An estimated worldwide television audience of 600 million watched Shane Lowry win the Open Championship at Royal Portrush Golf Club in 2019. (Image: @TheOpen)
The siren’s call of Royal Portrush, Royal County Down and the other headline links of Northern Ireland is stronger than ever as the British province gets set to host the Open Championship again in 2025.
(Last updated February 2025.)
Could the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush Golf Club possibly have had a more satisfying ending?
Native son Shane Lowry’s victory warmed Irish hearts everywhere and provided a watershed moment in the history of Northern Ireland. During The Troubles, when sectarian violence raged, the idea of the British province hosting the Open was regarded as little more than a pipe dream.
2019 Open Champion Sean Lowry. (Image: @TheOpen)
Northern Ireland tourism officials gleefully anticipated a flood of golf visitors to Royal Portrush, Royal County Down, Portstewart, Ardglass, Castlerock and other high-profile courses in the wake of Lowry’s triumph.
Those hopes were temporarily dampened by the Covid-19 pandemic. But golf revenues would quickly rebound to record highs. Research conducted for Tourism Northern Ireland showed that by 2023 the overall value of golf tourism had increased to £68.2 million, the highest figure ever recorded in the province, and well above the £52 million recorded in the Open year of 2019.
Helping fuel those numbers is growing anticipation for the 2025 Open Championship, which will see Royal Portrush, one of the world’s top-ranked links, host the championship for the third time since 1951.
Royal County Down is an Old Tom Morris design set on a sweep of Dundrum Bay. (Image: Royal County Down)
Outside Belfast, Northern Ireland is almost all green and rolling countryside, with farms and villages linked by a spidery network of roads. Establish a base and you can reach almost any golf course within a couple of hours.
The Championship Links at Royal County Down is absolutely not to be missed. Designed by Old Tom Morris, the links is set on a long sweep of Dundrum Bay, an hour’s drive down the Irish Sea coastline from Belfast. Vast swathes of gorse and heather line fairways that tumble through sand hills, while tussock-faced bunkers defend approach shots to subtly contoured greens at a course many rate the best in the world.
Just a 30-minute drive away, Ardglass Golf Club begins and ends in the middle of a fishing village once occupied by Vikings. The first five holes at Ardglass ramble along rocky cliff tops above the Irish Sea. Altogether, twelve holes deliver ocean views, with tees and greens often clutching precipitously to land’s end. And looming over this transfixing setting is the world’s oldest clubhouse, an imposing Norman castle built in the 14th century.
Mussenden Links at Castlerock Golf Club is another beauty. Located in the north coast town of Castlerock, Mussenden’s tremendous dunes and rolling ground are typical of the best of Irish linksland. Ben Sayers, Harry Colt and Martin Hawtree all had a hand in the design of an often under-appreciated gem considered the ultimate links test when the wind howls.
And found just five miles from Royal Portrush is Portstewart Golf Club, a magnificent north coast links that twists through massive sand dunes and runs alongside a tranquil estuary of the River Bann. Portstewart’s showpiece Strand Course memorably hosted the DP World Tour’s 2017 Dubai Duty Free Irish Open. Jon Rahm, who posted a tournament-record score of 24-under, called Portstewart “one of the most beautiful golf courses I have ever seen.”
Portstewart’s opening holes twist through majestic dunes. (Image: Portstewart Golf Club)
Despite the stiff competition, it’s Open host Royal Portrush that has naturally grabbed most of the attention. Tumbling down a hillside to seaside cliffs is an unbroken profusion of links holes as fine as any in Ireland. Some fairways are no wider than a county road, and many dogleg abruptly through dunes blanketed with whin and gorse.
Acclaimed architect Martin Ebert built two new holes (the par-five seventh and par-four eighth) at Royal Portrush’s Dunluce Links in part to accommodate the huge tournament grandstands. A total of 237,750 fans turned out in 2019, the biggest audience for any Open staged outside St. Andrews.
But the most famous hole at Royal Portrush is the 16th, Calamity Corner. The 236-yard par three demands a heroic carry to a cliff-top green at the heart of a brilliant links that this summer will once again host golf’s oldest championship.
