Carton is Monty’s gem

NO doubt the glorious sunshine had a part to play but Carton House looked an absolute picture yesterday as the stars assembled for the Nissan Irish Open, which starts tomorrow.

The magnificent Co Kildare estate has been transformed into a golfing complex of exquisite luxury with a couple of championship courses designed by Mark O’Meara and Colin Montgomerie, a high quality practice ground of massive proportions and a superb clubhouse that is as aesthetic as it is functional.

Add to the mix the manner in which the European Tour lay out all their tournament locations and you have a venue of which we can all be very proud.

Hopefully, the weather will stay as pleasant as yesterday for with the sun shining it is difficult to imagine anything more delightful for the country’s flagship golfing event. It’s the Monty creation that houses this week’s championship and the reaction of the 155 other players to the Scot’s “inland links” is awaited with the keenest interest, not least by Colin himself. There are those who believe nobody - Monty nor anyone else - can replicate a links course away from its natural habitat by the sea. Peter McEvoy’s ill fated plan to do so at Fota Island supports that view but Monty insisted last night that the same won’t happen at Carton.

“I felt it was a classic piece of land on which to build a classic links style concept”, he said. “You see it on computer images and on maps but what we’ve turned out is much better than expected so we are very happy and honoured to have the tournament here. It was very open land so the challenges weren’t really that great. The challenge is when you walk through a wood and you have to cut it all back. We could see the vista and it was very easy in that way.

“You have an idea of what you want. You can’t start linksy and then go to parkland or whatever. It has to feed its way through. I hate using the word links because obviously it isn’t but it has a links feel. It was an easy routing really. Hopefully this is the first of many tournament to be held here. It’s been amazing to be part of this creation through Lee Mallaghan, European Golf Design and myself.”

Montgomerie finds it impossible to disguise his feeling of excitement and expectation about his creation at Carton, which is about two miles from the town of Maynooth and fourteen from Dublin. He muses on how “it happened so quickly that we are hosting a major event here” although he might have been stretching it a little when declaring that “of all the honours I’ve received or won in my career, this is by far the best. To host an Irish Open on a course you designed and had a huge input to, is fantastic.”

This week is the dream come true for Lee Mallaghan, his son Conor and the entire family. They and Montgomerie worked in cohesion with the esteemed American designer Stan Eby and European Golf Design and the end product is a par 72 lay-out of 7,301 yards. It won’t please everybody and, no doubt, there will be veiled allegations that Montgomerie designed it to suit his own preference for playing.

“There is that sense as I hit the ball left to right but when I got together with Stan Eby, he said we can’t have every hole left to right or we’ll end up in Dublin”, explained Monty. “So we came back to square one and had a couple or rights to left. Hopefully we got the best out of it. I suppose we could have made it longer. It plays about 7,350 yards and what we didn’t want to do was build a course of 7,000 yards. That was long a few years ago but the way technology is going, we might have had to come back in three years and change it. As it is, it’s a long course and with the weather forecast and the conditions, some of the tees won’t be played off the back.”

Jose-Maria Olazabal, Irish Open champion in 1990 had his first look at Carton yesterday and conveyed the view to Montgomerie that he feels “the course is going to reward good shots and punish weaker ones. I think that weaker courses don’t punish poor shots enough. This is different. If you run into a bunker or go in the rough and still make a par, you’ll deserve it.”

The first hole at 456 yards into the prevailing wind could well prove a card wrecker. As with every single hole on the course, Monty insists that accurate driving is the key. He stresses that “to hit the greens, you have to hit the fairways.

Doing just that was the reason for my success in the 90s. It will be different. There are players in Europe who have designed courses and backed out of the challenge. No doubt there will be particular interest in my scores this week and there is nothing better than trying to win on a course that you’ve designed. With due respect to all the competitors, this type of course would favour the higher ranked players.

“Harrington, Clarke and Westwood spring to mind. That type of individual would do well, so, since we are in Ireland, I will say Harrington (presuming he is fit to tee it up.” For me, my next win is the most important of my career and there would be nothing better than to start here.”