Crowds flocked to see Jacklin
Imagine a gallery of 100 to 150 turning up to watch Tony Jacklin and three fellow well known professionals, one of whom was home bred.
Not many would believe that now. Mind you Jacklin was then only 21 - a rising star, on his way to becoming the most successful British professional of his generation, winning the Open at Lytham and Saint Anne’s in 1969 and the US Open at Hazeltine the year after and is credited with being a catalyst in helping transform the Ryder Cup into the multi-billion dollar global attraction it is today.
The Englishman teed up with his fellow countryman Tony Grubb and Irish professionals Hugh Boyle, born in nearby Omeath, and Ernie Jones from Downpatrick in a massive year for sport on these islands with England winning the World Cup in soccer.
However, golf in 1966 was nothing like as popular or as widely played and definitely not as opulent as nowadays. The giant wave of enthusiasm for a return to the fairways with the relaxing of the COVID-19 restrictions was in sharp contrast to a time when the Greenore club was struggling for members and there wasn’t a great level of interest in golf.
In actual fact the reason for the exhibition was to generate interest in the game with a view to attracting members with membership on the wane and to boost income.
Joe Molloy, a diamond jubilee member of the club, with 60 years of membership behind him, attests that was the situation in the Greenore club at the time and the then captain Miles V. McCann came up with the idea of the exhibition.
The Greenore Centenary book published in 1996 on the 100th birthday of the club, told that the quartet ‘appeared for a flat fee of £25 each which was to cover all their travel and accommodation expenses.’
Allowing for the relative value of money between now and then which was prior to decimalisation never mind euros with pounds shillings and pence the currency the sport was a poor relation. Players were not held in anything like the stature of today or treated with any great respect with modest earnings with the European Tour not starting until 1972.
Joe remembers the four professionals were ‘very nice people, very ordinary people.’ Grubb was the one who caught his eye and he ‘couldn’t believe how he didn’t make it (to the top). He was a great striker and at the time was a far better golfer than Jacklin.’
His big day in the paid ranks was two years beforehand in 1964 when he won the Schweppes PGA Close championship. Like two of the other participants, Hugh Boyle and the second Irishman Ernie Jones, he hopefully is playing now on the fairways in Heaven.
He teamed up with Jacklin on the day, with Jones, twice Irish PGA champion and winner of the Kenyan Open in 1971, and former captain of the PGA partnering local man Boyle.
Boyle enjoyed his best days in
the professional ranks in the mid 60s, with 1967 his most memorable year, finishing eight in the Open, won the Irish PGA championship and made the Ryder Cup the same year.
The gallery of what Joe estimated ‘100 to 150, was more or less cheering for Boyle and his partner’ but Jacklin and Grubb prevailed in what Joe described as a ‘kind of light-hearted affair.’
‘At the time it was very exciting to be part of it. It was big at the time for Greenore.’
Jacklin first appeared on the radar of some golf aficionados a year later in 1967 in the days of black and white television when he recorded the first ace shown live on the small screen when playing with Himself Christy O’Connor senior on the way to victory in the Dunlop Masters. He held out his seven iron tee shot on the 16th hole at Royal Saint George’s. Due to the complexities of live broadcasting in those days only the closing holes were shown.
He was the only European winner of the US Open in 84 years until our own Graeme McDowell won in 2010 at Pebble Beach. The Ryder Cup was a cakewalk for the
Americans with the best Britain and Ireland managed was a half during his time as a player, but with European players included and under his captaincy the tide was turned with him persuading Seve Ballesteros to come on board..
Amateur golf reflected the state of the professional game when Joe took up the sport. The playing boom and interest in the game was some way away when he switched his sporting energies over from gaelic football
‘When I arrived in the late 50s membership was very small. You could go down and play any time at all. Nobody was playing golf at all. On a Sunday for a competition if you had 20 to 25 (players) that would be it.’
‘I always enjoyed Greenore. It was home,’ he told. He struck up great friendships, among the closest with Eric Hynes, a player and a man whom he holds in the highest regard. The pair share the honour of filling the role of captain and president of the club at different times, with Eric chosen to hold the honour again of President in Centenary Year.
Now 88 Joe is as keen as ever to get back out playing, with Sunday competition in Greenore a highlight of his week all down the years.
He has witnessed a lot of changes in the six decades he has been attached to the club during which he served on the council. These changes included the way the game is played with the advances in equipment and ball and of the course the ebb and flow in membership. He recalled when the Greenore club wouldn’t have survived only for the benevolence of the local firm of Kearneys of Wilville such was the state of finances.
His conversion to the sport stemmed from playing pitch and putt in the summer on the former pitch and putt course on Sandy Lane in Blackrock. ‘That’s where I started golf. It was a lovely little pitch and putt course.’
Appetite whetted it was a case then why not try the big game. His father was born in Greenore and his cousins the Murphys helped further his interest. He recalled one day being brought out onto the 16th to hit shots. ‘There were five of us and before we left the green we hadn’t a ball between us because the whins were everywhere and the rough so tough.’
The group of five played with ‘the one set of clubs for years,’ Joe related. He and Kevin Lynch paid green fees for a time before they decided to join. ‘My first sub was three guineas ( three pounds and three shillings in old money ) which was a lot considering that I was then on £5 a week. If you had a pound you had a lot of money’ pointed out Joe.
It came then to the agm and the pair were told they must attend.