my biggest issue with ANY list of golf course rankings is that they are composed by panelists whom have only had one look around That is never enough to properly judge a golf course even if you are Tom Doak
That's why I usually go back to see a course again if I think it's got more to it. But you have to go see a bunch of them once to help decide which ones to dismiss, too.
I've been to Tobacco Road three times, because it's extremely interesting.
I don't think it's a great golf course. Seventy posts in here, and no one has said anything about the short game shots at TR; that's because a lot of holes are not built at the right scale for interesting short game play. [Also, as someone remarked, there's not enough short grass around the greens.] There are also a bunch of holes like 15 and 16 and 17 where the only approach is to fly it to the hole and make it stop relatively, which, of course, lots of golfers can't do.
Its saving grace is that it's short enough that people don't have to try these shots with long clubs in their hands, so they have some chance of success. There are holes that give golfers at different skill levels the chance for the heroic play; it's not all designed around the scratch golfer. [In fact, in many places, it actively tries to mess with the scratch golfer.]
At the same time, almost any golfer will come to a dead end out there somewhere, where there is no realistic good play to make. I've recounted the story here before about playing it with a couple of excellent junior golfers, about 10 and 12 years old: their dad really struggled to find them a tee on every hole which would test them but not demoralize them. They could hit it into the narrowest of spaces, which made some holes much more interesting for them than for you or me; but they would also run into forced carries from Hell. The 2nd and 13th holes were an absolute disaster for them.
I will happily defend art for art's sake, but I don't think that was Mike Strantz's goal for Tobacco Road, and it almost certainly wasn't his client's goal. So that part has gotta be fair game for discussion here.
I do hope to find a client someday who wants me to build something as out of the box as Tobacco Road. I've got some ideas for that, which I can't really use anywhere else.