Top 50 Golf Courses of Wales 2016

Little has changed at the top of the national rankings for Wales

There’s little movement at the top end of our new Top 50 rankings for Wales, where all of the first seven courses remain in the same position as the last edition.

The two regally prefixed venues at Royal Porthcawl and Royal St David’s head the new table and that’s been the situation since 2006 actually, when we created our inaugural Top 15 chart for the Principality.

Several interesting positive moves occur just outside the Top 10, however. Llandrindod Wells, the highest ranked course from the Mid Wales region, rises five places to number 14 and it’s immediately followed at number 15 by St Pierre (Old) from South Wales, an eight-time venue for the British Masters between 1971 and 1983, which also climbs five places in our new chart.

West Wales is not exactly over endowed with top notch courses but a couple of superior 18-hole layouts from that region also make significant progress up the chart and they are Cardigan (up four to 18), which celebrated its centenary in 1995, and Borth & Ynyslas (up six to 20), where Harry Colt had a hand in upgrading the links layout in 1945.

A little further down the listings, several courses make significant double digit upward moves. Newport (up eleven to 21) and Radyr (up fourteen to 31) are two top tracks in South Wales that are only now achieving the recognition they deserve and the same can also be said of the two underrated North Wales layouts at Prestatyn (up thirteen to 30) and Llandudno (up eleven to 35).

Six courses – Aberystwyth, Llanishen, Mountain Ash, Penrhos, Peterstone Lakes and Pontypridd – make way for half a dozen new entries, five of which debut in the lower reaches of the chart. The highest newcomer is a bit of a surprise and it’s Whitchurch in Cardiff at number 23. Extended to a full 18-hole layout within a decade of its inauguration as a 9-hole track in 1915, this century-old course still has sixteen of its original eighteen holes in play.

We always welcome comments when we publish new national rankings so we’d love to know what you think of our new Top 50 for Wales. What did we get right and what might we have got wrong? Is there a course that we’ve inadvertently missed or perhaps we’ve listed one that really doesn’t merit inclusion? Please use the “Respond to this article” link at the bottom of this page if you’d like to contact us.

To view the complete detailed list of the Top 50 Golf Courses in Wales click the link.

Jim McCann
Editor
Top 100 Golf Courses