Shinnecock Hills (Rank: 3)
Why rank golf courses? Well, because we love a good 19th hole debate. We love making bucket lists. We love to track trends in sports. We love to know which architects are hot (or not). And nothing fosters a healthy discourse about golf course architecture more than a good list.
For these reasons and many more, we at GOLF think the Top 100 lists are important, so the onus is acute to do the best job we can with them. For this, we rely on our panel of design lovers – 127 of them spread across the globe. Their handicaps range from +5 to +15.
There is a 52-year gap between our youngest and oldest panelist. Some have used it in over 2,000 courses, others in just a few hundred.
To hear our rating experts break down our latest rankings, check out our new travel podcast Destination GOLF. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: APPLE | SPOTIFY | HEART | AMAZON
Because the nature of course evaluation is so intensely subjective, no opinion counts. The only way, then, to build meaningful consensus is to incorporate this diversity of panelists and experiences into a ranking.
Or, in this latest iteration of GOLF’s best-of-the-best riff, two: The 100 Best Courses in the U.S., which you’ll find below, and, as a bonus, the 100 Best Courses that you can play in the US, which we will publish one week from today on GOLF.com.
The course descriptions below are written by Hayes Jackson, Ran Morrissett AND Josh Sens.
Homepage image: Cypress Point (Jon Cavalier). Main image above, from left: Lido (Brandon Carter); Bandon Trail (Evan Schiller); Philadelphia Cricket Club – Wissahickon (Evan Schiller)
Ranking of other GOLF courses: Top 100 in the world | Top 100 you can play | The 100 most valuable courses in the USA | America’s Best Municipal Courses | America’s best courses for $100 or less | Top 100 in the UK and Ireland | Top 100 in Asia-Pacific | The 100 shortest courses in the world
To browse and search our listings in map form, check out our new Course finder tool.
