The local favorite

WE had turned for home and were short and left of the long par four eleventh hole on Killarney’s O’Mahony’s Point course when Colm Cooper’s playground imagination kicked in.

A spinney of trees blocked most of the green from his sight – certainly the portion where the pin was positioned. And a pair of hump-backed mounds were unfavourable deterrents too, colluding with the wet, clingy rough between his ball and the putting surface.

Never mind. Savouring the challenge, the most naturally gifted footballer in the land reverted to his old ‘left hand down’ grip with which he honed his Pitch & Putt skills as a young teenager. He drilled the ball quite fearlessly through the snarly grass and bounced it left and quite deliberately off the protruding mound on the edge of the green. Gooch seemed a little miffed he left himself twenty feet for par.