Tomorrow an advance team of President Bill Clinton's security service will arrive in Ballybunion to check things out.

It can only mean one thing: the President is going to play that long-postponed game of golf with Dick Spring.

For Ballybunion an extremely poor season has been buoyed by the expectation that the world's most powerful leader - understood to have a golf handicap of 13 - is going to play the course.

Most townspeople see it as a brief but very special event which will reap long-term dividends for the famous seaside resort.

Ballybunion has got two great golf courses adjoining the town and a marvellous beach. Sadly, this year the beach has not been attracting the usual numbers because of the poor weather, but the golf club has been doing brisk business.

Golfers will brave the bad weather for an opportunity to play the old Ballybunion links, rated 11th in the world, and the newer Cashen 18-hole course.

Families, though, will not brave the weather when the mists roll in, the winds howl and the beach becomes uninviting. It has been a bad season. Ballybunion needs Bill Clinton.

The signs are that he will deliver on that long-standing promise to come back to Ireland and play golf in Ballybunion.

The word, too, is that former Tanaiste and local TD, Dick Spring, with whom the original golf date was made, will be part of what is likely to be a presidential four-ball in Ballybunion.

Spring was an influential Irish politician back then - now he is a backbencher. But golf buddies are golf buddies, and when the heavies are arriving to do the security checks you've got to believe that the postponed golf game is going to happen.

Ballybunion is expectant but not overly fazed by the likely visit of President Clinton. After all, there has already been a dress rehearsal.

When Spring and Clinton first discussed the idea of a game of golf during the presidential visit to Ireland in 1995, Clinton's men in trench coats came to Ballybunion to do the usual security sweep.

Telecom Eireann put 50 extra telephone lines into the golf club to cater for the world's press. The lines are still there, so Ballybunion is prepared and waiting.

Preparations for the visit that never happened the last time suggest that on this occasion - if and when it does occur - the security procedures will be the same.

Sources say that at 4 p.m. on the eve of the golf round everybody will be asked to leave the club. There will be a thorough security search and then the Army will move in to guard the clubhouse and the two golf courses overnight.

On the morning of the game, only those with full accreditation will be allowed near the course. Being a local or being a golf club member will mean nothing if the security people have not given accreditation.

Local businessman Frank Quilter has no doubt about what the visit will mean to Ballybunion. "We'll never see a poor day again. I feel it in my bones. People will flock to Ballybunion as they have never done before. This is going to be mega. Don't forget that when Clinton was last here he addressed the people of Ballybunion directly in front of a crowd of more than 100,000 people in College Green.

"He saw our welcoming banners saying that we backed him and then he made a promise to come back to us in Ballybunion because unfortunately events in Bosnia prevented him from having that game with Dick Spring. We believe that he is going to keep his promise and I think it's fair to say that we would be in a nasty mood if he failed to do so."

JUST before the British Open, Ballybunion hosted some of the world's top golfers, including Mark O'Meara - the winner of the British Open, who also won the major prize at Augusta earlier in the year - Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk and Payne Stewart.

According to Jim McKenna, the arrival of President Clinton to play on the Old Links Course would undoubtedly have a massive effect on Ballybunion's status as a golf venue.

People in the US would ask why their President had played in Ballybunion, and would undoubtedly head for the two golf courses which are Kerry's finest.

Jackie Hourigan, the chairman of the Ballybunion Development Company, said he was thrilled with the news. He added: "I know he is a golf lover and we get about 10,000 US golfers a year coming here.

"To think that he will come here and play the old course is very exciting, and there is no question about it, it will have a marvellous spin-off. It's been a long saga, he was to have come before, then he didn't, but now we all believe he will this time."

The security heavies will arrive tomorrow, and if the experience of Ballyporeen when President Reagan visited is anything to go by, the townspeople will find that hosting a presidential visit is a whole new ball game.