Our rankings are guided by our panel, whose 100 members represent 15 countries. The men and women who cast their votes include major-championship winners, Ryder Cup players, architects, leading amateurs, journalists and a cadre of nearly a dozen course connoisseurs who've had the doggedness to play all Top 100 Courses in the World.
To keep it fair, course architects and course owners on the committee can't vote on their own properties. In the end, the opinions of our staff editors are factored in as well.
In 2007, we switched to a web-based system that allowed panelists to vote on a combined master list of 475 courses from around the world. Panelists can only vote for courses they've played. (On average each panelist has played 73 courses on the World Top 100 list.) From this master list, the top 100 point earners make up our Top 100 Courses in the World. The Top 100 in the U.S. are determined by taking U.S. courses from the World list, in order, and then rounding out the list with the remaining top point earners that did not make the World list.
The points break down as follows: Each course placing in the top three earns 100 points; spots 4-10 earn 85 points, followed by 11-25 (70 points), 26-50 (60 points), 51-75 (50 points), 76-100 (40 points), 101-150 (30 points), 151-200 (20 points), 201-250 (10 points), 251+ (0 points). Any course that received a "remove from ballot" vote has 10 points deducted. The results at the top were remarkably similar to 2005, with Pine Valley, Cypress Point, St. Andrews' Old Course and Augusta National keeping their 1-4 spots.
What's new this year is that we reveal, via points, just how far in front Pine Valley and Cypress Point are compared to their peers.
There are no set-in-stone criteria our rankers must follow. Certainly, nearly all consider how a course tests the full range of skills, design rhythm, variety, setting and conditioning, among others. However, the weighting of these is left to the individual preferences of our panelists.
Unlike other publications, we not only identify our panelists publicly, but we have enough confidence to let them figure out for themselves what constitutes "greatness" in a golf course without dictating to them.
By keeping the vast majority of our panel intact from year-to-year, the rankings remain fairly stable. Some years, however, are more volatile than others.
There are many reasons a course's ranking can fluctuate: Increased visits can help or hurt a course; a renovation calls added attention to a course; and finally, the addition of new panelists can bring fresh perspective to the process, in some cases confirming a course's status and in other cases shaking things up a bit.
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