hello and welcome back to another
episode of the cookie jar golf podcast I am Tom Mills and today I’m joined by Sam Williams greetings Thomas pleasure as
always and we have a special guest on the club archivist or one of the club
archivists from Royal County Down Golf Club in Northern Ireland Brian Fleming
Brian welcome to the podcast good evening thank you uh nice to meet
you Tom and Sam thank you so it must be a true honor to be enrolled in this
position at County Down Brian being just a member is is I imagine a fascinating
thing but to be able to dive into the history of it must be really interesting for you I mean how did you get involved
in the history of of Royal County down and what got you interested in the history of the first place
um yes good question I mean I I think I think I just gradually stumbled into it and
um uh I suppose um there are very few members that are
really I suppose uh involved in delving into the past many great depth as long
as there’s a somebody’s done a Centenary book and I’ve did it but I I I because I
had that interest um and one of my colleagues the other archivist uh Alan Hewitt uh
he volunteered to update the Centenary book in 2000 and it had been written in
18 or sorry 1989 and then in 2014 Alan
did it that so I I kind of was brought into things at that stage
because I had such an interest in the history of golf in general and and specifically golf on the island of
Ireland and that brings you to places like Royal candid iron and Royal Port
Rush where I was a member when I was uh younger in my teens and 20s so that that
was that was the history of my getting involved and uh it’s been a labor of
love it says I find it fascinating it does make you wonder doesn’t it I think that when you look at you know
there’s probably a glutse of people that that did Centenary books in the late 80s and early 90s there’s a lot of golf
clubs and I suspect to an extent so we see a lot of you know people hold those positions for a while and very often
there’s very few people to step in and do that and if you don’t maintain it then very quickly I guess it it kind of evaporates how long have you played your
goal for County down for right um I joined Roy County donor I was invited
to join I should say you just don’t rule up and apply it got invited in the early 80s I was a junior doctor at the time
and was lucky that um I’d known quite a few of the members
there because there had been an annual match I think we were all kind of played against the University golf club and so
I knew people there and then the other Junior doctor that I met and married her
father happened to be a member
um yeah so uh so yeah and I got invited by the then honorary treasurer of the
club who had been a very close friend of my father who kind of
God was all into golf when we were kids yeah so that that was uh
that was how I got started there and uh lucky so nearly 40 years yeah
wow and when you were digging when you were updating the Centenary book and you were digging into the history of it did
you find did you find anything that you weren’t expecting in there does it was there any sort of groundbreaking things you
thought I did you know nobody knew that happened and we’ve just kind of uncovered it on their own way
um we yeah there’s a few little things yes but I think for me that I mean the
the most important thing about any course I I guess is the the early Club
is the course itself so um having sort of been very interested
and and I suppose the evolution of golf courses in general and Golf Course architecture
um you you sort of get curious and you see these old photographs I mean they’re served almost hundreds of old
photographs of the course and so I I got curious about that and
we’ve been lucky that we have so many old photographs and then you’ve probably heard of Richard Latham who started to
write on the evolution of course isn’t he and he is what um Woodall Spa guy and he operated wood
oil spike in the right County down and he he Unearthed stuff that I was then able to
to utilize in terms of the evolution of the course and it was amazing just how that course has
evolved into the the um the amazing place that it is today so that and then
of course you can’t ignore the membership itself because it and how the club itself got set up which
was a big connection with the the railway um that he had the railway line came
down from Belfast and um if it hadn’t been for the railway you
know it’s it’s debatable whether the golf course would have got up and running in the way that it did
um and then you’ve got characters within the within the club over the years who were
stalwarts and when you read the art history I mean pretty amazing people and and people
have great vision and foresight considering um what they did back at the end of the
uh 19th century and early 20th century so yeah that that uh now you put all
those things together there’s a lot to look at yeah absolutely and I think when you when you I mean the
course is probably the best jumping off point for us here in this discussion but when you there’s now outside looking in
when you look at Raw County down you’re looking and just say well one what incredible land and you know almost
certainly the greatest views you will you will ever see on a golf course but the actual routing of the course itself
am I writing thinking there was kind of a rudimentary nine holes first established and then quite quickly old
