The Top 100 Golf Courses
As determined by ... who? And how?
With some regularity, major golf publications will put out lists ranking the “best” golf courses in various criteria - just simply the best overall, the best publicly accessible courses, best in America vs a different area in the world, etc.
Recently, Golf Magazine published its new list of the Top 100 golf courses in the world, updating their list from two years ago.
If you’re asking, I’ve been lucky enough to have played 19 of these, which is actually more than I’d have guessed given how private some of these are. Those are:
St. Andrews (Old), Royal County Down, Royal Dornoch, Pebble Beach, Royal Portrush, Trump Turnberry, Pinehurst (2), Ballybunion, Pacific Dunes, Lahinch, Carnoustie, St. Patrick’s Links, Portmarnock, Royal Troon, Kingsbarns, Castle Stuart, Bandon Trails, Whistling Straits, Bandon Dunes.
When I got back from Ireland and tried to rank all the courses I played (some of which are above), I realized how hard it is to rank courses like this and this article and the source material go into how THIS list is done, which is a bit different than some others.
For the newly released 2023-24 World list, each panelist was provided a ballot that consisted of 504 courses globally. He or she was given seven months to complete it. Beside the list of courses were 11 “buckets,” or groupings. If our panelists considered a course to be among the top three in the world, they ticked that first column. If they believed the course to be among Nos. 4-10 in the world, they checked the next column, followed by 11-25, 26-50, and so on out to 250+ and even a column for remove.
Points were assigned to each bucket; to arrive at an average score for each course, we divide its aggregate score by the number of votes. From those point tallies, the courses are then ranked accordingly. It is an intentionally simple and straightforward process.
I think it’s probably as good a way to do this as is possible, but … there’s still gonna be some obvious weirdness to this setup, which is based on where these panelists (there’s over 100 of them) have had a chance to play, and which courses care about providing that access, etc.
I’m not here to complain that places like Cypress Point, Hirono, Pine Valley and other spots I am unlikely to ever see except from a distance, have made the list. They likely are terrific golf courses.
I do wonder, however, about some of the new entrants - and what’s more, what it says about this process.
Five courses made the list for the first time. Knowing that St. Patricks Links, was on it, I assumed it was one of those new entrants - but it’s not. It is ranked 49th, up six spots from the 55th it was in 2021. Which was less than a year after it opened. That’s sort of similar to a new entry this year, The Lido which enters at 68. That’s either slightly more or less impressive than #76, which is Point Hardy at Cabot St. Lucia which … actually isn’t open at all yet, just for preview play.
And that speaks to the icky factor here. I’m QUITE sure Point Hardy is amazing - it’s a Mike Keiser property and it’s designed by Coore & Crenshaw. It’s going to absolutely SLAP. But, the only folks who know are insiders - and there’s simply no way that the glee of knowing you’ve played somewhere almost no one else has been able to doesn’t push it up the rankings just a little bit when you’re filling out your sheet.
Of the new entrants, The Lido, Point Hardy, Te Arai (South) were opened in 2022 or later. Lofoten Links and Royal Cinque Ports are much older, but I think it’s kind of crazy for a golf course to enter such lofty territory when it’s so nascent. St. Patricks Links is a case in point - it’s clearly a masterpiece, but it’s not grown in and suffered earlier in 2023 from a heat wave that has caused some of the fairways to not be in ideal condition. This is the kind of thing that over time won’t matter for an elite course, but in the first few years sort of does? (I recognize that The Lido in particular is a special case as it is a replica of a course many considered to be one of the greatest ever, but again … this version of it just opened.)
I realize to some degree this is just spitting into the wind, and I also recognize if I was lucky enough to be one of the 115 people who get to vote in this, I’d probably think it was just fine.
I personally keep a list of the Top 100 Courses You Can Play, something Golf.com puts out every few years as those are by definition more accessible. It’s nice to keep track of them for when I’m planning trips, etc.
Lists are useful, but I also don’t totally buy into the specific rankings. I think tiers make a bit more sense, but that’s far less fun!
Well and of course how about the PR people pitching for their courses to be on this list? Sure there is criteria, and yes there is a group that determines who is in. But since this isn't a regulated process and its primary objective is to drive readers, and then players -- we can safely assume a few courses are on here because of influence, paid or otherwise.