Course is ‘tailor-made’ for fans
With a strong field taking shape for the European Tour’s second highest-attended tournament after its flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth later this month, the June 19-22 event is gearing up for crowds in excess of 100,000 over the four rounds.
Morris believes Fota is more than up to the task of not just coping with the large crowds at the Cork venue but giving them a spectator-friendly experience to remember, both in terms of access to the course and comfort on site.
Centrepiece of that experience will be the tournament’s tented village, complete with giant television screen, which will start to be erected next week to the right of the Deerpark course’s second hole, perfectly positioned at the heart of the action.
“Spectators will be able to sit there by the bank of the lake and look across to the third green,” Morris told the Irish Examiner.
“The location is perfect because it’s actually right in the middle of the golf course. You’ll be able to reach it coming off the eighth green, off the 14th green and anyone coming in by train will be close by as they’ll come in by the fourth fairway, only 100 yards from the tented village.
“It’s absolutely tailor-made for spectators. Nobody realised how much room there was to the right of the second. When you’re playing the hole, there’s trees to the right and you don’t notice but there’s a huge amount of space in there.
“It’s going to be a very spectator-friendly Irish Open, and the ease of access to Fota Island is magnificent, whether you come by train or road, with car parking on site and a rail link almost as close.”
With Fota train station a 15-minute journey from Cork’s Kent Station and only a 500-yard walk from the course, Morris predicts it will take“minimum effort” to reach the tournament from anywhere on the Irish rail network.
“You could be at the Irish Open 20 minutes after leaving the city,” Morris said.
The Irish Open may be a moveable feast, switching from Killarney to Royal Portrush to Carton House and now to Fota Island in successive years but there will be a good deal of continuity behind the scenes.
This year’s chief marshal Ray Cawley, (pictured) a former Cork footballer, Army Commandant and event organiser, has already reached his required quota of 400 volunteers to marshal the European Tour event. And he has recruited a valuable assistant as one of his trusted deputy chief marshals.
“I spoke with Pat Russell, who was the chief marshal at Carton House last year and Pat offered his services. So I invited him down and he’s going to be one of the deputy chief marshals. I sent him a questionnaire recently and one question I asked him was ‘at what stage before the event did you fill your quota?’ and he said ‘a month’ so we’re in front of that, which I’m delighted about.”
It is not just Fota Island Resort gearing up for the visit of the Irish Open to Cork. Near neighbour Cork Golf Club, the renowned Alister McKenzie course just down the road on Little Island, is also bracing itself for the masses.
Cork GC general manager Matt Sands is expecting a busy week during the Irish Open but thinks the real boost to the local golfing economy will be felt over the long term.
“We will have a presence at the tournament at the Fáilte Island stand in the tented village and we’re hoping to get a spin out of it,” Sands said. “People will be coming down to watch the Irish Open and we’ll be quite busy. We’re hoping to do a few things around it, such as inviting some northern clubs down to use the facilities. It’s great for the area, it gives the area great exposure and the bigger benefits might be further down than the line rather than that week. We’ll be planting a few seeds in people’s minds, hopefully.”
A year on from Cork GC’s 125th anniversary there is no sense of a hangover from last year’s celebrations.
“The course is in brilliant shape at the moment and we’re busy enough,” Sands added. “We had the Munster Stroke Play last weekend which was successful, despite the weather, and as a club we’re getting ready for the Cups & Shields, so it’s all systems go. Hopefully, now, we’re getting through the recession and starting to see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.”
Cork’s golfers have a hard act to follow given their double success in lifting Munster’s Senior Cup and Barton Shield and last year’s team manager Vincent Twohig has been succeeded by John Carroll, assisted by Kevin Sheehan.
“It will be hard to match last year, doing the double in Munster, but if we get one of them out it will be great and hopefully we’ll go a bit further than we did last year in the finals,” Sands said. “We’d be confident enough we’ll get a good run in the Senior Cup and Barton Shield. We’ve a good panel with Gary O’Flaherty, John Hickey, Ian O’Flynn, Eoin Murphy. They’re all playing well.”
The Irish Open may still be lacking a title sponsor but the Fáilte Ireland-backed event goes from strength to strength in the numbers of companies offering backing to the €2m tournament.
The European Tour yesterday added construction firm BAM Contractors, Cork City and County Councils and computer distribution companyWestcoast Ireland to its panel of sponsors for the June 19-22 event.
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