Tom was kind of you know appointed to then expand that to 18. how how’s the
course kind of evolved through that and with old Tom because other people have had a hand in it right but not
necessarily but the design is largely attributed to old time is that correct
well it is it is um attributed to an every website or a book you see Tom Morris’s name there and
then and indeed it is true when they set the the when these
prominent uh businessmen and professionals who were really from Belfast they weren’t really local people
in Newcastle they they were encouraged by the railway line to think about building a golf course
there because the land LED itself to it and when it happened did that and pretty much the first thing they did was uh
they said that kind of set out a little mindful course but they only played it for a few months
um Tom Morris came over three or four months after the first meeting and he
looked at the nine holes that they had laid out at that point and said well I actually can’t really improve on that but what it did what he did was
um he said look you’ve done very well maybe a couple of Minor Adjustments there but if you want to turn this into
18 holes this is what I recommend and so over the next few months they they more or less
near another nine holes that Tom Morris had had designed for them and we have an
old original map of what he what he did and the evil edition of the course was
broadly there were two phases after that because for those first 10 or 11 years things didn’t change very
much even though there were great championships came to to Royal what I was currently doing at that time didn’t
become Royal County down until 1908. um but they they
those first number of years the Irish Armature open came there in 1893 and Was
Won by John Buck the famous John Ball who had already won the Open Championship as an amateur and Harold
Hilton then won that same Championship a few years later so it was attracting these
uh great amateurs and Harry Barton one day it was an Irish professional tournament that ran for a few years in
the 1890s he beat J.H Taylor in the final of it was a party it was an amazing match and we have the the
detailed handwritten records of that match 36 all final so it was a great
course at that time but um it went through two phases after that
one was a member A Man Called George who really he took the view that it
was a course full of blind horse I mean I know there are a few blind walls still but it was full of blind holes and that
was seems to be in the way they played golf in those days it was almost a uh a bit of an element of chance and and
the way they played over these sand dunes but George coombe worked out that you could play Down The Valleys in
between these massive sand dunes and how I’m perhaps a more enjoyable experience on every bit as challenging
so for the first decade of the 20th century he he tried to do that and in
fact the second name that holds it’s pretty much the same as George coombe uh
laid out in those days but he really struggled with the front mine with the dunes are absolutely massive
and so after the first world war um again it was quite a bit of vision
from the council members they they thought they heard they’d heard of Harry Colton they said look let’s bring this
fellow over and see what he can do for us all right cool pretty much redesigned
not all of the halls but the uh most of the holes on the front Main and really
that that that he that was in 1926 Harry called Kim made those changes and the
course pretty much hasn’t changed since since the late 20s with the exception a very uh I suppose a little
bit of a re-routing um about 14 or 15 years ago by Martin Hebert who I’m sure you all you you know
well um and Martin redesigned the 16th are re-routed it but otherwise that’s been
it those that initial 10 11 years then this man couldn’t who I think was a
he was an amazing man actually and did a lot more than redesign right County down he he was a Founder member of the
golfing Union of Ireland and it was just the first handicapping system upon which the current handicapping system even to this day is
still based uh really yeah that’s fascinating you see because you just
don’t get that you know in when you sort of do a very bit of light research before you go and visit somewhere you
just don’t see that stuff and yet that’s you know clearly a fascinating guy in his own right
um and his contribution to the club which you know history just has a funny way of putting the the bigger name in
over time doesn’t it and then gradually the fat figures almost sort of drift into the background maybe a little bit
so yeah [Music] how do you find these things we um we discovered uh and the the
clubhouse was reconfigured and a bit of it was rebuilt in the mid 2000s uh just
before the Walker cup came there and um I knew there was a map of Coombs
changes to the course and but it just had disappearing normally hold I got up
into the the eaves of the clubhouse and there it was City rolled up and there’s a massive big map it’s about uh four
feet by three feet wow and there’s no mountain in the wall of the men’s locker room and and it was
I mean it was actually it was it it was such a professional job but uh it it was
printed in London by Hansard who are the same company that do the records of the House of Commons
