No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1037: Northern Ireland - Royal Portrush, Royal County Down, and Belfast

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Soly, Randy and DJ debrief on their trip to Northern Ireland where we played both Royal Portrush - the site of next week’s Open Championship - and Royal County Down. We also share our experiences visiting Belfast and taking in the culture and history of the region. Make sure to join us on our YouTube channel on Monday at 8pm ET for the premiere of our video from the trip! Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠⁠⁠ Support our sponsors: Rhoback USGA Yeti If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music Better than most. Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Solly here. Please forgive the kind of barren background. You see I'm moving offices now if you're watching this on YouTube, which you should be because this episode is our deep dive into our Northern Ireland trip that has a lot of footage laid over it. From the trip, Royal Port Rush, Royal County down all this to get you hyped for the open championship coming up next week, depending on when you're

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we're ready to let's let it rock. Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no laying up podcast. My name is DJ this is gonna be a travel episode And you know what a damn good travel episode, I think, if you'll allow me to say, I've got a couple of my fellow travelers with me. Solly Sollenberger, of course. Chris, good morning. How are you? I'm wonderful, Dej. We're recording this in May. It's going to come out much later. We just saw a very quick first draft of a video that we, that we took on this trip. And I was looking at all my, what was that real? Like did we

really do? It was such a quick trip. It's been such a busy stretch. Like I honestly kind of forgot like how sick this trip was. And it hit me just a little harder just knowing I haven't been able to do a lot of this stuff lately for personal reasons. And man, this was just a really, really fun one. And I'm excited to talk about it. Well, another guy we're excited to have our third, our third leg of this trip, big range leg, big. I almost said that. Randy, good morning. How are you? I am great. I'm enjoying a coffee. Yeah, Solly took the words out of my mouth. What a trip this was.

Is an area of the world of the Great Britain, Ireland that I had never been to a trip of total firsts for me from the golf to the cities, to the off course and was extremely enjoyable. And I think I'll make for a fun little discussion here recounting it because I don't know about you guys. I had a blast. First, faux pas, we'll let it go.

We know it's early on the mountain time zone. Great Britain is the island on which England, Wales, and Scotland sit. The United Kingdom is complicated. Complicated. Oh, Randy has been canceled and will not be joining us for the rest of this podcast, unfortunately. I still have my memory. As you probably have gleaned from the title of this episode and are dancing around it here, we of course went to Northern Ireland, flew into Dublin and then crossed the border,

went into Newcastle. We went to Belfast. We went up the North Coast. We played Royal County down. We stopped by Hollywood, the home of Rory McElroy. We went to Royal Port Rush. We went to Castle Rock. We went to a lot of other off non-golf places. And I don't know, guys.

I was thinking about it this morning, kind of thinking about what to say. And I think this surely is one of my favorite trips we've ever taken, straight up, period, point blank. I think the reasons are it had three things that I really love in an NLU trip, which is one, I had immense curiosity about it going in. I had never been there. It was a place I've always wanted to go, a place I've kind of know just enough about to be very curious, but not enough to kind of feel like I've been there and I'm just arriving to fill in all the gaps. So a true blank slate. Two, we had a local tour guide, one of our, all three of our favorite people on planet

earth, our guy, Patty Neal, who lives in B 70 degrees Fahrenheit, like the entire planet Earth. And it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, what a bonus. It was 65, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Like the entire trip, no rain to speak of very light wind, just enough to make the golf courses play really fun. I mean, it was, it was shocking for, uh, Rainey. I know you weren't with us at, uh, the old course last year, but we, we deserve that. I saw we deserve this. Yeah. Between that and that band and trip. Like I get, nobody's going to cry for us on this one, but it was like, I got through three or four of those trips last year. It was just like, man, it would be nice to take the waterproofs off. And uh, we, we got paid back in a big way. So you kept saying this while we were over

there, but like the, the sheer amount, the sheer volume of DMS from the Irish, the British, just the people like, I cannot believe what the 10 day forecast looks like for you blokes was just overwhelming. It that was in advance of coming over there. It wasn't even hit yet, but I just posted a little something on Instagram, like getting the flight dial for Northern Ireland. getting the flight down for Northern Ireland. And it was like I was getting congratulated on having a child. They were all just like, you know, the weather. Oh my god, you're not going to believe the weather. You're gonna get the best weather ever. And they were not joking. The one full day we spent in Belfast was like too warm. Like I was hot. I was steamy. I've never experienced that anywhere in the

British Isles. And that was that that that was the that was a first of experience of mine. It was downright tropical to go with all those Palm trees that you see planted in people's front yards randomly over there. Well, let's talk before we get into it, just about the project or the point of going, other than the fact that it's just a world-class amazing place to go is we spun up a video project. It's in the works right now. And I think if people watch our Argentina video, if they listen to the Argentina podcast that Tron and Ben and Cody and Wolfie put together, this is kind of a build on that. And I think those guys mentioned it in there too, but

I think one foible or one corner that we've kind of painted ourselves into is, you know, we do these big tour sauce trips and they're great and they're usually two or two and a half weeks and we're playing 15 golf courses and we're going to all these different places and creating like a whole season of content. And one place where we've kind of gotten stuck is if a place doesn't, I don't want to say like rise to that level because there are great golf courses all over the place and you could, you could stretch these places out. But it's like, if you don't have, you know, that many places to make that many episodes,

then the places just kind of get skipped over. And I think something that hit us late last year was like, man, what if we took kind of smaller, smaller trips and we did four or five days in a location rather than two and a half weeks? And I think that would allow us to get to many more locations. So I'm sure by now the Las Vegas one has come out. We are taping a Milwaukee one here shortly. We did the Argentina one. We've got a couple other great ones on the books. And so this video project kind of fits into that mold.

Anything else you guys kind of wanted to add there on the larger project or idea? Just that like, you can get a lot in in a short trip and a smaller crew makes everything easier. Like to your point on like, we would just end up bypassing doing so much stuff because they're like the biggest possible swing you could make or nothing at all. Like, yeah, there's probably something in between. And we found a little sweet spot. I feel like in a lot of this stuff that like, it's not going to get branded as Taurus sauce. And yeah, it doesn't have everybody there. And it is different, but it has kind of all of the same elements and themes to it. And

uh, I really hope people take the time to watch and enjoy it. All right. Well, before we get into it, like I said, we're talking about Northern Ireland. What I saw, I believe you're the only one that had been there. Big and I are, we're total blank slates. What was your experience with this region? Had you been everywhere? We went almost everywhere. What was kind of the, the experience you're bringing to the table? Almost everywhere. Of course, summer of 2017 2017 when there were, there were no rules that summer. I had nowhere else to be. I just, I just jumped a plane or a car or somewhere or a ferry and, and met up with people and played a lot of golf. I went

over, Jamie Kennedy organized a trip in April, 2017 and a couple of his mates went over and played County down, played port Stewart, played port rush and just had just, it was one of the, it was, it was so much fun. It was a couple of his mates went over and played County down, played port Stewart, played port rush and just had just, it was one of the, it was, it was so great to come back eight years later because I just got, I pretty much water boarded myself with, with the top golf courses in the world back then. And I didn't know what to look for. I didn't probably,

as much as I appreciated and enjoyed it, I didn't have the level of knowledge and experience to get the full experience at the time, right? And I went back later that summer. The Irish Open was played at Port Stewart during July and I actually ended up meeting up with some people and staying in a house there, wouldn't watch some of the Irish Open, went over and played Port Rush, went over and played County Down as well. I just, I didn't know how good I had life and how it was going to get a lot more complicated later on. But just was really, I guess a little, I was fascinated with this part of the world.

I mean, I know about Ireland, we had been to Ireland. I didn't really understand. And we hear a lot about Northern Ireland through Roy McElroy, Graham McDowell, Darren Clark, and a lot of the professionals that have come out of that part of the world. And I was kind of embarrassed that I'd spent time in Belfast prior to this trip as well, but like had real, I dunno, I'd read about like the history of the country and its relationship with Ireland and the UK and how complicated it was. But the, I just did not understand like the depth of it. And we, we did some stuff off the course that really, a lot of that I learned a lot. And

I guess a part of big part of the reason why I wanted to travel around Europe back in 2014 to 2017 was like to get away from golf, and like to learn about the world and to learn about cultures to learn about history to learn about conflicts in different regions. And like towards the end of my time in Europe, I was getting away from that and getting into just playing golf. And I totally missed this area of the world that I was in. I missed the opportunity to learn about what what's happened there,

what, what the relationships are and, uh, and how all of that works. We're not going to solve that. I don't think in this series, but we'll see, we'll see how close we can get. We had to disagree there, chief. Already off to a bad start. No, exactly. But it is fun to even just get a cursory overview of it and feel like you can color in the lines a little bit more of, or color in the gaps rather of like understanding some of these places and why it is a big deal that the open championship is going to Fort Rush. Like you read about the sixties, seventies, eights, even into the 90s. And then you think about

like the golf world coming to this country, like it would have been pretty unimaginable, you know, back in that time with how much violence there was there. And, you know, and just to learn a bit about like what level, you know, the gates and walls that exist still in Belfast that are still functioning was a shock to me. I just, I literally did not know that still existed. And that was, um, I guess, I guess gave it even more appreciation for, um, yeah, this, this golf tournament going there and the opportunity people have to go and travel there and feel safe and to experience it. Randy, what, what were you bringing to the table here? What was your mindset kind of

getting off the plane? Yeah, not bringing any experience, which kind of had me in a mood of just excitement. Like I said at the very beginning to see new places, obviously new golf courses, but everywhere we went off the course was new as well. My only time to Ireland prior to this, the island of Ireland was our tourist sauce trip. And on that trip, we had flown in and out of Shannon. And so kind of the one area of Ireland proper that we had not gotten to was like the Dublin area. And so flying into Dublin, we'll get there, but we also flew out of Dublin. We had a day at the end to kind of explore the city. Very much looking forward to that. Have heard so much about how much just fun that city is.

And so that was kind of the, I guess, cherry on top of the trip. Truly, you know, the trip starting with like, hey, we're gonna fly into Dublin. Then we're gonna drive a couple hours and play Royal County down was like, holy shit. Yeah, okay, play one of the best courses in the world off the plane. So I don't know, it was just like, it wasn't like a long trip,

but everything we were doing, the itinerary was dialed. I was just very eagerly anticipating going over there. Knew it was gonna be a great trip. The weather was so nice. I'm just picturing this trip, if it were just wet and soggy all week, we would have had fun, but it would have been a different trip.

So I'm thankful for the weather. And yeah, as Solly said, my familiarity with Belfast and Northern Ireland and the political violence and the troubles, like don't have a deep knowledge at all. Still don't. Still don't. Yeah, yeah. Please, I want everybody to know that. But it had just consisted of some reading.

I'll shout out the book, Say Nothing by Patrick Ragdon Keefe. That was my main, I guess, source of information. And so besides the golf, besides Dublin, like really having a day and going to Belfast and knowing that, yeah, we're never going to wrap our minds around what Belfast has been through and what the Troubles is, but just having the opportunity to look around, to learn. Yeah, I just really cherish that and it was a great experience. We'll get into more of that, but coming in as very much a blank slate, Dej, which I think is, is similar to maybe how you came into this trip. Totally. And I think what, you know,

I don't know if people enjoy hearing about like the, the inside baseball, you know, how the trips get planned and, and why type of stuff. But it's like, the other thing about a tourist sauce type of trip is like, you're trying to make so many episodes that you kind of need to, just the schedule is much tighter and much more, I don't want to say rigid, but you know, it's just, it's harder to take a day to go explore the city. You know, we've, we've started to do that more in like the Australia season and things like that.

