Fairway Diplomacy: How Golf Became Ireland's Secret Weapon Against Trump

0:00David McWilliams: Coming up on the podcast, Fairway Diplomacy, it's all about the way in which you can deploy golf, the sport of golf, the golf course, as a tool for diplomacy, for corporate relations, for let's say PR, and it's all against the background of, so it's the economics of golf, all against the background of the Irish Open this weekend in Doonbeg, a course owned by Donald Trump. And of course, guess who's coming to visit on Sunday, Donald Trump himself. It's all coming up in a couple of minutes.

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1:55David McWilliams: How you doing there? Welcome to the podcast. Today the podcast is all going to be about fairway diplomacy. If you don't know what fairway diplomacy is, it is the sort of diplomacy that has now become pretty much central to politics, to certainty to business, to getting deals done, and it's all done against the backdrop of the back nine, John, of the golf course because this week, not necessarily for golf fans, but there are half a million people play golf in Ireland. There are about 500 million people play golf around the world. It's a massive sport. It's a sport that Ireland is significantly represented in, not just in terms of the players, but in terms of the golf infrastructure, the heritage, all that good stuff.

2:49And of course, if you were living with your head in the sands, you might not know this,

2:55David McWilliams: but the Irish Open starts today. It goes until Sunday. It is down in a place called Doonbeg, which is in County Clare. and for those of you who know a bit about politics, know a bit about business, know a bit about Washington, you will know that Donald Trump owns Doonbeg. Not only does he own the course of the Irish Open that has been played at, but Donald Trump is going to Doonbeg on Sunday for an official, unofficial visit to Ireland. So it is against that background. You can probably rename it as well. I know. As he does. Exactly, exactly. It's going to be the Trump Open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the Atlantic Ocean will be the American Ocean or something like that.

3:44David McWilliams: Anyway, the point is, this podcast is all going to be about the role of golf in diplomacy, but more importantly, the cleavage within Ireland between many people who are going to, at least tacitly, if not go out and protest against Donald Trump, the Republican Party and America in general, and the more pragmatic side of Ireland, which is that this country has the deepest cultural, familial, economic, and let's say diplomatic links with the United States of any European country, based largely on our history, our geography, the experience, not just the famine, but pre-famine emigration, the massive Irish-American community, And of course, in the last 25 to 30 years, the extraordinary, extraordinary link between Ireland and America when it comes to economics.

4:40David McWilliams: So basically, John, what you have is you have the sort of the pragmatic side. Let's just say the golfing side of Ireland, what I would say. Calm, pragmatic, non-aggressive, getting things done, right? That's the gulf image with the more, let's say, ideological side of Ireland, maybe the left-wing side of Ireland, the anti-imperialist side of Ireland, the anti-colonial side of Ireland that are protesting against the United States. What I would just say, it's always been interesting to me that the United States has been an imperialist country for, certainly since the Second World War, when it decided to abandon its notion of being an anti-colonial power and became the big power.

5:25David McWilliams: There have been as many Republican as Democrat presidents. The Democrats led the Americans into Vietnam. The Democrats led the Americans into many wars in the Middle East. And yet, when Democratic presidents come here, they get fated and indulged. When Republican presidents come here, they get attacked. And it seems to me that given that the Republican and the Democrats have been largely, you know, I would say 60 % Republican, 40 % Democrats in terms of presidents over the last, let's say, 70 years. in terms of the crimes against colonialism or the crimes against the third world or the crimes against smaller races and nations.

6:10David McWilliams: The Democrats have been as involved as the Republicans. And yet, John, here we tend to, and I remember when we were kids, remember Ronald Reagan came to Ballybor. Oh, yeah. I signed that petition. I went into the American embassy and signed that petition. See, there you go. Anti-Roddy. I think the great crime that Ronald Reagan committed in Ireland was that when he went to get a pint, he took a pint of Smithings, not a pint of Guinness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Terrible, terrible. But my point is that Ronald Reagan was 100 % Irish-American and had been a Democrat and then flipped to be a Republican.

6:50David McWilliams: And the treatment of Reagan, if you contrast the treatment of Reagan with the treatment of, let's say, for example, Joe Biden. And if you were, for example, very, very committed to the Palestinian cause, you would have seen Joe Biden, who was much more pro-Israeli than Ronald Reagan. So Ronald Reagan actually was one of the last American presidents to ring up the Israelis in their 1982 invasion of Lebanon and say to the Israeli leadership, you better pull back or we will not support you. Yeah. My point is the anti-Republican thing in Ireland, I don't know how to describe it, is very deep. And yet the Republics and the Democrats have shared the White House in equal measure, doing equally good things and equally bad things.

