Rush

Located about 30 to 45 minutes North of Dublin it could easily be tagged on to a round at either The Island or Corballis. Founded in 1943 it has an olde-worlde charm with panoramic views of Lambay Island and Dublin Bay.

It's a little rough around the edges but that is no bad thing and there is a bunch of good stuff packed into its small acreage.

You'll probably want to go round twice and if you do the course covers 5,490 metres and is a par 70.

As you often find at links courses the best of the golf is found closest to the sea where the landforms are more varied. And that is certainly the case here.

The good thing is that the routing maximises this. Holes one and two run adjacent to the coast, as does the ninth. For the mathematically challenge, that's already a third of the course! The fourth green dips back, as does the eighth whilst the seventh covers some nice ground too. We're now up to 66% of the course on good linksland.

The third hole is certainly decent, although by a ridiculous amount of white out of bounds stakes, and although the fifth is perhaps the blandest of them all the sixth is a cracking short hole with a lovely green complex.

Rush is never going to be talked about in the same breathe as other links courses on the East Coast of Ireland but if you are looking for a quick spin on an old-fashioned links course then you won't go wrong. I'd have it ahead of Sutton which lies a little further down the coast.

Indeed Ivan Morris, in his book 'Ireland's Best 9-Hole Golf Courses' described it as one of the Top Three 9-Hole Links in Ireland. Somewhat ironically he was a fan of the fifth hole!