FROM THE ARCHIVES:The opening of a new clubhouse for Royal Dublin in 1954 was the occasion for this potted history.
BEHIND THE foundation of almost every golf club in the world you will find a native Scot, or at least somebody of Scottish extraction. Ireland is no exception to this rule, as you will find if you investigate the origins of such famous clubs as Portmarnock, Lahinch, Baltray, Rosses Point and the oldest club in the Republic, Royal Dublin.
The founding Scot in the case of Royal Dublin was the late Sir John Lumsden. Sixty-eight years ago a group of gentlemen interested in the game of “golf” held a meeting in a Grafton street office. A Scottish-born Dublin bank manager, then John Lumsden, moved the foundation of the Dublin Golf Club with the object of fostering the famous Scottish pastime which had already been introduced into Ireland by the officers of the various Scots regiments – notably the Black Watch. It was also suggested that they should throw in their lot with a military club which was already playing over a course in the Phoenix Park.
By the following September of 1886 an 18-hole course had been laid out in the park, and the Dublin club was under way, thus becoming the oldest club in Ireland after Royal Belfast which had been founded four years earlier. Incidentally, the annual subscription in those early days was ten shillings and the professional received a weekly wage of thirty shillings!
But the founders of the Dublin Golf Club were not satisfied with the Park course. They wanted the pleasure of the seaside turf, and after a year or two they migrated to Sutton, and later, in 1889, to a three-miles tract of Sand dunes, the North Bull Island, where the Club has since remained.
Two years later a member of the club, the Rt. Hon. Arthur Balfour, afterwards Lord Balfour of Burleigh, was able to tell his fellow-members that Queen Victoria had approved the change of its name to the Royal Dublin Golf Club. Today’s 6,607 yards 18-hole course is as it was reconstructed after the first world war, during the duration of which it was a military rifle range and training centre.
The course was re-designed, and among the club’s sponsors was Lord Chief Justice Sir Anthony Babbington. He is one of the club’s oldest members, since his connection dates back to 1895, where he joined as a Trinity College student. And let him here be quoted: “I don’t know whether it is the result of old associations or not, but I always thought Dollymount the best course in Ireland.”
From Portmarnock – the St Andrew’s of Irish golf – comes the club’s professional Christy Kane who won the Irish professional title in 1950. But Royal Dublin has a second professional, Bertie Smyth, in whose busy workshop is carried on the manufacture of the justly-famed Fred Smyth golf clubs. Bertie like the late Willie Nolan and one or two other Irish professionals, went to sea for a while before settling down to the game for life, took over this flourishing business from his father.
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