1. Every major should be accessible by train.<\/p>\n
The towns get smaller as you head north from Dublin towards Country Antrim; from the airport the easiest route is a bus to Belfast\u2019s Grand Central Station and then a train to Coleraine followed by a smaller train to Portrush. Things get greener as you go. The cow count goes up. Your blood pressure goes down. There\u2019s something about the rhythm of a train that\u2019s good for the soul, and when you can walk from the train right into town that\u2019s even better. There are a lot of good trains on the Open rota. That\u2019s an excellent thing. <\/p>\n
2. Every major should be accessible by beach.<\/p>\n
This feels like a slightly needier request, but after a week commuting by walk-across-the-beach it\u2019s going to be tough to get used to anything else. Portrush (in good weather) is a fun, cheery little beach town, filled with bars and restaurants and arcades and ice cream shops. But the really cool thing is the way its \u201ctown centre\u201d \u2014\u00a0which includes the Harbour Bar, the center of the social scene, which you likely saw on the broadcast \u2014 sticks out into the ocean, a jagged peninsula flanked by wide, flat, welcoming beaches. And if you cut directly across one of those beaches you just so happen to get to one of the best golf courses in the world. At every Open venue, the walk from course to town means something special and different. This walk is better than most.<\/p>\n
3. Rory McIlroy wasn\u2019t at the bars.<\/p>\n
But his name sure was. Several times I heard groups of lads breaking into Rory chants outside the bars or on their walks home, like he was their favorite football club. I wrote on Sunday that McIlroy seems clearly to mean more to Northern Ireland than any other golfer would to their respective home crowd \u2014\u00a0this felt like strong supporting evidence.<\/p>\n
(Sidenote: Jon Rahm actually was at the bar\u2026)<\/p>\n
4. The pros love Royal Portrush.<\/p>\n
From what I can tell, just about everybody loves Royal Portrush. It\u2019s challenging. It\u2019s scenic. There\u2019s a ton of variety. And it plays \u201cfair\u201d. (Pros understandably care about that last one more than viewers.) Golf fans hoping for carnage were likely disappointed by the weekend\u2019s benign weather, which led to uncharacteristically low scores. But several different players mentioned that it\u2019s jumped immediately into their top three Open venues. (Their consensus: St. Andrews, Portrush and a wild-card third.) There\u2019s talk of adding a stop at Portmarnock in Dublin, which would be awesome \u2014\u00a0but I hope the Open comes back here soon, too. I\u2019d\u00a0just ask for a little bit more wind when they do.<\/p>\n
5. The rake decision caused a stir.<\/p>\n
This is the sort of ridiculous story that could only happen in golf, but it\u2019s sort of interesting for that reason, too: Heading into the tournament, the R&A made a change to its bunker-raking policy. Rather than each group having a designated raker, as has been tradition, this year they decided to leave the raking to the caddies. I understand a couple possible explanations: it\u2019d be nice to\u00a0limit the number of people inside the ropes, plus isn\u2019t bunker-raking an integral part of the caddie\u2019s weekly job, anyway? But given an already sluggish pace and given these rakes have particularly wide tooths (yes, this is real), the process takes a little longer here than in your typical Tour bunker. <\/p>\n
In one high-profile incident,\u00a0Tommy Fleetwood ended up standing in a footprint at No. 5 on Thursday. And caddie-raking is something that you don\u2019t really notice until you do; on No. 17 on Sunday, Rory McIlroy for at least two minutes after finishing out on No. 17 as his caddie Harry Diamond perfected his rake job. The caddies and even players I talked to said they\u2019d like to see the rakers reinstated, that it was a great tradition of this tournament. They\u2019re biased, of course.<\/p>\n
6. Gotterup\u2019s still No. 1.<\/p>\n
The new prince of the linksland, Chris Gotterup, won last week\u2019s Scottish Open and finished third at Portrush. Everything is now on the table \u2014\u00a0Tour Championship? Ryder Cup?! \u2014 but on Sunday night he confirmed something important: he does not consider Scottie Scheffler a New Jersey golfer. Scheffler was born in Jersey and spent the first six years of his life there but his family has called Dallas home ever since; Gotterup said that makes him Dallas, through and through. As a result Gotterup is the clear top dog in New Jersey golf. That should make him a particular fan favorite if he tees it up at Bethpage in two months. <\/p>\n
7. Viktor Hovland was joking about the aliens.<\/p>\n
