*Jonathan Keane celebrates winning the South of Ireland Men’s Amateur Open where he is lifted by Aaron McNulty & Oisin Vaughan. Photograph: INPHO/Ben Brady
KILFENORA’S Jonathan Keane had his finest sporting hour to date when winning a title which had so much personal significance for him.
Sunday saw him win the South of Ireland, the first Clare winner in over half a century, it was followed by emotional and wild celebrations and his feat earned him an international call-up which will see him claim his first Irish cap.
In between the celebrations and preparations for the Home Internationals at Woodhall Spa, Jonathan spoke at length to The Clare Echo in what the most detailed interview of his entire career.
He became the first local since JD Smyth in 1968 to win the famed championship at Lahinch Golf Club, rolling in a five-footer for a closing birdie to beat former champion, Caolan Rafferty of Dundalk. JD was one of Jonathan’s first coaches in the sport and often brought him to the course after school when he went to Kilfenora NS and Ennistymon CBS. “For Lahinch to only have two locals in the last seventy years win the South of Ireland that are still alive, JD Smyth lives in Kilfenora, it is great Lahinch has two South of Ireland winners but they are both Kilfenora people, it is just amazing,” he reflected.
Twenty five year old Jonathan has been golfing since the age of eleven and Sunday’s feat is definitely the highpoint of his career to date. “To win any of the competitions is unbelievable but the South being on in Lahinch, being a Lahinch member all my life and only a Lahinch member, it is the one you always wanted to win, I’ve been watching it since I was eleven or twelve”.
Such success has already been a source of inspiration among some of his golfing crew. “It was great for the golf club and hopefully it will inspire a younger generation. A few lads that are older than me that I golf with, they’d be in their early thirties and late twenties, they text me and were like ‘I’m going to take golf a bit more serious and try improve’ because when we play every weekend there isn’t much between us, we’re all pretty similar and it’s great they can see that and there’s no reason why they can’t win one of those competitions so hopefully in the next few years you’ll see the Lahinch name out there a bit more”.
There has always been a distinct appeal about competing in the South for Jonathan. “I remember when I was younger, eleven or twelve when I was starting out, I went over to watch the South, at the time I wasn’t really a great golfer but I was like ‘jeez I’d love to play in this someday but then as time went on when I got to fifteen, sixteen I started improving, I started getting better, I started competing at boys level competitions, I was getting up the top of leaderboards and I was thinking I can win this someday, I knew I had the game and the golf when I was competing with the top people I knew I could win. Then I had a bad enough injury in 2021 which set me back, I thought at the time I would be back in six to eight weeks, I didn’t know it would take over three years for me to come back nearly, during that time you’re thinking will I even golf again, it is just amazing to finally actually win it, unbelievable”.
Rory McIlroy’s run in the 2011 Masters was among the moments to spark his interest in golf, prior to this he was oblivious to what a golf club was.” I didn’t know what a golf club was till I was eleven, I got fascinated with it then with the 2011 Masters when McIlroy was leading and unfortunately he didn’t win, that was the first competition I watched on TV and I was amazed by it, the amount of hype around this young guy from Ireland, it was amazing”.
Ennistymon’s Paddy Skerritt was responsible for giving Jonathan his first set of clubs, he was also one of the first signatures to help him become a member of Lahinch Golf Club, “When I was in primary school in fifth class, a friend of the family Paddy Skerritt who is from Ennistymon, he is a member in Lahinch for fifty years, he brought me over golf clubs and I chipped away with them on the lawn, I did a bit but I didn’t join the club but a few months later one of my classmates Declan Brennan, he said it to me ‘we will go over and join the golf club’, I was like ‘yeah shur I have a few golf clubs at home, why not I’ll go over and give it a try’ so I went over with him and I remember we played our first ever round of golf together, both of us we played on the Castle Course, when I was eleven, that is what got me into it”.
September 2011 saw him become a Lahinch Golf Club member. “You had to get two members to refer you, I had Paddy Skerritt and I was trying to figure out who to ask but he knew plenty of people to get a second signature on the application form, I’m very thankful they allowed me in as a member”.
