The legend of the Giant’s Causeway, one of the most famous in Irish mythology, explains the origin of the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s unique basalt rock formations along Northern Ireland’s Atlantic coast. According to the story, a giant by the name of Fionn Mac Cumhaill built the Causeway as a bridge to Scotland after being challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. However, when Fionn glimpsed how colossal Benandonner was in the distance, he feared for his life. To protect him, Fionn’s ingenious wife Oona disguised him as a baby and tucked him into a cradle. Benandonner took one look at the size of the ‘infant’, assumed the father must be terrifyingly large and fled back to Scotland at once, tearing up the Causeway behind him so Fionn couldn’t follow.

Standing on the hulking par three 16th of Royal Portrush’s Dunluce Course, host of this year’s The Open Championship, a vast chasm the size of a giant’s footprint separating my tee box from the green more than 200 yards in the distance, I can’t help but feel sympathy towards Benandonner and his desire to turn on his heels and run away; they build them big in these parts and it’s hard not to be intimidated.

‘Calamity Corner’ as it’s named, just in case the hole itself wasn’t enough to strike fear into its combatant, is where good rounds go to die on the Dunluce. The course is perhaps the most forensic test of a player’s ability to play links golf you’ll find anywhere on the planet and here at the highest point of the property it asks a stern final question before it lets you out of its exam hall. Will you be as wily as Fionn and Oona, or will you fall to the giant’s clutches? Take a long iron or lofted wood, aim further left than your intuition suggests, and strike it true. Shots running up the front left will ease to the right beyond the canyon directly in front of players and feed towards devilishly tucked pins.

Make a mistake? Well, calamity awaits. The reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy famously made double bogey here on his way to an eight-over 79 during the first round of The Open in 2019 – a score that would ultimately prove his undoing when he missed the cut the following day. You can expect more of the same when The Open returns in just a few short weeks.

Where giants roam

The 206-yard par-three 16th hole, ominously named ‘Calamity Corner’, is one of the most fearsome on the Dunluce.

‘Calamity Corner’ is its name, in case the hole itself wasn’t enough to strike fear into players

Royal Portrush entered the annals of golfing history in 1888 when ‘The County Club’ was founded on the outskirts of the small fishing village of Portrush. A year after its establishment, the legendary Old Tom Morris was invited to expand the course from its modest nine holes into a full 18-hole routing and he did so by marching the new holes through the dramatic coastal dunes that flanked the property. By 1895, it had received royal patronage from the Prince of Wales and was renamed Royal Portrush Golf Club.

However, it was the guiding hands of another pillar of Golden Age golf architecture that would act as the greatest influence on the Dunluce Course. Between 1929 and 1933, the great Harry Colt transformed the Dunluce Course from a straightforward out-and-back layout into one of the most strategically varied links in the world. His genius was in ensuring that no two holes played in the same direction, creating a continuously shifting challenge where players never felt overly comfortable with wind conditions or familiar lines.

Following Old Tom’s path into the duneland, he pushed ever-closer to the coastline – on the 5th hole, ‘White Rocks’, the green sits on the cliff’s edge with the plateaued putting surface stretching into infinity to the Atlantic beyond – before weaving in and out of the sandy formations that typify the undulating terrain underfoot. He carved out bunkers, strategically placed in the innumerable dips and hollows of the layout, and left the natural contours of the putting surfaces to form the hardest line of defence against par.

Bernard Darwin, a distinguished amateur golfer and godfather of golf journalism (as well as the grandson of naturalist Charles Darwin) once declared the Dunluce, “truly magnificent and Mr HS Colt, who designed it in its present form, has thereby built himself a monument more enduring than brass.” In 1951, Royal Portrush’s legacy was assured when it made history by becoming the first course outside of England and Scotland to host The Open Championship.

That it should take a further 68 years for the most historic golf major to return to this venue is a dark spot in the tournament’s illustrious history, but mercifully the course has returned to the sport’s grandest stage in no small part thanks to the upgrades the course has received under the watchful eye of Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert. The pair were instructed in 2014 to make a swathe of changes to both the Dunluce and Valley courses (we’ll touch on the latter in good time), including lengthening the yardage of a number of the holes to championship standard and, crucially, constructing two completely new holes that would replace the previously bland 17th and 18th holes.

“The opportunity to work upon such great courses as the Dunluce and Valley is a great honour for us. The setting for the courses is magnificent and the detail of the Harry Colt-designed greens and green surrounds illustrates the finest qualities of his work. We look forward to imperceptibly blending the changes into the existing course features,” Ebert said at the time of the announcement.

Each of the architects to have played their part in shaping the future of the golf course has had one thing in common: the land upon which they were routing the layout is nothing short of spectacular. A cursory glance at the pictures in this article, or indeed the views you’ll enjoy during The Open in July, are sufficient to give you an idea, but the truth is it pales in comparison to the real deal. That is because Portrush sits in quite a unique position on a sandy promontory that juts out into the Atlantic on a particularly stunning patch of coastline. A short way up the road to the east you will find White Cliffs, the tall limestone cliffs atop which the course’s namesake Dunluce Castle rests, and a further five minutes’ drive hence you’ll stumble across the aforementioned Giant’s Causeway.

Like many of my peers in the golf world, I subscribe to the idea of “course first, views second”, but it’s difficult to wind your way down the cliffside Dunluce Road and not feel your breath catch in your throat as Royal Portrush sprawls out below like a rumbled picnic blanket on the beach.

