County Sligo Golf Club, Rosses Point, Sligo
The County Sligo Golf Club, or Rosses Point as it is more popularly known, is situated some 8km from Sligo town on a headland under the shadow of Ireland’s table mountain Benbulben on one side, and Knocknarea with Queen Maeve’s grave on top on the other side. Designed by Harry Colt it is one of Ireland’s great championship links.
Home of the West of Ireland Amateur Open Championship since 1923 the club has also been the venue for the Irish Open Amateur Championship, the Irish Close Championship and has hosted the R&A Home Internationals and the Irish Interprovincial Championships and the Irish PGA Championships.
The course enjoys a magnificent location with breath-taking views of the mountains, sea and rolling countryside and is a setting for golf that one will never forget. The view from the third tee is a superb panorama of the area immortalised in the poetry of W.B.Yeats. One can see five counties from here on a clear day.
The game of golf came to Sligo in the days of the old Sligo Militia who had a camp in the area and played a number of holes around the camp. In 1894 Colonel James Campbell one of the officers, and a Sligo business man, conceived the idea of forming a club and secured the lease of the area known as the “Greenlands” from the Middleton family for that purpose.
The inaugural meeting for the formation of the club was held in Sligo Courthouse on the 18th October 1894 with Col. Campbell in the chair. He formed a committee with Arthur Jackson, another prominent Sligo business man, and his nephew Harper Campbell Perry as the first secretary to run the club. The club had 96 male members on its formation and Col. Campbell was elected as the first Captain in 1895. He served as Captain until 1903 with Arthur Jackson then taking over.
The minutes of that meeting tell us that: The name of the club shall be “The County Sligo Golf Club”. The Council and the Hon. Secretary and Treasurer shall remain in office until resignation or the cease to reside in Co. Sligo or to be a member of the club or until a general meeting by three-fourths of the members present, shall vote to remove them. The entrance fee was set at £1/1s and was to commence on November 1st of that year. A week later it was agreed to admit Ladies for a subscription fee of 10s/6d.
Col. Campbell then engaged the services of George Combe, a notable golfer and subsequently the first secretary of the Golfing Union of Ireland to lay out nine holes on the land. Combe also had the distinction of devising the world’s first handicapping system for the game. He was also closely associated with Royal County Down Golf Club. The local hotel owned by Mr. Tom Ewing, just across the road from the club was used as the first clubhouse. In 1896 George Combe presented the “Combe Cup” to the club to mark his association with the club and the opening of the nine holes. The Combe Cup is still played for in the August Open Week.
County Sligo Golf Club
For all enquiries contact via email - info@countysligogolfclub.ie