Surgeon General Warning, the following post is solely for the purpose of bar discussion after all other topics are exhausted.
Course rankings will forever be wonderful fodder for endless conversations about the relative merits of any given golf experience. Read more “3 Iconic Golf Courses in the British Isles”
As a firm favourite of the PerryGolf team, we were delighted – but not surprised – to read that Golf Digest Magazine has ranked Kingsbarns Golf Links as 12th on their “Top 50 Links in Great Britain & Ireland”.
Previous accolades include “Best New International Course” in 2000 as awarded by Golf Digest and the ranking of 46th place in Golf Magazine’s World Rankings in 2001. The course was also listed by Golf World as 13th in the British Isles in 2002.
In the PerryGolf office rankings, Kingsbarns would definitely be found in the Top 10!
Castle Stuart Golf Links, the new home of the 2011 Barclays Scottish Open, is now officially rated as the 56th best Golf Course in the World. The official rankings by the US based GOLF MAGAZINE were released this week on the ‘front9’ app with Castle Stuart being the highest-ranking debut on the World list. Following on from its success as host venue to the recently played Barclays Scottish Open, Castle Stuart’s reputation continues to spread worldwide. Perfect location and the courses in the highlands are a must play on a trip to North of Scotland; Royal Dornoch, Castle Stuart and Nairn are some of many worth the trip to the area.
By Denise McKee. Denise has been with PerryGolf for over 10 years and is a member of our admin team.
The recent edition of GOLF magazine with their 2009 rankings of their Top 100 golf courses around the world is always the subject for great debate and discussion amongst golfers. You may view entire list at;
http://search.golf.com/top-courses-and-resorts/top-100-world-courses-2009.html
One of the criticsms of the (ranking) lists are the relative inaccesibility of many of the courses, e.g. Pine Valley or Augusta National Golf Club. So with pen and paper in hand and my 25+ years of playing experience in the US and overseas I did a very simple analysis of course access of the two lists;
US Top 100 Courses – Of the Top 100 Courses, by my reckoning less than 20 permitted outside play that was not connected to a member, whether via sponsored unaccompanied or accompanied guest play. These 20 courses ranged from resort to daily fee.
On the World list, somewhere between 50 and 55 courses welcome visitor play, either because they are a resort, daily fee or a (semi) private club which accepts visitor play according to their rules.
I had no purposes to this “analysis” other than a curious observation and it supports my contention that there are many accessible world class golf courses spread throughout the globe….go and enjoy them!
About the Author: Gordon Dalgleish is the Co-Founding Director of PerryGolf, the leading provider of international golf vacations. You can find him on Google+
