The beautiful blend of ballet and boxing, it could even be referred to as physical chess, with creativity at its heart and speed and precision at its soul.
Jude Holmes first took up the sport when she was in her late teens, she joined the local fencing club in Newtownards and that continued on to Scotland when she moved there to study.
She has represented Ireland, Great Britain and Scotland, while she would eventually go on to coach on a voluntary basis.
Volunteering has been a central theme throughout her life, as a child she would give up her time to look after the environment or sick and injured animals. She would also have been planting trees and doing conservation work.
Today she volunteers with her local Donaghadee Golf Club where she is on the Women’s Committee and planted 60 trees after the recent storms, while she volunteers on the Get into Golf nights as well. She also tries to engage with new golfers as much as possible, to make them feel welcome.
However, her most important voluntary role took place over the last few years of her mother’s life, when she left her home and career in Scotland to become a carer.
“My dad had been quite seriously unwell, and I’d been coming back and forward to look after him a lot in the run up to actually making a move back and I’d recently got married over in Scotland to Anton. It was becoming more clear that my mum was really suffering from dementia,” said Holmes.
“I came over initially to look after her while my dad went into hospital and then he passed away on Christmas Eve in 2015 and I really couldn’t leave my mum at home by herself.
“I didn’t feel that it was safe to do so. I stayed for a little while longer and then we brought our cat over for Christmas, so it was myself and the cat and my mum in the house. My husband followed about three months later and we made the decision that we would up sticks and stay in Northern Ireland.
“We basically pitched a tent and camped out in my mum and dad’s lounge ever since, just to make it work but then mum sadly passed away last year.
“We looked after her for ten years and did our best. She stayed in her own home, we never had to put her into care, so gave up all we were doing over there and came over.”
National Volunteering Week is a weeklong celebration of volunteering every year, and this week we look to celebrate the likes of Holmes who now devotes her times and efforts to the game of golf.
Holmes initially joined in with the Get into Golf programme at Donaghadee because of the flexibility it offered around her caring responsibilities. She took to the sport straight away and within a few years was offering her time to help introduce more women to the game.
“I had to give up the fencing when I left. I had been running a club in Edinburgh, and it was on every week and had to just stop it and none of the other coaches or fencers wanted to take it on,” said Holmes.
“Fencing is a sport that you have to travel to do because you can’t really just go out and fence, so I was looking for a sport where it would be nearby and I could dip in and out. I did a little bit of tennis, but it also was more revolved around a club time and that you went down and had to do classes and stuff like that.
“I saw a little poster for Get into Golf in a shop window and I was just like, oh, it was very well-priced and obviously I was an unpaid carer so I was like, that’s not too expensive, I could afford to try that.
“I just thought, well, just in my nature, I’ll give that a go and see how it is, so I went along, and I had a great time, and I thought, do you know what? I quite like this.
“I got on Facebook Marketplace and bought myself a really cheap set of men’s clubs. I didn’t know anything about it, I’ve still got them, I still use some of them. I went from there and I did Get into Golf just before lockdown.”
Holmes did her degree in Interior Design and Glass and then a Masters in Exhibition and Visitor Interaction Design in Edinburgh.
“I loved art when I was at school, that was probably my favourite subject,” said Holmes.
“I had wanted to go into architecture but then thought interior design was more my line because I found it a wee bit more creative and then I went into visitor attraction design because museums were a bit boring.
“I wanted to make them and visitor centres a bit more interesting so that’s where I went into that line and then I ended up designing things like whiskey distillery visitor centres and we did the Bacardi visitor centre out in Puerto Rico, a lot of exciting projects.”
Holmes had to put her dream career on hold ten years ago when she returned home to care for her mother.
She knows that carers like her, who devote their time and efforts, shouldn’t be left to flounder and in search of their identity.
As a result she has helped to set up a carers network through golf and they will play a scramble next week, as they look to grow their own community.
“Most carers in our region, you can sign up and there is support for carers who can do different events and things. I’ve benefited from that quite a bit,” said Holmes.
“Since I’m doing #GolfLikeMe, I thought it would be great to highlight how carers can have a bit more of an opportunity to play golf and how to maybe fit it into a carer’s lifestyle. Obviously not everybody has the same time available.
“I’m organising a little tournament at the end of this month for carers and we’re going to do a scramble. It’s for people who have done a bit of golf but maybe set aside their clubs because of their caring responsibilities because possibly people maybe think, I don’t want to pay membership and not be able to go and use it, especially if you’re an unpaid carer.
“So we’re doing a little tournament for people who are carers who have previously played golf or maybe even still play, but are carers and just make a little carers network as well, a golf carers network.”
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