Getting rich and staying rich are two completely different skills.

Getting rich requires risk. Ambition. A willingness to bet on yourself when nobody else will. Staying rich requires something different entirely - discipline, diversification, knowing when to take money off the table.

Morgan Housel explains that the same traits that build empires can destroy them. The courage that takes you from nothing to everything can, in the wrong moment, take you from everything back to nothing. It’s not quite greed, I think it’s lazy to say that.

The same traits that can make someone extraordinarily successful can also make them extraordinarily reckless.

Last week I walked along the lush fairways of one of Ireland’s best inland golf courses, Slieve Russell in County Cavan in the heart of the Irish midlands. Looking out over the course sits a beautiful mansion owned by a man who was once Ireland’s richest man.

This is the story of how he lost it.

A Farm in Fermanagh

Sean Quinn left school at 15 and went to work on the family farm in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. No connections, no capital, no obvious path to anything beyond the life his father and grandfather had lived before him. He lived in a poor part of Ireland - the land wasn’t good for farming - you could make a good case that this was the part of Ireland where the British Empire drew the line - “you Paddies can have it”.

But Sean had an eye for opportunity. Where everyone else saw problems, he saw something else.

In the 1970s he noticed that the land around his farm contained gravel. He borrowed £100 to buy a crusher and started selling it. That is where it began. A teenager with a borrowed machine and a patch of ground, selling gravel to builders in the border counties of Ireland. Up until this point, the marsh and the gravel were the exact reason why the people of this part of Ireland had struggled.

Sean Quinn looked at the very problem with this land and turned it into an opportunity.

Quinn was just getting started.

The Empire Grew

From that quarry, he built Quinn Glass, a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant so successful that its only rival on the island of Ireland closed down just four years after it opened.

Then he got into insurance. Sean Quinn had dozens of trucks on the road and after years paying millions in insurance he wondered to himself - maybe I could set up an insurance company.

Quinn Direct became one of the most disruptive forces in the Irish motor insurance market - undercutting competitors and growing to become one of the most profitable insurance businesses in the country.

Profits for Quinn Insurance reached €232 million in 2005.

By 2008 his personal wealth was estimated at €4.72 billion, making him the richest person in Ireland. Forbes listed him among the world’s billionaires. The Quinn Group employed more than 5,500 people throughout Ireland.

A man from a farm in Fermanagh. No degree. No family money. No head start.

Just an extraordinary ability to see what others missed and the courage to back himself. Quinn was a hero in this part of Ireland and rightly so - he brought jobs to this part of the country that hadn’t existed before. All the “big jobs” were around Ireland’s major cities of Dublin, Cork and Galway. Quinn gave the people of Cavan and Fermanagh employment never before seen in this part of Ireland.

Building Slieve Russell

At the height of his success Sean Quinn wanted to do something for the community that had shaped him. The border counties of Cavan and Fermanagh didn’t have any five star hotels and championship golf courses. He decided to change that.

He built Slieve Russell Hotel and Golf Club in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, in his eyes, as a gift to the region. A world class facility in a part of the country that had never had one. Slieve Russell would provide more jobs but it also gave a reason for people to come to this part of Ireland that they had never had before.

I’d heard a lot about Slieve Russell over the years (my Dad is from Cavan) but I only got the chance to play it for the first time last week.

The golf course is simply one of the best parkland courses in Ireland. Difficult but fair and arguably the best greens on the island of Ireland. It’s not particularly famous outside of Ireland. Even within Ireland it’s the type of course that if you bring it up, people will say something like, “oh yeah I’ve heard that’s a decent track, must get up there some day”.

It’s ranked in the top 10 parkland courses of Ireland - behind the likes of Adare Manor, Druids Glen etc… Irish Golfer Magazine has it 26 in the country, 2 spots behind one of Ireland’s most famous courses, The Old Head of Kinsale. For context, the green fees at Old Head will run you €500 and that’s if you can get a spot which you might have to book 18 months in advance but you can play Slieve Russell for €65 and could probably get a spot on the timesheet tomorrow if you called the pro shop.

There is of course nuance to the rankings - the experience of playing Old Head is pretty incredible but still, one is over 7x the price of the other.

Courses of this quality usually charge double or triple that. Because it is so much cheaper than you would expect, people assume it cannot be as good as it is.

It is.

Quinn lost $4.5 billion

Quinn had started in business in the 70s and had risen to become Ireland’s wealthiest man. Every new venture he started was more successful than the previous one.