7:39That's just my point. No, no, and I accept that. I wonder what, you know the way in the UK, the kind of default government, as we've spoken about before, is the kind of the Conservatives. I wonder is the default government in America or the state of mind Republican because they're the ones who seem to kind of drive the American dream, this elusive thing. But also, I think the anti-Republican thing comes from there's a lot of hypocrisy of the Republicans. You know, you talk about Ronnie Reagan there and everything that happened in El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala and all that, all the Central American stuff that went on and the Iran-Contra deal and all these kind of underhand double standards, which seem to be more prevalent with the Republicans.

8:28David McWilliams: Maybe. It's just a point of view. I know it's a point of view, but let's have a look. So we're talking about Ireland and America and this relationship. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Irish-American relationship is just how close the two nations are. And I'll give you one statistic which really intrigues me. So Ireland, think of a country like we spoke about Norway a couple of weeks ago, right? Now, we also know that 800 ,000 Norwegians emigrated to the United States between 1840 and 1940, making the Norwegians the second largest emigrants to the United States per head from Europe after the Irish.

9:09I did not know that. That's amazing.

9:10David McWilliams: Yeah, an amazing Norwegian connection, right? And yet, and this is the thing, that connection has disappeared almost completely, despite the fact that half of Minnesota are Norwegian. And if you compare the amount of flights from Norway, which is a similarly small European country to Ireland, Ireland has 40 direct daily flights between Dublin and the United States. 40 a day. It's probably the best connected country in Europe to the United States. Norway, with a significant Norwegian-American population, would have been, let's say, 100 years ago, has three flights a day to the United States. So what it shows you is just that one statistic, right?

9:53Yeah, that's incredible.

9:54David McWilliams: Ireland has maintained this extraordinary connection with the Americans, whereas a country like Norway, which had an equally significant immigrant footprint in the United States, has lost that contact. And then when you actually look at the special bond, I mean, again, I always think the bond with the Americans, I mean, you've got American cousins, I've met them all. You know, it's not really fostered by diplomacy. The bond with America is more about friendship. It's around kitchen tables. It sings songs at weddings. You know, we're part of their story. There are 33 million Irish Americans. It's that kind of what I would call that kind of fuzzy, soft power that we have, you know.

10:33David McWilliams: And of course, it's bolstered by just frequent contact with ordinary people. So every year, 10 % of the Irish population visit America. Wow. Isn't that amazing? That's incredible, actually. It is extraordinary. And again, 1.5 million American tourists come here every year. So this is a huge connection, right? Yeah. And if you think about Irish art, Irish music, Irish cinema, Irish literature, Irish theatre, it all flourishes in the States. This is where your Cillian Murphy, you know, makes Oppenheimer in America, right? You know what I mean? And it's also like, you know, any band, you make it in Ireland, you make it in the UK, and that's kind of bog standard.

11:14But the key, the goal is to breaking America. Once you break America, you're away.

11:21David McWilliams: Yeah, and you know, of course, U2 is the greatest example of an Irish band that broke America. Seems to me, didn't really concern themselves that much with the UK. Just said, look, let's go straight to where the action is. But I mean, the other person who broke America in the most significant way was Conor McGregor. You know, people don't like to talk about it. But I mean, that is, again, you know, he went to America and he created a sport in the United States. So it's kind of, I mean, culture can be everything. I know people would think MMA isn't culture. Yes, it is. It's a culture for some people, right?

11:53David McWilliams: Yeah, of course. But even like the peace process in the North, you know, that would never have happened without the American involvement. You know, it was Bill Clinton who gave a visa to Gerry Adams. It was the four horsemen of the apocalypse, those four Irish Americans, you know, Tip O 'Neill and those guys who basically lent on the democratic institutions in the United States to actually say, look, this is important. And then, of course, we go to the investment. And again, just very briefly, many listeners will know this, but just to put it back into context, right? American investment in Ireland is 1.3 trillion euros in total, John.

