A SLICE OF GOLFING LITERATURE: Gary Moran takes great pleasure in delving into the work of Ireland's modern answer to PG Wodehouse.
GA Finn's Through the Green, Lightly comes with an explanatory note on the front cover. It is a short, accurate and modest description of the contents: "Stories set in Lahinch, about golf and golfers, written by a golfer, for golfers - and those who have to live with them."
George Anthony "Tony" Finn is someone with whom most Irish golfers can identify, if not match for talent. He has been a low single-figure handicapper for the best part of 40 years and, as he moved around the country, has been a member of several clubs including Grange, Galway and Cork, where only last weekend he won the Golfer of the Year title.
In the mid-1990s he got the idea that he would like to turn a lifetime's immersion in the game into some short stories, and the best compliment you can pay him is that they immediately remind you of the work of PG Wodehouse.
It is easy to imagine Wodehouse entitling stories "The President's Wife's Niece" and "Old Eagle Eye", or writing about characters such as Dily Donworth, the Dame from Dooradoyle. But these are all Finn's creations.
So is Bob Dickins, the caddymaster-cum-starter who enjoys a position "supported by two great obvious pillars - his power to allocate whatever caddy he chooses to a player and his control of the timesheets. A third, invisible pillar, namely his willingness to take a bet on practically anything, props up the other two in an unshakeable tripod which ensures that he will have the job for life. Thus, he can be of either great assistance or hindrance, depending on his humour." You know the type.
Some of the characters are exaggerated and the plots far-fetched and surely a far cry from what goes on at a modern business like Lahinch Golf Club. However, the writing is fine enough and the golf content strong enough to make each a page-turner before you reach the often clever final twist.
For example, in "May The Best Man Win", Dickins ensures that the three candidates for the hand of the beautiful Flora Griffin will play together in the President's Prize. There is the six-handicap son of the chemist's in Ennistymon, a doctor from Limerick who wants to share his practice with an appropriate spouse and the local rich man's son who played to scratch before he discovered booze and girls. Dickins opened a book on the outcome, but none of the three won either the President's Prize or the ultimate approval of the elusive Ms Griffin.
In "The Road to Damascus", local curate Fr Malachy Murphy is in despair when a non-golfing parish priest arrives in the shape of Monsignor Pius Ignatious O'Flaherty. Fr Malachy is used to playing "Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons, frequent Wednesdays and many balmy evenings during the long summer - deaths, births, marriages (and visits by the Bishop) permitting." Under O'Flaherty he soon sees his spiritual handicap move to category one and his golf handicap rise rapidly towards category three. A clever ruse is needed - and found - to convert the Monsignor to the Royal and Ancient way.
Jammy Flaherty is the local hustler who features in some of the stories, and Finn has a 55,000-word novel built around Flaherty plus another collection of short stories waiting for a publisher. He produced Though the Green, Lightly himself in paperback in 1997, and North American publisher Sleeping Bear Press brought out a hardback version in 2002 under the title Lazy Days at Lahinch. It is available in the non-fictional professional's shop in Lahinch, or email the author at: golfinn@eircom.net
