Søren Kjeldsen’s love affair with Royal County Down is showing no signs of abating as the diminutive Danish wizard navigated his way around the links in two-under to take a share of the clubhouse lead on day one of the Amgen Irish Open.
The 49-year-old’s last DP World Tour victory came here in 2015, and now in his 30th year as a professional, he’s better placed than most to comment on the quality of the golf course and the challenges it throws at the top players on the circuit.
“Well, it’s one of the best courses in the world. I mean, every shot you got here is just so interesting,” he said, before going on to explain that he’d hit 6-iron to the par-3 seventh in the Pro-Am and today was torn between hitting 9-iron and wedge. “It’s all about how much you are going to spin it, left-to-right, up into the breeze, stuff like that.
“So you know, it takes so much imagination. I really like that about the game.”
As he nears his 50th birthday, he’s intending to play on the Legends Tour and to attempt to qualify for the PGA Champions Tour, but were he to move sideways into a DP World Tour executive role, there’s every chance that courses like Royal County Down would feature much more heavily on the DPWT schedule.
“Well, of course, yeah, I do,” he replied when asked if he felt tests of this magnitude were sorely lacking on Tour. “But, you know at the same time, I sort of acknowledge that there are difficulties with that, you know. We go to a lot of places, maybe newly built golf courses, investing money too and I get all that.
“But if I made the schedule, I’d be here and, you know, courses like this every week because I love it because it’s much more fun.
“It’s brilliant. So, so good because it’s like what golf is supposed to be.”