Prior to this the Keane family had no real great interest or knowledge of golf. “None of my family played golf, my father, mother or sister, no one in my family plays golf, I hadn’t a clue what a golf club was. I remember my father’s good friend Murt McMahon from Kilfenora always used to go over golfing every weekend and my father would be making fun of him with his white shoes and his white pants saying, ‘you look ridiculous’, I’m the one wearing them now and I don’t think he’s saying that anymore. He he’d be very old style and traditional, him seeing white shoes and white pants he’s a farmer so anything I’d land home with the white shoes on he’d be giving out saying put on a pair of wellingtons instead”.
As his teenage years passed his love of golf intensified and it became his main hobby. “I always played football since I was four years old, like golf wouldn’t be a big thing in Kilfenora really, we’d be known for our football and our music, I used to play music as well. I enjoyed the football, I didn’t really enjoy the music, so I gave up the music from a young age, I was playing football and I kept playing football. When I got a bit better at the golf when I was thirteen I gave up football, I just said ‘look I’m getting a bit better at golf, and I enjoy it’. We were struggling for numbers at the time in Kilfenora, we didn’t have an U14 team so I would have had to travel to a different club like Ennistymon or Corofin, that was something I didn’t want to do so I stuck to golf and ever since, it’s just been golf only. I started putting in a bit more practice then when I was thirteen years old, instead of just going over once a week then, I used to go over after primary school in the evenings and after secondary school my mother would drop me over or my coach John Smyth, he lives in Kilfenora so I used to go over with him and he’d bring me back home again, I really appreciate the help I got when I was younger. From the age of thirteen or fourteen on I just started to take it more serious”.
For those wondering and to assist in a potential pub quiz question, the musical instrument Jonathan played was the accordion for three to four years, he was also a set dancer for six years, “when I got to eleven all of that went out the window”.
A mix of loyalty to his roots and rivalry to other clubs influenced his decision not to play football with either Ennistymon or Corofin. “I like to be loyal to the club you’re from, if I stay at one club I want to be with that club so I wouldn’t move, I wasn’t unbelievable at football so I was never going to make a Clare team or anything, I did it for enjoyment, I knew that eventually I’d focus on something else so I ended up going over to Lahinch and playing golf”.
As his status began to rise, he caddied for local member Thomas Neenan during the 2015 South of Ireland. “He asked me and fair play to him, he said ‘you’re going to be playing in this someday, come on over and caddy for me’. I caddied for him in 2015. I was a fifteen year old, I wasn’t unbelievable at golf, I was okay but he’d be asking my questions like what did I think and what’s your opinion, he was a way better than golfer than me so I couldn’t believe it, I was thinking ‘Jesus why is he asking me what do I think I’m only a small young lad who doesn’t know too much’ but to learn from that really helped”.
With golf becoming the main focus in Jonathan’s life, his ability was beginning to show for all in Lahinch to see. He won an U18 Boys Munster Order of Merit, made the Irish Boys panel at the age of seventeen and played for his country in a friendly match, won boys competition at club level.
Serving as a major disruption to his progress was a serious back injury where he had herniated discs that left him out of action for over two and a half years. “It was around the end of the second lockdown in November 2020, some time around then. The first lockdown when it happened, I was mad into the gym and mad into golf, I got an idea with no gym to go to so I bought a few bits online, a squat rack, dumbbells and I put it into the garage, I had nothing to do really, a few bits online for college which didn’t take up too much of my time, I used to hop into the car and drive over to Lahinch and I used to hit balls on the beach for about two hours straight and I go home then and I could do an hour and a half of gym training at home, I did that about six to seven months straight every single day. I had no physio or anything at the time because all physios were closed, I wasn’t doing proper stretching, I was taking it for granted at a young age that your body is fine, I was golfing the first day the golf courses opened up in 2021 I went playing with Patrick a local member and on one of the holes, I hit a shot, and I just felt a little twinge in my back but I thought nothing of it, I went home, put the feet up, and woke up the next morning and I couldn’t move.
