All set to tee off again: Courses ready for Irish re-Open
Superintendent at Howth Golf Club Ger Morgan works on the 11th green during the early hours of the morning as the course, and hundreds across the country, prepares to re-open next Monday
MEMBERS of North West Golf Club in Lisfannon in Donegal know all about keeping it on the straight and narrow.
For the first five holes on the course, you’ve Lough Swilly on one side of the fairway and a main road on the other.
Those little white posts that mean ‘out of bounds’ just fill your eyes on every shot.
But now, like every golf club in the country, they have to keep it on the straight and narrow in a different way.
Golf clubs in the Republic of Ireland open for play next Monday, but only to members, and only to members who live within 5km of the course.
And North West, like so many other golf clubs outside the cities, don’t have many members who qualify.
“Thank God, we do have a goodly number from Buncrana, who could make it to the course,” says the current club captain Paul O’Hea.
“But I suspect 75 per cent of our members won’t be able to access the club (during phase one of the easing of restrictions). Many of them live in Derry and even further afield in Northern Ireland, places like Limavady.
“We’re asking people just to respect the law of the land and not travel until the distance limit is relaxed further.”
Police
Golf clubs can’t be expected to police the new arrangements. It would be like asking someone did they break the speed limits on the way to the golf club.
It’s up to members to do the right thing themselves.
Anyway, North West have enough to be thinking of, as they face an ongoing battle with coastal erosion.
“The repeated storms of January and February this year battered our course and just did more damage,” says O’Hea.
“I’m 65 now and when I played here as a boy with my dad in the 1970s, all you could see was beach. Now there are dunes everywhere, dunes that have grown up out of land cleaved off from our course.
“I remember one year, after a storm, that our third green looked as though someone had taken a knife to it.
“There was just half of it in place. The other half was sitting out on the beach!”
Like so many other coastal golf courses, the battle with the elements is ongoing.
But for now a small battle has been won against Covid-19 and play can resume next Monday, socially distanced of course, for those who live close to their club.