Graeme McDowell (born 30 July 1979) is a professional golfer from Northern Ireland who plays on the European Tour.

McDowell was born in Portrush, Northern Ireland. Like an increasing number of promising junior UK golfers McDowell took a golf scholarship at an American university. He attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1998 to 2002. In 2002, he won the Haskins Award for most outstanding collegiate golfer in the United States. In 2001 he was a member of the Great Britain and Ireland team which retained the Walker Cup at Sea Island in Georgia.

McDowell turned professional in 2002 and won that season’s Volvo Scandinavian Masters, which was only his fourth start on the European Tour. He didn’t win in his second season, but in 2004 he claimed the Telecom Italia Open and finished sixth on the European Tour Order of Merit. In 2005 he divided his time between the European and PGA Tours. He was not yet a full member of the PGA Tour but his top 50 placing in the Official World Golf Rankings ensured he received invitations to play in many events in the U.S. and McDowell managed two top ten finishes on the PGA Tour including tied second place at the Bay Hill Invitational which earned him enough money to become fully exempt on the PGA Tour in 2006.

However he failed to finish in the top 150 in the 2006 PGA Tour money list and decided to return to the European Tour in 2007.

Amateur wins (5)
1996 Ulster Boys Championship
1999 Irish Youths Championship
2000 Irish Amateur Closed Championship, Irish Youths Championship, World Universities Championship

Professional wins (2)

European Tour wins (2)
2002 (1) Volvo Scandinavian Masters
2004 (1) Telecom Italia Open

Team appearances

Amateur
Walker Cup (representing Great Britain & Ireland): 2001 (winners)
Palmer Cup: (representing Great Britain & Ireland): 2000 (winners), 2001

Professional
Seve Trophy: (representing Great Britain & Ireland): 2005 (winners)
Royal Trophy (representing Europe): 2006 (winners)

Rory McIlroy (born 4 May 1989) is a professional golfer from Holywood, Northern Ireland, where he attended Sullivan Upper School. His home golf club is Holywood Golf Club.

Amateur career
McIlroy was a member of Europe’s winning 2004 Junior Ryder Cup team. In 2005 he became the youngest ever winner of both the West of Ireland Championship and the Irish Close Championship. He retained the West of Ireland Championship in 2006 and followed that up with back to back wins at the Irish Close Championship. In August 2006 he won the European Amateur at Biella Golf Club, near Milan, Italy. McIlroy won with the score of 274 (65-69-72-68). He won by three strokes over Englishman Lewton Stephen.

In July 2005 he shot a course record 61 at Royal Portrush Golf Club. In October 2006 McIlroy represented Ireland in the Eisenhower Trophy and the Amateur World Team Championship. On 6 February 2007 he became the second man to top the World Amateur Golf Rankings, though he lost the top spot after just one week.

McIlroy shot an opening round of 3 under par 68 at the 2007 Open Championship at Carnoustie which put him in a tie for third place, three shots off the lead. He was also the only person in the field without a bogey in the first round. He then shot a 5 over par 76 in round two to put him at +2 for the championship, comfortably making the cut. In the third round he shot a 2 over par 73. In the final round he shot a 72 (+1) to finish at T42. He shot +5 overall and was the lowest finishing amateur.

McIlroy was part of the Great Britain & Ireland team at the 2007 Walker Cup. On the first day of the event McIlroy was paired with Jonathan Caldwell for morning foursomes and the match was halved. In the afternoon he faced Billy Horschel in singles but Horschel won 1 up. On the second day McIlroy and Caldwell lost in morning foursomes by the score of 2 & 1. In the afternoon he faced Billy Horschel in singles again and this time he won by the score of 1 up. McIlroy’s overall record was (1-2-1) in Win-Loss-Tie format. In the end the United States came out victorious by a score of 12½ to 11½.

