Fat Guy's Southern Ireland Golf Trip
Fat Guy Review: I have a very limited first-hand knowlege of golf in Ireland specifically, but a pretty decent feel for drinking my way through the Emerald Isle on a 9 day post-college jaunt back in the early '90's. What follows is what I recall, with a little input from some helpful websites (hey, it a few years ago, and you try remembering it all on a steady diet of Harps, bland brown meat, and potatoes).
Get the biggest rental car they got (maybe even a van) and pack smart but light (4 bags of clubs will take up pretty much all of your cargo room in those tiny Eurobox rental cars; the rest of your gear should be compact and soft-case; and pack light--you can't have any qualms about wearing a somewhat soiled pair of khakis while here). Bring 2 rain suits, 2 pairs of golf shoes, and rental car tunes (radio sux over there). Book as loose an itinerary as you can stand while still securing tee times at your Must Play courses; you're highly likely to just stumble into afternoon-killer spots, pubs, castles, tours, etc. you'll want to have time for.
From www.Golfonline.com about packing for and travelling in Ireland:
Road Rules:
A valid U.S. license is sufficient to rent a car in Ireland, but make sure to keep your license on you at all times. Beware: Speed limits are posted in kilometers. Pointing lamely to the "110" sign won't help if the cops pull you over-that's only 70 mph.
Funny Money:
The currency in Ireland is euros, but if you venture into Northern Ireland you'll need to get British pounds. Prices are not cheap on either side of the border.
Tee Times: The Ryder Cup venue, the K Club, is public access. The best courses to sample near the K Club are Royal Dublin (150-170 euros; 353-1-8336346, theroyaldublingolfclub.com ), Portmarnock (165-190 euros; 353-1-8462634, portmarnockgolfclub.ie ) and Druids Glen (175 euros; 353-1-2873600, druidsglen.ie).
Sightseeing:
Find out how Ireland's second-greatest export (after David Feherty) is made at the Guinness Storehouse (353-1-4084800). After the tour you get a free pint. The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl (353-1-6705602) stops at haunts made famous by James Joyce and Brendan Behan.
What To Drink: Guiness on tap. You'll notice a distinct uptick in the quality of the dark Guiness brew from the already-stoudt drafts you get in the States, although it's tough to put a finger on exactly what's different. Fat Guy Tip: If you can bring along a guy who can chug Guiness as fast as he can pour it out of the glass down his throat (like we did), you'll end up drinking for free the whole way across Ireland on friendly wagers won at every pub you stop into, plus you'll make fast friends with the locals.
What to Eat:
Every menu offers an Irish breakfast: A greasy platter of fried egg, potato bread, a rasher of extra salty bacon, tea and a white and a black pudding. These "puddings" are actually pork and bread packed together in patties. Warning: Black pudding gets its color from congealed blood.
Fat Guy Recommendations: The Irish Tourist Board sells B&B vouchers accepted by almost all reputable B&Bs. Reservations can usually be made a day in advance. We literally spent 9 days picking our next destination and lodging with the closed-eyes-finger-point-on-the-map method, and stumbled into unbelievable experiences everywhere we went. One B&B we picked at random had a small castle ruin... in the backyard! Go with the recommendation of the house for local pubs and restaurants.
The Irish people are near-unsettlingly but refreshingly friendly in comparison to we guarded Americans; you'll be hard pressed to walk out of the pub every night feeling like you haven't made 5 or 15 great new friends. Our group spent a night of hard drinking in a pub in Cork getting pretty rowdy and busting the stones of the locals. At the night's end (the pubs close early here), we were the last ones headed out the door when a couple serious-looking rugby-types locked the doors in front of us, blocking our exit. They finally grinned and handed us fresh beers before we dropped our curled fists, then we drank until the wee hours in the closed pub with the owner and a few of his friends. Stuff like that literally happened everywhere we went. Dude, you gotta go.
The first course my fraternity brothers and I stumbled on by the recommendation of our inn keepers was Ceann Sibeal, translated from Gaelic meaning Sybill’s Head, the headland from which the club takes its name.
Founded 1971; Extended 1992
Architect(s): Eddie Hackett & Christy O'Connor Jr.
Location: Sybil Head, W of Ballyferriter, western end of Dingle Peninsula
Fees: EU 55-65 (May-Sept); EU 40-50 (Mar, Apr, Oct)
Address: Ballyferriter, Co. Kerry
phone: (066) 915-6255
From Irishgolf.com: "Set out like an afterthought on the western extremity of the Dingle peninsula, and a little-known but friendly enclave of Gaelic. Hard by the stunning cliffs of Sybil Head, and everything at Ceann Sibeal is in Irish, from the scorecard to the signs on the washrooms. The most westerly course in Europe, the links itself is eloquent in any language, one of Eddie Hackett's most bewitching creations. The setting is mesmerizing, too -- with the Three Sisters rock towering behind the course, and the sea crashing against the cliffs just below."
