Irish Star
The old adage about life beginning at forty certainly holds true for Paul McGinley.
Just ten weeks or so from the land-mark birthday, the ever popular McGinley has a lot going for him. More than ever, in fact. Not only has he just come off a third successive winning Ryder Cup campaign, he is also unveiling a whole new string to his already decidedly talented bow… the one time aspirant to a place on the Dublin fourball team is now a championship ckass golf course designer. McGinley, along with architectural partner Roger Jones, is putting – pun intended – the finishing touches to his initial creation, the Macreddin Golf Club, an exquisite 7173 yard track in lush woodland just three miles from Aughrim and part of the BrookLodge Hotel complex that also offers full leisure centre facilities such as a swimming pool and tennis courts to all members – plus, it has to be said uniquely, complimentary use of golf buggy.
McGinley makes no bones about it, his course is a no nonsense one, no trickery and nothing unnatural.
He acknowledges too he had gone into the venture with a few pre-ordinate notions.
"I had quite a few features in mind in advance, actually … I wanted it to be challenging but not intimidating," he said. "I'm not a golf course architect who wants to intimidate the player too much. I want the golf course to bring out the flair of the skilled player … you've got to work the ball and use you're imagination, but I also want to create something where the 20 handicapper to the lady golfer can enjoy their day and want to come back.
"I don't want anybody to walk away broken hearted having lost six or eight golf balls and get fed up with the game. That's not to say the course is going to be easy but it's going to create options for all standards of play.
"I've played too many golf courses where they build the greens that look like Augusta, big sloping greens that go all over the place. That was one thing I didn't want "What I wanted around the greens was run-off areas, so everybody could have an option on the type of shot they wanted to play, beit a run and bump shot, a pitch or a putt. "I'm very much a visual person; I wanted everybody to be able to stand on a hole and feel like they could see exactly where the holes going.
"I don't want anybody to have to turn to their partner and ask 'is that a dogleg left or right?' – I don't want any of those sort of questions to have to be asked. "The player needs to be able to see exactly where the hole goes, whether it turns this way or that way or straight forward or whatever the case may be. Simplicity, in a nutshell, is what I want, simplicity – but challenging simplicity. "Old Traditional values and old traditional styles are what have always really appealed to me. I love Baltray and Portrush and Sunningdale.
"They are my own favorite golf courses- Pebble Beach as well – and there is nothing tricked up or fancy about them, and they are the kind of things and features we want to bring to Macreddin. "We're lucky too with having so much maturity. All the trees, they weren't just drawn on a map; they've been here a long, long time and some of them are up to 60 feet in height.
"We've had to take a few – a very few – of them down where necessary, but overall they are magnificent features of the course and we've had a wonderful time weaving our way in and out and around them, " McGinley said. McGinley who plays in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at the St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns courses in Scotland next week and defends his Volvo Masters crown in Valderrama a fortnight later, admits that he would like to design more courses in the future …. But not just yet.
"I still have four or five more years at what I would call the top of my game and I want to accomplish as much as I can on the course in that time.
"I'm thoroughly enjoying this project, but it has been time consuming – more so than I anticipated – and I don't want anything to deflect from my own course interests for a while yet," he said. "I'd been offered a number of design projects before, but for one reason or another I didn't go for them but when I saw what they had down here, when I saw the beauty of the land, that decided it for me – I just had to get involved.
"I saw what they had already achieved with the spa and hotel. There was plenty of finance behind it. I wasn't going to lend my name to something that wasn't going to be properly backed up, particularly for my first venture into golf design, which is something I am passionate about.
"One of my old school teachers had a saying; 'You don't get a second chance to make a first impression' – and that sums things up perfectly for me."
Irish Star
Gerry Callahan
