The Castletown Golf Links course is not for the fainthearted. To my mind, you couldn’t find a more natural place for a golf course, out on a spit of dry land with the Irish Sea on both sides. Any chance of some respite from the wind? Not on your Nellie. Any chance of a few dramatic holes over the sea? Absolutely.

Here then is the Castletown Golf Links, a course not short of a slice or two of golf history. It was first laid out back in 1892 by none other than the master, Old Tom Morris, architect of St. Andrew’s Old Course, the home of golf.  But there is more golfing royalty to follow. In 1910 Alister Mackenzie, the genius behind Augusta National began work on updating the course, followed 30 years later by Philip Mackenzie-Ross creator of Turnberry’s Ailsa course.

You might be baffled as to why a spit of land on a remote island in the Irish Sea would be so attractive to this holy trinity of golfing designers. But during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the Isle of Man was Britain’s equivalent to the French Riviera. Thousands flocked here to holiday and party and Castletown Golf Links was renovated and ready to welcome them all with open arms.