The Dublin Golf Club, as it was originally called, was founded in 1885. The club moved twice before the course finally came to rest on Bull Island, in 1889. Two years later, Queen Victoria granted the club royal patronage. The course was severely damaged during the First World War and was rebuilt by Harry Colt in 1920.

The course is fairly flat and narrow with long stretches of out of bounds, calling for accurate drives, and the wind tends to swirl around Dublin Bay, generally making the back nine tougher The greens are outstanding and there are some brutally deep greenside bunkers here too; the ones on the fairway aren’t much easier. “There are some fine, towering hills at Dollymount,” wrote Darwin in his book, The Golf Courses of the British Isles, “but it is not these that make the player’s knees to knock together; it is the little pots of innocuous aspect that most emphatically decline to be ignored.”