The Full Irish: Cruit Island / County Sligo
Our itinerary takes its first hit, but we still make it to Rosses Point.
Yesterdays itinerary were some of the later adds to our trip, based on things we’d heard whilst planning. The very last thing we added was Cruit Island, a nine-holer that I first heard about while watching a video made by Matt Ginella. (I’m not particularly a fan of his, but it looked so raw and epic I was intrigued.) Then I saw another influencer I don’t much like, Erik Anders Lang, visit the spot. And again, it looked unlike much else I’d seen. But slowly, I realized many others - Tom Coyne included - had listed it as one of the best nine hole courses in Ireland.
So, we added it to the itinerary and as such, it’s worth noting the below:
Founded: 1986
Top100GolfCoursesRating: 53 (Ireland)
Even as a nine-holer, it makes the spot for Top100Golf, and there’s a reason for that.
Sadly, our tee time was set for 9:00AM on Sunday morning and a members tournament for later in the day was pushed forward, cancelling our time and essentially ruling it out for the trip. I was definitely not thrilled but if something had to be cancelled, the very last nine holes we’d added would have been the right call.
Instead, we got to sleep in and have a lovely breakfast at our B&B, the Edenvale B&B in Portnoo. This has been run by Michael and Mary for over 40 years, and let me tell you - Mary might be the GOAT. Not only does she run a TIGHT ship at the house, she also golfs (she’s well into her 70s, I’d guess) and also CADDIES at the club for visitors when asked. If you’re going to N&P, it couldn’t be more ideally located - you can see the clubhouse and first few holes from the car park:
After a Full Irish (delightful!), we headed to County Sligo (Rosses Point).
I first heard about this course from No Laying Up, and I know that some of that crew consider it one of the best courses they played. It’s also a course that hosts a lot of championships and is very highly considered.
Founded: 1894
Designer: George Combe, Harry Colt, Pat Ruddy
Ratings:
Top100GolfCourses: 54 (Britain & Ireland), 8 (Ireland)
The Irish Golfer: 14 (Ireland)
Golf.com: 53 (UK & Ireland)
One of the cool features of Co. Sligo is Benbulbin, the tabletop mountain in the backdrop that’s shown here in a photo I borrowed from Top100GolfCourses. There’s a lot of both myth and history associated with Benbulbin, and apparently its featured in a lot of Yeats’ work, which I can’t say I’ve read much of. All I know is, it looks cool.
I was blown away by Sligo, which was at least partially due to the lovely weather we had - certainly the wind was up and it made some holes a full stroke higher into the wind - but it was SO fun to play. Much easier to find wayward shots, and in a way felt more Scottish than Irish. The backdrop of Benbulbin, but also the sea, beaches and lighthouse made so many holes a virtual postcard.
The 10th hole, named Benbulbin appropriately, was pretty excellent, a tough par-4 that requires two excellent shots to reach in two.
Some of the holes seemed to be impossible tests to hold the greens, most notably the par-3 13th where the green sloped so severely that it was hard to see how to get a tee shot to not roll off into one of the massive bunkers. This par-3, the ninth hole, was a bit more receptive but no less dicey.
I admit going into the round, I really didn’t get what was so great about the course - I don’t think it shows as well on video and perhaps not on these photos. But it’s just so much fun and somehow feels both like the championship course that it is, and also a course you could be a member at and play a few times a week and adore (without getting your teeth kicked in). The drive on the 450-yard par-5 5th hole, “The Jump” from a cliff that must be 60 feet above the fairway, is an absolute delight and all four of us crushed our drives and then watched them run even farther down the fairway. That would literally never get old. Many other holes were similar in their ability to play completely different every day depending on weather, wind or how you would like to attack the challenge.
The following day, we were headed to the dunes of Enniscrone, which honestly sounds like a sentence from Tolkien, and it might even look a bit like that. After that, we have one more 27 hole day - all at Carne. After 11 rounds of golf in 10 days, I have to admit that my feet were feeling every bit of it, and I was hopeful that a night of stretching, Theragun and simple sleep will make it bearable.