proceedings and so on it’s a beautiful map and uh [Music] we’re very lucky to have that record of what did at that time and indeed Harry Court used that Maps when he then
did his changes in the mid-1920s he kind of super important you can see his line drawings uh superimposed on that map and
he did it with pencil but we’re not there going to Rabbi Harry Colts
uh Lane drugs yeah so there you go piano pieces lock finding it and uh as I
said it was professionally cleaned up and it’s a fantastic piece of memorabilia I mean it’s strange you get
these people back in the early days of golf where they could send they could sort of turn their hand to anything you
know he said he got involved in the original handicapping structure and then he designs one of the greatest golf
courses on the planet and then he and all this just being a member it’s just you don’t you don’t seem to get that
that anymore the way that they can just do it turn their hand to anything and and also it’s it’s it’s funny how
something can just end up like you say in the eaves of a golf club that someone at some point has been oh well that
map’s quite good let’s just Chuck it up there and hopefully we’ll not forget about it and then and then it’s only
when you’re kind of taking the golf course at the golf club apart that you you happen to stumble across it it’s
just brilliant I’m just thinking about some of the other bits of the history you touched on it there I think Brian in
terms of you know the club’s origination like many I suppose of that era starting
with you know the railway company who established a route and then local businessmen then you know travel to the
seaside and play golf and that’s a very familiar story um am I right in thinking you know one
of the one of the most famous parts of raw County Down is of course the hat and there’s a am I right in thinking there’s a story within there about train travel
from Belfast to Newcastle and and what that was used for uh yes I mean the the
The Core Essence of the club is that um
you don’t come down to play with your regular four ball weekend week out
um the the club is based on the two million members days but members can
play any day but the the the the the the day that the members really gather and and some numbers or Wednesdays and
Saturdays and uh back in the day when the only means of Transport really was
the the tree in the railway came to Newcastle in the middle of the 19th century
um so it was already there and they traveled up and down from Belfast and it wasn’t a long journey it took less than
an R just came spit down through the the countryside in farmland and hills of County down but they they met up but uh
Queen Street Station which is no longer there but it was in the center of Belfast and they
they put the names into a hat whilst they were on the train and they had their lunch and drink on the on the
train which at the very start the railways that the course actually started right at the
railway station so it started there the first team was beside that so but they drew the names out of a hat at that time
and then as as time went by that became the way that the club
set up it’s it’s uh golf amongst the members and continues to this day uh
there’s no train and it had stopped in 1950 um but what happens is that uh you get
up on a whatever Saturday morning you phone your name in and there is a a
member called the hot man who has a good knowledge of all the members and what
their playing abilities are and personalities and so on and he mix up he
makes up the game so that by the time you arrive at the club for um you know a drink and some lunch uh
you you can see on the notice for a little notice board in the bar um uh and he has made up the games so you
know exactly who you’re playing with and so you go into lunch and have lunch with your four and uh for six months of the
year your four is a foursome and then summer months or year four is a four ball and that has
that has never changed um and you will always be meeting new members it means any new members have
come in to the club get very quickly to know other members and the you know they’re they’re made to feel comfortable
and part of the the whole club life from day one you can’t it doesn’t I mean you
count a range of four if you really want to and go and play with them but that tends not to happen very much
um and uh so that the hat is the the the the the backbone of the club and uh
Longmire continue I guess because uh a member you can bring guests to the club and bring them into the heart and
they’ll they just think it’s a great way to to meet more people and not be stuck
in the same floor of our weekend we go month and month open so on forever so it’s uh it’s pretty it’s brilliant yeah
it’s a refreshing way to play and meet people and um so anyhow that’s it I can’t see no I
think it’s an interesting point you raise their brand because it it’s kind of like an old quirky tradition and in
some respects when you look at it now that by holding on to that it’s actually created something I think is brilliant
because you know a lot of the time in these podcasts we’ll reference our own club Blackwell in in England and you
know there we typically have a similar culture where it’s like not about fixing in advance because golf’s great when you
play with different people and actually that’s then created This brilliant atmosphere where people are playing
