Irish Open Follow-up: Philip Reid looks back on weekend events at Carton House and how they can be improved upon.

For those of us nurtured on the Irish Open, it seems mightily strange that it has been here and gone long before the school holidays have even kicked in. Yet, that is the reality; and the simple fact is the tournament, as good as it is, is no longer a blue-chip commodity on the PGA European Tour schedule.

In financial terms, its purse - albeit one of €2 million - has not kept pace with fancy interlopers of a more recent vintage.

A far more worrying trend, and perhaps a consequence of the event's devaluation, is the fall-off in attendance figures inside the past five years.

In that period, the drop-off in attendance figures at the Irish Open has been a dramatic one, from a total of 88,000 (over four days) when it was held for the first time at Fota Island in 2001 to a total of 63,651 at Carton House this year.

That falling off in attendances reflects a 25 per cent decrease in just five years, but it has been a steady decline over that time. The official attendances for the last five Irish Opens are: 2001 (Fota Island) 88,000; 2002 (Fota Island) 81,600; 2003 (Portmarnock) 76,410; 2004 (Baltray) 72,665; 2005 (Carton House) 63,651.

It would seem a number of factors have contrived to produce this situation. Certainly, the tournament's proximity to the Smurfit European Open - at least in recent years - hasn't done it any favours.

The European Open, once a struggling tournament on the schedule, has been transformed since Smurfit came on board in 1995 and is now one of the flagship events on the European Tour.

This year, it will have a prize fund of almost €3.4 million, with only the majors and world championship events and a handful of other tournaments surpassing it for prize money.

But money, although an essential part of professional golf, hasn't been the only problem.

Where once the Irish Open occupied a prime date in the golfing calendar, it has been shunted around in the recent past occupying dates in June and July and now May.

Ironically, the field at Carton House was an exceptionally good one for a tournament with a €2 million purse; and, let's face it, we're also blessed with having home-bred world-class players of the quality of Padraig Harrington, Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell and Paul McGinley.

Unfortunately, the weather - too - contrived to be a bit of a spoilsport, with Sunday's final round particularly affected.

Those who may have been tempted to attend were probably dissuaded by the weather forecast, instead preferring to be couch potatoes. The attendance on Sunday was 21,342, which was some 4,000 less than attended the final round in Baltray last year and a massive 14,000 fewer than were present for the final round in Fota Island in 2001, when beautiful sunshine basked the Cork course.

Apart from the weather, the late start - the latest on the European Tour - was also a likely deterrent to prospective attendees, especially for those not living in the Dublin region. Play was not scheduled to conclude until just before 7pm, apparently because of RTÉ television demands, and this scheduled late finish was compounded by the 90 minutes suspension midway through the afternoon which eventually meant that Stephen Dodd was not crowned champion until shortly before 8.30pm.

Ironically, one of the victims of this late finish was RTÉ radio, who had to abandon plans to stay on air with the tournament.

In any review of this year's tournament, the late start to the final round is one that, in particular, should be examined.

After all, was it fair either to those spectators who did attend the final day and who stayed to the death? It was a long, long day for those who remained on. In fact, a large proportion of the crowd left during or shortly after the rain delay, and Harrington was one of those to comment afterwards on the lack of noise emanating from other parts of the course.

"It was great for me, I'd large galleries all the time . . . but I did notice there weren't loud cheers coming from elsewhere. There wasn't that usual hustle and bustle about the place."

None of these faults can be placed at the feet of Nissan Ireland or Carton House. Since assuming title sponsorship four years ago - and effectively saving the Irish Open - Nissan have been aggressive in their marketing and promotion of the event and it is a tribute to that strategy they are so readily associated with the tournament, while Carton House was a superb venue.

And the promise from the Mallaghan family, who own it, is that it will be even better next year as they learn from what is entailed in playing host to a major tournament.

Colin Montgomerie spoke afterwards about the plans to take on board observations from his peers on tour, especially with regard to some of the landing areas on the fairways.

"I think it's important to soften up some of the driving areas," admitted Harrington, "and there are little things that can be done to make the course even better in a year's time."

As to the status of the Irish Open, Harrington observed: "It's very strong with the core of the European Tour, a lot of players want to come here and play it. It's hard to attract the very top players because they're always worried about schedules, but the actual core players on the Euroepan Tour always come to the Irish Open.

"They always enjoy it here, and always see it as one of the top events. The very, very top have different things on their minds. It's hard to get them. I'm sure you could find a better date and I'm also sure there are plenty of worse dates. The tour schedule is just so busy now. A summer date is always better, but we don't have that choice."

What is certain is that the Nissan Irish Open will be back at Carton House next year, from May 18th-21st. Nobody knows what the weather gods have in store for us in 12 months' time; but, next time, can we please not compound things by having such a late scheduled finish again? After all, people - players and spectators - do have homes to go to.