Golf Digest List: Why Do They Cut it Off at 100/200?

[Sam Kestin]

Assuming that there would be some minimum number of ratings submissions required to make the list--can someone explain to me why Golf Digest distills the list down to their top 100 only (plus the recent addition of the "second" 100) and doesn't just present to us the full results?


Why not have a top 500? Top 1000? Top 2000?


What would be the drawback of releasing the full results?

[Tom_Doak]

What would be the drawback of releasing the full results?

Courses near the bottom [and their designers] would be embarrassed and offended, and magazines do not like to offend anyone. 


They could probably go more than 200 deep without offending nowadays ... maybe even to 500 ... but I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon.  Plus, the difference between #400 and #600 is probably only two points on the GOLF DIGEST scale, so beyond a certain point the rankings are meaningless.  It would be like trying to rate all the 5's on the Doak Scale, in order.

[Tommy Williamsen]

The other reason is that GD requires 45 ballots to be eligible for the top 200. Even with 900 panelists it is hard to get to that number. There were a number of courses that fell off the list and some that should have come on because they did not get the requisite number of visits. For instance Spring Hill only now got to 45 ballots. In years past it probably had the scores to be on the list but not the 45 ballots.

[Kalen Braley]

Its possible there could be more courses actually interested in being rated in that case....  Most places have gotta know they don't have a shot in hell at cracking the top 100 list, but if they could get on a top 500 or 1000, maybe that might be interesting to them?

[Tom_Doak]

Its possible there could be more courses actually interested in being rated in that case....  Most places have gotta know they don't have a shot in hell at cracking the top 100 list, but if they could get on a top 500 or 1000, maybe that might be interesting to them?

That's why GOLF DIGEST [and even more so GOLFWEEK] have all their other sub-lists of "Best Public Courses," "Best College Courses," and the like.  In truth, they do have the numbers to rate 1000+ courses if they wanted to.  But, again, they'd be splitting hairs between 5's and 5's, and ranking them 300 places apart!

[Bill Seitz]

What would be the drawback of releasing the full results?

Courses near the bottom [and their designers] would be embarrassed and offended, and magazines do not like to offend anyone. 


They could probably go more than 200 deep without offending nowadays ... maybe even to 500 ... but I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon.  Plus, the difference between #400 and #600 is probably only two points on the GOLF DIGEST scale, so beyond a certain point the rankings are meaningless.  It would be like trying to rate all the 5's on the Doak Scale, in order.

They wouldn't have to rank them in order. They could always do a top 100 or 200 in order then tier the rest. So you'd have 201-250 as fifth tier, 251-300 as sixth tier, etc.  I don't think there's really any reason to do it, but there's no reason they'd have to list everything in order.

[Sam Kestin]

Maybe I'm something of a simpleton--but I just tend to think more information is better than less.


Also--I recall that they used to release the category by category scores.


Is this still around for this edition of the top 200?


I'd be curious to mash it up a bit--see what the final scores and batting order would look like if you threw various types of formulas at weighting the scores. I know that the GCA community had done this in the past by looking at the order with the history scores removed.


Obviously, such a project would be even more interesting if there were 1500 courses you could do it with and not 200.

[Bill Raffo]

Isn't that what "Best in State" is for?  If you do the 25 best in every state, that's 1,250 course.