{"id":1072,"date":"2013-08-09T15:29:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T20:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2015-03-17T12:20:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T17:20:47","slug":"carne-a-muscular-links-masterpiece-in-irelands-county-mayo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/1072\/carne-a-muscular-links-masterpiece-in-irelands-county-mayo","title":{"rendered":"Carne: A Muscular Links Masterpiece in Ireland\u2019s County Mayo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very existence of the Carne Golf Links<\/a> in County Mayo, Ireland, came as a surprise to John Garrity <\/a>when he first heard about it in 2002.\u00a0 The American course designer, Jim Engh, told Garrity that Carne came in as a close second to Ballybunion as his \u201cfavorite golf course in the whole world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Garrity was even more astonished to learn that Carne was in Belmullet, a town he had not only visited but honored as the embarkation point for his grandfather\u2019s voyage <\/span>to America in the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0\u00a0 How he had missed discovering Carne was a puzzle Garrity set out to solve during the sojourn he narrates in his wonderful book, Ancestral Links<\/i>, an edifying rumination on the Irish diaspora.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\"County<\/a>

County Mayo. As the locals say, next parish over is Boston.<\/p><\/div>\n

Garrity invited me to join a group of writers on a visit to Belmullet in late July, 2013 to celebrate the opening of nine new holes at Carne.\u00a0 Garrity and several fellow writers arrived in Dublin fresh from witnessing Phil Mickelson\u2019s epic final round at Muirfield, while I came directly to Ireland from Oregon.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been to Ireland many times, but only once before to Mayo, when I had played Ross\u2019s Point and Enniscrone.\u00a0 Carne did not yet exist then, and like most American golfers, I, too, had first learned about Carne by reading Ancestral Links<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tourism Ireland made the arrangements for our group over the next six days, which started with a five hour coach ride from Dublin to Belmullet, interrupted by a stop for a late, long glorious lunch at Mount Falcon<\/a>, the luxury fishing and hunting lodge in the heart of Mayo.\u00a0 Mount Falcon\u2019s proprietor, Alan Maloney, gave us a tour of the property, enlightening us with a narrative of his restoration work on the manor house that\u2019s now the main lodge, built in the 1870s for a newlywed Anglo-Irish couple whose families then owned thousands of surrounding acres. \u00a0A beautiful hand-drawn map of the estate\u2019s vast 19th<\/sup> century holdings discovered in the attic graces the wall of Mount Falcon\u2019s reception hall. <\/span><\/p>\n

Maloney described the endless hours required to strip the window sashes, sills, frames and raised-panel shutters from thick layers of paint, and how all of the original wooden flooring had been numbered and removed so that modern plumbing and wiring could be installed, then laid back down and refinished for a classy rustic look.\u00a0 He added a wing in the style of the original manor to bring the number of rooms up to a level that would make operating the hotel feasible, then added a series of cottages back in the woods beyond the estate\u2019s old stone water tower, providing elegant private lodging for families or small groups.\u00a0 The hotel entry looks out over a helicopter pad and a driving range.<\/span><\/p>\n

MOUNT FALCON<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mount<\/a>

Mount Falcon Manor House<\/p><\/div>\n

Mount Falcon sits on a hill west of the River Moy, Ireland\u2019s premier salmon stream.\u00a0 Mount Falcon \u201cowns the fishing rights on a two mile long double bank stretch just a few miles above the tide,\u201d according to Maloney, who explained that a long dry spell\u2014the same weather pattern that had Muirfield playing during the Open more like a winter day in Scottsdale than a July week in Scotland\u2014had also parched the Moy, leaving thousands of salmon idling up north in the estuary above Ballina, waiting for the rain that would fill the river\u2019s banks so the fish could start their spawning run.\u00a0 The Moy descends from the foothills of Sligo\u2019s mountains, running for sixty-eight shallow rippling miles down to the sea.\u00a0 Unlike their Pacific cousins, which can make migrations of hundreds of miles in river systems like the Columbia back to their spawning grounds and then die, the Irish salmon are “iterorapous,” meaning able to make multiple reproductive trips from their natal rivers to the sea and back.\u00a0 That characteristic makes \u201ccatch and release\u201d the preferred approach to angling on the Moy.\u00a0\u00a0 Be kind to your fine scaly friends; that brad\u00e1n<\/i> may be somebody\u2019s mother.<\/span><\/p>\n