In the early 2000s he signed up for a subscription to the newspaper, the Financial Times, and 6 days a week, that newspaper was delivered to Sean Quinn’s home that sits on site at Slieve Russell and every morning, Sean Quinn would read the financial news of the world.

This daily delivery of a newspaper would change everything.

He started reading about the stock market and in particular, he read about a product called “contracts for difference” — a type of financial contract where the buyer pays the seller the difference between the current and contract-time value of an asset. I won’t bore you with the details but basically, you could invest in stocks without having to outlay all the cash for it and it could make you a lot of money when the share price was going up.

Quinn invested heavily in an Irish bank called Anglo Irish Bank using these contracts for difference. This was a small bank in the grand scheme of things but it was also one of the most profitable little banks in the world and was making a lot of money by lending into the property market.

But Anglo Irish Bank collapsed during the 2008 financial crash and Sean Quinn was exposed.

The men running the bank believed Quinn held around 4% or 5% of their stock - a significant stake.

Quinn actually owned 25% of the bank, a stake worth €3.25 billion ($4.75 billion USD at the time). Almost his entire net worth.

When the bank collapsed, so did Quinn’s empire.

Not only did he lose his stake but he was also on the hook for some of its debt to their customers, to the tune of around $2 billion.

It was a mess.

I am not here to rub salt in these wounds. It has been written about extensively and I am not here to add to that pile.

What I will say is this.

The same traits that took Sean Quinn from a borrowed crusher on a Fermanagh farm to a €4.7 billion empire - the risk appetite, the conviction, the willingness to back himself when the stakes were enormous - were the same traits that led him to Anglo Irish Bank.

Morgan Housel was right. Getting rich and staying rich are two different skills. They require almost opposite instincts.

It is easy to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and call someone a reckless gambler. Greedy.

But the people who called Sean Quinn reckless in 2009 were the same people who called him a genius in 2005. The risk did not change. The outcome did.

He said himself - “I was always greedy, but greedy for what? I was never greedy for money.”

I think I believe him. The man who built a five star hotel in rural Cavan to give his community something to be proud of was not greedy for money. Maybe he was greedy for something harder to define.

Legacy, perhaps. Significance.

The feeling of building something that outlasted himself. Maybe it’s the same reason men built statues of themselves in the ancient world.

Sean Quinn’s statue is Slieve Russell.

Legacy

Slieve Russell survived it all and as we walked along the fairways my mate said to me that Quinn still walks the course most days, not playing, just walking the grounds.

The course was in magnificent condition. The greens were as good as anything I have played this year. There were people working on the paths, taking pride in the place. The hotel behind us looked as good as the day it opened. It’s under new ownership now.

Sean Quinn lost almost everything. But Slieve Russell is still going strong. Still welcoming people. Still giving the community of Cavan something to be proud of.

If you get the chance - get yourself to Slieve Russell. It is one of the best value rounds of golf in Ireland and one of the most interesting places to think about what it means to build something that outlasts you.

The Caddie’s Line

Slieve Russell is ranked in the top 10 parkland courses in Ireland. Midweek green fees start at €65. At that price it is almost certainly the best value round of golf at that standard anywhere in the country.

The Read

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Not a golf book. One of the best books about money, risk and human behaviour I have ever read.

Royal County Down. Royal Portrush. Lahinch. Ballybunion.

These are the heavyweights. The famous courses that sell out every tee time and host Irish Opens and Open Championships. The ones serious golfers travel to from all over the world. I love these courses, I’ve played them all and I would highly recommend anyone who loves great golf to play any or all of them.

But in the background there are other courses. Courses built with small budgets and by communities.

Carne Golf Links in Belmullet, Mayo is one of those courses.

Carne was built in 1992 by an Irish golf architect called Eddie Hackett in possibly the most remote part of Ireland you can imagine on the Mullet peninsula in a Gaeltacht area of Ireland’s rugged west coast - next stop New York. Gaeltacht areas are those where the Irish language and culture is kept alive.

For years, Carne was like a secret, really only known to those who made the pilgrimage. And making the pilgrimage meant really making it — Belmullet is not on the way to anywhere. You go there because you are going there.

Then the lads from No Laying Up came to Ireland.

The Discovery

If you don’t know No Laying Up — they’re an American golf media company with a devoted following of serious golfers. They’re not the Golf Channel. They don’t do corporate. They act like scouts going out ahead to find the places that the general golfing public might not be aware of and they tell people about them honestly.

In 2019, they decided to check out this course in a remote part of Ireland called Carne.

