34 minute read
Sugar Daddies of the PGA Tour
By DANIEL RAPAPORT • Illustrations by MICHAEL BYERS
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THE DIAGNOSIS, AWFUL AS IT WAS, CAME AS NO SURPRISE. JOEL DAHMEN HAD GONE INTO THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE FEARING THE WORST, AND THAT’S WHAT THE SCANS SHOWED: THE LUMP IN HIS SCROTUM WAS CANCER. FREAKIN’ CANCER. AGAIN.
When Dahmen was in high school, he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. Four years later, his older brother, Zach, overcame testicular cancer. Now at 23 years young and nursing a fledgling professional golf career, it was Joel’s turn to fight this dreaded disease, and he didn’t even have health insurance.
So he called Uncle Bob. Bob Yosaitis is not really Dahmen’s uncle. They had known each only four years, having crossed paths during a practice round for the 2007 Washington State Amateur. Yosaitis was caddieing for his son that week; Dahmen won the tournament by six. Two years later, when Dahmen decided to turn pro with no money and no clue where to start, Uncle Bob agreed to sponsor him. The relationship blossomed into something quasi-familial. With Dahmen facing the challenge of his life, he knew who to call. When Uncle Bob picked up, Joel was in tears. “I was in shock,” Yosaitis says. “I told the doctor, I want you to operate on Joel right away. The doctor said there was no insurance to cover it. So I said, ‘Here’s my credit-card number. Operate on him.’ ”
Nine years later, now healthy and an established PGA Tour player, Dahmen looks back at the day his golf sugar daddy came into his life with profound gratitude. “There’s probably a big word that’s perfect to describe it,” he says, “but all I got is lucky. Super, super lucky. Changed my life.”
THE WEALTHY BACKER For every Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm or Collin Morikawa—No. 1-ranked amateurs who bypassed the mini-tours and secured a PGA Tour card within months of turning professional—there are a thousand Joel Dahmens. Guys with dreams of playing for millions, and maybe even the game to get there, but without the money to bankroll the journey.
That journey, for all but a select few, is distinctly unglamorous. For a young $100,000 eighth-place check.)
No two deals are alike, and each investor has a reason for striking such a high-risk proposition. For Yosaitis, it was about helping someone he cared about. A former jet-fuel trader based out of Hawaii, he sold his business to Ross Aviation for a lucrative sum in 2008. “I’ve been fortunate in life, and I have a fair amount of money,” Yosaitis says. “I never looked at [the deal with Dahmen] as making money. The agreement was, I’ll give you the money you need, and hopefully you can do well enough to repay me. And if you don’t do well enough to repay me, I’ll have helped you out.”
That was it. No documents. No strings attached. Yosaitis wired Dahmen $15,000 to kick-start his career. “A pipe dream at the time,” Dahmen says.
In the first half-decade after he turned pro, Dahmen played mini-tour events and spent his summers on the PGA Tour Canada. He played 10 events up north in 2010 and made $11,742. Then came the cancer, which he caught early but required expensive chemotherapy. In six Canadian Tour events in 2011, Dahmen made $11,225. He failed to break the $12,000 barrier again in 2012. Then something clicked in 2013 ($22,528), and the breakthrough came the next year when he won the tour’s Order of Merit to get his Web.com Tour card.
During those lean years, between golf expenses and chemotherapy treatment, Yosaitis estimates he spent more than $250,000 supporting Dahmen.
“Eventually,” Yosaitis says with a laugh, “I just said, ‘Look, Joel, just take my credit card.’ I’m too busy to be worrying about every time you call me up asking me to write a check. I said charge whatever you want.”
Dahmen got his PGA Tour card for the 2016-’17 season by the slimmest of margins, finishing 25th on the Web.com Tour money list and beating unlucky No. 26, Xander Schauffele, by $975. Four
pro without status on a major tour or significant cash in the bank, the expenses add up frighteningly fast. There are entry fees, hotels, rental cars and, for the more formal events, caddies. Add it up and chasing the dream can cost north of $50,000 a year. It’s one thing if you know you will get starts on the PGA Tour or European Tour, where a top-10 finish can net you $100,000. Or if you’re an AllAmerican whose agent negotiated three endorsement deals you signed the day you turned pro. But if you are someone like Dahmen, who flunked out of the University of Washington in his self-proclaimed “young and dumb” days? Good luck getting a sponsor’s exemption or a company to pay you substantial cash to wear its logo. With virtually no guaranteed income on the horizon, where is that 50 grand going to come from?