“My whole body was just in pain, I’d never felt into it like it before. I had pains going down my legs, pains all along my lower back and I couldn’t get up out of bed. I was on placement in a school at the time and I was thinking I should ring in sick but I didn’t want to, fair play to my parents I’ve a very good record of attendance in school and work, I hate missing out and letting people down, I went into work and went home but it was awful pain so I went to the doctor. I didn’t have the symptoms for a herniated disc, just sprained muscles but after three months of trying everything and nothing worked, I got an MRI which showed I had herniated discs in my back so I was given the option of surgery that I didn’t really want to go down the route of because I had seen before that it had failed with a lot of people and I was very young for that to happen, it’s a surgery that a lot of people get when they’re older in their fifties or sixties, I tried physio and it didn’t really work, it worked for a while but I tried to golf but I couldn’t so I kind of completely stopped golfing. I thought rest would work but rest didn’t work,” he added.
As he entered his final year of college at the University of Limerick, he admitted that rehabilitation was not top on his list of priorities but as he reached his final semester the recovery received renewed concentration.
Helping along the way were connections from Lahinch Golf Club, if ever the saying of ‘it takes a village’ are applicable as Dr Conor O’Brien a former Irish Olympic doctor helped to get him an appointment in Galway Clinic where it emerged “a few nerves were wrong” and an epidural injection in his back to block nerve pain followed. Gerry O’Sullivan, another member of Lahinch GC is Head of Radiology at Galway Clinic and helped to organise the appointment for this injection.
He then worked for five months with strength and conditioning coach, Robbie Cannon who is coach to Shane Lowry and himself won the South of Ireland in 2009 and physios to get back to the fairways. “I got back playing in June 2023 and thank God I’ve had no problems with my back since. I’ve played eight rounds of golf in the last five days with no pain whatsoever, sticking to the gym work keeping the body nice and strong, the diet, the routine, the recovery sessions, just keeping it all going”. Returning to caddying was also central to his recovery, Jonathan felt. “I think a lot of sitting down in college studying kind of was it wasn’t great for me either. When I got up and I started caddying in Lahinch after college as well and walking around, I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t sitting down as much as in college and maybe not going out as much as in college helped. The drink isn’t really very good for your body”.
Physical and mental pain of the injury proved to be a big test, he recalled, “At its worst it was shocking, a lot of the time as well when I was at home doing nothing, I was on my phone a lot doing nothing and I was sitting down wanting to rest, I didn’t realise at the time but your posture and the way you sit is a big thing, my neck started to have problems as well. I ended up my whole spine at me. It was very bad, you’d be waking up some nights with pain, a few nights I struggled to sleep, nerve pain is nothing to laugh about, you don’t realise it until it happens to you, getting nerve pain down your leg from your sciatica it’s not something to be laughing about and I really feel for anybody that has it, and thank God no mind wasn’t as bad as what a lot of other peoples were. To be out of the game of golf was a pain in itself in your head”.
Keane continued, “It was the only sport I played with ten years, not being able to play it, going out and watching the lads, it was great at the time that Lahinch’s mens team were going good, they won the Munster Pennants so they were through to the All-Irelands, I was going around with them supporting them, it was something but at the same time I was at the All-Irelands and Kyle Cannon the manager who is in Portmarnock now said ‘we need to get you back playing’ and I knew I was missing out on this but you just have to block it out and say I’ll be back some day. I got an awful lot of questions about it from people asking me if I’d ever play golf again, I had never thought of that but you have to block that out and say I will play again, I always had confidence in my ability, if I go at something I’ll give it 100 percent and I did”.
Unable to caddy while he was injured, Jonathan started working at the Golf Club “so I was there every day, I was talking to people every day and there was people coming in every day asking how I was, what was up, will we see you back soon, as a few people said to me you can probably record your answer and play it to people, you don’t need to don’t need to be saying anymore. Everyone was wishing me the best look at the golf club, the amount of people that were coming up to me at the time saying we need to get you back and they were trying to do everything for me. The amount of people that said that they that they could try and get me physio appointments or doctor’s appointments with the people they knew, and I really appreciated it, like, I have to thank everyone at the golf club. They’ve done everything for me, like, to for the people that that they got me in contact with, like, and I yeah. It’s just unbelievable. There’s so many people, like, from the golf club in Lahinch that are members from all over the country, we’ve members from Dublin, Limerick, Cork, all around Ireland. From being there when I was younger I got to know an awful lot of people. It’s just great to see that when I was in the time of need that they all that they came together and they wanted to help me out and that they did. It was just absolutely amazing, and it was just something that that I really appreciate. Only for that and only for knowing them people, I don’t know would I have been able to come back from it all, it is very hard to know”.
