An amusing Top 100 in the US List - Golflink.com

[Geoffrey Childs]

http://www.golflink.com/top-golf-courses/

This is the most interesting list of all. Go Saxon Woods

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

Deerfield at #10... it might now have competiton for being the 10th best course in Delaware and that's saying something.

[peter_p]

#s 6-10 most popular in Oregon are Chehalem, Red Tail,
Stone Creek, Rock Creek and Lake Oswego Municipal.

[John_Conley]

1- The Golf Link list of the Best Florida Golf Courses details the most popular public and private golf courses in the state of Florida. 2- Although similar lists are often produced by various golf publications, those magazines tend to rate golf courses based soley on the subjective views and limited experience of a handful of their editors. 3- The Golf Link list is calculated from a more objective range of factors, including the preferences of up to a million or more visitors to our site every month. 4- This makes our Best Florida Golf Courses list the definitive online guide to the top Florida golf courses.

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1. Define popular.
2a. Talk about subjective views and limited experience, how many of the million have played as many courses as the people on magazine panels for GOLF, Golf Digest, Golfweek, or Golfworld?  
2b. For the record, the last time I heard Golf Digest's handful was around 700 and Golfweek's was about 225.
3. objective = preferences, I think I'm missing something.
4. Self-professed to be definitive, it kind of loses its credibility when Winter Pines is #16 out of over 1,000 courses in the state of Florida.  In Minnesota, Les Bolstad at the University is #3.  How can you print that with a straight face?

Thanks for the levity tonight.  I needed a good laugh.

[David_Madison]

After reading the national and NC lists, I'm thinking about giving up my GD ratings panelist spot and along with my 8 and 14-year old sons immediately applying to become one of Golf Link's milions. Talk about flying over the cookoo's nest!

Is it April 1st already?

[peter_p]

Presumably based on the number of hits a course gets. Of course public and resort courses get the most votes. They would list Paris Hilton as the most popular actress.

[Jordan Wall]

http://www.golflink.com/top-golf-courses/top-golf-courses.asp?state=WA

The Nile is on that list.
The Nile!!

Gold Mountain is not
Nor is Seattle

Willows Run and Newcastle could go in the countries worst courses $50-$150 and in the ENTIRE WORLD.

What a stupid list.
Actually, its kinda funny
 :lol:

[Lloyd_Cole]

This is actually not any funnier than the New York Times bestseller lists or the pop music charts. And it's good that we should see it. Who do we think are filling the hotels in Myrtle Beach year in year out?

[John_Conley]

This is actually not any funnier than the New York Times bestseller lists or the pop music charts. And it's good that we should see it. Who do we think are filling the hotels in Myrtle Beach year in year out?

Lloyd, it is one thing to compile the list - another to hold it out as what they say this is.

The NYT has Best Sellers and they are right.  They also have a literary page.  This is the most popular courses, but popular isn't defined.

Augusta National is a "popular" choice if you ask all golfers where they'd like to play if they could.

Winter Pines by my house (and I suppose Nile and ______ in your area) are popular places to play because they are inexpensive and convenient.

Courses on the PGA Tour are popular because it allows you to "play where the pros play".

They do a HORRIBLE job defining popular.  Actually, they don't define it.  The list, however, is (if the above post is correct) some compilation of number of web hits.  And that is not what they say the list is reporting.  In fact, they imply that the data is better because of more millions.

[John_Conley]

I've got a knock on the "limited experience" comment.  Of the 120 or so courses within an hour of I-4 & the E/W Expressway, not too long ago I'd played all but about six of them.  I don't know of anyone else that even comes close.  If my neighbor who has played for a year goes online and punches up the course closest to our house they count it as something, with no way of knowing that the experience of the de facto voter/panelist is in fact the most limited imaginable.

[Lloyd_Cole]

John
The NYT has two bestsellers lists - Fiction and Non-Fiction. These are based upon sales. The pop charts are based upon sales and radio and MTV type airplay.
Astral Weeks never really sold that many copies, but many critic folk consider it one of the best records ever made. It is never seen in the polls of the general public..
Clearly this list is heinously assembled but they may be something to be learned from it - in terms of what people actually like.. Quite possbily more than the usual Golf and Golfweek lists which don't tell us anything we don't know already.

[Jordan Wall]

[Winter Pines by my house (and I suppose Nile and ______ in your area) are popular places to play because they are inexpensive and convenient.

Inexspensive?
$35

Convenient maybe, inexpensive no

Dont get me wrong I love the Nile but if you are a regular person who doesnt play the course twice a day I dont see how you could put it among the top-50 in the state for fun and popularity.  This selection really surprises me.
Then again, any list not for worlds worst courses with Willows Run in the top-10 is stupid.

[Andrew Summerell]

"This makes our Top 100 United States Golf Courses list the definitive online guide to the best U.S. golf courses, and a great resource for figuring out where to play."


Hey, I'm a fan of stand-up comedy.

