Ireland Archives - Hal Phillips

Irish Golf Tidbits: Stouts, Control, Separated at Birth

Hal Phillips — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:37:56 +0000

Still emptying the suitcase of the golfing mind, fresh off the Golf Road Warriors’ late-July tour of Ireland. Several matters remain unaddressed, and so they are tackled here. I reserve the right to keep this tab running indefinitely. Even so… • Guinness Lite. Honestly — We had wonderful couple of days (less than 24 hours, […]

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A True Golf Road Warrior Does It Behind the Wheel

Hal Phillips — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:13:28 +0000

You can’t call yourself a proper Golf Road Warrior, no matter how far you travel from home, if you merely settle in one place and encounter only the courses in that vicinity. You’ve got to cover some ground, laddie, behind the wheel — and that we did over the course of our nine days in […]

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Tralee: Canny Punctuation to an Irish Golf Smorgasbord

Hal Phillips — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 20:54:19 +0000

The odyssey is complete, our nine-courses-in-nine-days schedule has been dispatched, and it’s all over but the ibuprofen withdrawals. Eight links, one parkland track. Three venues in the very north, four in the west of Ireland, and three more in the southwest. I arrived with a bag full of balls and 24 new ones […]

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How the Irish and Ireland inform their golf

Hal Phillips — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:31:30 +0000

Sitting on a park bench this Sunday morning in the Diamond, the central square area of Donegal Town. The Road Warriors straggled back here, battered and bruised, late last night between rounds at Donegal Golf Club and Enniscrone. What we found upon checking into the splendid Abbey Hotel was a major league party underway, in […]

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Old Links vs. New Links: Viva la difference

Hal Phillips — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:33:39 +0000

The assumption is that all the links courses here in northwest Ireland are “ancient”, but that’s not the case. Donegal Golf Club, also known as Murvagh, was built in the 1970s, though you’d never guess it. We’ve played two even newer links on this trip, the Sandy Hill track at Rosapenna, and the […]

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Ballyliffin: Old Links a Nearly Flawless Trip-Opener

Hal Phillips — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:19:36 +0000

All you need to know about the Old Links at Ballyliffin is that, for the 4 hours we spent going round it, I never did consider laying down for a couple hours in the fescues. Not strongly anyway, for they were invitingly cushy and sunsplashed. We arrived here on the northern most tip […]

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New Links, New Rough, New Sleeve: Doonbeg Could Use Some Old-Time Greenkeeping

Hal Phillips — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:49:23 +0000

It’s been a couple years since I played Doonbeg Golf Club, Greg Norman’s “new” Irish links in the southwest of the country. I’ve thought about it quite a bit since because, well, a lot folks have played it too — it’s just south of Lahinch and just across the Shannon River from Ballybunion and Tralee […]

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