The Joy and Utter Futility of Ranking Golf Courses
I can't NOT make a list. But it's stopped making sense.
I’ve always been a fairly compulsive list maker. Who are my favorite bands, movies or TV shows? Who are the best running backs in history, or the best football player overall?
Golf is no stranger to this. You cannot visit the Bandon Dunes Resort without being asked how you rank the courses there. (Old Macdonald is first, and if you disagree strongly with that, I’m so sorry for you.) I’ve talked about the Top 100 Lists, and the problems with that, but of course, we all have our own personal favorites.
At some point, I started keeping track of which golf courses I’ve played, while recognizing there’s probably 10-15 I just never got the names of when I didn’t really know or care enough to do so. All in all, that means I’ve played more than 200 golf courses, and of course I started to rank them all.
At some point, I realized the bottom trough was all somewhat indistinguishable from each other (though ensuring the courses I’ve actively not enjoyed were at the bottom). And when I came back from Ireland, it got even more preposterous. How does one really decide whether Narin & Portnoo is one spot better than The Boulders in Arizona, or one below?
Someone suggested absolute rankings (which, of course, I’m still gonna do) make less sense than tiers. And I like that. So, I jumped in head first.
I’ve been told that tiering somehow, perhaps due to videogames, goes from S to E (S, A, B, C, D and E). I don’t know why. But here’s how I think about it:
Those are mere logos because, again, we’re talking about a lot of courses.
Note: I wrote this a week ago, before I took off on another golf trip, this time to the St. George, Utah and Mesquite, NV area. This is to say that the above is missing five new courses, three of which would be in the B tier.
Each tier has … as many courses as I think it should. The top is truly the elite level courses, but if I am lucky enough to play another course I think is truly elite, it doesn’t mean a course that’s already there got any worse. That’s why, somehow, my A tier is bigger than the B tier. It’s just a feeling, and it’s my feeling.
Some thoughts on the tiers, which may spur future posts about the specific courses in each tier.
S-Tier, or God Tier — these are the truly best in breed. I currently have 15 courses in there, and if you want to know what I think is the best golf course I’ve ever played it’s Royal County Down, followed almost immediately by Royal Dornoch. Those are basically perfect golf courses, though quite different from each other. I tried to make this a top-10 list, but leaving off any course from Bandon Dunes, or Carnoustie, for example, felt wrong and forced.
A-Tier - The next cut, and there’s so many great courses here. (Currently, oddly, another 15 courses exactly. This was not intentional.) Basically, the difference between this tier and the one above is that every course in the above I would go out of my way to find a way back to play again. Desperately. This tier? Well, that’s sort of also true but … maybe not QUITE as desperately. It’s a feel thing.
B-Tier - These are all outstanding golf courses. (Only 14 of them!) If someone told me a course on this list was their favorite of all-time, I wouldn’t be shocked at all. But unlike the courses above them, they all might have a bad hole or three, or are a secondary course at a resort with some courses that are in above tiers. I can’t quite figure out why I have Tobacco Road in this tier, and it might deserve a promotion after I play it a second time this October.
C- Tier -Again, these are also very, very good courses. I have 19 courses here and I could make the argument for another 5-10 in the tier below to get elevated. These might be courses that are outstanding but I couldn’t remember them as well, or for some reason didn’t quite resonate with me quite as much.
These top four tiers have a grand total of 63 courses, or less than a third of the ones I’ve played. (It’s quite possible I’m not using the tiers accurately. Whatever, they’re my tiers.)
How do you rank golf courses you’ve played? Is there a better way than the above? This year I know I’m going to play at least ten to fifteen new courses and assume the above tiers will get shaken up a bit. Is this just a silly exercise? (It might be!)