Restoring Killarney to former glories

GOOD enough to host the Irish Open on a couple of occasions in the early 1990s, the Killeen Course at Killarney, as we used to know it, is no more.

True, the routing plan has not been altered to any great extent in the redevelopment work by golf course architects Donald Steel and Tom McKenzie but you will hardly recognise Killeen when it reopens for play in the early months of next summer.

At the moment, the place looks like a new course in the making and, essentially, that's what it will be. The revamping will have cost in the region of €2m with the members providing €1,000 each.