A LONG WALK AROUND A SMALL ISLANDa diary of a golf marathon around ireland

By Jeffrey A. Johnson

Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey A. Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elec-tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Mighty Press Publishing Inc., 2055 Westwood Drive, Carlsbad, CA 92008.

Designed by Studio 2055Carlsbad, California 92008

ISBN 978-0-615-34968-8

First Mighty Press edition 2010

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Cover Illustration by Jezreel Callejas

In loving memory of the best Mom any golferor non-golfer ever had, Kathryn Johnson.

CONTENTS

Introduction i

The Itinerary ii

Chapter 1 The Company We Kept 5Chapter 2 Toto, This Sure Doesn’t Look Like Kansas Anymore 9Chapter 3 What, No Driving Ranges? 17

Chapter 4 Expectations 28

Chapter 5 Portmarnock 31

Chapter 6 The European Club 38

Chapter 7 The K Club 50

Chapter 8 Portstewart and Royal Portrush 61

Chapter 9 Ballyliffin (New) 71

Chapter 10 Ballyliffin (Old) and Narin/Portnoo 84

Chapter 11 Donegal 91

Chapter 12 County Sligo 99

Chapter 13 Ballybunion (Old and Cashen) 107

Chapter 14 Old Head 119

Chapter 15 Dooks and Tralee 128

Chapter 16 Waterville 138

Chapter 17 Cork Golf Club 147

Chapter 18 Old Head 155

Chapter 19 Heading Home 162

The Other Irish Links 163

Epilogue 180

INTRODUCTION

The golfing trip recounted here happened more than ten years ago, and covers one of my many memorable visits to Ireland or Scotland, trips that included the same group of friends and business associates. At the time, I worked for Eco Soil Systems, as had a couple of my usual golfing companions. This book tells the true story of one such trip that circumnavigated Ireland more than ten years ago. On this particular trip, we played seventeen rounds of golf over two weeks on many of the famous links courses of Ireland. In putting together and organizing these trips, I found most of the information that I could get a hold of on the courses themselves, their history, the towns they were located in and the culture, to be factual but rather dry and uninteresting to read. My hope with this book is that by telling the story, the travelogue will spring to life and become much more readable, interesting and helpful in planning your own golf visit to Ireland. The fact that some of the group members have what I would call some notoriety within the field of golf-course maintenance may make the book more interesting to a few. That most of the players had great senses of humor will hopefully make this a more interesting read for most. I’m sure there are many groups of avid golfers who have played some of the famous links in Ireland who have had similar experiences to what is recounted on the following pages. If you have been to Ireland and have played golf there, perhaps this book will rekindle many of those memories and bring a smile to your face. For those who have never been to Ireland, this book may spur you on to making your own visit to the Emerald Isle, where you can play their famous and not-so-famous links.

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THE ITINERARY

Every year in the mid-1990s I took a trip to Scotland or Ireland with the same group of friends and business associates to play the countries’ famous links courses. As a result we got to know one another on these trips. Sometimes that helped and sometimes it seemed more like a hindrance to the social harmony of the group, when people no longer felt like they had to make a good impression and acted just like they really were. This diary of our trip in September of 1998 reveals some of the perils of such a journey. We proved, once again, that it is difficult to not drive each other crazy when you’re playing golf for two straight weeks with the same group of people. I’ve even had a customer who has gone with me on these trips regularly get so mad over what has transpired that he has pledged to never do business with me again. I’ll get back to that later.

This particular trip was not for the faint of heart or someone who is not a golf nut. We were scheduled to play eighteen rounds of golf over fourteen days by making a counterclockwise tour of the most prominent links courses of Ireland. Obviously, when playing links courses, we stayed and played golf right by the sea. We started out in the Dublin area. After we worked our way first to the North Coast in Northern Ireland, we proceeded along the coastline west, south and finally eastward. The two-week trip concluded in the City of Cork, approximately one hundred and fifty miles to the south of Dublin. When this amount of golf was scheduled over such a short period of time, we didn’t have too many wasted moments.

While we didn’t always get along as well as we could or proba-bly should have, we certainly made each other laugh a lot, especially now that I look back on it. Although the schedule was rigorous, it seemed we always had time for funny business, but that probably has to do with the company we kept, rather than the places we went. But I’ll let the reader be the ultimate judge of that.

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Chapter 1

THE COmpANY WE KEpT

All of the people who went on this trip with me, Bill Hanna, Dr. Joe Vargas and Steve Trotter, are either friends of mine, business associ-ates or both. It will become apparent as you read further just who are friends and who are business associates. Bill and Steve brought their wives and Dr. Joe didn’t because as he explained, “They had to and I didn’t.” I had the best excuse for not bringing a wife; I’m not married, which many people are starting to view suspiciously, as I’m now forty-two years old. When people inquire as to why I’m not married I typically explain to them that I am not a confirmed bachelor and I’m a standard heterosexual male; meaning I don’t like guys in that way. One reason I’m single at this stage is that for the last ten years I’ve rarely been home for more than a week at a time and when I am home I like to play golf. Okay, I obviously also have some other significant issues that I need to deal with, but I’m working on them.

