Coollattin Golf Club

I'm told that the club has eventually managed to sell Coollattin House. Anyone familiar with the course will know that they have been trying to sell it for some considerable time. It's a massive house of something like 65,000 square feet (reputedly the biggest in Ireland), but hasn't been lived in for 25 years, so whoever bought it will have some work on their hands. But the downside is that part of the course will go with the house. You can see from the image below (taken from the estate agent's promo video) that the 16th hole is gone, along with the 2nd and 15th greens and 17th tee boxes. I've circled these in the image.

I played it on Wednesday in the open comp and the 16th was closed completely, an old hole from before the course was extended (may have originally been the 10th) was playing as the 10th and everything after that shuffled forward by one, causing consternation for my Garmin watch 😀.

My score didn't appear on my Golf Ireland record (nor my playing partner's), so I assume that the course needs to be re-rated because of the loss of the 16th and substitution of the old hole and all comps there will be non-qualifying until that happens.

Obviously other course re-alignment needs to happen too. They will probably need to cut down some trees to accommodate the changes. I suspect the tees for the 16th (old 15th) will need to go back into the trees and the 2nd green needs to be rebuilt in the trees to the left of the current green. Not much can be done with the 17th, there's no room to move the green really without bringing in other problems. These are just my ideas of what's going to be done, I've no actual information on that.

All in all, it's good news for the club, but the changes necessitated by the sale will impact the course (which I've always liked) negatively imo.