CARNE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The rain the Moy needed started falling the next day, coinciding, of course, with our tee times at Carne.\u00a0 The course was showing the effects of the warm, dry weather. \u00a0It had reached 29 degrees Celsius on four separate days in mid-July, recording what The Irish Meteorological Service projected as the \u201cabsolute maximum temperature\u201d for Belmullet.\u00a0\u00a0 The normal mean daily maximum temperature in July is 17.6, so those mid-July days approaching 30 were very unusual.\u00a0 But when the cool rain did arrive, it helped the Mullet Peninsula revert to its default temperature mode, so we donned the rain gear, opened out the brollies, and started the tramp across Carne\u2019s massive dunes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The 17th: “Garrity’s Dilemma”<\/p><\/div>\n

The fairways were a golden brown, offset by the tea green shoulders of marram-burnished dunes rising above most fairways.\u00a0 The original 18 holes at Carne were designed by Eddie Hackett, the long-time professional at Portmarnock in Dublin and the god-father of modern links golf in Ireland.\u00a0 A picture of Hackett, who helped mid-wife Carne\u2019s birth by offering his services for practically nothing, hangs in the main dining room of the clubhouse.\u00a0 The first nine in Hackett\u2019s design plays through the lower, eastern portions of the site, and with the exception of\u00a0 the second, a par three whose green is partially hidden, the third, a strong par four playing east, and the seventh, an uphill par three with a daunting perched green, the front\u2019s holes play north\/south.\u00a0 Although fun to play and well-placed on the site, Carne\u2019s front nine gives only a hint of the challenge that comes when players move west and up into the back nine. But we didn\u2019t play those first nine holes in our \u201cofficial\u201d opening round, but rather a \u201ccomposite course\u201d combining the back nine of the Hackett course with nine new holes completed over the last two years under the supervision of a young Scottish architect now resident in Dublin named Ally McIntosh.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Hackett had avoided the area where the new holes wind, according to Garrity\u2019s account, because the land was considered too severe.\u00a0 \u00a0But Jim Engh, who is an overseas member at Carne, did a routing plan showing how in principle nine more holes could be built.\u00a0 Although Engh\u2019s routing plan would be significantly modified by McIntosh, it encouraged the club to create its third nine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone who plays Carne notes that the real genius of the place shows best in the original back nine, which ambles across some of the most dramatic dunescapes anywhere in links golf.\u00a0 Most low-lying dune systems are built by the slow accretions of sand deposited by wave action, then shaped by wind and captured by vegetation, particularly the European dune grasses that root deep and spread by sending out aggressive stolons.\u00a0 The shape of these dunes roughly approximates a sine wave, with regular peaks and valleys and long troughs between the ridges.\u00a0 But at Carne, as McIntosh explained at a banquet following the golf, the Dunes are irregular, with tall peaks thrusting above uneven valley floors, and scarcely a flat spot evident anywhere over 300 or so acres.\u00a0 This dune system spreads along the entire western coast of the Mullet Peninsula, but most has now been fenced off and reserved as private pastures, so the wild dunes at Carne are the last primordial links \u00a0around Belmullet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Carne Composite course starts at the Hackett tenth, shown on the card as the first hole.\u00a0 One through seven on the Composite are Hackett\u2019s ten through sixteen.\u00a0 There are two par threes among those first seven holes, both gems tucked into the dunes.\u00a0\u00a0 The Composite fifth tees off with the sea over the golfer\u2019s shoulder.\u00a0 I had the good fortune to play with Alan Maloney of Mount Falcon, who swings a golf club like\u00a0the expert\u00a0fly fisherman he is, and Peter Hynes, an architect who is also the Mayo County Manager.\u00a0 Peter pointed to the islands visible off shore, and narrated the legend of the king\u2019s daughters turned into swans who lived 3oo years\u00a0on Inishglora.\u00a0 The folklore\u2019s complicated, but the splendor of the view is easy to comprehend.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The seventh, a wonderful short par 3 with a green tucked into one of Carne\u2019s hillocks, is the last Hackett hole on the Composite\u2019s front nine.\u00a0 From 8 through 16, we would be playing the McIntosh, or Kilmore 9.\u00a0 Though the turfgrass was spotty, the routing of the Kilmore nestled well into the welcoming arms of its older brother.\u00a0 I will save a fuller critique of the Kilmore for a later post, but I want to compliment Ally and Carne for creating an interesting Composite course that doesn\u2019t obliterate the identity of the original 18, and provides an opportunity for the club to tweak and modify holes which could stand some small improvements while keeping a full 18 always in play.<\/span><\/p>\n

