Blind spots in our World Top 100 ranking? Our audience called out some

“Lido at 48 is INSANE. It’s the 4th best course at Sand Valley.” — Social-media commenter reacting to our latest ranking of the Top 100 Courses in the World 

This may be my own bias speaking, but given the potential for furious backlash, I thought our new World list largely was well-received. Even so, you can’t whittle a planet’s worth of golf down to 100 spots without irking someone. And the responses, in turn, never fail to reveal the stubborn biases that shape how many golfers see the game.

One of the most persistent is the tendency to conflate championship pedigree with architectural merit.

“How is Olympic Club not on the list?” one commenter asked.

“No Adare Manor on here is wiiild,” another said.

Strong courses, sure. But if we reshuffled the ballots and focused strictly on design, I’m not convinced our panel would place Olympic Club inside the top 10 in California, or Adare Manor inside the top 10 in Ireland.

That same tilt toward professional golf showed up in comments marveling that Florida and Arizona were so leanly represented. Between the two states, only Seminole made the list. To some readers, this was hard to fathom given how many Tour pros live in those sunbelt enclaves — as if architectural brilliance is what brought them there, rather than the weather and tax breaks.

Other familiar refrains surfaced. The list is too U.S.-centric, some argued, and too New York–centric within that tunnel view. Others expressed disbelief that South Africa wasn’t represented. Someone made a heartfelt case for Cape Breton Highlands Links (a sentiment I share). Stretching farther west in the Great White North, I might make a case for Jasper Park, too.

Then there were the critiques aimed at the very top. Pine Valley, No. 1 since our inaugural Top 100 in 1985, drew this gem: “Kick Pine Valley way down. No one even knows what the course looks like…how are we going to rank it 1 just out of prestige?” In reality, roughly 100 of our 127 course raters have played it.

Travel

Then again, that’s the beauty of the exercise. It’s subjective. We get to agree to disagree. And while the stakes aren’t truly small — rankings do drive business — the passions they ignite still bring to mind that line about feuds in niche academic circles: people care so much because the stakes feel so small. Golfers bring the same fervor to their arguments, which are most persuasive when they’re infused with a sense of perspective.

I look forward to our next Top 100, which will focus on the best courses in the U.S. Then people can rightly accuse us of ignoring the rest of the world.

3 things I’m thinking

New bite at Teeth of the Dog: In other Top 100 news, Teeth of the Dog finished No. 75 in our ranking, an impressive achievement for a course that has been closed all year for renovations overseen by Jerry Pate Design. That’s about to change. The famed Pete Dye layout at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic is slated to reopen to the public on Dec. 7. A friend who owns a home at the resort tells me that the two days prior have been set aside for residents and their guests.

Another Pebble refresh: Then there are the goings-on in Monterey, where the Lodge at Pebble Beach reopened earlier this month following an ambitious redo. The changes include a reimagined Stillwater restaurant, which has emerged from the work with a wraparound dining room, floor-to-ceiling windows and a central bar that offers views of the ocean and (sticking with the Top 100 theme) the 15th-ranked course in the world. All of this is part of resort-wide work aimed at spiffing up amenities and public spaces, headlined most recently by the reopening of the Tap Room, Pebble’s famous 19th hole.

Checking my own list: It’s a common topic in post-round conversations: Which courses on the Top 100 have you played? Depending on your tone, ticking off such lists can come off as either obsessive or obnoxious, or some combination of the two. Personally, I’d never bothered to tally up my number. But pressed by a friend after the release of our newest ranking, I finally counted: I’ve played 62 of the 100. My takeaway from this is two part: though I haven’t been deprived, I clearly have a lot more traveling to do.