Castlerock Golf Club is one of a truly great trio of links courses that lie within a few miles of each other on the Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland. Like the other two courses, at Portstewart and Portrush, Castlerock also has more than just an 18-hole layout to offer golfers. 

The 2,446-yard 9-hole Bann is the par 34 relief course for the 18-hole Mussenden and it is routed through magnificent, towering dunes that sit just off the Atlantic shoreline. Created in the mid 1980s by the late Billy Kane who followed a Frank Pennink design, the Bann course is tucked away beyond a caravan park behind the clubhouse and it’s very easy for the casual visitor to know nothing about its existence. Once on the course, golfers are isolated in their own private little golfing world, hidden from view, for the most part. 

There are no bunkers on the Bann, but it really doesn’t need any to protect the undulating little punchbowl greens. Rollercoaster is a cliché much used in describing a round played over tortuous terrain but it is the perfect description of what it is like to play the Bann – severe elevation changes, left and right doglegs, blind shots galore –you’ll find them all here on a new course steeped in old fashioned golfing values. 

The 5^th is a 491-yard par five, called “Bannview” and it’s a truly memorable hole played downhill all the way to a green flanked by sand hills on three sides with the River Bann running all the way down the right side of the fairway – wonderful! This is the tough wee course the juniors practice on at here at Castlerock, so look out for even more fine golfers to emerge from this part of Ireland in the future.