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Irish Golf Tidbits: Stouts, Control, Separated at Birth

Irish Golf Tidbits: Stouts, Control, Separated at Birth

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Still emptying the suitcase of the golfing mind, fresh off the Golf Road Warriors’ late-July tour of Ireland. Several matters remain unaddressed, and so they are tackled here. I reserve the right to keep this tab running indefinitely. Even so…

• Guinness Lite. Honestly — We had wonderful couple of days (less than 24 hours, actually, now that I think about it) in the very north of Ireland at Ballyliffin Golf Club. General Manager John Farren was our host, and he could not have been a better one. He looked the other way when we arrived looking like death warmed over (straight from a transatlantic flight and 4-hour drive from Dublin). He personally delivered Peter Kessler’s set of Adams clubs on the 8th hole of our round on the Glashedy Links. He even joined us in the bar for a podcast when all 36 holes had been completed. Somewhere in this blitz of activity, he made what I thought was a joke about offering us a Guinness Lite. I assumed he was joking; I mean, really… But lo and behold he mentioned it again during the pod, and upon drawing him out, it became clear he was perfectly serious. Guinness Mid-Strength is in fact the centerpiece of a “responsible drinking” campaign being waged by Diageo Ireland, Guinness’ current owner. Unlike American light beers that are marketed as being “less filling,” Guinness Mid-Strength was created to offer an unchanged taste experience without getting people so loaded. It weighs in at 2.8% alcohol, compared with the 4.2% we expect from the world’s most recognizable stout. I expressed mild shock and dismay at this development, but John urged me to try one. He even ordered me one from the bar, after the pod, but it was ultimately delivered to someone else — at which point I accused him of taking the joke a bit far. Still, I promised him I’d try one and report back. I did just that during our stay in Killarney and let me say I was impressed. Depending on how cold it’s served, a reasonable person might have trouble telling a Mid-Strength from the original. Indeed, because I’ve gone dozens of Irish posts and thousands of words without saying it, I’m obliged share the sentiment here: Guinness Mid-Strength. It’s magically delicious.

• Beamish, where art thou? — I love my Guinness. I’m no fool. But I do enjoy a wide variety of stouts. Why limit one’s self? The American craft brew renaissance, which pretty much coincided with my coming of age, has exposed me to just how many ways one can creatively brew a stout, the thickest and “stoutest” porter-style beer a brewery might produce. Gritty McDuff’s Black Fly Stout is one I enjoy regularly, as it’s brewed just down the road from my home in Maine. I like a Murphy’s every once in a while, and one thing I was dearly hoping to do in Ireland during this GRW trip was down a few Beamish, a lovely stout that I’d quaffed on previous trips to the U.K. Well, I wasn’t really expecting to find it up north in Ireland; Beamish was originally brewed in the south, in Cork, and folks up north don’t demand it. But I was dismayed to see it nowhere on tap in Killarney or any of the clubs we frequented in the southwest. Apparently Heineken International owns it now. There was a brief dalliance with international distribution, in 2009, but that’s been halted and it’s nowhere to be found on the streets of Killarney. What a shame.

• Eat, Pray, Love = Control, Feel, Trust? — So, each of the Golf Road Warriors was provided two golf gloves for our trip, courtesy of our friends at Hirzl. We received the Trust Control model, and the Trust Feel model. I can honestly speak only to the Control, which I donned at Ballyliffin’s Old Links and used throughout the trip. Great glove. No stretching, easy on and off, and the palm material (kangaroo leather apparently) was super grippy, without being tacky. I went for the Control because I reckoned we’d be playing multiple rounds in the rain (at which time, I would break out the Trust Feel model). But, as luck would have it, we played only one real wet round (at Carne GC), the Control provided just that, and it dried out in plenty of time for the next day’s round. I’ll report on the Trust Feel when the Control wears out, but don’t hold your breath. I’m thinking this could take some time.

• Time-Honored Tracks Enter Digital Age — Failte Ireland, the very capable promoters of Irish tourism (Failte, roughly translated from the Gaelic, means Welcome to), launched during the Irish Open an online search capability that allows visiting golfers to book tee times, in real time. Go to the Search and Plan section at www.discoverireland.ie/golf and you’ll see how it works. Many of the fine old links are represented among participating clubs, in addition to a bunch of top parkland tracks, including Open host Killarney Golf & Fishing Club. 

“If you want to play a number of courses over a few days, you can now make the most of your holiday by checking tee time availability at golf courses online in advance,” explained Keith McCormack, Failte Ireland’s Head of Golf. 

“Our tee time availability search facility will tell you exactly what slots are free. You can then book the tee time that fits your itinerary with your chosen golf course. All you have to do is decide where you want to go and what type of golf course you’d like to play on.”

