5: Hang Loose in Ireland
1991 Great Golf with Casey at Ballybunion Course
July 30-Aug. 11, 1991
Updated July 7, 2009
By LEWIS NOLAN
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Saturday, Aug. 3, 1991 – Visit to Ballybunion Golf Course,
Killarney, Ireland (Casey’s account)
Today my dad and I played 18 holes at the
New Golf Course at Ballybunion. I carried my own bag, while my father got a caddy.
The caddy, Fergol Buckley, was 14 years old. (At the
time, Casey was age 14 and his father, Lewis “Buzz” Nolan was 53.)
Off the No. One tee, we both had good drives and landed in the middle
of the tight fairway, right at the turn for the right dogleg. The first few
holes were beautiful as they were next to the Atlantic Ocean. I managed to get
one par, on a Par Three hole, on the front nine. I shot a 48 while my father
shot a 51. On the back nine, I was six over par after three holes, while my
father was even. In the end I shot a very honest 97; my father shot a 94.
In match play I won six and five. I
managed to lose three balls in the rough and one ball out-of-bounds. I found
out how rough the rough was on the first hole. My second shot was only a few
yards wide of the fairway, but I couldn’t find it. My father managed to hook a
ball to the left of the fairway, over the rough and well onto the beach.
Even though it misted and rained off and
on all day, this has been the best day. Carrying my bag up and over many dunes
was difficult, but I think I could get used to it if I played here more often.
I hope my score will be at least 10 strokes lower at Killarney on Wednesday.
Monday, Aug. 5, 1991 (Buzz’ account)
After a fitful night of sleep and thinking
about the Nolans who never left Ireland and what I
might do to get a line on them, we arose early as planned. Betty cooked a
“proper” Irish breakfast of Irish bacon, scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast with
real butter and orange juice from France. After having some fun taking pictures
of our “grass-cutters,” sheep which had gotten through the fence to munch on
the grass just outside our door, we left at 9 a.m. for Ballybunion. We
encountered very little traffic due to today being a bank holiday.
We drove through Tralee and Listowel, reaching Ballybunion about 10:30 a.m., where we
dropped Betty off in the central village while Casey and I played golf. It cost
40 pounds (or roughly $60), plus 10 pounds for a young caddy, named Fergol, who told us he was the youngest of 10 boys and 3
girls in his family. He studies German, French, Irish and English, along with
math and other subjects.
I shot fairly good, making a 94 with only
three “Mulligans,” with each Mulligan (or second
chance shot) scored as a one-stroke penalty. The course we were assigned was
the “new” course, due to a local tournament being played on the famous “old
course.” It lived up to its billing as being as being the tougher of the new
courses. But it was spectacular. Hole after hole played alongside the ocean,
unlike the U.S. courses I’ve played where you usually get only a turning or two
near the shoreline. The U.S. designers must be under the gun to get the most
they can out of the very limited ocean frontage. The Irish designers don’t have
that handicap.
At Ballybunion, the real
beach is a hazard on many holes. Some of the rough-covered dunes are 25-to-75
feet high. A caddy is essential for a first-time player, not only to point out
the way to the green but also to lead the way through the dunes from the green
to the next tee. The greens are quite small, not much bigger than the winter
greens at the municipal course at Overton Park in Memphis which caters to
youngsters. I was fortunate and shot some uncommonly lucky approach shots, with
my ball careening off the rough-covered dunes surrounding most greens, to land
on the green or just off. There were three terrible exceptions to that general
greens outcome when I topped my tee shots. But overall, my drives had excellent
distance for me and reasonable accuracy, an appreciated but usually rare result
when I play a new course.
All in all, it was a great
day on the links with Casey, who also played well. Unlike me, he took no Mulligans. We joined up with Betty at the end of the round
and had lunch in the clubhouse. My salmon sandwich might have been caught by
the village fishermen, who go out in pairs of small rowing boats called Curraghs (in the old days made of tanned hides stretched
tight over a hand-made frame of wooden poles). On a good day, our young caddy
told us, these boats may catch 40 salmon, worth perhaps 10-to-15 pounds each.
