Golf: Master of all ceremonies

Golf

Dermot Gilleece on the golfing society supremo that was Cecil Whelan

Master of all ceremonies..

Arguably their most memorable occasion was the Christy O'Connor Pro-Am at Hermitage GC, Cecil’s home club, in 1976. With Bing Crosby and his son Nathaniel in the field, top prize went to the 1969 US Open champion, Orville Moody, who carded a course-record 65 which contained birdies at each of the four par-threes.

Cecil Whelan: The indefatigable honorary secretary of the Links Society became so much a part of golfing life in Ireland over a period of 45 years that his many admirers felt they could take little liberties.

It must be an age thing. In the buildup to Christmas I found myself unusually preoccupied with departed friends. And not for the first time, Cecil Whelan came to mind for his annual pre-Christmas sports gathering at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, in association with the Irish Youth Foundation.

Along with sports stars, present and past, you could count on superb entertainment from the likes of Red Hurley, Kathy Nugent, Kathy Durkin and Finbarr Furey, all excellently MCd by Ronan Collins and Mary Kennedy who, I later discovered, gave their services free. The whole effort was linked so inextricably to Cecil that you saw little chance of it being repeated when the great host passed on. And so it has proved to be. If memory serves, one effort was made, but we had effectively lost an annual opportunity of dressing in our finest, just as we once did for occasions like the Press Ball.

I often envied Cecil’s address book, given the regular presence of Mike Gibson, Jack O’Shea, Eamonn Coghlan, Pat Jennings, Eddie Keher, and many other sportspeople of national and international repute. Indeed I felt honoured on the rare occasions he would contact me, looking for a phone number that had somehow escaped him.

When such a call came, there would be none of the usual introductory niceties on picking up the phone. Instead, the voice on the other end would begin as if he were continuing a conversation which had accidentally been cut off. ‘Des is something else, isn’t he? You can’t beat a bit of class. Fourteen Irish champions and 10 Major winners were there. Probably our best night yet. And how about Red ..’ Or you could have been in the middle of dinner when suddenly, a voice over your shoulder was whispering: ‘Not a bad lineup, is it? Brian O’Driscoll turned down three other engagements to be here. And Amy said she wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

This was how Cecil did his thing. And despite countless successes through the years, he would anxiously continue to seek assurance that the latest one had gone well. You’d tell him it was truly memorable, yet the silence suggested he wanted more. So you racked your brain for a few more superlatives, aware that the man deserved all the praise he got. Who else could command the same respect from sports icons from the past, as from today’s young stars like Rory McIlroy?

of golfing life in Ireland over a period of 45 years that his many admirers felt they could take little liberties. Like asking Cecil the line-up for his latest do. ‘Kathy Durkin and rack of lamb’ came the reply, prompting gentle laughter. One thing was certain: with Cecil at the helm, you knew it was going to be a memorable show.

On a crisp October day in 1966, three Irish professionals, Christy O'Connor Snr, Watty Sullivan and Jimmy Kinsella, joined 27 amateurs for a get-together of golfing friends on the links at Baltray. When the amateurs had each chipped ten shillings (64 cent) into a pool, the total of €17.28 in today’s money was used to buy prizes for the professionals. Towards the end of a thoroughly enjoyable occasion, someone suggested over dinner that they should do it again. Better still, they'd do it again and raise some money which could be donated to charity. And given the terrain on which they had just played, they would call themselves the Links Golfing Society.

When it came to the election of officers, Cecil fitted so comfortably into the honorary secretary’s role that nobody dared oppose him over a period of more than four decades. ‘The second outing happened a month after the first,’ he recalled. ‘This time we charged £1 (€1.27) to play and with 80 people there, we had a surplus of £25. Then, at the end of our first season we gave a cheque for £300 to Cappagh Orthopaedic Hospital.’

Meanwhile, there was no argument about who would be president. Nobody dared challenge one of Europe's leading players who, only a few months previously, had finished eagle, birdie, eagle to win the Carrolls International Tournament over Royal Dublin, his home course.

I learned of occasions when Christy Snr would be almost overcome with emotion on visiting Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. And how he would leave there more determined than ever to do what he could to ease the plight of those kids. So it was that Christy presided over the society for the next 30 years, while more than €12 million was raised for sick children in hospitals in the Dublin area. And in the context of money well spent, Cecil retained a vivid recollection of one particular visit he and O’Connor made to Our Lady's Hospital, where a nurse showed them a little boy, who had undergone major heart surgery that morning. Then there was a visit to Cappagh where the two of them met a gorgeous baby girl they described as a little princess, only to be told she had no more than three months to live because of a rare bone disease.

Those experiences made the two principals all the more determined to attend every outing, except when O’Connor was out of the country. And their activities expanded significantly in 1971, with the staging of an international pro-am, which became the biggest oneday event in Europe. Fixed for the day after the Open Championship each year, it developed into a huge fund-raiser while attracting leading players such as Roberto de Vicenzo, Kel Nagle, David Graham, Max Faulkner, Hubert Green, Doug Sanders, Tony Jacklin, Ernie Els, Ian Baker-Finch, Wayne Grady and Seve Ballesteros.

Arguably their most memorable occasion was the Christy O'Connor Pro-Am at Hermitage GC, Cecil’s home club, in 1976. With Bing Crosby and his son Nathaniel in the field, top prize went to the 1969 US Open champion, Orville Moody, who carded a course-record 65 which contained birdies at each of the four par-threes.

In most cases, the professionals responded to the quiet persistence of Whelan or simply to honour ‘Himself’. And for his part, O’Connor never failed to thank them for being there.

Des Smyth succeeded him as Links president in 1996, by which stage the society had been steered to an unrivalled place among golfing charities in Europe. And the fact that old friends didn’t forget, was never more evident than in December 2002 when Doug Sanders responded once more to Cecil’s call. This time, the hope was that as a longestablished honorary life member of the Links, he would be on hand to confer the same honour on the financier, J P McManus, during the annual Celebrity Awards banquet.

Not only did Saunders travel from Texas for the occasion; he had a memorable exchange at the Burlington with Paul McGinley, who had sunk a nine-foot putt to give Europe victory in the Ryder Cup, two months previously. Turning to a player almost half his age, there wasn't the slightest hint of rancour in the soft, southern drawl when he said: ‘I've been famous all my life for missing a putt[which cost him the 1970 Open at St Andrews]; you're going to be famous for holing one.’ Nothing could have been more typical of a faithful friend, universally known as the Peacock of the Fairways.

During the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, the Links managed to raise sufficient funds to purchase disabled minibuses. These were presented to the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, on the steps of Croke Park, on the Tuesday after the event, with the slogan ‘From Derry to Kerry’.

When Cecil decided that a Links outing at The K Club in August 2011 would be the last, there was no volunteer to take his place. ‘I made it a policy never to take on a job unless I knew it could be done to my standards,’ he once told me. And he never wavered. When he died in April 2016, aged 80, the one-time Dublin businessman had claimed a place as a selfless golfing fund-raiser, unique in my experience.

Cecil with Jack Nicklaus Along with sports stars, present and past, you could count on superb entertainment from the likes of Red Hurley