Your Golf Travel - Extraordinary Golf Experiences - Flipbook - Page 33
To The Manor Born
WORLD CLASS GOLF ON THE EMERALD ISLE
Ireland is blessed with dozens of
world class links, but it’s an inland
venue that has been bagging all the
golfing headlines of late following the
reimagining of Adare Manor, a luxury
retreat in County Limerick which has
been on the receiving end of a
€50 million makeover.
bottom up, with no stone or pane of glass
left untouched in the pursuit of luxury.
Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the 7,509yard championship course, which was
originally designed by Robert Trent Jones,
has taken two years to complete, and is
nothing short of a masterpiece in terms of
design and presentation.
Given that Ireland boasts a fifth of all the
true links courses in the world, it seems a
sacrilege to travel to the Emerald Isle to
play a parkland course, but so great has
been the reception given to the renovation
of Adare Manor, the Limerick-based resort
bought by Irish entrepreneur JP McManus in
2014, that I felt it my duty to find out whether
the hype was justified.
The par-72 course, which boasts the rare
feature of having no rough, is the first in
Europe to boast super fine Bentgrass
greens, while a similar strain of sward was
chosen for all approaches, enabling players
to pull their putters out with confidence
when they’re not short-sided by one of the
numerous greenside bunkers.
And so it was that I found myself flying over
the Irish Sea, landing at Shannon Airport,
and taking a 30-minute taxi drive south west
of Limerick to the closely guarded gates of
Adare Manor.
Having stayed and played here 20 years
ago, not long after the golf course first
opened in 1995, I was eager to find out what
impact a reported €50 million renovation
would have on the resort as a whole, and
on a golf course that, although a pleasant
enough track—and host of two renewals
of the Irish Open over a decade ago—is
currently being talked about as the likely
venue for the 2026 Ryder Cup.
The answer is, in short, a lot. The renovation
of the hotel has taken place from the
Adare is also one of only three courses in
Europe to feature a SubAir system on all 18
greens. The system, which was installed on
Wentworth’s West Course two years ago,
and is also in place at Augusta, is used to
remove moisture through vacuum pumps,
guaranteeing firm, fast greens all year
round. So firm, in fact, that Rory McIlroy,
who played here in a match at the official
unveiling last April, along with Shane Lowry,
Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley, said
it was like playing in summer conditions,
such were the pace and purity of the putting
surfaces, which are significantly raised and
heavily contoured.
Harrington and McGinley, Ryder Cup
captains present and past, were both
closely involved in the redesign project,
aiding world-renowned architect Tom Fazio
on the final routing, contouring and grass
and sand selection. It’s hard to think that
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