From rich people, of course. Golf has no shortage of them, and there is a history of wannabe pros finding a wealthy benefactor to grubstake the chase. Sometimes it’s a group of investors, maybe members of the same club, that all chip in money. However, this story will focus on the idiosyncratic one-onone sponsorship deals.
Perhaps the most successful example of such an arrangement dates to the 1930s, when Marvin Leonard, a wealthy Texan in the department-store business, agreed to bankroll a young local club pro named Ben Hogan. Though these small-time deals might seem charmingly anachronistic in the big business of modern professional golf, they are not. They might be less common today than they were in the days of Mr. Hogan, but they still happen. Take Tony Finau. When he was a 17-year-old phenom in Utah, he gave up his amateur status when a local businessman offered to pay his $50,000 entry fee into the Ultimate Game, a made-for-TV event in Las Vegas that paid a $2-million grand prize. (Finau and the businessman settled for a
years later, Dahmen is No. 62 in the world and has made more than $6.3 million playing on the PGA Tour. And still, Uncle Bob will not profit a single penny.
Uncle Bob is the exception. In almost every one of these deals, there’s at least some profit motive for the investor. Help someone and make money from it. It’s a gamble, for sure, but a potentially lucrative one.
Seeing as he loves a wager, Tim Jackson figured he’d roll the dice. “I used to be a bookie,” Jackson says. “When I told my wife I was gonna [start a book], she ’bout damn had a heart attack. It did not go over very well at home. But we did it for 12 years, and we had a pretty good-size operation. We handled anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 a weekend just on Alabama football. Had three 800-numbers, all that.”
Eventually, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the FBI got word of Jackson’s venture. After he and his partner were charged with a misdemeanor in 2002, Jackson moved on to the usedcar business in Pell City, Ala., where his son became best friends with a promising junior named Will Wilcox.
Now 34, Wilcox is far enough removed from his tumultuous youth that he is able to laugh about it. He started his college golf career on “a full ride” at University of Alabama-Birmingham, where his mom was the head coach of the women’s golf team. It started well enough until it went south in a hurry.
“I got in a lot of trouble at UAB. A whole gauntlet of trouble. Two DUIs,” Wilcox says, pronouncing the serious offense as dewey. “I was going down to Tuscaloosa, to the University of Alabama, at night. Wild scene. I was in jail for a while, so that was not a good way to attack Division I golf. I got kicked off the team. I tried to get into the military, but they said no. So I went to Clayton State.”
He became a three-time All-Amer-
ican there. But Clayton State is a small Division II school, and being a threetime All-American at Clayton State does not afford you the same opportunities as a three-time All-American at Oklahoma State. Wilcox signed a modest, incentive-based deal with Cleveland/Srixon Golf when he turned pro, but that was not going to be enough to fund a full season of mini-tour events. So he turned to Mr. Jackson with a proposal.
“They asked me if I would be interested in getting a group of investors to back Will to get onto the PGA Tour,” Jackson says. “I said, ‘No,’ and they looked at me kinda funny. Then I said, ‘That’s cuz I wanna do it all myself.’ ”
The initial deal, codified in pencil on the back of a manila envelope, was for eight years. In the first four, Jackson would cover all of Wilcox’s expenses— travel, food, caddie, everything—and he would receive 70 percent of the money Wilcox won up to $50,000; Wilcox would keep 60 percent of what he made past $50,000. After four years, Jackson would not have to put up a single dollar, and he would receive 9 percent of Wilcox’s winnings. This story has a happy ending: Wilcox eventually made it to the PGA Tour, and Jackson recouped his money and more, but like 99 percent of pro golfers, it wasn’t money-spinning from the start. Jackson was covering about $65,000 a year in expenses, and Wilcox’s winnings hadn’t yet caught up.
