There is no doubt in my mind that Tobacco Road deserves to be a top-100 - hell, top 50, even - American golf course. Here's why.
First, the context. Tobacco Road is not a private club, and it's not a municipal course, so it does not have (much of) a consistent clientele. Nor is it supposed to. As such, when we think about it, we need to give it (and all other resort-type courses, by the way) more leeway for pushing the envelope than the exclusive private clubs that historically earn the bulk of the analysis on this site. To knock the course down a peg for not being one you would want to play every day is to hold the course to the wrong standard. I wouldn't want to play TR everyday, either, but what Mike Strantz did and was allowed to do makes it so fascinating that the normal concern of what playing it does to your golf ball takes a backseat to the sheer visual experience of it. If you can't take a four or five hour vacation from the way you've thought about the more "normal" golf courses you've played in order to greet TR on its own terms, then you're missing something important, IMO.
Second, the location. TR was built in one of the top - and therefore most competitive - resort golf markets in the country, and on the physical fringe of said market, no less. Going for broke and stepping close to the line between novelty and legitimate experience became the most sensible course of action from a business perspective.
Third, the (almost complete lack of) parameters. In an industry where architects, if being honest, would mostly complain about how a course developer handcuffed them on the way to yet another forgettable effort, TR seems to be a manifestation of the dream scenario: where an architect gets to build exactly what he wants. (Of course, this might terrify some architects because if they end up falling short, they can't lean on an over-involved developer as a crutch.) It's a pure exercise of vision that happens almost never. Strantz took his blank canvas and didn't do a forgettable but technically proficient landscape or portrait - he painted Dali's The Persistence of Memory for a world of people who think Mona Lisa is the greatest piece of art ever. For giving his bosses and golfers something so wild and different - yet, as Ran's excellent review stressed, eminently playable and fun - the course deserves to be rewarded much more highly than it is.
I saw the movie "The Lobster" the other night, and can only imagine how many people saw it, may have been expecting an off-beat love story, and left the theater thinking it was the worst thing they'd ever seen. They were mistaken, of course, because their concept of "film" or "story" is excessively narrow, and their default reaction to weirdness is to dismiss it, rather than respect the difference of perspective, confidence and creativity level that produced it. Golf courses are of course subject to a somewhat narrower set of aesthetic criteria than films, but Tobacco Road falls within those boundaries. The fact that it may be closer to those boundaries than any other golf course in the world is why it is so consistently misunderstood and underrated.