Obviously, the first thing that the brief for this article demanded was a little bit of maths on my part, for I am not sad enough to carry round in my head the number of golf holes I’ve played in my life.
But I do know that I have played 1,047 courses as of April 2025 (some may say knowing that figure is nearly as sad), so the first thing to do was to tot up the number of non-18-holers among them, most of which have been nine-holers, though not all. That came to 156, meaning 1,404 golf holes on a nine-hole basis. The remaining 991 18-holers brought a further 17,838 into the mix for a grand total of 19,242 golf holes from which to choose.
Allowing for one or two courses with unusual hole counts (e.g., Shiskine on Arran and Rye Golf Club’s Jubilee course with 12 holes apiece), plus some where it was just not possible to play all the holes due to weather, time constraints or a press trip schedule not allowing the full experience, I’ve gone with 19,200 holes in total.
Yes, it may not be 100% accurate but it’s pretty close and when the brief is to pick just one out of such a vast number, does it really matter? No, is the answer I came to, for that figure alone seemed more than a tad daunting.
My initial thoughts were to deliberate long and hard about it but then I decided, no, just go with your first instincts… which is how I’ve come to select the par-5 1st hole at Doonbeg in County Clare in Ireland, a hole about which I have long raved to anyone even vaguely willing to listen.
Purists and traditionalists will be horrified that it’s on a course that only opened this century, but I’m not bothered by that. Does it make me a bad person? I don’t think so. Will some people think I don’t know what I’m talking about because the hole wasn't built by one of golf’s golden age architects. Probably, but it is what it is, as Tiger would say.
The temptation here would be to pad the article out with several other holes that might have made my shortlist had I drafted one, but I’m not going to do that. Even as someone who has played golf in some 34 countries, I’m going to dive straight in and say that, as a lover of seaside golf, it could only ever be a links hole from Golf Monthly’s Top 100 Golf Courses UK & Ireland.
As a huge fan of modern links courses that weave their way dramatically through towering dunes, it had to be a hole at the first such course I played back in 2003.
I was but a Golf Monthly novice when I attended a grand opening event for writers at Greg Norman’s County Clare masterpiece and I’d never experienced anything quite like Doonbeg’s towering dunes. From the moment you first sight the rugged, isolated, immensely enticing dunescape through which Greg Norman weaved his magic from the entrance road, you’ll be itching to get out there. I had played a number of famous traditional links courses before first visiting Doonbeg but had never seen anything quite like this.
Martin Hawtree was brought in to redesign things when a certain Mr Trump purchased the property in 2014, bringing the spotlight firmly back on to a course that had already attracted plenty of attention on many counts – not least its spectacular location overlooking the crescent-shaped Doughmore Bay, which was depicted on the original Doonbeg logo.
The 1st hole here is a brilliant example of a tantalising opener that whets the appetite over a pre-round coffee in the clubhouse, with the view down this spectacular 561-yard par 5 providing a real siren call to get out and play. It remains a kind of epiphany or eureka moment in my golfing journey to this day.
You can see the whole of the hole from its slightly elevated tee in the shadow of the clubhouse, from where you drive down a beautifully rumpled fairway with just a solitary fairway bunker on the right. At first you play along a gently valleyed corridor through shallow dunes, but as you home in on the green, the valley sides get steeper, culminating in one of the most dramatic green complexes in all of golf.
There are six more bunkers to ponder closer to the green, four in the lay-up zone and two greenside, but all the time your eye is drawn inexorably towards the spectacular amphitheatre of amazing dunes encircling two-thirds of the green.
‘Amphitheatre green’ may now be a slightly overused term at some of our modern links, but it’s the only apt one for the 1st green complex at Doonbeg, where you imagine every blade of wispy, marram grass on the steep banks standing to applaud your carefully crafted wedge shot as it lands just beyond the hole and zips back a few feet. You can but dream!
