Tiger Woods leads the field at next week's $5 million championship at Mount Juliet. Golf Correspondent Philip Reid reports on how such events keep the golf tourists coming.
Inside the past decade, Ireland has transformed its golfing image. From being little more than a bit player in terms of playing host to major professional tournaments, Ireland - as demonstrated by next week's staging of the $5 million American Express World Championship at Mount Juliet in Co Kilkenny - is now a big player not just in Europe, but worldwide, too.
The change has not come cheaply. Apart from the contractual commitments entered into with the PGA European Tour in 1997, when Ireland was awarded the Ryder Cup - originally for 2005, but now rescheduled to 2006 - which run to more than €1 million a year, the Government, through Bord Fáilte, also commits significant amounts of finance towards helping to stage other professional tournaments. This year alone, the cost, apart from that to the private sector, will be in excess of €3 million.
Yet it would seem to be money well spent. Damien Ryan, the director of golf with Bord Fáilte, sees the staging of these professional tournaments as a "powerful marketing tool" which, through extensive television coverage, has helped to increase the number of golfing tourists coming to Ireland and contributed an estimated €130 million to the economy last year.
The number of overseas visitors coming here on golf trips has risen from 50,000 in 1988 to 240,000 last year. The aim is to increase the figure to 400,000 by the time of the Ryder Cup in 2006.
Padraig Ó hUigínn, a former chairman of Bord Fáilte, was the man to see that, in a golfing context, Ireland had a smaller profile than it merited. It didn't always have sunshine, but it had one thing most other countries did not have - great courses!
Following the example of Spain - a country which had successfully used hosting professional tournaments to heighten the awareness of overseas golfers to its merits as a golfing destination - and expanding on that programme with an even more aggressive marketing approach, Ireland increased its number of professional tournaments. And, with this, the number of overseas visitors increased also.
From holding just one tournament - the Irish Open - a decade ago, Ireland has developed from a flyweight into a heavyweight and now punches above its weight.
Next week's American Express championship will be the seventh to be played in Ireland this year. The others were the Irish Open, European Open, the North-West of Ireland Open, the Seve Trophy, the Irish Seniors' Open and the Irish Ladies' Open.
The turnabout in Ireland going from the periphery of the golfing world to its core didn't only take place because of the Government's financial input, though. After the 1989 Ryder Cup match at The Belfry, the PGA in Britain revealed a list of 12 applicants who were interested in staging the event when it returned to Europe in 1993. One of them was an Irish golf course - the Kildare Hotel & Country Club - which had yet to be built. That was the first real indication that Dr Michael Smurfit was serious about putting his stamp on the international golfing map.
In 1995, Dr Smurfit assumed sponsorship of the European Open - a tournament which was struggling for its life - and moved it from its traditional home in England to the K Club in Straffan. He transformed the tournament into one of the flagship events on the European Tour and, when the time came for the Ryder Cup venue in Ireland to be announced, the K Club was the chosen venue.
The amount of money Smurfit put into making the European Open one of the biggest titles to win on the circuit and in securing the Ryder Cup ran into tens of millions of euro.
In their nine years as sponsors of the Irish Open, Heineken Ireland injected an estimated €25 million into promoting the tournament. "Any sponsorship is a finite property because there comes a period where the benefit that one derives relative to the investment becomes disproportionate," explained Padraic Liston, the company's managing director, when announcing the ending of their sponsorship earlier this year.
In a recent interview with Golfweek magazine in the United States, Dr Smurfit contended that tournament purses will shrink in the short term and that sponsors will be harder to find.
"When the dancing finishes," he said, "the music stops . . . That may be anathema to the PGA Tour in America and the European Tour, but I suspect that's just the reality of life." However, in the same interview he insisted that his company would not be exiting: "The Smurfit European Open will continue for quite a number of years to come. That was part and parcel of the Ryder Cup agreement."
"Ireland's reputation for hosting major golf tournaments is superb and everyone from Bord Fáilte to the people at Mount Juliet are geared up for this one. In terms of the worldwide focus on major international golf, this is a huge tournament," insisted Peter Adams, the executive director of the championship.
Away from the tournament scene, a number of Ireland's wealthiest businessmen have also helped to market Ireland as "the number one destination in Europe". The friendship which Dermot Desmond and J.P. McManus struck up with Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara and David Duval has led to the golfing stars coming to Ireland each summer for golf and a break. This has been picked up by the Golf Channel in the United States, and by newspapers and magazines there, and has provided the sort of international coverage it would be impossible to buy.
Staging tournaments is one of the key parts of Bord Fáilte's marketing policy. "We've been aggressive in pursuing tournaments, and we will continue to be aggressive," insisted Damien Ryan. "We've had a long, hard road to get to the top and we're at the top now and can't be complacent. Too much effort has gone into making Ireland a great golf destination. We can't stop now."