Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried.
Speaker 2: Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Friday Frida Egg Egg,
Speaker 2: fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off
Speaker 2: of the course.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 3: I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today we are going
Speaker 3: to talk Royal County Down in the Irish Open. I
Speaker 3: am pleased to be joined by Darra Garahey. He is
Speaker 3: a friend of mine that I met h longtime, you know,
Speaker 3: emailer and communicator, but we met when I was in
Speaker 3: iraland earlier this year played some golf together and he
Speaker 3: is a I would say a he's a diehard when
Speaker 3: it comes to golf architecture, at golf history and knows
Speaker 3: just a ton about golf on the island of Ireland.
Speaker 1: So I had one.
Speaker 3: I figured he'd be a great guest to come on
Speaker 3: and talk about Royal County Down and didn't disappoint. He
Speaker 3: came prepared, ready to go. We talked about one of
Speaker 3: the world's greatest golf courses and this week's Irish Open host.
Speaker 3: I figured this would be a great table setter for
Speaker 3: kind of I would say, the the last hurrah of
Speaker 3: pro golf this year. This year, you know, we got
Speaker 3: the Pea Cup coming up, the President's Cup coming up,
Speaker 3: but I think this Royal County Down this weekend. You
Speaker 3: obviously have the Solheim Cup at RTJ after and we'll
Speaker 3: have an episode later this week that kind of centers
Speaker 3: on that. But the I think the the Irish Open
Speaker 3: and Royal County Down is it's going to deliver the
Speaker 3: goods for people that are really into golf courses and
Speaker 3: in architecture. That'll be on Golf Channel early in the
Speaker 3: morning in the States all week, so check that out.
Speaker 3: Before we get to Dara, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about Club TFE. That is our sponsor of this pod.
Speaker 3: It's our membership, it's the fridaygg's membership, and it is
Speaker 3: it's a bustle in place. We're producing a lot of content.
Speaker 3: I'm actually working on a Royal Kenny Down written profile.
Speaker 3: So every week we do a course profile in there
Speaker 3: where we go dive deep into a golf course. Last
Speaker 3: week we had one of our member videos that comes
Speaker 3: that we put out a couple of those every year
Speaker 3: that was on Southern Pines. We have Design Notebook that
Speaker 3: comes out every Monday that kind of talks about what's
Speaker 3: going on in the golf design world.
Speaker 1: So a ton of content.
Speaker 3: On top of that, there a discounts to the pro Shop,
Speaker 3: and there are a handful of member only events, maybe
Speaker 3: a few more. We've got some really awesome couple of
Speaker 3: add ons that we've added that we'll be announced next
Speaker 3: week as some very good golf courses in America some
Speaker 3: would say probably a couple of the best golf courses
Speaker 3: in America. Those will go up next week. But really
Speaker 3: cool offering and big thanks to everybody that's joined and
Speaker 3: supported us. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the
Speaker 3: year and it really goes to helping us continue to
Speaker 3: grow and do more stuff. So just to check that out.
Speaker 3: And then one other reminder we did I did a
Speaker 3: big video with the help of Cameron heard us on
Speaker 3: Royal County Down talked about that. That's up on our
Speaker 3: free YouTube page. If you don't subscribe, check that out,
Speaker 3: subscribe and watch that video. That was super fun to
Speaker 3: see come to life. Cameron is believable at putting those
Speaker 3: videos together. So let's get to Dara and our talk
Speaker 3: about Royal County Down. Dearah, it's Irish Open Week. This
Speaker 3: is a great year of the Irish Open. Gone is
Speaker 3: Mount Juliet for this year and and Royal County Down
Speaker 3: is the host course hasn't hosted in almost a decade
Speaker 3: and this will be really like I think, like in
Speaker 3: terms of modern golf coverage between social media, HD cameras,
Speaker 3: this is really kind of the coming out party for
Speaker 3: Royal County Down in the in the modern golf viewing
Speaker 3: era with with social media. And so what are a
Speaker 3: few of your favorite things about the Irish Open and so.
Speaker 2: Much to say what a week it's going to be.
Speaker 2: Just reflect on the week. First of all, I saw
Speaker 2: you've put the Orish Open up as your event of
Speaker 2: the week and your various social media outlets. I'm going
Speaker 2: to push back a little. I'm going to say the
Speaker 2: Crump Cup is on in Pine Valley, So between the
Speaker 2: Pine Valley and Royal County Down and being showcased, I
Speaker 2: just think it's going to be an incredible week in golf.
Speaker 2: Obviously we can't watch Pine Valley, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: go up to Royal County Down on Saturday, and I
Speaker 2: just can't wait to see.
Speaker 1: It with the you're going up huh oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm going up on So I went to the Saturday
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen as well, and I'm going to be
Speaker 2: up on Saturday this year again. The weather was pretty
Speaker 2: bad in twenty fifteen. I think there was some pretty
Speaker 2: high scores on the Saturday I was up there, or
Speaker 2: maybe it was a Friday. But I can't wait to
Speaker 2: go up just with you know, the golf schedule since
Speaker 2: the PGA Championship moved, I think Andy from August to
Speaker 2: July or August to May, everything wraps up so quickly
Speaker 2: in terms of major events on great courses, seems to
Speaker 2: wrap up the end of July. We get a premature end.
Speaker 2: So we've just been blessed this year with this wonderful
Speaker 2: closing chapter in Royal County Down. So I wouldn't miss
Speaker 2: it for anything. It's just it's going to be spectacular,
Speaker 2: it's going to be firm. The weather's been good here
Speaker 2: for the last week or so. I just saw a
Speaker 2: picture today of Shane Lowry and Port Rush with some
Speaker 2: myits on, so it can change. But at least there
Speaker 2: should be some firmness in it unless it gets it dowsing.
Speaker 2: But the Irish Open is, as you said, returning to
Speaker 2: a Lynx course, we're spiritual home. We're so charmed. It's
Speaker 2: you know, the heyday of the Irish Open was the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, played mainly on Portmarnick, occasional
Speaker 2: smatterings in Royal Dublin, and they were just brilliant events.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety I think Sevy one,
Speaker 2: then Bernard Langer won, then Woozy went back to back
Speaker 2: and then I think it was Ola Thabel one in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. Huge crowds. Those days maybe slightly gone. We
Speaker 2: know all the commercial concerns that go around hosting a
Speaker 2: tournament and we can't always go to top tier links and
Speaker 2: you've talked so much about that. But just to be
Speaker 2: able to go back even this once this year, it's
Speaker 2: just amazing and I can't wait to see it and
Speaker 2: I hope everyone in America gets to watch some of
Speaker 2: it as well.
Speaker 3: I think like one of the interesting things about the
Speaker 3: Irish Open is having, you know, our visit to Ireland
Speaker 3: this spring kind of illuminated how great the amateur championships
Speaker 3: are in Ireland, whether it's the North, the South, the East,
Speaker 3: the West, and the courses, the host courses you know,
Speaker 3: you know Royal Port, Rush, Bealtray, County Law and La
Speaker 3: Hinch as a host like and you get these great
Speaker 3: amateur championships which anybody can enter. You can enter as
Speaker 3: an American, you can enter as an Australian, play these
Speaker 3: great links courses. But then you know, in recent years
Speaker 3: the Irish Open we've had Mount Juliet, we get the
Speaker 3: kind of interior, you know, the interior non links golf courses,
Speaker 3: and I think, like from from a standpoint of pro golf,
Speaker 3: I think venues add a lot. And when John Rahm
Speaker 3: won it Hinch years ago, it was like an amazing
Speaker 3: like win right, it was just like an amazing tournament.
Speaker 1: Everything.
Speaker 3: This this event needs to be held at the great
Speaker 3: golf courses in Ireland.
Speaker 1: It's a showcase for the Island of Ireland.
Speaker 3: Speaking of as the island as a whole for golf,
Speaker 3: I think that's generally the premise there. But these should
Speaker 3: be hosted around and it should be a big deal.
Speaker 3: Winning the Irish Open at Port Marnick or Hinch or
Speaker 3: wherever it may be. And I just hope that this
Speaker 3: trend kind of continues in the next couple decades of
Speaker 3: getting places like I'm sure Royal County Down probably wants
Speaker 3: to host about once every ten years, but there could
Speaker 3: you know, with a little planning, you could do an
Speaker 3: awesome rotation of ten or so courses in Ireland.
Speaker 1: Would do you agree with that?
Speaker 2: I would've You've mentioned so many interesting points there. I think,
Speaker 2: as you said, or City probably and any topp Links course.
Speaker 2: They're so filled with visitors now and obviously they're private members'
Speaker 2: clubs that there is a limitation on when they can hot.
