This Alpine edition for Austria and Switzerland is the ninth and final publication in a sequence that has taken us all the way from the Mediterranean Sea in the south to the Atlantic Ocean in the north.

This release covers the five nations of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. We’re increasing the number of courses featured in this region, so we now list nearly 200 layouts across this vast northern section of Europe.

South East Europe doesn’t have much golfing tradition, with fewer than ten thousand registered participants in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, so visitors play the vast majority of golf in these countries.

Claiming an “original” Punchbowl green is probably a lost cause, as the earliest of designers didn’t necessarily look at the decision as a piece of golf strategy. It was, in reality, a piece of agronomic planning.

Almost 200 courses are located across the five Central European countries of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. We feature 38 in our five national ranking lists and we’re confident these courses are the best you’ll find in this region...

Here I am in cold, dark mid-winter, post Christmas blues, but luckily there is a burst of sunshine and joy on my TV screen. The annual Tournament of Champions provides a welcome slice of escapism, transporting me back to the tropical paradise of Maui every January.