Dooks is a different kind of links course from the epic dunes of Ballybunion. While Ballybunion was a full-throttle, turbo-injected look at just what nature can serve up in the way of natural topography and blow-your-head-off wow-factor, I knew Dooks was going to be different the minute I turned onto the secluded, narrow, and winding road that leads to its entry gate. I had a 9:30 a.m. tee time, which I’ve realized in mid-October is more akin to 6 a.m. in the states. The sun had come up not long before and mine was one of only a few cars in the “car-park,” as they say. A doughy young lad in the pro shop signed me in and kindly informed me that I had paid too much on Golfnow.com, and that they were now on their winter rate. He adjusted the rate accordingly. This was yet another display of the Irish hospitality to which I was quickly becoming accustomed.
He sent me on my way to the first tee, and as I started up the gravel path up a hill to the tee box, I was struck with how quiet and peaceful this course was. It felt empty. As I looked down the first fairway, I just thought… cool. Gone were the dunes of the previous two days, replaced with more modest rough and a shrubbery called Gorse, a thorny bush that devours balls. There is no retrieving a ball from Gorse. Not without blood loss, I’d suspect. All of the drama of Ballybunion was replaced with the Zen-like calm of a course set on a backdrop of mountains. In the distance I saw an undulating green (with more movement in in that typical of any of my previous stops) with run-offs on all sides. A constant white noise was audible in the background, not unlike a distant highway. In fact, as I would realize as got to a higher elevation on the course, it was the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, breaking perhaps only a half a mile away. Dooks is set on Dingle Bay, which appears to be sort of an inlet of the Atlantic. So it’s truly a waterside course, but set on a different type of water, so to speak.
I was following a twosome that was playing at the breakneck pace for which Irish golfers are known. Granted, I was taking a lot of photos along the way, but I could barely keep up with them. They were my guides around the course. Dooks is generally easy to navigate on one’s own, but I was not sure where to aim my tee shot on hole #3, and I wasn’t going to fall for the trap of simply following the alignment of the tee box markers, so this twosome proved invaluable to me, preventing me from any early-morning mis-cues.
I caught up with the twosome on hole #4, a beautiful par 3 on the water that was only about 150 yards long, but mostly carry over rolling shrubbery and low dunes, to an undulating green. The twosome asked me if I wanted to “play through with them,” which in US vernacular is a pretty confusing proposition. So I just joined them. Eoin and Thomas (pronounced like“No mas”) were in their 30s on holiday from Limerick with their wives. Their wives were sisters, who were enjoying a day at the spa in return for granting approval of this golf trip the gents were on. Eoin had been married just three weeks earlier. Thomas was married six years, and now had a nine month old baby that his wife was watching back at their hotel. Eoin and Thomas were playing match play and having a lot of fun trash talking with each other.
Dooks tested my short game more than any course I’d played on the trip thus far. While the focus of Doonbeg and Ballybunion was to overcome the will of nature just to get the ball in the proximity of the green, at Dooks the course was less severe from tee to green, but in some ways, more interesting (or at least, more fun) once you got there. Many of the greens at Dooks run off on one or more sides, and putting with my 3 hybrid from well off the green quickly became a “go-to” shot. A bit sore, and with my full swing failing me a bit, I had to get up and down from all over the place to save pars and, more often, bogeys at Dooks. The highlight of my day was holing a putt from 15 feet off the elevated green of #10 with my hybrid to save par. Another great aspect of Dooks, which I found common at the links courses I played in Ireland was that tee boxes were very rarely immediately viewable from the preceding green. At Dooks, there was always a small walk required to get to the next tee, which gave us a real sense of privacy and isolation on each hole, while at higher elevations, one could see over much of the course, which by our back nine had grown quite busy.
I finished my round at Dooks with a string of hard-earned bogeys, which I felt good about, considering how tired my arms now had become. I met up with Eoin and Thomas in the bar and we ordered lunch. My “starter” of seafood chowder with a bit of dill on top was so rich and meaty, I could barely finish it, let alone confront the grilled cheese I had coming next. The bartender was a spritely and quick-witted fellow, and regaled us with stories of past visitors, and his own travels to the US. He told us about a rather snooty British fellow how complained to him how awful the roads in Ireland were. “Well, the British built them,” the bartender quipped. About his travels to the US, where his sister loaned him her Buick to drive into Manhattan, he told us of his terror of driving on the “wrong side of the road” in such a big car, with New York City taxi drivers speeding around him like sharks. “Oh, the adjectives!” he exclaimed. “Things you wouldn’t say to a dog,” he laughed, referring to the abuse he endured at the hands (or mouths) of New York’s cab drivers.
Despite my protesting, Eoin insisted on paying for my lunch and they were on their way. The bartender asked me if I’d like to shower in the member’s locker room (in Ireland, they’re much more welcoming to outsiders than at private clubs in the US) and handed me a towel from a door behind the bar. After showering and collecting my things, I returned to the pro shop where I bought a couple souvenir poker chips bearing Dooks’ unmistakable toad logo (Tom Coyne’s appraisal of this being the best club logo in Ireland was right on) and I was on my way. Dooks was easily the friendliest club I visited during my stay. And make no mistake, I encountered no unfriendly, or even remotely unfriendly clubs on my trip.
On my way back up to county Clare, I took a detour to Killarney to buy Irish sweaters to bring home. I drove past Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, which looked lovely, but being a parkland course, did not interest me enough to lure me through the gates. After some sweater shopping and a quick stroll through Killarney, I retreated quickly from what was clearly a high-tourist area, complete with groups of seniors being led around on horse-drawn carriages.
Having not realized quite how far out of my way the detour was to Killarney, I didn’t get back to by B&B in Spanish Point until it was nearly dark. I arrived back at the Berry Lodge to find I was literally the only guest of the lodge that night. To an American, it felt like something plucked from an Eli Roth horror movie. A lone American tourist, staying in an upstairs room of a desolate farm house, set a quarter-mile off the main road. As it turned out, I would be joined by a young couple returning from a wedding at about 4:30 in the morning, which was a comfort by breakfast time the next day when we met up. Sunday would be my last day of golf in Ireland. And it was sure to be memorable, if I could just have a bit of consistency with my full swing. I would have to get the ball in the air. For Lahinch Old was known for its blind shots, mountainous dunes, and even a hole that required a “crossing guard” of sorts at the top of a hill signaling parties when it was clear to swing. Wish me luck!
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