Not long ago some friends and I went to Ireland to play the remarkable, but often overlooked, golf courses in and around Dublin. We marvelled at the heaving farmland and theatrical par-threes of Druid’s Heath, the subtle, inscrutable greens of Baltray and the wondrous European Club, a 1992 home-made masterpiece by journalist-architect Pat Ruddy that is easily among Ireland’s five best links.
But somewhere along the way we apparently were anaesthetised and flown Guantanamo-style back to suburban Florida, where we endured a thoroughly uninspiring, comically overpriced, Americanised resort course beside some gazillionaire’s green, horsey estate.
They call it — oh, steel my loins — The K Club Palmer Course.
It grieves me to say this on the eve of Ireland’s first Ryder Cup, but, sadly, for the legions who adore true Irish links golf, the finest on the planet, the world will soon discover that this mundane, Arnold Palmer ”brand”, parkland affair is about as Irish as Kentucky Fried Chicken, with half the charm.
The K Club Palmer Course — it opened in 1990 and is the older of two Palmer resort courses that Arnie truthfully approves rather than designs — is a relentlessly average, yet needlessly pretentious, track that offers a flat, tree-lined walk of 7 277 yards from the tips that will never quicken your pulse.
There are some constructed ponds, nice hardwoods, an enormous mansion we’ll get to later and the required artificial fountain those rugged outdoorsmen so love. But because there’s so little natural elevation change and no sweeping vistas, unlike dozens of stunning Irish gems, you’ll understand why the Irish golf cognoscenti don’t even rank the K Club among the country’s best parkland courses, much less among its magisterial links.
Worse yet, the K Club’s majordomo, paper-packaging magnate Mike Smurfit, essentially bought the event as a jewel for his corporate crown, creating a monument to nearly all that is rotten about modern golf. A man infatuated with his aura, Smurfit insists that his staff call him by his honorary ”doctor”, though several privately refer to him as the odiously rich Simpsons character, Mister Burns.
All I can think about are the children in Argentina or Thailand who might be watching the TV coverage and who’ll be asking (through an interpreter), ”Mummy, I thought Ireland was near the sea?” Or, ”Look at how everyone in Ireland drives a Mercedes!”
Talk about a lost opportunity. The Emerald Isle offers incomparable seaside miracles such as Ballybunion, Portmarnock, Waterville, The European Club, Carne, Enniscrone, Lahinch, two dozen more Ballywonders and we’ll throw in Northern Ireland’s consensus world top-10s, Royal Portrush and Royal County Down, just to irritate the Brits. Coming to the munificent K Club instead of one of those jewels is like ordering fish and chips in Rome.
No less than the BBC’s Peter Alliss remarked: ”The greatest course to stage the Ryder Cup for the first time in Ireland would have been Portmarnock, [but] the PGA European Tour have sold it to the highest bidder. And with it their souls.”
The green fee of â,¬350 is perhaps the worst bargain in golf; more than twice what it costs to play St Andrews, Carnoustie or Ballybunion.
In a country whose courses are famous for legendary sand dunes, demonic bunkers, historic quirkiness (Ballybunion’s first tee sports a cemetery) and sight lines that have you looking for church steeples and ancient Celtic ruins, the K Club offers 18 holes of mum’s backyard.
At the Ryder Cup the golf world will be given an Irish impostor, a generic American resort course that values manicured hedges more than captivating golf design. You couldn’t get tour buses to stop were it not surrounded by [reading from K Club gospel] ”a sumptuously restored Georgian estate set in 550 acres of gardens, walks and lush Irish countryside with the famous River Liffey running through the grounds”.
That would be the Straffan House hotel, a five-star mansion featuring the luscious Smurfit Art Collection and glass-encased trophy trout. It’s truly stunning — shame the players can’t tee off from the lobby.
If the event’s biennial owners — this year that’s the PGA European Tour, the British PGA and the national PGAs in continental Europe — thought they could put everyone in a Beijing car park and make more money we’d all be shopping for chopsticks.
Does this mean it’ll be a dull Ryder Cup? Of course not. The drama is all about competition, not ocean views that would make Van Morrison cry for his mama. And we’ll still weep and roar and marvel at how Tiger Woods loses to some guy from East Whimsyshire.
But that doesn’t mean those of us who love Ireland, its genuine people and its glorious links courses have to applaud the money changers as they take over the temple.