Brian Keogh
When Jonathan Keane slipped into the famous Lahinch blazer after becoming the first local winner of the South of Ireland Championship for 57 years, it was a sign that the wheel had come full circle from his fledgling days learning the game on Lahinch’s famous Castle Course.
By a quirk of fate, the 25-year-old schoolteacher made his first serious golf swings there under the watchful eye of his mentor JD Smyth, whose 1968 South of Ireland victory was unmatched by a local Lahinch member until his thrilling one-up win over Caolan Rafferty in this year’s final.
It was a special day for the club, which was made even more special by the Kilfenora man’s international call-up for Men’s and Women’s Home Internationals at Woodhall Spa, where his Lahinch clubmate Aideen Walsh was also in action.
It was also a triumph for the Castle Course, which was the brainchild of another schoolteacher and Irish international, Austin “Brud” Slattery.
One of the most important figures in the history of Lahinch, ”Brud” won ‘South’ in 1947, beating 11-time champion John Burke in the final, and went on to serve as secretary-manager for 30 years from 1954 to 1984.
He was instrumental in the building of the club’s first modern clubhouse at a time when interest in the game was exploding. While the club will unveil a spectacularly redesigned new clubhouse in time for its hosting of next year’s Walker Cup, work will start shortly afterwards on a significant redesign of the Castle Course, which is situated on “the Corcass”, a special stretch of links land that runs along the banks of the tidal River Inagh to 14th century Dough Castle.
They are lands which were originally leased to the club by Brud’s maternal grandfather, Daniel Thynne, and while they formed part of the original course where golf was first played in Lahinch in 1892, he knew they were key to the club’s future.
The Old Course might be the grand dame, as it billows over the great dunes beside the sea, but the flatter, shorter and less intimidating Castle layout has a special place in the hearts of members looking for a fun game alongside their friends and their children, who are the real kings and queens of the Castle.
Brud knew this as he spent hours each evening poring over maps of the Corcass lands before suddenly declaring to his startled family: “I’ve found another hole.”
He undoubtedly pointed out his ‘discoveries’ to Commander JD Harris, who was appointed by the club to create the new links, leading to the opening of the first nine holes in 1965 and the full 18-hole course a decade later.
The joys of the current Castle Course are many, but with most of its holes running in a north-south direction, golfers who are not ‘au fait’ with the layout and who are unaware of the position of other tees and landing areas can inadvertently cause the occasional kerfuffle to other users of the links.
This ‘flaw’ will become a thing of the past following the appointment of American Keith Rhebb and his Canadian associate Riley Johns from the up-and-coming Rhebb & Johns Golf Design firm for their first European project.
Dr Martin Hawtree, who remains the club’s architect, he has given his blessing to the decision to call in Rhebb & Johns, who cut their teeth alongside the renowned Coore & Crenshaw design team, shaping such modern gems as Barnbougle Lost Farm in Australia, Cabot Cliffs in Canada, Sheep Ranch in Oregon and spectacular Te Arai Links in New Zealand.
The brief from Lahinch’s Castle Course development committee— comprising the club’s current vice-captain John Gleeson, general manager Paddy Keane and greenkeepers Brian McDonagh and Paudie Grealish— was not to make the Castle Course more difficult or a rival to the vaunted Old Course but to create a vastly improved and reimagined version of what it has always been, which is fun place to play game.
It’s also historic golfing ground as nine of the holes on the original Old Course laid out by Old Tom Morris were on the “Castle Course” side of the Liscannor Road. The eagle-eyed can still see remnants of them today and also enjoy the Old Course, which was famously revamped by Dr Alister MacKenzie of Augusta National and Cypress Point fame in 1926 and restored in 2003 by Dr Hawtree.
The current Castle Course offers golfers a par 70 test measuring 5,488 yards from the tips. But the new 5,400-yard par-68 design will be vastly different with holes running to all points of the compass, far better utilising the natural topography and landforms, while also future-proofing against the rising sea levels that threaten links courses worldwide.
