I think it may've been the NEW YORKER magazine's food critic perhaps 20 years ago who started a mad and frustrating scramble that lasted for a few years to find what he described as the best restaurant he knew of in NYC's general vicinity. His only clue was it was small, in the country, and within a 100 mile radius of NYC. A few other clues were given such as how the proprietor (unnamed) shopped probably daily at NYC's fish market.

And so I'm going to try to start the same kind of frustrating scramble for this golf architecture crazed site to figure out what and where (from the sound of it) just may be the world's true HIDDEN gem (real accent apparently on hidden).

Yesterday, WayneM, Bill Dow and I had lunch with that wonderful golf writer and course chronicler, Jim Finegan. As most know Jim Finegan has written voluminously on golf courses in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland (he has also written plenty about interesting places to stay and eat along the way!). So one should probably assume that over the years in those locales there’s probably almost nothing of any worth that Jim hasn’t seen or is unaware of in the way of golf courses.

Jim, as those who've read his books know, is a most entertaining and informative golf course writer and I can guarantee Jim is every bit as entertaining and interesting to sit and listen to and just watch talk and express his passions on this subject!

So yesterday, as we were talking about golf architecture and interesting golf courses here and there and everywhere, it was certainly something to listen to and watch him launch into the subject of this apparently truly HIDDEN gem.

As I recall, he started off by putting his arms straight out in the air to stop conversation and held them there for the appropriate ten seconds or so for dramatic effect before saying; “WELL, just listen to THIS!!! WOULDN’T you think after all these years (Jim is 75) of combing these lands for golf courses that it would be PRETTY HARD to HIDE something of significance from ME? WELL, OF COURSE YOU WOULD!!!”

And then he launched into the description of this place. It’s in Ireland and it just happens to be almost immediately juxtaposed to a quite fine (by Jim’s description) dunes laden golf course. Matter of fact he said it can’t actually be seen from this particular golf course but basically if one simply trod up into and just over the extension of these magnificent dunes---BOOM---there it is before you winding in and around and throughout one magnificent massive dunes-scape.

According to Jim the course has a name (more on that later) but there’s no clubhouse, matter of fact, there’s no club of any kind or type attached to it although it’s been there for over twenty years! It cannot be seen from any road, there’s no road to it, there’s nowhere to park, there’s no scorecard, no pars and no real way of even telling how to play it in a progression. Not ONLY all that but it’s actually two golf courses---one designed by obviously a well-known Irish architect (who although listed in C&W I assume has to be dead now) and the other by a woman!! The place is owned by one man, and according to Jim, very few, if any, as far as he could tell, play it! Jim said the only other thing there is a little hut where equipment is stored for the not more than 3-4 people who work on it. And even more extraordinary, one of the best Irish golf critics Jim knows of did not know it was there.

Jim said although the course is very rough, and the greens appear to be quite long and slow they have fascinating slopes and contours just as does the golf course as the holes cascade around this apparently incredible hidden dune-scape. I asked him how slow and rough was it compared to the things we know and have today. He said: “WELL, THIS has to be the way golf was played 150 YEARS AGO!!!

Oh yes, I did ask Jim if he could tell if the courses (36 holes) were just laid out or actually constructed and he said he honestly couldn’t tell!

So, GOLFCLUBATLASERS who may be the most resourceful group anywhere for this kind of thing----What is this place, what’s its name, and where is it?

Tom

I'm pretty sure this place has been mentioned on here before (3-4 years ago), but I can't remember the name.  I'm sure someone will come up with it (and its not Gullane, unless the Sumatran earthquake moved East Lothian to Ireland.....)

Well, shit, so much for hiding what Jim Finegan thought was perhaps the world's most HIDDEN gem and congratulations to those incredibly resourceful architecural super sleuths of GOLFCLUBATLAS.com in the august personage of Mike Sweeney. Was that the aerial or photos, or were they on-groung you posted on here within the last year? I just might call Jim Finegan and tell him he just might need to use GOLFCLUBATLAS.com as his be all and end all golf architectural resource. Only trouble is, since he says he's just breaking in his 50 year old UNDERWOOD typewriter he just might tell me I need to show him how to turn on a computer.  

Congratulations, MikeS.

http://www.carrigarthotel.com/

OK, I'll confess.....

This was NOT the course I was thinking of!  Thanks Mike.  See the link above and note the green fee.  20 Euros.  I CAN'T believe I missed this place when I was in Rathmullan (and had two great days on the incredible nearby links at Portsalon) 2 years ago.......

I believe the woman architect was somehow associated with Eddie Hackett. The owner of the hotel also owns the links. He is described as "colorful" and not looking to sell right now.

redanman:

As I recall regarding that mystery restaurant in the NEW YORKER, the article came out and the interest to find it was so intense and so great the subject just became part of the magazine's food critic's regular article as he sort of monitored the search. It took quite a while for it to be positively found and then identified by the NEW YORKER food critic as I recall. I seem to recall that some thought they'd found it but the critic would repond that they hadn't yet. I used to know but forget now where exactly it was. I think it was very small perhaps just the proprietor and his wife.

It reminds me of what I guess could be called a restaurant that my grandmother found out about from New York that was somewhere way out in the country in France. She tooks us all there as we were touring around when I was about 14. It turned out to basically just be the house of a family but the food's reputation started to filter around the world. You had to make reservations well in advance--I guess so they could get ready for you. So we went there for lunch and ate in this beautiful old garden served from the house. Both my mother and grandmother and sister spoke beautiful French and that made for a friendly connection. Although I don't remember what exactly they gave us it really was deserving of that fantastic reputation but the thing none of us ever forgot was the lady of the house when it came time to give us desert just took the enormous old plates back to the kitchen and brought our desert back served inside the large rings on the bottom of the plates turned upside down!

