Swinford Golf Club . . . 75 years a-growing

By Margaret Killalea – Lady Captain

It is seventy-five years since Swinford Golf Club was established. Great credit is due to the late Lord Brabazon for his generosity in providing the lands and to the very small number of enthusiastic ladies and gentlemen who, against all the odds, including, above all, a lack of money, started a golf club.

Seventy-five years represents a long time in the life of a golf course, a relatively short time in the life of a nation. Yet one cannot measure, in terms of time, the gulf that separates 1922 from 1997. For men and women of 75 years ago could not even have visualised the changes that the last threequarters of the century have brought, changes and challenges more far-reaching than any the world has known since Christianity was established. And, hovering over all, was the agrarian and discontent born of landlordism.

Old ways of life have died, some, no doubt, in the necessary march of progress, but the spirit that made them possible – and is needed still – that has vanished too. Modern modes of travel that would have seemed fantastic dreams to the fathers of the present older generation, but we are not quite as sure as they were as to what we should do when we have been swept to our destination.

We have been brought into contact with the great world in undreamt of ways, but what the world gives us is not always conducive to health of mind and body. Every world force plays upon us. The sturdy manliness that even landlordism could not fully extinguish seems hardly able to sustain itself against the Welfare State technique borrowed for Britain. The power of self amusement within the parish and townland has perished in a craving for the exotic and tinned as provided in newspapers, magazines and especially television.

As lady captain for 1997, it is my very sincere hope that the great progress that has been made in the clubhouse and on the course during the past 75 years will be continued.