At the recent Annual General Meeting of the Golfing Union of Ireland, Munster Branch, West Waterford Golf Club was voted Club of the year 2009.

This prestigious award is fitting recognition for the enormous contribution to, and promotion of the game of golf by West Waterford Golf Club since its inception.

Established in 1993, the club immediately put in place an extensive programme to encourage youth into the game. It wasn’t long before this ambitious initiative bore fruit, when they brought the first Munster pennant to the club by way of the Fred Daly Trophy in 1997, a title they successfully defended in 1998.
They followed this up with the Munster Youths title in 2000. The Munster Junior Foursomes title was next up in 2005 which culminated in the capture of the All Ireland title, the first Irish pennant for West Waterford. They then went on to repeat this feat in 2007 with another Munster and Irish crown and went on to make history in 2008 when they won both the Munster and Irish Junior Foursomes titles for the 3rd time.

These indeed were exciting times for the club with the emergence of Seamus Power as a major force in Irish amateur golf. Seamus won the Irish youths Championship in 2005, 2007 and 2008 to match John McHenry’s record and was runner-up in 2004, a year in which he also captured the Munster youth crown. Seamus has gone on to represent Ireland at youths and senior level. Seamus was preceded on the International scene by Alan Harty who was selected for the Irish Boys team, while the new kid on the block is Gary Hurley who has recently been promoted to the Irish Boys A panel, and is likely to play for Ireland in 2010. West Waterford Golf Club has also provided the entire team for Dungarvan C.B.S. who have won the Irish Schools Championship on 2 occasions. Other notable achievements have been Seamus Power’s captaincy of the St. Augustine’s team to an Irish Schools Championship and John Dunphy’s selection as the most improved young golfer in the British Isles in 2000.
The icing was truly put on the cake in 2009 when the Senior Cup team brought the Munster Championship back to the club, the first pennant at senior level. They went on to Tullamore for the Irish Finals, where they comprehensively beat Ulster Champions, Castlerock in the semi-final, only to be narrowly beaten by Galway in the final.

The Club of the year award is just another milestone in the remarkable success story that has unfolded in the Brickey Valley over the last 15 years, and with stalwarts of the like of Pat and Justin Spratt, together with the unstinting support of the entire membership of the club, it is likely to continue well into the future.