With angry Atlantic breakers crashing off the cliff face in gale-force winds of 60 m.p.h., it hardly seemed ideal weather for a helicopter ride. Still, the opportunity of seeing the Old Head of Kinsale from the air last Wednesday was too good to miss.

As it happened, the craft, a six-seater Augusta 109, was remarkably stable. So, thoughts of a mouth-covering brownpaper bag never crossed my mind as we swooped over the famous promontory. There was a perfect view of the new green at the fourth and mounding for the final routing of the majestic 17th. And there was the new, raised tee at the long 12th, as recommended by David Duval, one of six celebrated visitors last July.

But the exercise had more serious intent than sightseeing, delightful though that was. In fact it was a rehearsal for the introduction of so-called Heligolf to this country.

Having experienced Heli-sking in Canada, John O'Connor, who owns the Old Head with his brother Patrick, felt it was ideally suited to golf. "The way it works in Canada is that you stay in a remote lodge in the Rockies and are then ferried by chopper to the top of a mountain," he said. "After skiing down the slope, the chopper then picks you up at the bottom."

O'Connor is to lease the £1.5 million helicopter, along with a rota of pilots, for operation at the Old Head starting next April. It will be based either at the club or at Cork Airport from where clients will be ferried wherever they wish.

Essentially, it is a response to upwards of 100 helicopter flights into the Old Head during the golfing season recently ended. Among those was a flight last July involving financiers Dermot Desmond and J P McManus with golfers Tiger Woods, Duval, Mark O'Meara, Lee Janzen, Stuart Appleby and the late Payne Stewart.

It will mean reducing a 40-minute road trip from Cork Airport to six minutes, while clients can then fly on to Shannon in 20 minutes, or to Waterville in 30 minutes and Killarney in 20 minutes. Portmarnock can be reached in an hour.

"I have no doubt it will be cost-effective," said O'Connor, who plans to charge his clients £1,000 per hour for the privilege. "It will enhance the whole experience of playing the Old Head, given that people are already gob-smacked when they first see the place by road."

There are other ambitious plans for a venue which has already gained enormous popularity among tourists, especially from the US. Green-fee income this year was in excess of £1.5 million and the intention is to increase charges from £90 to £120 next season.

Meanwhile, O'Connor is expecting planning permission shortly for a £15 million five-star hotel and apartments to be built on the Old Mill site, on the quayside at Kinsale. And the prospective travel arrangements there? To bring clients to the Old Head by sea, naturally.

"We all make the mistake of trying to hit the ball."

- Eddie Keher, one of my all-time favourite hurlers, talking this week about the difficulty of adjusting to golf, which he plays off 13.

Nothing is going to alter the composition of the top-50 in the World Rankings between now and the end of the year. Which means that two very interesting things have happened. Padraig Harrington, at 50th, has qualified for next season's US Masters and Bernhard Langer has dropped down to 51st.

Langer's demotion will not affect his Augusta plans, given his status as a twice former champion. But it means he has lost the distinction of being the only remaining player to have been ever-present in the top-50, since the ranking system was introduced in April 1986 when, incidentally, he was number one.

Up to two months ago, he shared the ever-present distinction with Greg Norman. That was when the Shark dropped out of the top-50, leaving the German standing alone. Now, Langer, with a points average of 3.06 has gone too, because of Harrington who, on 3.07 points, edges him out by the narrowest of margins.

The Little Putter Boy gives Pinehurst No 2 one of the most appealing logos among American venues. But Michael Smurfit Jnr was moved by far more than visual appeal when he paid £9,000 in a charity auction last Monday for the 18th-hole flag from this year's US Open. It was signed by the champion, Payne Stewart, who, sadly, is no longer with us.

The circumstances of the flag-signing were recounted in these pages by George Kimball, in his regular Thursday column. The American writer explained how Stewart gladly agreed to do it after the second round of the British Open at Carnoustie last July. Three months later, he was killed in an air crash.

Now, having been donated by Kimball, the signed flag is expected to become a prime exhibit in the "Legends' Room" at The K Club. And six years hence, it will remain a poignant reminder of one of America's best-loved golfers, when the 2005 Ryder Cup is staged there.

Another notable golfing lot at the same auction was bought by J P McManus for £4,500. This was the last of 10 Ryder Cup bags owned by Christy O'Connor Snr; the one he used for the matches at Muirfield in 1973. And it contained a limited-edition set of irons which were produced specially for the staging at Valderrama two years ago.

"I've had that bag for 25 years, since Christy gave it to me," said Cecil Whelan, the indefatigable honorary secretary of the Links Golfing Society. With the help of Bill Cullen and Norma Smurfit among others, Whelan organised the Renault Sports Awards Dinner at the Burlington Hotel.

The event raised £150,000 for the Irish Youth Foundation. And after what was probably the most illustrious gathering of sports and entertainment celebrities ever seen in this country, Whelan insisted that "not one penny" was paid by way of inducement. Which made his achievement truly staggering.

These end-of-century lists are fascinating, if only by way of illustrating the bias which afflicts sports followers everywhere. And since the Golf Magazine lists are American, it is hardly surprising, for instance, to find only two outsiders among the top-10 ranked amateurs since 1900.

The list is: 1 Bobby Jones; 2 Tiger Woods; 3 Jack Nicklaus; 4 Harold Hilton (England); 5 Jerry Travers; 6 Walter Travis (Australia); 7 Lawson Little; 8 Chick Evans; 9 Harvie Ward; 10 Frank Stranahan.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the list is that Woods is preferred to Nicklaus on the basis of six USGA titles - three Junior and three Amateur - before he turned professional as a 20-year-old. Nicklaus won the US Amateur as a 19-year-old in 1959 and again in 1961, when he was 21.

But their Walker Cup records are rather different. On his lone appearance in 1995 at Royal Porthcawl, Woods won two and lost two whereas Nicklaus, under a different format in 1959 and 1961, won all four of his matches. Neither player, however, could rival the record of Jones at this level. In 10 matches from 1922 to 1930, he won nine and lost only one - a foursomes against Michael Scott and Robert Scott Jnr in New York in 1924.

Meanwhile, the list says of Ward that he was "unbeatable for a couple of years in the mid-1950s." Which is to conveniently overlook his defeat by Joe Carr in the final of the British Amateur at Hoylake in 1953.

This day in golf history . . . On December 11th 1945, Johnny Bulla, a tournament professional and a licensed pilot, bought a passenger airplane and began flying fellow professionals around the US circuit. A year later, he succeeded in persuading Sam Snead to compete in the British Open at St Andrews. Snead won and Bulla, who is believed to be the first right-handed professional to putt left-handed, was second.

Teaser: A and B are partners in a fourball match. By mistake, A putts B's ball and A is disqualified for the hole under Rule 30-3d for playing a wrong ball. B replaces his ball as required by Rule 30-3d and holes his putt. The opponents then claim that B also is disqualified for the hole under Rule 30-3f ("If a player's breach of a Rule assists his partners's play . . . . ") because A's act of putting B's ball assisted B in determining how much his putt would break, etc. Is the claim valid?

Answer: No. Rule 30-3d specifically provides that B incurs no penalty. Rule 30-3f is not applicable.