Club rankings alter inexplicably
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Golf course rankings and ratings have fascinated me since I first came across them when Golf World brought out what I still consider the definitive listing of golf courses in the British Isles.
In my first magazine collection of Golf World’s biennial review in 1990, our top Sutherland golf course, Royal Dornoch, was rated number 10, but my favourite year was 2006 when Brora Golf Club broke into the top 100 for the first time.
I have been following the reviews ever since, but much to the disappointment of the Brora members, the course has not retained a top 100 placement, always appearing in the next 101-200 list.
But in recent years and in other publications, both the Brora and Golspie golf courses have received good ratings for best value.
The National Club Golfer, a free publication available for club members from clubhouses, began themed reviews in 2011, first rating value for money green fees at under £80, then under £50 and then in December 2012 it produced a list of good value golf priced under £100.
Then in January 2013 National Club Golfer rated mainland Britain’s top 100 links courses and now this month it has published a second list of 2015 ratings and here is where I have to take odds with them.
How can rankings in 2013 of 54 for Golspie, Tain 75, Fortrose 94 and Nairn Dunbar 92, all now be placed below 100, while in the current list Askernish in the Outer Hebrides has risen to 86 from a placement of 93 two years ago?
Am I to believe these four golf courses — Golspie, Tain, Fortrose & Rosemarkie and Nairn Dunbar — are going backwards? Not so. For a start, the work on Golspie to repair the storm damage of 2012 is to be highly praised.
The panel’s comment on Askernish was "the ongoing project to see the Old Tom Morris course, that had been abandoned, skilfully brought back to life is extraordinary on one of the best pieces of golfing terrain anywhere".
Every golf writer who visited the Menie Estate in Aberdeen-shire considered Donald Trump’s terrain the best in the world.
In 2013, National Club Golfer ranked it number 19 and said "this course is heading in one direction", yet two years later, and now fully open for play, its panel have dropped the course 13 places from 19 to 32!
Just last year, the Golf World panel rated the Trump course at number seven in all golf courses in the British Isles.
In the National Club Golfer review, Royal County Down retained its status as the top links course, as it has done also in Golf World’s rankings. Royal Dornoch has fallen back in the National Club Golfer’s ratings from third to ninth, yet in Golf World, which rates all courses in the British Isles, Royal Dornoch has remained in ninth place for the past two years.
So the vagaries continue as further exemplified by America’s Golf Digest publication which last year published, in its opinion, the 100 greatest golf courses in the world.
Pine Valley came out on top with Royal County Down in fourth place and Royal Dornoch in sixth. Oh for the Lotto to come up so I could go and see for myself.