As we stepped on the first tee, I had a decent buzz going from playing the Panic Game in our rental car. I'll elaborate. Irish roads are barely a lane-and-a-half wide, likely with overgrown rock walls hard on both sides, plus you're driving on the wrong side of the road. So when a "lorrie" comes flying at you from the opposite direction off a blind turn, particularly when riding shotgun on the side where you're used to having control of the vehicle, you panic; you then inevitably stomp on an imaginary brake pedal. So the game is: if/when you panic, you do a shot of John Powers whiskey, until you don't panic anymore. Then a quick stop to rotate into the backseat for the next victim… eventually shots were done for being "mildly concerned".
So, I don't recall a lot of intimate details of the course, except the awesome rumpled linksland, the Gaelic scorecard and signs, sheep grazing on the course (I seem to remember a green or three surrounded by a low electric fence), the wind, a practically empty course, and how much damn fun we had, playing golf the way it was meant to be played: fast and loose, not half as worried about anybody's score as much as we concerned ourselves with fairly rationing the John Powers, busting each other's stones, and drinking in the experience.
The second track we stumbled on from the recommendation of the house only happened to be Ireland's most famous. Packing up hungover from a clifftop B&B at the Cliffs of Moher on our last day in country, we naively asked the lady of the house for the nearest course to kill 2 extra hours before we headed home. She steered us to:
Lahinch
Founded 1892
Architect(s): Alister Mackenzie (with Old Tom Morris, James McKenna, Charles Gibson, John Burke and Donald Steel)
Location: In town of Lahinch, 35 miles W of Shannon Airport
Fees: EU 110
Address: Lahinch, Co. Clare
phone: (065) 708-1003
Known somewhat misleadingly as the St. Andrews of Ireland, Lahinch is a community with a strong sense of connection to the sport. The classic feel of the links is the work of Mackenzie but there is a charm and a quirkiness that belongs only to Lahinch. And you get a glorious whiff of Old Tom Morris at two of golf's most famous and exquisite anachronisms -- the holes named the Dell and Klondyke. The Dell is a short par-3 green completely surrounded by three sand hills. You hit over a painted rock marker on the front hill, and hope. I still curse myself for not getting out of bed in time to play all 18 holes.
T&L Golf 2005 update on Lahinch:
Lahinch Golf Club, Clare
It's been two years now since Lahinch completed an extensive restoration that aimed to take its classic Old course back to the natural design envisaged when Alister MacKenzie arrived to offer his genius in 1927. Not content with the 1894 work of Old Tom Morris, the club had called in MacKenzie, who, among other things, moved all of the holes across a road and closer to the sea and fashioned elevated, undulating greens. MacKenzie's design, in turn, was reworked in the 1930s by a committee of members determined to make the course play easier. Decades later, in 1999, the club hired Martin Hawtree to restore some of MacKenzie's purist architectural touches. The result, now fully grown in, is a highly improved course that, remarkably, retains all of its quirky charm and sense of adventure.
Greens Fee: $175. Tee Times: 011-353/657-081-003 or visit lahinchgolf.com.
Other Irish Must Plays (from what I've read):
Ballybunion (Old)
Old Head
Doonbeg
and
Rosslare Golf Club (Old Course)
Rosslare, Co. Wexford. A much-underrated traditional links dating from 1908, designed by Hawtrey and Taylor. Marvellous links turf and seaside setting (which has led, unfortunately, to some problems with erosion), set in a popular, upscale resort area that is almost unknown in the U.S. Claims to be the driest course in Ireland and rarely closed due to weather.
I didn't play Rosslare GC, but mention it only to tell you about a fantasic nearby small romantic castle we stumbled on as they were remodeling it into a hotel. Cloughearst Castle (near Rosslare Harbor, Carne, Co. Wexford, 053-31441) is the kind of place you go to get engaged.
One last word on Ireland. This is just one man's opinion, but I thought Dublin sucked. It's New York in Ireland. If you've been to the Big Apple, there's not much to see here, unless maybe you're Irish or some huge history buff. Yeah, there's some great divey Irish pubs. But ya know what? There are great dive bars in every big city in the world and great divey Irish pubs all throughout the Irish countryside. Just 'cause these are in Dublin doesn't make them special. We spent one night in Dublin... we got crappy recommendations and directions from locals, one of our crew got pick-pocketed for hundreds of dollars in traveller's checks, another had his jacket stolen, the cabs wouldn't stop for us after a certain hour so we had to walk several miles back to our B&B (no small feat after a full night of boozing in an Irish pub), and the host lady at the B&B where we stayed chewed our ass for being too loud upon our late night return (that last part was justified). The only vaguely redeeming thing about Dublin was The Brazen Head Pub, Ireland's oldest dating back to the 12th Century. It had all the ambience you'd expect, although somewhat watered down by the mobs of tourists passing through for a pint, but even there the bouncers were kinda nasty in a sarcastic, heavily-accented, heavily-slanged way that you could barely even comprehend. They did sell really cool t-shirts.
Done. Kick the rental car into high gear and head back towards Shannon airport. Even though Ireland's rep for lousy food is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, by this point you'd trade the old Billybarool for a greasy New-York-style pizza, some dry clothes, decent radio, SportsCenter, water pressure, your own bed, and a week to dry out from all the Guinness.