McGeady defends PGA title

Adare Manor will host this year’s Irish PGA Championship from October 2-5.

Not to be confused with the Adare Manor Golf Resort, the venue for the 2007 and ’08 Irish Open Championships and which also hosted the IPGA event in 2003 won by Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley, Adare Manor was founded in 1900 and was regarded as one of the finest nine-hole courses in the country until being extended to 18 by architect Eddie Hackett in 1922.

It now follows in the footsteps of some of the game’s most famous venues in staging the national closed professional championship since it was first instituted in 1907. In that time, legends like Christy O’Connor and Harry Bradshaw each captured the title on 10 occasions and are followed on the honours list on six by Pádraig Harrington and Des Smyth.

Although it is most unlikely many of the tour professionals will tee it up at Adare, a course with a par of 69 and barely 6,000 yards has a hard act to follow and could be vulnerable to the country’s top club professionals. However, Adare captain Richard Hickey believes they could have a surprise in store.

“We staged 36 hole pro-ams in 2010, ’11 and ’12 and the scoring wasn’t all that low,” he stated.

“John Kelly [who made the cut in last week’s Irish Open] was best with seven under and that’s fine with us and even he had a stroke of good fortune on his side. The average low total over the three years was actually three under. We have five par threes and we have built new tees on each so that, with the exception of the first, they average nearly 200 yards. We believe our course will provide a very worthy challenge.”

Donegal’s Michael McGeady defends the title he won by a shot from Cian McNamara and Damian Mooney at Roganstown 12 months ago.