There was celebration aplenty at Greystones Golf Club on Monday with corks popping even when it became clear club member Paul Dunne was not going to win the British Open Championship.
But if the club was unfazed by Dunne’s stellar performance on Sunday – many said they knew the 22-year-old was destined to become a golfing great – Monday was a chance to revel in Dunne’s achievement over a long weekend at St Andrews.
Over the course of the day, up to 200 members of the Greystones club followed the action on widescreen televisions in the function and diningrooms.
After a couple of early bogeys, a roar of pure joy ripped through the normally sedate surrounds as Dunne delivered a birdie in a seeming return to his previous day’s form.
Ultimately Dunne came up short in the race for the Silver Medal (which is presented to the top- ranking amateur) but nobody in Greystones was complaining.
“Paul has played here since he was 10 years old; he is very popular, a very unassuming fella who will go out with the juniors or anybody” said club member Conor Woods.
Contender
Fellow club member Joe O’Brien said even the emergence of Dunne as a contender in the Open “means everything for the club”.
It was the “biggest thing that ever happened to the club” he said, likening it to the club’s claim on Jimmy Martin, a former Ryder Cup player.
“He is wonderful,” he said of Dunne before adding that he personally knew the young man had sat at breakfast as a child, swinging his cutlery like a golf club, always practising. “It’s true, I have that from his mother and father,” he said.
The media had closed in to see what the locals made of the day. Among the rows of seats in the club diningroom sat a table with four radio microphones; beside it sat a group of men at another table replete with pints. The kitchen had been going from mid-morning, and by late afternoon it was still flat out serving lunches.
In a lull in proceedings club president Via Maume said she expected whatever the outcome of the British Open, life would be different for Dunne from this day forward.
Ms Maume, with Lady Captain Jeanne Thorpe, took time out on the club’s balcony to praise the young golfer’s “dedication and hard work”, with Ms Thorpe describing his life as “transformed”.
“Well, if not transformed completely it is never going to be the same,” she said.
Lucrative
Both women said they expected Dunne would now be hoping to take part in the Walker Cup (essentially the Ryder Cup for amateurs), after which they expected a lucrative professional career would be on the cards.
Back inside the adjacent rooms the television was covering America’s Zach Johnson slowly and inexorably closing in on the title, and it was becoming clear there would be no fairytale finish for Dunne or fellow Irish man Pádraig Harrington.
Nobody in Greystones seemed to worry. For the club it seemed as if it was all about the taking part, about having one of their own competing against the world’s best and doing them proud.
As the evening wore on, the bubbly flowed. There was probably little work done in businesses around Greystones yesterday – and it looks as if today may be quiet too.
