A TRUE LINKS COURSE

Lahinch isn’t the oldest golf course in the world, but it’s certainly one they couldn’t get away with building today. As golf has been popularized in America over the past 100 years, it’s become increasingly flat, boring, and predictable. The game has become something around which you build a gated housing community rather than the everyman battle with nature it was originally intended to be.

Lahinch laughs maniacally as it continues to break each one of those modern-day norms. And it’s become one of the most popular places in the world that American tourists flock to experience a taste of golf as it was meant to be — a salty, windswept walk with friends through the dunes.

On Good Friday of 1892, the first homemade flagsticks were hammered into the ground throughout the dunes near Lahinch Beach, starting a club that would become one of the world’s foremost destinations for golf tourism. Despite more than a century of evolution and touch-ups from some of the biggest names in golf-course architecture (Old Tom Morris, Alister MacKenzie, and others), the course retains all of the quirk, charm, and utter confusion one hopes for when playing golf in Great Britain or Ireland. There are holes that intersect each other, blind shots over enormous dunes, and all kinds of other things that will put a player’s trust in their caddie to the test.

“If you can see the flag on every hole, it’s not links golf,” said John Murphy, a relative newcomer in the Lahinch caddie shack. (He’s only been at it about 25 years.) “I reckon this is one of the best (courses) inIreland, if not the best.”

The unorthodox nature of the course is one of the biggest reasons it’s essential to seek out the institutional knowledge of the Lahinch caddies. And there’s a lot of it. Caddying at Lahinch is not a seasonal job for high schoolers. It’s a lifetime craft, often passed down through generations.

My favorite caddie at Lahinch, and the best green reader I’ve seen anywhere in the world, is Hughie Benn, a dry, quiet man who is deathly serious until about the third hole. Hughie is 68 years old and just finished his 61st year caddying at Lahinch. In his free time, he likes to sing and play guitar in the pubs around town.

“It’s a bit like taking a hunting guide,” said Kevin Garrihy, a 37-year caddie who got started in the profession at the age of eight when a bus full of Americans showed up, and the club was forced to make as many quick hires as they could. “If you really want to enjoy your experience, you have to take a caddie."

But the job of a caddie goes far beyond reading putts and telling a player which way it is to the next tee box. The best caddies are part swing instructor, part Chamber of Commerce, part maître d’, part stand-up comedian, and part therapist. And to make the job even tougher, they never quite know which of these roles the day will call for.

“Obviously, when your player sees a big mountain in front of them that you’re telling them to hit it over,” Garrihy said, “it matters whether you’ve built up a bond with them in those first few holes. If they trust you, the day goes a lot better for everyone."

Those first few holes are also crucial for sussing out whether your player likes to talk or wants to be left alone. Caddies need to gauge whether someone wants to hear a joke or be treated like the most serious player on the PGA Tour.

“I suppose if there’s a lesson from caddying, it’s to be as patient as you can with people,” said JohnDavis, who started caddying at Lahinch at age nine and has been doing it for 63 years. “A lot of them will talk to you about anything — about their troubles, about their life — and you just try and listen as best you can. You’re out there to help them have a good day, whatever that might mean."

However, over those six decades, Davis has learned one universal rule about working with players.

“You give them all the information they need to play their best, but you never pull a club for them,” Davis said with a laugh. “After all, they could hit you with it.”

AIM FOR THE SMALL PAINTED ROCK

The fourth and fifth holes at Lahinch are the barometer for how much trust a first-timer has in their caddie.Hole No. 4, “Klondyke,” is a par 5 that clocks in just under 500 yards. What makes it so fun is that the second shot requires the player to make a bold choice: If you’d like to play safe (and boring), you have miles of real estate to play with on the right side. But if you’d like to go at the green, you’re required to hit the ball directly over a 35-foot dune, trusting that there is short grass on the other side. If you’ve played the course before, you step to the tee and pray that you hit the fairway, so you have a chance to hit one of the most heroic shots in golf. There is no worse feeling than taking an airplane across an ocean, hitting one into the left rough, and being forced to lay up. If you’ve never played the golf course before, the directions won’t compute with your brain.

Fanning and I both accomplished step number one. Our tee shots sat smugly next to each other on the fairway, daring us to take on the risk with the next shot. With little ado, Garrihy, Mick’s caddie, handed him the 3 wood and pointed toward a white aiming rock at the top of the dune.

“Mate...” the Australian said, trailing off with confusion before locking in and following orders. As a newcomer to the game, it was clear Fanning had never seen a shot like this. All of us held our breath as he sent one sailing over the dune and exploded with laughter at the absurdity and excitement.

The stakes ramp up even higher at the fifth hole, “Dell,” which is among the most famous par 3’s in the world. The shot itself is nothing crazy — it’s a mid-iron back into the breeze. But similar to Klondyke, players are asked to aim at a painted white rock perched on top of a 30-foot dune and trust that there is a putting green on the other side, completely hidden from view.

Ask any caddie about the prank that loopers used to play on American tourists, and they’ll surely deny it, but there’s enough smiling and laughing to give away that the legend is fueled by truth. When a player would hit the green at the Dell, one caddie would walk ahead to the green. Hidden from view, he’d drop the unsuspecting player’s ball into the hole. After all, caddie tips tended to be a bit bigger after a hole in one.

The pressure of the Dell proved to be too much for Fanning in his first time around. Aiming at the rock, he left the club face open and sent one howling into the right rough. Taking a moment to gauge how much wind was back into us, Hughie handed me a 6 iron.