Confidence was high heading into this year’s South of Ireland given the form he has shown so far this year. “This year, I won the Club Championship in Lahinch which was great and I’ve had a few close finishes, I finished third in the Munster-Mid which is an over 25 competition, the West of Ireland I got to the quarter-finals and lost to the eventual winner. I was over at the Welsh Strokeplay in April and I finished in the top fifteen. I’ve been playing decent all year with a few other top 20 and 15 finishes”.
Before he teed off in the South, his main target was to reach the top sixty four which he duly did after qualifying in the strokeplay which took place on Wednesday and Thursday. “I played very bad the first day, I shot 75 and was well outside the cut, I was two outside it, I was tied ninetieth and I knew I needed a good round the second day, I knew it was in me because I knew the score I needed wasn’t beyond impossible, I’ve gone around Lahinch before and was well under par so I knew I needed about two or three under which was well doable on my home golf course. As Noel said to me, my caddy and Lahinch member Thomas Neenan when they were talking to me after the round, they said ‘if there was ever one golf course that you need to shoot a good round on, it’s this golf course’ and I didn’t feel one bit nervous at all, I knew I could do it, I got off to a good start during the round and I was 300 after four holes so I knew I was going grand, I knew if I shot every par from here in I’d be fine, I finished 200 for the round and got through in something like 47th”.
Coming up against fellow Lahinch member Stephen Loftus on Friday evening was a difficult experience. “I had a tough opposition match on the Friday evening against Stephen Loftus, a fellow Lahinch member, it was awful to face him and go up against someone you know so well and play golf with nearly every second week, we had a great game, he is a top lad. That was probably the one game that you don’t want to play is against a Lahinch member. I played great again Saturday, absolutely unbelievable and again Sunday I played great too, I was two down after five holes on Sunday morning, I was two under par after five holes which is a great start, I got over the line on the seventeenth and then got in straight away, got away from the crowd and to go out in the evening and win was amazing”.
With the form he has shown all year Jonathan was quietly confident before he teed off. “I was playing good all year, the amount of people that said it to me after a few close calls this year that ‘the South is coming up and you’ll win it’, I know a a lot of people just say that for a bit of confidence sometimes, but, I was in the academy practicing one day and Shane was in there and he was watching me hit balls and he was like ‘you’re going to win something and there is no reason why you can’t win the South on your home golf course’. I always try take it one shot at a time, there is no point getting ahead of yourself, go out there and give everything 100 percent, when you give everything 100 percent you can’t look back with any regrets after, I can’t say I should have tried a bit more there, at the end of the day if somebody beats you and they play better then fair play to them, you shake their hand at the end of the day, you walk off that green knowing you tried your best, and whatever happens after that happens, that’s one thing my father always said to me when I was younger, ‘you play your best and you shake the person’s hand at the end of the day, and you walk off the course’. I learned that through him, he’d be very respectful so that is always what I try to do”.
Facing former South winner Caolan Rafferty in the final didn’t faze him, “I knew I had a good record, I was playing good and I like matchplay, it suits my game. I knew I was able to go out on my home golf course, if there was one golf course I could beat anyone on it’s this and that gave me more confidence, I knew he wouldn’t make mistakes because he is a top class golfer, it showed as well with the start he got off to that he had two birdies on the first four holes, a top class golfer but it didn’t faze me because I knew my game was there, it’s just about having the confidence. I wasn’t thinking going out, I’m going to win this thing, I was just thinking I’m going to try my best and he’s going to put up a good game against me which he did. Like none of us were ever going to run away with it. He is a top class man, such a gentleman and a nice guy, we played together a good few years ago”.
