This is the third biennial chart release for countries in Britain and Ireland. Over the past few weeks we’ve reported on Northern Ireland and Wales and now it’s the turn of England, where we actually feature more than 500 courses across thirty-six regional listings. The 100 layouts ranked below represent the crème de la crème of a very strong golfing nation which extends to more than 1800 golf courses.

Welcome to the ninth biennial edition of our rankings for Wales. We started out with a modest Top 15 for the country in 2006 which we then doubled in size four years later. By 2014 we’d extended the listings further to a Top 50 and that’s how things have remained since – what’s also remained constant over the last sixteen years is the identity of the nation’s No. 1 golfing layout.

This is the first of five updates for countries in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. When completed, we’ll produce a combined “chart of charts” for the top 100 courses in Britain and Ireland. But first we start with Northern Ireland, the smallest of these five geographical areas, where we feature a total of 43 courses across six counties in our regional listings.

The message of great, strategic golf course architecture is clear. The actual words used to describe those golf courses, however, are many. The Architecture Glossary column will examine more precise terms and concepts that one will find when exploring golf course architecture.

The purpose of the Review of The Month feature is twofold. Top100GolfCourses has always aimed to salute and encourage those who are putting admirable effort into reviewing the world’s great golf courses. Moving forward, we are also looking to learn from these experts!

Last month, we looked at golfing options across the Canary Islands so we’re now turning our attention a little closer to mainland Spain and the island of Mallorca in the Ballearic Islands.