12:31David McWilliams: That's 255 % of GDP, right? America accounts for about 900 billion euros of all foreign investment here, which is about 70%. And the biggest 25 firms are roughly 65 % of all foreign investment in Ireland, right? So that's know-how, capital networks, all that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. American firms employ 300 ,000 people in Ireland, which is 11 % of the total workforce, mainly in really good jobs and high-value manufacturing. American multinationals pay 40 billion euros in wages every year. and they account for 72 % of Ireland's total exports, which is extraordinary. And of course, we run this massive trade surplus with the Americans of about 50 billion, which Donald doesn't like, but thus far he has actually ignored.

13:25David McWilliams: But so that huge amount of that American money goes into tax receipts, you know, the corporate taxation, about 30 billion. And of course, what that does is it pays for all sorts of Irish services. So, I mean, these are extraordinary ties. on the one hand. And then on the other hand, John, Irish firms are the fifth largest investors in the United States, which is again amazing. That's pretty incredible, actually. Yeah, it is. So I think what we have is this amazing connection with the United States. And yet the United States animates so many Irish people and is the cause of, or the source of, so much protest, antagonism, anti-American vitriol.

14:12David McWilliams: So you have this weird sort of, it's almost like a sort of Stockholm syndrome on one hand. We're kind of hostage to the Americans and in some way one part of us can't stand them and another way another part of us really loves them. And it's a really strange, strange psychological, I think it's a very strange psychological place that we've ended up with the United States. And you're going to see all that this weekend. Well, I was going to say that. So Dunebeg will be full of protesters and placard-waving fellas and shouting and roaring and all the rest. But even before that happens, Trump is taking a little trip to the Oris, to meet President Conley.

14:58So that's going to be... I just wonder how that's going to go because that's going to be such a delicate meeting because she is on the record throughout her whole career, in fairness to her, being very anti-America and consequently anti-Trump and all the rest. How do you think that's going to go?

15:16David McWilliams: I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I describe Catherine Connolly as there's a concept in Ireland, what I would call the presidential left. The presidential left is very, very different to people's voting intentions in real elections. So if you look at since 1990, we have almost exclusively voted for left-wing presidents. Mary Robinson, Michael Dee twice, Catherine Connolly, and you could say that Mary McAleese was what I would call Catholic left. She wasn't left-wing in her DNA. She was more Belfast. She was more Fianna Fáil. But there is this what I would call Catholic left, which is based largely on the teachings of the New Testament.

16:02David McWilliams: and she was very much part of that, right? So social democracy, all that good stuff. But the presidential left is what happens in Ireland. It's a kind of a low stakes, high performative vote. And what you see is that we tend to vote for these people in the presidential elections. But when it comes to the real elections, Irish people shun the left and don't give them the same latitude that we do in the performative elections. So the presidential left is a very strange place in Ireland, right? And I think it's kind of very unique in Irish society because we don't vote in real elections the way we vote in presidential elections.

16:45David McWilliams: And I think it's because the presidential elections are who we'd like to think we are if we didn't have to do this nitty-gritty, unpleasant thing called compromise, called diplomacy, called pragmatism, called holding your nose, called weighing up the options and seeing, you know what, is it right? Looking at the American investment here, looking at our relations there, looking at our historical ties, looking at Irish America, all of which are both emotional and economic ideas. And once we weigh those up, we tend to actually be much more pragmatic. Whereas in the president, you can actually wave a flag of the type of people you'd like yourself to be.

17:25David McWilliams: So you're always on the side of the angels, right? Well, it's a pity that Catherine Connolly doesn't play golf. She's very good at keepy-uppies. Oh, yes, that's true. She's very good at keepy-uppies. And apparently, I've been told by a friend of mine who's a runner, that Catherine Connolly is a very good runner, like a proper middle distance runner, proper middle distance runner. So I would say what you're going to find is Catherine Connolly represents what I would call third worldism. And third worldism is very, very fertile in Ireland. Basically, it's kind of Maoism for the TikTok age, right?

17:57David McWilliams: It's basically that everyone from the third world is good and everyone from the white world or the first world is bad. And therefore the Americans are the big bullies on the block and nobody talks about American aid, nobody talks about Americans winning the Second World War, nobody talks about the Americans keeping the global peace, all these things. Even yesterday, the Serbs were burying horrendously Radko Mladic, right? Yeah. Nobody talks about the fact it was the Americans who actually came in and beat the Serbs. It was eventually the Americans said, there's a fucking genocide going on in the Balkans.

