Like an abstract painting splattered on a canvas, the skill of golf course design is easy to dismiss. A tee box, a green, a fairway and some bunkers in between. The whole time you think, Hell, I could do that. Then you dive deeper, and you realize it’s not so simple.
Whenever Golf Digest publishes a new ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, as it did last week, there’s an opportunity to consider what we prize most in courses. Most average golfers like me default to superficial assessments. Was it pretty? Were the greens true? Although aesthetics and conditioning factor as criteria, our course rankings look beyond plush lies and prime real estate, which makes them both more interesting and instructive. The scruffy courses many of us play might have little outward resemblance to Pine Valley or Oakmont. But when you start to understand some basic principles of course design, you begin to detect the threads that connect them all.
Since I’m a bit of a novice to the field myself, I decided to ask Golf Digest managing editor Steve Hennessey, who helps oversee our course rankings, to explain why golfers should care about the ranking of courses they might never play.
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Steve, “shot options” is something our course raters assess. What would be an example at a typical course?
In our eyes, great courses require strategic thought and skillful tactics from tee to green, so a hole that allows for choices off the tee and into greens would have great “Shot Options”. In other words, there isn’t just one way to play the hole. The more thought and decision-making, the more “Shot Options,” the more interesting the design.
We also consider “challenge” as criteria. Is that to say the harder a golf course, the better?
Courtesy of the club
That’s probably the biggest misconception of our rankings. We are not looking to identify the best championship courses in America. The reason challenge is different than difficulty is because we are looking at how a course tests an elite player as opposed to a course that is just long and penal for everyone. Some of the best courses in the world are the kind that measure the skills of the scratch player but are still playable for the bogey golfer.
Many of the top courses have been mainstays in our rankings, but there are always clubs that jump up the rankings while others fall. Are there trends in course design like in fashion? And what’s one we might notice where we play?
We’ve had 12 brand-new courses debut on our top 200 this year, which is the most in decades, and they all reflect qualities I referenced earlier: Mega-wide fairways, giving higher handicappers options off the tee, but rewarding better players by allowing them to seek a better angle and take on more risk. I expect this trend of fewer trees and more greenside options to continue, so don’t be surprised if you see it at the courses you play.
OK, my last question is my toughest. Let’s say I’m playing with my friends, and I want to look smart by pointing out a design element they might not notice. What would I say?
Layout/design variety is the most approachable topic. Start with the par 3s: Does each require different clubs? Are they oriented in similar directions? Even your buddies who aren’t interested in design will engage in that discussion.
If you haven’t completely lost their attention, you might continue to observe things like the variety of green surrounds (i.e. do some holes have runoff areas while others have thicker rough? Maybe some greens are approachable from the front while others require an aerial shot.) Ideally it's a healthy mix throughout the course.
See the complete list of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses, as well as our list of America's 100 Greatest Public Courses.
This article first appeared in Low Net is a Golf Digest+ exclusive newsletter written for the average golfer, by an average golfer. Have a topic you want me to explore? Send me an email and I'll do my best to dive in.