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<\/p>\nPORTHCAWL, WALES \u2014 This week is always a dream come true for the 144 golfers who have qualified to play at the AIG Women\u2019s Open championship at Royal Porthcawl. But for Welsh professional Darcey Harry, it eclipses everything.<\/p>\n
While many of the field, including defending champion Lydia Ko, are visiting Wales for the first time, this is Harry\u2019s home course. These are the greens she has trained on and where she has been a member for six years.<\/p>\n
Harry, 22, is from nearby Dinas Powys, a town with a population of just 9,000 people and a 20-minute drive southwest of Cardiff, the country\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n
After turning professional in late 2024, she won the Hulencourt Women\u2019s Open in Belgium in June, her first win on the Ladies European Tour, to secure her place at Porthcawl. In doing so, she achieved a long-held ambition of playing the course she knows like the back of her hand during a major event.<\/p>\n
This summer also saw Harry at Royal Portrush to support her boyfriend, Jacob Skov Olesen, who co-led the Open after the first round. Olesen is Harry\u2019s caddie this week in her home country.<\/p>\n
But Porthcawl, tucked up against the blustery Bristol Channel with its spectacular beach views and unpredictable weather, does not feel like \u201chome\u201d to Harry \u2014 and not just because of the thousands of people who have descended on this sleepy yet scenic part of Wales.<\/p>\n
The course, which world No. 1 Nelly Korda called \u201cabsolutely breathtaking\u201d, has been rejigged in various ways to challenge the world\u2019s best golfers. The first hole from which Harry tees off on Thursday afternoon, for example, is usually the last hole on the course.<\/p>\n
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Darcey Harry at Royal Porthcawl this week (Oisin Keniry\/R&A\/R&A via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a few tee boxes I\u2019ve never played off, which was quite surprising going out and playing the course,\u201d Harry said in a press conference on Wednesday. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Oh, I never knew this was here!’\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry says the greens are moving a lot quicker, and the course, which many (including Korda) have noted takes \u201ccreativity\u201d to navigate, is playing longer, too. Peter Evans, the head PGA professional at Porthcawl for the past 30-plus years and someone who knows every patch of gorse to avoid, is relishing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mood of the course changes a lot here \u2013 and quickly,\u201d he tells The Athletic. \u201cIt freshens as the tide rolls in and as the tide goes back out, it softens. You can play here in a gale when the sea is rough and it\u2019s still wonderful. But when you\u2019ve had a bright day like today (Wednesday\u2019s final practice round), you see it in its full glory because you\u2019ve got the colours: the greens, the blues, the sandy browns. A painter would have a field day here; it is a painter\u2019s paradise. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery hole is different. You don\u2019t play straight out and back. You loop, twist and cut back on yourself. You can play holes here that on the card seem fairly innocuous, but because of the wind, it can play so much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hole eight, compared to the \u201cpostage stamp\u201d at Royal Troon, is one of those. The 122-yard, par 3 is the shortest hole, but a nasty crosswind means it can be one of the most difficult. The key is to aim off the green and trust the wind to guide the ball down and away from the six bunkers, which look to swallow it.<\/p>\n
The members here boast how the sea can be viewed from all 18 holes, and rightly so. Rest Bay and Porthcawl beach, where surfers and kiteboarders take advantage of high-speed winds, are postcard-like. The course also takes in views of the Gower Peninsula, a region in Wales recognised for its outstanding natural beauty. In the opposite direction sits England and the cliff edges of Exmoor National Park.<\/p>\n
There is so much to see and yet, from hole three, a par 4, and the 18th hole, a par 5, golfers cannot see the pin, meaning they are forced to play blind tee shots.<\/p>\n
One landmark over the 6,748 yards of the course is Sker House, which juts out in the direction of Port Talbot, a steelworks town that has the M4 motorway slicing through it and is where renowned actors Sir Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen both grew up. The yellow Sker House, which is now privately owned, was home to Cistercian monks more than 900 years ago. According to local legend, it is said to be haunted by the Maid of Sker.<\/p>\n
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The sixth green at the Women\u2019s Open (Oisin Keniry\/R&A\/R&A via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Another prominent building sits to the left-hand side of the first hole on the 134-year-old course. It is now a private residence, but was a former holiday home for local coal miners. \u201cWhen the mines used to shut for the last two weeks of July, that\u2019s where the miners went to have their holidays,\u201d Evans says.<\/p>\n
Peel back its many layers, avoid its annoyingly placed bunkers, and this 72-par course has so much to love. Tiger Woods might disagree, though, having found it a frustrating experience when representing the United States here as a 19-year-old in the Walker Cup in 1995.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always said it will be the one thing on my tombstone: \u2018The man that beat Tiger\u2019,\u201d says Gary Wolstenholme, who beat Woods at Porthcawl in a singles match-up.<\/p>\n
Woods was the world amateur No. 1 at the time and within 18 months, he would go on to win his first major, the Masters at Augusta, by a record 12 strokes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was incredibly mature,\u201d recalls Wolstenholme, now 64, who played at the Senior Open last weekend. \u201cHe was able to cope with pressure and situations because even in those days, everyone was clamouring around him. He drove the ball further than anyone else and had a short game. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did that equate to? Somebody who can destroy any golf course on the planet, which is what he then did.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Wolstenholme shakes hands with Woods after his win at Porthcawl in 1995 (David Cannon\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
But not at Royal Porthcawl. Woods\u2019 problem was some shots landing out of bounds, a theme that will catch golfers out this weekend across the narrow and windswept fairways. Wolstenholme says Woods even clonked someone on the top of the head with a golf ball, which was marked as out of bounds on a weekend when Britain and Ireland defeated the U.S. 14-10 on Welsh soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore we won, there was talk of it being renamed the \u2018Walkover Cup\u2019 because the Americans kept on winning,\u201d Wolstenholme adds. \u201cBeating Tiger was a big deal because I was on a hiding to nothing and I happened to beat him, which gave us a two-point advantage going into the second day.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have been surprisingly few major golf tournaments in Wales, but golf clubs in the country are hoping this will change. The Senior Open has been played at Porthcawl on three occasions. In 2010, the Ryder Cup was played a 45-minute drive away from Porthcawl at Celtic Manor in Newport, in what was a winning debut for Rory McIlroy with Europe. The Solheim Cup, the women\u2019s equivalent of the Ryder Cup, has been played in Wales once, along with the Curtis Cup.<\/p>\n
Wolstenholme is not alone in knowing how much Wales would love to stage the men\u2019s Open in the future, but the R&A is happy with the portfolio of courses they currently rotate on.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaging a Women\u2019s Open at Porthcawl will perhaps be the next step in going down that route,\u201d says Wolstenholme.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s massively underestimated and underrated as a golf course,\u201d adds Evans.<\/p>\n
(Top photo: Warren Little\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTHCAWL, WALES \u2014 This week is always a dream come true for the 144 golfers who have qualified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-51958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}