Cruit Island Golf Club
A product of spades and shovels, Cruit Island is surely one of the most natural golf courses built in the past 50 years.
Connected to the mainland by a one-lane bridge, Cruit Island is a rocky hamlet off the coast of County Donegal in Northwest Ireland. In 1986, a group of founders contributed about 100 Irish pounds each to create a golf course on a spectacular property at the northern tip of the island. Michael Doherty, a golf professional at City of Derry Golf Club, produced a nine-hole plan, and local man Tony Boyle carried out construction, assisted by a handful of youngsters. Because they could not transport heavy machinery to the site, Boyle and his team molded the bunkers and greens primarily with hand tools like spades and shovels. As a result, Cruit Island is surely one of the most natural golf courses built in the past 50 years.
The postcard hole is the sixth, a par 3 playing across a pair of inlets to a green carved into a narrow peninsula. What makes Cruit Island noteworthy, though, is not its seaside setting but its chaotic topography and adventurous, disorienting routing. It has a lot of features that an established professional golf architect and construction crew would never build — and that’s a major part of its charm.
Take Note…
Pronunciation. While in Northwest Ireland, I heard locals say (what sounded to me like) a number of different pronunciations of “Cruit.” The happy medium seems to be somewhere between “critch” and “crutch.” Just say it quickly.
Off-course hazards. In order to reach Cruit Island Golf Club via land, you must navigate a narrow, winding, shabby-chic road. Keep your wits about you toward the end of the drive: one stretch cuts directly through the middle of the first fairway.
Owey Island. From the western portions of the course, golfers can enjoy views of Owey Island, where popular Irish folk singer Daniel O’Donnell spent his childhood summers. O’Donnell has been a member of Cruit Island since the 1990s and lends his name to the club’s annual open.
Pairings. While remote, Cruit Island is not an inconvenient stop on a Northwest Ireland golf trip. Driving north from Sligo, you can easily stop by both Narin & Portnoo Links, renovated in 2020 by Gil Hanse, and Cruit Island before proceeding to the famous Rosapenna resort.
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Favorite Hole
No. 7, par 4, 293 yards
The view from the clifftop tee on this fever dream of a par 4 is stunning but baffling. Across a small beach, the fairway sits on a left-to-right diagonal, disappearing into a trough before reemerging to climb up a tall dune. The green is tucked into a hollow on the other side of the dune, with the top of the flagstick visible to those who know to look for it.
First-time players may have no idea how to proceed. After a couple of rounds, a set of options comes into focus. The safe route is to the left, short of a pot bunker 200 yards from the back tee. The intermediate play is a 210- to 230-yard shot to the hidden portion of the fairway, which leaves a blind pitch to the punchbowl green. (A recently added tongue of fairway on the right marks this line.) The crazy-but-fun option is to grab driver and aim at the flag, risking a lost ball for an eagle look.
If you play this wild hole the same way twice, you’re a more consistent (and self-restrained) golfer than I am.
Favorite Hole
No. 7, par 4, 293 yards
The view from the clifftop tee on this fever dream of a par 4 is stunning but baffling. Across a small beach, the fairway sits on a left-to-right diagonal, disappearing into a trough before reemerging to climb up a tall dune. The green is tucked into a hollow on the other side of the dune, with the top of the flagstick visible to those who know to look for it.
First-time players may have no idea how to proceed. After a couple of rounds, a set of options comes into focus. The safe route is to the left, short of a pot bunker 200 yards from the back tee. The intermediate play is a 210- to 230-yard shot to the hidden portion of the fairway, which leaves a blind pitch to the punchbowl green. (A recently added tongue of fairway on the right marks this line.) The crazy-but-fun option is to grab driver and aim at the flag, risking a lost ball for an eagle look.
If you play this wild hole the same way twice, you’re a more consistent (and self-restrained) golfer than I am.
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Overall Thoughts
I love great golf architecture. But sometimes I crave golf courses with less architecture.
Today’s top golf architects are masters of detail. They and their shapers think through every aspect of every hole, molding each bunker and contour just so. Even when they leave a natural landform alone, they do so with intention. Often this process yields brilliant courses — beautiful, intricate mazes with many potential solutions.
But there’s something pleasing, too, about a golf course laid out with less intention, less mastery of detail.
Cruit Island was planned by a golf pro with few other design credits and built by amateurs with no access to proper equipment. It’s not hard to find fault with their work. The greens are rudimentary, either just sitting on the ground or built up bluntly on one side to counteract a slope. The small, round bunkers are oddly placed, almost irrelevant to strategy. And the number of blind shots is overwhelming. Only one of the course’s seven par 4s — the second — provides a full view of the fairway from the tee. On a windy day, get ready to spend time looking for lost balls.
Yet Cruit Island offers delights that a more professionally designed course on the same property wouldn’t. The holes are wild and mysterious, giving little guidance to the player. The unsmoothed terrain produces weird bounces, awkward lies, and obstructed sightlines. All of this generates an air of adventure usually reserved for much older links courses. Cruit Island feels like a tour of natural landforms rather than a set of problems invented by an architect.
I don’t mean to undersell Michael Doherty’s contributions to the course, the most important of which was his routing. The green sites are excellent and varied, and each hole registers as unique. On great land, routing is half the battle, and Doherty was up to the task.
But it’s exactly because he didn’t try to do much more that Cruit Island will stick in my memory.
1 Egg
Cruit Island earns its Egg mostly for its wonderful land, but Michael Doherty’s fine routing and the club’s suitably minimalist presentation of the course also deserve praise. If you’re planning a Northwest Ireland golf trip, this club and its 80-euro 18-hole international rate should be on your itinerary.
Browse the Course Tour below for notes on every hole at Cruit Island Golf Club.
Hole 1
Hole 2
Hole 3
Hole 4
Hole 5
Hole 6
Hole 7
Hole 8
Hole 9
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