You have got to be kidding me .... Dinner, Bed, Breakfast and 36 holes of golf for 85 Euros?!

http://www.carrigarthotel.com/

Andy

Now this is what I call affordable golf.

Woodhall Spa.  It never seems to get a lot of attention but it is a gem.

I think it may've been the NEW YORKER magazine's food critic perhaps 20 years ago who started a mad and frustrating scramble that lasted for a few years to find what he described as the best restaurant he knew of in NYC's general vicinity. His only clue was it was small, in the country, and within a 100 mile radius of NYC. A few other clues were given such as how the proprietor (unnamed) shopped probably daily at NYC's fish market.

Tom I --

I don't know anything about this golf course you're looking for -- but I know more about this New Yorker restaurant article than I need to ... and certainly more than anyone else here appears to!

The piece was published in the late 1970s -- the period when I was a fanatical reader of The New Yorker (and not just of Herbert Warren Wind).

The writer was not the magazine's restaurant critic. Oddly enough, I don't think the magazine, in those days, even had a restaurant critic.

The writer was my favorite reporter of all: the wonderful John McPhee -- any of whose first dozen books, from his profile of the young Bill Bradley ("A Sense of Where You Are") all the way through his Alaska book ("Coming Into the Country") to a collection of shorter pieces called "Giving Good Weight," I most enthusiastically recommend to all of you. (Sorry for that sentence, Brad Klein!)

The restaurant piece (you can find it in "Giving Good Weight") was called "Brigade de Cuisine." It was about a fanatically perfectionist craftsman (not unlike McPhee himself) of a chef, whom McPhee called "Chef Otto."

"Chef Otto" had demanded anonymity -- lest his small, intimate, wonderful restaurant be overrun with business and ruined. McPhee was willing to go along. Was the magazine? McPhee obtained, from the editor (William Shawn), a special dispensation from the magazine's usual procedures -- which involve intensive "fact-checking" prior to publication. In this case -- for the first time in New Yorker history (and possibly the last) -- a Fact piece would bypass the fact-checkers ... so that even they wouldn't know who "Chef Otto" was.

The piece came out. It began with McPhee's describing, with trademark McPheean detail, a series of what he called the best meals he'd ever eaten. All of them had been prepared by "Chef Otto."

It's a wonderful piece of writing.

Naturally, the article made the New York Times' restaurant critic (Mimi Sheraton, if memory serves) nuts! You could almost hear her thinking: How in the hell can this McPhee pipsqueak have found a wonderful restaurant that I've never heard of? The Times (and probably the other NY papers, too) immediately launched a crazed effort to find this mystery restaurant -- which they located, soon enough, somewhere out in the Pennsylvania countryside. I don't remember where, exactly. And I don't know what became of "Chef Otto's" place.

Two very funny postscripts:

-- The Times (Ms. Sheraton, again -- I think) published a VERY lukewarm review of the restaurant. Ha! Take that, McPhee!

-- In "Brigade de Cuisine" (Part II, I think), McPhee and "Chef Otto" journey into Manhattan for dinner at Lutece -- then the creme de la creme of NY restaurants. One of them orders the turbot. When "Chef Otto" eats some of it, he declares that it had previously been frozen, and furthermore declares that no self-respecting chef would EVER serve previously frozen turbot.

When the story appeared, the folks at Lutece went ape-shit crazy -- denying in the most uncertain terms that a previously frozen fish had ever been served to one of their patrons. The Times smelled a story -- and dispatched a reporter to the Fulton Fish Market (?) to rummage through all of the paperwork relative to Lutece's fish purchases during the period in question. The newspaper concluded that the turbot was, indeed, fresh.

The New Yorker, in those days (and still!), was monumentally uninterested in admitting its own fallibility. Its corrections were as rare as frozen fish at Lutece.

A couple of weeks after "Brigade de Cuisine" was published, The New Yorker ran a note signed by McPhee -- under the heading "Dept. of Amplification" of "Dept. of Clarification" (but NOT "Dept. of Correction") -- beginning with a short note describing his article and ending with words very much like these:

"Chef Otto guessed that the turbot at Lutece had been frozen. Chef Otto guessed wrong."

Not "I was wrong"; "Chef Otto guessed wrong"!

Even in the matter of amplification (or perhaps clarification), McPhee was the best!

P.S. One bit of McPhee trivia: The tempestuous husband and wife played by Albert Finney and Diane Keaton in the terrific "Shoot the Moon" (1982) were reportedly based on McPhee and his wife.

P.P.S. For more on McPhee's books, see http://lopezbooks.com/124/124-06.html

In this case -- for the first time in New Yorker history (and possibly the last) -- a Fact piece would bypass the fact-checkers ...

I think the New York Times has adopted this as standard practice.

 

PS

It was Sky Summonte (AKA I can't remember) who first brought St Patricks to notice on GCA.  About 3 years ago.

There was a picture or two of the St. Patrick's golf courses in THE GOLFER magazine a year or two ago. I remember posting here on gca.com back then, asking if anyone of us knew anything about these courses. I do believe it was Johnny Browne who responded with some information about St. Patrick's.  These courses have been discussed here before!