I'd love to know which holes you think are great, Ally. When I played it last year I played very badly and put my lack of excitement down to that. This time round I played almost as well as I can and still didn't find anything to really excite me.
I think this could kick in a much deeper discussion of what makes a “great” hole, especially on a links course. My feeling is so many of the holes we label great we do so primarily for aesthetics, because it looks cool, because the ground contours are funky or because it is iconic or perhaps has provided a template for MacRaynor.
To take just one of many examples, the 16th at North Berwick is by no means great: it just has a highly individual green that is great fun to putt on. On the contrary, Redan most certainly is great.
Portmarnock comes with a bunch of holes that really do require you to pick the correct side of the fairway, the best examples being 3, 10, 16 & 18. The first of these is quite a tight hole but not only does it require approach from the correct side, it also has two features that create deception: one bunker 40 yards short that marries with one tiny dune spur just a few yards shorter on the left. This last feature was the primary motivator for Tom Simpson to name it as one of the best par fours he had seen.
Personally I prefer the 10th with its sole green side bunker and huge green swale on the other side of a Dornoch shaped, raised green, two features that demand you approach from the left. For comparison, Dornoch has no such hole with as strong a strategy required.
Or maybe the 16th with its reverse cambered fairway on the drive, its cross bunkers and most importantly of all, its severe tilt on the green from front left to back right.
The 18th is a classic finisher requiring very much that the inside bunkers are hugged to approach the gorgeous green site.
The above holes aren’t even the iconic ones. The 14th and 15th are world famous, the former being great in every sense other than the traditional, strategic one, the 15th noted for both its beauty and its difficulty although the 12th and maybe even the 7th are better par threes.
The 13th and 17th both use deceptive ridges better than any other links hole I can think of, the 5th is a thrilling blind tee shot and has a fantastic mound nestled short right of the green, again with a really clever bunker placed 20 yards short.
To all this, I’d say Portmarnock has almost the perfect mix of green sites, some mere extensions of fairways where there is an interesting fold or two, some raised in that Dornoch style and some inserted in to the main dune ridge. For sure, they don’t have huge internal movement but there is more there than is generally given credit for.
Finally, whilst it is a big club, it screams golf in an understated, friendly but non-commercial manner.
Of course, I’m a homer, but worth remembering that I chose it as the club I wanted to join, not The Island or any other course in the area. I’dve said all the above before I could have been accused of bias.
As a post note, the club have recently - through a ubiquitous links architect - added a few fairway bunkers to the flip side of fairways where previously only one side (the necessary strategic side) was bunkered. This is disappointing. Furthermore, they have added low mounding between three of the flatter fairways on the course - utterly pointless and a sure fire way to start eroding the natural character of a fine links. Got to be much more careful building things on a more level lying links. Certainly building what amounts to containment mounding is not the way to go about things.