Rejuvenated Castletroy are a club on the up

Castletroy Golf Club will have a fresh approach to their debut appearance at the PGA Pro-Captain Challenge Irish qualifying event.

The Limerick club’s duo will feature their youngest ever captain and a PGA professional who has been in the post for just over a year.

Captain Paddy O’Halloran, a 35-year-old chartered accountant, and head pro Gary Howie will team up for the competition to be held at Co Louth’s Seapoint Golf Links on September 3.

They will be hoping to reach the £22,000 final, staged in association with Golfplan, which takes place between November 6-7 in Spain at Arabella Golf Mallorca.

And O’Halloran admits the Castleroy club is on the up at the moment after staging the Irish Boys Amateur Open Championship last year.

“We haven’t played in this event before, but Gary Howie has been a breath of fresh air at the club since joining us as head professional,” said O’Halloran.

“He’s really warmed to people and vice-versa. Gary’s from Ayrshire and we organised a trip from here over to his home club which attracted 23 members who all went over with him to Scotland.

“We combined that with playing at Turnberry and Dundonald Links so we had a great trip.

“That’s the sort of thing Gary has brought to the club and he also wants the members to take part in events like this one at Seapoint.

“A group of us have tried to rejuvenate the club with membership dropping,  we’ve stabilised that and we’re breaking even now on numbers. Things are on the up, there’s a lot of things going on at the club. We have around 1,000 members now.”

O’Halloran has been a member at Castletroy since he was 12 years old.

“I’m only a young captain, the youngest ever here so I’m told, I was treasurer and vice captain before that,” he explained.

O’Halloran says that last year’s staging of the Boys Open earned the club praise as well.

“It was very successful, we got some great recognition from the GUI and from parents, we had a memorable finish,” he said.

“But our greenskeeper is absolutely phenomenal, he has the course looking and playing really well. We’re very proud of the course in our region.”

Other teams from Ireland taking part at Seapoint include host pairing  David Carroll and Bernard Seeryl; Stephen Gordon and Paul Cuming (Bangor Golf Club);   Patrick Gittens and Peter Lehane (Corrstown Golf Club);  Leslie Walker and Gerry Byrne (Dundalk Golf Club);  David Mortimer and Phillip Duffy (Galway Golf Club);   Richard Whitford and Frank McGrath (Knock Golf Club);  John Dwyer and Brian Purcell (Royal Dublin Golf Club) and  Liam Bowler and Jack Lynn (Wexford Golf Club).

For more information on the event at Seapoint, click here.