Canada's Top 100 Golf Courses

[Jeff_Mingay]

SCOREGolf magazine's biennial list of the Top 100 golf courses in Canada, for 2010, showed up in my mailbox this week.

Thought some of you might be interested:

TOP 10

1. The National Golf Club of Canada
2. Hamilton
3. St. George's
4. Jasper Park
5. Banff Springs
6. Highlands Links
7. Capilano
8. Beacon Hall
9. Muskoka Bay
10. Royal Montreal - Blue

[Jeff_Mingay]

11-20

11. Devil's Paintbrush
12. Crowbush Cove
13. Shaughnessy
14. Westmount
15. Coppinwood
16. Tobiano
17. Devil's Pulpit
18. Oviinbyrd
19. Toronto Golf Club
20. Rocky Crest

[Jeff_Mingay]

21-40

21. Wolf Creek
22. Eagle's Nest
23. Taboo
24. Bigwin Island
25. Blackhawk
26. Royal Colwood
27. Victoria Golf Club
28. Sagebrush
29. Glen Abbey
30. Kananaskis - Mt. Kidd

31. Georgian Bay Club
32. Stewart Creek
33. Mississauga G&CC
34. Redtail
35. Le Maitre
36. Greywolf
37. Dundarave
38. Humber Valley
39. Osprey Valley
40. Weston

[Jeff_Mingay]

41-60

41. Glencoe
42. King Valley
43. Copper Creek
44. Le Geant
45. Dakota Dunes
46. Brantford G&CC
47. Kananaskis - Mt. Lorette
48. Deerhurst Highlands
49. Scarboro
50. Calgary G&CC

51. Rosedale
52. Cobble Beach
53. Fox Harb'r
54. Chateau Whistler
55. Le Diable
56. Nicklaus North
57. Oakdale
58. Priddis Greens - Hawk
59. Predator Ridge - Predator
60. Bear Mountain - Mountain

[Jeff_Mingay]

61-80

61. London Hunt
62. Salmon Arm
63. Bell Bay
64. St. Thomas G&CC
65. Heron Point
66. Essex
67. Angus Glen - South
68. Heritage Point - Desert, Heritage
69. Osprey Valley - Hoot
70. Deer Ridge

71. Magna
72. Mount Bruno
73. The Ridge at Manitou
74. Big Sky
75. Bayview
76. Wooden Sticks
77. Eagle Ranch
78. Marine Drive
79. Summit
80. Sunningdale - Thompson

[Jeff_Mingay]

81-100

81. Maple Downs
82. Black Bear Ridge
83. Eagle Creek
84. Riverside
85. Laval Sur-Le-Lac - Green
86. Beaconsfield
87. Royal Mayfair
88. Lookout Point
89. Thronhill

90. Burlington
91. Cataraqui
92. Northern Bear
93. Radium Springs
94. Mad River
95. Tarandowah
96. King's Forest
97. Westwood Plateau
98. Pine Ridge
99. Wildfire
100. The Club at Bond Head - South

[Gary Slatter]

Why not a Canadian Open at Westmount?

[hhuffines]

Have Jasper and Banff moved up recently or have they been there a while?  Thanks!

[mark chalfant]

Lookout Point(Travis)  and Cataraqui  seem very underrated on this  list

[Jeff_Mingay]

Why not a Canadian Open at Westmount?

Gary,

I agree. Westmount is a tremendous golf course. The club seems to have required space, and nearby population as well.

hhuffines,

According to SCOREGolf , Jasper jumped from #5 to #4 since 2008; Banff from #11 to #5.

[Matt Bosela]

Wow, hell of a jump from Muskoka Bay...pretty lofty company.

Nice to see Burlington squeeze into the top 100 and surprised by King's Forest squeaking in too.  On the negative side, Tobiano ahead of Sagebrush is a crime but I kind of expected it.

I'll need more time to digest this before commenting more.

