The Case for Doubt: Prestige, Friction, and Corruption in Golf Course Rankings
Epistemological problems inherent in course reviews
In a previous article, I wrote about course rating frameworks. Here, I want to write about the problem of epistemology in course reviews. That is, how can we know that golf course ratings actually deserve the score the reviewer gives them? And, why might we want to be more skeptical of some reviews than others? In the first essay, I discussed how different frameworks for rating courses lead to different results and how those results could be interpreted in different ways. However, while we may have ideals we intend to follow on paper, we live in a pragmatic world. That idealism may not withstand the practical compromises of rating courses in practice. Here, I want to look at some reasons why we might not see the results that these frameworks intend.
Criticism Seems Lopsided
Top-rated private courses tend to be exclusive, and are rarely criticized.
The top three courses on almost every list generally include Pine Valley, Cypress Point, and Augusta. These courses are rarely criticized in public, a fact that you could easily gloss over as logical: if they really are the best, there must simply be nothing to criticize about them. But scratch the surface, and you do have to wonder if it’s really these courses’ actual merits that keep their names wholly untarnished. Case in point: even the slightest criticism about one of these courses can make headlines. We saw this when Jordan Spieth made news for discussing mud balls at this year's Masters tournament.1 While he only criticized a couple of landing zones, much of the story focused on the taboo of criticizing anything at all about Augusta. More damningly, while tiny criticisms about top-rated courses end up on the front page simply for their audacity, more serious concerns about these clubs are so rarely discussed it can seem surprising.
Top-rated public courses regularly get criticized.
When I started writing this article, I was planning to reference Pebble Beach as the near top-10 course that is regularly criticized publicly. It seems now that it’s not exactly a constant top 10’er, and can be found anywhere from the top 10 to the top 50 on many lists. However, I don’t think the point is lost: from Bandon to the Old Course, even the most highly respected public courses can often receive regular architectural criticism in a way that high-end private clubs do not.
Pebble Beach has been criticized by well respected outlets for everything from price to the mow lines.2 Bandon has been criticized for the poa annua issues they’ve faced recently, as well as some internal arguments over the merits of their flagship course.3 St Andrews Old Course was criticized before it was cool, but even now people regularly make public criticisms of the course, and it regularly is criticized for changes, even to the point of having them reversed.4
This suggests a chilling effect on criticism
My point here isn’t to say that the criticisms are unjustified. On the contrary, I actually agree with the majority of criticism of Pebble and Bandon, and I often overlap with folks who don’t worship the Old Course. Instead, my goal here is to call attention to how odd it is that we never see the same level of criticism when it comes to highly rated private clubs..
I have some theories that might explain this.
1. Prestige Effects: the Tail Wagging the Dog
The most obvious explanation is simple prestige bias. Simply put, access to exclusive places just feels good for whoever’s getting it.5 It shouldn’t be surprising if being granted access to these exclusive goods shapes the recipient’s opinion of those goods. Some people literally pay for the privilege of being a rater (and the access that provides).6
Maybe this isn't the case with everyone. Maybe those raters who already have significant status are unswayed by access, since they are already incredibly well connected. Still, I’m skeptical that it has no effect on anyone. Here, if exclusiveness is putting upward pressure on ratings, it could help explain a positive feedback loop in exclusive courses in course ratings.
2. Frictional Effects: the Velvet Rope
Media outlets may have some control over who they want to review a course on their behalf, but when it comes to exclusive clubs they likely have little control over who actually gets an invite. This poses a problem. Some raters for outlets are very important, connecting people with access to these courses, but others just might be regular folks. It’s hard for regular people to review the Augustas and Cypress Points of the world, because it’s hard to even get invited. However, if a prestegious reviewer has a relationship with the course architect, it’s much more likely they can get access.
This is why most outlets have to aggregate their reviews. Perhaps only a small percentage of reviewers have access to exclusive courses. This means some reviews will be the result of only a few opinions, while others will include dozens of perspectives. To complicate things even further, these reviews often need to occur after major changes at the clubs, so these few reviewers will likely need to get a return invite. This need for an invite and the difficulty of returning will affect who ends up in that small percentage of reviewers who end up even writing a review.
Invite Friction
To explain invite friction, let’s say Jay Blasi opens a new course in my area. I’ve played a few of his courses, and I’m a big fan. Suppose he opens a new public course, no problem. I’ll grab a tee time as soon as I can. Get some of my golf nerd friends, and we’ll all go play together. If I were writing a review, I could then send it off to my publisher to have it compiled with other reviews of the course.
