Sam,
As I said, I am sure this panel has all the strengths and weaknesses of any other golf course rating panel. With me on it, how could it not?
Like all panels, the DMN builds in some safeguards against "bad" voting. My understanding is that the reason the Rawls Course is not in the Top 100 is that not enough panel members rated it this year........Its not like Lubbock is on the way to anywhere, ya know! The requirement for the Top 100 is that 25 percent of the panel members had to rate a course for it to be eligible. This year 100 panel members voted, so a course needed to be voted on by 25 panel members. Twenty-two voted for The Rawls Course, just short of what is necessary. The Rawls Course made the top 50 courses open to the public because the standards are lower (20 percent).
You can disagree with the percentage of voters required, the rating system, the differences in categories, the voters, the concept, whatever, but DMN takes it seriously and that is their system. Sometimes these rues work in ways no one can imagine, I guess.
That said, I will take those 22 voters word for it over some guy on this web site who thinks that a Doak or Crenshaw course just HAS to be better than all but 99 other courses in Texas, even though he hasn't seen them OR the others.
In reality, I am sort of tired of all the rankings of all kinds from any source, and the endless discussion of them here. They are what they are. I think its funny that so many rush to the typewriter to vent about this system or that, and almost always end up doing some kind of ranking themselves in response to some supposed unfair ranking. Like the magazines and newspapers, they tweak the categories and criteria endlessly to get "just the right result". I have just never been convinced that any one intelligentsia vote is more informed than a collection of them.
Of course, that is just me. Have a good one, and if you want to join our little panel to "straighten us out" I will do my level best to get you on there!