Ballybunion Archives - Hal Phillips

Hal Phillips, A Fine Golfing Ambassador: 1936-2011

Hal Phillips — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:30:42 +0000

My father and namesake, Harold G. Phillips Jr., passed away Saturday, Aug. 27, after a 15-month battle with lymphoma, and so I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about him this past week. Most of this bittersweet rumination has nothing to do with golf but some of it surely does. He’s the guy who introduced […]

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Of Blackthorns and Pro-Ams: Three Days in Killarney

Hal Phillips — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:59:43 +0000

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 […]

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Ballybunion, Enniscrone and Carne: Discuss

Hal Phillips — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:52:58 +0000

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, […]

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Making room for new memories of Ireland

Hal Phillips — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:02:49 +0000

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 […]

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New Links, New Rough, New Sleeve: Doonbeg Could Use Some Old-Time Greenkeeping

Hal Phillips — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:49:23 +0000

It’s been a couple years since I played Doonbeg Golf Club, Greg Norman’s “new” Irish links in the southwest of the country. I’ve thought about it quite a bit since because, well, a lot folks have played it too — it’s just south of Lahinch and just across the Shannon River from Ballybunion and Tralee […]

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