MIDLANDS MARVEL
Tullamore looks to a bright future with a wide-ranging course improvement plans put before the members, writes Brian Keogh
WHAT IS a golf club’s greatest asset? The plush clubhouse? That expensive machinery shed with all the mod cons? The indispensable secretary-manager?
The answer, according to a comprehensive Golf Course Improvement Plan recently presented to the members of lovely Tullamore Golf Club in the heart of the midlands, is the golf course itself.
“The golf course is the only asset of the golf club,” said course architect Ken Kearney in the 93-page document that explains in great detail what can be done to turn a great course like Tullamore into one of the best parkland tests in the countr y.
“A clubhouse is dependent on the success of the golf course and cannot be considered the main asset. Today’s golf course has been nurtured along by staff, members and committees. Their work is recognised but the challenge is to hand the club and the course over to the next generation in a better place then we inherited it.”
It’s been 20 years since Patrick Merrigan upgraded half a dozen greens at Tullamore and gently re-routed a course that bears the hallmark of the great James Braid.
“There is no doubt that once remodelled the golf course would be a suitable venue for international amateur golf tournaments and if the desire was there, I believe that you could host a European Amateur Team Championship or a Walker Cup,” Kearney told the members.
By all accounts, the information meeting was a great success, and even though the final figure at the bottom of the report adds up to an eye-watering €733,500, the scale of the changes proposed and the project’s vision is mighty impressive.
Not only does it recommend replacing the remaining clay-based greens with modern, sand-based putting surfaces, the rebuilding of bunkers and tees and a dramatic improvement to mowing lines, there’s also scope for a gentle re-routing of the course to make it a better-balanced test.
The back nine from the medal tees measures 3,285 yards compared to 2,963 yards for the front, and that imbalance is mainly down to Tullamore’s terrific, if daunting, six-hole finishing stretch.
While the average length of the first 12 holes is 321 yards, the final six average a whopping 399 yards.
It’s a great course for low handicappers looking to test themselves, but the average member might get more enjoyment from a more balanced routing and Kearney recommends exploring a new routing.
The plan proposes creating a par-four and a par-three on the land currently occupied by the 542-yard 15th and the elimination of the par-three second, which can disrupt traf fic f low on busy days.
With the addition of a new, par-three 15th, the course would present a 3- 4-3- 4 finish, greatly improving the rhy thm of the round and extending the par from 70 to 71 for men and 73 for ladies.
It’s all designed to make a truly great Irish parkland course even better and Ray Spain, chairman of the Strategic Course subcommittee, reported genuine enthusiasm for the proposals at a recent information meeting.
“It was met with great positiv ity,” Mr Spain revealed. “There wasn’t one negative comment, and while we haven’t bought into ever y thing, there is certainly a will to replace the remaining soil-based greens with sand-based greens.
“That said, members asked how we are going to finance this. But we are fortunate in Tullamore that membership — it ’s just under 1,000 right now — has held steady for the last few years and that has given us a feeling of confidence about doing something.”
The club’s AGM takes place on December 4 and the club is preparing to propose carr ying out the first phase of the plan over two years, with €70,000 to be spent on bunkers and tees in the first year and the same again the following year when the first new greens would be built.
Whatever the future holds, the course will improve, and with club professional Bernard Quigley doing sterling work to bring more women and juniors into the fold, a new wave of talent is sure to emerge.
Former East and South of Ireland champion Stuart Grehan, now a professional, is the most highprofile player to emerge in recent years, following in the footsteps of former international Sean Flanagan, who was made an honorary member this year.
The club, established in 1896, was affiliated to the GUI in 1899 and after a few false star ts, finally settled in its current location among the majestic oak and beech trees at Brookfield in 1926.
Lionel Hewson laid out the original course before five-time Open champion Braid came in 1938 and recommended changes, most of which are still in play today, with the magnificent finishing hole his ‘pièce de résistance’.
The club went on to produce some fine golfing talent including
Catherine (Kitty) Smye, who won the British Open Amateur Championship as Kitty MacCann in 1951 and the Irish Ladies Close Championship in 1949 and 1961.
Many more great players followed, including Eric O’Brien, who was capped for Ireland in 1963 having only lost to J.B. Carr on the 35th hole in that year’s Irish Close final in Killarney.
Denis White, Paul Burke, Bryan
P. Malone and Tony Tynan are also synonymous with the club, as is the aforementioned Flanagan, who was on the Irish Youths team that won the European Amateur Championship in Oslo in 1977.
Many more are sure to follow but even the lesser mortals cannot help but fall under the spell of those verdant fair ways, lined with magnificent mature trees in the heart of the midlands.