![It might not have the big name, but Ardglass Golf Club has the history – and sea views from most tee-offs.](/content/dam/images/g/v/f/c/z/p/image.related.afrWideArticleLead.940x529.gv9up9.png/1491954483584.jpg)
"Go on lad, put it in… you'll need it." The waiter has circled back from his place near the kitchen and is hovering over my shoulder – he's the voice of sin versus the saint I could have been this morning. He watches on as I empty a nip of single-malt Irish whiskey into my porridge, straight from the oldest licensed distillery on earth, Bushmills, just a mile up the road.
The aroma of peat-fuelled fires that have flickered in this hearth for more than 400 years imbues the Bushmill Inn's cosy confines. As the whiskey's warmth permeates my belly, the wind and the rain ease up a little, exposing a shimmer of distant sunlight through the windows, sweeping across the North Channel from Scotland.
Golfers come to this part of Northern Ireland for the challenge, not for the sun tan. Any gust of wind under 75 km/h won't register as a zephyr on this stretch of coastline; and at 100 km/h you've only just found yourself a breeze.
Golfers are an odd lot, after all – we seek the kind of brutalisation only the cruellest links can dish out. And nowhere disrupts a game of golf quite like this little patch of the United Kingdom.
![The Emerald Isle is home to stunning golf courses including Portrush Golf Club, in County Antrim.](/content/dam/images/g/v/f/b/u/s/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1491464187099.jpg)
The championship courses at Royal Portrush and Portstewart Golf Club, in County Antrim and County Londonderry respectively, are some of the finest anywhere. Located about a 20-minute drive from each other, they hug a coastline of white-sand bays frequented by surfers in heavy-duty wetsuits.
Portrush
Portrush is home to two championship courses, one of which, Dunluce, is the only one outside Great Britain to have hosted a British Open championship. And in 2019, it'll host its second. Built on giant sand hills overlooking the ocean, Dunluce has been rated by Golf Digest as the fourth best course in the world.
I tee off in the afternoon and the wind's blowing hard; tee shots require a precision that seems impossible from the grooves of my club head. But when I ignore the carnage that is my scorecard – and the brand new balls disappearing from my bag – I can see all the way to the islands of the Southern Hebrides across a frothing sea. On the signature fifth hole, I play to a green that is suspended high above a horseshoe-shaped beach, below Dunluce Castle, a medieval ruin that's slowly crumbling its way down the basalt cliff face.
For all the vehemence of the elements, there are moments of such tranquility along this coast. The renowned rock formations known as Giant's Causeway are 10 minutes' drive from my hotel, but even they are overshadowed by the beauty of the surrounding landscape. At times, I can't do anything but stop and stare, as the late afternoon sun sets on an unearthly green hillside that tumbles into the sea, or across to ancient stone cottages in Iron Age villages.
![The rock formations known as the Devil's Causeway are among the spectacular landscapes near Portrush.](/content/dam/images/g/v/f/b/u/n/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1491464430308.jpg)
Portstewart
Further west, Portstewart Golf Club is home to three 18-hole courses, the grandest of which, the Strand, will host this year's Irish Open (July 6-9). Despite Dunluce's reputation as worthy of hosting the event, the Strand is actually a much tougher test of golf.
I tee off on what is considered one of the finest opening holes on the global golfing circuit – straight into the might of an Atlantic gale, promptly depositing two balls into heath that's thicker than old-growth rainforest.
Golfers here are as tough as teak: even in near-zero temperatures, a foursome of septuagenarians in the Wednesday ladies' comp are pushing their buggies up 40-degree slopes – bare ankles and shins exposed to the elements, and one brave soul in short sleeves.
![The wind is almost always a challenge at Portrush and other golf clubs on the coast of Northern Ireland.](/content/dam/images/g/v/f/b/u/m/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1491464516580.jpg)
Truth be told, I'd much sooner stand there and applaud Irish designer Willie Park Jnr on each tee-box than try to play his creations. Par-three greens are perched on hilltops, terraced bunkers fill entire hillsides, and holes meander through towering sand dunes and undulating heathland that offers stunning vistas to the Donegal Hills.
With five courses in the area – and two of Northern Ireland's most renowned "surf towns" (I love Irish seaside villages, there's an over-riding blandness to design here that's actually endearing) – I'm content to be here for a week.
But no golfing trip to Northern Ireland would be complete without a road trip.
And so I detour off the main route on my way south-east to Belfast, along narrow beachside roadways, finding tiny cafes by the angry sea where fishermen seek shelter and swig at mugs of strong-smelling coffee. I follow the coast past Ballycastle to Torr Head and Cushendun. I push on past Belfast, to a golf course locals tell me I'd be a fool to miss Royal County Down Golf Club in Newcastle, which topped Golf Digest's World 100 Greatest Golf Courses in 2016-17.
![The biggest test of all: Royal County Down Golf Club in Newcastle is the world's number one-rated course.](/content/dam/images/g/v/f/d/l/t/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1491464668108.jpg)
Ardglass
There are only two groups of golfers on the ancient links of Ardglass Golf Club as I arrive, and I'm put into a four-ball with three locals. I change into waterproof slacks in the world's oldest clubhouse, built in 1405.
Northern Irish professional golfer Rory McIlroy rates Ardglass one of his favourite links courses in his homeland. The first six holes play out high across cliffs that face the Irish Sea, and you can look back from clifftop tee-offs to a harbour speckled with tiny fishing boats.
A 75-year-old who holds the course record shows me how to sluice my way through the breeze, chancing my luck across chasms 100 metres high and playing right through seaweed that grows to the greens. As we look across the water on the 10th hole, he tells me Ireland's "favourite son", Van Morrison, wrote a song about the tiny village I can see by the shore, Coney Island.
Royal County Down
Eventually I make it to Royal County Down, staying in the 119-year-old Slieve Donard Resort & Spa next door, perched atop sand dunes beside the ocean. I watch on as groups of golfers suffer in pain or triumph in ecstasy; the course is like a living, breathing creature, it's never static for a moment, with a mighty sea breeze whipping up the grass, howling so loudly I can barely hear myself curse.
Royal County Down seems to me more a test of mental toughness than any attempt at recreation; but between the skewered drives into hungry heathland, I encounter a landscape so rugged and so ancient, that I can almost envisage the Irish pushing back the invading Vikings during their bloody 10th-century battles.
But then, golf in Northern Ireland, locals will tell you, is warfare – albeit one where there's not always a clear winner.
"Never look a Northern Irish golf course in the eye," one man tells me. "Because the wind blows into your face whichever way you're hitting here."
While Scotland consistently earns its stripes as golf's most challenging prospect, in my opinion you'll have just as great a tussle with yourself on the courses along Northern Ireland's coastline.
But when you get it right, and that little white ball flies off your driver like God himself intended it to, and you watch it sail across a chasm in that magnificent coastline, high above the Atlantic, to land on a fairway that's, well, as green as Ireland… that, my fellow golf tragics, is what this game is all about.
Even if it does happen just the once.
The writer travelled with the assistance of Tourism Ireland.
Need to know
- Getting there Fly to London then on to Belfast with British Airways, www.britishairways.com
- Staying there Stay at Bushmills Inn, www.bushmillsinn.com and the Slieve Donard Resort & Spa, www.hastingshotels.com/slieve-donard-resort-and-spa/ www.royalportrushgolfclub.com, www.portstewartgc.co.uk, www.ardglassgolfclub.com and www.royalcountydown.org
- More www.ireland.com
- Try surfing in Ireland at Portrush www.alivesurfschool.com
AFR Contributor