I wish I could ask every panelist, "what's your guilty pleasure?"
When our friends get together we have a guilty pleasure music night and its hilarious, but you also realize you've left some great music behind because at the time the style didn't fit your style. If I look at the list, I feel like that might be happening.
That's the list I would really love to see. The panelist list that one course that appears architecturally out of touch with the current beliefs. But you don't care, you just love it and normally you won't admit to it. The Shadow Creeks, Harbourtown, something...
Even better, did you actually vote for it. For example, I consider Tobacco Road a bit of a hot mess in places. It's not my personal taste or style. But it made my Top 100 every time when I used to vote because I can't get enough of what does work there and its audacity to be different. It's the opposite of what I like, but it's a masterpiece to me. Picasso in a world dominated by Monet.
Ian:
Unfortunately, the panels do promote groupthink . . . cue Jonathan Cummings to come on here and explain why some magazines scold panelists for picking statistical "outliers" [i.e. disagreeing with the status quo and voting for one of their guilty pleasures].
Personally, I have lots of guilty pleasures, all of which are on record in The Confidential Guide, but I find it tough trying to place them into the context of rankings. For one thing, I've got a bunch of 9's on the Doak Scale and I find it pretty pointless to split hairs between them, yet the system INSISTS that I vote for some of them within the top 25 and put others in the second 25, or maybe even below that if I have too many. I guess I am agreeing with Pete Dye about that.
I'm a fan of all the courses you named [Shadow Creek, Harbour Town, Tobacco Road] as well as offbeat places like The Himalayan, and it's hard to know how to handle those. We voted differently on Tobacco Road; I think it is an artistic marvel but also IMO it has a bunch of real flaws and excesses that hold it back if I have to rank it.
The Himalayan is another that is just so different to everything else, it doesn't really compare to someplace like Deal, but it's such an interesting solution to the location and conditions that I just have to stick it into the list somewhere at random to show my appreciation. I think Lofoten Links is also in that sort of category . . . it's a wonderful PLACE but maybe not that good of a GOLF COURSE. It's clear that there are quite a few panelists now who put a lot of value on the "wonderful place" aspect.
I know that there are many good golfers like Ally who think that a refined challenging course like Portmarnock should be rated above any of the places I've just described; I don't agree, because there are lots of refined challenging courses, but I do agree there needs to be more balance between that perspective and the aesthetic globetrotters.