Michigan Golf Journal October 2021

The Irish Links Experience Without the Big-Course Green Fees By Tony Dear You’ve saved and planned for months/years and, at last, you’re heading east across the Atlantic to the Emerald Isle for two weeks of world-class golf and the sort of hospitality you’ve read about in tourism guides but didn’t think actually existed. Your itinerary has been set in stone for ages and likely includes any number of fabled links – Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, Portmarnock, Co. Louth (Baltray), The European, Waterville, Tralee, Connemara, Carne, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo (Rosses Pt), Donegal (Murvagh), Ballyliffin and Rosapenna where Michigander Tom Doak’s amazing new St. Patrick’s course opened in June. It’s a pretty impressive list of venues from which to choose. What will make your trip even more memorable though, is finding an obscure links course your friends won’t know about but which you have time to visit having played a big-name course in the morning. At the lesser- known links, you’ll find the same expansive landscapes and firm, sandy turf as at the more famous courses, but you’ll pay half or even a third as much to play them and be welcomed like a long-lost member. Michigan Golf Journal Ireland lf n a Budget Rosslare Golf Links