Three Kerry courses in Golf Digest Ireland’s Top 10

WE’RE back to golf course ratings again and Golf Digest Ireland have released their Top 100 Golf Courses in Ireland for 2020, which sees three Kerry courses in the Top 10.

Everyone has their own ideas on just what makes a good golf course and where each of Ireland’s top courses would be ranked, but some of these ratings take everything into consideration including clubhouse facilities, scenery, presentation of the course, etcetera.

For what it’s worth, I would rate a course purely on the design and the challenge that it presents, but then I’m not in the business of rating courses, and as Ben Hogan famously said: “I can’t define what a good golf course is, but I’ll know one when I see it”, and that just about sums it up for me.

Everyone raves about Royal County Down. I’ve played it and would argue that there are too many blinds shots, and for that reason I wouldn’t rate it so highly.

The same goes for Lahinch, which certainly doesn’t rate as high as number four for me, and I much preferred it before Martin Hawtree’s re-design because I hate to see golf courses that are over one hundred years old being changed, and I’d leave well enough alone, but that’s just me.

Anyway, for the record, Ireland’s Top ten are (in order): Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, Portmarnock, Lahinch, Tralee, Ballybunion (Old), Waterville, Co Louth (Baltray), The European Club and Adare Manor Resort.

The top ten are the same as last year; in fact the top 20 are the same as last year also, with a few minor changes.

Ballybunion is up one and Waterville is down one in an otherwise similar top ten.

Dooks is the next best rated course in Kerry, up two places from last year at number 22, followed by Killarney’s Killeen course which has dropped five places to number 36.

Ballybunion’s Cashen course is in a very disappointing 60th place, maintaining last year’s rating, while Dingle’s links at Ceann Sibéal is up four places to number 72 and Killarney’s Mahony’s Point is down two places at number 93 as the final Kerry course in the top 100.

On the plus side, three Kerry courses in the top 10 and 8 in the top 100 is indeed a fair achievement for the county, but I am rather disappointed to see the Killeen course at Killarney dropping five places, because for my money it is the arguably the second best inland course in the country after Adare, while Ballybunion’s ever-improving Cashen course languishes at number 60 and is certainly a much better golf course than the rating would suggest.

As an aside to the main article, Golf Digest Ireland also published their top 30 links courses and top 30 inland courses with Ballyliffin replacing Adare in the top ten and Dooks improving to number 18 on the links list, while Killarney’s Killeen makes it up to number 10 on the inland list.