Tellingly, though, he still votes them in his top 10, out of respect for what they represent.
“When I’m on the first tee of the Old Course,” he says, “I know that pretty much every golfer of consequence in the history of the game has stood there. That’s impossible to ignore.”
More important than its championship past, however, is its architectural pedigree. The Old Course, with its bouncy ground, hidden bunkers, shared fairways and infinite options, became the foundation for strategic design. Its DNA runs through countless great courses that followed, Augusta National included.
Occasionally, a modern course breaks through, and when it does it tends to confirm the pattern. Sand Hills (No. 10), the lone post-1990 design in the top 10, combines all the right ingredients: gifted land in the Nebraska Sandhills, gifted hands in Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and a legacy of its own as the course that ushered in a second Golden Age of minimalist design.
The next highest modern entry, Tara Iti (No. 19), on a dreamy stretch of New Zealand dunes, traces its lineage straight to the classics through its architect, Tom Doak, whose aesthetic is steeped in early design principles.
Lower down in the rankings, there’s more wiggle room. Between No. 60 and No. 80, say, the differences often come down to taste — personal preference, shifting trends or the statistical vagaries of voting, where a handful of ballots can swing a course’s fate. At the top, movement is rare for a reason.
New Additions, Old Friends
Ever since Sand Hills appeared in 1995 — and soon after, Bandon Dunes, which took the private model and made it public — golf development has followed a kind of Field of Dreams philosophy: Build it on the right site and they will come, no matter how remote the address.
The three newcomers to this year’s Top 100 fit that mold: Te Arai (North) (No. 98), a Doak design on New Zealand’s North Island; CapRock Ranch (No. 84), a Gil Hanse–Jim Wagner layout stitched along the Snake River canyon in the Nebraska Sandhills; and Childress Hall (No. 73), an exclusive retreat in West Texas with a Doak course set on wonderfully tousled land. (A Hanse-Wagner design at Childress is in the works.) Each asks something of you to reach it — and each pays it back with scenery and strategy in equal measure.
Timing can also play a role in the rankings. CapRock was still a relative newcomer when ballots were cast for the 2023–24 World Top 100 list; few raters had seen it. It finished just outside the Top 100 in that vote. Te Arai (North) came online just after that vote closed. Sometimes a course simply needs time — for its turf to settle or for enough panelists to make the trip.
The returnees — Cape Wickham (No. 100), a rugged coastal design in Tasmania, and De Pan (No. 89), a classic Harry Colt heathland layout in the Netherlands — illustrate another rhythm of the rankings. When a course drops off, it often does so by decimal points, and it rarely disappears quietly. Its absence sparks conversation, which draws more eyes. More panelists make the pilgrimage, and the course reenters the debate.
With hundreds of worthy designs vying for only 100 spots, the difference between off and on can boil down to quirks in the calendar, travel and renewed attention. In this year’s ranking, five courses fell out of the Top 100 to make room for the three newcomers and two returnees. Among the departures: Royal Cinque Ports, a humpy-bumpy English charmer and former Open venue, and Yeamans Hall, Seth Raynor’s symphony of templates in the moody South Carolina Lowcountry.
Both have vocal defenders among our course raters. Every vote counts, the tallies are tight — and, as history shows, a temporary absence doesn’t mean a permanent exile. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see any of this year’s near-misses resurface next time around.
Restorations and Revivals
There was a time when even classic clubs weren’t shy about tinkering — stretching holes for tournaments, tweaking design features to fit fashion or satisfying the whims of influential members. Those are no longer the prime motivations. In today’s new Golden Age of design, amid rising golf IQs and a deeper appreciation for architecture, clubs are intent on preserving what they have or restoring what made them great.
Restoration has become its own art form — part scholarship, part craftsmanship. The best projects dig through old aerials, photos, letters and notes to recover subtleties that time and past modifications erased. The ethos — and the economics — have shifted; some restorations now cost as much as new builds.
For architecture buffs, this has been a gift — and the rankings reflect it. Consider Sleepy Hollow (No. 77), a more-than-century-old Macdonald/Raynor classic that never appeared on the list until a 2017 overhaul by Hanse and Wagner. They revived Hudson River views and sharpened short-game interest by imbuing the greens with renewed Macdonald flair.
Victoria Golf Club (No. 93), reawakened by Ogilvy, Clayton, Cocking & Mead, regained its Melbourne Sandbelt brilliance, with native grasses fringing playing areas that include a pair of riveting short par 4s (the 1st and 15th) and a par 3 set to rival any in the world. The changes put it squarely on the Top 100, alongside its more famous neighbors, Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath.
Another Down Under destination, New South Wales Golf Club (No. 46), offers an additional case study. Its Alister MacKenzie routing dates to 1926, but decades of edits by a revolving door of architects left it disjointed. A recent restoration by Mackenzie and Ebert reconnected the course to its origins — an Alister MacKenzie layout in a national park on the Australian coast now looks and feels the part. Our raters raved. That, too, is reflected in the rankings.
No talk of restoration would be complete without mention of The Lido (No. 48) in Wisconsin, though it’s really more precise to call it a revival. The original Long Island, N.Y., course vanished in the 1940s; its modern recreation, led by Tom Doak and Michael Keiser, brings back the lost masterpiece in remarkable detail. Since its debut two years ago, the course has matured, more raters have seen it and its strategic complexities have come into sharper focus.
Major Movers and What the Movement Means
If restorations demand energy and commitment, the rankings often reward the outlay. It’s no coincidence that two of the courses that benefited most from recent work also saw substantial jumps this year. New South Wales climbed 18 spots, while The Lido vaulted 20, now sitting comfortably within the top 50. But rankings shift for all kinds of reasons. Shanqin Bay (No. 64), the Coore & Crenshaw design along Hainan Island’s bluffs, experienced the most dramatic movement of all, leaping 31 places. Several years ago, the course lost its 17th hole to government land claims; as a consequence, it also lost its place in the World Top 100. But a replacement has since been built, restoring the integrity of the layout and renewing enthusiasm among raters.
Recency bias also plays a role. New courses arrive with a buzz that can lift them quickly. But what happens once that first-glow excitement fades? Some hold firm — or even climb — after the spotlight moves on. St. Patrick’s Links (No. 44), a dazzling Doak design on the dramatic dunes of Ireland’s Donegal coast, rose five spots this year. But not every newbie shows that kind of staying power. Ohoopee Match Club (No. 99), which opened during the pandemic and drew notice for its match-play format and naturalistic design, fell 18 spots. Does that drop signal a genuine reassessment or simply the quirks of voting, limited access or shifting tastes? (That holes 2 through 5 were closed to flood damage last year might have been a factor too.) It’s difficult to make definitive claims.
That’s the thing about any list like this: It’s a living document, just as a golf course is a living, breathing thing, forever evolving. For all their influence, the rankings are ultimately an act of interpretation — a snapshot, but not image etched in stone.
Tom Doak has a way of framing it. In the past, when new Top 100 lists have been released, he has gotten calls from prestigious clubs, wondering what to do about a slip in the standings. Embark on a restoration? Rebuild from scratch? His advice is consistent: Don’t panic — or drive yourself crazy trying to understand statistical differences that are barely thicker than a blade of grass.
“So you dropped a few spots,” Doak tells them. “You’re still one of the best courses in the world.”
Lists shift. Great designs endure. Forty years on, those are truest constants of all.
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