St Patrick’s Links Rosapenna – Tom Doak’s Modern Masterpiece on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Coast

Gunnar Kobin

Dec 12, 2025

4 min read

Updated: Oct 22

I made two triple bogeys at St Patrick's Links and it is still the Rosapenna course I would go back to first. I'd heard plenty about it before I ever teed it up, and for once the course lived up to the noise. It sits above Sheephaven Bay in County Donegal, it is the newest of the three courses at Rosapenna, opened in 2021, and to my mind it is the one with the most to say. I played it in September 2024, on the same trip as Royal Portrush and Royal County Down.

A bit of history. The land had golf on it long before Tom Doak arrived. In the 1970s a local hotelier built 36 holes here, one of the courses by Eddie Hackett. In 2006 a new owner brought in Jack Nicklaus to redesign the lot, and the project went bankrupt after about two months of work. In 2012 Frank Casey, who had run the neighbouring Rosapenna Hotel since 1981, bought the land, and the Casey family opened Doak's course in the summer of 2021.

Doak built it, and you can feel his hand, or rather his restraint, from the first tee. He didn't carve holes out of the dunes so much as let the dunes decide where the holes went. The rolling ground, the sandy blowouts and the natural contours do the routing for him. What you get is a course that feels both ancient and brand new. Raw, open, and properly exhilarating to play.

OK, the actual golf.

What struck me most was the freedom off the tee. There is very little telling you how to play a hole. You can take the aggressive line and carry a ridge, or you can bail out to the wider landing area and cruise. Most of the time both options are sitting right there in front of you, and the choice is yours. I like that. Too many modern courses funnel you into one correct shot and punish everything else. St Patrick's does the opposite. It hands you the decision and lets you live with it.

The angles matter more than the yardage, which means thinking beats hitting. That is true on the short par 4s and the longer par 5s alike. You have to look, weigh it up and commit. If you take the aggressive line, the next shot opens up. If you bail out, you have more room but a worse angle in, and the hole quietly gets longer.

The greens are excellent. The movement is subtle, nothing screams at you, but it is all there once you are on the surface, and the putting rewards a good touch. Miss a green and you have options too: bump-and-run, a lofted pitch, whatever the lie invites. I found myself trying shots I would usually play safe on elsewhere, mostly because the ground around the greens actually encourages it.

If Old Tom Morris Links teaches you restraint and Sandy Hills tests your strength, St Patrick's asks you to adapt. Into the wind it is a patient, controlled grind. Downwind it turns into a course that rewards boldness and a bit of imagination. Same holes, completely different round depending on the day. The routing keeps changing direction, so you never get comfortable, and I mean that as a compliment.

For a course built through dunes this big, it walks beautifully. The flow from green to next tee keeps you inside the landscape the whole way round, and you never feel like you are trekking. Being down among the dunes rather than looking at them from a cart path is rare in modern design, and it is one of the things I will remember.

My round lived up to the bit about letting you live with your decisions. From the slate tees I went out in 44 on a par of 36, with a double on the 2nd and another on the 9th, but also pars on the par-3 3rd and the par-5 6th. Then I started the back nine with two pars, which on this course is exactly the moment to stay humble. A 7 on the par-5 12th, a 7 on the par-4 13th and a 7 on the par-4 16th. Back nine 45, total 89 on a par of 71. Between those sevens I made a par on the par-3 15th, and I finished with a bogey on the 17th and a par on the 18th, which shows the holes were there to be played. Five holes cost me twelve shots over par between them. The other thirteen I played in six over, which is the more encouraging way to read the card. The course hands you the decision on almost every tee. Living with it is the part I am still working on.

Should you play it? Yes. St Patrick's sits comfortably among the best links in the world, and alongside Old Tom Morris Links and Sandy Hills it completes the Rosapenna experience. But it is the most original and the most expressive of the three. My 89 here was worse than the 85 on Sandy Hills and the 77 on Old Tom, and I would still play this one first. If you like strategic choice, a natural build, and links golf without the frills, this one is in a class of its own.

Final word. It is the kind of course that makes you think, makes you experiment, and pulls you back for another go. If this is where modern links design is heading, I'm all for it. I would just like the 13th and the 16th back.