In the early ’90s, when Yanks began descending en masse on Ireland’s
mightiest links, they first gathered at the magisterial courses of the southwest
(think Ballybunion and Lahinch), then east coast wonders like Portmarnock and
the European Club, and more recently, the raw and secluded northwest.But
without direct flights to Belfast and scared off by decades of
Protestant-Catholic mayhem that claimed more than 3,200 lives, the tour buses
usually missed the island’s greatest golf destinations: Northern Ireland’s
magnificent links, including Ulster’s consensus world top 10s, Royal County Down
and Royal Portrush.
With a new millennium, however, Northern Ireland’s
“troubles” are truly fading into history. Belfast lures the world with hip
festivals and urban renaissance, while County Down and Portrush are finally
awash with busloads of Yanks on holiday. Yet some things may never change. Near
the heart of Belfast, one of Ireland’s revered courses, Belvoir Park Golf Club,
still sits largely undiscovered by Americans—a victim not of tourists’ fears but
of the silly notion that says that while doing Ireland, don’t waste your time
with 6,600-yard parkland courses.
The good folks of Belvoir Park—for
centuries pronounced “beaver,” an English corruption of the loathed French—are
understandably a bit torn about flying under your golf radar. See, they
would love for you to know that in the fall the thousands of oaks, elms, beeches
and chestnuts that color this rolling Lagan River estate might rival the
finest upstate New York courses, or that sages like the BBC’s Peter Alliss have
compared Belvoir’s classic brilliance to Firestone Country Club.
They would
especially like the world’s golf cognoscenti to know that their demanding
course, opened in 1929, was designed by England’s renowned Harry S. Colt. But if
all that prestige means clogging up their cozy car park with Greyhounds, they’ll
do without the fame, thank you.
Welcoming to the public, Belvoir Park’s 850
members are a religiously mixed bunch and (they say) “a bit more middle class”
than another Belfast gem, Malone Golf Club, two miles away in the same river
valley. “With hand over heart,” states member Peter Megaw, a retired banker, “I
can say bigotry hasn’t infected this club, and I wouldn’t stay here if it were
so.”
