Good Bay Area pro year; Irish eyes smiling

Golf notes|

It’s been a good year for the Bay Area golf-wise, with the end of it just around the corner.

Despite a drought, most of the courses were able to maintain good playing conditions and the professional tours made a couple of stops in the area, starting last January at Pebble Beach and ending with the Frys.com Open at Silverado, which was a huge success. The LPGA also made its inaugural trip to Lake Merced GC in San Francisco and will return for the next couple of years.

It looks to be even better in 2015, with the PGA Tour once again playing at Pebble and Silverado, but the best players in the world will also travel to Harding Park in San Francisco for the Cadillac Match Play Championship in April.

Personally, it’s been a good year. My fellow Northern Irishman, Rory McIlroy, regained the form from 2012 and won both the Open Championship and another PGA title.

Heading into April’s Masters Tournament, McIlroy looks to complete the career Grand Slam.

McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Captain Paul McGinley also represented Ireland well at the Ryder Cup, where the Europeans came away as the victors once again.

For a country so small to be turning out such quality sports stars is a fantastic boost to the moral of the area and the economy.

The success of these players mean that professional events are once again being played on the great links courses of the area, with Royal Portrush hosting the Irish Open in 2012 and Royal County Down hosting it in 2015, along with the fact that Portrush looks to be getting the Open Championship in the near future.

Good news for fans here in the Bay Area is that both McIlroy and McDowell will be in the field for the Match Play event in April, along with the other greats of the game, such as Tiger Woods, Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Matt Kuchar.

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