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).

Fintan worked for the New Ireland insurance company in Dublin, maintaining a close interest in golf on and off the course. He was a member of the Hermitage team that won the Leinster section of the Irish Junior Cup in 1965 before losing to Fermoy in the Irish final at Ballybunion.

His move into officialdom began in 1976 when he was appointed junior and handicap secretary at Hermitage. He served a two year term as President in 1993/’94 before becoming the club’s Leinster Branch delegate on the death of Tom Bishop. He went on to serve four separate years as hon treasurer and hon sec.

Ulster’s Ivor McCandless is new President-elect, while the long serving Albert Lee and Rollo McClure continue as Hon Secretary and Hon Treasurer respectively. Having served as Leinster chairman for four years and the last 12 months as president-elect of the Union, he now looks forward to his presidency when he will have the total support of his wife Betty, daughters Ann and Niamh and sons Brian and Eoin. Two of the six motions before the AGM were carried. Ballyliffin received approval for their suggestion “the GUI investigate the possibility of making compulsory for all competition software to validate the handicap of all entrants in an Open events.”

Likewise, Edenmore had backing for their motion “any club hosting an Open must declare whether or not it is qualifying for handicap purposes and if so much record all entries/scores on their software and return all scores via GOLFnet to the visiting players club.”