AMERICA’S 100 GREATEST GOLF COURSES
just as effectively as a course that makes large meals of bogeys and doubles. The prototype for the convergence of challenge and choice is Augusta National, once again the No 2 course in the US behind Pine Valley. Whether playing the members tees or the Masters, it is not a taxing driving course. The fairways are up to 55 metres wide, perfectly groomed with few hazards and flanked by a short cut of rough that helps higher handicaps get the ball in the air. The shots into the greens,
noblest of species was then widely held and somewhat baked into the Golf Digest recipe for ranking courses. When our current evaluation model was created in 1985, with each course scored on a one-to-10 scale in seven categories, criteria like Shot Values (the need to skilfully shape and manoeuvre a variety of shots around and over hazards) and Resistance to Scoring (what it sounds like) catered towards a specific type of elite player and tended to tilt the results toward “championship” courses, to use the popular label of the era. These categories were remnants of the magazine’s original ranking concept, the 1966 list of “America’s 200 Toughest Courses.” Around a decade ago, we modified the categories to acknowledge the changing tastes and intentions of developers, clubs and architects, who, in turn, were responding to market interests. Shot Values became Shot Options, and Resistance to Scoring became Challenge, both measuring different things. Shot Options now means raters assess how much the design requires thinking and decision making, with higher scores going to courses that offer a greater mix of risk- reward shots, approach strategies and greenside recovery options. Challenge is a more significant change. Instead of rewarding courses in proportion to how thoroughly they thwart the hopes and intentions of those who play them, we ask raters to examine the range of skills required to score well, along with the less obvious ways their designs challenge advanced players. Good architecture and good land can pose interesting challenges beyond length, deep rough and penal hazards. These include changing wind directions, visibility (the impact of blind shots), firmness of turf, unlevel stances, changes in elevation, difficult- to-read greens with diverse hole locations, demanding stretches, and the overall psychological stress the design imposes. Perhaps none of these factors alone would make a course “difficult” in the old sense, but they certainly enhance the challenge and might cumulatively eat away at a score
GOLF IS A GAME OF FAILURE. Shots that don’t come out the way we envision always outnumber those that do, and unsatisfying rounds tend to triple those in which we play well. Considering how rare it is for any of us to consistently play to our expectations, it’s almost miraculous that people don’t walk away from golf more often than they do. Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, including the 2025- 2026 ranking, reflect a growing shift towards more “option-friendly” designs. Many courses that a different generation may have considered too easy or not demanding enough for tournament play have risen on our list. Some are older courses that have been renovated to emphasise their strategic rather than penal qualities, with remodels focused on tree removal, expanded fairway borders and reestablishing lost green sizes. In other words, they give golfers more room to play. Others are new designs from architects who’ve taken advantage of enormous properties to create fairways with multiple avenues and massive, robustly contoured greens, with hole locations that alter the day-to-day tactics. In each case, the spaciousness plays to a desire for freedom: the freedom to explore different shots, take chances and recover from errors. Does this mean these courses are “easier”? Not necessarily. Difficulty is not their point, as it often was for prestige courses built from the 1960s through much of the 1990s. The belief that difficult courses were the
RIVIERA CC The future host of the 2028 Olympics matches its highest historical ranking at No. 18.
84 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JUNE 2025
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