[ForkaB]

Any list that has one of my old stomping grounds, Leo J. Martin Memorial, at #30 can't be all bad.

[Jim Nugent]

Here is their own explanation of how they compile their list:

"The Top Golf Courses section of our web site details Golf Link's 100 most popular golf courses nationally as well as the most popular golf courses for each state. It is important to note that our sole criteria for listing a course in our Top Golf Courses section is popularity of a course amongst our millions of site visitors, not how famous a course may be or how scenic or difficult it is. (Although all those factors do of course strongly affect a course's popularity.) For example, you may find that a well-known and famous course could surprisingly rank slightly lower than a less well known one simply because to play the famous course costs $250 a round whereas the higher ranking course, which may offer some difficult challenges and stunning scenery too, is significantly cheaper to play and thus more popular with the users of our site. Please keep this in mind when discussing our lists.

"If you are more interested in the most challenging and scenic courses regardless of cost and other factors affecting popularity then you may wish to check out various golfing publications top lists. We carry many of them here in our Golf Course Awards section. Try checking out the menu on the right of the most awarded golf courses. One point to note though about golfing publications' lists is that these are often subjective personal views of just one or two editors whereas Golf Link's lists are derived scientifically based on the activities of millions of visitors to our site."

They don't specify how they know which courses are most popular among their readers.  Online voting?  

Also, I bet Winged Foot drops from its top spot pretty fast.  Seems like that has to be temporary fallout from the U.S. Open.  

[Doug Ralston]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

The State lists are an amazing absurdity. I have played most of the top publics in KY, and almost none of them are here. Instead, they name many courses that are a total joke, complete 'daily fee mills' courses. Hilarious!

I notice same for all the states I know, The National list is replete with courses from New Jersey, for God's sake. NOTHING is good about New jersey, is there?  

[TEPaul]

A list of top American golf courses that ranks Shinnecock at 67 proves without a scintilla of a doubt that the magazine (or whatever it is) and those who compiled the list have their collective heads pretty far up their collective asses----end of story---period. Actually TRIPLE period followed by about 100 exclamation marks.  

Ranking lists suck anyway and if this list doesn't prove that, I'm sure nothing ever will.

[JohnV]

Presumably based on the number of hits a course gets. Of course public and resort courses get the most votes. They would list Paris Hilton as the most popular actress.

Actually it is based on the following factors:

Amenities
Difficulty
Maintenance
Scenery
Value
Overall

Each rated 1-5 stars.  Winged Foot which is #1 has 3 votes.  I guess the millions don't get there much.

[JohnV]

Actually now that I went a little further, Peter might be right as the Black Course is #2 and has had nobody rate it.

[Paul Payne]

Les Bolstad made the national list. All I can say is...

I could have called that one.

[Mike Benham]

The NorCal guys will enjoy this list, we never realized that we had 2 brand new courses in the Bay Area in the Top 17 ... Callippe Preserve at #10 and Mountain House at #17 ...

The SoCal guys have to be happy about Angeles National rolling in at #9 in California.

There definition bears repeating: The Golf Link list is calculated from a more objective range of factors, including the preferences of up to a million or more visitors to our site every month.

[Dan Herrmann]

I found it amazing that venerable Merion East ranked as #3 in Pennsylvania behind:
1.  Oakmont  (A world-class golf course)
2.  General Washington GC in Audubon PA

I'm assuming that most GCA folks have no idea just how bad General Washington is.

This is like comparing Henry Aaron to a kid playing T-ball.

[John_Conley]

John
The NYT has two bestsellers lists - Fiction and Non-Fiction. These are based upon sales.

Clearly this list is heinously assembled but they may be something to be learned from it - in terms of what people actually like.. Quite possbily more than the usual Golf and Golfweek lists which don't tell us anything we don't know already.

Lloyd, I get it.  The Best Sellers list is a list of the best sellers.

If a golf course is exceedingly hard to get to and I go to theri site for directions there is a hit for "popular".  Or if I go play Winter Pines because I can get on and don't play Pablo Creek because I can't that makes Winter Pines "popular".

They hold this out as a "definitive" list.  Of what?

[Wayne_Kozun]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!111I notice same for all the states I know, The National list is replete with courses from New Jersey, for God's sake. NOTHING is good about New jersey, is there?  

Don't forget the course that is generally ranked #1 in the worlk in sane lists is located in New Jersey - Pine Valley.  As is the Bada Bing!

[Wayne Freeman]

Well, trying to look at some positives,  at least there are a bunch of good courses and several legitimate top 100's listed. Obviously anyone really serious about rankings can't give it much credence-  in looking at the Calif. list, it's not too bad for the top courses-  and then it gets a little ludicrous.  They have DeBell- a little 5600 Bill Bell muni in the valley there and that is a total joke.  And there is no mention of Valley Club in Montecito.  But heck, how many golfers have even heard of Valley Club, let alone played it.  

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