“Very traditional links golf course,” Harrington said after playing an introductory nine holes of practice yesterday.

“Requires an awful lot of thinking, a lot of strategy on the golf course, which hopefully will play into my hands a lot of options.

“We played in a fourball and there was... between the four guys, we could hit four different clubs off the tee. Guys going with irons, maybe a three-wood or four-wood and a driver. That’s always the sign of a good test.

“You know, when everybody is thinking and working and trying to figure out what the best strategy is, it’s a good test to see a golf course like that and in some ways that does play into my hands.

I’m looking forward to that side of it. The fairways are very narrow, from what I’m used to, anyway, in the US. That’s a little bit hard when you come home to see.

"It’s tougher to get your head around, but there again, it’s not a big problem to miss the fairways, as long as you don’t hit it into either the bunkers or the heavier rough. In general, missing the fairways, you’re pretty much in links rough. It’s just the lack of control.

“Yeah, but nice, traditional links test, for sure.”

That will have been music to the ears of Ballyliffin general manager John Farren, for whom hosting an Irish Open has been a long-held dream.

“We’ve a very progressive membership and a very progressive council,” Farren said.

“We always had the ambition to stage an Irish Open, always felt we had the capacity to do so, so preparations have been in train for several years now.

“Certainly over the last 18 months or so we’ve seen some considerable improvements and enhancements to the Glashedy links. All the bunkers were re-revetted this winter, as you’d expect ahead of a major championship. We’ve added some back tees to extend the course by some 300, 400 yards. We’re now over 7,500 yards.

“Most dramatic is the 115-yard addition to the fourth tee, which really makes it one of the strongest par-fives in Ireland and one of the strongest par-fives in links golf anywhere.

“We’re working very closely with Pat Ruddy and we do all the work ourselves, in-house, with our great greens team here. They take great pride in what they do. The enhancements are there should the Tour decide that the weather permits and the championship permits they be used.

"Obviously, prevailing winds and the weather conditions will have an influence where tees are set up etc, but we do feel we’ve enhanced the complex and particularly the Glashedy links in a way that affords the Tour and the tournament organisers the opportunities to make switches, switch tees about and to change the challenge for the best players in the world.”

Harrington suggested Ballyliffin is as close to a natural landscape as he has come across on a links course, similar to another Ruddy design at the European Club, where he won the 2007 Irish PGA Championship en route to his first Claret Jug at Carnoustie.

Maybe this is the parallel (between Ruddy’s two designs): It doesn’t really look like this course is designed. It just looks like it just was.

"You don’t think any earth was moved for the golf holes here. They just sit as they are. They play like that. Yeah, it looks like this golf course just came into being rather than was designed, which is the beauty of it.

“Startlingly enough, if you didn’t have a tournament, you’d be out there going, where am I going? It’s amazing that when we went to different tee boxes, like it genuinely is, it is like, wow, this is out on your own, out in the wild.

"If there’s ever a golf course that sums up the Wild Atlantic way, this is it. I can imagine it on a wild day out there. I just said to my playing partners: “Thanks be to God we have marshals this week to find our golf balls.”