Ballybunion, Old Course

The club nearly failed before it had begun: founded in 1893 on the dunes south of the town, it was rescued early in the twentieth century by an investment that also paid for nine new holes, and it reached eighteen in 1927. Tom Watson first played here in 1981 and remodelled the Old Course in 1995 into what is played today. Bill Clinton came in September 1998, and there is a statue of him with a club in the town.

The Old Course is 6,802 yards from the blue tees, par 71, and its holes run along the tops of the dunes above the beach, so a green can sit with nothing behind it but the Atlantic. Its remoteness has kept most championships away; the Irish Open came once, in 2000. The second course, the Cashen, was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in 1984.