Countdown on to the West
FINAL preparations are well underway ahead of the 2018 West of Ireland Championship which takes place at the County Sligo Golf Club at Rosses Point, the preliminary round of which gets underway on Wednesday week.
One of the most popular amateur tournaments, the marquee event is one of the most popular in the Irish golfing calendar.
Since its inception in August 1923, the competition has been a launch pad for many careers.
Most recently those of Padraig Harrington who took home the crown in 1994, Rory McIlory who became its youngest ever winner at 15 in 2005 before going on to retain his title a year later.
Also Shane Lowry in 2008, who followed up his Sligo sucess one year later by becoming only the third amateur ever to take a European Tour title when he beat Robert Rock at Baltray in County Louth.
This year’s edition of the championship is hotly anticipated given that local talent prevailed last year, when Barry Anderson became the first home-grown player since 1950 to win it.
The competition gets underway on Wednesday week, March 28th when 96 hopefuls will battle it out for just eight qualification places in the main tournament which gets begins on Good Friday, March 28th.
From here, a field of approximately 126 players in total will contest for the 64 spots in the latter stages with the final taking place on Wednesday, April 4th.
Ahead of a hectic few weeks for the green staff and all involved at Rosses Point, County Sligo Golf Club Manager David O’Donovan says the venue is as ready as it will ever be.
Weather conditions haven’t been ideal for the nine strong team of green-keepers who will be working from sun rise past sun set to ensure the best course surface possible.
But David says his team are coping well with the recent cold spell.
“It’s been busy”, he tells the Sligo Champion. “Unfortunately with the recent bad weather, the growth has been slow and the soil temperatures are low.
“We could have done with a few weeks of better weather but look, all you can do is be ready as you can and I think we are. I suppose all that comes with organising a golf tournament in March!”
“We always have the course in top condition as much as we can.
“But I suppose you could say we give it that extra five percent for the week of the tournament. You’d love to give it another six weeks but we’re here now and that’s it. We can’t control the weather.
“We usually get good reports from the players in terms of ground quality after the championship finished up.”
The club hit national media headlines last November in unfortunate circumstances when both the seventh hole and the tee box at the eighth were damaged when someone drove on to the green.
The driver accessed the course courtesy of a public road, and David says this has given cause for concern.
“After the tournament, we’ll look at getting a few extra fences and gates in”, he explains. We have to be conscious that there are right of way issues and we need to respect that. But we’ll also look at installing more security cameras.”
With large crowds expected to attend the six day event, the club are drafting in roughly 60 volunteers to steward the event with around 15 stewards expected to man Wednesday’s final.
There will be ample parking available in and around Rosses Point throughout the week with David expecting an especially large numbers should the final be contested by local talent.
“There’ll be a lot of activity so we’ll have our great volunteers looking after the place. As for the final, it depends on who’s it really. We’ll probably have the guts of one thousand people there on the Wednesday. If you have local lads involved, then you get a lot of interest from around Sligo and the north west. You also have members from their club coming up to see how they do. It’s free in so we would encourage anyone interested to come along.” The village of Rosses Point and its region is set to be the focus of the camera once again next week with the wider hinterland again expected to benefit from the numbers attending.
“You’ll have a lot of players involved and they’ll have partners, wives, families etc, so they have to have somewhere to stay and eat”, David continues.
“All the hotels in the area will be pretty much full, so it’s great for Sligo to have that influx of people arriving in.
“We were on the RTÉ 6.1 news last year and there were shots of the course, the beach and Rosses Point in general.
“Along with the locals, you had a lot of national papers down too.
“The beauty of what Sligo has to offer is there for everyone.”
Looking ahead to the on-course action, David says it’s difficult not to favour the ten players from the Irish senior panel who are signed up to take part. These include defending champion Anderson, Colm Campbell (Warrenpoint), Robin Dawson (Tramore), Alex Gleeson (Castle), Peter O’Keeffe (Douglas), Tiarnán McLarnon (Massereene), Mark Power (Kilkenny), James Sugrue (Mallow), Jonathan Yates (Naas) and Jamie Fletcher (Warrenpoint).
“You’re probably looking at the lads from the elite panel but that’s not to say that someone else won’t win it”, David says. You have the likes of Alex Gleeson, Robin Dawson, Johnathan Yates and of
IT’S GREAT FOR SLIGO HAVING INFLUX OF PEOPLE COMING IN
course our own Barry (Anderson) who will go in as favourites.”
As for the locals, David says that playing on your nearby course is special, it doesn’t necessarily hand a player any upper hand.
Apart from Anderson, the Sligo based players include Sean Flanagan, TJ Ford, Shane Underwood, Mark Morrisey, Ruairi O’Connor, Declan Reidy, Alan Gaynor, David Brady, Cian Feeney, Eoin Gaughan, Thomas Finnegan, Daniel Ford, Paddy Bird, Tom Flanagan and Niall McDermott.
Commenting on the chances of a second home win in as many years, David concludes: “I suppose it’s an advantage to the local lads to be on their own course but that can be a disadvantage too as people will expect the lads from here to be familiar with the course, so it doesn’t always work out that way.”