Ireland is still a place of castles and thatched-roof cottages. A land of music and easy laughter but in golfing terms the country is far ahead of the curve. In the 2000s, Ireland is the home of four major champions, Pádraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy as well as, perhaps, Europe’s greatest Ryder Cup Captain, Paul McGinley.

One reason for this ‘out-of-proportion’ development for such a small country is the challenges and variety of the golf courses dotted all around the Emerald Isle; over 400 of them on an island no larger than the US state of Maine.

To research the new account he had been offered by the fledgling Irish Tourist Board, John DeGarmo, a New York advertising executive, made a magical journey through south-west Ireland in the early 1960s. The deal was that if he could not come up with a suitable strategy to ‘sell Ireland to Americans’ he’d pay for the trip himself.

After spending a number of weeks driving along the narrow, twisting roads, which are now but a distant memory, endeavouring to become familiar with the product, DeGarmo landed in Ballybunion.

“In golf there are certain places that send emotional charges through the bodies of avid golfers but few can boast the awesome power of Ballybunion. Carved out of towering dunes, ‘Ballybee’ is the greatest golf course in the world. As wonderful as Scotland is, Ireland is better,” wrote DeGarmo later.

In 1969, Herbert Warren Wind pitched up at Ballybunion unannounced and after playing a leisurely 18 holes with the club’s general manager, Sean Walsh, he wrote in the New Yorker magazine: “Ballybunion is the finest seaside links that I have ever played.” Almost immediately the steady trickle of American golf tourists that had begun because of DeGarmo’s advertising campaign turned into a stream. When Tom Watson extolled its virtues after winning The Open Championship in 1982, the number of visitors heading in Ballybunion’s direction became a flood.

Ballybunion Golf Club has changed dramatically since DeGarmo’s first visit. There are two courses now and a palatial clubhouse featuring fine dining and a pro shop dripping with high quality merchandise. The course looks quite different too. It’s manicured and can no longer be disparagingly described as a “rough and ready, rabbit warren.”

The standard of green-keeping is world class and it is fully intended that it will remain that way. Earlier this year, the local membership voting overwhelmingly to lift and re-lay all 18-greens on the Old Course next winter, but a more striking development is a whole ‘new look’ developed by course architect, Graeme Webster, that creates a stunning amphitheatre effect.

The process of ‘dolling up’ the links is well advanced. The objective is to uplift the overall appearance, define margins and increase the proliferation of native fescue grasses so necessary to maintain traditional links characteristics. However, the shot values and the way the links ‘plays’ won’t change one iota. The course will look harder because the playing corridors will look narrower but, in fact, they will remain exactly the same.

To read the full John DeGarmo story, look for his out of print book ‘The Road to Ballybunion – A magical Journey Through the Golf and Lore of Southwest Ireland’, beautifully illustrated by Ray Ellis and published by Longstreet Press, Atlanta, Georgia in 1997.

When the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI) president-in-waiting, Commander George Crosbie of Cork, ‘bulldozed’ his colleagues into bringing the 1937 Irish Amateur Championship to a previously ‘unknown’ Ballybunion, he couldn’t have anticipated the resounding success that would follow.

Somehow, the club committee had sensed that this was the club’s chance to make its mark on the outside golf world. With no funds to spend, they recruited Tom Simpson, an independently wealthy, eccentric, Englishman, who enjoyed the luxury of being able to turn an interesting hobby into a career, while remaining indifferent to the fees he haphazardly earned in what has always been a precarious, ‘boom and bust’ profession.

Trained in law at Cambridge University, Simpson qualified as a Barrister but never practised. He was also a respected art critic. His wildlife sketches regularly featured in Bernard Darwin’s Country Life articles. One of his several hobbies was silk needlework. He was also a collector of fine cigars, Persian rugs, walking sticks and wines. Simpson’s golf design philosophy was to allow nature to ‘talk.’

Simpson always turned up for work in a chauffeur-driven, silver Rolls Royce, wearing a flowing cloak and Basque-like beret, wielding a riding crop. He never married but was often accompanied on his course visits by the accomplished lady golfer, Molly Gourlay, the winner of the English Championship on several occasions. The chauffeur spent his day polishing the Rolls and then, at the appointed time, drove the glistening automobile onto a pre-designated fairway to act as valet and serve a Fortnum & Mason’s luncheon from an enormous wicker basket. Unlike Pete and Alice Dye many years later, there was no dining with the construction crew for Simpson and Gourlay. Hell, they didn’t approve of the club committee showing up to ask them intrusive questions either. If they did, they were summarily dismissed with an imperious hand wave.

Because it was their favourite picnic spot, the two, pot bunkers in the middle of the 1st fairway (back then it was the 14th) are named ‘Mrs. Simpson’s’ after Molly because the members erroneously presumed that Tom and Molly were man and wife.

Current golf architect Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert says: “Simpson is an unsung hero of golf architecture. His name deserves to be mentioned alongside Harry Colt and Alister Mackenzie. That he isn’t is due to his personality and how he was perceived personally more than a fair judgment on his body of work.” Apparently, Simpson’s penchant for accepting redesign work in order to ‘correct the mistakes’ of others made him unpopular with his peers.

At Ballybunion in 1936, Simpson and Gourlay, when they finally got around to meeting the captain and committee, had the good sense to declare that they “could not improve on God’s work”. They advised a few minor alterations and left without offering an invoice. Something similar is happening today.

Earlier this year, the membership voted overwhelmingly to lift and re-lay all 18-greens on the Old Course next winter. At the same time, course architect, Graeme Webster, has been engaged to redesign the 7th green, which, off and on over the decades, has been threatened by erosion. The process of ‘dolling up’ the links is well advanced and the objective is to uplift the overall appearance by defining margins and increasing the proliferation of native, fescue grasses so necessary to maintain traditional links characteristics. However, the shot values and the way the links ‘plays’ won’t change one iota.

A classic links always sits beside the sea, a shoreline or estuary and features sand dunes and sandy, waste ground recovered from ebbing tides, usually by an evolutionary process over centuries. The word ‘links’ actually means that the uncultivated shoreline is ‘linked’ to more fertile soil further inland.

In the early days of golf, the game was always played on this type of common, waste ground where the natural characteristics made it unsuitable for agriculture. The sandy, gravelly soil and short, stubby, relatively thin bent grasses were ideal for golf because they required minimal upkeep. The flattish ground amongst the sand dunes was easily adaptable to the challenges of the game as it evolved over the centuries and it did not require a huge amount of costly care and maintenance. Rabbits, sheep and goats did most of the greenkeeping work keeping the grass short, crisp and free from weeds as well as fertilising it in the process!

The key distinguishing factor between playing on a links as against the inland/parkland variety of the same game is the way experienced links golfers anticipate how the ball will bounce and skip across rumples, ridges and slopes.

On inland courses you can loft the ball up in the air with a less-than-perfect contact from lush, grassy lies but on a links, the tight turf makes it impossible to get the ball up high without the most precise and accurate ball-striking.

Instead of trees, hedges and bushes that one finds on inland, parkland courses, there are usually awkward, sidehill lies and taller, wispier grasses in the rough that devour golf balls.

Most links courses have the additional hazard of deep bunkers, while the exposed nature and undulations on the greens in strong winds present the severest of tests in putting skills.

The members at Ballybunion have realised that modern greenkeeping methods had introduced a certain amount of ‘inland, parkland characteristics’ to their links and to make sure that course conditions would recover its traditional features, they have agreed to lift and re-lay all 18-greens on the Old Course next winter as well as construct an entirely new, 7th green complex to once and for all deal with a continuing erosion issue.