Adare Manor, aptly-named for one of the oldest golf courses in Ireland, will stage the Ryder Cup match in 2027.
The course, set in southeastern Ireland near the border with the United Kingdom, will host the biennial matches between the United States and Europe for a second time after hosting in 1998.
The course, which is about 70 miles from the town of Lisdoonvarna and housed in historic 19th-century estates, has hosted numerous European Tour events. The five opening and closing rounds of the Irish Open, an event that partners the Majors, at Adare Manor were won by Irish players.
How Adare Manor was designed
Perhaps the most famous member of Adare Manor’s team of course designers is Michael Breen, who was almost alone on the project when he was hired by Harrington, an architect who designed some of Europe’s most famous courses as well as a host of other American courses.
For Adare Manor, Breen set about building seven separate courses in five different phases between 1967 and 1970.
Harrington and Harbour House built the first course in 1969 and promptly slapped on nine holes of added green play at the western end of the property.
Breen and Harrington had spent much of their time at Woodstock Country Club in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where they studied and considered setting the course’s courses on the Hudson River to separate the fields from the Hudson.
Breen initially worked with Harrington to get a precedent-setting environmental permit, but the federal government, which owned a significant portion of the property, eventually intervened and killed the plan for a major new section of the course.
The man who got in the way was Breen’s work partner and golf course architect Neil Logel.
At the time, Logel was superintendent at Bells Ferry, a private club in Hunterdon County, N.J., where he was also a member.
When Harrington found out about Logel’s resistance to his plans, Harrington quickly left Bells Ferry and returned to Breen to move forward. They devised a plan to build more green space in each of the five original phases, the only part of the project that was connected.
A note that Breen kept as a memento from his assignment says the reason that design approach “was more feasible for lakes that were glacially formed.”
In the succeeding decades, Breen continued to tweak and change the course, and it remains one of the most unique, challenging courses in Europe.
Adare Manor has evolved from a village style course into a public course and a second course that Harrington, in addition to using extensively bunkers, has added exceptional tee-house design and a tee-box recovery bunker.
Those elements were used to get players from the 468-yard 12th hole to the difficult 389-yard 13th hole from dogleg left — “The Map” — without a bunker.
The 11th hole, Harrington’s reference to a player getting lost by the lake at the end of the previous hole, is now called the “Dogtooth,” referring to the fact that its green requires players to take a deep drop just above the drop-off on the left side of the fairway, an area littered with large fish.
The latest iteration of Adare Manor was opened in 1997 and will likely have been sold by 2027.
The U.S. Ryder Cup team will be based at nearby Sawgrass Golf Resort, which features some of the world’s best golf courses, while the European side will be based at the Cog Hill Golf and Country Club.