Jamaica, home of the Rastafarian movement, gained independence from the UK in 1962 and it’s the third largest island in the Caribbean, with most of its near 3 million inhabitants housed in the towns that are strung out along its coastline.

An ideal all year round holiday destination, it’s little wonder that tourism is Jamaica’s largest industry, welcoming over a million visitors annually to the main resort centres of Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, Negril, Port Antonio and the South Coast.

Cricket, football, athletics, basketball and horse racing are all popular Jamaican sporting activities and golf is also popular with locals and, of course, with the many visitors who come to enjoy the island’s reggae rhythms, rum punch and mouth-watering seared jerk.

There are only ten golf courses in Jamaica following the closure of Ironshore a few years ago, and most are well worth playing. There’s even an antiquity in the popular resort town of Mandeville.

The 9-hole (18 tee) Manchester Golf Club can trace its roots back to 1865 which makes it the oldest layout in the Caribbean and perhaps even the Americas. According to the Stanley Thompson Society, The Toronto Terror updated the course in 1930 with “periodic fine tuning thereafter, as well as planning for 9 additional holes” which were never built.

Our Caribbean and Atlantic Islands rankings were last updated in February 2020. Click the link to read the story.