Waterville: Four Seasons in One Round
- Gunnar Kobin
- Apr 25
- 6 min read
The morning we played Waterville started with rain blowing horizontally past the hotel window before sunrise. One of the guys in our group came down to breakfast in flipflops because he had decided, looking at the weather, that golf was off and he might as well be comfortable. There were eight of us. We told him fine, stay at the hotel, we'll pick you up after the round. He thought about it for a minute, looked back out the window at the rain, then went upstairs to change his shoes. He's a golfer. He couldn't actually do it.
By the time we got to Waterville the worst of the weather seemed to have passed. The sky was grey but the rain had stopped. The wind had backed off to something playable. The starter looked at us with the kind of expression that says, you don't know what you're in for, but didn't actually say anything. We teed off on time. Within four holes we'd had sunshine, more horizontal rain, a brief snow flurry, and a 40-mile-an-hour gust that knocked one of the bags over on the 4th tee. It was September. None of this was supposed to be happening in September.
Welcome to Waterville.
I'm going to come back to the weather because it defined the round, but let me set up the course first. Waterville Golf Links is on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, on the southwest tip of Ireland. The course was originally laid out in 1889 and rebuilt by Eddie Hackett and Claude Harmon in the 1970s. Tom Fazio did some renovation work in 2006. It's ranked top 25 in Britain and Ireland and has been for decades. Tiger Woods used to come here to prepare for Open Championships. Mark O'Meara is an honorary member. Payne Stewart was a regular before he died and there's a statue of him near the clubhouse.
The setting is among the best in Irish golf. You have the Atlantic on three sides of the property, the Kerry mountains in the distance, and a tidal estuary running along part of the course. On a calm day with sun on the water it must be one of the great golf experiences anywhere. We did not have that day.
What we had was probably the most extreme four hours of golf I've ever played. Let me try to break down what actually happened.
The 1st is a downhill par 4 that should give you an easy start. We played it in driving rain. I made bogey because my hands were already cold and my grip was slipping. My playing partner who'd worn the flipflops to breakfast made double after his rain glove failed and his second shot squirted sideways into the rough. Welcome back to proper Irish golf weather.
The 2nd is a par 4 with a tricky tee shot toward an estuary. We played it in sunshine. Five minutes after the rain on the 1st, the sky had cleared, the sun came through, and we were hitting tee shots in suddenly bright conditions that none of our eyes were prepared for. I shanked my drive into the estuary. My partner birdied the hole. We laughed at each other and walked to the 3rd.
The 3rd is a par 4 along the dunes. We played it in snow. Actual snow. Not a heavy fall, not enough to settle on the ground, but visible flakes blowing horizontally across the fairway in front of us. In September. In Ireland. I'd never seen snow on a golf course in summer before. None of us could quite believe what was happening. We took photos. We made bogey or worse. We moved on.
The 4th is a par 3 with the wind whipping across the green. The bag-knocking-over gust hit during the walk from the 3rd green to the 4th tee. By this point we were just laughing because there was nothing else to do. The starter had been right. We didn't know what we were in for.
Then the weather settled. Not into one stable pattern, but into something cyclical. We'd get fifteen minutes of pleasant sunshine, then a squall would blow in for five minutes, then back to sunshine, then maybe ten minutes of light rain, then sunshine again. By the back nine I'd given up trying to dress for the conditions because the conditions were no longer a single thing. I just left my rain jacket on, opened the zip when it was sunny, closed it when it wasn't.
This is the most important thing I can tell anyone who plays Waterville. The course is wonderful. But you have to pick your day and even then you might not get the day you wanted. The weather here is genuinely chaotic. The Atlantic generates whatever it wants and dumps it on this peninsula and you just have to deal with it. Bring more layers than you think you need. Bring two rain jackets in case the first gets soaked. Bring a hat with a chin strap because you'll lose any hat without one. Bring a sense of humour because you're going to need it.
OK, the actual golf.
The front nine is good but not extraordinary. Solid links holes, decent variety, the kind of opening sequence that gets you settled into your round. On a course with this much hype the front nine is going to underwhelm you a little because the back nine is so much better. This is true at lots of links courses (Royal Aberdeen, Cabot Highlands' Old Petty in some ways) and it's true at Waterville.
The back nine is where Waterville earns its reputation. The 11th is called Tranquillity and it's a par 5 that wraps around dunes with a green tucked into a natural amphitheatre. The 12th is a par 3 over a depression to a green on a small plateau. The 16th, called Liam's Ace, is named after a member who once made a hole-in-one here. The 17th, Mulcahy's Peak, plays from a tee on top of a 50-foot dune to a green far below, with the entire course laid out in front of you and the Atlantic beyond. It's one of the great views in Irish golf and it's the moment where Waterville delivers on its reputation.
The 18th is a long par 4 finishing at the clubhouse. Standard finishing hole that doesn't quite live up to the previous seven. Good but not great.
I'd love to give you a coherent account of how I played each of these holes but the truth is I can't really remember. The weather kept hijacking my attention. I made what I made. Some pars, some bogeys, a couple of doubles, no birdies that I recall. The flipflop man finished with a respectable score actually, which we all gave him grief about because he'd been the one most ready to skip the round.
The clubhouse is excellent. We sat in the bar afterward for two hours drinking hot whiskeys and trying to dry out. The food is genuinely good and the staff treated us like we'd just survived something rather than just played a round of golf. Which in fairness we kind of had. There's something about Irish hospitality that comes out best when the weather has been genuinely difficult. They know what you've been through. They feed you. They top up your drink. They ask if you want to take your shoes off by the fire. Which we did.
Cost was around €280 in peak season, which makes Waterville expensive but not Old Head expensive. Worth the money for the course alone and absolutely worth the money on a weather day like ours because you walk away with a story.
Where does Waterville sit in my Irish rankings? Top 5 of what I've played. The back nine is genuinely as good as anything in Ireland. The setting is as beautiful as Old Head when the weather cooperates. The course is more strategic than Tralee in places and more playable than Ballybunion in others. I'd put it level with Tralee in terms of overall quality and behind only Royal County Down in my personal Irish list. (I have not played Lahinch yet, which apparently belongs in this conversation, so this ranking is provisional.)
Should you play it? Yes. But pick your weather window if you can. Mid-summer gives you the best chance of stable conditions, though even mid-summer doesn't guarantee anything in this part of Ireland. Bring proper gear. Don't wear flipflops to breakfast even if you think the round is off, because in Ireland the round is never off until you've actually got rained off the course mid-play. Just dress like you're playing.
The thing I'll remember most about Waterville isn't a hole or a shot. It's standing on the 3rd fairway watching snow blow horizontally past me in September and thinking, this is what people mean when they say golf in Ireland is its own thing. The wind here doesn't care about your tee time. The clouds don't check the calendar. You either accept the conditions or you sit in the clubhouse and don't play. We accepted them. The weather gave us the full menu. The course was excellent. The story is one I'll be telling for years.
Worth every cent. Worth the early start. Worth the cold hands. Worth the snow.
A footnote on the flipflop friend. He bought a new pair of waterproof golf shoes the next day. We never let him forget the breakfast appearance. By the end of the trip "are you wearing your flipflops" had become the standard question whenever anyone asked about the next day's conditions. Some jokes earn themselves through repetition and that one earned itself the first time around.
