Golf World UK - August 2017

132 Golf World August 2017

TOP 100 COURSES IN IRELAND

Lahinch (  2 )

Liscannor Bay, Clare. Old Tom Morris.

TOTAL 87.7

4

Ihada

whole year

to be in

Britain and

Ireland [to study], so

I could linger in the

most interesting places.

I wasn’t on the clock or

on anybody’s

timetable.

I remember going to

Lahinch, for example,

for two or three days.

One day I just sat to the

side of the Dell hole and

watchedgroupsplayit;

Iwatchedthepartyou

never see when you

play the hole... where

did your ball actually

land and how did it

react when it landed?

It was fascinating.

It was kind of the

moment where I really

thought ‘ok, this is

different’. Somebody in

one of those groups hit

a ball way short on top

of the dune in front of

thegreen,30ftabove,

looking straight down

into that narrow little

green.

I thought “how can

he get this close?”

His caddie told him

to hit it to the toe of the

dune. He did that and it

rolled dead to the hole.

I thought, ‘wow, that’s a

golf shot you don’t see

often’, and so I wound

up liking that hole even

’though some people

thinkitisjustacrazy

blind hole.

I’mnottooworried

about what other

people think. In the

‘Confidential Guides’,

[Doak’s books rating

elite courses] it is very

different from what is

written in a magazine.

Publishers never want

their journalists to write

anything bad about a

golf course. They do

travel articles about

Ayrshire one month,

south west Ireland the

next and there is no

way for anyone to

decide if you want to

go to that one or that

one. I’m trying to help

people make choices;

it doesn’t mean any of

them suck, but if I think

that one is an eight and

that one’s a six, I say it.

Tom Doak is one of

the world’s leading

course architects.

“AN AFTERNOON AT LAHINCH SHAPED MY PHILOSOPHY”

Feted American architect Tom Doak explains how one of the Clare links’ famous holes influenced him.

ARCHITECT INSIGHT