Royal County Down

The toughest course in Ireland? No contest - Royal County Down.

The most picturesque course in Ireland? No contest - Royal County Down.

Situated on a rugged piece of links land below the Mountains of Mourne lies one of the most spectacular courses on the planet. However, for all it's aesthetic delights, Royal County Down is not for the faint-hearted. Japan's Noburu Sugai won the 2002 Senior British Open here with a 72 hole score of only -3, while the impressive names of Watson, Irwin and Co. were blown away with the wind. Had they played from the tips, it is a certainty that no player in the field would have broken par. Rumour has it that even the great Tiger Woods got through half a dozen balls on his last visit.

The difficulty here lies three-fold. Firstly, Royal County Down is one of the most demanding courses off the tee that you are likely to find. On several occasions you will find yourself hitting driver to a blind fairway. Secondly, many of the greens boast treacherous undulations. If the green keeper happens to be in a particularly bad mood, the pin positions can be brutally difficult. Add some Northern Irish wind and the odd shower of rain into the mix, and you are left with one of the world's most difficult courses. If you manage to play to your handicap on your first visit, you've been sandbagging off a high handicap for far too long.

I think one of the great tests of a course's greatness is how you feel about it after a bad round, or having played it in inclement weather. Believe me, you will walk away from this place astounded even if you end up shooting the dreaded three-figures. If you're blessed enough to catch it on a calm sunny day, there is no finer place to be on earth.

It doesn't earn it's No.1 position on The Top 100 Rankings for no reason... It's everything a golf course should be, and more.

Tour Photography

Connoisseur Golf are very proud to offer our clients the services of one of the world's leading golf photographers for personal and corporate golf trips.

Bill P. Knight, or 'The Shooter from St . Louis' as he is more famously known, will be available to capture those priceless moments on and off the course that will remain with you for a lifetime. In addition to providing individual albums and mementos for your group, he can also be on hand to present your clients with a lasting memory of their golf tour to Scotland should the occasion be of corporate significance.

Bill was the official PGA Tour Photographer from 1971-1998, and is responsible for many of the iconic golfing images you have seen down through the years. The above photograph perhaps gives you an indication of how close Bill was to the leading players of his generation. At the 1973 Ryder Cup in Muirfield, Scotland, Lee Trevino was playing the best golf of a star-studded American team. His confidence was so high he wagered with his fellow team members that he would win both his final day singles matches or face the humiliation of being subjected to a rather lewd act. Unfortunately for Lee, a brave performance by Peter Oosterhuis saw him held to a half point during the morning's play. After a commanding 19-13 victory, Bill was on hand in the US team room to capture the jovial moment of Trevino being invited to honour his bets! My thanks to Bill for letting me share this story and photo, surely one of the best 'inside the ropes' images ever to be caught on camera.

It just goes to show that it isn't always the obvious shots that let you re-live the best memories. Posing for snaps on the Swilken Bridge, and in front of the R&A clubhouse is all well and good, but giving a photographer license to roam with high-spec equipment can really take your album to the next level. Having a professional like Bill on hand - who knows his way around a golf course like no other - will be an invaluable asset for you and your guests.

If you would like to find out more about retaining Bill's services for your next golf trip or are perhaps interested in viewing his commercial portfolio, simply e-mail me at jim@connoisseurgolf.com and I will be delighted to answer your queries.

Jubilee Course - St Andrews

St Andrews now has four entries listed in the Top 100 Courses Outside the United States. Not before time, The Jubilee Course has moved into this elite category and is ranked at No. 92.

The course was named in honour of Queen Victoria, whose Diamond Jubilee fell in 1897. Originally a nine hole course, it was extended to the regular quota of eighteen in 1905 at a cost of £150. Through this period, it was widely regarded as a course for juniors and ladies, but in 1988 Donald Steel was brought in to develop the Jubilee into a championship layout. He stretched it to 6742 yards and raised many of the tee boxes, affording golfers panoramic view of the surrounding links and also to bring the wind more into play. Further changes were made at the turn of the century to the opening holes. The 1st used to play 440 yards into the wind, while the 2nd was a relatively weak par 4 that could be reached with a single blow. The difficulty of these two holes was evened out to provide a fairer test.

The course has went on to hold a selection of tournaments including The Scottish Amateur Strokeplay, The British Mid-Amateur and The Boys Home Internationals. It has also played host to the qualifying rounds of The Amateur Championship, and The St Andrews Links Trophy.

I believe it to be the toughest of the courses in St Andrews. When you combine the length with the ever-changing winds, it forces you to adapt your game on a regular basis. Unlike the Old Course, with it's severely undulating greens, the Jubilee's seem to slope in one direction and not short-siding yourself is crucial here.

