Brian Keogh: Jimmy Kinsella’s golfing love affair beautifully captured in new book

“Links of Love — How Golf Brought Jimmy and Bernie Kinsella Together” is more than a memoir of the Skerries Golf Club professional, who made history in 1972 when he became the first Irishman to win on the fledgling European Tour by claiming the Madrid Open at the Club de Campo.

It is a beautiful tribute to his late wife, Bernie, his daughters, Bernadette, Mary, and Clare, and his son, Bobby, who succeeded his father, Jimmy, and grandfather, Bill, as head professional at Skerries.

Jimmy Kinsella was a trendsetter for Irish tour players in the 1970s, but this book, while offering a wonderful time capsule of his career, is also an important social document of Irish life in the latter half of the past century.

It not only portrays the closeness of the Kinsella family, Jimmy’s ‘divilment’, and his love of bikes and motorbikes, but it also captures the great pride the PGA professionals have in their craft.

“It seems that for Bill Senior, who died on 11th September 1989, Jimmy’s win in the Moran Cup at the Curragh in 1968 capped them all,” Gilleece writes.

“It meant a lot to the Da,” Jimmy said of a win that meant more to his father than his win in Madrid, his World Cup appearances, his two Irish Professional Championship victories or his third place (alongside Greg Norman) to winner Hubert Green and runner up Ben Crenshaw in the 1977 Irish Open at Portmarnock.

“He’d lost in the final when the Moran Cup was a matchplay event, so my mother said I had to come down to the club with the Cup. He was pleased as punch about it. I loved him altogether. He was a great man and spent all his time giving lessons in Skerries in the summertime and trying to earn a few shillings to rear us. He never drank or smoked because he couldn’t afford to.”

The book is teeming with anecdotes, such as the genesis of Kinsella’s foray into professional golf at the age of 15, when he took the boat to England and joined Bill Cox at Fulwell Golf Club near Twickenham.

The pay was £2 a week — not enough to cover his digs and have money left over for the plate at Mass on Sunday — but it was better than school.

“Guided by Joe Carr, he left home and headed for Dublin’s North Wall and the boat to Liverpool. Accompanied to the boat by his mother, he remembers her seeing his tear-stained face and telling him, ‘You don’t have to go.’ To which Jimmy responded: ‘But if I stay, do I have to go to school?’ And when she insisted: ‘You do.’ He said: ‘OK. I’m going.'”

His win in Madrid in 1972 was remarkable for the fact that in order to save money, he carried his own clubs for the early rounds and went home with £1,500.

He’d holed an eight-footer for the title and remembered the moment clearly and the delight of Christy O’Connor Snr at his achievement.

“I said a silent prayer. ‘Dear God. You didn’t bring me all this way to lose. Then I remember thinking as I stood over the ball – ‘Keep your head still’ And when I looked up, the ball had disappeared. In that instant, Christy was on the green. Then, with typical intensity, he hugged me, whispering, ‘How did you do it? How did you do it? It went in like a rabbit.’ To which I replied: ‘I don’t know, Christy. I never saw it.'”

Kinsella once played a round at Skerries in 42 minutes and 18 seconds using a bicycle and was famous for his non-nonsense swing, as so memorably described by the late Peter Dobereiner in The Observer.

“He does not mess about,” Dobereiner wrote the week after Kinsella’s Madrid Open win.

“Out comes the club and in an instant he has taken up a conventional address position. Now comes the unique Kinsella routine. Like a giraffe getting down to a tasty morsel, he spreads his legs wider and wider, at the same time shuffling backwards until he is reaching for the ball at full stretch. Just before he is entirely out of reach of the ball, there is a blur of violent activity, too fast for the human eye to follow, and the ball is on its way.”

Gilleece’s love for the game and the Kinsella story oozes from every page, almost every one of them festooned with newspaper cuttings and old photographs that will delight lovers of Irish and world golf.

It’s written with love, and an excerpt from a school project on “My Grandad, Jimmy Kinsella” by his granddaughter Alice, daughter of his second-born, Bernadette, beautifully sums up the essence of his career.

“At the age of 14, my Grandad went to Galway to play in a golf competition (1954 Connacht Boys Championship),” she writes. “It was his first time away from home and he was very frightened. He was met at the train station and brought to his hotel. He was too afraid to go and have breakfast in the morning in the dining room.

“The owner of the hotel (Mr Cheevers) noticed this and was very sorry for him. He would bring him aside and feed him. He promised not to charge him for the hotel. My Grandad won the competition!! A man called Jerry Molloy caddied for him.”

The author added: “This was Jimmy’s first provincial golf success, to which he added the Leinster Boys. In the process, he had displayed the prowess of a future professional by effectively paying his way.”

“Links of Love—How Golf Brought Jimmy and Bernie Kinsella Together” by Dermot Gilleece is available from Skerries Golf Club (€20 + €9 postage and packing). To order, e-mail bobkins05@yahoo.ie.