18:31David McWilliams: All you Europeans are pussy-fitting around here. And it was Clinton and the Americans who came in and the American military who actually said to the Serbs, if you touch another Muslim, we are going to destroy you. And the Serbs surrendered. And we forget that, that, you know, all through history, the Yanks, yes, they've made mistakes, but they've also done amazing things as well. Yeah. But that's 30 years ago. It just struck me that Mladic was being buried. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw it in the paper, yeah. But Trump will be here. And I think the interesting thing about golf, John, is that golf is the perfect vehicle for this fairway diplomacy, which is kind of where business meets politics.

19:19David McWilliams: It's where slogans are actually put to the side. and you say, okay, do we have to do a deal with this person? Yes, we do. Is there too much at stake? Yes, there is. Okay, what are we going to do? And this is why I think golf is the perfect metaphor for the relationship between Ireland and America because the relationship isn't straightforward. Yeah. The relationship is based on pragmatism. It's based on a shared history, which isn't always shared. It's based on the ability to live with somebody you don't particularly like. And the reason I think is golf is I've always thought that to understand the modern world and to understand the way in which multinationals operate, business operates, economics operates, the flows of money around, it's quite interesting to understand golf.

20:14David McWilliams: I've always, even though I don't play the game, I've always had a certain soft spot. I've had a certain curiosity for golf. Yeah. And the reason is that there's a certain serenity in golf players that really intrigues me. So when I see football, it's the game I love, cursing, flipping around the place, roaring at the referee, behaving like awful little creatures. Yeah. Hot-headed, sloganeering, right? Passionate. Passionate, but also, yeah, but so if you think about the golfer, right, think about the classic golfer. Like, you know, it's basically Mount Merion at play. It's deeply suburban. And it's suburban and things are nice and everyone behaves well.

20:56David McWilliams: You never see a golfer, very, very rarely, thrown his club down. He's always calm. He's always serene. What I always love about golfers is this sort of ridiculous humility. Whereas, you know, a footballer would say, I'm the boss. I'm the goat. Or a boxer would say, I'm the goat. Whereas a golfer would say, well, I did well. It was like, they're kind of, they're humble. And I think that, do you know this concept of Zen in Buddhism? Yeah, yeah. I think there's a concept, what Zen is to Buddhists, par is to golfers. That if you can achieve par, you are at this Zen-like, calm place, right? Your clothes are good, your self-help manuals are good.

21:37David McWilliams: Well, that's questionable. Clothes are questionable, but go on. If you are confident enough, right, John, If you are self-confident enough to think you look good in beige slacks, you're impressed. Plaid beige slacks. Plaid blaze slacks and pink sweaters and Pringle. You know what I mean? You've got to have big balls to carry that off, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my point is that golf has become the sport of choice of wealthy suburbs as a general rule. and globalization and the relationship between Ireland and America is in effect a wealthy relationship. You know, we're talking high-end manufacturing, we're talking very educated people, we're talking huge amounts of money, we're talking pragmatic deals.

22:27David McWilliams: What you find in Irish diplomacy to America is no hard edges and that's what golf's all about. It's all about smooth edges. The fairways are always beautiful, John. The greens are always manicured. The sun is always shining. But my point is that I think it's kind of appropriate that Donald Trump is in a golf course in Ireland where discussions about the Irish-American relationships will be framed against the backdrop of the fairway and will be framed against the possibility of golf and the calmness of golf. And I really, really believe this. Yeah, which is a good thing. All of that is a good thing.

23:11The calmness, to keep them calm. That's the key to all this.

23:15David McWilliams: It's crucial because, you know, the alternative is a shit show. Yeah. The alternative is that the Americans become the enemy, which is, in effect, the presidential left view in Ireland. and yet the American money has contributed enormously to the building of the welfare state in Ireland, which the presidential left support, which is kind of just one of these ironies and it's one of these great anomalies in having a diplomacy which is based on ideology. It means you don't really appreciate the grey area. So I think, John, understanding golf is very important, bizarrely to understanding the corporate world, the world of CEOs, the world of chief financial officers, the world of boards, because they're the guys who disproportionately play golf.

