I've been following this post with great interest. I hope I don't offend its originator by suggesting a GCA ranking of these courses as follows:
I've created a list of 50 courses named after a good sized city. By "good sized", I'm referring to a city population of 100K or a metro population of 150K, and the club's name needs to be part of the metro's common name. These criteria leave out otherwise great candidates such as Garden City, Salem, Fairfield, etc. Rather than try to rank them in order from 1-50, I suggest we break them down into top 10, second 10, third 10, fourth 10 and fifth ten. So, assign a ranking of "1" to each of your top 10, "2" to each of your second 10, "3" to each of your third 10, "4" to each of your fourth ten and "5" to each of your fifth ten. I'm sure I've left off worthy candidates, but I've tried to assemble a list that includes known greatness as well as architectural and geographic diversity.
The course are:
Atlanta AC (Highlands)
Atlantic City
Augusta CC
Augusta National
Austin CC
Baltimore (East)
Boston
Buffalo
CC Birmingham (West)
CC Charleston
CC Detroit
CC Little Rock
Cedar Rapids
Chattanooga
Charlotte
Chicago
Columbus (OH)
Dallas National
Davenport
Denver
Des Moines (South)
Eugene
Fargo
GC Austin
Greenville (Chanticleer)
Kansas City
Lancaster
Los Angeles (North)
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Philadelphia CC
Philadelphia Cricket
Phoenix
Pittsburgh Field
Portland (ME)
Portland (OR)
San Diego
San Francisco
Scranton
Seattle
South Bend
St. Louis
Tacoma
Texarkana
Waterbury
Wilmington (South)
Worcester
York