Muskerry’s rich legacy
From MacKenzie to Bruen - Muskerry’s rich legacy lives on, writes
MUNSTER is blessed with dozens of beautiful golf courses from the links splendour of Ballybunion and Lahinch and the clifftop beauty of the Old Head of Kinsale to the parkland delights of Cork and many more
Muskerry Golf Club also deserves special mention. But it’s not just the golf course, which was redesigned by Dr. Alister MacKenzie in 1924 (nine years before he created Augusta National), that makes it so special but the club’s remarkable competitive spirit.
Many will know that it was Muskerry, not Cork, that gave the great Jimmy Bruen his first handicap, and like Galway Golf Club, the club has also claimed all the great men’s team titles in Irish men’s golf, winning the Irish Senior Cup (1946, 1947, 1953), the Barton Shield (1953, 2014), the Irish Junior Cup (1954, 1962, 2007), the Jimmy Bruen Shield (2007) and the Pierce Purcell Shield (1971, 1978).
“All we need now is the new All Ireland Fourball,” says General Manager Hugo Gallagher. “That’s the great thing about Muskerry, it’s very competitive for a small club.
“We don’t always have a huge number of green fees here, although they are very welcome. But because we run so many competitions we are always very busy. It’s a golfer’s golf club.”
While the country’s top amateurs battled it out for the West of Ireland title at Rosses Point over Easter, a field of 64 teed it up at Muskerry for the annual Ford Junior Scratch Cup, which is regarded as one of the most prestigious in the country.
It’s not for the faint-hearted mind. The winner must play six rounds which made Liam Harte’s second victory in the event, courtesy of a one-up win over East Cork’s Kieran O’Brien, a truly special achievement.
Muskerry is no stranger to great feats and after 111 years of golf, more are sure to follow.
After consultation with the Sports Turf Research Institute of Ireland, the club has now installed a new irrigation system that will give its 720-strong membership an even better playing experience.
Like most clubs, Muskerry faces a major challenge in attracting new members but there is a growing junior section, which gives new club professional Fred Twomey lots to do following the retirement this week of long-serving professional Martin Lehane.
The club’s Bruen Memorial has been one of the club’s most popular events since it was inaugurated in 1986 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bruen’s British Boys victory at Royal Birkdale.
His widow Nell presented the club with the trophy – JJ O’Grady’s Captain’s Prize of 1944 – which he won off a plus five handicap, returning scores of 35 and 36 points for a one-point win.
That British Boys win marked the arrival on the world stage of a player who would be hailed by some of the game’s top professionals as the greatest player in the world.
His story began in 1935 when Muskerry gave him his first handicap – six. But just 12 months later the then 15-year old became the first Irish player to win the British Boys Championship following a sensational 11 and 9 victory in the 36-hole final at Royal Birkdale. His fame would only grow and with it, so did Muskerry’s.
He went on to beat John Burke to become the young Irish Close champion at Ballybunion in 1937 before retaining the title the following year at Castle, beating another Corkman, Redmond Simcox, in the final.
As the journalist Tim O’Brien – a long time member of the club – noted in Muskerry’s excellent history, Bruen truly made his mark in the 1938 Walker Cup, when he helped Britain and Ireland beat the Americans for the first time.
He’d secured his place with a remarkable performance in the trials at St Andrews, which included a 68 that equalled Bobby Jones’ 1927 course record.
In 1939, he led the qualifiers in The Open at St Andrews. But the outbreak of World War II interrupted his career and while he won the 1946 British Amateur Championship and played again in the Walker Cup in 1949 and 1951 as a representative of Cork Golf Club, he never forgot his Muskerry roots.
“Had it not been for Muskerry, I doubt that I would be here tonight,” he said in the wake of his Amateur Championship victory. “It was the club that first gave me a handicap.”
He later proposed a toast to the members of the Muskerry team that had won the Irish Senior Cup for the first time a few weeks earlier and while he passed away shortly before his 52nd birthday in 1972, his old club has gone from strength to strength.
His legacy is as great as that of MacKenzie, who came to Cork in August 1924 to present plans for the extension of the course from nine to 18 holes.
As the club recorded in a booklet in 1930: “Dr MacKenzie’s services were sought and secured for the Brian Keogh first time in Southern Ireland and strikingly well has he performed his work for Muskerry’s 18 holes form a bold and beautiful course capable of absorbing the interest and attention of any player whatever his handicap may be.
“The Doctor, after a march over the then gorse ground, returned to the Pavilion and, whilst awaiting lunch, sat apart with paper and pencil. In that short interval he ‘roughed out’ eleven new holes and astonished the members present by placing before them his still crude but perfect design.”
The club would go on to produce a string of outstanding players, including Mick Power, who won the Irish Close in 1951 as well as the East in 1951 and the South in 1950 and 1952.
Add to that the likes of international Larry McCarthy, the great Billy O’Sullivan and Asian Tour player and former Irish Close runner-up Niall Turner and it’s clear that MacKenzie’s “crude but perfect” design worked out very nicely indeed.