24:11David McWilliams: And our relationship with the United States has morphed from an emigrant relationship to almost a boardroom relationship. And it's the boardroom relationship where you need this civility, this calm, almost this Excel spreadsheet approach to the pros and cons of dealing with the United States. And so it's boardroom America and boardroom Ireland, where the Irish-America relationship is at its most fertile. And ironically, that's where golf is at its most powerful. So I think, you know, all told, it might not be heroic, but the shenanigans in Doonbeg this weekend will probably be hugely to Ireland's advantage.

25:00David McWilliams: I know lots of people listening will think this is a betrayal and we should use this opportunity to tell Donald Trump what we think or what we think on certain issues. But I think there are so many issues and the water is so muddied that if we decide to go down one route, as you said, the presidential left route, it misses the boardroom route. and boardroom Ireland is as important, if not more important, to the relationship as what I would say, barricade Ireland. So you've got barricade Ireland is the sloganeering, shouting through the megaphone, we don't like you. Yeah. And then boardroom Ireland is golf Ireland.

25:40David McWilliams: So basically what you have, John, is you have a clash of the fairway versus the barricades on Sunday. And I actually think the fairway is going to win. The fairway and the rough. The very and the rough, John, exactly. And the bit of rough. Well, we have this opportunity now. Now that Trump is coming to Ireland, because on one hand, we can go shout and roar at them and, you know, raise our placards and insult the man. Or we can use golf as a schmoozing tool to actually smooth things over, create a better atmosphere, get them on side and be pragmatic in our relationship. I think you're absolutely right.

26:25David McWilliams: You know, it's the idea is like, do we all put on slacks and pastels for the afternoon, right? And do we use golf and fairway diplomacy as a way of advancing the cause of Ireland? That's the key here. This is what we're trying to do. We're not trying to solve the world. Advance the cause of Ireland at a time when America has its most mercurial president, its most unpredictable president, but in his love of golf is a president who kind of loves everything associated with golf. And Ireland with, let's say, Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry, and all these golf courses in the Irish Open, and his own thing is actually a perfect location.

27:10David McWilliams: I think you're absolutely right that it's a big opportunity. Okay, let's talk to an insider, a golf insider, about how the world of golf actually works, right? So Donald Casey was the chief executive of Rory McIlroy Inc., Rory McIlroy's business for a decade. He's just written a fascinating book called Reflections on a Golden Ball. And of course, he was on the inside of the business of golf for the past decade. So consequently, he knows what it's like to be on the inside of this global game. So let's go and talk to Donal about how golf works, how the business works, and more importantly, John, as you said, how it works as a schmoozing, what do you call it?

27:57David McWilliams: A schmoozing tool. A schmoozing tool. So let's go and talk to Donal Casey. Today is Thursday the 10th of September, 2026. And for golf aficionados, it is the beginning of the Irish Open, one of the oldest tournaments on the golfing circuit. Not by any way the most significant, but for us in Ireland, it is a significant tournament and it has been made all the more exciting or treacherous, depending on which way you look at it, by the visit of Donald Trump to his own golf course, Doonbeg, where the Irish Open has been held. People would say that was absolutely unspeakable, lit-spickly, lackey job on the part of the Irish government at least suggesting Doonbeg or at least embracing Doonbeg.

28:50David McWilliams: On the other hand, maybe that's the way you deal with Donald Trump. And we have a very, very special guest, a man who knows everything about money and sport because he was the chief executive of Rory McIlroy, Inc. for a decade. His name is Donal Casey. He is on the line. He's written a fantastic book as well called the reflections on a golden ball, which is kind of golf, reflections on business, reflections on life, morality stories, a whole gamut, very broad ranging, wonderful read. But Donal is here with us. Donal, lovely to see you. How are you? Hi, David. Thanks for having me on again. Tell me now, the fact that Donald Trump is turning up in Doonbeg, one could almost say that the face of modern golf is not Rory McIlroy or Scotty Scheffer.

29:34David McWilliams: It's actually Donald Trump. well he's certainly probably the most significant figure in golf at the moment you know given that obviously he's the most powerful man in the world and golf is a big part of his universe it's a big part of his business world you know so when the dp world tour decided to host the irish open i mean they're the people who made the decision to host the open in dunbeg you know they're very cognizant of the fact that that curry's his favor you know he loves having big events at his tournament the tournament becomes about him rather than the event. So it's a pretty easy way to kind of gain his favor.

30:09So if you have something that's very attractive to him, it makes a lot of sense to, you know, play into that.