Speaker 2: So we should say thanks to Yald County Down first
Speaker 2: of all. And you notice you picked up on the
Speaker 2: love of Irish people have for amateur golf and the
Speaker 2: great courses that host those tournaments, and they are just
Speaker 2: it's just it's an over and above love for amateur
Speaker 2: golf that we have here and we're so lucky they
Speaker 2: are in great golf courses. But the history of the
Speaker 2: Irish Open, as you mentioned there like it was, it's
Speaker 2: coming up one hundred years now, so in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: seven and the first one was in Port Mark and
Speaker 2: the second one was in World County Down And obviously
Speaker 2: times have changed so much since then, but we've only
Speaker 2: got these matterings of hostings in Port Rush or in
Speaker 2: Lahinch that John ram One like. When I was growing
Speaker 2: up as a kid, one of my standout memories is
Speaker 2: and you mentioned Mount Juliette earlier and the Irish Open,
Speaker 2: and interesting enough, on the European tour was actually becoming
Speaker 2: quite strong, and we'll say it in nineties and two
Speaker 2: thousands that's when the Irish Open moved for obviously commercial
Speaker 2: reasons and then other reasons from the like support Marnic
Speaker 2: in Royld Dublin to Druid's Lend to Killarney, to Photo
Speaker 2: Island and occasionally dipped back into Baltray and then in
Speaker 2: later years support Rush et cetera. But I remember going
Speaker 2: to Bali Bunyon in about two thousand with my dad.
Speaker 2: He brought me down as the first golf tournament I'd
Speaker 2: ever been at. I was ten years of age, and
Speaker 2: that just resonated so hard with me. I'd never seen
Speaker 2: a links golf of course in my life. It probably
Speaker 2: played a large reason into why I really got into golf.
Speaker 2: After that, I only started playing golf. And as you say,
Speaker 2: if we could even occasionally lock something in, given the
Speaker 2: great courses that we have the porst viewers not to
Speaker 2: mention the Big five or the Big six, it would
Speaker 2: just be it would add so much to world golf,
Speaker 2: and given all the discussions that are going on, it's
Speaker 2: particularly pertinent. I think I would say that things were
Speaker 2: going particularly while Andy pre COVID in with the Irish Open,
Speaker 2: the Rolex series. There was a lot of money being
Speaker 2: pumped in and we went back to back I think
Speaker 2: in Lahinch and Port Rush. So that was and I
Speaker 2: think unfortunately obviously COVID happened in European to European tour
Speaker 2: position weakened. But you know, you never know what's around
Speaker 2: the corner, and I think that if there's anything the
Speaker 2: tours can do to come around to this area of
Speaker 2: having a link swing, and Ireland has so much stuffware
Speaker 2: in terms of the best courses, it's a lot of
Speaker 2: interesting discourse now around Live. Have obviously said there's chat
Speaker 2: about John rab wanting a Links event in Ireland before
Speaker 2: the British Open, so I think it should be to
Speaker 2: the forefront of everyone's minds. We have too much good
Speaker 2: stuff to offer and everyone's going to see it this
Speaker 2: weekend in County Down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you hit on an interesting point of the future
Speaker 3: of the Irish Open, and we'll get to ROC after this.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think one of the things you
Speaker 3: watch what's going on with the you know, potential Saudi
Speaker 3: Public Investment Fund PGA tour deal or in lack of
Speaker 3: progress on the deal, I think like one of the
Speaker 3: big things that's a sticking point of the deal is
Speaker 3: a world tour, you know, a global a little bit
Speaker 3: more of a global game where the best players in
Speaker 3: the world travel around the you know, to the biggest
Speaker 3: golf markets in the world.
Speaker 1: The Irish Open would seemingly be a.
Speaker 3: Lynchpin to that world tour and it is probably you know,
Speaker 3: along with the Scottish Open and Wentworth behind, you know,
Speaker 3: the the Open Championship as the premiere worldwide event. You know,
Speaker 3: I think like the Australian Open, you'd throw in there also.
Speaker 3: But you know, if if a deal doesn't happen, and
Speaker 3: maybe the Saudi's look at the European Tour more closely.
Speaker 3: This this event to me, if you were going to
Speaker 3: you know, do like a stock exchange for golf events.
Speaker 3: This event seems to have the most potential of becoming.
Speaker 1: A great, great event again.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, that's just such a brilliant point. Like firstly,
Speaker 2: obviously the Scottish Open occupies I think currently the slot
Speaker 2: before the Open Championship, and Scotland has an unbelievable amount
Speaker 2: offer in terms of classic of courses and indeed renaissance, etc.
Speaker 2: But the Irish economy is booming, there's no shortage of sponsors.
Speaker 2: The Irish links to America in particular are strong. There's
Speaker 2: a precedent for the Irish Open being a really, really
Speaker 2: great event, like Ben Crenshaw used to come over in
Speaker 2: the mid seventies when nobody was coming over, those record
Speaker 2: crowds at these Irish Opens. We're a natural midpoint between
Speaker 2: everyone that's involved in all these negotiations in this game.
Speaker 2: And as you say, I'm not down on the Irish
Speaker 2: Open at all. I think it's got a huge promise
Speaker 2: to come Andy, I really do. I think that the
Speaker 2: Irish Open should really be agitating for a more premier
Speaker 2: spot in the calendar. I did start this podcast saying
Speaker 2: September is pre eminent in terms of conditioning for a
Speaker 2: link course, and of course it is. But we any
Speaker 2: top pro would love to be in Ireland the week
Speaker 2: before an Open or two weeks before. Courses around Ireland,
Speaker 2: as you've obviously seen on social media have no shortage
Speaker 2: of top pros coming to prepare anyway.
Speaker 3: Privately, you know, you know who's one of them that
Speaker 3: goes to Ireland every year before the Open?
Speaker 4: Go on?
Speaker 1: Tiger?
Speaker 2: Tiger, Well, yeah, yeah, Tiger. There's a great, great picture
Speaker 2: of Tiger in two or must be maybe ninety eight
Speaker 2: or ninety nine playing Port Marnick and some of the
Speaker 2: guys who obviously in the club watch him play that day.
Speaker 2: In only but five or six people watched him playing.
Speaker 2: This is absolutely incredible. But I've seen Dustin Johnson had
Speaker 2: a couple of times, and lots of other guys come because,
Speaker 2: for example, obviously playing Port Marnix some a little bit boys,
Speaker 2: but Port Marnick is as firm and as kind of
Speaker 2: intrigate as it gets. You know, it's very similar to
Speaker 2: a lot of the style of golf played on certain
Speaker 2: Open venues like Mierfield. But we have so much to offer.
Speaker 2: We have occupied that kind of top spot in world golf.
Speaker 2: In terms of our Open and the history like the
Speaker 2: history of our National Open and the national Opens are
Speaker 2: so important and the Irish Open is really to the
Speaker 2: top of those. Andyes, so something that's here to my
Speaker 2: heart and I'd love to see it get a better position.
Speaker 2: And I think it's very well primed too.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we talked about they brought up
Speaker 3: the Scottish Open. One of the things that the Scottish
Speaker 3: Open struggles with is is venues, because you know, the venue,
Speaker 3: the great championship venues are kind of wrapped into the
Speaker 3: Open rota, right, and they aren't. They aren't looking necessarily
Speaker 3: to host a Scottish Open. So what happens with the
Speaker 3: Scottish Open. And these are still great golf courses, just
Speaker 3: not the country's top tier golf courses. The Scottish Open
Speaker 3: goes to places like Gullen in Renaissance versus you know,
Speaker 3: your mirfields, your your truons, your your your great great
Speaker 3: championship hosts. The thing that Ireland has is that it
Speaker 3: is never I don't think it's ever outside of like
Speaker 3: Port Rush, and you know, it's never going to be
Speaker 3: a hub of open championship golf because you know, the
Speaker 3: Open is it's just that the Irish Open, So the
Speaker 3: Irish Open heads this opportunity of we can we can
Speaker 3: get the greatest golf courses of Ireland to.
Speaker 2: Host absolutely and you know, obviously there's been a little
Speaker 2: bit of discussion recently about Port Marnik maybe putting a
Speaker 2: stand up for bigger events and whatever. But well, while
Speaker 2: all that's going on in the background, there are so
Speaker 2: many golf courses that could put their hand up. Baltray
Speaker 2: would be only too willing. There's places like bally Lyffin,
Speaker 2: which is obviously hard to get to. Yeah, but Lahinch
Speaker 2: was such a success, bally Bunyan that I went to
Speaker 2: in two thousand or maybe two thousand and one, I
Speaker 2: think it was two thousand. I remember watching Garcia. I
Speaker 2: was really got me in throlled with golf, I think.
Speaker 2: But we are perfectly perfectly situated for all this, and
Speaker 2: as you said, we're not you know, we're not. We're
Speaker 2: not in the same situation as Scotland is with all
Speaker 2: the open road courses, so we have a completely blank
Speaker 2: slate and it's just the world is our oyster. And
Speaker 2: I really do think it's going to happen quite soon.
