Britain & Ireland

Northern Ireland

Fermanagh

Little did supermarket tycoon Jim Treacy realise back in the late 1990s when he established the Castle Hume course in Enniskillen that it would be the starting point for a 10-year, £30 million golf project that would reach a dramatic conclusion with the opening of the Lough Erne course in the summer of 2009.

Think of luxury golf resorts in Ireland with both excellent accommodation and quality courses and the likes of Adare Manor, Mount Juliet, The K Club, Druids Glen and Carton House spring to mind – well, to that illustrious quintet of top notch establishments can now be added Treacy’s new 5-star Lough Erne in County Fermanagh.

Designed by Nick Faldo, the Lough Erne championship course extends to just over 7,000 yards from the back tees and it lies at the heart of an upmarket development in a part of the country more renowned for its angling and water sports than golf.

That perception will change once golfers get to know how good the facilities are at a course that sits on a spectacular site along the shores of Lough Erne – indeed, many seasoned observers anticipate the course will be a future professional tournament venue as it has all the attributes expected of a top European Tour track.

Castle Hume Lough and its many wetland areas come into play at most of the holes here so accuracy around the course is absolutely essential in order to score well. A good short game will also help at the handful of par threes on the scorecard, the last of which is played at the final hole, “Cygnets Rest,” where the home green is a welcome refuge for tee shots that avoid sand to the left and water to the right.

A couple of short par fours really catch the eye. The 2nd hole, “Forest Drive,” doglegs right from the edge of the Lough and the 351-yard 10th sweeps to a green jutting out into the water. A pair of par fives are also worthy of special mention. The first, the 637-yard 9th is a strategic three-shotter that plays to a narrow, angled green and the other is the 16th, “Faldo Turn,” which enjoys views over the estate that are simply stunning.

The competitive side of Lough Erne was initiated by a charity match in July 2009 between Ireland’s two leading golfers, Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy, when they played an 18-hole stroke play head-to-head match billed as “The Duel on the Lough.” Young Rory edged out 2-time Open Champion Padraig by two shots to claim the specially commissioned Belleek Trophy for the first time.

Lough Erne (Faldo)

Designed by Nick Faldo, the Lough Erne championship course extends to just over 7,000 yards from the back tees and it lies at the heart of an upmarket development...

The county of Fermanagh is the only one of Northern Ireland’s six counties that doesn’t have a boundary with Lough Neagh. Large bodies of inland waterways do play a large part in the county however and Fermanagh is widely regarded as Ireland’s equivalent of the Lake District in England due to its location in the River Erne basin.

For over a hundred years, until the Castle Hume course was established in the late 1990s, Fermanagh had been able to boast only one, solitary 18-hole layout in the entire county at Enniskillen Golf Club, which was founded in 1896. The arrival of the Faldo Championship course at the 5-star 

 resort in 2009 has taken golf to an altogether new level in the county with the layout making an almost immediate impact on the Irish golf rankings. Indeed, it has already appeared in the Top 100 Great Britain & Ireland rankings with every sign that it will climb higher still.
