Tom Coyne, author of Paper Tiger, is making his way across Ireland on foot this summer, playing every links golf course in the country. In Fall 2008, he'll publish a book about his adventures, A Course Called Ireland. In the meantime, he'll be writing a travel journal for GOLF.com. This is the second installment; the first is here.
I had never cared much for Lahinch. My unusual aversion to one of the undisputed kings of links golf stemmed from a first tee whiffing incident many years ago. I won't recount the painful details here, but know that for many seasons since, the very syllables - La-hinch - have rung with shame in the depths of my golfing soul. I have never felt quite comfortable on a first tee since, and certainly wouldn't feel cozy revisiting that first tee in western Ireland, where I once sent a breeze past my Titleist in front of what felt like every storytelling Irishman in county Clare.
It had been a long time since I visited the scene of that crime, and with a dozen years passed, I felt ready to put that swing behind me. And so with nary a spectator in sight aside from my travel mate Joe, and with our recently arrived college roommate, Steve, on camera duty, I pulled driver, and laced one long and deep down the first fairway at Lahinch, a yawning par-4 rolling upward to the green. And from that first sound shot onward, the course became less terrifying, and I began to see Lahinch for the miracle it was. The hit-it-over-the-rock par-5 that had stretched to 8,000 yards in my nightmares, it was really a lovely little hit-it-in-two gem of a hole. The blind par-3 (again, aim for the rock at the top of the hill) that I had maligned in many an anti-Lahinch rant? It was now perhaps the coolest short hole I'd ever played. And I even doubled the damn thing.
After a week of 80-degree temps and calm breezes, the sun went away, and the rains came. And came. Neither the cold nor my wet socks nor my frozen fingers could wipe the smile off my face. Not the lost balls (two, a respectable donation), and not the foursome of ugly Americans in front of us, holding up the entire course and heaping embarrassment upon my homeland. (When you get a case of beer delivered on the tenth green of Lahinch while a twosome that has been pushing you all day stands waiting in the rain in the fairway, you just don't have a clue. It was like they were bummed the place didn't have a cart girl. Sacrilege! This is Lahinch!)
The course is a stunner all the way around, and though I'd been there before, it was a whole new place. And the town, packed to the doors on a bank holiday weekend, was quite a bit more built-up and raucous than I remembered from the trip when I was 18. Not to mention that Lahinch is a huge surfing destination now (seriously, surfing in Ireland is the new big thing). I would guess that there were two surfers in town for every golfer. But dreadlocks or collared shirts, we were all wind-burned sportsmen in the pub at the end of the day.
We walked out to Doolin, and made our way through Galway and out to Ballyconneely, en route to the Connemara Championship Links, a course I had yet to see but had been hearing great things about. The walk to Ballyconneely via the bog road was easily the most resolve-rattling day of the trip so far. (Travel tip - if you're ever going to opt for the "bog road" anywhere, make sure you have a car. And a flare gun.) Steve proved himself to be a capable, if not more vocal, travel partner than Joe ("Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"), but the bog road just about ripped both our hearts out. Eighteen miles to our B&B, and three hours of walking in the wind with no civilization in view in any direction. Our minds and our feet pretty much went to mush. We were talking to the sheep. And they were talking back.
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