But I think those are the types of things, especially on a trip like this, where you just leave feeling much more well-rounded. It's much more fun to walk around the Belfast city center rather than just being on a tour bus going from golf course to hotel to golf course to hotel. And I think all of us probably left with, you know, a slightly more three dimensional picture of the trip rather than it just being like a straight up capital G golf trip. And when you're making something that is just one kind of standalone film, I think there's more wiggle room to do that stuff rather than trying to wake up every day and be like, we

need to make an episode today. And there needs to be beginning in the morning and a middle in the afternoon and an end at night and there's no time to really mess around. And so I'm thankful for that because those trips I enjoy a lot more. And then on the golf side, I said this to you guys while we were there. So apologies for repeating myself. But the, a lot of these types of courses, Royal County down, Royal Port Rush, there's a lot of courses like this in America too. Uh, they,

they kind of end up feeling like these big concepts, like historical concepts and almost like the great novels of, of the English language where I'm just like, yeah, man, Charles Dickens, tale of two cities. Like very, very important. Oh, really? Have you read it? No, I couldn't really tell you what it's about. I, you know, I know the broad strokes, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I don't really know. And so it's like the same as when you put in the time to, you know, read one of those novels and sit with it and research it and think

about it. You like get done. You're like, wow, should have done that a lot sooner. That's what it would have way to enrich my life by consuming that. It's like, I think these golf courses are the same way where it's like, okay, I hopped on a plane. I went and saw this place. We set it all up. We went and did the whole thing. And now I have this whole new experience to draw on. Like that's kind of how I felt finally seeing some of these big gigantic, you know, holes in the resume. So again, just very, very thankful for that and very thankful kind of coming in without,

without much knowledge, you know, cause those, those trips end up being, you know, almost a lot more fun in a way. So why don't we, why don't we get into it? Why don't you take us into our, our first leg here. First leg of the trip, we land in Dublin. Some of us through the loyalty to, to many of the great airlines got bumped up into the business class for free. Thank you. My friends at American airlines for that little free annual boost that I get. Well rested, picked up the blokes. I landed a couple hours later, we had a little Irish breakfast

and drove up to Newcastle. So Newcastle is this little kind of holiday town that sits on the Bay of Dundrum, I believe, I hope I'm saying that right. And it's just, it sits right underneath the sleeve Donard, which is this mountain that we've struggled to pronounce and probably still got wrong. We stayed at that. What did you have sleeve Donard?

Donard. Yeah. I'm not trying to make fun of it. Like I just thought that might be how it's pronounced. We stayed at the sleeve Donard hotel right at the base of the mountain there, right next to the golf course. It's hard, super cool. Just like you, you fought this walkway out the back of the hotel and it has this little archway that says Royal County down in these classic letters. And you literally just walk from the hotel right over to the putting green and you just walk out there

and you're just at a special place almost immediately. Like you can just tell the way they treat the grounds, uh, the, the open vistas of the putting greens and your view to the first tee and your view of the Bay and just unbelievably friendly staff. Like I don't know when this started. I don't know if it was a COVID thing or probably pre-COVID, but like all of these clubs, especially some of these highly traffic clubs just have gotten their visitor operations. clubs, especially some of these highly traffic clubs just have gotten their visitor operations. Just they're just running in a very tidy fashion now because so much American tourism has come to a lot of these top golf courses, especially let's call

it in the last 10 years, it might even be less than that. But it's just a it's tea times are booked out for the entire year. Probably we were lucky to get a tea time shortly after four, I think right at 4pm in the evening kind of hoping we wouldn't have anybody behind us. And it is just, it's grand, man. The walkways to the first tee are grand. The walkways from the tee box to the first fairway are grand. It's undulating. It feels really, really, really natural. And the thing that sticks out to me about Royal County down is there's a lot of, call it junk out there like a lot of Gorse a lot of just like crabgrass a lot of stuff in

between these holes that kind of something courses it's it's basically like you play there's the hole and there's some fescue and then there's the whole the next holes right over next to it right and there's not a lot of other stuff in between there is just like a lot of Gorse out there you got to work kind of hard to find it. There's not a lot that like encroaches on the line of play but man there's just a lot of random field the areas like the old course has a

lot of that too that creeps in a lot of different spots but you tee on the opening hole is a mid length par five and you can hear the Bay right there and it just like you just hitting what that sea air and it just it feels different right off the I mean, we played in almost no wind at counting down, I guess, little wind as you can get. I was going to say, I almost feel like that's worth setting up. I'm concerningly little wind. Yeah. Probably we're setting up a flare at the beginning here is like all of these

takes are run through the filter of it was 65 sunny and zero wind. And if it was 40, it was like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's a lot of wind. It's like, oh, that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing. I think that's the biggest thing, I think you were the first one to say this is just like, if you had a, like a, a teleport machine, I truly, a hundred percent sincerely, I don't think there's anywhere on planet earth that you could teleport right now that is better than this, than, than playing the, you know, the fourth hole at Royal County down the fifth hole of Royal County down. Like this is, this is as good as it gets on planet earth,

like right this second at this time, uh, which this time, which is a heady take, Randy. No, no, just stop and chew on that. Like how often in this life, in this world, are you literally maybe in the plate, like the best spot that you could possibly be in? I don't think it's that often, you know? I really don't. But I think my point was if I was at home in Florida, I wouldn't have picked to transport here.

Like, it wouldn't have been like, oh, I want to be walking this fairway at Royal County down. I would have said something different. I don't know what I would have said. But once I'm a mayor, I'm like, dude, I don't, looking around, I don't know if I could immediately go transport somewhere else right now. I wouldn't do it.

Like, now that I'm here and I see this, like, there's nowhere better to be. And you play this first couple of holes, you get kind of introduced to these athletes, immediately go transport somewhere else right now I wouldn't do it. Like now that I'm here and I see this like there's nowhere better to be and you play this first couple holes you'd kind of introduced to these elements of County down off the second tee where it kind of bends around a little bit to the right. And it's a blind it's not the most blind shot you're going to play on this golf course but it's a blind shot and you got to kind of start trusting your four

caddy and it's a common critique because some people don't like blind golf holes. If you don't like blindish shot and you got to kind of start trusting your four caddy. And it's a common critique. Some people don't like blind golf holes. If you don't like blind golf holes, you might not like Royal County down as much as some other links golf courses. I really like, I tend to like a lot of blind golf holes. I have no problem with that. Once you kind of view it through the lens of appreciation of back in the 1800s and 1900s, when they're building these golf courses, like they didn't have the ability

to move land and like the land was the obstacle. Like that sand bunkers were just essentially where the sheep were grazing and hiding out. And that's like, you know, there weren't these like manmade things that we get now. Like the land was, was how you navigated a golf course. And once you view it like that, I just, you're like, you're realizing you're walking in this ancient place where the game has been played for over 100 years. That just adds another layer of enjoyment on all this stuff for me that tends to. I'm not a history buff, but I would consider myself an appreciator of history. So you get to that. You get to the third hole. I'm

not going to do all the holes, but the front nine is awesome. Like I could do almost every hole in the front. If there is a critique of County down, it's that it loses a little bit of steam on the back nine. It's not bad by any means, but it's just like the front nine is just true bangers only.com. And the third hole is like is this long par four played along the water, but it's got a cross bunker that essentially like it takes a hole that like if you had a little helping wind or if it's

firm, it could be driver wedge for a long hitter that has almost no thought to it versus they put this cross. There is this cross bunker there. I shouldn't say they put it there. It's a cross bunker that makes you test. It tests your knowledge and your ability to control your golf ball of how much you can control your runout. I don't remember what it was. Let's say it's 280 runout, which on a links course, a little bit of help you can can your ball can run to that quite

easily, so it tests how close can you get to that bunker and you know, cut down the distance of your second shot without going too far and getting the punishment and it turns it into like I hit two iron seven iron. I think into that hole it becomes a test of your distance control off the tee and then a mid iron test and like that is where you had this kind of double black diamond mogul skiing at this golf course where you can't pin your ears back and just bomb it

over all the stuff and because it just it makes you think and that was a whole that I probably that's an example like when I said earlier of I something I wouldn't have appreciated eight years ago. Now I stand up on that 13 I'm like dude this is sweet like this is this might have pissed me off eight years ago and now I'm like dude I see what you're doing here and I like it. All right. One thing at County down that stood out as just kind of a macro thing is just how many factors there are on every shot, you know, and that's kind of largely a links golf thing

in general, but it's again, we had perfect weather, perfect conditions, but like most of the time you wouldn't and out there it's like, is the shot blind? Is the lie uneven? What's the wind doing? What's the firmness? What's the run out? And like your shot on number three there is, even though it's a tee shot from a flat lie is a good example of that because it's so easy to forget about one of those things and hit a bad shot. You know, and that's like, the edges are so tight out there. Like the trouble is so looming that as soon as you don't hit a good shot, like there's no bailing out really. And so you talked about this with greens. That's probably the best example is a lot of Lynx golf courses. There

are, you know, if you miss around the greens, like it's not that severe. You can, you can kind of get, you know, a lot of the challenge is can you avoid these deep pop bunkers off the tee? Can you avoid some catastrophes around the greens? But if you miss, you know, you can miss in the wrong spots, certainly. And especially if you're on the wrong side of the wind or whatever, but like the actual topography is not that severe. You can putt from a lot of places you can, you know, you can get up and down to big greens in a lot of spots out there. The severity around the greens, if you miss an iron shot in the wrong spot, it's like, dude, you're kind of hitting eight feet back up a dune here, you know, to try to get back up onto the flat part of the green. I think about like the, was the par three, number eight on the back side, number seven on the front side. Like that's the best, most dramatic example of just like, man, left half of this green, it's a little tiny wedge 110 yards. But if you're on the left half of this green,

like you're just, you're toast, man. I think I bailed 50 feet right on the wedge. Cause it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. And it's just, there's little, uh, there's less obvious examples of that on almost every hole. You know, I thought about that on number two, I believe was where I was like on where I was on that high left bunker. I was pin high, but it was like, I have no chance of going at the pin here. Otherwise, I'm going to make a seven.

So it's basically like a lay... There's a lot of almost layups with your chip shots. Where she's like, man, I'm just, I got to hit this out to the left and just try to make a 30 footer or just basically take six out of play, which is amazing. Like what a fun test rather than just like, Oh, there's, there's water here. This is an Island green. There's out of bounds here. You know, I was going to say there's a version of what you described that is not fun golf. And I wish I was better describing the difference of like, it can, it can really divide your

experience where it's like whereas it elevates it here because there's so many spots you hit it in. They're like, I just wish I was better. Like that was not an impossible shot. Like that was not an unfair shot. This is not an unfair punishment. I was better golfer. I would have got away with that.

