"There's nothing quite like the astonishing silence that comes with an entrance driveway like that.
Big park, green old trees and a welcome committee so good we felt like the most important people to arrive that week.”

In a year, the 100th Ryder Cup will be held at Adare Manor in Ireland. Abacus is a proud Official Licensee of the Ryder Cup.

A year is a long time to stay quiet about that. So we're not going to. A few close friends of ours got to Adare Manor this summer and left some notes worth sharing after two days walking it themselves.

Notes from our friends:

The house is older than it looks in most photos and newer than it looks in person, with recent additions built in the same style as the original. Close enough that in a few years nobody will be able to tell which is which.

From the terrace the whole course opens up below. There's a tree next to the manor, a very old tree that is a landmark in its own.

Breakfast ran close to two hours with a view over the river and nobody in our group once checked the time. A proud mother swan swam past with no predator in sight, she had the whole stretch of water to herself and eight chicks trailing calmly behind her.

The course is genuinely difficult. Not in a brochure way - in a real way. The 18th green sits behind a small stream and slopes just enough that a five-metre birdie putt looks easy right up until it isn't. We know because we missed that one.

We had caddies the whole way round. 120 of them are on site, which tells you something about how seriously this place takes hospitality. Ours knew every yard of the course and exactly where a ball ends up when it doesn't do what you wanted.

Just off the course stands an enormous bronze statue that will almost certainly end up as an unofficial mascot in the Ryder Cup coverage during 2027.

We didn't rush a single hour of this visit. Every detail earned its place in how we'll remember the trip.

Ireland hasn't hosted a Ryder Cup since 2006. Europe have won the last seven played on home soil. We didn't know what that would actually feel like standing on the ground itself.

Now we do.

Whatever happens in September 2027, places like this have a way of making an afternoon feel both endless and over in a blink. That's usually where the best golf happens.