“Hackett’s overall contribution to Irish golf has been incalculable,” says Dermot Gilleece, considered the dean of Irish golf journalists.

More impressive, however, than any single course or design feature Hackett ever fashioned was the method and manner of his genius. “Oh, Eddie Hackett was a saint,” Connemara’s club secretary, Peter Waldron, once said. “He was totally self-effacing and had more integrity than almost anybody I ever came across.”  

Those who knew him well say Hackett cared little about money—no doubt endearing him to club members and developers—and was certainly underpaid on most projects by almost any standard. In a time when most Irish courses were modest labors of civic pride, rather than American-style monuments to ego, Hackett reportedly told course owners they could pay him his standard fees when they started making money.

None of which, family members say, should lead one to think he struggled to pay his bills or was so unsophisticated about money that he invited exploitation. He lived frugally but comfortably in one of Dublin’s more expensive neighborhoods, says son-in-law John Purcell, and he had a formal schedule of fees for everything from feasibility studies to the final designs. “I know I’ve charged too little all my life,” Hackett once said, “but starting out, I didn’t have the confidence in my abilities.”
Hackett was slight of stature—maybe 5-foot-8, 140 pounds. He contracted tuberculosis and meningitis early in life and looked more like an aging priest or poet than a rugged land sculptor. “He was 100 when he was 50,” Higgins says with affection, “but he was very active. He went out in rain or snow, even when water would be pouring down his face.”

By all accounts Hackett, a teetotaler, widower and father of five, was a man who genuinely loved to listen to other people, including the workers on his courses, and he could not force himself to be disagreeable. “We’d go to the first tee [at Waterville] and he would grab my arm like an old lady, partly to steady himself but also just to be close so he could hear every word,” Higgins recalls. “He really listened, and if he absolutely disagreed, he’d say something like, ‘I’m not sure about that,’ which was his way of saying no.”

Born in 1910 in Dublin, Hackett spent most of his life in golf, with stints as an assistant pro in Johannesburg in the ’30s, a clubmaker at Royal Dublin, an assistant pro to the famed Henry Cotton at Royal Waterloo in Belgium, secretary of the Irish PGA and resident pro at Portmarnock for 12 years, until 1950. His venture into course design in the early ’60s came at a time when Irish interest in the game had surged, due to the televised Canada Cup at Portmarnock in 1960. But Ireland had few course architects of note and England’s were thought too expensive. So Hackett’s vision, reverence for linksland and willingness to work for modest pay made him a logical choice.  

A Hackett course is typically characterized by elevated tees, obvious but not overly generous landing areas, spacious greens and an absence of blind drives and concealed hazards. He believed that bunkers within about 150 yards of the green should carry a penalty. “In most of them, you’ll have to come out sideways,” says Higgins.