St. Patrick’s Day refreshes memories of a 2019 trip along the Wild Atlantic Way as the recent easing of COVID travel restrictions has made travel to the Emerald Isle as plausible as ever. Enjoy this look back.
Royal Portrush still was buzzing and champion Shane Lowry still was buzzed the Monday morning after the 2019 British Open when a taxi whisked me along the Wild Atlantic Way, the longest coastal road in the world, and across the border into Northwest Ireland.
The Wild Atlantic Way, as it’s known, offers a two-week to four-week trip that provides one-of-a-kind views of everything from the Cliffs of Moher to the Aran Islands. Glaciated valleys and steep cliffs make every leg of this journey unique, and that goes double for the golf, which for me meant discovering four links courses and one parkland layout for the first time.
It’s a great time to take a look back at such as trip, as COVID-19 has interrupted many American plans to visit the Emerald Isle since 2020. Many travel restrictions to Ireland have recently been eased, making a dream trip to some of the best links courses in the world a real possibility again.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but when I first read the trip itinerary, I’d never heard of my first stop, Cruit Island, let alone had any clue the proper pronunciation of its name (Critch Island). But this quirky slab of land on the edge of the country – next stop America, they joke – came to represent everything I loved about this trip and golf in Ireland.
I already had been fortunate enough on previous trips to check off several of the trophy courses that dot the Emerald Isle, long touting Royal County Down just south of Belfast in Northern Ireland as my top-ranked course. But if you only play the Ballybunions and Watervilles and Tralees, you’ve missed out on walking towering dunes that seem to go on forever and sweeping valleys at seaside courses that are often half as expensive and twice as much fun as their better-known venues. Some say the western coast of Ireland, where Donegal alone counts 16 links golf courses, can lay claim to the finest array of links courses in the world, and it’s gone next level since I was there.
No. 6 at Cruit Island (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
Such as the nine-hole wonder that is Cruit Island, which thankfully my driver knew how to find because it takes considerable effort to do so. It is linked to the mainland by bridge and requires driving another mile and half after you seemingly come to the end of the road. Google “hidden gem” and Cruit Island’s picture should pop up among the top listings. It was built in 1982 by the community using nothing more than shovels, a wheel barrow, a tractor and good old-fashioned sweat equity. Local golfers did so because they tired of traveling some 20 miles for a game at the nearest course, so they negotiated a sweetheart deal for the land from a local church and designed the no-frills course with its simple clubhouse themselves.
“We moved almost nothing,” said Paddy Sweeney, the club’s jovial president, as he shared the compelling backstory.
The land was so dramatic that it revealed to them the most wonderful sites for tees and greens that never could have been constructed with bulldozers and earth scrapers.
The sun was shining and the sky was blue when I made my way to the first tee. Sweeney, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, warned my group, “This is the windiest course you’ll ever play.” It was blowing 30 mph, but his face turned as serious as a clock when he described the current conditions as “just a wee bit of wind.”
The view from the first tee is a blow to the senses and rivals anything you’ll see on the Monterey Peninsula, leading some to boldly claim it is “Pebble Beach on steroids.” That it may be, but a scruffier, more rough-around-the-edges version. We could do without the unsightly phone lines, but these eyesores are canceled out by plenty of eye candy along the way. None more so than the par-3 sixth hole that had us grabbing our phones to snap pictures and shoot video. The sixth runs along a rocky coastline and is all carry over a deep and craggy Atlantic inlet to a long, narrow green perched at the edge of a cliff with pounding white surf below. The hole measures only 150 yards from the tips, but the question is always: What club will it be today? A short flick of the wedge, or a fully struck wood?
In his book “A Course Called Ireland,” Tom Coyne went so far as to tab Cruit’s sixth as, yard for yard, one of the best holes in the world.
“Seventeen at Sawgrass? A respite. Pine Valley’s Devil’s Asshole? A mere pothole in comparison to the abyss of sea-cave and closing tide that separated tee from green on the sixth at Cruit,” Coyne wrote.
This walk through a natural and humbling setting, where seven of the nine holes present blind shots, felt pure and uncommercialized, the way golf was played before it became big business. I wished we had the time for an emergency nine. (A second set of tee boxes creates a puzzle that plays to a par 68.) It had me thinking of something Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke had said when I chatted with the former Claret Jug winner at Portrush just days earlier.
