An Irishman's Diary

My father hated golf. It was probably the one four-letter word not accepted in our house.

His hatred (and there is no other word) was political. In Castlerea, Co Roscommon, where he worked as a young man, only "big shots" played golf. And while in principle "anyone" could join the club, in fact it was the preserve of the local bourgeoise and allied professionals, such as the doctor, the lawyer, the priest. Associated women had their place too, on Wednesdays.

Membership was by selection and there was a fee. This intimidated "outsiders" possessed of vaulting ambition but little else (not least in the skint Forties and bare Fifties).

Those years and their associated "golfereens" (pronounced with a slow, snarling, sarcastic sneer) formed my father's attitude to the game which he saw not as a sport but as a self-conscious statement of social superiority by those determined to preserve a form of apartheid.

War was inevitable

So when he bought land alongside the golf course in Ballaghaderreen in the 1970s, war was inevitable, even though that the social construct of membership there was altogether more egalatarian than ever was the case in Castlerea. It too, however, included the lawyer, the doctor, the priest.

He did not buy the land with war in mind. It just came on the market and had originally been part of an estate which at one time included the golf course.

So he had certain rights of way.

These were a source of endless delight to him - not least as he marched his cattle down past the clubhouse along a grassy margin fenced off from immaculate greens by three rows of harmless-looking wire.

Another source of satisfaction was one of his fields. It cut a "V" between greens. It had a hedge which golfers had difficulty hacking over and which frequently meant the ball fell into his field.

This set up many a moment of truth for the golfers. They had to decide whether they had the courage to risk trespassing on my father's land or if they should leave well enough alone.

Most left well enough alone.

After all, why take risks with a man who had threatened to sue the club when he discovered the plastic covering on hay-bales in his field had been perforated? A man who, when told the holes had probably been pecked by crows, asked "And when did crows start wearing spikes?" A man who had remarked to one large lady member, after she complained one of his heifers had damaged a green, that if he had a heifer the size of her he would be happy?

It meant my father was frequently in possession of myriad golf balls from that field, which largesse he distributed like a latter-day Robin Hood among younger golfers whose political pedigree was of the right hue.

The war went on. He had a red cow. The leader of the pack. He had her for years and we called her "Prugeen". She hummed while being milked. She was also "a thief" and would lead the others on grand tours of the local highways and byways "thieving" the grassy margins.

To stop this, my father tied her front leg with a rope which was then twisted around one of her horns. It was an old country method. Sickened by my father's endless delight in exercising his rights (of way), the local doctor/golfer reported him for cruelty to animals.

Douglas Hyde

What had been merely a conventional war threatened to become nuclear.

It extended to certain pubs in the town where my father and the doctor's paths crossed, crossly. It might even have descended into sectarianism as the doctor was a member of the Church of Ireland, but was saved from that abyss by my father's respect for the memory of Douglas Hyde, an eminent local member of that church.

Hyde was the founder, in 1893, of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), and my father was a fervent member. Hyde was also one of the few people - on either side of the grave - my father admired without qualification.

There were other interesting episodes, not least when my father discovered old deeds which proved he had a right of way down the very middle of the golf course itself. His joy was unconfined, as consternation set in at the clubhouse.

This led to a rapprochement of sorts as the golf club offered to construct a proper right of way for him with proper gates at the end. My father, it seems, was mellowing and the complexion of the golf club was changing.

Opinion of in-laws

Still, at home golf was a no-no. That my uncle Tom Rogers should, around then, become president of the Golfing Union of Ireland simply confirmed my father in his opinion of his in-laws which, as with all his relatives, was never high.

And my brother Declan began to play golf. For many years this fact was in the family closet, another of our skeletons. My father did not know. No one would tell him. The import of my brother's apostasy was too great.

So widely understood was this in the family that whenever Declan had a row with his little daughter Niamh she would threaten the ultimate - "I'm going to tell Granda you play golf". She never did.

No one did. He found out through the Roscommon Herald. Declan won a competition and it appeared in the paper's "Ballaghaderreen Notes". We all stood back waiting for the deluge, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. It was then it dawned on us that our father's attitude to golf had undergone a fundamental shift.

A revolution had taken place and we hadn't noticed. Golf, it now seemed, was just a game. It was for everyone, even family. It wasn't socio-political any more.

Not that he ever played, or is likely to now. He died two years ago next Friday, my mother's birthday, stealing the limelight to the last.