Portmarnock Golf Club has spent decades being discussed as one of the great links courses not to have hosted The Open. Now that conversation appears closer than ever to becoming reality.

In July, The R&A chief executive Mark Darbon said discussions around taking golf’s oldest championship to Portmarnock Golf Club were “getting pretty close”, following extensive feasibility work involving the club, local authorities and the Irish Government.

Should the plan come to fruition, Portmarnock Golf Club would become the first venue outside the United Kingdom to stage The Open Championship.

For golfers planning a visit to Ireland – and Dublin in particular – that prospect adds another reason to explore a stretch of coastline that already contains some of the country’s best links golf. And one of the most practical places from which to do so sits next door.

Portmarnock Resort & Jameson Golf Links occupies the same historic peninsula, overlooking Velvet Strand. Dublin Airport is around 20 minutes away, the city centre approximately half an hour, while a growing golf concierge operation helps visiting golfers piece everything together.

That responsibility falls to Golf Sales Manager Niall Carbery and Golf Sales & Tour Coordinator Daniel Yeates.

Working under Director of Golf Paul McCanny, the pair help create itineraries combining golf, accommodation, transport, dining and time away from the course. For Yeates, the concierge service begins well before anyone reaches Portmarnock.

“From the first email,” is how he describes it. That initial contact can lead to considerably more than booking ‘just’ a room and tee time.

The team can arrange caddies, rental clubs and club shipping, organise airport and course transfers, book restaurants and spa treatments, and advise on places to visit.

For groups playing several courses, the job becomes more complicated while inevitable changes need to be dealt with without disrupting the rest of the trip.

Yeates says the starting point is understanding the people travelling: “It is all based around getting to know the group, what their idea of a good time is and really going from there.”

Requests can stretch to helicopters and private jets, although he says that after working in golf travel for a while, very little feels unusual. The fundamentals are less glamorous: attention to detail, communication and getting the timings right.

His route into golf was unconventional. After leaving school he started an air-conditioning apprenticeship before moving into banking, where he spent eight years working in mortgages. The aftermath of Covid-19 presented an opportunity to change direction and enter the golf industry.

Carbery’s career has developed within Portmarnock Resort itself. A former competitive GAA and tennis player who also represented Ireland in sailing, he initially worked in health insurance before returning to college in the evenings to study business and marketing.

He joined Jameson Golf Links while studying and has progressed from the golf shop through reservations and sales to his current management role.

After more than 11 years at the resort, that experience gives him a detailed understanding of both the product and the practicalities of selling Irish golf. It also means he has watched the market change.

Carbery points to Royal Portrush hosting The Open in 2019 and 2025, Ireland’s growing profile among North American golfers and the return of the Ryder Cup in 2027 as important drivers of golf tourism.

For Portmarnock Resort & Jameson Golf Links, geography helps. Alongside its proximity to Dublin Airport and the capital, there is an unusual concentration of links courses within striking distance.

Jameson Golf Links is an exceptional modern links while Portmarnock Golf Club, The Island and Royal Dublin can all form part of an itinerary, with County Louth another option farther north. More ambitious day trips can extend to Royal County Down.

The resort has already packaged that principle into its Ultimate Irish Jameson Golf Links Experience, combining six nights at Portmarnock with golf at Jameson Golf Links and a selection of Portmarnock Golf Club, The Island, County Louth and Royal Dublin.

Trinity College, the historic Jameson Distillery and a whiskey tasting at the resort’s Sibin Pub provide reasons to put the clubs away for a few hours, with transfers also incorporated.

Jameson Golf Links itself has changed substantially. Originally designed by Bernhard Langer in 1995, the course recently underwent a renovation led by architect Jeff Lynch of (re)GOLF.

Tees and greens were raised to make more of the coastal setting and views across Velvet Strand, Ireland’s Eye, Howth Head and Lambay, while much of the closing ten holes was remodelled.

There is considerably more history beneath the redesign. The resort occupies land once belonging to the Jameson family, whose St Marnocks House, dating from 1847, now forms part of the hotel.

John Jameson established a private golf course on the property in the 1850s for family and friends, and three members of the family are buried beside what is now the first hole.

The prospect of The Open arriving next door would inevitably raise the profile of the area further. If Portmarnock joins the rota, golfers staying at the resort would have one of Ireland’s newest-look links on site and an Open venue immediately alongside it.

Before then comes another significant year for Irish golf, with the Ryder Cup returning to Ireland at Adare Manor in September 2027, 21 years after the country last staged the matches at The K Club.

For international visitors turning the Ryder Cup into a longer Irish golf holiday, several days around Dublin before or after travelling to County Limerick presents an obvious opportunity.

Golf travel has become more complicated as tee sheets at Ireland’s leading courses have filled. Carbery argues that relationships with clubs, tour operators, restaurants, pubs and other suppliers are consequently an important part of the job.

Personal contacts can help when plans change, while detailed knowledge of courses and travelling times matters when a group is trying to fit several sought-after rounds into one visit.

Yeates believes demand for that type of service will continue to grow, in part because golfers talk to one another: “If friends start chatting that they had a great trip with no worries, then it will spread around and people will look for that service more often.”

With the prospect of Open Championship golf next door, there should be no shortage of reasons for those conversations to start.

For Portmarnock Resort, however, the proposition remains relatively simple: the golf brings people to Ireland; the location allows them to see more of it; and the team makes the pieces fit together.