Around the turn of the decade, it seemed we couldn't go a fortnight without a prize graduate of the GUI youth system winning a major championship.
For decades and decades, Fred Daly was the only major winner of whom Ireland could boast, his Open Championship victory at Royal Liverpool dating back to 1947.
And then all the big prizes started arriving in a torrent. Between Padraig Harrington's triumph at Carnoustie in 2007 and Rory McIlroy's most recent major victory at Valhalla in 2014, Irish players racked up nine major championship victories in a golden eight-year spell.
2017 represented a retreat from those highs as many of Ireland's leading professionals struggled, for various reasons. No Irish player, from either side of the border, has registered a victory on either the European or PGA Tour.
Shane Lowry, who led the 2016 US Open after three rounds, has had a frustrating season thus far, after years of solid progression.
His coach - though he is somewhat wary of the term 'coach' stressing that Lowry is responsible for his own success - is Neil Manchip, a Scot who serves as the Golfing Union of Ireland's national coach, mentoring and looking after Ireland's national squads from U14 onwards.
Typically based in Carton House, Manchip spent a couple of days out in Portugal last week, where Lowry was playing in his first tournament in six weeks at Villamoura.
Lowry, who won the competition back in 2012, played well over the first three days, but slumped to a +1 over par 72 on Sunday.
"It was a very good four days. Lots of birdies, lots of good shots so he was pretty happy with the week. Obviously, he'd have liked a better finish on Sunday but it didn’t happen. But overall, it wasn’t bad for the first tournament back," said Manchip.
In Manchip’s estimation, whatever troubles Lowry has endured this year are at least partly attributable to the difficulties of commuting to and from the United States.
Lowry decided to concentrate on playing more in the US in 2017 but did so without setting up a base across the Atlantic.
"This year, he's played a lot in the United States and he's been commuting a lot from here. It's been difficult at times.
"But all parts of his game are good and he's just waiting for the good results to come along really.
"You don't really know you do it (move to America). Is it the best idea to go and live over there and uproot yourself and your family? Or is it a good idea to commute back and forwards for three weeks at a time? It's hard to know until you go through with it.
"He's going to move over the United States for a few months next year and have a bit more of a solid base and play the tour from based over there."
Manchip has held the National Coach role since 2005 succeeding Howard Bennett.
Born in Edinburgh, he moved to Ireland permanently in 1992 to work for Royal County Down club pro Kevin Whitson and has never had any desire to leave the country since.
In 1999, he won the Irish PGA at the Island course in Donabate in a field containing Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke. He made a stab at forging a tour career during the same decade, attending card school and winning a couple of invitations to European Tour events, though he insists he was never good enough to make it on tour.
"My best golf might have made a couple of cuts every now and again. But my average golf was way off the mark. And really at that level, you need your average golf to be good enough to still be able to compete and when you’re really on song you need to be in a position to win tournaments," he says matter-of-factly.
It was in 1999 when he became the teaching professional alongside Leonard Owens in Royal Dublin. He was there for six years before being appointed national coach with the GUI.
Crucially, for a man who deals with Shane Lowry on a regular basis, Manchip is a Gaelic football fan, supporting Mayo by dint of his Claremorris born wife.
The Scot has been at the helm during a wildly successful era for Irish golf, both at professional and amateur levels.
After that feast, is Ireland headed for a famine in professional golfing success?
Are the underage ranks providing as many as stars as it did in the noughties?
"I think all these things go up and down. Sometimes you've really brilliant streaks of really strong individual showings.
"Around that time, you had Rory McIlroy coming through, Shane Lowry coming through just after when he won at Baltray in ‘09. And we started winning a lot of team events. And we were going well in boys events too.
"And then the all the major championship wins began to happen, starting with Padraig (Harrington) in ’07 and ’08 and then all the other guys after him.
"And then inevitably, it doesn't keep going forever. You'll have troughs. But different players will come through."
At amateur level, Paul McBride was the sole Irish representative on the Walker Cup team that was trounced by the US team in Los Angeles two weeks ago.
This represents something of step back from 2015. Two years ago, a record five Irish players - Paul Dunne, Gavin Moynihan, Jack Hume, Cormac Sharvin and Gary Hurley - were part of the GB & I team which won the Walker Cup at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.
Four of the five promptly turned professional, with Jack Hume waiting a year before taking the leap.
Hume retained amateur status long enough to help Ireland to third place in the World Amateur Team championships - aka, the Eisenhower Trophy - in Mexico last year.
Incidentally, Ireland holds that event next year, with the Montgomerie and O’Meara courses being used for the fabled biennial competition.
Manchip says that the next step for the 21-year old McBride is turning professional in 2018.
Currently a student at North Carolina's Wake Forest University - a renowned golf nursery - McBride made the cut at the Porsche European Open at the end of July, finishing two under par for the tournament.
Manchip says McBride is a very promising player but adds that graduating from the amateur ranks to the lofty surrounds of the European tour is an often treacherous business.
"His (McBride's) prospects are strong. He got an invitation to the tournament in Germany in August on an invitation and made the cut there.
"He's an excellent all-round game and he's playing well in the States for Wake Forest and he's due to graduate next May.
"So, we'll look at his development before he goes to tour school next year and see what approach we take.
"Some guys like Shane (Lowry) and Rory (McIlroy) do it really, really quickly. And somebody like Paul (Dunne) who gets through tour school at the first time of asking.
"It's just such a small number of players get through with so many players from Europe and all over the world going for the same very few positions.
"So it can take some players a few years to get there."
Neil Manchip is one of 40 experts from nine countries speaking at HPX Conference 2017, which runs from October 6-7 at the Sport Ireland National Sports Campus in Abbotstown. You can find out more about the Ireland Institute conference, dealing with lessons learned from high performance here.
