Golf Digest's 2016 Rankings of the Top 100 Courses in the World

[Benjamin Litman]

I'm not one for rankings (especially the contrived best/favorite divide), but I know many on here are. So as a public service, here are the latest Golf Digest rankings of the top 100 golf courses in the world (the rankings are biennial, with the previous ones released in 2014): http://www.golfdigest.com/story/worlds-100-greatest-golf-courses-2016-ranking
 
And here is Ron Whitten's accompanying article: http://www.golfdigest.com/story/royal-county-down-tops-our-world-100
 
A few observations: The new No. 1 course, Royal County Down, hosted a high-profile professional event, the Irish Open, last year. Is the correlation between exposure and ranking as direct as that example would seem to suggest? Other evidence that it is comes in the sky-high debuts for mega-hyped seaside darlings Cabot Cliffs (No. 19) and Cape Wickham (No. 24). Further evidence that it is comes in the falls of yesteryear's darlings Barnbougle Dunes (No. 33, down from No. 11) and Lost Farm (No. 40, down from No. 23), Pacific Dunes (No. 39, down from No. 21) and Bandon Dunes (No. 90, down from No. 62), and even Friar's Head (No. 53, down from No. 37). Cabot Links bears the brunt of its baby sister’s rise, falling from No. 42 all the way to No. 93. And a similar story plays out in Scotland, where both Kingsbarns (No. 69, down from No. 50) and Castle Stuart (unranked, down from No. 87)--both no longer all the rage--lose ample ground to the courses that are. In general, the jumps up and dives down for previously ranked courses are substantial (Portmarnock made the biggest jump, up from No. 83 to No. 25, while San Francisco Golf Club fell the furthest, down from No. 29 to No. 81), and many courses make the list for the first time.
 
Much more to observe, but that's what the Discussion Group is for. Have at it.
 
 
 
 

[Jim Franklin]

SFGC falling that much is crazy. I do know a GD guy that said he did not care for it because there were some rough patches on the fairways. He also commented at how much better Kinloch was than SFGC.

[jeffwarne]

An amazing amount of new courses on the list and some amazing rises and falls.
Different panelists?
Did somebody get out more?
Looks like a High School Homecoming queen contest

[Ruediger Meyer]

Not only the amount of new courses is strange. The tumble some of the courses take seem fishy as well. Barnbougle Dunes losing 22 places, Cabot Links going down 51, Bandon Dunes down 28, San Francisco G.C. down 62(!). It feels like they wanted to shake up the rankings just to generate headlines

[Kalen Braley]

Not only the amount of new courses is strange. The tumble some of the courses take seem fishy as well. Barnbougle Dunes losing 22 places, Cabot Links going down 51, Bandon Dunes down 28, San Francisco G.C. down 62(!). It feels like they wanted to shake up the rankings just to generate headlines

On one level, it may be at least explained.

BD and LF - Very remote,
Cabot Links - Pretty remote
Bandon Dunes - Remote
SFGC - very exclusive.

Perhaps they just didn't get the data points and others blew by them.

[John Kirk]

The list that broke the Internet.

Rioting in the streets.

Alotians permanently assume their spot among the world's elite.

[Philip Hensley]

An amazing amount of new courses on the list and some amazing rises and falls.
Different panelists?
Did somebody get out more?
Looks like a High School Homecoming queen contest

I quickly browsed this list and that was the first thing that stood out for me. Dramatic drops in rankings for quite a few courses.

[Thomas Dai]

Played the new number one course a couple of times this year and played pretty well too. Also played the clubs other course. The other course might be more fun......light blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance!
Atb

[Garland Bayley]

Does churning the list provide the impetus for more ad dollars?

[Tom_Doak]

The only way you get changes that big in the rankings is if you change the methodology somehow.


It's hard to tell if that's the case because I am not sure that GOLF DIGEST even publishes an explanation of how they arrive at their rankings.


In the past, it has seemed that the international courses were ranked consistently with their sister publications' rankings in other parts of the world, and then somehow mixed in with DIGEST's own U.S. top 100.  But they've also made some noise about having their U.S. panelists rate other courses they've seen around the world, and the more weight they give to those votes, the more things will change.  [However, that shouldn't have any effect on how the American courses in the list rank, compared with one another.]


In the end, any list of the top 100 courses in the world is a hair-splitting exercise ... any position on the list is terrific.  If they've managed to produce such a list without any courses that look like they've bought their way on, so much the better.  Are there any Trump courses in there?


P.S.  I was at S.F.G.C. a month ago.  It sure didn't look like it had fallen far.  They did have a rough year for fairway turf, but it's hard to believe the rankings are tied to that in any significant way.

[Peter Pallotta]

A new day for me. For the first time ever, the gca.com thread ABOUT the Top 100 List is not only of MORE interest to me than the list itself, but is in fact the ONLY source of interest. In other words, I haven't yet -- and have no desire to ever -- click on the link and look at the actual list; this thread is enough, starting with Benjamin's excellent OP.
Peter

[Howard Riefs]

Not only the amount of new courses is strange. The tumble some of the courses take seem fishy as well. Barnbougle Dunes losing 22 places, Cabot Links going down 51, Bandon Dunes down 28, San Francisco G.C. down 62(!). It feels like they wanted to shake up the rankings just to generate headlines

Conversely... lots of movers in the opposite direction as well (beyond the new entries): 


25. Portmarnock G.C.   +58
38. Oakland Hills C.C. (South)   + 29
42. The Country Club (Clyde/Squirrel)   +29
56. Casa de Campo (Teeth of the Dog)   +29
72. The Honors Course   +23
36. Oak Hill C.C. (East)    +22
45. Royal St. George's G.C.    +21
48. Wade Hampton G.C.   +21

[Tom_Doak]

Peter:


Your comment actually caused me to look at the list.  And holy crap, there are some ridiculous courses down near the bottom of the so-called top 100, that wouldn't have made the top 250 on most other lists.  Now I would REALLY like to know what their methodology is.


