Deep Dive: Royal Portrush

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Speaker 1: Royal Port Rush is hosting the Open Championship for the third time. Let's dive deep. I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf.

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Speaker 2: All right.

00:00:16
Speaker 1: I'm here with my Frida Egg golf colleague Matt Ruschis. How's it going, Matt doing well, doing well? So Matt, you're gonna help me with this deep dive on Royal port Rush today because, unlike me, you've actually been to this golf course. You saw it last year on a trip that you Andy Johnson, Brendan Porath and Cameron Hurdis took for our Explorations series. People should check that out if they they haven't already. There was a podcast series. There are articles associated with it, a bunch of cool social stuff. Great trip that you took focused on northern Ireland. Where did port Rush sit in your itinerary? What was its role? Did you stay in the town of port Rush. I'm having trouble remembering that details of what you all did there.

00:01:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we came in through Dublin, made our way up the coast to Newcastle, which is where Royal County Down is, spent a few days there and then drove up to port Rush, which sits basically at the northernmost part of Northern Ireland and the entire island of Ireland. So it's way up there. And yeah, we stayed right there in town. Like you could basically see the golf course from our place. It's it's honestly like a pretty small town that sits on this peninsula that kind of juts out into I believe it's the North Atlantic Ocean, and from like there, like you have a great view kind of looking back in towards the dunes where Royal port Rush is. So we we got to see Port Marnick, Royal County down and ard Glass before we set our sights on Port Rush.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so port Rush was kind of a culmination. You saw some other courses and then you're then you're able to see Port Rush.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Funny thing about the geography there you're describing how it's it's at this kind of northern most point of or a very northern point of the island. It's actually relatively not that hard too, if you were to take a boat trip to go right across to like where Macrahannish is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, in Scotland, and.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there's a there's a plan a foot among some of the Macrahannish owners and operators to maybe design some kind of situation where where people can go play Macrahannish and then take a little flight across to Northern Ireland and see Port Rush and County down. So these this this area is kind of it's all one area, even though there are different countries and not necessarily thought of as being that close together. Now, you know, one of the famous things about Royal Port Rush is that it sits right on this kind of entrance into town. Did you have that experience of coming into town and seeing the links for the first time? Was this part of the trip?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the entrance, I think when Rory was on our podcast he spoke to it in depth, like the first time he saw it, because it's like truly an amazing drive. So we were coming up the coast and we stopped up at the Giants Causeway, which is this really cool kind of like rare ecological like rock formation that's right on the coast.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like a major attraction. It's a World Heritage site famous for a long time. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But so we were coming from over there, which is I guess they'd be just east of the town of port Rush, and you're kind of up on these cliffs overlooking the ocean there, and you pass the Dunluce Castle, which is I think it's like a fourteenth century castle, really really old castle. So you kind of pass that and you come around on this corner and then all of a sudden you have this like incredible view. You're probably a couple hundred feet above like the town of port Rush and the golf course because you're up on these like high coastal cliffs and you just like come around this bend and there's this amazing, amazing view of the dunes land right there, which shits in between you and the actual town of port Rush. So the reveal like when you're driving is really really spectacular and certainly increases your anticipation if you already weren't really really excited to go see Royal port Rush. Yeah, very cool.

00:04:37
Speaker 1: Love a love a good drive into town where you get a preview of the golf course. So our basic plan for this episode, Matt, is for us to tell our listeners everything they need to know about the Dunloose Links at Royal port Rush Golf Club. We'll talk about the land, the routing, the characteristics of the hairy cult design, the greens, the hazards, thex, the agronomy, the recent renovation work done by Mackenzie and Ebert, the overall architectural significance of the place, and then finally we'll talk about some specific holes to watch for during the open. So let's get into the history of rural Port Rush. I've done some research on this subject. There's a lot of really interesting bits and pieces of this history that I want to cover. So the club was founded in eighteen eighty eight. Now, by this point in the eighteen hundreds, Port Rush the town was a vacation spot and it was accessible by train. The railroad arrived to this town in eighteen fifty five and this transformed Port Rush the town from just a small fishing village into a very popular, bustling seaside resort town. On its way into Port Rush, the train route passed the Duneland where the golf course now sits. So basically the train route was the current day highway route into town. So obviously people would would look out the windows of the train and see this duneland, and if there were golfers, they would see really obvious land for a golf course. So two of the most prominent founders of Royal Port Rush were George Lockhart Bailey and Thomas Gilroy. Both were Scotsmen born in eighteen fifty two, born the same year, and they were advocates of golf. Bailey was raised in East Lothian, became a school teacher and was posted as an English master at Belfast Academy. When he was twenty nine years old. He helped establish Ireland's first golf club, which was Royal Belfast in eighteen eighty one, and just went on to kind of become a Johnny apple Seed of golf in Ireland. He'd go on to help form Royal County Down and many other clubs. Thomas Gilroy grew up in Dundee and was trained in golf by Old Tom Morris's brother George, so Gilroy played a lot of his golf at Carnoustie, went to school at the University of Saint Andrews and regularly played with young Tom Morris while he was there, maybe encountered Cebe McDonald, who knows. He moved with his family to Ireland in eighteen eighty five, where they bought one of these kind of grand Estates, clearly from a wealthy family, and he went on to establish County Louth Golf Club or Baltray as it's more commonly known. He helped to design Royal Dublin and was just one of the best players in Ireland. Was kind of known as the golf guy in Ireland. So these two men, Bailey and Gilroy, joined with members of several leading local families to form a club in Port Rush, initially called the County Club. Now, this was the fifth golf club to be established on the island of Ireland, so this was early days of golf and Ireland and the first statement of the club's committee went like this. It said, the sandy hills or dunes around Port Rush, if properly laid out and cared for, will in a short time form excellent and attractive links. So the purpose of the club really from the beginning was to take advantage of this outstanding land that they were all familiar with next to this popular vacation town. So what happened next was was kind of clever and indicate some things about how golf developed during this period. George Bailey connected with the Belfast and Northern Counties, railway to lease the land from the Earl of Antrim. So the Earl of Antrim was kind of the administrator of this land and to lease the land from him, Bailey connected with a railroad company. So the railway influence on Royalport Rush and many other golf courses was absolutely critical. The construction of railroads in Great Britain and Ireland helped to create this culture of travel and a kind of fad for travel. Before this, most people rarely left the region where they lived. With the railroad in place, more and more people were using trains to escape from the congestion and the pollution of the cities where more and more of them now lived. This was happening at the same time as urbanization in Ireland, Great Britain and Europe. A lot of people moving to cities and access to the railroad gave them a chance to escape those cities from time to time to go visit these seaside towns. So it was just a lot easier to get from cities like Belfast in Northern Imla or what's now known as Northern Ireland to towns like Port Rush for a week or a weekend of recreation, and you know, around this activity was created an entire travel industry, or as they call it, a holiday industry in Great Britain and Ireland, especially along the coast. It was thought to be healthy to go to the coast. Cities were thought to be bad for you in a lot of ways, and going to the seaside was thought to be good for your health. Golf became part of this industry. So the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway understood the potential of golf to attract tourism and motivate people to buy train tickets, so they agreed with George Bailey to lease the land for the golf course in Port Rush. They helped to create Royal Port Rush because they knew it would be a nice little tourist attraction that would motivate people to use their railroad. So the County Golf Club formally opened on May twelfth, eighteen eighty eight. The original course consisted of nine holes occupying a forty acre plot called the Big Triangle. This is right next to town, right under that peninsula jutting into the ocean that you talked about earlier, Matt. So this is a triangle kind of formed by different roads that you can still see on Google Earth Maps of port Rush. Now today there are no holes golf holes remaining within the Big triangle. But originally the course was just there, and the course was pretty well regarded at first. I guess there was pretty good land within the Big triangle, because this is what the Belfast newsletter. The newsletter was a different thing at the time. It was a newspaper. This is what that paper said about the course in eighteen eighty eight. It said, port Rush, the town has many attractions. It's beautiful situation, its bracing air, its proximity to the Giant's Causeway, together with its extensive sands and excellent sea bathing, have rendered it a favorite place of resort. Golfers will be delighted to learn that to these has just been added one of the finest golf course of the three kingdoms. So right away what would become Royal port Rush was a well regarded golf links. Now the ground on which the nine holes had been laid out was close to the railroad, the railway station, it was right there, and so it had all just the elements of good golf right away. Old Tom Morris ended up visiting port Rush in the summer of eighteen eighty nine, so this was just a year after the club was established. Old Tom Morris visited and he ended up providing some on the expansion of the course to eighteen holes. Initially just had nine holes within the Big Triangle. Old Tom Morris came to town and gave some guidance on how to expand the course outside of the Big Triangle and into the actual more dramatic duneland that was to the east of the Big Triangle, so more away from town, deeper into the links. Old Tom Morris was saying, 'ro oute your course there now. The specifics of the advice that Morris gave were never recorded. It was just assumed. I guess that they were followed. And Morris never returned to Port Rush, so it's not like he built this course. This is not like Prestwick where it was Old Tom Morris's course.

