Pitchmarks #78 - Dollymount
Royal Dublin Golf Club
“A hundred and forty years of history, and people condense it down to ‘himself’ and a few Irish Opens”, mutters Shane, as we start our journey through the Royal Dublin clubhouse towards some caffeine, and a perch looking out on the links and a packed range. And so I have to check myself, for the last Irish Opens were in the mid-eighties, just about the time when my interest in golf began.
In those years, the pedigree of players who turned up to compete was truly world-class - Seve prevailed in ‘83 and again two years later, the ‘85 win seeing the swashbuckling Open Champion beat the new “Master” Bernhard Langer in a play-off, thereby denying the German a successful defence in this event. Europe was starting to collect major championships in this phase, with Sandy Lyle’s Open to come that summer, from where Faldo and Woosnam and Olazabal kicked on.
But 1985 was also a pivotal moment in the Ryder Cup, and the international presence in those Irish Opens was strong. Curtis Strange, Ray Floyd and Lee Trevino also featured, alongside other multiple major champions such as Greg Norman, though his duck was still unbroken at that stage. In the days leading up to the event, forty-five year old Trevino and Royal Dublin’s professional Christy O’ Connor Snr (“himself”), who was in his seventh decade, played an exhibition match against Seve and Langer, and snuck home by a shot.
But then I spot a Fred Smyth cavity back iron in a cabinet, stamped with “Christy O’Connor”, and feel myself being dragged down this other common rabbit-hole, for one of the first clubs I ever had was such a weapon - a long lost nine iron - which I loved so very much. Christy joined Royal Dublin as Professional in 1959, and his association with the Club went right up until his death at the ripe old age of 91, in 2016. He played in ten consecutive Ryder Cups for GB&I, finished in the top ten of the Open on ten different occasions, and in 2009 was elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame, and the only thing that is surprising upon receipt of this last fact is that it took so very long to elect him a “Hall of Famer”.
But Shane was right, of course. You don’t build a club at the very beginning of Irish golf in a city like Dublin, move twice, host a large number of national and international events and remain relevant without there being more to the story, and over the course of the next few hours I get a snippet of that rich tapestry - enough to make me desperate to return. Time is scarce, so I understand why human nature tends to chop things into a manageable size. But peel away the layers and sometimes there is more gold waiting underneath.
On the tee we find our opposition for the morning. Niall holds some very low handicap, and without a single practice swing or warm-up hits a driver fifty yards beyond the scope of my eyesight, splitting the fairway in the process. His partner, Everett, arrives with a few seconds spare, plucks a driver from the rental set, and without bothering to remove a cigarette from his mouth, hits his drive up into orbit. Shane and I glance at each other, for it would seem we have our work cut out…
Straight away, Dollymount - as I have been instructed to call this place by a mutual friend of Shane and I - is attractive. This lower half of the peninsula on which we tread, the North Bull Island Nature Reserve, is low-lying linksland, with small dunes like creases across the course. From the very start, it is clear that the greens will be an integral part of the challenge - vast, contoured carpets that sit beautifully in the gentle curves of the land.
Protecting many of these are some beautiful and terrifying bunkers, and the firm Clayton, DeVries and Pont have created a unique style with this renovation work. A reduction in the number is combined with some brilliant positioning, and the flashed white sand is in marked contrast to the often veiled, revetted pot bunkers that we are used to by the seaside. But here, they not only work but are consistent with historic imagery of Dollymount during the war, and though I go in a dozen more of them than I - or my partner Shane - would like, I love them.
But I love even more the spaces that have been created by removing redundant traps. Miss a green by a few feet, and the chances are you will watch your ball scurry off into some immaculate but devilish swale, from where no end of dangerous escape options can be found. Decision fatigue could be fatal on such fine turf. But I can barely pitch, so it is often the Texas Wedge I draw, somehow staying in the hole with enormous, cowardly recovery putts like Trevino to Niall’s Tony Jacklin.
Shane is driving as well as he always does, flushing it down the middle as if my partner is, in fact, “Himself”, but Everett seems more John Daly in his effortless, flamboyant style. He hits it miles, then punches the most glorious irons from Dollymount’s pristine fairways, and with the short stick looks likely to hole everything, and mostly does. It’s a delight to watch, and without the many shots that we’ve negotiated in desperation, Shane and I would not have made it far beyond the turn.
There is a lovely flow to the course, and it is a delight to watch Shane and Niall plot their way round, for in places it is clear that the obvious line holds danger. They know where to miss, but play well enough to barely do so, though I lose a little rhythm in the back nine, and suddenly feel lost over my irons shot. Perhaps this is a sub-conscious way of learning more about the course, but it leaves Shane exposed, and I am grateful for the ridiculous iron shot he hits to a couple of feet on the seventeenth. Everett escapes from one of Dollymount’s treacherous swales with a pitch that I couldn’t imagine playing under hypnosis, and then holes the putt, leaving Shane with a tiddler in the midst of a blanket of silence. He holes it, of course, and we move to the final tee somehow one up.
The eighteenth is a weird and wonderful hole on which to finish. The fairway skirts left of the practice ground, and you can hit your tee shot anything from two to three hundred yards, but you will have roughly the same second shot from anywhere on that runway, for the hole turns abruptly right, with the inside corner out of bounds. I have the last of my shots to claim, and shake like a leaf over my five iron second, but somehow find the green. From a mile further up the fairway, Everett hits another towering iron to within about twenty feet, giving him a decent chance for a fifth birdie of the morning.
Niall and Shane, steady all day, drop away at this point, and when my weak lag putt stops rolling six feet short, Everett has to hole his to make me putt mine. His ball is never going anywhere but the heart of the hole, but so does mine to my complete surprise, and we laugh once more at this crazy game, and shake hands. During the match, we’re desperate to win but the very moment the battle is decided, all is forgotten…will there ever be another sport played like this, in quite this spirit?
Back in the bar, Everett is talking about his sore back, and the physiotherapist Shane has put him on to lately. His pain had put him near the point of not being able to play this game that has run through his veins for about as long as it has been in mine, and in his eyes I can see how much it - and days like this, with people like this - mean to him. I recall Shane saying that few people bother to ask Everett about his life, just seeing him as the guy in the locker room, and in that explanation of our deadly foe for the past few hours, there’s a definitely implication that there is more to this new friend than his thrilling golf and the fag end that hangs from the side of his permanent smile.
Over the course of a sandwich, I learn more about his roller coaster life, and how golf has fitted in with the peaks and troughs of that journey. Beaming out from Everett is an intense gratitude that he is still here, and I hope that he sees that same thankfulness in my eyes staring back at him, for in some strange way, golf is as important to me as it has been to him, and I will carry with me forever his cracking voice when he spoke of the fear that his spinal issue might take it away from him. Some old phrase of my childhood golf teacher drifts back to me on the way home - “still waters run deep” - and in that acknowledgement that there is often more beneath the surface than we bother to explore - exactly the point Shane was making when we first walked into this clubhouse - I see both Everett and Dollymount reflected, and am grateful for both.
In the places we play and the people we meet, there are hidden depths that are worth plumbing, yet it is easy to skirt along the surface and miss out on a richness that can change you, one shot or one day or one person at a time. The surface level of Dollymount is wonderful, but I can’t wait for the next time I can plunge a little deeper; learn a little more. Cross the wooden bridge full of anticipation and hope. With people like Shane, and Niall, and Everett.
Our match finished one up, but it feels like we all won a fortune that day.
Its a cracking good course to be sure….though I hope you also got to visit The Island whilst in/around Dublin?
Love the story within the story! Here’s to Everett🙏