Golf is still perceived by some as a game played by middle-aged bank managers with the athletic ability of a mahogany sideboard. But one only has to see the young Turks of both sexes letting fly on the links these days to realise that it’s become a cool sport for the athletically gifted and even those who might struggle to tackle the high hurdles.
Nowhere was that better illustrated than this year’s South of Ireland Championship at Lahinch, where 24-year old Co Sligo product TJ Ford emerged as champion from a field replete with players in their late teens and early twenties.
Just two of the entrants in this year’s Championship hailed from Lahinch Golf Club, and owing to injury, only one teed it up.
But thanks to the creation of a state-of-the-art, 3,000 square feet Indoor Performance Centre at Lahinch in 2019 and the accompanying short game facilities designed by Martin Hawtree, the great Co Clare club is preparing a new generation of Lahinch players.
The last “home” winner of the South was JD Smyth in 1968, but thanks to this new facility and the growing passion amongst Clare kids for golf following Jon Rahm’s 2019 Irish Open win, Lahinch will soon have a string of great golfers and who knows, a new John Burke, a Brud Slattery, a Sinead Sexton or an Aideen Walsh may yet emerge.
The club has around 300 active juniors in a membership of 2,700, many of whom are also members of other clubs as far afield as Limerick and Dublin. Were all to represent Lahinch, the club could field some of the strongest teams in the country, and ten years from now that may well be the case as the €500,000 Indoor Performance Centre is now in full swing and schoolchildren from the surrounding district are receiving regular visits from Lahinch’s PGA professional, Donal McSweeney, before becoming familiar with indoor and outdoor training facilities which are the envy of every club in the country.
“The land was occupied by an old army barracks, and it was important for the club to buy it,” explains Lahinch’s General Manager Paddy Keane, gesturing to the five-acre short game range on the Castle Course side of the Liscannor Road, just across the road from the Championship course.
“We didn’t have practice facilities, so we decided to develop a short game academy, which Martin Hawtree designed.”
The short game range features a large undulating grass tee to simulate the rolling links experience with three target greens ranging from 40 to 100 yards. There are also two purpose-built short game greens to simulate chipping, lob shots, chip and run shots, and greenside bunker shots.
In total, the club has seven practice greens within 100 yards of the first tee, all of them in pristine condition.
But the pièce de résistance is the Indoor Performance Centre which opened just a few days before the 2019 Dubai Duty Free Irish Open and wowed even the European Tour stars with its state-of-the-art technology.
“It was always intended to develop and build an indoor performance centre here because the weather is such in the winter and spring and even in the summer that junior golfers and club teams are too exposed to the elements here,” Paddy explains. “So the concept was to design something indoor where we could have junior golf every Friday afternoon irrespective of the weather, promote junior golf within the locality but also within the club and the club team environment. It has had a lot of other benefits to individual members too and allows them to hone their skills.”
The entire operation is run by the club’s estimable PGA professional Donal McSweeney, who has a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of golfing goodies at his disposal.
It has a tour-spec workshop that allows him and his assistant Shane Carey to carry out re-grips, re-shafts, swing weighting and loft and lie adjustments, as well as club fitting.
But the rest of the facility is super high tech and divided into three main areas, starting with the Teaching & Custom Fitting Studio, equipped with a Trackman4 launch monitor, Sam Balance Lab, Sam Putt Lab and high-speed cameras, all of which enhance the coaching and custom fitting experience.
The Members Suite consists of a Trackman4 simulator for teams and members to work on various skills in their own time, a large putting complex with the latest putting technology, PuttView, which projects a laser image onto the putting surface showing you the perfect line and speed to give you the best chance of making the putt.
The first facility in Ireland to feature PuttView, it’s ideal for teaching kids, who before Covid, had huge fun playing putting games such as navigating the putting maze.
The club’s schools initiative has been a big success, and at the end of the Christmas school term, 60 children visit the facility to play games and enjoy some lunch in a fun environment while summer camps run for five weeks.
The idea is that the youngsters will progress into a cadet and then into the club’s junior program, all of it carried out following a carefully created junior golf policy document.
“At the end of the day, it’s great to produce scratch golfers, but we also have to produce social golfers,” adds Paddy, who explains how the juniors’ progress is monitored as they learn the etiquette of the game and progress from playing short holes on the Castle Course to the full course eventually.
As Donal explains: “It’s not a short term thing. It’s designed over 10 years to try and produce golfers for the future, perhaps even a successful Fred Daly team.”
If you’re looking for the 2031 South of Ireland champion or Co Clare’s answer to Leona Maguire, keep an eye out next time you pass the practice ground at Lahinch. He or she is likely there right now.