GOLF released its latest ranking of the Top 100 Courses in the World (2025-26), and while Pine Valley again took the top spot, there were three newcomers and two returnees to the ranking. Here, we’ll introduce you to them.
Tom Doak batted second at Te Arai, stepping to the plate after Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw knocked one out of the park with the resort’s South Course. Doak’s North Course, less cozy to the coast, starts and ends amid the seaside dunes but also makes the most of its inland stretches. The real story, though, is the scale and drama of the greens, outsize, expressive surfaces that pose a wholly different challenge depending on where the flag is cut.
You know you’re in for entertainment from the opening hole, drivable par-4 that often leaves a ticklish pitch off a tight lie for your second. Other early highlights include the par-4 5th, which, like the tee of the Dell hole 6th, occupies a ridge alongside the remains of an ancient Maori fortress, a feature that sharpens the property’s vivid sense of place.
As the routing moves toward the back nine, it becomes transportive, taking advantage of a natural sandy crater that Doak has likened to the landscape of Pine Valley. This is the backdrop for an especially stirring stretch that begins with the 11th: a brawny par-5 with a green-side bunker some two stories deep. It leads to a short, downhill par-3; then a roller-coaster par-4 with a blind tee shot and an unruly green; followed by an elegant par-5 and an Eden hole rendered with such fidelity it could pass for a postcard from St. Andrews.
On multiple loops around the North, some of my favorite memories involve watching playing partners linger after the final putt, experimenting with bump-and-runs, flops, even the occasional Texas wedge, evidence of a course that leaves you itching to get back out to test yourself again.
Michael Goldstein is a course rater for GOLF.
