Course Review - Royal Portrush & Blue Course at Congressional Country Club

This week brings events at historic and fabled golfing venues on both sides of the Atlantic. A celebration of all that is good about Irish golf sees Ireland's quartet of recent Major Championship winners – Darren Clarke, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington – welcome a strong field to the masterpiece that is Royal Portrush as the Irish Open returns to Northern Ireland's soil for the first time in almost 60 years.

Originally opened under the name The County Club in 1888 as a nine hole course, the layout was extended to 18 holes the following year. Royal patronage was first gained in 1892 through the Duke of York, then again in 1895 through the future King Edward VII when the club's name was changed to Royal Portrush. Later, in 1951, Portrush became the only club outside the British mainland to host the Open Championship.

Although Portrush is blessed with two courses by the great Harry Colt, it is nonetheless his 1929 design the Dunluce that collects universal praise from the golfing world. The windswept fairways nestle in natural valleys between towering sand dunes and the greens blend into the landscape, generally protected by grassy humps and knolls rather than conventional sand bunkers. Ranked among the best 15 courses anywhere, there are no weak holes, but undoubted stars are the par 4 5th that hugs the cliff edge and the par 3 14th with its green fronted by a yawning chasm at the aptly named Calamity Corner.

On the US PGA Tour the famed Blue Course at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland is hosting the AT&T National a stone's throw from the corridors of power in the nation's capital, Washington DC. From its founding in 1921 with future US President Herbert Hoover as the club's first president, Congressional has numbered the great and the good among its members including several sitting Presidents. The Blue Course was laid out by Devereaux Emmett in 1924 and since then has also been touched by the hand of greatness with Donald Ross, Robert Trent Jones and his son the Open Doctor Rees Jones, all subsequently being credited for redesign or remodelling.

Normally a par 72 for the members, Big Blue sheds a stroke at the par 5's on 6 and 11 to add teeth for championship play. The biggest change in recent years has seen the unusual par 3 finish consigned to the pages of history. A totally new par 3 was fashioned to start the back nine and the round now climaxes at the old par 4 17th, delivering the drama of a well-protected green almost encircled by the largest lake on the course.

A Golf Weather
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