English pro Chris Wood

• Chris Wood, Separated at Birth — As you may recall, I played in the pro-am on Wednesday of last week’s Irish Open at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club. Thankfully, no one was hurt. My pro was Englishman Chris Wood and the whole time around I’m thinking to myself, “This guy reminds me of someone. Not someone I know, but a public figure…” Couldn’t nail it down during the 18, but I did upon returning home. Indeed, I realized it was two guys who both reminded me the 6’6” Bristol native: NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Robin Lopez, center for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. See the evidence below. Actually, Robin has a twin in the NBA, Brook, of the New Jersey Nets. But I’m going with Robin because 1) he dated fellow Stanford product Michelle Wie for a time, 2) he was on my fantasy team a couple years back, and 3) his flyaway, corkscrew hair is more reminiscent of Wood’s trademark, wind-blown, nest-like coiffure.

Robin Lopez

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

A True Golf Road Warrior Does It Behind the Wheel

A True Golf Road Warrior Does It Behind the Wheel

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

You can’t call yourself a proper Golf Road Warrior, no matter how far you travel from home, if you merely settle in one place and encounter only the courses in that vicinity. You’ve got to cover some ground, laddie, behind the wheel — and that we did over the course of our nine days in Ireland, courtesy of our not-quite-British-racing-green VW Transporter. Reputable tour companies, like our friends at Perry Golf, will hook you up with both car and driver, but you can dispense with the latter. Call me a control freak, but I’d rather our party controlled its own destiny. Highlights and observations from our Irish driving experience include:

• In total, I reckon we spent a full 23 hours driving to, from and between various golf courses. That’s nearly 1/9th of our entire sojourn, or 11 percent of our time here. Too much? Perhaps. I’ll drive an hour to play golf at home, each way. That’s 40 percent of the golf experience, not the day itself… I will say that if you’re playing 36 on a road trip like ours, you can’t afford to be driving any more than 2 hours between them. Even if they are right next to each other, at the same resort, that sort of regimen leaves little time for anything else (like blogging).

• On Day I, we landed in Dublin, secured our van and headed dead north to Ballyliffin, 4 hours away at the very northern tip of the island. That’s serious and immediate motoring immersion, but driving on the other side really isn’t that big a deal. Honestly. It’s disorienting for 10 minutes, and then everything locks in, mirror imaged, and you don’t think about it again — until you pay a toll. The urge to hand money to the person on the left is quite overwhelming…

• The big issue is leftward drift, or the tendency to not hug the centerline on Ireland’s famously ribbon-like roads. I don’t really have that center-line-hugging sensation when I drive at home, on the right side. I must do it instinctually. When that instinct isn’t contrived, in Ireland, you tend to hear it before you see it — either the brush of a hedgerow on your left sideview mirror, or maybe something like, “Curb, CURB, CURB!!” from your co-pilot.

• Our gas station/convenience mart of choice on this trip was the Topaz. We stopped at our first one in Northern Ireland, about 2.5 hours north of Dublin. I’m not sure we realized we had passed over this once dangerous, now fairly workaday border. Later we realized that signs in Northern Ireland no longer featured both English and Gaelic language words, but it certainly became clear exactly where we were when the woman behind the counter explained that we could pay in Euros, but she was obliged to give us change in pounds sterling. Hello, plastic…

• This signage dynamic stood in contrast to that which we discovered in the far west of Ireland, where, in Bellmullet, home to the superb Carne Golf Club, we discovered the signs to be written only in Gaelic.

• My mother’s been complaining for all my years about the poor signage adorning New England roadways. She’s probably right, and the signage in Ireland (like that in her native California, in the 1950s) is extremely detailed, copious and accurate. One can simply follow the various road names (N25, R344), or one can keep onesself headed toward the various cities that form the links in a chosen route’s chain, or one can do both. All in all, it’s difficult to get truly lost. That is, if one can read a map.

• I can read a map, and so can Tom Harack, my co-pilot for the great majority of our odyssey. We split the driving and orienteering. We screwed up only a couple times — mainly missed turns at roundabouts (nothing a quick U-turn won’t solve) or not properly divining the most efficient way around substantial towns, as opposed to through crowded city centres.

• We were provided a Garmin GPS plug-in unit along with the van, courtesy of the rental company. It was never once employed during this trip. It was eschewed in favor of a gigantic fold-out map of Ireland where one side featured the northern half of the island, the other the south. There are, as you know, hazards to map usage. Can’t see the left side-view mirror when someone has it fully unfolded in the passenger seat, for example. But there are comic advantages, such as the times I glanced over to see Tom reading the unfolded map but appearing to be hiding under it, as one might hide under a bedsheet.

