If you see Cathal Butler and his Kinsale Golf Club Barton Shield team-mates bickering at the AIG Cups and Shields finals in Thurles this week, do not be alarmed, they’re just being friendly.

Simon Lewis For the second summer in succession, Pádraig Harrington is returning to the scene of a major championship triumph and just as he did at Birkdale 12 months ago, he will be sure to smell the roses as he makes his way around the famous links at Carnoustie.

Limerick Golf Club face Galway in today’s AIG Senior Cup final aiming to bridge the 15-year gap to their last victory in Irish club golf’s blue riband competition.

The Open Championship has not been a happy hunting ground for Shane Lowry over the past two seasons but Pádraig Harrington believes the 30-year-old has the credentials to become Ireland’s fifth recipient of the Auld Claret Jug.

‘Duel in the Sun’ is still The Open’s greatest day, writes Kevin Markham.

The Open still stirs the passion in three-time major winner Pádraig Harrington, and he can’t wait to get into the thick of the action at Troon on Thursday.

It was a bad day for Munster golf as Muskerry and Douglas crashed out in their respective semi-finals of the AIG Cups and Shields National Finals at Carton House.

It’s like the Champions League of golf but unlike the continent’s premier football tournament which has yet to be retained by any club, Muskerry’s Niall Gorey is hopeful the Cork club can become the first back-to-back winners of the AIG Barton Shield for 18 years.

Young Mallow golfer Liam Dowling has beaten competition from more than 20,000 golfers to win a trip to the Open Championship, starting tomorrow, at St Andrews Golf Course and meet world number one Rory McIlroy.

How many times have we heard a sports star talking about a legend from a different generation they grew up watching on tv, wide-eyed and wondering would they be like them one day?

Niall Kearney, the 26-year-old European Challenge Tour player from Royal Dublin, achieved an ambition he has chased since turning professional in 2009 when he birdied the 18th hole at Adare Manor yesterday to capture the 104th Irish Professional Championship.

Legends like Harry Bradshaw, Fred Daly, Christy O’Connor Senior, Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke and Pádraig Harrington have won the Irish PGA Championship over its 104-year history.

Graeme McDowell led the praise for "the curly-haired kid" at Hoylake last night as Rory McIlroy got his hands on the Claret Jug and brought Irish golf its eighth major in as many years.

Darren Clarke is hoping his happiness off the course can translate to success on it as he goes in search of a second Claret Jug in today’s opening round of The Open Championship at Hoylake.

It is not just Tiger Woods who will have changed in the eight years since the Open Championship last visited Hoylake, the Royal Liverpool course he tamed in 2006 will be presenting quite a different challenge this time around.

Hoylake is a course with a fond record for Irish golf but only those who stay out of the deep rough at a lush, green Royal Liverpool will have any chance of winning The Open next week.

The 97,000 fans who thronged the magnificent Fota Island Resort over the last four days had it all. The weather, the big names, the course looking better than an airbrushed postcard.

Dining out on one Major win for 60 years didn’t stop Irish golfers or Irish golf writers from attending the British Open and a host of other Majors from Fred Daly’s win in 1947 until the great messiah — Pádraig Harrington — performed his first miracle at Carnoustie in 2007.

As far as we know, the great French writer Marcel Proust did not play golf but he would have been intrigued by Graeme McDowell’s responses to his famous Questionnaire.

This country has produced many of the game’s finest but for reasons not always easy to fathom, their record at the Irish Open is a long way short of what might have been expected.

Just over five years ago, no Irish golfer had won a major since Fred Daly in the 1947 Open, but how times have changed.

One practice round today was enough to tell Padraig Harrington that it is no ordinary Irish Open this week.

Stephen Healy (Claremorris) will represent the home province on the final day of the Radisson Blu-sponsored West of Ireland Amateur Open Championship at Rosses Point today after a clear-cut 4 and 3 triumph over Nicholas Grant (Knock) in their quarter-final yesterday.

ORPHANED when his mother dies, Boston teenager Ren McCormack (Kenny Wormwald) moves to a small Midwest town to live with his uncle in Craig Brewer’s remake of Footloose (12A).

THE four big guns of Irish golf hogged the pre-tournament headlines and, in truth, most of the galleries, but there’s another quartet of Irish men who turned heads in Killarney yesterday.

After achieving one dream – winning The Open, of course – Darren Clarke returns to action this week hoping for another.

IT really doesn’t get much better than this.

THE timing was perfect and apt. As Darren Clarke walked into the Dunluce Room at Royal Portrush Golf Club, went up the stairs and turned left, the bar opened.

Champion Darren Clarke has re-iterated his belief that Royal Portrush would be able to host the Open.

Golfer Darren Clarke today presented his winning Open championship medal to Royal Portrush Golf Club.

Darren Clarke was clearly making the most of his first day as a major champion today – and he hopes it is only four weeks until Lee Westwood is doing the same.

New Open champion Darren Clarke is at a loss to explain how tiny Northern Ireland has suddenly produced an amazing three major winners in 13 months - after one in the previous 149 years.

IT WAS four years ago that Darren Clarke read in an English broadsheet newspaper that he was continuing an “inexorable descent towards irrelevance”.

Four years ago no Irish golfer had won a major since Fred Daly in the 1947 Open.

Four years ago no Irish golfer had won a major since Fred Daly in the 1947 Open, but how times have changed.

THE formal ratification of Jose-Maria Olazabal as captain of the European Ryder Cup team at Medinah next year takes place shortly after lunch today.

MARTIN KAYMER isn’t allowing himself to become caught up in the hype surrounding his potential overthrow of Tiger Woods as the world’s number one golfer.

US Open champion and Ryder Cup hero Graeme McDowell is to receive an honorary doctorate.

SHANE LOWRY is hoping to join a very exclusive club and boost his chances of finishing the Race to Dubai on a high when he makes his debut in the 100th edition of the Ladbrokes.com sponsored Irish PGA at Seapoint today.

DES SMYTH, now 57, has already won the Ladbrokes.com Irish PGA Championship six times and quietly fancies his chances of a seventh title when the event gets underway over the Seapoint links, Termonfeckin, Co Louth this morning.

The seaside town of Portrush in the North is preparing today to throw the mother of all parties for US Open champion Graeme McDowell.

Sports Minister Mary Hanafin led tributes to US Open winner Graeme McDowell today.