ROYAL DORNOCH, ST ANDREWS AND MUIRFIELD IN TOP TEN
GOLF DIGEST'S World's 100 Greatest Golf Courses
Pebble Beach, California, U.S.A. / 6,524 yards, Par 72
Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland / 7,186 yards, Par 71
Dornoch, Sutherland, Scotland / 6,704 yards, Par 70
St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland / 7,279 yards, Par 72
Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland / 7,209 yards, Par 71
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia / 6,643 yards, Par 72
Bridport, Tasmania, Australia / 6,721 yards, Par 71
Portrush, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland / 7,143 yards, Par 72
Hirono, Hyogo, Japan / 6,925 yards, Par 72
Turnberry, Ayrshire, Scotland / 7,211 yards, Par 70
Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia / 6,494 meters, Par 72
Pine Valley's Par-3 14th (bottom right) | Par-5 15th (left) | Par-4 16th (right)
Golf Digest has been ranking courses for almost half a century. Here,
for the first time, we present the World's 100 Greatest Golf Courses.
We compiled a ballot of the world's best layouts, from Aamby Valley to Zimbali, and sent it to our U.S. Course Ranking panelists, our 27 international editions and their respective Course Ranking panels, and other selected people we have come to know and trust. In total, 846 knowledgeable, well-traveled golfers completed our survey, rating each course they were familiar with on a 10-point scale. Courses needed a minimum of 20 ballots to qualify for our ranking.
Top of the list, by a clear margin, was Pine Valley, New Jersey's heathland homage to Sunningdale in England.
Forty of the top 100 are American courses—a fitting number given that America's 15,619 courses make up 46 percent of the estimated 34,000 global total. Our ranking spans 18 countries.
Expect future rankings to change dramatically. Though many mature markets like the United States are facing course reductions—there are 500 fewer courses in America than in 2005—elsewhere there are pockets of growth, fueled by prosperity, tourism and, in two years, golf once again becoming an Olympic sport.
The number of courses in China, for instance, has tripled in less than a decade—despite a technical government ban. The Chinese golf market will inevitably become the largest in the world. —John Barton
Note: For additional information on courses in the U.S. and Canada click on the course name or photo.
We compiled a ballot of the world's best layouts, from Aamby Valley to Zimbali, and sent it to our U.S. Course Ranking panelists, our 27 international editions and their respective Course Ranking panels, and other selected people we have come to know and trust. In total, 846 knowledgeable, well-traveled golfers completed our survey, rating each course they were familiar with on a 10-point scale. Courses needed a minimum of 20 ballots to qualify for our ranking.
Top of the list, by a clear margin, was Pine Valley, New Jersey's heathland homage to Sunningdale in England.
Forty of the top 100 are American courses—a fitting number given that America's 15,619 courses make up 46 percent of the estimated 34,000 global total. Our ranking spans 18 countries.
Expect future rankings to change dramatically. Though many mature markets like the United States are facing course reductions—there are 500 fewer courses in America than in 2005—elsewhere there are pockets of growth, fueled by prosperity, tourism and, in two years, golf once again becoming an Olympic sport.
The number of courses in China, for instance, has tripled in less than a decade—despite a technical government ban. The Chinese golf market will inevitably become the largest in the world. —John Barton
Note: For additional information on courses in the U.S. and Canada click on the course name or photo.
1. PINE VALLEY G.C.
Pine Valley, New Jersey, U.S.A. / 7,057 yards, Par 70
A genuine original, its unique character forged
from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump
had help from architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas
Jr. and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson of Merion fame finished the job. Pine
Valley blends all three schools of golf design -- penal, heroic and
strategic -- throughout the course, often times on a single hole.
2. CYPRESS POINT CLUB
Alister MacKenzie's masterpiece, woven through
cypress, sand dunes and jagged coastline. In the 2000s, member Sandy
Tatum, a former USGA president who christened Cypress Point as the
Sistine Chapel of golf, convinced the club not to combat technology by
adding new back tees, but instead make a statement by celebrating its
original architecture. So Cypress remains timeless, if short, its charm
helped in part by the re-establishment of MacKenzie's fancy bunkering.
