{"id":252396,"date":"2025-07-10T03:02:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T03:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/252396\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T03:02:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T03:02:24","slug":"its-a-lovely-part-of-the-world-former-european-ryder-cup-star-hails-portrush-ahead-of-open-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/252396\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s a lovely part of the world\u2019: Former European Ryder Cup star hails Portrush ahead of Open bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Lee Westwood has sung Portrush's praises\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/05dcf3c9-8c55-4a44-b4bc-987849709986.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Lee Westwood has sung Portrush&#8217;s praises<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Former European Ryder Cup star Lee Westwood has hailed the town of Portrush and the golf course at Royal Portrush ahead of next week\u2019s Open Championship at the Dunluce Links.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The Englishman, who played in 11 Ryder Cups and won seven of them with Europe, qualified to compete in the 153rd edition of the tournament which will be played on the Northern Irish north coast next week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Westwood played well on his previous professional appearance at Royal Portrush, finishing in a share of fourth at the 2019 Open Championship when Shane Lowry triumphed, and will be hoping to improve on that in his 90th career Major appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">And speaking on the Five Clubs podcast, the 52-year-old \u2013 who now plays alongside Graeme McDowell and Tom McKibbin on LIV Golf \u2013 has spoken of his love for Portrush ahead of returning there next week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;It\u2019s a lovely part of the world. The people there are very friendly, it\u2019s a great little town, some great bars and sort of encapsulates The Open feeling. It\u2019s kind of like St Andrews but in Northern Ireland!&#8221; grinned Westwood, who is making his first Major appearance in three years at the Dunluce Links.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;The course itself, I fell in love with it years ago when I played the British Amateur there in the early \u201990s. Went back for The Open in 2019, when Shane won, and I played well then.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;I\u2019m friends with Darren Clarke, who\u2019s from that area, and Graeme McDowell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">&#8220;Really love the golf course itself. It gives you a few chances, it\u2019s tough in a few places, some hard par-threes, some easy par-threes. It throws something different at you every day and with it being a links course and stuck out there, the next land you see out there is Iceland or Greenland, so you get some real weather coming from that direction which changes the golf course completely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee Westwood has sung Portrush&#8217;s praises Former European Ryder Cup star Lee Westwood has hailed the town of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,6222,79,24411,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-252396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-open-championship","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-the-open","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114826716414322089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}