SentieroCustomTravel - Blog #Ireland golf trip planning

Links Golf Ireland & Scotland: Plan Your 2027 Trip Now

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:47:10 -0500

The Real Thing | Links Golf and the 2027 Planning Window

If you love links style golf like me, this time of year is both a blessing and a curse.

The US Open last week at Shinnecock Hills — with the required Corey Pavin 4-wood nostalgia — and the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale arriving in two weeks. Two majors, four weeks apart, both befuddling the world's best players with wind, sand, and fescue. For those of us who live for this style of game, it's the sweet spot of the whole golfing calendar. Unfortunately, this is also when the dreaming begins. The dream of actually playing there. Aye, there's the rub.

What Makes a True Links Course

Shinnecock Hills is always a visual delight to watch on TV. Those sloped, running greens. The golden fescue baking in the Long Island sun. Sand everywhere. Glimpses of the Atlantic beyond the dunes. It plays like a links course — it punishes the same mistakes, rewards the same creative, low shots. But as we links-purists know, Shinnecock Hills is not a true links course.

A true links sits on linksland. The definition is strict, as laid out in our links bible — True Links by George Peper and Malcolm Campbell. I'm staring at my copy right now. The criteria don't leave much room for argument:

The course must sit beside a river estuary
It must offer partial or occasional views of the sea
It must have few trees
It must have numerous bunkers
The nines must run out and back from the clubhouse
The turf must be sand-based, draining hard and fast year-round
The site must be fully exposed to strong, variable winds

The word "links" itself comes from the Old English hlinc — rising ground. These are ancient coastal landscapes, shaped by glacial retreat and centuries of wind. The turf drains so quickly that the ground plays firm and fast year-round. There are no trees to shelter you. The wind isn't a factor — it's the architect.

At the time of the book's writing in 2010, 246 courses in the world made that official cut. Royal Birkdale is one of them. Shinnecock Hills is not.

The Courses Worth Dreaming About

On July 16, we get the real thing. The Open Championship. And if you're like me, you'll spend that weekend on the couch — watching the pot bunkers, fescue, and gorse (oh my!) — and be left with one persistent thought: I need to play there.

That feeling doesn't go away. It gets worse.

So let's talk about where it leads. The top links courses in Ireland and Scotland are not interchangeable scenic backdrops. Each one has a personality — a set of demands, a particular way of humbling you — that stays with you long after the round.

Ballybunion, on the wild Atlantic coast of Kerry, may be the most dramatic links setting in the world. The Old Course perches on clifftops above the Shannon estuary, routing along ridges with 100-foot drops into the sea. Tom Watson called it one of the greatest courses he ever played. He was right.

Lahinch, in County Clare, is sometimes called the St Andrews of Ireland — not just for the quality of the golf but for the way the town and the course have grown together over more than a century. The goats still roam the property. When they shelter near the clubhouse, rain is coming. That is not a metaphor.

Royal County Down, framed by the Mourne Mountains and Dundrum Bay in Northern Ireland, is consistently ranked among the top five courses in the world. It is visually stunning and strategically unforgiving. It earns every superlative.

Carnoustie, on the Angus coast of Scotland, has earned its nickname — Car-nasty — through decades of hosting Opens that exposed the world's best players as merely human. Barry Burn. The closing stretch. It is not a course that flatters.

And then there is The Old Course at St Andrews. The home of golf. The Swilcan Bridge. Six hundred years of history playing out on a stretch of linksland shared, improbably, with a public park. To stand on the first tee at the Old Course is to feel the full weight of the game. Gulp.

Why Your 2027 Planning Window Is Now

Here is the part that surprises most golfers when they first start thinking seriously about a links trip: the logistics require a longer runway than you think. The top courses — particularly St Andrews, Royal County Down, and Ballybunion — release tee times well in advance, and the best slots fill quickly. For a well-planned 2027 trip, late summer and fall 2026 is exactly the right moment to begin. Waiting until January often means settling.

A well-designed links trip typically runs at least six to ten days, can combine two separate areas - even both Ireland and Scotland- and moves at a pace that lets the golf breathe. The goal is not to check boxes. It is to understand what this land does to a golf ball — and to you — when the wind comes in off the Atlantic at thirty miles an hour and the scorecard becomes beside the point.

As someone who plans these trips and loves this golf as much as my clients do, I can tell you: no two are alike. The routing, the sequence of courses, the places to stay between rounds — these choices matter, and they make the difference between a good golf vacation and the trip you talk about for the rest of your life.

So here's my pitch. Don't just watch the Open. Use it.

Let Birkdale do what it does. Let the feeling come. Then reach out, and let's start building the trip.

