Ivan - Rating golf courses is an opinion and its hard to argue with someones opinion, taking that further, ratings are often a collation of opinions, so as the ratings are less skewed, probably if you asked everybody and gave everyone the same criteria and they were fair and unbiased it would work. Generally raters are out of the same bracket and like the same sort of thing, if you dont you are unlikely to get the raters job in the first place. I look at some golf courses and just dont get it in the same way others do, but often my 10 howlers are not someone elses. My personal opinion is that new golf courses get a bad rap, by and large ALL my golf courses are extremeley popular and busy and profitable, why are my golf courses not in these ratings when the one next door is and almost empty? How should we measure golf courses really, I looked at the GM criteria and I dont agree with the criteria...why should the way the pro shop greet you influence the position a golf course is rated....some of these things should be unbiasedly detached IMO but here is the magazine saying THIS GETS YOU POINTS... fancy car parks are hooey IMO but I think a course should lose points if its under 6500 yards and others will say hooey to that too...but if you look at ratings at the top 20 or 30..... you dont find many sub 6500 and in fact the bar is higher, so I think length does play a part. The Belfry gets a bad rap on here but it deserves better, there is quite a bit of fun out there and whilst its a bit clinical it does not have too many faults...but its an opinion. Now on to your question.... raters give courses points and they get added up and divided by the number of scorers, so 86th has more points than 87.