Red numbers can be made on the way out, especially at the two par 5's, No. 3 and No.6. But some of the shorter par 4's require a degree of course management off the tee, and driver may not always be the correct choice. You certainly need to build the foundation of your score on the front nine because the closing holes pose a much more serious threat.

No. 15 in particular can be particularly lethal to the well-being of your scorecard. It may only play 360 yards, but you must hit the correct segment of a tight fairway to have a view of the green. A small green that tilts from back-to-front is surrounded by gorse to the back and sides. Strike your approach too well and the ball can screw back into a large gulley at the front, but leaving yourself above the hole will see you face a nightmare two putt. It's a fantastic matchplay hole because birdies are sometimes offered up, but doubles and triples just as likely.

When including the Old Course on your itinerary, Connoisseur Golf also require that you play one of the other St Andrews courses. If you want to take on the challenge of St Andrews most difficult links course, I suggest you include the Jubilee. It's a beautiful rugged track and when played you will scratch your head, like me, and wonder why this glorious golf course only just creeps inside the Top 100. The boys at Golf Digest have some answering to do.

Carnoustie

Widely regarded as the toughest of the layouts on The Open Championship rota, Carnoustie is undoubtedly one of Scotland's must-play courses. It is perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing as say Turnberry, or doesn't carry the history associated with St Andrews, but there is no doubt that it provides a wonderful test of golf. During the 2007 Open, Colin Montomerie described it as "One of the toughest and best links courses we have in the world".

The name 'Carnoustie' is probably derived from two Scandinavian nouns, “car” meaning 'rock' and “noust” meaning 'bay'. It sits on an exposed coastal peninsula 12 miles east of the city of Dundee, and is easily accessible from St Andrews - a mere 45 minutes by road.

It has hosted the Open on seven different occasions and produced some of the most dramatic finishes in major championship history. In 1999, Paul Lawrie and Justin Leonard were leading in the clubhouse with a score of 290. Frenchman Jean Van de Velde was faced with the seemingly simple task of requiring a double-bogey six to win The Open. But things went from bad to worse as he plundered his way to a seven, including an exploratory trip to The Barry Burn in his bare feet. Local favourite Lawrie, who had earlier made his charge from ten shots back, played exquisite golf in the playoff, and became a surprise but deserved winner of the Claret Jug.

In 2007, it looked briefly as if Harrington was to suffer a similar fate to that of Van de Velde. He visited the water twice on the 72nd hole, but played one of the best pressure chips in the history of championship golf to secure a six, and found himself in a playoff with young Spaniard Sergio Garcia. The Irishman stepped through the gears in the playoff and picked up his first major at the expense of his Ryder Cup compatriot in what was one of the most exciting finishes to an Open since...well... the last time it was played at Carnoustie.

The 7400 yard course doesn't really offer respite at any point. You need to be straight and long off the tee. On several shots you are also required to shape the ball in order to avoid the sand on what Ernie Els calls "...the best bunkered course in the world." The prevailing wind seems to make the tough holes play exceptionally long, and even if you make it to the 16th tee unscathed, you are left with one the most difficult finishes in championship golf.

No. 16 is a 245 yard par 3 often played into the wind. In winning the 1975 Open after a playoff, Tom Watson failed in five attemts to make par here. In 1968 Jack Nicklaus was the only player to get past the pin during the final round. If you make three at this beast of a short hole, you will undoubtedly have earned it.

The beauty of No.17 is that you will typically have a mid-to-long iron approach regardless of the wind direction. This is due to the snaking Barrie Burn, that usually requires you to hit a lay-up shot off the tee. Ideally you want to work your approach from left to right into this undulating green, and overall it's a hole that doesn't give away too many birdies.

The 18th is brutal. 450 yards into the wind, with bunkers and thick rough to the left, and Harrington's favourite friend - The Barrie Burn - to the right. Any draw spin on the long approach can be accentuated by the wind and you can find yourself out of bounds, cruising to a triple or even worse. Into a strong wind, it's almost best playing for a five. Greed will be punished severely by the Carnoustie golfing gods. If you don't believe me, just ask poor Van de Velde.

Hell Bunker

The second shot on No.14 at St Andrews is not for the faint-hearted. If you've hit a good one off the tee then you can have a stab at going for the green in two. However, a not-so-perfect drive leaves you the ultimate risk/reward shot in golf - the carry over Hell Bunker.