Speaker 2: And I think that the negotiations that are going on
Speaker 2: probably will have a very positive outlook or positive end
Speaker 2: result for Ireland and all this. I think that I
Speaker 2: just thought the live chatter was quite interesting. I think
Speaker 2: that that that'll bubble up and keep bubbling, you know.
Speaker 2: I think that if they were to look for venues,
Speaker 2: they would probably find this under the surface. They have
Speaker 2: eight or ten brilliant golf courses in Ireland that they
Speaker 2: could host a brilliant event on the week before the
Speaker 2: Open and that'll peak people's interest handy.
Speaker 3: So all right, let's talk about this week's brilliant venue.
Speaker 1: Royal County down.
Speaker 4: Staggeringly, staggeringly brilliant, just arguably the best course in Ireland
Speaker 4: and the island of Ireland arguably the best golf in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: People would put that in there, you know, it is
Speaker 3: I think like it is a it's somewhere. It's a
Speaker 3: golf course that you can I don't think anybody could
Speaker 3: visit and be like, you know what, not my cup
Speaker 3: of tea because it kind of offers everything from staggering
Speaker 3: beauty challenge. There is like in a sense of adventure
Speaker 3: to the golf course, and I think there's a very
Speaker 3: brilliant golf design, so you kind of package all that together.
Speaker 3: People might like one course more than an other. Somebody
Speaker 3: might like Port Rushmore, or someone might like Port Marnock Moore,
Speaker 3: someone might but like l Hinchmore. But I don't think
Speaker 3: it's a golf course many people go to and say,
Speaker 3: you know, I wish I hadn't come up here, this
Speaker 3: was overrated, or this is this is too much. What
Speaker 3: is your personal history, When was the first time that
Speaker 3: you visited Royal County Down and what stood out to you.
Speaker 2: I went to Dublin College in Dublin and played on
Speaker 2: the university golf team, and I still have photos that
Speaker 2: took on a low megapixel camera of we were lucky
Speaker 2: enough to play against university in the North of Ireland
Speaker 2: who had playing rights in Royal County Down or just
Speaker 2: the ability to host matches. And it was March two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, the times time says, and the more
Speaker 2: mountains were snow capped. But I don't think they care
Speaker 2: too much about frost Up and roll County Down back then.
Speaker 2: So I still have all these pictures of my opponent
Speaker 2: gone down the fairway, who was a good player who
Speaker 2: beat me. But I just I couldn't believe I was
Speaker 2: playing rold County Down. I'd read about it for so
Speaker 2: long and with the whole place for ourselves. It was
Speaker 2: absolutely freezing. And he's along with his myths in his hat,
Speaker 2: and I, you know, like any golf course, I really
Speaker 2: didn't get a sense of it on first play. I
Speaker 2: was overawed by it. I did play a couple of
Speaker 2: more university matches there, but then I went back many
Speaker 2: more times of a particularly good friend there who actually
Speaker 2: want the club championship there a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 2: for the first time. So well done to Jack, but
Speaker 2: I went back many times with him and indeed them
Speaker 2: with other pals. And it's obviously it's less than two
Speaker 2: hours up the road from Port Marnick, and I just
Speaker 2: it's a truly great golf course. Like I've given up
Speaker 2: on golf course rankings, and they're one of the most
Speaker 2: useless things I think ever. I like to bucket golf courses,
Speaker 2: and County Down is so far to the top of
Speaker 2: the top tier bucket. It's just, you know, it's truly
Speaker 2: great golf course because it has so many great golf holes.
Speaker 2: That's what a great golf course has. To have great
Speaker 2: golf holes and world County Down has twelve plus truly
Speaker 2: brilliant golf holes. And as much as I you know,
Speaker 2: I was just talking with my friend. My friend we
Speaker 2: won the club championship. But I'll never admit to him
Speaker 2: Monroe texting each other about County Down being better than
Speaker 2: where I play in portmeric or whatever. But there is
Speaker 2: just so much good going on that even if you
Speaker 2: think that the last three holes are overrated, or some
Speaker 2: contriving about the new sixteenth, or you know, you think
Speaker 2: the seventeenth is week, which I don't think. I'd love
Speaker 2: to chat about that the last trials. I think the
Speaker 2: seventeenth is she has a great green site. But County
Speaker 2: Down is just all about the terrain. The various people
Speaker 2: involved in shaping it throughout the years never tried to
Speaker 2: make too much of the greens. That didn't put bells
Speaker 2: and whistles on. They're just so they're perfect for the
Speaker 2: land they occupy. It's staggerantly beautiful and it might be
Speaker 2: perhaps the most natural top tier course in the world,
Speaker 2: I think, because there's nothing. You know, it's got foibles,
Speaker 2: but it's all about the terrain. It's just perfectly put
Speaker 2: along the terrain, but it was quite a journey to
Speaker 2: get there. I don't know if you want to go
Speaker 2: into it, but every samples nothing like the golf course
Speaker 2: that was there in kind of eighteen well, eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine when it started to nineteen twenty six when Harry
Speaker 2: Colt came. But that briefly. Sorry to answer your original question,
Speaker 2: that was my that's my history with it. I've played
Speaker 2: it so many times and it's a joy to go
Speaker 2: up there every single time. I find it to be
Speaker 2: an incredibly hard golf course, which is the way to
Speaker 2: start the outside of his part, I was laughing at
Speaker 2: the idea of the Crumb Cup and Pine Valley in
Speaker 2: the other sho opening in County Down, but because it
Speaker 2: is a really, really difficult golf course, even in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh eight or nineteen seven, I think of us with
Speaker 2: a six four hundred yards. But it started, it started.
Speaker 2: If you're happy to me to keep going, it started.
Speaker 3: In eighty Yeah, I was just gonna I was gonna
Speaker 3: jump in here and just go ahead.
Speaker 1: I think like a couple of things that you you
Speaker 1: hit on.
Speaker 3: There are Oh I don't know if any golf course
Speaker 3: that has as many overwhelmingly great golf.
Speaker 2: Holes, truly brilliant, so many of them, like.
Speaker 1: We can start, you can like like you can nitpick.
Speaker 3: There are I think there are a couple couple of
Speaker 3: weak moments in the round. But in terms of any
Speaker 3: golf course in the world that I've played, there is
Speaker 3: no golf course that, like, if you just like were like,
Speaker 3: what are the greatest golf holes in the world, I
Speaker 3: don't think any golf course would have as many in
Speaker 3: that initial list because it's like one, two, three, four
Speaker 3: or five six, So like you just go the whole
Speaker 3: front nine, the entire front nine, Like, is there another
Speaker 3: golf course in the world that has as good of
Speaker 3: nine holes?
Speaker 1: Any nine, like any nine you want to pick?
Speaker 3: You could go one, seven, fourteen, like you could pick
Speaker 3: your best nine. I don't know if there's any nine
Speaker 3: that is as good as the front nine at Royal County.
Speaker 2: Dowbt not even close. Is the running course in the
Speaker 2: world where you I think the first hole is magnificent,
Speaker 2: But you walk down the first hole like you walk
Speaker 2: down every hole, every first hole. But what you should
Speaker 2: do in first thing, I turn around and look back
Speaker 2: up the fairway because you just it's stagnantly brilliant to
Speaker 2: just look back on. And then you know, you get
Speaker 2: to the second and I'm not a great lover of
Speaker 2: flying holes, but they don't bother me in Roild County
Speaker 2: down at all because there's some sort of a compression
Speaker 2: or lease on most aspect to the second hole, the
Speaker 2: t shot, because even though it's a blind shot, which
Speaker 2: you may or may not like, it's up to your
Speaker 2: personal preference, but it's so wide when you get over
Speaker 2: the hill that you like, it's so different, it's so wide,
Speaker 2: and it's just gives so many options, and you know
Speaker 2: that that second. Obviously, they approach to the second can
Speaker 2: be blind depending on where you've hitch your T shirt
Speaker 2: if you pull it left, but that that used to
Speaker 2: be I think in different stages that was a completely
Speaker 2: blind approach shot as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they knocked down the do knock down went all
Speaker 3: the way across.
Speaker 2: And yeah they knocked down to doing ridge that I
Speaker 2: think at various points they knocked that down. But they
Speaker 2: also attempted to build up the back of the green.
Speaker 2: But then you know, like the the first three holes
Speaker 2: kind of play out like a classic links But obviously
Speaker 2: then it turns on itself at four. And when you
Speaker 2: get these golf courses in Britain and Ireland that play
Speaker 2: out and in even though a county nown doesn't, but
Speaker 2: the first three holes play out, and they often have
Speaker 2: a sense of claustrophobia, I find, but that there's just
Speaker 2: none of that. There's a sense of space, as I
Speaker 2: said about the release on the second, there's a great
Speaker 2: sense of space. And the third, which is one of
Speaker 2: the best holes. I absolutely love the third. But you'd
Speaker 2: be so hard picked to pick your favorite holes. If
Speaker 2: I asked you to pick your three favorite holes in
Speaker 2: the frontline county down, we could be here all day
Speaker 2: and all night. I think I'd probably go for a
Speaker 2: soft spot for eight.
