Top 10 Golf Courses in Buckinghamshire 2015
Top 10 Golf Courses in Buckinghamshire 2015
Buckinghamshire Best in County rankings updated
The chalk escarpment of the Chiltern Hills is an area of outstanding natural beauty and it dominates the southern portion of Buckinghamshire, where many of the residents commute to work in London. Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes was where Britain based its codebreaking centre during World War II and the Paralympic games originated in Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury Vale.
There you have it, all you need to know about Buckinghamshire in a couple of snappy little sentences. But what about the county’s sporting facilities and its golf offerings, in particular? Well, they’re also dominated by one golf club, Woburn, which is blessed with three top rated courses, though another forty clubs provide a sterling supporting role around the region.
We’ve recently surveyed all the golf clubs in this area and have now processed the returns, formulating the latest edition of our Buckinghamshire Top 10 rankings. The top five positions remain exactly as they were two years ago, so we reckon that’s a fairly good indication that we’ve at least got the top half of the table ordered in the correct manner.
At number 1, Woburn’s Marquess course only opened in 2000 but it has since hosted two British Masters tournaments and the English Amateur Championship in 2011. Now matured way beyond its youthful years, the course has also been used for recent Final Open Qualifying and it’ll stage the British Masters again next month.
At number 2, The Duke’s course at Woburn has also seen its fair share of top amateur and professional tournaments, including the English Strokeplay Championship, the British Masters and the Women’s British Open. Designed by Charles Lawrie, it has been delighting golfers on a daily basis since ever it first opened in 1976.
Woburn’s Duchess course occupies the number 3 position in our regional chart. Overshadowed to a large extent by the tournament exploits of the other two Woburn courses, the Duchess is still a golfing treat in its own right. One reviewer has described it as the “shortest, prettiest and arguably the tightest golf course you’ll find anywhere in the world… the definition and visual aspect of the Duchess is breathtaking.”
At number 4, the tree-lined Colt and Alison nines form the premier layout at Stoke Park and this impressive old course was fashioned by Harry Colt back in 1908, opening a year later when an exhibition match was played between James Braid, J.H. Taylor, Arnaud Massy and James Sherlock, the club’s professional.
The Buckinghamshire is at number 5 and it’s a John Jacobs design from the early 1990s. Fairways are laid out on a 226-acre parkland estate, with the Misbourne and Colne rivers coming into play at seven of the first twelve holes on the card. The course enjoyed a 5-year stint of hosting top tournaments soon after it opened, when the Senior Tournament of Champions was held there between 1996 and 2000.
Lambourne is the only new entry at number 8 and it’s another early 1990s design. This time the architect was Donald Steel and he set the eighteen fairways out within a well-drained 180-acre wooded estate, routing the holes around six sparkling lakes.
We’re in debt to the clubs and professional golfers who helped with our re-ranking process for this county. To view more information about the courses in our Buckinghamshire Top 10 rankings click this link. If you have extensive experience of playing across the southern region of England and would like to contribute to our next re-ranking exercise then please email Editor-in-Chief Keith Baxter at keith@top100golfcourses.com. Top 100 Golf Courses never claims to publish definitive golf course listings but we do like to think they’re the most informed.
Jim McCann
Editor
Top 100 Golf Courses