One of the nice things about having traipsed around Ireland for three decades playing golf is that you get to discover or re-discover courses that for whatever reason – weather, injuries, the lure of something new — you’ve bypassed for a long while.
This year’s journey, like most, starts in Dublin with a grown son in tow making his second visit to Ireland and his first to the five courses we chose for an unlikely-but-satisfying tour that is probably best suited for the traveler who has already seen Ireland’s golf cathedrals.
We begin in Malahide, a leafy, old money seaside village of Dublin, six miles from the airport, where I like to open my week at The Grand Hotel, an “opulent but not fussy” monument to hospitality built in 1835 that welcomes golfers from around the world. Tour buses frequent the crowded car park and the morning lobby buzzes with eager hackers discussing their journeys. The Grand is fancier than my normal digs ($200 to $460 range), but it’s perfect as either an HQ for a Dublin-centric golf vacation or as a first-night splurge when you’re fighting jet lag.
Here’s why: First, when your golf trip is done and you want to travel elsewhere, they are happy to hold your clubs free of charge; second, The Grand is 900 feet from the beach and barely a ten-minute walk from restaurants that range from Italian, Thai, Pakistani and Asian to inviting pubs like Gibney’s (excellent beer garden) and Fowler’s, a stylish gastropub with 12 big screen TVs and live local music; and third, you’re minutes from Corballis Links, Jameson Golf Links, Portmarnock Old Course and my choice for an opening round, The Island Golf Club, which hardly qualifies as “overlooked” any longer but which often gets passed over as Americans rocket out of Dublin for the touristy Southwest.
Malahide’s outdoor cafes are bustling in the summer.
The Island Golf Club
In 1887, a group of wealthy Protestant bachelors, including bankers, lawyers and a soap merchant, formed a snooty golf syndicate that, like many others of the era, kept out Catholics and tradesmen, and even discouraged the lowliest of the castes, caddies. They found some neglected linksland that was more rugged than what is usually found on Ireland’s east coast and more adventurous — for decades golfers had to row across an estuary to reach the course — than its far more famous neighbor, the Portmarnock Old Course, which Ireland hopes will one day host the Open Championship.
“We’ve always been somewhat in the shadow of Portmarnock,” The Island’s current club captain, John Gartland, a former utilities engineer, said after lacing an opening drive on the uphill par four. “You would hear some people call us a `hidden gem,’ but the good players always knew The Island and knew its reputation was that of a tough course.” After World War II, the course often struggled and by the Sixties a proposal to reduce the track to nine holes was just narrowly defeated. Strong-willed members stood up for their club and took out a generous loan to build a new clubhouse in 1975 and incorporate the designs of British architect Fred Hawtree and the inestimable Johnny Appleseed of Irish golf, Eddie Hackett.
Located on a lonely peninsula-like stretch of dunes between the Irish Sea, Donabate beach and the Broadmeadow estuary, this rugged beautiful course has been tweaked so well over the last 20 years that it is perennially ranked among Ireland’s top ten and for 2027 will command a gut-punching visitor’s green fee of about $422 USD. The most recent renovation (2019-2020) by Mackenzie & Ebert, an English firm that has restored British Open venues such as Royal Portrush, Royal Troon and Carnoustie, enhanced the front nine to keep up with the superior back nine by shaping a new par-3 4th with elevated tees, creating new greens complexes for the 5th, 8th and 9th and re-styling a host of bunkers so that they appear more rough-edged and natural. (The tips reach 7,000 yards, with a 129 slope.) But the back nine features the gorgeous 13th (a cliffside carry of 200 yards across an inlet) and the famously slender intimidating 14th., which creeps along the water’s edge, plus game-stopping views of the ocean.
All told, The Island is now so good and so coherently designed from front to back – it’s been ranked as high as 9th in the country — that you’d be foolish to ignore its challenging hills as you rush off to Lahinch and Ballybunion.
Rosses Point (County Sligo Golf Club)
About 142 miles west of Dublin, in a county whose wild Atlantic coastline has graced numerous films, awaits a dynamic revitalized golf course that has literally hosted virtually every important Irish golfer of the last century. But every time in the last decade that I even got close to Rosses Point, it was locked beneath a deluge of wind and rain that kept all the locals in the club dining room marveling at the poor tour bus lads who felt obligated to play.