00:13:44
Speaker 2: He was just there.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: We know that he provided some advice and an eighteen hole course was soon built. So the club acquired the land to the east this more dramatic duneland in eighteen and the eighteen hole course opened that year. This new routing, presumably recommended by Old Tom Morris, had a classic loop out and back structure. It started in town, ventured out into the dune land, looped back around in a counterclockwise direction, and then visited the coastline before returning to town. So this is what old Tom Morris did in many courses. I think we can assume that this is basically what he recommended. Just take the golf course out there inland, loop back around, you know, graze the coast, and then come right back. There was a hole on this course called the Crater, which played directly over a massive blown out dune. Now I'm not entirely sure which hole this was. The sources that I've read from the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundred it's about the course, are a little bit confusing. It They seem to indicate that the hole was on the back nine, somewhere like in the middle or towards the beginning of the back nine, maybe hole thirteen or fourteen. But the photos of the hole that I've seen have show the hole being fairly close to some houses in Port Rush, which would indicate that the hole was more on the front nine. So I'm a little bewildered as to what the exact routing of the course was and which hole this was, But it was a very memorable hole. It was a bit like kind of like the maiden hole at Royal Saint George's which no longer exists, just playing right over this obstacle, and it made certainly a very striking photo. So at this time the course was still called the County Golf Club. It was renamed Royal County Club in eighteen ninety two under the patronage of the Duke of York, then renamed again Royal Port Rush Golf Club in eighteen ninety five, now under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. And by the nineteen twenties it was still this golf course that was Royal Port Rush Golf Course, this old Tom Morris routing. But a lot of advances in ball and club technology had happened. The course had fallen behind the times and the club leaders saw the need for a redesign. They were especially anxious to attract the best players in golf. This has been a through line in the history of Royal Port Rush, the desire to host big tournaments and the emphasis on competitive play. They got to a point in the nineteen twenties where they felt they weren't attracting the quality of players that they wanted, so they needed to improve their course somehow during this time, during the nineteen twenties, the club actually figured out a way to cut out the railway company that had helped them secure the lease of the land initially and they negotiated their own ninety nine year lease on the land from the Earl of Antrim or whoever it was, yeah the Earl of Amtrim in nineteen twenty eight. Around this time, the club also engaged Harry Colt to design two new eighteen hole courses. So they had one eighteen hole course, but they had a lot of Duneland. Harry Colt was brought in to show them how they could make full use of it create thirty six holes of golf. So Harry Colt quick sidebar on him. He's in the discussion for the most influential golf architect of all time, no doubt about that. He started designing courses in the first decade of the twentieth century. Among his first projects were the design of Rye Golf Club and the redesign of the old course at Sunningdale. Went on to design Swinley Forest Saint George's Hill in the new course at Sunningdale. All in the English Heathlands, also renovated and redesigned much of the modern open Roda, including Mierfield Royal Liverpool. Made key contributions to golf architecture on the European continent, particularly with a couple of great Links courses in the Netherlands. In North America, he designed Toronto Golf Club, Hamilton Golfing Country Club, Old Elm Club, and he provided really important assistance to George Crump in the design of Pine Valley Colts. Changed the way that golf courses were built. He changed the way that golf features were built. He was one of the first architects, maybe even the first golf architect, to blend artificial features into the natural landscape in an intentional way. He also adopted the strategic ideas pioneered and promoted by John Lowe, Tom Simpson and others, emphasizing options and angles rather than straightforward punishment for poor strikes. He just brought a new level of sophistication and artistry at a golf course design trained Charles Allison and Alistair McKenzie, who then exported this approach to golf architecture.

00:19:08
Speaker 2: Across the world.

00:19:09
Speaker 1: So the Allison and McKenzie courses that you see have a lot of the characteristics that early Cult courses had embodied his philosophies to a great degree. So Harry Colt's influence on architecture just spread all over the world by the nineteen twenties, and by that point his career was really winding down. Royal Port Rush was one of his last really well known designs. Now, it wasn't until nineteen thirty two that the new courses were built, the Dunloose Links and the Valley Links. Essentially nothing that I can see was kept from the old Tom Morris course, maybe a whole corridor here and there, but these were brand new courses that really didn't take much inspiration from the Tom Morris course. The company Frank's Harris and Company had worked with Cult previously carried out the construction and members played the new championship course the Dunloose Links for the first time on Eastern nineteen thirty three. The core of Colt's Dunloose Links still exists today with some modifications that will discuss, and he also designed, of course the Valley Links, which although owned by Royal port Rush is home to Rathmore Golf Club and the Royal port Rush Ladies Club is a primary course for those clubs.

00:20:32
Speaker 2: So the first.