Augusta, Georgia, U.S.A. / 7,435 yards, Par 72
No club has tinkered with its golf course as
often or as effectively over the decades as has Augusta National, mainly
to keep it competitive for the annual Masters Tournament, an event it
has conducted since 1934, with time off during WWII. All that tinkering
has resulted in an amalgamation of design ideas, with a routing by
Alister MacKenzie and Bob Jones, some Perry Maxwell greens, some Trent
Jones water hazards, some Jack Nicklaus mounds and, most recently,
extensive lengthening and rebunkering by Tom Fazio.
4. ROYAL COUNTY DOWN G.C.
On a clear spring day, with Dundrum Bay to the
east, the Mountains of Mourne to the south and gorse-covered dunes in
golden bloom, there is no lovelier place in golf. The design is
attributed to Old Tom Morris but was refined by a half dozen architects
in the past 120 years, most recently by Donald Steel. Though the greens
are surprisingly flat, as if to compensate for the rugged terrain and
numerous blind shots, bunkers are a definite highlight, most with arched
eyebrows of dense marram grasses and impenetrable clumps of heather.
Southampton, New York State, U.S.A. / 7,041 yards, Par 70
Generally considered to be the earliest links in
America, heavily remodeled twice by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced
(except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s. It's so
sublime that its architecture hasn't really been fiddled with in nearly
50 years, although the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw has made a
few changes to prepare Shinnecock for the 2018 U.S. Open.
6. ROYAL DORNOCH G.C. (CHAMPIONSHIP)
Herbert Warren Wind called it the most natural
course in the world. Tom Watson called it the most fun he'd had playing
golf. Donald Ross called it his home, having been born in the village
and learned the game on the links. Tucked in an arc of dunes along the
North Sea shoreline, Dornoch's greens, some by Old Tom Morris, others by
John Sutherland or tour pro George Duncan, sit mostly on plateaus and
don't really favor bounce-and-run golf. That's the challenge: hitting
those greens in a Dornoch wind.
7. THE OLD COURSE AT ST. ANDREWS LINKS
The Old Course at St. Andrews is ground zero for
all golf architecture. Every course designed since has either been in
response to one or more of its features, or in reaction against it.
Architects either favor the Old Course's blind shots or detest them,
either embrace St. Andrews's enormous greens or consider them a waste of
turf. Latest polarizing topic: Martin Hawtree's design changes at the
Old Course, in advance of the 2015 British Open. Many consider it
blasphemy.
8. MUIRFIELD
Muirfield is universally admired as a low-key,
straightforward links with fairways seemingly containing a million
traffic bumps. Except for a blind tee shot on the 11th, every shot is
visible and well-defined. Greens are the correct size to fit the
expected iron of approach. The routing changes direction on every hole
to pose different wind conditions. The front runs clockwise, the back
counterclockwise, but history mistakenly credits Old Tom Morris with
Muirfield's returning nines. That was the result of H.S. Colt's 1925
redesign.
9. ROYAL MELBOURNE G.C. (WEST CSE.)
Alister MacKenzie's 1926 routing fits snuggly
into the contours of the rolling sandbelt land. His greens are miniature
versions of the surrounding topography. His crisp bunkering, with
vertical edges a foot or more tall, chew into fairways and putting
surfaces. Most holes dogleg, so distance means nothing and angle into
the pin is everything. For championships, holes 8 & 9 and 13 - 16
are skipped in favor of six from the East Course, which is ranked 28th.
That "composite course" was once ranked by several publications.
Oakmont, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. / 7,255 yards, Par 71
Once the epitome of a green chairman gone crazy
(old man William C. Fownes would stake out new bunkers whenever and
where ever he saw a player hit an offline shot), Oakmont now represents
the zenith of architectural restoration. It began with the deforestation
of thousands of non-native trees planted by decades of green committees
and continued with Tom Fazio's reclamation of the game's nastiest, most
notorious bunkers and deep drainage ditches. Oh yes, Oakmont also has
the game's swiftest putting surfaces. They actually slow them down for
professional tournament play, like the upcoming U.S. Open in 2016.
11. BARNBOUGLE DUNES
A 2004 collaboration of American superstar
designer Tom Doak and Australian tour-pro turned architect Michael
Clayton, this is a tremendous 18 in a fantastic stretch of sand dunes
along Bass Strait, the sea that separates Tasmania from Melbourne. What
is fascinating is that the back nine is completely reversed from how
Doak originally routed it. So was the site that good that, once
construction started, Doak and Clayton were able to find nine new green
sites at the opposite ends of holes originally envisioned? Or did they
create those "natural" green sites?
