The One-Armed Bandits

The Old Course at Ballybunion is perhaps the most famous of the championship links in the south west of Ireland, and it is without doubt one of the country's best layouts.

Unlike so many of the toughest coastal courses, The Old Course is relatively straight forward off the tee, but there is a very high premium on approach shots. Small, irregularly shaped greens that often hide devilish pin positions will decide the success of your round. Undulating fairways and a mixture of contour changes make club selection to these small greens even more difficult. It certainly tightened Stewart Cink's game up in the week preceding the Open Championship at Turnberry. He went over to the Ayrshire coast and played beautifully throughout the four days, finally overcoming Tom Watson in a playoff to lift the Claret Jug.

The second stands out as a particularly tough hole. Its 394 yards play more like 450 when you factor in the climb up to the green. The fairway is reasonably generous but finding the left half makes for a more favourable approach. The green slopes from back to front and must be found in regulation if you are to have any hope of making par. Penal bunkering and unforgiving run-off areas make it an almost impossible job to rescue a four after a stray approach. My good friend Tom Whelan recently invited me down to play during his visit over from Washington for the member guest. To say I was confident of victory in a one-off bout over 18 holes would be an understatement. But after he rolled in a 12 foot putt for the most textbook of birdies on this unmerciful hole, I knew I was in for a tough day. It proved to be very tough, and I was eating my words on the 16th green.

However this was a match within a match, because Tom and I were also playing betterball against the renowned 'One-Armed Bandits'. For those of you that have not yet lost money to this duo of sandbaggers, the pairing consists of Joe Guerin (past captain of Ballybunion) and Graeme Dawson (golf and leisure sales manager at the Fairmont St Andrews). Both play without the aid of a left arm, and use a combination of prosthetic and home-manufactured gadgets to devastating effect.

After an unlikely series of dove-tailing, Tom and I managed to find ourselves still in the game and only 1-down on the 14th tee. After a wayward 9-iron and a skulled chip I found myself in a not-so-pleasant spot in the first cut of rough to the left of the green. Somehow the ball found the bottom of the cup with my third shot, and Joe missed an eight foot birdie putt after a beautiful approach. This was to prove a turning point, and the One-Armed Bandits knew they still had a game on their hands.

After a few out-of-character holes where I almost resembled a 5 handicap golfer, we stood all square on the final hole. The 18th at Ballybunion is one of those holes that looks relatively straightforward, a medium length par four that doglegs uphill and to the left, but again the difficulty is in the approach. As I waded about in tangly rough for the next 360 yards, Tom and Graeme both played two fine shots to find themselves 30 feet from the hole. My partner shook off the yips to make par, leaving Graeme a birdie putt for the win. Bearing in mind this is a guy that in his prime held the amateur course record at Shinnecock Hills and reached the latter stages of matchplay at the Scottish Amateur, we would have been very content at this point to walk away with a halved match. However when the first putt came up a good four feet short, our eyebrows almost touched our fastly receeding hairlines. Joe gave a rye smile, knowing that his rock solid partner was merely toying with us wannabe hustlers. But with the clubhouse looking on, and the fear of spoiling their unblemished career record, the ball didn't even threaten the hole.

By all accounts, we finished celebrating this most unlikely of victories 12-18 hours later. Tom and I may not be scratch golfers, but we are major championship contenders when it comes to drinking Guinness. Ballybunion is full of fantastic bars, but be sure to have a bite to eat in McMunns and then walk around the corner for a few jars in Mikey Joes. You should also seek out a game with the One Armed Bandits, because they are smarting from their first ever defeat and are perhaps not the impregnable force of days gone by.