00:20:33
Speaker 1: Major change to Royal port Rush came in the nineteen thirties. The first major change to Colt's design, that is this is when the town of port Rush purchased the remainder of that big triangle near town and they wanted to build a new school, so that purchase included the first and eighteenth holes of Colt's course. So Cult returned in the nineteen thirties to advise on some replacement holes, but the club's professional PG Stevenson, ended up actually designing them. Stevenson's holes were different from what Colt suggested, but Colt apparently said that they were better. These holes, the old eighth and ninth and the current tenth and eleventh, were completed in nineteen thirty nine, so the routing had already changed. The first and eighteenth holes original holes had been chopped off and more holes had been built deeper into the lynx Land rowport Rush hosted the Open Championship in nineteen fifty one, the first time it Open had been held outside of the island of Great Britain. It was won by Max Faulkner, an English golfer who apparently did most of his damage in the late forties and early fifties, and it didn't host another open until twenty nineteen, and of course won by Shane Lowry. So we'll talk about some more kind of recent history of Royal Port Rush a little bit later in this episode, but that's the basic story of the formation of the course, and in a minute will dive into the architecture. But first a word from the USGA Green Section, the sponsor of today's episode. One of the biggest trends in golf course maintenance is data collection, and no management system today makes collecting data easier than Deacon from the USGA Green Section. Data collection tools like the GS three ball and the new USGA Moisture meter seamlessly connect and instantly upload data in the Deacon app. You can use this data to make decisions to manage inputs and resources more efficiently, to provide consistent playing conditions, improve playability and of course increased golfer satisfaction. With the latest upgrade to Deacon, you get enhanced navigation, robust reporting tools, and decreased testing time measure what matters. Get your Deacon Tools bundle today at gsshop dot USGA dot org. Again, that's gs shop dot USGA dot org, the USGA Green Section Shop. All right, Matt, let's let's dive into some characteristics of this golf course that Harry Colt designed and has been altered in some ways, but basically still embodies what Harry Colt envisioned in the early nineteen thirties. When you think about the land at Royalport Rush, what are the main features of the property. What's the structure of the property, Where's the interesting stuff, where's the less interesting stuff? How is it all kind of laid out out there?

00:23:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the land is like far and away one of the best assets to Royal Port Rush. It's such an incredible variety of links land and it took me a while, like I actually kind of just recently understood this because this was actually this trip that we went on last March. It was my first time like making a trip to Scotland or island or to play you know, these classical links type golf courses and Portmarnick I guess is more like the Scottish Links where it's kind of this low lying land with smaller undulations, and then we went up to Royal County down which is like these incredibly dramatic like landforms and huge sand dunes, and it, like, I guess it like surpassed my thoughts of what real links golf was in this like kind of more low lying and less intricate land. And that's what Royal Port Rush has is which is why it makes it so great. It has huge, long, broad slopes alongside really choppy dunes that kind of layer on top of each other and create these really amazing peripheries on holes like nine, ten and eleven kind of in the middle section, but in general it's just like a very very good variety of land and at the same time, like you're set right on the water there and the land like really goes up high once you go inland there to kind of this rolling farmland, so you have really long views up the coast of the rocky coastline you can see the farmland inland and then just some of the most incredible sand dunes you'll ever find where the two golf courses, the dunes SLINKs in the valley course sit so I really do think that the land is one of the greatest assets. It's so different than what you see a lot of the other ROTA courses, at least from my perspective seeing them on TV, and what I haven't visited very many at all, but that was the definitely something that stood out so much to me is just how good the land is at Royalport Rushing.

00:26:00
Speaker 1: That distinguishes Irish Links Golf from Scottish Links golf or even most English Links golf, just the sheer scale of the land, the size of the sand dunes, it's just bigger. And then another interesting aspect of Royal Port Rush is that it has like that spectacular coastline as well that you can actually see. Although there is a big dune ridge along the coast, there are places where you can kind of get through it, get up and over it and really see the ocean. So it's almost it's like more of a site that Mike Kaiser would like, you know, and would be attracted to for one of his resorts, more so even than a lot of the sites we see for Scottish Links. So in general, the land toward the town, my understanding is that the land toward the town is more subtle than the land that you get too deeper into the links land. So how does that all function? Is there more detail there that I should know about?

00:27:01
Speaker 2: Not really, I would say you're pretty correct in that kind of the further west you go on the property, the more subtle the land is. It's still like exceptional land to build golf on. It just doesn't really compare to how dramatic and choppy and really really undulating the land is more towards the center, and then kind of the coastline where the fifth hole plays too, So that includes like holes one and two kind of play over these more broad slopes and it climbs you up to kind of a high point on the most inland side, which is definitely the highest point of the course. And then also kind of the eighteenth hole sits in a little bit more I guess gentle land, which is still obviously very very good land for a golf course.

00:27:49
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the land. Let's talk about the routing. Take me through how the current routing of roll Port Rush basically works, and then we can get to about the past routings.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the current routing, you have the first I would say four holes are kind of climbing up around the perimeter of the property. So based on on the two courses, the clubhouse kind of sits in the middle for the dunlost links, and.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: You on the southern end of the property farthest away from the coastline, which is on the north.

00:28:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're yeah. One one is essentially the furthest inland hole that you play, So you're starting about as far inland as you can and you make this direct b line towards the ocean. Per se, you play up the hills kind of on one. Two, three is pretty level, and then four is slightly down towards the water. But once you get up to the fifth t it's this like it's this high vista. You have this very very panoramic view of the North Atlantic Ocean, the entire fifth holes. There you get to see like all the dunes in their in their whole glory. The massive un ridge that kind of protects the seventh hole from the ocean there is right there in view. So that's like the start, which I really really enjoy because it builds this anticipation. We're up on this high ground. You look down to all the holes in the center of the golf course and you see people playing down there, and it's building this anticipation to get down into this really dramatic looking duneesland to play all these holes that go through the center of the property. And then from there you got to play down to the coast edge, which is almost like a cliff edge. It sits up probably maybe forty feet above the actual beach, so you can get up onto the edge of the green there you're overlooking the water, you can look down on the beach. There's always people down there. That's something that stood out to me very quickly is how much the locals just utilize the beach and the dunes on the perimeter of the golf course. There's these little hiking trails. Actually spent one just walking the beach and going up on that main dune ridge and looking at the course from up there, which is a really cool perspective. So it's really cool to see how integrated this golf course is with the town and how many of the locals are using it even if they're not out there to play golf. And then the new holes that were added, which I'm sure we'll dive into a little bit deeper in a little bit are seven and eight, which took up the land that the old fifth and sixth holes of the Valley course played over, So that's the seventh pole, kind of playing through this valley up against that main large dune ridge that borders the ocean there, so you play out along the coast there again, and then you start coming back inland, and then there's these little loops that you play throughout the center of the property in holes in nine through eleven per se, and there you're just kind of playing now in one direction through these very very choppy dunes, and then you come back, you cross over, you loop around, and then one more time. So it's really kind of interesting when you compare it to other old Links courses. It's not a true out and back. It is in some fashion where you're going out and you don't return back until the eighteenth hole, but there's these these different types of loops, and it's a little bit more intricate and complex of a journey going through the natural terrain. And then after that you you kind of reach this other climax after you get through the middle section of the course and you come to the perimeter where the fifteenth hole you crest up over a hill and that's where you get another really awesome panoramic view of the water. The fifteenth Green kind of sits a little bit down from where you're hitting your approach shot, and then obviously you turn the corner there to one of the most famous part of threes in the world, the sixteenth Calamity Corner, and then from there you're playing over some very very dramatic land. The sixteenth and seventeenth there are really really cool golf holes that play over some very undulating terrain, and then the eighteenth, I would say, brings you back into kind of that more gentle land for kind of like a smooth landing to the under year round.

00:32:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of kind of mirrors the first hole in some way as a return to the broader slopes. Yeah, it's such an interesting routing. Basically, I like to imagine it as a journey out the climaxes on the fifth green, right out on the cliffs, and then you kind of turn back, but really you're doing these squiggles around the choppy dunes there in the middle. You're just kind of looping around those and taking turns and exploring them, and then eventually you find your way out through Calamity Corner and Clambity Corner. The whole sixteenth hole plays over a massive orge basically it's just a really impressive land form. And then the seventeenth hole plays up and over a dune. Yeah, and these these two big, uh pieces of the terrain are are kind of what you're what you're going for in the routing and as they provide a re entry into the more subtle land. So you know, when you consider just the the overall quality of this routing, what do you think the big strengths are. What are your big takeaways from why this is a good routing.