“You don’t think this is going to go over the back?” I asked, half joking and with a knowing smirk, considering that Hughie has clubbed more than 60 years’ worth of golfers on this very shot. He didn’t say a thing, staring incredulous daggers back into me before breaking into a smirk of his own.

The shot came off perfectly and sailed over the white rock, but at the Dell, that’s only half the battle. You have no idea whether the shot will land softly on the green or on a downslope that causes it to rocket forward. What follows is one of the most fun walks in the game — 154 yards of uncertainty. The ball could be waiting in a horrid bird’s nest of a lie behind the green, or it could be in the bottom of the cup. Either way, there’s nothing you can do about it now.

We rounded the corner of the dune and saw my golf ball resting safely, four feet from the flagstick.

“I told you that was the right club,” I said to Hughie, who quickly offered to have me carry my own bag the rest of the round.

As I stepped in over the putt — a simple one inside the right edge — my heart rate began to rise. A birdie on the Dell would be a lifetime achievement and something to carry into golf conversations for the rest of my days. That realization quickly made its way into my hands, and I pulled the putt, missing left. As he stepped in to put the flagstick back in the cup, Hughie, with impeccable timing, knew just what to say.

“Well, I can’t do everything for you.”

LAHINCH’S SISTER SEASONS

Lahinch, Ireland, has an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records and, although it took place near the third fairway, it has nothing to do with golf.

In May of 2006, more than 250 surfers lined up off the coast near the Lahinch Surf School, trying to catch the same wave simultaneously. Fifty-four were successful, breaking the previous record of 42.

The endeavor was led in part by a local surfer who founded the town’s surf school in 2002. Since then, the sport has exploded around Ireland, with Lahinch being one of the hottest spots for new surfers.

“My first trip here was around 2002, and the surf scene was basically non-existent,” said Fanning. Our trip was his fourth to Lahinch but his first with golf clubs. “Everyone would talk about how there were good waves, but nothing was really documented. You needed someone to point you in the right direction because it was basically all word of mouth."

Fanning was born to Irish parents who left for Australia as teenagers. Each time he’s returned to Ireland, and Lahinch specifically, he’s watched the surf scene grow larger.

“There used to be nothing, and now there are 12 year olds out there with incredible technique, and it’s just really uplifting,” he said. “These kids are growing up right next to one of the world’s best golf courses, and you ask a lot of them whether they play, and they say they don’t have time between all the surfing and skating.”

“When we were young and at the beach, we’d see a wave coming toward us and hightail it out of there. There’s no way we were getting wet,” Davis said. “Now my grandkids and all these other kids — winter or summer, it makes no difference — they’re running straight in. It’s marvelous.”

Mick explained much of this transition as we walked the fairways of Lahinch’s Old Course over our three-day trip. There’s no doubt golf is a game that is slow to change, and Lahinch is a town built around that inflexible sport. But there seems to be little old-versus-new friction between the pastimes. Even their seasons line up well — the waves in Lahinch tend to be at their best as the golf season winds down.

“It’s such a strange dynamic between the surf and the golf,” Fanning said. “They exist right next to each other; the golf courses are right next to the surf spots over here. But you go in the golf club, and there’s nothing in there about the surfing. And you go to the beach, and they know nothing about the golf. It’s a weird concept, but you have world-class options for both sports, and they’re right next to each other.”

To an extent, the uptick in surfers mirrors the way Lahinch turned from a golf gem for locals and a fewEnglish players into a world-class destination.

“There weren’t many visitors when I started here,” Davis said. “There were some clergy, some businessmen from around Ireland and some English players who traveled to see our courses. But when the Americans started to come, it just exploded. Now our business is 80 percent Americans."

As different as they may look, there’s no shortage of similarities between golf and surfing. Yes, on a basic level, they both involve travel, sunshine, expensive equipment, pros, and amateurs. But the most accomplished at both sports seem to be the people who best understand how to react to nature — when to use slopes and wind and speed to your advantage and when to accept your limitations.

But perhaps the simplest way to explain it is to say that both sports allow nearly endless flexibility for the participant to get exactly what they need out of their experience. For some, golfing and surfing are solely meant to be relaxing escapes, small moments of isolated peace spent searching for an impossible perfection. Others just want to do it better than the person across from them.

Post up in the clubhouse at Lahinch for long enough, and you’re sure to come across a logo you recognize from home or strike up a conversation with a local you never would have come across without having the game of golf in common. Anyone who has done either understands that the shared languages of golf or surfing can carry a conversation between strangers for hours. For some, that human connection is the bulk of the reason to practice either sport.

People use both sports as an excuse to get out and see the world, to go beyond your home course or the surf break down the street. The fact that people are willing to travel is something that has been important to Lahinch for decades. It’s only getting more important in the future.

“There used to be some factories here, but a lot of them are gone now,” said Hughie Benn. “There isn’t a whole lot of industry outside of the golf and the tourism. We’re kind of on the front of that, because if people interact with you, and if you really make them feel welcome as best you can, they’re going to comeback. And in this country, that’s very important.”

As we wind down our day on the golf course, Hughie invites us to spend the evening listening to him perform music in the pub. It’s the kind of invitation that reminds you that in both golf and surfing, the activity itself is really only part of the experience. When the boards and clubs are put away, you realize what a great excuse they are to get out and meet people like Hughie. And you realize how rare it is to spend an afternoon with someone who has dedicated their life to making sure everyone realizes how special their corner of the world is.

D.J. Piehowski is the head of video and written content for No Laying Up, a golf media company based in the United States. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and two dogs.