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It is amazing, and it used to it used to
Speaker 2: play it played down to the left. Yeah, and we'll
Speaker 2: come on too that I'll go through that, but.
Speaker 1: Now we can't go now we're here, now.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, Okay, Well maybe i'll work back. So I
Speaker 2: think the golf course, I'll do it in stages of
Speaker 2: that properly. So the golf course eighteen eighty nine rudimentary
Speaker 2: course laid out resemble nothing like the current course and
Speaker 2: then old to Mars came three months after it was
Speaker 2: opened and suggested changes and they built three new holes
Speaker 2: and six year holes, so very suddenly done. By eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety there was eighteen holes course. And you alluded to
Speaker 2: the Irish lave of amateur golf earlier. Immediately the golf
Speaker 2: course was hosting Irish amateur opens where the great players
Speaker 2: from the UK were coming over, John Boll and all
Speaker 2: these type of characters. And then there was some pro events.
Speaker 2: Even I think Hilton and Braid might have been coming
Speaker 2: over as well. So it was a plague championship government.
Speaker 3: One of the things about the early golf course was
Speaker 3: and how this golf course people came to play it
Speaker 3: was that the first and eighteenth green were right next
Speaker 3: to a train station.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what happened there. What happened there was like
Speaker 2: all good golf, like all golf in britaint Isreland. The
Speaker 2: train line dictated the development of the golf course, and
Speaker 2: the Belfast Railway made the stop in Newcastle, which is
Speaker 2: the village of County Down beside. It made that a
Speaker 2: terminus kind of maybe a few years before, and they
Speaker 2: were so in lockstep with each other of the golf
Speaker 2: course and indeed, the town and the train station that
Speaker 2: the government slash train station and Royal County down actually
Speaker 2: came together to build a room for the use of
Speaker 2: golfers at the train station. That's how we boxed up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they I think I maybe paid half and a
Speaker 2: half for the upkeep of it was shared, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And you're right, like the I think the original Home Green,
Speaker 2: the eighteenth Green, was down on the currents side of
Speaker 2: the sleeved Honnerdt Hotel, So you're right. It started way
Speaker 2: further down, finished further down, and it bore no resemblance
Speaker 2: the current golf course at all. So this is eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety and then again between eighteen ninety two and eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety four they rebuilt six new holes in and got
Speaker 2: rid of some others. So we've had three or four
Speaker 2: already major iterations of the golf course and we're only
Speaker 2: four four and a half years in. And then, like
Speaker 2: all great golf courses and the there was a benevolent dictator,
Speaker 2: you know, like there was The more I think about it,
Speaker 2: so many great golf courses, mainly in America, have been
Speaker 2: shaped by benevolent autocrats. And there was fans at Oakmont
Speaker 2: and in later years Gerald Micklum made good changes at
Speaker 2: Sunning Dealt. But there was a guy called George Coom
Speaker 2: and he was first noted to be around in the
Speaker 2: mid or sorry, the early eighteen nineties. But he was
Speaker 2: a gentleman of boundless energy. You found these people at
Speaker 2: the time who could turn their hand to anything, you know.
Speaker 2: And he gained a prominent position in world County down
Speaker 2: on the council I think it's called they called their committee,
Speaker 2: and he started changing the course I think in Earnest
Speaker 2: in about nineteen hundred. He built many new new holes
Speaker 2: and he changed the rest so there was only six
Speaker 2: original holes left of the original golf course. And the
Speaker 2: golf course is up to fifty eight hundred yards, but
Speaker 2: descriptions of that course don't really exist. There's kind of yardages, etc.
Speaker 2: But at the same time he was also building the
Speaker 2: number two course, the Ansley Course are the number two.
Speaker 1: Course, the Weak Course.
Speaker 2: The Weak Course. So he was a busy guy. He
Speaker 2: was sure. He was honorary Secretary of the Golfing Union
Speaker 2: of Ireland and he did all sorts. But anyway, he
Speaker 2: wasn't a complete autocrat. Yet he got many people who
Speaker 2: he knew understood golf architecture to come over and have
Speaker 2: a look. He had Ben Sayers actually come over, and
Speaker 2: then he would carry out more changes and even paid
Speaker 2: for some of the changes out of his own pocket.
Speaker 2: So he two more big changes, trunch of changes, the
Speaker 2: kind of nineteen two changes that he started in nineteen hundred,
Speaker 2: and then by nineteen oh eighty don it again, so
Speaker 2: we have big golf course sixty four hundred yards. And
Speaker 2: then obviously the most important thing that happened was that
Speaker 2: Harry Cold came over in nineteen twenty six. And this
Speaker 2: is just where the genius of County Down and the
Speaker 2: genius of Harry Cold comes out. And in a nutshell,
Speaker 2: what Harry Cold did was, first of all, he planted
Speaker 2: all the gorse. There was no gorse in County Down
Speaker 2: before Harry Cold. So the fourth hole, as we know,
Speaker 2: one of the most honest biring part threes in the world.
Speaker 2: You've you've just got beaten up by the third and
Speaker 2: you step onto the forty and you're you're looking around
Speaker 2: trying to take it all in, and then you you know,
Speaker 2: you got to pick up a two hundred yard club
Speaker 2: and hit down to just one of the best best
Speaker 2: golf holes in the world. But what Harry Colt did
Speaker 2: was that the old fourth hole was a hole that
Speaker 2: played in parallel, went back up beside the third up
Speaker 2: to kind of around the current fifth green, So it
Speaker 2: was a five hundred and twenty yard hold that kind
Speaker 2: of played along the rough corridor of what he built
Speaker 2: where the current fourth is and the current fifth. So
Speaker 2: he knocked that whole out the three shotter and put
Speaker 2: in the dog leg right fifth, but more importantly the fourth.
Speaker 2: So immediately he was Harry Colt was always on the
Speaker 2: lookout for good bar threes. I think that's how he
Speaker 2: when he was called to port Rush. That's really what
Speaker 2: he did up there as well. He looked for the
Speaker 2: best sites for par threes, is what I understand, and
Speaker 2: then he worked off the rest and that was his
Speaker 2: first change on the front Niner County down, So he
Speaker 2: actually reduced It's hard to believe, but he reduced blindness
Speaker 2: around the golf course as well. So we can only
Speaker 2: imagine the demands of the pre cold iteration.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the site itself is naturally can do
Speaker 3: to blindness. You have massive, you have massive you know,
Speaker 3: dramatic dramatic sand dunes. I think, like you know, in
Speaker 3: terms of golf court, but they're well scaled sand dunes,
Speaker 3: you know. I think like the thing that people will
Speaker 3: say is like, oh, the front nine at Port Stewart
Speaker 3: is as good as the front nine at Royal County Down,
Speaker 3: and I just disagree because the variety of the of
Speaker 3: the way that you interact with the sand dunes is
Speaker 3: the brilliance of Royal County Down is that you're you're
Speaker 3: playing through them, and I think like Port Stewart is
Speaker 3: I love that nine, but the dunes are so big
Speaker 3: that you can't play on top of them in the
Speaker 3: way that you play on top of them on six,
Speaker 3: seven and eight at at at Royal County Down, you
Speaker 3: miss that like playing on on you know, the exposed
Speaker 3: center of it. At Port Stewart, you're always playing through them.
Speaker 3: So what I think the brillions of the cult iteration
Speaker 3: is the way that it interacts on the dunes, you know,
Speaker 3: the way it gets you you kind of wrap around them,
Speaker 3: play in them, and then you get on them and
Speaker 3: then you play off them.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it like that.
Speaker 2: You're you're absolutely spot on. He so he obviously probably
Speaker 2: reduced playing through them on the first few holes and
Speaker 2: then made the best of them up on five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: and nine. What I understand is what I understand is
Speaker 2: George Coom as well, our favorite benevolent dictator, also kind
Speaker 2: of reduced blindness. I think the first few holes genuinely
Speaker 2: played just straight over and straight over and through dunes.
Speaker 2: That probably was not in the best way to play
Speaker 2: certain holes. So I think Komb had already started laying
Speaker 2: out the original playing corridors that the holes occupy, and
Speaker 2: by the time he was done in about nineteen o eight,
Speaker 2: the first in the eighteenth were parafise, so they were
Speaker 2: three shutters and the playing carriders were established. And then
Speaker 2: Colt obviously came in and as you just saw eloquently said,
Speaker 2: utilize playing off the dunes and the slopes rather than
Speaker 2: egregious playing over them. So perfectly, that's exactly I think
Speaker 2: that's probably the fairest way to describe it. But I
Speaker 2: do think that this golf course, modern version of it
Speaker 2: was an awful lot to George Coop. But then what
Speaker 2: so what Gold did was and this is just the
Speaker 2: current eighth, which is just one of my favorite golf course,
Speaker 2: a murmer my favorite holes on the golf course. It's
Speaker 2: just at that time that was the seventh and it played.