00:33:32
Speaker 2: I really think it's the variety, because you're getting to such different like types of land within this very diverse links land. Something I was actually just thinking about too that I'm kind of thinking about, like why Harry Colt shows this specific section for the Championship dunloose Links and then the other one for the valley, And I think it's because of maybe potentially this like high ground where you come up high, you're overlooking the golf course. You're playing this really like you're just on top of the world almost. It feels like when you're walking those fairways, you can see the entire rest of the two golf courses there. You can see into the town. There's a ferris wheel in town that is kind of like it's almost like a beacon, like you keep seeing it on the horizon line as you're playing the course. And I think why he did that is because of the journey out to the ocean. It builds the anticipation. And then the land is just so good in that middle section. It has such amazing undulations that are smaller scaled and create such unique different kind of undulations in each fairways. And then he just found such amazing natural green sites. So I really think it's the variety. And none of the holes play in the same direction, so the wind is affecting it in such different ways. And then when you look over to the valley course, it's called the valley for a reason. The state sixteenth hole is kind of one of the edges. The sixteenth on the dum loose links that is, is kind of one of the rims of the valley, kind of the high points and the steep sides of the valley. So when you look down to the right on sixteen, you see how like it's much flatter. It's kind of this flat bottomed valley in between the dune ridge that the sixteenth plays over and then that large dune ridge that is on the border of the shoreline that I spoke about earlier. So you have these two massive dune ridges and the valley just kind of sits in this low lying land in between it, and it's it's perfectly great land for a golf course. It's just maybe a little bit less interesting and not quite as complex. The complexity of the dunlus Lynx Land is just it's so good, Like there's there's never a spot where you're like, oh, this kind of looks the same as this over here. It's always constantly changing, and then the journey in which you experience each of these different types of kind of dunes within the site is constantly changing. So it's just such a dynamic golf course, if I had to put it in one sentence.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's a cool contrast between the two courses, the dun Loose and the valley, because one is kind of on the high ground, on the really dramatic land. One is more on the low ground, the low section of the property, on perhaps less complex land, but still really good. And you can assume that on really windy days the valley course is probably a little more protected from the wind by that big dune ridge and the other dune ridge on the other side inland, and so maybe that would be a more pleasant place to be during the bad weather days. It does serve its purpose. Tom Doak, and one of my favorite phrases that I've seen from him refer to the valley course at royal Port Rush as the dun Loose Lynks's hot little sister. So that's I guess you can imagine it that way as well. We could say this for our renovation work section when we talk about what Mackenzie and Ebert have done with the dumb Loose Links in preparation for these modern Open championships. But I want to just quickly refer to the changes of the dumb Loose Links as routing overall, which I think are really interesting. The original Harry Cult routing of the dumb Loose Links started much closer to town. As I mentioned earlier, it started in that big triangle it's basically abutting the town of royal Port Rush, and so there was a first hole in that big triangle. Then you cross the road and play another hole, which until fairly recently was the first hole. No, it was the eighteenth hole. Teenth on the dumb loose links that used to be the second hole, and then finally you get to the third hole, which is today's first hole. Essentially, what this means is that the journey out to the fifth green to the edge of the cliffs took longer. The fifth hole used to be the eighth hole, and then there was a longer journey back, and then in the middle of the round when you're kind of exploring this really good links land, it was a simpler route through those. Basically, from the fifth Green in Harry Colt's original routing, you turned directly back inland, went inland for a couple of holes, and then looped around and went back toward the coast to hit Calambity Corner, and then finally you turn inland again to make your way all the way back to town. This was not a pure out and back routing. There's a little kind of loop or almost em the shape in the middle, if you can imagine it as these two kind of curves of a m. But it did have that out and back character a little bit more and somewhat more in common with kind of classic links courses that would often start on very dull land closer to town and take you out to the interesting stuff. The modern Royal Port Rush starts much closer to the really interesting land. It gets you much quicker to the cliff, and a lot of people might like that better. A lot of people might say, I prefer to spend all this time, to spend most of the round in this fascinating dune land. But there's something about that original routing that is kind of pure. You can really see the intention of the routing and Harry Colt's initial plan for the course, which which lasted. It only was in the ground for only six years because it was nineteen thirty nine when they took out those the first and eighteenth holes that were right close to town. But in that original routing you really see that Harry Colt's intention was to take the plays on a journey out to the cliffs, loop around back through the interesting duneland inland, and then loop you back around to hit Calamity Corner. Those are the two things that he was going for. The two magnets of the routing cliff side on on that current day fifth hole and the big gorge at Calamity Corner for the current day sixteenth hole. It's I think it's such a fascinating routing because it is so simple in that way. It's like he clear he saw those two landforms and or saw those two points on the property and was like, I'm going there. That's the whole point of the golf course. That's muddied a little bit. Now you can't see that as clearly because basically they've put a lot more holes in the in the middle of the links land of of of the course, and that's just, you know, it is what it is. The courses evolve, and this is how that course has evolved. And I guess to be clear for people, it is a little preview of our renovation work. Section Mackenzie Ebert's seventh and eighth holes, which you mentioned earlier, Matt, were added for the twenty nineteen Open Championship, and as part of that they eliminated the seventeenth and eighteenth holes, which in Harry Colt's original routing were actually the second and seventeenth holes. But that's starting to get confusing. They basically eliminated the seventeen and eighteenth holes, which were on subtler land near the clubhouse, and pushed the whole course more into the dune land. And now they're using that land by the clubhouse formerly occupied by the seventeenth and eighteenth holes for spectator infrastructure, championship infrastructure staging area. I guess that's probably where you enter the venue for the Open Championship, and you know it serves its purpose for championship golf.

00:41:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they actually built they actually built a kid's course kind of where the seventeenth and eighteenth hole used to be on the old dune list link. So it's just a very simple kind of pitch and put style course there for children. I saw this on the Google Earth aerials.

00:42:07
Speaker 1: Is it cool? I mean, the land is obviously it doesn't give you much there, but is it kind of a cool thing to have that. Yeah.

00:42:14
Speaker 2: I think it's great for kids obviously. I know when we talked with Gary McNeil, who's been the head professional there since I think nineteen ninety nine, like almost thirty years now, he said it was a great asset for you know, warming kids up when they're little to try and like build up the kind of the gamesman to get onto the championship links there. It's mostly just kind of flat land, open holes, no bunkers, So it's just great for you know, children who can hit it on the ground and roll it around and kind of pick up the game.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: Right. All right, we've talked about land and routing. Let's just mention quickly what we think the general design philosophy of this course is now cult is generally regarded as golf architecture history's great naturalist. Natural features is what he emphasized, and looking built features is also a big point of emphasis with most of his work, and he's also known as a proponent of the strategic school of golf architecture as opposed to the penal. Do you think those things come through in Royal Port Rush's design.

00:43:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely, very very evident. The natural aspect of the design, that's definitely something that sticks out right away is just the amazing natural green sites that he selected, and inherently that then creates strategy on a lot of the golf holes based on angles or direction, green orientations or fronting dunes and mounds, kind of like the fourth hole. So I think inherently, Yeah, creating these awesome natural green sites, finding them, placing greens there then kind of helps to drive strategy back to the tee alongside, you know, the creation of the bunkers. So it's definitely very evident that those two things are present. And then there is there is like some I guess I don't know if you could consider it one hundred percent penal design, but there there's a lot of you know, false fronts and runoffs, crown greens, bold greens. So there's this good dynamic where there's shots that you hit in that will be more receptive and kind of funnel towards the center of the green, and then other ones where you need to be really really precise or you're going to kind of get repealed away to a difficult spot to make it up and down.