They fell in love with it and told their audience. Bookings went through the roof. Up until this point, people who knew about Carne loved it but golf is a crowded space so getting the word out there wasn’t easy. The lads from No Laying Up gave Carne the global platform it deserved.

Then Covid happened and the floor fell from under them.

How It Began

To understand why what happened next matters, you need to go back to the start.

A man called Michael had lived in London for years. When he came home to Ireland he bought some farmland in Mayo that came with a 17-part share of nearby grazing land called Carne Banks; this land was described as a sandy wasteland. Michael had never visited it.

One day he asked one of the other 16 owners to take him out there to show him this “sandy wasteland” that he was a part owner of.

They walked onto the land and Michael was blown away.

The dunes were enormous. He had never seen anything like them. Standing there on the edge of the Atlantic looking at this wild, improbable landscape, he had a thought.

I wonder could we build a golf course here?

He gathered with the 16 other land owners who agreed to Michael’s proposition and they approached Eddie Hackett — arguably Ireland’s leading golf course architect — and asked him what he thought. Hackett walked the land.

“These dunes have been here longer than humans. I’ll build a course here alright, but we’re not going to move any dunes”.

He built the course around the dunes rather than moving them. No big budgets. No heavy machinery. The community built it largely by hand and it opened in 1992.

Getting the word out was the problem. Mayo is a long way from anywhere. Carne is a long way from Mayo.

For years, it existed in the golfing underworld.

I remember seeing this Ted Talk from Simon Sinek a few years ago where he talks about how people are split into different categories.

You’ve got the “innovators” who are the ones who will Q outside the Apple store the night before when a new iPhone is released so they can buy it before anyone else. They don’t need to test it first, they pride themselves on being first. About 2.5% of the population are in this category.

Then you’ve got the “early adopters”, “early majority” all the way through to what he calls the “laggards” - these are the people who only buy a smart phone because you can’t get a landline phone anymore.

Simon Sinek called this split of the population, “The Law of Diffusion of Innovation”.

Up until the No Laying Up guys went to Carne, the only ones who played Carne were the “innovators” in Sinek’s language. But NLU introduced the “early adopters” and Carne’s tee sheet started filling up.

On Their Knees

Then along came Covid.

Just when Carne got their big break and was about to take off, everything stopped. The international visitors who had finally discovered Carne couldn’t travel. The momentum was gone overnight. Everything halted.

I didn’t know this story at all until last week when I played Carne for the first time.

My friend Joe and I met Gerry, the chairman and Sarah, last year’s Lady Captain. The 4 of us, standing in the pro shop last week.

Gerry started talking with his Dublin accent, quiet pride, obvious love for the place. The kind of man who when he speaks instantly captures your attention.

Before No Laying Up found them, back in 2019, Carne was doing 2,500 rounds a year. At €65-€100 a round, you’re talking about €200k in annual revenue to maintain 27 holes of golf and a clubhouse on the Atlantic coast of Mayo.

The carpet in the clubhouse had seen better days. Replacing it wasn’t an option. Keeping the lights on was. In Gerry’s words - “we couldn’t afford to buy tea bags”.

“We were on our knees”.

Here you had a spectacular golf course on the edge of the world, built by the community, as a non-profit organisation but they were really struggling.

Gerry is from Dublin. He has no obvious reason to pour his life into a golf club in the far west of Mayo. He came to Belmullet on a holiday years ago and decided to stick around.

He fell in love with it and couldn’t look away - when you see Carne you can understand why.

Tom Coyne Makes a Call

Then Tom Coyne got in touch.

If you’re not aware of Tom Coyne, he’s the Editor of The Golfer’s Journal and has written multiple books including, “A Course Called Ireland” — Tom Coyne played a big part in sending a generation of American golfers on pilgrimages to remote Irish courses just like this one. He’s an overseas member of the club.

Tom knows what good looks like.

When Covid hit, Tom reached out to Carne - to check in on them really. He knew it was a special place and knew they would be struggling.

He asked Gerry if he’d write a diary - “a week during Covid managing a golf course”.

When Gerry came back with the diary, Tom was floored. He got back to Gerry and said, “you have to record a podcast of your diary”.

Gerry got his hands on a microphone and hit record. He talked about the course, the community, what it meant and what he and the team were facing during this pandemic. When you listen to this podcast (it’s about 25 mins) you will likely be floored too.

You can hear the emotion in Gerry’s voice. He talked about how they had to take the hard decision to let staff go from the clubhouse. The only people they could keep on the payroll were the green staff to make sure the course would be in good shape for when they re-open.

