New Golf Magazine Top 100

[Steve_Roths]

Fall Line.  Has either course opened yet?  I saw it referenced above. 

[V_Halyard]

I don’t mind being the one to say it; it just seems so obvious how good this list is versus other competing publications. It’s not perfect, no course rankings list is. But there isn’t a course on this Top 100 that I think is undeserving of its place +/- 10 spots. I can’t remember thinking that before.


One small nit. If the panel appreciates NGLA, Fishers, Chicago, Shoreacres, Camargo, Sleepy Hollow, Yeamans, Creek, Piping Rock, Fox Chapel, and St Louis (not to mention Lido and Old Macdonald)…surely there’s room for Blue Mound too?

Good note.
Blue Mound is currently undergoing significant level of additional restoration.  This will reclaim of a good deal of their original scale and features.
All should try to See it in 25

[V_Halyard]

Obviously I personally don't love seeing White Bear drop 15 spots in two years, second only to Gamble Sands in # of spots dropped.


However, I'm hopeful that with the extensive work completed there this past year and the Club's commitment to firm & fast turf it'll start climbing the list again to a more appropriate grouping. Like the Top 25. 

Ha stop whining!  lol
Seriously, the green expansion and long overdue dredging and assassination of your 18th will be rewarded.

[V_Halyard]

Was Lido on the GOLF DIGEST list yet?  (That’s how much attention I pay to it anymore - I really have no idea.)  Lido and Ladera presumably have a lot of favorable votes from GD panelists since they won the best new awards last year.  This year’s Best New will give a sneak peek at where Old Barnwell and Pinehurst #10 and a lot of other new courses stand.


Personally I’d love to see Sedge Valley get more love in the rankings, because I think it would be significant for these rankings to embrace golf in a smaller footprint - but that’s certainly not how the trend has been going - they might as well just rename the GOLF DIGEST award “Biggest New Course of the year”. If I hear the word “Scale” one more time from a panelist I think I will barf.

I'm not sure Sedge had enough traffic since it didn't open until summer and the resort wasn't taking many early bookings.
It was quite a favorite for those that were able to play it this year.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Was Lido on the GOLF DIGEST list yet?

No. next year.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Was Lido on the GOLF DIGEST list yet?  (That’s how much attention I pay to it anymore - I really have no idea.)


I'm not sure Sedge had enough traffic since it didn't open until summer and the resort wasn't taking many early bookings.
It was quite a favorite for those that were able to play it this year.

It has plenty of ballots.

[Jim Hoak]

Since National is in the top 5 on this list, I expect (or at least hope) that its twin brother, the Yale Golf Course, will on next year's list be in the Top 100, maybe even top 50, when Gil Hanse gets done with the restoration next year.  Early looks are very good.  My expectations are very high!!

[Cal Seifert]

Since National is in the top 5 on this list, I expect (or at least hope) that its twin brother, the Yale Golf Course, will on next year's list be in the Top 100, maybe even top 50, when Gil Hanse gets done with the restoration next year.  Early looks are very good.  My expectations are very high!!

I’d assume Yale will easily be in the top 100 USA after the restoration. If I recall correctly, it was top 100 world before they let it go during Covid.

[Mark_Fine]

Tim,
I don’t know if Tom responded to your question about a restoration moving a course a whole point?  I personally think that is probably a true assessment particularly at the high end of the scale but less so at the lower end. I think it’s much easier for a course to move from a 2 or 3 to a 5 or 6 then it is for a course to move from a 7 to an 8 or 9. For example, for me a course moving from a 7 to 8 could up 400 places on my own personal list which is a massive jump and that is just one point. This is because there are so many 7s out there vs 8s and 9s,…


This is also the reason there is variety in all the Top 100 lists (despite 80% plus overlap) - there are so many courses that are very close in quality that any could replace the other.  Ran is the only one I know who says he can explain why a course is #67 vs #68.  To the rest of us mortals, they are both just really great courses and while we might like one a little better than the other, we can’t quantify why. It is just subjective opinion. 

[Michael Morandi]

What is the best painting of all time?  The best novel? It’s great to have a standard but in the end the best course for any of us is the one that is most enjoyable to play. Not all great art fulfills me, nor do all great novels.  I have an Ivy League degree but I wouldn’t for a second say that I got the best education or that my top rated university is right for all. So it’s all fun and good that we debate rankings and it is important that the “best”courses set a standard that leads to the improvement of otherwise mundane  courses but let’s view these rankings for what they are. Keynes, when asked to judge a beauty contest, said most would pick what others might think is beautiful rather than what they thought was so for themself. I hope raters resist this instinct.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom-I remember you saying at one point that a restoration should not have more than a one point upward move on the Doak scale. Does this still hold? Thanks!

Generally, yes, I do feel that way.  The lion’s share of what I rate in a golf course are the routing, the greens, the use of the property, and the bunker placement, none of which really changes in a restoration.  I might have moved Yale from an 8 down to a 7 when it was in horrible shape, but a restoration is unlikely to get it up to a 9, in my book.  I realize I’m an outlier in that regard and that’s fine, but the point is, I usually rated a course as high as I imagined it would be if it was in great shape, so getting it there doesn’t affect my thoughts much.


The Restoration Industrial Complex may not agree with that, but a lot of that is about promotion and making $

[Paul Rudovsky]

For those who pine for groupings of 10 (or even bigger groupings), remember that means when a course in the unpublished detail moves from say #20 to #21...it looks like it moved somewhere between 1 and 19 slots!  so the bitching would get even louder!!  my point is there is no perfect system.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
I think you would agree, restoration of a course that is “tired” which I define as one that is just not conditioned well, greens have shrunk, bunkers reduced in size or left fallow or grassed over, grassing lines altered,… is very different from restoration of a course that has been purposely changed and bastardized.  There are times when I get to a course and it takes months of research to figure out what was once there and how it evolved.  In the case of the latter, the improvement via restoration/renovation could be fairly dramatic. One example was Berkeley CC which we just played at the ASGCA annual meeting.  It is night and day from what happened to it to where it is now.  You would not have known what was there and how good it could be without doing the research. Just my opinion.