• There are three major designations of roadway in Ireland: The M’s, like the M1, denote a motorway, or what we’d call an interstate highway in the U.S.; the N’s designate a “national” roadway, one that is pretty substantial, will provide passing lanes on uphill portions, and will more than likely connect major towns (it seems there are also N roads, like the N59, which seem to imply some kind of scenic byway designation). Then there are the R’s which are basically rural routes. They can range from roads of N-like quality to the most rudimentary country lanes. There are some L-designated roads, usually followed by 4 digits, as in the L2364. From a distance, these looked like deer paths and we never did venture down one, by choice or necessity, thank goodness.

• You really want to minimize your time on the rural routes. They’re often beautiful, no question, but they’re a freakin’ hazard and you generally make poor time. We picked up the R253, for example, on the way to Narin & Portnoo Golf Club on Day III. It was no wider than my driveway at home, questionably asphalted, and we were on that sucker for 38 kilometres! Luckily, it was early on a Saturday morning and we only encountered a handful of cars coming the other way. Each time, however, it was the same drill: See oncoming car, come to a full stop, inch by said car (checking both side mirrors all the while), continue on our way.

• Another disadvantage to the rural routes, and narrow Irish roads in general? Passing. Or, as they say over here, “overtaking” (undertaking on motorways, or passing on the left, is seriously frowned upon in the U.K., I’ve found). As indicated, on N and R routes, there is barely room for two cars to pass each other going in opposite directions. When you finally get some visibility and pull out into the oncoming lane to pass, occupying nearly all of that narrow passage, it’s a leap of faith.

• The one place we avoided a rural route where perhaps we shouldn’t have was some 30 km outside Carne, after our game there. We were headed dead east to Ballina and then took a right turn south to Castlebar, where we planned to pick up good road to Galway, then Limerick, around the River Shannon to Killarney. We had a chance to turn right and angle our way down to Castlebar on the R312 — it was clearly more direct, but we’d have traded an N for an R. So I opted against it. We may never know if this saved or cost us time. It’s a decision that may well haunt me for the rest of my days.

Tralee: Canny Punctuation to an Irish Golf Smorgasbord
The crazy-good par-3 3rd at Tralee, from the lesser of two killer nines.

Tralee: Canny Punctuation to an Irish Golf Smorgasbord

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The crazy good par-3 third at Tralee Golf Links. [photo courtesy of John & Jeannine Henebry]

The odyssey is complete, our nine-courses-in-nine-days schedule has been dispatched, and it’s all over but the ibuprofen withdrawals. Eight links, one parkland track. Three venues in the very north, four in the west of Ireland, and three more in the southwest. I arrived with a bag full of balls and 24 new ones in a box. I’m happy to report there are at least 18 left and, God be praised, I’m actually swinging the club better now than I was at the start. That’s not typical. I’ve been on plenty of long golf trips were things get bad, before they get worse, and there they stay, excruciatingly. But I tallied an 85 at Tralee today and it could have been 81 or 82. For me that’s something to blog about.

But I won’t. Tralee Golf Links, not my 85, is the story today, and what a grand golf course it is. The back nine is among the best loops of links golf you’ll find anywhere, and after the brutally long, quite tight 10th, 11th and 12th holes, this Tiger does something unique: It retracts his claws and treats the sojourner to six exquisite holes of only moderate length, as they snake up, over and around some massive dune formations.

Tralee is a bit different than many of the links courses I’ve played, on this trip and previously. As indicated, it finishes very reasonably with two short par-4s, a par-3 and a short par-5 (no. 18). It’s nowhere near Tralee town; just a few houses are scattered about the hillside nearby. It sits way out on a point, surrounded by huge tidal lagoons and an estuary or two. The feeling of isolation would be total, if you weren’t looking down off tees over long beaches dotted with families, dogs, etc. When we walked back to the 14th tee, serving a magnificent 300-yard uphill par-4, we noticed a jet ski peeling its way out of a lagoon to our right, headed for more open water. Would’ve made a fine video… sorry we didn’t act quickly enough.

One of our colleagues at Failte Ireland, the estimable Michelle McGreevy, says that the back nine at Tralee is her favorite loop in the country. As a senior tourism official, that means something. As a former Irish Girls Champion who plays off 1, that means a little more. She’ll get no argument from this quarter. Tralee’s front nine is perhaps as beautiful — it skirts massive cliffs before looping back beside another lagoon, across which sit the ruins of some ancient castle — but the back nine is worth the trip on its own.

It was a helluva way to punctuate ours.

 

 

Of Blackthorns and Pro-Ams: Three Days in Killarney
The 18th at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club, site of the 2011 Irish Open

Of Blackthorns and Pro-Ams: Three Days in Killarney

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The 18th at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club, site of the 2011 Irish Open

After five manic days on the road, wielding golf clubs in Ireland’s furthest northern and western reaches, we have come to rest in the Killarney, Cill Airne, meaning “church of sloes”. (What’s a sloe, you might well ask? It’s a blackthorn). This is County Kerry, in the southwest, and here we’ve continued our Golf Road Warrior mission whilst de-emphasizing the road part. We’re based here for the next few days, in this charming town 20,000, to complement the media corps covering the Irish Open and play the region’s top tracks.

