I love it how, when someone asks me for my five favorite golf courses and I name five, they immediately argue with me for leaving one out. My snarky answer is always that if you wanted ten maybe I would have included the one you were looking for.
So as with any piece, here I was operating under constraints, mainly it all had to be around 1,700 words or so to fit the original print space. Added constraints, self-imposed, were that they all had to be public access, equally divided between Classic (pre-1960) and Modern (1960+), from ten different design shops and geographically diverse.
Kalen Braley’s assumption (Reply #18) that “minimalism” is some sort of standard worth emulating as an inherent virtue makes no sense to me; it’s certainly not one I have ever committed to.
Cary Lichtenstein’s list of additions (Reply #8) suggests some interesting courses but – outside of Bethpage-Black (which I include) do not convey designs that in my estimate are distinctive enough embodiments of styles worth studying, even if they have some considerable virtues – like Pebble Beach’s figure 8 routing. If I were teaching an ethics course, I’d focus on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, et al and not Dilthey, Bergson and Rawls, even if the latter are worthy later on.
Andy Troeger (Reply #11) asks which courses I considered. All I can say is that I have seen thousands of them, have a huge collection of scorecards and books, and I flip through my mental roll-a-dex each time I write such an article and sort through very unsystematically to come up with such a list.
Michael George (Reply #15) asks a great question of whether, in choosing Old Macdonald, I committed a mistake by basically including two Macdonald’s, since I already had Greenbrier-Old White. But of course Old Macdonald is a Doak-Urbina design, not a Macdonald, it’s their version, I know that course as well as almost any other, and it’s much easier for me to explain its distinctive features than just about any other since I was witness to its genesis. I’m big believer in being didactic, or as I often say, it’s more important to be effective than to be right.
As for a Colt-Alison, well, something had to give and I'd be hard pressed to name a quality public course they did; I also left out Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus. Had I room for 20 I would not have.
R.J. Daley (Reply #21) asks about TPC Sawgrass-Stadium over PGA West as the paradigm for Pete Dye. All I can say is that PGA West is a starker embodiment of his visual genius, though TPC Sawgrass is more sophisticated strategically. But it would take longer to explain it whereas there’s nothing subtle and everything is in front of you (or on the side for smart players) out at PGA West.