There will be some special guests at tomorrow’s Dubai Duty Free Irish Open Pro Am at Royal County Down, as two teams of young golfers from Shannon Golf Club in Clare and Faithlegg Golf Club in Waterford reap their reward for winning the inaugural Irish Open Golf Skills Challenge.

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.

Adare Manor will host this year’s Irish PGA Championship from October 2-5.

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.

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.

Composer Shaun Davey says his new musical dips in and out of Jonathan Swift’s most famous book, reports Richard Fitzpatrick

This week’s return of the Irish Open to Royal Portrush could spark a rekindling of the tournament’s halcyon days of the 1970s and ’80s, says leading golf commentator Ewen Murray.

Ireland’s hopes of ending a 54-year BMW PGA Championship drought will not rest on its quartet of major champions, who all suffered early exits at Wentworth.

Peter Lawrie would have been an unlikely choice to become the first Irishman to win the European Tour’s PGA Championship since 1958 but he goes into today’s second round feeling bullish about his chances.

It was a year ago at Wentworth that Luke Donald ascended to the top of the golfing pile, outlasting Lee Westwood in a play-off to win the BMW PGA Championship and oust his fellow Englishman as world number one.

The big guns of Irish golf will contest this week’s BMW PGA Championship, the European Tour’s flagship tournament, at Wentworth.

THE RETURN of the Irish Open this year to Royal Portrush will act as a dry run for bringing the British Open Championship to the Dunluce links at the famed Antrim links in the future.

TWO years after a one-shot defeat to Italian brothers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari, Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy return to Mission Hills in China bidding to capture the World Cup of Golf.

NOT everyone has been as enamoured with this stretch of Kent coastline as William Laidlaw Purves was when he first envisaged a golf links on the humps and hillocks just outside Sandwich in the 1880s.

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.

THE HONOURS keep coming for Graeme McDowell.

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.

WHEN you have worked hard and fought a dodgy swing to stand three under after 16 holes in the first round of the PGA Championship at Wentworth, you are perfectly entitled to dream of a score in the mid 60s given the last two are par fives reachable in two.

IRISH golfers have won tournaments – including majors – in almost every corner of the globe.

THE EUROPEAN Tour begins in earnest this week with its flagship tournament, the BMW PGA Championship, boasting a €4.5m prize fund, taking centre stage at Wentworth.

AFTER the excitement of the Race to Dubai and Lee Westwood’s successes on Sunday, the attention switches to the World Cup of Golf which starts Thursday at the Mission Hills Golf Club in China.

ONE of the mysteries surrounding British & Irish and European Ryder Cup teams is that this country hasnever been honoured with the captaincy.

AGAINST the backdrop of the forthcoming inauguration of Barrack Obama as the first African-American president of the US, the controversy over South Africa’s participation in the World Cup of Golf at Waterville in July 1978 is a reminder of how much things have changed in 30 years.

PADRAIG HARRINGTON last night became the fourth Irishman to receive the Golf Writers’ Trophy presented annually by the Association of Golf Writers.

A number of big names faced a battle to survive the halfway cut in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth today.

Paul McGinley’s slide outside the world’s top 150 has not stopped him believing “there is a lot more good golf left in me” – and at Wentworth today he made a lot of other people believe it too.

Padraig Harrington has joined three of his Irish golfing heroes in winning the Golf Writers’ Trophy for 2007.

MANY of golf’s finest are snubbing this week’s World Cup at Sandy Lane in Barbados.

The Ryder Cup was long overdue coming to Ireland but is going to be worth the wait, golf legend Tony Jacklin announced today.

Paul McGinley has expressed his disappointment at the number of big names missing from this week’s World Cup in Portugal – even though it improves the chances of he and Padraig Harrington regaining the title and walking away with almost £400,000 each.

Four new stamps celebrating the contribution of Irish golfers to the Ryder Cup were launched today ahead of Ireland hosting the event next year.

A ROUND of 70 on the testing Burma Road course at Wentworth yesterday was far from a disaster for Pádraig Harrington.

THE PGA Championship has never been a particularly kind event to the Irish, our only win coming courtesy of the late Harry Bradshaw at Llandudno in 1958.

HAVING cavorted around the world since early January, the European Tour finally returns to its roots this week with the €2.5m British Masters getting under way at the Forest of Arden this morning.

LAID up as he currently is after an operation on his left knee, Paul McGinley has plenty of time to reflect on 2004.

CHRISTY O’Connor is 80 years young today, another milestone in the life of one of the greatest sporting stars Ireland has ever produced.

IRELAND and America have long and deep traditional ties. But you would not have thought so when listening to the different views of their respective teams in the lead-up to the World Cup.

TOURING professionals have a reputation of seeking relief from every type of hazard in the cut-throat competition of the golf circuit but will never, ever, make a personal judgement in doubtful circumstances.

PADRAIG HARRINGTON will not be lining out in this week’s Smurfit Irish PGA Championship at Adare Manor.

The omens are still good for this year’s Irish quartet and especially the in-form Darren Clarke and Pádraig Harrington.

PAUL McGINLEY yesterday joined a long list of Irish men who have played crucial parts in Ryder Cup victories.

THE younger generation may have gained the impression that the misbehaviour which marred the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline was the first sign of trouble in a competition launched by wealthy British seed merchant Samuel Ryder back in 1927 to foster good relations between the people of the United States and Britain.