Another very beautiful place with a very delightful course is =Newcastle= in County Down. Newcastle has lately been altered and extended, and has consequently risen to a position of greater dignity among golf courses. It was always looked upon with great affection by all who knew it, but this was a love a little akin to that which the frequenters of Burnham used to feel for the many high hills and blind holes of the Somersetshire course. Everybody liked Newcastle, but they spoke of it as "a wonderful natural course," or "the best fun in the world"--expressions which rather begged the question as to its exact golfing merits. That is all changed, however, and to-day Newcastle is as long as anyone can desire: indeed, in places almost too long. I remember meeting a very distinguished player on his return from Newcastle soon after the alterations had been made, when there was still practically no run in the new ground, and he solemnly averred that he had never played so many brassey shots in all his life. The course lies among the sandhills under the shadow of Slieve Donard, the tallest of the Mourne Mountains, and so close to the sea that we may reach the shore with our first tee-shot. No amount of reconstruction has done away with the original character of the course; we still have many big carries to compass with the tee-shot, and a good deal more pitching than running to do with our iron clubs. However, we must not run away with the idea that we shall have done all that is demanded of us when we have hit a ball hard and high over a hill somewhere or other into the distance. Trouble lurks at the sides as well as in the centre of the fairway, and for all the boldness and bigness of the hazards it is really a straight rather than a long driver's course. The greens are good, and sometimes inclined to be slow; they lie, moreover, in a good many instances, in those pleasing little hollows which are the most adroit flatterers in the whole world of golf. The turf on the outward journey is of the ideal sea-side kind, but on the way home we fancy that we detect something more of an inland character about it. [Illustration: NEWCASTLE _The ninth carry and the club-house_] Flitting, like arbitrary bees, from one hole to another, we must pause a moment over the first, which is one of the best of the long holes, and has an admirable tee-shot. So has the second, while there is an approach shot of much interest and delicacy to be played at the third. The sixth again is a memorable hole, of no great length, but considerable difficulty. We need but one shot to go from the tee to the high plateau green where the hole is, but the sides of the plateau fall very quickly away, and there must be plenty of stop on the ball or it will inevitably overrun its mark.