A Love Letter to Lahinch

On leaving Dublin we may betake ourselves southward to the very charming course of Lahinch in County Clare, where, if the holes are rather unduly blind and put a great premium on local knowledge, the golf is yet intensely enjoyable. The greatest compliment I have heard paid to Lahinch came from a very fine amateur golfer, who told me that it might not be the best golf in the world, but was the golf he liked best to play. BERNARD DARWIN

Links season is upon us, with weeks of play upon the ancestral golfing grounds of Scotland and Ireland.  And this year takes us to two gems that we've not seen previously, unless you happened to be on the grounds for that 1951 Open Championship.

Here's a quick precis of the schedule:

The Irish Open - Lahinch  July 4th-7th.

The Scottish Open - The Renaissance Club  July 11th - 14th.

The Open Championship - Royal Portrush  July 18th - 21st

The Senior Open - Royal Lytham & St. Annes  July 25th - 28th

Usually we add the Women's British to finish this list, but this year they'll be at Woburn, an inland English course.  The Scottish is at a newer venue, a Tom Doak design in East Lothian that will be of interest to architectural geeks and your humble blogger, though I repeat myself.  But it's the Irish venues that have me excited this year.

In 2007 the bride and I made our first joint trip to Ireland, covering the west coast from Kerry up to County Sligo.  For those unfamiliar with the territory, that's an insane itinerary covering far too much ground, leading to accusations that I was running a golf prison.  You'll understand that that's a result of your humble blogger wishing to play every links I've heard of... the problem of course being, that's all of them.

We finished our trip with two full days at Lahinch, and we adored the town and its links.  Lahinch is a familiar name to traveling golfers, as it's a regular stop on the typical Southwest Ireland rota, along with Waterville, Tralee and Balybunion.  One can be on the first tee at Lahinch with the hour of touching down at Shannon Airport, though just because you can does not mean that you should.  Lahinch is far too special to play groggy from travel...

Lahinch is often referred to as the St. Andrews of Ireland, though that does seem a stretch to me.  It's a good golf town for sure, though what I like best was that the golfers coexist peaceably with the surfer dudes and trailer parks as well.  It's it's own lovely place, I just think the St. Andrews analogy is unnecessary.  Did I mention the surfer dudes?

This was early morning, when it was still quite cool, but these crazy kids....

It's also got that SoCal vibe, with this view from the course reminding of Torrey Pines:

It's just a beautiful spot, with headlands North of town offering a wonderful view:

The beginning of the links are in the left of that photo, though it doesn't quite do them justice.

As Ran Morrissett notes in this review of Lahinch, it would be difficult to find grounds better for golf of the links persuasion than this.  He compares it to Royal Portrish, and that comparison is more apt than the previous one, though sham on Ran for for his redesign that precludes me from grabbing some of his text.  But this aerial view from the Euro Tour's Instagram account will make this point clear:

The pleasures of Lahinch start with the architectural credit, which is typically attributed to Old Tom Morris and Dr. Alister MacKenzie, two of the greats but names seen together nowhere else of this great planet.  From the club's website comes this description of Old Tom's work:

In 1894, Old Tom Morris was commissioned to make full use of the natural links terrain, especially the giant sand dunes at Lahinch. Old Tom believed that Lahinch was the finest natural links course that he had seen. Two of Morris’s creations were the famous Klondyke (4th) & Dell (5th) holes, which are still in play today. These iconic holes continue to be the most memorable talking points for first time visitors to Lahinch and are seen locally as fitting tributes to the great Scotsman.

Klondyke and Dell are two of the craziest golf holes you will ever see, and this week you'll have the chance to watch some of the greatest players in the world take them on.  Many will have never seen anything like it, and I'll not be happy unless a pampered professional's head explodes on air.

We'll get back to those two holes in a bit, but Shack scores this timely interview with host Paul McGinley, who is most responsible for the choice of venue:

GS: How did Lahinch’s selection happen?

