GAA still No 1 for former Bundoran Professional Golfer Frankie McGloin

You would presume that any young sportsman who reaches the top echelons of his sport would have that sport as his number one. But that is not the case for former Bundoran Golf Club Professional, Frankie McGloin.

Frankie turned 85 on 2nd of October last year and still enjoys the fairways in Bundoran. But when it comes to his favourite sport, there is no argument. “Golf for me was always a job, football was my passion.”

That passion for football came from his National School days and a headmaster from Monaghan called Owen McGuinness, from whom he gleaned some great advice. “He used to say to us, ‘the tough guy is not the guy at the corner with a fag in his mouth’. I never smoked because of that.

“We also used to play football at the car park which was where the Old Astoria was. He used to say, ‘some day my boys will go from the car park to  Croke Park’. And you had boys like Seamie Granaghan, Declan O’Carroll, Bernard Brady, Brian McEniff. And I often thought that the influence he had was very good.”

Born in the East End of Bundoran, Frankie went to National School in Bundoran and then to the Tech in Ballyshannon. His youth was taken up with football and, as most young boys in Bundoran did, as a caddy at the local golf club.

“I used to caddy for the local priest, Fr Finnegan and sometimes for Petie Clancy.

“There was no clubhouse here then. The Golf Club was in the dining room of the Great Northern Hotel. There would always be an ‘oul golf club knocking about and I would be up hitting golf balls up there (on the practice ground).

“Petie (Clancy) and Fr Finnegan and an old lady called Teresa Gorman said why don’t you join the golf club. So I joined as a junior member and it was a guinea, a pound and a shilling, to be a member.”

A Donegal senior team from 1959/'60 with Frankie McGloin front row, extreme right

Around the same time Frankie became proficient at Gaelic football and was probably unlucky not to be on the Donegal panel which won the first Ulster minor championship in 1956. Had he been a pupil at De La Salle or any other college the likelihood is that he would have been included.

He did make the minor team the following year and they were unlucky to lose out in the Ulster final to Armagh.

He would go on to play senior football for Donegal in the Lagan Cup but because of his golf career, he had to make a choice at the end of the 1950s.

By that stage he had dipped his toe into competitive golf. Christy  O’Connor Snr was the professional in Bundoran in the 1950s and was a huge influence on potential young golfers, including McGloin. “Christy was very helpful to me and I learned a lot from him.”

One of the turning points in Frankie’s decision to take golf seriously came when he was around 17.

“There was a Dr Callaghan from Ballyshannon and I used to play with him a good bit. He was going to enter the West of Ireland and he said, ‘you should enter too’. 

“But I had no clubs. I used to get a lend of clubs. Petie Clancy gave me his clubs to play in the West of Ireland. At that stage there was no such thing as qualifying. You started at 128 and it was knockout.

“I got through the first few rounds and then I got into the last 32 and was playing a fella from Galway, Sean Hosty, a Connacht interprovincial and I beat him on the 19th.

“That was me down to the last 16 and I played a fella from Belfast, Ian Nesbitt, who was an Irish international and a Walker Cup player and he beat me on the 17th.

“People then said to me that I should take golf seriously, but from then (to playing professionally) golf was always a job for me whereas football was a passion. I just loved football.

“I played with the local teams and then with St Joseph’s and the last game I played with St Joseph’s was the unofficial Ulster final in 1966. It was played against Irvinestown against St John’s of Belfast and we beat them by a point. That was the last game I played,” said McGloin.

The journey to the professional ranks started in 1961 but prior to that he had emigrated to England for a few years and while there had spent some time working and playing golf at a club called Davyhulme just outside Manchester. 

Among the clientele of the golf club were some big Manchester United stars like Harry Gregg, Billy Foulkes and Tommy Taylor. But he admits while there were free passes available to go to Old Trafford, he rarely went there, opting instead to go to Maine Road, the home of Manchester City “because that was where all the Manchester people went!”

When Frankie returned to Bundoran, the club had no professional as Christy O’Connor had moved on. The wheels were put in motion for Frankie to become a professional. “Johnny McGonigle, who was a Bundoran man, but was the professional in Rosses Point, wrote to the Golfing Union of Ireland,  to begin the groundwork for me to become a professional.”

Bundoran, Junior Championship winners, 1966. Back row, l to r, John Daly, Frankie McGloin, Brian McEniff, Liam McDaid, Tomas Barry, Bernard Brady, Declan O'Carroll, John Healy, Aidan Campbell, Jim Daly. Front, l to r, Thomas McManus, Peter Cleary, Ciaran O'Gorman, Seamie Granaghan, Michael Pat Daly, Peter Quinn, Danny McHugh, Eamonn Gavigan.

And so it began in 1961 with McGloin starting his professional apprenticeship as assistant to Joe Hunter and he was attached to the club until stepping away in 1979 - a span of 20 years.

While he was the Bundoran Club professional, the Great Northern Hotel were his employers and the managing director, Irene Calvert, wanted to promote golf for the hotel and for Sligo and Galway.

McGloin was both Club Professional and Golf Course manager and in those years Bundoran hosted all the big tournaments - Carrolls, Dunlop and Guinness Tournaments and attracted all the big pros from Ireland and some from England.

During his professional career, Frankie’s big successes came around 1970 when he won three tournaments in the North of Ireland. He was playing with the cream of Irish professional golf.

“I was the best looked-after golf pro in all of Ireland. Mrs. Calvert got me set up so that I had to play to promote Bundoran. I got to play in all of the big tournaments, not just in Ireland but in Scotland and England, all over.

