THE 153RD OPEN

July 15, 2025

Robert MacIntyre

Press Conference

ED HODGE: Good morning, everybody. Delighted to be joined by Scotland's Robert MacIntyre in the interview room this morning. Bob, you were tied sixth on your debut in the championship in 2019. I know you love this course. How excited are you for the week?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I'm looking forward to it. It looks a bit greener than last week, so that's a positive for me.

I love coming back here. Fans are unbelievable. Just preparing as well as I can to get the tournament started.

Q. We've seen some putters that are great on the tour level. When they come over to play links golf, they struggle a little bit. Wondering what the unique differences or challenges are of putting on an Open Championship course.

ROBERT MacINTYRE: Compared to America? I mean, so different. For one, the grass is different. The slopes are more subtle. When you play in the regular tour, whether it's PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, the slopes are normally just, they're there. They're obvious. But as you play links golf, it's very subtle.

I use AimPoint, and I think the reason I normally putt well on links greens is I use the AimPoint not as a science, not as I've got the answer. I use it as a guide, and I go down and look at it. There's so many -- you use AimPoint on the putting greens and you can maybe feel a 1, and you move it four or five inches, and it's a 1-1/2. I think there's so many subtle moves. So I think that's a big factor.

Also, the wind. The wind, if it blows 20 miles an hour, it's hard to stand the way you normally stand because you've got to try and brace yourself for the wind that's gusting. It's not just a constant buffer, so you start moving a bit. Thankfully, I'm used to that.

Q. Very quickly, before I ask a question, how did you get on with your seasickness yesterday?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: It was all right. It was nice and calm.

Q. When you came here the last time, you were a youngster. Now you've been talked about as one of the tournament favorites, a guy that's picked to win it. Can you tell us the difference in your own mind with the pressures and that kind of thing?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: This week's completely different to what I had last week. I still feel like I've got no real care. Yeah, people may have picked me to win it, but to be honest, there are so many guys this week that can win this tournament.

I'm going to go out there and enjoy playing Royal Portrush again and give it my absolute best, and that's all I can guarantee.

Q. Just going back to 2019, that was your major debut. Can you talk about how you felt the start of the week and how you did at the end of the week?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: Yeah, it was tough, standing on that first tee, the nerves. You've always dreamed to play in these. You've watched it on TV since you were a young kid. I got to just live another dream.

Yeah, it was difficult, but I got a little bit lucky when I managed to finish in just the proper time when the storm came in in 2019. I remember sitting in player dining, and it just kept blowing. I thought the roof was coming off the place. I was just like keep coming, keep coming. I was just watching it, watching me get further up the leaderboard.

It's a different week this week, but just looking forward to it.

Q. You're playing with other Scots this morning. One of them is a hotel planner, the other two are amateurs. What sort of advice will you have for them, and what are you looking to get out of that round today?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I'm going to go and play 18 because yesterday, the beautiful sunshine, we couldn't get out. Yeah, 18 holes today, and I'll give them any advice they want. If they ask for it, I'll give them advice. If they don't, that's fine, I'm going to prepare the same as I've tried to every week. Going to try and win The Open.

Q. I know you're pretty frustrated about last week. I just wondered how well you've gone with putting the past in the past and how have you progressed? Have you gotten better at it, or were you always quite good at leaving last week last week?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I've always been pretty good at that. I think Sunday after the round I picked apart some things that will help me going forward. We don't play much links golf. We play maybe four events, if we're lucky.

I changed to Titleist equipment at the start of last year, the irons, and they're brilliant 99 percent of the time, but I haven't used them when it was brick hard, firm, when it was hardly any grass. Sometimes your ball was setting on just like, I don't know, it was almost dirt-like, it was so firm, so compacted. The irons I use are to help me get the club out of the ground because I'm steep. Last week, because it was brick hard, the club wouldn't go in the ground. So it was just the short irons I was struggling with.

Once we picked that apart Sunday after the round and once I'd spoken to you guys and actually had calmed down and was thinking clear, it was almost like there's a learning curve. Then we spoke to people yesterday about how we can be ahead of the game before it happens. This week it's not going to happen. We've had some rain. It's greener already on the range. I'm seeing the strike off the face. I'm seeing the ball flight up in the sky. So a completely different week this week.

Q. A month or so on from Oakmont, give us your reflections on that tremendous performance, but talk, if you would, a little bit more about that.

ROBERT MacINTYRE: Yeah, just a brilliant performance. We were lucky that the weather allowed us to play golf. The rain that came in softened it, thankfully no wind, but it would have been absolute carnage. Thankfully it allowed us to play golf the way we probably should be playing golf.

I thought it was an absolute brilliant effort. When I finished, I thought, if someone beats that, fair play, and JJ played better during the week. For me, that's as good a performance as I can put in a round on probably the hardest golf course on the planet that we play.

Q. You've always said, well, in recent years, Portrush is probably one of your favourite links courses in the world. What is it about it? Was it kind of love at first sight kind of back in the day?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: It's how the golf course flows. It's not so much the holes. It's not nine holes one way, nine holes the other way. There is everything on this golf course visually. It's obviously enclosed by the dunes either side. So you've got visuals off the tee. I played it when it was in the Home Internationals. Obviously 17 and 18 have changed since that. As newly designed golf holes in the modern game, I think these are as good as it gets when they've been redesigned.

So many golf courses try to trick it up. It's a par-5 and a par-4. Par-5, from tee shot hitting down, bunker on the right, heading back up the hill with a wind that's normally off the right. Then you got onto a little shelf, then you hit across the top of the hill. I just think the whole golf course is absolutely beautiful to the eye but it also plays absolutely brilliantly.

