Chasing around the little white ball...

Great day yesterday.  A chance to revisit the Connemara Golf Links in Ballyconneely, Co Galway.  I had played there two years ago, but in less than ideal conditions.  It had been a "soft day," mostly mist, light drizzle, and an occasional minor, fast-passing shower.  Still great fun, but I did not get the full benefit of the extraordinary beauty of the setting.  The course sits between the Atlantic and the brutally beautiful, stirringly primitive Twelve Ben mountains of Connemara.  As you can see from the photos, we had no such problem this day.  Again, I just wish I could capture the full majesty of this view in a photograph.

I played acceptably well - Padraic thought better than last year, but it was just a thrill to be out on this beautiful golfing venue.  My thanks to Padraic and Marion for hauling me there, a bit of a drive from Westport.  Especially since Padraic will go there again today to play with "the lads" - his buddies Tom Walsh and Dave Joyce.

On the way - the upper Kylemore lough

One of my favorite books on golf is "A Course Called Ireland" by Tom Coyne.  A single-digit handicapper, he walked the entire coastline of Ireland and played every golf course he encountered on the way - the great and legendary, the minor and unsung.  He completed this feat in 2007, the first year we came over.  I can say that it was exceptionally poor weather - it rained or poured twenty out of the twenty-one days we were here.  Coyne describes the courses in a most enticing way, but his observations on the culture, landscapes, and quirky people he met on the way are well-worth the price of the book alone.  Here are his thoughts on the course in Ballyconneely.

From "A Course Called Ireland"

Much was owed to the pair of eyes (legendary Irish course designer Eddie Hackett) that looked over an empty field of wild grasses and told the local priest that he could give them something that would bring pride to this town.

It was clear that he was onto something as we stepped onto the property, a wavy stretch of unspoiled green set on the ocean's edge...

The back nine at Connemara was a special set of holes ... that had me working up and down the dunes, blasting tee shots off plateaus overlooking a vast countryside.  Seventeen and eighteen were favorites, two par-fives that played first up into the dunes and then back out of them.  On 18, a blast of wind hurled my last drive some 380 yards down the fairway (it was downhill as well), putting an 8-iron in my hands for my second shot.  After a divine bounce off a greenside mound, my first eagle wasn't fifteen feet away on this, the 90th hole of my trip.  Poetry, I thought.  The wet made dry, the big scores made low.

Struggling to come to grips with my greatness, I stepped to my ball and knocked it eight feet past the hole.  I then went ahead and accomplished one of the saddest feats in golf, the three-putt-par.

Ireland and I, back to even.  The wind was at my back all the way home...

On the 3rd tee, looking back at the Bens

A very daunting par-three

Hitting back toward the Atlantic

Darn it!  Almost got there!

Did Marion jar that putt?