Adare Manor will host the Ryder Cup next September, putting Limerick and Clare in the golfing spotlight as Ireland prepares for only the second time it has staged the competition. The build-up is already being felt across the Mid-West, from the parkland fairways around Limerick to the links courses along the Clare coast.
Limerick sits about 25 minutes from Shannon International Airport and has six other golf courses, while Clare is home to two of Ireland’s top-rated links layouts, Lahinch and Trump International Doonbeg. A seven-club regional golf pass is also about to be launched, giving visitors a new way to move between courses as interest intensifies ahead of the tournament.
The scale of the spotlight is being sharpened by a busy calendar. Trump International Doonbeg is hosting this year’s Irish Open in September, when Rory McIlroy will defend his national title there, adding another high-profile event to a county that is already drawing serious attention from golfers at home and abroad.
For Dromoland Castle Golf Club, the buildup has a familiar ring. The club, which dates to 1962, hosted the women’s Irish Open in 2022 and 2023 on its par-72 Championship course, set on a 450-acre estate. The course was completely revamped and redesigned in 2003, with more than 5 million euros spent on the work, and a further 3 million euros has been invested over the past three years.
Dromoland Castle is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s leading parkland courses and sits alongside a five-star hotel, adding to the draw for visitors looking beyond the better-known coastal links. The region has long been a hidden gem, with several challenging and affordable parkland tracks within easy reach of each other.
Adare Manor is JP McManus’s parkland masterpiece, and next September’s Ryder Cup will place that setting at the centre of the sport’s biggest team event. With the Irish Open at Doonbeg, McIlroy in the field, and new golf access links being marketed across the Mid-West, the region is set to convert a burst of global attention into a longer run of visitors.
The question now is not whether the Ryder Cup will lift the profile of Limerick and Clare. It already has. The issue is how much of that attention will stay once the final putt is holed.
