Rory McIlroy: The Open's biggest legacy in the North could be bringing people together

Rory McIlroy has spoken of the great legacy this week’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush can have, both for golf in Northern Ireland and its people.

Tournament favourite McIlroy, 30, was speaking today at Royal Portrush on the day tournament organisers the R&A announced record-breaking crowds of 237,750, the largest attendance for an Open outside St Andrews and second-largest ever, including more than 30,000 fans under the age of 25, 21,000 of whom are under 16s.

The four-time major champion from Holywood, Co. Down said the event could both encourage more young people to play his sport and bring together the community at what is a time of uncertainty surrounding Brexit and a political impasse at the Northern Ireland Executive.

“In golfing terms, it’s legacy could be young boys and girls are keen to pick a golf club up and play,” McIlroy said during his pre-tournament press conference. “A lot of people I know and their kids, they all play golf and I feel like golf is a very accessible sport here. I’m very fortunate that I grew up here because it was so accessible and you didn’t have to come from money to play the game.

“So I think no matter what happens here this week, if I win or whoever else wins, having The Open back in this country is a massive thing for golf and I think as well it will be a massive thing for the country.

“Sport has an unbelievable way to bring people together and we all know this country sometimes needs that and this has the ability to do that. Talking of legacy, that could be the biggest impact this tournament has, outside of sport, outside of everything else, the fact that young people are coming here to enjoy it and have a good time and sort of forget everything else that goes on.”

McIlroy was born during the Troubles when the likelihood of a major sporting event being staged here would have been thought of as an impossibility but the world number three spoke of a very different climate now, 21 years after the landmark Good Friday Agreement brought a cessation of violence.

“I think it just means people have moved on. It’s a different time, it’s a very prosperous place, I’m very fortunate that I grew up just outside Belfast and I never saw anything, I was oblivious to it.

“I watched a movie a couple of years ago, just basically called 71 about a British soldier that gets stationed at the Palace Barracks in Holywood, which is literally 500 yards from where I grew up and it follows him on a night of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

“I remember asking my mum and dad, ‘is this actually what happened?’ It’s amazing to think that 40 years on it’s such a good place, no-one cares who they are or where they’re from, what background they come from. You have a great life and it doesn’t matter what side of the street you come from. That’s what I was talking about, the legacy of this tournament, having a tournament here again speaks volumes of where the country is and where the people that live here are now. You know, we’re so far past that and that’s a wonderful thing.”