Two up after the twelfth hole, the lead was wiped when they were level heading into the seventeenth. “I was two up after twelve, on fourteen I had a bad enough second shot but I had a bunker shot, it was a hard bunker shot, I got it close to give me range so that was good, I was two up with four to. I hit a bad drive on the fifteenth, and I ended up bogeying it, he hit a super up and down for a par, unbelievable. I was one up then with three to go, he hit it on the green in close on the sixteenth for a par three which did put a little bit of pressure because it was a hole with a birdie putt, I hit a bad enough tee shot on that, I hit it left to the green. I was buried over a bunker in the rough and I ended up hitting it into the bunker and then I conceded the hole.
“I was level with two holes to go and knowing my caddy, fair play to him, he could see that I was a tiny bit annoyed on the green picking up the ball, not really annoyed but a bit agitated, I was out of my normal routine, and he stopped me when I was walking to the green and said ‘if I told you in the morning you’d be playing in the final against Caolan Rafferty and you’d be level with two holes to go, would you have taken it’, I said yeah and he said exactly, that was it, he handed me the driver I walked up to the tee. Caolan hit it down the middle of the fairway, I stood up then, I hit it a bit left, he had an okay first putt and he was in for a par so I knew the eight or nine foot I had was crucial, I had to hole it because if you were going down to the last one which is a par five it’s not great so I holed that and the roar that was let out by the crowd was absolutely amazing so it was. I was very proud of how I handled myself on the seventeenth hole, with the Liscannor Rd down along the left and all the cars passing by and all the heavy rough on the right it would be very easy to hit the ball into the rough. Under the circumstances the two shots I hit into the last hole are in the top five shots that I’ve hit in my life”.
On arguably the biggest sporting occasion of his career, Jonathan came up trumps and hit some of the best shots of his life. “The shots I hit on the seventeenth were good but the two shots I hit on the eighteenth were up there under the circumstances with some of the best shots I hit, it is a par five and it is a tough hole to reach in two, he came up just short to the green in two, and I hit a five iron into the green, to be able to hit the ball up the middle of the fairway and hit it a good distance as well it was great and then I remember I was standing over the second shot and a phone went off so I backed off it, Noel said ‘routine again, throw up the grass’ so I threw up the grass and did my normal routine, my few wiggles and stuff that I do which is a bit weird but it works for me, I hit the shot, it was in the air and there was silence, everybody was watching the ball, when the ball landed on the green the amount of people behind me that started roaring and the people above on the green starting roaring ‘come on Johnny’, it was just amazing, the crowd were moving from behind me, Noel gave me the putter and I just walked to the green, it was unbelievable”.
An intrinsic knowledge of every twist and turn on the famous links course was invaluable for Keane. “You just know exactly what spot to hit on the course. I know a lot of people might look at my tee shot I hit on the final round of the first hole in the final, I hit it way right but in the morning I hit it up the left side of the fairway and it wasn’t a good angle into the hole, I know in the evening I hit it forty yards right of where I should’ve, but I had such a good angle. I know I was in the rough, but I had such a good angle, it’s just things like that sometimes you are better off being in the rough somewhere like the ninth hole than actually being on the fairway and having a bad angle to where the pins are, especially where the pins were in the last round, the thirteenth hole, I knew if I missed the green a yard left I was screwed which I did in the morning, I knew for the final that no matter how far right I hit it that it would be better, it’s the knowledge of knowing the course. The seventeenth and eighteenth hole, the two putts from golfing and caddying I must have walked that golf course over a thousand times in my life, I’ve had them putts before and watched people do it so I knew the breaks in them and I wasn’t second guessing myself. I had the confidence of what to do on the holes”.
He added, “It’d be very easy for me to stand up in that seventeenth hole after losing two holes in a row and to miss that foot on the green, it was eight foot and like on the PGA they only hole about fifty percent from eight foot, at our level it’s probably only twenty five percent, I was so happy to hole that putt because if I lost three holes on the bounce to be one down going down the last hole, if I lost going down the last hole everybody would be saying he threw it away, mentally it would scar you fair bad. In my life, I may never get to a final again, hopefully I do but it may never happen but to be in that situation and produce the goods was amazing”.