McIlroy made his first appearance in a European Tour event a few days after turning sixteen, when he took part in the 2005 British Masters. He made the cut on the European Tour for the first time as a seventeen year old at the 2007 Dubai Desert Classic, where he had to forego prize money of over €7,600 due to his amateur status.

Amateur wins (5)
2005 (2) West of Ireland Championship, Irish Close Championship
2006 (3) West of Ireland Championship, Irish Close Championship, European Amateur

Professional career
2007
McIlroy turned professional on September 19 which was the day before the Quinn Direct British Masters. He signed with International Sports Management, a company that also manages Ernie Els, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and David Howell. At the British Masters, McIlroy shot 290 (+2) which put him in a tie for 42nd place. McIlroy finished in 3rd place at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October. He finished 3 strokes behind the winner Nick Dougherty. Due to this performance, McIlroy put himself in position to become the youngest Affiliate Member in the history of The European Tour to earn a tour card. The next week McIlroy secured his card for 2008 by finishing in a tie for 4th place at the Madrid Open. On the 2007 European Tour season, McIlroy earned €277,255 and finished in 95th place on the Order of Merit list. He was the highest ranked associate member.

2008
Before his season started, Tiger Woods invited McIlroy to play in the 2007 Target World Challenge. He declined the invitation though, saying, “I was thrilled that they would want to invite me considering I’m only just starting out on my career.” McIlroy also said “That event clashes with the European Open and that’s an event I would be stupid not to play.”

McIlroy started his 2008 European Tour season at the UBS Hong Kong Open. He did not make the one-under cut though, missing it by four strokes. He shot a 69 in the 1st round and looked good to make the cut from there. McIlroy slipped up in the 2nd round though and shot a 74. This poor round made him miss his first cut as a professional. McIlroy bounced back by finishing in a tie for 15th at the MasterCard Masters in Australia.

McIlroy entered the top 200 of the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time on January 27 2008.

Team appearances

Amateur
Junior Ryder Cup (representing Europe): 2004 (winners)
Eisenhower Trophy (representing Ireland): 2006
Walker Cup (representing Great Britain & Ireland): 2007

David Feherty (born 13 August 1958) is a former European Tour and PGA Tour golfer, who now works as a writer and broadcaster. He is known by many for his good sense of humour.

He was born in Bangor, Northern Ireland and spent most of his playing career in Europe, where he won five times and finished in the top ten of the European Tour’s Order of Merit twice, coming tenth in 1989 and eighth in 1990. He spent 1994 and 1995 playing mainly on the PGA Tour, and the best result on the tour was a second place finish at the 1994 New England Classic. His combined career prize money exceeded $3 million.

Feherty represented Ireland numerous times in international competition including captaining the victorious 1990 Alfred Dunhill Cup team. Feherty also played for Europe on the 1991 Ryder Cup team.

In 1997, Feherty retired from both the European and PGA Tour and joined CBS Sports as an on-course reporter and golf analyst. Feherty is also a frequent contributor to Golf Magazine and has his own column in the back of the magazine called Sidespin. He is also the New York Times and Booksense bestselling author of three books, A Nasty Bit of Rough, Somewhere in Ireland a Village Is Missing an Idiot, and David Feherty’s Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup.

He is also a co-announcer on EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour series along with Gary McCord. He lives with his wife, Anita (whom he calls “She Who Must Be Obeyed” in his Golf Magazine column), and five children in Dallas, Texas. He also currently features in advertisements for the Cobra golf company, showing off his trampolining and cheerleading skills in the advert, to show off the company’s Speed drivers & woods.

Feherty has had a long struggle with depression and alcoholism, which he publicly addressed in 2006. In an interview with Golf Magazine about his problems, Feherty said that his therapy for depression was instrumental with him getting off the bottle, saying that “I used alcohol to mask my inner demons”. The outspoken columnist then took a shot at actor and noted Scientologist Tom Cruise, who has said that therapy and drugs are useless and that depression can be cured by physical exercise: “Actually, some sort of exercise would have helped me. If I kicked the shit out of Tom Cruise, I’d feel a lot better about myself.”

