|
Now I am not very bias when it comes to the European Club, I visit it as many times as I can and of all the places in the world, I love going to this course the most. We have heard famous golfers say that if they had just one round to play before their demise, they would play at courses like Pebble, St. Andrews, Cypress Point or Augusta National. If I had my choice of a place for my final round, it would be at the European Club and would be with it's owner and builder Pat Ruddy.
There is no too ways about it, in golfing circles Ruddy is one of the most overlooked characters. Ruddy was a full time golf writer who like Tom Doak, loved to dabble into golf course architecture and made that his full time career. In this book he relates his love of the game and his dream of building a world class links course in Ireland.
In looking at folks that build courses, most of them are very wealthy or have land in which to put the course on. Ruddy had neither. All that he had was a dream and after he became comfortable with his golf writings he made the faithful decision along with his wife Bernardine, three daughters and two sons to make his dream a reality.
Now like most dreams, the first time doesn't work out perfectly and that was the case with Ruddy in the mid-70s when he tried to build a course in Northwest Ireland. That turned into a big failure when a river burst its banks and flooded his course. There was then a second venture in which he couldn't purchase a piece of property that eventually became part of a Nick Faldo project.
Even with these flops, Ruddy never gave up and found another perfect piece of property, this time about 40 miles south of Dublin in Brittas Bay. Ruddy purchased the land and then spent six years mortgaging everything and working the land in crafting the European Club.
Now some may wonder about reading a person's first account story of this, but just like everything that Ruddy does it's a first class project that is very entertaining. In a corporate world in which businesses build these resorts and big money make them happen, it's nice to see a story of how someone along with some teenage kids build a golf course that turn into one of the best links in all the world.
The stories are great on how he made this project a big success, plus how hard that he and his family had to work 24/7 in making the dream happen.
Now for those in the United States you can't go down to your local Barnes and Noble to pick up the book. Matter of fact you won't find the book on any site like Borders.Com or Amazon.Com. The book is not even sold in the United States, the only way to buy it is through The European Club website. The cost of it is about $40 dollars and Ruddy will send it off to you. Trust me when I say it's well worth a read, the photography is special and in looking through the book you will want to book a flight off to Ireland to play this magnificent links course. Yes it's a very unusual way of buying something but of course Pat Ruddy is a very unusual man and that is the whole fun of him and his ways.
