Has there ever been a concerted effort to pull together an "official" GCA ratings systm and resulting top 100 list?
There is constant complaining about Golf Digest and Golf Mag ratings that it could be a good opportunity to create official ratings categories and then the list based upon those. That way we'd have rankings that reflect opinions of those here on the board and the ability to compare courses with a consistent system. Obviously it's still going to have a lot of personal opinion attached but if values were well established there could be a bit more consistency.
As for the system I envision 10 categories with 0-10 ratings so a course can be evaluated out of 100. Enough that it's nearly impossible to get a perfect score but not so much to be overly cumbersome. Here are my thoughts for categories:
Strategic Nature - does the course support multiple options or is it hit don the middle and go pin seeking?
Routing - is it a solid And connected or disjointed - should be flexible enough to allow for interesting cartball layouts
Tee Shots - is there interest off the tee - left ambiguous enough for interpretation of difficulty
Approach Play - are the approaches interesting and varied
Green Complexes - interest and varied and cohesion with entire hole
Playability - what are recovery options, playable by all handicaps however NOT difficulty
Variety - is there variety in the holes and teeing grounds
Maintenance Meld- how well does the maintenance match with the intent of the design
Fun Factor - how fun was the course... I personally think this is really important
Overall Experience - ambiance, setting, history, caddies, service, etc. all factor in for the overall experience. Hopefully doesn't leave out the difference for a seaside course but also doesn't over rate it because of that.
I think these 10 would provide a pretty accurate description of a course by a reviewer. It also seems like it would prevent any of the categories from having too much value. If everyone thinks it could be a worthwhile exercise and can agree on categories I'd be willing to pull together a google document spreadsheet that everyone could participate in.