Paul McGinley: In the South of Ireland, we've always played Lahinch historically. So we're all very familiar with it and we’ve all won around there. The irony is, the only guy of all the Irish guys on tour, other than [Shane] Lowry, that hasn't won there is Rory. All the rest of us have won around Lahinch. So we're all very familiar with it growing up. And the second thing is, everybody seems to love Lahinch. The fact that the 18th and the golf course goes right up to town with the town nestling around it and you’ve got the ocean framing the other side. So when I was asked to host by Rory you know when I take over the hosting role, I went away and I thought okay, now where are we going to go what venue are we going to? Knowing that The Open was going to be at Portrush and knowing that the commercial market as well as the spectator market was going to be very much gravitated towards golf and anyone from Dublin, the top half of the country was going to gravitate towards the Open Championship.

So we started looking around at potential venues and I thought, “you know what, the one outstanding one here is Lahinch.” It haven't been held before and I think that's a golf course certainly worthy of hosting. We could make it a par 70, instead of 72, and then the other box that we ticked is of course the people of Lahinch. And there's three people there that I’ve known very well for a long period of time, Padraig Slattery former captain who was very successful in the PR world, John Gleeson who is a retired oil trader and very successful, and Paddy Keane who is the director of golf there.

I've known these guys personnel for a number of years and I thought wow, the personnel combined with the golf course, combined with the opening of the new commercial market is a package that I believe would work best. Then it was a question of presenting that to the European Tour and the sponsors, Dubai Duty Free, and I became convinced that this is the right place.

All I can say is, thank you, Paul.  And by all means take another $5 out of petty cash, because this is inspires.

Now might be a good time to mention the goats....Back to the club's website:

The Goats of Lahinch

Tommy Walsh, owner of the famous Lahinch goats, is the caddie on the left
The original goats at Lahinch were owned by an old Lahinch caddie, Tommy Walsh, who lived close to the old 3rd tee. Tommy, in the early years of the 20th century, caddied for

Tommy Walsh is the caddie second-from-left.

the great John Ball of Hoylake (Open Champion 1890) when he travelled to Lahinch in the early 1900’s. The goats were a great guide to the weather at Lahinch. If they were seen hovering around the clubhouse the weather prospects were not good. But once the goats made their way out to the outer regions of the sand hills, then weather prospects were good and the day was sure to be fine. 

In the 1960’s when the Club Barometer broke down, Secretary/Manager at the time, Brud Slattery, hand wrote a note on the barometer “See Goats”. In 1956, on the suggestion of Dr. Patrick Hillery, the Club approved an emblem incorporating the thistle, the shamrock and the goat. 

The goats continue to roam across the links without a care in the world and continue to be a source of amusement to members and visitors.

Do you not love this place?  Of course, Geoff asks the necessary tough questions:

GS: Last thing, will the famous goats roaming the property be present during the tournament? 

PM: Unfortunately not. With twenty 25,000 people a day out there and hopefully sellout crowds, their safety would be in question. It would have been nice to have them and we inquired about that, even maybe corralling them just to have them there, but the animal rights groups said no, lets not go there with the crowds. Because if something were to happen it would be a travesty.

 Pity that, but perhaps for the best.

So, care for a deep dive into these two crazy holes?  I thought you would want to go for the ride.

The early routing of the golf course takes you to the north end of the property, where you first meet the Atlantic Ocean.  The third hole plays parallel to the coast, offering the first blind shot.  It's not on topic here, but it's one I liked, playing over a saddle to a fairway running away, but one where the contours of the dunes perfectly frame the shot:

You're at the water, but Klondyke plays directly away from the see.  here's a photo of the tee box from the club's site:

Not too shabby, eh?

So, now let me try to explain this crazy golf hole, using the graphics from the club:

As noted, the hole plays away from the ocean:

The strangeness of the hole is the result of a big honking sand dune blocking the fairway just over 300 yards off the back tees ( I don't know what yardage the big boys will play, though there's not much room to push back the tee.  In fact, I assume this will be a Par-4 this week, though I've not bothered to look).