00:44:40
Speaker 1: Yeah. Variety, I mean, variety is one of the biggest strengths of Harry Colt's architecture. He always provides variety across all dimensions, you know, variety of maybe penal and strategic, but certainly variety of difficulty, some friendly holes, some some more challenging holes, and and variety of landforms. The way that the holes use the Land. He was obviously a master of that. This is Harry Colt at a very late period of his career. Golf architecture was very advanced by the late nineteen twenties. You compare this to a Harry Colt course from the first decade of the twentieth century, like Stoke Pogues or a Swinley Forest or something like that. I think by the time you get to Royal Port Rush, it's not that he's a better designer, it's just that he's maybe more advanced in his methods. And maybe one example of that is the greens at Royal Port Rush, which has been a big focus of your work on the course. Matt. You wrote a great course profile for Friday Golf Club on Royal Port Rush that people should check out if they're members of Fridagg Golf Club. What to you makes Royal Port Rush's greens different from the rains that you saw at other Links courses when you took this trip to Northern Ireland and to Port Martock as well.

00:46:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that you brought up kind of how this was late in his career, because I believe he has like nearly three hundred golf courses to his name, so he had so much experience in green building and finding great natural green sites and then you know, kind of massaging the land to make it fit, maybe a design strategy he was looking for or some sort of look that he wanted for each golf hole to make them different. And I think that's so evident at Port Rush is just how amazing the natural green sites that he selected, which in turn gives you this awesome, awesome variety because the natural landscape is so is just it's so random and unique and chaotic, so there's always kind of a new twist or new turn with each green site, and you have these awesome contours that feed into the centers of the greens. So I feel like on a lot of other Lynx courses, a place like maybe Royal County Down which we saw just a few days before we're at Port Rush, is it's they almost just occupy these flatter sections amongst the dunes. Because the dunes are so massive and towering, there's only a few specific areas where you could actually build a green that would be usable and functionable. So I think that's probably the biggest difference you see from LINKS courses is the dunescape at Royal Port. Rush is kind of this middle ground where you can find these little pockets and little ledges on dunes or bowls in low points where you can build great natural greens and then use the surrounding contours and rumples and stuff to kind of feed into the middle of the surface. So it's not just these large flat planes on flat sections. It's more so two tiered or even three tiered, or these long broad ridges crossing through greens, or drainage swales coming from the dreams to get water off the surface. So it's just this this awesome kind of different style where he's just adapted them to the natural landscape so well, and it's it's it's honestly, probably because of his experience at the time, like he had built so many greens, he was probably comfortable with trying to do new things, be a little bit more creative and try and do something different here because that's what the land was giving him.

00:48:33
Speaker 1: Would it be fair to say that the greens are are kind of more shaped than most greens that you've seen at links courses that there's it's it's good shaping and blended shaping, but but there's some some manufacturing that went into these greens, right for sure?

00:48:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely there's more shaping per se, Like not the bad kind of shaping, but the type where it feels like they just took a blanket and draped it over the land escape and it kind of created these soft, rolling contours that flow in and out from the green surface and create this just amazing aesthetic. The Sixth Hole always comes to mind when I think, like when you just say, like, what are the like if you wanted me to talk about the greens and how they're natural, the Sixth Hole just like always comes into my mind. I have this perfect depiction in my head of the whole. I can like see it as if I was still standing on the tee because it just like sits amongst these dunes so naturally and so seamlessly. It's it's almost like it was just meant to be there.

00:49:36
Speaker 1: Do any other greens come to minds as standing out or ones that people should should pay attention to when they come up on the telecast?

00:49:44
Speaker 2: I really like the fourth Green in the in the sense of just where it's situated. It might not have the most I guess, intricate or interesting internal contours, but just the way that it sits in between these like four or five different like kind of sand mounds, and the orientation of it is really interesting. And then especially so when you bring in the out of bounds boundary, there's a straight line out of bounds fence all down the right side, and the green angles towards that, so you have to be down the right side to kind of see into the green and see the flagstick depending on that day's that day's pin position. So that's one that comes to mind. Another one too that comes to mind, would be the fifteenth. It's a really small green. It feels a lot smaller than the other ones. Maybe it isn't, and maybe that was just my perception of it, but the target looks really small because, like I was saying earlier, the drive semi blind. You're playing up a hill and you get up to the kind of the crest of the hill is where or maybe even the downslope where you're hitting your approach shot from, and you're kind of looking down to the green and there's a couple of bunkers down the left side of the hole that kind of frame the green and a fall off to the right of the green. So it feels like a shot that you have to be really precise at. And there's a big ridge that kind of cuts through the center of it, dividing the green in half. So are those are three that I think stand out, at least in my mind pretty significantly cool.

00:51:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is the aspect of Royal Port Rush that makes it feel like more of a modern golf course or modern in the sense of late Golden Age more advanced golf architecture with earth moving techniques involved. It's the greens that make Royal part Rush feel like it's, you know, of a piece with maybe more the Heathland courses or some of Alistair McKenzie courses in the US and Australia. Royal Port Rush kind of feels like it belongs to that category almost as much as it belongs to the open Road, a category of Saint Andrew's and Royal Saint John and Royal Liverpool and Carnoustie. You know, yes, it does have significant similarities with some of those courses, but it also has one foot in this kind of high Golden Age advanced architecture period and I think that's part of what makes it special and it really comes through in these sophisticated green designs. All right, let's talk about hazards at Royal Port Rush. What do you think are the primary things that drive challenge and strategy on the holes at Port Rush?

00:52:36
Speaker 2: It's certainly the wind. I think there's if you look at the course at a hole there, there's not an overwhelming amount of bunkers. There's a lot that are really strategically placed, and you'll find yourselves in them because they're kind of placed in areas where balls want to collect. But I think it's the wind and the landscape that are kind of the course's greatest defense. It's always windy there. We played on a very windy day. I would assume it's going to be very windy for the Open Championship. It's so exposed there, so I think that's kind of the greatest potential hazard that players are gonna face. And then the green designs as well. There's a lot of false fronts where balls are going to roll off, so in tandem with the wind, you have to be really precise with your iron shots to get the ball close. If you're just slightly off, the wind's gonna blow it offline and then you're gonna find kind of an edge of the green that repeals you away from the putting surface. So I think it's it's a combination of the design which is really really dynamic, and it kind of is is flipping and flopping between the type of tests. It's asking you from these really demanding precise shots where you're gonna have to you know, mid to long irons and be really really accurate with where you're landing the ball, and then the combination of the wind. So it's kind of I think it's a very dynamic test. It's not there's not one certain aspect that's going to overwhelm players. I think it's the combination of the course, is greens, the landscape which you're playing over, the uneven lies, the tricky stances, and then the wind.

00:54:18
Speaker 1: Obviously is it because of the wind, do you think and the difficulties of combining the wind with the land that the bunkering it or all part rush is is maybe relatively minimal. I mean, there are plenty of bunkers, but it's not the place isn't absolutely strewn with them, right.

