NIPPING AT THE HEELS

Jeremy Ellwood chooses ten of his favourites from our 'Next 100', the courses that sit just outside the Top 100 in our biennial UK&I rankings

- Photography Jason Livy, Kevin Murray, Getty Images, Jeremy Ellwood, Geoff Ellis, Bob Atkins

Much effort goes into ranking our UK&I Top 100 Courses every two years, as you may have read in the supplement accompanying last month's issue. But just below the rarefied atmosphere of what we consider the best of the best lie a further 100 courses nipping very closely at their heels in some cases.

None of our Next 100 courses will disappoint and, of course, some golfers will say a number deserve a spot in our premier league. We don’t actually rank our Next 100 courses numerically for the honest reason that we just don’t have the resources to undertake a full assessment of any more than our current Top 100, plus the 30-40 courses from our Next 100 that we feel have the best chance of one day breaking through.

This leaves you free to come up with your own ranking order if you so desire (you will find the full Next 100 list on the Golf Monthly website). In the meantime, over the next two issues, my colleague Rob Smith and I will attempt to apply some degree of differentiation by picking out ten of our personal favourites from the current list.

By starting just across the border into East Sussex, close to my West Sussex home, some might accuse me of whatever the geographic equivalent of nepotism is. My response would be that surely it's only right that you love, at least in some way, any course at which you have been a member?

Crowborough Beacon and Royal Ashdown Forest's Old course lie just eight miles apart and, historically, most would have rated the latter above the former. St Mellion may be tough, but it's also extremely pretty

Having been a member of Crowborough for eight years a decade ago and now an artisan member at Ashdown, I'm not sure it's quite as clear-cut as that. Both are heathland delights playing over rolling countryside with fine views, right down to the South Downs in Crowborough's case.