All Downhill from Here

For one reason or another, I had never gotten around to playing The Curragh, but popped down last week with a mate of mine to check it out. You hear mixed reports about the place, so I wasn't sure what to expect at all.

You can always tell a non-Dublin course, even just by pulling into the car park, and the atmosphere you get from the place. I'm a Dub myself, so it's not a biased slight, but there's something about golf clubs in the countryside that just welcome you, rather than eyeing you suspiciously, wondering if you've valid reason to be there. See Kevin Markham's blog from the start of February for more on this.

So yeah, as you'd expect from the oldest golf course in Ireland, there's a real charm to the place. I enjoyed the course a lot. It plays very fast, even at this early stage of the season, with some real no-go areas around (and on) the greens. My first putt on the quite sloped practice green just missed, and curved onwards, 15 feet past the cup (4 feet of which was fringe). A second putt left me marginally less club for the return shot, and a third managed to actually stay on the putting surface. Satisfied with my analysis (I hit a practice putt into the car park at the Lord Mayor's last year, so this constitutes a pretty reasonable warm-up for me), I headed to the first tee.

The standout features of The Curragh are undoubtedly the par 5s. The opening tee shot of the first is pretty damn awesome. The second shot is quite a straight-forward chip sideways from the trees, and I find it can be reachable in three in good conditions. The two par 5s in a row on the back 9 are a big hitters dream.

Aside from digging up the golf course, I was glad to get a look at Curragh member, Keith Egan from last year's Ireland u16s panel hitting some shots about the place. Obviously, he looked completely savage. It's a pretty impressive, tour-esque swing, as opposed to some of the more unorthodox amateurs around at the moment.


Having Kicked off at Fota Island last month, the Top Golfer Tour continues into a busy period for Junior Scratch players the next couple of weeks. Castle has what I think is their first ever Junior Scratch Cup this Friday, followed by the Rosslare event on Sunday. The bank holiday weekend then has competitions at Wesport and Glasson. The timesheet for the Castle event is booked solid from 8.30am to 4pm for some time now, which is great to see. Some muppetry on the boards.ie golf forum last week portrayed the upcoming Roganstown event in a pretty poor light, but for me, the thread did just as much to show how the vast majority of the scratch cups still are actually great value. Rumour has it, upon reading the thread criticising Roganstown's ridiculous decision to charge visitors and members the same €40 fee, a quick adjustment was made to the member rate.

In non golfing news, the excellent LCD Soundsystem have a new album out soon. You can stream it here. Unfortunately their two gigs in Dublin were cancelled this week, due to lack of air transport, but they're reportedly rescheduling in late June.

Now where did I leave my short game...