Guinness, soup & sandwiches.
Golfing brothers Andrew
& Paul Marshall join a
golf tour in a magical
corner of Ireland to play
seven classic courses...
Ah...the joys, frustrations and vagaries of links
golf, where a well-executed shot can get an
unfortunate kick and end up in a pot bunker,
or a mishit shot may get a lucky bounce and
finish on the green. Links courses with their
unique characteristics retain their allure as the
game’s original and purest form – and some of
the world’s best can be found in the wild and
rugged north-west corner of the Emerald Isle.
It’s early May and the start of a week-long
golf tour organised by North West Coast
Links, where we are joining half a dozen keen
golfers (Sam and Dan from Australia, Jo from
Belgium, Kaia from Norway, Bo from Sweden
18
Destination Golf .TRAVEL
Castlerock 1st with caddie.
and Peter from Canada), to tee it up for seven
magnificent rounds in County Londonderry,
County Donegal, County Sligo and County
Mayo. Just uttering the names of the courses
on the schedule such as Castlerock, Ballyliffin,
Portsalon, Donegal, Lough Erne, Enniscrone
and Carne is enough to get the golf juices
flowing.
Some layouts such as Castlerock and Portsalon
are old-fashioned local-style links where
golf has been played for over a century,
whilst others such as Carne and Ballyliffin’s
Glashedy Links are relatively recent creations
that still look as though they have been
part of the landscape since then. All the
key links ingredients are here in abundance:
fast undulating greens, blind shots, dunes
rising above fairways like skyscrapers, deep
pot bunkers, hidden greens and weather
so changeable, that you find yourself in a
rainproof jacket one minute and a tee-shirt the
next.