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FIND OUT WHICH ARE THE TOP 100 GOLF COURSES IN THE UK AND BEYOND
Rated by the experts at Golf World Magazine and our readers, our Top 100 lists tell you where you should be playing. Browse through the Top 100 golf courses in the UK and the rest of the world.
Welcome to the most prestigious and most definitive ranking of the best golf courses in Great Britain and Ireland, and from around the world!
Struggling to decide which golf course to visit and play for that next memorable round? Well, let us help and guide you to the best golf courses around.
We've carefully handpicked the Top Ten golf courses in every county in the country so there's bound to be at least one near you. But there's more, much more with our special comprehensive Top Ten golf courses guide featuring not only all the various types of golf courses but also the toughest and shortest golf courses plus the best for views, value and the most unusual and underrated.
Make no mistake, if they're in any of the Today's Golfer Top Ten golf courses categories, they're a winner.
If you're planning a golf trip in the UK and Ireland, browse our listings of the Top 100 Golf Courses to find your next destination. You don't need to travel abroad to enjoy some of the best golf venues in the world - instead, have a staycation and visit a home-grown golfing gem.
Fancy travelling to Portugal for your next golf holiday? How about a trip to beautiful Turkey? Or if you don't want to travel too far, what about one of the many golf venues in France or Spain?
Discover the secretly brilliant golf trips in continental Europe, South Africa’s NO.1 destination and the best of Spain. Also, check out our insiders gold guide to Mauritius, Morocco and France, or relax in the Bahamas and play links golf at the Abaco Club.
DRIVING TIPS
Did you know that NOT hitting your driver might be the best way to practice? Understanding speed and managing the swing-path of your follow through are the focus of these two drills, and we guarantee you'll be hitting it further in no time!
IRON PLAY TIPS
Getting the club in the right position at both takeaway and impact is one of the most important factors when playing from the fairway, and these two drills will help you with both. Just make sure you've got two golf balls and a pair of trousers/shorts with pockets - you're going to need them!
BUNKER PLAY TIPS
Whether you struggle to get out of a bunker or you always catch it TOO well, these two drills promise to help you from difficult green-side traps. It's all about knowing how much sand to take and using the bounce correctly, and it turns out saving shots from your scorecard might be as easy as a simple practice of breaking tee-pegs!
CHIPPING AND SHORT GAME TIPS
By making sure your body is balanced and your club is at the right angle when you make contact. We guarantee these two tips will make a huge difference to your green-side play, and all you need is two coins!
PUTTING TIPS
We're focusing on eradicating those costly three-putts and helping you to master the art of judging distance on the greens. These two drills will definitely help you on the greens as they are all about improving your stoke and helping you to become as good as Jason Day at long-range putting.
GET YOUR FREE SUPPLEMENTS AND IMPROVE YOUR GAME EVEN FURTHER....
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO GET EACH HOLE OFF TO THE PERFECT START
MAKE THE MOST OF A GREAT DRIVE BY KNOCKING IT CLOSER EVERY TIME
SAVE PAR AND MAKE MORE BIRDIES WITH A ROCK SOLID SHORT GAME
TODAY'S GOLFER'S BIGGEST EVER EQUIPMENT TRIAL WILL HELP YOU MAKE A SMARTER BUYING DECISION!
Top Gear 2017: It's the biggest and most comprehensive gear test we’ve ever published, featuring over 100 golf clubs reviews and videos. The reason we've done it this way is that the golf equipment market continues to change. Most brands (Ping and Titleist the notable exceptions) are now on annual product cycles, which means a raft of new clubs at the start of each year. With that in mind, there’s no point in us just testing putters in July or wedges in September when they’ve been on sale for months. That’s why we’ve put them all in one place– with lots more detail, images and video – plus some 50 products that didn’t make our Top 10s.
This year, for the first time, Top Gear has been supported by American Golf, which has enabled us to create more content – especially video – online.
How we did it:We asked all the major manufacturers to submit their entire 2017 ranges for testing. Only one, PXG, declined. In order to ensure a level playing field, each of the three testers were fitted for the equipment tested. We conducted a test every week from January 2017, when every new club was available in the UK.
We tested both indoors with a premium ball and outside in a range bay using range balls, as that’s how many golfers will get fitted. We collected an incredible amount of data from every shot, using a Foresight Sports GC2 launch monitor, and then reviewed all this information to come to a conclusion.
