Top 100 Golf Courses - Britain & Ireland

The tall dunes of Enniscrone loom up beyond the
7th green (photo taken from 8th tee)

Another rankings has hit the online golfing community – this one from the authoritative Top 100 Golf Courses website… if you don’t know it, the site ranks courses worldwide, country by country, county by county. It’s an excellent resource.

The Britain & Ireland 2014 list was published three days ago and it includes 24 Irish courses. Here are their positions within the list:

1 Royal County Down - No Change

5 Royal Portrush (Dunluce) - No Change

8 Ballybunion (Old) - Down 1

12 Lahinch (Old) - Up 2

14 Portmarnock - Up 2

19 Waterville - No Change

26 The European - Down 4

46 Tralee - Down 1

Approach to the 10th green at Tralee (the 17th green hangs above it)

50 County Sligo - Down 8

54 County Louth - Down 6

55 Ballyliffin Glashedy - Down 4

58 The Island - Up 6

59 Rosapenna (Sandy Hills) - Down 6

60 Enniscrone - No Change

62 Carne - Up 3

63 Doonbeg - Down 2

67 Old Head - Up 13

83 Adare - Down 7

86 Druid’s Glen - Down 7

88 Lough Erne - Up 9

89 Mount Juliet - Down 11

92 Portstewart (Strand) - Down 11

93 Donegal - Up 5

100 Ballyliffin (Old) – NEW

Of the Irish contingent, 7 are up, 12 are down, 4 have not moved and 1 is a new entrant. No Irish courses fell off the list despite six new entrants. It's fantastic to see Royal County Down at the top of the pile and, similarly unmoving, Royal Portrush at number 5. Ballybunion (Old) at number 8 brings Ireland's top 10 tally to three.

The views from the 8th tee over the 9th green at Narin & Portnoo

As always there are some courses that I feel are missing – Narin & Portnoo, Dooks, Strandhill and Castlerock most notably from the links contenders, while Concra Wood and Killeen Castle would be the biggest parklands staking a claim.

It’s a good list and while I’d debate the order with anyone (as I’d do with any rankings list) it gives a really good feel for our top courses.

Click here to read the article and the rankings – there are some choice comments in there… the one about Trump International being the most amusing. If you want to see photos (good and not-so-good) of all of these Irish golf courses, visit my Flickr page.