It’s impossible to keep anything under your hat these days. There were remote tribes in deepest Sarawak that probably had a decent inkling that the Open would be going to Portrush in 2019 but the Royal & Ancient heid honchos like to keep folk guessing. Even the freebie baseball caps that were being dished out prior to yesterday’s official confirmation simply stated in stitching, ‘The 148th Open – Portrush’, which left some mathematically challenged scribblers counting their fingers and muttering ‘now, if last year was the 144th Open what year is the 148th?’.

Yes, it did add up to 2019 and for only the second time in the long history of the game’s oldest major, the Open will be held outside Scotland and England and will go across the water to Northern Ireland’s Antrim coast.

Since Max Faulkner won the last Open to be staged at Portrush back in 1951, Northern Ireland, ravaged by sectarian violence, has been to hell and back. The return of golf’s most historic championship will provide another layer of soothing balm to the deep wounds as the province continues to move forward with stability, confidence and peace.

As a lifelong Portrush member, Darren Clarke, the Open champion in 2011, knows all about the abundant charms and challenges of the Dunluce links, which is undergoing a number of changes to accommodate the modern day Open demands. The wait will be worth it even if he believed such a moment would not be possible. “To think we would we ever get through the dark times Northern Ireland has had, and get to this stage where we have the biggest and best tournament in the world, I'd have been very foolish to say yes (the Open will come here),” said the European Ryder Cup captain. “Nobody could foresee that coming through in the bad old days.”

Given that the Open will be staged in mid-July, a traditionally contentious period in the Northern Ireland calendar, the R&A high command remain confident that security issues will not be a concern. “We spent a lot of time with external advisers working through those particular issues and we are very comfortable that we will be fine hosting it in July,” said Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A.

When it comes to sport, there remains a united front. Martin McGuinnes, the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, gave his congratulations to Northern Ireland’s football team for qualifying for Euro 2016 while hoping the Republic of Ireland will join them. He hailed the success of Belfast bantamweight, Michael Conlan, who became a world amateur boxing champion recently while expressing his hopes that Ireland as a whole can be the host nation for the 2023 Rugby World Cup. “This announcement by the R&A is a tremendous vote of confidence in the transformation that has happened here politically and security wise over the last 20 years leading from conflict to peace,” he said.

Of course, Ireland’s golfers have done a huge amount to put the Emerald Isle on the global map and help with the campaign to lure the Open back to this neck of the woods. Since 2007, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Rory McIlroy and Clarke have won nine majors among them. “The impetus for this wasn't started by Graeme or Rory or me, it was from Padraig winning three majors in a very short period of time and we all followed him,” added Clarke, of Dubliner Harrington’s triple whammy of majors in 2007 and 2008. “Padraig deserves an awful lot of credit.”

Three years ago, the Irish Open was staged at Portrush – the first time the event had been held in Northern Ireland since 1953 – and attracted the kind of vast crowds that would’ve made a Cecil B DeMille biblical epic look poorly attended. Despite the fairly ghastly conditions, around 112,000 drookit fans packed themselves in during the four days as it became the first ever European Tour contest to be sold out.

“It’s a dream and I never thought I’d have the chance to play an Open at home,” added McIlroy, who holds the Portrush course record of 61. In 2019, that dream will become a reality.