Going for Golf

Royal Dublin

Two clubs live side-by-side in perfect harmony on a beautiful stretch of island which juts out into Dublin Bay: Bull Island, a nature reserve and also home to St Anne’s and Royal Dublin.

It’s not just the setting which helps foster the legend of Royal Dublin – there is also the actual presence of a golfing legend in the form of Christy O’Connor, who joined the club in 1959 and who has lived and breathed its fairways and bunkers ever since on the way to his induction into the Golf Hall of Fame two years ago.

The par-72 course has four par-threes and four par-fives, with the 10th hole taking the title of hardest hole. Anyone taking it on has to carry a drain with the second shot, and many locals simply lay up short, such are the perils. The course was lengthened at the early part of the last decade and is now triumphantly tournament standard. Earlier this summer, it played host to qualifying for the Open Championship, and it is home to amateur stroke play in Ireland.