There’s a very small percentage of golfers that can boast of holding a course record, but the cohort who can claim to have set the course record at the same venue twice in the space of a year is smaller still.
That’s something Colm Moriarty can claim, however, after the Glasson pro set the record at Elm Park with a bogey-free 62 in 2023 and then returned in 2024 to repeat the feat. In the interim, course changes saw the introduction of new tee boxes and new bunkers on several holes, so his original 62 was wiped from the record books, but not for long.
Arriving at the lush, south Dublin venue as the defending Pro-Am champion, he again fired seven birdies, going bogey-free to motor to a one-stroke victory over Simon Thornton and notch his second victory of a season that’s seen him consistently among the top performers on the PGA Ireland circuit.
“Sometimes you get a course that just suits you,” he said. “I’ve played there maybe the last five years or so since they’ve had the Pro-Ams there and have obviously played very, very well there the last two.
“But even the first time I played it, I just thought it’s a really, really nice course, a really mature course, and it’s always in great condition.
“And it’s a very nice place to play golf, and yeah, it obviously suits my eye or certainly has over the last couple of years.”
Perhaps the key to his successful defence didn’t lie so much in the course layout as it did in a near-11th hour addition to his golf bag in the form of a new putter which he wielded to devastating effect.
“The funny thing was, I hadn’t been putting great, or hadn’t been holing as many putts as I’d have liked all year,” he explained. “I played in Balmoral last Thursday and one of my amateurs was using an Evnroll putter and I just picked it up and the minute I did, I said, ‘Jeez, that that feels absolutely beautiful’. So, I text Ross [Methven] from PRG [Premier Licensing] who is the agent for Evnroll and he actually sent me one down.
“I had it on Saturday and practiced a little over the weekend and then I used it for the first time in Elm Park on Monday. And I putted beautifully, like so it was a good start.”
“And I’d be kind of slow to change equipment a lot of the time, you know? But I just said put it straight in the bag. Sometimes you’re better off not thinking about it too much and getting it straight in.
“Look, I played lovely and gave myself plenty of chances, but just putted beautifully with it.”
Playing lovely and giving himself plenty of chances is not something new of course, as evidenced by his fine run of form where he’s racked up two wins, a further five top-fives, and has been outside the top 13 just once in 14 starts on the Irish circuit. But holing the putts makes a world of difference.
“You need to get the momentum on the greens,” he said, “especially in the one-day Pro-Ams. You you need to get rolling and get on a run early, especially this year on the region which has been a great advertisement. Mark, because it’s a great advertisement for the region this year.
“All the Pro-Ams are thriving, but the scoring – if you look back over the scoring all year, it has been really, really impressive. Simon [Thornton] and Tim [Rice] have been leading the way, but the scores needed to win have been really, really low this year, which is great, to be producing those scores in front of the amateurs and the sponsors.”
Next up for Moriarty is the Delgany Pro-Am on Friday July 26th, before he heads across the water to meet up with his fellow PGA Cup competitors for a team get together in advance of the Great Britain and Ireland team heading to Oregon to take on the United States. In between, he’ll return to home soil for the Irish PGA Championship at Palmerstown House Estate which returns east after three years at Carne’s Wild Atlantic Dunes course.
“Carne were great host for the for the PGA, but a links course is totally different to a big, modern style course.,” he said. “It’s worthy of any championship, really, even though I don’t know it that well, so I’ll get up there for the Pro-Am and I might get up there a day before as well just have a look around and familiarise myself a bit more with it, but I think I really gonna enjoy playing there.”
Understandably though, it’s the PGA Cup – an event many of those fortunate enough to play have described as being the best week of their lives – that is looming largest on the horizon.
“Yeah, it’s at the forefront of my mind,” he concedes. “We’ve got a two-day PGA Cup get together after Delgany, kind of camping in The Belfry on Sunday and Monday, and then I’m staying over there to play in an Open series event in Copt Heath which is very close to the Belfry.
“I suppose now that I’ve qualified and you see the amount of work that’s going on behind the scenes and now we’ve got WhatsApp groups and there’s a lot of activity on that, so you can see how much it means to everybody.
“And I see the Americans released their team a few weeks ago as well, and there’s a lot of well known players on that and you see how much of a big event it is. So, you really want to go over there and bring back the trophy.”