Most recent plays

Following a 4:00am alarm call we’d already driven for more than six hours and covered over 350 road miles before boarding a ferry at Oban sailing to Lochboisdale.

The Halifax Golf Club, often better known as Ogden, is a course that divides opinion.

The Dunskey course at Portpatrick is one of the most fun and enjoyable I have played in Scotland.

Since my last visit in 2017 when the second course here was called the Kintyre much has changed.

Not many people know but there is also a third course at Turnberry and this is the nine hole Arran course.

The Hillhouse loop, formerly part of the main course but now a standalone nine hole layout, is an absolute treat.

The Fullarton links is one of three courses emanating from the starters office at the Troon Municipal golf complex which is owned, managed and run by South Ayrshire Council.

Girvan is very much a tale of two halves although mathematically speaking it is actually a story of 8/18's (or should that be four-ninths?) and 10/18's.

Stranraer is not a great course but it is certainly a very good one with no two holes the same and boasts lots of varied and interesting shots.

East Sussex National is a big hotel, spa and golf complex near Uckfield in, er... well as you might be able to guess.... East Sussex.

East Sussex National is a big hotel, spa and golf complex near Uckfield in, er... well as you might be able to guess.... East Sussex.

Located just outside leafy Ottershaw in Surrey the Foxhills resort is a high class venue with three golf courses. The Club has staged a number of prestigious tournaments since it opened in 1975, including the European Tour’s Tournament Players Championship and the Qualifying School.

Located just outside leafy Ottershaw in Surrey the Foxhills resort is a high class venue with three golf courses. The Club has staged a number of prestigious tournaments since it opened in 1975, including the European Tour’s Tournament Players Championship and the Qualifying School.

There's a wonderful sense of scale and grandeur to the 18 holes at North Foreland Golf Club that adorn the clifftops at Kingsgate in the North-East corner of Kent.

Flempton is a lovely, tucked away, nine-holer close to the market town of Bury St. Edmunds in the sleepy Suffolk countryside.

Prince's is a truly superb 27-hole links complex that makes for a great play & stay venue but the emphasis is certainly more on the play side of things, it's all about the golf here.

Prince's is a truly superb 27-hole links complex that makes for a great play & stay venue but the emphasis is certainly more on the play side of things, it's all about the golf here.

Wildernesse is a real Kentish treat located just outside the M25 near Sevenoaks.

A bit like a coin there are two sides to Thurlestone.

An unusual creature called Mullion Golf Club lies on the southern Cornish coast.

Looking out from the clubhouse at Berwick upon Tweed Golf Club you would be forgiven for thinking that the course wasn’t really up to a great deal. You would be wrong. Very wrong.

Every now and again you stumble across a golf course that takes your breath away.

I’ve been keen to play both courses at the Fairmont Resort on the outskirts of St. Andrews for some time and finally made that a reality in October 2020 just a matter of days after the Torrance course had played host to a European Tour event.

I’ve been keen to play both courses at the Fairmont Resort on the outskirts of St. Andrews for some time and finally made that a reality in October 2020 just a matter of days after the Torrance course had played host to a European Tour event.

The Craighead course at Crail is a very different challenge to the links of Balcomie, but no less memorable.

The Strabathie course at Murcar is a little nine-hole relief course that has two sets of tees and plays to 5,364 yards if you are to go round twice, par is 70.

The Silverburn course, home of Aberdeen Ladies Golf Club, and offers a great deal but sadly doesn’t quite live up to its excellent early billing.

It’s a long time since I have walked off a golf course with as big of a smile on my face as I did at Rosehearty!

Strathlene was the final Scottish golf course I played that features in the True Links book by George Peper and Malcolm Campbell – a publication that details all the genuine links golf courses in the world.

Established in 1890 Grantown-on-Spey Golf Club is a picturesque and varied course situated in the heart of the beautiful Cairngorm National Park.

Portmahomack Golf Club, sometimes known as Tarbat, is situated above the quaint seaside village of the same name on the Southern shores of the Dornoch Firth.

Delamere Forest must go down as the biggest surprise of the year for me, and a very pleasant one at that.

As you would expect from a club that has seen the Claret Jug contested over its links on no less than eleven occasions Royal Lytham & St. Annes didn't disappoint.

