There are no dangling chads, no contested recounts. But the voting for GOLF’s Top 100 Golf Courses in the World produces painfully close results. For each new ranking, our magazine’s 120 panel members cast their votes in boxes: 1-3, 4-10, 11-25, 26-50, and so on. Each bucket has a corresponding point value. When all ballots are received, these point values are averaged to make the final selection.
It sounds neat. But that tidy system makes way for small margins with major consequences. Courses that seem worlds apart in the public perception can in reality only be separated by decimals. In the most recent voting, for example, the 101st-place golf course, the Golf Club, a Pete Dye design in Ohio – which just missed out on a coveted Top 100 position – was just 0.3 points behind the course before it.
That is less than the difference that one panel member’s dissenting opinion can make. Perhaps that evaluator didn’t see the rate this cycle because their plans were derailed by a flight cancellation or a spell of bad weather. All kinds of factors can play a role.
To break ties, GOLF gives an edge to the rate that appears with more total ballots, reflecting a broader consensus. Yet the margins remain wafer-thin. For the architects, owners, and superfans who follow these results as stock quotes, it’s worth remembering: each ranking is a snapshot, not a judgment.
When the difference between #100 and #101 comes down to tenths of a point, you begin to realize the obvious truth: there are far more than 100 courses in the world worthy of a Top 100 list.
On a recent episode of the Destination Golf podcast, Simon Holt, head of GOLF’s golf ratings panel, discussed the nitty-gritty of the ballot and the statistical nuances behind the rankings. It was part of a conversation dedicated to this year’s top contenders: the courses that finished 101-150 in GOLF’s new World Top 100, to be published on November 19. You can listen to the entire episode. hereand watch a segment dedicated to the vote count in the video above.
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