Day 1 was Ballybunion. Day II, Wednesday 27 July, was the pro-am here at the sterling, Killarney Golf & Fishing Club. Tomorrow, Day III, my penultimate day in Eire, we head back to the links, at Tralee.

It was a brutal 5-hour drive to Killarney from Carne, but if you’re going to put down temporary roots somewhere, you could do a lot worse than Killarney. Like Tralee, the home base for my father, brother and I when we last visited SW Ireland, in 2008, Killarney is a lovely, walkable, vibrant town full of restaurants, pubs and high streets awash in colorfully painted signs and facades. Killarney comes off as even more alive, this week, as it’s fairly well bursting at the seams with Irish Open enthusiasts. The pride of Irish golf fans is bursting, too. They have come from all points to see their four major heroes — Paddy Harrington, Darren Clarke, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell — in action.

Pro-Am day was also free admission day, so the crowds were quite substantial. I’m not used to playing in front of a gallery, but I can report that no one was hurt. Indeed, I treated them to my typically dazzling shot-making, when I wasn’t mixing in self-loathing mutters, three-jacks, and high, peeling slices into the pro-style rough. I was essentially useless to my team, but no one seemed particularly pleased with the way they played, either, and fun was had by all. Chris Wood was our pro. You might remember him for having finished 3rd, as an amateur, at the 2009 Open at Turnberry. I can tell you, having viewed him up close over the course of 5-plus hours, that he’s quite tall, resembles an oversized Dale Earnhardt Jr., hits the ball a bleedin’ mile, and comes off as a genuinely nice lad. I’m rooting for him this week, though as I sit here in the media centre, I see on the big board that he’s 3-over through his first 11 holes. He’ll need to pick things up to make the cut.

Robin Lopez

At first blush, it might seem odd that an Irish Open would be played over a parkland track like Killarney. This is Ireland, after all, home to so many stunning links. But, as we’ve learned, many of those links are stupendously remote, while others don’t have the facilities to handle the huge crowds. With the exception of Dublin, there are more hotel beds in Killarney than in any other Irish city. That would include, I presume, the 14 rooms at Killeen House, a B&B where we dined in admirable style and substance our second night here.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

English pro Chris Wood

Our group is about 11 media strong, and the Killeen had us at a long table occupying half of a private room. After our appetizers arrived, the other party arrived: 12 dudes on golfing holiday from St. Louis. We recognized them immediately from Ballybunion earlier that day — these were the guys whooping it up on the clubhouse balcony when were putting out on 18. We had seen them at Carne, as well. They were soused at Ballybunion 2 hours prior, so they were predictably boisterous and even more lit by the time they sat down for dinner. Ah, the joys of being an American abroad…

Thankfully, we took our desert in the bar, where the spirits flowed with more decorum and the walls are bedecked in golf balls (the barman here will readily trade you a logoed ball for a pint). The sun was all the way down when we stepped outside. It was quiet and still, and the gloaming made our deep green surroundings that much deeper. A thunder clap of laughter, surely emanating from our original dining room, breaks the silence and continues — ebbing and flowing but remaining constant — for a minute or more until, again, it’s quiet and all we can hear as we approach our bus is the muted crunch of gravel beneath our feet.

The gloaming descends on Killeen House, home to the superb Rozzers’ Restaurant.

 

 

How the Irish and Ireland inform their golf
A quiet Sunday morning on the Diamond in Donegal Town. That's the road south, to Sligo.

How the Irish and Ireland inform their golf

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

A quiet Sunday morning on the Diamond in Donegal Town. That’s the road south, to Sligo.

Sitting on a park bench this Sunday morning in the Diamond, the central square area of Donegal Town. The Road Warriors straggled back here, battered and bruised, late last night between rounds at Donegal Golf Club and Enniscrone. What we found upon checking into the splendid Abbey Hotel was a major league party underway, in our hotel bar/disco, and in every hotel and bar surrounding the Diamond. Saturday night in Donegal is no joke, and it wasn’t just the gaggle of young things strutting about. This was clearly a cross-generational night out. When I checked into my room, I shared an elevator with a 50something couple and another woman who had broken the heel off one of her 60s-era, black, Nancy Sinatra-style, go-go boots. The three of them were literally falling all over themselves in hysterical laughter at what had happened, and they wanted me to join in. When I crashed last night, sometime around 3 a.m., there was still plenty of laughter emanating from the Diamond.