The brief was to offer the thinking golfer an even more enjoyable game and use every club in the bag to tack their way around in myriad wind directions, removing the temptation to simply let fly with the driver.
It’s a bespoke design for the true golfing aficionado — not a big championship test but a standalone, must-play test that could become what the Annesley Links is to Royal County Down on terrain that is similar to Royal West Norfolk (Brancaster), Royal Cinque Ports or Royal North Devon, which are also built on similar low-lying terrain.
Working with what nature has provided, the redesign of the Castle Course will be painstakingly carried out and become an even more attractive habitat for the already incredible array of flora and the fauna that makes this corner of west Clare such a special place.
Sunny summer days already bring out as many as a dozen butterfly species, not to mention damselflies and dragonflies and myriad species of snails and slugs that provide rich pickings for the varied seaside and estuary birdlife, not to mention the curious hare, the surreptitious fox and the occasional playful otter.
The course design will allow the time-poor to play myriad small loops of four, six, or nine holes and still make it back as dusk falls and the wildfowl and wading birds go about their business in the fading light.
The natural wetlands that are part of the fabric of the current Castle Course experience will become an integral part of the challenge with meandering burns doubling up as drainage points as well as tactical conundrums.
There will be six new greens, but of the 12 remaining holes, only two (the seventh and 13th) will be played from the same direction as they are now, providing those who know the course with a brand new challenge. It’s a massive change when it comes to the routing, but minimalist when it comes to the actual amount of construction and earth-moving required.
This minimalist approach to golf course design is something Rhebb and Johns learned working alongside Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who are widely regarded as being at the pinnacle of modern golf course architecture.
Rhebb and Johns’ work is already in evidence on Lahinch’s Old Course in the shape of mounding down the left side and the par-four 17th, which channels players away from the road and turned a previously ordinary hole into one of the strongest holes on the course.
The redesign, scheduled for completion by 2029, marks the beginning of a hoped-for long-term partnership with a new generation of golf course architects at a club that enjoys a fortunate position in terms of visitor numbers, with cost not being a primary consideration.
Time, as all clubs would agree, is now a golfer’s most significant expense.
Not only is the Castle Course where Lahinch’s juniors play most of their golf, it’s where many older members or visitors like to play a less strenuous round — an ‘amuse bouche’ to the hearty Old Course — and where those with young families who might not have much spare time, can escape for a hour or two and play away in loops of four, six or nine holes.
The Castle Course proved the ideal place for South of Ireland champion Keane to learn the game from the age of 11.
“Paddy Skerritt, a good friend of our family, got me golf clubs,” Keane told Clare FM the day after his South of Ireland triumph. “He’d come out to the house and we’d be chipping on the lawn. Then I started playing away in Lahinch, where JD Smyth took me under his wing at the Castle Course every Thursday morning. He’d stand there for about an hour or two, watching me hit the ball and giving me tips. That went on for years, and without him, winning the South wouldn’t have been possible.”
Lahinch’s Junior programme has been enhanced considerably in the intervening years under Junior Covenor Kevin Glynn, and Keane’s win will undoubtedly inspire more youngsters to follow in his footsteps.
The aim is to create home-grown winning teams and the club’s well of young talent is very much in evidence the fortnight after the South as they compete in a raft of events from the putting competition, the Lissadell and Klondyke Cups for under 18s and the Valerie Hassett Trophy for Under 12s to the JB Carr Trophy on the Old Course, all followed by a grand prize-giving for the children, their parents and grandparents.
One can only imagine how much pleasure Brud would have taken in Keane’s win, the upsurge in Junior golf, the sight of as many as 60 local schoolchildren enjoying free weekly golf lessons at the club’s state-of-the-art Academy during the winter months.
New holes have been discovered and who knows, perhaps a new Keane, Burke or. Slattery will emerge from the famous “Corcass” lands as the Castle Course serves as a training ground for a new generation and a playground for golf lovers worldwide.
