Welcome to our long-anticipated list of the very best golf courses in GB&I. This is a list that has been years in the making – now you can enjoy the full ranking on our brand-new NCG Top 100s site. It was ahead of the 2017 golfing season that we devised an ambitious methodology for our ranking of the best courses in England, which was updated for 2022. In 2018 we moved on to Scotland and in 2019 tackled Ireland and Wales.
What you are about to study is an amalgamation of those four lists to come up with the big one – GB&I’s Top 100 Golf Courses. On this side of the Atlantic at least, this list is the gold standard.
If nothing else, we hope that you can’t fault us for application and diligence.
Starring the likes of St Andrews, Trump Turnberry, Royal St George’s, Royal Portrush, Royal Porthcawl and many more, it’s a list that’s sure to stimulate debate and inspire future golf trips in equal measure.
We are personally invested in lists because we love golf courses and we love the business of ranking them. We have been a voracious consumer of golf course ranking lists for a good 30 years now and, mentally at least, have been compiling our own GB&I lists ever since.
We’ve also recruited an incredibly knowledgeable panel. These panellists each bring an independence of thought as well as their own perspective and we respect their opinions thoroughly.
It was our intention only to make a credible list, one aimed squarely at the discerning golfer. That’s why a key element of our methodology is that we only consider the courses themselves.
The golfing experience, for us, begins on the 1st tee and ends of the final green. That’s not to say that we don’t think clubhouses, practice facilities, service, food and beverage and all of the other many elements that help us get the most out of visiting a golf course don’t matter. They most certainly do. But we don’t believe that the merits of a bacon sandwich or a pyramid of Pro V1s on the range make the course itself better or worse.
We did not set out to be controversial when compiling this list. We just wanted to identify the best courses.
We have no doubt that you will disagree with the order we have put them in but we are confident that you won’t find a weak course in the list. We hope you enjoy it. Please do let us know what you think.
More from the NCG Top 100s GB&I ranking
Dan Murphy
