Playing Golf Digest’s Top 100 Public Courses

Playing Golf Digest’s Top 100 Public Courses

Golf Digest has released its Top 100 Public courses, and I find I have some work to do. Of the Top 100, I’ve played the following:

1. Pacific Dunes (2)
2. Pinehurst No. 2 (6)
3. Bandon Dunes (7)
4. Erin Hills (9)
5. Old MacDonald (12)
6. Bandon Trails (13)
7. Arcadia Bluffs (14)
8. Blackwolf Run River (16)
9. Pinehurst No. 4 (32)
10. Forest Dunes (33)
11. The Greenbrier Old White (37)
12. Torrey Pines South (42)
13. Tobacco Road (49)
14. Arcadia Bluffs South (52)
15. Point O’ Woods (54)*
16. The Loop Black (59)
17. Bay Harbor (63)
18. Greywalls (67)
19. Pinehurst No. 8 (76)
20. The Loop Red (78)
21. The Virtues (84)
22. Caledonia Golf and Fish Club (85)

You can read reviews of the courses I’ve played at the links. I’ve yet to get around to compiling my notes and photos on Tobacco Road, so that’s not there yet. Also, weirdly, I seem to have accidentally deleted my article on Longaberger, which became The Virtues. I have a link to a photo I took, though.

Eight of those are in Michigan, so I’ve naturally played all of those.

Four I checked off on a trip to Bandon Dunes. Pinehurst No. 2, No. 4, No. 8 and Tobacco Road I visited while on a golf trip in North Carolina. Erin Hills and Blackwolf Run River I visited on consecutive days on a trip to Wisconsin.

There are quite a few courses on the list within a days or so drive of GolfBlogger World Headquarters that I need to visit. Ten days in Wisconsin would check most of these.

1. Whistling Straits Straits
2. Sand Valley
3. Pete Dye at French Lick
4. Mammoth Dunes
5. Quarry at Giant’s Ridge
6. Whistling Straits Irish
7. Sentryworld
8. Cog Hill
9. Lawsonia Links
10. Nemacolin Woodlands Mystic Rock
11. Blackwolf Run Meadow Valleys
12. Firestone South
13. The Pfau Course at Indiana
14. The Bull at Pinehurst Farms

Also within my grasp are

1. The Ocean Course at Kiawah
2. Harbor Town
3. Highland Course at Primland
4. The Omni Homestead Cascades
5. Sea Island Seaside
6. Golden Horseshoe
7. May River
8. The Dunes Golf and Beach Club
9. Bulle Rock
10. Kingsmill River
11. Spring Creek

The lion’s share of those are in South Carolina, where I go to vacation in the summer once every few years. Others are in Virginia, where I also go on a semi-regular basis for a summer trip.

The list is very much clustered. Six are in or near the village of Pinehurst. Five are at Bandon Dunes. Nine are in a reasonable radius (for a mid-westerner) in Wisconsin. Three are at Forest Dunes in Michigan; three others are just a couple hours drive from there . Three are at Streamsong.

Five well planned trips could easily allow a golfer to check off thirty courses on the list.