It’s morning now, close to noon actually, and it’s quieter here in the square. A motorcycle club has gathered here on the stone plaza, but their comings and goings are the only break in the quiet remove of a Sunday morning after. You may think I’m crazy, but I believe I hear some Irish pan flute in the distance. Honestly. Some business establishment must be piping it in. I listen to the familiar chug of diesel engines (they predominate here) as lines of slow traffic putter by me. The three main roads all meet on this one spot, heading off south to Sligo, north Letterkenny and west to Killybegs. Nothing here in the square is made of wood. It’s all stone masonry, businesses on the first floor, resident apartments on top. People are out and about and the pubs are open for business.

I’m from Boston, so I’m used to the way Irish towns are laid out (i.e. around a square or town green — these forms of public architecture were imported directly to New England from the old country), and I’m used to the Irish. Growing up, I just assumed (up to a point) that everyone in America but me was Irish and Catholic. Everyone had relatives back in Ireland, just as everyone here has kin in the states.

The difference is (aside from the presence of a proper castle, Donegal Castle, just off the square), the Irish in Ireland are all too happy to chat you up about their relatives, where they live, where you live, what sort of trip you’re doing, have we played Sligo, there’s a pub round the corner you must try, and let me buy you a pint. The American Irish are nice enough; no more or less congenial than me, or any other immigrant population in the U.S., which is to say all of us. But the indigenous Irish are off-the-charts friendly.

Oftentimes the Scots and Irish people are compared, as the links courses in Scotland and Ireland are often compared. There is, I think, an austerity to life in Scotland, to the golf they play, to the courses they play, to their outlook on life. It’s nothing cold or perverse, but there is a reserve, a near asceticism to the people, culture and the courses. I love it there, but when you think of the Scottish links you’ve played, do you think green?

Well, this ain’t the Emerald Isle for nothing, people. It’s green and lush. The outlook is sunny, even if the weather isn’t always. Ireland and the Irish don’t do asceticism. They are, in contrast, generally garrulous and outgoing. Their golf courses run the gamut, naturally, but they generally reflect their keepers: they are greener, the dunes are bigger and more dramatic, the welcome in the clubhouse more genuine than those you find across the Irish Sea. Handsome is as handsome does.

Donegal Castle is just a stone’s throw from the town center, better known as The Diamond.

 

 

 

 

Ballybunion, Enniscrone and Carne: Discuss
The 16th at Carne GC, in the remote west Ireland town of Bellmullet

Ballybunion, Enniscrone and Carne: Discuss

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

 

The 16th at Carne GC, in the remote west Ireland town of Bellmullet. [photo courtesy of John and Jeannine Henebry]

About 50 minutes outside of Bellmullet, bearing down on Ballina, headed east so that we might eventually tack south to Castlebar, Galway, Limerick and Killarney, it registered with me that we were playing Ballybunion the next day. So I was thinking, “How many links golf courses are rated higher than Ballybunion, I mean, in the whole freakin’ world?” Now, ratings are nothing if not subjective, and, as a member of the GOLF Magazine panel since 1997, I am party to that subjectivity. Nevertheless, if you refer to the GOLF list, only the Old Course at St. Andrews, Muirfield, and Royal County Down, Royal Dornoch, Royal Portrush, Turnberry, and Pacific Dunes are more highly rated. Sand Hills? I just don’t think of that as a links.

This would normally be the fodder for yet another pedantic ratings discussion, and I have played Ballybunion before. But as we made our my way down the N56, it occurred to me that I’d be playing it this time having played 7 stellar links courses in the space of 5 days, including one that I’d have a hard time placing behind any links course we’ve mentioned here, so far.

Much as I enjoyed the two courses at Ballyliffin, the Sandy Hills course at Rosapenna, Narin & Portnoo and Donegal, they are simply not in Ballybunion’s class. But Enniscrone is, and it’s interesting to compare the two, having played them both in the space of 48 hours. Both routings spend considerable time NOT weaving their ways through the deep hollows of giant dunes corridors. This is to their credit. Links that spend all their time in there are too intense, too difficult, too funky. You need a break, and there’s nothing wrong with wrapping holes around the perimeter of a dunes complex, or routing an open fairway to a green that sits in a dunesy amphitheater. Both Enniscrone and Ballybunion serve up this sort of thing, in spades.

So, what does Ballybunion have that Enniscrone doesn’t? Or what is it about Enniscrone that keeps it from these lofty heights? Is it, as my colleague put it, simple inertia on the part of the scum-sucking media? It could be that. But here are some alternate theories.

1)    Ballybunion is older and more accessible, meaning that more people have played it over the course of more years. Enniscrone is way out there in County Sligo, hours from Galway and even further from Dublin, Limerick, Belfast or any sort of hub. It’s remote, and unless you’re course was designed by Ben Crenshaw, or developed by Mike Keiser, these types of remote courses don’t get the same sort of attention.