BANQUET\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Surviving the walk was the first accomplishment to celebrate at Carne.\u00a0\u00a0 Even if you hit the ball in the fairway every time, Carne is a\u00a0taxing walk, and if you hook or slice into the dunes,\u00a0some vertical adventures to look for lost balls will add to the challenge.\u00a0 Carne’s a ball-eater,\u00a0but it also\u00a0yields hidden treasures, so\u00a0I began to keep score\u00a0not by strokes but by the number of balls lost and found.\u00a0 I finished\u00a0my first round two down.\u00a0 We were playing a scramble format, a brilliant way to keep the Americans from obsessing over their medal scores.\u00a0\u00a0 One should never keep score on a new course with tight fairways, rough above your waist and precipitous greens anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

We raised a pint of Guinness to celebrate. \u00a0\u00a0The second achievement was staying alive and alert until dinner was served.\u00a0\u00a0 More Guinness helped.\u00a0 A banquet and buffet were scheduled for 7:00, but as our hosts happily pointed out, once off the course our clocks were set to Irish time, meaning the hands were removed from the dial.\u00a0 The sunset was glorious, a citrine glow over the dunes, while the moon lifted above Blacksod Bay.\u00a0\u00a0 The dignitaries gathered, and a \u201cnine-hole\u201d roster of speakers was introduced by our master of ceremonies, accompanied by a suggestion that each hold to brevity in his or her remarks.\u00a0 \u00a0There were local and national politicians among the dignitaries, including Ireland\u2019s Minister of State for Sport and Tourism, the Honorable Michael Ring, and a local Mayor named John O\u2019Malley, famous even among a people known for telling stories as an especially gifted raconteur. \u00a0\u00a0Though the speeches pushed up dinner until after dark, the mood was good and the celebration sincere.\u00a0 What the good folks at Carne accomplished\u2014and especially Eamon Mangan, whose crucial role in Carne\u2019s original creation Garrity narrates in Ancestral Links<\/i>, and whose gentle but firm leadership, mostly in the background, has been crucial to Carne\u2019s existence and survival\u2014with a tiny budget and deep reservoirs of perseverance, to create a world-class golf destination is as miraculous in its way as the tale of the children of Lir and the swans of Inishglora.<\/span><\/p>\n

We spent another full day in Belmullet, learning more about Mayo\u2019s past and its rich and enduring links to America.\u00a0 Just as Garrity had come to Belmullet in search of his ancestors, many \u00e9migr\u00e9s from Mayo, or their descendents, have returned to stay.\u00a0 Among these is Mayor O\u2019Malley, who lived in Cleveland, where he met his late wife and where his children were born.\u00a0 A play performed in the local cultural center the next day illuminated the emotional power of these bonds in song and dance.\u00a0 It was an honor to witness such an affectionate connection of its people to a particular place.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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