You've got holes that you've got a chance, and then you've got holes that you just try to hang on.

Q. Talking about what you said before about clearing your mind Sunday night, when you go through the technicalities of your game and one thing or another, how do you sort of decompress? Are you able to put -- is there a point in the night when you can simply say, forget it, and you're clearing your mind?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: Yeah, I'm pretty good at telling everyone give me an hour. I can go as mental as I want for an hour, and after that, I just back to life.

Q. What's your mental look like? You're on your own?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I can do whatever I want for an hour. Just anything I want. You can break things. You can literally do whatever I want for an hour. After that hour is gone, my job's done. For an hour and a half before my round, two hours before my round, I'm preparing, so nobody gets in my way. It's warmup, stretching, gym work, all of that. So there's a five-, six-, seven-, eight-hour window that I'm working.

If you have a bad day at work, you're going to be annoyed. It happens more often than not for me as well. (Laughter). It's just about once that's gone, it's been difficult in the past for me to reset, but nowadays, there's so many golf tournaments and you don't know what's coming the next week.

Actually, I thought Saturday, Sunday, I played better than I did Thursday, Friday. Scores didn't show that, but I wasn't in the thick of it. There was no buzz for me. The U draw kind of took that buzz away from it. I was on the wrong side. Sunday just wasn't a good day, but I'm here this week, and I'm as ready as I can be.

Q. That fire is what can be the difference in making you feel ready to win a major? That's what you need?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I'm fiery on the golf course when I'm in tournament rounds. I'll drop, I was going to say the odd, but a few bad words in there. I'll hit the bag. I'll say some harsh things, but that's what gets me going.

If I walk around and I'm all happy I just made a double bogey or people are clapping, thanks very much, that's not me. I'm needing to smash something up. I want to rip a glove. I do something to get that anger out. It's better out than in for me. Some people it's better holding it, but for me it's get it out and then just do not let it affect the next shot. Simple.

Q. A previous question mentioned the idea of giving advice to people. If someone came to you who had never played a links round before and said, okay, I'm about to do it, what are the one or two things that are going to be the most surprising for me or the most different from kind of a technical side, what would you say to them?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: If it's a good player, it's the ball flight. I've had a few people, few Americans ask me, how do you play links golf? I'm not going to name names, but one of them hits it incredibly high, and he's always said I struggle on links golf. I played with him recently in America, and I'm watching his flight, and it's simple; that's why you struggle on links golf.

Again, if they're only over here for a week, don't change the world for one week. Just hope that you're going to get flat, calm weather on that side of it, and you can hit that ball as high as you can.

For me, it's the purest method of the game that we've got, links golf. So many different ways to play it. It's not just 155 yards, pitch it 155 yards, keep it two yards right of the pin. It's not that. It's the unpredictability of what that's going to give us.

You could tee off at 8:00 in the morning, beautiful sunshine, and then quarter past 8:00 there's a storm coming in, and you're playing and the wind switched. It's just unpredictable with the weather, unpredictable with the bounces. I think that's what I love about it, that if you're out of position, I've got little rules that I keep. In links golf it gets pretty easy with there's certain things you cannot do and there's certain things you have to do. I think it's the best way to play golf is links golf.

Q. Can you give us a few examples of what's on the list that's a secret?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: A lot of guys that I watch that haven't played it as much as I have make the mistakes, and then I'm looking at it going, you cannot do that. But as for me, sometimes you can hit certain shots, but you're actually walking up there going, that's all right, that's all right, we've got a chance from there.

I just love it, and I think that's why I've been brought up in it. I play it less now, and I think I enjoy it more now than I've ever done it.

Q. Just on the golf course itself, what are the big questions that the golf course asks you. Can you give us a few examples that you might face and the difficulties of those? And maybe some of those places where you have to hang on?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: It depends on the wind direction. I know yesterday was the same wind I think we're going to have all week. Today's a bit different, but you've got to take advantage of the holes that give you the chance, par-5s, drivable par-4, and then you've got certain holes that you hang on like 16, 18.

I just think links golf, every hole there's an opportunity to make a bogey or make a disaster. You've got the gorse bushes, you've got thick rough, wispy rough. I had a few last week, I've walked in there stupidly thinking, I'll get a 7-iron on that, hit it, goes over my shoulder, just wrapped the club.

I just think every hole is a different test, but on links if you hit the fairway off the tee, then you can maneuver the golf ball however you want -- draws, fades, wind direction, holding it into.

If you're in the rough, it's carnage. It's not carnage as in Oakmont carnage where I'm just getting a lob wedge on this. It's carnage that guys are going to think I could hit 6-, 5-irons out with this rough, and it wraps it, and it goes sideways.

It's just you've got to think about it sometimes. Be sure a club will go further because you've got control of it.

Q. Obviously this week is quite a big one for a lot of guys in terms of the Ryder Cup. With Bethpage so close now, just wondering, where do you see the current level of European golf?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: I think it's absolutely brilliant. For me I've had a good spell in the U.S. to get me right up there, but when you look at the European winners on Tour this year, it's as good as ever. The team's going to be ready to go, and Bethpage is going to be -- it's going to be tough, obviously, with the crowd, but it's going to be the same as Rome that we're in it together. As long as we've got each other, it doesn't matter what else is going on.

Q. Do you have any superstitions or any rituals you follow before a round or after a round?

ROBERT MacINTYRE: No, nothing like that. Just my marker. I'll putt with it white side up. If I hole a putt early on or a decent 8-footer, I'll keep it on the white. If it's not gone in, I'll just flip it to the blue. That's all.

There's nothing before the round, nothing after. It's just I don't worry about that stuff.

ED HODGE: Bob, thanks for your time and good luck this week.