Although I’ve been writing course reviews here for almost 5 years, I’ve never written a piece that sums up my thoughts across courses. To be sure, I’ve included bits of these thoughts in many of my reviews. And if anything, these general thoughts and comparisons have probably become a more important part of my reviews over time.
But I’ve reviewed almost 100 courses (97 to be exact) which, assuming an average of somewhere just under 3,000 words per review, means that I’ve probably written around 275,000 words. One of my favorite novels, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, only has 206,000 words. So I’ve done a lot of writing about golf courses. And it’s probably time to say something about these courses in summation.
So I started trying to rank the courses I’ve reviewed. This is something I’ve done in bits and pieces in the past, but I’ve never sat down and tried to hammer out a list until now. It’s a tough thing to do. It’s tough enough for me to come up with a list of Michigan’s top 5 public courses. And although I’ve obviously thought about all of these courses intensely, I haven’t seen or thought about many of them in a long time. I also haven’t thought about many of them in relation to each other. How does Blackwolf Run’s River Course compare to Woking, for example? I don’t know—I’d never thought about it.
But now I have. I went through all of the courses that I’ve reviewed and come up with my top 40 plus 6 honorable mentions. These are all of the courses that I’ve reviewed that I would give a borderline 6/7 or higher on the Tom Doak Scale. Honestly, I started with the intention of doing a top 10 list. But then I found that there were about 13 courses that should be in the top 10. So I expanded it to 20 plus 5 honorable mentions. But then I figured, why not just make that a top 25? Then I had a bunch of near-misses for that top 25 and that list ended up having 15 courses. And that was pretty close to all of the courses that I thought were a 7 or better, but there were 5 or 6 more that I would either give a 7 or where it would be very close between a 6 and a 7. So I decided to write a bit about those as well.
Before we get to the honorable mentions and the top 40, here are some of the other contenders that just missed the honorable mentions. I would give each of these a strong 6 on the Doak Scale:
But I’ve reviewed almost 100 courses (97 to be exact) which, assuming an average of somewhere just under 3,000 words per review, means that I’ve probably written around 275,000 words. One of my favorite novels, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, only has 206,000 words. So I’ve done a lot of writing about golf courses. And it’s probably time to say something about these courses in summation.
So I started trying to rank the courses I’ve reviewed. This is something I’ve done in bits and pieces in the past, but I’ve never sat down and tried to hammer out a list until now. It’s a tough thing to do. It’s tough enough for me to come up with a list of Michigan’s top 5 public courses. And although I’ve obviously thought about all of these courses intensely, I haven’t seen or thought about many of them in a long time. I also haven’t thought about many of them in relation to each other. How does Blackwolf Run’s River Course compare to Woking, for example? I don’t know—I’d never thought about it.
But now I have. I went through all of the courses that I’ve reviewed and come up with my top 40 plus 6 honorable mentions. These are all of the courses that I’ve reviewed that I would give a borderline 6/7 or higher on the Tom Doak Scale. Honestly, I started with the intention of doing a top 10 list. But then I found that there were about 13 courses that should be in the top 10. So I expanded it to 20 plus 5 honorable mentions. But then I figured, why not just make that a top 25? Then I had a bunch of near-misses for that top 25 and that list ended up having 15 courses. And that was pretty close to all of the courses that I thought were a 7 or better, but there were 5 or 6 more that I would either give a 7 or where it would be very close between a 6 and a 7. So I decided to write a bit about those as well.
Before we get to the honorable mentions and the top 40, here are some of the other contenders that just missed the honorable mentions. I would give each of these a strong 6 on the Doak Scale:
Honorable Mentions
The Homestead--Cascades Course (Virginia, USA)
Arcadia Bluffs—Bluffs Course (Michigan, USA)
Meadowbrook (Michigan, USA)
Caledonia (South Carolina, USA)
Pinehurst—no. 4 (North Carolina, USA)
Cleeve Hill (England, UK)
Keilir (Iceland)
It was very difficult to decide which courses would just miss and make the 40 course cutoff and I’ve done a few iterations of this list where some of the following courses made it. One course which didn’t make the original list—because I hadn’t played it yet when I made it—is the Cascades Course at the Homestead Resort in western Virginia. When I first started looking at golf course ranking lists in the late 90s, this course was always considered the finest American example of mountain golf, one of America’s top 5 public courses, and one of its top 100 courses overall.
With so many high profile, flashy public courses opening in the last 25 years, the spotlight has shifted away from William Flynn's much more modest-appearing Cascades and it has fallen significantly in the rankings. I think that this drop is justified because while there are several fine holes—including the long par 4s nos. 2, 9, 13, the par 3 8th, and the par 5s nos. 12 and 16—a good half of the holes here are relatively undistinguished. But looking at the recent top public course lists, the course hasn’t fallen as far as I thought, placing in the 30s or 40s on the Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, and Golfweek top 100 public course lists. And I think that the current consensus is about right. Still, while the Homestead may longer be on lists of top American golf destinations, the Cascades is an excellent course and worth a detour into the mountains of western Virginia to see something a bit different from the recent attention-grabbing courses.