“I was allowed three outfits twice a year. I got car expenses, mileage; I stayed in all the best hotels, the Burlington, etc. One time I got reprimanded for staying in a 3-star hotel.

“I was called to head office in Dublin and Mrs. Calvert said ‘we’re very disappointed with you Frank’. I said I’m very sorry madam, what have I done wrong?

“And she says, ‘you know that we are the premier hotel group in all of Ireland and you are our representative and I see by some of your dockets that have come in here you are staying in a third class hotel’.

“I was trying to save them money,” laughs McGloin.

“I never stayed in a third class hotel again after that.”

But despite playing along with the top players, he retained the old hankering for GAA.

“I was a full-time professional but in my own head I never had the love for golf that I had for football.

“If I had one regret, it is that I gave up football when I was 24 or 25. I had to because of the possibility of injury.

“Christy (O’Connor)  wanted me to go train with him in Dublin as he felt I was good enough to win an Irish Championship but I didn’t go up.”

He also had an opportunity when he was around 21 to go to America. It happened when a big shot American arrived at Bundoran with a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce and put a proposal to him. “He asked to play a round with me and then booked me again for the following morning. Then he said ‘would you like to go to America’. You have to remember this was very early, I was just after getting the job here around 1960, ‘61. 

“He says ‘I’m the President of Greenbrier Golf Club and the professional there is Sam Snead’. Now Sam Snead and Ben Hogan were two of the best golfers ever.

“He says, ‘Sam Snead is a very personal friend of mine and you will be his second assistant and I will pay you and you will get accommodation out there’.

“Basically, I was afraid. He said he would write to me and he did and I thought it over and wrote back and thanked him.

“I never really regretted it but I did often think about what would have happened if I had gone,” said McGloin.

Among his greatest feats in golf, he ranks playing in the qualifying round of the British Open in 1970 and missing out by two or three shots.

“I played in the biggest golf tournament in Europe at the time. It was called the John Player Classic. I remember it was after Tony Jacklin had won the US Open. All the players playing in it were syndicating themselves into fours so that if any one of the four won, they would share the prizemoney which was £25,000.

“I remember I was in a syndicate with Paddy Skerritt and the two Murphys. Christy O’Connor says I’m not sharing with anybody and he went out and won it. He had it in abundance, a sense of being arrogant.”

Among the other highlights of his golfing career: “I led the Carrolls International for one day at Woodbrook.

“I was so well looked after - maybe only three fellas going over and back to England at the time, Ernie Jones, Christy (O’Connor) and maybe Norman Drew.”

Frankie McGloin stepped away from the professional side of golf in 1979 and built a restaurant and home bakery. “I kept it for eight years and hated every minute of it. I had been too used to the outdoors.”

He says his greatest golf strength was his iron play and among his many golf stories is of Jimmy Murray caddying for him while playing with Scottish Ryder Cup player, Eric Brown, at Shandon Park. “I hit a drive down the fairway where people were crossing. We couldn’t find it. The rules then were if you could identify that a man lifted the ball, that was okay. We knew it was on the fairway.

“But Brown insisted ‘did you see the ball being lifted’. We couldn’t say we did, so I had to go back and play another ball. Murray was going to nail him,” says McGloin

Any conversation with Frankie McGloin will always return to Gaelic football and you can see his eyes light up on the subject. He is looking forward to the return of Michael Murphy but wants him on the edge of the square.

Of the new rules he likes the idea of having just two players for the throw-in. “It does away with the other two pulling and dragging. I don’t like the goalkeeper coming out the field.  And as for the ‘keeper taking a ‘45’, it is more or less saying to me, the forwards are not good enough to take the kick. It’s not that they put it over the bar every time

“I think Donegal were extremely unlucky this year. That fluke goal that Galway got was unlucky. (Shaun) Patton couldn’t be faulted. I’m looking forward to the new rules and looking forward to seeing (Michael) Murphy back and I hope to God he stays inside.”

But when asked if Murphy is the best ever Donegal player, he hesitates. 

“Jesus, there were some great footballers way back, Frankie McFeely, John Hannigan. I would have known John Hannigan very well, he was in my era. I think Hannigan would be just as good as anyone if he were around in the modern era.

“He was such an utility player that he never got to play in any one position for any length of time.  Of course I would be biased also and say that Bernard Brady was the greatest, but he didn’t give himself a chance and didn’t play enough,” said McGloin, who also added that Mickey McLoone was also highly thought of.

Frankie remembers going to games with the late Ray Sheerin. “He was my best friend but I had an awful habit when watching matches to be moving my hands and feet.

“And I remember going with Ray one day to a match in Dr Hyde Park and after we went in the gate, Ray says,  f— off over there, I don’t want to get the legs kicked off me!”

Among his earliest memories of GAA is listening to Micheal O Hehir commentating on the All-Ireland final from the Polo Grounds in 1947.

Married to Clare (McCauley), with whom he went to school with in Ballyshannon, before they both went their separate ways before meeting again. Clare qualified as a chef and ran a very successful accommodation business in Bundoran. They have five children - Geraldine, Sandra, Francis, Brendan and Kieran, and will be married 60 years in March.

Frankie still gets up as often as he can to the golf club and says he now uses a buggy. “I’d find going the 18 holes without the buggy a bit difficult.”

And while his love of GAA will always be No 1, he says golf has its values too.

“One thing that golf would teach you is discipline and honesty. It is a selfish game but it is also a game that shows character.”

A young Frankie McGloin in his professional golf days