Royal County Down

This is Royal County Down Golf Club. Isn’t Royal County Down Golf Club beautiful?
Fortunately, it looked very much like this on Thursday, with, of course, a fair number of clouds and the Mourne Mountains (in the background) becoming more enveloped with mist & fog as the day went on (very, very cool). How did I shoot? Let me simply say this. Tiger Woods played here for the first time five years ago. He shot an 85. He came back twice more - subsequently shooting 73 and then the course record of 65. I’ll be happy to share my score when I’ve played my third round here. What an incredible golf course! Some of the dunes along Dundrum Bay stand 70 feet high against the constant zephyrs and gales coming off the water. Most holes play through and over the dunes as well, with many blind shots guided only by an aiming stone at the top of the dune.
Golf Digest ranked RCD as the number 1 course outside of the United States this year, which would make it the number 3 course in the world (after Pine Valley in New Jersey and Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula in California). It seems that Old Tom Morris (as previously noted, the superintendent at St. Andrew’s Old Course in Scotland) did too good a job in laying out RCD in 1893- it kicked St. A’s out of the top spot!
From RCD’s brochure: “The Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea. . . soaring, smoky blue peaks, and a glistening turquoise ocean, or when the elements are stirred, forbidding, mist covered mountains and a wild, turbulent sea. King of these mountains is mighty Slieve Donard, once described a ‘perpetual gazing stock.’ Fringed by the impressive sweep of Dundrum Bay, here’s where towering sand hills appear wrapped in bright yellow gorse in spring and early summer, and in September are liberally sprinkled with purple heather. On such a stage, against such a backcloth, and amid such splendor weave the emerald fairways of Royal County Down.”
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to play on these hallowed grounds.