This Dublin offers up a complete contrast in styles

Caddie's Role/Colin Byrne: There is an abundance of European capital cities renamed in America. Places like Athens, Georgia; Paris, Texas; and the venue for last week's Memorial tournament, Dublin, Ohio. Having grown up in the Irish capital, I was interested to see what the Americans could come up with for their version.

After a very wet spring in Ohio, my first impression last Monday was that it was very green and lush. This has been a feature of the Memorial tournament: rain, and lots of it. The event has had more rain delays than not in its 28-year history. This year was an exception.

Like many features in the States, given the relatively recent development of the country, a new town like Dublin can be eclectic. Indeed it is.

Columbus, the nearest city, is the birthplace of the greatest golfer of all times, Jack Nicklaus. The Memorial tournament is his event, just as the Bay Hill event

is Arnold Palmer's. Whatever Jack says goes in Muirfield Village.

This is where the confusion lies for me in Dublin, Ohio. With its sandstone buildings in what passes for its quaint Old Town, it looks very Scottish, even if shamrocks and Irish street names are prevalent. But then again, there are many Americans who have come on whirlwind trips to the Britain and Ireland and haven't had the time to distinguish between the nations.

Muirfield Village Golf Club and its environs, despite its culturally confusing architecture, is very much the Golden Bear's habitat. As you ease down Muirfield Drive, before you turn for the course entrance, a bronze statue of Jack divides the avenue.

The clubhouse sits on top of a hill overlooking the vast practice ground, which almost looks like the front garden of a very large house.

Called the Memorial tournament, because it takes place during the Memorial bank holiday over here, the tradition is that each year someone is inducted into the Memorial Honoree group. There is a tranquil garden below the clubhouse and to the side of the first tee. It's a shaded area with unobtrusive, sandstone walls, on which are mounted bronze plaques of the honorees and an accompanying message about their accomplishments.

Naturally a ceremony marks the occasion. So as this year's players were fine-tuning their putting on the practice green on Wednesday afternoon, the honoree ceremony was taking place nearby behind the 18th green. It is a formal affair with plenty of long speeches. With Joyce Wethered and Lee Trevino being honoured this year, there was a serious contrast between the two candidates.

Wethered, who was later to become Lady Heathcoat-Armory, came from a privileged background, and spent summer holidays playing golf at her parents' summer home in Scotland. Joyce is remembered as one of the greatest women golfers of all time. She won five English Amateur and four British Ladies' Amateur championships.

Bobby Jones, the first inductee to the "Garden of Remembrance" at Muirfield Village back in 1976, called Joyce the "finest golfer I have ever seen" when he met her on a US tour in the 1920s. Wethered retired from competitive play at 25 in the mid-1920s. She retreated to her stately mansion, Knightshayes Court in Devon, where gardening became her primary activity.

In contrast, the other honoree, the 64-year-old motor-mouthed Mexican, raised by his mother, a house cleaner, and his grandfather, a grave-digger, was brought up in a modest abode behind a public golf course. The speech about Wethered was given by a crusty old English lady, all scripted and formal. Lee didn't need a script, he spoke from the heart and with his customary humour.

"God saved me," he said. "Without golf, I'd probably be dead or in prison. There is no sense in dancing around it. From the way I was raised, it's a stone miracle where I'm at today."

He went on to tell the audience - and, more attentive than they would admit to, the golfers on the putting green - that he played a shot in 1967 when he was qualifying for the US Open that jump-started his career. He holed out a three-wood at a par five for an albatros and went on to qualify for Baltusrol. He finished fifth.

He went on to tell the long-running joke between the host, Nicklaus, and himself. Jack said to Lee as they were walking off the first tee in a tournament: "Lee, I just want to play golf today, I don't want to talk." To which Trevino replied: "That's all right, Jack. You don't have to talk, you just have to listen."

Lee's speech was not short last Wednesday.

The event is a step up from the average tour stop in the US for us caddies. There is a caddie room with sanitary toilet facilities, and food was put on daily with breakfast and lunch. There is a hat deal, for those who don't have a contract, to wear the Memorial hat for a fee each day.

The really special feature for us toters is to be able to dine at the half-way house down beside the ninth green.

Naturally, Jack designed his course, and judging by the little pavilion set above the pond by the ninth green and completely surrounded by water, I would guess that Jack was influenced by courses he had seen in Japan. With beautiful foliage and water packed with begging carp, it was a wonderful way for us porters to eat lunch, compliments of Jack, in a very soothing atmosphere.

The course is, as you would expect, of the highest standard. Muirfield Village, like so much of America, is a little bit of everything that Jack has developed an affection for throughout 50 years of golfing travels.

Muirfield Village, Dublin, Ohio: call it what you like - eclectic, mish mash, the best of both worlds or confused - it is still very true to America.