Reviews

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A selection of media reviews...

Travelin' Joe's No. 1s

By Joe Passov, Senior Editor (Course/Rankings), 9th September, 2010

No. 1 Favourite Course: "....My choice is the Old Course at Ballybunion Golf Club in Ireland. I'm with Tom Watson on this one. I'm totally smitten with the wild contouring, ocean views, towering dunes and remarkable variety - no matter what the weather."

Whistling Straits: It's a links course, with American features

By Jerry Potter, USA Today, 10^th August, 2010

KOHLER, Wis. - When Herb Kohler brought controversial golf course architect Pete Dye here for his first look at an old military base overlooking Lake Michigan, he gave Dye short instructions on what he wanted in a golf course.

"He said, 'Make it look like Ballybunion,' and walked away," Dye says. Ballybunion is a fabled links course on the northwest coast of Ireland overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.."

"The Road to Ballybunion" by John DeGarmo

"In golf there are certain places that send emotional charges through the bodies of avid golfers ... St Andrews, Augusta, Winged Foot, Muirfield. Yet even among the select, few courses boast the romance and awesome power of Ballybunion.

Carved out of towering dunes along the Atlantic Ocean by God and the elements, it is considered by many to be the greatest course in the world."

Links, Jack Whitaker, March 1995

"If you want perfect fairways, no rough, flat greens and calm balmy days, Ballybunion is not for you nor you for Ballybunion. But if you are one of life's seekers, a Ulysses with three pitching wedges, seeking what lies beyond the western star, go at once to Ballybunion."

Golf Escapes, 2007

"Updated by Tom Watson in 1995, he called it, "one of the best and most beautiful tests of links golf anywhere in the world".

Golfing, Daniel Walton, April 2008

"What trip to the west would be complete without playing the Old Course at Ballybunion. It deserves its reputation as one of the finest golf courses in the world. Since Herbert Warren Wind wrote in the early 1970's that it was among the ten best courses in the world, visitors have flocked to Ballybunion".

Golfing, Daniel Walton, April 2008

"The Cashen Course is a roller-coaster ride through towering dunes stretched between the Cashen River and the ocean. As a golf course it is probably more spectacular than the Old Couirse. In truth both courses at Ballybunion deserve to be on the list of the world's sreatest courses".

"What can be said  about Ballybunion that hasn't been said already? This is links golf at its very best: innumerable rolling dunes perched on the edge of the cliffs and bays of Kerry that offer scant protection for the naturally contoured greens from the wilds of the Atlantic". (Daniel Walton, Golfing- The Clubhouse Leader, February 2009)

Golf World, November, 2008

"No greater authority on links golf than Tom Watson has heaped praise on many courses over the years, but never with the reverence he reserves for the place where he warmed up before each of his 5 Open wins. "Ballybunion is a course on which many golf architects should live and play before they build courses," says Watson of Tom Simpson's venerable design. It might have a statue of Bill Clinton, but this awesome links is a true monument of golf". (Golf World, November 2008)