Cork Golf Club, Ireland
In the spring of 1897, Maudsley and Sharmon Crawford were sailing the Lee Estuary on their way to the Cork City Regatta. At the time (and to this day), men of means in Cork were yachtsmen. Ireland’s second-largest city is a seafaring town, and the Cork Yacht Club, founded in 1720, is the world’s […]
Ballybunion Golf Club, Ireland
The speech and rhythms of the west country of Ireland are far different from the majestic lilt of Dublin, where English is spoken perhaps more beautifully than anywhere on earth. But the speech of western Ireland reflects the nature of the harsh and terrible land, which that gives off a beauty more memorable than […]
Portmarnock Golf Club, Ireland
Apparently they couldn’t wait for Christmas. But who could blame them, given the sporting potential of the grounds that beckoned W.C. Pickeman and George Ross to the peninsula of Portmarnock, northeast of Dublin? On Christmas Eve 1893, Pickeman and Ross left the tiny village of Sutton, manned a rowboat and skulled across Howth Bay […]
The Royal Dublin Golf Club, Ireland
When the guns on the Western Front fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month of 1918, among the estimated 35,000 Irish who perished in the Great War was the country’s finest golfer. Michael Moran, the first Irishman to win prize money in the British Open, was mortally […]
Rosapenna Hotel & Golf Resort, Ireland
Rosapenna, situated on County Donegal’s Rosguill Peninsula in the extreme northwest of Ireland, was traditionally overlooked when a roll call of Ireland’s great golf locales was taken. The links laid out by Old Tom Morris in 1891 was pleasant enough, but hardly worth a go-at-all-costs pilgrimage, especially considering its remote location. Now, however, the […]
Old Head Golf Links, Ireland
You’re a serious golfer. You have skirted the clifftops at Pebble Beach, maneuvered around the giant sandhills at Ballybunion, genuflected to the golf gods at St. Andrews. If you haven’t yet been to those meccas, you’ve read and dreamed about them. In your wildest fantasies, however, you couldn’t have imagined a golf course as striking […]
Waterville Golf Links, Ireland
Jack Mulcahy, born in Ireland and self-made in America, returned to his native country in the 1950s intending to pursue a gentleman’s sporting life. His love of fishing brought him to Waterville, an eyebrow of a town on Ballinskelligs Bay renowned for its sea trout and salmon fishing, its bird hunting and its immense […]
The Island Golf Club, Ireland
It all began with four men in a boat. The year was 1887, in the small village of Malahide just north of Dublin, Ireland. The crew was comprised of a lawyer, a brewery owner and two bankers. They were good friends, this intrepid foursome, confirmed bachelors and golf addicts. For some time, each had […]
Tralee Golf Club, Ireland
The elderly gentleman clapped his hands and signaled thumbs-up as he chugged by in a golf cart on the 12th fairway of Tralee Golf Club. Considering I had just played a 9-iron lay-up and still sat 100 yards shy of the green on this long par 4, I wondered if he were complimenting me […]
Ardglass Golf Club, Ireland
The 1st tee of Ardglass Golf Club backs up the clubhouse, a nearly 700-year-old castle, and points the golfer toward a prospect as exhilarating as it is dangerous: a drive over 40 feet of imposing black cliff bordered by the Irish Sea on the left. Add first-tee jitters and loitering spectators to this mix and […]
