MARK Twain once said that golf is a good walk spoiled. Personally, I’ve never seen the appeal, but as I wait for Fianna Fáil councillor Bridie Collins at Adare Town Park, I realise how little I know about the perfect golf swing or putting stroke. A shameful sin as the county is set to host one of the sport’s flagship competitions in under two years.
Thankfully, Cllr Collins, who worked as a greenkeeper at the luxury Mount Juliet estate in Kilkenny, can teach me a thing or two about bogeys, eagles, and sand wedges.
Adare has become the Mid West’s golfing mecca, where in two years’ time Ryder Cup 2027 will see Adare Manor host the biennial contest between Europe and the United States for the first time. So where better to learn all about a game once described as the “most fun you can have without taking your clothes off”?
After finishing her Leaving Cert at the age of 16, Donegal-born Bridie Collins went off to study horticulture. A J1 visa saw her work on a resort at Mackinac Island in Michigan where she “got the grá for the golf course when I worked in the clubhouse there”.
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“When I came back scrambling for work in the late eighties, they were looking for gardeners in Adare Manor,” she says. “Limerick certainly wouldn’t have been on my radar. I applied for the job and that’s what brought me here nearly 40 years ago,” Bridie tells me as we take a walk around the town park.
Construction began on its 18-hole parkland golf course during Bridie’s tenure, as she decided she would swing towards a career in the sport.
“I then decided I was going to head off to Australia and work on a couple of golf courses there and discovered that I was reasonably capable. The people and any of the bosses that I worked for were very impressed with what I was doing,” she said.
“After that I came back and worked at Mount Juliet. That was just phenomenal. The standard of the playing surface and the standard of the work quality were second to none. It was at Mount Juliet where it all really began in terms of golf courses, because it was just incredible.”
This writer knows so little about golf that I am left with my mouth gaping when Bridie tells me about the science of greenkeeping, the important duties of raking bunkers, cutting holes, and moving tee-markers to the right place. Even more surprising is her admission that top of her bucket list is pin position at a Ryder Cup.
Pin position
Forget about seeing the Northern Lights or going skydiving, Bridie Collins wants to place the pin at the position the hole will be placed on the greens during one of the world’s greatest sporting events before she exits this mortal coil.
“When Paul McGinley was here last November, they brought the Ryder Cup down through the village and it was brilliant. I met Paul and I told him that I would have walked behind him at many tournaments and explained that I used to be a greenkeeper at Mount Juliet. We had a good conversation and we’d know a few of the same people, so we have a few shared contacts, and I said my biggest bucket list item was pin positions for a Ryder Cup.”
Maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but as grand as all this sounds, I’m still not sure exactly what this all means. Pray tell, Bridie?
“The actual position of the hole on the green changes every day. It might bring a bunker into play, it might make the hole a little bit longer. On a normal golf course, it will move depending on the amount of play, every few days, if not every day. This changes the way the hole is played,” she explains.
I then discover that the greens can be mowed a staggering four times a day, and even ironed, during a tournament to influence the speed of the ball.
With experience working in the National Botanical Gardens, where she was lauded with the title of Toro Student Greenkeeper of the Year, which saw her get to study in the University of Massachusetts, the mother-of-three is now perfectly placed for Ryder Cup 2027.
A local Fianna Fáil councillor and chair of Adare Tidy Towns since 2017, growing up on a small farm in Donegal has given her a grounding in the importance of community and the traditional Irish idea of ‘meitheal’ – neighbours helping each other with tasks like harvesting crops.
Hailing from the picturesque village of Frosses, situated on the main road between Donegal and Glenties, Collins (née Redican) grew up off the land with her five sisters.
“We had three or four cows and donkeys. We had a kind of subsistence living. We grew our own spuds, we cut the turf. My dad had a real love of Irish music and he used to hand milk the cows. We were steps and stairs, six girls, lined up on upturned buckets and he would be teaching us all these old rebel songs,” she recalls.
“My dad, Mícheál, used to drag me out Irish dancing. His uncle Larry Redican was a very famous fiddle player. I can hold a tune myself when I’m about four vodkas in,” she jokes.
‘Go big or go home’
Bridie is hugely passionate about her adopted home of Adare and being a voice for all those that need her in her electoral area.
I have no doubt that when Ryder Cup touches down in Adare in September 2027, Cllr Collins will be in fine voice and play her part to see it is a roaring success. As she so eloquently put it at a recent local authority meeting, the adage of “go big or go home” very much applies here.
“The bigger the better, the more creative the better, the more the beauty and heritage of Adare and County Limerick is advertised the better,” she said.
“The Ryder Cup is a huge opportunity here in the village to capture what will be the biggest sporting event in the world that year. They’re estimating 300,000 people and when you consider how that will fit in with the life of the village, it’s such an opportunity.
“The bypass will be open. Please God, the 3km missing piece, will be delivered in some shape or form. I hope we will have a passenger element to the railway line. It will bring a huge other element to the competition and it will be exciting to see what comes with that.”
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme