The brief
story of professional golf in Ireland
Since the 1880s there
have been golf professionals plying their trade in Ireland, many
of the early professionals were Scottish who came to Ireland as
golf clubs began to materialise and a person was needed to cater
for the needs of the membership which included lessons, club repairs
and sales, golf course design and greenkeeping, caddie master
and club caretaker. By 1901 the split between Irish and Scottish
was 1.5:1 and by 1911 was more like 6:1 but nobody really knows
the exact figures.
The first professional
championship in Ireland took place at the County Golf Club ("Royal
Portrush Golf Club") in 1895 and another tournament, which
attracted overseas professionals to these shores in 1899, was
staged at Portmarnock Golf Club.
In 1901 the Professional
Golfers Association ("PGA") was formed and a year later
the PGA looked at setting up an Irish Region and enrolled the
services of well-known Irish professionals of the time including:
A G Day, John Aitken, C S Butchart, David Brown, William MacNamara,
Michael Hackett, Tom Hood, George Coburn and Richard Larkin as
Hon. Sec. It doesn't appear to have got out of the starting gate
with the exception of setting up an Irish regional qualifier for
entry to the very lucrative News of the World tournament.
The professional tournament
at Greenore in 1902 and the Lord Lieutenant's Golfing Party in
Easter 1903 attracted a strong contingent of overseas professionals
including Vardon, Taylor, Herd and Braid. The Golfing Union of
Ireland continued to bridge the gap as much of the professional
activity was done under the auspices of the G.U.I. and. in 1907,
they led the way in holding the inaugural Irish Professional (Close)
Championship and
in June 1911, one hundred years ago, helped the professionals
with the formation of the Irish Professional Golfers; Association
("I.P.G.A."). The previous year has seen one of the
most successful professional tournaments in Ireland, which was
hosted by Portmarnock Golf Club.
In June 1911 golfers
met at the Northern Counties hotel in Portrush and hatched the
formation of the Irish Professional Golfers Association (IPGA)
to look at its members interests with Thomas
Hood, James McKenna, John
Aitken and Alex Robertson
included in the joint committee (amateur and professional) to
draw up a constitutional framework and by 1914 it had 40 members
albeit that not many were professionals from the North of Ireland.
1927 saw the first Irish
Open Golf Championship played at Portmarnock Golf Club and it
was to be 1965 before the I.P.G.A. took over the organisation
of this tournament in their own right from the G.U.I. The I.P.G.A.
was dissolved in 1975, sixty-three years after its formation,
after 30 out of the 140 I.P.G.A. professionals attended the meeting
to vote on a merger with the Professional Golfers' Association,
moves to reform the association in 1982 were unsuccessful. The
professionals were now affiliated with the P.G.A. and Ireland
is a region, which continues to this day.
One hundred years on
from the formation of the I.P.G.A. we find ourselves slap, bang
in the middle of the Golden Era of professional golf in Ireland
with a tally of five Majors in the last four years. Can we presume
that the early professionals contributed to this in the biblical
sense as one professional begat another and so on.
Below is a rough guide
to the early professionals in Ireland and Irish professionals
and their descendants who plied their trade outside of Ireland.
Early
Professional Golfers in Ireland
Early
Irish-Connected Professional Golfers based outside Ireland
The 101st Irish PGA
Championship takes place at Seapoint Golf Club from August 4-7.
