Ruddy hard work to make top course
Wednesday October 03 2007
PAT Ruddy -- a man apart. Golf nut, dreamer, visionary, creator of the concept that eventually became a genuinely world class golf links, and advocate of the gentler values of the game, the man from Mayo has broken the mould.
Quite simply, his contribution to the game of golf in this country is unique.
A golfer from boyhood, he graduated to full-time golf writing, then to course architecture and the establishment of his brainchild at Brittas Bay, The European Club.
In return, the game has provided Ruddy with a plethora of memories, friends worldwide, and the opportunity to bring to reality scribbled drawings on long-forgotten school copy books.
The Ruddy Empire, a.k.a The European Club, is testament to all aspects of the man's character. First and foremost it stands for family values, romantic vision, stubborn determination, hard work and unyielding ability to overcome all obstacles.
Ruddy's story is, above all, a wonderful example of 'Carpe Diem', Seize The Day.
Approximately 350,000 people are registered members of golf clubs in this country.
Of that total, almost 100pc have at one time voiced their opinion on how a particular golf hole might be changed, altered or improved.
And if even 10pc, or 3,500 have wanted to own and design their own links course, that's a huge total, but only Pat Ruddy has gone out and done it.
His achievement in sourcing, purchasing, designing and working the land down the east coast of Ireland is remarkable because Ruddy was not a multi-millionaire.
He was comfortably off and no doubt could have enjoyed a far more restful last 21 years if he had stayed with the golf writing, designed courses for other people and put the carpet slippers on each evening.
Instead, passion drove him, albeit incrementally, to a divine madness in the sense that he mortgaged everything and put his reputation and finance on the line in pursuit of a dream back in 1986.
Ruddy's family -- wife Bernardine, sons Gerard and Patrick, and daughters Sidon, Bernardine Junior and Zilla -- committed themselves to the project as well.
Indeed, it's quite a thought to consider that if Bernardine, Pat's wife, had been a lady who clipped his ears, told him to 'stay with the day job and forget that nonsense', Irish golf would be all the poorer for it.
Instead, it was all hands on deck, just as it had been when the family backed Pat's first efforts to establish a course of his own in south Co Sligo in the mid-1970s.
Ruddy describes a funny incident from that Sligo adventure in his book 'Fifty Years In A Bunker, The Creation of a World Top-100 Golf Links at The European Club, thus:
"There were many challenging moments, like the day when one of our brand new tractors went missing. It took three days of driving around in ever decreasing circles to find it parked outside a farmhouse, 10 miles away."
Borrowed
The resulting conversation with the farmer is worth recording: Ruddy: "I think that is my tractor out in your yard?"
Reply: "Could be, I borrowed it."
"I would like you to leave it back now."
Reply: "I'm not finished with it yet."
Kaboom! Tractor returned!
That Sligo venture ended in costly lessons when a river burst its bank and flooded the intended golf course.
Some time later he came upon a new parcel of land. This one was Lough Rynn estate, and Ruddy went right to the wire with the purchase when he backed out, deciding there wasn't enough demand for golf in that area at that time.
Ironically, Nick Faldo is currently working on a course at Lough Rynn but Ruddy's caution paid off, as he eventually viewed by helicopter the lands that became The European Club.
He and the family threw their future into the fledgling golf course, as Ruddy describes: "Everything went into the effort. In went the pension plan, the big car, and the mortgage-free status of the home."
Then came six years of hard work for the Ruddys and their staff before opening on December 26, 1992, with a raw new links and no clubhouse, but happily, a queue of golfers were waiting in cars to pay a crisp Irish tenner for the privilege of playing the new course.
Now, 15 years later, The European is rated 78th in the prestigious 'GOLF' Magazine's Top 100 Courses in the World. Three of the golf holes -- numbers 7, 13, and 14 -- were included in the list of the '500 Greatest Golf Holes in the World', and he has hosted Tiger Woods and other top international golfers.
In addition the club has staged national men's amateur, ladies' amateur and the Irish professional championship won by Padraig Harrington the week before his British Open victory.
The Ruddy family has developed the course to the extent that they were offered over €40m for it just 18 months ago.
Ruddy admits he was tempted but, in the end, opted to continue his life's work of chasing perfection at The European.
Each day since he first bought the land in 1986 has brought its own challenges and pleasures, but if you, too, harbour a dream of emulating Mr Ruddy, let the following serve as a warning.
The drought of 1995 caused severe problems for golf courses all around Ireland. At the European two big water tankers were pressed in to use for two shifts daily, and thousands of yards of hose were bought.
Son Gerard and Pat senior spent many nights watering those greens on an eight hour shift from 8pm to 4am.
Ruddy writes: "The low point came one night when one reached the 17th green and parked the car with its lights pointing across it to where the water-box was set in a dip.
"Across the green in that light one scuttled, with thoughts of a warm bed within the next hour, and over a knoll beyond and into the shadow-filled dip which happened to be filled with water also as the result of a leaking valve!
"Now, here was a strange position for a fellow described by a critical newspaper article that very day as 'a powerful developer': up to one's butt in water and thinking suicidal thoughts as the realisation dawned that the hose plug-in was nine inches below one's feet.'
"To go for it or not?
"Total immersion was undertaken with the murderous thought that the first player to criticise that green that day or ever again would be a dead man!"
