Bag man O'Reilly gets down to business

Jude O'Reilly did his time in the lecture halls of UCD to obtain a commerce degree, and then promptly decided he wasn't ready to go into the business world.

He wanted to travel, maybe for a year. You know the story, get out and see the world. Experience different cultures. Which is what he did, except the odyssey lasted for well over a decade.

An encounter with Christy O'Connor jnr in the early 1990s is the reason O'Reilly opted for a career on the golf course rather than behind a desk.

"I basically wanted to get out and do some travelling, to get to see different countries. I got talking to Christy and he told me the ideal way to do that was to become a caddie," recalled O'Reilly.

Two weeks after finishing his exams in 1991, he was on the bag for Christy jnr in the Epson Grand Prix. What was supposed to be a year spent caddying developed into a longer time span. After a year and half on the European Tour, during which time he also had stints with Darren Clarke and Martin Poxon, some caddies suggested O'Reilly head down to Australia and New Zealand. He did, and it was there he started caddying for the Japanese player Massy Kuramoto. The last tournament the pair were committed to was the Japan PGA championship in 1992. Kuramoto won, and asked O'Reilly to hang around a little longer.

When Kuramoto decided to go to the US Tour school later that year and tied for first place to secure his card for 1993, it cemented the relationship. They spent the 1993 season on the US Tour and the pair were eventually together for seven years, switching between the US Tour and the Japanese Tour before O'Reilly moved on to the bag of Shigeki Maruyama.

"I'd always intended stopping caddying at some stage, certainly before I got into my 40s and it would probably be too late. I spent two great years with Shigeki. He won the Milwaukee Open on the US Tour, the first Japanese player to win in the States, and he shot 58 in the US Open qualifying. It was a good time, and we finished up on a high. I felt if I was going to make a move, this was the right time to do it."

Now, O'Reilly, a native of Sligo, is a director and manager with Headway Sports and Leisure, based in Sandymount, Dublin. No longer caddying, but still very much involved in the golf business, among the golfing products he has the franchise for in the Republic are Sonartec clubs and Zen Oracle putters. He also markets and sells Huxley all-weather greens.

When O'Reilly finally set about putting his business acumen to use at home, he felt Sonartec was the product to kick-start his new career. "I'd seen the club development out of its sister company in Japan and I actively went looking for it. I knew how good a product it was," said O'Reilly.

His timing was perfect: when Todd Hamilton played his famous approach shot to the 18th at Royal Troon on his way to a play-off win over Ernie Els in the British Open last year, it was with a Sonartec hybrid club.