The Current Shape of Irish Golfers on the Biggest Stage in 2026

Ireland punches far above its weight in the upper echelons of professional golf. With the season’s majors having now come to a close, Rory McIlroy continues to dominate the headlines and the latest golf betting odds.

The story of Irish golf extends much further than just this one generational talent, covering both the men’s and women’s games.

Rory McIlroy Remains the Unmovable Favourite

There was never much doubt going into the 2026 season about who is the top dog of Irish golf. Rory McIlroy finally ended his Masters drought in 2025 and looked like a man with a massive weight off his shoulders. 

That confidence carried into the 2026 renewal at Augusta, where he claimed a successive green jacket. His major tally is now at six and he’s cemented his status as one of the best golfers in recent generations.

McIlroy’s name has dominated the betting odds at almost every event this year. The only person who has been ahead of him has been the ever-consistent Scottie Scheffler. They’re often both quoted at single-digit odds, offering little value to golf bettors.

Anytime that McIlroy tees up, people expect him to contend. Not many players on the tour offer his combination of pure talent, consistency, and being able to handle the weight of expectation.

Shane Lowry is the Everyman

Shane Lowry is still the beating heart of Irish golf. The 39-year-old has spent the last two seasons chasing another major title, tailoring his schedule to try to peak at the right times for the four biggest tournaments of the season.

It has been a largely frustrating 2026 for Lowry, who now hasn’t won solo since 2022 despite appearing near the top of leaderboards. This was at its starkest when he blew a great chance at the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches in March, with two double bogeys in his final round costing him dearly.

He’s still a beloved figure following his 2025 Ryder Cup heroics and his hole-in-one at the 2026 Masters kept his name in the headlines. However, Lowry knows that time is running out to add more major titles to his Open Championship title from 2019.

He often appears as an unhappy and frustrated figure on the course, with caddy changes not helping matters. Fans are hoping that he’ll be able to circle the wagons and come back in the 2027 major season and contend in all four events, as he certainly has the game when he’s on song.

Leona Maguire Leading the Women’s Charge

It’s not just the men who are operating at an extremely high level in professional golf. Leona Maguire is the standard bearer for Irish women’s golf, being one of the most accomplished players ever produced in the country.

The former world amateur number one made history as the first Irish woman to win an LPGA Tour event, doing so in 2022 and she also registered a win in 2024 on the Ladies European Tour.

Maguire’s 2026 season has been a little underwhelming, as the Cavan native struggled to deal with the LPGA Tour’s move to longer and firmer setups that places a big premium on being long off the tee, which isn’t the 31-year-old’s forte. She has been working hard with her coach Sean Foley to add extra distance and adjust her ball flight.

The early returns have been mixed, as she has missed more cuts than usual and nearly missed out on qualifying automatically for the US Women’s Open. 

However, she will still rank high and she was a captain’s pick for the upcoming Solheim Cup, given her propensity for match play in particular. She’s the woman most likely to give Ireland a winner on the women’s side of the game and her name attracts major support anytime she tees up on the LPGA Tour.

Padraig Harrington Dominating the Seniors Scene

Now 54-years-old, the three-time major winner is thriving on the Champions Tour in the US. He defended his US Senior Open title in Holt, beating Stewart Cink by a commanding four shots. 

He became one of just four players to manage this back-to-back feat, and matched the record for three title wins. It was his fifth consecutive season with a win on the circuit. He’s still behind Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson on the season-long money list.

Seamus Power Trying to Bounce Back

The 39-year-old Waterford native started 2026 on conditional status on the PGA Tour and has been trying to chase a full card. His putting started to turn the corner and he registered 2 top 10s during the year, but this wasn’t enough to secure a full card for 2027. 

Power finished in 114th place in the FedEx Cup standings, which means that he will once again be on conditional status. 

The two-time tour winner will only get into full-field PGA Tour events if the field isn’t filled by fully exempt members. He does have full status on the Korn Ferry Tour where he could choose to play next season and to finish in the top 20 of the points list to get a PGA Tour card for 2027.

A Comeback for McKibbin?

Finally, one of the hottest prospects in Northern Irish golf was Tom McKibbin, before he signed for the LIV Golf Tour. He’s still just 23 and with LIV on the descent, it will be interesting to see where he ends up playing in 2027. 

McKibbin confirmed recently that he still has several years left on his deal, although there are a lot of questions about how the LIV Golf league will look next year. He had a poor 2026, only making the top 20 a couple of times in LIV Golf and missing the cut in his first US Masters. 