“I remember about six months into it, he called me,” Wilcox says. “He was like, ‘Hey, Willy, I’m down 14 grand,’ That hit me hard. To me, at that point, $14,000 was like a million bucks. After that, I won a couple events for $40,000 on the Hooters Tour. Then we started rolling.”
Four years after turning pro, Wilcox got his PGA Tour card for the 2013-’14 season. Remember, after year four of the initial deal, Jackson would receive 9 percent of Wilcox’s winnings without having to put up a single dollar. So just as Jackson was off the hook, Wilcox started playing for big boy money.
“When I was on tour, we’d just be drinking nice bottles of wine and laughing about the money we were making. He used to bet on me 8-to-1 for top 10s a lot, and one time I hit a couple straight, so he was also making a ton of money off of that.” A wager on top of a wager. much family to me as anyone has.”
Wilcox and Jackson recently agreed on a similar deal for the coming years, giving Wilcox the financial cushion he needs to focus on getting his game back. The plan? “Suck less.”
FEWER MINI-TOUR OPTIONS Every caddie has a story to tell, but Jhared Hack’s has to rank in the top 1 percent. At one point or another during his loops at Shadow Creek, the Tom Fazio course in Las Vegas that doubles as a high-roller hangout, the conversation veers toward his golf history.
“When I tell them I won the Western Amateur, they usually think that’s pretty cool,” says Hack, 31, who is certainly not a hack. He was just 17 when he won the Western in 2007. “I beat Rickie Fowler in the second round of match play and Dustin Johnson in the third round.”
Fourteen years later Dustin Johnson is the reigning Masters champion and the No. 1 player in the world, and Rickie Fowler is in every golf commercial ever created with nearly $40 million in career earnings. Yet the guy who beat them both that week has turned to caddieing to fund his dream of playing the PGA Tour, which he refuses to let die despite never having a PGA Tour card and last having Korn Ferry Tour status in 2018.
But caddieing isn’t his only source of funding. To supplement his income, Hack had been giving short-game lessons. Through a weekly skins game at a local muny he met Taylor Randolph, an attorney who founded an eponymous law firm. Randolph asked Hack how much he charged for a short-game session. After discussing terms, he told Hack he didn’t want to pay per lesson. Instead he preferred to pay a lump sum and have Hack at his service whenever he wanted. “I told him Canadian Tour Q school was coming up and asked if he’d be interested in paying $3,000, and I’d be here whenever he needed me,” Hack says. “And he said perfect.”
Then COVID-19 happened, and the entire PGA Tour Canada season—including Q school—was canceled, so Hack issued a refund. “Then he asked if there was anything else I needed help paying for,” Hack says. “I told him about the summer mini-tour events. He said, ‘Why don’t we do this: You tell me what
For Jackson, it was an opportunity to live vicariously through a young man he would become close with—to experience the rush of competition and feel like he, too, was on the professional golf journey. Jackson flew to multiple tournaments every year. He would eat dinner with Wilcox at events. When he wasn’t there, he would follow Wilcox’s progress on the PGA Tour app. They talked on the phone multiple times a week. “I loved it,” Jackson says. “It was like betting on a football game. You turn on the TV; you had your investment out there, and you could watch what it was doing, going up or going down.”
Wilcox made 56 starts on the PGA Tour during the next three seasons and, when you include his earnings from the occasional Web.com Tour appearance,
made a combined $2,494,942 from January 2014 through July 2016. Nine percent of that—and, thus, a rough estimation of Jackson’s cut—equals $224,544.
Wilcox has since lost his PGA Tour card and will use a medical exemption to play the Korn Ferry Tour this year, underscoring the ephemeral nature of golfing glory. Jackson took a risk, and the risk was rewarded. But technically the lack of an enforceable contract meant Wilcox could have pulled an about-face and disappeared with the money.
“I had people in my life going, ‘You don’t have to give this guy that money. Where is it written down? Can he sue you?’ But I would never do that to Tim,” Wilcox says. “I love this guy. He’s been as
you need, and we’ll give you a free roll, and you keep 50 percent of the profits?’ And I had no reason to say no to that.”
