Stop adding Top 100 courses to your bucket list. You might never play them.

There are 132 golf courses in Britain's official Top 100 rankings. 63% of them won't tell you how to become a member, let alone what it costs. 17 won't let you on as a visitor at the weekend, at any price, ever. This is what that bucket list actually gets most golfers — and ten Top 100 courses where it doesn't.

You already knew about Augusta

Everyone accepts that a regular golfer can't play Augusta National. You need a member to invite you, and even then you're playing at their discretion, not yours. Nobody complains about this. It's just understood to be how Augusta works — the exclusivity is the whole point, and it's priced into how we talk about the place.

What's less well understood is that Britain runs a domestic version of the same policy, and it's baked directly into the "Top 100" lists that get shared as bucket-list content without any of that context attached. Nobody puts a footnote on the ranking that says "good luck getting a tee time." You just see the list, and the list implies these courses are things you could plausibly go and play.

Seventeen clubs, every weekend, no exceptions

Of the 132 clubs in our database flagged Top 100 for England or Great Britain and Ireland, 17 block visitor access completely on both Saturday and Sunday, every single week of the year. Not "book early." Not "peak season only." No visitor access, no matter how much you're willing to pay.

Some of the biggest names in the sport are on that list. Sunningdale takes visitors Monday to Thursday only. Royal St George's — host to more Open Championships than almost any course in the rota — takes visitors on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Royal Lytham & St Annes, Swinley Forest, Royal Cinque Ports: all weekday-only. If you have a normal job, playing any of them means booking annual leave. The weekend, when most working golfers are actually free to play, is simply not available.

A smaller group go further still. JCB, Loch Lomond, Skibo Castle, Centurion, Renaissance and New Zealand Golf Club don't offer independent visitor access at all — any day, any price. You play as a member's guest, or you don't play. That's not a pricing tier. That's a closed door.

The membership nobody talks about

Even if you set visitor access aside entirely and just ask "could I join?", most of the Top 100 won't answer. 83 of the 132 clubs — 63% — publish no membership pricing whatsoever. Not a fee. Not a tier name. Not a "contact the secretary for details." The information simply isn't published anywhere.

On top of that, 13 clubs explicitly require a formal proposal — meaning an existing member has to put your name forward before the club will even consider you. Combine the two and you get a filter that has nothing to do with money: if you don't already know someone on the inside, you don't know the price, you don't know the process, and you often don't even know it's theoretically possible. The gatekeeping happens before you ever reach for your wallet.

A model built for a different era

The clubs behind this — waiting lists, proposal-only membership, weekday-only visitor windows — were built for a specific kind of golfer: predominantly older, predominantly male, predominantly connected to a social network that already knew how the system worked. That generation is ageing out of the sport.

The growth in golf over the last few years has come from younger players, from women, and from people who found the game later in life with no friend-of-a-friend at the secretary's desk. They search online, compare prices, and book what's in front of them. If a club doesn't show up in that search with a price attached, it doesn't lose those golfers a sale — it never enters their consideration at all.

We're not arguing every historic club should throw open its doors. Plenty of what makes these places special is bound up in exactly the culture that keeps them small. But "you need to know someone" as the primary access mechanism for courses that sit on public Top 100 lists isn't really tradition — it's just gatekeeping that's gone unchallenged because nobody's totalled up the numbers before.

Ten Top 100 courses you can actually play

So here's the other half of the list — the one nobody publishes. Ten courses that carry a genuine Top 100 ranking, take visitors on both Saturday and Sunday, publish their fees online, and charge £75 or less to do it. No proposal, no member, no waiting list. Just book it.

1. 1
   Kington Golf Club£45

   England #68 · Herefordshire

   The highest 18-hole course in England, on National Trust common land with views over seven counties. £39 weekday, £45 weekend.
2. 2
   Manor (Yorkshire) Golf Club£45

   GB&I #65 · West Yorkshire

   Weekend and bank holiday rate, £45. A parkland course near Bradford with a par-3 academy course alongside it if you want to warm up first.
3. 3
   Seascale Golf Club£50

   England #80 · Cumbria

   A genuine links on the Cumbrian coast, laid out by Willie Campbell in 1893. £45 weekday, £50 weekend, playable year-round.
4. 4
   Grove (Wales) Golf Club£50

   England #83 · Bridgend

   Peak-season weekend rate of £50, no joining fee for members either. Twilight rounds available after 5pm for less.
5. 5
   Royal North Devon Golf Club£60

   England #48 · Westward Ho!, Devon

   The oldest golf course in England — Old Tom Morris, 1864 — played over common land. £60 flat, any day of the week.
6. 6
   Cleeve Hill Golf Club£60

   England #88 · Cheltenham

   Another Old Tom Morris design, on open common above Cheltenham. £50 weekday, £60 weekend, no joining fee for members.
7. 7
   Royal Cromer Golf Club£65

   England #82 · Norfolk

   A clifftop links above Cromer, also a Tom Morris original from 1888. £55 weekday, £65 weekend. One of England’s most photographed coastal courses.
8. 8
   Cavendish Golf Club£65

   England #71 · Buxton, Derbyshire

   Designed by Alister MacKenzie in 1925 — the same architect behind Augusta National. £55 weekday, £65 weekend.
9. 9
   Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club£65

   England #91 · Northumberland

   James Braid-associated links running beneath the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle. £55 weekday, £65 weekend.
10. 10
    Yelverton Golf Club£75

    England #90 · Devon

    A Herbert Fowler design on the edge of Dartmoor. £70 weekday, £75 weekend, with twilight rounds from £25.

None of these are consolation prizes. A Tom Morris links on a Norfolk clifftop, an Alister MacKenzie design from the same drawing board as Augusta National, the oldest course in England — all bookable this weekend, all for £75 or less. The Top 100 isn't a wall. It just has a very unevenly signposted door.

Data from The Stimp database of 2,700+ UK golf clubs. Top 100 classifications based on National Club Golfer rankings for England and GB&I. Visitor fee, access and membership data sourced from club websites; figures reflect the latest rates published by each club. Last updated 9 July 2026.