Mullen, Nebraska, U.S.A. / 7,089 yards, Par 71
The golf course wasn't so much designed as
discovered. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw trudged back and forth over a
thousand acres of rolling sand hills in central Nebraska, flagging out
naturally-occurring fairways and greens. By moving just 4,000 cubic
yards of earth, and letting the winds shape (and reshape) the bunkers,
the duo created what is undoubtedly the most natural golf course in
America.
Southampton, New York State, U.S.A. / 6,935 yards, Par 72
As the 2013 Walker Cup reminded us, National
Golf Links is a true links containing a marvelous collection of
strategic holes. Credit architect C.B. Macdonald, who designed National
as a collection of his favorite features from grand old British golf
holes. Macdonald's versions are actually superior in strategy to the
originals, which is why National's design is still studied by golf
architects today.
Ardmore, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. / 6,886 yards, Par 70
What a treat it was to see Merion East, long
considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, hosting
the 2013 U.S. Open. Today's generation of big hitters couldn't conquer
the little old course. They couldn't stay on its canted fairways edged
by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes and they couldn't
consistently hit its canted greens edged by bunkers that stare back.
Let's hope it doesn't take another 32 years for the U.S. Open to return
to Merion.
Pebble Beach, California U.S.A. / 6,828 yards, Par 72
Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in
American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched
immediately above the crashing Pacific surf -- the fourth through 10th
plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble's sixth through eighth are golf's real
Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over a ocean cove on eight
from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble will host another U.S. Amateur
in 2018, and its sixth U.S. Open in 2019.
16. ROYAL PORTRUSH G.C.
An Old Tom Morris design reworked by H.S. Colt
in the 1930s. He fit fairways into seams between dunes and molded one of
the best set of putting surfaces in the world, making Portrush what
many feel is Colt's finest design. His most notorious hole is the uphill
210-yard par-3 14th, called Calamity, as there's a steep drop to
oblivion on its right. Portrush is the only Irish course to host the
Open, back in 1951. Now updated by Martin Hawtree, there's talk it may
finally return, perhaps in 2018.
Fishers Island, New York State, U.S.A. / 6,566 yards, Par 72
Probably the consummate design of architect Seth
Raynor, who died in early 1926, before the course had opened. His
steeply-banked bunkers and geometric greens harmonize perfectly with the
linear panoramas of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. The
quality of the holes is also superb, with all of Raynor's usual
suspects, including not one but two Redan greens, one on a par 4.
18. HIRONO G.C.
Undoubted the finest design of globetrotting
C.H. Alison, longtime partner of H.S. Colt. He laid out Hirono in the
early 1930s in a hilly pine forest slashed by gulleys, clearing wide
corridors and positioning greens on the crests of ridges. What makes
Hirono special was Alison's spectacular bunkering, which ranged from
diagonal cross bunkers, fearsome carry bunkers and strings of
ragged-edged ones. Soon after completion, writers were calling Hirono
the Pine Valley of Japan.
19. TURNBERRY RESORT (AILSA)
A legendary links ravaged by Britain's Ministry of Defence for World War II flights, it was
re-established to its present quality by architect Philip Mackenzie
Ross, who tore away concrete landing strips to create a dramatic back
nine and built a set of varied greens, some receptive, other not so
much. Its revetted bunkering is not P.M. Ross; Peter Alliss and Dave
Thomas created them before the 1977 Open. More recently Martin Ebert
altered some holes, notably the famed par-4 16th, turning it into a
dogleg but retaining the burn before the green.
20. KINGSTON HEATH G.C.
Considered an Alister MacKenzie design, but in
fact Australian pro Des Soutar designed the course in 1925. MacKenzie
made a brief visit the following year and suggested the bunkering, which
was constructed by Mick Morcom before he built Royal Melbourne's two
courses. The bunkers are long, sinewy, shaggy, gnarly, windswept and, of
course, strategically placed. Some say MacKenzie's tee-to-green stretch
of bunkers on the par-3 15th set the standard for all Sandbelt layouts.
Labels: WHERE TO GO
posted by Colin |
See story on its own page | Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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