COUNTY KILDARE AND WORLD CLASS GOLF

By RAY KANE

County Kildare has had a meteoric rise to fame as a top golf destination since Dr. Michael Smurfit opened the K-Club in the tiny village of Straffan, County Kildare, in 1991. Securing the annual European Open was the first step on the ladder. The Open has been played on the original Palmer Course from 1995 to 2003 but moved a few hundred yards within the K Club grounds to the brand new Smurfit Course for the 2004 competition.

The next step was the development of an equally prestigious venue only six miles away at Carton House, Maynooth. With the opening of the O’Meara and the Montgomerie (which hosts the Nissan Irish Open in 2005 and 2006) you can select from four excellent tests of golf, which can be ranked amongst the best courses in Ireland, within a couple of miles of each other.

County Kildare has always had a brace of excellent parkland courses, ranging from the picturesque to the novel, as well as one of Ireland’s oldest, the Curragh, dating from 1852. At the other extreme, a new kid on the block is the PGA National, a gorgeous new course on the Palmerstown Demesne, near Johnstown, to which the PGA Ireland has given its support and name. This Christy O’ Connor Jnr-designed parkland course is destined for greatness.

And now the greatest honour of all, the selection of the Palmer Course at the K Club as the host course of the 2006 Ryder Cup, a feat achieved in no small part by the work of Dr Michael Smurfit and his team. The event itself will bring 40,000 spectators per day of play and will be broadcast to millions of homes across the world. It is our golden opportunity to cement Kildare’s position in the hall of fame of the great golfing destinations of the world.