Dooks Golf Club in Ireland Has Colorful History


County Kerry in Southwest Ireland is known by the locals as "The Kingdom," and one of its top destinations is Dooks Golf Club.

Built by a garrison of British Army soldiers sent to West Kerry to "keep the peace" in the 1880s, and billeted at nearby Caragh, a nine-hole golf course was laid out to not only keep the soldiers busy but teach them engineering skills and provide a form of sporting entertainment upon completion.

Because this activity took place in 1886, Dooks & Caragh Golf Club became by "several years" the oldest golf club in the province of Munster, and one of the 10 oldest in Ireland. "Dooks" is Gaelic for sandbank, which describes the terrain perfectly.

In the following years, the Great Southern Railway promoted its hotel at Caragh Lake, with one of the star attractions being the "sporty challenges of the game of golf at Dooks, overlooking magnificent Rossbeigh."

The golf club quickly became a reflection of the genteel lifestyle of the British ascendancy, with tea parties on the lawn beside the clubhouse.

Before the course was renovated by Martin Hawtree in the early 2000s, the course featured a short hole (the seventh) with a unique "basin" green that, as regularly as clockwork, yielded aces.

In 1970, the club expanded to 18 holes and hasn't looked back, although a decade later, the club was faced with a mini-crisis when it was accused by a local environmental group of threatening, if not destroying, the natural habitat of a rare species of toad named the Natterjack.

The members rose to the challenge, building special breeding areas for the toads in which they have increased and multiplied ever since. The then carried off a huge public relations coup by adopting the Natterjack as the club logo.

For more information about Dooks Golf Links, visit www.dooks.com.