Speaker 3: The eighth plays up along the ridge. It's you know
Speaker 3: the ninth. You'll see everybody takes pictures of the ninth.
Speaker 3: The eighth is where it gets you to the ninth
Speaker 3: tee and it's I think it's probably one of the
Speaker 3: least talk about great holes at Royal County Down. It
Speaker 3: kind of plays on a diagonal off the tea and
Speaker 3: winds its way up to the top of the dune ridge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think big Part.
Speaker 3: Four most exposed, most exposed to, most exposed shots maybe
Speaker 3: at Royal County Down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and kind of a tabletop green almost falls off
Speaker 2: on the right anyway. But what Cold did was that,
Speaker 2: as I was just saying, that was the seventh hole,
Speaker 2: and it used to finish down into the left, almost
Speaker 2: near the current first green I'd imagine in my head.
Speaker 2: And then from there you played from down near that
Speaker 2: original green, you played back over at an angle over
Speaker 2: the current hill that you that the nine is so
Speaker 2: well known for in a blind Part three, and then
Speaker 2: you would go from behind that green and you would
Speaker 2: play over another sand hill that was there at the
Speaker 2: time to another green around the current nine green. So
Speaker 2: you two blind part threes, is that green?
Speaker 3: Is that practice green an original green? If you look
Speaker 3: like my side have been the green.
Speaker 2: You are correct. But I don't think that was actually
Speaker 2: the green for that just previously mentioned second blind part three,
Speaker 2: which occupied I think that was the green for another
Speaker 2: hole that was there in the in a more previous
Speaker 2: iteration in one of the.
Speaker 1: Time it could have been an old I think I.
Speaker 2: Think it could have. I think it could have, because
Speaker 2: I actually was just checking that last night. I don't
Speaker 2: think there was. I don't think the second line Parturie
Speaker 2: played to that because it played over it played to
Speaker 2: a green in sand Hills in which is currently gone,
Speaker 2: which has gone in the meantime. So I think the
Speaker 2: practice green, which certainly was a real green, was for
Speaker 2: a different tole. But what he did then was so
Speaker 2: he obliterated that he moved the eighth green up or
Speaker 2: with the seventh hole at the time, up to the
Speaker 2: right onto this magnificent table top. And then you just
Speaker 2: walk from obviously so many or so many of your
Speaker 2: listeners will have just will know exactly where the ninth
Speaker 2: Green ninety is then straight behind the current eight green
Speaker 2: when you play the Magnificent Night. So Harry Colt created
Speaker 2: the modern eight, the modern Night, and indeed the modern Fort,
Speaker 2: which is just pure genius. But he did it all
Speaker 2: through the garters which were previously established. After about seven
Speaker 2: or eight goes from all our various he mentioned pals,
Speaker 2: but you know where to start. But the front nine,
Speaker 2: it's just it's an endless hit list. Really, I think
Speaker 2: Andy so, but that's that was Harry Colt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Harry Colet. Obviously.
Speaker 3: I think I recorded a pad years ago with Curtis James,
Speaker 3: who's the superintendent at at Old Elm, Harry Cole, one
Speaker 3: of the few Harry Colts in North America.
Speaker 1: And uh and.
Speaker 3: He said, I think this brilliantly is most Americans don't
Speaker 3: really know much about Harry Colt, but if you go
Speaker 3: over the UK, he's like Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just for a period of time when the
Speaker 2: screensaver on my phone was the Poe three the fourth
Speaker 2: hole at Swenley Forest, which I just couldn't get over.
Speaker 2: It's just so brilliant. I don't know, I don't think you've.
Speaker 1: Ever played Swenley I have that yet.
Speaker 2: There's that silly old quote that he called it it's
Speaker 2: his least bad course, but it's just it's it's a
Speaker 2: brilliant monument. Was that the quote they said about port
Speaker 2: Rush him he doesn't need a brass statute is port
Speaker 2: Rush is his monument.
Speaker 3: So I think I think what he did at Port
Speaker 3: Rush is so different than at at Royal County Down.
Speaker 3: I think at the green, I think the greens are
Speaker 3: pretty simple at Royal County Down, but then you go
Speaker 3: to you go to Port Rush and they are like
Speaker 3: these beautiful intricate.
Speaker 1: Greens with like some really.
Speaker 3: Wonderful contouring, you know, different pockets, and but Royal County
Speaker 3: Down I think like it's I don't know what makes
Speaker 3: what do you think makes Royal County Down so challenging?
Speaker 3: Because I think it's like from a from a sheer
Speaker 3: challenge right there with Port Rush, Like I would almost
Speaker 3: venture to say that Royal County Down might be more
Speaker 3: challenging than Port Rush.
Speaker 2: I think Royal County Down is way more challenging than
Speaker 2: Port Rushian. But first of all, it was a guy
Speaker 2: called Anthony Babbington who bought cold to port Russian. Again,
Speaker 2: they had a very rudimentary golf course. But I think
Speaker 2: that was Cold genius. He recognized the land, the topography
Speaker 2: of Port Rush. Obviously it was rolling in a sense.
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't describe World County Down as rolling,
Speaker 2: and he perhaps he created the greens a little bit
Speaker 2: more rolling fashion. Whereas if you think, if you think
Speaker 2: about the third hole of rold County Down, if I
Speaker 2: was to be laconic in my in my language, I
Speaker 2: would say that two good shots will sort you out
Speaker 2: at the third at County Down, because when you get there,
Speaker 2: the green is relatively open, simple, somewhat inviting, but the
Speaker 2: challenge is before and Cold knew that, you know, so
Speaker 2: that that's part of his genius. There's no overdoing it.
Speaker 2: We talked about Simpson and his restraint at Baltray, but really,
Speaker 2: why do I think I suppose your question was why
Speaker 2: do I think it's so challenging. I think this it
Speaker 2: is very, very broad. It's so beastly in every term
Speaker 2: that the rough is absolutely brutal at times. The gorse
Speaker 2: planted by Colt as well. I know last time I
Speaker 2: was up there was about a year ago that cut
Speaker 2: back some of the course, but it's an incredibly challenging
Speaker 2: golf course, and there are many parallels to Pine Value
Speaker 2: with the strength of the t shots. If you hit
Speaker 2: it five or ten yards right on the third which
Speaker 2: is again four hundred yards plus, there's deep, deep bunkers
Speaker 2: that I don't think, for example, when Americans come over here,
Speaker 2: I don't think they've ever played out of the surrounds
Speaker 2: of a bunker like they played out at the third
Speaker 2: hole on the fair way of World County Down. You
Speaker 2: can take five or six swipes. It's something that's caught
Speaker 2: up on that marton grass and be there all day.
Speaker 2: You know, there is there is nothing like that challenge
Speaker 2: and you were in the world really and I think
Speaker 2: the amount of trouble you can get yourself in between
Speaker 2: green and tea is unrivaled in world golf really too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think like from first glance,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel that demanding off the tea, like there's
Speaker 3: space there is, But when you throw in the wind
Speaker 3: and the firm when especially firm conditions and wind, it
Speaker 3: becomes like very clear that it is a like you
Speaker 3: you need to drive it extraordinarily well here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's if you look at and obviously just
Speaker 2: to bring it up again. I play my golf for
Speaker 2: Port Marnock and Port Marnik appears kind of tied off
Speaker 2: the tee, but if you miss it left or right
Speaker 2: you're generally okay. But there's no marim grass with the
Speaker 2: volume and the texture like there is a Royal County Down.
Speaker 2: There are no You can be up against the base
Speaker 2: of a hill on the third of Royal County Down
Speaker 2: if you hit a long drive up the left, you know,
Speaker 2: you think you've done all the hard power.
Speaker 1: Not a good spot.
Speaker 3: You know you can be to use your pend there
Speaker 3: twice to use your.
Speaker 2: Parallel so you can be jammed hard, you know.
Speaker 1: So you're not enjoyed over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all the other golf courses in Ireland. If
Speaker 2: you hit a good law drive you're generally okay. But
Speaker 2: golf is natural and it's not supposed to be fair,
Speaker 2: you know. So I think this is where County Down
Speaker 2: wins out. The same give you said of the fifth hole,
Speaker 2: for example, which is a lovely dog leg used of
Speaker 2: a square green. Actually so a picture from nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: four a day use of a perfectly square green, almost
Speaker 2: like the the Philly Cricket Club the second course there
Speaker 2: Martin Saint Martin's, Yeah, which had a US open. I think,
Speaker 2: but if you miss any of these fairways, even though
Speaker 2: you said the playing carders are white, they are wide,
Speaker 2: but they're they're a different character off the farewell than
Speaker 2: they are at Port Mark or Port Rush or Lane
Speaker 2: for example, very very different. Lane has contouring and undulation
Speaker 2: like Royal County Down, but its penalties for missing the
Speaker 2: fairways are more consistent with the type of rough that
Speaker 2: you see across Ireland, which can be a decent blend
Speaker 2: of escue, but there is mareon grass I think, Andy,
Speaker 2: to answer your question about the difficulty of Royal County Down,
Speaker 2: that's not appreciated anywhere else on the island. That's what
Speaker 2: I'd run it back to.
