Early Irish Golf – The First Courses, Clubs and Pioneers

William Gibson’s knowledge of the early history of golf in Ireland is as encyclopaedic as it is peerless. What started out as research into the history of his local golf club (Curragh) led eventually to the definitive early history of golf in Ireland from the references to golf in the Montgomery Manuscripts in 1606, through to the playing of golf in Donnelly’s Hollow in the Curragh in 1852 to the origins on all the early Irish golf clubs in his seminal work, Early Irish Golf, which was published in 1988. One would imagine the National Library was a second home for the duration of much of his solitary research as digitised newspapers, magazines, censuses etc were not yet widely available which made the feat all the more incredible.