So, it was with great anticipation that we at least started the day with no rain and got to fully enjoy yet another extensive Mackenzie & Ebert renovation (from 2024) of an historic course, this time a fabulous 1927 re-design by famed Harry S. Colt, whose handiwork graced Royal Portrush, Muirfield and Pine Valley, among others. Again, the M&E tweaking is most noticeable in the reduction of bunkers and the transformation of existing ones into more natural, rough-edged obstacles that would entice sheep. A host of tees and greens complexes were upgraded, while holes 5, 7 and 9 were lengthened.
But forget the technical issues. Come to Rosses Point for the No. 3 pinnacle tee box. On a golf course full of grand vistas, this would be the finest. After you climb No. 2’s fairway to heaven and scramble off the back, you see something special, a vast golf portrait where you can watch your comrades beneath you on another half dozen holes. To the left is Sligo Bay – next stop Newfoundland – and its lighthouse, the original Coney Island and the green top of Knocknarea, with glimpses of five different counties. Looming over it all is Ben Bulben, a brooding flat anvil of limestone and shale carved some 330 million years ago during the last Ice Age, when the whole of Ireland was located – we’re not making this up — somewhere along the equator.
And perhaps that is where my tee shot will be found someday, for by the third hole gusts had risen to 35 mph at 51 degrees and I had won the over-under with my son by promising that even in this Arctic blast we would see at least three adult European males wearing shorts. They were Dutch, maybe Swedes.
Almost as good as the golf, I re-discovered a vibrant town of 21,000 that has a highly-walkable riverfront filled with busy storefronts, legendary pubs like Thomas Connoly’s and a remarkable “Left Bank” restaurant district highlighted by Bistro Bianconi, where the thin-crust pizza is as good as anything I’ve had on the mainland, and 30 yards away sits Hooked, a highly-awarded but relaxed seafood spot where the wait staff might be humming Stevie Wonder as they bring you locally-sourced Baja Haddock Tacos and the Chorizo and prawns. All of this was just a brief walk beside the rushing Garavogue River before reaching our stylish 116-room hotel, The Glasshouse. I can’t remember an Irish downtown that made such an impression on me. It felt so sophisticated yet so unpretentious and friendly. You could easily make Sligo your homebase for an entire week of golf.
Castle Dargan Hotel & Golf Resort
Heresy alert.
On occasion, if your back is sore or you just want a day off, it’s okay not to play golf or to do the unthinkable and play a parkland course that won’t be quite as wind-ripped as Ireland’s incomparable links.
So, on a soggy day that became unplayable, we dropped by County Sligo’s Castle Dargan Golf Resort (about 7 miles from downtown Sligo) and found a delightful 170-acre heathland course – more open rolling hills than a true parkland track, with no coastal dunes – featuring 300-year-old limestone walls, natural ponds and castle ruins. Opened in 2008, the course was designed by architect Patrick Merrigan and Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke, winner of the 2011 Open Championship.
Better still, we found Eoin Patterson, a candid sales manager with a sense of humor, who told us that in the past two years more Americans have discovered Dargan’s challenging finishing holes, 14 through 18, and its attractive green fees (about 105 euros).
“Cost has definitely become an issue for Irish golf,” said Patterson, 31, remarking on the rampant inflation driving elite Irish green fees beyond $500. “Irish tourism forces have pushed the famous links courses to raise their prices and the result is that more tee times have been reserved for Americans at higher prices, crowding out some of the locals and causing resentment.”
The County Wicklow man offers a needed reality check. Soon the only people playing Ireland’s best links will be millionaires landing in helicopters, and true middle class golf travelers will be as common as metal spikes.
“There is a limit (to the inflation),” said Patterson, echoing the sentiments of many golf industry colleagues around the country, “and we are there.” (A nice 18-mile side trip finds you a Sligo favorite, the thatched-roof Beach Bar at Aughris Head, where we had lasagna and apple pie, don’t judge.)
