Lawrie – Luttrellstown provided a tough but fair test

FORMER European Tour star Peter Lawrie believes Luttrellstown Golf Course provided the perfect endurance test after hosting the Titleist & Footjoy PGA Professional Championship.

All of the field found the going very tough over four days in Ireland last week and just three players shot a final under par score in what was testing conditions.

The weather too played its part with heavy winds wreaking havoc across the course and on the leaderboard too.

But Irishman Lawrie feels the Luttrellstown course was just what was needed to challenge each player to produce their best golf at such an illustrious event.

“I thought at the beginning of the week that three under par would win and that’s what we got,” said Lawrie, who ended is playing career last year to become the director of golf at Luttrellstown Castle.

“You want it to be tough but you want it to be fair as well. We’ve got very little rough on the golf course, the tree heights are quite high, so when you get underneath the trees you can play.

“But the greens have been superb. We just took away the flags and the golf course becomes very difficult – long and difficult.

“The weather has helped really. There’s been no rain which is great, but there’s been windy conditions and it’s a very long and tough golf course. Congratulations to Paul O’Hara – I’m delighted for him.”

The Titleist & Footjoy PGA Professional Championship is one of the most prestigious in the pro player’s calendar.

Asked how becoming a host came about, Lawrie revealed: “It all came about through a contact I had at the PGA called Liam Greasley.

“Liam was over here at a meeting, I brought him over here one morning, we had breakfast, I showed him around the course and literally we shook hands on it that afternoon.

“He couldn’t believe the venue that was here, he’d never been here before and he was very impressed.”

Stepping aside from what has been your day job for almost 20 years was not an easy decision to make for Lawrie.

The European Tour and everything that comes with being a professional golfer was hard to walk away from.

Lawrie consistently finished inside the top 100 Order of Merit, and won his maiden Tour title at the 2008 Spanish Open.

But the 43-year-old insists he has no regrets about ending two decades as a player.

He continued: “Luttrellstown Golf Course took a leap of faith with me and I certainly had a change of scenery from the tour life to now.

“It’s been difficult but I’ve got my head down and worked very hard.

“Leaving the tour has been difficult. I miss playing and especially watching the players here, I miss competing. But I decided to do what I did and there’s no looking back.”

Lawrie’s future remains firmly focussed on increasing membership figures at Luttrellstown and attracting more people and families to take up the game.

He is also targeting more major events in the future after hosting the Titleist & Footjoy PGA Professional Championship.

He added: “The Titleist and Footjoy PGA Professional Championship was kind of the first test case. I pushed everything to get it here and I worked really hard to get here too.

“We’ve all worked really hard over the week. The course has proved that it is able to host and event like this so we’ll see how it goes.

“You never know maybe we’ll host a senior event, maybe the Senior Irish Open. We’ll look at that down the line but not just yet.”