In a similar vein to the previous thread on fantasy in terms of how courses come to existence....I too have a "fantasy" scenario.
It would be interesting to me, if new courses didn't disclose their designer/builder for the 1st 5 years of existence. We would unleash the masses from Golf Digest, GolfWeek, notable GCAers, and other golfers in general on each new course and come up with a list of our favorites. Then we could do the analysis, hole break down, haggle over what works/doesn't work, etc...all without the knowledge of who actually did it. It would be fun to speculate, wonder, build theories/arguments while removing this component of potential bias. In the end we could have a more objective measure of a course, because lets face it, all of us have some biases or another when it comes to who built what and how that affects our perception of the course.
Then every year there would be a big reveal where every course that hits its 5 year mark would then be unveiled. Obviously this is where the fantasy component kicks in because I have no idea how all this info could be kept under wraps for that length of time.
P.S. On a comparison basis, every year the beer industry holds an event called the Great American Beer Festival. During this event they hold a double blind taste of all the beers with qualified judges and declare 1st thru 3rd place for each beer style. There are always fan favorites going in from some of the bigger names in the industry and its always interesting to see who comes out on top. I'd love to see something similar in the course building business...even if it is "Fantasy"