Major player enters the market

Philip Reid visits two widely contrasting Midlands developments - The Heritage and Castlecomer - and finds that, while one cost €100m and theother €2.5m, both are courses to be proud of

As one enlightened soul put it, your first reaction after negotiating a couple of miles of narrow country roads and then arriving in the small village of Killenard, Co Laois, where The Heritage golf course is to be found, is likely to be to utter the words, "oh, Jaysus."

This has nothing to do with rediscovering religion, or anything like that, but more to do with the mind-blowing impact of the massive three-storey 38,000 square feet clubhouse that overlooks the Seve Ballesteros signature layout in the heart of what was once rich and fertile pasture land.

You can't miss the clubhouse, dominating as it does the entrance - through a newly-constructed village-style estate of properties - of The Heritage Golf & Country Club, all part of the €100 million investment which has already transformed this once-quiet village into a new mecca of Irish golf.

The package here is an intoxicating one, comprising as it does the course, the clubhouse, a golf academy - the Seve Ballesteros "Natural" Golf School, of course - with indoor and outdoor lawn bowling greens coming on stream, as well as a 150-bedroom hotel and a Wellbeing Resort (or, if you prefer, spa and leisure centre).

To be sure, no stone has been left unturned to make this newest development on the Irish golfing landscape an immediate major player.

The Heritage is the brainchild of Tom Keane, a property developer from Portlaoise who first caught the golfing bug while a member at The Heath. It was while having a social drink with the then professional there, Eddie Doyle, that the idea of constructing a golf course first came up. That was in 1994, but almost six years passed before Keane decided it was time to act.

"Let's do something about it," he told Doyle, and proceeded to buy the 260-acres site in Killenard.

Getting Ballesteros involved in the project was Keane's idea. When he originally sat around the table with his closest advisers, the names of different players they should pursue to design the course were bandied about.

"Why not go for Seve?" asked Keane. "Why not?" his friends agreed.

Contact was made with the Spaniard when he flew in for the 2000 Irish Open in Ballybunion and, later, the men from the Heritage flew out to Spain to meet him. Talks were held, handshakes took place, and last weekend Ballesteros was in the village to see the fruition of his creative mind.

Although it is a Ballesteros signature course, the design was created in partnership with Jeff Howes - who worked with Jack Nicklaus at Mount Juliet and was responsible for upgrading Fota Island - and the result is a course of 7,250 yards off the back tees.

The greens and teeing grounds have been seeded with Bent Grass - a 50/50 mix of Penn A4 and G6 - while the fairways are rye grass and rough fescue. Over 300,000 cubic metres of earth was moved during construction, nine and a half acres of lakes were created and almost 5,000 indigenous Irish trees - oak, ash, birch, beech - were transplanted at a cost of €700,000.

Ballesteros made half a dozen or so visits to the site during the construction, but even he was impressed upon arrival last Friday evening to see the end product.

"It's at the very top level, as good as anything you will find anywhere," he insisted. "I wanted the course to be as natural as possible, and that has been achieved."

Asked if he was concerned modern-day designers were making courses too difficult for the ordinary player, Ballesteros disagreed. "The new technology which golfers are using means we have to make the courses longer. If you look at some courses designed, say, five or eight years ago, some fairway bunkers are already obsolete. This course is right up there with any you will find."

Indeed, the course is impressive; as is everything about the facility that has evolved on this once farmland in Co Laois and which is set to regenerate the area.

"I'd like to think it is going to compare very favourably with Mount Juliet," opined Howes. "Of course, the course will win - but it is not one that will beat a player up so bad he doesn't want to return. People will enjoy it. They will have to think their way around. In this day and age, we're often intimidated by what we see on television but as designers we've deliberately tried to make things more challenging that 15 years ago."

One of the features of the course is the magnificent use of the man-made lakes, which are quite spectacular. The ninth and the 18th holes are mirror images of each other, on either side of the giant five-acre lake that dominates the view from the clubhouse. The ninth is a par four of 444 yards with the water all the way down the left, the 18th a par four of 419 yards with water all the way down the right.

However, the index one is the 12th, another par four of 494 yards (off the back, most will be glad to hear - it is a little more sedate, all of 440 yards off the forward markers) which also has water on the right of the green. Another hole that will definitely capture the imagination is the preceding one, the 11th, which is a driveable par four to a green guarded by six superbly shaped bunkers and an old natural quarry on the right.

Howes, though, has a couple of favourites: the eighth, a par five that gives the player risk-and-reward options, and the 16th, a hole that does not have a single bunker - and there are 98 on the course - and which also possesses the most undulating green on the course. In general, though, the greens are subtle rather than undulating.

"The ethos and the product here is that everything should be top class," explained Eddie Dunne, a former Irish international and captain who is general manager of the complex, adding: "But, also, that everything is relaxed, and people should feel at home."