The
THE clue to what gives Carne Links Golf Course, on the wild western tip of County Mayo, West Ireland, its utterly seductive appeal lies in the name of the holes; ‘Crioc Na Ros,’ ‘An Traonach,’ ‘Lusna mBrat,’ ‘Draith na Sabhaircini,’ ‘Magarlin’ and ‘An Muirineach’; or for those not au fait with Gaelic; ‘Hill of Roses,’ ‘The Corncrake,’ ‘Wild Thyme,’ ‘The Primrose Way,’ ‘Wild Orchid’ and ‘Maram or Bent Grass’.
All these species thrive
there and if the course was any more at one with its natural habitat and in keeping with the rugged terrain in which it nestles, the flagsticks would probably start sprouting roots. Rolling fairways tumble their way around gargantuan sand dunes up to verdant- layered greens battered by the saline breath of the Atlantic. And how can rough, so menacing to golfers’ scorecards, look so wild and beautiful even to their eye - a gloriously unkempt tangle of wild grasses and flowers that has digested untold thousands of errant golf balls?
HUGGING the Erris Peninsula, overlooking Blacksod Bay, with sublime views of the Atlantic and the islands of Inis Gloire and Inis Geidhe, this is a magical place, hosting a golf course, the swansong of the late great Irish links course
LINKS Effect
designer Eddie Hackett, worthy of the terrain’s majesty.
No wonder golfers come
from all over the world to play it with a string of golf industry accolades - a recent one, 28th best golf course in the world according to Golf World Magazine. Aside from its other- worldly feel and look, the most amazing thing about the course is that it was only completed in 1993, despite appearing to have been there for centuries. The course was the inspiration of a company called Erris Tourism, which was set up in 1984 to attract more tourist traffic out to this most splendidly isolated corners of Eire. The directors had the foresight to engage the services of Hackett, a visionary architect whose reputation for hewing out organic golf courses from Ireland’s rugged coastal terrain earned him the moniker: ‘King of the links’. ‘I find that nature is the
best architect,’ he once remarked and Carne, his last and many say his most challenging work, embodies that ethos. “Right from day one he was adamant he would mess as little with what was here as possible,’ says Eamon Mangan, the club’s treasurer and one of Erris Tourism’s directors. “He found a sight for a green here and a sight for a tee there and threaded the fairways through valleys,
Carne Links Golf Course in Eire’s North-west is one of the most organic courses in Europe, totally in harmony with its natural rugged terrain. BEN CARLISH finds out how Carne’s keepers have polished a rough Irish gem
dunes and hills. There was no way he was going to open up the landscape or bulldoze the sand dunes. In fact very little bulldozing was done at all; most of the shaping was done with the shovel.”
When it comes to
maintaining a links course of this nature, Eamon is adamant that less is more and to keep its harmonious symbiosis with its surrounding environment, a laissez faire approach is the order of the day. “We have to tolerate a lot of daisies and that sort of thing,” he explains, “because we are very reluctant to use pesticides and weed-killers, so as to protect the flora and fauna.” “There’s a lot of stuff advertised for killing off broad-leaved weeds which is detrimental to other vegetation too. So we use them sparingly and we make sure we use protective sprayers that only spray downwards on to those weeds on the fairway, the greens and their aprons, and ensure as much as we can that it doesn’t drain on to the rough.”
Similarly the hosepipe and the fertiliser keg seldom come out at Carne as the native fescue grasses don’t much appreciate them.” “We haven’t irrigated our
fairways and given our climate in the West of Ireland there’s no need to anyway,” reports Eamon. “One of the contributory factors to crowding out the
natural fescue grasses is because people over-irrigate on account of the demands put on fairways by heavy play.” “Fescue is a deep-rooted grass, capable of surviving drought situations,” Eamon continues. “We believe irrigating these fairways encourages the shallow rooted unwanted grasses such as poa-anna (annual meadow grass).” “So we tolerate fairways drying up in the summertime. We also only cut the fairways about once every three weeks because the grass growth is not as vigorous as on parkland and doesn’t need as much attention.”
The meadows here
previously constituted common land used by farmers who grazed their cattle here for centuries and Eamon says it was incumbent on the club to protect that natural heritage by employing an agronomist from Dublin as a consultant during the construction of the course. “As a result, the
abundance of wild flowers thrive and species, such as the endangered corncrake, which resides around the third hole after which it was named, are familiar and welcome inhabitants.” And what of those legendary links greens? How to keep them as fast and as beguiling as any championship course? The secret, says Eamon, lies in seaweed.
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