Here's what the view from the tee looks like:

Even odder, is that just over that dune sits the 18th fairway, and that guy on top of the dune is the traffic cop, who tells you when it's safe to hit.  Note on the right-hand graphic above that the green is readily reachable from a decent drive, especially since the inland direction of the hole renders it downwind most days.

But the green complex sits hard against the club's property line, making the holding of the green often more challenging than the reaching of the green.  Long is OB,. and I'll be interested to see if that's a common hazard this week.

Notwithstanding the club's citation above, Tom Doak attributes Klondyke to another hand, specifically this guy:

The first major redevelopment of the Links took place in 1907 when Charles ‘Mo’ Gibson, a distinguished professional and golf course architect from the Royal North Devon Club (better known as Westward Ho!) was invited to advise on how it should be progressed. Not surprisingly, the main feature was the further development of the sea holes corresponding roughly to the 6th and 7th of today. Gibson’s course in 1909 stretched to 5,893 yards with a bogey of 81.

You might recall that we had the pleasure of playing Westward Ho! on our Wales trip in 2017, it's a storied name in the game's history.  But I choose to credit Old Tom with Klondyke, as it just makes for a better story.

There are traveling golfers who don't like Lahinch because of the number of blind shots, and I feel no need to talk them out of their prejudices.  Rather, I'm happy not to have to compete with them for tee times or rooms at the inn, if they don't appreciate this gem.  But this is why I included that picture from the third tee... There are blind shots and really blind shots, and the second on Klondyke is mots certainly the latter.

Can't leave without also sharing this photo of the bride when she had the misfortune to deposit a shot on that dune.... Good times.

One walks off the Klondyke's gree a mere few steps to the tee of the Par-3 fifth, Dell as it's called.  Dell is a blind one-shotter, oh so blind:

Mad Old Tom nestled an extremely shallow green between two big honking sand dunes, and each day they move a white stone on that front dune to show where the pin is.  One can see a the far right edge of the green, but that is all.  Here's what it looks like from another angle:

Geoff had this one as well:

Ran Morrissett notes that it would have been a crime to not place a green in such a perfect setting, but he didn't have to hit a featherie over that front dune.

I'm dying to see how the players take to this, though of course the Tour has to make it a circus:

GS: Will you be camping out at the Dell to see who the guys deal with a hole unlike anything they’ve played in the world of golf? 

PM: I've been a bit worried about that, and I’ve been thinking a long time about what are we going to do with the Dell. How am I going to convince the players that this is not a bad idea? A par-3 where you hit over a stone on top of a hill to a green that is about eight yards wide. So what we've done is with the European Tour’s ok, is rent the house behind the tee box. And there's a huge big front garden where we've put a grandstand in there and to the right of the tee box we've put a huge big TV screen.

So as the players hit the shot, they’ll see the ball taking off and their heads will then move to their right hand side, they'd be looking away from where the ball is. The ball will be tracked by a TV camera as it goes over the hill and whether it’s on the green or not. So if they have a hole in one they will know before they leave the tee that it's been a hole in one. So it's just creating a little bit of showbiz around a very traditional hole in the golf course, and also taking away a little bit of the edge of the criticism they might have.

Just peachy, golf's first Jumbotron.  At an Old Tom Morris hole....  What's wrong with them knowing where their ball ends up from the crowd's reaction?

Balls will and do bounce all sorts of crazy ways off those dunes, so we'll hopefully get extensive coverage of this and Klondyke at least on Thursday and Friday.

The rest of the course is less quirky, but quite great.  It features all sorts of interesting green complexes, although MacKenzie's more dramatic green contours have reportedly softened over the decades.  This is the lovely 11th green:

And the 16th and 17th:

It's great in every way, and I do hope I've convinced you to tune in.   As McGinley notes, we can argue about better courses all day, but it's very hard to think of one that's more fun.

And one final reader caution...  If you think I'm lovestruck teen babbling on about Lahinch, just wait a couple of weeks until we get to Portrush.