TAYLORMADE M2 DRIVER REVIEW
Details:RRP £329, Stock shaft: Fujikura Pro XLR8 56, Lofts: 9.5°, 10.5°, 12°
TaylorMade’s engineers have worked seriously hard wringing out extra juice on last years hugely successful M2. The original TaylorMade M2 was a hit because of its ability to deliver a combination of distance and forgiveness, and for club golfers that’s a potent mix.
The new TaylorMade M2 is really easy to generate club speed with, it feels very lively and friendly, as if you don’t have to be on top of your game to get the best out of it, which for most amateurs is a nice place to be.
Against the old TaylorMade M2 our test pro gained 7 yards of carry distance from the same ball speed. Simon added 2 yards of carry distance from 3mph of extra ball speed and Chris Jones increased ball speed by 2mph without adding extra yards - which for us says with some fine tuning of shafts there’s a decent amount to be gained from the new M2.
GOLF CLUB REVIEW - Ping G400 Irons
Details: RRP £110 (s) £120 (g) per club. Availability: 4-LW. Stock steel shafts: Ping AWT 2.0 plus 5 upgrade shafts at no charge. Stock graphite shaft: Ping Alta CB
Ping’s game improvement G irons have earnt a deserved reputation as being just about the most club golfer-friendly irons available. Since the first set (G2s) in 2004 they’ve got progressively better, so it’s no surprise that unlike some brands Ping haven’t felt the need to tear up the blueprint and head back to the drawing board to redesign them for 2017.
Our test pro Chris Ryan hit both the old G and new Ping G400 7-iron on a launch monitor so we could accurately compare the old and new models.
TG's equipment editor Simon Daddow travelled all the way to Ping's HQ in Arizona and tested with Ping's Director of Product Development Marty Jertson, so that we could see for ourselves the difference in the two models.
This is what happened
CALLAWAY APEX PRO 16 IRONS - REVIEW
Details:RRP £889, Availability: 3 – AW (stock set 3 –PW), Stock shaft: Project X (s) UST Mamiya Recoil (g)
Callaway’s premium forged iron has a classic look that’s been influenced by their tour staff. The heads are soft 1025 carbon steel to maximise feel, and there’s progressive cg’s (thanks to tungsten weighting) to optimise playability and precision throughout the set.
Somehow Callaway have managed to roll what looks like a reasonably forgiving cavity back design into a head that looks very much like a blade at address. It’s a cracker and we applaud them for pulling off such an audacious combination. Chris Ryan really liked the soft but solid feel thinking it was one of the nicest feeling forged clubs he hit. Chris’s longest shots with the Pro came from both slight toe and heel hits (9mm spread between them) which has to demonstrate a degree of playability which wasn’t present in every better player iron we hit.
OUR LAUNCH MONITOR
We again picked Foresight Sports’ GC2 launch monitor with Head Measurement Technology (HMT). Thanks to its high-res camera and stereoscopic lens (which captures up to 10,000 frames per second) we were able to collect thousands of pieces of data not only from the ball, but also from the clubface. We picked it for several reasons:
We were able to record where every shot impacted the clubface, making it possible to analyse where the fastest shots came from and monitor how
much ball speed was lost on off-centre hits.
It can be used both indoors and outside. That means we were able to create a controlled environment inside at a comfortable temperature to collect data while using a premium ball. To ensure data was relevant to you, we also tested outside using range balls.
By hooking the system up to a laptop and using Foresight’s software we saw where every shot had gone and how it had own.
Its portability let us take it to different ranges when we needed to gain more data.
The GC2 is recognised by manufacturers, players and teachers of the game as giving unmatched accuracy. Foresight’s new and improved GC Quad only became available after we’d started testing, so for consistency we stuck with the GC2.
HOW WE PICKED OUR WINNERS
To help you choose the best new clubs for your game, we picked our top 10 products (Five for sub-£280 and over-£380 drivers) in each of the following 12 categories:
Drivers (-£280, £280-£380, +£380)
Fairway woods
Hybrids
Better player irons
Game-improvement irons
Super game-improvement irons
Wedges
Putters (Blade, Mallet, MOI)
Each tester also came up with a personal top three in each category to show which products they’d put in their own bag.