Waterville Golf Links

The spread of golf often can be traced to the commercial and military activities of the British Empire. Such is the case of golf in the Waterville region. Hundreds of men were stationed in what was during the mid 19th century an exceedingly remote location for the purpose of laying the first trans Atlantic cable. They formed the Waterville Athletic Club, fashioned an altogether crude links and affiliated with the Golf Union of Ireland. Golf in Waterville remained enthusiastic but on a course utterly without merit for nearly a century.

Then in 1970, Eddie Hackett, Ireland's national golf architect was commissioned to design a course fitting for a spectacular resort hotel. The result is a stunning creation bounded on three sides by the Atlantic with one of the best homeward nines in all of golf. From its birth as the Waterville Lake Hotel, the resort oddly enough was once a Club Med. While the golf stream warms the region, as perhaps no other in Ireland, the former Club Med affiliation should not lead one to expect shirtless bathers or rum drinks with umbrella swizzle sticks. It is still seaside links golf that normally requires a wool sweater as much as a putter. American golfers may be pleased to discover that the club features two Irish rarities: buggies (golf carts) and a driving range.

The course once sported a most mundane beginning with holes 1 and 2 being strikingly ordinary. In a commendable display of honesty, the first hole was dubbed the "Last Easy". Major refurbishment by Tom Fazio in recent years has remedied the weakness of the first two holes and dramatically improved several others as well. At the second green, one reaches the Atlantic Ocean and the true beginning of the course. Two 3 pars are particularly noteworthy. Number twelve (The Mass Hole) is a 202 yard test across wild grasses into a hidden hollow purportedly used for secret masses celebrated by Irish Catholics in the days when the English outlawed their religion. Number seventeen offers a smashing view of the environs and is named Mulcahey's Peak in honour of the American course founder. Also of note is the eleventh, a splendid dogleg par five that winds through the dunes. And, the shortish par four sixteenth which was once aced by club professional Liam Higgins. (Higgins, we should hasten to add, once held the world's long drive record.) After completing the rugged 5 par eighteenth, the golfer can hardly wait to return to the first to begin the adventure all over again.

Independent travellers: The club is sign-posted from the N70 before you enter Waterville driving from Killarney. Report to the Secretary's Office on the ground floor of the clubhouse. Two side dishes are essential to a truly complete day on the Waterville links: a seafood meal at the Smuggler's Inn across the road and a hot toddy from the bar on the upper floor of the clubhouse.