COUNTY CLARE, Ireland — Pity the poor sibling course — overlooked by raters, disregarded by architecture experts and just plain ignored by visiting golfers laser-focused on playing the higher-profile and much more expensive layout.
That’s the case at Lahinch Golf Club, where the Castle Course is rightly overshadowed by the Old Course, venue for September’s Walker Cup won by Great Britain & Ireland, and currently ranked No. 4 in Ireland and No. 34 in the world by Golf Magazine.
But make the short walk from that famous layout across Liscannor Road, and golfers find the Castle Course. Its history is intertwined with its famous sibling, and the routing was impacted, albeit negatively, by two of golf’s legendary architects. Now, the Castle — its centuries-old namesake overlooks the seventh green — is about to embark on an entirely new chapter.
When the Old Course at Lahinch debuted on April 15, 1892, the layout created by William McFarlane was vastly different from the much-lauded current-day version. More than half of the holes (9 through 18) were located on the inland side of Liscannor Road. Two years later, Old Tom Morris stopped by and created a variety of new holes among the rolling dunes on the much more adventurous coastal side of the property (while moving one over from the other side of the road). In 1907, Charles “Mo” Gibson, a pro at England’s Royal North Devon Golf Club, devised another routing that left just five holes (14–18) east of Liscannor Road.
Then, in 1927, it was none other than Dr. Alister MacKenzie who devised a routing that set all 18 holes on the parcel where they remain today. That move left the stretch of land along the banks of the tidal River Inagh — known as the “Corcass” due to the presence of wetlands — devoid of any holes for almost four decades.
The increasing popularity of the Old Course eventually created a need for more golf, so nine new holes were re-established back across the street in 1963, followed by a second nine that opened in the summer of 1975.
Now, a renovation project that has been in the pipeline for many years is about to transform the Castle Course.
“The course will be rerouted from its existing layout,” says Paddy Keane, general manager of Lahinch Golf Club since 2011. “Twelve of the existing greens will remain in play, but only two will be played from their current direction. The par will be 68 at just over 5,000 yards. We propose to install a new irrigation loop in March/April 2027, which will allow construction to begin. While no specific timeframe has been agreed upon, it is estimated that the project will be completed over two to three years, as we will need the golf course in play for the high golf season.”
Leading the project will be U.S.-based architects Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns, longtime associates of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Their connection to Lahinch dates to when Johns traveled to an annual gathering of the Alister MacKenzie Society held there in 2014. He hit it off with Keane, and some years later the latter reached out to the duo to discuss potential work on the Old Course under the consultation of Martin Hawtree, consulting architect for Lahinch, who retired earlier this year.
“There’s really been kind of a respectful handover in a way,” Rhebb says. “We’ve still been working under him (Hawtree). He checked off on some of the things we have done on the Old Course in recent years, like shifting the second fairway, adding mounding on the 17th fairway, and relocating a practice putting green. He looked at our plans for the Castle Course and gave his thumbs-up.”
The transformative project will take place in multiple phases. One top priority is the rerouting of many holes. Currently, the second hole heads directly back toward the starting area, parallel to the first hole. “It’s like, ‘Why am I coming right back to where I started?’” Rhebb says. “I kind of just want to go on a continuous journey.”
The current second green will remain unchanged but become the 18th green in the new routing. “We’ve had a lot of fun figuring out how we could use the original greens without just blowing the whole place up and starting over,” said Rhebb. “It’s a small acreage (roughly 94 acres), so we had to get really creative. There are some really cool contours already there that are just under the marram grass, so we just want to get the best out of the property.”
Home to a thriving junior golf program since the mid-1990s — Jonathan Keane won the South of Ireland Amateur Open Championship on the Old Course in 2025, becoming the first homegrown player to win the championship in 57 years — the Castle Course hosts 20,000 to 25,000 rounds of golf annually, approximately half of the total rounds played on the Old Course. Peak visitor green fees this year were $504 (450 euros) for the Old Course and $67 (60 euros) for the Castle.
“The Castle Course has played a major part in the ongoing success of Lahinch Golf Club,” Keane says. “It was never meant to be, nor can it be, a rival to the championship layout, but it still has countless virtues that are appreciated more and more with each passing day.”
“We’re going to make it fun,” Rhebb says. “That’s what the place needs to be. Something that people talk about in the sense of, ‘Hey, if you’re going to play Lahinch, don’t miss out on the Castle Course while you’re there.’ That’s our goal.”
Rhebb and Johns recently encountered a veteran Lahinch member in the elegantly renovated clubhouse next to the first tee of the Old Course.
“He’s in his late 80s and is always there when we visit,” Rhebb recalls. “When we saw him during the Walker Cup, he said to us, ‘I didn’t think anyone could unlock the Castle Course, but what you guys are going to do there is really exciting.’ That really helped us feel that we are checking the boxes for the locals who play the course. It was both a relief for us and also supercharged our own excitement for the project.”