2)    Ballybunion is, I would say, 2.5 shots easier per side than Enniscrone. Now, this can depend a lot on conditions the day you play. But we played the two on very similar sun-splashed days in similar 15 mph winds, maximum. Enniscrone kicked my ass and kicked the ass of everyone in our group. Today, at Ballybunion, I shot 85, best score of the trip. Ditto for the others. Bottom line, it’s a feel good course. I don’t want to call it a “resort” course, where the design is intended to please first-time/only time players. It’s far more quirky and too flat out awesome for that. But the landings areas are more broad, the rough not so thick, the twists and turns not so confounding for visitors.

You know, I was going to just list these reasons one after another, as to why Ballybunion is ranked higher than Enniscrone, but I’ve run out of ammo at two. Beyond that, it’s sorta hard to make the argument. So I’ll stop.

Now, Carne is another matter. There are some who feel this is among the world’s great links, and I’ve decided they’ve got a point. It’s more raw than Enniscrone, not in the same sort of condition, and we played it in a dank mist. My feet were soaked by the third hole (too much walking around searching for balls in the heavy, wet rough) and I lost several golf balls. It’s hard to separate these factors from one’s perception, especially re. a one-time golf experience. Carne goes out into the dunes and never really ducks out for a breather, but I’ve just gone through the course again in my mind, on the card, in the par-saver book, in the pictures and videos we’ve gathered. It’s extremely tough, crazy penal in spots, but it’s the equal of Ballybunion, as well.

So there. I’ve said it.


Old Links vs. New Links: Viva la difference
The 17th at Donegal GC

Old Links vs. New Links: Viva la difference

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The 17th, a broad and beautiful par-5, at Donegal Golf Club.

 

The assumption is that all the links courses here in northwest Ireland are “ancient”, but that’s not the case. Donegal Golf Club, also known as Murvagh, was built in the 1970s, though you’d never guess it.

We’ve played two even newer links on this trip, the Sandy Hill track at Rosapenna, and the Glashedy Links at Ballyliffin GC. Both courses are superb but severe, built amid the big dunes slightly inland from the older courses at both venues, on land Old Tom Morris (who did the original course at Rosapenna) would never have dreamed of using. I’ve written elsewhere that many of these new links suffer from agronomic issues: The rough is too thick, has not been burned off appropriately over the course of decades, and doesn’t generally have that wispy-penal-but-you’ll-find-it quality. But there’s more to it. Back in the day, Old Tom and his like didn’t have the technology to carve holes from terrain like this — so they wisely fashioned subtle holes amid the gentler topography closer to the ocean.

These new links are more dramatic but, as you might imagine, much tougher, too; the locals, who have the option to play either course at both Ballyliffin and Rosapenna, invariably choose the older courses, the staffs inform us. Sensible.

In any case, despite its relative youth, Murvagh has that ‘old course’ feel. The front nine circles around the perimeter of the property — an estuary dotted with dunes — while the back nine forms a separate central loop. Returning nines is perhaps a sign of its recent design, but what a golf course. Old Tom would have approved.

 

 

A Day in the Life: 36 more and a Warrior down
The 12th at Narin & Portnoo Golf Club

A Day in the Life: 36 more and a Warrior down

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The 12th at Narin & Portnoo Golf Club [photo courtesy of John and Jeannine Henebry]

The day-to-day existence of The Golf Road Warrior might sound, well, sorta cushy when viewed from a distance. But trust me: The pace is unrelentingly, if purposely, grueling. Let me give you the blow by blow of our Saturday in County Donegal, using the 24-hour clock that pervades here:

01:15, Saturday, 23 July — To bed at the Rosapenna Golf Resort Hotel. We had arrived here for our 16:30 tee time the day before, whereupon we tackled the super striking, super difficult Sandy Hill Links, one of two golf courses here perched high on the North Atlantic coast. We finished at 21:00 or thereabouts, rushed over to the hotel for a lovely dinner, and set about blogging re. Friday’s events. My post was uploaded well after midnight and I was dead away the moment my head hit the pillow.

06:30 — Outta bed and upstairs for quick continental breakfast.

07:30 — On the road for Narin & Portnoo Golf Club, which sits in a remote village on the northwest coast — next stop to the west, Newfoundland. Thirty-seven kilometers of this trip from Rosapenna to Portnoo were logged on a road no wider than my driveway back home. Thankfully, unlike my driveway, it was paved, and there was little oncoming traffic. It is Saturday morning after all.

09:15 — Arrival at the club, and off the first tee 15 minutes later. Beforehand, however, I pop an 800 mg tablet of ibuprofen — a canny purchase I made in Cabo san Lucas the previous May. You can’t get that much ibuprofen in the U.S., not in a single serving and without a prescription. They’re bright orange and the size of a horse pill… Finian is our caddie. Like most we’ve retained here, he’s young and a very good player (he plays off 3).

