If you’re keen to play some of the world’s best courses, it helps to qualify for the Walker Cup. With Seminole and Sunningdale and the Old Course at St. Andrews and Cypress Point, host venues for the century-plus-old event read like a Top 100 ranking.
This year is no exception. The 2026 Walker Cup is headed to Lahinch Golf Club in County Clare, Ireland, where 10-player teams representing the United States and Great Britain and Ireland will square off Saturday and Sunday on the club’s storied Old Course. (This year marks a rare back-to-back edition of the Walker Cup; from here on out, the event will return to its traditional biennial cadence.) In advance of the matches, here are eight things to know about Lahinch.
Lahinch is known as the “St. Andrews of Ireland,” owing to its close connection to the town of the same name and for its link to Old Tom Morris, who, in 1894, was brought in to reshape the club’s original rudimentary layout, which itself first welcomed play in 1892. Old Tom described Lahinch as “the finest natural course he had ever seen.”
The club is no stranger to high-level amateur events. Since 1897, it has staged the annual South of Ireland Amateur Open, the country’s oldest provincial championship, whose winner receives the oldest physical trophy in Irish amateur golf.
They say success has many fathers. Lahinch had several, too. Founding member Alexander Shaw and his cohort staked out the original routing in 1892. Two years later, Old Tom Morris carried out extensive improvements, stitching the routing into wilder dunes and laying the foundation for a design that today ranks 34th on GOLF’s list of Top 100 Courses in the World. Credit also goes to Alister MacKenzie. In 1927, the British architect added an array of strategic enhancements, including brawny, ragged bunkers and multi-tiered greens. At the turn of the 21st century, Martin Hawtree took a turn of his own. Enlisted to steel the course against the modern game while preserving its MacKenzie/Morris character, Hawtree rebuilt greens and tees, re-routed four holes closer to the coast and created a pair of new par-3s, pushed deep into the dunes, among other changes. Like MacKenzie before him, he left Lahinch’s two most famous holes (see below), the Dell and Klondyke, untouched.
Lahinch pairs raw, oceanside terrain with some genuinely eccentric golf. Blind shots and crisscrossing holes add to the intrigue of a twisting routing made all the more varied in its challenge by shifting winds. The setting isn’t shabby either, with Liscannor Bay curling beside the course and the town of Lahinch poking into storybook view.
The par-3 Dell and the par-5 Klondyke both date to Old Tom’s original design, and both ask players to fire at a green shrouded by a dune. The Klondyke’s name is a nod to 1890s gold fever — Irish prospectors flocked to Canada’s Yukon around the same time the hole was built, and the hump of sand blocking the green was steep and massive enough to earn the comparison. The Dell takes its name more simply, from the natural hollow the green sits in. At 154 yards, it’s the shortest hole on the course, and sometimes it gives you a peek at the flagstick from the tee (but only when the cup is cut on the far right). Otherwise, your line is a white stone placed atop the dune.
For years, Lahinch caddies were known to lend a little extra help to approach shots on the Dell, where a discreet foot wedge was enough to turn a good shot into a “hole-in-one.” Great shot by the player! Good tip for the looper! Everyone was happy. Sort of. As the aces piled up in preposterous numbers, the caddies’ hijinks became a kind of inside Irish golf joke. When the club approached the caddie master, asking him to get his crew to cut it out, the caddie master agreed, on one condition. A raise was negotiated, the shenanigans ceased, and holes-in-one at the Dell returned to being as rare as they’re supposed to be.
Most clubs rely on marshals or rangers to keep play moving. Lahinch has the Hillman. Because the Klondyke 4th hole and the closing 18th cross paths through the same swath of dunes, a staff member stands sentinel on a high point, using a colored-flag system to indicate when it’s safe to hit.
Lahinch got a modern-day tune-up ahead of the 2019 Irish Open, which Jon Rahm won there. The club added a short-game practice area in 2018 and built the Academy, a high-ceilinged indoor training facility next to Lahinch’s other layout, the Castle Course (which dates to 1963), to bring its practice options in line with tour-level expectations. For tournament week, organizers also rigged up a screen behind the Dell so players and spectators could actually see where approach shots had landed. No fictitious holes-in-one were made.
The post Walker Cup course preview: 8 things to know about Lahinch appeared first on Golf.
