Here at Custodian Golf we’ve spent the last couple of years knee-deep in data, trying to get to grips with the state of golf across Great Britain*. Our focus has been on understanding the characteristics of individual golf clubs, including things like catchment populations, how many local competitors each club has, environmental factors like flooding and weather, as well as local demographics and how hemmed in clubs are by housing and roads.
But we’re also real golf data nerds, so inevitably we ask ourselves more general questions about the geography of golf in Great Britain, such as:
Which village, town or city has the greatest number of courses within a 10 mile radius?
How much of Great Britain’s land area is covered by golf courses?
Which county / local authority has the highest % of its land covered by golf courses?
The golf capital of Great Britain?
If you’ve ever spent any time at all thinking about the ‘golf capital of Great Britain’ then St Andrews is surely top of the list. Globally and nationally, St Andrews is the Home of Golf, with the sport being played there in various formats for more than 600 years. If we plot the courses within a 10 mile radius of the centre of St Andrews (as shown in the map) we can see that there are no fewer than 23 golf courses - including the Old Course but also newer world famous venues like Kingsbarns or Dumbarnie Links.
If we extend this analysis to the whole of Great Britain to include every village, town and city in the Ordnance Survey places database (more than 16,000 of them) and then calculate the number of clubs within a 10 mile radius of each one, we begin to see which localities have the greatest golf club density and, perhaps, a claim to being ‘the golf capital of Great Britain’ - or at least second in line to St Andrews.
When we looked at the data for every town and city in Great Britain and then identified all the golf courses inside the 10 mile radius, one clear winner emerged - Ashford in Surrey, with 70 golf clubs. Courses here include a wide variety of types, such as famous venues like Wentworth and Sunningdale, The Royal Household Golf Club (within the Grounds of Windsor Castle) and New Zealand Golf Club in Addlestone.
In Scotland, the settlement with the greatest number of golf courses within a 10 mile radius is not actually St Andrews, but the city of Glasgow, which has 53 courses within 10 miles. In Wales, the winner is Wattsville (just west of Newport) with 30 courses in the 10 mile radius.
Thanks to the comprehensive database we’ve built, we’re able to generate maps and data for any club and radius, as well as travel time catchments and demographic profiles, so we also looked at the 10 mile radius around a few other locations, including Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and London, as shown below.
What does any of this tell us? Well, we gained a better understanding of the fact that the geography of golf in Great Britain is quite uneven. That is, the density of golf courses is often quite different to the underlying population density of the country. When we look at where the top courses are, this is particularly true, and in some areas there is something of an oversupply and in others there is a clear undersupply. This kind of ‘spatial mismatch’, where the geography of supply and demand don’t match has, at an industry-wide level, the potential to hurt some clubs. This phenomenon is most often discussed in relation to the job market but it also applies to the geography of golf in Great Britain.
For example, in some localities it may be more difficult to recruit and keep members and in others golfers may find themselves locked out of membership due to high demand. The geography of golf provision therefore may go part of the way to explaining the apparent contradiction whereby participation in golf is growing overall, at the same time as club closures are accelerating. If supply and demand are both high, but geographically uneven, we need to do something about it. Therefore, it’s worth thinking more about the geography of golf across Great Britain from a birds-eye view.
How much of Great Britain is golf course?
Looking at these maps one could easily conclude that a large proportion of Great Britain is actually golf course. But this is far from true. In some areas it’s clear that locals have access to a large number of facilities but even in golf-dense areas like the Surrey Heath Belt the proportion of land taken up by golf courses is relatively low. Overall, our calculations show that currently operating golf courses cover an area of 118,100 hectares (about 292,000 acres in total and about 115 acres per course on average) in Great Britain, and we have just under 2,600 golf clubs in our database. This equates to 1,181 square kilometres, or 0.56% of the land area of Great Britain. How big is this? Well, it’s about the same size as 9 out of the 10 districts in Greater Manchester, as you can see on the map. If we combined all golf courses across Great Britain into one big one (not something Custodian Golf would recommend!) then it would cover almost all of Greater Manchester and nearly 0.6% of Great Britain.
Which local areas have the highest % of golf course land?
One key factor when thinking about the geography of golf in Great Britain is the reality that some clubs are quite local, and attract members and visitors mostly from the immediate area, whereas others are globally significant golfing destinations which people travel to from all over the world. Examples here include courses such as Royal Dornoch in Sutherland, Royal Troon in Ayrshire, Royal Birkdale in Merseyside or Royal Porthcawl in South Wales.