Let's go from couch to course.

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Ireland Golf Travel: Planning a Links Trip in 2027

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:38:50 -0500

Ireland Golf: Ten Years Later, and Why It Still Belongs on Every Golfer's List

It's been over ten years since my last golf trip to Ireland — and much has changed.

I'm currently planning a return trip for 2027 with the same group of friends who once took on the great links courses of southwest Ireland: Lahinch, Tralee, Doonbeg, Waterville, Old Head, and Ballybunion. While our golf games didn't always hold up against the Irish wind and demanding links conditions, the trip remains one of my favorite travel experiences to this day.

As I plan this return journey — now through the lens of a travel advisor — it's striking to see how dramatically Ireland golf tourism has evolved over the past decade. And equally striking to see how much has stayed exactly the same.

What Has Changed: Planning, Demand, and Cost

The demand for premier Irish links golf has exploded internationally. When I last visited in 2014, advance planning certainly mattered. Today, the most sought-after courses and peak-season tee times often need to be secured a year or more in advance — especially for groups. Ballybunion, Lahinch, Old Head, and Doonbeg in particular fill up quickly. If you're planning a buddies trip for summer 2027, the conversation needs to start now.

Greens fees have risen significantly as Ireland has firmly established itself among the world's elite golf destinations. At many premier links courses, peak-season rounds now exceed €300–€400 before caddies and other costs are considered. The total investment for a week of serious Irish links golf has grown considerably — which makes thoughtful planning and prioritization more important than ever.

The southwest corridor — County Kerry, Clare, and Limerick — has always been the heart of Irish golf, and it remains so. But the planning window and the price point have fundamentally changed. Working with an advisor who knows which courses are genuinely worth the premium, when to go, how to sequence the routing, and how to build the non-golf days around the experience makes a real difference in what you get for your investment.

What Has Not Changed: The Reason You Go

Despite the increased popularity and rising costs, the essential magic of golfing in Ireland remains unchanged — and that's the honest reason anyone should make the trip.

Golf without pretense. Even the most legendary Irish links still feel welcoming, relaxed, and deeply connected to local character. There's no stuffiness at the first tee, no dress-code theater. The caddie who walked Lahinch in 1994 is probably still walking it. The pint after the round is poured by someone who wants to hear how your day went.

Golf that rewards imagination. Irish links golf is less about precision yardages and more about creativity, adaptability, and embracing whatever conditions each day brings. The wind changes your club selection, your ball flight, your strategy. You can't just hit the shot your GPS tells you to hit — you have to think. That is, for the right golfer, deeply satisfying.

Scenery that puts the round in perspective. Shifting Atlantic skies, towering dunes, rugged coastline, and rolling green landscapes create an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in golf. Standing on the 17th at Old Head, the Atlantic on three sides, you stop caring about your scorecard for a moment. That doesn't happen everywhere.

Hospitality that extends well beyond the course. The villages, pubs, music, and warmth of the Irish people become just as memorable as the rounds themselves. A proper post-round evening in Lahinch or Ballybunion — dinner, a session at a traditional music pub, a late Guinness — is as much a part of the trip as the golf.

Camaraderie. This is what a buddies trip is actually for. Shared meals, long drives between courses, stories retold late into the evening, the friend who made a double on 18 and blamed the wind for three days. Ireland is an exceptional setting for all of it.

How I Think About Planning an Ireland Golf Trip

A well-planned Ireland golf trip has a shape to it. The courses need to be sequenced thoughtfully — some days are longer drives, some courses are better suited to fresh legs, and the non-golf experiences in between matter as much as the rounds.

The southwest loop is the classic foundation: Lahinch and Doonbeg in Clare, Ballybunion, Tralee and Waterville in Kerry. Not every group needs to play all of them. Part of what I do as an advisor is help clients decide which five or six courses make sense for their skill level, schedule, and budget — and build the rest of the trip around those anchors.

Accommodation choices shape the experience significantly. Staying in a character inn in Lahinch is a different trip than staying at Doonbeg Lodge. Both are right for different groups.

And timing matters. May and September offer the best balance of weather, daylight, and crowd levels. June, July and August are peak demand — beautiful but busier and more expensive.

For 2027, the window to plan is now. The courses that matter book early, and the best accommodations go with them.

A Final Note

Yes, Ireland golf has become more competitive, more expensive, and more globally recognized than it was a decade ago. But for a group of friends who love the game and the experience around it, I still believe it remains one of the great travel experiences anywhere in the world.

I'm planning to go back. If you've been thinking about it, let's talk about building it together.

Reach out through the contact page — a trip like this takes some lead time, and that's exactly when the planning is most enjoyable.

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