During a recent family holiday to Edinburgh an afternoon pass from the wife gave my son and I the opportunity to drive 90 minutes north to Tayport for a round of golf.

Writing a golf course review for Dewsbury District Golf Club should be a piece of cake for me.

It’s not until you are willing to venture a little bit off the beaten path that you are able to discover such golfing gems as Dunnerholme.

Located in the very heart of the Lake District, Windermere Golf Club must be one of the most adventurous golf courses I know and I make no apology for loving bamboozling layouts like this.

Powfoot is a no-nonsense golf course close to the Solway Firth just over the English-Scottish Border in Dumfries & Galloway.

Seascale is a 125-year old links oozing charm, character and class.

Silecroft is a springy, nine-hole clifftop links occupying a compact strip of coastal land high above the Irish Sea in the Western Lake District.

Furness could well be deemed the forgotten links of Cumbria.

I've been raving about the golf course at Hollinwell to anybody who would listen for the last 20 years since I first played here.

The drive into Royal Dublin Golf Club, over a splendid wooden bridge, sets a fabulous scene for golfing at one of Ireland’s most revered yet underrated golf courses.

Founded in 1892 County Louth Golf Club, home of the East of Ireland Amateur Championship, is a pure links golf experience played over a wonderful and sprawling dunescape.

The Island, which is not on an island, is a golf course that has an enormous amount of cohesive variety.

Corballis Links is a real head-spinner of a golf course around a 30 minute drive north of Dublin.

The nine hole ‘links’ at Sutton Golf Club, just to the north of Dublin, makes a promising start, dips alarmingly in the middle but then finishes extremely strongly.

Portmarnock Hotel & Links, not to be confused with the neighbouring 125-year-old Portmarnock Golf Club, is a modern course designed by Bernhard Langer in 1996.

If there are golf courses in heaven I suspect they will be very much in the spirit of Cruit Island.

Located on the edge of the picturesque Sheephaven Bay in County Donegal the Rosapenna Resort is a fascinating golf facility tucked away in a corner on the North-West coast of Ireland.

The Old Tom Morris course, with origins going back to 1893, is a mixed bag with two disjointed nines where you must walk through the car park at the halfway stage (pet hate alert). It is very much is a case of where modern and tradition meet.

Portsalon provides a wonderful mix of high quality links golf in a beautiful part of Ireland.

The terrain for golf at Ballyliffin – located at the remote tip of the Inishowen Peninsula where mountains, dunes and sea merge together – is the stuff of dreams. Expansive linksland stretches for an eternity on what is a lunar landscape ideal for exceptional golf.

The terrain for golf at Ballyliffin – located at the remote tip of the Inishowen Peninsula where mountains, dunes and sea merge together – is the stuff of dreams. Expansive linksland stretches for an eternity on what is a lunar landscape ideal for exceptional golf.

North West Golf Club, a founder member of the Golf Union of Ireland located on the Inishowen Peninsula at Buncrana, is a hugely underrated links course laid out on a narrow and compact tract of land.

On the mile-long drive along a tree-lined, single-lane track towards Donegal Golf Club one would be forgiven for wondering if there was a links course within 100 miles of the dense woodland you are travelling through.

Of all the links golf courses around the Fife Coast the Balcomie Links at Crail must be the most picturesque of them all.

No less than three courses, ranked by number reflecting their age, constitute Gullane Golf Club.

Hankley Common is a heathland paradise played over a sprawling tract of land on the North Surrey Downs where the texture of the property is utterly divine. Pastel colours, sprinkled with tints of purple, give the course a wonderful character which perpetually changes on a seasonal basis.

Wentworth is an exclusive private club in the heart of the Surrey heathbelt where a members invitation is required to play any of the 54 holes comprising the East, West and Edinburgh courses.

Hillside is one of several first-class championship links in prime golfing territory on the West Coast of England. Located tight between Birkdale to the North and Southport & Ainsdale to the South it makes a tasty filling for what is a delicious sandwich of links golf.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend you visit Colonsay specifically for the golf, however, that's not to suggest you shouldn't visit this beyond beautiful island, inhabited by less than 150 people, in the Hebrides and play their truly unique golf course.

