By Brian Keogh
Eamonn Darcy’s remarkable golfing journey continues to inspire, with the Irish legend recently making headlines for his generous donation of a piece of sporting history.
The putter he used to secure Europe’s historic 1987 Ryder Cup victory has found a permanent home at Delany Golf Club, where Darcy is an Honorary Life Member.
After all, he grew up next to the course.
That 1987 Ryder Cup at Muirfield Village marked a watershed moment for European golf.
Darcy’s victory over Ben Crenshaw in his singles match, where he holed a six-foot putt on the final green, secured a decisive point that helped Europe defeat the Americans on home soil for the first time.
It was his fourth Ryder Cup appearance, and the moment cemented his place in Irish golfing folklore.
The pressure of that putt was immense, but as Darcy recalled at last year’s Irish Golf Writers’ Awards at the Anantara The Marker Dublin, where he was presented with the Distinguished Services to Golf Award:
“You can’t [think about the pressure].
“If you go out in the Ryder Cup, and it’s an important putt, and you start thinking about what happens if I miss this, you have no hope of holing it.
“So it’s called concentration, your own little bubble.”
His only thought was simple: “Don’t hit this thing too hard, because that was quite fast.”
Darcy’s path to becoming one of Ireland’s most distinguished golfers was far from conventional. Turning professional in 1968, he would go on to win 16 times around the world. But the journey began in unusual circumstances when he was forced to give up his dream of becoming a jockey.
“I got too big, so I had to stop riding horses,” he recalled. “So my jockey dreams went out the window.”
What followed was a career spanning over 600 European Tour events and 800 tournaments overall.
He demonstrated remarkable self-belief from the start:
“When I won my first tournament, I actually knew. I had seen myself winning that tournament. Now they call it a different thing, you know, the psychiatrist thing. But I had my own way of doing it.”
Darcy’s achievements extend far beyond his Ryder Cup heroics.
In 1988, alongside Des Smyth and Ronan Rafferty, he formed part of the Irish team that won the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews, defeating Canada, the USA, England, and Australia en route to victory.
It’s a triumph that Darcy remembers fondly.
“That was a fantastic week,” he recalled, adding with characteristic wit about managing the team dynamic: “The problem we had that week was to try and get Ronan on our side, you know, because Ronan liked to do his own thing.”
Darcy ended his professional career in style at the 2018 Costa Blanca Masters at age 66, carding an impressive 67 in his final round.
It was a poetic ending at a tournament where his great friend Des Smyth was present.
“Des said to me on the Saturday night, ‘Go shoot the lights out,’ and as it happened, it was my best round for the week,” Darcy recalled.
Seve Ballesteros, one of golf’s all-time greats, was a huge admirer of Darcy’s short game and his unconventional “figure of eight” pitching motion.
Now 74, Eamonn Darcy’s legacy continues through the memories of his historic putt, his pioneering techniques, and the clubs that now tell his story for generations to come.
