Ballymun kids challenge perception of golf as elitist sport

THERE’S a lot to be said for the game of golf (and a lot against), but few people have ever held the sport aloft as a paradigm of social equality.

Whether it’s Hootie Johnson and his ongoing feud with the American feminist movement, or just the run-of-the-mill snobbery still to be found in many clubhouses around the globe, the ancient game has always been linked with the upper echelons of society.

Like many class boundaries, that particular wall is slowly coming down and nowhere is that more evident than in Ballymun on Dublin’s northside.

The Soviet-like high rises may be disappearing from the city skyscape, replaced by post-modern structures with curved roofs and weirdly-shaped exteriors, but the social ills remain.

“The problem of amenities for kids has got bigger since the regeneration began,” claims Eileen Gleeson of voluntary group BRISK, which is using sport to combat the problems facing children in the area.

“Before, with the flats, you used to never see the kids because they were on every floor. Now we see them the whole time in huge groups hanging around the streets. The problem is just more visible now.

“The green spaces have been taken away by the rebuilding as well. There are plans to put them back but some kids have grown up around here and they’ve never seen a football pitch in the area. That might sound ridiculous but think of the effect that has.

“I was watching ‘Reeling in the Years’ the other night about when they were putting in the first flats in Ballymun and the residents were saying they needed amenities. That was before a slab was laid and 35 years later we’re still saying the same thing.”

The community’s response has been to channel their energy into sports and drama initiatives for local youngsters and, with the public Sillogue Golf Club no more than a brisk walk across the M50, the ancient Scottish game was handed a leading role when the initiative was launched last April.

“We wanted to make golf more accessible to kids in Ballymun. We used to run programmes for six weeks but after that the kids had nowhere to go. They hadn’t enough lessons to keep playing the game by themselves.”

So, a local group called BROYR, the Christy O’Connor Golf Club and Dublin City Council got together and the idea came up for an ongoing Ballymun Golf Academy.

With 50 kids routinely turning up for lessons from the local pros, Peter and Christy O’Connor (not that Christy), golf has proven to be at least as popular as other classes for snorkelling, aerobics and hip hop.

Not many of the local kids who turned up back in April had held a golf club before. Few more would have even watched much of it on TV, so why did the organisers choose a game very few of their target audience could relate to beforehand?

“Normally, you just put out the feelers and see what sort of feedback you might get and the kids took to it straight away,” said Gleeson

“They keep coming back every week because there’s nowhere for them to go. We’re trying to get them interested in something, start them off, because lots of them wouldn’t be involved in anything at all.

“It’s a way of making contact with kids and giving them something else to do apart from hanging around the blocks. We’re not looking for national league players or professional golfers from these schemes. If we get one, well and good but that’s not our aim.”

For Christy O’Connor, the initiative isn’t some sort of exception, it’s symbolic of the new rule in the game.

“Golf isn’t the best known sport around here but you ask those kids who Pádraig Harrington is or any of the top guys in the British Open and they’d be able to tell you no problem. Their all-round knowledge of the game and how to play it is increasing all the time.

“Golf isn’t like it was even 20 years ago. More and more people are playing the game now and public courses like ourselves are busy almost all year round these days. It’s not a game for the elite anymore.”