Irish Golf attracts 163,000 Visitors

Rays of light over Ceann Sibeal.

Irish Golf may be struggling a bit, with green fees falling across the board, but that only helped to attract golf tourists in 2012. True, the numbers are not quite reaching the dizzying heights of the Celtic Tiger years, but the following link outlines some impressive statistics on spend/satisfaction/repeat business. The research survey was conducted by Failte Ireland, and the link is from the Irish Examiner:

Golf tourism nets €200m from 163k visitors

There's plenty of doom and gloom around, but at least there are some rays of light.

Concra Wood... from the Tips

The par three 12th

Irish golf boasts many great parkland courses and, towards the end of the boom years, three in particular made a big splash: Killeen Castle (Jack Nicklaus), Lough Erne (Nick Faldo) and Concra Wood (Christy O'Connor Snr and Jnr).

And yet, Concra Wood has, to date, not received the credit it deserves.

Irish Golf Gets a Slice of Funky

I have seen a fair number of golf clothing companies promoting their wares on Twitter. Thanks to Just Treats, I have now taken the plunge and bought a pair of trousers from Golf Junkie, that will make my wife weep.

Quiz Time on Irish Golf Courses - The Answers/Winner

Connemara's exceptional par three 13th

Thanks for all the entries to my photo quiz on Irish Golf courses - some intriguing answers.

Several people thought the 1st was a photo of Connemara. With all the exposed rock I can see their rationale. It was The Heath, however, outside Portlaoise.

Only one person - Redhill - identified all 10 photographs. Here are his answers:

Ireland's Golf Gathering 2 - Carlow

The Bunclody clubhouse, behind the 18th green
(taken from their website)

Irish golf continues to promote itself through the 'Gathering'. 171 events are now listed under 'Golf', which is up from 134 when I first posted about it in February. I'm sure there will be more. Carlow has now pushed itself into the fray with the Carlow International Golf Classic. 

It plays like the Challenges I am so fond of promoting. In fact, it is exactly the same. 

Despite living in the next county over I had never heard of it... easily explained by the fact that this existed in a very different guise until this year. Now three of the best courses in the region have come together to offer a three day/three round event. It's something worth talking about.

Inside The Ropes at Co. Louth - Golfers are...

The three names picked are

JCDUB (Boards)
golfwallah (Boards)
seanoneill (Blog)

It's May, so I'm guaranteeing good weather for the round.

St. Andrew's to Play Host to Historic 189-Hole Challenge

Yep, that's 189 holes (11 courses) of golf in a calendar day... playing as a fourball... playing on foot... and playing for charity. Four golfing lunatics have decided to up the ante from 2007 (when three of them played the 10 St. Andrew's courses), as the Castle golf course has since been added.

Quiz Time on Irish Golf Courses - Win Balls

Photos of 10 Irish Golf Courses are shown below. Guess as many as you can, fill in the Comments box at the bottom and whoever gets the most right wins a sleeve of golf balls.