The pit itself is enormous. Almost the size of your average green. But size isn't the issue here, it's the tall vertical faces. If you're far enough in, then you may only be able to play backwards. But the curvature of it's shape often interferes with the path of your swing, and sometimes the only option is to chip it back to the middle of the bunker.

The local caddies are so worried about their player finding Hell that many of them actually recommend that they play down the adjoining 5th fairway. It lengthens the hole and leaves a shot of around 150 yards for the third, but it does provide the best angle for approach and more importantly takes the cavernous beast out of play completely.

To make matters worse, the 14th fairway sits on a plateau above the second half of the hole which makes the bunker disappear from sight. A golfer playing here for the first time could finish up in Hell without even knowing it was there.

From the back tee, this sandy grave will be on the minds of even the world's top golfers. Jack Nicklaus needed four blows to escape from here during the Open Championship in 1995, and finished up carding a ten. Ben Crenshaw commented, "When you're in perdition like he was, sometimes there's no way out. You can get in there and stay in there, that's why they call it hell".

Kinnettles

Some of our clients occasionally require a level of privacy that is perhaps not afforded at many of the major resorts and hotels across Scotland. Achieving this exclusivity whilst maintaining a top level of service has been difficult in past, but the facilities on offer at Kinnettles House are second to none. Situated just twenty minutes from Dundee Airport, and within comfortable reach of the courses at St Andrews and Carnoustie, this mansion house provides the ultimate base for a golfing trip to Scotland. The surrounding 66 acre estate provides the perfect countryside retreat within striking range of the country's best championship courses.

Accommodation is offered in nine contemporary-styled bedroom suites, each with super-kingsize beds and a 42' plasma screen. A host of public rooms are made available for your group including a spacious lounge with fully stocked bar, a casino room with roulette and card tables, a snooker room, and a sun lounge. A private chef and his staff will prepare meals to your specification which are served in the most magnificent dining room, and of course your on-site concierge from Connoisseur Golf will be available for any transfers that you may require. Basically this is a luxury home away from home, and we regard it as the finest exclusive occupancy venue in Scotland - perfect for a corporate golf trip.

Augusta & St Andrews

The Masters is only a few days away, and it is interesting to note the links between two of the world's most famous courses - Augusta National and The Old Course. When you watch the rolling green fairways and the array of beautiful flora on display at Augusta, it is sometimes easy to forget that a lot of the inspiration for this golfing masterpiece actually came from St Andrews.

Augusta National was the brainchild of Bobby Jones, and he dearly wanted to differentiate it from the countless other cloned golf courses that were appearing throughout America. The most notable architect of that time was Donald Ross, but Jones required someone with the vision to design a tough layout that still gave the golfer options from any point on the course - a thinking man's course. Jones had an ideal in his head of spacious fairways with severely undulating greens and cleverly placed hazards that punished poor approach shots. Ross was known for lining fairways with hundreds of bunkers, a design that suited the robotic straight hitter. But he chose Dr. Alister Mackenzie for his love of St Andrews and his ability to take the best aspects of great holes from around the world and fine-tune them to the land available.

At least five holes from The Old Course were used as inspiration in building Augusta National. Perhaps the most obvious is the the par 3 4th, which is very similar in nature to the short 11th on The Old Course. A large sloping kidney-shaped green is protected by two punishing bunkers. One short and right (relating to Strath) and one on the left (Hill bunker), where Jones famously tore up his scorecard and walked off the course in 1921. This version at Augusta plays much longer at 240 yards, but possesses all the characteristics of it's cousin back in Scotland. Every year I enjoy watching Ken Brown's (BBC Commentator) previews of the holes at Augusta. He is always of the belief that an imaginative short game is more important than raw power around this 7400 yard track. Shots such as the 'bump-and-run' with a seven iron are employed just as often here as at The Open Championship. The course plays fast and fiery, and that's exactly what Bobby Jones envisaged when he hired Mackenzie.

The fairways are large, but simply hitting them isn't good enough. Like St Andrews, being in the centre of the fairway is sometimes the worst place to be. The angle of attack is usually much easier from one side or the other, i.e. adding difficulty to your tee shot will benefit the following approach shot. Take the 9th for example - unless you are on the extreme right hand side of the fairway, you can't see the green due to the bunkering on the left apron. Being centre-cut will also leave you with a hanging lie, and a pin-point approach to a green that runs away from you. I think this is very similar to the 4th at St Andrews, probably where the blueprint of the hole originated.

So when you're drooling over the azalea's and cherry blossoms this weekend, take time to look out for ways in which Alister Mackenzie tried to make Augusta play like Bobby Jones' favourite course - St Andrews.