Portstewart Golf Club, Portstewart, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

One top-level course that most people are not yet familiar with is the Strand Course at Portstewart Golf Club, just down the road from Royal Portrush. Its front nine, designed by the club’s greens committee chairman after the club purchased some adjacent dunesland in the late 80’s, is one of the most daring and bold you will ever encounter. It is both spectacular and severe, and in the spirit of the great Fownes brothers who designed famed Oakmont in Pennsylvania, he never designed another golf hole. Hole #2 is especially exciting, a par-4 that skirts the edge of a dune at least 100 feet high, running the entire length of the hole on the left. If you were to try and climb to the top, you would be looking almost vertically down onto the green. We consider this nine to be the equal of Ballybunion, Tralee, and Carne in terms of spectacular golf. The back nine is no disappointment though. More traditional in style, it comprises of the best of the original course, and makes for a perfect compliment to the front nine. The unique combination of the two makes for one of Ireland’s greatest tests!