“If I had my choice as to what kind of golf I’d play, I’d like to play links golf every day,” said Clarke, the 2011 British Open champion. “I just like hitting a 5-iron from 140 yards, if you have to, and putting from 20 yards off the green. Things like that.”
One of Cruit Island’s biggest cheerleaders is Liam McDevitt, co-owner of Narin & Portnoo Links, who told me his mother grew up near the golf course. The coast road to Narin & Portnoo, named for the two seaside resort towns between which the course sits, takes you through some of the most beautiful scenery in Donegal alongside a magnificent coastline fringed with golden sandy beaches. McDevitt grew up playing what was then a par-69 layout that he described as a test and host to an annual pro-am that attracted the biggest names in Irish golf. McDevitt can’t put his finger on why the club messed with a good thing, but it eventually was converted to a par 73 with four par 5’s on the back nine, including three in a row.
No. 10 at Narin & Portnoo in Ireland (Courtesy of Narin & Portnoo)
McDevitt, who lives in Connecticut fulltime and travels back to Ireland once a month, has been a member at Narin & Portnoo since his formative years and knew the club, where golf has been played since 1905, was struggling financially. He worried in 2017 that if he didn’t do something quickly, a vulture fund likely would’ve bought it. “The debt was sold on a Monday morning; we had it bought on Monday afternoon,” McDevitt said.
Then the real work began to undo the mistakes of the past. “They took all the character out of it,” he said. “Our goal was to restore the character.”
He and his partner, Larry Foley, instituted a major redesign of the course plus a refurbishment of the clubhouse, and they wooed architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to “add some quirk.” McDevitt’s enthusiasm for what the golf course again could be was contagious. Wagner described McDevitt as a kid on Christmas morning. “Unfortunately, there was also the heart-sinking Christmas moments when you open Aunt Edna’s gift,” Wagner said.
McDevitt compared landing the high-profile architecture team to buying a lotto ticket and winning. “The last guy with any credentials in Ireland was Tom Fazio when he did Waterville. It’s just catapulted the whole thing,” McDevitt said. “The reason we hired Gil Hanse is he provided instant credibility with the American market.”
As a symbol of their devotion to making the club a success, McDevitt recently bought a small nearby hotel called Lake House that will attract golfers that want to stay two to three days.
My foursome included a local member, Paul, a retired Belfast fireman, who lived in a caravan parked not far from the 18th hole and served as a course forecaddie of sorts for us first-timers. After a gentle handshake of a start, we arrived at the tee of the dogleg-left, par-4 fifth that plays to an elevated green and Paul said, “Here’s where it gets interesting.”
He wasn’t kidding. The par-3 sixth over a ravine to a two-tiered green required first judging the wind and then a precise tee shot. The downhill, drivable, par-4 seventh played to the Atlantic Ocean in the distance, and Hanse capitalized on the location of the winter temporary green to make a new green protected by a hill. It’s a meandering route over and around dunes with stunning views of Gweebarra Bay and the nearby beach, which is a semicircle of dazzling white sand backed by large dunes that brighten the landscape on even the dullest days. Instead of a slug home through par 5s, Hanse and Wagner created a series of solid par 4s and short par 3s.
After the round, stop into MichaelAngelos Restaurant, renowned for its fresh seafood including raw oysters that may have been gathered from the final resting place of some of my sprayed golf shots. I never played it “before,” so I lack the perspective of how much credit Hanse and Wagner deserve for lifting the reputation of this course, but it is a hidden gem no more.
Donegal Golf Club in Ireland (Courtesy of Donegal Golf Club)
On to Donegal Golf Club, which lies in the bosom of Donegal Bay. It’s also where Ireland’s most revered links golf designer, the late Eddie Hackett, did some of his best work. He walked the land and prayed to God for the strength to do the right thing. His credo: “Nature is the best architect. I just try to dress up what the good Lord provides.”