Like I wish I just hit a better shot there. And that's the most fun. Whereas some of like the, I don't know, I tend to generalize a lot of this and bag on just the American golf courses on this. But some of the more cookie cutter modern golf courses, when I say modern, I mean more like not like the Gil Hans, Tom Doak era, but more 60s, 70s, 80s golf courses just end up being repetitive tests. And it's not a fun balance of not risk reward, but just shot value. And this is where this

just exists everywhere on this golf course in a lot of places like this. But I was, it also helped to have been abandoned dunes several times since we last played County down. You go out there and you're like, all right, that's dope. I see exactly what you're doing with Pacific dunes here, like almost on a whole by whole basis of like, all right, the seventh hole at County down, that's the 14th hole at Pacific Dunes. Like you try, I don't think he succeeded very well with that one in particular,

but I see exactly what you're trying to do. The way like the eighth green sits, uh, reminded me of how the second, the eighth green at Pacific Dunes, how the second green sits at Royal County down and just the severity of the falloff short right of that one. And yeah, like to your point, it is just the championship leveling up of this golf course compared to just like a member's course, you know, that you may find down the street is very noticeable. At least it was on this go around. Which also makes me think, you know, we got to meet your buddy who owns the, I think it's the railway street cafe right down the street. And he was talking about playing, you know, we, we got to meet your, your buddy who owns the, I think it's the railway street cafe, right, right down the street. And he was talking about playing,

you know, he's played rural County down his whole life and played off what? Like a plus four plus five plus five. And I'm like, Oh, you're like, that's, you're one of the best golfers in the world. That's the case playing off that handicap at that golf course is like, you're, you're one of the best golfers on earth. If what was his best score ever was only like 65 or 66 or 67. I forget what he said, but like he's never gone low. I think it was 67, never gone more than four under on that golf course. Yeah. To kind of color in some here,

I the first thing I want to mention is the gorse was flowering in late April. So you can imagine just there was a lot of gorse and to have that rich, vibrant yellow color kind of all over the grounds, it truly with the mountain, the sea, the yellow gorse, it really was majestic. And I don't say that lightly. I think the other big first impression of Royal County down for me is it's very well kept. Like it's a very stately golf course that the greens were immaculate, like the fescue in the Gorse area gives it that roughness. But man, the

corridors, the fairway, the T-boxes, the greens, like really, really, really nice condition. And so you just have this sense. And I guess I say that in contrast to some of the places like in Ireland specifically, that feel just very wild and they're a little shaggy and it has that that edge of the world exploration quality to it. I felt like Royal County Down was just prim, proper with its setting right by the town of Newcastle. It bordered very much more Scottish feeling to me in that sense. And Solly, I totally agree, could not have played it in easier conditions, but just struck by like the green complexes, the surrounding area, the greens, it just forced a level, a got to be accurate. There's just not places to like miss and run off.

And then I'm like, Oh, maybe I'm hitting like a 25 yard little like hybrid bump, you know, quasi putt back. Like it just doesn't give you a lot of that. It's much more like, okay, like we're demanding that you you hit a pretty good golf shot. You got to really control your golf ball. And thankfully, playing it in a very benign wind. I found it very enjoyable on this day where I was somewhat in control of my golf ball. I shudder to think with like a 30 mile per hour crosswind, rain coming down, it could get very miserable. And in fact, we talk to people have like, Oh, yeah, I've walked off that course. Like it's just too hard when the conditions are, are tough. So sorry, carry on. I don't know other holes you want to

you mentioned it feeling Scottish. I mean, it was laid out by a Scottish school teacher named George L Bailey. He laid out the first, first one whole life, I believe in a different guy. I think, put that in the Charles Dickens category for sure. It's great. Uh, laid it out the front nine in 1889 and then old Tom Morris was paid for guineas to lay out the second nine in 1890. This is from top 100 golf courses.com. Harry Varden modified the course in 1908 and that's when King Edward the seventh bestowed the Royal

patronage on the club. But again, top 100 courses says that old Tom deserves most of the credit for the layout. So if it feels Scottish, that's probably exactly why it does, Randy. So one thing our caddy told us really from the jump, which like was extremely prescient advice was just like, you have to play the fronts of greens here because that is where there's the most width to miss left or right. And if you get pin high on a lot of these holes, and you don't have the proper accuracy, like you're going to miss the greens in the worst spots. So again, I find it super fun. Weirdly, when you're playing golf, and even down to wedges in

your hands, you're playing away from holes and away from pins and you're like strategically, that's such a better way of playing than like anyway where I play here in Florida, if I have a wedge in my hand, it's aim at the pin and try to hit it really close, which of course is fun to try to make birdies, but like it's way more fun to feel like you're trying to unlock a puzzle, unlock an angle, unlock a, you know, eliminate a certain risk with a certain shot knowing you just are, the question being asked of you is very different. And you end up working for par, like working pretty hard for par with wedges in your hand, but you're like,

I know that that caddies advice just like saved me from the one. I hope I get to play Royal County down again in my life, but I have to wait 10 more years to try to hit the proper wedge into the eighth hole, which I might have messed up had I tried I get to play Royal County down again in my life, but I have to wait 10 more years to try to hit the proper wedge into the eighth hole, which I might've messed up had I tried to get that all the way back to the pin. There's something very fun about feeling like you're solving a four piece puzzle instead of just a bunch of one part puzzles. You know what I mean? Like that's what playing golf in Florida or whatever is like.

And of course, listen, the same disclaimer in all of these podcasts, the land is very different to the, you know, geology is different to the, uh, just everything's different. But over there, it's like, you have this opportunity where it's like, okay, I'm standing on the tee box. I need to do three things correctly here to, in order to, uh, in order to make a par. three things correctly here to, in order to, uh, in order to make a par. I need to get my drive in the right spot. I need to avoid this, which then will allow me to get my second shot in the right spot, which then will allow me to two putt and like, let's just, let's just take it one at a time, but we got to do all of those things. Whereas a lot of times playing golf in America is just like fucking bombs away, dude, like let's do it. Just hit this one as hard as you can.

And then we'll figure it out from there. Okay, cool. We got it. What do we got? A wedge like, all right, let's stuff it, You know, and like all of those things feel independent. Whereas over there, it feels like they're all connected. If that, if that makes sense. So you were right on about, you know, you don't want to miss around the green and the wrong spots, but I do just want to, I, these greens to me weren't like the, the sloping, they aren't outrageous greens. They're very subtle. A lot of times they're in kind of flatter spots. It's almost weird because I don't know, in one sense, like thinking back, I'm like, yeah, why couldn't you just get at more pins? But just the subtle runoffs and the bunkering and because there wasn't just a lot of just like turf, benign

turf around the greens. I guess that's what I was trying to say too. Yeah, it just puts a level of demand on how you approach the greens. And so DJ, you're right. It's like, you know, I almost think like those first couple steps, like, man, if you can really get your drive in a good spot and you could hit your approach in a good spot, some comfy two-put bars, you know, I don't think any of us made a ton of putts, but it wasn't like, once you got up onto the greens, that wasn't where the stress was playing Royal County down to me, at least. Totally.

Any other holes to shout out? The ninth is like prehistoric. The fourth was like corn. I mean, it's just crazy. The ninth was easily would have appreciated that eight years ago, but I don't think I would have appreciated the eighth. And that's where hopefully I'm trying to pull up the image here for you guys, but I know we're going to lay some imagery on the video aspect of this podcast. But like,

just the way this whole sat on this ridge and with the mountain in the background and the way that green sat with the way these bunkers are staggered, like that is such an underrated little thing about golf courses and especially golf courses in this part of the world is, all right, if I want to hit it 280 on this tee shot, this bunker is going to be a problem. And if I want to hit it 250, well, this bunker is going to be a problem as well. And if I want to maybe hit it 220, well, that bunker is going to be a problem.

And I end up getting lucky hitting it right at that bunker on the left that you see in this picture here and stayed out of it. And this is one of those shots where it's like I had to play short of the green with wedge out of the light rough. And the way a, this is one of those shots where it was like I had to play short of the green with wedge out of the light rough. And it just the way this green sat as you climb this ridge and then yeah, you get up to the ninth, which is a famous hole that a lot of people have probably seen pictures and

you have this tiny little fairway right in front of you. It serves no purpose other than just to mess with your eye because you're hitting your tee shot way right of that and way down this hill like over this little huge massive dune on top of it and down this massive ridge, where you're getting all the way back to the lower part of the property and back to the clubhouse to make the turn.

And yeah, it's just a hole that doesn't really fit modern technology. Maybe originally that tee shot was a tougher carry to get over that hill, but it's still just, it's such a sick and fun shot. We thought we went way left off the tee, DG, and we ended up finding both of our balls. I was very surprised by that. That was the one blind shot. I think I was like, God, if I could have that one back after

seeing it. Cause it does mess with your eye on the tee. I was just going to shout out, you know, both part threes on the front, I know we've talked about them, but the views that they offer back towards, you know, you can kind of see most of the golf course laid out in front of you. You can see obviously Sleeve Donner Mountain is framing the round the whole time, but like truly standing on the tees of the par threes on the front were some of the most incredible views I've ever encountered. I don't know if there's any hole before 13, but man, the 13th hole is one I wanted to call out. Mid-size par four, depending on what tee box it might play over 400 yards from the back, it's what, 450 maybe.

But this big kind of doglegging par four, where you know, you got to make a decision there, the fairway, there's not a ton of room left of the fairway before you, like this embankment kind of creeps in that just gives you a lot of gorse and fescue and it's gnarly. So you kind of got to fit a drive on this big sloping dogleg right, part four, over on the other side, the right side of the fairway, some bunkers,

and just more fescue. But then I really love the green complex where, again, this whole routing kind of goes left to right. And then the green, the land kind of naturally contours at the green from left to right. And so- Right to left. Right to left, excuse me. Opposite of the whole shape. And you really want to play your approach

like outright of the flag and to use that sloping. I just love the contrast there. It's a very elegant hole up by the green. I think there might've been some, yeah, there's a front left bunker that protected that green, but man, very open out towards the right. I don't know. That hole just really stuck with me

as one that was like handsome, interesting. And I just loved the contrast of the shots between the tee shot having to work it one way and then kind of wanting to do the opposite with the approach shot. Which on that one, the fun part about that was I was in that left rough kind of skinny area and it almost like to your point,

the hole goes left to right, but the land kind of tilts right to left. So if you're on the left side, you're almost like lower, you know, so you can't really see what's up there. And it doesn't, you certainly can't see that that's all fairway that's feeding the ball to the green. So I'm standing down there with like a, I had, I think I had like a punch five iron or something from like one of the hillsides.

And I'm standing over this just like, what the hell am I going to do with this? And I, Katty's like, no, check it out. And like, if you just get it running, just punch it like 140 yards. If you get it running, it's just going to like run up, up on the green. It's almost like a big kind of like mega radan sort of, sort of feel. And he's like, yeah, it's just like, trust me. It's there. Just hit it, hit it over this line. I'm like, all right. And sure enough. And it's one of those where you're just like, all right, ball, like please appear, appear,

please appear, please. Oh my God. There it is. There it is. He was right. It's the best. It's the best. The future of American golf is now launched in 2023. The U S national development program is the United States' first unified pathway designed to guide top junior players all the way to the highest levels of the sport, from competitive junior golf to amateur and eventually professional play. The USGA is helping chart that journey.

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say this, but I'll say this is the proper way to grow the game. Talent is everywhere and opportunity should be to learn more at usga.org slash US NDP. Back to the pod. That's one of my favorite holes in the back. I hated that I tripled it, I think. But that was like a hand caught in the cookie jar. Why did I hit driver there? Could it hit two iron and like could it hit seven iron on the green but like didn't properly weigh out the risks of those shots. And yeah, you kind

of meander through a little weaker part of the property there from there. The par three, 14th hole kind of along the edge, the back edge. It's a fine hole. It's a fine little little stretch. There's nothing like, again, wrong with it. And then you get to 16 is a drivable par four, which is a fun little hole. And 17 is a weird one. There used to be a pond in the middle of this fairway, which they've filled in and put a little waste area in, which is still a little bit bizarre.

