Ireland - A selection for the connoisseur
It is well documented that some of the world’s most outstanding golf courses are scattered throughout the south-west region of Ireland. Among the best – but not exclusively so – are Waterville, Killarney, Adare, Ballybunion and Dromoland Castle.
Ballybunion
Ballybunion
Telephone:
+353 68 27146
Email:
Website:
Courses:
Old: 6,802 yards, par 72
Cashen: 6,306 yards, par 72
Herbert Warren-Wind writing in the New Yorker magazine in 1971 said: “I found Ballybunion to be nothing less than the finest seaside links I have ever seen.”
He was doing no more than reflecting the views of the members who somehow knew that, since the day the club was founded in 1893, their links was a treasure waiting for the outside world to discover. Few golf courses have such stunning, natural features and ocean views.
In 1936, the English architect, Tom Simpson, was hired to prepare the course for the Irish Amateur Close Championship. He arrived in a chauffer-driven Rolls Royce accompanied by his glamorous wife, Molly Gourlay, wielding a riding crop and dressed in a flowing cloak and beret. They picnicked on the course from the contents of a giant Fortnum & Mason’s wicker basket, while the white-gloved, chauffeur polished the Rolls. Simpson’s unconventional behaviour and haughty personality made him unpopular and it militated against him being regarded as a hero of classical golf architecture alongside Harry Colt and Alister Mackenzie.
Nevertheless, his legacy is formidable and none more so than at Ballybunion. He made minimal changes, confining his input to what he called finishing touches. Perhaps his greatest ‘gift’ to posterity was realising that the links did not require much ‘correction’ and that nature herself could not be surpassed. Ballybunion remains an elemental, natural golf links with twisting, undulating fairways in deep valleys amid towering dunes beside the ocean where all the challenges are God-made.
There are two courses at Ballybunion. Although built on similar, stirring terrain to the Old Course in the 1980s, in many ways ‘The Cashen’ is more irascible, more spectacular, more flirtatious, more brutal and more unforgiving. In a strong wind it verges on being impossible. The dunes are higher, the valleys deeper, the greens more undulating. Ballybunion’s Cashen Course requires precision – especially off the tee – as fairways frequently disappear around corners. If it were anywhere else it would attract far more plaudits than it does.
