My favourite hole:
‘I’VE quite a number of other favourite holes, particularly the par threes, but I’m going to say the 14th.
‘It’s a short par-4, 322 yards, on an elevated tee and as you walk up to the top and look one way you can see the Cooley Mountains, and then if you turn around you can see the River Boyne, Irish Sea, Bellewstown Hill and all the way down to Skerries and Rockabill.
‘The view is magnificent and you’re intrigued by the beauty of it.
‘It’s a driver off the tee usually, depending on the wind which can be quite fierce, especially when it’s coming from the North East, but there’s no bunkers.
‘The average person will hit their drive about 230 or 240 yards and that will put you close to the green, but that doesn’t make the second shot any easlier. It’s a plateau green, with a lot of undulations on it. Protecting the front is a small hill and if you hit it the ball can go left or right or stop stone dead.
‘There’s also quite a large slope to manoeuvre out towards the sea and it takes great judgement to get close. If your second shot goes left
Win a fourball for one of our health heroes
THANKS to the great generosity of County Louth Golf Club, the Drogheda Independent today has a valuable prize to give away in a competition - a fourball at their famous links course in Baltray.
The club would like the prize to go to one of our heroic frontline health workers who lives and/or works in Drogheda/east Meath/mid Louth and we invite readers to nominate someone they think deserves to win a fourball at County Louth Golf Club.
Nominations should be emailed to sport@drogheda-independent.ie, explaining why that person would be a worthy winner of the prize. Please include your own name and contact details. The deadline for entries is next Monday, May 4th, and the editor’s decision is final.
or right you have a very pitch back up.
‘In the last Irish Open [at Baltray, 2009] I was marshalling on that hole and I saw a professional take a nine on it in the final round, Julien Clement from Switzerland - and he didn’t lose a ball. His second shot went left and it took three pitches to get up [on the green] and he
difficult four-putted from there - expensive.
‘We gave up our lockers as members to the pros for the tournament and funnily enough that guy had my locker!
‘We are very fortunate to have 18 magnificent holes and we’re renowned for having the best collection of par-3s - there’s four of them. The pros rate them very highly and the 7th is a very strong favourite of Padraig Harrington who has said often it’s one of the best par-3s on the European Tour.
‘Of course we’re all missing the golf at the moment, and for me as captain it’s a big year and how it’s panned out so far has been a huge disappointment. The East of Ireland and the Irish Ladies championships have gone and we had a British Open qualifier which has been cancelled.
‘When the 2km restriction is lifted maybe we can get back to some form of golf, but competitive matches? I don’t think so.
‘At the moment I play off 13. I was 8 at one time and then I had a major back op about three years ago which set me back a bit, but I’ll be back as they say!’