Buckley elected GUI President

Fintan Buckley, from the Hermitage club in Dublin, was yesterday installed President of the Golfing Union of Ireland at the annual delegates meeting in Carton House, Co Kildare.

Buckley is a native of Kildare, where, in his younger days, he playedrugby for Newbridge College and North Kildare. Gaelic games were his original love and he played hurling and football with his native Maynooth before falling foul of the infamous foreign games “ban” rule when, as he admits, “a group of vigilantes turned up for a match in search of far better-known players but instead they got me. I was banned for 12 months.”

He also played golf as a young man, his handicap coming down to six in as little as six months and he was to operate off single figures for the next 35 years. He played originally out of Lucan before transferring in 1959 to Hermitage where the joining fee at the time was five guineas (£5. 5 shillings).