How a great links evolved - a gentle and often inspirational read

GOLF BOOK CLUB:"Fifty Years In A Bunker" By Pat Ruddy 

IF YOU'VE never met Pat Ruddy, it's your loss. If you have encountered him, consider yourself fortunate. For those who've never had the good fortune, this book – Fifty Years In A Bunker: The Creation of a World Top-100 Golf Links at The European Club- will at least bring you, for a time, into his world. It's a good place.

This is a story of how a great links evolved, told through the eyes of its creator. It’s a gentle and often inspirational read, and yet pulls no punches. Long before US president Barack Obama came up with the catchphrase, Ruddy lived out the belief that it could be done . . . and, despite all the barriers which he faced, of the financial kind and from those who purported to be environmentalists, he achieved his dream.

Ruddy – a golf writer and, then, course designer before becoming a golf course owner – had harboured the dream of owning a golf course for many years before it came to fruition. The European Club at Brittas Bay, discovered on an aerial survey of the Irish coastline and the land acquired at auction without formal backing (until the next day) of his bank, was a case, as he admits, of third time lucky.

Originally, Ruddy had bought land in Co Sligo – close to where he had grown up – only to discover the marshy soil sucked money with the dexterity of quicksand and, then, with his family living in a mobile home, woke up one morning to discover the place flooded. As Ruddy, in his own inimitable style puts it in the book, “we were now the proud owners of a lake!”

Ironically, the quest for a suitable site was next to lead him to lands by a genuine lake, Lough Rynn in Co Leitrim, but he backed away at the last minute and, instead, turned his attentions to seeking suitable dunes land on which to build a links course.

For sure, there must have been a touch of fate about it all, for Ruddy’s search delivered a piece of seaside terrain that has become one of the world’s great golf courses.

There were obstacles to its development, and Ruddy, you figure, won’t be high on the Christmas card list of environmentalists; or they on his. In outlining his own “shock of being a hate figure,” Ruddy recalls the “sheer deviousness, venom and hatred” of those who were against the development in the early days.

Indeed, you get the impression that Ruddy would prefer if those against his plans had confronted him face to face rather than, as he describes it, “shooting from the bushes.”

Ruddy has created a traditional links, yet admits he was influenced in some aspects by Americans. For instance, he sought to bring the hospitality offered him by Charlie Yates at Augusta National to The European and, impressed by the way Jim Lynch insisted the green crew at Shinnecock Hills brush away the heavy dew and be out of sight before the first golfers teed off, Ruddy adopted the same philosophy. One particular anecdote underlines when the links means to Ruddy.

It concerns a drought in the mid-’90s (before they could afford to go with automated irrigation) and Ruddy and his son Gerard would attach hoses to the car and leapfrog from one green to another to keep them alive.

The story of how The European was patiently built is a real life version of the Field of Dreamsand one that will appeal. It also provides a wonderful insight into the creative eye of a golf course designer, and of how courses must move with the times as technology and equipment advances effect change in how the game is played.

Yet, one thing which Ruddy stubbornly stands over is the use of railway sleepers in the face of the bunkers. As he explains, “it is an old Scottish idea born in the days when the railway companies threw unwanted sleepers over the fence onto the adjoining golf links at places like Prestwick and where they were snapped-up by the pioneering green keepers and used to shore-up tees, embankments and bunker faces. One always liked the look of them.”

More than anything, Ruddy allows his personality to be captured in the book. It is him to a tee, one feels!

QUESTIONS FOR READERS:

1 “Perfection is the goal and good is not good enough when excellence is attainable,” is Ruddy’s underlying philosophy at The European. Having read the book, can you understand why he should be such a perfectionist?

2 What do you think of Ruddy’s idea to name individual holes in honour of great champions?

3 The planning laws changed after Ruddy developed The European Club which would make the development of such a links nigh impossible in this day and age. Is this a case of over-zealous planning in your opinion?

4 How inspirational do you find this book?

5 How would you rate this book out of a top mark of 10?

Next week's book choice: The Game for a Lifetimeby Harvey Penick