Top 10 Golf Courses in Shropshire 2015
Shropshire Best In County rankings updated
The Salop county of Shropshire is easily accessible from just about anywhere in England, but it’s far enough away from the madding crowd such that it has remained peaceful and unspoilt.
The Shropshire and Herefordshire Union of Golf Clubs take care of the interests of 33 golf clubs in the union, two-thirds of which are located in Shropshire. It may therefore seem overly generous to feature a Top 10 for this relatively diminutive golfing county. However, we feel the quality of Shropshire’s golf courses is sufficiently interesting and unsung to warrant such coverage.
The course that remains at the head of our Shropshire rankings has a Welsh name that most non-Celtic speakers will struggle to pronounce. Fifteen holes at Llanymynech (meaning “Church of the Monks”) lie within Wales, but Llanymynech is an English golf club. From atop this limestone plateau, surrounded by sheer cliff faces, you can see the Shropshire Plain with its quilted patchwork of fields and trees stretching out for miles. It’s an awe-inspiring location on a clear day.
Set within an extensive property that attracts many visitors to the caves, tunnels, trails and towers of its 18th century follies, the Hawkstone course at Hawkstone Park moves up one place to 2nd. This James Braid design from the 1920s was renovated by Welsh golfing legend Brian Huggett when the Principal Hayley Group acquired the estate in the 1990s.
Up two spots to 3rd place is Oswestry Golf Club, another James Braid design, this time from the 1930s. Routed across an undulating, free-draining site, the course is blessed with a fine set of par three holes. Two short par fours at 7 and 11 are also worthy of mention, with the former doglegging slightly left to the green and the latter playing to a small raised putting surface.
To see our new 2015 Shropshire Top 10, click the link. If you have played golf extensively across any English county and would like to have your say, please contact me (keith@top100golfcourses.com). In the meanwhile a big thank you to everyone who contributed to our Shropshire Best In County ranking process.
Keith Baxter
Editor-in-Chief
Top 100 Golf Courses
