So...seeing all these posts, I decided to find out "which course won"...based on certain groundrules. First, note that there have been a total of 118 posts to date (including Tom's initial question opening the thread). Some 40 of these did not include a "qualified vote" as per the following (my rules here...had to draw some up or this tabulation would have become impossible)...some inputs were eliminated if:
1. only non-USA courses were named
2. more than 5 courses were listed by a voter (without citing 5 or less as their favorites)
3. post did not name any courses but just made the snarky comments we all do on GCA
Also, if you named 2, 3, 4 , or 5 USA courses, I gave each 0.50, 0.33, 0.25, or 0.20 votes respectively...otherwise we would have someone voting more than once and we all know that NEVER happens in any fair election
. Lastly, if you voted for USA courses on more than one post, I merged these multiple posts and then applied the above rules (so if you voted for 4 courses on one post and 3 other courses on another...all you votes got canned since that put you at a total of 7 courses...over my limit of 5.
I should also confess that I chose not to differentiate courses that are Top 100 vs others...so all USA courses were eligible.
The results follow...understand that if a course was named 3 times, twice as the only course named on ballot and once as one of four courses on a ballot...that course would total 2.25 points
with a total of 72 GCA'ers voting (as of 11:45pm Eastern on Friday night), the top 10 were:
10. Ballyneal 1.75 points
9. Valley Club of Montecito 1.87 points
8. Merion-East 2.00
7. Shoreacres 2.12
6. Mid Pines 2.15
5. Old Town 2.23 Thereby winning the NC Championship in an extremely tight race
4. Torrey Pines-South 2.67 Shocking the analysts who had made early predictions
3. Somerset Hills 2.92 Making some wonder if these results will cause the USGA two revisit their
decision to move certain operations to Pinehurst
2. NGLA 3.93
and the runaway winner is:
1. Cypress Point Club 7.08
Cypress was named on 17 ballots
(including 3 stand alone votes worth of course 3 points between them) compared to NGLA's being named on 9 ballots (including 2 stand alone votes) , and Old Town in third place being named on 6.Would like to do the same on my similar thread..."one last round in your life...where to play it" but you can't imagine how much time it takes!!BTW...a total of 86 USA course received votes under the above rules...and this excludes 20 overseas courses mentioned (Australia-3; Canada-3, England-4, France-1, Ireland-3, NZ-1, Scotland-5). Most mentioned overseas courses were Royal Melbourne and TOC with 4 and Royal Dornoch w 2. The other 17 o/s courses were all mentioned 1x.