Or at least some of it. Here's an article I was subbing - the unedited version...
PADRAIG Harrington is teeing-up for a new challenge - his first
attempt at golf course design.
Harrington, winner of the Irish Open at Adare Manor last Sunday week and currently eleventh in the world rankings, has signed up to design a new championship standard parkland course in the village of Marfield, just outside Clonmel.
To be known as The Marlbrook, the course, located on the magnificent and historic 400-acre Marfield Estate in the very heart of the famed Golden Vale, will measure over 7,000 yards and, while not due to officially open until the spring of 2010, has a provisional par of 71.
Harrington admits to being more than a little excited about the venture.
"This, to me, is a really a hobby, a true labour of love," he said at yesterday's unveiling.
"Over the years I have had perhaps 30 offers to get involved in golf course design and I've passed on every one ... until now.
"I've been looking for the perfect location for my first golf course
design venture and I feel I have found it at The Marlbrook, with its beautiful specimen trees and superb views of the River Suir, and I know we can create something special.
"Certainly for four or five years I have been looking for the right
opportunity. I like the idea of designing a course and I genuinely see it as an enjoyable pastime, a hobby more than anything else.
"I'm looking forward to testing a few ideas out and seeing if they work. The philosophy is that it should be challenging for the good golfer and playable for the average one - and not possible for the high handicapper.
"That's a pretty lofty aspiration, I admit, because it's easy to
design a golf course that is difficult for everybody. This is my first course and, if I don't get it right, it will be my last.
"The first one has to be as good as it can be. I've been selective all along in what I was prepared to look at, but I really think I have found what I was looking for at The Marlbrook.
"I have always felt that courses should have shelter, and with the Comeragh Mountains running all along one side, we certainly have that, and then we have the River Suir bordering the entire course on the other side.
"The shelter should ensure that the majority of the course, even in the worst of conditions, will be an enjoyable place to be out on.
"The site is absolutely perfect. A lot of it, as I've said, is well
sheltered and it has a lot of rolling hills and undulations. There are a lot of elevations in it, too, and a lot of mature trees.
"This will be very much a club orientated undertaking, geared towards the membership and with a real club atmosphere.
"There is property development with it that will obviously go a good way towards paying for it, but it's all more to do with having a sustainable and viable golf course that is going to be there forever," said Harrington.
He does, though, have a bit of a sting in his architectural tail. What is his aim as regards putting his signature on The Marlbrook so golfers will say 'That's a Harrington course'?
"To fool people into playing where they think is the safe place and then have them find out that it's worse than where they thought the danger was," he said.