Hello Mr Muldoon
Thank you for your courteous enquiries.
It was nice to share some time with you. But your recollections or understandings of what I said or meant to convey are not
entirely accurate. I hope that my answers below will clarify matters somewhat.
I'm afraid I am not acquainted with your family although we have lived in the same town for so long. I am a private sort of person and have also been away working a lot doing over 30 course design jobs since 1972 ...and it is just a fact that so few people want you to build a course for them near your own home. My golf-writing involved a lot of travel also.
My primary home is right alongside thesecond green on the old Dun Laoghaire course which is just now being ploughed up for housing,. I will miss the joys of my "loo with a view"
where one could while away part of a Sunday morning on the throne reading a golf book and watching the neighbours suffer with a weird variety of shots to, around and on that second green!
I do hope you visit The European Club again someday and see how it has been evolving. I think you might like some of what you find.
To answer your questions to some extent:
1 the game has changed and the ball is played through the air these days and hence the traditional running ground game is of less importance to the good modern player?
By and large that is obviously right when speaking of the elite players. They seek to overpower the course with A to B and B to C in direct lines being their primary game plan. Of course, when the wind blows everything can change. Also, it is a different game for normal folks and for the older guys like me. So, that is why all my links including The European Club leave the way open to play the running shot. Runners to greens are on here at holes 1, 3, 4, 5,7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 17 ... albeit with some demands on skill ... and I know that is more generous than most of the older links.
2 The distances the modern player hits the ball has radically changed and any new course needs to cope with that?
Any new course which wishes to contend with tournament play or be fit for purpose for tournament play. I have attended big tournaments many times annually since I started as a golf-writer in 1964 and seen over twenty championships played on courses I have designed and it has moved from driver and fairway wood or long iron to a game that is hardly recognisable.
To be great for all golf purposes a modern course needs to be over 7,000-yards. Of course, it must be superbly designed in detail as well. Shorter courses can be good or even great little 'uns but cannot be better than best of own class.
3 You believe a good shot should get a fair reward?
Yes.
4 You have chosen to incorporate features that deceive the golfer and e.g. that “the hungry eye” will lead even the best golfer into making mistakes e.g. the 16th at TEC a dogleg where the green is visible from the tee will fool all too many golfers “even the best guys”?
Yes. This is an old device which can be brought into play in many ways. Bad eyesight, a bad nervous system, animal instinct and greed are all amongst the elements which can cause the player to come to grief.
5 You choose to maintain The European Club with lush green fairways. This means that the ball will not run on landing. This helps to restrict the distance hit and to prevent balls running off into the rough if it lands on the fairway?
Totally incorrect. I favour fast fairways and slopes feeding into hazards but not into rough. We never have lush fairways. They will be green when it rains a lot....as it can do on the Emerald Isle, as you must know, that Emerald Isle name didn't come from outer space.. Besides, we keep them just the greenish side of brown. Of course, the fellow who wants to hit a modern ultra- high ball and have it run when descending in a fairly perpendicular parabola can't expect it to run forever.
6 Your courses highlight elevation change and do not rely on a lot of the micro undulation that typify older links courses? This does allow the player to hit their normal shot if they are on the fairway. The challenge is mainly to play the wind and the elevation changes highlight the difficulty of getting this right?
I wouldn't see things like that. A lot of guys who find themselves having to play sidehill, downhill and uphill stances on my courses wouldn't think so either. But this whole issue, the relationship between striking position and target, could occupy a book in itself.
7 You talk a lot about wind and its effect on the high ball that golfers hit today. I remember you talking about you wanting to add a back tee at 17th TEC and how you came to decide to make it higher as the hole plays into the prevailing wind and you wanted to give a sense of uncertainly about if and where the ball would ever land?
Close but not complete memory. Without going too deep into my thinking, which is my main "tool in trade" and not something I necessarily want to expound on here, it is obvious that the golf ball spends over 98% of its time in the air and the condition of the air and the inter action between it and the ball decides most of one's golfing fate.
