The Island Golf Club

Facts first: The Island isn’t actually located on an island but rather at the south end of an isthmus just north of Dublin. The links do feel remote and isolated, bordered on two sides by water—the Irish Sea to the east and a large bay on the west—as well as a marshy estuary to the south. The coastal dunes are some of the steepest on Ireland’s east coast and feel more like what golfers encounter in County Sligo or County Donegal to the north. That’s why many visitors often cite The Island as their most surprising discovery when playing in Ireland. There’s an almost prehistoric aura about the course as the spacious holes wander through valleys between dunes and hop from high point to high point over sand barrens. Amateurs laid out the original holes in the 1890s when members accessed the course by boat. When the clubhouse moved in the 1970s the holes were renumbered along with remodel work by Irish architect Eddie Hackett. In 2020, British architects Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert completed their first nine renovation, including the construction of several new holes like the eighth and ninth (to go along with the sporty par-3 fourth added in 2009), to match the quality to the second nine, long regarded as the stronger of the two.