The World's Best Golf Trail

TRALEE: SWINGING IN THE RAIN
You could have a reasonably successful career as a meteorologist in Ireland by predicting nothing but showers with occasional periods of rain, or vice versa. We got wet every day of our trip—but never wetter than at Tralee, our stop after Ballybunion.

Tralee opened in 1984. It is seldom ranked among the very best courses in Ireland, although it's plenty nice and it's almost certainly the best golf course that Arnold Palmer ever designed. As we approached the middle of the (terrific) second nine, the wind reached the velocity necessary to propel water through the fabric of my previously reliable Sunderland of Scotland rainsuit, and I stopped trying to clean my glasses between shots. It wasn't just the worst weather I'd ever played golf in; it was the worst weather I'd ever been outside in.

Nevertheless, we all enjoyed ourselves immensely, and we played far better than you might think—perhaps because over-swinging and over-thinking are impossible when simply remaining upright requires most of your concentration. Playing the wind was like solving complex geometry problems: On the 159-yard, uphill 13th hole, whose green is a shallow shelf carved high on the face of a precipitous dune, and where I might have hit a 7-iron if the weather had been calm, I aimed my No. 5 hybrid club 30 yards to the right of the rightmost edge of the putting surface, choked down, swung hard and watched the wind bring my ball all the way back to the hole, which was cut on the far left.

A rainsuit is obviously necessary on any golf trip to Ireland or the British Isles. Almost as useful are rain gloves (which are beginning to catch on in Ireland but are still less widely available there than they are at home), wool socks or their high-tech equivalent (to keep your wet feet warm as you search for missing balls in wet fescue up to your knees), and at least one spare pair of waterproof golf shoes. I also depended heavily on my excellent rain hat, which is manufactured by Outdoor Research, is intended mainly for backpackers and kayakers, and is called a Seattle Sombrero.

That evening, at the Brehon Hotel, in Killarney, Barton, Carney, O'Malley and I applied ourselves mainly to drying our equipment. I sandwiched my rainsuit between bath towels and stomped on it, to blot the worst of the water, then used a hair dryer to dry the legs and sleeves from within. I dried my golf towel with the iron (producing cumulus clouds of steam) and the heated pants press (less successful). I left my shoes overnight on a radiator in the hallway and finished drying them the next morning by holding them against heater vents in the car as we drove down the coast to Waterville.

Waterville Golf Links is on a toe-shape peninsula defined by Ballinskelligs Bay and the meandering, sand-filled estuary of the River Inny. The property was purchased in the 1970s by an Irish-American golfer and businessman named John A. Mulcahy, and the course was designed soon afterward by the Irish golf architect Eddie Hackett, with help from Claude Harmon and Mulcahy. Today, the course is owned by a small group of American rich guys, who bought it in the late 1980s, and is listed on Golf Digest's ranking of the 100 greatest courses outside the United States.

We got a late start leaving the Brehon, so we phoned Waterville's golf shop from the car to ask if we could miss our tee time by a few minutes. We were told that, because of the weather, we could be as late as we liked, because there were "only a few golfers milling about the clubhouse." (Later that day, at Carton House, west of Dublin, the first round of the Irish Open was suspended because of high winds.) A little driving rain was nothing to us by that point, however, and we made a very nice day of it. We were unimpeded by other golfers until our second pass through the second nine, when we were blocked by a foursome of cigar-smoking Americans in golf carts. Golf carts are still rare in Ireland, though not as rare as they used to be; Waterville, at least, mildly discourages their use by charging roughly $65 for each one. (A senior caddie, in contrast, is about $45, plus tip.)

Several years ago, Waterville's owners hired the justly celebrated American golf architect Tom Fazio to undertake what eventually grew into a major renovation, including the addition of a "tour-quality practice facility." Waterville was Fazio's first project outside the United States, and the major work was completed this past spring. I had never played the course and therefore have no basis for judging the results. However, all four of us thought that the new sixth and seventh holes, which Fazio essentially created from scratch, somehow felt more like Fazio than like Ireland. What you think about that will depend partly on what you think about the trans-Atlantic cross-pollination of course-design ideas, which never alarms anyone when it operates in the other direction. One possibly ominous note, however: The owners have announced their ambition to make Waterville Ireland's "premiere golfing destination."

Tralee and Waterville are outposts on the storied Ring of Kerry, a roughly circular travel route that winds through some of the most ruggedly beautiful terrain in the country, much of it along the coast. The pavement is so narrow that tour buses, to keep from colliding like particles in a cyclotron, travel in one direction only (counterclockwise). We were stuck for a long time behind an enormous truck, which slowed way down as it came to a bridge that looked almost too low for it to squeeze under. Then—pow!—right into the bridge. The driver was unharmed, although when he jumped out to inspect his truck he said a bad word that a non-lip-reader could easily lip-read.

The final course on our itinerary was Old Head Golf Links, about 15 miles south of Cork. It opened in 1997, and it's laid out on a 220-acre promontory that's shaped a little like an overturned skillet. Old Head pretty much has to be seen to be believed. (You can take a video flyover at oldheadgolflinks.com.) It is the dream project of John and Patrick O'Connor, wealthy Irish brothers, who bought the land in the late 1980s (for less than $2,000 an acre) and began construction of the course in 1993. Nine of the holes play along the tops of the cliffs, which rise more than 300 feet above the water in some places. From the second tee you can look down (or, if the wind is right, launch your drive) into a cove within which a German U-boat lurked before torpedoing the Lusitania, in 1915. The third (a par 3) and the 12th (a par 5) look almost like holes in those fantasy prints by Loyal H. (Bud) Chapman—the ones in which the tees and greens are perched on top of Machu Picchu or at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Playing Old Head was exciting, and so was creeping along the edges of the precipices. The whole experience made me uneasy, though: Old Head should be a national park, not a private golf course. The whole place feels like the triumph of ego over reason. Much of the topsoil had to be imported, several of the most exposed greens have to be rebuilt almost every spring because of salt damage inflicted by winter storms, the club's horticulturist introduced ice plant (among other non-indigenous species) after seeing it at Pebble Beach, and approach shots to the par-5 10th are played over a 5,000-year-old Druid burial ground. A round at Old Head costs roughly $350, and the vast majority of the rounds are played by Americans. Old Head used to be a beloved destination for local hikers, fishermen, picnickers and whale-watchers; now nongolfers are brusquely turned away at the gate, and the club's website suggests that golfers consider arriving by helicopter.

Old Head, nevertheless, usefully provided a spectacular setting for the final round of the All-Week Irish Championship of the World, which was contested by Barton, Carney, O'Malley and me. We had decided to keep the same partners for the entire trip, playing a four-ball close-out format too complicated to describe fully in a monthly magazine. The entire thing came down—as it somehow always does—to the final hole. Each of the four of us had a putt to win; only O'Malley (my partner!) sank his. We then played a second 18, a victory lap, before returning to our hotel in Kinsale.

The next day, back at Shannon Airport, I was killing time before my flight home when I spotted the young woman from the lost-baggage office—the woman who, a week before, had tracked me down in my taxi to let me know my clubs were on the way. I rushed over and thanked her for her kindness.