Some Legends and Anecdotes
about Irish Golf

Not everyone knows what it means to have a consuming passion. Bridge players know it, Fishermen know it and then of course we golfers know it too.

We also know that if you are relatively new to this consuming passion you will have an almost insatiable desire to indulge that passion, especially in the places where it has a history , tradition and where legends have grown up around it.

You don't need to be told that Ireland is such a place.

But, perhaps you didn't realise the real extent of the history folklore and legend associated with golf in Ireland, which can only come from a people who share your passion for the game ..... for example the goats at Lahinch who give you the weather forecast; or the player who hooked his ball off the first tee in Portmarnock into the eighteenth hole for a most unusual hole-in-one; or the player in Killarney who sliced his ball into the lake and killed a trout that was rising to a fly.

Similar to what happened to the Scottish Pro, Sam Torrence, the eventual winner in the 1995 Murphys Irish Open in Mount Juliet, who, having had a birdie on the difficult par three third, then proceeded to hit another from the tee on the fourth .... an unfortunate Magpie who happened to be flying by! .... where else, but in Ireland.

Golf in Modern Ireland has friends in abundance; great golfers both professional and amateur, erudite writers and commentators, visitors from all over the world, all convinced that Irish golf is something special.

A most eloquent example is the legendary English essayist and journalist, Henry Longhurst, who, despite often been credited with no great love of Ireland or things Irish, nevertheless wrote in his famous Sunday Times column ....

"Some of the Irish Links, I was about to write, stand comparison with the greatest courses in the world. They don't, they ARE the greatest courses in the world, not only in layout but in scenery and 'Atmosphere' and that indefinable something which makes you relive again and again, the day you played them."

Peter Dobereiner (Longhurst's successor as the doyen of British writers) observed,

"This Irish birthright imposes certain rules of behaviour. One unwritten law insists that the duty to be companionable is more important than selfish personal ambitions". That must be why you get so many 'gimmies' in Ireland.

"I have never felt embarrassed or uncomfortable in an Irish Golf club, or on any Irish golf course, which is more than I can say for any other golfing nation .... some things are beyond price".

Our accord with such eloquent sentiments from such respected sources explains why we in GOLF IRLAND identify so much with the fir cones one finds on the pillars of the entrance gates to so many of Irelands fine old Country Houses ... a traditional symbol of IRISH hospitality!

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