G.C.A. UNOFFICIAL Top 100 Released

[Ian_L]

Hi All,

After a very long delay, the Unofficial GCA Top 100 is finally out!  I would like to say a quick thank you to:

-Ran for letting me conduct this experiment (I would like to stress again that this is not sponsored by GCA nor is it an official GCA project)
-Tom Doak for coming up with a comprehensive list of courses
-Jonathan Cummings for his amazing statistics work
-And to everyone who nominated courses, voted on them, and gave suggestions for the format of the experiment.

A quick review of the process:
We began with a list of nearly 400 courses for Top 100 consideration.  From there, GCA members nominated courses to be added to the ballot (two votes were required for a course to make the ballot). From there we arrived at a list of 412 courses that could be considered for the top 100 in the world.  Members then voted on each course they had played using the Doak Scale.

-There were 177 valid voters
-There were 8403 valid votes
-Raters had played an average of 47 courses on the list
-Each course was rated on average 20 times
-The average rating was 6.9

The lists:

Two Top 100 lists have been created, so you may choose the one that suits your opinion.  The first contains "raw" rankings.  Courses are ranked simply by the average vote.  However, only courses with 10 or more votes are included.

Raw rankings (courses with 10 or more votes included):



The second list was adjusted by Jonathan to give experienced voters more weight, guard against raters who consistently rated too low or too high, and discard outliers (Jonathan can explain this all much better than I can). Here is Jonathan's summary of the process:

"Matrix ranked by avg (highest-to-lowest)               
Courses with less than 10 votes deleted               
Only rater votes within +/-2SD of the overall course average included               
Bias Adjustments: Delete Raters with less than 30 votes and |SD|>1; Adjust Raters with more than 30 votes and |SD|>1 by rater/overall average differences               
Courses with less than 10 votes again deleted"

Adjusted rankings:


Feel free to discuss which method you prefer, as well as any comments you have on the lists.  Thanks again for your participation.

**EDIT**

You can download a spreadsheet with all the basic stats here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ojoy0mn1yzj

Here is a snapshot of the full raw rankings (all eligible courses):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/ian8389/GCA/Raw_All.jpg

And the full adjusted rankings:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/ian8389/GCA/Raw_All.jpg

Note: see important message on reply #86 (page 3) regarding these "full" rankings.

[Brian Phillips]

Ian,

Superb job, well done.  I would be curious to see the demographics of the raters if that is at all possible?  I cannot remember if that question was asked.

[Ian_L]

Sorry Brian, what exactly do you mean by the "demographics of the raters"?

[Sean_A]

Ian

Thanks for all the hard work.  The two lists don't look that different!

A few things that stood out to me were

1. The number and courses which received a 10.  This really highlights a wild disparity of what the very best handful of courses in the world are and/or a lack of experience. 

2. On the flip side, some of the lowest scores for big name courses is incredible.  Chicago, Pinehurst, Woodhall, Casa de Campo, Sunny New and Cruden Bay 4s?  Sounds like big time axes to grind!

3.  I am surprised by how highly rated quite new courses are such as Rock Creek just because of the what must be a sheer lack of exposure. 

4.  It is quite interesting to see St Georges Hill rated as second best inland course in GB&I.  I was also surprised to see Ganton rated relatively low, but still within half a point of SGH. 

5. It is amazing to see Woking make both lists.  I thought I might see it make the general list, but not the "expert" (for lack of a better term). 

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF ALL IS OAKLAND HILLS NOT BEING INCLUDED ON THE EXPERTS LIST and 85 on the punters list!  I wonder how the heck it gets rated so highly in the publications?

Is there any chance we are gonna get to see the 2nd 100?  In many ways, this can be the more interesting list.

Ciao

[Brian Phillips]

Ian,

Sorry, may have used the wrong word.  Where each person is from. I am voting from Norway.

[Jim Nugent]

I looked up Golf Magazine's world's best list.  If I counted right, 18 of the top 20 courses in the GCA list are also top 20 GM courses.  (Ballyneal and Kingston Heath are the two exceptions.)   While the order differs somewhat, our top 20 is nearly identical with GM's. 

[Scott Warren]

St Enodoc top 50 in both lists? Wow.

[Sean_A]

St Enodoc top 50 in both lists? Wow.

Scott

Its probably too high a rating.  However, instead of questioning it you need to go back St Enodoc.  I wasn't impressed by much of Yeamans Hall, but seeing it in the top 100 convinces me I missed something and I most certainly want to go back.

Ciao

[Eric Smith]

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF ALL IS OAKLAND HILLS NOT BEING INCLUDED ON THE EXPERTS LIST and 85 on the punters list!  I wonder how the heck it gets rated so highly in the publications?

Sean,

It's in there on both lists.  Oh wait, that's HOLSTON Hills!  


