Australia’s Lucas Herbert is back in The 056, back at Mount Juliet and comes to Ireland as the defending Horizon Irish Open champion.
Having won here under tricky conditions last year – the weather in particular after the opening day – Herbert took some out after a practice round on Tuesday to look at this year’s competition.
“Obviously, a lot of good memories from last year”, reflects Herbert following his maiden Horizon Irish Open win on the competition’s return to Kilkenny.
“We just played nine holes and it felt like a trip down memory lane for two hours, talking about all the different shots we hit, where all the pins were, where the crowds were, everything like that. Mum and dad are here this year, my girlfriend is here. I’ve been explaining basically what went on last year – I’m sure they don’t really care, they watched it on TV – but it felt really good to take a trip down memory lane.”
And how does the 2022 version of Lucas Herbert stack up against last year’s version?
“Obviously a lot more experienced”, he offers.
“I physically, probably, had the skills that I have now last year, but I just hadn’t proved to myself that they would hold up under pressure. Winning here wire-to-wire, being tied for the lead with four holes to play, that was probably something that I didn’t know I had the ability to do.”
And as for this week, does he take a different mindset into the competition or have any specific goals as defending champion?
“I haven’t looked enough at the forecast, but I know my goal was to get to 20 under. I think Tiger (Woods) got to 23 or 24 under here when he won so I want to try and get as close as I can to that. Even going into Sunday I had a one-shot lead but I was trying to get to 20 under as hard as I could. That would be a great number to set this week again [Herbert fell one short at -19 for the week].”
“It’s probably going to be slightly harder conditions again so I might need to revise that but that worked well for me last year. Obviously, I’ve got a lot confidence here.”
We’ll find out exactly how Lucas Herbert does when the Horizon Irish Open officially gets underway on Thursday, continuing through Sunday at Mount Juliet Estate in Kilkenny.
