Leslie Robinson, a wannabe astronaut who ended up a Golf Professional

A few weeks ago Leslie Robinson finished up at Donegal Golf Club, Murvagh after a lifetime as a golf professional stretching back to 1978 when he started out at City of Derry as an Assistant Pro.

He doesn’t like the word retirement and is looking forward now to playing much more without the restriction of being attached to a golf club and giving lessons.

Looking back over the last 47 years and even longer, back to his school days, he says he wouldn’t change anything. It has brought him to Murvagh via Derry, Bundoran and Rosses Point, and he has been blessed to play all over the world.

While his 25 years at Murvagh has mainly been in the area of coaching, Leslie Robinson has a great story to tell about his exploits while playing with plenty of success along the way.

Fate played a part in Leslie’s life choice. He had got an interest in golf from caddying for his father’s fourball in Newtownstewart but was destined to go to university until a blip in the A level results. As he explains: “I was always interested in reading and books but I had a problem remembering stuff. And that’s not great when it comes to exams,” he laughs.

He was urged to repeat the two A levels he failed and it meant he had only half hour classes on Friday and Monday, which was ideal for golf practice.

“My handicap went down from about 6 to scratch. I remember the Careers Master asking us to write down 10 jobs you would want to do. I wrote six or eight and I couldn’t think of anything else so I stuck down ‘golf professional’.

“Wasn’t I lucky the Careers Master was a golfer and he came in the next week with this magazine about what it takes to be a professional golfer.

“I failed the two A levels again but a few weeks later I got a call from the professional in Derry to say there’s an Assistant Pro job here if you want it. 

“It sort of worked out for me. If I had to do it over again I would fail those exams again because I am happy with what I have done,” says Robinson.

Asked if there were any other interesting jobs he was interested in, he immediately replied: “I’m a massive Sci-fi fan. One of the things I wanted  to be was an astronaut. But then to be an astronaut you had to be a pilot. So that was next on the list. But to be a pilot you had to be very good at mathematics and that was my worst subject.”

His farming background gave him natural fitness, something he still maintains. After a few years in Derry, he arrived in Bundoran to take up the Pro position in 1982 and a few months after he was joined by his brother, David, as Assistant.

“I always remember my first Captain at Bundoran was Pat McEniff.”

Leslie Robinson was Professional in Bundoran from 1982 to 1991 when he moved to Rosses Point and he joined Murvagh in 2000.

“When I was at Bundoran, David was very good to me because he ran the shop. I was a reasonably good player on the Irish circuit. I played a few Irish Opens and I won a couple of championships and a few Pro-Ams. I wouldn’t have been a top 3 player but I would have been a top 10.

“But that involved a lot of travel, and in the summer time as well, which is usually the busy time for a pro at a golf club. David was very good in those years. I won the Bundoran Pro-Am a couple of times as well.

“One of the highlights of my time in Rosses Point was that I was Head Provincial Coach for Connacht which meant we had U-12, 14, 16, 18 panels of kids. The best players in the province came to a centre, which was  Ballinrobe, and it was just fantastic working with kids like that. They were the best at their own golf clubs.

“The Irish National coach would call us to their headquarters at Cartron House to work with the national squads. I remember I was very lucky one year I was down and Rory McIlroy was there. He was 11 or 12 years old at the time, but he was still beating everybody.

“It’s a funny thing, they talk about how far he hits the ball (now); he was only young and he was small and at that stage he couldn’t reach the par 4s in two and he needed a driver at the par 3s. But he still chipped and putted and parred them all. 

“I remember having him down there and Graeme McDowell was down as well for a couple of weekends. That was a great time working with great players.”

Coaching is what he really enjoys while the part of the job that he didn’t like was shop work.

“To be honest I never liked shop work. My brother David was great at it. I didn’t like the shop work at Rosses Point so I came down here and met a very famous man, John McBride. I explained it to John and he said if I wanted to teach only, and that’s what happened.

“I would often say to people I would rather go outside in the heavy rain and give golf lessons than sit in the shop and sell mars bars, no offence to the shop boys.”

His coaching motto is to get players to enjoy playing.

“A lot of clubs are always looking for their best golfers. But in the last while I’ve switched that around when I was coaching. I’ll have a kid of 10 years and he’s not very good, but if he’s still playing golf 50 years from now and enjoying it. That’s what I switched to.