00:54:38
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, there's so little, Like I think the sixth hole has no bunkers, the eleventh hole might have one. The tenth hole has no bunkers, and then even holes like the fifth, like there's just two bunkers out there that kind of frame the edges of the fairway and are only really going to punish you if you're trying to push a driver up by the green. So it's almost as if it's kind of allowing you to play a more conservative game, play the wind, keep the ball on the ground. But if you want to be aggressive and try and try to I guess, bully the course, then that's where you can find yourself in these bunkers that are a real penalty. Another interesting thing that I've been considering and thinking about ahead of the Open is the seventeenth hole, which plays kind of up over this ridge line and then it's a huge drop and the fair way tumbles down towards the green, and I believe it's like a four hundred yard hole. But I'm almost convinced that some players are going to be able to drive the green because if you get the ball over that ridge, it's just going to run down the hill forever and ever. But there's these bunkers that are way down there that may seem like they're not in a place to challenge you. But if you're going to try and drive the green and you know, man handle the hole, then they're going to cause you issues. So I feel like potentially maybe that's where these bunkers come into play, is more hazards and then obviously on on the par fives in your layup zones, and trying to make you make a decision on your second shot on the par fives. Gotcha?

00:56:12
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's take a quick detour into aesthetics real quick. That the shaping of the course, we talked about it with the greens, and and how nicely tied in the edges of the greens are with their surroundings, how they kind of seem to emulate the Lynx Land in certain ways, but do so in ways that go beyond just natural. What do you make of the shaping of the bunkers out there? Do you think it's evolved over time? And and I don't know what's the what's the kind of esthetic character of the bunkers?

00:56:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of them are are kind of like that stack sad, that traditional kind of pot bunker. Not I wouldn't compare them much to like Saint Andrews where therese these feel like these deep pits. They have that kind of stacked face, But then a lot of them are kind of flashed up a little bit because of I think just wind erosion and sand blowing out. So it's kind of I guess it's more of an eclectic look, just based on the environment and how it evolves over time. But a lot of them do have kind of that that revetted stacked face.

00:57:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and probably done maybe after Colt's time. I haven't seen many early pictures of the course, but there were more blowouts back in the day, whether whether natural or man made. And and Coult is of course known for pioneering the ragged edged bunker. The naturalized bunker was a that's a leading characteristic of his courses in the English heathlands and many other places. But of course, over time on on real links courses, those ragged edged bunkers, as good looking as they might be, proved to be a little bit hard to maintain given the wind and weather that the properties get, and so they tend to be formalized into these stacksod designs that that are a little sturdier only need to be replaced every few years, as opposed to constantly evolving and constantly giving the maintenance team headaches. So you see some of that at at Royal Port Rush, but as you say, it's not to the point where it's like like Royal Liverpool where they're just these sort of circles that go you know, like Wells or something that goes straight straight down. They're at least a little more nuanced than that.

00:58:31
Speaker 2: So I will know too that we when we were there, it was still technically under winter conditions. We were there and early to mid March, so it's it's definitely we are seeing the course in a very different light than what you're going to see on TV in the middle of July kind of the in the heart of the golf season for them. So things that I, you know, saw might be slightly different. You know that things might be a little bit more refined and and buttoned up for the Open Championship.

00:58:59
Speaker 1: Well in the rough might be a little bit less thick, perhaps because it's gonna be a little dryer out there. That is one of the critiques of Royal Port Rush that I've seen that the rough maybe plays a little bit too much of a role, that it's so penal that it kind of takes away from some of the strategic complexity of the course. Did you find that to be the case? Is the rough super thick and punitive.

00:59:27
Speaker 2: It was definitely a challenge when you got into it. I think more so is the land that the rough is like on top of. Is like, once you get outside of the whole corridors, you get this really really tumultuous turning landscape, these dunes that are very hilly and rumpled, So you're gonna find yourself with some really awkward stances and you're gonna be just having difficult getting the ball out of there because the ball might be way below your feet or way above your feet, or you having these really really awkward stances is because the land is just so like undulating outside of the whole corridors, it's it's a little bit more smoothed out in the fairway areas, and then it almost transitions right into kind of the native and the native grasses. So I think it's definitely going to be a challenge. I don't know if they're you know, growing it out or trying to juice it up to make it a serious challenge, but I think the thing that I noticed most was just like having really funky lie while you're in there and then just trying to hack it out and get it back into play. And that's also where like the bunkers can also come into play and punish you even further is trying to get too much out of a shot from the rough and then you know, find yourself in even more trouble.

01:00:42
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've talked about greens, we've talked about hazards. Let's touch on the turf out there agronomy at Royal Port Rush. What are the basics that we should know about the turf presentation at Royal Port Rush.

01:00:57
Speaker 2: I think, just like all other lyings courses, it's it's almost like it was meant to be. Using the fine fescue grasses across all of the surfaces is just it's just the best. It's this is the most superior playing surface for the game of golf. It's firm, it's fast, something that I don't think people maybe who aren't so wired into agronomy and and know the specifics of it. But but fescue grasses are a much thinner leaf blade, so it's a very very thin type of grass compared to let's say bent grass or Kentucky blue grass, which are kind of the predominant cool seising grasses that you'll see in the States. So this fine fescue is is a really thin leaf blade, so it creates much less friction between the golf ball and this and the plane surface. So just that simple nature of it, the sand that it sits on, which is is great for the grass, a great growing medium for the grass, and then the wind creates this this awesome dynamic we're playing in. The ball along the ground is likely going to be your friend, and it's going to roll forever and ever and ever. It's just gonna just roll and roll and roll, and it creates all these different types of shots that you can hit around the greens. I was using. I use a four iron to play these short, little bump shots, which is something I love doing instead of trying to, you know, reach for the sixty and fly it up in the air. And that's just something that that the terf allows you to do. Here.

01:02:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully we'll get a truly firm and fast open championship. There's been a few opens recently where things have been a little bit soggy, but still, you know, bouncy enough, and I think ural Port Rush would would really come alive if it's if it's very firm and fast and baked out there, that that would be that would be fun to watch. Definitely the twenty nineteen Open, we didn't quite get that it was. It was rainy during during most portions of that championship. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. Let's get finally to the renovation work here talk about some specifics of how the course has evolved recently. So in preparation for the twenty nineteen Open, Mackenzie and Ebert, the firm that works at basically all of the Open Road of courses and has very close ties with the RNA, Mackenzie Ebert made major changes to the routing of the course. They eliminated the seventeenth and eighteenth holes. As we described earlier, these these played parallel and in opposite directions right near the clubhouse. They were Colt's original second and seventeenth holes. They got rid of those holes, replaced it with the short course that you were describing, and during opens this is kind of, you know, what they consider to be essential space for hosting the championship. It's right there at the entrance of the course, and they're going to make use of it. Mackenzie Ebert then designed those two new holes that are fairly close to the coast, the seventh and eighth, and that's those that land used to be part of the Valley course. The old fifth and sixth at the Valley Course were eliminated. Those were well regarded holes and that and that's one one critique of this project that has been aired is that they they borrowed from the Valley Course and maybe maybe lessened the quality of the Valley course for the sake of making this change to the dunloose links. In addition to that really huge change, Mackenzie and Ebert moved the second green aways down range to lengthen that hole, and they did some reshaping here and there, made little tweaks throughout the golf course with an eye toward preparing the course for elite play. There wasn't necessarily an intention to restore the course or or a real devotion to Colt's original plans. Mackenzie and eb oh It's usual line is, we have great respect for Harry Colt, but I don't necessarily see them putting any great effort at many other courses to restoring Harry Colt's intentions or ideas at his courses. They may have great respect for him, but the primary intention of the work, the brief that they get from the RNA and from these clubs, is to make the course ready for the Open Championship, and that's what they did. That was the priority of the work. The argument for the new seventh and eighth holes is that the holes that were eliminated the seventeenth and eighteenth weren't especially well loved. They went over the most boring land on the property and they were considered to be kind of a disappointing and to the course for many years. I think those holes probably made more sense originally when they were the second and seventeenth holes, but once the big triangle was taken out of the equation, they became the seventeenth and eighteenth kind of playing back and forth, and maybe it's it was just sort of a disappointing or deflating and to the round, and so there wasn't any great outcry about the elimination of those holes. That was part of the defense of Mackenzie and Ebert's work. So those seventh and eighth holes, which you briefly describe as we're going through the routing, What do you make of them architecturally? How would you evaluate their their quality or character design wise?

