Beginings by Séamus Healy
(Written in 2012)
Once upon a time, back in the Nineteen Fifties, a tall handsome Dubliner named Ronan Maguire arrived in the small village of Lavallyroe, County Mayo. He had come to court the eldest daughter of Jim and Katie Moran’s eleven children.
He carried some unusual baggage in the form of a set of golf clubs and a 22 Handicap. Surely it was a match made in heaven – Ronan and Breda, of course – but, almost as importantly, the start of a love affair between Breda’s seven brothers and the wonderful game of golf.
Soon cousins Jack and P J Moran and Mike Glynn were bitten by the golf bug that spread around the village. About the same time, 6000 miles away in Spokane, Washington another cousin, Séamus Healy, was bitten by the same bug, a bug that would eventually infect most of the descendants of Pat Moran and Mary Ellen Murphy and their spouses both male and female, in all corners of the world.
As more family members improved their golf skills and whetted their competitive appetites around The Fields of Lavallyroe and elsewhere, they graduated to proper golf courses where they found that they could compete with the best.
When their mutual love of family and horse racing drew them each year to the Galway Festival, a meal together, often at the Great Southern and a round of golf, usually at Ballyhaunis, were always on the agenda. After one such golf game the idea of an annual family tournament was suggested and quickly agreed to.
All descendants of Pat Moran and their spouses would be eligible to participate and it would take place each year on the Saturday following the Galway Races. This competition continued informally for a few years until the first official Pat Moran Cup was contested at Ballyhaunis in 1969. The winner, fittingly, was Paddy Moran, aptly named and destined to do so much to keep the event alive in subsequent years.
In the next three years Michael and Albert Moran and Séamus Healy also had their names inscribed. At that time all were single figure handicappers as were Jack and P J Moran.
In 1970 the first formal Family Dinner was held at the Hermitage Hotel in Tuam. The following year the Dinner was held there also. Forty one members of The Clan including six of the first generation John A, May, Jim and Katie Moran, and Kit and Martin Healy, sat down to dinner together.
Over the years, as the event has settled in Ballinrobe, the numbers have grown to more than one hundred each year. The occasion has been greatly enhanced by the inclusion of the ladies as golf participants and by the presence of so many overseas family members. Every branch of the Pat Moran family has been represented, at on time or another, at this happy event.
In more recent years we have had the first lady winner, Linda Meehan and the first fourth generation winner, Cormac Delaney.
When the original idea was discussed over a few pints in the Ballyhaunis Golf Club bar nearly fifty years ago P J Moran suggested, with a little of the hyperbole of any good cattle dealer, that this could become as big as the British Open. To date it has not quite reached such dimensions but has become a most worthy and joyful institution.
Some of the giants have left us but with the participation of so many bright, talented members of the younger generations, the future is in good hands.