Viktor Hovland went to see Giant\u2019s Causeway<\/a> on Saturday night, a breathtaking and bizarre set of cliffside geologic formations. Hovland is as curious as they come; he\u2019s likely the only Tour pro to go see<\/a> Shawshank prison multiple times while in Ohio for the Memorial, for instance. So it was no surprise that he posted a picture of the Causeway\u2019s strange hexagonal basalt columns to his Instagram story on Saturday, captioned, \u201caliens\u201d. <\/p>\n Hovland \/ IG<\/p>\n I asked him about the visit post-round Sunday (after he\u2019d finished answering several questions, somewhat despondently, about his T63) and he lit up, though he clarified the \u201caliens\u201d thing was a joke.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was some pretty good lore about some giants, though,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 8. Haotong Li lost his game. This was quite the comeback<\/p>\n In the last several years Haotong Li has been so embattled with swing yips off the tee that he has considered giving up the game. To make a long story short: it\u2019s good he didn\u2019t! Because on Sunday he played alongside Scheffler in the final tee time in the final round of a major. <\/p>\n Li admitted something interesting on the eve of battle: he was ready to play free.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing to lose,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially from two years ago, swing yips, couldn\u2019t even pull the trigger until now. It\u2019s a massive step for me.<\/p>\n Li admitted that he didn\u2019t expect to catch Scheffler from four shots back \u2014\u00a0\u201cplaying for second, especially playing with [Scheffler]. I\u2019ll just try to play my best out there and hopefully make something happen.<\/p>\n 9. I had two special guests at this week\u2019s Open.<\/p>\n I want to write more about this, so I won\u2019t go too deep, but just know how cool it was that my mom and her sister planned an Irish adventure that centered on a pair of Friday tickets to Portrush. The absolute highlight of my week. More to come.<\/p>\n 10. It\u2019s always a come-down, leaving\u00a0a major championship.<\/p>\n I write this every major, but I cannot believe these guys finish an event like this and then just go do it again the following week. Granted, the very top tier aren\u2019t playing the 3M Open, but the likes of Gotterup, Mav McNealy and Sam Burns headline a pretty deep field chasing valuable points. Not me \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m headed home. <\/p>\n RYDER CUP WATCH<\/p>\n Things just started to get very real.<\/p>\n Team USA faces a slew of new questions after Sunday\u2019s results at Portrush. Is Harris English a lock after his T2? Is Gotterup a serious contender after finishing third? Is there legitimate concern around Collin Morikawa? Did Ben Griffin peak early? Could J.J. Spaun slip outside the top six and if so, what are his chances? Does captain Keegan Bradley need one more top finish to pick himself? At the moment it feels like there are five locks \u2014 Scheffler, Schauffele, DeChambeau, Henley, Thomas \u2014\u00a0and then a whole bunch of guys who will look to prove their worth come playoff time.<\/p>\n Team Europe didn\u2019t experience the same level of shake-up but its core remains rock-solid. One interesting plot point was both Hojgaard twins, Rasmus (No. 7) and Nicolai (No. 25) in and around contention for much of the week, though they faded slightly to T14 and T16. Harry Hall (No. 24) is another promising pro who\u2019s further down the rankings than he feels like he should be. Matt Fitzpatrick made the biggest move of all, though \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s up to No. 13 and trending better every day.<\/p>\n TEAM USA RYDER CUP RANKINGS<\/p>\n 1. Scheffler 2. Schauffele 3. Spaun 4. Henley 5. DeChambeau 6. English 7. Thomas 8. Morikawa 9. Griffin 10. Bradley 11. McNealy 12. Harman 13. Novak 14. Cantlay 15. Burns<\/p>\n TEAM EUROPE RYDER CUP RANKINGS<\/p>\n 1. McIlroy 2. MacIntyre 3. Fleetwood 4. Hatton 5. Lowry 6. Straka 7. R. Hojgaard 8. Rose 9. Aberg 10. Hovland 11. Detry 12. Wallace 13. Fitzpatrick 14. J. Smith 15. Norgaard<\/p>\n Complete standings\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n NEWS FROM SEATTLE<\/p>\n Monday Finish HQ.<\/p>\n I have no news to provide other than I\u2019m excited to re-enter real life. And I\u2019ll triple down on my gratitude that Seattle has a direct flight to Dublin. It\u2019s the little things.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see you next week!<\/p>\n Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “><\/p>\n Dylan Dethier<\/p>\n Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine\/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he\u2019s the author of 18 in America<\/a>, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we still have the same number of U.S. Opens as Scottie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-14523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Viktor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Hovland_Aliens.jpg\")
\n Viktor Hovland at Giant\u2019s Causeway.<\/p>\n![\"Dylan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Dethier_headshot1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n