Sunday,Sept. 30th. We wake up and make the winding drive to the wild and windy coast of Northwest Donegal. Narin-Portnoo is one of our favorite links courses - a natural and unassuming club with a modest beginning few holes but a rousing series of holes along the coastal dunes which make this links a must play for links golf aficionados. We arrived and were allowed to enter a one-day stableford competition sponsored by a local hotel. Our rounds generally begin with a trip to the pro shop to purchase green fees, rent trolleys to carry our golf bags, and get water bottles and candy bars for the eighteen hole trek. Stableford competition assigns points for net bogey, par, birdie, eagle, and ace. A double bogey ("ding") results in zero points. We had no delusion of winning this competition, but we wanted to play well on the final day of the Ryder Cup at Medinah. We scored several points on the initial meadowland holes, and we continued strong play on the first several dunes holes-----but the golf gods were toying with us. Skies were blue, and there was no rain, but we played in wind which ranged from three to five clubs! Planning and executing shots in the wind was difficult and our scores ballooned. It was a spent foursome that returned to the clubhouse to register scores ranging from 22-27. Dings rang throughout our scorecards. Despite our lackluster scores, we were buoyed by the prospect of viewing the final round of The Ryder Cup on our opponents' soil. We couldn't lose, could we?