As West Waterford Golf Club prepare to celebrate 30 years in existence, a celebratory festival of golf is promised and all are welcome to attend.
Pat & Nora Spratt’s desire to convert a successful dairy and apple farm into a parkland golf course was the acorn from which the ‘Mighty Oak’ has grown and 30 years later it’s showing no signs of shedding its branches.
The current members are celebrating WWGC’s 30th Anniversary with a series of “30 Years On The Go Classics” and a host of other Anniversary Celebrations. The Classics run from Thursday 24 – Sunday 27 August and Thursday 1 – Saturday 2 September.
On Sunday 3 September, Lady Members play for the Bernie Twomey Memorial Trophy and the Gents play for the Pat Murphy Trophy – a fitting way to end a weeklong celebration as Bernie and Pat were the first Club Captains.
Sunday July 9th, 1993 will be forever etched in the memory of WWGC when the Eddie Hackett designed course was officially opened and WWGC joined an elite list of Championship Parkland Courses with lofty ambitions for the future.
While the first ambition of the Spratt family was to design and develop a golf course at Coolcormack, having realised that ambition, Pat felt West Waterford GC should be a club with members who had the ability and skills to play at National and International level.
And over the last 30 years that ambition has been realised. Through a successful youth programme, WWGC has achieved National Awards across numerous Inter-Club Competitions. WW became synonymous with the Irish Junior Foursomes with wins in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 whilst managed by Justin Spratt. The culture of supporting junior golf at West Waterford continues to thrive with close to 100 aspiring young golfers participating in Golf Ireland Programmes.
While Junior Golf has been incredibly successful, WW ladies have secured many pennants over the years, the most recent success was reaching the 2021 Revive Active All-Ireland series at Strandhill. Other notable successes for the club include the 2009 Men’s Munster Senior Cup and JB Carr glory in 2004 and 2018.
West Waterford GC also holds the distinction of having two professional golfers on the international stage with Gary Hurley playing on the DP World Tour and Seamus Power on the PGA Tour.
Today WW are proud of their two ambassadors who never miss an opportunity to promote WWGC and recognise the part played by WW in their formative years.
While WWGC has gone through lots of change in its relatively short history, one consistent value is the spirit of volunteerism that exists within the club, and thankfully, volunteerism is still alive and well at WW at Management level, Ladies and Gents Committees and throughout the membership.
Golf Ireland introduced a Volunteering Award in 2023 and Captain Pat Murphy was the first Munster recipient of the award. A fitting tribute to a member who has given a life time of volunteering to the game of golf, more than thirty years to West Waterford, and is now involved in course development work to ensure that guests and visitors enjoy a memorable West Waterford experience during the Anniversary Celebrations.
Captains Michael Cass, Nora Flynn and President Jim Moroney extent a welcome to golfers and non-golfers to join them at West Waterford from Thursday 24th August to Sunday 3rd September to celebrate the successes of the last 30 years and to usher in a new era for the ‘Mighty Oak.’
For more information or to book, click here.
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