30:15David McWilliams: Now, tell me about the economics of golf, right? Because we know that the spectacle, as you say, it's a one-off, it's the experience, because there are only so many tournaments, there are millions of people who want to see these things. But what else is going on? in the privatisation of golf? When I say the privatisation in terms of the way the structures of golf has changed and is golf in some way a leading indicator of where other sports are going? Golf has gone through this boom because of COVID. It's, you know, basically it's outdoors. It's naturally socially distanced. So during COVID, there was an explosion in golf that has been retained.

30:52So you've got these huge growth metrics in the numbers of rounds, the number of people who are members of clubs. Like every golf club, pretty much, maybe not in the world, but certainly in the kind of UK and Ireland, and they're completely full. All the timesheets are packed. So it's a very much a growth business, which I think, you know, sport generally is. And then, you know, you get into the wider part of golf, the wider economics are around who plays the game. So the people who play the game are typically a little older, they're richer. They've generally got lots of influence in other spheres.

31:26So it's a meeting place of business, sport and politics. And Donald Trump is probably the epicenter of that right now. You know, you've got the president of the United States who is an avid golfer. And he genuinely is an avid golfer.

31:39David McWilliams: Donald, give me a sense of how big golf is. Give us a sense of the numbers. How big is golf? Why is it surging? Why are the prize money? Why has there been this back and forth between the various different organizations that run golf? Why are the Arabs so interested in buying golf? Tell me all these things. So a quick metric, David, is there's more than a billion rounds of golf played every year in the world, which is a big number. There's probably 100 million people who play golf in some way regularly. And then those people are, you know, there's a very rich seam of kind of power, money and influence that plays the game.

32:17So that's where the Saudi attraction would have come from, that the networks around the game are incredibly dense with power, with money. with the influence, as I've said about Donald Trump. So it's a game that gives you access to not just the kind of game itself, but it gives you access to the people who play it and the people who want to be around it. The biggest thing about golf, and this is what makes it so different, is that anybody can play with anybody else on a given day. So that's why President Trump, he can play with Rory, he can play with Tiger, he can play with all these people. And it's not just him.

32:55There's, you know, people who find that very attractive, obviously. So it has far more influence than it would look from the outside, really as a function of who plays it.

33:07David McWilliams: So there's two ways of looking at this. One way of looking at this is that this is a duplicitous way of flattering the ego of, let's say, Donald Trump in this case, or whoever it happens to be. And the other one is like, this is a pragmatic way of doing a deal with this geezer. He's going to go away. You talk about the experience economy. he may well strike a ball on Sunday at the Irish Open. Who knows? Who knows? He may well play what they call a pro-am, which is to your point of the amateurs being able to play with the pros, all that sort of stuff. But golf diplomacy is a thing. It's definitely a thing, isn't it, around the world?

33:41No, it's completely a thing. I mean, where else can you have this amount of time? So, like, to play golf with somebody means you get to spend four hours outdoors with them. You're away from media. You're away from cameras, maybe not all the time, but you're in a very private setting. So people can talk about whatever they want to talk about out in the golf course and nobody gets to hear it. So it's a very rich diplomatic platform. Donald, can I just ask you about the power and money in golf and sport in general, actually? I mean, I know when the Saudis set up Live Golf a few years back, you know, it was a massive disruptor for the game.

34:20and a few of the players kind of held out and said no like Rory and the like but ultimately it didn't work and now I believe Liv is on its last legs but why didn't it work why was that I think it just proved that you know you can buy everything but you can't buy tradition and you can't buy heritage and basically the fact John the fans didn't want it yeah these tournaments didn't have any context it's a sport a huge amount of sport is about context like and tradition and we're all used to our different affinities and people we follow and that's where the real value is it's in affinity and it's in tradition and intergenerational stuff golf has all of that in spades it was a pretty interesting experiment i say it will be studied for a long time to come that kind of its arrival and now its departure it's a very interesting thing around the limits

35:11David McWilliams: of money when you see in many many sports it's like the the americans trying to break in to football, for example. You know, in the 1970s, George Best and Pele and Beckenbauer and all those guys went over. And sometimes, you know, money repels people in sport because it actually attacks the very basis upon which people are engaging with the sport, which is tradition and all that sort of stuff. But let's look at the other idea. So big businesses in Ireland is golf tourism. Explain where that is going, how significant it is and what it does for the country. Yeah, so I mean, it's really significant, David.

