Portmarnock Golf Club can trace its origins back to Christmas Eve, 1893. That’s when Scotsman W.C Pickeman, along with Irish pal George Ross, rowed across a narrow estuary from nearby Sutton to a peninsula in Portmarnock occupied by subsistence tenant farmers. Pickeman knew this was prime golf land. The duo negotiated with landlord John Jameson (yes, a member of that Jameson family), who agreed to lease the land. Mungo Park, 1874 Open champion, helped design the front nine, which opened in December 1894. The back nine followed in 1896. The Portmarnock layout has remained in its original footprint since, with no real rerouting work done in the intervening 130 years. There are now 27 holes on the property, with a third nine (par 37) designed by Fred Hawtree opening for play in 1971.
Editor’s note: The author of this profile, Darragh Garrahy, is a member of Portmarnock Golf Club and previously served as greens chair. That makes him a great person to dive into the course’s design, history, architecture, and culture, but to ensure an objective final review, the Fried Egg Golf team alone was responsible for the final Egg rating and reasoning.
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Take Note…
Aquifer, “Be Up.” The links is surrounded by water on three sides and drained by an aquifer beneath, meaning that in the winter it can still play almost as firm as many other links do in the summer. With fine sand draining beneath and a playing surface consisting almost entirely of fescue, Portmarnock is renowned for its firmness of play. The club motto is “Be Up,” the irony of which is not lost on those who have seen their ball bounce flag-adjacent while still only beginning its journey. It’s nearly impossible not to “Be Up.”
Outer Lands. With 500+ acres on site, Portmarnock had long thought about developing a further nine holes to make a complement of 36. The club acted on this in the late 1980s, with the course rerouted to include new holes built out on the foreshore, starting across from the third hole and moving around the periphery of the fourth hole. These were exciting holes, but along with other infrastructure they were washed away in a storm soon after opening. The hole corridors and greens are still visible, and the club plays a two-club competition on them once a year called the Outer Lands. When circled by water and wind, you are never inviolate from the whims of nature.
Flippin’ genius. In 1938, Nos. 8 and 10 were simultaneously altered. The old eighth hole played from the present eighth tee to the present 10th green. That made for a short par 4 of 316 yards that presented one of the most demanding pitch shots on the links, up and over the “Valley of Sin,” which still exists to the left of the current 10th green. Imagine playing from the current eighth fairway to the current 10th green! The whole world would be running away from you. Modern green speeds wouldn’t allow it. The old 10th hole, a 319-yard par 4, played from the present forward 10th tee to a green on low ground in front of the current 11th tee. Over the winter of 1937, a new eighth green was built close to the old ninth tee, lengthening No. 8 to 396 yards. The old eighth green was fully retained, becoming the present 10th green. Those changes extended the course from 7,016 to 7,208 yards, and Portmarnock became reputed as “the longest course in the British Isles.”
