Number one immigration man catches Tiger for charity
Martin Donohue may not be well known as such, but his position got him a personal hearing with Tiger Woods.
The world’s top golfer had flown in for the Ryder Cup last September, when he was met by Martin.
He is the official Number One immigration officer at Dublin airport.
“All immigration officers are issued with an immigration stamp,” said the sergeant. “My stamp is number one, number one in Ireland as such. That’s stamped on your passport.
“So, it was the week of the Ryder Cup and Tiger Woods came in that morning from London on a private flight. I welcomed him to Ireland and, by the way, I said ‘you are getting stamped Number One, it’s appropriate for the number one golfer in the world’. So, he liked that.”
Sgt Donohue then explained to Tiger he had a Ryder Cup T-shirt and a baseball cap.
A member of the Bone Marrow for Leukaemia Trust had approached him beforehand about asking the US sporting legend to consider signing the items for charity.
“I did explain to him what it was for.
“I was telling him the charity and he said ‘Oh yes, my father had cancer’. He had a similar type of cancer I believe.”
Earl Woods, described by his son as his “greatest role model”, had died aged 74 only a couple of months previously in May from prostate cancer.
The immigration officer, who plays off a respectable handicap of 12, said he even asked Tiger for a lesson.
Marie McSweeney, administrator of the Bone Marrow for Leukaemia Trust, said the two items, were auctioned for €9,000 at their Pink Lilly Ball on April 24 in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel.
The trust is based at St James’s Hospital in Dublin, the site of the National Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, which carries out 100 transplants a year.
