A Clare golf trip is easier to plan once you stop treating every course as an isolated booking. The order matters: where you land, where you sleep, whether you are continuing into Kerry, and whether you really want three major links rounds in succession.
Golfers are excellent at choosing courses.
We are less accomplished at putting them in the right order.
The usual method is to book the hardest tee time first, celebrate briefly, then spend the next fortnight attempting to construct a route around it.
This is how you end up sleeping in one town, playing forty minutes in the opposite direction, driving back past the hotel after lunch and then announcing that the itinerary is "actually quite efficient".
Clare does not require that level of suffering.
The county's golf falls into a few fairly natural corridors. Once you understand them, the trip begins to arrange itself.
Start with the direction you are travelling
This matters more than rankings.
If you are flying into Shannon and staying entirely in Clare, you have enormous flexibility.
If Clare is one section of a longer trip through Kerry, the route becomes much clearer.
If you are arriving from Kerry via the Killimer–Tarbert ferry, it reverses again.
The courses do not move.
Your order should.
For golfers travelling south through Clare towards Kerry, the broad progression is naturally:
Lahinch.
Spanish Point.
Doonbeg.
Kilrush.
Killimer.
Then across the Shannon Estuary.
You do not need to play all four.
But geographically, that is the direction of travel.
And geography is usually a better itinerary designer than enthusiasm.
If Lahinch is the main event, give it its own day
Lahinch Old Course is not a round I would bury casually between a long morning drive and another hotel change.
For many visitors, it is one of the main reasons they are in Clare.
Treat it accordingly.
Stay around Lahinch if possible.
Play it without needing to dash somewhere immediately afterwards.
Have the evening free.
This is not because Lahinch requires ceremonial observance.
It is because major golf days are more enjoyable when the logistics surrounding them are simple.
If you are also playing the Castle Course or Spanish Point, those rounds can fit naturally around a Lahinch stay.
What makes less sense is repeatedly leaving Lahinch, driving south, returning north and then doing the same journey again the following morning.
At that stage the N67 is getting more attention than your golf.
Then move south towards Doonbeg
Doonbeg is the logical next major stop on a southward West Clare route.
It is a very different links experience from Lahinch, which is precisely why the pairing works.
You have the historic heavyweight first.
Then the modern premium links.
There is no particular benefit in inserting three unrelated rounds between them merely because somebody found availability.
If both are priorities, build the route around them.
The smaller courses can then be used to give the trip contrast rather than to make the map untidy.
Spanish Point can go before or after the headline rounds
Spanish Point is particularly flexible.
It is a traditional nine-hole links, with visitors able to play 18 by going around twice.
That makes it useful around a Lahinch or Doonbeg itinerary because it does not demand the same kind of day.
You might use it before Lahinch as the opening round.
You might play it between Lahinch and Doonbeg.
Or it can become the lighter day after one of the major links rounds.
There is no great strategic mystery here.
Spanish Point works because it is different in scale.
That gives it more freedom in the schedule.
Not every course needs to be Monday at 10.20 because Monday at 10.20 looked good in Excel.
Kilrush is particularly useful when the trip is moving south
Kilrush becomes much more interesting once the route is considered properly.
Kilrush is an 18-hole parkland course outside Kilrush, member-run, with a €35 standard visitor green fee.
That already gives it a different role from Lahinch and Doonbeg.
But geographically, it becomes especially useful for golfers moving through southern West Clare towards Kilkee or the Killimer ferry.
If you have played premium links on consecutive days, Kilrush can be the change of pace before continuing south.
Parkland rather than links.
Local club rather than destination resort.
And, importantly, it sits within the journey rather than requiring the journey to be rebuilt around it.
That is exactly the kind of course that often improves an itinerary.
You did not necessarily fly to Ireland dreaming about it.
Then you look at the route and think:
Actually, that fits very nicely.
Kilkee belongs in a southern West Clare day
Kilkee Golf Club gives you another 18-hole option further into West Clare.
It is a coastal course, not a links course, and its July-to-September standard visitor fee is €75.
