Situated along the stunning Ionian bay of Navarino in the Peloponnese western coast of Greece, Costa Navarino boasts four of Europe’s top 18-hole golf courses.
The Bay Course, which recently hosted part of a Legends Tour event, and its enticing Par 5 13th was playing 449 yards on Tuesday 21 May, when Cork man Eóin Noonan stepped up to take his tee shot.
With plenty of course knowledge, he knew to opt for driver and he blitzed the fairway, his high fade accounted for the pot bunker in the middle and with the breeze at his back it ran out for 25 yards.
From here he decided that a smooth wedge would suffice for his second, his half swing was enough and the ball angled towards the green, hopped once and disappeared out of sight.
“JJ was saying it was over the green and I wasn’t sure,” said Noonan.
“The closer we got, I couldn’t see it. I was like, it’s obviously over the back but it wasn’t there, it wasn’t on the road.
“Then I saw a pitchmark on the front of the green but no ball. Where is it? I made my way, briskly over to the hole and there it was.
“Sitting up, with the Costa Navarino logo looking back at me. First ever albatross.”
Noonan lives in Greece now and he has come a long way from his days gracing the sidelines of Thurles, Croke Park and the Aviva. The dream is to become a PGA professional.
It is an amazing rise for the 26-year-old who only began to take the sport seriously during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently he left his job where he was a photographer with Sportsfile in the hope of pursuing his passion.
Up until then it was always sports photography, something passed down to him by his grandfather. That together with an accident on the football field meant the stars aligned and he was set for a career in that industry.
“He was big into taking pictures and I had a lot of free time so I started taking pictures and trying to sell a few to make a bit of money, and I was enjoying it,” said Noonan.
Then just a few days after finishing his Leaving Cert in 2018 the Grange native left Cork for Dublin and joined up with the Irish sports photography agency.
“I got flown all over and got to work with some of the biggest sports stars in Ireland and across the world,” said Noonan.
“It was brilliant but in my free time I was playing golf with the lads and then Covid came and it was around the US Open in 2020, the one that had no fans.
“I was watching it on TV with my father back home and I said: ‘Jesus that would be class, imagine being a pro golfer.”
Noonan had moved back to Cork during the Pandemic and although he never truly entertained the idea of turning into a PGA professional, he eventually began to ponder would it actually be possible.
In his current career he had become an award winning sports photographers and knowing he could succeed it gave him the courage to pursue another difficult goal.
“I moved back to Dublin at the end of 2021 and joined St Margaret’s,” said Noonan.
“It was my first time being a member of a course so I didn’t really know how it worked, I didn’t know how handicaps worked, I just enjoyed playing golf.
“The first couple of months I was hooked, I couldn’t stop.”
Noonan was given a handicap of 21 and got down to 15 before he really started to explore ways to improve his performance.
At the time he was playing with a set of irons and a pitching wedge that he had picked up for €70, along with his father’s old putter and ‘a broken up’ driver.
“I was getting good, I had a little bit of money saved up, I was going to go ahead and get myself fitted,” said Noonan.
“I got fitted and then got a few nice irons, a driver, three wood and putter and started taking it a bit more seriously. Then got a few lessons got a little bit better and got down to 12.
“I started to think, Jesus I’m really enjoying this, I definitely never thought about it as a career, I was always looking at photography and that’s what I’m doing, I’ll just play golf for fun.”
It was the beginning of last year when his plans grew shoots after he became the new Cork-based photographer for Sportsfile.
Noonan gained membership at Fota Island and he went on to represent them in inter-club at an event in Bantry, where playing team sports again really lit the fire.
“I had never played proper competition golf before and I was on a high,” said Noonan.
“We ended up winning our match but the team lost overall, still the buzz out of it was unlike I’d ever experienced.”
A couple of weeks later Noonan came fourth in the Captain’s Prize, another first in his burgeoning career, meanwhile his handicap dropped to eight.
During the summer Noonan hooked up with fellow photographer Tommy Dickson for a round at Portstewart. One of the other players in their four-ball was the assistant professional there.
“I mentioned about doing the PGA and how hard was it because he was just finishing,” said Noonan.
“My biggest worry was I was too old or was I not good enough and he said, ‘at the moment you’re not good enough to do it playing off eight, you have to be 6.8 or lower’.
“But he said the way you play, if you have a couple more lessons and worked on a couple more things you’d easily get there. He also said you’re definitely not too old.
“At this point I was 25 and he said there’s people in his course who were 40.”
In October Noonan reached out again and he put him in touch with Rick Daniels, who turned out to be the link to Greece.
Luckily, Noonan had a few words of Greek from a previous relationship and that helped when he was sending across his CV. He made contact with Adam Kritikos, the PGA professional coach at Costa Navarino.
“I had a really good job, I really liked the people I worked with and the people I worked for and liked the way my life was,” said Noonan.
“But I would have loved to do something in golf, I had a real obsession with it and he said, look I’ll pass on your details to HR and they might give you a call.”
Within three weeks he was in South Korea working for Sportsfile at the Youth Olympics when he got an email from Greece.
Fast forward a few months and Noonan has moved over to work as a caddie master agent at Costa Navarino.
“We look after everything that happens on the golf course, the caddie master commands a team of three to six people every day,” said Noonan.
Noonan spends his days on The Hills Course but it was on The Bay Course that he landed his recent albatross.
The objective is to obtain his PGA and while there are a few more obstacles to overcome he is excited about his future in the sport, even with his hurler’s grip.
“It was a massive shift, I had been a photographer for ten years and I had been very successful,” said Noonan.
“It was something I was good at, I knew I was good at it and I was taking a risk coming here, I don’t even hold a club conventionally.
“We have a lot of groups coming here and there has been a couple of pros who have seen me out in the range practicing or after work, and they’ll say does this fella know what he’s doing, he’s holding the club wrong way.
“I still golf cack-handed and I won’t be changing at this point.”