Occupying a significant portion of the Murvagh Peninsula, Donegal Golf Club opened in 1976 and at the time was the longest course in Europe. With Donegal Bay to the west of the course and the Blue Stack Mountains to the north, the opening outer loop plays counterclockwise along the dunes before hugging the ocean, providing stunning views of the surrounding area. Sheep grazed in a meadow to the right of the second tee. The par-3 fifth is known as the Valley of Tears, and for good reason – tee shots must carry at least 180 yards of trouble or else – and the next three holes were all dominated by large, shaggy dunes.
The par-5 eighth checked so many boxes for me of why I love links golf: a blind second shot where you aim at a white-painted rock, followed by a punched 6-iron from 130 yards dead into the fan that rolled pin high.
The inner back-nine loop is more protected, yet the constantly changing sea breeze provides a continuing test. While less hilly than the other links courses in the northwest, this is a test of toughness rather than finesse.
Donegal Golf Club in Ireland (Courtesy of Donegal Golf Club)
In case you’re thinking Donegal’s length is what makes it special, Irish course designer and writer Pat Ruddy – who has worked on the course, designing a few new greens, reshaping some fairways and making a stream running through the property more prominent and ominous – will set you straight.
“Oh no, ‘twas its sheer beauty that enthralled us all with its isolated splendor,” he wrote.
Afterwards, do yourself a favor and order the fish chowder while settling the bets. I enjoyed my fill so much that I spoiled my appetite for dinner and instead wandered off for a walk around town. So many of the little towns along the Wild Atlantic Way come alive during the summer and are quiet in the winter, relying heavily on tourism. It’s a bit like being in Cape Cod or the Hamptons in that way. I stopped and admired the Donegal Parish of the Church of Ireland and the Abbey Graveyard in the historic town, and also stumbled upon the first self-serve laundromat at a gas station these eyes had ever seen.
The Abbey Graveyard on an electric-blue night. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
“You’ll be as welcome as the flower of May to dear old Donegal,” read a sign that I passed. I felt the warmth of the people as I stumbled upon my crew tipping back a few pints of Guinness with some regulars at The Little Diamond, a pub in Hazard Square. The late Payne Stewart once spoke of the 19th hole at the Butler Arms Hotel in Waterville but could’ve been speaking about most any of the country’s watering holes when he said, “We get into the pub and get around a piano. I bring out my harmonica and the next thing you know it’s about 4 a.m.” In other words, once you spend a night cheersing beer in a local pub and wandering quaint back alleys, you won’t want to leave.
Sligo Golf Club’s Colt Championship Course, also known as Rosses Point (Courtesy of County Sligo Golf Club)
We saved the best for last amongst the links layouts, in my humble opinion. County Sligo Golf Club’s Colt Championship Course, perhaps better known by its other names, Rosses Point or simply The Point after the village it overlooks, is the home of the West of Ireland Amateur Championship. The gabled clubhouse opens to a wood-paneled hallway where championship banners line the walls. Rory McIlroy, Padraig Harrington and Lowry all won here before hoisting the Claret Jug.
As we pulled our bags out of the bus, a local who was changing his shoes nearby welcomed us with these words: “Greetings American golfers. We love hosting you here but don’t take this the wrong way, when the members see a coach bus of Americans arrive like yours, they hustle to the tee,” he said. “We go into a panic.”
No offense taken at all. We do tend to be a slow lot.
No. 17 at Sligo Golf Club’s Colt Championship Course, also known as Rosses Point (Courtesy of County Sligo Golf Club)
This venerable Harry Colt design has stood the test of time with an assist from Ruddy, who made sure to respect the integrity of Colt’s original design while making it different and better during a renovation in 2014. The first two holes, the latter known as Heart Attack Hill, play almost 500 feet uphill. If the climb hasn’t taken your breath away, the view at the top will do the trick. From the third tee, the Point in all its glory reveals itself as 13 holes of this classic links appear in view. The west side of the course is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean. The view to the north is dominated by Benbulben, an impressive glacier-cut rock. The east has great views of the Dartry Mountains, while the south vista is completed by Knocknarea, a large prominent hill with steep limestone cliffs.
Hardly a better quartet of par 3s are to be found than here, beginning with the fourth, which was one of Hall of Fame English golfer Henry Cotton’s favorite short par 3s. The fifth, known as The Jump, offers an equally splendid view from an elevated tee to a fairway that plunges 150 feet below. Once more, at the 10th tee, you owe it to yourself to stop and take in the view, which looks out at the splendor of Sligo and Benbulben.