Benefactors like Randolph are more important than ever for a pro without status because there are fewer minitours to play. “Around the time I turned pro, mini-tour golf in the winter in Florida was great,” Hack says. “There were guys who would make 60, 70 grand a winter. I probably made an average of 20 grand every winter. And that bankrolled me for the other mini-tour events throughout the year. But when the economy died in ’08, we lost the donators.”
When he says “donators,” he’s not referring to angel investors like Taylor Randolph or Bob Yosaitis or Tim Jackson. He means the guys who paid entry fees into every event during a mini-tour’s season. These fees were the primary source of these event’s prize money, and the “donators” never, ever finished in the money. “You’d have 20 guys a year on the EGolf Tour who wouldn’t break 80 and would play every event,” Hack says. “You needed those guys. Those were our favourite guys! As those guys started fading off, the purses got a little lower, and the same 15 to 20 guys are in contention every week, and now instead of finishing top 25, you have to finish top 10 to break even. All of a sudden it’s a lot harder to make money.”
For the majority of guys, playing the mini-tours isn’t the ultimate goal. The intent is not to make a living with one $1,500 check at a time; it’s to keep the game sharp, become comfortable playing under pressure and prepare for the up-and-comer’s ultimate shot: Monday qualifiers for Korn Ferry or PGA Tour events and Q school.
After missing his first two cuts on his backer’s investment, Hack found a groove in the summer of 2020, finishing second in the Laramie Open ($7,500) and the Platte Valley Pro-Am ($6,350) and T-6 in the Wyoming State Open ($2,208.33). That was enough to turn his benefactor a small profit, but both have their eyes on a much bigger prize.
“We have nothing on paper, just a gentlemen’s agreement,” Hack says. “If I make it to the PGA Tour, obviously he’s going to get a pretty nice chunk of my earnings the first year or so.”
WHEN A DEAL GOES BAD Hack-Randolph, Wilcox-Jackson and Dahmen-Yosaitis are three success stories. But these Wild West agreements often don’t go so well. Around the time he got his PGA Tour card, Wilcox struck an agreement with a young man who made a small fortune in the clean-up effort after tornadoes ravaged Alabama in 2011. The deal was for $30,000, and Wilcox would wear the logo of the man’s company on his sleeve for his first full year on the PGA Tour. There were to be four payments of $7,500 during the year. Problem was, only one of those payments ever came, and Wilcox figured it wasn’t worth the hassle or legal fees to try to recoup the money. “In hindsight, I should have known,” he says. “I told him to talk to my agent, and he was all like, ‘No, let’s just do this you and me.’ That was a red flag.”
That wasn’t even the low point. The man invited Wilcox to play in a money game—a classic plan to hustle unsuspecting golfers by bringing a ringer. “Just a Wednesday game, we were in a rough part of Birmingham,” Wilcox says. “I had full PGA Tour status at the time. I had just finished, like, 12th in Memphis the week before. I made it clear on the first tee, I was like, ‘I’m on the PGA Tour.’ And they were like, ‘No, you’re not; you’re just some driving-range pro.’ ”
Wilcox shot 13-under 59 that day. His competitors were not pleased. Wilcox was told he would not receive the $900 he won or get the money back he put into the pot. But it didn’t stop there.
“One of the guys pulls his truck behind mine,” Wilcox says. “Blocks me, so I’m wedged between his car and the clubhouse. They open the back of the Tahoe I was driving, and they just start taking shit! They looked like NFL players. I was like, ‘Y’all have it all.’ I was encouraging it. I was like, ‘I had nothing to do with this. This moron invited me here, I barely know him.’ They were pretty mean, though I did take a picture and sign an autograph for two of them. But the other 13 were livid.”
And whatever became of this mystery hustler?
“He kinda disappeared, but to this day I hear he’s still driving an Audi R8.”
