The Full Irish: Enniscrone
We head deep into the dunes.
We are continuing to head west across the northern part of Ireland, and today - thankfully - we only have 18 holes on the docket. Which is fortunate, because todays round takes place at Enniscrone Golf Club.
A few things of note - one is that prior to our arrival, I’d secured buggies (what we Americans call ‘golf carts’) because Enniscrone is one of the few that allows riding without a medical requirement. Golf in general is about walking, and no more so than in Ireland, Scotland, etc. But it was clear to me that todays round was our 12th full round in 12 days, and the next round is 27 holes at Carne.
If I’d made a list before our trip of the courses I was the most excited about, for some reason Enniscrone would have been in the bottom third or so - not because I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I just didn’t know much about it. There’s a No Laying Up Tourist Sauce video that shows it off, and Chasing Scratch went there too - it looks incredible. Maybe it’s the low-key awful logo that had me a little less than geeked over this course in particular.
Like, there’s a world where some people absolutely LOVE this logo but for me it looks like it could be the logo for a slightly skeevy massage parlor on an island somewhere, not the logo of a world class golf club.
Which Enniscrone surely, surely is.
Founded: Â 1974
Designer: Â Eddie Hackett
Ratings:
Top100GolfCourses: 68 (Britain & Ireland), 15 (Ireland)Â
Irish Golfer: 15 (Ireland)
Golf Magazine: 54 (UK & Ireland)
I included the designer because Mr. Hackett, you’ll remember, was the head pro at Portmarnock and is responsible for a lot of amazing courses we’ll be playing, starting here. It turns out my expectations being moderately low made for an incredibly enjoyable day. First off, I ran into the head pro Keith, who was featured in the NLU video and he was an absolute delight, insisting we take a selfie to send on to the No Laying Up gang.
I then played some decent golf, making a birdie on 11 and a host of pars to record a decent score for myself on this trip, where many rounds my score has been fairly poor in relation to my index.
That’s one thing that’s really absurd here - while courses like Royal County Down and Royal Portrush have appropriate tough ratings/slope to indicate how hard the courses are, other courses like Ballyliffin, Rosses Point and Enniscrone seem rated as if they are fairly average in difficulty when they are anything but that. I’m not really sure what’s going on but when Enniscrone is rated as an easier course than my home course, something is amuck.
Like the day prior, we had mostly great weather - I wore pants and regretted it almost instantly. I didn’t regret the buggy as my feet in particular are absolutely howling.
Every course we’ve played, we’ve left with our jaws dropped from time to time and certainly, Enniscrone has more than a few of those holes. On the very first hole, you tee off on flat ground but dogleg up a hill into the dunes. And it’s SICK.
The benches often have maxims on them which are nice and inspirational. I snapped a photo of a bunch.
The par-3 11th is, of course, my favorite since I made birdie but it’s also a great hole, maybe 170 yards on the card but playing uphill into the wind. I hit one of my best hybrids to get to about five feet.
And compared to my tempered expectations, Enniscrone absolutely delivered. In the long run, it’s probably in the lower half of the amazing rota of courses we’ve played on this trip, but that’s no foul to Enniscrone, it’s just elite company that it belongs in but can’t quite always measure up to.
After the round, we headed to Belmullet where we’ll be staying for an actual two whole evenings. Not having to pack in the morning and doing laundry might not sound like blessings but they are surely well overdue.