MY GOLFING HATE NO 1

I'LL tell you what I hate, what I really, really hate (sing the rest yourself, I think I'm getting to hate that annoying Spice Girls song) although fair dos, it doesn't keep me awake, at night (not like this cough). Oh yeah, what I really, really hate. Well what I hate (apart from world hunger and terrorism) is the way every new golf course that hoves in sight across the fairway is a Championship Golf course.

Excuse me, but pray tell, how can a golf course that has never hosted a championship, not even one of those tense Sunday - fourballs I lose every week, be called a championship golf course? What are the qualifications apart from having a championship played on it? And - what is a championship?

My own course (hailed at its entrance as "Ireland's Oldest Golf Course - this is, actually, a misprint for Ireland's Coldest Golf Course) holds the Army championships. So is it a championship golf course? Does a battalion of military hackers armed to the teeth with Big Berthas, playing for a trophy - wrought out of a discarded shell casing once a year qualify us as a Championship course?

As far as I know there are four regional amateur championships in Ireland and a couple of national ones. They are played on the same rota of courses each year, with one exception, so how come we have so many, of these championship class of courses around thee place? Does someone from the GUI or the IPGA nip down to the soon to be opened Mount Glen of the Hills GC (green fee, a snip at £85) and say, "wow this is a championship course" and bob's your uncle?

I know that an Executive Golf Course is one that executives play on. I am totally aware that a Pitch and Putt Course is one often frequented by Seamus Pitch and Declan Putt and their, extended families. Perhaps one of these newly minted, straight - out of the polythene bag Championship courses that seem to open every other week could let - me know when I can pop down, and see a Championship frolicking on their pristine Bent Cross grass?