Pat Ruddy Review
 

I asked Pat Ruddy for some of his thoughts on our course from his first impression to the final design and in particular the challenges, responsibility and final masterpiece he helped create.

Pat has a history steeped in golf from his early days as a golf writer to designer of some of the finest courses in the world. Pat was a writer before turning his hand to architecture and construction – famously at the European Club south of Dublin which he founded, financed and built from scratch. The European Club is Pat’s masterpiece, and it’s a layout that he has continued to tweak and modify over the years in a constant quest for course perfection.

Pat loves the links courses he has been involved with in this part of the world.
His love of Portsalon and his ability with the pen are very evident in his review below.

“Portsalon was one of the world's greatest links in the 1890s! One of the World's Top-50 for sure!
There were very few golfers and very few golf courses back then and Northern-Donegal was the Riviera of world golf before the game took hold in the new world and jet travel was created. They came from all over Britain to Portsalon and nearby Rosapenna, by steamer and by train and by horse drawn carriage, and they returned to the cities to enthuse about their great golfing adventures and fret for the day that they could return.

Portsalon was one of the world's greatest links in the 1960s! At least that was what Pat Ruddy thought when he scored his first ever round in the 60s there! There is nothing like a good result to colour the outlook. Love is blind but sublime!

Portsalon was still a beautiful place and the links was sporting but it had, in fact, become dated. It measured just 5,611-yards in 1960 and featured cross-over holes at three places ... the 4th with the 15th, the 11th with the 12th and the 16th with the 17th.... which was all very charming until golf became popular and increased traffic rendered cross-overs, especially those of the blind variety, very dangerous.
The upsurge in golf worldwide lifted all boats and so it was that Portsalon moved along with the times into the 1990s before surging back into the company of the world's elite venues when the club acquired some extra dunes land and commissioned Pat Ruddy to make the best use of it. The result was a total transformation which eliminated the cross-overs and increased the overall length to 6,800-yards.

Only five holes remained unchanged. Nine totally new holes were introduced and four others were given exciting new dimensions and playing characteristics. By 2005 the Irish Ladies' Amateur Championship was being played in Portsalon, for the first time since 1905, and very soon the links was ranked amongst Ireland's Top-100 by Golf Digest Ireland.

The improvements started at the second as a par-3 was discarded and replaced with a blockbuster par-4 of 457-metres from a high tee to a fairway running diagonally along a sea inlet and then across a river to a well trapped green. To be a hero and go for it in two, assuming the drive was safe, or to lay-up short of the river? This is a very notable hole which gets a day full of decisions and challenges underway.

The new third is a par-4 of 337-metres played to the first of two successive double greens in the St. Andrews tradition. This one is shared with the new ninth hole; and the second double-green is shared by the new fourth and eighth holes. These greens cause plenty of cheerful banter and the opportunity for monster putts if the approach shots are imperfect.

The green of the old par-3 eighth was redesigned beyond recognition to transform it from a tiny target squeezed between steep banks with an impossible to maintain entrance and exit to a raised surface with fall-offs on either side into deep bunkers. A terrible beauty.

Now the new-look Portsalon is fairly breaking into a gallop as the old ninth, now the sixth, has been extended from 290 to 435 metres with a new tee and the green pushed back behind the old one and up into brave dunes with a platform green surrounded by swales and sweeps enticing and demanding a brave approach.
The seventh is a new par-4 that sweeps down a valley in the dunes and sweeps right with overtones of the famed Foxey hole at Dornoch. The new eighth is a par-5 of 474-metres and the drive is either over, for the big-hitters, or around an old castle which emerged from the sand during construction of the hole but was simply covered over by a mound of sand to ensure that history and golf would co-exist in harmony.

The new ninth is a par-4 of 435-metres played from a high tee to a valley fairway which was shaped and rumpled from an old flat fairway which had earned the hole its name Runway. The name remains but the runway is gone and the turbulent fairway gives the impression that it was created by nature in one of its more vigorous moods.
The new tenth is a lovely par-3 of 147-metres played to a punchbowl green that was previously approach blind from the opposite direction in its previous existence as the eleventh.
It is back out into the new lands next with the eleventh which is a par-5 of 499-metres into the prevailing wind featuring a small, elevated green that demands accuracy as well as power and presents one of the rarest of experiences in modern golf course design in the shape of a par-5 that plays to its full value.
The par-3 twelfth is another totally new hole and it has a Muirfield feel to it as the shot is 170-metres across a relatively flat plain to a raised green which has three levels and fairly invites three-putts from the unwary or inept.

The thirteenth is a magnificent short par-4. A new high tee was created to set-up an heroic drive to a beautiful terraced fairway with panoramic views of mountain, dunes and ocean and one has to concentrate to focus on a precise approach half-left to a tiny green sitting in rumpled ground beyond a valley. This is a hole demanding skill more than brawn in an age of golf brawn!

The fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth were unchanged in the Ruddy-era.

New green and attendant bunkers were created for the closing hole between a fast-flowing wee stream and the clubhouse. This introduces the final agony of performing one's best in front of the dining-room and bar windows before retreating into those safe havens to look back out at what is now undoubtedly one of the world's finest links and the devilish demands placed on one's golfing prowess over the past few hours.

As the thirst is slaked the hunger grows for another go at those darned links.”

Warmest regards
Pat Ruddy