Royal Portrush Golf Club is an oversize golf course in every
sense. Located on the northern shore of Northern
Ireland, it runs along the Giant’s Causeway Coast, one of the most monumental meetings
of sea and land in all the world, where limestone cliffs sculpted into strange
shapes by the tides rise from wide arcs of beach to meet the green and rolling
glens of Antrim.
Legend has it that this aquatic highway is the work of Finn
McCool, an Irish giant who was bent on building a road to reach his love, a lady
giant who lived on the Scottish isle of Staffa. Finn never completed the
project, encountering a rival and apparently equally giant suitor, at whom he
hurled a mighty rock that missed its target and landed in the sea. Thus was born
the Isle of Man.
The golf course at Portrush is the work of a different sort
of giant, Harry S. Colt, one of the titans of golf course architecture. While
golf has been played at Portrush since 1888, Colt laid out the present-day
course in 1932. Portrush is links golf in its most blissfully intense and
elemental state. The championship course at Portrush is named Dunluce, and
another 18-hole course, Valley Course, is a fine old links as well.
The Dunluce course is set on high ground so that, unlike many
links courses, there is a constant awareness of the sea and exhilarating vistas
at every turn. Portrush has few bunkers and no holes of unusual length, and the
members are proud of the almost complete absence of blind shots. The challenge
is posed not by artifice but by the fresh, constant Atlantic winds and the
certainty that any ball that strays from the tossing fairways will find itself
in the tall, clingy sea grasses that eddy around banks of red-berried sea
buckthorn, wild rose bushes with lavender blooms and forests of ferns.
Portrush has the great distinction of being the only course
outside England and
Scotland to host the British Open,
which was played there in 1951. The winner was Max Faulkner, at the time famed
for his canary-yellow plus-fours and collection of 300 putters, one of which had
a head made of driftwood and a billiard cue for a shaft.
The late Fred Daly was born in Portrush and learned the game
as a caddie there. Daly went on to win the British Open in 1947, becoming the
only Irishman to have his name engraved on the Claret Jug. He later donated his
championship medal to the club.
The first four holes of the course all run along the coast
road, away from the attractive town of Portrush,
which flourished as a Victorian seaside resort where Ulster’s
well-to-do came to take the sea air. The 5th hole, known as White Rocks, twists
and tumbles down to a green perched on the chalky cliffs above the sea. It is
one of the most famous holes in golf. From the tee, the fairway swoops to the
right and the golfer must pick out a white marker in the dunes over which to
drive.
Another celebrated hole at Portrush is the 14th, fittingly
named Calamity Corner. It is a 213-yard par 3 that into the wind requires all of
driver. If the Causeway Coast is Northern Ireland’s 17-Mile Drive, the
14th is Portrush’s version of the 16th hole at Cypress Point. From the tee
looking out toward the green is the backdrop of the handsome white and gray row
houses of Portrush, with their steeply pitched roofs overlooking the harbor.
The 14th is the centerpiece of a wonderful three-hole loop
that begins with the 13th hole, which climbs uphill as it doglegs from right to
left to a green that overlooks the Skerries, and finishes with the 15th, which
swings from left to right as it skitters downhill.
With its unabashedly natural links and rich history, Royal
Portrush is a true goliath of a golf course on the Giant’s Causeway
Coast.