I don't know if that is necessarily fits the, uh, fits the rest of the golf course. And then you finished with a par five back to the clubhouse. And it just, man, it's just one of the world's great walks. It really is. Um, I just flipping through some of the footage last night was like, holy crap, man. I, it's one, it's one of the weirder podcasts to do because it's such a visual hit.

I mean, all that gorse, the depth, the spiral, the top chimney-like thing of the hotel that you're hitting towards so many different spots. It's a really, really, really special place. And this was, of the three times I've played it, by far the most memorable, by far the best experience I've had on it. And I just appreciate it so much more this time around. Another thing I'll shout out about it kind of transitioning us post-round is, you know, Randy, you meant you when you were talking about how stately it is and how

kind of almost elegant it is, I also want to point out that it still feels very welcoming and still feels very accessible. And I think a lot of that is because of the thing you've heard on this podcast a million times is club, right? Right next door is, is kind of the, uh, you know, there's a bunch of local clubs that, that kind of play out of there and Morne club shout out to our guy, Andy, who invited us for a post-round beer over there is like, you know, it's a kind of membership of, of a bunch of locals and like, they still get to play X amount of days per week. And, you know, so you do have all these American tourists coming over and playing these like extremely high dollar, uh, uh, days per week. And, you know, so you do have all these American tourists coming over and playing these,

like extremely high dollar guest fee rounds of golf, but you still have, you know, they still have the local soul of the place. At least that's how it felt, you know, to us, the, the one day we were there. And so hopefully that is accurate. And hopefully, you know, that that's kind of how it feels all the time, cause that was a really awesome takeaway. And it was fun to just see that clubhouse and watch a little bit of the soccer game and have some beers in there. And, uh, you know,

have that right next door to what is a top 10 course on planet earth is, is, is pretty essential to keep. I think what makes that so special. I think part of that too is there's a whole nother golf course winding through this property, the Ansley links, which is, I think, like much shorter. It's not a short course, but just shorter holes. And gosh, just looking at some of that, I mean, we crisscrossed, people were playing that course.

DJ, I'm totally with you. This part of the world, they just have threaded the needle so perfectly between exquisite world-class golf that's also accessible and like not, god, they could be so much more pretentious there. Like you said, like it could be totally shut down private. Like, who do you know? You got to know a member to get on here. And it's just like, not that feeling. And I don't know, it just, it can't be said enough how nice that is.

Yeah. Like, the answer looks sweet, by the way, the course looks awesome. There's so many cool holes up in dunes and kind of a, if you remember back on the, um, Valley bunion, uh, episode, what's the other course in course, cash and course, that's right. Which we played in hurricane winds was like a bunch of weird golf. It's just weird golf holes, weird, you know, kind of shorter aspect to it. That like, again, something 10 years ago, I would have had zero appreciation for now. I'm like, dude, that's kind of where

it's at. We'll get to one of those that we played later in the trip as well. I also want to shout out the hotel. We kind of breeze past it. And I think as I'm becoming a man of a certain age here, I hate it, but I'm just becoming much more of a like things are nicer at nicer hotels type of type of guy. Used to be very much just like, dude, just I'll sleep on the couch. I don't care. And getting into that hotel, I was like, Ooh, my God, I would stay here for three weeks. This place rules. Like we're, Randy saunter down at eight 39, read the paper, have about 30 coffees and a full Irish, you know, maybe some outside. Yeah. Go chip and pun on the Ansley course for a little bit. Maybe like, Oh, I, man, I could really see myself just kind of, just, just kind it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's, it, it, it does check a lot of boxes. Anything else kind of from Newcastle? I know we were only there for a night, walked around a little bit to get some takeaway. Didn't, didn't really get much. I mean, I, I, I shouted it out. Sorry, but your, your buddy's coffee shop, the railway street cafe is like essential, really, really, really good coffee, really good pastries. Uh, that's like, if you are going absolutely seek out a

cup of coffee there, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, it's right at the entrance of the club. Like it couldn't be much. It's right across the street from the Sleeve Donner hotel. Like it's a great place. He was nice enough to host me at County Down back in 2017 and his place has turned from a, it used to have like a full on meal breakfast,

but now he's more of a roaster post COVID. And just again, kind of one of those things that like, I don't know how well this all translates into podcasting and video stuff, but just like, again, one, another one, a great person that we've met along the way that's just been really kind to us and has been really excited to show off like their part of the world and make sure that people have a great time doing it. And it's just, it's awesome. It just fills my, my golfing soul up. Randy, why don't you, uh, why don't you take us on the next leg here?

Yes. So our, our stay in Newcastle was short, but sweet. We woke up the next morning and everybody piled into, God, we had a big ass van. How were you feeling whipping that thing around? You were doing all the driving on this trip. Well, a little nervy. I have to say this. This was the beginning of the nervy when we were going to the city and we were going to have to start, you know, getting, getting a little tighter. Thankfully it was an automatic. It was not a stick shift big van, but yeah, we woke up the next morning and we were headed for Belfast. I believe the drive was a bit over an hour

and our destination where we were headed for Belfast. I believe the drive was a bit over an hour and our destination where we were gonna stay that night was the Bullet Hotel, which was right in the city center, near the cathedral quarter, I believe. And so pretty drive, you know, we've mentioned the weather. One thing that didn't occur on this specific drive, but one thing I was interested about leaving Dublin and heading to Newcastle was what type of,

like what would we have to do with any border between Ireland and Northern Ireland? And as it turned out, it was a big nothing. Like didn't stop. It was really like, you know, cruising in the States here and you cross a state line. And it's like, Oh look, there's a sign like welcome to barely in this case, welcome to Northern Ireland. So that was interesting.

What we were going to do in Belfast. So our, our kind of day two, if you will, was a little lighter on the golf. We get out to Hollywood golf club, home of Rory McElroy, of course, we would do that in the late afternoon. But before that, we were going to kind of divide and conquer a little bit around Belfast. We were meeting Patty and Patty's friend Tim at Oh Donuts, OH Donuts. And I'm actually wearing one of the shirts that Tim gave us. And guys, I freaking

love donuts. So I was very excited for this. And it did not disappoint. We rolled up and I was presented straight away with a little custard filled kind of Boston cream pie donut in the shape of a coffin that had Rory is dead written on it. It was it was like chocolate frosting with white lettering Rory is dead. Good on Tim. Good on the people there. I he presented it to me saying Randy it's time to eat your words. And I said Tim you're exactly right. And I've never been more excited to do so. We should point out this was basically two weeks after the masters that we were tooling around Belfast. So the city very understandably,

very high on the career grand slam and our, our beautiful boys masters victory. Yes. Oh, don't Oh, donuts. Do we linger on Patty for just a second? Okay. Before we get there. What? Who is Patty? How would you sum them? How would you describe him to somebody who's never met him? Patty Neal is, I think, one of the funniest people on this planet. And I think he's funny even when he's not trying to be funny. And I don't want

him or anybody listening to take that as like a slight in any way. He just his mannerisms, his vocabulary, his timing. I just feel like he is such a unique character. He just cracks me up. I've now spent time with Patty, you know, many times over the last several years. And truly I can say never had a bad time. Like just as somebody that will talk to you about anything, has opinions on everything, is curious, is funny, will laugh at himself.

Like he just really is the best of us. And he lives in Belfast, he's from England, but kind of going back in his family, has family ties to the area. He and his wife have settled down in Belfast and Patty's somebody that we've gotten to know somewhat randomly, you know, through the joys of like social media and the golf world.

He now works for us. We put him to work sometimes doing filming, doing editing. We joke he's kind of our UK outpost over there. But what would you guys add about Patty? I mean, there's so much more to him, but that's kind of the high level, I guess. Yeah, it's great. He's pretty young. I don't I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am.

I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's a little bit older than I am. I mean, I think he's how much you know about the history of this place, but like me with my very posh London accent, probably not the best tour guide for Belfast city tour. Maybe we could get some other people involved.

I can talk to my guy, Tim. He's from here. So he's great and has very good timing. But he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's from here. So he's great and has very good timing. But he introduced us to Tim,

who you mentioned owns O Donuts and is now, I think they have a couple of locations and have turned into a little bit of a juggernaut inside of Belfast. And Tim is fascinating in his own right. I'm sure this will be in the video, but he's, he's got like a, I think a doctorate in biological physics, I believe is what it is. Yeah. It was something extremely smart sounding. I forget the exact. Huh? And when what? Now you made Randy these donuts? Like what there's got, it seems like there's gotta be a story there. So yeah, just a fascinating guy taking over family business and just a guy that was really great to kind of tool around with.

Well, and I think what's interesting, the family business is like a bakery, right? They do a lot of pastries, cakes, whatever throughout Belfast. And Tim has just had a passion for donuts. And so these little donut shops, I think there are two or three of them now, maybe around the city.

They look kind of like pop-ups, you know, they're not much to them, but they just excellent donuts and excellent coffee. And God, that's not a beautiful combination. I don't know what it is, but he's kind of the donut project is kind of his passion project, which is cool. Which was great too, because that was like on my list of questions, like, you know, go

get an answer about this while you're there was just like, man, it doesn't seem like making pastries like is, you know, I know there's an immense craft to it, but I'm like, how are we in the States just getting our clocks cleaned by the Brits, by the euros at large on this pastry situation? Because it's all, I mean, we've talked about this millions, you can go to the airport, you can go to a gas station, you can go anywhere and just get the like a pastry that would knock your socks off. And Tim was like, Oh my God, I'm so glad you asked me that.

Let me give you a very detailed explanation on exactly why that is. And so I'm sure, I don't know if that's in the video or not, but we can, we can dissect that. If it's not, it reach out to DJ Persol. Exactly. I want to shout out the, uh, just in case we don't come back to it, just that location that the hotel was in, in the city center was very cool. Not at all what I was picturing. Youuring. I don't know what my preconceived notions of Belfast were. And again, much like the RCD conversation, it was incredibly sunny, beautiful day, everybody's out. I'm sure Belfast can get fairly bleak weather-wise as well. But

in the sunshine, my gosh, that whole area town just lit up. And it was a lot of new stuff. And Patty was doing a lot, like explaining a lot of it to us as well about just how it's pretty, you know, it almost reminds me of like a, like a less hipster type of. Like how Brooklyn became Brooklyn, where it was like, you know, things are just very cheap to try. So you don't have to, if you want to open a donut shop, you don't have to go through 800, you know, loopholes to try to get this lease through this part. Like you can, there's usually areas of town where it's cheap to just experiment

and you can give it a shot. And you can kind of see that with restaurants, bars, breweries, bakeries, like just cool, kind of interesting, weird stuff, seemingly all over the city. So again, it's like, I wish I could post up there for two weeks and just go try all of it. But that was kind of just my cursory, you know, in 24 hours type of, type of takeaway. Yeah. No, that's well said. It's an area of the city to, you know, obviously bars, restaurants, coffee shops, like it would have been so easy and sorry, I'm gonna bring in here because it would have been so easy on this trip to just kind of hang there for a day, leave Belfast and we'd come home and we'd be like, oh man, yeah, Belfast. It's cool. You know, didn't see the troubles.

Yeah. I don't think not a thing anymore. Um, you know, happened 30, 40 years ago, whatever. Uh, totally, totally cool now. And Sully and I were disabused of that notion. And I am so thankful we were, I could not give the black taxi tours of Belfast any stronger of a recommendation. Kind of the black taxi, meaning, you know, the idyllic kind of what you think of

as like a taxi cab in London, right? Well, they do these tours where I think we did one that was 90 minutes. There might be one that's a bit shorter, maybe even a bit longer, but we had an excellent driver and essentially he drives you out of the city center and up into the areas of Belfast, which were where the troubles, I mean, which was like ground zero for the troubles.

