Waterville Golf Links

When John Mulcahy, an Irish-born American, returned to the Emerald Isle to build his dream golf course, he found it on an old abandoned links in the town of Waterville. The original 9-hole course was built in the late 19th century for workers on the transatlantic cable station located nearby. After the cable station closed, that early links was abandoned in the 1950’s, but not before laying the foundation for what would become one of the most celebrated courses in Ireland.

After Mulcahy fell in love with the Waterville property - a peninsula bordered on 3 sides by the Atlantic and Inny River estuary - he commissioned Eddie Hackett, the lion of golf in Ireland, to resurrect the old links. What emerged was quickly recognized as a marvelous test of golf, as well as perhaps the longest course in all of Europe.

The club recently brought in Tom Fazio to implement a multi-year plan which called for a number of enhancements to the course. The combination of a natural seaside links with Fazio - a man who has moved more earth than the Caterpillar corporation - might seem like a dubious pairing, yet the two have gotten along beautifully. Several holes on the front-9, long held as the weaker of the two sides, were either tweaked or redesigned altogether to incorporate more of the dunes and add some much-needed balance between the pair of nines.