Adare Manor, famed Irish golf course, has been chosen as the site of the 2027 Ryder’s Cup, a biennial competition between teams from Europe and the U.S. In choosing the site, the tournament’s organizers are not only picking a prime setting for the sport’s best players. It is also recognizing the talents of its architect, Lansdale native Tom Fazio. The Irish Examiner carted off any doubt about his bona fides in crafting unforgettable sites for play.

The Golf Course at Adare Manor is a 7,509-yard, 18-hole, par-72 course that sits 10 miles southwest of Limerick (not the Montgomery County one, the one abroad).

The onsite manor house began as a simple country home in the 1720s. It was transformed into its present splendor by three decades of renovations that ended in the 1860s. The large estate once held sweeping parklands, formal and informal gardens, and some of the best trout fishing in Ireland.

Golf first came onsite in the 1890s. A 1992 expansion added another eight holes to the original course.

Fazio’s 2018 re-do kept most of the prior footprint and routing.

But he did tweak the elevations of several holes, including the 5th, where he removed several trees that had long-standing reputations for kidnapping wayward shots and rendering them lost.

His redesign wasn’t meant to help golfers overtly; it was to redirect the water runoff that was causing the grass there to grow wildly.

In fact, he labored intently to retain Adair’s reputation for a deceptively simple game that played like nothing of the sort.

“Adare is purposefully set up that it looks really easy to play,” explained Fazio.

Atop decades of professional accolades, the Golf Course at Adare Manor was voted the best course in Ireland in 2021 by the World Golf Awards.

More on these luscious links is at the Irish Examiner.