To further introduce myself, as author and trip producer, I am Jeff Johnson. I was one of the founders of a publicly held company in the golf maintenance industry called Eco Soil Systems, Inc. The company distributes traditional and innovative golf maintenance products (fertilizers, pesticides, seed, etc.) and also biotech products that help reduce chemical use on golf courses. I have visited most of the famous golf courses in the world as a result of this business. I’m a four-to-five-handicap golfer, I hit the ball consistently solid and draw, hook or pull everything (as my golfing friends say I can’t even slice a piece of pie). I generally can’t chip or putt very well, and I can get irritated playing with people who can, when I am having a bad day around the greens. Some people like to play golf with me (and some do not) because as Bill Hanna says to me “…you can tell that it really matters to you how you are doing,” although inevitably I’m disappointed ninety percent of the time. I can also get very competi-

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tive with Bill on these trips. Even though he normally beats me four times out of five, on the days he doesn’t I’m normally emotionally higher than a kite and Bill is miserable, which makes it all the more entertaining.

I will take a moment here to introduce the other characters in this quest. Bill Hanna, (forty-seven) a plus two-handicap golfer, is Eco Soil’s largest customer and Bill is responsible for maintaining the golf courses for the Sultan of Brunei’s relatives over in Borneo. The Hanna/Brunei combination was a match made in heaven for a number of years. Before the Asian financial crises struck, no one in Brunei cared or kept track of how much money they were spending on the golf courses, and the condition of the courses was their only concern. Hanna was given a blank check to produce some of the finest turf conditions in the World. Bill has always been a hell of a golfer, a former Texas high school champion at the same time that Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw played. Bill also still has a world-class short game and his putting stroke is very similar to Ben Crenshaw’s—long and silky smooth. Hanna can have a world-class temper at times on the golf course as well, especially when things are not going his way. Bill has spurts where he can play as well as any touring professional. Unfortunately, he can rarely sustain that level of play for more than nine holes at a time. When his game deserts him and he can’t hit the shots he knows he is capable of making, Hanna’s emotions can get the best of him and frustration with a capital ‘F’ can set in. Even though he has never achieved what he is probably capable of in golf, it hasn’t affected Bill’s self image. Hanna not only believes that the earth is the center of the universe but that he in fact may be the center of that universe. He’s told us many times in jest that “I just can’t imagine the world when I’m gone without me in it.” I’ve told Bill that the rest of us can, and the future is bright. While Bill is extremely funny, sarcastic and irreverent, he also has the kind of personality that makes him almost always the center of attention. As one of my friends said after a previous two-week golfing trip to Scotland with Hanna, “That’s a lot of Hanna.”

Dr. Joe Vargas, (fifty-six) is a Professor of Agronomy at Michi-gan State University and probably the preeminent turf grass patholo-

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gist in the world. Joe is one of the world’s most foremost authorities on the diseases that affect turf grasses, and the chemical, biological and cultural practices that are employed to prevent and treat these diseases. He is somewhat of an iconic figure to most golf course superintendants. Joe has been intimately involved in the develop-ment of some of the products that are sold by Eco Soil Systems. Joe is not what one generally thinks of when the word professor comes to mind. Joe is street smart, very funny and easy to be around. He also travels well, which was very important for this trip. Joe has always been adamant that he is reasonably happy when traveling if he just gets to play golf on a semi-regular basis and gets a scotch on a regular basis. Because I felt I could help him on those two counts, our relationship blossomed. Joe and I have traveled around the world together, to Europe, Japan, Korea and South Africa and countless other locales. Joe is a serious Elvis Presley impersonator, and I am probably the only person who has seen him do his Elvis Presley imitation (complete with an Elvis costume) on three differ-ent continents. Joe has about a fifteen handicap, and he hits the ball not long but reasonably straight, putts well at times, and keeps trying to execute the flop shot on links courses instead of just chipping and running the ball.

Steve Trotter, (fifty-two) is Eco Soil’s distributor in Texas. Steve is outwardly much more balanced and mentally healthy in life than the rest of us, but if that’s true, why has he gone on these trips with us every year? I think Steve goes to demonstrate to his wife, Kathy, who usually accompanies us with Bill Hanna’s wife, Molly, how relatively normal he is, compared to the ranting and ravings of the rest of us. Steve has a great swing, but a bad knee prevents him from hitting correctly—and consequently well—any shot that doesn’t involve a full swing. As a result, Steve is more likely to hit a full two-iron closer to the pin than a sixty-yard pitch. Steve tries to not let golf get him down, and generally succeeds, although one time he never said a word for the entire back nine at Royal Dornoch in Scotland and acted clinically depressed. When we inquired after an hour or two what was wrong, Steve told us that he was just very, very sad because his golf game had made him very, very mad. I told him if

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he would swear, throw or break a club, this dangerous inward spiral of multiple emotions would probably not fester and ferment. Steve is famous for saying before the trip that he plans on only golfing five or six times and that he’s going to do other things. Once we get there, Steve has played nearly every time, even the days when we had played thirty-six holes. Steve’s an eighteen-handicap, with a swing of a two, but the short game of a thirty-five.

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