Tim W--
I enjoyed your comments about the Cashen course. My son and I played the course last year in a 40 MPH and loved it. I was very very happy to shoot 88. I remember hitting an 8 iron to a small plateau green (17 ? )and aiming at least 50 yards out over the beach. More americans should give the course a shot.
Since you know the course so well, I have a longwinded story of our round that you might enjoy.
We walked the course with a couple from Texas who had to be in their early 80s. He had been a surgeon and a passoniate golfer, but was now going blind and wanted to make a final trip to Ireland. His wife lined him up on every shot like a LPGA caddie. Given the terrain, and the lining up, this was a very long round. Luckily they were the two nicest people on earth .We had all the time in the world and seemed to be the only people on the course so we helped the two of them around, and up and down, the course.
Toward the end of the round we came to a short downhill par three. After being lined up, the husband hit his shot high in the air and way off to the right and then literally walked off the teebox. The wind somehow carried the ball on to the green and then, given the slope of the green, the ball started rolling toward the hole. The three of us were jumping up and down and yelling at him, but the husband --who was also very hard of hearing--wandered down the path. The ball ended up 3 inches from the cup. He never saw a thing. As we walked to the green he told me he had played for over 50 years and never had a hole in one. When he finally saw where the ball was, he told one look and walked to the next teebox. His wife asked us to putt for a while before we joined him.