Links golf is a liar. It promises romance with those sweeping Irish vistas and then punches you right in the gut with a blind tee shot into a patch of marram grass. Honestly, the 153rd Open at Royal Portrush was less of a golf tournament and more of a four-day psychological experiment conducted by the R&A. If you just looked at the final leaderboard, you'd think Scottie Scheffler cruised. He didn't.
He survived.
Most people see a four-shot victory and assume it was a boring Sunday stroll along the County Antrim coast. They're wrong. Portrush doesn't do "strolls." Even for the best player on the planet, the Open 2025 was a gauntlet of "Calamity Corners" and bunker-less greens that behaved like upturned saucers. You've probably heard the stats, but the stats don't tell you about the silence that fell over the 8th hole when the world number one looked human for the first time in months.
Why the Open 2025 felt different from the start
The energy was weirdly high even on Thursday. Padraig Harrington took the opening shot, and the local fans—who basically treat golf like a religion—went absolutely ballistic. It was a 7:30 AM birdie that felt like a final-round roar. But the Dunluce Links doesn't care about storylines.
By the time the afternoon wave hit the 16th—the infamous 236-yard par-3 "Calamity Corner"—the Atlantic wind had started to wake up. It’s a terrifying hole. You're staring across a massive chasm. If you're short, you’re dead. If you’re right, you’re in thick rough that hasn't seen a lawnmower since the Clinton administration.
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Early leaders like Harris English and Matt Fitzpatrick found out quickly that the 2025 setup was toothier than 2019. The greens were running at a 10 on the Stimpmeter, which is "slow" by PGA standards, but with the undulations at Portrush, if they were any faster, the balls would simply roll into the ocean.
The Scheffler "procession" that almost wasn't
Scottie Scheffler entered the week as the heavy favorite. He was coming off a gold medal in Paris and a tear through the States. But Portrush is a different beast.
His second-round 64 was a masterclass in "boring" golf, which is actually the hardest kind to play. He wasn't pin-seeking; he was middle-of-the-greening. It was a surgical 7-under-par that put him in the driver's seat, making him the first world number one to hold a 36-hole Open lead since Tiger Woods in 2006.
Then came Sunday.
He birdied three of the first five holes. The lead ballooned to seven shots. People were already checking out, thinking about what to have for dinner. Then, the 8th hole happened. It’s a new hole, part of the Martin Ebert redesign, and it ate him alive. He found a fairway bunker, stayed in it, and walked off with a double-bogey six.
Suddenly, the seven-shot lead was four.
The Irish crowd, desperate for a Rory McIlroy or Robert MacIntyre charge, suddenly had something to cheer for. But Scheffler is basically a golfing robot disguised as a guy who just wants to go home and see his kid. He birdied the 9th. He birdied the 12th. The door didn't just close; it was deadbolted.
The leaderboard that surprised everyone
While Scottie was busy being Scottie, the rest of the field was a chaotic mess of surprises.
- Harris English played the round of his life on Sunday, a 66 that would have won almost any other Open. He finished solo second at 13-under.
- Chris Gotterup, the guy who just won the Scottish Open, proved it wasn't a fluke. He took third place, showing that some Americans actually do understand how to play on dirt and fescue.
- Li Haotong was the story for three days. He was tied for the lead after Thursday and hung around the final groups until the very end. Seeing him back in form was a genuine highlight.
And then there was Rory.
Being Rory McIlroy at Royal Portrush must be exhausting. Every person in Northern Ireland wanted him to win. He shot a 66 on Saturday to give everyone hope—a "glimmer," as the pundits called it. He finished T7 at 10-under. It wasn't the win everyone craved, but after his 2019 nightmare at this same course, it felt like a weird kind of redemption.
What we learned about Royal Portrush
The course only has 57 bunkers. That’s almost nothing. St. Andrews has 112. But Portrush uses grass as a weapon.
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If you missed a green, you weren't splashing out of sand; you were trying to putt through three inches of fescue or use a 60-degree wedge from a downhill lie on a tight runoff. It rewards creativity. It punishes the "stock" high-draw that works so well in Florida.
John Parry provided the moment of the week with a hole-in-one on the 13th. The roar was loud enough to be heard in Derry. It was the exact same hole where Emiliano Grillo had an ace in 2019. Some holes just have that magic.
Practical takeaways for the next Open
If you're planning on attending Royal Birkdale in 2026 or just want to understand why these guys struggled, here’s the reality.
Watch the wind, not the yardage. On Sunday, Scheffler was hitting clubs that made no sense for the distance because the wind was gusting at 15-20 mph. For us mere mortals, that’s a three-club wind. For them, it’s a test of flight control.
Short game is everything. The players who made the cut—which fell at +1, just like in 2019—were the ones who could scramble from those "saucer" greens. Robert MacIntyre and Xander Schauffele stayed in the top 10 because they didn't bleed bogeys when they missed a green.
Expect the unexpected. The weather forecast for the Open 2025 was "mixed," which is Irish for "it will rain while the sun is out and then get cold for ten minutes." You saw players switching from polos to hoodies three times a round.
The 153rd Open reminded us that Scottie Scheffler is currently playing a different game than everyone else. He finished at 17-under-par, a score that felt impossible when the rain squalls hit on Friday morning. He didn't just win a trophy; he won the title of "Champion Golfer of the Year" in a place that knows exactly how hard that is to achieve.
Next time you're on a links course, remember the 8th at Portrush. Even the best in the world can't escape the sand every time. The goal isn't perfection; it's the ability to birdie the 9th after you've just made a double. That’s how Scottie won his fourth major. That’s how you win the Open.
If you're looking to gear up for your own links adventure, start by practicing those low-flighted irons and maybe book your tickets for 2026 early—the 2025 ballot sold out in record time for a reason.