If they would re-open.

He talked about how Fergus, the head green keeper, had to take in the flags. Symbolic.

Would the place survive?

In the diary, Gerry talks about how emails were coming in every day of people having to cancel their tee times. Refunds and reschedules were being issued by Gerry and Fiona, the GM at the time. All their hard work and the boost they had received was wiped out overnight.

When the podcast went out, Tom Coyne asked the audience to help however they could. Buy a tee time. Buy something from the shop. Donate if they could afford it.

In the days after that podcast went out, Carne received over 6,000 emails.

Six thousand.

People booked tee times they couldn’t use. People bought merchandise. People sent donations with notes apologising that they couldn’t afford to give more. Carne didn’t have their pro shop online at the time but inquiries were coming in so thick and fast that they needed to get one up so people could buy stuff. They got the website up and running in a couple of weeks and the generosity of the world came through.

Gerry told me this as the 4 of us stood in the pro shop and I could see it still moved him. The outpouring of goodwill from strangers — most of whom had never set foot in Mayo — for a golf club they had mostly never visited.

We live in a world where we’re constantly bombarded with bad news and disasters but fundamentally I believe people are good and I think the reaction from people towards Carne shows that.

Not only did Carne survive Covid.

They got enough money to buy their new carpet.

What We Found

Joe and I drove out last week on a grey morning with dark clouds floating in off the Atlantic.

We stood on the first tee and looked out at dunes unlike anything I’ve seen on a golf course. Enormous, wild, rolling. The kind of landscape that makes you feel small in the best possible way.

At one point Joe disappeared over a dune and I didn’t see him again until the green.

That’s Carne.

You look at a course this raw and rugged and you could expect to make allowances. It would be quite reasonable if there were bumpy greens, patchy fairways — the inevitable compromise of maintaining somewhere this exposed on what had been a small budget.

But there are no allowances to make.

The greens were among the best in the country. We saw lads out working on the paths, improving small details. Taking pride in something that nearly didn’t survive.

In the pro shop I spoke with Sarah, last year’s Lady Captain and who looks after all their socials. You could feel her love for the place in every word she spoke.

It’s 2026. Carne has already sold 16,000 tee times for 2027. They’re not in debt to anyone. They have money in the bank. They can now do all the things they always wanted to do without asking whether they can keep the lights on.

A community golf club in Mayo — built by hand on ancient dunes, nearly killed twice, saved twice by people who loved it enough to tell others about it — is now one of the most sought after tee times in Irish golf.

As I walked upstairs in the clubhouse after the round, I looked down at the new carpet beneath my feet and smiled to myself.

My only regret is that we didn’t play it twice.

If you were ever thinking of going to play golf in Ireland and want to visit Carne the only thing I’d say is do it. You won’t regret it.

If you want us to organise it for you, email me at conor@roam-golf.com or check out our website here and fill out an enquiry. We’ll organise the whole trip for you.

People are fundamentally good. That’s my belief.

Go roaming.

The Caddie’s Line

Eddie Hackett designed over 60 golf courses in Ireland, often for rural communities with modest budgets. He is considered the father of Irish golf course design.

The Read

A Course Called Ireland by Tom Coyne who walked the entire coastline of Ireland playing every course along the way. A four-month long adventure and a 990-hole, 1,967,680-yard, Par 3,895 golf course ahead of him.

The idea, put simply, was to walk the entire coastline of the island of Ireland and play every golf hole along the way, making up what would eventually become A Course Called Ireland.

There are no members, no website, you can only play if you’re invited by the family who own it, the course can go days or even weeks without a single round being played but the course is ranked in the top 50 golf courses in the world. It’s ranked higher than Pinehurst No. 2, Bethpage Black, Seminole, Portmarnock and Birkdale.

When you think of Brazil, golf is likely not the sport that comes to mind. Pele, Ronaldinho, the original Ronaldo or even Neymar are more likely to be what you think of.

So how did this magical golf course in the rainforest of a country not known for golf come to be?

Way back in 1859, the Malzoni family moved from Italy to Brazil. At the time, Brazil had become the biggest producer of coffee in the world with 80% of all coffee produced around the world coming from Brazil.

Like the gold rush in the US around the same time, Brazil was experiencing a “coffee rush”. Those little brown beans promised a world of wealth for those who could crack the market.

The Malzonis, like a lot of Italians, were coffee drinkers and could see the growing popularity of this little drink spread across their country. Even the Pope had recently given his blessing to coffee around this time. So the Malzonis decided to take a risk. They boarded a ship bound for a crossing over the Atlantic from Italy to Brazil to buy a coffee bean farm just outside Sao Paulo.

