Jack Madden has announced himself as a major contender on the PGA in Ireland circuit after winning the Irish Assistants Championship at Castle Dargan in Sligo, then following up by claiming the Irish Club Pro Championship at The Heritage in Laois just a week later.
The Dungannon native, who is in the first year of his PGA training, joined the staff at Holywood Golf Club in Belfast at the start of the year, but found playing opportunities few and far between as his new role is time-consuming and there are a limited number of places available in tournaments on the island’s Pro-Am circuit.
But he had no such worries for the Irish Assistants Championship, though attending a friend’s wedding in Leitrim on the tournament’s eve wasn’t exactly ideal preparation.
“The first nine holes, I hit two balls in a hazard, I three-putted and there were a few wee silly errors, but I guess that’s what comes from not really playing that much golf,” he explained.
“Apart from a few one-day Pro Am’s I haven’t really played any golf so the goal for the second day was to keep the mistakes off the card because I knew I was going to make birdies.”
And make birdies he did. 24 of them in total, with two eagles over the course of 72 holes and he finished the week on 19-under-par, seven clear of Jake Whelan in second.
“I didn’t worry about what anyone else was doing and it was quite comfortable in the end, so I’m delighted and it gives me something to look forward to next year,” he added.
It also gave him something to look forward to a week later, as the victory took him from 15th alternate and into the field for the Irish Club Pro Championship.
Playing in the afternoon of the 18-hole event, he was aware that Concept Golf’s O’Mahony had already posted four-under in the morning but didn’t know the lay of the land otherwise.
“I knew that was the benchmark at the bare minimum,” Madden said. “I got to five-under and then had a 10-foot par putt on 17 that just slid by, then another from about 12 feet for birdie on the last and it slipped by too.
“I thought that might be my chances gone, but it wasn’t until I checked the leaderboard on my phone after I finished that I saw that I was going to a playoff.
“I was delighted. My record in playoffs down through the years is pretty good, and I was able to par the first playoff hole and that was enough to win.
“It was unfortunate for Mark that he’d finished about three hours before whereas I was pretty fresh off the course, but I’m really happy and now I’m really looking forward to playing a lot more tournaments on the Region next year.
“I’d like to thank Elavon for their sponsorship of the event and of the Order of Merit, and to Paul Dunne for attending the prize presentation.”
Madden graduated from Arkansas State University in 2023 and set himself a four-year goal of playing his way onto the DP World Tour, but despite getting eight tournament starts on the HotelPlanner Tour in 2025, he wasn’t able to earn enough ranking points to secure a card for 2026 and when he came up shy at Asian Tour Q-School in December, he was faced with the choice of competing primarily on the Clutch Pro Tour this season or starting his PGA training and taking a steady job.
He chose the latter.
“Obviously it’s a large financial burden to be playing full-time golf,” he explained. “I probably wasn’t going to have any HotelPlanner Tour starts, and the Clutch Tour is expensive, so I decided that it was time to get some money coming in rather than going out. So I opted for the PGA route.
“It’s always something that was in the back of my mind anyway, because, say you get on tour and have a good, 10-year run of it; what are you going to do afterwards?
“So this way, I get to play alongside doing my training, and the events that I’ve played in have been really good. The standard is really good, and I can’t wait to get playing in them all next year.
“But I’m doing about 35 hours in the shop, a bit of coaching, and then trying to play a bit as well, so it’s busy, and because of that I’ve moved to a minute down the road from the golf club in Holywood.
“It’s a great facility here with the gym, five trackman simulators, and the craic is really good too, so I enjoy being around it.”
And, in something that’s come as a little surprising, he’s found that he’s really enjoyed the coaching side of the role as well.
“I wasn’t sure how I’d like it, to be honest, but I really do,” he said. “Like, the other day there was a guy who came in and told me he’d broken 80 for the first time after having two lessons with me.
“That was just so cool to see because you can forget that, whatever level of a player you are, you’re always trying to get better and to be able to help in any way is great. And I’m really enjoying those interactions.
“I went down to a Golf Ireland seminar with Hugh Marr and Johnny Foster and a couple of other guys at Carton House a few months ago and it was so interesting. To hear those guys talking about the golf swing, just their knowledge of it, you realise that there are levels to the coaching side of it as well.
“And it probably actually helped my own game as well, because I was the furthest thing from a sort of swing nerd. That’s why I’m surprised at how interesting I’ve found it all. But when guys with that level of knowledge are able to break it down into the simplest things, you start to understand your own swing a little more and it’s absolutely fascinating.”
Madden’s victory in the Irish Assistants Championship means that he’s eligible to play in all of the Pro-Ams on the Region in 2027, and if his early exploits are anything to go by, he’ll be a regular feature at the business end of leaderboards.
If he can get someone to cover his shop hours, that is.
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