Old Links

Few golfing destinations on the island of Ireland carry the raw, windswept drama of Ballyliffin, and the Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club is where that story begins. Laid out across the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal — one of the most remote and genuinely unspoiled stretches of linksland in Europe — the course predates its more celebrated neighbour, the Glashedy Links, and holds a character all its own. The terrain is a rolling, rumpled patchwork of dunes, hollows, and natural turf that has been shaped more by the Atlantic than by any architect's hand.

The Old Links plays firm and fast in dry conditions, soft and demanding when the weather rolls in off Malin Head, and the wind is rarely absent. Its layout rewards creativity and ground-game thinking over pure power, and the course has a warmth and accessibility that its wilder sibling sometimes lacks.

Ballyliffin itself is a small, unhurried village, and arriving here — genuinely out of the way — feels like a deliberate pilgrimage. That sense of effort rewarded is very much part of what the Old Links offers.