Royal Portrush

Over the last several years, the most anticipated event for golf in Great Britain and Ireland was undoubtedly the return of Royal Portrush to The Open rota. After a 68-year absence, the Dunluce Links finally received its rightful place on the world stage, delivering a popular Champion Golfer before record crowds. The championship was such a success, the R&A has already decided to bring it back in 2025.

After leaving his mark on the likes of Pine Valley, Muirfield, and Royal County Down, architect Harry Colt was summoned by the members of Royal Portrush in 1929 to begin work on a pair of new courses. The club was anxious to leave behind their original Old Tom Morris layout which lay further inland, in favor of the coastal sandhills along the Atlantic Ocean. The ever modest Colt once regarded his work at Swinley Forest outside of London as “the least bad golf course I have designed,” however after arriving in Portrush and laying eyes on the dunescape which stretched before him, he must have known that claim would have to be rescinded.

The beauty of Colt’s work at Royal Portrush centers around his marvelous routing of the course. The holes on Dunluce wander between the rumpled dunes in a manner that feels completely natural; the same way one might walk the links were it never a golf course. At times these corridors flanked by sandhills feel a bit narrow, with the notoriously thick Portrush rough looming all too close for comfort. But to have skipped these natural fairways in favor of something wider and more forgiving would have been a travesty for such a fine piece of golfing land.