Barely had the tears dried and the emotions been choked back from Wednesday’s farewell to St Andrews by Arnold Palmer when it felt like you needed to start them all over again in Thursday’s opening round of the 144th Open Championship.

Graeme McDowell will get Ireland’s challenge at the 2014 Masters up and running tomorrow at Augusta National when he tees off in the opening round of the year’s first major championship at 2.35pm Irish time.

DARREN CLARKE spent the build-up to this week’s British Open deflecting questions about his protegé Rory McIlroy.