I thought the T&L article was well reasoned and well written. Unlike most of these travel book articles, I actually learnt a couple of things reading this list.... even though Tom's reasoning about leaving out the Open rota courses might have made more sense if:
a) He mentioned it in the article.
b) He left out the course that has hosted the most Open Championships. (Although I guess that would be like asking Lou Duran or the like to discuss the modern conservative movement without mentioning Barry Goldwater.)
I did find Tom's comparison of Pebble Beach and NSW as cliff top courses to be curiously off-base. While I would agree with his assessment that neither course is a true links, the playing surfaces, grasses and elevation changes make them as disimilar as two world class courses looking out on a common body of water can be. (Of course Tom is not exactly the only person who mentions these two in the same sentence. I got so tired any question starting, "So Anthony, you lived in California, how much is this course like Pebble... " that I donated a copy of 'Alister Mackenzie's Cypress Point' to the NSWGC Library and referred them to the book.)
Also the reason why more world class seaside/links courses have not been built on the Australian mainland is not entirely due to the lack of suitable land... there are literally hundreds of square miles in the areas between Lake Macquarie and Nelsons Bay, including the whole Myall Bay area that fit the definition of linksland to a tee.
Until very recently, however, there was neither the population or a person with the vision or capital to build the kind of course that would make this list. With the Macquarie Bank/Greg Norman juggernaut in full swing, the sad and inescapable fact is that should an opportunity arise in this area, GWS's name would be more likely to move the surrounding $500,000+ building sites than a Tom Doak course.