And the thing that we quickly discovered was how present and alive the reality of the troubles still is in Belfast. And so, Solly, maybe I'll turn it over here to you, but it was like the most striking part of the trip for me. And again, we're not the proper historians on this topic. We're not here to, you know, we're gonna share our experience in this. But again, that's kind of where I go back to like, just kind of the amazement of bringing

a large sporting event here when, through this lens is very different. I've always been just confused. It just literally goes back hundreds of years. And I've always been a little confused by like, I don't understand Catholic versus Protestant. Like, isn't everybody Christian? Like, why is this happening? And again, that's kind of the part where I'm not going to try to solve. But it is, it does become a lot more clear in terms of loyalties lying more so

with the English and British, the loyalists or unionists versus like the Republic of Ireland, right? That's essentially kind of what's driving things. But our cab driver did an amazing job. I thought, I don't know how you felt ready, but we got to the end of it. And I was like, if you're on no idea what his background, no idea. If you're on one of the two sides, I don't know what side you're on, which I think is a compliment. He's kind of pissed off at a lot of people on both sides, which is understandable. But yeah, I wasn't able to suss out like, hey man, what's your specific background? But I thought you did a great job of like isolating the incidents into this,

I've hesitated to use the word silliness of it, but like the true like abuse and radicalization through some of the leaders of the violence and how they've indoctrined people into this cycle of violence is kind of how I felt. Right. It's like, it's really not easy to sum up other than like, it's just a complete history of, well, that guy killed these three people here. So the retaliation is going to be this. And this person is considered maybe a spy for this and blah, blah, blah. To the point where, again,

having been to Belfast before and not knowing that there are functioning walls and gates that still close at night between the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods at 7pm, like from 7pm to 7am, like the gates close and you cannot go between the two neighborhoods, like during daylight hours, you can. And he was still very clear, like, if you have a good, you know, if you're in a Protestant neighborhood and you have a good Catholic buddy from work, like he's just not going to like come have a drink at

the bar with you at, in the evening. Like it just, there still is that very much separation. The gates close every night at 7 PM. And that's kind of like, yeah, you're just not going to, if you're Protestant, you're not going to be in a Catholic part of town after that and vice versa. Well, and then my dumb ass, I was like, yeah, you're just not gonna if you're Protestant, you're not gonna be in a Catholic part of town after that, and vice versa. Well, and then my dumbass, I was like, they go along a tour of the walls. And there's three like sections of the walls was

like a clear like built wall, like the Berlin Wall. And there's a second like section tacked on then like a third section tacked on. I'm like, look at this. I'm like, what, what are what's the purpose of like, were people scaling these walls? Why do they keep building up on top? And he's like, No, what are, what's the purpose of like, were people scaling these walls? Why do they keep building up on top? And he's like, no, it's for, for all tough cocktails. And it was just like, Whoa, okay. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. I, I, I'm an idiot one and two, like, it's just did not understand it to be to that level. And then so that was, that's where like, I started going back and reading a whole heck of a lot more and, and spent a lot of the plane ride on the way back. The Wikipedia page for The Troubles is enlightening and just goes to describe the depth of everything that's happened there. So it all like, I've always known the Roy McElroy, is he going to play for Ireland or is he going to play for Great Britain? And he once said he felt more British than Irish, but he was a part of the island developed, like I just didn't understand the

complication. And now I'm like very much. I wouldn't I understand it 1% better, at least to say like, Ah, I understand why this was extremely difficult topic and how there were no right answers. When somebody throws an Irish flag on him after he wins the US Open, and he takes it off. I understand why that because like you drive from town to town and it is like Union Jack everywhere, like truly everywhere through a small little neighborhood or part of town,

uh, which is the British flag for those that don't know. And then like the next town might be, or the next neighborhood, next block might be all the tri-colored Irish flag. And it's something that, you know, ah, yeah, it's just something we haven't experienced like anything like that in our neck of the world. And I wish I had a better way of summing it up other than like, it was very interesting and worthwhile to learn about. Yeah, certainly a somber, a somber, you know, 90 minutes

that we were on the tour, our driver took us to these little neighborhoods. And in the Catholic neighborhood, you minutes that we were on the tour, our driver took us to these little neighborhoods and in the Catholic neighborhood, you know, every neighborhood has a little plaza garden that they've turned into a memorial for either remembering, you know, people that were killed in some act of violence. Perhaps it was somewhat they consider like local heroes, people that were part of the resistance as they saw it. It's the same memorialization on the Protestant neighborhood as it is in the Catholic neighborhood. They all spell out very detailed what they're aggrieved about, the atrocities, the people killed. And so, Sully, to your point, it just is a conflict

that has so many layers and such a history that, you know, you get however many years on and you just, there's no like good side, bad side. There's no good guys, bad guys. It's all so interwoven and intertwined that it's impossible to kind of cleanly peel apart now. I mean, the last thing I'll mention that was food for thought, I guess, was the big peace agreement was signed in 1998 that was kind of put an end to the hotness, if you will.

I'm trying to think of the term, like it cooled the troubles, right? Like officially, there obviously has been ongoing violence here and there. But as our cab driver said, you know, when they signed this big agreement in 1998, these walls that still run all throughout the city that separate the neighborhoods,

the plan was for these to be torn down in 25 years, which if you do the math, would have been 2023, we're now 27 years past that peace agreement. And as the taxi driver said, there are no plans to take down these walls. Um, it, it kind of is still in a point that there are people alive that have been firsthand touched by the trouble still. And so while the younger generations, I think there is optimism of more of a blending of more of a understanding of more of like a moving beyond.

I, at least the take that I got from our cab driver was like, it's still gonna take a very long time. And so as somebody that knew about the troubles and thought that they were, they existed in like the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was completely eye-opening. And honestly, the biggest thing I learned that no, this is still a very real thing in the present for the people of Belfast. And

I was very appreciative to kind of take that understanding home. I think maybe I'll pick it up from there because we had a very different day, me and Patty and Tim went and just kind of explored some of their favorite places in East Belfast. We went to Flout Pizza, which is like a kind of factory, Detroit style pizza type of spot. Then there was a brewery across the street. And my reason for bringing that up is what you guys said earlier, I spent that entire day. And I knew you guys were going on this tour and kind of seeking some of those specific locations out.

But my experience in Belfast, like could not have been more naive to all of this. And the reason I bring that up is like, please don't listen to the last 15 minutes and be like, oh my God, I don't know if we can go there. Like it felt like going to Edinburgh. It felt like going to London. It felt like going to, you know, wherever, like just kind of a great,

like pretty world-class, neat, interesting, diverse, fun city. And you know, you, you have to seek it out. You would have to seek out, you described, like I totally missed this on my first time to Belfast. And I think talking to Tim and Patty about, you know, just through living there, you know, about their perspective on it. And I don't want to speak for them. I think they speak for themselves on the video is like, it's just very interesting to think about the generational evolution of how these things have to, I don't want to say work themselves out, but they just kind of, there's almost like a decay cycle, right? As Randy, you were talking about the people who have been touched by this stuff, like

firsthand, you know, they don't, they don't live forever and they have kids and their kids have kids and it just kind of slowly starts to, starts to fade. And that's kind of what it feels like based on talking to people that are there, you know, the point that we're kind of at now is especially with the business stuff I was saying, like how affordable it is to start a business there and to move there, especially compared to a lot of the rest of the UK. Like it just seems like there's probably a lot of turnover, almost like cultural turnover that's going on in the city. And again, people don't need to come to the Knowling Up podcast for a full breakdown of all of that stuff. I just think it's a really interesting topic for those who

want to learn more. I'll shout out Say Nothing as well. I started reading that since returning and it's like, it's the perfect resource for something like that. Which has been turned into a mini series on Hulu. If you don't have time or if you don't want to read the book, they've turned it into a mini series. Well, listen, we did all that and then we met up after lunch. Now let's play some golf. When play G.

Randy, take us to Hollywood. Yeah, so Hollywood, I don't know how far of a drive out of the city center, maybe 20 minutes felt pretty close. Like shockingly close to this. I had no idea how close Roy grew up to like the Belfast city center. I thought he was coming out of the country and it was maybe 15 minutes something. I was expecting a flat piece of land.

You know, I don't know why I was just expecting kind of like, oh yeah, flat piece of land. I don't know why I was just expecting kind of like, oh yeah, flat piece of land, ho-hum, whatever little golf course here. Man, reality could not have been different than my expectations. First of all, you drive up a pretty severe hill to even get to the clubhouse. And Hollywood Golf Club sits on a hillside overlooking, oh god, it's a lake or a channel. You guys will have to help me. I'm not sure if it empties out. It does empty out into the sea. Gorgeous view. Honestly, it reminded me of like some parts of like Northern Michigan maybe, maybe some like upper Wisconsin, Minnesota vibes. But this golf course is hilly, like crisscrosses this gigantic hill.

We would play the front nine, we didn't have enough time to play all 18. But we thought we'd have a fun little old shot game on the front nine of the course. And man, I cannot, I truly can't imagine walking that golf course every day, all 18 holes. I was exhausted walking nine holes and hitting every third shot. But what I will say is what a fun just piece of land,

the holes, the routing, the shapes that it offers. And I just couldn't shake the feeling of like, man, this is a golf course for young legs. Like I could just picture a young Rory not paying attention to how tiring the hills are, bouncing around the property. We were joking, maybe that's why he's kind of got that pep in his step when he's really feeling himself. And you kind of need that to get up and down and around and across Hollywood Golf Club.

Just a fun Parkland golf course elevation changes, doglegs, you know, tree lined. I, you know, you guys add add to the golf course as you see fit. But I do want to just lastly mention the clubhouse. Not overly big, not like grand, not necessarily like old feeling, but just like a nice clubhouse with a nice patio, great place to have a Guinness.

And what's fun is they have like this whole kind of, you know, I guess I'll call it a shrine. But when Rory McElroy literally grew up as a member of your club, like you're going to brag on your boy a little bit. They have a lot of Rory McElroy trophies and pictures. It's just fun. You can see his progression through his childhood as it relates to golf success. And they've gotten copies of the Wanamaker, the Claret Jug, the US Open Trophy. I'm not sure if they'll be able to

obtain a replica green jacket or not. I think those are pretty strictly watched over. But the last thing to mention, they have an addition on the clubhouse, which was totally new, totally modern and awesome. They have like a full gym, you know, squat racks, free weights, like a really nice place to go have a workout on one side. And then on the other side, they have this indoor lounge bar area with like three or four golf simulators, I believe. Five golf simulators, a pool table,

and just like a great place to hang out. And those projects were financed by Rory, him giving back to Hollywood Golf Club. The people we met there were great. We took some pictures with the replica trophies. But you guys tell me what, anything that stuck out about the course itself, any holes, what, what am I missing here? It, I actually went up there when I was there like eight

years ago, just to walk around a little bit and just, it's like a waterlogged golf, like it wasn't like a linksy style golf course. It wasn't, uh, you know, anything like County down or port rush or any of these places. And, uh, I don't DJ kept saying this. You kind of see really quickly, like, Oh, that's how we learned how to hit a draw. Like I need to draw a lot of places, but it reminded me a lot of places I played growing up of they were just honestly not special. I don't mean that as a, as a slight, just like that's what a lot of normal

golf looks like. And it just, I remember I was walked away being amazed that one of the world's best golfers ever came from that club. Like learn to play the game there, uh, in terms of what that golf course looks, absolutely nothing like any championship golf course ever. And I know he traveled around a ton as a kid and played a lot of different places, but that was a massive takeaway I had in that moment. Yeah. I mean, same. It reminded me a ton of the course that I grew up at, not topographically or anything like that, but just I grew up at a golf course that was $25, $30 to go play. And some guys would sneak their own beer on and some guys would, whatever. It was just the most basic daily fee golf course.

