Should Killarney be a breeze or a battle?

IT was a glorious day when we assembled at the Killarney Golf & Fishing Club for the 3 Irish Open media day.

There was hardly a puff of wind, the sun shone gloriously on the famous lakes and fellas (well, some, anyway!) made hay.

Afterwards, the message was almost entirely the same – if we can play the Killeen Course so comfortably, the game’s finest professionals will surely tear it apart in the championship itself on the August bank holiday weekend. Even devoted Killarney members expressed fears that their pride and joy could be turned into a pitch and putt course and there were many pleas to European Tour director David Probyn to lower the overall par from 72 to 70 by reducing the 7th and 11th to par fours.

As of now, Probyn is prepared to go halfway on this issue. The 11th will play as a par four but the 7th will stay as it is with the vastly experienced Tour official of the belief that a strong wind blowing into the players’ faces would make it wrong and unfair to play it as a par four.

This is a worthy compromise and those who fear the Killeen Course will prove a pushover for Westwood, Harrington, McIlroy et al should have no great reason to worry. While we all hope for benign weather conditions, nothing can be guaranteed where the Irish climate is concerned. Windy, wet and chilly conditions will turn any course of more than 7,200 yards into a serious test and Killarney is no exception, especially when it is set up for a major championship. Given four balmy days, of course, low scores are a certainty but I venture to suggest that’s the case with any course – including several of those that regularly host some of golf’s greatest championships.

“These guys are so good that they are capable of tearing any course apart,” accepts Killarney superintendent David MacIndoe. “Give them four calm days and a putting stroke in working order, they could shoot any kind of score. Anyway, I’m not too worried, what harm if they shoot 20 under or whatever? It’s what many people come to see.”

MacIndoe is only too well aware that there will be little meaningful rough after the awful winter and the cold, dry spring and early summer. Nor will there be any question of narrowing the fairways or tricking the course up in any shape or form. They will get the fairways as firm as possible but they will be of a consistent width in keeping with the Tour’s guidelines, in other words, an average of 25 yards, whether 270 or 320 yards out from the tee.

MacIndoe, though, has his own ideas when it comes to presenting the players with a well thought out and fair challenge and he intends to see that the swales and hollows around many of Killeen’s putting surfaces have an important role to play.

“We’ll be cutting the grass tight around the greens and also getting them as firm as we can and it will be like going back to the way golf was played many years ago,” he says.

“Your ball ran off the slopes of a green and down a bank and you had to use your imagination in how best to get it back up there. Killeen may not be a links but a lot of linksy shots will need to be played.”

David Probyn is only too well aware that there are two different golfing publics out there. On the one hand, you have those who like nothing more than watching birdies and eagles and the pros shooting in the mid or even low 60s. On the other, there are those who enjoy seeing the players working hard for their pars and a lot harder for anything better than that. It is Probyn’s job to find a balance. They don’t always succeed and certainly Ballybunion in 2000 is an example that remains all too fresh in the memory. And in a different way, it could also be fairly argued that they failed on both counts on the two previous occasions the Irish Open came to Killarney. Nick Faldo, the No 1 ranked player at the time, won on both occasions but with starkly contrasting 72 hole aggregates. In 1991, he shot 283 (-5). Twelve months late, he totalled 274 (-14). By and large, it was widely accepted that the two Irish Opens at Killarney were extremely successful.

As always, of course, the weather dictated much of what happened. It was fine and sunny for the first and fourth rounds, wet, windy and chilly on the Friday and Saturday. The scoring reflected those conditions. The field that year also included the late Payne Stewart, who stepped off his transatlantic flight just a couple of days after a magnificent victory in the US Open. He quickly discovered how things could change in this part of the world in as little as 24 hours. Whereas Faldo reached the par five 16th with a drive and four iron on Thursday, Stewart hit two drivers at the same hole on Friday and still needed a pitching wedge for his third.

It was a different story in 1991 when Faldo did make Killeen look just a little too easy. For three days, that is. Rounds of 66, 65 and 68 saw him cruise into a four stroke lead with eighteen to play but those who believed the rest were all playing for 2nd were made to think again, not least because the wind, almost non-existent up to this point, began to make its presence felt.

Even the normally unflappable Faldo became a little rattled as club selection suddenly proved a lot more difficult at much the same time as others began to creep through the field.

No doubt, it will be pointed out that the improvement in the golf ball and club equipment over the intervening years make the pro’s task appreciably easier these days and that Killarney’s Killeen course, in spite of the major overhaul conducted a few years ago by English architect Tom MacKenzie, is only marginally longer than it was 20 years ago.

However, I doubt if it will be humiliated to the extent that many have been predicting.

An overall par of 284 sounds just about right and anyone shooting better than 10 under par over the August weekend will have played outstanding and probably tournament-winning golf.