Here we are at Lahinch -- where ol' Tom Morris designed two of the most famous holes in golf: The Klondyke and The Dell. The Klondyke is a short par five with hill in the middle of the fairway. The Dell is a bowl. These are two designs which are not part of the modern designer's repertoire. Tom Morris had timeless vision.

We arrived in our Dan Dooley diesel van in pouring rain. The clouds departed and we were greeted with serious wind gusts: 25-30 mph.

We are here to play golf, not merely to survive a round. That being said, it was a tremendous round of links golf -- testing every club in the bag in various weather conditions. The sun shone; the rain pelted. The wind died down; the wind blew. Great stuff. It was a challenging test -- and our scores reflected the challenge. We will soon be competing in a Stableford tourney in which pars are rewarded with two points, bogeys with one point, and birdies with three points. In our intiial journey on Irish soil, we decided to calculate our Stableford scores. The tally: Jim - 28 points; Chuck and Mike 23 points each. A very good Stableford score is 36 points. We have room for improvement. If only the weather will cooperate, we should be able to improve.

Today's glorious round was enhanced by the addition of Londoner Dave, who joined us on The Dell (#5). Dave is a headhunter in the currency trade field and was attending a wedding in nearby Limerick. Terrific guy and welcome addition to our sometimes beleaguered trio who struggled at times to produce shots into the gusty winds. There were definite highlights, to wit, Bino's par of #1 handicap hole into the teeth of the wind; pars by both Bino and Mike on both Klondyke & Dell; and Chuck's par on the difficult #17.