'For instance, around half the top 100 are in America and as many as 15 are in Massachusetts and New York, within easy reach of Boston. 'You just have to be smart in how you tackle it,' he said. He suggested that the challenge of playing the world's top courses is not actually as daunting as it would appear, especially for someone like him, working in financial management.

The Boston connection was first established while I was at Trinity, in that my sister lived there and I would go to work at Brookline during my summer holidays.' 'In caddying for them, I became fascinated by stories of where they'd been - all through golf. 'A bug seems to have bitten me while I watched busloads of golf tourists arriving at Portmarnock from Dublin Airport,' he said. He has worked with Ernst and Young for the last five years.

From membership of Malahide GC, he progressed to Portmarnock and then to The Country Club at Brookline after emigrating to Boston in 2005. In fact he shot a level-par 72 at Durban and reckons he covered the 100 courses in creditable cumulative figures of about 150 over par.īorn in Dublin, his first golf clubs came as a gift from his father, Pat, in 1989 and he has been playing the game competitively since he was 12. It is a safe bet, however, that O'Leary accomplished the challenge more efficiently than most, having been scratch or better for 14 years and currently playing off plus-one. To date, an elite group of 29 have done the top 100, and five of them have since passed on to the Elysian Fields. 'I'm already planning to play them, which won't be a problem, given that Karen will enjoy Thailand before going on to visit her sister in Melbourne.' Which would suggest that it is, in fact, possible for a sane partner to meet the needs of a hopeless golf nut. 'Of those, the only ones that I haven't played are Ellerston GC in Australia and the Ayodhya Links outside Bangkok,' he said. Now he was studying the latest biennial list in Golf Magazine, which shows six changes from the one he used from 2013. They were together at Durban Country Club in South Africa last month when O'Leary became at 32, the first Irishman to play all of the world's top 100 courses.

This little interlude took place in the Cape Cod abode of an irrepressible Dublin golf enthusiast and his Meath-born girlfriend Karen Lynch, who happens to be a neurologist at a local hospital.

Relentless french karen lynch