Another cautionary tale is that of Tony Lema, who won the 1964 Open Championship and died in a plane crash two years later. In the early days of his career, Lema had an agreement with Jim Malarkey, the details of which are outlined in Bill Roland’s biography Champagne Tony Lema: Triumph to Tragedy. Initially, Malarkey would give Lema $200 a week and assist with payments on a new car, which Lema would drive on tour. Lema would pay back the money from his winnings and one-third of everything he earned past that. After Lema had a successful rookie year, Malarkey’s lawyers devised a new contract that would have made the “Shark Tank” crew proud. Instead of weekly payouts, he would loan Lema $14,000 for expenses at the start of the year. Again, Lema would have to pay that back out of winnings and give Malarkey a third of what he made past that, but that wasn’t all. Malarkey insisted Lema fly first-class and stay in the best hotels, the cost of which was added to the yearly advance. Eventually, it reached $16,000 a year, which Lema would have to pay back one way or another. The debts piled up, and the earnings lagged behind.
“The debt and the way Malarkey owned him ate away at Lema emotionally and affected his play dramatically,” says Guy Yocom, who recently retired after nearly 40 years at Golf Digest. “It was unfair, because the sponsor was in a no-risk position.”
By the end of 1962, per Roland’s book, Lema’s earnings totaled $48,000 and his liabilities to Malarkey were $49,000. In 1963, Lema hired a team of lawyers to get out of the contract, which had given Malarkey (and only Malarkey) the option to extend through 1966. Lema skipped the Open Championship, Western and Canadian opens that year to work with his attorneys, who eventually got him out. “I was not only flat broke after having earned $110,000 in 18 months,” Lema said, a sum equivalent to about $942,000 today, “but I was in hock up to my ears. I’m embarrassed to say what I had to pay Malarkey to get out of the contract, but anyone can figure out that it came to a good deal more than $50,000.”
Another sponsorship rift involved Tony Finau, who was sued for more than $16 million by Molonai Hola, a dif-
ferent investor than the one who put up the $50,000 when Finau was 17. In the lawsuit, Hola says he paid expenses for Finau and his family for several years with the expectation he would be reimbursed for those expenses and receive 20 percent of Finau and his brother Gipper’s professional earnings. Lawyers for Finau, however, dispute the facts of the original deal, which they say was never formalised beyond a verbal agreement, and that Hola’s demands for repayment fall outside the applicable statute of limitations. At the time of printing, the matter remained unresolved.
Sugar-daddy arrangements are risky, even in the famously risk-averse world of golf. Surely each player discussed in this story would have preferred that their startup dollars come from TaylorMade or Morgan Stanley. But someone in the situation of a 23-year-old Joel Dahmen will take any dollar he can get.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, if you’re good enough, you’ll always make it,’ ” Dahmen says. “I don’t know if, without Bob, I would have even tried.”
Northern Ireland
By Ronan MacNamara
the hottest ticket in town
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the world’s leading golfing destinations, with its iconic golf courses and storied history. The absence of North American and other international visitors due to the pandemic has opened a rare window of opportunity with greater tee time availabilities waiting to be snatched up by golfers across Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Headlining a list of brilliant golf courses is Royal County Down which can put up a stern argument for being the finest golf course in the world. The narrow carpetlike fairways meander their way through the sand dunes while purple and gold gorse bushes frame each hole. The famous bearded bunkers lie in wait to catch any stray approach shots with marram red fescue overlying on the lips while the greens are domed and rapid.
Royal County Down has been synonymous with hosting the biggest events in professional and amateur golf. Rory McIlroy and Jonathan Caldwell were in Walker Cup action here in 2007, while the Amateur Championship has twice paid a visit and the Ladies Amateur Championship has been staged here on no fewer than nine occasions.
The Senior Open Championship was staged here for three consecutive years at the turn of the Millenium while many of the world’s biggest stars stop off to prepare for The Open.
Royal County Down has hosted the Irish Open on four occasions, most recently in 2015 when Denmark’s Soren Kjeldsen triumphed.
If you can’t secure a tee time at Royal County Down, why not travel a couple of hours up the M1 and visit Royal Portrush which has recently hosted the Irish Open and staged The 148th Open in 2019 where Offaly’s Shane Lowry triumphed in front of a delirious home crowd. The Senior Open Championship has been staged here featuring some all-time greats like Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Tom Watson. The iconic links course in Dunluce has hosted the most prestigious events in amateur golf with the Home Internationals, Palmer Cup and both the men’s and women’s Amateur Championships stopping off here.
