Gavin Cooney

STILL DRENCHED IN the emotions of the end of Rory McIlroy’s Masters yearning? 

Come over here, we’ve got a few cold facts that will leave you stunned in another way altogether. 

McIlroy’s Masterspiece was the 70th major championship since Padraig Harrington won his maiden title in 2007 at Carnoustie. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that they have been dominated by American golfers, who have won 39 of them. 

But next on the list of successful nations is, remarkably, Ireland, with 11.

(A necessary interlude: we’re talking here about the all-island organisation of Irish golf. McIlroy, Darren Clarke, and Graeme McDowell are entitled to pick whatever flag they wish to acompany their names atop leaderboards.) 

McIlroy owns the better part of the glory here, of course, with the Masters’ his fifth major title. Harrington has three (the 2008 PGA Championship along with the back-to-back Claret Jugs) while Shane Lowry (2019 Open), Clarke (2011 Open) and McDowell (2010 US Open) have one each. 

But even if you take the greatest European golfer of all time out of the Irish list (and, nope, there’s no quibbling with that title since last Sunday night) there have still been more Irish major winners since 2007 than any other nation. 

The nearest any other country comes to Ireland’s total is South Africa, who have had four major victories in that timespan. England, Spain and Australia have each had three, Martin Kaymer has won two major titles for Germany, while all of Argentina, South Korea, Sweden, Italy, and Japan have had one winner each.  

Of the eight widest winning margins at major championships in that stretch, three belong to Irish golfers.

Nobody has won more comprehensively than the eight shots McIlroy took from the nearest challengers at the 2011 US Open and 2012 PGA Championship, while only McIlroy, Martin Kaymer (2014 US Open by eight shots) and Louis Oosthuizen (2010 Open by seven shots) have bettered Shane Lowry’s six-stroke winning margin at Portrush. 

The glory has been underpinned by consistency, as Irish golfers have accounted for six runners-up spots in majors across that time. McIlroy finished in a tie for second at the 2018 Open and then solo second at the 2022 Masters along with the previous two US Opens, by a single shot on each occasion. 

Lowry, meanwhile, was tied second at the 2016 US Open, and McDowell came close to another US Open title two years after his first but finished tied runner-up. 

In fact, one of the Irish quintet have finished among the top five in at least one major in ever year since Harrington’s breakthrough bar 2013. (And still McIlroy managed a T8 at the PGA Championship.) 

These guys have not just broken the mould in Irish sport. 

McIlroy, of course, has become the first European golfer ever to win the career Grand Slam. 

Harrington was the first European to win the PGA Championship for 78 years, and the first European to successfully defend the Claret Jug in more than a century. (He is also the only European to successfully defend a major in our time span, though Brooke Koepka has done so twice.) 

McDowell, meanwhile, was the first European to win the US Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970. 

And here’s one last bit of miraculous contextualising: you have to go back to that Jacklin win to build a list of the last five English golfers to win a major. The Irish equivalent only barely predates the Beijing Olympics. 

It is the condition of the underachieving sport to be constantly forced to look at the winder picture: hence no tournament qualifier defeat for the Irish men’s national team can pass by without an inquest into the pitiful structures, deplorable facilities and berserk politicking that have so tragically diminished our status.

Conversely, runs of success rarely get the perspective they deserve. For Irish golf to have produced this kind of run at major championships is astonishing. 

Harrington can take credit for more than just his three triumphs, as it was he who lighted the path for the ethereal talents who followed. 

“Pádraig was the one who made us all believe that we could do it that we could follow in his footsteps and win major championships,” said McIlroy last year.

Harrington kicks it all off at Carnoustie in 2007. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Having done a few Q and As with Conor Niland after the publication of The Racket, a staple audience question has been to make the unflattering comparison between Ireland’s global impact on tennis and golf. 

Conor says a key to revitalising Irish tennis is to host a major event here, as it would allow the sport dominate the media for a week or so, while also giving young Irish players a taste of the top level. 

 That’s yet to happen, but thanks to the support of the country’s biggest golfers, the virtuous cycle is turning in relation to the Irish Open, which has retained an admirably-sized footprint on the global schedule. 

Through their professional scheme, Golf Ireland also provide direct support worth €33,000 annually to 10 young professionals, giving them access to competition starts and coaching. This is the kind of national subsidy and scaffolding an Irish tennis player is crying out for. 

There are deeper cultural reasons for this success too, most obviously the fact the game is still relatively accessible and democratic in Ireland. It has its exclusive pockets, but it’s still possible to play the game relatively cheaply in Ireland, certainly compared to elsewhere in Britain, America and Europe. 

But any success this outsized is bound to be ad hoc and we should acknowledge it won’t last forever. McIlroy and Lowry have plenty of years left at the elite level of the sport, while Tom McKibbin may yet find his way back to the majors: his decision to take the bag on LIV has been dispiriting, especially with the merger deal with the PGA Tour stalling and potentially condemning McKibbin to a few years in lucrative exile.

There is also an alarming lack of depth beyond our headline acts on the PGA Tour, as Conor Purcell is the only Irish player currently playing regularly on the DP World Tour.

But golf’s generous timelines mean these are concerns which won’t need a reckoning with for many years, if at all.

It has been a heady major run for Irish golf, and it’s not over yet.