Dublin Becomes a Launch Point for Ireland's Top Links Golf

Dublin is emerging as a base for American golf trips to Ireland, with a cluster of championship-caliber links courses within a short drive of the city's airport and a wave of investment reshaping the courses around it.

Could Dublin host the Open Championship?

Portmarnock Golf Club, seven miles from Dublin Airport, has hosted more than a dozen Irish Opens along with the Amateur Championship and Women's Amateur Championship, but the Open Championship has never been played in Ireland. R&A chief executive Mark Darbon said in April that he is "cautiously optimistic" about bringing the championship to Portmarnock, with speculation pointing to as early as 2030. "There's feasibility work going on," said Portmarnock general manager Kyle Cannon, describing ongoing discussions between the R&A and the Irish government.

What's happening at Brittas Bay?

Forty miles south of Dublin, the course once known as the European Club opened in 1992 and later hosted the 2008 Irish PGA Championship, won by Padraig Harrington. Irish businessman Raymond Conlan and his family bought the club last year for a reported $39 million and renamed it Brittas Bay. The family hired architect Kyle Phillips, known for designing Kingsbarns in Scotland, to rework the 180-acre site into a new layout with wide fairways and water views from every hole. The new course is scheduled to open in summer 2027.

Why is Irish golf tourism growing?

An estimated 220,000 golfers travel to Ireland each year, generating more than $500 million in revenue, and close to 80 percent of those visitors are American. Clubs across the country have responded by upgrading visitor amenities rather than altering their courses. Royal County Down, about 90 minutes from Dublin by car and ranked among the best courses in the world, introduced an on-course food truck this year so golfers making the turn no longer need a clubhouse stop, cutting about 15 minutes off each round across roughly 9,000 annual visits. The club has also expanded its pro-shop merchandise and retrained staff to be more engaging with visiting groups, part of a broader shift among Irish clubs toward treating tourism as a year-round business rather than a seasonal add-on.

Which other courses sit near Dublin?

Beside Portmarnock, Jameson Golf Links occupies land once owned by distilling family member John Jameson III, who bought the Portmarnock peninsula acreage in 1847 and laid out nine holes there in the 1850s; the current 18-hole course opened in 1995 as a Bernhard Langer design and was renovated again in 2023. Portmarnock itself is a relatively flat links with water on three sides, a layout the writer Bernard Darwin once praised for its closing stretch of holes.

North of Portmarnock, the Island Golf Club was founded in 1890 and was reachable only by boat until an access road opened in 1973; it now ranks among Ireland's top dozen courses and includes a par-4 14th hole with a fairway only about 10 yards wide. Nearby Corballis, a quirky par-66 links, carries green fees starting around $35. Five miles east of the city center, Royal Dublin Golf Club dates to 1885, with its current Harry Colt routing from 1920 later updated by Martin Hawtree; the club has hosted the Irish Amateur Open Championship a record 29 times, and Seve Ballesteros won two Irish Opens there.

Ireland's golf boom is no longer just about the courses that already exist — it's producing new ones, and a possible Open Championship venue.