8 You place a premium on accuracy and hitting the fairways? Frequently at the edge of the fairways the contour will change abruptly via a dune and this wil be covered with thick rough. I cannot recall any significant use of ‘semi-rough’?
It would be a travesty if the player who sprays the ball all over the place should win. Do you think? Contrary to your memory we have dune bases shaven at holes 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 17 and 18 which help to direct balls back to safety. Our fairways are in the main very wide now, except in the eyes of the sprayer of shots. Harrington and McIlroy won championships here without any bad experiences. Our high-handicap members enjoy life too.
9 One of your favourite means of defending the green is to raise it above the level of the fairway (or to introduce a valley just in front) and to place a single bunker into the face of the upslope; in this way you encourage the aerial approach?
Not true. We have relatively flat or very flat to fairway approaches on holes 4,5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 16. Of course we have swales and dips despite being perceived as flat! I'm glad someone noticed we aren't all flat!
10 Your greens tend not to feature significant amounts of internal contouring?
Not so. What I said is that even a blind man can see those modern 6-foot sweeps and read the green accordingly. More subtle slopes can test the eyes more. That said ... we have absolutely no flat greens and I would think that we are very lively in parts of greens 1, 3 (wow), 4, 8 (wow), 9, etc etc.
11 The three main courses I’m basing this on TEC, Sandy Hills and Galshedy are all on ‘extreme’ duneland and so some of what I have observed is based on your response to the land available to you. However I can’t recall (m)any blind shots EXCEPT where the player has driven to a particular part of the fairway (usually the wrong part). I.e. you have rejected the blindness still so often seen on older links e.g. RCD.?
Blind golf isn't nice for a person playing a course for the first time. No good saying its not blind second time around because the world travelling golfer may not get back to many courses a second time! Blind golf is dangerous on the modern busy golf course with a growing number of impatient and reckless players. Of course, a degree of blindness can be exciting but it is not good in excess.
12. You also make a point of singling out the”non thinking” golfer (I hope I have your terminology correct). Do you see thse golfers at all levels because in my experience the people who like The European Course are low handicappers?
I don't know how extensive is your knowledge of those who play at The European Club. All that I can say is that if it were true that it is only the people who are low handicappers who like The European Club links I would be a very poor man now that we are 18-years open for play! Low handicappers are not always big spenders! In the chests of most average golfers beat the hearts of lions. But there are some wimpish chaps about, too, who wish that the fairway was thirty yards to the left on one hole and forty yards to the right on the next hole.
I think that answers your questions. I hope you find them elucidating to some small degree. I will not take supplementary questions on an open forum such as this.
I have spent many years working-up my thoughts on golf and I will share many of them in some books up ahead. This isn't meant to be big-headed .... but there is no imperative that any artist or workman should have to reveal all the secrets of his trade to all-comers no matter how charming they may be.
Nor do I wish to discuss my financial affairs here no more than you might like to discuss yours here. Suffice it to say that we are doing nicely and have achieved my objective: Create a golf course of my own, make it as good as I can, enjoy studying it (only 24-years at the task come June this year, so we are just beginning), have it pay for itself with a bit to spare (it does that), do not crowd the place and so take much of the enjoyment out of the game as is the way at so many places which see golf purely as a business (nothing wrong about that for them but it isn't how I want it), make sure that I and my family and members enjoy it. Anyone else who comes along is welcome providing they come in peace. We do not have security at the gate to keep people out ..or in. We do not demand networking to secure a game on our links. That is the Irish way: Welcoming of polite and considerate people. We would hope that visitors enjoy their experience here and we make them welcome as I did you and others. If they don't like it or us we would hope they would go away rejoicing that they have about 30,000 other courses to play on without having to worry about me or bother me....so, the odds are heavily in their favour, or maybe not if they are unhappy folk anyway. Thankfully most people we meet are happy as they come and seem happy with their time here.
Come calling again. We'll have a chat,
Pat Ruddy