Enniscrone Golf Club is located on the scenic West Coast of Ireland in County Sligo. Known for having some of the largest dunes in Ireland, the club is situated on a promontory that juts into Killala Bay at the mouth of the River Moy Estuary. This provides Enniscrone with one of the most beautiful settings for the uncompromised playing characteristics of Irish links golf.
Since the club’s founding in 1918, its organisers dreamed of expanding their nine-hole course onto Ireland’s most spectacular links land. The dream was realized in 1974, and today Enniscrone Golf Club offers 27 holes of links golf. Here, we believe, you’ll experience some of the best Irish links golf on the Dunes course, or a more serene round on the Eddie Hackett and Donald Steel designed nine-hole, 3,367 yard, Scurmore Course
Our featured course, The Dunes, is a 7,033 yard, par 73, championship links course, often a venue for National and Golfing Union of Ireland’s top amateur events. The Dunes evolved from Eddie Hackett’s original 18-hole design. The traditional links layout was reconfigured to include six new holes in the seaside dunes. Renowned architect Donald Steel designed the six new holes, and The Dunes was further refined to include four men’s tee boxes to suit golfers at all handicap levels.
In true links fashion, the course layout is ‘nine out’ and ‘nine back’ to the clubhouse. Each golf hole follows the natural contours of the land. It challenges the imaginations of golfers of all abilities, demanding the use of every club in the bag. At Enniscrone, the wind, true links lies and firm elevated greens reward those who can hold a line, hit fairways and execute ‘bump and run’ shots.
The scenery of The Dunes is second to none. Twelve of the Dunes eighteen holes wind through the tall shaggy dunes on the coast. A sense of isolation and tranquility surrounds you, along with tall marram grass roughs. The last four finishing holes are exhilarating and border the Atlantic Ocean. Dozens of player reviews attest to our surrounding beauty. However, we are fond of the UK’s Top 100 Golf Course Review; “Enniscrone really is a breath-taking course with a serious challenge attached.”
Being endowed with spectacular land comes with some responsibility. Our membership’s emphasis has always been on golf, and we are proud to have hosted top Irish amateur events. However, our pride in our golf heritage is second only to retaining the natural qualities of the Dunes course’s links land. This is why Enniscrone is a member of the Sports Turf Research Institute – to sustain the natural balance between the course and surrounding land. With this in mind, we can state with confidence; our visitors will experience true Irish links golf on a grand scale for decades to come.
We are fortunate to offer you a Championship venue, and we think you’ll experience golf as Tom Coyne describes Irish links golf, but on a grander scale: “unapologetic, unpretentious and wonderfully unrefined, authentic and irresistible”. If you play The Dunes, we assure you our mighty dunes will forever be part of your memories, and will join your list of favourite courses in the world.
History.
The club employed a greenkeeper in 1933. His fairway mower was horse drawn and a lawnmower cut the greens. In 1947, a clubhouse was built at a cost of £400. However war, emigration and economic depression throughout these difficult times combined to produce a declining membership and by 1959 there were just 14 club members. The building of a power station at Bellacorick and the Moy drainage scheme in the sixties brought a revival and with it came prosperity and new golfers to the area. In 1963 the club entered a team in the Connacht Shield competition – the first time the club became involved in interclub competitions. By 1969 membership had grown to just over a hundred. The course was in good condition but livestock on the course presented problems necessitating wire fencing of greens.Revival encouraged ambition. Members began to look longingly at the dunes and dream of an 18-hole links course. By March, 1970 the great course designer, Eddie Hackett was at work in Enniscrone. Working alongside a dedicated and hard working committee, he shaped and blended holes through the dunes that interfered very little with the natural terrain. It was here that Hackett built some of the best golf holes of his long and distinguished career. In 1972, the aquisition of a new lease agreement was very important for the club and allowed wire fencing of the course (12 miles of it !) to exclude livestock. With just two permanent employees along with the generous voluntary labour of members, a pioneering spirit and a will to succeed saw the course and a new simple clubhouse opened in August, 1974 with Eddie Hackett driving the first ball. This was followed by an exhibition match featuring golf professionals Christy O Connor Sr. and John O Leary.
Throughout the eighties club development continued with a new clubhouse being added in 1989. In 1990, Peter Dobereiner, the London Observer’s great golf writer reported that he had stumbled across “an undiscovered gem of a links in the far north west, a course with some amazing holes”. By 1999, Enniscrone Golf Club was evolving once again with the skilled links designer, Donald Steel, commissioned to reroute the golf course directly into the dunes. Steel added 6 new magical holes through the dunes and added three new holes on the flat land to six of the old Hackett holes to produce the Scurmore 9-hole golf course. The clubhouse also received a new extension and the new renovated course opened in 2001. The result is that Enniscrone has one of the finest pure links courses in Ireland, plus a splendid 9-hole course for the slightly less adventurous. Today, they stand as a fitting monument to the dedicated members of the Club who so unselfishly and willingly gave their time and expertise throughout the decades to see this dream fulfilled.
Enniscrone Golf Club
Enniscrone
Co. Sligo
Ireland.