Eire We Go Again

The bride and I are on the ground in Ireland and struggling to make it through that dreadful first day.  It's like a Monday on steroids....  But we arrived safely, on-time and with all of our bags intact.  Plus a nice note from the TSA.  So thoughtful, but they really shouldn't have.  OK, our phones didn't work, but not like that's never happened before.

I've at long last convinced Theresa that the only logical way to spend the day of arrival is...never saw this one

A Foggy Day in Dublin Town...

coming....to play golf.  It being a golf trip and all... Not serious golf, mind you, but fresh air and physical activity of the moderate persuasion being helpful to the task of making a reasonable bed time.  So something not too taxing, expensive or far fits the bill, and Lowell had one at the ready. Specifically Seapoint Golf Club, adjoining the renown and Friday-booked County Louth Golf Club, d/ba/a Baltray.

A perfectly fine day in these here parts, with just the proverbial wee breeze.  Seapoint opened as a bit of a muddle, hard to define and surprisingly unlinsky given its neighbor.  On an early short Par-4 is a feature with the reed-out -of-the-water look more typical to the South Carolina lowlands.  And mu ch more water in play than I've ever seen.

We teed off shortly after a foursome of men and moved at a leisurely pace.  There was a bit of waiting on

A credible bunker escape though, alas, not my first bunker on this hole.

shots now and again, but they were moving consistently well for a four-ball, obviously not their first loop at the joint.  Our golf wasn't horrible either, though Theresa's dealing with some kind of muscle issue around her rib-cage.  Timing, eh?  The links was built in the 1990's and as is typical the ninth hole returns to the clubhouse.  She availed herself of the option to not push it and I dumped her clubs in the car and hustled back to meet her on the tenth tee.  

I should note at this point that the course routing meanders back and forth towards the water, the closer to which we got the more linksy it became.  We closed to the group ahead and as we walked through some dunes onto the 13th tee, that fourball was only now clear to hit.  offered to let me play through, but where was I going?  One of them suggested I play along, and that's a bigger thing than you might realize.  Some of our most prized moments are those inadvertent times we actually get to tag along with the indiginous golfer, genus and phylum Eurus Golfeus.

In any event, I watch them tee it up and two of the four just bomb it out there, and the other two could also

It's different here.

play.  The oldest of the four is a character named Noel, who plays a nice consistent fade that repeats, not a bad thing on a firm track.  Alan is the other non-bomber, but hits it long and straight enough to be annoying.  Alan tells me he and Gary are struggling at two-down.  As Jared was throwing up the birds, that proved to be a bridge too far.

That Gary was bombing the ball shouldn't have been a surprise, as he's this guy, Euro Tour player and all.  Noel, meanwhile, is grabbing my camera to take pictures of T and I, and at one point insists that I show him how to take video.  Here's Noel the auteur in action:

I didn't get a photo of Gary, but that's him at the start of the video.  As you can see, the final holes along the water were quite spectacular.  A huge dune ran down the right side, and the tees, fairways and greens were nestled between the dunes.  It would be hard to mess up the architecture there, and they didn't.

Looking back at the Par-3 seventeenth.

The Par-5 eighteenth is a double-dogleg along the duneline.

Theresa with Noel and Jared.

A delightful chance encounter with wonderfully-welcoming and helpful folks.  After saying our goodbyes, on the walk to the car Theresa noted, "Well, someone really stepped up their game."  Indeed I had played quite well in their company, including a couple of suitably-linksy knockdown shots.  Of course those will be long gone when next we play, but the "Praise from Caesar" was enjoyable all the same.