GOLF


Links that would turn into a job for seven years.


“I did my first year of college, and I needed a summer job. My friend helped me out with a job on a pitch and putt course. I went back to college after the summer finished in 2009 and, during that year, I had to do a 30-week placement, so my lecturer Pat Suttle set me up with a job at the Royal Dublin Golf Club. He basically said to me, if I’m going to send you here, you need to work. You need to be able to work. Me being a young lad, I said sure no bother and got such a shock after a week or two, to say the least. But it was a good shock in the end.” “Working at Royal Dublin for that 30


weeks taught me a lot about hard work and high standards and, being a Championship


Golf Course, it has those. I worked under Paddy Teeling there, and he was the one setting the standards, and you had to match them, or you’d leave.”


“I think those summers there just happened to be some of the best weather- wise. Royal Dublin is a links course in the heart of Dublin Bay and, when the sun shines, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s so low lying that you can see the ships coming in every day. You can actually set your watch to the Irish Ferry and Stena Line at 8:08am nearly every morning.”


"Funnily enough, I spotted Emirates Golf Club a long time ago when I was beginning college. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, I can’t remember exactly, but I’d always seen it in magazines and the way it was


presented during the European Tour. For some reason, it was always sitting in the back of my head, and when an opportunity came up as a Head Mechanic at a different golf course in Dubai - the Superintendent at the time was an Irish lad - I jumped at that opportunity to go over and get my foot in the door. Whether it worked out or not was another thing, but I don’t think I would have got that opportunity again, so I just went for it.”


“I think the eight months up to me leaving Ireland was probably one of the coldest eight months I’ve ever experienced. The opposite side to a links golf course is during the winter; it’s windy, and it does not stop blowing. I was in the workshop, and my tools were covered in frost, the wind was blowing


PC April/May 2021


15


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