Over the next few decades, their plan worked and the Malzoni coffee empire grew.

In the years that followed, the family diversified their portfolio and expanded into real estate and other ventures. Rino, one of the sons, actually set up a sports car company called Puma and although I can’t say I’m much of a car fan, based on what I’ve seen, the Puma GT looked pretty cool.

The car company even received investment from Muhammad Ali at one point.

Although there are no publicly available figures that outline the exact net worth of the Malzoni family, they are understood to still be one of the wealthiest families in Brazil with a net worth in the billions.

Paulo, who was head of the family office for many years, is also a keen golfer. He developed a love for the sport during the 1980’s and started travelling the world ticking off every golf course in the top 100 in the world he could before doing what any reasonable man with a few billion dollars and a love for golf would do - he decided to build his own golf course.

Originally, he built a course full of replica holes.

Holes that had made an impression on him from his golf travels around the world. Think, 17 at Sawgrass or the 12th at Augusta. I’m sure the course was cool in one sense but after a while, he decided that his course lacked its own distinct character so he developed a new plan.

He decided to approach one of the most famous and respected golf course designers in the world, Tom Fazio and asked him to build his golf course.

Mr.Fazio has built courses around the world like Shadow Creek in Las Vegas (the most expensive green fee in the world) and was even involved in the remodeling of Adare Manor in Ireland a few years ago, site of next year’s Ryder Cup amongst dozens of other famous golf projects around the world.

At first, Tom Fazio was not interested in this project in the middle of a Brazilian rainforest. He has built enough great golf courses and he didn’t need the hassle of that much travel and living on site away from his family. But Paulo didn’t give up.

Paulo pitched his vision for the course. He wanted to build an incredible golf course with slopes more extreme than Augusta and a course in as good condition as Oakmont but beyond these ideals, he would give Tom Fazio complete freedom to build the golf course in his image. Most golf projects have this tension. The owner has a vision. The architect has a different one. The result is usually a compromise that satisfies neither.

Paulo laid out a philosophy for what he wanted Tom to keep in mind but ultimately, would give Tom free rein (and in all likelihood, a hefty budget) to build the best golf course they could.

Eventually he won Tom over and, along with Tom’s son Logan, they got to work.

Over the next few years they carved their way through the rainforest, moving trees and land to shape their course and in 2015 they opened their golf course which they called, Santapanzienza.

Some modern golf course architects like the idea of minimalism, that is to make the course look like it was just uncovered from underneath an existing plot of land rather than built. Courses like Tara Iti in New Zealand or St.Patrick’s at Rosapenna have this feature and it’s beautiful when it works but this was not possible for Santapanzienza. They had to build a golf course rather than reveal one.

It took them 3 years to produce but what they built has been recognised as one of the very best golf courses in the world (by those lucky enough to have played it). It has dramatic slopes that are apparently more extreme than those at Augusta and the conditioning of the course is at the standard of the very best in the world.

Some golf courses are built for commercial use, i.e. to make as much money as possible but Santapanzienza is not a money making exercise, this was a project of pure passion.

They wanted to build the best golf course they possibly could and maintain it as such. No expense was spared in the building of the course nor with the maintenance of it - the first Director of Grounds at the course had worked as the superintendent at courses like Merion, Oakmont, Aronimink and Shadow Creek - some of the best maintained golf courses in America.

The name ‘Santapanzienza’ translates in English to ‘holy patience’ which, according to those who have played it, matches the experience. There is even a little bridge that runs through the course that lies slightly underwater known as the Jesus bridge - you’re walking on water (well, driving your golf cart on water). They wanted to hide cart paths where possible so as not to take away from the beauty of the place.

What you can read and research about this place is limited which seems intentional but some reviews I read imply they might be open to one day hosting some grand tournament there - I’m sure they would love the South American version of The Masters but whether that’s possible or not is a different question.

You might think that you need to walk on eggshells when you’re at a place like this but from what I’ve read, once you’re inside the property you’re treated like a member of the family.

Whether Santapanzienza ever hosts a grand tournament and becomes known around the world or remains this ultra-private secret known only to a handful of people - I don’t know. But if it does become famous one day, at least you’ll have heard about it before everyone else.

I’ll probably never get the chance to play it. But if you have, I’d love to hear what the experience was like.

And if you like these sorts of weird golf stories then it would mean more than you know if you considered becoming a paid subscriber.

