seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Straffan


by Leave a comment

The 36th Ryder Cup Matches Come to Ireland

The 36th Ryder Cup Matches officially open on September 22, 2006, at the Palmer North Course of the K Club in Straffan, County Kildare, west of Dublin. It is the first time golf’s premier team tournament has come to Ireland and to date it is the biggest sporting event ever staged in the country.

Europe wins by 18-1⁄2 to 9-1⁄2 points, equalling their record winning margin of two years earlier for their third consecutive win, a first for Europe. Swedish rookie Henrik Stenson makes the winning putt, just moments after Luke Donald sinks a putt to ensure Europe retains the trophy.

The K Club has two Arnold Palmer-designed championship courses and the 36th Ryder Cup is held on the Palmer North Course (also known as the Old Course). The course is a parkland course located on the banks of the River Liffey, threaded through mature woodlands on the Straffan country estate.

Domestically, Sky Sports provides live coverage of all sessions. In the United States, coverage of the first day is recorded live, but presented on tape-delay by USA Network. Bill Macatee hosts from the 18th tower. On Saturday, NBC Sports presents coverage on tape, but recorded live. NBC then airs the singles live on Sunday morning. Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller host from the 18th tower, Gary Koch and Bob Murphy call holes, while on-course reporters are Mark Rolfing, Roger Maltbie, and Dottie Pepper. To provide a European perspective, NBC uses former European team player Nick Faldo as a guest analyst on the Saturday afternoon session. Faldo had worked in the same role for NBC at the 2002 Ryder Cup, and at the time of the 2006 edition is in between jobs, having worked as an analyst for ABC Sports from 2004 to 2006, but having signed with CBS Sports for 2007 and beyond.

The Ryder Cup is a match play event, with each match worth one point. The competition format used in 2004 and 2006 is as follows:

  • Day 1 (Friday) – 4 four-ball (better ball) matches in a morning session and 4 foursome (alternate shot) matches in an afternoon session
  • Day 2 (Saturday) – 4 fourball matches in a morning session and 4 foursome matches in an afternoon session
  • Day 3 (Sunday) – 12 singles matches

With a total of 28 points, 14-1⁄2 points are required to win the Cup, and 14 points are required for the defending champion to retain the Cup. All matches are played to a maximum of 18 holes.


by Leave a comment

Death of Clare Boylan, Author, Journalist & Critic

Clare Boylan, Irish author, journalist and critic for newspapers, magazines and many international broadcast media, dies in Dublin at Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross, on May 16, 2006.

Boylan is born in Dublin on April 21, 1948, the youngest of three daughters of Patrick Boylan, a clerk, and his wife Evelyn (née Selby). Her mother feels trapped by the limitations that domesticity imposes on women in 1950s Ireland, and had wanted to have a writing career. She encourages her daughter to send off stories and poems to newspapers. The first piece is published when she is 14, and she wins a prize in the national Texaco Children’s Art Competition when she is about 10 years old.

The family lives in the Dublin suburb of Terenure. Boylan goes to school in the Presentation convent, then St. Louis convent in Rathmines, and does her leaving certificate in Rathmines College.

After leaving St. Louis convent, Boylan takes a job as a sales assistant in a bookshop before beginning her career as a journalist at The Irish Press, now defunct. She marries Alan Wilkes, a journalist who is a colleague at The Irish Press, in St. Patrick’s Church in Straffan, County Kildare, on September 18, 1970. In 1974 she wins the Journalist of the Year award when working in the city for the Evening Press. Later in her career she edits the glossy magazine Image, before largely giving up journalism to focus on a career as an author.

Boylan’s novels are Holy Pictures (1983), Last Resorts (1984), Black Baby (1988), Home Rule (1992), Beloved Stranger (1999), Room for a Single Lady (1997), which wins the Spirit of Light Award and is optioned for a film, and Emma Brown (2003). The latter work is a continuation of a 20-page fragment written by Charlotte Brontë before her death.

Boylan’s short stories are collected in A Nail on the Head (1983), Concerning Virgins (1990) and That Bad Woman (1995). The film Making Waves, based on her short story “Some Ladies on a Tour”, is nominated for an Oscar in 1988.

Boylan’s non-fiction includes The Agony and the Ego (1994) and The Literary Companion to Cats (1994). She writes introductions to the novels of Kate O’Brien and Molly Keane and adapts Keane’s novel Good Behaviour as the classic serial for BBC Radio 4 (2004). Her work has been translated as far afield as Russia and Hong Kong.

In later life, Boylan lives in County Wicklow with her husband. When she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she faces her illness with characteristic strength. She takes up kickboxing and spends time in France, shopping, cooking and entertaining friends. She succumbs to cancer at the age of 58 on May 16, 2006.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Journalist Eoghan Corry

eoghan-corryEoghan Corry, Irish journalist and author regarded as the most extensively traveled writer in Ireland, averaging over 30 countries a year, is born in Dublin on January 19, 1961.

Corry is the third of four children of Patrick Corry (1916–1971) from Kilmacduane, Cooraclare and Anne Corry (1929–2009) from Clahanmore, Milltown Malbay, both from County Clare. He grows up in Ardclough, Straffan, County Kildare.

Corry is educated at Scoil Mhuire, Clane, at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and University College Dublin (UCD). His first published work, as a teenager, is poetry in English and the Irish language in literary magazines and the New Irish Writing section of The Irish Press.

He begins his journalistic career as a sportswriter with The Irish Times and Sunday Tribune where he wins several awards and becomes sports editor. Determined to pursue a career outside of sports journalism, he joins The Sunday Press as a feature writer in 1985 and becomes features editor of The Irish Press in 1986, bringing younger writers and a more contemporary, polemical and literary style to the paper. He revives the literary and travel sections of the paper and is an adjudicator of the Dublin Theatre Festival awards.

When The Irish Press closes in 1995 he becomes Features Editor of the short-lived Evening News, storylines the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) museum in Croke Park in 1998 and is founding editor of High Ball magazine. Since then he has been a columnist, first with The Sunday Business Post and then with the Evening Herald and Irish Independent. As a journalism lecturer in the Dublin Institute of Technology he tells students that “journalism is about pissing people off.”

Since 2002 Corry has edited Ireland’s biggest circulation travel publication, Travel Extra. He has fronted travel shows broadcast in Ireland and the Middle East and is a regular commentator on travel affairs to Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and TG4, and an occasional guest contributor to BBC Northern Ireland. He writes the ten-part series GAA@125, screened on Irish television station TG4 in 2009. He appears on Tonight with Vincent Browne from time to time to preview the next day’s newspapers.

Corry is awarded a lifetime “contribution to the industry” award at the Irish Travel Industry Awards in Dublin on January 22, 2016. He receives the Business Travel Journalist of the year award in London in October 2015. Previous awards include Irish sportswriter of the year, young journalist of the year, Seamus Kelly award, MacNamee award for coverage of Gaelic Games and is short listed for sports book of the year.