Caddie’s Role: Historic Carton House presents an Irish Open to all

When you wander across the fairways of the Montgomerie course on your way to the stately Carton House you get a sense of what the 1st Duke of Leinster must have felt as he rattled through the grounds in his carriage back in 1739.

Sweeping around the back of the 16th fairway the magnificent house looms above the Rye River and you are filled both with a sense of history and how such a vast estate can be put to effective modern use.

When Lee Mallaghan bought the Carton Demesne in 1977 it had lost most of its stately elegance and was in desperate need of repair. He wanted to bring the house back to life and open the 1,100-acre estate up to the public again.

Golf resort
When the Gleneagles resort in Perthshire, Scotland, chose Carton as the Irish location for an exclusive resort, the Mallaghans were relieved that its future was secured. The idea was to build a replica here of the estate's golf resort in Scotland.

But then a new chief executive took over at Diageo and decided replica golf resorts were not the way forward.

So Mallaghan decided to go it alone, to restore Carton House and build two new golf courses.

In the early 2000s he signed Mark O’Meara and Colin Montgomerie to design the two very different courses on the estate. The clubhouse opened in 2004 and the hotel in 2006.

The philosophy of the Mallaghans has been to include as many local people as possible in all activities at Carton. And this extends to this year’s Irish Open at the venue.

There are 50,000 people living within a 5km radius of the demesne and Carton Demesne chief executive Conor Mallaghan’s objective is to get as many non-golfers as possible inside the Carton walls during the week of the tournament and make them feel welcomed. Children under 16 will get in free and hopefully bring their parents with them.

Three past Irish Open champions in Brett Rumford, Richard Finch and Ross Fisher have been appointed ambassadors for Maynooth, Celbridge and Leixlip respectively. If you wander through Maynooth the week of the event you are likely to see shop windows adorned with the Irish Open theme.

Apart from restoring and opening the old house up to all comers, the 1km Carton Avenue walk to Maynooth has been opened by the Mallaghans, with no obligation, to the public to come inside the grounds and enjoy the splendours within.

For those not familiar with the courses the O’Meara is a more gentle inland layout amongst trees.

Whereas the venue for the Irish Open this year is on the more difficult, but very playable Montgomerie "inland links" style of golf with trees only on the periphery. The greens on the Monty course are reliably good all year round with their durable creeping bent grass. A criticism of some golfers who have visited the tournament course is that the bunkers are so deep you can only admire the clouds when you are in them, nothing else is visible. Conor Mallaghan will be listening carefully to the professionals opinions about the course in a few weeks' time. They have already started changes to the O'Meara course with an eye to future Irish Opens.

Much like Portmarnock was ingrained in golf spectators psyche as the home of the Irish Open in the 1970s and 80s the Mallaghans would love Carton to be recognized as a regular host of our national Open in the future.

With some prompting from Conor's uncle, Tyrone football manager Mickey Harte, a sports pitch was opened in 2008 and Carton has since hosted Real Madrid, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, numerous Gaelic teams, and it is the home from home of the IRFU and, of course, the Lions were there before they headed off to Australia.

Leap of faith
There is plenty of space for a cricket pitch and a 3 G sports pitch, according to Conor Mallaghan. The Golfing Union of Ireland also took a leap of faith and set up their headquarters in Carton over 10 years ago. The GUI academy is also situated there.

Although the Irish Open was held in Carton in 2005 and 2006, Conor Mallaghan admits in hindsight they were not ready for it. With the know-how gained since, an eye for detail, an embracing attitude and with the commitment of all our top home-grown golfers this year’s Irish Open promises to be quite a spectacle for all.

Those with an interest in history can walk in the footsteps of one of the most influential families in Irish history, the Fitzgeralds, while golf fans can watch four golfers with seven majors between them leave their mark in the annals of golfing history in the last week of June at the majestic Carton House demesne.