As promised, I looked up the numbers from the GOLF DIGEST Best New voting in 1999, and with Mike Erdmann's spreadsheet help, we've plugged them into the ranking of America's 100 Greatest Courses WITHOUT THE TRADITION FACTOR.
Now these are not the actual 2003 GOLF DIGEST results ... certainly more panelists have voted on these courses since the year they opened, conditioning has changed, and so forth. But it will shed some insight into what would happen if the Tradition rankings were dropped.
Within the top 50 (ranked without tradition) there are only two changes:
Sand Ridge with 59.46 points would be at #14 (!) (Some voters who have seen it since 1999 obviously didn't think as highly of it, or it would have finished ahead of Victoria National and well within the top 100 even with Tradition.)
Lost Dunes is at #36 with 56.58 points, putting it right between Los Angeles CC and The Ocean Course.
But look at the second fifty just adding in this one year of Best New voting:
51 The Estancia Club 55.88
52 Scioto 55.83
53 Ocean Forest GC 55.71
54 Riviera CC 55.58
55 The Golf Club 55.56
56 Blackwolf Run (River) 55.53
57 Spyglass Hill G Cse 55.39
58 Castle Pines GC 55.38
59 Crooked Stick GC 55.24
60 Valhalla GC 55.21
61 Shoal Creek 55.15
62 Black Diamond Ranch GC (Quarry) 55.00
63 Sycamore Hills GC 54.98
64 Long Cove Club 54.90
*65 Cape Cod National 54.88 ***
66 Peachtree GC 54.80
67 Colonial CC 54.74
68 Camargo Club 54.74
69 Interlachen CC 54.72
70 TPC at Sawgrass (Stadium) 54.60
71 Cog Hill G&CC (#4) 54.50
72 Plainfield CC 54.48
73 Grandfather G. & CC 54.46
74 Laurel Valley GC 54.46
75 The Homestead (Cascades) 54.42
76 Kittansett Club 54.41
*77 Canebrake GC, Hattiesburg, Miss. 54.39 ***
78 Maidstone Club 54.31
79 Hazeltine National GC 54.23
80 Wannamoisett CC 54.22
81 Bellerive CC 54.16
82 Aronimink GC 54.12
83 Jupiter Hills 54.04
*84 Bay Harbor, Michigan 53.95 (no points for walking either)
85 Shoreacres 53.86
86 Eugene CC 53.84
*87 The Trophy Club, Indiana 53.81 ***
88 Mauna Kea G Cse 53.74
89 Canterbury 53.70
90 Harbour Town 53.54
91 Baltimore CC (East) 53.52
92 Greenville CC (Chanticleer) 53.52
93 East Lake 53.34
94 Pine Tree GC 53.32
95 Stanwich 53.32
*96 Cuscowilla 53.32 ***
97 Congressional 53.30
*98 El Diablo, Florida 53.30
99 Pasatiempo 53.25 ***
100 The Dunes G. & Beach C. 53.12
Atlanta CC 53.08
Desert Forest GC 53.02
Sahalee CC (South/North) 53.01
Old Warson CC 52.94
Point O'Woods G & CC 52.85
Salem CC 52.69
NCR CC (South) 52.59
The executive summary: eight of the Best New Courses from 1999 would elbow out eight of the current America's 100 Greatest ... no, actually seven courses from 1999 which aren't on today's list, PLUS Bandon Dunes, Whistling Straits, Victoria National, and Rich Harvest Links which made the 100 Greatest. Sadly, based on the GOLF DIGEST numbers from 1999, Wild Horse finished well out of contention at 51.01.
If you add in the last twenty years of new courses, a lot of them will be elbowing each other out of the list ... Cuscowilla and El Diablo certainly wouldn't stay with those numbers ... but it's likely there could be five more courses within the top 50 that aren't in their top 100 now, and I suspect that as many as the last thirty listed above would fall.
Which is why GOLF DIGEST is likely to hold onto some sort of Tradition factor in their rankings for a few more years.