Irish golfers are set to be in Hogs heaven in August
ARCHITECT Robert Trent Jones Jnr expects to unveil his Hogs Head Golf Club design near Waterville in August this year.
Situated on the south side of Ballinskelligs Bay and surrounded by farmland, Hogs Head boasts views of both the Atlantic seascape and the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks with a salmon stream dominating strategy on the first nine holes.
“We have incorporated all the great elements of golf that people seek when they come to Ireland,” Trent Jones Jnr said of the Co. Kerry course.
“Hogs Head is a golf course that will fascinate you and hold your interest every time you play it.”
Jones moved soil and rock walls while resculpting the entire site, which includes a small segment of the former Skellig Bay Golf Course, a victim of the recession.
With more than 120,000 tonnes of sand used to create the playing surfaces, which have been planted with three types of specially selected fescue grasses indigenous to the Irish coast, Hogs Head is designed to offer firm and fast, links-like conditions.
“We provided multiple choices of how to play many of the holes, given the weather of the day,” Jones said. “It will be different every day with that hidden dimension of variable winds.”
Hogs Head Golf Club is the first original golf course design in Ireland by architects RTJ II, which has created more than 270 courses in more than 40 countries.
The new layout at Hogs Head Golf Club is a continuous 18-hole sequence that features dramatic holes routed along the edge of 100-foot coastal bluffs from the eighth to the 16th.
The Finglas River comes into play from the first through to the fifth and pops up again at the 18th, which is an inviting, downhill par-five.
“The owner’s vision is to create a championship-calibre golf course equal to Ireland’s unsurpassed passion for the game of golf, a passion we wholeheartedly share,” Jones said of fellow American Bryan Marsal and his partner Tony Alvarez.
“Our working motto has been, ‘built by friends for friends for fun.’ And we know this course will deliver the fun.”