I got several fine laughs reading Golf Digest’s “2021-2022 ranking of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses”, which was touted as being “ready for its close-up” by authors Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey.

A close look shows not much has changed except that it’s a for-profit model now, where you can try to sign up and pay the $1300 to join here and you better like your courses exclusive and difficult.

Tom Fazio remains a panelist favorite the way Michael Bay is big with teenage moviegoers and not many others, delivering thirteen top 100 courses to Donald Ross’s ten, followed by Tillinghast’s eight, Pete Dye’es eight, Tom Doak’s five, Alister MacKenzie’s five, Seth Raynor’s five, Coore and Crenshaw’s four, William’s Flynn’s three and Gil Hanse’s single inclusion on the list.

The best laugh may be Muirfield Village landing 15th even as Jack Nicklaus has taken a bulldozer to it. Pinehurst No. 2 at 29th would suggest maybe it’s time for the resort to realize Digest panelists won’t ever get that whole strategy/nuance thing.

On that strategy topic, the panelists already have been told they focus too much on theatrics instead of pure design values. How do I know this? Why, the panel head Duncan eviscerated panelists for not paying attention to what matters in a March 2, 2021 email forwarded to me by multiple raters.

After hitting the panel up for their $300/1300 (depending on returning or new status) and explaining a sign-up system for courses in demand, some scolding for “checklisting” ballots on some other websites was delivered before the fun began.

As always, this is an exciting time and an important institution for Golf Digest. I’m very proud of the effort everyone puts into creating the America’s 100 Greatest Courses list, and you should be, too—your hard work and keen eyes and analyses make it happen.

Greasing ‘em up before a good old fashioned slapping!

 I will, however, take this opportunity to make a comment on our scoring:

I did an exercise while compiling the final rankings to list, along with the total score, the highest individual category score each course received. I thought it would be interesting to see in what category each of the 100 courses was strongest—for instance, Winged Foot West’s highest score, 8.62, came in the Character category. About 20 courses in, I realized I couldn’t send the results out for publication.

Oh?

The highest score for almost every course came in either Character or Aesthetics. Here’s the breakdown:

CHARACTER: 42

AESTHETICS: 19

CONDITIONING: 15

CHALLENGE: 14

DISTINCTIVENESS: 6

LAYOUT VARIETY: 4

SHOT OPTIONS: 0

 In other words, according to the majority of the panel, the greatest strength of two-thirds of the 100 Greatest courses in the U.S. has to do with aspects other than how the course actually plays.

This is like scolding Oscar voters for judging movies by the theater seating, Emmy voters for how well their remote control worked, and Tony panelists for emphasizing the playbill’s paper stock.

But please, keep scolding…

That not a single course in our top 100 distinguished itself above all other measures in Shot Options is stunning—this is the most fundamental aspect to architecture and thus our rankings. It’s why we afford it double points. 

Maybe not flood the panel for profit? I’m wrecklessly brainstorming here, I know, so continue…

We are placing too much emphasis on intangibles like character and aesthetics and not enough on architecture, strategy and layout.

Come on, that shallowness is a Digest staple! How else could so many forgettable Fazio’s rank so well!

Yes, ambiance, history and sense of place are all important to the golf experience—they are major reasons why we all play. But your job as course-ranking panelists is to study the golf holes and the architecture and not be overwhelmed by beauty and reputation.

But if they have a killer bar and the owner personally signs a thank you card, we totally get that.

We can all appreciate the totality of a golf experience—it’s unrealistic to think that won’t have an impact on your impressions—but golf is about hitting the ball across a landscape that presents a variety of obstacles and enticements, trying to get it into the hole in as few as strokes possible. We are there to analyze how effectively and with what amount of entertainment a course achieves that. 

 Pssssst…Derek, this is Golf Digest, not Golf or Golfweek. Ranking courses based on everything but architecture is how so many ads were sold before it became all about house ads.

Please consider how much you are weighing the importance of different categories. Please re-read the category definitions. And make efforts to distinguish each category from each other—our best panelists earn high marks for doing so.

 Do they get a dues rebate for being Best In Panelist?

Lastly, I’ve had several private email exchanges with individual panelists about their scoring habits and techniques. We do not intend to tell you how to score courses and categories, as long as you can rationally justify your evaluations. But we do want you all to be discerning and understand what your scores and numbers mean. This ties back to the predominance of high Character scores: a sizable portion of the panel might consider approaching their evaluations with a more discriminating eye.

 What fun that would be? Never stopped Golf Digest panelists before.

In some of the cases I reviewed, panelists were overscoring courses, awarding points that would have placed a course barely making the Best in State list in the top 15 of America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking.

Hey, top 5 in Kansas, top 15 in the USA…what’s the big difference?

Ok that’s enough fun at the expense of Golf Digest’s panel for one blog post. There will be more to laugh at as the explanation’s pour out from Digest. But I just want to return back to the idea that the leading course with “Character” in the United States is Winged Foot West.

A fine test for sure. And home club to the last two Golf Digest editors. Plus the West also hosted last year’s U.S. Open and will host many more down the road. It’s brilliant at times and has loads of character.

But the design with the most character in the United States?

Heck, if you polled the Winged Foot membership, I’m fairly certain the neighboring East Course would easily win the character debate. Like, 7&6.

But we all have different definitions of character. Particularly the Golf Digest panel.