As he made the final putt, he dropped his club and put his head over his hands where his parents Mary and John were among the first to grab him and hug in an emotional embrace. Not long after, Lahinch duo Oisin Vaughan and Aaron McNulty had him lifted shoulder high. “When I was over the putt I said ‘just hole this will you’, when I holed in and saw the ball go in I didn’t know what to do, I dropped the club out of my hand, put my hands up to my eyes, then my father came over and swarmed me, my uncle and my mother were over, it was just a blur, so many people coming up shaking my hand, then Oisin and Aaron put me up on my shoulders, it was unbelievable, it hit me then, I was in shock and no words were coming but when they put me up I could see everyone around, roaring and shouting, I got a bit wild then”.
When he found the words, ‘Up Kilfenora’ is what came out. “I saw the over on the right hand side, there was there was about, I say fifteen people from Kilfenora that were over there and, like, some of them non golfers and I could hear them roaring and shouting, they stood out to me of all the people, I had to acknowledge that, it was great, I know how much sport is to the people of Kilfenora and to have this trophy back”.
Local support was massive for Jonathan but it wasn’t something he noticed too much during the final round. “If there was only ten or fifteen people there I’d be a bit more nervous or conscious of it, when there’s so many people you don’t realise who was there, I couldn’t tell you who was there and the amount of people that were there, the faces, it was all a blank, there was so many faces that you don’t look. The support was exceptional, I appreciate all the Lahinch people that came out and travelled too from around the country, the amount of people that aren’t even members that came up to watch”.
This level of backing has continued across the week with a special celebration held in Kilfenora on Monday evening. “It’s been mad, we had a night out in Kilfenora last night, so it was great. We had a bonfire and the amount of people that turned out, it was absolutely amazing. I say, nearly all of Kilfenora that was there, I know we’re a small parish but I’d say nearly everyone was there and it was great. Even all my buddies from the Golf Club that aren’t from Kilfenora travelled there, people that are originally from Kilfenora that live in Limerick and other spots travelled up too and it was great, it was amazing seeing the amount of people there, it is great for the village as an achievement to have a South of Ireland winner with our two Jack Dalys”.
Celebrations were curtailed somewhat with Jonathan’s selection on the Irish team for the Home Internationals. “We’ve a nine-man team so it will be my first time ever getting capped for Ireland, that’s next on the agenda and then the week after I’ve the Irish Close up in Westport, the week after that myself and the girlfriend are going away to Coldplay so it is about time she got a weekend away with me”.
Generally he is comfortable taking phonecalls in front of his girlfriend Jill but there was something different about the Irish call-up. “I got that phone call on Monday night, I was just heading out the door to Kilfenora, I was going to text one of the lads was he above because I was running but I saw from my phone on a weird number on WhatsApp that I didn’t have asking me to give them a ring back. My girlfriend Jill was in the room at the time but I was like ‘sorry can you leave the room, I’ve to ring someone’, she looked at me wondering who I was going ringing, she must have thought it was some woman or something because usually when someone rings I answer in front of her, I went downstairs then and she was with my mother, father and sister just ready to go out the door and I told them and they couldn’t believe it. I’m absolutely delighted. I’m just going to practice for the rest of the week, go over to England and just represent Ireland. Aideen Walsh from Lahinch is going over too so it will be great to have two Lahinch people going over there representing Ireland and two Clare people as well.. I’ll just take every competition as it goes, I’ll just give everything a 100% and whatever happens after that happens”.
Had he not received the Irish call-up, he would certainly have milked the celebrations a bit more. “I was going to have a few pints but when he rang me and told me, he said ‘you might ease off on the celebrations’ and I said ‘Damon don’t worry it’s going to be Rock Shandies tonight’. I’d be very strict about drinking, the only time I drank this year was when I went on holidays to Madeira with my girlfriend, I did enough of drinking there for the week, I always like to give it one hundred percent because when you’re young you need to give it everything while you can, there’s plenty of time for drinking when I’m older at forty and fifty spoofing away”.
A qualified Maths and PE teacher, he has been teaching in Limerick City and Kilmihil for the past two years but has yet to secure a post for September. His feat on the golf course may spark the attention of local principals looking to employ a model teacher. “I still have no job lined up for the coming September but I’m not too worried about it anyways. I do a bit of caddying, I started caddying when I was fourteen and have done it all the way up, I still do a bit in the summers in the Lahinch, if I don’t have a teaching job I can always fall back on the caddying which is great, there’s plenty of work to do on the farm at home so I’m not shy when it comes to work. If a job came up it would be great, I’ve to pay the bills somehow but I’ve plenty of time, I’ll be working for the rest of my life, I may as well as enjoy myself and try and pay a bit of golf all I can but I wouldn’t turn down a job”.