He intends to play as much as possible in the European scene, including the British Masters and the Irish Open in the coming weeks.

A year is a long time in golf, as players can come in and out of form multiple times during that stretch. It’s hard to know how Irish golfers will fare next year but there’s plenty of action to follow across the men’s and women’s games.

Ireland’s new gambling regulator has already started changing how golf bets get placed

Somewhere around the 14th tee on the final Sunday of the Irish Open, a phone buzzes with an odds update, and someone at the bar remembers they still have a tenner each-way on Shane Lowry. It’s a small, familiar ritual for Irish sports fans, the same one that plays out on GAA county final Sunday, just with a leaderboard instead of a scoreboard. What’s changed this year is what sits behind that bet.
That something is the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, or GRAI, the State’s first dedicated gambling watchdog. It was established under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 and has been operational since March 2025. Ireland had regulated betting shops and casinos through a patchwork of laws dating back to the 1930s. Replacing all of it with one authority is not a small shift, and it’s one most punters have barely noticed yet.

A licensing system built from scratch

GRAI’s job is to license and police every gambling activity in the State, covering betting, gaming and lotteries under a single framework for the first time. It started accepting licence applications in February 2026, beginning with betting operators, which covers the sportsbooks Irish golf fans already use for major-championship markets. Online casino licences are being phased in separately, with applications expected to open during 2027. Until that category exists, casino sites serving Irish players continue operating under transitional arrangements, typically holding licences from established regulators such as Malta’s MGA or the UK Gambling Commission instead.

What the numbers say about Irish betting habits

Ireland’s own research backs up how normal a flutter on a big sporting weekend actually is. The Health Research Board’s most recent national gambling survey found that 49% of people aged 15 and over had gambled in the twelve months before the survey, and that sports betting was the dominant activity among anyone using a bookmaker’s shop or an online betting account. Golf’s share of that spikes hard around the majors and the Irish Open, and climbs further whenever an Irish player is in genuine contention. With Rory McIlroy, Lowry, Séamus Power and Tom McKibbin all active on tour, that’s been most years lately.
Part of golf’s appeal to newer bettors is structural rather than sentimental. As Golfnet has explained before, a golfer’s result depends on individual form rather than eleven other variables on a pitch, and each-way and top-finish markets give a four-day tournament room to develop instead of settling in ninety minutes. That’s exactly the kind of market a first-time bettor tends to try during Ryder Cup or major-championship week, which is why regulation aimed at newer and occasional bettors matters here as much as it does for the shops taking bets on Saturday football.

The safeguards arriving alongside the licences

The practical changes rolling out under GRAI are specific rather than symbolic:

• A National Gambling Exclusion Register, letting a person self-exclude from every licensed site at once rather than site by site
• Mandatory identity and anti-money-laundering checks confirming every account holder is over 18
• A ban on credit card deposits, with only debit cards and e-wallets accepted
• Stake and win limits on certain casino-style games once that licence category takes effect
• Restricted advertising hours for TV and radio gambling ads, between 9pm and 5.30am
• Enforcement has real weight behind it too. GRAI can fine operators up to €20 million or 10% of turnover, whichever is greater, and can seek court orders to shut down sites operating without a licence.

Golf’s tournament calendar keeps the pressure on

It’s not a quiet year for Irish golf. The Amgen Irish Open returns to Trump International Doonbeg in September, and Adare Manor hosts the Ryder Cup in 2027, Ireland’s second time hosting the event since The K Club in 2006. Both draw the kind of betting volume that made this year’s US Open a useful test case for how Irish golf fans back their own. McIlroy, Lowry, Harrington, Power and McKibbin all attracted interest from bettors who’d never opened a betting app before a major week.
That same surge in casual interest tends to spill over into other forms of online gambling once the tournament ends for the day, which is one reason the licensing overhaul reaches further than sportsbooks. Anyone curious how the shift is playing out on the casino side, ahead of GRAI’s own remote gaming category opening, can compare licensed Irish online casinos to check which operators hold recognised licences and how their terms stack up while the framework is still being built out.
Whatever the regulatory calendar looks like by 2027, the arithmetic of a tenner each-way on a major Sunday won’t change. What does change is that the operator taking that bet now answers to a regulator with real enforcement teeth, rather than a system that had gone largely untouched since before the State existed in its current form. The usual responsible-gambling advice still applies regardless of the game or the licence behind it: only bet what you can afford to lose, and Gambling Care Ireland is there if a flutter ever stops being fun.