There were two Cork winners at the Irish Golf Writers awards at The K Club last week as Sara Byrne and Denis O’Sullivan were both recognised.  Byrne received the Women’s Amateur of the Year award, her second time to win it, and O’Sullivan was recognised for his distinguished services to golf.  Byrne recorded several notable wins and performances in 2023 while O’Sullivan’s career stretches over four decades.

Sara Byrne captured the Women’s Amateur award for the second time.  The 22-year-old from Douglas Golf Club won her second AIG Irish Women’s Close title with a one-up win over Beth Coulter at Connemara Golf Links before finishing as the leading amateur in the KPMG Women’s Irish Open at Dromoland Castle.  She also made back-to-back cuts on the LET Access Tour and completed a stellar year by winning back-to-back individual titles with the University of Miami in NCAA Division 1 events in October.

Byrne was delighted to pick up her second title from the golf writers, and she admitted how things have changed from when she won as a 17 year old.  “I feel like I’m a totally different player to what I was five years ago, I think means so much more.  When I look back and see how I won the Close the first time, I don’t know how I did that, compared to the golf that was played this year.  It has been quite the turnaround,”

It was a very impressive summer of golf for the Douglas player and Byrne credits that win in Connemara with the kick start she needed for 2023.  “That got me back into the winners circle and I didn’t want to let that feeling go.  In my fall season in college (2022) my results weren’t that great but my golf was there and I knew it was going to come if I was patient with it.  So that was a starting point for it all to click.”

Cork’s Denis O’Sullivan won the Distinguished Services to Golf Award sponsored by Galvin Green.  A former Irish international and selector, he was Irish Amateur Close champion in 1985 and East of Ireland winner in 1990 before he turned professional at 49 and qualified for the European Seniors Tour, where he won six times.

O’Sullivan recalled his trip to the professional ranks and how the journey began.  “I saw an opportunity to go to tour school and it took it.  I took a week’s holidays in November 1997, there as 185 guys trying to pre-qualify in Hardelot, Northern France, the top ten qualified and I finished 8^th.”

“I remember driving out of the gate of Hardelot and I promise you the wheels didn’t touch the ground I was so excited.  I went back to work after the week’s holidays until the following May when I took a month off to play golf.  I spent a few weeks in a row playing golf and then I’d go back to work for a while and that’s how it went until I won at the end of my third year when I went full time.”

O’Sullivan was Cork’s most prolific winner as an amateur, winning over 50 scratch cups as well as two national titles.  He was a latecomer to the game, only taking it seriously when he was in his late teens.

“I didn’t take up golf really until I was 18, I was into soccer and rugby before that.  I’ve never swung a club properly in my life, I learned the wrong way and after I got to one handicap I had to literally try and learn it a different way.  I learned to do it my way.”

I had a habit of winning as an amateur, I won 56 scratch cups in my time.  Most of those were stroke play and I had a habit at that stage of winning.  When you played something like the East in the old days, two or three or four under would win and I brought that mentality to the Seniors Tour thinking that was good enough.

I remember my first tournament in El Bosque in Spain, I shot five under and only finished in the top twenty.  Tommy Horton won with 18 or 19 under par and I thought I’ll never get there.  But eventually I did through hard work and loving what I was doing.”  His breakthrough came in October when he won in England in October, and he followed that a week later when he won the tour championship.

O’Sullivan went on to win six European Seniors events, and amassed over €1.3m in prize money in his 18 years on tour.