Ballybunion: Cashen course
To some all the prizes are awarded. And this stretch of coast was given the best links land you could wish for. The club also chose to build a golf course for golfers rather than spectators. No barren spaces that only come to life when the stands go up. Furthermore the club had the wit to choose the right designer. It is the highest praise, in my vocabulary, to say that it could have been touched by the hand of Eddie Hackett. Wildness is the essence of links golf however well kempt the course it should always feel raw; nature winning over nurture.
The topography is challenging; sandhills where every hump is over 100 feet high and there is not enough flat land for nine holes of parkland golf. Navigating from green to tee is an expedition and the journey onwards is a mission. Yardages are irrelevant when the ground rises before you or disappears without warning. We walked without caddies and saw the marker stones to guide us off the tee but were not confounded by blind shots. Indeed I lost not a ball and played to a very acceptable score. Accuracy is rewarded beyond distance and I can imagine it is a great for match play and a frustrating stroke play course.
But you are not thrown in the deep end from the off but drawn, as if by sirens into a duney seascape so before you know it you are lapped by marram grasses and troughs of humps and hollows not so deep that you cannot see the shore but enough to drown in. Excellent natural turf and small but perfectly formed greens until you realise that the pin is in the one place you do not want to see it; sliding off the deck into a frothing mass of grasses or a greedy bunker. Innocuous holes on paper are rendered fearsome by their positioning and the fearsome looking are often simpler to execute if the mind can be cleared. Five and eight illustrate this very well. The fifth plays 300 yards across the most open landscape but there isn’t very much fairway and the green is on the top shelf of the newsagents and is just as narrow. Not many small boys can get on here. The eighth is a voluminous par 5 of 600 yards but a 200 yard shot over the correct line will bring you within attainable distance of the green or allow you to attack the pin aggressively with your third despite the green being lodged just above, and behind, the top shelf wares. Very clever stuff.
There is the marvel that is the sea to accompany you on numerous holes and bathers crossing the tenth to navigate. Do not be distracted by the strand and it’s worshippers as you play the par 3 eleventh and take your courage with you to the twelfth, another par 3 that would be called a Mass hole elsewhere. Imagine having to leap, 190 yards from a listing ship onto a life raft that is tossed by the storm and you will understand the challenge of flighting a ball across the briny marram grasses to the green. The twisting 15th is one of my favourites swirling through the sandhills and a stiff uphill approach to the green. The closing holes disappoint you neither. The course takes you on a real journey of revelation and wonder bringing contemplation of the depths and the magical vistas of sea and the heavens. You might guess that I rather enjoyed it.
And yet there are plans to change it. Rise up and protest. This is natural links golf.
Thank you very much to the club for allowing us to donate our green fees to Alzheimer’s Society it is very much appreciated. I can also recommend the food in the clubhouse which was generally of a higher standard than local fare. The restaurant was quieter than it should have been as so many people seem to be delivered by coach to the first tee and removed likewise almost before the last putt has been sunk. Do they know nothing of hospitality or the need for hydration?