Good work Ian and all!

[Mark Pearce]

Ian

Thanks for all the hard work.  The two lists don't look that different!

A few things that stood out to me were

1. The number and courses which received a 10.  This really highlights a wild disparity of what the very best handful of courses in the world are and/or a lack of experience. 

Equally, I'm surprised at some of the courses that got a 10.  I'm not as big a fan of North Berwick as most on here but I'm astonished anyone could give it a 10.  Can anyone say, hand on heart, that NB doesn't have a few holes which are rather ho-hum?

2. On the flip side, some of the lowest scores for big name courses is incredible.  Chicago, Pinehurst, Woodhall, Casa de Campo, Sunny New and Cruden Bay 4s?  Sounds like big time axes to grind!

Bizzarre.

3.  I am surprised by how highly rated quite new courses are such as Rock Creek just because of the what must be a sheer lack of exposure. 

4.  It is quite interesting to see St Georges Hill rated as second best inland course in GB&I.  I was also surprised to see Ganton rated relatively low, but still within half a point of SGH. 

I'm astonished to see Ganton so far down the list in comparison to places like SGH. 

5. It is amazing to see Woking make both lists.  I thought I might see it make the general list, but not the "expert" (for lack of a better term). 

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF ALL IS OAKLAND HILLS NOT BEING INCLUDED ON THE EXPERTS LIST and 85 on the punters list!  I wonder how the heck it gets rated so highly in the publications?

Is there any chance we are gonna get to see the 2nd 100?  In many ways, this can be the more interesting list.

Ciao

[Bart Bradley]

Ian:

I'll second the request to see the whole list...Is that possible?

Bart

[JC Jones]

Interestingly, a course that is beloved by many but left off of most rankings lists (and even Tom Doak said it wasn't top 50 in the United States), Kingsley Club, is hovering around 50 (in the world!!) on both lists.

[Jim Colton]

Ian,

nice work. I'd love to get my hands on the data and run it through the statistical methodology used for the Golf Blog 100, just for comparison purposes.

Jim

[Peter Pratt]

No Fazio, no Oak Hill, no Medinah, no Baltusrol, no Congressional. Not surprising. No Harbour Town, Loch Lomond, Inverness, Somerset Hills?

Ian, are there any highly rated courses that didn't get the minimum 10 votes?

[Chris Buie]

I just breezed through the list because I'm getting ready to go to work but I don't think I saw Pine Needles on the list.  I would be very suprised if this site ranked Sawgrass above PN.  IMHO PN without a doubt deserves to be on the list.

[Mark Pritchett]

Ian,

Thanks for all the effort you and the others put into this project.

Any chance we could see a US Top 100 list?

Mark

[Mac Plumart]

You know what might be pretty neat?

Take a person or a group of people who rate a course low and a group who rate it high and have them make their case.  Debate can ensue and I'll bet some pretty interesting things could be learned.

Tom Macwood challenged me on Bethpage this way and I learned a lot more about it. 

One of the cool things about this site and its venue is that we can have experts who can make a viable top 100 list...but we also have the ability to ask questions, dig deeper, and learn about it and there reasoning and thought process.  This is what seperates this venue and this list from the Golfweek, Digest, and Mag list.

Just a thought.

[Carl Nichols]

Mac:
I'll second the idea so long as it's voluntary; I suspect many people voted on the assumption that they would be doing so anonymously.  It would be great to hear from those who gave out 4's to some of these courses! 

[TEPaul]

I must say that being a longtime and pretty vocal critic of the whole idea of this kind of numerical ranking, this list feels very good to me for some odd and ineffable reason.  

[Ian Andrew]

Sean,

More people on here have seen Rock Creek than you think.

There are a number of people here regularly - but only post on a rare occasion - who played in the Ren. Cup.
They would have participated since they are very well travelled.

[Brian Phillips]

Sean,

More people on here have seen Rock Creek than you think.

There are a number of people here regularly - but only post on a rare occasion - who played in the Ren. Cup.
They would have participated since they are very well travelled.

Ian,

That's it? That's all you are going to say?? The greatest ranking of all time comes out and that is ALL you have to say....?  By the way, thanks for saying goodbye to me and Robin in Aussie...ahem ahem..

[Mike Nuzzo]

I think the min is pretty wild

4s & 5s for the best courses in the world
and who gave a 7 to Pine Valley....

[Bill_McBride]

"S.D." = Statistical deviation?  Please elaborate.

[Jud_T]

Ian,

Great Job! I'm only sorry I didn't notice the balloting until the day after it closed! Small request-can you possibly post it in a more printable format?

[Mike Demetriou]

A very exciting thread indeed. Ian, thank you for the hard work. Is there any chance you could post both of the lists as text?