One of the great gentlemen of Irish golf will stride the beautifully manicured fairways of Adare Manor during this week's AIB Irish Seniors Open.

Big David Jones ­ all six feet five of him ­ is back and ready for action after a year-long absence from the game.

But the affable 54 year old Bangor man can consider himself lucky to be playing golf at all after suffering a career threatening shoulder injury in April last year.

A fall on a golf trip to Las Vegas left him with a badly broken collar bone that took months to heal and left him contemplating an 'early' retirement from competitive golf.

"For a while things were looking very black," he confessed. "It was quite worrying and it looked as though I was going to have to have surgery on it if I wanted to play golf again.

"It did heal eventually last October but although I had healing in my collar bone I had very little mobility and couldn't move my arm above shoulder height in any direction. So I had physiotherapy on a weekly basis for about four months, which sorted it out. There's a little bit of movement in the shoulder that will never come back but there's no reason why I shouldn't play well again."

Always a fierce competitor, Jones will not be at Adare simply to make up the numbers alongside Christy O'Connor Jnr, Ian Stanley and US number one Bruce Fleisher.

"Adare It's my first event for a long, long time. I went to the Kenya Open in March for a laugh and played okay. I usually go down there for an extended Safari and to play in the tournament. But the last senior's game I played was a skins game in Egypt in November 2000, which I won incidentally.

"I'm not interested in playing seniors golf unless I can be competitive. Every year I say that I'll see how it's going after 12 or 15 events on the tour but as long as I get a bit of fun out of it and make a few quid it's enjoyable.

"It's not like a week-in week-out rat race. It's possible to have a parallel career as a golf course designer and that's what I'm hoping for."

Jones is now a very successful golf course designer with several projects on the go, including the new National Golf centre at Hilton Templepatrick, a course he designed with David Feherty back in 1998.

"I did a course with David in Turkey back in 1993 called National Golf club and I'm doing another course down there, a lovely 36 hole complex," he reported. "I'm also doing one for the Jockey Club of Kenya at their property in Nairobi and I'm doing a number of things in Ireland. I did nine holes for Mitchelstown back in 1992 and I'm doing the second nine of that so I'll probably visit them, during Irish Open week."

But the £2.3 million complex at Hilton is set to become Jones' most impressive project to date.

The Ulster branches of the Golfing Union of Ireland and the Ladies Golf Union have come together with Sports Council, the R and A, the PGA and the owners of the Hilton complex to create a practice and training facility that should be the first of several national golf centres.

Explained Jones: "It is due to start later this summer, with big training facilities, outdoors and indoor. We've got lottery funding and everybody in bed on it actually and it should be really good.

"Although it's being built under the auspices of the Ulster branch it being seen as an all-Ireland facility. The Golfing Union is hoping to do two or three of these. I think they see one of them in the North, one in Cork-Limerick and the main headquarters in Dublin. But this is the first one that has actually come to the board and it's looking very exciting."

Jones has come up with an innovative design for a "sophisticated outdoor range" with individual targets, slopes, tees and short game areas that allow you "to replicate any shot that you are likely to find in the playing of golf in a driving range environment."

There will also be an indoor facility with a 350 sq m artificial green, bunkers, chipping areas, driving range areas, physiotherapy rooms and offices for the Ulster Branch of the GUI.

"I've great hopes for it. The design, even if I say so myself, is quite unique looking on paper and I hope we can translate it to the ground," he explained.

"It's a series of interlinked targets all of which are lit at ground level so they are very clearly identifiable but when you look from the range you can only see the one you're looking at.

"It doesn't look like one huge area with a lot of flags in it. If you're hitting at the 150-metre marker it has all the appearance of looking at a green, a 400 sq. m golf green that's 150 metres away and you can't see the other targets that adjoin it.

"At the far end of the range we will have an elite coaching area for the Golfing Union and the Ladies Union coaching scheme, playing into targets that are behind the targets that the public will be using.

"It will be part of the Hilton complex and operated by Hilton but it will be the focus for the national coaching scheme."

Jones hopes to successfully combine his design career with his competitive instincts and add to his solitary senior victory to date - the 1999 Jersey Seniors Open.

"I've been working at my game a bit and the shoulder seems to be behaving itself. I've had three decent years in the seniors, only one win, but I have had 20 top five or ten finishes. I had a run of bad form in 2000 and but towards the end I had a third and a second and then the win in Egypt. So I was kind of really looking forward to 2001 before the injury but there you go. Now I'm looking forward to Adare Manor and I've heard great reports about it.

"Sooner or later I'm going to have to decide whether I'm a senior golfer or a golf course designer. Having had a few good years in the seniors I haven't had to make the decision yet because both sides of my career were going really well.

"But then I thought last year that I was having that decision made for me and I'm just pleased to be out playing again."

The local crowds are sure to appreciate the long, flowing swing and graceful style. David Jones is back.

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© Brian Keogh 2002

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