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, if I was going to
Speaker 3: use a descriptor for Royal County Down and why I find.
Speaker 1: It to be difficult. So tough is like it's like
Speaker 1: a raw golf.
Speaker 3: You you just are like the elements and whether it
Speaker 3: be on the ground elements like the dunes and the
Speaker 3: contours you're facing like, you know, you have these big features,
Speaker 3: but then in the fairways there are a lot of
Speaker 3: small features that kind of can can get you in
Speaker 3: bad spots and feel uncomfortable, you know, where you have
Speaker 3: like slight side hills and you're hitting into these small,
Speaker 3: small green targets and the wind's blowing hard. But it's
Speaker 3: just like a very raw place to play golf, Like
Speaker 3: you are just you're not going out there, you're like
Speaker 3: going out there and you know you're going it's almost
Speaker 3: like you feel like you're going to war with just the.
Speaker 2: But that's exactly it. Earlier on when we were chatting,
Speaker 2: I said, I think it's the best natural golf course
Speaker 2: in the world, and I really thought about that that phrase,
Speaker 2: because that's what it is. You know, there is just
Speaker 2: so little manufactured about it, and there's other golf courses
Speaker 2: that are in the top bucket that just don't feel
Speaker 2: like that, you know. I think that's what I think.
Speaker 2: Countydown is completely unique and it's how natural it is.
Speaker 3: Well that's why, yeah, I might I might say I
Speaker 3: think where when you get off the fifteenth hole, you
Speaker 3: kind of leave that and that might be why people
Speaker 3: don't love the.
Speaker 1: Last three holes.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, is that I think it loses the plot
Speaker 3: on the naturalness a little bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, they're they're off discussed. I think I think
Speaker 2: the best one to start to it is seventeen. I
Speaker 2: hear a lot of people knock seventeen, and I actually
Speaker 2: quite like seventeen.
Speaker 1: I really like, I say, that's the best of the
Speaker 1: three finishers.
Speaker 2: It is, but I actually think it's quite a good hole.
Speaker 2: And now obviously I'm not sure if you if you
Speaker 2: ever saw pictures or whatever, but they're used to a
Speaker 2: pond in the middle of the seventies.
Speaker 1: It was like a natural spring, right, It's.
Speaker 2: An true spring, I think. And now maybe there was
Speaker 2: drainage issues, but they filled it in and they have
Speaker 2: a waste area there, but like I.
Speaker 3: Odd odd of waste area, you know, I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 3: you don't have any of any anything that looks anything
Speaker 3: like it for sixteen holes and on the vast majority.
Speaker 1: Of the week course, yeah, I suppose.
Speaker 3: And then you just like come up, come up on
Speaker 3: this like very it feels very made. That doesn't it
Speaker 3: doesn't feel natural. But I think like the t shot
Speaker 3: there and the approach are extremely high caliber shots. It's
Speaker 3: just this weird to me, a weird pit in the
Speaker 3: in the farewell.
Speaker 2: And to play Devil's advocate for a second and at
Speaker 2: least so some people would say it's not a binary hazard,
Speaker 2: you can recover from it, et cetera. And maybe they
Speaker 2: had some sort of drainage issues, Andy, But I liked
Speaker 2: I actually quite liked the old pond because there was
Speaker 2: nothing like it. It was offering an unusual challenge in
Speaker 2: so far as I was saying, can you hit the
Speaker 2: ball this far or if you hit a little bit
Speaker 2: further you'll paid the penalty. And there's not that many
Speaker 2: type there's not many. First of all, in country lend
Speaker 2: there's very little of that challenge. Obviously all approach shots
Speaker 2: are that challenge. But in the world golf, there's very
Speaker 2: few challenges like that left where someone is asking you
Speaker 2: to actually hit the ball at certain distance off the
Speaker 2: tee with wood club. So that was kind of unusual
Speaker 2: in this day of bomb and gouge, where you were
Speaker 2: being asked to just consider a little bit of restraint
Speaker 2: because you were faced to the binary you know, one
Speaker 2: shot penalenty or two shot plenty or whatever. So I
Speaker 2: didn't really mind it. I do appreciate that it's easier
Speaker 2: to play the hole, but as you've said, I think
Speaker 2: this is I it's a little out of keeping, but
Speaker 2: you know, the green is just magnificent. The bunker on
Speaker 2: the right of the green, which I found myself in
Speaker 2: many times, it's really hard to get out of. It's
Speaker 2: very narrow green as lovely cant from left to right.
Speaker 2: So I'm all in on the seventeenth, you know, as
Speaker 2: I've said, I do. I quite like the quirk of
Speaker 2: the pond. But I think the sixteenth is I've been
Speaker 2: trying to study a little bit recently. The sixteenth is
Speaker 2: for the listeners is three hundred and thirty five forty
Speaker 2: part four that runs the same direction as the fifteenth
Speaker 2: and more or less the same direction as the seventeenth.
Speaker 2: In its place before was a tea. It was a
Speaker 2: whole landy that was a very short driveable part four,
Speaker 2: and it was changed for the Walker Cup in about
Speaker 2: winter two thousand and five two thousand and six. So
Speaker 2: you used to come off the fifteenth green and go
Speaker 2: up left, and then you kind of played slightly across
Speaker 2: the new hole, kind of towards almost towards the seventeen
Speaker 2: tease simple hole. But you know, the interesting thing about
Speaker 2: simple holes is the eight intes Saint Andrews is a
Speaker 2: simple golf hole, and it makes good players angry if
Speaker 2: they don't burn it, So there's nothing wrong with a
Speaker 2: simple hole. And then obviously the the views probably behind that,
Speaker 2: because you know that to the right of seventy isn't
Speaker 2: exactly spectacular more mountain, so the views were probably an
Speaker 2: issue and all sort of challenge for the Walker Cup,
Speaker 2: and maybe pace. The play on a two hundred and
Speaker 2: forty yard hole for the members every week was also
Speaker 2: probably slowed up. So in this winter of two thousand
Speaker 2: and five they changed that hole to make it this
Speaker 2: three hundred and forty yard hole playing kind of straight up.
Speaker 3: And Donald Steel was the architect who built it.
Speaker 2: It was deal and I love a good short part four,
Speaker 2: but it's not quite driveable. I had a good go
Speaker 2: out of a couple of years ago. I suppose that
Speaker 2: the I would just say that I think it's it's
Speaker 2: limited and options off the tee. I think the layup
Speaker 2: is actually quite hard on the left and it doesn't
Speaker 2: reward you that well because the green is still very
Speaker 2: hard to hit. You've did a deadly bitch to hold
Speaker 2: the green and almost there's a I think maybe when
Speaker 2: it was built there was a kind of a separate
Speaker 2: fairway down on the right, which is actually the optimum
Speaker 2: place to kind of approach trum, so that the green
Speaker 2: is then up on your left, but that's been grown
Speaker 2: in by rough and I think there's a couple of
Speaker 2: bunkers there, so in reality you're kind of forced up
Speaker 2: the left a little bit. So if I was playing
Speaker 2: a week in week out, I would never go for it.
Speaker 2: And I think that the lay up on the left
Speaker 2: is actually into quite a small area, and I just
Speaker 2: think that, you know, maybe, and it's a very very
Speaker 2: tricky green. It would be so interesting to be there
Speaker 2: at the time to see if they could have retained
Speaker 2: the original sixteenth old because the green is down and right,
Speaker 2: like you know, there's all these sort of questions after
Speaker 2: but it's just it's a very tricky, drivable part four
Speaker 2: that doesn't give me two options many options in my head.
Speaker 2: So if I was playing it week in week out,
Speaker 2: I'd probably kind of dragging at the five iron and
Speaker 2: hitting it up the left. So I don't know what
Speaker 2: your take on it is.
Speaker 3: I you know, it's definitely it's probably my least favorite
Speaker 3: hole out there. I think what like maybe I don't
Speaker 3: know for pulse is the right word. But the what
Speaker 3: bothers me the most is the green and the homogeneous bunkering. Okay,
Speaker 3: the two the two fronting bunkers that are almost symmetrical.
Speaker 3: It was like they were just like copy and pasted
Speaker 3: to me the golf course. It just it's very clear.
