Royal Country Down Golf Club - Northern Ireland

Many knowledgeable golfers consider Royal County Down in Newcastle, Northern Ireland, to be the greatest golf course in the world. It is certainly one of the most surpassingly beautiful, with the course following the crescent of Dundrum Bay and looking across the spire of the Slieve Donard Hotel and the town to the Mountains of Mourne, with their chameleon's coloring of smoky purples, blues, and greens. The fairways glide through galleons of yellow-flowering gorse and clusters of "eyebrow" or bushy-topped bunkers. County Down was founded in a meeting at Mr. Lawrence's Dining Rooms, Newcastle, in 1889, and Old Tom Morris was brought over from St. Andrews, Scotland, to design the course for a fee of £ 4. By 1902, only six of the original holes remained, with George Combe, an early captain, carrying out the alterations, and further refinements were overseen by Harry Colt in the 1920s. The splendor of Royal County Down was best summed up by Bernard Darwin: "It is perhaps superfluous to say that it is a course of big and glorious carries, nestling greens, entertainingly blind shots, local knowledge, and beautiful turf. . . the kind of golf that people play in their most ecstatic dreams.

Portstewart Golf Club - Northern Ireland

Portstewart Golf Club has a long pedigree, having been founded in 1894, but for almost a century it was overshadowed by Royal Portrush, its neighbor just three miles east along Northern Ireland's Antrim Coast. Then in 1990 Portstewart unveiled seven new holes, carved out of 60 acres of giant brambled and this­tled sandhills that the members had long coveted for their course. Now Portstewart no longer takes a backseat to any links in Ireland. The dramatic new holes, molded through the steep, saw-toothed dunes piled high with blankets of buckthorn and marram, were designed not by a big-name architect but by member Des Giffin, a math teacher at the local grammar school. The first hole, with its crow's nest tee, was unchanged and remains one of the best in Irish golf, looking down at Portstewart Strand out to the dome of Mussenden Temple in the distance, built by the Earl of Bristol on his 19th-century estate overlooking the Atlantic. The newer holes then race through the dunes, playing as Nos. 2 through 8. The back nine is quite different from but complements the front, with lower­lying holes straddling the banks of the River Bann as it arches its way slowly out to the sea and inland through green quilted fields.