Golf Ireland has kickstarted 2026 with two innovations to its competitions schedule, providing a shot in the arm to the women’s amateur game and instituting a new Strokes Gained rating system for all elite championships.
Golf Ireland chief executive Mark Kennelly presided over his organisation’s season launch at Carton House in Co. Kildare on Monday night as a range of panellists discussed topics including next week’s Masters at Augusta National, the importance of social media to the game here and life on tour as an Irish professional with Sara Byrne, Conor Purcell and James Sugrue sharing their experiences.
Yet it was the amateur game that took centre stage with Golf Ireland Championships and Rules Director Mark Wehrly addressing the introductions of four regional women’s tournaments, starting with an inaugural South of Ireland Championship at Lahinch, home of the well-established Men’s South, on April 25 and 26.
“We’re really excited about this,” Wehrly said.
“So having a North, South, East and West of Ireland women’s championship, giving the domestic championship season for women in Ireland such a shot in the arm.
“We think that’s really important from a visibility point of view that we’re going to see in Lahinch next month at the season opener for the Women’s South of Ireland, we’re going to see one of the best fields from top to bottom that we’ve seen in a women’s amateur championship in Ireland ever.
“That’s very, very exciting for us and really, we couldn’t have had a better start with it.”
The season kicks off this Friday with the men’s West of Ireland at Co. Sligo with the introduction of a pilot for a system which will statistically rate the performance of male and female players in scratch events all over Ireland.
The Golf Ireland Strokes Gained Ratings system, devised in partnership with Quantum Sports Data, will be driven by results collected not only from Golf Ireland championships and events, but also from Men’s and Women’s Senior Scratch Cups organised by clubs all over Ireland.
The pilot will run through the 2026 season with a view to its introduction in 2027 as a new primary qualification method for all men’s and women’s championships on the Bridgestone Orders of Merit, and potentially for talent identification purposes, team selections and coaching panels.
Using scoring data returned to Golf Ireland’s WHS Clubhouse platform, players will receive an Adjusted Strokes Gained (ASG) rating which will be driven by their scores over a rolling two-year period.
ASG measures how many strokes better or worse a golfer performs in each round compared to an average championship-level player, accounting for course difficulty and playing conditions. The ratings will be updated once a month during 2026, on the first day of each month on which no eligible event is taking place.
“We’re delighted to get our strokes gained project up and running this year. It will be really interesting to see how players from all age groups progress their rating through strong performances in Golf Ireland championships and scratch cups,” Golf Ireland High Performance Director Neil Manchip said.
Dylan Beirne, of Quantum Sports Data explained: “The goal of it is to have a purpose-built system that allows Golf Ireland and players themselves to have a better perspective and a more accurate look at how amateurs are performing in significant events.
“The way it works structurally is that on any given day in a Scratch (Cup) golf or in a championship, there’ll be basically a baseline rating… and it estimates what an average championship player would shoot in those conditions and then everything’s benchmarked against that.
“So I think the West last year, round one was like an 81 average (score). It was a really, really tough day, so someone shooting 75 in those conditions is pretty impressive.
But then there’s other events where that are completely different so the idea is that it’ll benchmark against that and then it gets a weighting over time. But for players themselves, I think it will be a good benchmark to see where they are now, how they’ve progressed.
“A handicap may not always do that, but you’d be able to see where you are in relation to the best players in the country, also in relation to yourself over recent times or recent years.”