And just the idea that a grand slam winner would grow up and apply their craft there as a kid in a world of, you know, academies and high specialization and all that. It's just, it's, it's awesome, man. It's, it's so cool. And it's, uh, impossible to be cynical about. It's just really, really, really neat. And to talk to the GM and the staff there about like, you know, again, what it's done for the junior program, like there's, there's a million kids there now who are like, I wonder if I could be Rory McIlroy. And that's fucking great. It's so cool to hear them talk about it and feel the energy at that club and all the people that have gotten way into it. We saw a couple of kids just absolutely grinding out there. It's great, man. It really, really,

really makes you happy to go through. And I think they welcome, you know, we were joking about it a little bit that especially, like it's always kind of been this way, but especially since the Masters, they're like, oh my gosh, the amount of merch we're selling of just people who are flying into Belfast or staying in Belfast or passing through on the way from County down to Port Rush who stop in just to see it. And they're like, man, it's kind of like, these people are coming in and they're buying, you know, sweatshirts and polos and beers and like, they don't play the go.

They don't need tee time. So they don't take up space. They don't add any divots. It's really like, it's kind of like the perfect business model a little bit, which, which made me laugh. But I would encourage people to do that, man. I mean, go in that back patio, especially if it's a little bit, uh, which, which made me laugh. Uh, but I would encourage people to do that, man. I mean, go and that back patio, especially if it's nice out looking over that Bay and looking straight down the Hill and you know, seeing people grind on their, on their short games or like play that little downhill par three. Uh, was it like the sixth hole, seventh hole? Sixth hole. Yeah. It's just, it was a really cool spot. Again,

just enriching to, to the trip, you know, not because I, the golf holes are unlike anything I've ever seen. It was more just like a, I dunno, almost felt like going to a museum exhibit or something in a, in a way, right? It's just, it's just really cool to, you can't really do that with Tiger Woods. You can't really do that. Maybe, I don't know what Jack's upbringing was in Ohio. You know, I don't know. Yeah. It's like, there's probably nothing really there. Arnold Palmer. I know like Latrobe, you could probably do that,

but it's not really the same scale as, uh, what we're talking about and kind of how singularly famous that place is for, for Rory McElroy and his association. So I loved it. So glad we, we took the time to go see it. And just to be, yeah, if it's not clear, like, it's not like your, your Northern Ireland golf trip needs to include playing around at Hollywood golf club. Like if you want to hit off, it depends,

but if you want to hit the top golf courses of the country, this is not, this is not where you're going to find that I think is the point. And again, it wouldn't necessarily be a place I would think about going if it wasn't for the Rory factor, right? It's not like some of the golf course we find like Kilspindy and all these little hidden Scottish gems are a different category, I think, than a place like this, if that's fair. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Randy, what else? Yeah. So I guess after that, the last thing to mention from that night, we went back to the Bullet Hotel, the city center, and Patty had a great dinner lined up for us at Yugo, Y-U-G-O, which was kind of an Asian fusion type restaurant, walking distance to where we were staying. Yeah, what was it like a six, seven person tapas meal just right in my wheelhouse. Excellent

restaurant though delicious meal probably the best you know food. I don't know probably culinary highlight of the trip for sure. And any meal dishes to shout out anything to add just, I would give a full recommendation to you go if, if you're looking for a nice meal in Belfast. Yeah. I feel like everything we had was, it was great. I don't know why we kept going back. We ordered about 60 orders of that tempura broccoli. That was so good. Oh God. That was good. All the drinks were great. Spicy tequila drink. Yeah. But that was called, but, uh, that was, that was, that was good. All the really good, spicy tequila drink. Yeah. What that was called. But, uh, that was, that was, that was a great, great, great place.

Yeah. Couldn't go wrong. I think it was, I think Patty's point was like, you can, you can end up with a pretty average dining experience in Belfast without like doing the proper proper research on, but there are good places to eat much like Charlotte. You can end up in a lot of average places, but no, he took us to a good one. Yeah. So that was really our day. I think after dinner, we kind of walked more through the city center. I don't know what the street is guys, but there's like a definite kind of bar district, a lot of ran into a hen party. Just people out and about. I was struck by how many like youths were out and about.

I kept telling the patty, don't these kids go to school? Like, what's going on here? You kept calling them ne'er do wells. I think we ended the night back at the bullet hotel. We had a Guinness down in kind of the lobby bar area, but a great second day. That's kind of it. If we want to keep moving, unless I've forgotten anything. The hen party culture just out of control, I would say.

Totally out of control. This was a pre-hen party, wasn't it? This was a pre-hen because a couple weren't able to make the hem party. So yeah, this was a whole prehen. The only thing I'll shout out a couple like, you know, a bachelorette party is what we're talking about. And we had our golf clubs for some reason we were carrying them like from Tim's car back to the hotel. And that's what there is. These these women came up and they're like, oh, can we see your golf clubs? Let me see your golf clubs. And like it had had some cocktails for sure. And then I was like, Oh, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to

the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I We're like, that's great. Do that. And it turned out, I think he was the pro or something at, at car news. And he was listening to the no leg up podcast when she called him. And so he was just, he was quite flabbergasted on who was, who was on the other side of that. He was either totally shocked or half asleep or wildly unimpressed with us. Like I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

It was just very, very funny. So shout out to him is the point of that story. Shout out to her. I hope they had a great time and the rest of the pre-hen. Guys, that takes us to kind of leg three, we'll call it. The North Coast Royal Port Rush. We woke up that next day and took a long, like took the scenic route, took the long way. This was another paddy special, which again is one of my favorite things in the world

is just when somebody grabs the ball and is like, let me show you all the places that I really like. And so we drove up the North coast of Northern Ireland, kind of like a, it's not as big and sweeping and dramatic as the Pacific Coast Highway, but there are spots where it's similar, where you get out on a couple of two-lane roads. Yeah, out on the edge of the world, looking at these giant cliffs down to the sea. It is gorgeous. A couple of spots where he was saying they filmed the Northmen, if anybody's looking for a visual comp. I, our boy Robert Eggers came in and just set up shop for a couple of months and, you know, use those dunes as a playground.

So if you're picturing the scenes from that movie, that's kind of where we're driving. So of course, Game of Thrones. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So he has his little passport book. He was checking off sites. That was fun. I don't know. You think more people have seen Game of Thrones or the Northman?

Hard to say. Uh, the, uh, I want to shout out a couple, a couple of places. Uh, he took us to a bar, gosh, that I'm going to forget the name of maybe one of you guys. McBrides. McBrides. Yes. Ma McBrides, uh, which was an awesome little, little pull off. Uh, once was the smallest pub in, is really cool. Yeah. And now it's, it's got all kinds of additions on it and stuff. So that was cool. But then the other spot is Murlock Bay, which I shout out because Patty, first of all, you know, if you're,

if you're looking for the kinship between Patty and Randy, one of Patty's favorite things is just jumping in the ice cold sea. And I think that's the best part about it. And I think that's the best part about it. And I think that's the best part about it. And I think that's the best part about it. And I think that's the best part about it. And I think that's the up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one.

I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come up with an answer. I still don't really have one. I'm trying to come earth is. I can't stop thinking about it. I know I'm trying to come up with an answer.

I still don't really have one. Uh, so I'm jealous of Patty for being able to definitively say, uh, that little swimming hole at murloc Bay is, is his, his spot. It's where he's planted his flag. A big thank you to our friends at Yeti and the new Ranchero backpack. It's now available in four different sizes and plenty of color options. It's our go-to backpack when we're on the road. There's plenty of space for everything you need. And if you're looking for new luggage, check out their Crossroads luggage line. You've seen us take them everywhere with sizing ranging from carry-on size to the large 73L checked luggage, both with firm handles, mesh pockets made of tough skin nylon, so it's water and abrasion resistant with rugged wheels to get you where you need to go. Yeti has plenty

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Eventually made our way up to Port Rush. We stayed a great Airbnb, I believe it's called the Port House. If anybody's taking a trip and needs a location with a lot of beds, very walkable to kind of all the bars and restaurants down there in Port Rush, which we should say is probably reminding me a little bit of like North Barrick, the town, right? A little more like holiday home type of spot, a little bit of a vacation spot up on the I'm going to go to the that right? I don't know if you guys can check me there. I think it's Dunliss. Dunliss maybe, perhaps. You truly, I have no idea. Randy, you got anything? The championship course. That's what we're going to be focused on. Originally it hosted the Irish Open in 1947, which was a big deal because it would not host the Irish Open again until 2012 when Randy's got Jamie Donaldson won.

And it also hosted the 1951 Open Championship, which was the first one held outside of, you got me all twisted up now, sorry, Great Britain, the British Isle. It was the first one hosted outside of that. Would not come back again until 2019 when Shane Lowry famously won. I think you can see the earlier section of this podcast for maybe some dot connection on why that would be. And then of course, is hosting the open this year, probably next week or in a couple of weeks as this podcast airs. So I know you have been here before, just kind of thoughts upon arriving again, past memories, impressions, and then what was different this time? It's a, again, very different golf course than County Down. It really cool coastline. That's another thing too of like, you kind of get a little bit of the

band and experience up there too, especially when you get to the fifth green, not to jump out of the golf course, but you stand up on the edge of that, the tee box there on six, and you're like, I can kind of see this as abandoned dunes feel, whereas County down fell a little bit more like Pacific dunes. You know, you have that fifth hole that plays right at the ocean or right at the, at the Bay there, whatever you want to call it. I always get the body of water wrong. Kind of reminds you a little bit of the fourth hole in some way at abandoned dunes. It just plays right at it. And in fact, I think some of the theory behind the hole actually stems back to that anyways, to say beautiful coastline, there's a ruined castle down the down the

way. And you see all this like, there's some this little like trailer vacation homes that are a vacation little park right across the street from it. And it's I love visiting these open championship venues, like just a few months in advance of the whole golf world coming to this location and seeing the infrastructure. Like once you're at the tournament, it's harder to appreciate how much work goes into getting ready for one of these tournaments until you just look at grandstands and hospitality and everything being and signage all being built for four months prior to a tournament happening is just a very, very cool thing to see up close in person. It's a, but just a sweeping landscape, one incredible dune that rests up against right up against the ocean, uh, at that the north side of the property and, um, just some amazing,

amazing golf holes that filter through, especially that again, front nine just remains just a complete banger, similar to rural county down. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't want to skip ahead to our kind of 10 round split, but I'll say it through this lens that through the first five, six, seven holes at Rowe County down, I was like, man, I've never seen Port Rush, but I don't know how this is not 10 zero. This is the coolest place on planet earth. And through the first four or five, six holes at Port Rush, I'm like, this might be 10 zero row Port real port rush. It's just, it's that good. And that's striking

again with the caveat that we had perfect weather, perfect conditions. It's a dream walk. That first, I would say, especially six holes for sure. It was just like as good as it gets, I think. It was just spectacular. Randy, what was your, what was your kind of initial impression rocking up to the place? Yeah. Well, I mentioned Royal County down felt like prim and proper and kind of not in a bad way. I got opposite feelings at Royal Port Rush,

just big and brawny and a scruffy coastline. And so I think that characterization really frame the two places for me. Soterios I feel like Ballybunion would be a comp, right? Matt Yeah, for sure. For sure. Like Royal Port Rush felt, I guess to go back, like it felt more Irish, things that I've experienced, like other places in Ireland, where, again, Royal County down felt more like, God, you could lift it up and put it in Scotland or, you know, maybe in England, maybe. But, yeah, what a, I mean, what a fun walk. We had a late afternoon tea time.