The Harry Colt layout is seamlessly integrated into the natural landscape. The fairways and greens appear miniscule as they cut their way through the natural rugged terrain while large grass dunes frame numerous holes.
Royal Portrush have a number of reduced green fee rates on offer this summer. It costs £500 for a fourball to play the Dunluce course, or £125 PP. One can play the fantastic sibling course, the Valley for just £60 per player. (Golf Ireland members only)
Portstewart boasts three magnificent true links courses with the Championship Strand course playing host to the 2017 Irish Open which was won by current world number one Jon Rahm. The Strand course is able to hold its head high alongside Royal County Down and Royal Portrush as the top links courses in Northern Ireland. The stand-out features of the Strand Course are the undulating dunes, run off bunkers, rolling fairways and tricky undulating putting surfaces.
Described by Rahm as ‘one of the most beautiful golf courses I have ever seen,’ Portstewart have a couple of fantastic offers to come and play. For just £90 golfers can play the Championship
the hottest ticket in town
Galgorm Castle Golf Club
Strand course from 4pm, but it is the combo deal that is the most appetizing for the public. Golfers can enjoy a round on the Strand and the Riverside courses for a bargain £195, the price of a normal green fee on the Strand normally!
Like many, golf courses in Northern Ireland took advantage of the Covid-19 lockdown to make wholesale changes to their layouts to upgrade certain features or keep in touch with the modern game.
Galgorm will host the second edition of the ISPS HANDA World Invitational this month and took advantage of the cancellation of the 2020 event by adding numerous bunkers and making additional modifications to the tee boxes.
The additional bunkers on the 2nd and 10th holes give the approach shots a new visual aspect while also improving the holes and assisting drainage.
The bunker on the 13th hole was reshaped which now covers the front portion of the putting surface making for a more challenging approach shot. The major bunkering operation took place on the 15th with the reshaping of the bunkers to the right of the green into one large bunker that hugs the front right portion of the green. The entrance to the green has been significantly narrowed with the introduction of a front left greenside bunker.
Numerous tee boxes were resurfaced and extended to allow for more teeing positions and giving the worn parts of the tee boxes more time to recover. The new tee boxes provide length particularly on the 16th where a new championship tee box was built making the hole longer and changing the angle to the fairway.
The practice putting green and short game facilities were extended while a vast drainage operation was taken last year.
The staff at Lough Erne have been working tirelessly on both the Castle Hume Course and the Faldo Course. A fresh drainage programme was given to the Castle Hume Course while work is ongoing to make the fairways and tee boxes more sand based. Discussions are underway about turning the par 4 15th into a pat 5 which would restore the course to a par 71.
The Halfway House adjacent to the 9th hole on the Faldo Course is undergoing a makeover too.
Clandeboye Golf Club was in the news recently having been namedropped by Jonathan Caldwell after he claimed his maiden European Tour victory at the Scandinavian mixed last month. Clandeboye has undergone some maintenance work ahead of hosting a EuroPro Tour event in August.
Numerous tee boxes have been levelled, the practice area has been extended while the road into the club has been widened and the stone wall has been restored. The bunkers and gorse bushes on the course have also been maintained throughout the winter.
Malone Golf Club in Belfast has undergone a widespread redesign and maintenance operation, spearheaded by architect Ken Kearney, contractors DAR golf and agronomist Turfgrass Consultancy.
Since August 2020 five greens and several tee boxes have been redesigned and upgraded. A vast bunker renovating operation on the backnine has been completed while trees have been removed and transplanted throughout the course.
Lisburn have upgraded all their bunkers and improved drainage throughout the golf course. Several pathways have been added to ensure a pleasant walking experience throughout the parkland course, while tee boxes have been lifted, levelled and re-surfaced.
Castlerock Golf Club in Coleraine carried out extensive work on several holes. New tees were added while greens were repositioned and elevated. The most dramatic change was on the 16th hole where it was completely redesigned from start to finish, new bunkers and run off areas were added to this par 3. All 56 bunkers on the course were refilled with sand. Castlerock has been busy catering to
the playing experience by extending the practice facilities, refurbishing the halfway hut and adding new signage to the course.