10:30 — About four holes into this track, the thing takes off. Many of these links begin in flattish, gently duned, lowland areas, or maybe some sort of salt-water bog or estuary. This was the case at N&P. Yet as we made our way out to the beach, we could see a line of huge dunes rising to our left. At no. 5, we played a dogleg up into the breach of one and there we stayed for the next 13 holes, diving down off the dunes to seaside greens (no. 8), playing par-3s from promontory to promontory amid the dunes, and banking our way around the base of this stunning dunescape, right to left and left to right. This is a course you may never have heard of unless you book a Perry Golf tour or consult the Northwest Ireland web site. It’s superb, and if you’re doing 36 a day, it forms a nice link between the northern courses and Donegal GC.

13:30 — We finish the round literally one step ahead of the three women who pushed us the whole back nine, as we hit entirely too many balls in the junk, and spent entirely too much time looking for them. It was a big day at P&N, Lady Captains Day, where the leading ladies from clubs all over Ireland converge for their annual to-do. We grabbed a quick bite in the clubhouse, which was mobbed with some 60 women, all fresh off the golf course. Ran in to the threesome behind us outside; they had picked up a head cover we had dropped somewhere along the line. I took this opportunity to apologize for playing so slowly. They smiled and shot me a polite look that said, “Well, that’s all well and good but you should be ashamed for having played so slowly.” And so we skulked off to our green VW van, suitably admonished.

14:15 — In the parking lot we run into another group of three women, whom we had encountered prior to the round. They asked where we were headed next: Donegal Golf Club, also known a Murvagh (mer-vah). Well, that’s their home club. They advised us that Murvagh was several miles beyond Donegal Town and to “stay out of the rough.”

16:15 — Arrived at Donegal GC. We headed straight off the back, and the weather couldn’t be better: 70 degrees and 15 mph of wind. Fifth consecutive round in shorts. Second horse pill of the day, down the hatch.

17:45 — On the 8th, a lovely par-4 that plays off a dune down to a left-turning fairway, our fellow Road Warrior Peter Kessler was felled. We didn’t know it yet, but he ruptured a tendon in his left hip trying to hit a sand wedge a bit farther than perhaps was feasible. (I heard him say as much, to himself, before the swing.) This was serious: 5 rounds in 3 days had taken its toll, and Peter’s day was done. He couldn’t walk, so fellow Road Warrior Tom Harack packed it in after nine and brought him to the clinic in Donegal, from whence Peter was shipped north to Letterkenny Hospital for an x-ray, where the tendon-issue was confirmed. At this writing, Peter remains in hospital. We’ll pick him up tomorrow, with his crutches, and head to Enniscrone GC. At least, that’s the plan…

18:30 — And then there were two. Fellow Road Warrior Jeff Wallach and I headed out to play our final nine. Hey, we told ourselves, Tom has it handled — and he’d played the course before, whereas we had not, and Donegal GC is too good to simply walk away from.  I snagged Peter’s Adams Redline driver and hit the shit out of it. If he doesn’t play for a couple days, I’m appropriating it. If he rallies, we’ll share it.

20:30 — We holed out on 18, victimized by the Murvagh rough twice on the last two holes. In the clubhouse, Tom and Peter are nowhere to be seen, so we grab a Smithwicks and a bite to eat. They’re still sorting the patient, we’d soon learn from Brendan Reck, the affable club captain whom we met in the bar; I recognized him from his portrait hanging in the hallway. Tom arrived around 21:00 with all the details re. Peter’s condition. Nothing to do but find the hotel and start blogging.

22:00 — Saturday night in Donegal, and it’s quite a scene at The Abbey Hotel, where we’re kipping for the night. First-floor disco with a live band. The place is packed, and up and down the high street every bar and hotel is similarly equipped with live music, packed houses and dozens of folks on the street smoking butts. How does the Golf Road Warrior respond to such stimuli? “Um, excuse me: What’s the wireless password?” Thirty-six holes and two 90-minute drives have sapped us of all partying energy and initiative. Must post.

02:09, Sunday 23 July — The above is written, the photos/video are downloaded and posted. Looking to sleep in tomorrow, if only just. A 90-minute drive and a 16:30 tee time at Enniscrone await — that is, after we retrieve Peter from Letterkenny.

Thirty six holes in one day can be taxing. Thirty six with at least one 90-minute drive in between is more so. Thirty six on this sort of schedule three days in a row? Well, it has proved to be a bit more than at least one hip tendon ocan bear. Twenty-seven at Enniscrone tomorrow… I mean, today.

