For the one of the next courses for WGT to pursue I would like to recommend Royal County Down Golf Club in Northern Ireland. It somewhat of a lesser known golf course, but it is one of the best, and has been conistently ranked in the top five in the world. It is a semi-private golf course, so I think WGT would be able to maneuver their way onto this course, and it would be better than any course we have now except for St. Andrews. In fact, after St. Andrews, according to golf.com's ratings it is the highest ranked course in the world that allows public play. Here are some excerpts and pictures taken from golfclubatlas.com and a video taken from royalcountydown.org.
First hole, 540/505 yards; Voted by
GOLF Magazine among the three finest opening holes in the game, the 1st
has been in play in its current form for over one hundred years.
Playing along side Dundrum Bay, a tee ball down the right can bring the
sunken green in reach in two. The more one plays the course, the more
one realizes how important it is to get off to a good start. The next
three shotter isn’t until the 12th and the demand for quality golf is
so high over the next ten holes, that a poor start weighs heavy upon
the golfer.
Third hole, 475/455 yards; This hole stands side by side with the third at The Country Club in Brookline and the 3rd at National Golf Links of America
as the author’s favorite 3rd in the world. Its great attribute is that
there is no clearly defined ‘best’ way to play it. A long drive down
the right of the fairway leaves the shortest approach but the shot is
blind. A drive long down the left gives the golfer the best view of the
green, though at the expense of a longer approach. With trouble both
left and right, other golfers prefer the center line off the tee as at
least some of the flag might be visible. Golfers play this hole for
years before deciding a preferred course of action.
Ninth hole, 485/430 yards; The dramatic
sixty foot drop 200 yards from the back 9th tee markers is – in theory
– actually too sharp for good golf. And that makes Colt’s routing over
this dramatic landscape all the more impressive as the hole works
wonderfully well. Once again, the golfer is given something to
accomplish that no other course does on quite the same scale – launch a
tee ball over the top of a dune to a blind fairway well below. The
thrill of a well struck tee ball is immense but infrequent. Indeed, the
key to one’s round at County Down is often how well the player recovers
from a missed tee ball. Far too often, a missed shot results in a
double bogey or worse as the golfer gets greedy with his recovery shot.
Interestingly enough, golfers frequently display worse judgment on
harder courses than on the easier ones. County Down ruthlessly exposes
such unsound and impatient course management. The 9th is a prime
example: not to be on the wide fairway in two with a pitch to the green
for an easy bogey is inexcusable but somehow, doubles and worse are
more the norm. The 9th hole highlights a term that readily applies to
County Down: ‘appropriate blindness.’ The golfer has a wider margin of
error for his (blind) tee ball with tighter requirements following for
the (non-blind) approach.
Tenth hole, 195/180 yards; Like the
1st, this hole was a naturalwith agreen situated in a natural
amphitheatre of dunes.As such, it has remained in play forat leastone
hundredyears. In fact, this green may wellhave been in useover one
hundred andfifteen years as it may be the 2nd green from Old Tom
Morris’s original layout.
.....anyway I think these pictures speak for themselves, so, please WGT, take Royal County Down into serious consideration when planning the next several courses you plan on bringing here. Other then St. Andrews, here is no other semi-private or public course that is better.