I heard the squelch first. The gentle sinking sensation soon followed. However, it was a few seconds before I felt the warm, moist trickling sensation around my ankle. The smell arrived shortly afterwards.

Playing at The Machrihanish Golf Club is perhaps not as romantic a prospect as it was several years ago. None-the-less it’s a fabulous golfing experience.

In the summer of 2019 I returned to Woking after a 20 year absence. Much has changed over the last two decades but the atmosphere of the club and the strategy of the course have not budged an inch.

The inclusion of Effingham in Golf World Magazine’s recent “Top 100 golf courses of England” peaked my interest in this Surrey downland course located just outside the London Orbital.

County Sligo Golf Club at Rosses Point held the Irish Amateur Open the week prior to my visit and it is understandable why a prestigious venue such as this is deemed worthy of holding a tournament of this ilk.

Enniscrone manages to tread the tricky line between quirk and championship golf perfectly. The blend it creates produces a catalogue of unique, enthralling and funky holes.

Carne is a free spirit of the golfing world which has 27 holes of adventurous big dune golf. It is vast and mind-blowing with each hole providing the golfer with a puzzle that must be solved. It’s immense fun trying to do so.

Strandhill Golf Club is a links course that often lives in the shadow of its GB&I Top 100 near neighbour, County Sligo, and that is doing it a real disservice because this befuddling good golf course delivers with a bang and offers great value at the same time.

Atop a large hill in Mid Wales, above the Victorian spa town of Llandrindod Wells, lays a topsy-turvy, rough-and-tumble, bags-of-fun sort of golf course.

The four-star St. Mellion International Resort is not short of accolades. The Nicklaus course has been voted the 'Best Golf Course' in the West of England by Today's Golfer Magazine readers and the complex recently ranked 14th in the Top 100 UK & Ireland Golf Resorts.

There’s a real feel-good factor about playing golf at Yelverton. It’s great for your soul and can also be a confidence booster for your golf; that is if you catch it on as benign a day as I did.

It’s a real shame that Warren Golf Club, located at the seaside town of Dawlish Warren in South Devon, was omitted from the “True Links” book showcasing the 246 true links golf courses of the world.

If you’ve got an itch sometimes you’ve just got to scratch it… even if it’s in a hard-to-reach place! And in my personal quest to play all the true links golf course in the British Isles that was exactly the case with Castletown.

There are few better places to enjoy a full day of golfing than at Woodhall Spa.

Tankersley, a former baronial deer park, is not your average run-of-the-mill parkland golf course.

Bradford Moor is a little dazzler of a nine-hole golf course close to the city.

Located high on the Sussex Downs above the seaside town of the same name Seaford is a fine downland golf course with superb views.

It’s generally a case of slim pickings when it comes to high quality golf away from the sea in Scotland, however, at Blairgowrie the old adage about buses rings true because two come along at once.

It’s generally a case of slim pickings when it comes to high quality golf away from the sea in Scotland, however, at Blairgowrie the old adage about buses rings true because two come along at once.

In the not too distance future The Royal Burgess Golfing Society at Barnton on the outskirts of Edinburgh will celebrate its tercentenary.

Ganton, located in the Vale of Pickering between York and Scarborough, is rightly regarded as one of the UK’s very best inland golf courses with an extremely rich history and a strong sense of tradition.

Sherwood Forest is a superb heathland golf course that is played over an amazing isolated property which reveals its full beauty through holes seven to 14, both visually and playing wise.

The championship Strand course at Portstewart in County Londonderry is one of the finest links in all of Ireland.

The Old Course, often referred to as the ‘Town’ course is not actually located at the main Portstewart Golf Club.

The Riverside layout is located adjacent to the Strand (some of the holes and land used to be form part of the main course).

Little known Bushfoot golf course at Portballintrae near Bushmills in County Antrim, Northern Ireland is an interesting 9-hole layout in a picturesque location.

I don’t think I would ever accept the notion that a golf course is perfect – not even The Old Course at St. Andrews – but boy does Royal Portrush come close. Tantalisingly close.

The Valley course in its own right is a very fine links and one that makes a fine bedfellow for the Dunluce.