GOLF: Stars get ready to battle it out for World Invitational

Tom McKibbin says he's delighted to be back on home soil for tomorrow's ISPS Handa World Invitational.

Played across Galgorm Castle and Castlerock courses over the opening two rounds before everting to solely Galgorm an Saturday and Sunday, it will be the last time the tournament will be held here as it stands, following a shake-up of the DP World Tour schedule.

But for Holywood's McKibbin, the touring professional for Galgorm, it'll be a special week.

“I’ve played this event the last couple of years, but it’s special to come back here this week and I’m very much looking forward to it and it should be a great week," says the 20-year-old who collected the European Open title in his first season on tour.

“It’s been very good. Getting the win tops it all off and it was cool to get that in my first year. Besides that, I think I’ve played pretty consistently through the first half of the year and it’s been quite nice to see a lot of top 25s, top 20s and I think that spurred me on to go and get that win.

“I’ve ticked off a few goals this year that I wanted to. As towards expectations and hearing stuff like that, I try to block it all out and not listen to it as much. I’ve heard it a lot for a long time so I’ve gotten used to it but I think my own goals and ambitions, it’s been good and I’ve been fairly happy," added McKibbin, who's looking forward to playing both Galgorm and Castlerock this week

“I think they’re great venues they have for the event and it’s set up nicely with the two fields, the men and the women, and I think it’s a pretty cool event.

“Castlerock is a good course. I think it’ll play quite tricky this week with a few of what are usually par fives playing as par fours this week. It’ll be interesting to see the scoring, here at Galgorm is great, it gets better every year. I’m looking forward to playing it, I’d say it’s one of the tougher venues we play all year so it should be good.”

For Stephanie Meadow, she says the variation in both courses is going to be a challenge.

“It's definitely an interesting test. I don't think I've every played a tournament where we're playing links and parkland back-to-back days. It'll be interesting. You've got to be able to switch from one mindset to the other pretty quickly" she feels.

“Parkland, obviously they're very green, lush. Links is a lot for wispy rough and kind of brown fairways. It runs out a lot more. Bunkers tend to be more pot bunkers. I wouldn't say Castlerock is playing like as bouncy as I've ever seen a links course play, but it's obviously a lot more firm than it is here.

“North West Ireland can be pretty unpredictable with weather, so yesterday we both played there. We stood on the range and it was pouring and windy and cold, and an hour later it was sunny and we had everything, all the layers off.

"It will be interesting to see how that plays out," smiles the Jordanstown woman.

Meadow tees off at 12.52pm at Galgorm, with McKibbin out with Victor Perez and Ewen Ferguson at 1.03pm at the same venue.