regularly with lots of different people and I think there’s nothing more repetitive than playing with the same weekly four ball every Saturday and I
think you know I think there’s probably a broader point in there but you know I I certainly feel like a lot of golfers
and golf clubs would do well to try and do something like that you know you know the the general roll-up mentality that
that’s quite popular those are some of the best days when you just don’t know who you’re going to get drawn with so um yeah it’s incredible to know how you
kind of kept that tradition you know for so long now
those guys knew how to enjoy themselves in those days yeah I can imagine on the uh funny the actual there was a the
railway company um donated a carriage for their for the golf clubs exclusive use
a bit of money out of the golf course and probably probably vice versa in the
those early years but um the the
there are there are some old photographs of these guys standing on the uh
on the um platform and the the railway carries there with photographs of the
Outside Inside in fact it was was delivered to the golfers in the early 1920s it had been the Royal carriage for
two Royal visits to for to Northern Ireland by I think it was George V uh
did both of them and Queen Mary I’m sure somebody will correct me in my history but uh and then in the 1920s they felt
that that carriage had outlined its usefulness um and so it was given order the golf
golfers and I mean it was extremely well appointed as you can imagine having been specifically fit for royalty and uh we
uh we we think that those guys knew how to
enjoy themselves sitting in the lab of luxury having the refreshments uh when they’re
really when the railway company we discovered recently and again part of our digging
um the uh when the railway line closed down in 1950 uh all these things were
sold off and it actually ended up with a farmer into the corner of a field it was a chicken coop and it was discovered by a
local railway preservation Society in Don Patrick uh we were great enthusiasts
and they actually rescued it from the chicken the chicken cooked from the field and it’s snowing there Museum
undergoing restoration and uh you can see some of the old uh the woodwork the
windows some of the stained glass windows are still actually in the carriage but maybe some years before it
gets fully back to to its uh pre-1950 conditions but there you go so
more memorabilia it doesn’t belong to us yeah chickens can do some damage for
sure you don’t want to know about that
how long would that Journey have taken them from Belfast to Newcastle back back in there quite an hour and it only made
about a couple of stops I don’t know what speed it went out there’s a cruel flies
um it’s probably no it wouldn’t be any more than 30 miles
um and there are a couple of old stops they’re all Victorian um station houses on the on route that
are still standing but it would have been an hour so they would have plenty of time to enjoy themselves
um and uh I think there was a after 1950 there was a bus ran for a while but
there wasn’t anywhere successful so uh people travel by car and very often
members will be lived close to each other and Belfast and we’ll share the car and I should say In fairness they’re
a lot more local members from the Newcastle area I’ve now joined the club and under very much at the heart and
soul of the club as well so it’s it’s uh it’s reached out into the local community there was a[Music] um the landowner of the family who donated the land and at least least for
very little money the Ansley family um helped the club set up a local club for
the local man when you visited there you might have seen in the trees behind the First Tee
the morn Golf Club um named after the mountains on the area and that’s a thriving club[Music] which has quite significant playing rates on the
course and we have a very good relationship with them including an annual match so that those things are
all important parts of the club yeah so that’s it’s
um we’re very proud of our connections with the local community in Newcastle and there’s also ladies Club there which
has been a very thriving Club since 1894. so they said no coins going strong
ever since yeah so it’s uh it’s a quite a nice little Community it was an out it was an outstanding segue of yours Brian
I don’t know if it was intentional or not but one of the one of the things I had written down here was the Ansley course
um and you obviously touched on the family family name there so am I right and thinking it was named in honor of them or have I got that totally wide of
the mark oh absolutely no you’re absolutely right it used to it used to be no one just as the number two course
of course and then the number two course and it’s a it’s a short course
um probably it’s about four and a half thousand yards long but I can tell you and if you
come back you really must play it it’s a joyous place to play golf it’s a
fabulous Golf Course um with Incredible challenges and you need
to you don’t really need your driver perhaps with a couple of holes the driver’s okay but you have to position full of dog legs and Tiny greens and
just a spectacular views as well and uh Martin Hebert who talked about earlier
um redesigned uh out of three new halls out by the beach on the North End of the of
the property and that is enhanced it and it’s uh well it’s it’s just a superb