The Read

The Match, by Mark Frost tells the story of one of the greatest matches ever played where 2 professionals, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson took on 2 amateurs, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward at Cypress Point - the best golf course in the world. Great read.

The Caddies Line

The green fee at Shadow Creek, another Tom Fazio designed course, is currently $1,250 making it the most expensive public access tee time in America.

I went straight to the wedge section and started taking practice swings with three or four different clubs, careful not to touch the ground so as not to damage the bottom of the club. I’d been in enough golf shops to know this unwritten rule.

I’d heard Cleveland make good wedges so I went with one of those.

We drove home from the golf shop that evening - My Mam, my sister, my mate Kev and I in the car and after we parked the car I took the wedge out of the boot, my Mam walked ahead into the house.

As I lifted my new 60 degree Cleveland wedge from the boot of her green Fiat Punto I heard her shout out “we’ve been done!”. My mate Kev and I looked at each other.

I didn’t know what she meant but when I walked into the kitchen I could see what she meant.

All the drawers in the kitchen were open, paper everywhere, the place was turned upside down.

The back door was wedged open, that must have been how they got in. It was just before Christmas so maybe these guys were panicking about not having any money to buy Christmas presents for their kids. Maybe they were just pricks.

My sister was pretty affected by it. We lived in a detached house on a hill. Slightly isolated so as that winter wore on, any time the wind howled or a door creaked she would panic. Understandable. We got an alarm and now the house has gates all around it, not quite Fort Knox but about as close as you can get for an average Irish home.

It wasn’t that I was unaffected by the experience but I just reasoned that they didn’t get much the first time so they were unlikely to come back.

I was about to have far greater issues.

A few days later I was pretty excited when I got to take my new 60 degree out to the course. Chipping and pitching was my biggest strength. I loved it. I had played in the men’s club championship for the first time earlier that year and the guy who beat me in the 2nd round told me after our match that I probably had the best short game in the club. Maybe he was just being a gracious victor but I was proud of my ability around the greens.

That winter had been wet, pretty typical for Ireland. My first shot with this new wedge was to a tight pin over a bunker, the kind of shot my cocky 16 year old self relished.

I chunked it into the bunker in front of me. Hmmm that was weird I thought to myself.

I chunked the next one too and my mind started racing. “What’s going on here?”. I looked down at the club in search of some answers and saw 2 numbers - one said 60 and the other said 6. The 60 referenced the degrees of loft on the club which I was pretty familiar with. The 6 referenced something called the bounce, I’d never heard of it before. It turns out the less bounce a wedge has, the more it digs into the turf. Most wedges like this have 8-12 degrees of bounce. This only had 6.

Whatever it was, my head became scrambled. I thought, maybe I could ask Mam and Dad to get me a different wedge but straight away I shut off that idea - they had just got me a new wedge and now I wanted another one?

Deal with it, I thought to myself.

My greatest strength became my greatest weakness

But I didn’t deal with it. My greatest strength turned into my greatest weakness overnight. At that age we have a tendency to overthink. I would spend hours on the chipping green trying to get my old flare back but it was gone. Every time I stood over a chip my knees would buckle and the ball that once used to fly in the air and dance around the flag like a butterfly with sore feet was suddenly scuttling off the far side of the green or dying pathetically right in front of me as I’d either chunk or thin one. That lovely sound as I clipped the ball off the turf with spin was gone.

When I got my first job I saved up and bought 3 new vokey wedges - maybe that could fix me but now the damage had ingrained itself somewhere between my amygdala and hippocampus. The summer of when I was 18 I tried my hand at playing at Ireland’s elite amateur level but a 5 handicap with the chipping yips wasn’t going to make many cuts against the best young players in the country.

It went this way for years.

There was a round when I was level par playing the 16th, a reachable par 5 and I was greenside in 2, a chance to go -1 if I could get a simple up and down. I tried to be brave and take out the wedge when a putter would have been the percentage play. I thinned one off the far side of the green and turned a birdie into a bogey. I did the same on 18 and made a double, A round that should have been -1 turned into +3. Also ran.

This happened time and again.

I’d play a match for the club, come down the stretch neck and neck with my opponent only to have a poor chip hand the match to the other guy. I’d shake hands and feel a sense of deflation. “Just bloody chip the ball like a normal person”, I’d mutter to myself on the way to put my clubs in the boot of the car.

It affected my putting at times too with bouts of a rattlesnake coming down my right arm as I stood over a 3 footer. Anyone who has experienced it will know the feeling.