With so many high profile, flashy public courses opening in the last 25 years, the spotlight has shifted away from William Flynn's much more modest-appearing Cascades and it has fallen significantly in the rankings. I think that this drop is justified because while there are several fine holes—including the long par 4s nos. 2, 9, 13, the par 3 8th, and the par 5s nos. 12 and 16—a good half of the holes here are relatively undistinguished. But looking at the recent top public course lists, the course hasn’t fallen as far as I thought, placing in the 30s or 40s on the Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, and Golfweek top 100 public course lists. And I think that the current consensus is about right. Still, while the Homestead may longer be on lists of top American golf destinations, the Cascades is an excellent course and worth a detour into the mountains of western Virginia to see something a bit different from the recent attention-grabbing courses.
For me, one of the hardest lists to make is a list of Michigan’s 5 best public courses. For me, the contenders are Arcadia Bluffs (Bluffs), Forest Dunes, Greywalls, Pilgrim’s Run, and The Loop. Many would include Arcadia Bluffs (South) and some might include American Dunes. Over several playings between 2004 and a few years back, my thinking was always that the original Bluffs Course at Arcadia Bluffs was the best public course in Michigan, but just by a fraction over Forest Dunes, Greywalls, and Pilgrim’s Run. Others have always criticized it as being unwalkable and having too severe a set of greens. I always defended the greens as being interesting and challenging and the walkability as no worse than Greywalls.
But I played Arcadia Bluffs again in the summer of 2024 and this time, it finally struck me that there’s more to the criticisms than I had realized in 4 or 5 previous visits. Too many of the holes are overdone given the severity of the property and the ever-presence of the wind. A few of the greens (5, 6, 18) are blatantly over-contoured and a few of the green complexes are too severe at their edges (10, 14). I still think that some of the par 5’s (3, 11), long par 4’s (7, 16), and the opening 5 holes in general are among the best in the state. But I’ve become more sensitive to courses being over-the-top in difficulty in recent years and Arcadia Bluffs is one of my home state’s biggest offenders. Still, it’s hard not to include on my list a course that I thought for so long was Michigan’s best public course.
But I played Arcadia Bluffs again in the summer of 2024 and this time, it finally struck me that there’s more to the criticisms than I had realized in 4 or 5 previous visits. Too many of the holes are overdone given the severity of the property and the ever-presence of the wind. A few of the greens (5, 6, 18) are blatantly over-contoured and a few of the green complexes are too severe at their edges (10, 14). I still think that some of the par 5’s (3, 11), long par 4’s (7, 16), and the opening 5 holes in general are among the best in the state. But I’ve become more sensitive to courses being over-the-top in difficulty in recent years and Arcadia Bluffs is one of my home state’s biggest offenders. Still, it’s hard not to include on my list a course that I thought for so long was Michigan’s best public course.
Another Michigan course that falls in the middle of this tough-to-rank group is Meadowbrook, a private club in the western suburbs of Detroit. While the course has been here since before WWII (it hosted a PGA in the 50’s), it was completely redesigned a few years back in the MacDonald/Raynor style, with steep-faced, flat-bottomed bunkers and a Biarritz green, among other features. While there is some outstanding greens contouring and several fine holes (especially the par 5 4th, par 4 7th, and par 3 11th), some of the green complexes are overdone and I feel that the angular style of the shaping conflicts with the broadly rolling landscape. Still, it’s a course that’s very much worth playing if you’re in the Detroit area and get a chance.
Two other very fine courses that I would also give (low) 7s are Mike Strantz’s Caledonia and Pinehurst no. 4. Caledonia is my favorite Mike Strantz course and I’ve always found it to be the best course in Myrtle Beach—although really, it’s the only one that I’d say is worth driving any distance to play. It makes excellent use of a very small property which makes me think that Strantz would have been well-served by having such a limitation on his other courses. Although I like other Strantz courses like Tobacco Road and Royal New Kent, they suffer from a visual excess that probably wasn’t an option here. In addition to being a fine piece of landscape architecture, with bunkers and shaping that harmonize well with the surroundings, Caledonia has an excellent set of par 3s and par 5s. While I liked the previous Fazio version of Pinehurst no. 4, the new Gil Hanse version is clearly an improvement. There are several beautifully contoured greens and several green complexes with some very good, subtle shaping at their edges. At their best, these green complexes get closer to those next door on no. 2 than any modern course that I’ve seen. There are fewer standout holes here than other courses on my list but there are a few cool blind shots and the long par 4 18th is one of the finest in the North Carolina sandhills.
And across the pond—or in the middle of it in the case of the latter—are the English Cotswolds’ Cleeve Hill and Iceland’s Keilir. Cleeve Hill is one of the most epic courses that I’ve ever seen, playing across the treeless highest points of western England. The course is on common ground and a bit rough, with sheep (and their outputs) aplenty. But Cleeve Hill is a breathtaking course and features some of the my favorite holes, including the blind dogleg 7th and the par 5 13th, with its green in an ancient earthwork. The topography is notable at Keilir too; the front nine plays through an old lava field and the back nine is on a precipice of coastline, with several holes—including the great 11th, 14th, and 16th—providing a solid Icelandic response to Pebble Beach. The long par 4 finisher was one of my favorites anywhere. Since my visit, the back nine has been reworked to increase the ocean frontage of the holes. Looking at the new routing plan, Keilir is likely now an even better course than what I saw.
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