Firstly, let me confess that I was drawn to golf for various reasons, but one of them was the rankings. Firstly in Golf Digest in the 60's and 70's when I found out early that of the few courses I was able to play in those days many were highly ranked--Winchester, Stanford, Myopia, Wee Burn, etc. My math gene kicked in, and I was hooked. My addiction moved onto places like Pebble and Spyglass, SFGC and Harbourtown, but that wasn't enough. In 1978 I bought and read the original World Atlas of Golf and then took a 3 week holiday to Scotland and played (in rough order) Turnberry, Troon, Prestwick, Western Galies, Dornoch, Dornoch Dornoch and Dornoch and then Gleneagles, Carnoustie, St. Andrews, and Muirfield. Possibly others, but my mind was was overloaded all the way from Dornoch to back home in San Francisco.
Over the next 20+ years I got married and had sprogs but still needed the monthly Jones of single figure ranked golf courses and spreaded my testosterone over Olympic and Cypress and the Valley Club and all four couress at Banon and all the 3 courses in the Nowhere place which is Mullen, and NGLA and Merion and Shinny and gulph Mills and the rest of the British rota plus Rye and Westward Ho and Aberdovey and Alwoodley and Hunstanton and Swinley and far too many others to try to google to tweak my curiosity.
Since then I've taken the 10,000 step oath per FitBit, and have confirmed my long term held belief that there are c. 30-35 golf courses in the world that are separated from all the other ones, and I play them when I can, but don't really care to play any more courses except those which others whom I know and respect proclaim to have found a possible gem, but by far most importantly, can bring some interesting people who will play with me and talk silly things in the bar afterwards.
Rich