LONG READ: Thurles golfer Darragh Stakelum follows British Open title with Canada jaunt

It’s been a hectic but rewarding season on the greens for Thurles native and avid golfer Darragh Stakelum, whose recent British Open win was quickly followed by a trip to Ontario, Canada, to play back-to-back tournaments.

Darragh competes in the B1 classification for visually impaired golfers, meaning he is completely blind and plays with the use of a guide.

He sat down recently with the Tipperary Star to discuss his journey with losing his sight, his decision to continue playing the game he loves, and how 2025 has seen him produce some of the best golfing moments of his career.

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“It’s like normal golf in the sense that you hit the ball and it’s the same courses, but we have guides with us and they line us up to hit the ball,” Darragh explained.

“Our guides can literally place the club behind the ball for us in a sort of elevated caddy status.”

Darragh, a member of Thurles Golf Club from a young age who played off a handicap of six as a junior, lost his sight later in life and had to adapt his game to his new-found disability.

“It happened between 2025 and 2016, I lost it entirely. Two years after that I had a brain tumour, and I believe that those two things are linked.

“I played at a competitive level before I lost my sight, actually off a handicap of six. Tiger Woods was my hero when I was younger and he was at his best. That’s probably how I started looking at the sport and felt inspired to get out there and start hitting balls.

“I started off just driving on a range and then got myself a juvenile set of clubs and joined Thurles Golf Club and just always enjoyed it from day one really.

“I put a lot of my natural ability with it down to the fact that I played hurling too and I had the hand-eye coordination down and the rest of it just came quickly to me.”

Losing one’s sight as an adult would potentially mark the end of many if not all sporting pastimes and aspirations of competing at a high level, for Darragh Stakelum however; this ushered in the start of an incredible journey.

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“When I lost my sight initially you’re just going through so much you don’t know what to do. I looked to friends and family and they did a lot of research into sports that I could still take part in. They eventually found Irish Blind Golf, I went to an event of theirs and thought maybe this might be something for me.

“I play blind football for Ireland on an international level too, and you need that kind of mentality there as well as it’s a pretty tough sport.”

Darragh’s progression as a visually impaired golfer is largely down to being coached by the legendary Ray Ryan, a pro at Thurles Golf Club. Ray works one-to-one with Darragh to help perfect his technique, ball positioning, and lining shots up relative to his stance.

All this proved more than worthwhile when Darragh, along with his guide Adrian Morrissey (pictured below), were triumphant in the British Golf Open for blind and visually impaired golfers at Cardrona Golf Club, north of Edinburgh, Scotland.

This is the second British Open title of Darragh’s career and ironically his second time winning the event at Cardrona GC, having emerged victorious there in 2017.

“It’s horses for courses really!I really like the course, although it is very severe to play in.

“If you shoot ten yards into the rough, you’re basically up to your waist in hay. Fellow players have hit into the middle of the fairway and it somehow still ends up in the hay.”

Darragh didn’t have much time to sit back and ponder his second British Open title in Edinburgh, with that trip quickly followed by a jaunt to Renton in Ontario, Canada, for the Canadian and World Championships which took place in week commencing Sunday, August 3.

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“First off, it was an amazing trip. I really enjoyed the Canadian Open, played some brilliant golf. Outside of the local players, I was the top ranking foreigner taking part in the event. So I played that event, and basically the day after that finished I played a practice round for the World Championships, and then those Championships started basically straight away!

“I started the World Championships brilliantly. I was actually leading at the end of the first day. Then the week just caught up with me a little bit with the back-to-back tournaments. I woke up on the second day with basically no energy and just couldn’t follow it up with my best stuff.”

Darragh finished in a very respectable 7th place in the World Championships, which coupled with his British Open win in July, places him in the top bracket of visually impaired golfers worldwide.

As for future plans, Darragh says he is open to anything, and plans to play some disability events in Dublin to keep sharp.

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