There was no doubting that the traditional welcome still applied, so I wheeled in to Carrick-On-Shannon Golf Club to reminisce a bit and view the new holes on a course recently extended to 18.

Amazingly, the guide informed that the new clubhouse had been opened in 1971. It came as a shock to a young mind that hadn't been back since that great occasion grandly orchestrated by the never to be forgotten Mick Gaffney.

Club Manager Chris Lowe was delighted to greet a returning pilgrim and, subduing his excitement over a marvellous winning 62 by Tommy Mulvey at the weekend, conducted a tour of the new holes.

Carrick was always a wee charmer with holes running up, down and around an 80foot hill, and with sociability ablaze in the Nissen hut brought from Enniskillen in 1949 soon after the club had paid £1,500 to Major Kirkwood for a portion of his lands at Woodbrook.

The Kirkwood name is, of course, an intrinsic part of sport as a family-owned horse called Woodbrook won the Aintree Grand National in 1881. Another horse called The White Knight won the Queen's Vase at Ascot and The Newbury Autumn Cup in 1906 and added many other wins including the Ascot Gold Cup in 1907 and 1908.

Irish connections between golf clubs and horse racing history are not uncommon and, by chance, I had paid a recent visit to Doneraile where the first ever point-topoint had been run at Christmas 1752 between the steeple of Doneraile and Buttevant.

That exciting event exhilarated the entire populace and did much to inspire the local St Ledger family to inaugurate the Doncaster St.Ledger in 1776.

Golf or horses? Jodphurs or soft-spikes? It could get confusing but there was no mistaking the sense of sporting history in the air standing on the elevated fourth green at Carrick and looking out, as those great horses of the past must have done, over the plains and mountains of Leitrim and Roscommon.

The new holes, opened in 2003, are lovely parkland, well furnished with mature trees and shrubs, that offer good, but not penal, changes of elevation, and bring players to the banks of the Boyle River.

From the fourth hole, which encompassed what is reputed to be the burial place of that deadly mixed foursomes partnership of Diarmuid and Grainne, the eye can wander to Arigna and to Cootehall where a young John McGahern grew up oblivious to golf but inspired by this land.

You have the message and if you have a spare 20 get to Carrick one Tuesday before the open days end on 31 October and winter begins.