I really enjoyed watching the Senior Open at Portrush. I've played Pete Oakley's The Rookery in Rehoboth Beach, DE and, while not an architectural masterpiece, it was a good, solid mid-level course.
Here's an article about why Portrush won't return to The Open rota:
Golf: A Portrush open remains a pipedream
By Jack Magowan
jmagowan@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
26 July 2004
While the return of the Open Championship to Royal Portrush might once have been an exciting possibility, it's now highly unlikely.
Not because the famous Dunluce links would have to be lengthened and strengthened, in the opinion of top American golfer, Davis Love, but because of the sheer cost of setting up all that's essential to the success of a major championship; from parking space for 2,000 cars, to the installion of ten miles of underground television cable, to the expense of recruiting a thousand people to help run the event.
Only once has the Open been staged in Ireland - at Portrush in Max Faulkner's year for the title (1951). Since then, it has been to a preordained rota of eight seaside courses, the toughest of them Carnoustie, a short train ride from Dundee.
It will be back there three years from now after going to St Andrews next season, and then to the scene of Fred Daly's historic triumph for the first time in nearly 40 years, Royal Liverpool.
While television must be the Open's biggest source of revenue, crowds totalling 150,000 at Troon have also been worth a lot of money to the R&A, who can't be unaware of how much their income from the championship would be depleted if it ever left Scotland or England.
And for Portrush members, too, there could be serious disadvantages. Not only does housework for a 'major' usually begin two years in advance, the famous Dunluce course would be so intimidatingly tight for months beforehand that a 10-handicap golfer would have trouble breaking 100!
"Frankly, I shudder to think of the abuse our links would take during an event as big as this," comments one club spokesman.
"It will be Christmas before Troon has recovered from the punishment it suffered under the pounding feet of so many spectators."
Love, a 20-times winner on the US Tour, touched a sensitive nerve by suggesting that while Dunluce was a jewel among great links, only wind would save it from a cruel assault by the world's top players.
The American Ryder Cup ace felt that, at 6,850 yards, it was too short in places to host an Open.
"Not by much," says Ireland's No 1 golf architect, David Jones.
"Not if two of the existing par-five holes, the second and 10th, were called par-fours, and the total par was reduced to 70.
"All it would then take to make the course a formidable test is for the fifth, eighth and 15th holes to be stretched a bit, and the rough allowed to grow. How friendly would it be now, I wonder?"
Jones, who rates Dunluce as the fairest of all Britain's historic links - "the key to its popularity with overseas visitors" - was a guest recently of former club pro, Dai Stevenson.
"Dai's wife served dinner on table mats that intrigued everybody," says David.
"They are faded with age, but show a stream in front of the tenth hole. Think of what a majestic two-shot hole it would be if that stream was ever put back there!"
Mighty Carnoustie is the longest course on the Open rota at 7,360 yards, about 500 yards longer than Portrush, with Royal Lytham the shortest at 6,905 yards. Troon spanned 7,175 yards.