Along with George Lopez, Feherty hosted the Lopez - Feherty Foundation Anti-Pro-Am in November of 2005.

He also guest starred in the Season 6 episode of Yes, Dear Greg’s a Mooch

European Tour wins
1986 Italian Open, Bell’s Scottish Open
1989 BMW International Open
1991 Credit Lyonnais Cannes Open
1992 Iberia Madrid Open

Darren Christopher Clarke (born 14 August 1968) is a professional golfer from Northern Ireland who plays on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour. He was born in Dungannon, County Tyrone. He played college golf at Wake Forest University in the United States.

Clarke has been featured in the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings. The most prestigious titles he has won are the 2000 WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship when he defeated Tiger Woods in the final, and the 2003 WGC-NEC Invitational. His highest finish on the European Tour money list is second, which he achieved in 1998, 2000 and 2003. He has represented Ireland in the World Cup and Alfred Dunhill Cup and played for Europe on five consecutive Ryder Cup teams 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Clarke is represented by International Sports Management.

Private life
Clarke met his wife Heather in a nightclub in Portrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The couple had two sons, Tyrone (born 1998) and Conor (born 2001), and the family lived at Sunningdale, Berkshire. In 2005 and 2006 he missed several tournaments to care for his wife, who was diagnosed with both primary and, later, secondary breast cancer.

Heather Clarke died at 2.15am on Sunday August 13, 2006 at 39 years of age, in the Royal Marsden Hospital, London (the day before her husband’s 38th birthday).

Clarke’s friend, Paul McGinley immediately announced his own withdrawal from the PGA Championship starting in Medinah, Illinois on Thursday. In a statement McGinley said, “Our two families are very much intertwined, obviously me and Darren, but Heather and (McGinley’s wife) Ali were the best of friends and our kids are in the same class at school. So it is a tough time for us all” Clarke later made himself available for selection for the 2006 Ryder Cup. European captain Ian Woosnam chose him as one of his two wild cards and he contributed 3 points from 3 matches to Europe’s victory.

Clarke is a keen cigar smoker, on and off the golf course, and has been reported to spend an estimated £25,000 per year on cigars.

Darren was the favourite to win the 2006 Sports Personality Of The year award, but was runner-up to Zara Philips. Darren had previously stated he didn’t want to win based on a sympathy vote concerning his wife’s death.

European Tour wins (10)
1993 (1) Alfred Dunhill Open
1996 (1) Linde German Masters
1998 (2) Benson & Hedges International Open, Volvo Masters
1999 (1) Compass Group English Open
2000 (2) WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship, Compass Group English Open
2001 (1) Smurfit European Open
2002 (1) Compass Group English Open
2003 (1) WGC-NEC Invitational

PGA Tour wins (2)
2000 (1) WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship
2003 (1) WGC-NEC Invitational

Japan Golf Tour wins (4)
2001 Dimension Data Pro-Am, The Crowns
2004 Mitsui Sumitomo VISA Taiheiyo Masters
2005 Mitsui Sumitomo VISA Taiheiyo Masters

Challenge Tour wins (1)
2003 Benmore Developments Northern Ireland Masters

Other wins (2)
1992 Ulster Professional Championship
1994 Irish National PGA Championship

Professional team appearances
Ryder Cup (representing Europe): 1997 (winners), 1999 (losers), 2002 (winners), 2004 (winners), 2006 (winners)
Alfred Dunhill Cup (representing Ireland): 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999
World Cup (representing Ireland): 1994, 1995, 1996
The Seve Trophy (representing Great Britain & Ireland): 2000, 2002 (winners)
Royal Trophy (representing Europe): 2007 (winners)

Amateur wins
1990 Spanish Amateur Open Championship, Irish Amateur Championship