Top 10 Golf Courses in Oxfordshire 2015

Top 10 Golf Courses in Oxfordshire 2015

Oxfordshire Best in County rankings updated

The tourist guide website for Oxfordshire gives extensive details of a whole host of outdoor activities within the county, allowing browsers to consider the likes of punting on the river at Cherwell, cycling on the Ridgeway National Trail or maybe even flying kites at the giant white chalk horse on Uffington Hill.

Unfortunately, for those looking for somewhere to play golf, there’s very little mention of the various golf facilities located throughout the region. Indeed, if you choose to navigate through “Sport, Leisure & the Outdoors” you’ll find only Heythrop Park and Bicester listed under places to “exercise your golf swing”.

For a county that can boast around 30 golf courses, we’re surprised that regional golf facilities are promoted as poorly as this at an official level but, as we like to monitor the golfing situation locally, we can present what are the best layouts in the region within our latest edition of the Top 10 course rankings for Oxfordshire.

At the top of the standings, the wonderful old Willie Park Jnr-designed course at Huntercombe has been knocked off the top perch by another heathland classic, the Red course at Frilford Heath. One of three outstanding 18-hole layouts at Frilford, the original Red course is a century-old J.H. Taylor design which has been described by one of our reviewers as “a top golfing venue with greens in mint condition”.

Frilford Heath’s Green and Blue courses also make upward moves in our Oxfordshire standings, the former climbing three places to number 4 and the latter rising just one position to number 9. The Green course is the product of different eras – the first nine was laid out by J.H. Turner, the club’s first professional, the second nine added years later by Frank Pennink – whilst the Blue course is a more recent design from Simon Gidman.

Only two other courses move up the revised chart: Studley Wood (up two to number 6) is another modern Simon Gidman creation that’s routed around 14 lakes and 30 acres of forest and Burford (up one to number 8) is a fine woodland track from the 1930s where golfers have to be right on their game to handle the tight fairways and sand-protected greens.

We’d like to thank everybody in this region who contributed to our re-ranking process. To view more details of the courses in our Oxfordshire Top 10 rankings, click this link. If you’ve played extensively across this region and would like to help us with the next edition of the chart then please drop Editor-in-Chief Keith Baxter an email at keith@top100golfcourses.com.

Jim McCann
Editor
Top 100 Golf Courses