Ballyliffin: Old Links a Nearly Flawless Trip-Opener
The Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club

Ballyliffin: Old Links a Nearly Flawless Trip-Opener

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club

 

All you need to know about the Old Links at Ballyliffin is that, for the 4 hours we spent going round it, I never did consider laying down for a couple hours in the fescues. Not strongly anyway, for they were invitingly cushy and sunsplashed.

We arrived here on the northern most tip of Ireland pretty pooped, following a 4-hour drive north through Newry and Armagh and Cookstown and Londonderry, all the way from Dublin in other words. That drive (wherein I took the wheel) had been preceded by a 6-hour blogger-wrangling exercise at the airport, which had been preceded by the 5-hour flight from Boston to Dublin. I departed at 6:20 p.m. Boston time and landed at what would have been 11:20 p.m. my time, Boston time. There simply isn’t time to sleep, or for appropriate sleep-aids to take effect. So I didn’t, and they never did, and I’ve not slept yet.

It’s coming, and soon.

But first, Ballyliffin, which sports two courses, the Glashedy Links and the Old Links. With Glashedy Rock sitting like a monolith in the surf, a couple miles off shore, and Malin Head (that northernmost point) framing the view to the East, the Old Links — which aren’t THAT old; they were laid out in the 1940s, and renovated very subtly and deftly by Nick Faldo in 2009 — simply never serves up an ordinary golf hole. There aren’t the towering dunes we associate with some Irish links courses; indeed, the neighboring Glashedy, would appear to occupy that sort of ground.

Nope, the Old Links just fits the land like a glove, moves right and left, is impeccably bunkered, and sports the perfect combination of firm, fast, bouncy turf, the perfect combination of green and brown, never anything but a perfect lie in the fairway, and stern rough that punishes but rarely swallows the ball whole. It also features enough wind — in combination with holes that do, in fact, play markedly up and downhill — that 6,300 yards was plenty. One could go further back, to 6,937 yards. But why would four guys working on a sleep debt do that?

I’ve flown to the U.K. before, and it’s nearly always the same sort of drill: The first day is crazy. One gets off the plane and fights the jet lag by playing golf. Yet there’s something to be said for saving a day for the entire arrival ritual, for a long drive if you’ve got one in store, for a relaxing dinner overlooking the course you will play the next day. That’s the difference between an Irish linksfest organized by professionals, like those at Perry Golf, and those organized by a bunch of journalists cum bloggers.

We worked the Old Links at Ballyliffin in to the itinerary because one simply cannot come to this part of the world and not play it. Now we have. Glashedy tomorrow. But now, sleep.

Making room for new memories of Ireland

Making room for new memories of Ireland

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The last time I visited Ireland, my brother and I chaperoned the old man around the Southwest, taking in the links at Doonbeg, Lahinch, Tralee and Ballybunion. That was nearly three years ago and our timing couldn’t have been better. I don’t want to go all Jim Dodson on you, but my dad has since been diagnosed with lymphoma. He’s hanging in there, but my brother and I are pretty damned glad we took him to Ireland when we did, because his days of walking 18 on consecutive days are in all likelihood behind him.

I’m turning these things, these most recent memories of Eire, over in my mind here in Dublin Airport, waiting on the rest of my party. A leaden gray sky hangs low over the modernist terminal I spy across the street, through massive picture windows. We have a mighty drive ahead of us, once we’ve all assembled — straight up to the island’s northernmost tip, skirting the new golf capital of the world, Northern Ireland, to the links at Ballyliffin. From there a veritable string of equally hallowed venues await.

There will be plenty to write about in the days to come, plenty of memories to be made. I and my comrades in Gortex will be diligent in relaying them to you via word, sound and image. But for now I’m loathe to shake the memories from last time.

I won’t bore you but one moment stands out: That first day we arrived, in Shannon, the three of us promptly headed straight for Lahinch on a beautiful sunlit morning. There is no better cure for jetlag than a round of golf, first thing, right off the plane. As one enters the tiny beach town of Lahinch, it’s not clear to the novice exactly where to find the golf club. We pulled over and asked directions of an older woman.

“Well, it’s right over there,” she said, gesturing to an intersection where we should’ve gone right. The course lay on the high ground just beyond. It proved pretty difficult to miss, but she didn’t press this point.

“Have you a game today? I see that you have. Well, you’ll love it. Absolutely love it. It’s a wonderful golf course and you’ve got a beautiful day for it. Where are you from?”

Boston.

“Well, I have several relatives living there. They’re not golfers, sad to say. But that won’t matter to you. Just take that right hand turn and the course is on your left. Can’t miss it. Lovely course, lovely weather. You’ll have wonderful day…”

We thanked her profusely, of course, and, duly bathed in the hospitality for which Ireland is rightly famous, we all turned to each other and smiled. We may have giggled. At which point my brother summed it up: “What a bitch.”

We laughed long and hard, then headed off into the dunes at Lahinch.