Pro-Am With a Talented Field

Justin Rose barely had time for the victory in the AT&T National at Aronimink Golf Club to sink in before he was headed to the airport to catch a chartered jet from Philadelphia to head across the pond to Limerick, Ireland, for the J.P. McManus Invitational Pro-Am. It’s a charity fund-raiser that features a stunning array of the world’s best golfers, including Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington.

In all, 56 touring pros will each team up with three amateurs in the two-day event with a purse of $1 million at the Adare Manor Hotel & Golf Resort. The tournament, played every five years since its inception in 1990, has raised 55 million euros for various charities in its four playings.

McManus, a 59-year-old Limerick native whose primary residence is in Switzerland, has built a fortune estimated at more than $500 million from currency trading, gambling and racehorses. He owns a resort in Barbados where Woods was married, and he is rumored to have beaten Woods, 3 and 2, in a match played years ago at Limerick Golf Club.

Woods, who was happy with the progress of his golf game after shooting 71 Sunday in the AT&T National, jetted to Ireland in his private Gulfstream V for the event. He did not say where he will continue his tuneup for next week’s British Open at St. Andrews after the Pro-Am (which he won in 2000 before the British Open at St. Andrews) but presumably will take the remainder of the week to acclimate to the time change and to the links of Ireland and Scotland.

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