Portmarnock Golf Club, Ireland

Over the last 117 years Portmarnock Golf Club has hosted some of the greatest tournaments in golf. We have welcomed the greatest Amateur and Professional golfers to have played the game, from Arnold Palmer to Padraig Harrington. In an open competition in 1899 the great Harry Vardon established a record of 69 over a course measuring 5,810 yards.

Having established the viability of the site through an earlier boat trip from the mainland in 1893, William Chalmers Pickeman (Centre) and his friend, George Ross (left), formally opened our links with nine holes on December 26th, 1894. The Club’s first officers were G. Ross (Captain), W.C. Pickeman (Honorary Secretary) and the well-known distillery owner, John Jameson (President). Mungo Park (right), the 1874 Open Champion, supervised the course design and stayed on for one year as the club’s first professional.

With hickories and gutties at the ready, and donning a variety of headgear from cloth caps to bowler hats, Portmarnock’s enthusiastic golfing pioneers watch the first Captain’s match (George Ross is on the extreme left) on the embryonic links. With the formal opening of nine holes on December 26th, 1894, a new era had been launched in life on the peninsula.