Royal County Down – The Dream Golf Course Details

Royal County Down Golf Club

Royal County Down Golf Club, located near Newcastle, County Down, just 30 minutes drive from Belfast and 1 hour drive from Dublin, is the dream golf course of any golf trip to Northern Ireland and one world’s most famous and highly regarded links courses.

Situated in the Murlough Nature Reserve and impacted by the Mourne Mountains and Dundrum Bay the Royal County Down Golf Club has one of the most naturally exquisite settings in the world.  Slender fairways, surrounded by purple heather and golden gorse, make their way through extraordinary sand dunes, while the ‘bearded’ bunkers characteristic of Royal County Down Golf Club display overhanging marram, red fescue and heather.

The greens are speedy and several are domed, dismissing any shot taken without confidence. Royal County Down the dream golf Course of the North is a true test of golf and a must play for any golfers visiting Northern Ireland.

Bernard Darwin, Golf Writer & World Golf Hall of Famer
The kind of golf that people play in their most ecstatic dreams.

David Owen for Golf Digest
if I truly had a single-destination global golf pass I’d do what I did recently: I’d travel to Northern Ireland and lose myself on the course that native players call Newcastle and the rest of us know as Royal County Down. (It’s No. 4 on Golf Digest’s World 100 Greatest Courses list.  I first played it in 2000, on a trip with five friends. Our itinerary was mediocrity-free—it included Portstewart, Royal Portrush, County Louth, The Island, Portmarnock and The European Club, all wonderful—but Royal County Down stood out. The opening holes run along the Irish Sea, but you mostly infer the presence of the water, rather than observing it directly, until you climb to the fourth tee. The Mourne Mountains loom to the south like something out of The Lord of the Rings, and the bunkers, which are savagely rimmed with marram grass, could be portals to another dimension.