Rosslare Golf Links

Rosslare Golf Links was founded in 1905 — the first committee meeting was held at White's Hotel on 2 September of that year, with 140 members already signed up before the course was finished. When the club extended to 18 holes in 1926, they commissioned Hawtree & Taylor to design the layout. The Taylor in question was J.H. Taylor, five-time Open Champion and one of the "Great Triumvirate" alongside Vardon and Braid. The design fee for all work including bunkering was £15 15 shillings plus expenses. The course they produced remains largely intact: a narrow sandy peninsula with the Irish Sea to the east and Wexford Harbour to the west, firm fast turf, pot bunkers, and a wind off the water that reshapes the experience every day.

The 11th — "The Barber's Pole" — is the signature hole: a par-4 of 481 yards where a barber's pole marker post atop a mound about 100 yards short of the green gives the sightline for the ideal tee-shot line. Henry Cotton visited in 1953 and singled out the 13th as "one of the best par fours in Europe." In 1992, Christy O'Connor Jnr added the Burrow Links — a 12-hole course without bunkers on the same peninsula — giving the club 30 holes in total, most of them with views of either the harbour or the sea.

Rosslare Europort — the ferry terminal for crossings from Fishguard, Pembroke and Cherbourg — is fifteen minutes away. County Wexford records the most sunshine hours in Ireland (1,600 per year, more than any other county), which is a genuine practical advantage when the rest of the country is under a weather system.