The Full Irish: It's HAPPENING...!

A trip that's been planned for so long is just around the corner.

What were you doing in the spring of 2020? Unless you were actively flaunting regulations, you were in lockdown – though every county, state and country defined that word quite differently. (It would be a fun test to show the folks in the United States whinging about the tyranny of lockdowns to see what actual lockdowns were like around the world, but that’s another topic.)

But me? I was working from home like most of us, and desperately trying to distract my brain from what was happening in the world. It was becoming quite clear that my May 2020 golf trip to Pinehurst was not going to happen, which meant that would roll forward to 2021 (it did!) but in the meantime, I could dream bigger and think of an even more special trip.

Two years earlier, me and three of my closest friends had gone to Scotland and crossed off a few Open rota courses and other gems like Elie and Royal Dornoch, and it was everything we’d hoped for – to the extent that I spent half the flight home trying to dream up what our next trip to Scotland would be, since we’d left so much on the table.

But I’d never played golf in Ireland.

Before I really got down to planning, Ballybunion was maybe one of three courses in Ireland I’d ever heard of. Wow, was there a lot to learn.

Like many golf sickos, I’d read Tom Coyne’s book, A Course Called Ireland, where he walked the circumference of the country playing literally every links course over two months. The walking part of that didn’t sound too appealing but it suggested we could cover a lot of ground in a week or ten days, like we’d spent in Scotland. So, I started making a list. I scoured the No Laying Up Refuge message board, I re-read Coyne’s book, and I looked at a LOT of “Best Of” lists and websites.

I’d never even heard of Carne before reading Tom Coyne and watching No Laying Up. Now it’s on the short list of the courses I’m the most excited about.

After I came up with a list of “must play courses,” I started using Google Maps to plot out a route – there was, of course, a logical order to play these in to limit driving time and unlike Scotland, I was planning on doing the driving myself here. At some point, it struck me that given the relative size of Ireland and the number of courses we wanted to play that … we could kind of do it ALL in about three weeks.

The work of a mad man.

At almost the exact same time I realized this, my buddy Andy texted me and said something along the lines of, “This might be crazy but … what if we just played ALL the courses on our list in one trip?” Great minds think alike.

And as such, The Full Irish was created.

Talking to folks who had made Ireland golfing trips made it clear – there were certain courses we had to prioritize because available tee times were incredibly limited. In fact, our entire trip might have to be rerouted because of that. I created an itinerary that I wanted to happen, but knew that if Royal County Down couldn’t have us until a week after I wanted to play it, we’d simply have to move the trip.

But Royal County Down had room for us on the date we wanted to play it.

Will Royal County Down look THIS good for us? Doubtful, but I can’t wait.

So did Royal Portrush.

So did Ballybunion.

Lahinch, on the other hand, messed up. They’d taken my name down for a date in mid-August, only to realize that this was right in the middle of a few weeks where the course is only open for members. (Note: I think this is a smart and important thing to do. Most of these courses in Ireland, Scotland and England have local members who pay what American consider a pittance to belong – we subsidize that with very high visitors greens fees we are all too willing to pay. But the members still need a chance to play and enjoy their club. So, they should.) Lahinch graciously found a tee time for us that was still within our planned window, so while we indeed will be driving three hours in the opposite direction in order to play it, it’s well worth the diversion.

In fact, of all the courses we wanted to play, only one simply wasn’t available when we could play it. County Louth, aka Baltray, we will have to have that dance another time.

(As an aside, for several other courses I’ve been asked HOW I got a tee time and whether I’m playing as a guest of a member. The reality is that all of these courses have tee times available for unaccompanied visitors, there just aren’t necessarily a TON of them, so you have to be … a bit psychotic and disciplined in calling as soon as humanely possible. Or, use a tour company which we decided against from a cost perspective. For a week or so, that’s the way to go. For three weeks? That’s a year of college tuition.)

The eventual itinerary is 387 holes of golf in 21 days. The courses, which I can type out from memory, are:

• Portmarnock Golf Club

• Ardglass

• Royal County Down (Championship)

• Royal Portrush (Dunluce)

• Portstewart (Strand)

• Royal Portrush (Valley)

• Castlerock (Bann) – 9 holes

• Ballyliffin (Glashedy)

• Rosapenna (St. Patricks Links)

• Narin & Portnoo

• Cruit Island – 9 holes

• County Sligo (Rosses Point)

• Enniscrone

• Carne (27 holes)

• Dromoland Castle (this is our fill in for Lahinch and the only non links course on our trip)

• Ballybunion (Old)

• Dooks

• Waterville

• Lahinch

• Tralee

• Old Head

• The Island

The biggest question is whether I will take more Aleve capsules than the number of holes of golf I’ll play. (Since that’s 387, I hope the answer is no. But it’s still an open question.) We do have two open days in there plus one with just nine holes, but stretching and sleep are going to be paramount. Is that sexy? No, but neither am I. Let’s just deal with it.

For so long, this has been a trip about planning, about random texts to each other about how many pairs of waterproof gloves should we each bring, whether it makes sense, what courses we need caddies for or where the best pub in each area might be.

But suddenly? We’re less than a month away.

This is happening.

The plan is to document the trip here, though I can’t promise any immediacy of posts. (Spoiler: I’m trying to prep a few posts so all I have to do is add photos and some actual “what happened” in between the rest of it, but we’ll see how far I got there.)

The Full Irish begins in country on August 4. Let’s do the damn thing.