Is there an accepted "ranking" or respected ratings for golf courses?

[sjw]

Following on from my thread around football away days and golf, I've found myself searching for things such as "best golf courses near x" or "x course review", and I'm wondering if there is a generally-accepted "gospel" as to whether a course is good vs tripadvisor or something like that. The trouble with a lot of sites is a course can have a 5 star review because it's cheap, good value and friendly, and not because it's an amazing course in golfing terms. Other websites say "here are the best courses in Surrey" and it's a load that you can't actually play on unless you're invited, or it's £180 for a weekday morning tee time.

So where would you guys and girls go to find out which courses are worth playing, preferably with a filter on budget? Is there anything?

 

[Orikoru]

I tend to search the course name on this forum. You've got about 15+ years worth of posts, usually a couple of people have mentioned it and offered opinions.

 

[Deleted member 31467]

I'm not aware of any list that you can filter by budget but if you want sensible accurate reviews and rankings the Golf Monthly list is probably the best place to start.

 

[IanM]

Well, the trouble with public review sites (or any sort) is that you have absolutely no idea whether the person writing the review has a clue what they are talking about, OR if their review has an ulterior motivation (positive or negative)

On here you develop a feel for who has travelled sufficiently to have a view worth listening to!

It's always good to compare their reviews with your own experience... and look for obvious "say what?" comments! But in realty so much is subjective it has to be an inexact science.

The GM rankings are not bad at all, but of course none are fool proof!

 

[sjw]

Well, the trouble with public review sites (or any sort) is that you have absolutely no idea whether the person writing the review has a clue what they are talking about, OR if their review has an ulterior motivation (positive or negative)

On here you develop a feel for who has travelled sufficiently to have a view worth listening to!

It's always good to compare their reviews with your own experience... and look for obvious "say what?" comments! But in realty so much is subjective it has to be an inexact science.

The GM rankings are not bad at all, but of course none are fool proof!

Bold of you to assume that anyone here is worth listening to

 

[sunshine]

On a lot of review sites, the actual reviews are skewed by people who are more interested in the bacon roll than the course. Any review that includes the phrase "they do a great pint of X in the bar" is immediately discounted by me.
GM rankings are a good source of information, but I find it hard to navigate and cluttered with adverts, it's basically a clickbait website. Personally I like top100golfcourses because it has several ways to search for courses, it feels the most objective ranking, and it's easy to scroll through the reader reviews (and choose which ones to read/ignore). Doesn't help with pricing though. These days, it's probably safe to assume that if a course has achieved "top 100" status it's going to cost an arm and a leg to play.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

On a lot of review sites, the actual reviews are skewed by people who are more interested in the bacon roll than the course. Any review that includes the phrase "they do a great pint of X in the bar" is immediately discounted by me.
GM rankings are a good source of information, but I find it hard to navigate and cluttered with adverts, it's basically a clickbait website. Personally I like top100golfcourses because it has several ways to search for courses, it feels the most objective ranking, and it's easy to scroll through the reader reviews (and choose which ones to read/ignore). Doesn't help with pricing though. These days, it's probably safe to assume that if a course has achieved "top 100" status it's going to cost an arm and a leg to play.

Doesn't someone do a 100-200 list, a below £60 (might be slightly more) green fee list? Those are the ones I would be honing into in this situation, largely because of your last sentence.

Incidentally, a good bacon roll is very important to setting you up for the 1st tee on an away day. A poor quality buttie deserves to take a star off a course

 

[Deleted member 15344]

There a multiple lists out there

The Top 100 courses on the web are mainly from unfiltered reviews and some are very old , but it’s a decent start

GM top 100 and the next 100 are done to a specific criteria and imo are bit closer to what I think about courses

If you look through their review areas they also do

Best courses under £60 etc

Best Value courses

Hidden Gems etc

Todays Golfer do the same

But overall most of the lists are pretty close to each other

 

[Orikoru]

I don't think he's talking about top 100 courses guys. I thought he just meant trustworthy reviews of everyday courses we might play.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

I don't think he's talking about top 100 courses guys. I thought he just meant trustworthy reviews of everyday courses we might play.

The Top 100 Courses can be filtered to go to pretty much most of the courses within the UK

Top 100 Golf Courses

www.top100golfcourses.com

 

[sjw]

I don't think he's talking about top 100 courses guys. I thought he just meant trustworthy reviews of everyday courses we might play.

A little bit of both, really. I guess part of the question was is there a, say, Michelin star equivalent for golf courses, but the second part is what you're talking about (and what is most useful for me), in the sense of "is there a source that people of this forum would use to determine if a golf course is worth it for, say, £40" or whatever. Any course could price themselves at £40 a tee time but it might not be worth it and there might be a better GOLF course for £20 further down the road that doesn't have such a flashy website, for example.

 

[paddyjk]

Chances are someone on here will have played a given course , post up the names of any that interest and we can rate|slate as appropriate

 

[Lord Tyrion]

@sjw I don't think I have seen what you are looking for. Realistically, here is probably a good a place as anywhere to test the waters as the chances are someone will have played the courses in the area you are looking at. You can then at least fire back questions as well.

Otherwise you are looking at Trip Advisor or Golf Now reviews, neither of which I find that great.

 

[Crow]

I rely on the course website and Google satellite view to decide if a course tickles my fancy.

 

[sunshine]

The Top 100 courses on the web are mainly from unfiltered reviews and some are very old , but it’s a decent start

The rankings on the top100 website are not based on the review comments at the bottom of the page. Otherwise any idiot could heavily influence the rankings. As you point out, at the end of the day all these rankings tables are very similar.

 

[sunshine]

I don't think he's talking about top 100 courses guys. I thought he just meant trustworthy reviews of everyday courses we might play.

The top100 website goes down to county level rankings, so for example there is a top 10 for Middlesex (Northwood is no.1, Haste Hill doesn't make the list ). These are mainly everyday courses. Counties with a bigger and better range of courses feature even more, e.g. Hertfordshire has a top 30 and Surrey a top 50. This is generally my starting point when planning golf trips.

Top 100 Golf Courses

www.top100golfcourses.com

 

[sjw]

Thanks all, will try and use the "Top 100" site a bit more. I think I overlooked it in the search results because "top100golfcourses.com" sounds pretty amateurish and a bit like a website you'd create in a web design class!

 

[Orikoru]

The top100 website goes down to county level rankings, so for example there is a top 10 for Middlesex (Northwood is no.1, Haste Hill doesn't make the list ). These are mainly everyday courses. Counties with a bigger and better range of courses feature even more, e.g. Hertfordshire has a top 30 and Surrey a top 50. This is generally my starting point when planning golf trips.

Top 100 Golf Courses

www.top100golfcourses.com

Surely there are countless courses that still aren't featured here though?

 

[Orikoru]

Thanks all, will try and use the "Top 100" site a bit more. I think I overlooked it in the search results because "top100golfcourses.com" sounds pretty amateurish and a bit like a website you'd create in a web design class!

Yeah, in fairness, I also have never checked this website before. I'd have assumed it was simply a list of the top 100 courses.

 

[sjw]

Yeah, in fairness, I also have never checked this website before. I'd have assumed it was simply a list of the top 100 courses.

I assumed it was a list of the "top 100" courses as decided by whatever content some AI had scraped from other sites.