The big interview with Golf Ireland CEO Mark Kennelly: Profiting from a measured approach

Despite a historic change in the governance of the sport and the crippling impact of Covid, Golf Ireland CEO Mark Kennelly is excited and optimistic for the future growth of the game in this country — at all levels

WATCHING BRIEF: Golf Ireland CEO Mark Kennelly watches Beth Coulter (Kirkistown Castle) during the AIG Irish Women’s Amateur Close Championship in Ballybunion. Picture: Thos Caffrey/Golffile

We know they’ve been in Team Europe mode lately, but what’s struck Mark Kennelly is how much they’ve remained part of Team Ireland. Ask the new CEO of their national governing body something you’d never need to put to John Delaney, but possibly could to his successors in the FAI — Do the best players from this country know who you are? — and he replies: “I don’t know.”

He’s met them all — Rory, Leona, Shane, Pádraig — but whether it has registered or remained with any of them that the bespectacled middle-aged man is called Mark and oversees the entire Golf Ireland operation, he couldn’t say — and couldn’t care. What he can say and care about is that they’ve chipped in for the cause whenever they can.