We were playing a fun game. Dej and I versus Solly and Patty won a better ball. I didn't know what to expect. I guess all that to say, it goes hand in hand with like rural port rush. It just needs to be bigger because it's hosting the freaking open. So it just has to have more area for people

to get around the course, to stand, to watch, to build out infrastructure. And so that, I guess, is the first impressions. But I'm with you. The front nine, some of those golf holes, four and five specifically, are just fabulous, fabulous golf holes. Not that it really drops off after that, but I think those two are the two that just like stick most prominently in my mind. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't want to say this the wrong way, but it is a true eye of the beholder. Like it depends what you, what you're looking for out of a golf course. And the, the caveat that I'm building to is like, for me personally,

someone who loves quirky, weird, I can't believe this is a golf hole. I can't believe I'm standing here looking at this giant dune type of stuff. It just it doesn't feel as charming, I guess, as as counting down. It's a little more in front of you. It's a little more like I see what the challenge is. Stay out of this bunker. Don't miss in this spot. And in that way, it's just probably much better for modern championship golf,

which I think it will be a fucking awesome test for the open again, as it was in, in 2019, you know, it's got all the infrastructure that you mentioned, but it's also got the length to stretch it out and, you know, challenge these guys in the way that they, they need to, but it does have enough of the infrastructure that you mentioned, but it's also got the length to stretch it out and challenge these guys in the way that they need to. But it does have enough of the things that are like, this doesn't feel like all the other majors. You have Calamity, the par three, where it's like, oh, some truly awful stuff can happen there. There's enough little quirks and pits and peaks and things where you can get weird bounces

and you can get weird bounces and you can get weird, you know, all the stuff that you, you hope for from an open championship. And in that way, I'm like, man, if it's, it would be a shame to not keep coming here. You know, like it, it, that's, that's awful that it was whatever 60, 70 years went by without, without coming to this place. And it's just, I'm very, very glad it's, it's part of the rotation because it really, really seems like it fits. Yeah. It seemed like more of a, I was trying to think of like how to frame this because I,

I feel like I'm fishing in the same pond as you are Deitch where port rush feels, it's almost like you're getting ready to like go on like a technical ski run where you're like, okay, like, this is really going to demand some things out of me. Like, I got to focus. Whereas like Royal County down felt like, man, we just had a great lunch. Like, let's just go out and enjoy the snow. You know, let's see where it takes us. Like, you're going to look up and out and just enjoy the beauty a little bit. I just feel like it's a little different mindset for me, at least on this trip, playing those two golf courses.

Yeah. The more we've talked, I think we had left and I said five, five on the 10 round split. The more we've talked about it, the more I'm like, I think it's six, four, counting down. That's exactly where I'm at. Yeah. But I will say it hits so hard from the jump. And what I really like about Port Rush, and not spoil any of the video, this won't ruin it, but opening tee shot, I hit five iron to try to stay out of a bunker. And it just like hit hard and ran like directly into it.

Like it was never missing it. Like I just totally miscalculated it. And it is like, that is my favorite style of links golf is the courses that will make you just get your mind in a pretzel about what iron you're supposed to hit off the tee on a par four because of the wind, because the way the land lays and because of how those bunkers just swallow you up.

And because if you get in there, you're not getting it out all the way to the green. And they just keep putting bunkers in the best spots like just right in your head. The fourth hole is awesome. This green set in between these dunes and these two bunkers down the left that get right in your head.

You can hit it over everything if you want, but like you're gonna bring the OB into play down the right if you do that. And that kind of little chess match is just great. It just doesn't maintain that through all 18 holes, if you ask me. And I think if I was really nitpicking it again something I did not think about eight years ago when I saw it for the first time is

so the old Royal Port Rush they took away the 17th and 18th holes and they took two holes from the valley course the sister course there and they rerouted it and redesigned two holes to add a par five, seventh hole and a par four, eighth hole. And it feels like they, I'm getting extremely amateur architect here, feels like they should have reversed the routing of those two holes. Like you play this brute par five up this hill, straight into the wind, all kinds of nasty grass down there.

Like it's really native grass. That's just like lost ball down there. Like it's really native grass. That's just like lost ball down there. And it's straight away and it's narrow. And it just kind of feels like, and then you come back and play a par four kind of a little bit down the hill. It feels like you should have played the par four up along the ridge to the left and then come down the hill

for either a long par four or a short five the other way. Cause it just, it just feels a little bolted on that little section. Maybe it just I know that those two holes were added in that it just feels a little unnatural then it picks back up and it flows really good through the middle stretch of the golf course but maybe it was a little fatigue on the back half but it the back nine didn't hit as hard as I feel like I remember it hitting there eight years ago or so. There's something yeah getting to that like all the way up that hill to that seventh green, which is like a striking tee shot. You know, some of the best photos we took is like

walking through that, that walkway with a giant dune right there. It's really, really cool. But you get up to that seventh green and you're just out of breath and everybody's tapping in for double and you're like, man, that's like, that was fun. Like, what the hell, what happened to that course? We were just playing like that was,. Like what the hell? What happened to that? Course we were just playing. Like that was, that was so electric. And I guess where I would kind of mealy mouth, like, uh, fence it or try to have it both ways is like, I don't need to play that seventh hole again necessarily, but I am kind of like, Ooh, let's see you play that old Bryson. Like, what are you going to do?

You know, I am interested to watch, you know, what's, what's Scotty going to do if he gets a bad lie over that left side or something like that. I do like that. And that's where I think I kind of meet with it is fitting of the open and it does have all the space and it does check all the boxes to be able to kind of host, you know, a big modern open championship. And I think some of that is just the trade off you need to make to, to be able to do that. Yeah, the, the back nine, like proper golf holes, but just playing it once, nothing really sticking out that would help me differentiate like 10 through, I don't know, 15, 15 even. I, I

don't really remember specifics there. But then I do remember 16, the very long par three that kind of plays uphill with like a dramatic, dramatic drop off right. Wow. It was a great golf hole. And 17 I thought was really cool. Kind of a shorter four with the last, I don't know, 80 yards kind of running downhill towards the green. Those two holes then they still do stick out to me. 18 was cool, only in that, you know, we were playing into like the huge open championship build out so you can imagine those grandstands packed.

But yeah, I- I was surprised a little. I remember from 2019. I don't know about you guys, but I know to the point where I'm like, did I watch that over? Like I don't really remember too much of it either. I was thinking, you know, for people that know me, my 10 round split, I think I would even lean more like, I think Port Rush, if I lived in the area, Port Rush would be the type of place I would love to

go play maybe once a month and making sure it was like pretty nice weather. I'm not going to go out and play Port Rush in nasty weather. Whereas I think Royal County down, not that I'd be excited to play that in bad weather, but that would be more of my like everyday car. Like just because of the walk, I just felt it was a little bit more manageable for me and what I'm seeking in a round of golf. Yeah, I think that's so maybe like seven, three for me even, depending. I'm going to join you on six, four, County down. So I think I was coming into this pot is five, five. I was pretty and by the end of the4, County Down. And I think I was coming into this pot as 5-5. By the end of the pot, we might be moved back to 5-5.

Who knows? But I think just as I was, Randy, you're right. As I'm trying to go through and think through hole by hole and all that stuff, I just, I don't know. Again, maybe it's the weather we had, it's the company, it's the adrenaline of getting off the plane and going right to County down. Like all that stuff kind of adds up for me to, to give it a, a slight edge. Um, anything else from, from Port Rush? We went to, went to the Harbor bar that night,

which is another place that I, again, I didn't really know what it was. I've always pictured it as kind of like the jigger in, you know, just kind of like right off the golf course or something. It's like a compound, man. It's, it's crazy. There's like five different bars, restaurants in there. It was, that was quite a, quite a setup. Yeah, quite an operation. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was really crowded. I think the Harbor bar, like the, the, the, that was just crowded in there and we didn't really

spend much time in there. We spent time in the restaurant and a little bit of time upstairs at one of the other bars, but the quaint little section of it was quite well occupied. But the, yeah, the whole Port Rush area, like down by the Harbor there or down by the sea is just like, it's really, really cool.

And again, perfect weather, just a great place to go walk around, which I think kind of brings us to our final day a little bit. We, we recorded our, you know, our seamsters podcast with, with Patty on the, on the trap draw, uh, which some of these go listen to that. Yeah. A lot of people were like, I don't know. I didn't get if that was like a joke or not a joke. I think it was like a joke, but, uh, yeah, Patty's never watched baseball gave it his light. That's not true. He went to the red socks? That's true. You're right. You're right. I have to enthusiastically with every fiber of my being shout out Babushka, which is the coffee shop right on the water in port rush. I cannot imagine how

slammed that place is going to be during the open, but God worth it. Amazing coffee, great breakfast. And if the sun shining, just, I, you want to talk about to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I mean, I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee.

I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have a cup of coffee. I think it's a great place to have. Yeah, no. Um, it's a, I love this about a lot of places around the UK is they have these little

amusement parks, like these tiny little amusement parks and a lot of these carnivals going on. It's crazy. Yeah. And there's a little one that wasn't open yet for the season. I don't think for their import rush, but, uh, just kind of these little, I think there's one in New Castle as well where Royal County down is. Remember one in Carnoustie as well when we were there. There's one at Berkdale or in Southport. I think there's one there as well. Patty had told us one time he had gotten on like

the spinner ride after eating and got violently sick, you know, just to give you a sense of who Patty is. He's a grown up child. We ended up heading over to Castle Rock, sense of who Patty is. So child, we ended up heading over to Castle Rock, which was a golf course. I'd never played before but heard about I got to give a shout to the divot doctor, David Mulholland, who's a guy I played with eight years ago with Jamie Kennedy, who still had a driver off the deck that I'm still thinking about. But just

he's tearing up the senior am circuit, I think over there, but he was, uh, we were playing port rush and he's just kept, kept talking about Castle Rock. You gotta see Castle Rock. Gotta see Castle Rock. We didn't end up playing the full course, but we went over and played nine holes, the nine hole course, the band course, kind of, again, another thing that a lot of these golf courses, a lot of these clubs do is, is have these places that are so good for like young people to learn the game, just a smaller version of the golf course, always just a good supplemental

exercise like that. I don't want to say I'm swearing off 36 whole days, but like 36 holes is a lot to get in a day now for me. Like, but 18 holes and something like the band course is a perfect day of golf. 18 sometimes doesn't feel like enough golf and short golf course, a lot of trouble everywhere. They literally't feel like enough golf and short golf course, a lot of trouble everywhere. They literally told us like literally leave your driver in your car. Like you do not have to take your driver. Do not do it. Of course got tempted into using driver a couple of times, but it just a really wild but well-kept course. I mean, I think there was a 68, 78 yard par three at one point on the golf course, all kinds of elevation changes, really cool setting there down by the band

