Chalk and cheese: How can you compare a classic links like Deal ...
The Great Golf Course Debate
Golf Monthly editor and Hoylake member, Michael Harris, explains how lists of the Top 100 courses are complied and celebrates the subjectivity of these rankings.
No subject is guaranteed to get golfers chatting quite so animatedly as that of favourite courses. After being given a moment to delve into the memory bank and ponder their relative merits, every golfer I know can reel off their top three tracks with many able to stretch to a top 10 and a few beyond that. And, as each course name is offered up, those who have posed the question usually respond with anything from a nod of approval to a detailed argument as to why a different course was in fact more worthy of praise than the one that had just been named. It is this passionate debate which means that every time
a list of the top courses in the UK and Ireland is published, the rankings are hotly debated by golfers. As editor of Golf Monthly, one of the real joys of my job is helping to put together the biennial rankings the magazine produces.
Whilst there are a number of such lists, many golfers seem
to appreciate and empathise with the Golf Monthly Top 100 for three main reasons. The first of these is that the list is the most comprehensive and up-to-date. All of the courses on the short-list - a list that is actually not at all short as it contains more than 160 entries - are visited during the two-year assessment period. This means that any changes to the design and condition of the course, off course facilities and visitor experience, be they big or small, can be taken into account. The second factor is that the process itself evolves and
improves as it always builds on the lessons learnt over the previous two years. The judgment criteria are revised and improved, and the short-list itself is re-drawn to take into account all of the feedback from readers, golfers, secretary/
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