Interview /Karen and Tara Delaney: Johnny Watterson talks to Karen and Tara Delaney, gifted golfers who have reached a crossroads in life

Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. This is the beginning.

Golf bags congregating like rabble around the putting green. Junior Competition night. Mediterranean evening sun and breakers strafing the Laytown beach. Dune grass crackling and a long run on the fairways.

Echoes. An adolescent screech for a wayward shot. A flag slapped down to a hard green somewhere. This evening golf isn't just about hitting a ball. Stripped of its occasional pretensions by broomstick, unkempt teenagers, it's a summer's evening the way you remember all holiday summer's evenings to have been. Knocking around balls and sidling up to the girls.

Karen and Tara Delaney sit down on the grass by the first tee, removed from the chatter and the lazy evening carnival. Karen, at 18, is kicking time before her next adventure in the sport to Kent State College, Ohio. Seventeen-year-old Tara is anxious to follow her sister but must first hurdle the Leaving Cert. The beginning is always that as some doors open others close.

To label the Delaney sisters as talented is easy but understating their ability. Not unlike the tennis-playing Williams sisters, there is a genetically close bond between the two. They flourish in a tight-knit family, who all gather comfortably around the game of golf.

"The fact that I'm leaving my family and that I am so close to Tara will be tough," says Karen.

"Spotted" at last year's British Girls Championship by former professional and head coach at Kent State, Mike Morrow, Karen was smitten and accepted the career path towards professional golf. In August she will follow a trodden path to Ohio where Martina Gillen, the 2003 Irish Ladies Amateur Championship winner, currently plays.

"He spotted me over there and offered me a place. He was over scouting for talent. He followed me and must have been impressed," she says.

No lack of clarity fogs what this chase across the Atlantic is all about, what the two sisters wish to achieve. A burning ambition to be professional golfers prospers in both but it is accompanied by a lack of self-consciousness about the breadth of their enterprise or even that regular bugbear, a fear of failure. Karen has a clear uncomplicated vision and a teenage appetite for what a scholarship is and where it can lead. But neither seem blind to the booby traps and cockfight nature of life on the tour, or that it can occasionally lead to dark alleys.

"A lot of people are afraid to do it and afraid to say that they want to do it. It is a big step and the fear of failure comes into it as well," says Karen. "But if you want something, you have to go after it and that's what we're doing. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

"How I get on in America will determine what road to go. It will be more competitive. It's a kind of stepping stone to the pro ranks so you have to up your game."

So entwined are their golfing lives that the collective "we" litters the conversation. As Karen speaks, the two handicapper, Tara, nods approvingly and as Tara talks Karen's silent chorus is an imperceptible, "yeh, yeh, yeh".

One year older, it is as if Karen, who plays off one, is breaking new ground with Tara, close in her slipstream, feeding off and assisting the older sister's every move.

Since they took up the sport at the relatively late age of 10 for Tara and 11 for Karen, life has seen them living, practising and playing together; always in County Carlow.

Brought down to the championship course by father Michael and eight-handicap mother Catherine, the Carlow track has fed their habit and brought them on. The family home is just three miles from the club and many of their reference points are Carlow Golf Club, its water, its holes and its proud character.

Karen has shot her best ever score, a six-under 69, at Carlow while Tara has recorded a five-under 70 on the same course. Tara's first hole-in-one came in last year's Carlow Open and she followed it up with another ace last week while practising in Ardee. Karen admits, without undue distress, "I've never even come close."

The difference between them is little more than the rolling in of a putt or a lucky bounce.

Both were educated in the local Irish-speaking school Gael Choláiste Cheathariach, and are now fluent in the language, Karen having done her Leaving Cert through Irish. In the early years the golf just dovetailed with everything else but as both improved, the emergence of a particular talent was difficult to ignore. When one sister took a step forward, the other shadowed her. Nothing seemed more natural.

Within five years of starting Karen, at 16 years old, found herself selected for the Irish under-18 team. Tara dutifully followed. She too was capped at under-18 level when she was two years under the limit. Both have won tournaments over the last two seasons, with Tara's first coming in the Midland Girls under-18 championship on June 24th last year.

"That was special for a couple of reasons," she says.

"It was my first under-18 championship, which was nice, and it was on my dad's birthday. Both mam and dad introduced us to it (golf) and they've helped us all along the way."

Karen acquired the Irish Girls Close trophy last year after five rounds of matchplay. She followed it up by winning again a couple of weeks ago, beating Tara 4 and 3 in the final. This season she also collected her first senior championship victory at The Heath in the Midlands Championship, a stroke and match play event. Another step up.

"There was a couple of senior ladies there," says Karen. "It felt good that I could compete with the seniors. I think the Irish Senior team play in September. I don't know what chances I have but it's in the back of my head. When I set my goals last winter, it was something I wanted to do."

Both have been selected to play in the Girls British Open Amateur Championship in Newport, Wales in August. In fact they comprise half of the Irish entry. The team of four is Galway's Sinead O'Sullivan and Limerick's Catherine Tucker along with the Delaney sisters. Both are heading the Junior Irish Order of Merit, Karen leading, her younger sibling following.

So far their dad Michael has resisted the urge to ape Venus and Serena Williams' father Richard, of colourfully declaring the greatness of his daughters and their intentions to dominate the sport. But as the Americans have eyeballed each other across a net over the past three years, so too do the Irish girls find themselves facing each other in competitions, this year's Close trophy being an example .

"Yeh, we play each other," says Tara. "It comes up when you play tournaments. It doesn't really bother us. We know it's going to happen and we get on with it. That's all you can do. We play together, practise together and help each other out. That's probably a good thing that other girls don't have. Because when we practice, it's probably a bit more competitive."

The beginning is also the start of departing from familiar territory, of moving on. Leaving the protectorate of an age group carries threats common to many sports and the departure from junior ranks into the deeper water of senior competition leaves some players treading water. Others sink, some move on. But playing America is more a goal achieved than a dread to be faced.

Theirs is fresh tale of soldiering together in a famously lonely game. And maybe if any Irish women are to break solidly into the professional ranks in the way Padraig Harrington or Darren Clarke have done in the men's game, it will be as much by occasionally bearing each other's weight as by savage competition.

"This is going to be difficult," admits Karen sagely. "A new transition. But I have to get over it. It's a stepping stone to the professional ranks and if I can't overcome this there is no point in me looking at trying to turn pro."

You turn around to canvas Tara but you need not. The head is nodding up and down like the sedge lining thesecond fairway.

Come August, they will be travelling different directions and the story will move on. As always, though, the sisters will depart as one.