river. And it kind of reminds you of La Hinch when you get out to like that 12th hole, or 11 to 12th hole that par five and you're right along the river there. Just while it I think the comp we kept making was the the Kilmore nine at Karn, which is just Yeah, dude, like, I don't know if some of this stuff's going to work for like a real full golf course using air quotes, but like this little nine hole tack on, we're going to get a little weird with some stuff here. We're going to put a green here. We're going to do this. It's going to be surrounded by all this native grass. We're not going to

maintain a lot of it, but like just go have fun and hit golf shots out there. And man, that did we have a great final nine holes of the trip. Yeah. Just a, um, I mean, the perfect match play spot, right? Where it's just like, nobody's keeping score. Just try to, you know, just try to beat your buddy. And like he might be in his pocket after the first shot or the second shot, or it's just, it's, or he might hit some, he might find it, hit some insane recovery shot, you know, from three holes over. It's just, it's, it's one of those places. And like, God, we had just massive smiles

on our faces the whole, the whole time. Randy and I got to run back that match from, from port rush. So, you know, so you can put your victory at port rush against decisive victory at the band course. We'll let the history books decide which of those is more impressive than Randy and I were just vibing our face.. Couldn't fucking stop making birdies, man. I know. It was crazy. Truly concerning stuff. It was very frustrating. I'm not going to lie. Nearly holding it. It was crazy. It just, it made us think that maybe port rush is not like, we weren't playing real golf. The band course is a real test. It wasn't, yeah, exactly. And once it was that hard, we had to, it was like Scottie Scheffler. He's like, once the hard shots,

like I lock in, you know, and, uh, God, it was so fun. It was so fun. The people at the clubhouse were great. A couple of the members we talked to on the way in and out were great. Um, just to, it's always, it's always fun. I think this is like a little thrill and delight is when you run in, when you have a nine holes like that, that's probably very polarizing. I imagine there's a lot of members that are like, I hate this. What are you talking about? I just lost six balls over nine holes. But when you get asked by some of the members or staff or other people who have played it like, so what did you think of the band course? And you could tell they

have no idea. Like they've gotten such a wide spectrum of answers. Like that's, that's the best. And so yeah, enthusiastic, two massive thumbs up for that. We had, we had a blast. Yeah. I love that style of golf. Like you just, it just, you just think a lot, like a lot less about your score.

You just try to do fun stuff and, and, and play a match like that. Just one thing, there's one thing going on. Like even if we play a match on like a full 18 hole course, I'm going to be thinking about my score in some way versus like there. I couldn't tell you if I shot five over or 12 over. I know it was a lot over, but I could not care less about my actual score. Cause you just, you're playing the match. That's really fun. And that kind of brings us to the end of our, our Northern Ireland portion of the trip. We, we stayed that last night in Port Rush there and hit the road early to drive back down to the airport. Sully and, and our other guy, Kevin,

were flying out that morning. And then Randy, you and me and Ben stayed around in Dublin. Randy, you and me and Ben stayed around in Dublin. Why don't you take us there? God, this was, like I mentioned at the very beginning of the pod, kind of the cherry on top of the trip for us. No golf, just kind of a true, hey, day to explore Dublin. We're entirely concerned with capturing content. We don't get a lot of days like this on the back end of work trips.

To have one in Dublin, again, did we say the weather was nice? The weather was great. It was very exciting. Shout out my wife who helped us book the Mason Hotel. It was a great hotel. Honestly, I wish we had a couple more days nights there so I could get to the spa and the gym

and take advantage of all the amenities there. But kind of our plan, our day was, well, first we had to make the drive to Dublin, which Solly had an early flight. So we wanted to make sure Solly got home, got on his flight, which meant what? On the road by 5.36 out of Port Rush. Can I say a bit of an own-

Can you set up the drive? Yeah. It was kind of an own goal for the boys. I forget if it was your phone or my phone, but whichever phone we were using to navigate. So I don't know if we told you this, we accidentally had avoid tolls on for the route. So that's why like we were not on the motorway at all. We're just like, just taking all these like back streets and rainy and I are up in the front seat. A lot of the, you know, the rest of the gangs kind of snooze and we're like, dude, we gotta be able to get on the, you know, the interstate motorway. Like sometimes like this can't be fucking like this can't be the route. Like tiny roads all the

way to this is the fastest way is like a three hour, three and a half hour drive. Like there's got to be some, some highway we can get on here. And then finally, with like an hour or 20 to go or like, Oh, dude, that's what it is. We're avoiding tolls. So we probably saved, you know, I don't know, a dollar 50 years. But it did end up being a much scarier drive. God, we were so tired when we got there, we ended up sleeping for like 90 minutes in the parking lot of that gas station, which was, that's awesome. Which was pretty, you know, we dropped off and we went and found the nearest

gas station. It was like, I literally, I just need to shut my eyes. And we all napped for an hour and a half. That's cool. But then we were dialed. Just what the doctor ordered. Yeah. Yeah. So we were dialed after that, checked into the hotel.

And then it was kind of one of those like, you leave the hotel at noon and you don't really get back till midnight sort of walking tours. So we had a couple of outposts we'd know we wanted to check out. Patty shout out Bread 41, which is again, cannot reiterate that. What was it? The hazelnut kind of like hazelnut cream puff pastry was honestly maybe the best

pastry I've had this year. One of those pastries that I don't know if you know what the like style would be. It almost looks like a hamburger bun sort of thing with like a kind of like a brioche. Yeah, maybe. God, it was so good. So good. And then just a standard croissant. Obviously, you got to judge the place by like, just do you have a, can you just hit us with a standard croissant? That was great. And then just kind of walked around, you know, did St. Stephen's, Green and Trinity college and the whole thing before kind of just conceding.

Like, why don't we just hit some pubs? I think it's late enough. I went to the Harry Lemon for a couple, which was great. More hen parties running around in there. Sorry. We went to Bunsen, which I believe was dubbed the greatest burger on planet Earth. Is that what you said?

I did not say that. I said it's that weird.. Is that what you said? I did not say that. I said it's that weird. Is that not what you remembered? I truly thought I was like, you have to stay in line. This is the best burger. I would. It's up there with one of the best burgers I've ever had. I don't think I called it the best burger on planet Earth, but it's like you say it's a good burger.

Yeah, really good. Good burger. Yeah. I think I can go get that burger. Yeah. Shake shack. It's really, well it was like, it's, it's a chain too. Do you, well they have more, there's more have opened. It's not a, now there's, now there's more that have opened. I don't want to speak badly of Glunson because it was a good burger. I just, when we were thinking like this, Sally said this is the best burger on earth. I just feel like I can get that burger places.

Okay. But I had it eight years ago and it was like three 30 in the afternoon and it was only like a 30 minute line or something to get it. And, uh, it was after a rugby match I went to, I think, and it was, you know, one of my Irish buddies was, was showing me around and he said, you gotta have it. And I was like, man, I, I remember like the taste of the bun of that burger. Like it was really, really good. I don't know if it breaks my heart that it didn't have that experience of it. No, no, no, no.

It was not a bad experience. You just compared to Shake Shack. That ruined my fucking day, Randy. Shake Shack slapped. Still. No, that was- I just think the expectations were too high for us. Okay, that's fair.

That was the problem. What we needed was the context. We didn't know what what was your day like, you know, because any any burgers, it's much like golf, any any golf course can be the best golf course on earth, depending on the context, right. And so it's not like you're just having a great day. So well, I just remember they were saying like, yeah, he spent like three months getting the tomatoes right for this

sandwich and all the sourcing and all that. And like, I got caught up in this story. It's really good. I think I would love to hear people's review of Bunsen if they go to Dublin, please. Yeah, let us. Or Belfast. There's one in Belfast now. And then we kind of just, just got pretty touristy after that. I think we, we, we hit John Kiyos, which was a really, really cool, that was a recommendation of my neighbor who has spent a lot of time there shot to Patrick. And then, then just kind of conceded and we're like, let's just go to the temple bar neighborhood and we'll just back out and do some shopping.

And then we're like, we're's just go to the Temple Bar neighborhood and we'll just bounce around. And just got pretty drunk, Randy. I mean, that- Properly drunk. Like just capital D. Just the boys got drunk off Guinness too, exclusively. We found this great table. I don't even remember what bar we were at. Found this great table where they were kind of rotating musical acts. They'd play for like an hour and then somebody else would come up. So we probably saw three, four, five different acts over the period of time we were sitting there. And I found it shocking a couple takeaways from that.

Everybody who came up, I think,, uh, that Noah Khan song stick season, which just said that people, the people were frothing instead of to a fervor when they played that. And then I don't know why everybody played a teenage dirt bag by weedus. It was like 25 years old or something. I just, I had no, I had no idea. The boys were singing. The boys were, again, the boys were drunk, but in like, we're just singing along, just having a good time type of way. I just had no idea that that song was so popular there or why. So I need to, I need to look into that.

That's on my list of takeaways, but all in all guys, a great, a great trip. I don't know if we got any further takeaways, anything else we wanna kind of get on the record here, Solly? No, I think it's interesting. I don't know the answer to this on whether or not is the Northern Ireland golf trip a separate trip from like the West coast of Ireland golf trip?

Like you could do a mega trip that includes both. It's not the biggest island in the world to get around. It just, the roadways are not the easiest to navigate, especially linking up those two parts of the island. But it's worthwhile in its own trip. I mean, there's other golf courses. Ardglass is still a place I've never been able to make it to that I really, really, really want to.

Port Stewart is another really good golf course that's very close to the Royal Port Rush that I got to play several years ago. And the Front Nine is really, really, really want to. Port Stewart is another really good golf course that's very close to the Royal Port Rush that I got to play several years ago. And the front nine is really, really good. Lingus Golf Course. Back nine is kind of just math, but another really cool place. And it, yeah, I mean, it doesn't roll off the tongue. Like I don't hear, I hear a lot of people say, I cannot wait to go to Scotland, cannot wait to go to Ireland, you know, even less to say, can't wait to go to England, but just Northern Ireland ends up fourth, I think on that list of places you want to go travel to, and that doesn't mean it's fourth best at all.

Like I think it's just, um, it just, the depth isn't fully there with the other places I listed, but the peaks are as strong as you're going to get truly anywhere in the world. Like Royal County Downs rated one of the top five golf courses in the world at any list you ever look at and Port Rush not far behind it. And it hits hard, man. It's a great, great place. And I just, I really have enjoyed my time in that part of the world. Well said. Brandy, anything else? I thought Northern Ireland was a fun, again, you know, judging this off of like four or five days, one trip, but I just was tickled. You could see the Northern Ireland towns felt more English, Scottish,

the people, a lot of that Irish just festiveness, hospitality, warmness. I just thought it was a fun blend of some areas that I had been, and then coming to a melting pot for the first time. It was a fun blend of some areas that I had been and then coming to kind of the melting pot for the first time. It was a great trip. The golf was world-class as Solly said, we got to do some stuff away from the golf course. Yeah, I'm just very happy we went on it. Well said. Guys, I think that's it. That was a hell of a trip. I can't wait to relive it watching the film and getting that piece together. Glad we were able to jot some thoughts down

because that was an all-timer. I can't wait to make it back. Thank you to everyone who made it possible, all the golf courses along the way. Master shout out to Patty for helping wrangle the itinerary and get that to such a good spot. That was pretty much ideal. Shout out to Ben who managed a lot of the production. Shout out to Kevin Jackson, who managed a lot of the shooting. Guys, that's that. Yeah. That's all I got. Good to be in with you. And let's, let's go do another one. I'm going to go watch some of the video right now to relive this one. Cause it was, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for all that went into it.

To both of you. It was a real treat to be included in this one.