Traditionally staged in the third week in September, next year's Bulmers All-Ireland Cups and Shields finals - which are scheduled to take place at Galway golf club - are likely to move to a new date in the first week of October because of the rescheduling of the Ryder Cup.
If they went ahead on their traditional date, they would clash with the American Express world strokeplay - featuring a certain Tiger Woods - which is due to take place at Mount Juliet. Moving them back a week would have put them head-to-head with the Ryder Cup.
Yet, at a time when professional golf tournaments tend to dictate when an amateur event can be played, the evidence from the most recent Cups and Shields tends to indicate that this unique club competition goes from strength to strength.
Last week's staging of the competitions at Newlands proved to be an unqualified success, with some of the largest crowds in recent times. The only province not to win a green pennant proved to be Connacht. Munster took three: the Irish Senior Cup (Mallow); Jimmy Bruen Shield (Thurles), and Pierse Purcell Shield (Kanturk). Leinster took the Barton Shield (UCD) and Ulster the Irish Junior Cup (Ballyclare).
Mallow's maiden win (beating Portmarnock, 17 times winners of the Irish Senior Cup in the final) provided further confirmation that a vibrant junior golf policy in a club will ultimately reap rewards. With a number of low-handicap teenagers coming through the club's system there is every reason to suspect that the Cork club will be serious challengers in the Irish Senior Cup for the immediate future.
Meanwhile, England has named an extremely strong side to compete in the inaugural Seniors (Over 50s) Internationals which take place at Portmarnock next week. The team includes Roy Smethurst - the English seniors champion for the past two years - along with Andrew Morrison, Robert Turner and Jon Marks, who occupied the next three places in the English championship earlier this season, as well as David Lane, Anthony Smith and Paul Baxter, the English Golf Union's chief executive.
Lane, Smethurst and Marks have dominated the English championship for the past five years while Lane is also a former British Seniors winner and recently won the Scottish Seniors Open at Gleneagles.
Marks, incidentally, won the silver medal as leading amateur in the British Seniors Open in 1998.
Ireland's seven-man line-up includes reigning Irish seniors champion David Jackson of Clandeboye, the Munster and Connacht seniors champion Harry McKinney of the European club, Ulster seniors champion Hugh Mackeown of Portmarnock and Leinster seniors champion Peter Cowley of Cork. The remaining members of the team are David Noonan (Rosslare), Bob Wallace (Spa) and Sean Coyne (Killarney). Earlier this year, the three-man Irish team of Jackson, McKinney and Cowley won the European Nations Cup in Spain.
Although inter-collegiate golf in the United States has been temporarily postponed due to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Walker Cup player Graeme McDowell - who was a junior All-American this year - has been given a boost for the season ahead by winning the individual title at the Toby Cup in Japan, which was the University of Alabama's opening tournament of the season.
The Portrush player - who played in the Walker Cup and Palmer Cup teams this year - took the individual honours, although Alabama had to settle for second place in the team competition.
Meanwhile, Ashbourne five-handicapper Damien McCartan was narrowly defeated in the Boys' Under-15 final of the Weetabix Golf Foundation championships. Matthew Baldwin, a two-handicapper from the Hesketh club in England, finished with a gross 36-hole total of 147, just one shot ahead of McCartan.
Kyung Hae Lee, who plays out of Castle golf club, was second in the girls under-15 competition, shooting rounds of 83 and 76 for 159, three shots behind England's Felicity Johnson.