If Kilkee or Loop Head is already part of the travel plan, it can make obvious sense.
What I would not do is keep a hotel base far north and repeatedly drive down simply because Kilkee has been added to the list.
Once you are playing Kilkee, Kilrush and possibly using the ferry, you are dealing with a southern West Clare section of the trip.
Treat it as one.
Golf trips become substantially easier when you stop pretending hotels are permanent residences.
If you are arriving through Shannon, resist playing the biggest course immediately
Shannon Airport creates another common planning question.
Should you land and head straight for Lahinch?
You can.
That does not necessarily mean you should.
Flight arrival times are suggestions until the aircraft actually touches the ground.
Then there is baggage.
Golf clubs.
Car hire.
Food.
The member of the party who insists on reorganising his entire suitcase in the arrivals hall.
If you genuinely have a comfortable schedule, fine.
But Shannon, Dromoland, Ennis and Woodstock all provide parkland golf within the central/south Clare part of the trip.
That can make for a very sensible opening day.
Play locally.
Sleep.
Go west the next morning.
There is no medal for beginning your holiday under unnecessary time pressure.
The final round deserves thought too
Departure-day golf creates the opposite problem.
By then, golfers have become confident.
They know the roads.
They have survived six tee times.
Somebody notices a free morning and suggests one more round.
This can work perfectly well.
But if you are finishing in West Clare and flying from Shannon, the final course should fit the direction home.
A round around Shannon or Ennis can make more sense than squeezing in another west-coast course and then racing east afterwards.
Likewise, if you are travelling south towards the ferry and Kerry, Kilrush makes more sense than doubling back north.
Again, the answer is route before reputation.
Do not schedule three versions of the same day
The other issue is course order.
Suppose you are playing Lahinch, Doonbeg and Spanish Point.
You could play them on three consecutive days.
Nothing illegal will happen.
But inserting a parkland round somewhere in that sequence can make the trip feel more varied.
Kilrush.
Ennis.
Dromoland.
Shannon.
Woodstock.
East Clare.
Which one makes sense depends on the route.
The broader principle is simply that contrast has value.
By the third straight day of links golf, even the most committed visitor can become slightly less moved by the revelation that wind affects a golf ball.
A sensible southbound Clare sequence
For a golfer arriving at Shannon and ultimately continuing towards Kerry, a strong route might look something like this:
Arrival day: Shannon, Dromoland or Ennis if golf fits comfortably │ Then move west │ Lahinch │ Spanish Point if desired │ Doonbeg │ Kilrush or Kilkee for contrast │ Killimer and the ferry into Kerry
That is not a prescribed itinerary.
It is a route.
You can remove courses according to time and appetite without destroying the logic of it.
Going north? Reverse the thinking
If you are entering Clare from Kerry, much of the same logic simply runs backwards.
Ferry to Killimer.
Kilrush or Kilkee if they are on the list.
Doonbeg.
Spanish Point.
Lahinch.
Then onward towards Ennis, Shannon, Doolin or wherever the rest of the trip is taking you.
This sounds obvious once written down.
It is remarkable how often golf trips manage not to do it.
Famous tee times have a powerful ability to make otherwise rational adults geographically illiterate.
The best order is usually the simplest one
There is no definitive order in which to play golf in Clare.
Tee-time availability will always interfere.
Weather may interfere.
Accommodation may dictate part of the route.
And sometimes the course you desperately want is available only on Wednesday, so Wednesday it is.
But when you have a choice, simplify.
Group the west-coast rounds together.
Move through the county rather than repeatedly across it.
Use Shannon and Ennis intelligently around flights.
Use Kilrush and Kilkee naturally when the route moves through southern West Clare.
And if you are continuing into Kerry, let the ferry do what ferries have been doing for centuries:
save you from going the long way around.
A golf itinerary does not need to be clever.
It needs to work.
Save the clever decisions for the second shot into a par five.
They usually go better there.
See Clare & Kerry on one trip, where to base for Clare golf and plan your trip for more.