01:06:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the seventh is a par five kind of playing through this really really dramatic area in the dunes, and then the eighth comes back right back towards the sixth green. So it's just this basically two hole loop that kind of takes you out to this very dramatic land and then back towards kind of the core of the middle or I guess the beginning of the back nine and where you kind of loop around in the routing. And it's under kind of my impression of the way that I see it that the the seventh hole they built is like almost trying to replicate or draw inspiration from the old seventeenth hole. They rebuilt this very very large blowout styled bunker on the right side of kind of the landing zone for drives. I believe it was called the Big Nelly Bunker was its nickname, and it was this very ominous kind of hazard that would do would capture balls all the time. So I kind of see that that was maybe their inspiration for that hole is trying to almost recreate the seventeenth because it had become this sort of infamous sand bunker, and and it kind of had this reputation. And the hole is really cool. I think it's a it's a great golf hole in the sense that it travels over really awesome dramatic land in order to get it to the length that they need for the pros. It unfortunately has a big backtrack towards the tee from the sixth green, so you're almost walking like to play the very back tee. You're almost walking all the way back to the six tea. It's more than halfway past kind of the hole. You already traversed back to that tee. So that's kind of a little bit of a disappointing aspect of it as it breaks up kind of this awesome flow that you get on the first six holes where you're just basically stepping over you know, a dune, a small little dune ridge and just like getting onto the next tee box very quickly.

01:08:29
Speaker 1: So this is always progressing, right, yeah, and then suddenly you just have to walk backwards, which is you know, something that sometimes happens when Mackenzie Ebert reroute courses. It certainly happened at Royal Liverpool with the awful walk that people have to make back from the little I par three, but they installed there and so this is see seems to be a trend that the that the walks are not always working out well.

01:08:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's obviously it might be a little disappointing for the flow of the routing. But I never got to see the old seventeenth and eighteenth holes, and perhaps this is the best solution to get rid of those two other holes and create a new one. As you had to do this, which you're saying a good golf hole too. The seventh is solid. Yeah, it's certainly a good golf hole. I think. Another aspect of the hole that maybe falls a little flat is the green design and kind of the shaping around the green. It sits kind of up a little bit. You're playing down through this low point and then it's a slightly elevated approach shot, and there's these hollows kind of shaped around the green that are almost rhythmic in fashion, where there's these just kind of pretty evident scoops where waters draining off the green into kind of these low lying areas surrounding the green. And I also heard that this green's been rebuilt several times since the first iteration in the twenty seventeen twenty eighteen period when they first rebuilt the golf hole.

01:10:00
Speaker 1: Look at a green like that and compare it to the more original, perhaps or more faithfully cult greens at the course. What is the thing just for the people out there who maybe want to see these things themselves when they're playing, or be able to make these distinctions. What do you zero in on as the kind of weaknesses of the shaping of that green compared to the other greens on the course.

01:10:28
Speaker 2: I think the biggest thing is maybe just the execution of the shaping. Where when you pick a natural green site that's really good and great for you setting a green into there's going to be all these little natural subtleties to the landscape. And yeah, there's going to be hollows like there are that they built. There's going to be hollows that kind of drain water off the green, but they're going to be different from one another. Some are shallow, some are really deep and penalizing. They're different sizes and widths and all of that. So they're just very varied, and you have a great natural green site, but on the seventh they feel a little bit more contrived. They're kind of rhythmic in the depth of how below the green they are the width of this round, you know, kind of hollow. So there's just almost this this very similar stipe style of shaping for each of these hollows surrounding the green, and it goes all the way around kind of the left and back side of the green. And for someone who you know, kind of is looking out for these things, it stands out and sticks out amongst all the other greens.

01:11:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, there, I like to think of it. You're talking about rhythmic kind of like these these repeated shapes. There's a kind of a symmetry or repetition to the shapes. Yeah, Whereas greens that are really blended in well to the natural environment often have an element of chaos about them or imbalance. Where shapes are not repeated, because rarely do you see wave like scoopy shapes in nature, those those stand out as man made tour i whereas you know, really thoughtfully shaped greens tend to tend to have a bit more mess about them, and the surrounds of the seventh green don't quite look messy. I've seen photos of it. Totally agree with your assessment. What do you make of the eighth hole, the one coming back?

01:12:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the eighth plays over kind of this virgin land that was unused before they changed the routing of the dune this links It didn't take any land from the valley course like the seventh. But so you're playing kind of down on these lower area on the seventh through the valley, and then the eighth you kind of climb up this little hill and it's coming up to kind of the same ridge that you tee off for for the sixteenth hole, so it's on this little slightly higher point, and then the whole kind of traverses a ridge the entire way with kind of a fall off down towards kind of that I was talking about on the seventh hole to the left. So basically there's not I guess in my in my mind, there's not a real strong strategy to the golf hole. I guess you could try and shorten the hole by playing down the left side of it, which you're taking on a little bit of risk, but then there's bunkers, you know, plopped on the right side of the hole, on the landing outside of the dog leg.

01:13:28
Speaker 1: Bunkerd on the outside of the dog leg. Yeah, so usually a dead giveaway of not a not a very good strategic hole.

01:13:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's almost like there's there's a penalty for missing left or right. So it's almost like, yeah, there's there's no real reason to try and hit it down the left or hit it down the right. You're you still just need to hit it in the middle to have a good look at the green.

01:13:49
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So those are the new seventh and eighth holes. Some good things, some things that that could have been better. Let's get to the overall arc textural significance of Royal Port Rush kind of try to sum it up. When you look at Royal Port Rush in the in the world of golf courses and golf architecture, what do you think the big important thing about it is.

01:14:14
Speaker 2: I think what makes it stand out so much amongst links golf courses is how refined the design is. It's so thoughtful in each green and the way that it traverses the land and the style in general. It's just everything seems so well thought out and put together and complete, and there's there's hardly a weak hole across all eighteen of them. So it's almost this this constant like high that you're you're having when you're when you're playing the golf course, whereas and I know a lot of other links courses maybe you're playing like three or four maybe more bland holes to get to a really cool piece of ground and then play a really dramatical whereas at port Rush you're constantly playing really like truly rate golf hole one after another on this just absolutely amazing tapestry. The landforms the landscape right on the water. It's more so that the culmination, I think of all the little aspects that come together and make it truly one of the greatest golf courses in the world.