Speaker 3: I think this is probably you know, the worst thing
Speaker 3: when you do renovation work on a historic golf course
Speaker 3: is like that hole. You get to it and it's
Speaker 3: very clear that that's not an original golf hole, Like
Speaker 3: whether you read something or not, like it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: this has been changed because the bunkering and everything just
Speaker 3: screams nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: You know it is.
Speaker 3: And I think that this is my same complaint with
Speaker 3: the eighteenth. It's just over bunkerd It's there's bunkers everywhere.
Speaker 3: They're seemingly formulaic in appearance. They just you know, check
Speaker 3: her the right and left sides of the fairways all
Speaker 3: the way down the hole. And I think, like to
Speaker 3: me that that hole, the sixteenth, if you took away
Speaker 3: the front right bunker, would be way better because then
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, if I play, if I take this on,
Speaker 3: I have a path to the green. But if I
Speaker 3: play left, then I have I have to go over
Speaker 3: the bunker.
Speaker 2: So this, yeah, like you're the you're the real calf
Speaker 2: of architecture expert here. But what I always thought that
Speaker 2: whole was what I always thought of it that hole
Speaker 2: was I'd love the option to be able to chip
Speaker 2: a ball up or run a ball up from the right.
Speaker 2: It's links golf, and I'd love to be able to
Speaker 2: run a ball in hard turf if I hit it nicely,
Speaker 2: play shot down the right up the green. That would
Speaker 2: just give me so much joy. So you're focusing on
Speaker 2: the bunkers and I you know, and I agree, they're
Speaker 2: a little bit for me. Lake. I just like I'd
Speaker 2: love to see more option around the green.
Speaker 1: I like the idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like the idea of the right fairway to
Speaker 3: what you what you said like that hole would get
Speaker 3: a lot more interesting, I think to me, I would
Speaker 3: looking at the hole, I would just hit driver every time.
Speaker 2: Would you You're a better driver than me. But I just.
Speaker 3: Think I think i'd take the chips around the green,
Speaker 3: knowing like I'm twenty yards around the green.
Speaker 2: You know, quite tight up there, Andy, I think it's
Speaker 2: quite tight on the left as well. Is it's what
Speaker 2: I all see when I look at it. Hit a
Speaker 2: little pole. This is why my mind works with the left.
Speaker 2: But it just you can be again, you can be
Speaker 2: kind of like the third hole after a good drive.
Speaker 2: You can be up against it a little bit. You
Speaker 2: can run the room pretty quickly there.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's the roughest down, but I hit it right
Speaker 3: and thought it was pretty pretty simple to get up
Speaker 3: and yeah, up and down from right.
Speaker 2: I think. I think in the initial period after building,
Speaker 2: I think they did maybe soften the green or something
Speaker 2: like that, but I would have loved it. I never
Speaker 2: played the old hole andy, and I'm always thinking about
Speaker 2: going left after fifteenth is such a nice idea and
Speaker 2: kind of playing across as well, because then you're getting
Speaker 2: a different look and it doesn't bother me if the
Speaker 2: backdrop to that old hole, which is kind of playing
Speaker 2: towards the seventeen t I imagine, isn't so good. And I
Speaker 2: think a simple golf hole is often a good one.
Speaker 2: And mentioned the eighteenth at Saint Andrews, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eighteenth at North Berrick, eighteenth.
Speaker 2: At North Berwick. Yeah, there's so many of them, so
Speaker 2: many of them. But I just yeah.
Speaker 3: The real thing with sixteen and eighteen to me is
Speaker 3: just less is more with them, you.
Speaker 1: Know, like eighteen.
Speaker 3: It feels like there's more bunkers on eighteen than the
Speaker 3: rest of the golf course. I know that's that true,
Speaker 3: but that's the way it feels when you stand on
Speaker 3: that tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always thought that. I always thought that it
Speaker 2: was asking you, in fairness, it's asking you test a
Speaker 2: question of execution, like a straight shot. But then I
Speaker 2: think I wouldn't say I'm a problem with it. But
Speaker 2: I always thought the green was a little skinny for
Speaker 2: someone taking on the second shot, and it's very tight
Speaker 2: down there. There used to be actually out of bounds
Speaker 2: behind the whole, very very tight, and I think Cole
Speaker 2: got rid of that. But it's quite a skinny green.
Speaker 2: I think it's more designed to almost take a third shot.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure what work was done on it,
Speaker 2: but I think it's a really, really kind of high
Speaker 2: risk shot if you're coming in with a three or
Speaker 2: er or two urn or whatever. So I agree with
Speaker 2: you about the bunkering being kind of off, and I
Speaker 2: can't remember if it's quite symmetrical or asymmetrical. I agree
Speaker 2: it's probably over bunkered. But I think as you approach
Speaker 2: the green, I would you know, I would love to
Speaker 2: see something a bit more open and flowing and less skinny,
Speaker 2: is how I describe it.
Speaker 3: And I do, yeah, I do like the green in
Speaker 3: the sense of like the way it kind of runs
Speaker 3: off on each side, like that narrow green. But I
Speaker 3: just it's the bumkers that lead into it, like do
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think that andy up around
Speaker 2: the green. When it falls off again, it kind of
Speaker 2: ball doesn't really go anywhere. It's into quick bowls, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's you have a very steep incline, so you
Speaker 2: probably put her one to seven or not. But I
Speaker 2: would like to see it, obviously in the modern vogue
Speaker 2: of architecture, flowing off a little bit more. And I
Speaker 2: appreciate that probably won't happen around there because of concerns
Speaker 2: for space. It's quite close to a lot of things.
Speaker 2: It's quite close to the clubhouse and whatnot and everything.
Speaker 2: And I suppose the out of bounds was got rid
Speaker 2: of for a reason there and they want to contain things.
Speaker 2: But you know, when I think about Royal County down,
Speaker 2: I think certainly, no matter what you think about sixteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen or eighteen, the sheer glory of the golf course
Speaker 2: is just something that can't be matched anywhere else. Maybe
Speaker 2: Cyper's Point, which I haven't played with, might match for
Speaker 2: natural setting, Point Valley might match it for shot value,
Speaker 2: shot execution perfection. But Pine Valley is not as natural
Speaker 2: as Royal County Down. It sits alone. And you know,
Speaker 2: we haven't even discussed how good those holes and the
Speaker 2: Ansley Course are behind the fourth hole that Martin Lieber wilt,
Speaker 2: those three holes, they're really really good, interesting golf holes.
Speaker 2: And the Ansley Course is a brilliant accompaniment course.
Speaker 1: I think it's the best short course in the world.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I like so many golf courses that
Speaker 2: are top tier in America have two courses, or you know,
Speaker 2: they have one course and brilliant practice facilities. But port
Speaker 2: America has the Yellow nine, County Down has the andlier
Speaker 2: the number two course, and then Port Russia has done
Speaker 2: loose And even if you are at the Valley, and
Speaker 2: then if you play Enniscron on the West coast, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure there's another there's another golf course out onto
Speaker 2: the left of Enniscrown, So you know, that's something we
Speaker 2: do well over here, and that golf course is built.
Speaker 2: I think the Ladies Club, which came into being not
Speaker 2: long after County Down came into being played over that
Speaker 2: and George Coomer dictator again was responsible for that. But
Speaker 2: to have that on your on your as yours your
Speaker 2: second course, and I know a lot of people go
Speaker 2: there don't play it, so they're missing out big time.
Speaker 2: And the same same occurs for Portmerica. I don't think
Speaker 2: we got to play the Yellow nine when you were over.
Speaker 2: But those sorts of things are really special. And you know,
Speaker 2: if places busy, you go out and you have some
Speaker 2: fun with friends, and you know, and when County Down
Speaker 2: is such a hard golf course as well, as we've
Speaker 2: talked about so for so long here and it really
Speaker 2: is so hard that you need that kind of contrast
Speaker 2: at County Down, I think. So that's just that's just
Speaker 2: something else that really keeps it up into the amount
Speaker 2: of rushmore bucket of golf courses from me, Andy, I
Speaker 2: think it's there's so much good there. But I do
Speaker 2: think when I when I the more I think about it,
Speaker 2: the simplicity of the greens and compared to the I
Speaker 2: call it lack of internal intrigue. But that's necessary in
Speaker 2: port in County Down, whereas what cult did it? Port
Speaker 2: Rush with just lovely gentle weaving slopes wouldn't work it
Speaker 2: County Down.
Speaker 1: Really, it'd be too much. It'd be too much.
Speaker 2: I love. I think if I had to pick, I'll
Speaker 2: put you on the spot and minu I'll give you
Speaker 2: two seconds to think about it. But if I did
Speaker 2: think about my top three things about world County Down,
Speaker 2: I'd say the feeling of just hitting your drive on
Speaker 2: the second and coming over or even the eleventh, the
Speaker 2: second or the eleventh and the air just coming back
Speaker 2: into your lungs after you see your ball being okay
Speaker 2: or wherever it is, or figuring out if you blind
Speaker 2: semi blind shot into the second or you're blocked out
Speaker 2: on the right you've pushed it on eleven or whatever.
