1. Royal County Down - it's just such a marvellous meeting of links golf, superb mountain background and (on the one day in the year it isn't raining) the sun sparkling on Dundrum Bay, and I've been lucky enough to have played it a lot as a teenager, when it greatly influenced my golfing tastes.
My chasers are:
Royal West Norfolk for its old-fashioned course, salt marshes, wading birds and bearded reedlings.
St Enodoc for its tumbling dunes, its circumnavigation of the little church, its stone walls and holiday-makers pushing prams through the middle of the course.
Conwy - it's not the greatest links course in the world, but it's home to me and when I stand on the 7th tee I never fail to be uplifted by the mountains to my right, Conwy Estuary in front, Deganwy beyond, looking like a Breton fishing village, the hideous pile of the Great Orme at about 11 o'clock, the Irish Sea to the left, and Puffin Island and Anglesey completing the 360-degree vista.
I also have very fond memories of a game at Co Sligo when I was in my teens and my father and I were the only people on the course during an evening round, with the sun setting into the Atlantic in the West....