Castlerock are offering a reduced rate of just £65 to play and experience the upgraded layout.
If spending a day on a challenging links layout isn’t tickling your fancy, why not venture to the four golf resorts Northern Ireland has to offer.
Galgorm is an excellent, well-manicured parkland in Ballymena, Count Antrim. It is long enough for the tour pro and forgiving enough for the club player due to the vast number of teeing areas. It has hosted the annual NI Open on the European Challenge Tour and hosted the 2020 Irish Open on the European Tour. The rivers Maine and Braid meander through the course and appear on numerous holes as well as a number of lakes which come into play. A bargain at just £60.
This month the ISPS HANDA World Invitational will return, and a higher quality of field promises to tee it up at Galgorm Castle with the tournament being tri-sanctioned with the European Tour and LPGA and Ladies European Tour. The event will be shown live on Sky Sports so viewers can get a look at the stunning layout that Galgorm has to offer.
Roe Park is a four-star hotel and golf resort and is one of Northern Ireland’s premier golf and spa resorts which overlooks its own stunning 18-hole parkland layout surrounded by the picturesque Roe Valley Country Park.
Roe Park with its state-of-the-art Golf Academy including V1 video analysis and golf simulator recently contacted renowned golf course architect Marc Westenborg to renovate holes 16, 17 and 18.
Hilton Belfast Templepatrick Golf and Country Club is situated north of Belfast City and was designed by 1991 Ryder Cup player David Feherty.
The course plays over 7,000 yards and features challenging fairways and greens that are guarded by lakes while mature parkland frames each fairway. Templepatrick boasts first class practice facilities with two practice putting greens and a 16-bay driving range. An intriguing feature of this layout are the pot bunkers that dot several fairways.
Set among 220 acres of woodland and 13 miles from the city centre, Templepatrick is an ideal destination.
Lough Erne boasts a five-star resort in Enniskillen which is perched on a 600-acre peninsula with stunning views of the Fermanagh Lakelands. Options are a plenty for anyone looking to visit, with a 36-hole golfing experience lying in wait. Two Championship golf courses including the award-winning Faldo Course are available at a reasonable price.
The Faldo Course has the marks of Nick Faldo all over it, and it provides a strategic challenge, nestled on a 24-hectare peninsula between Lower Lough Erne and Castle Hume Lough. The course features links style fairways and undulating greens and is playable all year round. Lough Erne is in play on 11 holes of course.
The plethora of top-drawer golf courses does not stop there. Plenty of quality members courses for those in the mood for a day trip lie in wait.
Malone golf club is offering golfers a great opportunity to sample their recent renovations for just £55. One of Belfast’s premier parklands, this
immaculate course weaves its way through a picturesque estate. Just five miles from Belfast, it poses a fair but tough challenge to golfers of all levels with large lakes and water hazards, coupled with tree lined fairways which place a premium on accuracy through the round.
Perhaps an overnight stay might be your best bet in Belfast as the opportunity to play Ireland’s oldest golf club,
Malone Golf Club
Castlerock Golf Club
Royal Belfast is too good to turn down. A discounted rate of £60 to play this Harry Colt gem. Situated on the scenic southern shore of Belfast Lough, a unique and enjoyable place for a great game of golf. Tricky greens are a feature throughout with accuracy off the tee required to find the right areas of the fairway. A pulsating finish awaits with two par 5s on 16 and 18 which offer a chance to pick up late birdies.
Clandeboye, home to Jonathan Caldwell, offers golfers a genuine and demanding test. The championship Dufferin Course in County Down is a largely wooded layout. Accuracy off the tee is of paramount importance with gorse and trees strategically placed on every hole to catch any wayward shots. Clandeboye has a great offer with green fee rates as low as £40.
Belvoir Park was voted the best parkland course in Ulster by Golfers Guide to Ireland and it is easy to see why. This Harry Colt masterpiece is situated just two miles from Belfast City Centre and is still one of Irish golf’s best kept secrets. Any golfing visit to the north’s capital should include a round at Belvoir. Green fees are just £55 this summer so there has never been a better time to experience this parkland beauty.
