Top 100 Golf Courses updates its Australian golf course rankings
Top 100 Golf Courses, the most informed and dedicated ranking website, presents its Australian golf course rankings for 2012. Five years ago, we compiled our first Top 50 listing of courses in Australia then it took until 2010 before we doubled the size of our table.
We recently refined our procedure for capturing credible ranking data from Down Under by polling a number of the respected golfing fraternity that have actually played the best Australian golf courses and their valued opinions have been factored into the first update of our Top 100 for Australia.
There are a dozen new courses in our revamped Australian rankings, the highest of which, Barnbougle Lost Farm, hurtles into our chart at the astonishingly high position of number 5. This stellar 20-hole links is located adjacent to Barnbougle Dunes (up one place to number 3) on Tasmania's north east coast and we think these two world-class courses will become permanent fixtures in the World Top 100.
Victorian architect Michael Clayton worked in partnership with Tom Doak on the Dunes layout and Healesville, one of the courses that Mike totally revamped in 2008, enters our rankings at the admirably strong position of 35. An exciting Queensland offshore development, the Thomson & Perrett-designed Hamilton Island course, is another very highly regarded new entry at number 41.
Further down the listings, another couple of Thomson & Perrett courses – Sandhurst (Champions) and Sandhurst (North) – debut at 73 and 92, whilst a pair of old Sam Berriman designs at Cranbourne and Keysborough gain national recognition with new placements of 74 and 84.
Three more Victorian tracks – Thirteenth Beach (Creek), Cape Schanck and Sands Torquay – enter at number 71, 79 and 81 respectively, whilst the century-old course at Royal Perth (at number 88) and Queensland's Sanctuary Cove (Palms) (at position 100) completes the list of new entrants.
In the upper reaches of our Top 100, significant upward movers include St Andrews Beach (climbing thirteen to 13), Commonwealth (rising eleven to 14), Peninsula (North) (up thirteen to 15) and Royal Queensland (advancing eleven to 22). In the bottom half of the table, the 70-year old Long Island layout leaps up a healthy twenty eight places to number 69.
Of course, for all the ups, there has to be a number of downs and there are some spectacular fallers, unfortunately. A couple of regal tracks, Royal Sydney (down sixteen to 30) and Royal Canberra (Championship) (down 20 to 38), tumble out of our top 20 standings. Both courses at Vines – Lakes (down twenty five to 55) and Ellenbrook (down twenty nine to 85) – suffer spectacular drops whilst the biggest faller of all, St Michael's in Little Bay, Sydney, plummets thirty one spots to 90.
For the curious, the courses that dropped out of our rankings are: Laguna Whitsundays (Turtle Point), Macquarie Links, Araluen, Arundel Hills, Southern, Noosa Springs, Albany, North Lakes, Castle Hill, Tallwoods, Bunbury and Kooindah Waters.
We always welcome criticism at Top 100 Golf Courses as your feedback lets us know what we're doing well and what we're not doing so well. Are there any Australian courses that are too high or too low in the standings? Is there an 18-hole layout in our chart that really has no right to be anywhere near a Top 100 ranking position? Please let us know what you think as we value your opinions.
Top 100 has never claimed to be "definitive" but we do think we are the most "informed" golf course rankings in the market place. If you've played one of our featured courses in Australia, we'd be only too pleased to find out what you think of it, so please share your thoughts by posting a course review.