I resolved the putting (that’s a story for another day) but never the chipping.

It became something I managed rather than cured. I was always comfortable with a flop shot for some reason. I think once there was speed involved I was immune. It was the delicate little chips that I couldn’t deal with. Still, I managed to maintain a handicap of 5 or 6 and even broke par once - 14 greens in reg and every time I missed a green that day I could take out the putter.

The £500 Zoom Call

One day I came across a guy on Instagram with the username “cure for the yips”. I watched everything I could on his profile and although he talked about curing people’s problems he never really showed how he did it.

Is this a charlatan or is this legit?

How could I believe this would work? He described himself as a “yips therapist”. I wasn’t aware they gave out degrees for such things…

I reached out to him to find out more about it.

£500 for a single session.

“Are you serious?” I thought to myself. He was in the UK and I’m in Ireland so my options were to travel to him or just take a zoom call. He said a Zoom call would suffice. £500 for a bloody Zoom call.

When I asked him about the price he said, “it’s tricky for me because I have no repeat customers - it’s so effective the first time”.

It was a good line but was it bullshit?

I was 32 at this point so the chipping yips had haunted me for 15+ years. Would I pay £500 to resolve it? Fucking right I would, I’d probably pay £2,000.

If it worked.

After a month or two of debating it in my own head I bit the bullet and booked the session.

Is this guy for real?

I sat in front of my computer and James appeared on the screen in front of me. After exchanging the usual Zoom call niceties we got down to it.

He explained the background of his work to me. “The yips is PTSD for sport and so we treat it using a technique that has been very effective for treating people with PTSD. A specific treatment called havening”.

The way he described it to me was that if you were in a shop one day and a robber came in wearing a t-shirt that read “I love Jesus” and held you up at gunpoint you’d probably be scarred after an experience like that - trauma for lack of a better way of putting it. The next time you saw someone wearing an “I love Jesus t-shirt” even if it was not in a threatening situation you’d break into a sweat and your heart would race. The previous experience is ingrained in your brain and your body reacts in a fight or flight type manner.

The same thing happens with sport. You have a bad experience at the wrong moment and it leaves a mark on you - it affects darts players, snooker players, baseball players and golfers. This “scar” on your brain manifests itself in these sports via an uncontrollable movement, usually in your arm or hand. Your subconscious mind takes over and overrides your conscious mind. Your arm jumps uncontrollably and you can’t override it with sheer willpower.

In the early 2000’s after years of after years of research into neuroscience and how trauma is encoded in the brain, 2 doctors in New York called Dr. Ronald Ruden and Dr. Steven Ruden came up with this technique that they called “havening” - it comes from the word ‘haven’, a safe place.

Their scientific explanation of the technique is that it “generates slow delta wave activity in the brain, which helps release neurotransmitters like serotonin and uncouple negative emotional responses from memories.”

My plain English understanding is that it was designed to help people with real world PTSD and helps unwire the part of your brain where the trauma has embedded itself. It’s almost like you’ve got this scar on your brain and havening removes the scar.

But the technique itself is kinda nuts.

On the Zoom call, James explained to me, “when we’re children, the way we’re comforted by our mother is they stroke our arm and say something like, it’s ok dear your mother loves you very much”. It’s soothing to us as babies and makes us feel safe when we’re scared.

Our brains are comforted by this.

Havening is basically the same thing but for adults. He asked me, “how do you feel when you’re standing over a chip with a tight lie over a bunker?” I replied, “I feel nervous, almost jumpy.”

“Ok good, now what I want you to do is cross your arms and start stroking the outside of your arms, almost like you’re giving yourself a hug”. I start doing this and he says, “ok you said you feel jumpy over a chip shot, start saying the word “jumpy” as you stroke your arms”.

Is this guy for real I thought to myself?

Well I’m here now I suppose, let’s just go with it.

I started stroking my arms and saying the word “jumpy”. This went on for a full 20 minutes. 20 minutes is a long time to repeat the word “jumpy” with your eyes closed while a stranger is watching you. You feel like a bit of an idiot. After a while I start laughing and say, “this is ridiculous” and James says, “yes, it is ridiculous”.

“Ok, now you’ve said you feel jumpy before you chip. When you were younger and your chipping was great, how did you feel?”.

“Well, I suppose I felt excited to hit a chip. Almost cocky, like I wanted to show off to my playing partners”.

“Great, so let’s stroke your arms again and say the word”excited “. And so we went again.

This went on for another 20-30 minutes. The session involved some more discussions but then after 90 minutes we said goodbye and I closed my laptop.

