Well, I've been traveling all day today, and just got to an airport lounge to see all the fur fly.
First off, a lot of people here owe Jim Colton an apology. All he did was offer to volunteer his own valuable time to input the data from all you experts, and he's gotten mostly grief for taking the trouble. For my part, Jim -- I'm sorry I got you into it.
I have not seen the ballots and don't have any desire to see any of them that the posters did not choose to make public.
I DID ask Jim to cut off the list at 20 or 25 courses, max, because the point of the original thread was a top ten, and because the courses which finished #30 or #40 might be embarrassed as such. Somewhere I still have a sweater from Tumble Creek embroidered to honor their #7 Best New finish in the GOLF DIGEST poll years ago
and I wear it with pride because that's how much these rankings really mean.
I don't even understand precisely how Jim added up the data, but I know if you crunch the numbers different ways the same courses still wind up around the top. As Jim says, a few of the courses which have only a few votes are more suspect than the rest, but part of the fun here is to identify courses which MIGHT be worthy of inclusion, instead of just paying attention to the same courses everyone has already seen.
Personally, for me there were several surprises down the list a ways, but when you see them put in order, it does shine a light on the depth of quality courses that have been built in the past 15 years. Melvyn doesn't like it being called a Golden Age, but it has certainly been a bit of a rebirth of quality design, or something like that.
I'm also surprised [and pleased] to see how close Pacific Dunes and Barnbougle finished.