Life on a golf course

Living and working a progressive farm, leading many national farming organisations and a passion for golfing led one couple to progress their farm into one of the country's top golf and country clubs. Tom and Breda Reid have put the village of the roses on the worldwide map, and have enhanced Athlone's amenity and tourism reputation, with their family business. The Glasson golf and country club is a four-star 65 bed hotel with an impressive bar, restaurant and banqueting suite, and, of course, golf club. Last year, Glasson won the Ireland Golf Tour Operators Association Golf Resort of the year. Tom Reid is a native of Glasson, and had lived there on his lakeside farm, alongside his wife Breda, and their family until they developed their land, and used the natural amenity of the Lough Ree, to create the Glasson Golf and Country Club in 1993. Tipperary-born Breda had spent her earlier life in Carlow and after working as an au pair in Germany, she came to Athlone to work in an office in Gentex. The couple met in the Roseland ballroom, Moate, and after they married in 1963, they raised their family, worked their farm, and then their golf resort. "We did things gradually here, and had portocabins in the beginning for offices, and changing rooms, and then we started constructing what became the clubhouse," said Breda. "We built it around our house, and right from the start, Tom and I did everything together." Tom was a noted progressive farmer in Glasson who did intensive farming with 300 beef cattle, and up to 2000 sheep, and he also grew cereals. He said he didn't leave farming behind when he built the great resort on his farmland, and has kept up an interest in the science. Tom had been told by friends and colleagues that his farm in Glasson would make an ideal golf course, but he was busy with farming, and full-time at that practice. "I still have the interest, and ploughed through the muck at the Tullamore Agricultural Show a few weeks back, and was always active in farm organisations," said Tom He was Westmeath representative on the IFA beef committee, and the sheep committee, and the environmental committee. He was also active in grassland, and was the National President in 1989 of the Irish Grassland Association. Tom is involved with Athlone Rotary, of which he was a founder member, and past President. "In all my farming years, I would be getting rid of hills or hollows or bushes, and then when we started building the golf course, I'd be recreating and making mounds and hollows and hills," said Tom, of the golf course that he is so proud of today. Breda was always an avid golfer and after her youngest child went to school, she became a member of Moate golf club, and then later Athlone golf club and developed a passion for the sport. Tom and Breda have two sons and two daughters. Their eldest son, Donal is living in Germany, and has his own business school and teaches project management there. Their second son, Frank is a computer programmer in the banking industry. Fidelma Reid is the Manager of the Glasson golf and country club, and she's married to Athlone man, Garrett Leech, and the couple's second daughter, Aine is married to Gareth Jones, who is the club's director of sales. Tom and Breda have visited golf courses in four continents over the past 25 years. "When the tournaments are over, my greatest thrill is to walk over the courses," said Tom. "When we were working on the idea for Glasson, Slieve Russell was coming on-stream, and Mount Juliet and the K Club, and golfing was becoming very popular, and then we met Christy O'Connor Jnr." The golfing great, O'Connor won four European Tour events, and two Senior British Open titles, and two Champion Tour events, and was the designer of Glasson Golf club. Tom and Breda visited prestigious golfing courses, and the duo went on promotion with Fáilte Ireland, through venues at home and abroad, sometimes, along with their daughter Fidelma. "We mostly went to Sweden and the Scandinavian Masters each year, and then we started getting quite a few Swedes to Glasson, and we also went to America, and to Mexico, and the Dominican Republic," said Tom. It cost Tom and Breda Reid around £2 million to develop their farmland to become a golf course. They also spent another half million pounds on converting the clubhouse on the grounds in Glasson. "We were lucky that we had the land, and the success of the course was down to the good design, and we went top of the range on everything, and the interest in golf was growing in those years," said Breda. Tom said the initial interest from the golfing community was excellent. "We brought more golfers into the midlands, and they weren't necessarily good times when we opened," said Tom. Glasson Golf Club had three honorary members, since it opened in 1993. Gene Sarazen was a top American professional golfer during the 1920s and 30s, and he came to Glasson at the age of 91, and became an honorary member. US Ambassador to Ireland in the early 1990s, Jean Kennedy Smith is also an honorary member, as was the late Dr. Harry Rice. "Jean used to run fundraising events for the Fulbright Scholarship, and we held that for her a few times in Glasson," said Tom. The Reids had their bar and restaurant up and running by the middle of 1994, and the hotel was opened in 2001. "Golf is a great social outlet, and the course in Glasson offers a lot for lady golfers," said Breda. "Lady golfers sometimes aren't catered for on courses, and Christy had that in mind when developing Glasson." Fidelma Reid works alongside her parents, in the club, and said they always have the care of the customer, close to the forefront of their minds. "They look after customers and that's always the way they have run things, and that's why we have been able to ride out difficult times here, and there was a tough few years, but it's fantastic again now," said Fidelma. "Tom has shown great courage and vision by putting on the new extension to the bar and banqueting suite in 2010, and he's determined and extremely hard working and very fair. If he starts something new, he learns everything about it. Tom added: "Our location here is stunning, and we have a great team of people here, and our standards are high and it's a great place to work. My parents are a great team and have great passion for the club, and as Breda always says, 'Glasson was heaven even when it wasn't a golf course.". Tom said the golf course's peak year was 2007, but in recent times, they found they weren't getting many people, and there was pressure on prices. "We were working hard, with 65 bedrooms, but still we hadn't the infrastructure to go along with it, so two years ago we built on a banqueting room, and it has been a great success, particularly for weddings." said Tom. "We have built up a great reputation in recent times, and are now being sought after as a wedding venue, and our location and service have been praised nationally and internationally for that." They are still planning to enhance the facility further, by providing teaching in the near future, so people from far and wide can come to Glasson, and get tuition in golf. "They could stay for a few days and get golf tuition, and we could maybe send them back with a handicap, and our eldest son, occasionally brings over some of his clients from Germany to teach them, so maybe we can pursue that further," said Tom. Tom also got involved in the worldwide organisation, SKAL international, which is a professional organisation of tourism leaders around the world, promoting global tourism and friendship. He has represented Ireland around the world, from Puerto Rico to Scandinavia with SKAL. Tom said that of the visitors to the Glasson Golf course, seventy percent would be Irish, and thirty percent would be international. "We get a lot of international groups, which mostly come from Scandinavia, Germany and America in that order," he said. In his travels, promoting the golf course, Tom was given the honour of becoming a Kentucky colonel, which is the highest honour given by the American state, which makes him an ambassador of goodwill internationally. Swedish professional golfer Lars Broms wrote of Glasson in a periodical, 'As I walked up the 18th fairway, my heart was filled with pain, and my eyes were filled with tears, because there were no more holes left to play,".