Ballyheighe Castle, Ireland
While in Ireland on vacation, I managed to get in a round at Ballyheighe Castle, a wonderful 9 hole course just north of Tralee. It was a bit cloudy and it rained (of course!) for a few minutes. I played with my brother-in-law. To be honest, this was the most amazing course I’ve ever been on (not that I’ve been on too many great ones).
The entire course was surrounded by castle ruins – the 8th and 9th were out front, overlooking Tralee Bay to the South, and the castle gate to the North.
I shot a 54 (9 holes) and played decently given:
- How bad I am at golf
- The fact that we rented some horrendous clubs (I wish I could blame them) – we had a frayed 5 wood, a very old 3 wood and a collection of irons including a 3, 4, 5 (super tiny), 3 6’s, one lefty 7, 2 wedges and a putter.
- I didn’t have my golf shoes (like that matters)
After playing the first 2 holes horribly, I played pretty well – actually parring a par 3 and making an incredible shot from the rough about 180 yards out over at least 50 yards of out of bounds area (easily my best shot ever). If you take out the first 2 holes, I actually played +10 from holes 2 through 9. 1 Par, 2 bogeys, yahoo!
Before going to the course on Thursday, I bought a box of 15 balls for 15 euro, thinking I’d lose them all… we ended up finding 2 balls, and ended up even/par for losing balls.
Tags: golf