35:48It's like, it's basically, there's two dimensions to golf tourism. First of all, you've got 200, 250 ,000 people who come to Ireland to play golf. But more importantly, they are incredibly price insensitive. They don't care what anything costs. They're here mostly ticking off courses on a bucket list. And they normally have a brilliant experience. They have great Irish local cabbies. they have great hospitality around the experience to play all these we have aided the top 100 golf courses in Ireland a lot of people would come and play each one of them and they have a tremendous hospitality experience around each of them and so they spend a lot of money while they're here and more importantly they leave then with this kind of tremendous affinity with Ireland that's the bit that I think people don't understand is you know it's not just the economic value that has been created by their stay here, that they just leave the country with unbelievable affinity for Ireland, that it kind of has a big stream of economic benefits in all sorts of places.

36:49David McWilliams: And that finally leads me to the Trump effect. You know, he turns up on Sunday, he will play some golf, it'll be beamed all around the world, Doonbeg will be seen, County Clare will be seen, the west of Ireland will be seen. and all told, I presume the upside for Ireland will be precisely what you're talking about. That will reinforce the sense of tourism, the sense of the brand, and it's a sort of a virtuous financial loop. Yeah, 100%. There's a reality to the whole proposition, David. That's the whole point. Like the courses are brilliant. It's a brilliant tourism experience. It's a brilliant product.

37:29And the reason why it's a self-reinforcing loop is there's an inherent truth to that. And, you know, this will be projected all over America. It'll be projected all over the world. And all you'll see is kind of the rugged, wild Atlantic way, rugged coastline, spectacular views. And it just feeds the desire for more and more people to come. There's an insatiable demand for this product because it's a great one. Donald, does Micheál Martin or any of the senior ministers play golf? No, I don't think it's a very golf-intensive government. I don't think Michal does. I don't think Simon Harris does.

38:05But it's just so woven into the country. Like half a million people in Ireland play golf. There's 400 golf clubs. No, I was just wondering, that might have been a good opportunity for Michal Martin to get time alone with them. Or maybe he's dodging a bullet. Who knows? Maybe he's dodging a bullet. Four! But it's just, like, this is something that we have. It's a kind of natural advantage. Like it's a little natural resource that we have called golf. It happens to be in the sweet spot of the kind of current context in terms of the American president. So it makes sense that, you know, we avail of it.

38:43David McWilliams: Donald, that was wonderful stuff. Donald Casey's first debut work is Reflections on a Golden Ball. I have it in my hand here. It's ruminations on golf, on business, on morality, on life, on journeys, all that great read. And Donald, thanks a million for coming on the show. Thanks, David. Thanks for having me.

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40:49Yeah, I mean, the golf world is not really my world. It's actually a really enjoyable game to play, but that whole corporate world, I don't really get. But I did like what he was saying about golf and our golf courses. We've got some of the best golf courses in the world. And I like the way he was saying that that's actually one of our natural resources that we should utilize and leverage. And it's a perfect opportunity to showcase Ireland and to use it as our schmoozing tool.

41:19David McWilliams: Yeah, I think, look, it's very simple. There's two types of power any country can have or any individual can have. You can have hard power, John, which is the power the Americans have, which is the power of the military, the power of money, the power of big business, the power of size, right? And then you have small countries like us. And the thing about being a small country is you live and die by the quality of your strategic thinking. Yeah. And that means you live in the gray. It's never black and white because you don't get to make the rules. You're a rule taker. And once you're a rule taker, you've got to figure out, well, how do I negotiate this?

41:55David McWilliams: And that's what elevates the opposite of hard power, which is this soft power. It's how do you convince somebody to do what you want to do without imposing your will on them? So it's the power of imagination. It's the power of persuasion. It's the power of friendliness. It's the power of good fun. It's the power of experience. It's the power of memory. It's the power of all those soft skills that small countries have to be good at because we can't be good at hard skills because the bigger countries will bulldoze us. So it's actually the limitations of geography and of size require you to be that little bit more nimble.

42:36David McWilliams: And I think what we're going to see this weekend is an exercise in Irish soft power, framed against the background of golf, which is calm, pragmatic. It's the sport of the boardroom. It's the sport of the chief executive. It more than anything else sums up the relationship between Ireland and America as it has evolved. And ultimately, it is the power of persuasion that keeps somebody like Donald Trump not on your side, but just away from you. And that's exactly where we want him to be. So we'll talk to you after the weekend.

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