(An Irish pound is worth about $1.50 at current exchange rates, a bit less than
the trade for a British Pound.)
Driving back to Killarney,
we passed a roadside market for a “famine cemetery,” a memorial to some of the
hundreds of thousands of Irishmen, Irishwomen and Irish children who were
starved to death by the heartless policies of the English in the 1840s and
1850s. What a horrible period in the history of man – fully comparable in my
mind to the awful Holocaust inflicted on the Jews by the Nazis during World War
II. The big difference is that the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the Germans,
lost, while the perpetrators of the famine, the English, won their war against
a people their citizens viewed as less desirable. The ensuring history is
always written by the winners.
The English propagandists
have successfully kept public understanding of the English government’s role in
creating and maintaining the famine to a minimum over the generations. The
British PR machine rolls on without much challenge today and “The Troubles” in
Northern Ireland are reported in the press from the English point of view.
(Years later, sitting British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to reverse the
non-culpability veneer of his country and freely admitted to an American
audience its horrendous mistakes and apologized.) Back in the early 1970s, a
New York Times bureau reporter admitted to his worldwide audience that he had
been hoodwinked for years.
The scar tissue I
encountered among the Irish over the centuries-old conflict between their
country and England is thick beyond belief and I fear repair. I am convinced
there can never be a complete healing. The Irish with an eye on history truly
and utterly despise the English and the same goes on the reverse; I’m afraid it
will ever be thus.
As James Callahan, a former
British Prime Minister in the 1970s, once told journalist me before he spoke to
a club I belong to in Memphis, “there is no way to deal with people who
remember something that happened 200 or 1200 years ago.” I fear that one day
there may well be a terrible reckoning of old scores and the current, ugly
incidents by the IRA may just be a two-bit precursor. The Irish, I’ve learned,
are a brave and unforgiving people who’ve had their manhood all but snuffed out
by the English until fairly recently.
There is clearly something
afoot in Ireland as seen by the Irish rededication to separatism – witness
Irish language schools, many roadsides are in Gaelic Irish language and the
main ones are in both English and Irish. Across the country, I’ve seen what
appears to be a rekindling of interest in traditional Irish names being given
Irish children.
The all-Irish hurling
championships have dominated television the last few days. Hurling is a
competition that combines football, soccer, hockey and baseball into a
semi-organized riot, with sticks and goalposts. Casey and I have been enjoying
it on TV very much and have been impressed by the absolute fearlessness
displayed by the players in the face of bruising blocks, punches and swinging
sticks. Casey quipped that the best players must have flunked the rigorous college
entrance exams.
I think I could get
involved as a hurling fan. The game is fast-moving, exciting, high-scoring, raw and rough – a real test of skill, physical power and
courage.
There was a bit of mist and
30 minutes or so of light rain today. But it was a very good day, nonetheless.
Sunday, Aug. 4, 1991, Betty’s account:
Most of the day was spent
driving around the beautiful lakes within the northern segment of the Ring of
Kerry and there was an abundance of magnificent views. Many people were
bicycling or walking sections of roadway and paths in and around the lakes or
in the Killarney National Park. Pony carts were also transporting tourists
around the sights at Muckross.
The town of Killarney was
very congested due to the bank holiday weekend. Many tourists seemed to be
German and French. There were also a few English and, of course, people from
other parts of Ireland spending the weekend in this scenic area. There seemed
to be very few Americans.
During our drive, we saw
many horned sheep grazing alongside the road and they seemed to be quite
unconcerned by the passing cars and people. One could almost reach out a car
window and touch the sheep since they were so close. The roads here are so
narrow that they have little if any shoulders.
We also made a trip into
town to do some shopping at Clifford’s Food Store, where the proprietor had
been most friendly and helpful in giving us directions the other day to the
golf course and in giving us his personal recommendations of the best sights to
see.
