Golf, by TourMiss

I’ve had to severly test the ole ‘grey matter’ in posting this article of my first visit to the famed Old Head course located at the Old Head of Kinsale at the south-east corner of Ireland. It was the Monday morning after the 2001 Murphy’s Irish Open at the Fota Island course in nearby Cork. In a then super three Scottish newspaper coverage storyline for your golfing freelance author, Colin Montgomerie captured a third Irish Open title, storming to a five-shot success in defeating ...

The quintessential French town Bourg-en-Bresse lies in the eastern region of the country, north-east of Lyon and about a 100 kilometres west of Geneva in neighbouring Switzerland. The town is known worldwide not for its golf but its poultry – Poulet de Bresse or Chicken of Bresse. France has long enjoyed a strong association with the rooster.  It’s one of the national emblems of France, the Coq Gaulois (the Gallic Rooster) decorated French flags during the Revolution. It is also the ...

Spectacular, stunning, dramatic, breath-taking and any other ‘take your breath away’ adjective is how you can only describe sensational D’Etretat Golf Club in the Normandy region of northern France. This 18-hole layout is laid out on relatively flat land but some 50-metres high above chalk-coloured cliffs, overlooking the Bay of Etretat and the English Channel. It’s around a 3-hour drive north-west of Paris and some two-hours driving east along the same coastline as the ...

If you’re not Scottish born but consider yourself a serious golfer, then you’ve no doubt visited the Home of Golf nation. And if you’ve played many of the Scottish golfing gems then you probably are keen to savour some other of the not so well-known Scottish golf courses. So, with this thought in mind can I recommend extending your next Scottish golfing adventure by heading to the top of the Scottish mainland, and then take the short 90-minute ferry trip to the stunning Orkney Islands. The ...

I was looking at some of the latest golf-related stories the other day when I came across this article: ‘Should You Play Golf on Christmas Day?” It quickly took me back decades when my brother, Steve and I used to play golf on Christmas Day, and in those years when we were first getting into the deep end in playing golf. We grew-up in the lower North Shore region of Sydney.  Our father, Terry, was the first in the family to play golf.  He joined the 9-hole Castlecove Country Club course, ...

Golf fans around the globe know that Ireland is famed for some of the best links courses on the planet. Courses such as Royal Portrush, Royal County Down, Castlerock, Portstewart, Rosapenna, Enniscrone, Donegal, Portsalon and Ballyliffin in the north and north-west to the likes of Waterville, Ballybunnion, Dooks and Tralee in the south-west where there right there on the virtual front doorstep of Dublin is the likes of Portmarnock, Royal Dublin, The Island and then my favourite a little to the south, ...

The late 1890s was a great time for the birth of golf on the Scotland island of Arran. Arran remarkably boasts six golf courses founded within 11 years of each other, and up to the dawn of the 20th century. They include – Lamlash (1889), the 9-hole Corrie (1892), Whiting Bay (1895), Shiskine (1896), Brodick (1897) and the 9-hole Machrie Bay (1900). Six years later in 1906 the six clubs got together to form the Arran Golfers Association. Our first introduction to golf in Arran was visiting The ...