P.S.  And this is coming from the guy who built their highest-ranked modern course:  they somehow put Cape Kidnappers one spot ahead of Sand Hills.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Just a guess but looking at the significant movements in ordinal rankings of a fair number of courses makes me suspect the scoring is very tight and that small changes in score can produce big movements in ranking. For example, Portmarnock jumped 58 spots but might have picked up, say, just a couple-tenths of a point.

Buttressing this argument: the rankings don't disclose scores, suggesting the editors don't want you to see how small the differences are (as is the case with the GD USA list).

If that's the case then these movements mean little; a meaningful proportion of a course's change in score may be down to random variance. Maybe more / fewer rankers saw it, maybe the course hosted a special event, etc etc. That fewer rankers see the international courses also suggests small sample size can account for the variance, depending on how the scores are calculated and weighted.

[Peter Kelly]

Ballybunion was #27 in 2013-4; not ranked in 2016. That was so surprising that I thought I'd missed it and went back over the linked list where I noticed it skips from #88 to #90....so maybe Ballybunion is hiding there. Even if it is, that's quite a plunge for a perennial top 30-level course and difficult to understand.

[Kalen Braley]

Mark and Tom hit the nail on the head. This list is:

More akin to the "64 player field World Match play" where nearly anyone can beat anyone else on a given day....

And less..."68 team NCAA BB tournament", where the vast majority of teams have no shot in hell at winning the whole enchilada.

[Anton]

Golf Digest lost their credibility years ago and I put zero value in their rankings.  As someone who played golf with a few of their panelists over the years, I can assure you that there was a giant shift in the way they handle and 'weigh' their panelists evaluations.  It's all about selling rags and ad space anymore.  Sad but true.   

[Mark Chaplin]

Gave up reading it when I saw New South Wales at 30.

[Brandon Urban]

If there are 58 courses better than Prairie Dunes, I know zero about golf.

[Keith OHalloran]

If there are 58 courses better than Prairie Dunes, I know zero about golf.

I didn't need to see rankings to know that! 

[David Jones]

A slightly odd list.

I do a 'poll of polls' of 5 lists - Golf Club Architecture (2013), Golf Digest (now 2016), Golf.com (2015), Planet Golf (2014) and Top100courses.com (2015 list).  My rule is that a course has to appear at least twice to be included.  I then average the ranking but if a course doesn't appear in one of the other lists it gets an arbitrary '101' for that list when averages.  It is of course nonsense, but it passes the time.

Excluding Cabot Cliffs and Cape Whickham as they are 'too new to rate' for the other list the biggest outliers are as follows -

Worse rated by Golf Digest-

Ballybunion  - Not Ranked by Golf Digest (14 average by others)
San Francisco - Ranked 81 by Golf Digest, (34 average by others)
Royal Aberdeen - Not ranked by Golf Digest, (average 58 by others)
Bethpage Black - Not ranked by Golf Digest, (average 61 by others)
Ballyneal - Not ranked by Golf Digest, (62 average by others)
Pinehurst 2 - Ranked 63 by Golf Digest, (24 by others)
TPC Sawgrass - Not ranked by Golf Digest, (63 by others) 

Better rated by Golf Digest -

Fancourt Links - Ranked 43 by Golf Digest (not ranked in any other list)
Yas Links - Ranked 46 by Golf Digest (not ranked in any other list)
Sentosa - Ranked 58 by Golf Digest (not ranked in any other list)
Royal Melbourne (East) -Ranked 55 by Golf Digest, average 100 by others)
The Alotian Club - Ranked 62 by Golf Digest (not ranked in any other list)
Ellerston - Ranked 29 by Golf Digest (average 88 in others)
National GC of Canada - Ranked 66 by Golf Digest (not ranked in any other list)

[Kalen Braley]

If there are 58 courses better than Prairie Dunes, I know zero about golf.

I didn't need to see rankings to know that! 

So there are approx. 15,500 golf courses in the U.S. ...and based on some simple math, I guess having your course rated in the 99.63 percentile just isn't high enough.

The tragedy of it all!     

Edit:

My bad, this is a entire World list.  So with approx. 34,000 courses world wide, 99.83 percentile is an even bigger travesty.....

[David_Elvins]

No one has mentioned the most bizarre inclusion.

The Old course at The National (Australia) at 87.

I had no idea it was even in contention for world top 100. 

[Brian Freeman]

Ballybunion was #27 in 2013-4; not ranked in 2016. That was so surprising that I thought I'd missed it and went back over the linked list where I noticed it skips from #88 to #90....so maybe Ballybunion is hiding there. Even if it is, that's quite a plunge for a perennial top 30-level course and difficult to understand.

I noticed that as well and came on here just to see if anyone else had... Seems like an obvious oversight.

[Sean Walsh]

David,

Saw that re National Old as well. Some nice holes and views sure but it's not even the best course on the property.

Where would it be 10-20 range in Victoria?