Kirkistown Castle perhaps gets overlooked amidst the glamorous Royal County Down, Portrush and Portstewart but this unique links course is underrated. Voted as the best value golf experience in Ulster it is easy to see why with summer green fees as low as £52!
Moyola Park has a friendly atmosphere that caters to the need of golfers of all levels. This par-71 layout is situated in 130 acres of mature woodland in Castledawson, Derry with a combination of a fair but challenging course and great food in the clubhouse.
Northern Ireland is made for golf and with so many great courses on offer the time is now to make the trip across the border and discover some of the gems that are waiting to be played. The pandemic can be seen as a happy accident with the absence of our American friends leaving a host of tee times available on these courses so the time is now to take advantage of some of the discounted rates on offer this summer.
Galgorm will host the innovative ISPS HANDA World Golf Invitational from July 28 to August 1st. It is the second edition of this mixed field event. The inaugural event in 2019 saw Galgorm ambassador, Stephanie Meadow claim the women’s title while England’s Jack Senior lifted the men’s trophy.
The European Tour, LPGA Tour and Ladies European Tour will come together for the event presented by Niall Horan’s Modest! Golf Management. It is another excellent move by Horan’s golf management company who have been pulling up trees in the golfing world. This event is part of their vision to develop golf programmes at grassroots level and inspiring more young people into golf on a long-term level.
This mixed tournament will have a field of 288 players evenly split with a purse of US $3 million evenly split between the men and women. The tournament will boast a greater field this year as it has been elevated from Challenge Tour status to full European Tour status as part of the UK swing, with Sky Sports televising all four days which can only help expose the event in a positive light in front of a global audience in the region of 640 million.
This will be the first time the event has been tri-sanctioned by the three competing tours, so things are moving rapidly in the right direction. A higher quality of field promises to tee it up as the event will be counting towards each tour’s end of season races with points on offer for the European Tour’s Race to Dubai, Race to CME Globe on the LPGA Tour and the Race to Costa del Sol on the LET. Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup points will also be up for grabs at a crucial point with both competitions just over a month away
at the time of playing.
Fans are expected to be able to attend in Galgorm which will give an added boost to the tournament and will be welcome news after the roaring success of fans at the Irish Open last week.
Of the notable names already pencilled in to compete, former Irish Open Champions, Soren Kjeldsen and Jamie Donaldson will be joined by former Ryder Cup stars David Howell, Andy Sullivan and Frenchman, Victor Dubuisson, while Scottish duo Richie Ramsay and Stephen Gallacher will tee it up.
Spaniard and five-time European Tour winner, Pablo Larrazabal will be joined by Dubuisson’s compatriots, Gregory Havret and Raphael Jacquelin while Aussie, Scott Hend and South African Richard Sterne have also entered. British Masters Champion, Richard Bland and local boy Jonathan Caldwell will also compete.
It is the women’s side of the draw which provides the most excitement with Moriya Jutanugarn joined by her sister and two-time major winner Ariya. 2018 ANA Inspiration winner Pernilla Lindberg is the headline European entry while two-time Solheim Cup star, Angel Yin will be one of many Modest! Golf players in the field.
Former women’s Open Champion Georgia Hall is joined by fellow Solheim Cup stars, Charley Hull, Jodi Ewart Shadoff and cult hero, Bronte Law.
Solheim Cup hopefuls Alice Hewson, Olivia Cowen and Caroline Hedwall round off the women’s field.
There is still time for further entries to be confirmed with Ryder Cup hopefuls expected to tee it up as they look to make a late surge into Pádraig Harrington’s reckoning.
This event will be the first of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere, mirroring the ISPS event in Australia. Tickets are on sale with a number of flexible options in adherence to the government guidelines, still this is a fantastic opportunity to watch the best male and female professionals perform in an innovative and historic event which will be brilliant for golf in Ireland.
Jack Senior of England gets his birdie to make the play-off with Matthew Baldwin during the final round at the 2019 ISPS HANDA World invitational at Galgorm
Northern Ireland’s own Stephanie Meadow is crowned the female champion of the 2019 ISPS HANDA World invitational at Galgorm
