Ireland didn’t acquire the nickname, the Emerald Isle, without offering more than its share of enchanting views, and many of them can be found on its golf courses. But to experience the best golf course view of all, visit Royal County Down on your Ireland golf vacation.
There, you’ll eventually come to the ninth hole, a 486-yard par-4 from the championship tees (425 from the daily markers) and one of the game’s most celebrated holes.
From its hilltop tee, the loftiest point on the course, a solid drive sails over a directional pole and floats down to the unseen fairway 80 feet below.
The view from the summit is spellbinding. Beyond the white clubhouse, with its red tile roof and the red brick steeple of the adjacent Slieve Donard Hotel, are the rooftops of the town of Newcastle and the faded purple Mountains of Mourne, whose tallest peak is often wreathed in clouds.
Your gaze also takes in miles and miles of green countryside skirting the Irish Sea, which morphs from grey to azure to cobalt whenever the wind disperses the clouds and allows the sun to light this jaw-dropping panorama.
Then there is the business of playing the hole. The fairway is lined on both sides by sandhills clad in gorse, heather, bracken and long marram grass. Two sentinel bunkers, one smack dab in the middle of the fairway and one to the left, are deftly spotted in the face of a slope about 40 yards short of the green. Clear them, and, if the course is playing fast, your long second shot will skip onto the green.
The combination of challenge and beauty makes this hole one of the greatest par-4s you can ever play among Ireland golf courses or any other.
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