In September 2024 the Irish Open returned to Royal County Down, fifteen minutes from our door, for the first time in nine years. It produced one of the most dramatic finishes the tournament has seen.
Rory McIlroy took a one-shot lead into the final round and stretched it to four. With four holes to play he was still two clear and looked set for his first professional win in Northern Ireland, on a course an hour from where he grew up. Then Rasmus Højgaard, playing two groups ahead, birdied four of his last five holes, including a hole-out from a greenside bunker at the 17th, to post nine under and set the clubhouse target.
McIlroy bogeyed the 17th. He needed an eagle at the last to force a play-off, hit his approach from around 190 yards to roughly ten feet, and watched the putt slide by. Højgaard's closing 65 had won it by a single shot.
The Dane became the youngest player since José María Olazábal in 1989 to reach five DP World Tour titles, at 23. He also followed his countryman Søren Kjeldsen, who had won the last Irish Open staged at Royal County Down in 2015. The week raised over £200,000 for Make-A-Wish Ireland.
McIlroy would get his own back the following year, winning the 2025 Irish Open at the K Club on the third play-off hole.
The Irish Open has been running since 1927, when George Duncan came from fourteen shots back in torrential rain, shot a closing 74 and won by one. His 72-hole total was 312, which tells you plenty about how the game has changed.
Royal County Down has hosted it five times now, though for most of the last century it barely featured. Before 2015 the gap stretched back decades. That scarcity is part of why the 2024 return drew the crowds it did.
The 2015 edition is worth remembering for the scoring. Søren Kjeldsen won a play-off over Eddie Pepperell and Bernd Wiesberger at two under par, in an era when winning totals are usually far lower. The course showed its teeth then, and it did again in 2024 — nine under is a modest winning score by modern DP World Tour standards.
For contrast, the event's 72-hole record belongs to Jon Rahm, who posted 264 twice: at Portstewart in 2017, winning by six, and at Lahinch in 2019, winning by two. Both came while the Irish Open sat in the Rolex Series.
Among the multiple winners, Colin Montgomerie, Bernhard Langer, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros each took the title three times.
Royal County Down sits between the Mourne Mountains and the Irish Sea, and is routinely ranked among the finest links courses in the world.
It began in 1889, when the railway turned Newcastle into a destination for golfers and George Baillie laid out the first nine holes. Old Tom Morris extended it to eighteen shortly after. Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor and James Braid all left their mark over the following decades, but the course owes most to George Combe and Harry Colt. Combe, the club's Convenor of the Green, helped devise golf's first handicap system. Colt's work in the 1920s shaped the course into what players face today. Mackenzie & Ebert have handled more recent updates.
From the championship tees it plays 7,206 yards to a par of 71 — not long by modern standards, but the September wind changes that arithmetic quickly.
The 229-yard par-three fourth is the one people talk about, guarded by gorse and ten bunkers. The 483-yard ninth is the signature: a blind tee shot over a ridge, then a view down the fairway to the Slieve Donard, the mountains and the sea. The sixteenth, at 337 yards, tempts long hitters into taking it on, with five deep pot bunkers and gorse waiting for anyone who gets it wrong.
Royal County Down is a fifteen-minute drive from The Brambles Retreat. Ardglass, Kilkeel and the other Mourne coast courses are all within easy reach.
We take golf groups of up to sixteen, with eight en suite bedrooms, a private bar and a sixteen-seat dining room, hired as a whole property from £700 per night midweek. Our golf concierge can arrange tee times, transfers and caddies so the group turns up and plays.
Green fees and tee-time availability at Royal County Down should be checked directly with the club, as visitor access is limited and books up a long way ahead.
