The European Club - Ireland

The European Club owes its conception, design, and realization to the vision and determination of Pat Ruddy. Ruddy, who grew up in County Sligo in the west of Ireland, has been something of a one-man band for Irish golf, starting out as the golf writer for the Evening Herald in Dublin as a young man and becoming a leading course architect. The European Club is located about 35 miles south of Dublin, overlooking Brittas Bay. In 1987, Ruddy saw an advertisement in the real estate section of a Dublin newspaper for a stretch of seaside property suitable for a golf course. He arranged for a helicopter ride down the east coast to inspect the site from the air, discovering an Elysium of enormous sand dunes that cried out for a golf course. Ruddy was able to raise the funds to buy the property and then essentially built the course himself, with the help of his children, over a five-year period, completing it in 1992. Ruddy created a true blue, natural links that he has continued to refine over the years, but without the blind holes and quirkiness of some of the older links courses.

The Island Golf Club - Ireland

The Island is actually located on a peninsula, but for much of the club's long history the only way to reach the links was by a large rowboat from the village of Malahide across 13roadmeadow Estuary. The first golfers at the Island were four bachelors from prominent Dublin families, who rode across the channel in 1887 to be able to play golf on a Sunday, which was prohibited at Royal Dublin Golf Club. They persuaded six of their friends, also all bachelors, to form a syndicate to secure the pristine linksland and build a course. For many years, the course could only be played by ticket holders invited by the syndicate, all members of the Protestant establishment. In the 1960s and '70s, The Island fell on hard times, but the members went forward with a successful plan to redesign the course, a 15-year project overseen by architects Fred Hawtree and Eddie Hackett (also during that time a bridge was built to the peninsula). The Island is now recognized as one of Ireland's greatest golfing treasures, with 11 old holes and seven new ones that run through the craggy sandhills with their colorful bunting of gorse, cotton lavender, and wild orchids. The front nine is shorter and tighter than the back, with the 14th featuring the narrowest fairway in Ireland threading along the estuary.