Donegal Golf Club

Two Loops Around Murvagh

The golf course at Donegal Golf Club belongs to a club founded in 1959 at Tullycullion, near Donegal Town. In the early 1970s, members identified the Murvagh peninsula for expansion, where Eddie Hackett laid out the present links in 1973. Pat Ruddy began a wide-ranging update around 1992, later describing heavy revisions to eleven holes.

The routing uses two elongated loops. The outward nine travels anticlockwise around the property's edge, while the inward nine turns clockwise inside it. Donegal Bay and the Atlantic keep changing position around the player, with the Bluestack Mountains inland.

The course enters stronger dune ground at the par-three 5th, "Valley of Tears", where a semi-blind shot must reach a raised green beyond bunkers. Later, the long par-five 12th and demanding par-three 16th underline the scale of a par-73 course with five par fives. Ruddy's work sharpened green angles and bunkering, while keeping Hackett's two-loop plan.