Bundoran Golf Club
Half the fun of Irish golf is the greeting you’ll get at the pro shop. Despite their/our revulsion over Trump, they still fuss over Americans and will tell you about cousins in Kansas. At Bundoran, a wind-blown links where surfers in wetsuits dot the nearby Atlantic, we were greeted by Mason Collins, the modest hometown pro who was an all-conference golfer two years ago at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, Iowa, and JJ McCaughey, a clever teenager who knew exactly where San Antonio (our home) was and seemed to be mastering his first day at work.
“The course is really two different nines,” offered JJ, in an understatement. Established in 1894 and revised in 1908 by Harry Vardon, six-time winner of the Open Championship, Bundoran’s front side is relatively tame and level, nothing all that visually enticing, except the sea. But things pick up around the 8th and you’ll soon find yourself hitting blindish shots uphill toward what you hope is a flag. In normal stout wind, the back nine offers plenty of challenge. The course is also cramped in spots and uses screens like baseball backstops on the tee boxes of 14 and 17 to protect you from fatigued flailing golfers I know.
Again, we left Bundoran thinking more about the friendliness of its members than any series of golf architecture achievements. At one point, the Texans somehow took a wrong turn on the course and got badly out of position. When we finally located the correct hole and apologized profusely, the locals showed no impatience whatsoever and insisted that we play ahead of them. If only more Irish golfers would play on my hometown munies, I could return their many favors.
The town of Bundoran can look a bit worn along the coastal strip, but we found an excellent shop for wool sweaters and local photography (Paraphernalia) and a wonderful family-run gastro pub, Maddens, with a full view of Donegal Bay, live music and warming seafood chowder.
Strandhill Golf Club
If there was a “bypassed Hall of Fame” for Irish golf, surely this idiosyncratic and endlessly fun course just six miles west of Sligo town yet very much in the shadow of Rosses Point would be a founding member.
Thirty years ago, before needed enhancements by architect Ally McIntosh and course manager Jason Kelly that revealed more natural beauty around tee boxes and greens, the esteemed golf travel author, Jim Finegan, a true scholar whose comprehensive books on Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales are cherished, somehow managed to survey all of County Sligo golf and ignored Strandhill. In 2006, to make amends, Finegan wrote in his mammoth coffee table book, Where Golf Is Great, that par-69 Strandhill boasted “stunning sea-and-hill vistas and dramatic elevation changes” with three “dull” holes (9, 10, 11) and two others (7, 13) that he deemed among “the finest par 4s in northwest Ireland.” Fair enough.
By 2007, the superb British-Canadian duo of Richard Phinney and Scott Whitley, in their updated Links of Heaven, waxed rhapsodic about Strandhill holes that were “incomparable…thrilling…picturesque…charming…and outlandish.” Finally, Irish golf authority Kevin Markham, in 2015, wrote in Hooked, “If you come this way to play Sligo or Enniscrone, do not pass Strandhill by. It is every bit as good, if only in a different way.”
And therein lies the rub. The American tour buses quite properly flock to Enniscrone and Rosses Point (Sligo), paying over $300 and $400 respectively, and those in charge wrongly decide that Strandhill, at roughly 6200 yards from the tips and about $260 (for 2027) in peak summer, probably isn’t quite ready for prime time. Their silly loss.
It’s perplexing, admits Strandhill’s director of golf, Xavier Medas, a charming Spaniard-Frenchman who joined my son and I for four holes on the front side. “Clearly, there are some visitors to Ireland who judge courses by the price, and they just assume we aren’t at a certain level.”
Understandably, the membership is not that bothered. They are a friendly welcoming lot – famous for their frigid winter tournaments that draw hundreds — not overly taken with crested coats and ceremony, lots of avid women hackers, perfectly happy with quirky unique holes like the par five No. 5, where you start with an invigorating elevated tee shot that has you thinking you’ll send the ball two furlongs. But you’ll need a high draw and you must clear a gnarly row of unforgiving dunes. Having navigated the dogleg left, you’re then confronted with a mogul-filled potato chip fairway, where your lie depends on luck and you’ve not even contemplated a strangely, somewhat sunken saucer-like green.
You’ve never seen a hole like this back in the States, nor will you see another quite like it in Ireland. And this is why you made the trip.
Bruce Selcraig is a former staff writer with Sports Illustrated and U.S. Senate investigator who has made 30 golf trips to Ireland and has yet to break 80. selcraig@swbell.net