If your vision of golf includes finely manicured fairways lined with stately oaks, sleek golf carts and beverage girls slinging overpriced Coors Lights, you might not recognize Enniscrone – or many of Ireland’s other links – as golf courses. It is on true links land, defined by Enniscrone General Manager Pat Sweeney as the land that connects or links pasture land to the beach in other words, land that’s too sandy to grow anything, marginal for grazing sheep, and not much good for anything else. Dating to 1918, Enniscrone rests on a spit of land that juts into Killala Bay, near where the River Moy meets the Atlantic. Where wild and woolly links courses lie on peninsulas formed by rivers brimming with Atlantic salmon and sea trout.Īfter checking in at Mount Falcon Estate - a castlelike hotel just outside the town of Ballina - I made my way to Enniscrone Golf Club. Back in the old country, on the west coast of Ireland. The ultimate adventure, however, lay further afield. I’ve assembled several trips in the past along the golf/fly-fishing theme, mostly around my stomping grounds in the Pacific Northwest. For both sports, it’s what happens “between the ears” that separates relative success and failure. The rest of the time is spent gauging currents, checking for rises, selecting flies and reading the water. When fly-fishing a river, even the best day involves minutes - not hours - of actually fighting fish. The rest of the time you’re gauging distances, checking the wind, selecting clubs and reading greens. Or perhaps it’s the fact that in your average round of golf, the time you spend actually swinging a club amounts to about three minutes. Perhaps it’s the similitude of the swinging/casting motion, and the fact that the ball and the fly go farther when you move smoothly. Perhaps it’s the outdoor setting, pitting man against obstacles (be they finicky trout or gaping bunkers). As my friend recounted this special day, it struck me that many golfers I know fly-fish - and vice versa. Some years back, a fishing guide acquaintance of mine led pro golfers Tiger Woods and Mark O’Meara out on Oregon’s Deschutes River for a day of fly-fishing for steelhead.
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