"Irish eyes are Smilin' this week Amgen Irish Open...

The Back 9 continues on the DP World Tour with an elite field gathered at The K Club for the Amgen Irish Open. 

edit >>> With the PGA Tour regular season over, the focus of the golfing world is on the DP World Tour for the next fortnight with the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth next week to follow.

McIlroy leads home charge

The island of Ireland's open always draws a large and knowledgeable crowd and this year is no different with a host of home stars giving the fans plenty to cheer. Rory McIlroy heads the field, with the World Number Two chasing a second Irish Open title after his victory at The K Club in 2016 and returns to the event for the first time as a career Grand Slam winner following his triumph at the Masters Tournament. Fellow Major Champions and winners of this event Shane Lowry and Pádraig Harrington also tee it up, as does a third Amgen ambassador in Seamus Power.

Major winners aplenty

The three home favourites are not the only winners of golf's four biggest events in the field this week with five other Major Champions teeing it up on Thursday. Italian Francesco Molinari makes it four Champion Golfers of the Year in the field, while the addition of Danny Willett, and Patrick Reed means we have three winners of the Green Jacket at The K Club. Add in Brooks Koepka's three US PGA Championships and two U.S. Opens and that is a total of 18 Major wins on the tee this week.

Back at The K Club

The K Club is one of the most storied venues in Irish golf and since 1995 has hosted 13 European Opens, two Irish Opens and a Ryder Cup. 

The Club, founded in 1832, boasts two courses, the 'inland links' Palmer South and the Palmer North, both named after their designer, the great Arnold Palmer. The South played host to the 2004, 2006 and 2007 European Opens, won by Retief Goosen, Stephen Dodd and Colin Montgomerie, but it is perhaps 2006 Ryder Cup venue the North which is best known. As well as hosting the Ryder Cup, it has seen Major winners such as Bernhard Langer, Darren Clarke and Michael Campbell win the European Open. McIlroy and Vincent Norrman have also won the last two editions of this event here, while Europe's 18½-9½ victory over the United States will forever be its most famous moment. We will be back here for the Amgen Irish Open again in 2027.

Inside the field

The Major Champions may take a lot of the headlines but the field this week is stacked from top to bottom. Tyrrell Hatton joins Ryder Cup team-mates McIIroy and Lowry, while Europe Captain Luke Donald along with Vice Captain Francesco Molinari add to the anticipation for golf's biggest event in the coming weeks. 

All five winners of the International Swing tee it up with five wins between them this season and they join 20 other victors from the 2025 campaign. Throw in PGA TOUR regulars Jhonattan Vegas, Erik van Rooyen and Ryan Gerard - winner of the Barracuda Championship - and the fans are in for a treat.

A sustainable event

Green Drive sees a host of on-site activities available to reduce waste and encourage the use of public transport but it is also breaking new ground through the event broadcast as the Amgen Irish Open will be the first sporting event in Ireland to power its live television production and global broadcast exclusively with green hydrogen. 

Hydrogen Power Units (HPUs), will replace traditional diesel generators, producing zero CO2 or particulate emissions, with water being the only by-product.

europeantour.com

Bryan Angus (edit)

European captain Luke Donald picks his 6 players to complete 2025 Ryder Cup team

 European Ryder Cup team 2025 for Bethpage Black course September 26-28.

There weren't any surprises at captain Luke Donald's press conference moment's ago as he announced his 6 picks to go with the 6 who qualified on their own.

Picks :  Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Aberg and Sepp Straka

Qualified : Rory McIlroy, Rasmus Hojgaard, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Robert MacIntyre.

>>>>Only the one change from the 2023 victorious team in Rome as Rasmus replaces his brother Nicolai Hojgaard.

The European squad have dominated the Ryder Cup at home for 3 decades now, however they have lost 3/4 lopsidedly most recently in the USA.

In Rome they won 16.5 to 11.5 with the largest audience in Ryder Cup history. 

A total of 271,191 people from 100 different countries attended the 44th Ryder Cup in person at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome, with millions more following the action from afar on television and digital platforms.

Furthermore, figures showed views of Ryder Cup official social media channels amounted to 197.6million, with a total of 26.7million interactions, contributing to the channels gaining 500,000 new followers.

The figures also showed notable increases across global broadcasts, with a rise in average viewership on Sky Sports in the UK of 38 per compared to the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits and 25 per cent up on the 2018 edition at Le Golf National, making it the most watched Ryder Cup on Sky Sports on record.

Donald has a month know to steer the guys with his assistants Francesco and Edoardo Molinari, Thomas Bjorn and Jose Maria Olazábal in preparation for these 2025 matches, something he has been working on, now fine tuning, for the last 2 years.

The DP World Tour has the Amgen Irish Open at the K Club this weekend, then their flagship event the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, September 11-14, two weeks before the Ryder Cup.

I expect the entire team will gather together and play in front of a cheering home crowd at Wentworth before flying out to New York the following week.

It has become 3 of the best days in all of sport, filled with passion, drama, triumph and disaster, beyond the wildest dreams of the English seed merchant Samuel Ryder who proposed this event and donated the trophy that bears his name, in 1926 with the first matches in 1927 at Worchester GC in Massachusetts. 

Bryan Angus

Henderson rallies, Chinese Miranda Wang wins FM Championship.. Final results..

   LPGA: FM Championship 

Leaderboard

Brooke Henderson has done her best this week after her heroic win at the CPKC Women's Championship and a 32 hole Saturday she has posted T15 71 68 71 67 - 11 to tie for T15.

Rose Zhang, left, laughs as Weiwei Zhang, right, of China, douses Miranda Wang, center, also of China, after Wang won the FM Championship LPGA golf tournament at TPC Boston, Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025, in Norton, Mass.

Asian women continue to dominate the top 20 scoreboard with Chinese, Miranda Wang 66 67 65 70 -20 the winner a shot ahead of Thai star, Jeeno Thitikul 2nd  69 68 65 67 -19 and Korean Sei Young Kim 3rd  65 65 71 70 -17.

Wang is the 7th LPGA Rookie to win this year, in fact there have been 24 winners in 23 events (one of them a Team event).

The Tour is off for two weeks before the Kroger Queen City Championship in Cincinnati.

Bryan Angus