01:15:20
Speaker 1: It's well put it, you know, it's like high Golden Age design meets links golf, and that does make it stand out, because you could say Mierfield also embodies some of these characteristics, but the port Rush land is so much more dramatic and the design is bold to meet that land. And it's a kind of rarity in golf in Great Britain and Ireland because This is a late nineteen twenties golf course with all the benefits of the advances in golf architecture since the early twentieth century, that was put on a great piece of links land, and you just don't find that many places, partly because while there was a boom in golf and golf architecture in the United States and in North America in the nineteen twenties, that wasn't the reality in Great Britain and Ireland and Europe. There was a recovery from World War One, but economic times were harder and the recovery was harder because the war had happened there so many people had died and so much damage had been done, whereas you know in the in the US, we're across an ocean here and and there. There. It was an economic boom in the nineteen twenties that golf benefited from, and that's why you see so many of the great courses in Great Britain and Ireland really emerged before World War One, and a lot of Harry Colt's great architectural achievements happened in the nineteen hundreds and nineteen tens. And if you think about where golf architecture was in the nineteen hundreds and nineteen tens. Yeah, they made advances really quickly, especially in England in golf architecture, so quickly things came together and they figured things out. But man, in if you compare it to the US that Charles Charles Blair McDonald's just building National golf Links and Pine Valley was just getting going before World War One. By the nineteen twenties things had exploded and the art of golf architecture had grown so much, and the benefits of that were not as enjoyed in Great Britain and Ireland. But at royal Port Rush you do see the benefits of that matched with an amazing piece of land. And that's from what you've from your discussion of the course, that has really been my takeaway. Of course, I haven't been there. I'd love to go play Royal Port Rush, but from what you've written, Matt, what you've said about the course, that has been the impression formed of it, and it's kind of what makes it interesting. So let's wrap up here with a couple of holes to watch. We've mentioned some holes already, maybe we can just remind people of those, but as they're watching the Open Championship, what would you say people should watch out for for a couple of specific holes.

01:18:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, the stretch four through six is amazing, maybe my favorite stretch of holes on the course. Like I said, you have the boundary hole, so you have out of bounds all down the right side, which can you know, derail someone's round early on, And then the fifth which depending on the wind, people will definitely be driving the green on certain days. But there's also out of bounds right on the back edge of the green, like maybe two paces two or three paces off the back edge of the green is this very prominent out of bounds line and then a cliff right beyond it, So going for the green on a down one day could be could be really risky business. And once again like that early part of the front nine could certainly derail someone's round and cause some big fluctuations on the leaderboard coming on the weekend. And then the six is just an awesome par three and the back right kind of whole location in this little nook is a really interesting pin location that I'm gonna be curious to see how the players attack. And then another section that stands out a lot is the middle, the middle of the golf course. Holds nine through almost fourteen are just really really demanding golf holes. A lot of those greens sit up like the fourteenth especially sits way up in the air and there's no room for air. It falls off on basically all sides, and the recovery is really challenging on that. So I'm curious to see how players will kind of handle that middle section. You're gonna need to really golf your ball in that middle section and keep everything together to keep a good round intact. And then obviously sixteen is where there's also gonna be a big roller coaster of emotions for players. And if they hit a good shot or a bad shot, you know, you could just hit it up there and and make your par pretty easily if you if you commit to the shot and get it up onto the flat land where where you can chip it onto the green or find the surface. But the second you you you go uncommitted and you miss it to the right, it brings in, It brings in any any sort of number. I made a seven on the hole when I played it, So there's there's no there's no question that there's gonna be high numbers there at some point during the week.

01:20:39
Speaker 1: You're down below yeah yeah, yeah, your way into the into the gorge.

01:20:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like barely missed short right, and and you watch the ball trundle down this incredibly steep slope and then you're gonna you know, go down there and see what kind of lie you have and try and get it back up onto the putting surface. But then right after that is also a fascinating hole, like I said, because it has this big question, you know, do you want to lay up kind of and remain on top of the hill and have this shot down Are you gonna you know, challenge hitting it down there and and trying to either drive the green, which will definitely be possible on a down one day, But that that that specific downslope where the fairway drops off is very crowned. It's like a big hog's back, right, So it's gonna feeds into the trouble, right Yeah. So so if you if you clear the hill, uh, you're kind of at the mercy of the lynxland and where your ball is gonna bounce, it can bounce left and go down into some bunkers down the left side which then is going to give you kind of this awkward you know, sub one hundred bunker shot into the green, or it's going to kick you right into this this kind of taller native fescue area. So it's definitely a great kind of risk reward hole where if you want to if you want to take the risk and pound it down there and try and get it close to the green, there's there's some real penalty if you miss. But also if you lay back your your way up on top of this hill and you still have a wedge in your hand most likely and you're hitting down to a really low green, so it's gonna be hard to control where your ball is going in the wind and get it close to the hole. Nice.

01:22:24
Speaker 1: So those are some holes to look out for. Do you know what your one and done pick is going to be? Yet?

01:22:29
Speaker 2: My one and done PM.

01:22:32
Speaker 1: For the Friday Golf Club one and Dunpool. Yeah, I think I'm going with Tyrell Hatton. I might choose erl Hatton. You kind of got to choose the Live Boys and the Majors because they only show up for the for the Majors and he can save the PGA to ur horses for other events, but Terrel Hatton might do well here. He might be frustrated by certain aspects of the course, but he seems to play really well on links. He plays brilliantly on the old course. Yeah, if there's a terribly similar courses, but he can deal with the conditions least.

01:23:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. One one I've been thinking about is John Rahm. I know he's played uh the Court Stewarty. Well, yeah, he won. I think he won. I don't remember the exact tournament. It was an amateur tournament at Port Stewart just down the road. So I think I think I'll go with John Ram as my my one and done pick.

01:23:19
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be a really good pick. I already burned him for the for the PGA Championship. I should have waited on that one. All right, Matt, thank you for coming on this deep dive podcast. Worldport Rush really enjoyed this. Thank you for for doing all the prep for this pod, as well as all the all the work that you've done on Royalport Rush so far. I mentioned your course profile and Friday Golf Club. People should go see that, check that out and see all the stuff that you're going to do. In the run up to the championship.

01:23:48
Speaker 2: So thanks, yeah, thanks for having me.

01:23:58
Speaker 1: This episode of does Signing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you Will. If you're enjoying Designing Golf so far what we're doing here with these deep dives and these discussions of golf architecture, then give us a rating or review and or review wherever you might be listening to us. And of course this kind of material is our bread and butter in Friday Golf Club for the exclusive content we do their weekly course profiles. I publish articles on a weekly basis about what's happening currently in golf architecture, some information that you'd have a hard time finding anywhere else. I think all that is going on in Friday Golf Club, along with a great community that we're building of avid golfers and access to our events where that community is really reinforced and brought to life. So if you enjoy the content we do at Friday Golf on designing Golf, as well as the Friday Golf Podcast, the Shotguns Start, and the many other things that we do our YouTube channel, if you like that stuff, then then just consider joining Frida Egg Golf Club. Go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership. Thank you for listening to this episode, and we'll be back again in three weeks for another episode. We're gonna wait until after the Open Championship to release another episode, but we'll do one on We'll do two episodes on consecutive weeks, so that's a little programming note. We're doing this episode now, but we're gonna wait for the Open Championship to unfold before we come back with another, so I'll see then.