Ruddy tabbed the Mahon Burn, which runs diagonally in front of the seventh and 14th greens, as the loveliest and deadliest stream. Like most elsewhere at this strategic test, it demanded shotmaking, skill and nerve to avoid this “bold-faced devil,” as Ruddy so elegantly put it.
Even when out of sight of the Atlantic there is a magical quality to golf at Rosses Point. Tom Watson and Christy O’Connor Sr. agreed that the 17th, which brings golfers back over the mountain in spectacular fashion, was one of the better par 4s they ever encountered.
This was the one day of my trip where the wind whipped, the rainsuit came in handy and a hot toddy was needed post round, but I loved every second of it right down to the best fish and chips at the clubhouse restaurant that I’ve ever tasted. If Rosses Point is not the best links course in the Northwest of Ireland, then it’s surely among the most picturesque, although the embarrassment of riches in this region is underscored by the fact that my trip didn’t even take me to Enniscrone or Carne, the last course designed by Hackett, who proclaimed it ultimately would be hailed as the finest links in the country.
St. Patrick’s Links in Ireland (Courtesy of Courtesy of Rosapenna/Clyde Johnson)
And since my trip, another challenger for that prestigious title has emerged with the 2021 opening of Tom Doak’s latest layout, St. Patrick’s Links at Rosapenna, which reimagined 36 previously shuttered holes into 18 beauties. The early reviews have been nothing short of breathtaking for Doak’s work along Sheephaven Bay and piqued my interest to reserve a tee time as soon as humanly possible: “Like any work of art, it changes with the light and has to be seen to be believed,” wrote Brian Keogh in The Independent. “In short, it’s a modern masterpiece that tests every club in the bag and the six inches between your ears, all the while charming you and encouraging you to come back again for another golfing feast.”
Donegal had become the forgotten Irish county during The Troubles, but no more. This wild, barren, rugged, postcard view of Ireland is beginning to take center stage. It’s in parts unforgiving and romantic and where life happens at a slower pace. The beaches are beautiful and populated with people walking dogs, more closely resembling a public park than the bikinis and beers we associate with going to the beach stateside. It’s also where ancestors of so many Irish-Americans fled from long ago during the Potato Famine.
Could St. Patrick’s have finally lifted this stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way to destination status?
“We always had trouble selling the Northwest because we didn’t have an anchor,” said Sam Baker, founder of Haversham & Baker Golf Expeditions, a leading provider of international golf travel to America’s private clubs and their members. “We could sell Dornoch because it was such a legend, but we sold a lot more when Castle Stuart came on board. We’re going to be sending more now that St. Patrick’s premiered in top-100 lists in much the same way that Kingsbarn and Castle Stuart came on line.”
As McDevitt, the co-owner of Narin and Portnoo, put it, “Where else within an hour of each other and in the middle of nowhere are you going to get a Doak and a Hanse golf course in Europe that you can play?”
Concra Wood in Ireland (Courtesy of Concra Wood)
All good things must come to an end, but first, on the way back to Dublin and a flight home, we stopped for one parkland-style round at Concra Wood, located 60 minutes north of Dublin and just outside Castleblayney in County Monaghan. It’s not why so many of us make the trek across the pond, but after four days of battling the elements and searching for balls in hay up to our knees, it was a refreshing change.
Concra Wood debuted to acclaim in 2008. For the first time, two of Ireland’s favorite sons, the nephew and uncle pairing of Christy O’Connor Jr. and Sr., combined to build a stroll through wooded landscape that tilts down to Lough (Lake) Muckno and offers views stretching across the Monaghan Drumlins to the Cooley and Mourne Mountains to the east, and the Slieve Gullion and Mullyash Mountains to the north.
“The beauty of Lough Muckno is one of Ireland’s best-kept secrets,” O’Connor Jr., once said. Eleven of the holes play to the water’s edge, sometimes in a most inhibiting manner. Like all great courses, each hole at Concra Wood requires a combination of thought and precision, and at all times there is the lough with the mountains behind to distract and take the mind from the task at hand.
But at no point did I forget that I was wild for the Wild Atlantic Way and mindful of the fact that for five glorious days, Irish eyes had smiled upon me.
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