The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Golf in Northern Ireland
THINGS have changed greatly since a first golfing visit to Northern Ireland in the early nineties. Back then, after a pleasant first evening in a hotel on the banks of Strangford Lough, my hosts had taken me to a nearby club to meet the locals they had coerced into introducing me to their course.
The briefest of pleasantries had been gruffly exchanged when one of the trio looked me sternly in the eye. “We just need to give you a warning,” he began portentously: “Around here it doesn’t matter how bad a shot you hit, you never, ever say you’re going to hit a provisional.”
My, how they laughed, as I fumbled for a response that would be sufficiently neutral to minimise hostilities over the ensuing four hours. Looking back, the resolve of those seeking to create a tourist industry in the midst of the Troubles is only to be admired, but times have moved on and a part of the world that has much in common with Scotland is beginning to thrive.
The Mourne Mountains may not be on quite the scale of Ben Nevis or the Cairngorms, but they are beautiful and challenging to walkers in their own right, while the question of whether whisky or whiskey is the superior distillation is essentially a matter of personal taste, but it is the sport Scots gave to the world that is providing the greatest stimulus to their efforts to attract visitors.
Previous visits in recent years had brought exposure to the magnificence of Royal County Down and the ruggedness of Royal Portrush, and the selection of the latter as host for next year’s Open Championship represents a spectacular opportunity that looks unlikely to be missed as the event is staged off the British mainland for only the second time in history, some 68 years after the same venue witnessed Englishman Max
Faulkner’s victory.
This invitation, though, was a potentially treacherous one, with the first of four rounds to be played as part of an international team taking part in the pro-am ahead of the Northern Ireland Open at the plush Galgorm Resort and Spa, after more than two years without swinging a club in anger. That was quickly remedied after a couple of lost balls early in the round on a suitably challenging parkland layout, while for all that a sixth-placed finish in the 52 team event owed little to my efforts, Scottish honour was retrieved by the end of the week by young Calum Hill, who posted an astonishing 19-under-par total to take the title, with compatriots Scott Henry and Ewen Ferguson finishing second and seventh respectively.
Our teammate for the day, Switzerland’s Joel Girrbach, was not too badly traumatised by what we had witnessed either, just missing out on a top 25 finish in the European Challenge Tour event, but while they were getting down to their business, so were we as we went into full tourist mode on the seaside, playing over the courses which annually host the Causeway Coast Golf Tournament.
Truth be told, the heat of the early part of this summer had taken its toll on the patchy fairways of the windswept Mussenden course at Castlerock, which may not have been at its best as a consequence but is highly regarded, as it weaves its way through the linksland dunes.
From there it was off to the second of our bases, Bushmills, the town which lays claim to housing the world’s oldest licensed distillery, just down the coast from next year’s Open venue. With the British Boys Championship being held that week on its Dunluce course, we were given the chance to play over The Valley, its sister course that is largely overlooked, but memorable in its own right, slightly shorter, but very similar in feel, slotted between the championship course and the shoreline and in superb condition, the greens in particular.
That may be partly down to having to deal with considerably lighter traffic than The Dunluce, but those failing to take the chance to play both courses at Royal Portrush are missing a treat, not least because, lying slightly lower, The Valley mostly feels better protected from the elements, at least until you get to the 18th
tee, elevated and offering the distraction, to its rear, of classic seaside scenes across Portrush beach, ahead of taking on the challenge of hitting what looks, from such height, the narrowest of curving fairways.
The real treat was saved for last, however, with a visit to The Strand at Portstewart, another course that has not enjoyed the same level of attention as Royal Portrush, with its Open Championship credentials or Royal County Down, which has been placed at the top of some world rankings, as if such listings can ever be anything other than meaninglessly subjective.
That said, whereas Royal County Down is worthy of comparison with my own favourite, Turnberry, as a near-perfectly manicured test of skill and judgment when at its best, while there is something of the wild delight of Royal Dornoch about both Royal Portrush courses which look to have been formed by nature, with designers simply placing greens on the closest areas to flat land that they could find, Portstewart is reminiscent of Royal Aberdeen as a mix of the two, the land largely dictating the layout, but the shrewdest of craftsman’s eyes having been brought to maximising the interest and the challenge.
Admittedly there are more blind shots than would be to the taste of most modern professional players and on a first visit there were even times when we were unsure of which direction to take from the tee, but from the stunning opening hole, setting off from another eyrie-like launchpad, all the way to the admittedly relatively prosaic last two holes, the imagination required to find
a way round makes for four wonderfully fun hours. Nor did it end there, because an additional source of joy awaits at the end of the round with a visit to Harry’s Shack, a seafood restaurant that could hardly be more splendidly situated, tucked in among the dunes on the Portstewart beach, no more than a punched pitch from the clubhouse car park. As also evidenced on our trip during visits to The French Rooms, The Distillers Arms and The Bushmills Inn, all of them on the main road in Bushmills, the growth of the food scene offers further evidence of readiness to welcome the world.
It is certainly hard to imagine a more enticing setting for a meal than driving to Portstewart, parking on the beach as diners do, then enjoying the freshest of seafood served with, on the instructions of Donal Doherty – the eponymous Harry’s son who now runs the business – the sand blowing in through the doors.
There may, then, still be some parts of Northern Ireland in which it feels as if Royal weddings and golden jubilees are being perpetually celebrated, but the hosting of the Open is set to allow this troubled land that has come a long way since the 1990s to showcase some of its most prized assets, on and off the golf course.
BETWEEN COURSES
•A visit to the Giant’s Causeway is a must. Our guide, Billy, was greatly amused to advise us of a recent exchange with a tourist who interrupted him outlining the volcanic activity which formed it 50 to 60 million years ago, to point out that he was talking nonsense because it is only a few thousand years since God made the world. He decided that this might not be the time to recount the alternative fable of the battle between Irish giant Finn McCool and his Scottish rival Benandonner. Whatever version you prefer, it is a fascinating landscape and, for all that the National Trust seeks to direct all-comers through its visitor centre, the option of walking over its roof and walking down to the causeway remains available.
•The Mussenden golf course takes its name from the local Mussenden Temple, a circular 18th-century building that sits perilously atop 120 feet of sheer cliffs, offering a focal point for bracing walks along the Castlerock clifftops and, in another sign of the times, now apparently available for civil wedding ceremonies.
•Another landmark that is not for those cursed by vertigo is the Carrick-a-Rede walk and rope bridge which was previously used by fishermen who had worked out a crafty way of using the natural geology to trap salmon. Swinging above a 30-metre drop, the 20-metre walk to the rocky island can seem a long way on a windy day.