Douglas bids farewell to the consummate pro
Gary Nicholson is just such a man, just such a legend. For the last 33 years, from 1977 until his retirement at the end of last month, Gary was the club pro in Douglas Golf Club, in the suburbs of Cork city. Over the course of his tenure, and almost from day one, the legend was built, the stories, the yarns began to accumulate. But there was also another side to Gary – work ethic.
“The most outstanding thing about Gary as a club pro,” says Sean Hurley, his long-time club fourball partner and occasional caddy, “was his loyalty to the members – it’s unprecedented. Seven days a week he was here, from dawn ‘til dusk, right through his 33 years – I don’t think he ever took a day off.”
Well, no, not quite true, says Gary: “There was one year I injured my ankle; I didn’t actually get it treated at the time, kept going to work though I was being told – ‘rest, rest, rest’. Eventually I met Ann Byrne – as she is now – asked her if she could do anything for me. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘But you should have come to me much sooner.’ I went in to her on crutches, walked out – well bandaged up mind you, but she fixed it pretty quickly. I was out of the shop for a week or two, but that was it, the longest absence I ever had.”
“It got to the stage,” says Sean, “That you expected him to be here every day. Every guy is entitled to a day off, but he wasn’t – you can give people bad habits too and he did, because that’s what we came to expect from him. But, an amazing record. Any man who turns up every day for over 30 years has to become an institution, and he was, in this club.”
It’s only a short hop along the south coast from Gary’s native place of Tramore in Waterford to Cork, but he took the long road to get there, did Gary, and a long time. “I studied accountancy in Dublin for five years but eventually decided – this isn’t for me. So I headed off to Vancouver, in Canada, where I became a golf pro.”
Vancouver? Hardly a place you’d consider as any kind of haven for golf, yet there were reasons, one better than the next. “I knew I wanted to turn pro but in those days in Ireland if you were an assistant you were paid peanuts, and after five years in Dublin, the old man paying my way, to ask him to subsidise me again just wasn’t on. I decided to bugger off and do it on my own. The place to go would have been the United States but it was 1967 and at my age then, 23, six months or a year and you’d be off to Vietnam – I was prime meat for Vietnam. Initially there were four of us in Dublin and things were almost as bad then as they are now so we decided – to hell with Ireland, let’s do something.
“We talked about going to Alberta, work in the mines there, the four of us, but live off one wage and save the rest, come home and start up a business. One by one though they all dropped out, so I was left on my own. I went to the Canadian Embassy one day, bound for Alberta; there was an Edmonton (capital of Alberta province) paper there, I picked it up and was glancing through the photographs and Jesus Christ it was bleak – I turned to the person on the desk and asked – ‘is there any place in Canada where it doesn’t snow?’ ‘Vancouver,’ he said; ‘Okay – change my destination!’, and that’s where I went.”
Really, no snow? Canada? “No; the climate is actually much the same as here, a temperate climate; a bit more likely to get snow alright but in the ten years I was there, there were many winters when we didn’t.” So, ten years in Vancouver then, during which he became a pro, but during which also he met and married Tina deBlois. With everything running in his favour, why did he leave?
“It was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. I was teaching full-time, on a driving-range which was actually on an Indian Reserve, a guy was leasing it off the Indians. He was retiring, I had a chance to take it over, but the rent was $7,000 per quarter, in advance. At the time I’d have had to lay out three instalments before I got into the next season, when you’d start to get your money back. It was difficult to get money from the banks, so I made him an offer – monthly in arrears according to cash flow. I knew he wouldn’t bite, and he didn’t, so that was the end of that. We were living in an apartment over there, and if we were to have kids we were out, straight away.
“I just felt it was time to come home; my folks were well up in golf in Ireland, which would make it easier to get a job – you don’t just walk into a professional’s job, you had to know people. We came back in September 1976 for six months with the idea that if anything came up, we’d consider it. The job here (Douglas) came up, I got it, we stayed, and we’ve been here ever since.”
A perfect match, as it turned out. Tina settled instantly, they had three fine sons, Ross, Ciaran and Seán, but they also found themselves part of an even bigger family. “You had 750 members here, potential friends, and getting to know them was the fun of it. You get involved with them, do business with a lot of them, play golf with and against them, that’s what being a club is all about. My best memories are the games I played here; we had some great games, some great days, brilliant – it certainly beat working for a living!”
Wait a minute though – what of those yarns? “Remember the year of the Dunlop in Athlone,” says Sean; “I was your caddy, and we went up a week early for ‘practice’, were met by the captain of Athlone.
‘I’m here for the PGA,’ says Gary, ‘And this is my assistant pro’ – I got free golf for the week! There was a doctor lived out in a lake in Athlone and we stayed with him, would take the boat across the lake to the golf club every day, which was a handy way to dodge the breathalyser!”
They didn’t come home empty-handed either, as it turned out – “I remember shooting even par in the pro-am and I eventually got a cheque from the Irish PGA for £1.32, which I duly cashed!” remembers Sean.
“Remember the year we were in Hermitage, were out in the Goat Inn, having a few pints of plain. We were in the jacks when this fella walked in, about 4’6” tall, 4’6” wide – a barrel of a man. Gary turns to me: ‘God, he got me into more trouble over the years! – and in his best imitation of a Cork accent, says, ‘It’ll be great to get back to Cork and a decent pint – of Murphys!’ The butty guy gets righteous, pipes up – ‘Murphys! Jaysus, that stuff would kill you!’ And Gary comes back – ‘C’mere boy, if you drank Murphys you’d be six-foot-two instead of two-foot-six!’ I was gone, down the road, waiting to hear ‘nee-naw, nee-naw!’”
Legend, real legend. An era has ended in Douglas Golf Club, and it’s worth marking that passing. But, he’ll still be a regular around both the clubhouse and the course, will Gary Nicholson.
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