About me
This is a site designed mainly to help people plan playing golf at some of the great courses in Europe and beyond. My names is David Jones and I am a Scottish based keen golfer who thinks too much about playing great golf courses and have been lucky enough to experience some of the best. I am an 11 handicapper with a lot of friends who are better, and a few who are worse. I have agonised over which courses to include on a golf trip with my friends and fantasised about playing the best in the world. I thought it was time I wrote some of that down!
Being based in Scotland has its advantages. There are some fantastic courses within an hour's drive of my front door (I live in Gullane, East Lothian - a good drive and a topped 4 iron from the first tee at Muirfield) and you don’t have to drive too far without finding yet another great course.
Golf rankings are always things of opinion rather than fact and are seen by some as pointless and almost always controversial. If I have a good round on a good course then my rose-tinted spectacles can elevate it to greatness. Likewise, too many duck hooks and a couple of shanks will probably set me against a course for no other good reason. Others have made them a thing of architectural purity and maybe lost a real sense of of fun from their judgement.
Having said that, I do think that it is possible to assess and classify golf courses. I always thought that the Peugeot European Guide had a pretty good scoring system. For that reason, despite its demise, I have used a version of that on this site. It should give you a good sense of the relativity of the courses and my views of them. Every course has a score and you can see rankings of those I have played in my current ratings. I have tried to rank the top 100 courses in the world using a 'poll of polls' for a bit of fun. You can see that in this ultimate world top 100 golf course list.
In my course reviews I have also tried to include some of the important information for planning a golf trip. What's the atmosphere of the club like? Where's good to go locally? Which courses nearby make the grade when planning a trip? It's all very arbitrary and feel free to let me know what you think!
If you are looking for a comprehensive view of the best courses in the world to play try going here for some suggestions. If you want one guy's view on a bunch of great courses - read on!