A golf weekend in County Clare

Clare is one of the tidiest golf weekends in Ireland: two of the country's best links, Lahinch and Doonbeg, about twenty-five minutes apart on the Wild Atlantic Way, with Shannon Airport under an hour away and the Cliffs of Moher between the golf and the sea. You can base in one village, play both courses, and never really move the car. If you are flying in from the UK, this is the easiest two-great-links weekend to reach on the whole island.

Lahinch (Old)is the one people mean when they call somewhere the “St Andrews of Ireland.” Old Tom Morris laid it out in the 1890s and Alister MacKenzie reworked the greens in the 1920s into the wild, tumbling plateaus that still catch you out today. Two holes from Morris survive intact and are unlike anything in modern golf: the 4th, the “Klondyke,” a short par five whose second shot is played blind over the shoulder of an enormous dune, and the 5th, the “Dell,” a blind par three to a green hidden in a hollow between two sandhills, its line marked by a white stone someone repaints each morning. Purists grumble about the blindness; everyone else grins. It hosted the 2019 Irish Open, and the goats that graze by the clubhouse are the club's unofficial weather forecast — in off the course means rain is coming.

For your second day, Doonbeg is the big one: a Greg Norman links routed through some of the tallest, most severe dunes in the country, dramatic and photogenic and not shy about its green fee. It is worth playing once for the scale of the place alone.

If you would rather spend the money on one big round and keep the other cheap, Clare has real value on the doorstep. The clifftop links at Kilkee (about €35) is a proper wild little course above the bay, and the parkland at Shannon (about €45) sits right beside the airport — a handy, mature round to play on the way to a flight home.

Stay in Lahinch itself. It is a proper little surf-and-golf village — you can walk from your bed to the first tee, the beach and the pubs, and Randaddy's and the Cornerstone are good for dinner. Rooms are tight on Open-anniversary and festival weekends, so book early. Browse hotels in Lahinch or, for a wider choice, nearby Ennis. Leave time for the Cliffs of Moher (twenty minutes north) and the moonscape of the Burren; our County Clare golf guide has the full picture, and the planner will slot the rounds around your dates.