Dunluce Dreams, Cont'd.

We'll briefly interrupt our wall-to-wall coverage of the U.S. Open to update everyone on the longstanding dance between Peter Dawson and Royal Portrush Golf Club.  In a nutshell, Dawson has thrown caution to the wind and will announce on Monday that the Open Championship will return to the Dunluce three times, the first in 2019.

Per Golf Digest:

It's finally going to happen. After years of speculation and almost seven decades on from its

only previous visit for Max Faulkner's victory in 1951, the British Open is to return to Northern Ireland's Royal Portrush in 2019. While a formal announcement has yet to be made, a source close to the County Antrim club has told GolfDigest.com that a press conference has been scheduled for later this month.

It's simply a spectacular links, and I'm truly happy that Dawson and the R&A could set aside their fears of Marching season and the associated disruptions.   For my thoughts on Portrush I'll refer you back to this post from 2012, when we slogged our way through heavy rains to play it.

Of course, Shackelford rains on our parade with this:

Brian Keogh reports and posts a letter that went out to Royal Portrush members assuaging

concerns about a possible Open Championship (or more) by reminding them that they will get to vote before the R&A is told it's a go. The R&A has scheduled a news conference Monday to announce a future Open Championship without committing to a date. 

And considering the absolutely perfect record of club membership votes, why not! What could possibly go wrong, especially as they have to build two new Martin Hawtree holes to permanently shove aside two H.S. Colt holes, including one with an iconic bunker? Who wouldn't vote for that?

I mostly agree with Shack, but am more inclined than he to accept 16/18ths of a loaf, especially when the 2/18ths I'm foregoing are the stalest.  The iconic bunker of which he speaks is visually arresting, it's just that no one is ever in it.   

The weirder part is no doubt the creation of the two new holes on their Valley course, which we discussed at length here.   But if this is the price that needed to be paid, I'm OK with it.

The bigger picture is equally interesting, as we most assumed they'd award and Open and, you know, see how it went.  It may be that the Portrush leadership wasn't willing to go through the hassle of building the two new holes for a one-off, but perhaps there's a bigger agenda here.  Is it possible that the R & A might be planning on dropping a venue from their Open rota?  Donald Trump was unavailable for comment.