The name of Pat Ruddy, a genial conversationalist and generous man who has been a journalist, publisher and golf course designer, resounds around Irish golf like the crack of a well-hit drive.
“I am on my fifth left hip post sepsis and in my ninth decade, having first hit a few balls as a kid in 1949,” Ruddy, a broad-shouldered and barrel-chested Irish man with thinning hair and glasses that don’t completely obscure the glint of mischief in his eyes, said in a soft accent that is as Irish as Ulysses. “I’m not yet 90. Actually, I’m 79. But ‘in a ninth decade’ sounds better, and I use that to cause the patrons to babble a bit.”
The patrons are certainly babbling now because Ruddy has put The European Club, the stirring links course 30 miles south of Dublin that he and his family have owned since 1987, on the market. Sotheby’s, the firm handling the club’s sale, suggest “…it is believed this is the longest engagement of owner, designer, lover of the links in the history of the game.”
Why is he selling now after years of rejecting offers, one of which was for more than £30 million (about $38.75 million), and four or five others were for not much less? “I’ve been watching the clock of life,” Ruddy said. “As you get towards 80, you have to reorganise. It’s a difficult decision but a fact of life.”
“There are fewer than 250 links, golf on sand deposits beside the sea, among the thousands of golf courses. A rare breed and the original of the species. They have to be valuable!”
Pat Ruddy
The asking price? £29 million (about $37.5 million), and Ruddy is rubbing his hands as much at the interest being shown in his club while his restless and enquiring mind is relishing the philosophical challenge of comparing a golf course with a work of art.
“As we go to market I am engaged by thoughts of how the art world puts great values on paintings, statues and the like but golf courses generally achieve much more modest prices …,” he wrote in an email to GGP. “Could I be a catalyst in bringing a new prosperous age for those with golf properties worldwide?
“Privately speaking it’s like trying to make a birdie putt,” he continued. “I must maximise it because I’ll only play this shot once. Take our land and stand on many points of the course and look at the scenery that God made, look at all the vegetation, the colouration of the sky and the mountains and then include 40 years of intense effort to embellish it in a golf sense without destroying the original. I am sure that’s worth something, you know?”
There are said to be more than 38,000 golf courses in the world, and tens, possibly hundreds, of golf courses and golf clubs are bought and sold each year. But very few are links, as The European is. Links courses are the Fabergé eggs of golf courses, there being fewer than 250 in the world.
Not only are they rare, but their sand-based turf, which once was swept daily by the sea’s incoming and outgoing tide, makes them quick to drain and springy to play from. Tall dunes topped by marram grass often march alongside fairways and encircle greens adding to the visual appeal of a links. The firm, fast greens of a links course are considered by some to be the fiercest test of putting.
Even among links courses, The European stands out. It is as pure an old-style golf club as it is possible to be, spread over 200 acres with a mile-long frontage on the Irish Sea. There are no houses lining the fairways to be bought and sold to bring in extra income, no blocks of apartments near the clubhouse, no hotel. The only buildings are two houses owned by members of the Ruddy family and the clubhouse.
When Ruddy talks of The European, there is an affection in his voice that is reminiscent of someone talking of his child or children. He sounds as if he has given birth to it, and in a way he has. He and his family bought the land in 1987, have tilled it, shaped it, walked it, designed it, admired it, painted it, and lived on it ever since. It is as near as it is possible to be, a child of the Ruddy family.
“There are fewer than 250 links, golf on sand deposits beside the sea, among the thousands of golf courses,” Ruddy said. “A rare breed and the original of the species. They have to be valuable!
“But how do they compare to the American record art price of $195m achieved by a Marilyn Monroe painting in Christie’s in New York in May 2022? Now everyone likes Marilyn Monroe but is her painting worth several golf links? Whereas a painting hangs comfortably on a wall or sits quietly in a vault, a golf links is an expansive living thing which is embellished by the surrounding landscape, by the ever changing sky, by the mountains and by the sea that goes all the way to Australia and Hawaii and back. Art my hat! This is the real thing. It is time for a debate. Can the art world awaken to the beauties of golf links?”
If Ruddy eloquently propounds the virtues of his links course, listen to the less romantic but perhaps more realistic view as outlined by Larry Hirsh, president of Golf Property Analysts, whose company in the U.S. has made more than 3,000 appraisals of golf courses and facilities in the U.S., Canada, Scotland and Panama.
“Bottom line is, keep it simple,” Hirsh said. “It is an economic analysis, a business analysis. It’s all about revenues and cash flows. A golf course is worth what it can produce economically. Revenues minus expenses equals cash flow. Cash flow is what people are buying. That is what it comes down to.”
As to the philosophical argument as to whether a Marilyn Monroe painting is worth several golf links, Tom Marriott, who has bought or sold perhaps 200 golf properties, some including hotels, since he started HMH Golf and Leisure in England 27 years ago, said. “You could argue that it is a one-off painting whereas his golf course is not a one-off golf course in Ireland. People don’t buy paintings to make money. They buy them to hang on their walls. They might buy a golf course because they want a trophy asset.”
As all this unfolds, Ruddy is visibly in his element. “It is intriguing for a guy from the west of Ireland to be considering such matters,” he said. “My wish is I can raise the bar in what a golf course designer and his work are worth. If a fellow doing a painting in a small canvas can get such a big fee, a man working on glorious land who isn’t a fool should be worth something as well. If I succeed in raising the bar it is an interesting intellectual challenge. Either way I will get enough money to live on. There is no way I am going to die hungry.”
As if demonstrating that the hunt is almost as exciting as the prize, Ruddy wrote to GGP recently and you could easily imagine the smile on his face as he penned it: “A tricky, curving, 20-footer down a tight mown green! What fun when it drops!”
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: The 432-yard par-4 17th hole at The European Club in Ireland.
David Cannon, Getty Images