[Will MacEwen]

Speaking only of the courses I have played, Nicklaus North and Chateau Whistler are ranked too high.  CW has some good holes for a mountain course, but it seems to fall off on the back 9.  The site does not suit golf.

Nicklaus is always in great shape, but it is somewhat monotonous.  There is a dull stretch of par 4s around holes 14-16 that always seem to take me out of my round going from no housing to dense housing.  I prefer the original Whistler course to NN, nicer routing, better variety of holes.

Sagebrush I would say is low, but I have only played two courses ahead of it so I don't exactly have an informed opinion when it comes to that tax bracket.

[Ryan Admussen]

Have Jasper and Banff moved up recently or have they been there a while?  Thanks!

Banff had been out of the top 10 for awhile but not too far out, Jasper has been there for awhile now.

[Ryan Admussen]

I'm curious how close Kawartha was to making it, it's a lot better than quite a few of those courses.

[Stu Grant]

St. Thomas G&CC remains vastly underrated.

[Ronald Montesano]

I am certain that A)  ScoreGolf has some advertisers to satsify; B) They have no appreciation for Travis (Lookout Point and Cherry Hill should both be in the top 65); C)  They get much of their rankings from word of mouth.

[Sean Leary]

Did Toronto GC jump up after the redo?

[Wayne_Kozun]

Did Toronto GC jump up after the redo?

Hard to say that which TGC course was rated as the new course was only open for about 8 weeks by the ratings deadline (it opened in mid-May and ratings deadline was mid-July).  I doubt more than a handful of raters had played the redone course.

[Wayne_Kozun]

I haven't played Muskoka Bay but I find it hard to belive that it belongs in the top 10.  I wonder if it will suffer a similar fate as Taboo which was 11 in 2006, fell to 18 in 08 and now to 23.

IMHO new courses often come on to the list and tend to be overrated for a few years.  This is especially the case for resort or Clublink courses that have large marketing budgets.  Taboo and Lake Jo are two examples.  Will Tobiano fall into this catrgory as well?

Magna is really plummetting - if he didn't just get a transfer of wealth of about about $1 billion from Magna shareholders I would think that Mr. Stronach would be pissed.

Redtail is starting to fall down the list as well since it used to be around 20 most of the time and is now down to 34.

The most under-rated course on the list is Mt Bruno at 72.

A shout-out to my own club, Scarboro, which has cracked the top 50 for the first time!

[Dan Herrmann]

Bell Bay in the 60s?  Wow...  The course did nothing for me from a GCA appreciation point of view.  Nice views, but very pedestrian.

[Tom_Doak]

Essex is ranked # 66 ??

They must not think much of our work there.

[Ronald Montesano]

Jeff,

Does Scoregolf reveal how its rating pool is assembled and what their standards/guidelines are?  How broad a reach do their panelists have?

I personally would love to see two additional statistics next to each rater's name in golf digest, scoregolf, golfweek, et al...the number of courses that she/he considered and the number of courses in the top whatever (100, 50, 25) that she/he had played.

[Sean_A]

I hope this isn't taken the wrong way by Canadians, but does the country warrant a top 100?  Might a top 50 or whatever be more realistic of the "special" courses on offer?  I have long believed that a top ... is a list of what folks should see if inclined and I find it hard to believe that there arw 100 courses in Canada worth the effort to see.  Just so folks don't get uptight, I think the same about GB&I.  With this in mind, can the folks who know suggest a counter list of the special courses?

Ciao

[Dan Herrmann]

Sean,
Canada has a lot of really fine golf courses.  Remember - it's the 2nd largest country in the world!

[Matthew MacKay]

Sean: If one were making a trip to Canada to see only the 'must plays', (ie. Doak 7+) the list would be pretty short, imo. St. George's, Hamilton, Highlands Links, National, Toronto, Capilano, Banff, Jasper.

But, there are plenty of very good courses not far behind that are well worth seeing, and the diversity of geography in Canada creates so many different looks. All 100 courses on that list are not worth seeing, but at least half of them are, and at least a few others that didn't crack the list (ie. Kawartha).