Barry McMahon
of the Irish Golf
Academy prepares
to swing away.
A local chalk artist produced McMahon’s mantra high above the academy’s simulators.
all skills can come inside and also simu-
late playing on courses from around the
world. They range from nearby Fauquier
Springs in Warrenton to Augusta Nation-
al, home of the Masters, among countless
more iconic venues.
It’s all high-tech and tons of fun, which
is the whole idea. And Chestnut Forks
allows McMahon far more space than his
previous location to do his job.
“My son (11-year-old Bryce) took les-
sons from Barry and I’ve known him for
years,” said Derek Maloney, a co-owner of
Chestnut Forks along with his father, Chip
Maloney. “Golf simulators were one of the
things we really wanted to have in here,
and I think this is going to be very popular.
Barry is a great teacher and a wonderful
guy. People just gravitate to him. Bryce
loves it, and a lot of it is because of Barry.”
BARKEEPER BARRY
Many Warrenton area residents know
McMahon because he worked as a pop-
ular bartender at McMahon’s Irish Pub
& Restaurant on Broadview Avenue for
more than eight years until his passion
for golf led to the opening of his academy.
His uncle Michael had opened McMa-
hon’s in 2006 and convinced his nephew
to come live in Warrenton and work in
the restaurant.
What the locals might not have known
is that Barry had given up the game for
four years as a younger man not long after
his father died at age 45.
“The night before, he’d bought me my
first pint of beer,” McMahon recalled.
“The next day, he played and he died on
the 11th hole. I went sideways after that.
I quit playing for four years. I’m a recover-
ing alcoholic and I really had some serious
problems back then.”
McMahon eventually came to the U.S.
and was living in Connecticut when that
same Uncle Michael, who was running the
popular Dubliner Tavern on Capitol Hill
in Washington at the time, showed up on
his doorstep. He insisted that his nephew
move in with him in Falls Church to get
his life back together.
“The first thing he did was buy me a set
of clubs,” McMahon said. “He got me back
to the game, and it saved me.”
But that didn’t happen overnight.
FINDING HELP & HELPING OTHERS
While working at the Warrenton restau-
rant, McMahon lived in a small room
above the bar. He began drinking heav-
ily again, and finally, his friend, Fran-
cis Fusco, by then the proprietor of the
restaurant, told Barry he needed help.
Fusco called McMahon’s mother, Veroni-
ca, in Ireland and put Barry on the phone.
She told him in no uncertain terms that
he needed to come back to Ireland and
get some help.
He was on a flight the next day, and short-
ly after he arrived, Veronica arranged for
her son to meet with a local therapist who
“kicked me in the butt and told me it was
“A hundred years from now,” it reads, “it will
not matter what my bank account was, the
sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I
drove. But the world may be different because
I was important in the life of a child.”
vsga.org
time to get my life together,” McMahon
recently told Warrenton Lifestyle magazine.
The next day, he attended his first
AA meeting, eventually ending up with
another therapist who also convinced him
to embrace golf once again. He eventually
returned to the U.S., opened up the acad-
emy in 2014 and now seems to have exor-
cised the demons that turned him toward
a bottle instead of a dimpled little ball.
Now, McMahon said one of his own
primary goals in golf also involves help-
ing youngsters learn the sport, but more
importantly “learn not to make the same
mistakes I made when I was younger,” he
said. “I don’t want kids to have the life I
did with alcohol.”
McMahon has paid close attention to
the opioid epidemic that also has had a
chilling impact in his and many other
areas of Virginia. In the last nine years,
he said he’s been to at least 25 funerals
of people 30 and under, all victims of
substance abuse.
“It’s frightening, and so sad,” he said. “I
know better than most that you can get
help. A lot of people helped me, and any-
thing I can do to help someone, I will do.”
Indeed, on the wall above the three
golf simulators at Chestnut Forks, one of
Barry McMahon’s favorite quotes is paint-
ed in large letters that reflects his person-
al mission, on and off the golf course.
“A hundred years from now,” it reads,
“it will not matter what my bank account
was, the sort of house I lived in, or the
kind of car I drove. But the world may be
different because I was important in the
life of a child.”
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