"A shower or rain," as they say in Ireland, washed down as we trudged off the fourth green. By the time we stood on the fifth tee, facing the sea and a group of islands called the Skerries, the sun was back out and a rainbow had formed, its western leg marking exactly the spot to land your drive. Not wanting to damage the rainbow, I pulled my drive well left into the tall grass.
It is impossible to overstate the grandeur and the challenge of Portrush. If I had to play only one golf course for the rest of my life, this would be it. (It might be Pine Valley if Pine Valley had an ocean.) There is no hole anywhere quite like the fourteenth at Portrush, which is called Calamity, an outrageous understatement. It's a 213-yard par three over a huge chasm that drops down sharply from the right side of the green. The smart play is to ignore the green and to aim the tee shot to the left of the putting surface toward a little dell called Bobby Locke's Hollow. It was from this spot, in four rounds of the only British Open played at Portrush, in 1951, that Locke got up and down in par.
Just a couple of miles west of the grotty town of Portrush is prettier Portstewart, where the golf club has forty-five holes, eighteen of them comprising the Strand course, which was our biggest surprise on the trip. I can't think of another first tee as spectacular as the one that opens the door to the Strand. The view sweeps along the Atlantic beaches, over to Donegal--in the Republic of Ireland, fifteen miles away (which offers another pair of great links courses). The Strand's first fairway is so far below the tee that hang time on an average drive seems to stretch to minutes. The grass-covered sand hills are epic in size, and the fairways snake between them as if laid out by the world's greatest golf architect. Most tees on the front nine are raised, and many approaches are to elevated greens. In addition to the ominous high grass on the dunes by the fairways, there are vast patches of sea buck thornbushes to add to the wayward player's misery.
A full summer's day of golf can be had by driving just twenty minutes from Portstewart along the coast to Castlerock and tackling its very pretty and friendly eighteen. Our competition partner Dr. Nutt turned up in the afternoon to show us his club. As a former captain, he knows it well and speaks of it lovingly. He seemed especially pleased to show us its signature hole, the par-three, 200-yard fourth, which they call Leg of Mutton after the shape of the fairway. Here the problem is a meandering stream on the left, and the local rule is that a ball in the stream or on its left bank is out of bounds. On the right run the railway tracks, which seemed to exert an odd magnetic attraction, pulling the good doctor's and my own first tee shots out of bounds to that side. Next time, I'll take a mid-iron and hope to get up and down.
Castlerock lacks the drama of both Portrush and Portstewart, but like Ardglass after County Down, it rebuilds the ego. The eighteenth is an interesting finisher. Tee shot down to Bad Boy's Corner, left of the towering dune. Then a blind approach to the green. With Dr. Nutt suggesting the club, I parred out.
That most of Northern Ireland's courses are underplayed is due, of course, to the pall of violence that has hung over the province. But the Troubles have so far posed no great threat to tourists, even during the tensions that usually arise in July when the Protestant associations undertake their annual marches--sometimes provocatively through Catholic neighborhoods. The best courses are distant from the regular trouble spots. The occasional British Army helicopter passing over County Down's first hole, or along the coast by Portrush, are reminders of the Troubles but are not disruptive enough to make a plausible excuse for a misfired approach.
The conflict in Northern Ireland has been so bitter and the legacy of death and violence so vivid that it is prudent to be cautious in predicting peace. Nonetheless, the Troubles seem to be coming to an end, however slowly and despite spasms of violence from both sides. The British and Irish governments are pressing the peace talks, with the active mediation of the United States. The constituency for violence on both republican and unionist sides is shrinking, and the two sides seem to recognize that compromise is ultimately their only choice. My advice would be to get to Northern Ireland quickly, while you can still get a tee time.
