Sunday, August 14, 2011 - A Royal Treat

I apologize for not keeping the blog up to date ... too much traveling, golfing, pubbing, etc.

On Sunday, we left in the morning for Northern Ireland near the city of Belfast to play one of the world's great links courses - Royal County Down.

After stoppoing to get some British pounds for spending (yes this is under British rule), we made our way to the golf course. It was a splendid day with plenty of sunshine and some puffy white clouds.

After checking in and meeting our caddies, they took us to the practice green for some putting. I commented to my caddy - Gareth - what a beautiful day it was.  I took out two balls, dropped them on the green, took two putts, and by the time I was going to get the balls, a cloud had moved over us and there was a light shower !! This is Ireland ... it can go from sunshine to a shower in a matter of a minute and then back to sunshine.

We put on our rain jackets and went to the first tee. By the time we were teeing off, the rain had stopped and we were strolling down an incredible fairway with a picturesque view of the mountains in the distance.

There were many incredible holes to play - in fact, all of them were interesting, different, challenging and scenic.  Here are a few pictures, though I cannot capture the Royal in such a few snapshots.

Hole 3 goes right down the coastline and we couldn't resist a gorup photo with the ocean on the right and the fairway down the left.

Hole 4 is a downhill, 210 par 3. It is the site of the WORLD'S GREATEST UP-AND-DOWN IN THE HISTORY OF GOLF ... by our own Chan Saysana. Our caddies confirmed that they had never seen such an incredible pair of shots in their 21 and 33 years of caddying at the Royal. Let me explain. Chan swizzled his tee shot off the the far right into the extremely heavy gorse that you see on the right of the hole. He had a terrible lie and could not even chip to the green. He slashed through the spinach, grass and other vegetation flying everywhere to have his ball come down about 30 feet in front of the green. It was a miraculous out under any circumstances. He then proceeded to putt from off the green and drained about a 60-70 foot putt for par !! We all went crazy and the caddies were smiling like they had never seen anything like it ... because they hadn't !!

The beauty of the scenery, the course and the challenges it presented were, honestly, inspiring. Collectively we had great caddies (which was not always the case as we played other courses), and in our case Mick had 33 years experience at the Royal and Gareth had 21 years of experience.

After golfing, we stopped at a local seafood house called Mourne Seafood Bar near Belfast. The food and drinks were great, especially the local specialty called brill – a very nice white fish – which a handful of us ordered. Pat got crab claws, which were impossible to crack and get enough food to make a meaningful meal, so he once again drank most of his dinner.

On the way home on the luxury bus, a game of cheating euchre broke out. One of the participants was Chan who quickly became known as “Cheatin’ Chan” for his adept ability to give clever signals as to what trump to call … such as “I have 2 diamonds in my hand.” The bus is a really comfortable ride that allows people to play cards, chat, read or sleep.