place to play golf it’s great for kids and the ladies actually use it a lot not that they don’t play the championship
course but they they the championship course is a massive course and they’re obviously the ladies teasing it makes it
playable for them but they actually choose to play a lot of their competitions on the and stay links
um and it’s it’s uh it’s just we’re just lucky to have it um uh not many I mean not many
courses have a second corset that can fall back on and when members play quite a bit uh themselves so yeah beautiful
named after the Ansley family the the leasehold was to delete it
um I think it was a 10 000 year lease and they just uh they pretty much tore it up and gave us the Freehold about 15
or 20 years ago oh nice some of the new holes you can see is am I right thinking
from the back of the fourth T of the championship you can kind of Overlook those are the new hordes that Mark
neighbor designed for us yes um they they those three new halls go
around that massive dim that you you can see behind the fourth team on the championship course and play along the
beach and uh yeah that’s uh as I said it’s just a joyous place to to
play golf and when was the Ansley links first laid out them does that come
shortly after sort of Harry Cole visited or was it was it prior to that well the answer links were there
um the answer links were there that would have been George coombe Incorporated those into his redesign
um because he went further out into the Duneland further north uh and this left
uh it’s a somewhat flapper course although it’s by no means flat but it
lent itself to um another 18 holes and in actual fact that
old map that I was telling you about that we discovered it’s actually on that map of 1908 and it’s just called on it
the ladies course because they actually tended to play a lot more there so
um but a beautiful place to play golf I can tell you yeah it’s funny because when we uh when we visited I didn’t know
much about the Ansley course at all if I’m being really honest with you Brian and um the guys who were just sort of
pointed out said you know there’s some of the new holes and talked about it you know four and a half thousand yards and you know what I think is brilliant and I
think I’m guessing you’ll have played for me in your time but having a course like for me ladies that you you know which is almost like a different
challenge isn’t it it’s you can take a half set it’s all about precision and you know for all the greatness that the
championship course brings to hell of a test and yeah whilst it whilst the Le Ansley I’m sure is tricky It’s tricky in
a slightly different way without being as taxing perhaps on you so um yeah I certainly felt like coming
away from our visit there I’d really like to see the Ansley and I suspect I
suspect a lot of visitors who are probably listening to this podcast on their way over to Ireland at the time
and you know probably going to Royal County Down and listening to this podcast to hear about it I suspect
there’s some some words of advice in there to play it when you if you get the chance right oh I would I would I highly
recommend it it’s uh yes it is it’s uh it is so much fun and uh has its own
challenges so platform is not a bad comparison actually you’re right I’ve been there and it’s uh although I haven’t actually played uh formerly the
latest in the dominated
so for any visitor Brian that was to come over and try and tackle the
championship course at Royal County down I mean you’ve been there for a good number of years now I mean what what
advice would you give to people in terms of playing the course and expectations going around there because I I played
there knowing that it was one of rated as one of the the best golf courses in the world and I still couldn’t catch my
breath of how beautiful it was to stand there and play it um what advice would you give to a to a
visitor coming in to Royal County Down okay what have you booked your tea time
um I we would offered two pieces of advice
the first one I would say is if if you can afford it and the caddy scheme is one of the few left on the island of
Ireland um I I would book a carry the second
thing I would do is um I would have a think about my playing ability and that’s broadly speaking you
know where you fall on the on the handicapping system because you leave aside the emergency links as far as the
championship course is concerned I this is a personal view um but I’ve said it many times that the
the challenge of course at Royal County Down is really three courses um the uh there are the yellow T’s the
forward T’s um [Music] and that course runs to about
six thousand six six hundred six thousand six hundred yards of that order
and it’s very playable by most golfers you know any you can play golf at all
you will be able to play that course there’s some significant carries onto the Fairway you’re still going to be
playing the same there are actually only about four properly blind holes and once you’ve played them they’re not blamed
anymore and I should say a little secret for anybody playing for the first time
those blind holes of the widest ferries
um but play off that if you’re a higher handicapper and by higher handicapper I
really mean one ship if you’re into double figures that’s the course to play because it will give you the full
