Doonbeg

We took the ferry across the Shannon and watched the sea otters play and enjoyed the views across this wonderful coast line and made our way to the slightly bleaker landscape of Doonbeg.  This was a premonition of wild sandhills and the raw energy of the sea. From farmland by the Shannon to rugged linksland.  The architecture of the accommodation and main hotel buildings adds to the foreboding which reminded me of the house in Skyfall with it’s dramatic denouement.

We took advantage of their great rates for twilight golf and a postman who knew his way about.  But whether it was the excitement or the exhaustion we struggled to make sense of any of the opening holes playing a series of very tired shots and compounded the errors as we played out along the, mainly, inland holes.  The routing works well bar those breaking across the first fairway from the seventeenth green to the eighteenth tee box.  The sandhills are immediately evident and contain each hole in it’s own amphitheatre.  Everything was in great condition and the weather was generous for a bay which has a reputation for treachery.

The fairways billow with humps and hollows and are crossed by the odd dry gulch and very occasionally a wet one.  Pot bunkers pierce the fairways like the holes in Liz Hurley’s famous dress encouraging you to look a little more carefully as you plan your approach to the green.

There are five par 5s and five par 3s and three par 4s under 300 yards.  I find the latter really intriguing and absorbing to play as they do not rely on length even if many are uphill.  It requires all the designer’s skill to make them strong components of the whole and they demand the player’s attention.

The second of these is the fifth which corkscrews uphill and right between two large sandhills that frame the bay beyond and funnel the wind over the flag so that anything timid will fall back into the grassy gorge at the foot of the green.  But your heart will be warmed by the views.  It is a perfect bay kept so perhaps by it’s unfriendly rip tides but it instils the course with an added layer of serenity and majesty.  In the gloaming the contours are picked out more cleanly and the light across the sea is magical. 

Perhaps it was this peacefulness and the wholehearted welcome but I finally got my act together and played the last ten in a very acceptable four over.  It is not a fiendish test of golf when the weather is mellow but it would happily provide a few days entertainment and help you digest the enormous quantities of good food served by the hotel.  A very satisfactory end to our break.