Given the golfing date I have with President Clinton on September 5th, I suppose it is a little premature for me to be doing a piece like this. And if we actually succeed in having that long-awaited game at Ballybunion, which I'm convinced we will, much of the following will become old hat.

The fact remains, however, that everything has to be right for the President of the US to take a halfday off for a game of golf in Ireland. I can still vividly recall the situation on his last visit here in 1995.

Our golf game was confirmed on a Monday and cancelled 24 hours later. The crisis in Bosnia had intervened and in a hurried change of schedule, President Clinton headed for Germany.

I was a latecomer to golf and I didn't really get into the game until the mid 70s, in the US. Then, after playing it for two years, I discovered I had been doing it all wrong. It was only when a friend handed me a left-handed club and suggested I try it out, that I discovered I should have been playing that way all along.

So, in a manner entirely appropriate for a Labour politician, I belatedly set about approaching the game from the left. Further progress was somewhat curtailed, however, by my car accident in 1981 which, as it happened, spelt an end to my rugby career.

I find it interesting on reflection that of the 15 EU foreign ministers, I was the only one who played golf. The others thought I was half-mad when I would include a pair of golf shoes in my travelling gear. I'm a member of Tralee and Ballybunion, among other places, and my best performance in recent years was just after the 1997 General Election. For obvious reasons, I hadn't played for about two months when I was invited to Ballybunion by the Munster Press.

Playing off 18, I returned 39 points which won me the visitors' prize. In fact is was the best score of the day. But it could have been a little better, given that I had 38 points standing on the 17th tee.

Obviously I finished poorly. I drove out of bounds on the 17th to draw a blank there and then scrambled my way up the 18th for a six and one more point. Perhaps the problem was that I didn't have a sufficiently large gallery to display my skills; at least that's what some of the well-meaning media men suggested.

Though I play golf strictly for the fun of it, I have the feeling I'm destined to have a hole-in-one. This is prompted by an experience at Castlegregory about five years ago and by the recent pro-am at East Clare, prior to the West of Ireland Seniors' Championship.

While playing with my brother Arthur at Castlegregory, my teeshot at the short second finished only a few inches from the hole. Then, on the short eighth at East Clare my tee-shot came to rest two feet away. In my approach to golf, I try to apply a philosophy which served me well in other areas of my sporting career. It is that if you take your points when they present themselves, the goals almost certainly come. You must be patient.

Anyway, my game at East Clare was part of a determined effort to get my game into shape for the big date with President Clinton which, I understand, will be a fourball. Over the next two weeks, I will be doing my best to avoid the delights of the Festival of Kerry.

I know the President, who plays off 15, takes the game seriously. I also believe that golf has allowed us to develop a relationship which extends beyond politics. And apart from all of that, there are certain to be a few side-bets involved. Either way, I hope we see Ballybunion at its glorious best.