“This year’s incoming captain at Donegal is John Neary and he was my first junior when I arrived 25 years ago, so that is great to see.”

Leslie Robinson’s playing career was successful and he got to play alongside all the big Irish names like Christy O’Connor snr and jnr, Des Smyth, Philip Walton, Paul McGinley, etc. He has also played alongside Wayne ‘Radar’ Riley, who is now one of the top golf commentators on Sky.

He also went so, so close to qualifying for the European Tour, a 180 degree lip out on the final hole depriving him of a Tour Card.

“But looking back, I was in the process of applying for the job at Rosses Point at the time. If I had got the Tour Card I wouldn’t have got the job at Rosses Point and I wouldn’t have ended up at Murvagh where I have been happiest.

“You never know. What’s meant to be is meant to be.”

There were successes at Irish PGA events all over the country but there were special victories at the Bundoran Pro-Am in front of his own supporters.

One of the most special of those came in 1997 when he holed a 35ft birdie on the 18th to secure the title. He takes up the story: “I remember coming up the 18th. Brendan McGovern was behind me and there was a cheer when he birdied the 17th. My second shot was on the green but on the front left while the pin was back right.

“Robert (Barnes) was holding the flag and I hit the putt and it was bouncing, which is always a sign that it will be short. Robert was looking at me or the ball and I shouted take the pin out and in it went. I still remember the whole place erupting.

“That is your British Open or Masters for the club pro,” said Robinson.

The previous year in 1996 he had holed a 12 ft putt to tie the Pro-Am with Liam Higgins of Waterville.

There are plenty of memories, like playing alongside Paul McGinley in the Irish Championship at the Island and leaving all his golf balls on the practice green

“I got to the back nine and I just said to Robert, I’ll change the ball here. Give me out another one. Robert went into the bag and no golf balls. I was that nervous I’d left all the balls behind on the putting green. I was lucky to get around with one golf ball. It would have been a bit embarrassing to ask Paul for the loan of a golf ball.”

He has played many great golf courses but is just as happy when playing the ones close to home - Sligo, Bundoran, Murvagh and Portnoo. He does have a bucket list of St Andrews and Augusta still on his mind.

ROBERT BARNES

Throughout his career from the time he landed in Bundoran in 1982, one of his greatest allies has been Robert Barnes, who has been caddie and friend and Leslie has some great stories about him.

“Robert was a very good caddie and a very good solicitor. I mentioned him in my retirement speech. He used to talk a funny language to me. If I hit a bad shot into trouble and we were walking down the fairway, I would say, ‘what will we do here?’ Robbie would say ‘minimal damage limitation’.

“Then I would ask, ‘what does that mean?’ And he says: ‘Chip it out sideways’. And I would say ‘why didn’t you say that in the first place.

“Robert was very good. I remember one time where Robert won me the tournament. I think we were on the 17th or 18th and I knew I had a good score, but I walked up to the bag too fast, reached in for a 6 iron but Robert had his hand on it. He wouldn’t let me take it out. I asked Robert what was wrong, but he never spoke. It was then I realised he was getting me to slow down. I walked away and took a few breaths.

“It was things like that that a good caddie does very, very well,” said Robinson, who said that Robert worked with him in the shop in Rosses Point as well.

“He would have been one of the first we met when myself and David came to Bundoran. We started off in a caravan at the back of the golf club. Robert worked with me in the shop in Bundoran as well. It was a great relationship that we had.”

The other constant in his golf life has been his brother, David, who coincidentally will also be handing in his clubs at Bundoran in the New Year.

“Going back to our amateur days, David was a very good player when we were playing in Newtownstewart. He would have played in more of the big events, like Scratch Cups.

“I asked him to come to Bundoran with me and in the early ‘80s turning Pro was unheard of. I still remember my father was very much against it. They sort of felt that being a pro that time was a Tour Pro. There was no Club Pro scene. One in 10,000 would have made it as a Club Pro.

“David was great in the shop and he enjoyed that. He has the personality for it. He has a way of handling people,” said Leslie, who says there is something special about starting together and finishing together.

But while Leslie Robinson is finishing up as a golf professional, he is not finished with golf.

“The only thing that I haven’t done in recent times (is play). From my time I’ve spent 95% on the practice ground and 5% on the golf course. I want to flip that around now. There’s about 800 members that want to play with me.”


A young David and Leslie Robinson back in the Bundoran days of the early 1980s