Moving on up

New to the 2023-24 Top 100 is the ever-improving links at Wallasey. Rob Smith looks at what it takes to break into the upper echelons...

- Rob Smith

Often referred to as England’s Golf Coast, the region between the country’s north-west borders with Wales and Scotland is packed with golf of the very highest order. It is home to three current Open Championship venues – the Royals at Liverpool, Birkdale and Lytham & St Annes – and the supporting cast is as strong an assortment as you will find anywhere.

It would therefore be easy for even a top-notch links to be somewhat hidden in the shadows cast by the headlights blazing nearby. So just how did the links at Wallasey win over the Top 100 assessors and indeed the Golf Monthly staff to lead to its promotion into the top-most category of golf in the UK&I?

The journey 

There are somewhere in the region of 2,000 courses in England alone, and when you add in the rest of the UK&I, the number is closer to 3,000. When Golf Monthly first published its expanded Top 200 rankings in 2011/12, Wallasey was included in the second tier. In footballing terms, the course was probably considered to be of solid, mid-table standard, but unlikely to challenge at the very top. Happily, there were those who saw beyond this, largely inspired by the fact the links is blessed with some of the finest dunes in the entire country.