“That was nuts”, I said to myself shaking my head as I got up from my chair and back to the real world.

But I was strangely excited to get onto the golf course.

The following day

The next day I made my way out to Blainroe, my local course, with my cousin who I’d never played golf with before. He had no idea of my chipping yips or my £500 Zoom call from the evening before.

We played 11 holes and I shot -1. I missed 4 greens and got up and down every time. I flushed every pitch and chip shot - I nearly holed a shot from 50 yards over water.

What? Surely that did not actually work?

It did.

A few weeks later I was playing a tournament in Donegal, a 27 hole scratch cup. I stood on the last hole of the tournament +7 for the tournament on a tough golf course. That score might not sound all that great but go easy on me - for me this was good.

I was actually right in the mix to win the tournament. I was playing with the captain of the club and he had told me that +7 for the 27 holes had won the year before.

If I make a par, I could win it and a birdie would give me a serious chance. As I stood on the 18th tee my hands were shaking. I’d never won a scratch cup before.

I ripped a drive down to 40 yards short of the green. This 40 yard shot would be hell on earth for me a month prior but aside from the obvious nerves I didn’t feel the usual jumpiness that I normally felt over a shot like this.

I made a smooth swing and heard that beautiful sound you get when you clip a ball off tight links turf.

I looked up and saw the ball fly beautifully through the air and stop about 7 feet from the flag. Oh my God I thought to myself.

I missed the birdie putt - not a terrible putt it just didn’t drop but I walked into the clubhouse so pleased with myself, even though I didn’t make birdie. I was so proud of myself for the shots I hit on the last few holes but especially that pitch shot on the last.

I looked at the leaderboard - I actually lost by about 5 shots. I laughed to myself. In the end all those nerves were for nothing but I didn’t care. I hit the shot when the pressure was on. I hadn’t done that with a wedge in 15 years.

Last week, I played in the Captains prize and came to the last hole of the 36 hole tournament and had a pitch shot over a bunker from a tight lie. I nipped the ball nicely to 4 feet and holed the putt. Again, I didn’t quite win but I didn’t know that as I stood over the pitch.

That Zoom call was 12 months ago and my handicap has gone from 5.5 to 3.6. The chipping came back but so did my overall confidence. I had been stuck with this limiting belief about myself. Now I can play with the freedom of a 16 year old me. I know I’m never going to play on the PGA Tour and know that in a game like golf nothing is ever permanent.

You’re probably thinking - don’t get ahead of yourself Conor, and you would be right. The dreaded y word could return at any time and if it does, well then it does. But maybe I could beat it again.

But as of now, 12 months in the clear, I can stand over a 40 yard pitch with my hands shaking and back myself to hit a good shot. That feeling - after 15 years of not having it - is worth every penny of that £500 Zoom call.

If you’ve got the yips and want to find out more, here’s James’s website. I make nothing from sending you there. It just worked for me and maybe it could work for you too.

The Read:
Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

By Sian Beilock

The Caddies Line: The yips is not nerves. Nerves you can breathe through. The yips takes over before your conscious mind has a chance to intervene. That distinction matters if you are trying to fix it - best not to try beat it with willpower. A technique like havening works better.

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Kingsbarns Golf Links, which opened in the year 2000:

• Sells between 27,000–28,000 rounds of golf per year

• Has an average green fee of £420 per round — £70 more than the Old Course at St Andrews

• Has no members

• Closes for winter

• Is one of the most profitable and operationally efficient golf courses in the world

The vast majority of people who play Kingsbarns don’t know the story of how it was built.

Landmines and Barley

In 1939, at the outbreak of World War 2, the British army wanted to defend its shores against a potential German invasion. The army put up defences along certain areas of the coastline that they believed were exposed to a German attack.

One such area was a 2 mile stretch of land just south of St.Andrews near the village of Kingsbarns. A series of landmines and defensive structures were put up to defend this wee part of Scotland should the Germans ever decide to invade.

After the war, the land was converted back to farmland for potato and barley to be used for the production of whisky.

Golf, as you know, began in St.Andrews but it was really only in the 50 or so years after the war where travel became more accessible and the average golfer was able to make the voyage to the home of golf.

Throughout the 90’s more and more golfers were making their way over to this special part of Scotland for a once in a lifetime experience in golfing heaven.

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It was clear that soon there would be an overflow of keen golfers looking for tee times in the area. It may seem obvious now to build a new links course in the area but for context there hadn’t been a new links course built in Scotland for 70 years.

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