When we returned to town
later to find Dingle’s Restaurant for dinner, which had been suggested by the
owner of Lakeland Cottages, the traffic was awful. We finally found the
restaurant, and as advertised, dinner was very good. The owners had placed
bunches of miniature roses on the tables. On the mantle and shelves were
bouquets of large, beautiful, pink roses, sweet peas and a variety of flowers
and greenery.
The flowers in Ireland are
very beautiful, especially the roses. The cool, damp weather is probably one of
the main reasons the roses and various flowers do so well, plus the
availability of rich manure from all the sheep, cows and ponies.
The remainder of the day
was spent doing laundry in a pay facility at Killarney’s Lakeland Cottages –
not very pleasant, but necessary. A token costing 2.5 Irish Pounds had to be
purchased for each load of clothes and fed into a programmed, German (Miele) machine. The capacity was very small, so I had to do
two loads. The dryer was American-made. It was a large Speed Queen and took 50
pence for each short cycle. If one has ever been in a coin-operated laundry
(where Betty spent much time early in her marriage to Buzz, when he was in the
U.S. Marine Corps at Quantico, VA), they know what a time-consuming process it
can be to wash and dry family clothes. It is obvious here that the owners of the
machines want to make as much money as possible. And they do.
Buzz and Casey had already
bathed and gone to bed. They had fallen asleep by the time I finished trekking
back and forth from our tiny cottage to the laundry area in the rain and mist
to attend to our clothes. I finally gave up on the laborious process about 11
p.m., deciding to spread out the remaining damp clothes in our cottage living
room, near the pathetic, little peat fire Buzz had built earlier. After taking
a hot bath, I fell into bed about 11:30 p.m.
Monday, Aug. 5, 1991 – Betty’s account:
I got up at 7:30 a.m. so I
could dress while Buzz and Casey still slept. I made breakfast and afterwards
washed dishes, with Casey drying. We left for Ballybunion about 9 a.m. There
was very little traffic even though it was a holiday. It seems that most Irish
like to stay up late and don’t get going very early in the mornings unless they
are farmers. We did meet several farmers pulling their milk tanks with
tractors. It’s quite common to meet a slow-moving tractor pulling a hay wagon
on the road or just going to and fro. The tractors carry license plates.
We arrived at Ballybunion
ahead of schedule, got directions to the golf course and checked on tee times
for Buzz and Casey. They took me into the village of Ballybunion and drove back
to the clubhouse.
Ballybunion has nothing to
brag about except its golf course (it is listed as one of the top 100 in the
world by some golf magazines). There is a beach – actually two beaches, one
section for men and one for women, the ruins of a castle and a park. One
interesting thing I saw were the hot seaweed baths that claim to be
therapeutic. These were on the Men’s Beach at Ballybunion. I talked briefly
with a man at Daly’s Hot Seaweed Baths, who told me the baths were seasonal –
May-October – and were good for health because of the iodine from seaweed and
seawater. However, I don’t think I would be too fond of all that seaweed over
me in a hot soak!
There wasn’t much of
interest in the town except for a few shops, bakery, hotels, arcades, betting
office and a golf antique store, where I purchased some small, claddagh earrings and a silver, claddagh
pinky ring. Nonetheless, the town was crowded with young tourists and locals
since it was a holiday weekend. The lady at the golf antique store referred
them as the “factory crowd in for a good time.”
After shopping, I walked
back to the Ballybunion Golf Clubhouse, about one mile from the village. I
chatted with a young boy walking his dog, a sort of collie. I walked by the
village football (soccer) field and helped out an Irishman who had hit his golf
ball across the road from the course and over a fence. I stopped to look around
a very old cemetery on the edge of the golf course, but didn’t find the any
Nolan names among the faded tombstones. I had a sandwich and tea at the elegant
clubhouse and then sat outside to read and look at the ocean while Buzz and
Casey finished their round of golf. It was a fair day – not real exciting, but
scenic.
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