The Golf Course at Adare Manor Review

McManus bought Adare Manor in 2015 and told Fazio to spend what it took. Fazio stripped the old Robert Trent Jones course to the subsoil, rebuilt every hole on sand, laid a drainage and air system under the greens and reopened in May 2018 with a course that plays firm through the wettest Irish spring. That is the whole point of the place. Irish parkland golf has always lost weeks of the year to rain and Adare simply does not, which is a large part of why the Ryder Cup goes there in September 2027.

The routing uses the estate well: the River Maigue crosses in front of the eighteenth green, ruins from the fifteenth century stand on the grounds, and the oaks and cedars are genuinely old rather than planted for the photographs. As architecture it is Fazio at his most polished, meaning generous landing areas, beautifully shaped bunkers and greens that are difficult without being tricky.

It is a thoroughly good course and not a surprising one, and nobody walks off arguing about a hole. The catch is access and cost. Only residents of the hotel may play it, the green fee is 550 euros in 2026, and the course takes guests from late May to the middle of October. Take a caddie at 120 euros and walk it.