Colt laid out the Dunluce to be a gruelling test of strategy, creativity and an ability to adapt

I’ll save you any further suspense and get this out of the way now: the Dunluce Course at Royal Portrush is the best golf course I have ever had the pleasure to play. It knocks off Turnberry’s Ailsa Course and the brilliant Pinehurst No 2 from their perch at the top of my personal rankings and, if I can be honest, it’s not particularly close. I played the Dunluce once before on a blustery wet day in 2017, prior to the latest round of improvements, but the new routing inclusive of Mackenzie & Ebert’s new holes has transformed a great course into one of the greatest there is anywhere.

Colt laid out the Dunluce to be a gruelling test of strategy, creativity and an ability to adapt to the unexpected, and these signature elements ring true today as much as they did at the completion of his work in 1933. In an era where modern golf equipment appears to have hit terminal velocity and many classic courses are sadly no longer relevant to the professional game, the Dunluce loses little of its tactical magnificence in the face of longer hitters. It’s the most complete course I have experienced – the kind of chess-like brain teaser that works your mind as much as the body, but leaves your soul full.

It feels mean-spirited off the back of such a comment to pick out any specific holes to highlight, but I’ll mention a few in the spirit of journalism. The 1st hole is an unassuming one, but it rises to an elevated green that features a textbook undulating surface that banks diagonally across in a way that is both clever and quietly terrifying; the 4th hole, named after the first Irish winner of The Open, Fred Daly, is a brutish par four with a green site guarded by a narrow corridor of dunes; the new Mackenzie & Ebert par-five 7th sits alongside a humongous dune and sits perfectly congruous with the existing course; and, the brilliant 15th hole which winds its way uphill and to the left, revealing a stunning green with the backdrop of the Skerries, the group of rocky islands just off Portrush’s coast.

I can’t promise you will find the Dunluce in quite such fine fettle, but on an unseasonably sunny May afternoon, the golf gods laid down their swords and allowed me to bask in the golden light dancing off the rippling fairways, the greens rolling like an air hockey board and the tufts of fescue lightly swaying in the soft breeze. My wife and I played deep into the evening until the sun finally gave in to the horizon as our golf balls landed on the 18th green – in the shadows of The Open grandstands, no less. The only way I can describe it is golfing nirvana. It’s a feeling I’ll spend the rest of my life chasing.

The Ultimate Northern Ireland Golf Trip

Pound for pound, it’s difficult to argue with the notion that Northern Ireland has the greatest number of world-class golf courses relative to its size. Clocking in at a total area of 5,460sq m, it’s roughly two-thirds the size of Wales and five times smaller than Scotland, yet it’s responsible for two of the top ten courses on the planet alongside a further two in the top 100, with a bevy of lesser discovered and often historic gems to take in along the way.

Indeed, the Valley Course at Royal Portrush is one such golf course that is finally getting its time in the spotlight. While the Dunluce next door will continue to attract golfers from around the world, Mackenzie & Ebert have quietly transformed the Valley into a world-class test worthy of addition to any golfing itinerary. Likewise, less than 15 minutes from Portrush is the superb Strand Course at Portstewart Golf Club, which is home to perhaps the most dramatic front nine in the entire isle of Ireland. There are few backdrops quite as breathtaking as the opening tee shot, pointed towards a mountainous sand dune that hides much of the wonderful linksland behind.

Just the other side of the River Bann estuary, you’ll also find Castlerock Golf Club – yet another superb links test in the shadow of the Mussenden Temple, perched on the hill above the town. The 2,446-yard nine-hole Bann Course, in addition to the 18-hole Mussenden layout, is an absolute must for any golfer visiting the area, with the way it scythes through towering dunes that would match even the most impressive in the county.

In other words, come for the Dunluce Course, stay for the links golf you’ll find in close proximity. Even the great county of Fife in Scotland may struggle to match the wonders of this corner of Northern Ireland.

There are few backdrops quite as breathtaking as the opening tee shot at Portstewart, pointed towards a mountainous sand dune

In his 1910 opus, The Golf Courses of the British Isles, Darwin wrote about the upcoming Irish Championship held at Portrush, sharing words that ring remarkably true more than a century later: “There is no country where the golfers are more keen or more hospitable than in Ireland, and the friendliness with which the inhabitants welcome their guests is only equalled by the earnestness with which they endeavour, and very often successfully, to beat them. It is a fine country for a golf holiday, and this fact is now so thoroughly appreciated that Englishmen and Scotsmen pour over to the Irish courses every summer, and more especially to the particular course on which the Irish Championship is being played for. At this meeting may be had fierce golf, tempered by a proper measure of cheerfulness, on which those who have played in it – sad to say I am not one of them – are never weary of descanting.”

As we turn our attention to The Open in just a few weeks’ time, no doubt fierce golf will be had in pursuit of the Claret Jug, but perhaps the greatest hope we can all share is that more among us will be inspired to discover the magic of golf in Northern Ireland, whether that’s at Royal Portrush’s Dunluce or its kin – to stand on the shoulders of giants and do battle with this spellbinding golfing terrain. It is, indeed, a very fine country for a golf holiday.

The Open Championship takes place 17-20 July. Plan your Ireland golf itinerary at ireland.com