His own school days saw him attend Kilfenora NS and Ennistymon CBS where sport was always positively promoted. He described Ennistymon CBS as “a great sporting school. I know they’d be well known for their football and hurling achievements but Mary Lyons the principal in there was absolutely amazing, Gerry Sexton as well a teacher in there who brought us to all the golf competitions whenever we wanted to go, there was no question ever asked, he used to drive us up and down and he brought us to Cork before we made it to a Munster final. I really appreciated how the school was so helpful and the two of them for helping us out”.
“Myself and Aidan McCarthy used to cause a bit of trouble together in school, we all know what he has gone on to achieve in hurling. Darragh MIniter a great athletics man from Kilrush, his mother used to work in the school so he came to Ennistymon. It was great to be in school with them, having two or three other lads in your class who were so driven about sport, from that that age we were so driven about it, like there was a lot of sacrifices like not going on nights out, you wouldn’t be drinking or anything so we missed out on things but it was well worth it, it helped that there was two or three other lads so you were keeping an eye on your diet and nutrition too at lunchtime at school so you wouldn’t be buying hot chicken rolls and wedges like some others would have done”.
Following his historic victory at Lahinch, Jonathan has jumped back into the top ten of the Bridgestone Men’s Order of Merit. He collected 250 Order of Merit points for, adding to the 110 he earned from a quarter-final finish at the West of Ireland Amateur Open earlier this season, to jump from thirty second to seventh in the overall standings.
He has also moved to 4506 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. “It’s very hard to get on that so you have to win a championship or come second in it. I got onto it when I was seventeen, I came second in one of the men’s tournaments when I was 17, so I got ranked and then when I got injured, it’s a two year cycle so when I didn’t golf for three years with no competitions coming in I got thrown off the rankings, I haven’t been able to get back on it since, I had a few tight calls this year, a third place finish and a quarter-final finish, it’s absolutely great to get onto them rankings, there’s a lot of international competitions that the criteria to get into them is through the World Amateur Ranking so hopefully I can boost myself up along the rankings and often I might be able to get into a few international events if that’s possible, it’d be absolutely great”.
Further exposure saw him named ‘dog of the week’ by Dan Rapaport on his podcast ‘Dan on Golf’, a well-known media golf personality based in LA. “Dan Rapaport is the narrator for ‘The Full Swing’ on Netflix, I had seen him the last few years online, he’s such a well-known journalist, I was caddying in Lahinch two weeks ago, TJ Forde the operations manager in Lahinch called me over and goes ‘Johnny you’re meant to be caddying at 11am tomorrow morning but there’s a change of plan you’re out at 5 o’clock’ and I said ‘TJ ah what 5 o’clock what are you on about’ and he told me you’re caddying for Dan Rapaport and the name sounded familiar, he told me who he was so myself and Jimmy Doyle a member in Lahinch were caddying for the group, Dan and his two buddies, they came up to Lahinch and played, three absolute top class people, we had such a great round, they were amazing, we had great fun. I was going out for my round on Sunday morning for the semi-final and then Gary Murphy who does Irish Amateur Info on Instagram, he gives great coverage of all the competitions, he came up to me in the morning and said ‘Dan Rapaport has text me to say well done so far and best of luck’, I was thinking what was he on about because Dan is best friends with Shane Lowry, Matt Fitzpatrick and all these top golfers. Gary came up to me and did the interview after the final, he said ‘Dan is looking on from the United States and he is delighted’. I got a shout out, I got ‘dog of the week’ on his podcast which was some achievement”.
North Clare has been an area hit by tragedy in recent months but the sporting exploits of Jonathan Keane in winning the South of Ireland Golf Championships has provided a ray of light and lifted the spirits of the entire area, it even left some locals in tears as they watched him celebrate. “The tragedy has been awful in North Clare, it’s been shocking but this is something great for Lahinch and the whole area to up the spirits a bit, it is absolutely great, hopefully the spirits will be lifted”.
