Putting aside trying to sell more magazines or ads, going through the largely irrelevant exercise every couple years to determine - for instance - whether PV has been surpassed by Augusta or Shinnecock Hills, the real usefulness of the various panels is to identify terrific courses you probably never heard of.
It can also save you from wasting your time and quatloos on shitty, overpriced, ham-handed CCOF's. Barny is right in the sense that most of the raters I personally know play out of solid clubs - or semi-private tracks with excellent architecture.
And it certainly is not the Golden Ticket it once was . . . . NGLA does not need or want a conga-line of newly minted conde nast newbies, hyperventilating at the statue of C.B. in the library, snorting up the crab and macaroni lunch.
I have spent more time the last five years enduring scalpels and epidural catheters being shoved in my spine than swinging a golf club, but always focused more on Best in State, because the real fun is uncovering a hidden gem of real merit. It took me a long time to finally realize the peeps in our Treehouse - really and truly - are an intellectual epicenter of golf design.
99.9% of the Coors Light punters will NEVER, EVER play Oakmont or Mid Ocean - or could even find Fishers Island on a map. Nearly all the jockeying for position in the top 50 is really a fairly capricious mathematical exercise in splitting hairs. Fine for a lusty, martini fueled grillroom throw-down, but ultimately no more interesting than the Ginger vs. Mary Ann discussion.
But if you find yourself in Boulder City, NV and don't feel like having your asshole rerouted to the tune of $449.00 to play a bad Rees Jones course with a fancy waterfall, you can drive 5 more minutes and play a bulletproof track - dripping in strategic content - for $80 at Boulder Creek GC. It is right there on the list.
To me, that is what has become the purpose of the panel, to get a reasonably well researched straw poll - so the readership does not have to wade through a bunch of bullshit ads and pictures, only to arrive and be subjected to another Algie Pulley or Casey O'Callaghan train wreck.
I do think our panel has become somewhat diluted over the decades - especially with newbies lacking the experience to draw a firm line between marginal, okay, good and great - but like our education system, you just have to take into account grade inflation.
And be careful about calling us "dolts" big boy, I'll match cards with anybody (except Tom D.) on architecture or the history of different classical strategic arrangements.
And dear friend Barny, you are right, everybody plays a role. Yours is resident Cane Toad, spitting pithy poison on the hoi polloi, even though - as a practical matter (like me) - you are generally one phone call away from access to nearly every top golf course in America, whether on a panel or not.