I’d wanted to be a jockey... but golf came to the fore!
DELGANY GOLFING PRO EAMONN DARCY, WHO HAS PLAYED IN FOUR RYDER CUPS, TELLS THE BRAY PEOPLE ABOUT THE EARLY DAYS OF HIS AMAZING CAREER.
MY AMBITION was to be a jockey. I used to ride horses in the local stables in Delgany owned by a guy called Jimmy McGee – he had the local riding school and kept about 30 horses. I loved them and used to go down there every day. I rode in a couple of point-to-points for a first cousin of Jimmy’s, Mack McGee. At that time I could probably ride eight and a half stone.
Then all of a sudden I sprouted up. I got very big and tall, just too heavy between the ages of 13 and 15.
I had no great formal education. I did primary school in the Glen of the Downs and the Inter Cert in Bray.
I hated school and ended up in Bray Technical College when I was 16 to try to get a career – whatever was going to come out of it. They specialised in metalwork, woodwork, all that kind of stuff
One of the main guys there was Mr O’Riordan. I wasn’t going anywhere at school and wasn’t playing much golf.
My mum (Rita) died when she was quite young – she was only 39. I was one of six children, brought up in the village of Delgany, five boys and a girl.
My dad, Christy, was a good golfer and he played off scratch in the artisans – he was a really good player, a natural player, who played with Harry Bradshaw and guys like that
Harry was one that turned pro and made a career of it but my dad had to look after six kids – he would never go hitting golf balls for practice.
I used to caddy and I guess that’s how I got into it. We would have a caddies’ competition. I used to play with Jimmy Bradshaw’s nephew, Séamus Cleere, who had a set of clubs cut down for him.
I used to use those when we went out and played together – the pair of us with the one bag.
Lots of time I would be on the course and be run off because I had no permission. Jack Mahony – he was jack of all trades, did the locker room and he was caddy master.
He kept little fellas like me in check – he was loved in Delgany because he was a character and there’s a picture of him up in the clubhouse.
I was at a crossroads in my life at 16 years of age – what do I do? Jimmy Bradshaw, Harry’s brother, who was the professional in Delgany, called me in one day and said that Watty Sullivan, the pro at the Grange Golf Club in Dublin, was looking for an assistant.
He said he had told the Grange about me. So I went home and talked to my father. The horses were gone at this stage, so he thought this was a great idea to become a club professional.
So I got the job with Watty as his assistant. I used to go in to Rathfarnham six and a halff days a week on a little Honda 50, which I could ride on a provisional licence.
My duties were club repairs, serving the members and keeping the shop clean – no teaching – all for three pounds a week, whichh wasn’t great when you think about it. Wattyy was getting eight pounds a lesson at that timee for half an hour.
IWAS a terrible golfer at this stage. I played d off 12 handicap, had a very individual swing. Everyone thought I was stone mad – at least they didn’t think I was going to be a golfer. They thought I was going to be a club pro, teaching. At the time I did not think any different.
Then there was a guy who used to run the e Irish Sweepstakes called Captain Spencer Freeman, a very wealthy man, a South African Jew. He started playing with me, five mornings a week, at nine o’clock in the morning.
He was very strict. A few times I come across The Scalp on my little scooter and I hit black ice. I would end up in the ditch, arms bruised. I would get to the club at ten past nine and he would be waiting on the tee. He would say: ‘ Young man, if I say nine o’clock, it’s nine o’clock – my time is money.’
But we hit it off great playing five days a week, 12 holes. He was looking for someone to play with and it happened to be me. I used to get 30 shillings (€1.90) a game, so he more than trebled my wages. He said to me: ‘ You could
hahave a future in this gagame. But you need to play more.’
Play more – that wasn’t going to hahappen at The Grange.
So there was a magazine called ‘GolfG Illustrated’ which came out in ththose days and different jobs would cocome up in it.
I was looking for a job as a playing asassistant. Lo and behold a job came up in Derbyshire – shop duties but plentyl of playing rights – at Erewash VValley.
It was in an area where there was huge steel works and most of theh people who played at this club had jobs at the steel works – it was a working men’s club and not a bad ggolf course.
I went over for an interview in 11969 when I was still a teenager. DavidDavi Parsonage was the pro – a really lovely man – he offered me the job and off I went, first time away from home, only a kid.
They sourced a bed and breakfast for me – a woman called Mrs Harvey. She had two other Irish guys staying with her, miners.
I used to pay £3 a week, get my washing done and my lunch sandwiches and my dinner at night.
I went to Erewash and started playing more, getting a bit better. There was a chipping green adjacent to the shop at the clubhouse. What I used to do was chip all day long and run in whenever someone came to the shop. That’s all I did, chip and putt, chip and putt. I’d say by the time I was 21, there weren’t three better chippers in the world.
Every time I went out to play, I’d chip it into the hole.
I used to play with David Parsonage and he was a much better golfer than I was but my chipping was fantastic.
THEN he said to me that I had a future in the game as a player. I was starting to shoot the odd good score in the sixties.
There was no tour for me to play on at that stage but I came home to play in the Irish assistant professionals event at Malone in Belfast, in conjunction with the Gallagher’s Irish Open.
Tommy Horton from Jersey won the open but I won the Irish assistants title and around 30th in the Gallagher Open, shooting twotw scores in the sixties.
I still didn’t have any money to go and play butb one of the managers at the steel works gave me a job driving a crane, after I was given a crash course.
It was decent money, in the hundreds, and I used to work regular night shifts in the winter from eight in the evening until eight in the morning. Then in the daytime I practised.
That was how I got the money to go and play in tournaments, local events at first.
Then a man with a clothing company, Alan Jepp – he was a left hander – decided with two of his friends who were also left handers to sponsor me. They gave me five grand.
The sponsors gave me a little Mini Clubman estate. I remember playing on the Continent and I used to sleep in it.
This was about 1972 and at that stage you had to tee it up on a Monday on the tour to prequalify at every event unless you had finished in the top ten the previous week or unless you were in the top so-many of the order of merit.
The second year I finished 36th in the order of merit. The highlight was playing with Brian Huggard in Birmingham and he was so encouraging to me.
That was the start of me getting on to the tour. I didn’t have to do that Monday qualifying for too long.
It all came very quick. I was the number one player on the Ryder Cup team in 1975, the top guy on the money list eligible to play in the Ryder Cup.
I was beaten to the top spot in the order of merit by Seve Ballesteros. He and I were the last of the generation of pros who came to golf over the ditch.
David Medcalf writes: Our conversation was coming to an end as Eamonn was set to go out and play a practice round preparing for a seniors tournament in Switzerland.
So there was no time ask about that famous Ryder Cup winning put at Muirfield Village or his views on Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry.
The great man, who remains true to his Wicklow roots headed for the first tee with a promise to resume his reminiscences some other time.