Paul McGinley and Padraig Harrington were on their way home from here yesterday, 40 years to the day since Harry Bradshaw and Christy O'Connor Jnr captured the World Cup (then the Canada Cup) for Ireland in 1958. Behind them they left a totally revitalised New Zealand golfing scene after a successful 44th staging of the tournament.

Total attendances of 53,900 for the week were relatively modest by Irish standards. But a figure of 13,300 at Gulf Harbour on Sunday clearly convinced the authorities of a bright future for the New Zealand professional game.

All of which had much to do with the weekend decision to relaunch the New Zealand PGA Championship in the year 2000, probably at Gulf Harbour with a prize fund of around £350,000. The move - it was last played in 1987 - emphasises the desire of the local tourist board to promote the country as a golfing destination, despite its remote location in the South Pacific.

Ireland's World Cup duo are now set for a long break from the game. In fact Harrington plans not to touch a club for five weeks and won't be returning to action for a further four weeks, probably in Perth towards the end of January. For his part, McGinley is not yet clear when his 1999 European campaign will start - his wife Allison is six months pregnant - but he, too, is taking an immediate rest at their home in Sunningdale.

The future remains somewhat up in the air, however, for Harrington's caddie John O'Reilly who parted company with his "master" after the final round here on Sunday. They had been three seasons together and O'Reilly proved to be an excellent choice as an old hand showing newcomer Harrington the ropes on tour.

"I'm not retiring," insisted the grizzled Tallaght resident, who admits to being 55 going on 70. "I've had the offer of a bag and I'm not clear whether I'll take it up."

He has been 23 years on tour, seven with Peter Townsend, 13 with Des Smyth and three with Harrington. His most productive period was with Smyth and he nominated the 1988 Dunhill Cup triumph as the highlight of his career, followed by the World Cup victory at Kiawah Island last year.

"I had six Irish region tournament wins and eight on the European Tour," he said proudly. I was tempted to enquire as to the extent of the contribution he felt that Smyth and Harrington had made to those successes, but it hardly seemed an appropriate time for such pedantry.

Meanwhile, the performance of Nick Faldo may prove to be the second most significant turning point in an illustrious career, after the breakthrough of his British Open triumph at Muirfield in 1987. With rounds of 68, 70, 73 and 69 in trying conditions, he compiled an eight-under-par aggregate which was surpassed only by America's Scott Verplank.

In his moment of victory we saw the more endearing side of a very complex man who had tastelessly thanked the press "from the heart of my bottom" after his third Open triumph at Muirfield in 1992.

On this occasion, in his victory speech, he dedicated England's first World Cup win to a woman whom he named simply as Velvet, "who couldn't be here today because she's had some bad news."

She later turned out to be Velvet Shearer, the next-door neighbour of Faldo colleague David Carter in the apartment they rented for the week. "She really looked after us," said Faldo. "She got bits and pieces for us and took us for a barbeque. She's been a good buddy." Her absence was caused by the death of her father the previous day.

Faldo clearly relished the challenge of Gulf Harbour though he joined the criticism of the course, albeit with a more measured assessment, after the high winds of Friday and Saturday. They were conditions which prompted New Zealand's Greg Turner to remark scathingly: "We got screwed by a terrible course."

The reasoned view from Faldo was that the exposed course demanded links-style golf on American-style terrain. "You've got to play to the edges of the greens, rather than bump and run the ball," he said. "That makes it very hard for us."

The designer, Robert Trent Jones Jnr, flatly rejected that view when I put it to him, though he admitted: "I'm going to be very sensitive to constructive criticism. Four areas have been identified for refinements - at the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th. But I don't accept Faldo's criticism insofar as the approaches to about 12 of the greens are open."

Yet Australia's Peter O'Malley claimed: "It's the wrong golf course for the amount of wind the location gets. Basically, we all (the players) agree with Greg Turner's comments."

All of which was reflective of some decidedly unhappy Irish experiences with American architects. One recalls the horrendous problems that Tralee GC had with the greens on their Arnold Palmer-designed course at Barrow. This came after a profoundly disappointing layout by Trent Jones Snr for the new course at Ballybunion, where he was clearly out of touch with the subtleties of links terrain.

Then we had the drainage problems at the Palmer-designed K Club, which were experienced to a lesser extent at Mount Juliet, the work of Jack Nicklaus. In all of these cases, it was clear that the American designer was not sufficiently enlightened about the prevailing local conditions. Mistakes were inevitable.

For his part, Trent Jones Jnr claimed that last weekend's conditions were most unusual, even on a headland course swept by Pacific winds. "I don't consider myself to be an American architect: I'm a world architect," he said.

The basic construction of the course (7,089 yards off the back tees), with its creeping bent greens and Bermuda fairways, is of an admirably high quality. But most of the greens are elevated and lack the protection of dunes, which form such a critical element of such celebrated Irish links courses as Portmarnock, Royal Co Down and Ballybunion. And the clinging Bermuda, or so-called couchgrass, approaches to the greens, make pitch and run shots somewhat problematic.

As it happens, Trent Jones Jnr also designed the Mines Resort in Kuala Lumpur, which is the venue for next year's World Cup. But he is confident there will be no comparable problems there. Nor should there be, given that the environment is very similar to what one would experience in Florida.

This will be the last staging of the World Cup under the auspices of the International Golf Association. After that, it becomes a world tour event, run jointly by the major tours.

Footnote: The official statistics for last weekend had John Daly as the longest hitter in the field with average drives of 276.9 yards, followed by Damaso Galban on 272.9. By way of illustrating the enduring relevance of Sam Snead's claim that "you drive for show and you putt for dough", Daly's putting lapses effectively wrecked US hopes of the title while Galban, from Venezuela, finished 60th of the 64 competitors with an aggregate of 316 - 28 over par.