Casual observers might assume we throttled back during May. It’s true, we’ve published fewer news releases this month than in other periods, but that’s because we’re out and about playing new courses – lots of them in fact. One Top 100 team member is on target to play 150 different courses this year and many others are golfing around the globe seeking out old favourites and hidden gems.

A few days ago, Barack Obama arrived in Scotland for his first visit and a round of golf on the Old course at St Andrews. Some Scots were outraged when the former US president was given a sugar-free version of Irn Bru. Shurely shome mishtake. Meanwhile, President Trump was in Europe eating delicious chocolate while complaining to the Belgian Prime Minister about the difficulty of setting up golf resorts in the EU.

A dishevelled Tiger Woods hit the headlines after being arrested in Florida and charged with driving under the influence, while the Peter Pan of golf – 59-year-old Bernhard Langer – won the Senior PGA Championship at Trump National Washington to become the first golfer to win all five senior majors.

Who said golf is boring? It certainly wasn’t Sweden’s Alex Noren, who eagled the 72nd hole on Sunday, carding a final round 10-under-par 62 to break the Wentworth West course record and win the BMW PGA Championship.

England’s East Midlands is the first of seven regional updates that will inform our national English rankings, our Britain and Ireland rankings and our World Top 100, all of which will be released later this year. For the first time we’re producing a ranking list on a regional basis and these tables will be underpinned by a complete re-evaluation of each and every English county.

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The mantelpiece at Rocco Forte’s Verdura Resort in Sicily is brimming with just about every award available – and we’d heard the golf wasn’t too shabby either – so when we were invited by The Azalea Group to experience the luxury resort, set on the south coast of the Mediterranean’s largest island, we jumped at the chance.

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There's gold in them hills... It was April 2016 in a northwest corner of Ireland, and we expected some tough weather. We got it, of course, in spades, but what we also got was two days of golfing majesty. If the greens staff were to immediately fill in every bunker, Carne would not become the first bunkerless course in history, but it would inarguably be crowned as the best.

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Top 100 Golf Courses of Scotland 2016-2017 was published in Kindle format, which can be enjoyed on any device with Kindle’s free App. This latest title in the Top 100 series is jam-packed full of previously unreleased material and it includes an insight from our Editor and Scottish Correspondent, Jim McCann, who has played every layout in the Scottish hundred.

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