The sand dunes of Lahinch are a far cry from the madding crowd of Croke Park. Yesterday, though, Davy Fitzgerald - a two-time All-Ireland winner with Clare and a three-time hurling All Star - demonstrated he had lost none of the passion that made him one of hurling's greatest goalkeepers. Transferring his skills to golf he negotiated a route into the third round of the South of Ireland amateur championship.
If his heart was actually with his former hurling team-mates on the opposite side of the country, Fitzgerald's mind was very much on the job at hand as he caused something of an upset in beating Cian Curley of Newlands on the 18th to set up an encounter today with the former Walker Cup player Arthur Pierse.
And while he was happy with his own victory here, Fitzgerald's first reaction after securing his one-hole win over Curley with a birdie on the par-five 18th was to sympathise with his hurling colleagues who had lost to Limerick.
"I'd prefer to be up in Croke Park," said Fitzgerald, who was dropped off the Clare panel earlier this season after a falling-out with manager Tony Considine.
"I'm gutted for them, because I know how much hard work they put in. I never wanted what happened to happen. I wanted to play. I just wasn't wanted"
Fitzgerald, who made his senior intercounty debut in 1989 as an 18-year-old, had been at every Clare championship match - as either spectator or player - since 1979.
Still, his absence from the hurling field enabled him to prepare with diligence for his third appearance in the South of Ireland, sponsored by McNamara Builders. In the past, the one-handicapper had put hurling first and felt he did not do himself justice in the championship, the last of the domestic majors.
This time, he could give three weeks of intensive preparation, which was rewarded with a first-round win over Kenneth Fahey oSaturday and yesterday's second-round win over Curley, a semi-finalist in the North earlier this month.
"I'm an awful man for the mental game; it's a big thing for me," he said. "Hurling, and especially as a goalkeeper, is a sport where you're on the edge all the time. Here, in golf, you're on your own and if you don't put the ball in the hole you are out . . .
"This (win) has given me the biggest buzz and I'm delighted that I'm competing. Sure I'll give it a blast (against Pierse) and see what happens."
In yesterday's match with Curley, Fitzgerald was repeatedly out-driven by the Dubliner, who is one of the first recipients of the Paddy Harrington Scholarship to NUI Maynooth. But, rather than watch his opponent's ball striking, Fitzgerald looked elsewhere so he could "focus on my own game". It worked; he overcame a one-hole deficit at the turn to keep the match going to the 18th, holing critical putts on the 16th and 17th to do so.
On the 534-yard, par-five finishing hole, with the pair all square, Fitzgerald played driver and four-wood to the edge of the green before two-putting for a birdie that gave him victory and a date with the veteran Pierse, who was a 3 and 2 winner over Killeen's Donal Hogan.
Shane Lowry, the Irish Close champion, also had to show fortitude when overcoming Paul Buckley at the 19th, where he hit an eight-iron approach to two feet for a winning birdie at the first play-off hole.
The defending champion, Simon Ward, progressed with a 6 and 5 win over Michael Kemmy.
And another former GAA star also made an impact yesterday; Conor Deegan - an All-Ireland football winner with Down and an All Star at full back in 1991 - defeated Royal Dublin's Gary McGrane, an Irish boys international, by 4 and 2.
