The late Phil Lawlor was a magnificent example. No more amiable man ever donned spikes than the Curragh professional of longstanding and when one played with him in a fourball and played a decent shot he would throw a gigantic arm about one's shoulders and whisper:

"Paddy, we pros must stick together."

Great. But come the day that we were in opposition and one played a poor shot.

The same arm would encircle one and the whisper would change to: "Paddy, you amateurs will never learn."

One of the best illustrations of the proud professional stung into action was provided by the legendary duel between Leonard Owens, the resident professional, and the late Frank Carthy at Royal Dublin many years ago.

Maybe they had been socialising a bit too vigorously and Owens felt goaded. In any case, Carthy was delighted when the professional issued a challenge for a match for �1,000, which was the equivalent to maybe 15,000 in today's money, despite the fact that Carthy was a 16handicapper and that the match was to be played off scratch.

The equaliser in the situation was that Owens, a righthanded player, would have to play left-handed and would have just three months to learn to do so.

Owens went to work in The Garden, the famous practice ground at Dollymount, and felt he was ready for his man when the big day dawned cold and windy in early December. Scoring would not be very low and that had to suit the battle-hardened professional.

Carthy was in relaxed mode as he had two friends along to witness the duel and share in the bet. They were feeling good when the professional was three down after eight and they would soon turn for home on Royal Dublin's famously difficult back-nine.

Surely, Owens was in trouble? But the pro thought otherwise.

"I had learned to hit the ball decently with most clubs, " Owens remembers, "but I couldn't make a fist of the driver and so I relied on the three-wood. In the circumstances, I was more than pleased to get up in two at the 13th!" Which shook Carthy as he was irrevocably reeled-in and the match was square after 17.

It had been good fun. The amateurs were impressed.

They said so and sportingly offered to consider the bet settled on the 18th tee. But they forgot that they were dealing with a proud professional who insisted that he was happy to play it out. "I holed-out for a 90, " recalls Owens, "which was satisfactory on the day and it was a very pleasing win!"

The question of left-handers arises on foot of an email from well-known professional Jeremy Dale who has set-up a specialised school for left-handers at Stapleford Park in Leicestershire. "I offer them a particularly comfortable environment, " he says, "as a left-handed instructor who knows exactly how to teach the left-handed game."

Dale is a permanent convert from right-handed golf and he is a renowned 'trickshot' performer with a big repertoire of right-handed and left-handed shots. His most famous shot is a vertical drive which sends the ball straight up into the sky for 300-feet where it has hangtime of 12 seconds before returning to earth! A totally useless but amazing feat despite the fact that every club has one or two fellows who can do something similar without really trying!

Left-handed professionals are a rare enough breed. Ben Hogan had a chance to become the first big-name lefty, or to remain a nobody, when he started as a left-hander thanks to the fact that his first club was a left-handed five iron. He turned it around through sheer hard work as he always believed that a good game had to be dug out of the dirt and when asked why he continued hitting perfect shot after perfect shot on the practice tee once replied: "I want to see what happens when I get tired!"

The left-handers began to come into their own when Bob Charles won the 1963 British Open at Lytham. He was the first left-hander to win a major. Decades passed before he was joined on that pinnacle by Phil Mickelson and then Mike Weir.

For many years Geoff Loughrey was Ireland's only left-handed professional. He has been a prolific winner on the Irish circuit, his latest victory coming in the Dunmurry Pro-Am of recent days, and he has a great reputation as a teacher of all golfers at his new base at Roganstown.

Michael Burke in Galway is a lefty as is Padraig O'Rourke who has just left Black Bush Golf Club to go into a partnership which has acquired the Pro Golf franchise for Ireland, England and Poland and he is up to his eyes getting ready for a September opening of their first megastore in the Beacon Centre in Dublin. He says that they will be carrying a good stock for lefties as he knows that they represent a growing percentage of the market.

Just how many left-handers there are nobody knows.

It is said that one-in-eight golfers in Britain plays lefthanded. The recent UK Junior Championship saw 17% of the field play left-handed. In the north of Scotland the shinty influence shines through with an estimated 40% of the golfers being lefthanded and , although exact figures are not available, the hurlers of Kilkenny and Offaly are impacting on the lefthanded golf populations in their counties.

The Irish Left-Handed Golfers' Association has a permanent membership of over 300 men, no women as they have an organisation of their own, and they can be viewed in action when they play their annual championship at Tramore in August.