Located near Lahinch, the Doonbeg Golf Links contains so much beauty, it took designer Greg Norman's breath away and that was before construction even began.

Designed along the towering dunes on a crescent of Ireland's famed southwestern shore between Lahinch and Ballybunion, Greg Norman says, "This is the best piece of property I have seen anywhere in the world. When I first looked at this site I thought I was the luckiest designer in the world."

The expansive layout of Doonbeg course makes a u-shape around the Doughmore Bay responsible for several magnificent green and tee-box views. There are dozens of dunes, some as high as 100 feet, and pot bunkers that are as always a signature of the links course.

Feature holes include the opening par 5, already coined one of the top starting holes in Ireland, which is guarded on three sides by one dune. Then there's the par-3 ninth, a terrifying sight from the tee due to a sloping dune, a rocky cliff and a small green. Norman himself has proclaimed the course's signature hole as the fifteenth, a long par four protected to the right by the ocean ridge with a funnel shaped green sitting amidst a crater of some of the highest dunes on the course.