Christy wants big drive for game in Ireland

Irish golf legend Christy O’Connor Jr. has made an emotional appeal to tourism chiefs to help promote the nations’ courses to foreign golfers.

O’Connor Jr., 64, enjoys a sterling reputation around the golfing world following his Ryder Cup heroics for Europe in 1989 and his back-to-back Senior British Open victories in 1999 and 2000. Now he aims to put that standing to good use to help bring much-needed green fees into Ireland.

“I would love to help with the job of doubling or tripling the amount of green-fee players coming to Ireland,” he said.

“I’d love to do it and I’d love to have a chat with the sports minister regarding that situation.

“It’s about going out there and telling people about the facilities we have in this country. It’s something I feel very, very strongly about.”

O’Connor Jr. was at the Galway Bay Golf Resort yesterday to re-launch the Renville Peninsula course he designed and opened in 1993 and renovated in 2006. Now that his competitive career has been scaled back he feels the time is right to devote his efforts to promoting Irish golf around the world.

“I’m not playing as much as I used to and it would be lovely to be behind golf courses such as Galway Bay.

“I believe there’s an awful lot of green fees to be had outside the country. In my opinion, our country’s not doing enough to bring in foreign golfers and there’s a huge number of them that’s grown in the last few years and hopefully I can be of some help in rejuvenating that.”

Tourism Ireland, the agency responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas has worked hard to promote the country as a golfing destination and stepped in to help save the Irish Open when title sponsors 3 withdrew its support for the European Tour event in late 2010.

O’Connor said he felt he could add to the promotional effort.

“The Irish tourist board should be out there selling Ireland, using the likes of myself. In Scotland, they’re using Sam Torrance, Wales are using Ian Woosnam, and I know Pádraig Harrington and the guys are great ambassadors for the game but they don’t have the time. You need somebody actually physically out there at shows, at golf seminars, driving this.

“We’re second to none for places to play golf and that’s what I would love to get more involved in.

“We have fantastic facilities around the country, both inland and around the seaside and there’s nowhere any better. We need to go out there and we need to sell our wares.”