Alongside the top clubs, there are hundreds of other courses most of us have never heard of, and will never play, but which retain a crucially important place in the hearts and minds of golfers in villages, towns and cities across the country. This is why we believe it’s so important to have comprehensive, accurate and timely data on the state of the golfing landscape. Everyone knows the bucket list courses, but at Custodian Golf we are driven by a desire to help struggling clubs survive, thrive and - being blunt about it - not kick the bucket.
We are also acutely aware of the wider societal context within which golf operates and in this respect recent changes to the planning system in England have become increasingly relevant as many less financially buoyant clubs now consider their futures and how they can weather the economic headwinds facing many in the industry. For some, this may mean selling up and moving to a more suitable location, with the former site used for housing. For others, it may mean selling part of the course to a housebuilder to fund improvements including acquiring new land to expand, and for others still it may mean repositioning themselves as a different kind of venue altogether.
So, in order to better understand where such issues may be most acute, and where planning and housing pressures may be most keenly felt, we recently looked at the percentage of land in each local authority and English county covered by golf courses. The table below shows the result of our analysis - with the highlight that Woking is more than 10% golf course and Surrey overall is almost 3% golf course.
Rank | County | % Golf course coverage | Acres |
1 | Surrey | 2.87 | 11,863 |
2 | Hertfordshire | 1.96 | 7,953 |
3 | East Sussex | 1.01 | 4,296 |
4 | Kent | 0.98 | 8,620 |
5 | West Sussex | 0.93 | 4,562 |
6 | Warwickshire | 0.90 | 4,394 |
7 | Essex | 0.88 | 7,562 |
8 | Hampshire | 0.87 | 7,953 |
9 | Nottinghamshire | 0.79 | 4,065 |
10 | Worcestershire | 0.72 | 3,114 |
* Source: Custodian Golf calculations based on Ordnance Survey data, 2025
Rank | Local Authority | % Golf course coverage | Acres |
1 | Woking | 10.72 | 1,686 |
2 | Richmond upon Thames | 6.98 | 990 |
3 | Epsom and Ewell | 6.37 | 537 |
4 | Runnymede | 6.27 | 1,210 |
5 | Worthing | 5.89 | 474 |
6 | Watford | 5.16 | 274 |
7 | Surrey Heath | 5.00 | 1,175 |
8 | Sefton | 4.87 | 1,887 |
9 | Croydon | 4.78 | 1,022 |
10 | Southend-on-Sea | 4.48 | 462 |
11 | Three Rivers | 4.39 | 965 |
12 | Eastbourne | 4.35 | 475 |
13 | Welwyn Hatfield | 4.34 | 1,391 |
14 | Elmbridge | 4.31 | 1,026 |
15 | Blackpool | 4.26 | 368 |
16 | Bromley | 4.23 | 1,569 |
17 | Havering | 4.18 | 1,160 |
18 | East Dunbartonshire | 4.14 | 1,785 |
19 | Sutton | 4.01 | 435 |
20 | Oadby and Wigston | 3.99 | 232 |
21 | Hertsmere | 3.85 | 961 |
22 | City of Edinburgh | 3.84 | 2,498 |
23 | Barnet | 3.76 | 806 |
24 | Brentwood | 3.65 | 1,380 |
25 | Wirral | 3.61 | 1,438 |
* Source: Custodian Golf calculations based on Ordnance Survey data, 2025
* We’re also expanding our analysis to cover Northern Ireland, but more on that in future. Ordnance Survey data only covers Great Britain but since we are keen to understand the entire UK golfing landscape we’re currently working on adding Northern Ireland to our database using other high quality data sources.
How to take action
For further information, or to start a conversation about your club's future feel free to contact Phil Grice on 01223 776101 or phil.grice@custodiangolf.co.uk.
Phil is a former Chairman of the Golf Club Managers' Association and Head of Venues at Custodian Golf. Phil works closely with Alasdair Rae (Head of Data at Custodian Golf) and the rest of the team as they seek to support and advise clubs across the UK.
All maps and statistics in this article were produced by Custodian Golf. If you wish to reproduce any of the content here, please just get in touch with us at info@custodiangolf.co.uk and we’ll be happy to chat.