The Royal Curragh Golf Club was the first golf club built in Ireland in 1853. Golf in Ireland continues to enjoy a healthy patronage rating fourth in the Top Ten Most Popular Sporting Activities of 2008. Also in 2008, membership in the Golfing Union of Ireland was at 166,419 and membership in the Irish Ladies Golf Union was 49,822, making them third and seventh in the Top Ten Sports by Club/Association Membership respectively. Golf ranks third in Euros spent on activities in Ireland by overseas travelers bringing 183m in 2012. In the same year, the game of golf contributed over 15b Euros to the total European economy. In 2007, Pádraig Harrington became the first golfer from the Republic of Ireland and the second player from the island to win The Open Championship, the oldest of the four Men's major championships.
Although most historians agree that the birthplace of golf occurred in Scotland, the sport has a rich and colorful history in Ireland. Dating back to the mid-1800s, one of the fascinating aspects of Ireland's golf history is that many of its oldest courses are still around today, giving players and tourists a first hand account of its history. Today, Ireland is one of the nations with the most golf courses per capita in the world. Golf in the modern world originated from a game played on the eastern coast of Scotland in the Kingdom of Fife during the 15th century. Golf was officially introduced in Scotland in 1421. The game quickly spread throughout Europe due to the royal endorsement of King Charles I who brought the game to England. One of the oldest and most popular courses at the time was the Royal Curragh Golf Club, which opened in 1856. It quickly spread to Ireland from Scotland.
Organizations
The Professional Golfers’ Association was founded in 1901 and is based out of The Belfry, England. It was established to professionalize careers in golf and grow the golf community in Great Britain and Ireland. The Association initially included 70 members and has now grown to over 7,500. The Golfing Union of Ireland was established in 1891, making it the oldest national golfing union in the world. It is based out of Carton House, Maynooth. It currently represents 430 golf clubs and 170,000 members, compared with the nine original founding clubs. Union business is conducted by a Central Council and four smaller governing branches: Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. The Ladies’ Golf Union of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1893, just two years later. It is based out of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. The LGU works to provide women golfers opportunities to participate and compete and to aide British and Irish women in becoming successful golfers, domestically and internationally. The LGU also actively works to attain gender equality in golf and provide a unified voice to work for the interests of women golfers.
Ireland has thirty-two different counties, twenty-six in the Republic of Ireland and six in Northern Ireland. There are around 300 different courses. Around the entire coast of Ireland are links-style golf courses, played on sandy soils with firm conditions, often with views of the sea while inland there is a wide variety of parkland courses more usually containing trees and water hazards. There are many historic courses in Ireland, whether that be tournament hosting history such as Portmarnock in the Dublin region, which was home to fifteen Irish Opens or Royal Portrush in County Antrim, the only course in Ireland to have held The Open Championship. There are many clubs and courses that were established in the 19th-Century such as Lahinch in County Clare and the Royal Curragh Golf Club in Kildare that still receive great amounts of play and tourism. Below is a list of some of the notable courses in Ireland;