challenge of right kind of design if you then go to the middle T’s which we call the metal tees that that course is 6900
over 6 900 yards long and you need to be a seriously good striker of the ball to
carry it far enough of a lot of the t’s it’s really challenging um you would need to be a decent single
figure golfer to play that course and get it right in a in a way that’s
enjoyable for you and then you have the Bluetooth or the the championship tease and that’s that course is over 7 200
yards but you you really you really need to be a very low single figure player
offer maybe up to about a three or four handicap to play that course and you need to also be a good Striker to to to
just get the ball into play off the teams they’re really challenging
um and they’re the teaser if we have champion there and we do have a lot of championships most recently I think the
Irish open was there in 2015 and even then the European tour pushed some of
those blue T’s forward because they were so challenging so they’re the the so that’s the big advice your level of
ability to don’t don’t be tempted to go further back just because they’re the
back tees and so on because it you could end up you know losing an awful lot of golf balls we talk about it all the time
on this podcast the fastest way to destroying experience is by sending yourself all the way to the backs if the
conditions are against us when we played it it was blowing an absolute hooley I mean it was uh and and that was all well
and good for the first three because it was right off the right shoulder and you know nice and easy when you’ve got you know of course short time into the first
the par five you’re thinking I can get quite used to it but when you turn and face into it you wouldn’t want to be stood on the ninth tee standing on the
blues because I mean you you know there’s only a few people in the world in that window Gonna Get It On
yeah for sure uh yeah another thing I think that’s worth just highlighting
that you said there about the caddies I mean we talked about it on our previous podcast when we visited Northern Ireland but having it the caddies that we had
when we visited uh Royal County Down were just absolutely brilliant and really did enhance the day not only
because they can tell you where to hit the ball or likely to in my case like me to help me find it in the rough
um but you know just just the the banter and the chat and just they’re just
really good sociable sociable guys and it turns out they were all we three
players Three Counties they’re all much better golfers than we were I think they were all roughly around yeah it’s pretty
humbling when on the second second to the whole you should say what’s uh you know what’s your lowest knock around
here it’s of 67 you’re thinking Echo I think I’m gonna I’m in safe hands here today the only way I could be in safer
hands if I picked up the back and just watched I just watched the afternoon but um I I will you know we talked about it
the caddy program it’s great like they actually explained it to us how the the program works and you get a ticket at
the end and you put it in the right box and depending on you know you know obviously it’s excellent but you know
and I I seem to recall that I think it was Phil who uh who was on my
bag his his command of yardages was exemplary I couldn’t it was almost
robotic I I tested him a few times with the uh with the range finder and I think you guys have like the bib structure
don’t you with the yellow bibs basically means they can pretty much get a yardage from anywhere on the course near enough
to about two yards doesn’t matter what type of week it is um but no it was it was fabulous yeah
well the the canning program is is expertly run
um uh on a weekly day-to-day basis and weekly basis by our professional Kevin
Whitson um Kevin Gaston trained up if they’re novices and there’s very young kids during their summer holidays he makes
sure that they all get properly trained up and then there is as you say this this hierarchy up to the top guys who
who really um are superb caddies I mean they’re Professionals in their own right and
we’ve had top players who come to play the course um and the greats have all come to play
including the likes of Tiger Woods he can back he was there three times because he couldn’t quite Master it the first a
couple of times and uh these guys talked so highly of the counties they’re apart
from a big very nice guys I played courteous and all of that they know their stuff but Kevin what’s the must
take a lot of credit for that amongst other uh things that he contributes to the club so uh yeah we’re we’re very
lucky um uh to have that kind of program running you know well we have to take
this opportunity to thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast with us it’s not often we get to chat to such important people in golf
clubs and it’s uh it’s our attempt to try and
um connect the people of who want to come play counting down with members and it’s it’s what you’re doing is exemplary
and we really do thank you for taking the time to speak to us and uh and we wish you all the best and
continue to do all the hard work that you do so thank you very much for for speaking with us a pleasure if you come back to play
please call me and uh come and we’ll start something I will get a game together[Laughter] thank you Brian it is great thank you okay thanks guys