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IRISH GOLFING:
The best of the East
By: Elisabeth Ann O’Hearn Doehring
 | | Number seven at the famous European Club links course, is a par four 470-yard hole, guarded by high marram grass. It is ranked by GOLF Magazine as one of “The 100 Greatest Golf Holes in the World.” |
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Give Pat Ruddy a pencil and a little drawing space, and golf courses appear as if by magic.
The young lad in Miss Claire’s classroom in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland always had his head tucked in a book. Other classmates never understood the boy’s keen interest in his studies. But there was a method to his madness— using every inch of white space on the page as well as filling in the rims of his textbooks; Ruddy was making his dreams come true at an early age.
 | | Fairway and green at the 11th hole of the European Club. Facing the Irish Sea, Tara Hill appears in the background on a sunny day in Brittas Bay, County Wicklow. |
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Golf was in his blood, and young Ruddy would drive his bike nearly twenty miles just to play the game.
Fifty years and thirty-five Irish golf courses (and two Canadian courses) later, the boy from Ireland’s west coast has more than a textbook corner for scrawling his drawings. Ruddy sits today in a home studio office, overlooking the famed Irish Sea, where he creates his freehand sketches in notebooks and on large sheets of paper.
Along Ireland’s east coast is the famed European Club. Situated in County Wicklow in the town of Brittas Bay, this club is a Ruddy trademark. A true links course, the European Club measures 7,368 yards long. One of only twenty courses in Ireland featuring fairway irrigation, it has hosted the winners of no less than 43 major PGA championships including Tiger Woods, Mark O’Meara, Johnny Miller, Nick Faldo, and Ian Baker-Finch. Only two years after the course’s 1992 opening, it has garnered countless worldwide honors from being named as “One of the Hidden Gems of the World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses,” “One of the Best 100 Golf Holes in the World,” “Two of the 500 Best Golf Holes in the World,” and a ranking of “Number NinetyOne of the One Hundred Golf Courses in the World in 2005,” all by GOLF Magazine, to being named “Sixth on the List of of Ireland’s Thirty Greatest Golf Courses” by the Irish Golf Institute.
Ruddy says, “Playing a good golf course is like a good life or a good meal. You should enjoy each hole as you would each chapter in your life and as much as you would each individual course of a good meal.”
The famed twelfth hole boasts the longest green in the world. Two-putting is a major accomplishment, one-putting a miracle.
Another Pat Ruddy course, co-designed by Ruddy and his late friend, Tom Craddock is Druids Glen. The vision of the late Hugo Flinn, this Irish golf resort is nestled among the Wicklow Mountains and the Irish Sea in Newtownmountkennedy, an area just thirty minutes south of Dublin.
Set among the 400-acre Druids Glen estate, the courses of Druids Glen and its sister course, Druids Heath, are steeped in four centuries of rich Irish history. From the famous Woodstock House, which dates back to 1770 (rockers Rod Stewart and Stevie Winwood recorded albums within the acoustic expanse of its famed main dining room walls) to the spell-binding Druids Altar on the twelfth hole (predating the Pyramids of Egypt), Druids Glen offers eighteen holes of golf sculptured within a worldclass golfing retreat.
Color abounds off the fairways of Druids Glen. The eighth and twelfth holes are two of the most beautiful you will play anywhere in the world. Both are par threes, surrounded by water and exquisite floral arrangements. Plush with azaleas, magnolias, wild and cultured rhododendron, hydrangea, and centuries-old redwoods, navigating this course takes one on the most sensate of golfing experiences. On a clear day, you can see Mount Snowden in Wales off in the distance.
An amazing feature to playing at Druids is the total peace and commune with nature. A myriad of wildlife and a cornucopia of flora and fauna abound. Play at Druids Glen is leisurely; yet a round is completed in four hours. It is a place where comfortable Irish time fits visitors from all over the world—including many visiting Floridians.
The famed Golf Academy at Druids is run by PGA touring professional George Henry. It features twelve covered bays, two putting greens, and state-ofthe art technology and instruction.
Celebrating only its ten year anniversary, Druids Glen was recently named the 2005 European Golf Resort of the Year by the International Association of Golf Tour Operators (for more information visit www.iagto.com).
Attached to Druids Glen is the five-star Marriott, complete with bars, some of Ireland’s finest restaurants and the country’s best full-service family breakfast (from fresh fruits, porridge, and omelets to the famous Cashel Irish blue cheese), conference and banquet rooms, and a splendid spa and health club (featuring an indoor lap pool).
Sixteen greenkeepers keep the Glen humming. The grounds glow with a rich and meticulous appearance. Denis Kane, director and chief executive of this resort, has a topnotch staff—the service seems effortless and always discreet. Golfers flock to the resort for its impeccable golf and the genuine Irish hospitality from such outstanding Druids Glen staffers as Jane Balfe.
An affable fellow of humble proportions, Kane reflects on his guests and golfers, “There is a sense of arrival when you drive through the front gates. People always seem to marvel at the seventeenth hole and old clubhouse on the left. To the right they are struck by the natural beauty of the first fairway.”
In addition to being chosen as the venue for the European PGA Tour’s Irish Open from 1996 – 99, Druids Glen has been named the European Golf Course of the Year in 2001and 2002.
Whispers of the ancient game of golf greet Americans at Ireland’s top two east coast courses of Druids Glen and the European Club.
After Miss Claire’s class ended, some five decades ago, the young Ruddy would head for the County Mayo golf course. Lying on his back, he would munch away on a candy bar; all the while staring at the clouds rolling past overhead. Only a true architectural dreamer could have created Ireland’s richest golfing dreams.
(This is the first in a two-part series on “The Best of Irish Golf ”. Next month, the “Best of the West” will be featured.)Elisabeth Ann O’Hearn Doehring is a travel writer for “Splash! Magazine” and “Gulf Breeze News.”
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