Golf Course Architecture - Issue 66, October 2021

59 plenty of golf to satisfy its customers. The only real point of building another course at Rosapenna was if it proved to be a true marquee facility, elevating the resort – and for that matter, golf in Donegal as a whole – to another level. Ruddy’s Sandy Hills typically ranks in the top twenty courses on the island of Ireland: clearly, if St Patrick’s was to be worth building, it had to be substantially better than that. Well, it is. On Doak’s website is a page entitled ‘Renaissance’s Top Ten Courses’, the result of a poll of the firm’s employees. Of those ten, I have seen six, and in my opinion St Patrick’s is certainly better than five of them. Only Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania, which up to now I have cited as my favourite modern golf course in the world, can compete with it; I have not yet decided which I prefer. I am not a huge fan of golf course rankings; but I feel very comfortable in asserting that St Patrick’s will, in time, be very, very high up in any credible ranking of the world’s best courses. What makes it so good? Doak’s mantra has always been ‘Great land produces great courses’ and St Patrick’s is, I think, close to being the best piece of golfing land I have ever seen. Never in my life have I seen ground movement like this; when you combine the astonishing topography with the beauty of Donegal, the views of the Atlantic and the variety of different enviroments that the site encompasses, it can’t have been hard for the architect to see the potential in this land. St Patrick’s spells out what golfers are in for from the very start. Walk from the two trailers that constitute the course’s temporary clubhouse (an actual one will follow in 2023) to the first tee, and you are presented with an opening shot into the most heaving ground I have ever seen on a golf course. On most big dune links courses, this sort of stuff is pushed to the side, the holes routed through the f latter valleys: Doak’s bravery in offering such a sight from the first tee must be respected. Most architects have generally adhered to the theory outlined by Harry Colt – “a fairly long, plain-sailing hole for the first one”. Doak, it would appear, does not. The approach that follows is, by contrast, reasonably sane, though a dune that cuts in on the left hand side rather, Photo: Clyde Johnson A dune cuts in from the left side at the first, with the green favouring an approach from the right “ The only real point of building another course at Rosapenna was if it proved to be a true marquee facility”