Athenry
Oranmore, County Galway
- AddressPalmerstown, Oranmore, Co. Galway, H91 HH5T, Ireland
Athenry Golf Club was founded in 1902, with members playing on a 9-hole course at Rockfield until 1940, when the club relocated to Cullairbawn and Park. This layout lasted only twelve years before another move was made to Mounbawn, where the club operated for twenty-five years until finally settling down at its current Palmerstown site in 1977. Additional land was acquired in 1989, allowing the course to be extended to eighteen holes.
In the book Hooked: an amateur’s guide to the golf courses of Ireland author Kevin Markham comments: “there are good tee box settings, some wild spots (a fairy ring on the 1st), some woody dells and hollows (the 4th), a desolate and broken wood (the 12th) and a pine forest that ensures the closing stretch is the most exciting on the course. Off the tee the trouble comes from the trees; this is particularly so on holes where the fairways gently curve around them.”
Laid out as two returning nines, the course at Athenry measures a little under 6,000 metres from the back markers, playing to a par of 70. Feature holes include the short par four 4th (doglegging right to the green with out of bounds on the right); the signature par three 12th (with a narrow ditch crossing in front of the offset green); and final par three on the card at the 17th, which plays through a chute of trees on the edge of the woods to the green.
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Eddie Hackett is regarded as “the father of golf course design” in Ireland, though he never formally trained as an architect and only became involved in laying out courses when he reached his late fifties.
