The Royal Dublin Golf Club

The golf is out on Bull Island, a nature reserve in Dublin Bay, reached by an old wooden bridge at one end and a causeway further along. The club was instituted at a meeting at 19 Grafton Street in May 1885, played its first golf near the Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park, moved out to the island in 1889 and became Royal in 1891. Harry Colt re-routed the links in the 1920s, and the championship routing played today is his. The Irish Open has been played here six times: 1931, 1936, 1950, and then three years running in the 1980s — Seve Ballesteros in 1983 with 271, Bernhard Langer in 1984 with 267, and Ballesteros again in 1985, beating Langer in sudden death.

The links runs out and back, nine holes away from the clubhouse and nine home. Martin Hawtree modernised it between 2004 and 2006, cutting two new holes and stretching it by about 450 yards to the 7,269 it plays now. The club calls the 18th probably the most famous finishing hole in Irish golf. It is named Garden, after the garden of the old coastguard station, and that garden is out of bounds. The hole is 465 yards, par 4, stroke index 1. Drive down the right and you can carry the out-of-bounds and a lateral water hazard to the biggest green on the course. Christy O'Connor Senior held the professional's job here for 57 years.