As a golf club, Royal Portrush is as venerable as it gets, with a rich pedigree and roots that reach back to 1888. But as an Open rota stop, it’s a relative newbie. The oldest golf championship in the world didn’t come to Portrush until 1951, nearly a century into the tournament’s life, and it didn’t make it back for another 68 years. By the time the event returned for a splendid four-day showcase that culminated with the Irishman Shane Lowry chugging champagne from the Claret Jug, the Harry Colt-designed Dunluce Links at Portrush had long been ranked among the top 20 courses on the planet.
Yet to many fans in the U.S. and beyond, the 2019 Open counted as a revelation — a first up-close look at a wildly artful layout, draped across high dunes along the Irish Sea. In advance of that year’s competition, the British architect Martin Ebert was enlisted to ready the course for a modern major by updating its infrastructure and shotmaking demands without changing the essence of Colt’s design. The success of those revisions helped ensure that the Open would return to Portrush in 2025. On a links without a weak link, every stroke matters.
But some demands on the Dunluce are stouter than others. Here’s a look at the six holes that played the hardest in 2019, along with insights from Ebert on what makes them so demanding.
1st hole, 420 yards, par 4
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 4.195
DIFFICULTY RANK: 5th
To some observers, a hole with out-of-bounds on both sides is unfair. That’s opinion. This is fact: The penal feature came about because the club did not originally own the land. The result is a supremely intimidating test that Rory McIlroy failed in 2019 when he pumped his opening drive on Thursday into the penalty area, leading to a quadruple-bogey 8 that all but ended his week as soon as it began. Not that the second shot is easy from the short grass. The approach plays uphill to a green partitioned into subtly contoured quadrants, and anything short risks spilling back into a doomsday bunker on the left. “From there,” Ebert says, “the best players in the world will do well to make a 5.”
4th hole, 502 yards, par 4
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 4.183
DIFFICULTY RANK: 6th
Royal Portrush has only 59 bunkers, the fewest of any Open rota course. But a particularly pesky pair occupies the center-left of the fairway of the 4th, a brutish hole named in honor of the first Irishman to hoist the Claret Jug. A new back tee has been added for 2025, and, with that extra distance, Ebert says, even bombers aided by a tailwind will struggle to carry those two sandy hazards, which, in turn, will bring out-of-bounds on the right more into play. Decisions, decisions. There is always the option of laying back, but the shorter the drive, the tougher the second to a green nestled in the dunes.
11th hole, 475 yards, par 4
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 4.383
DIFFICULTY RANK: 1st
The statistically hardest hole at Portrush, which morphs from a par 5 into a par 4 for the Open Championship, was not in Harry Colt’s original design. But it was built with the architect’s approval as part of changes triggered in the late 1930s when the clubhouse was relocated from the town of Portrush, more than half a mile away, to its current site. The scorecard tells you that this one is a doozy. What the yardage fails to convey is the impact of the wind, which is often forceful and usually hurting. Though the fairway widens as it bends right, inviting players to try to cut the corner at 260 yards, trouble lurks both left and right in the form of dunes and gnarly rough. The green is elevated, with a false front that repels balls into a valley — yet another reason the 11th yielded more than twice as many bogeys or worse than it did birdies in 2019.
14th hole, 466 yards, par 4
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 4.350
DIFFICULTY RANK: 2nd
What’s in a name? Plenty in the case of the stout 14th, which owes its moniker — Causeway — to the precarious path an approach must travel to a long and narrow hog’s back green that shrugs off shots in all directions. To its right is a Valley of Sin-like swale. To the left, one of the deepest bunkers on the property awaits. An amateur could spend the day chopping haplessly back and forth between them. Tour pros stand a better chance. But to hold the putting surface with their second they’ve got to leave their first in a good position. That requires a thread-the-needle drive between bunkers to a fairway that tilts left toward a bunker and tapers as it goes. Then comes the real test. “The beautiful but challenging green is what makes 14 so difficult,” Ebert says. “Only the perfectly flighted approach has a chance of finding and staying on the putting surface.”
16th hole, 236 yards, par 3
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 3.263
DIFFICULTY RANK: 3rd
The low ground to the left of the green is known as Bobby Locke’s hollow, a nod to the South African great who aimed for it successfully in all four rounds of the 1951 Open and made par each time. That’s far easier said than done. From a high point on the property, exposed to the elements, this imposing par 3 plays slightly uphill, dune-top to dune-top, across a ravine with a chasm running the full length of the right. Shots that stray in that direction wind up in knee-deep cabbage, some 40 feet below the putting surface — the “calamity” that Locke was intent on avoiding. Bailing left is not a bargain either. Miss the hollow and you’re in tangled misery. Over four rounds in 2019, the field carded a collective 24 birdies here, the fewest of any hole.
18th hole, 474 yards, par 4
SCORING AVG. AT THE 2019 OPEN: 4.200
DIFFICULTY RANK: 4th
From an elevated tee, out-of-bounds on the left extends in plain view. And though it shouldn’t be in play for the game’s elite, Ebert says, it’s apt to creep into their minds. Instinct suggests favoring the right with the driver, risking dunes that constrict the fairway. But no matter where the ball lands, the second is apt to be a mid- to long-iron to a green guarded by a bunker on the right and a tightly mowed bank on the left. “It is,” Ebert says, “a fittingly great hole to end the round.”
