Philip Reid on how €2 million alone was spent on the wonderful signature hole, the Swallow Quarry.

The mind of a golf course architect knows no bounds; and, of course, it helps if the purse strings are not too tightly pulled. On what was once a mundane piece of flat farmland, on the south side of the River Liffey in Straffan, Co Kildare, a spectacular new course - called simply the South Course, as distinct from the North Course, which is contracted to play host to the 2006 Ryder Cup at The K Club - has been created at a cost of over €12 million.

Also designed by Arnold Palmer - whose team of architects featured Ed Seay, Harry Minchew and Erik Larsen - the South Course is a revelation, unlike anything that has ever been created in Ireland.

Located on 180 acres, the new course, which from next year will stage the European Open, officially opens today with a select pro-am. After that, it will open for green-fee business and, indeed, the word of mouth has spread to such an extent that 6,000 rounds are already booked in for this year.

The new course is completely different from the old course. There are trees, but they are few; and fully one-tenth of the landscape is occupied by water. Huge tracts of water that will put the fear of God into golfers, both off the tee and in their approach shots to wildly undulating greens that will show no mercy to anyone who does not deem the putter to be a favoured club.

Each hole is spectacular, with 1.3 million cubic metres of earth moved to transform the site, but one is more spectacular than the rest. It is the seventh, a par five of 600 yards that has a canyon running up the right-hand side. This hole alone cost almost €2 million to construct and, to be honest, it is like something out of a Hollywood movie set, which is no surprise given that it was built by a California-based company who include Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park among their portfolio.

Called the Swallow Quarry, the seventh is the signature hole on the new course. The rockface looks natural but was manufactured with ingenuity that involved bending metal bars, covering them with chicken wire and pouring concrete over that before coating the whole lot with paint. The result is a stunning, natural-looking quarry, complete with six waterfalls - ranging from white water to trickles - while some 5,000 plants, including gorse, primrose and bluebell, have been integrated to make it appear as if it were always here.

"It's a very dramatic hole," conceded Paul Crowe, the project director, "but, from a playability point of view, it is also a bloody good golf hole in its own right."

Because they were forced to excavate so deeply, the fairway on the hole is actually below the water table - "we were constantly pumping water during the construction and used 400 truckloads of stone, with trucks lining up for weeks, just to get a base," explained course superintendent Gerry Byrne - but the entire fairway is sand-plated while the very latest drainage and irrigation system has been installed throughout.

"Golf courses last for centuries, and I believe this creation will be an added attraction to bring golfers to Ireland, a country blessed with so many great courses, for many years to come," insisted Michael Smurfit.