Speaker 2: I think that's really high up there, and I don't
Speaker 2: think people will probably plump for that, but I do.
Speaker 2: It's just, you know, and this is some from someone
Speaker 2: who doesn't really love blind shots, so that's special, you know.
Speaker 2: I love that. I think the eighth toll, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: is off the charts for me, and I love thinking
Speaker 2: about the sheer simplicity of how cult did thats my
Speaker 2: moving one up and then moving the green up and right,
Speaker 2: and then getting rid of those two rudimentary part of
Speaker 2: threes and giving the world eight and nine, and then well,
Speaker 2: I haven't really thought of the third, but I said
Speaker 2: I'd better come up with three. I love looking back
Speaker 2: up the first toll, turning backwards, something you don't do
Speaker 2: in any of the first hole in the world. I
Speaker 2: don't think you're always looking forward in life, and you're
Speaker 2: always looking forward around the golf, but I love to
Speaker 2: look back on the first to county down.
Speaker 3: Those are your three. I'll try and go with three
Speaker 3: different ones here. I love the approach to the sixth.
Speaker 3: Everybody talks about seven and how demand that is, but like,
Speaker 3: to me, the six is like a terrifying shot. It's
Speaker 3: kind of your first one where you're up and exposed.
Speaker 3: So I think, like the you know, you get used to,
Speaker 3: like you kind of get used to environments on a
Speaker 3: golf course. I find it's always hard hardest the first
Speaker 3: shot in an environment, and that one you're up so
Speaker 3: high and the green. I think it's the smallest green
Speaker 3: on the golf course.
Speaker 2: It's brilliant, I mean, and it.
Speaker 3: Runs off in every direction. It's just an extremely demanding shot.
Speaker 3: That's a brilliant short four.
Speaker 2: It is a brilliant short for just to just interrupt
Speaker 2: you very quickly. I hit it on a playpoint valley,
Speaker 2: hit it into the bunker in the first hit it
Speaker 2: out and had fifty yards into the first toll, and
Speaker 2: I was looking at this pitch and I got this
Speaker 2: green is so skinny and falls off everywhere that if
Speaker 2: I don't hit a really good pitch, I'm screwed. And
Speaker 2: that is exactly the shot you have into the sixth
Speaker 2: of Royal County down as well. You'll hit a five
Speaker 2: r after tea in a wedge and you just gotta
Speaker 2: nail it, and there's so much going on in your head,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's just brilliant.
Speaker 3: And so strong when you're up there. That one, to me,
Speaker 3: I think the ninth t shot. I mean, it's the
Speaker 3: obvious one. It's like one of the most thrilling shots
Speaker 3: in all of golf. You know, you're just it's just
Speaker 3: so beautiful hitting over that. I think, like the thing
Speaker 3: that kind of surprised me about that whole seeing all
Speaker 3: the pictures, Like the stuff that I didn't understand was like,
Speaker 3: how if you push it right you'll get blind by
Speaker 3: that dune, Like and I think that's really cool. And
Speaker 3: just how all the slope, because that green's built into
Speaker 3: the dune, all the slope just pushes it so hard left,
Speaker 3: like being right there and taking that safe line off
Speaker 3: the tee is really it's not a great it's a
Speaker 3: it's a bit of a spot of bother, but then left,
Speaker 3: like you can get yourself in a lot of trouble
Speaker 3: if you get too far left, like certainly, and I
Speaker 3: think three, I think just going down into the valley
Speaker 3: on thirteen, it's just one of the coolest moments in
Speaker 3: the round. It's kind of the end of the really
Speaker 3: epic dune dune escape area and it's just such a
Speaker 3: like it's such a gentle It's not gentle in the
Speaker 3: sense it's this extremely hard hole, but it's just such
Speaker 3: a gentle.
Speaker 1: You're you're you're shielded, you're.
Speaker 3: Kind of unexposed in that that gorse we got it
Speaker 3: in full bloom was just like it's just I'll never
Speaker 3: forget that image in my head of Royal County down
Speaker 3: is that Valley of Gorse and the thirteenth just going
Speaker 3: down in that tunnel.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful down there.
Speaker 2: But you can really see Andy who obviously the members
Speaker 2: when they play their hot on the Wednesday or Saturday,
Speaker 2: and they play so much forceomes because it's so hard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and like Great Britain in Ireland, golf is
Speaker 2: it's a different animal to golf in the States. I
Speaker 2: really think it's an acquired taste. We grew up playing
Speaker 2: it here. We absolutely love it, but I appreciate might
Speaker 2: not be for everyone. But there's you know, score doesn't
Speaker 2: matter too much. We play matches and then, funnily enough,
Speaker 2: all our club championships. I mentioned my Palo won the
Speaker 2: club championship at a Royal county in on a few ago,
Speaker 2: but they actually tendend to be the reverse. We play
Speaker 2: thirty six sols strokes in most club championships and we
Speaker 2: play play all our kind of casual matches, but we
Speaker 2: play these lump championships over thirty six holds off the
Speaker 2: back teas at Portmarnica Role you Down or Port Rush,
Speaker 2: and they're just absolutely brutal. You know, if you hit
Speaker 2: one bad drive you're making an eight or a nin
Speaker 2: er a day. But I do think it's a different sport,
Speaker 2: and I think i'd love to hear when people come
Speaker 2: here and eat all these American visitors and people from
Speaker 2: far away, and I hope they I hope they get it,
Speaker 2: because it's I think it's a different sport almost to
Speaker 2: golf in America, and I think that everyone should. One
Speaker 2: visit is good and two is even better, you know,
Speaker 2: and you really begin to enjoy these things on repeat
Speaker 2: plays so much in places like World County down and
Speaker 2: there's such a different culture of golf up here. They
Speaker 2: you know, they're unchanged in so many ways, and they
Speaker 2: have this magnificent, magnificent course to play over. I really
Speaker 2: just I think that I really hope, first of all,
Speaker 2: that a lot of people will watch this event. I
Speaker 2: hope that the weather is good. Sarren Kelson one with
Speaker 2: two hunderd and twenty fifteen. Yeah, it's And I was
Speaker 2: looking back over some of the scores of the as
Speaker 2: you said about our Irish Amateur golf, So they hosted
Speaker 2: the Irish Amateur Opening. It's twenty seventeen or eighteen back
Speaker 2: to back. Remember I saw Matt Jordan came forth. He's
Speaker 2: obviously become quite a good tour player. You know, good
Speaker 2: players went at these things and come top four or five.
Speaker 2: But the scores are so hard, and that's why we're
Speaker 2: golf over here is molded by that. You know, you
Speaker 2: can chuck away the scorecard sometimes unless you're playing the
Speaker 2: Chub Championship. But it's a treat. It's just a it's
Speaker 2: a different sport and I'm glad you guys enjoyed it
Speaker 2: when you were over here. I know you got pretty
Speaker 2: bad weather at times, but that's the fun of it.
Speaker 3: You know, We've got a great epic day at Road
Speaker 3: County down, you know, did you Okay?
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable morning.
Speaker 3: It got a little gnarly at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: but it was you know, sun was out and it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: It was amazing. So hey, Dara, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 3: How do people find you if they want to talk
Speaker 3: more about Irish golf with you?
Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram, Dara p Gary He so they'll find
Speaker 2: me on that, and then I'm on Twitter, all under
Speaker 2: the same name, and I can be always led upon
Speaker 2: to be just I love it when people want to
Speaker 2: talk about links golf, for anything about the historical nature
Speaker 2: of Artish calf, for GB and I golf, anything to
Speaker 2: do with amateur golf. Really, Andy, that's why I jammed
Speaker 2: you with the crumb cup at the start. You know,
Speaker 2: that's that's my wheel that's my wheelers. I wasn't gonna
Speaker 2: let you out away with that. I know the saw
Speaker 2: Him cup is on, but what a week.
Speaker 3: We have lots of cups, lots of cups up this
Speaker 3: week there.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, yeah, And anyway, look, I'll looking forward to
Speaker 2: reporting back after Saturday. I can't wait to go up
Speaker 2: and hope you get some time with your coffee in
Speaker 2: the morning to watch some golf as well.
Speaker 1: I've got I've got the alarm set.
Speaker 3: It's going to be you know, my wife, by my
Speaker 3: wife is gonna be like, what what the what the
Speaker 3: aff are you doing?
Speaker 1: Why are you agreed?
Speaker 2: Egregiously, earlier I would say that's it is.
Speaker 3: It is all right. Thanks so much, Dara. We'll we'll
Speaker 3: talk soon and hopefully see you soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully see you soon. Thanks Andy, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another edition of the fridayk
Speaker 3: Golf Podcast.
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