If the course is exclusive, however, there will be some hurdles. I may have to make some phone calls, see if my publisher can get me on, I might even have to send a physical letter. All of that is a big hurdle to actually getting on the course and playing.
Here, I’m a fan of Blasi’s work. I’d be happy to search around my desk, find a stamp, sit down and hand-write a letter, and then go find a postbox and mail it. I’m willing to put out the effort because I’m already a fan. I’m very likely to enjoy the new course, so I’m motivated to put forward the effort to get on.
Now imagine the same exclusive course was designed by some architect that I don’t like. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that I don’t really like Tiger Woods’ designs (note: I’ve never actually played any of his designs).7 As a casual course reviewer, do I really want to call in a favor to get access? Probably not. Sure, I’d probably make time to see it if it were public and work paid for it, but I’m definitely not going to write a letter or expend a bunch of effort and social capital when I know it’s probably not going to be my favorite. All that effort just to write a bad review that will be received poorly probably doesn’t seem worth it. In fact, the whole thing sounds exhausting.
Here, because of the friction that exists to gain to access this new course, my (likely) positive review of Blasi’s new exclusive course gets published, but my (likely) negative review of Woods’ course never gets written at all. In contrast, there will be other reviewers who will want to visit that new Tiger Woods course! Those reviewers will probably be fans of Woods’ designs, and their reviews will probably be positive for the very same reasons.
This exaggerates the point, but in our hypothetical there are 100% positive reviews if the courses are exclusive, but only 50% positive reviews written if they are easy to access. Here, something as simple as friction of access can significantly skew reviews of exclusive courses.
Return Friction
The same principle should be expected when it comes to follow-up reviews if the publication has any requirement that course ratings remain current. Fans of a course will be more likely to push through the friction in setting up a return trip than folks who do not like the course in the first place. Again, this should create a positive skew in ratings the more exclusive a course is.
Many publications attempt to mitigate this issue by requiring a minimum number of raters to visit a course before it can be included in rankings, and while we should expect this to reduce the potential positive skew, the effect likely should remain as long as the entire population of raters aren’t required to visit. Whether or not this skew is significant enough to affect the ratings is a different question, but it should be something we’re concerned with.
3. Chilling Effects: Curated Objectivity
The discussion above is valid even without clubs putting any thumb on the scale. While I don’t think every top-tier club cares about their reviews, I think it’s fair to say that many clubs do.
Invites to Reviewers Who Will Give Positive Reviews
Suppose that one reviewer really, really, publicly likes a particular architect. It stands to reason that a club with a course built by that architect should invite this cheerleader critic to their course. Here, however, the opposite sentiment is also true. If a reviewer publicly criticizes that architect, then the club may not exactly extend as warm a welcome for a contrarian reviewer to come play.
Public courses have some ability to create incentives for friendly reviewers to visit, but they don’t have the ability to keep the contrarians out. There is simply less control. Any attempts to invite friendly reviewers to influence overall perceptions will be less effective, since tougher critics will still be able to bring down the averages with their lower ratings.
There isn’t anything nefarious going on here besides a club acting in its own best interest. However, we can see a chilling effect on criticism start to form even before courses start extending invites. By publishing any review, positive or negative, the reviewer knows that they very well could be affecting their ability to access other courses in the future. Like it or not, we should expect the maxim, “If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all” to hold true.
To illustrate this concern, imagine a Hollywood reporter publishes a story about Brad Pitt and mentions in the story that the actor was actually kind of a jerk. This article would make Tom Cruise much less likely to agree to do an interview with that particular reporter, simply because of the negative personal details. In contrast, imagine a writer who always publishes thoughtful, glowing profiles of celebrities (regardless of whether the profile is entirely accurate). Every publicist is going to try to get that friendly interviewer for their client. The same should be true for new golf courses who care about their ratings.
Now, in a world where everyone gives positive reviews to everything, the audience’s credulity is (or should be) strained. As much as I love the We Rate Dogs methodology (where all dogs are rated higher than 10 out of 10), I’m not sure it transfers well to golf courses. My real worry here is that, when there are potential consequences for reviewing a private course poorly (or even just less positively than a club would like), reviewers may, consciously or not, reserve their more critical opinions for public courses. Even if it’s just slight differences, if most raters are doing it, we should expect it to materially affect the ratings of different types of courses.
Anonymity seems to be the obvious solution, but I think this would be a less effective strategy than many might believe. Firstly, even getting on exclusive courses likely requires most raters to reveal their status as a writer for a publication. Here, any club that cares about their ratings can keep track of the “anonymous” raters who visit their course and they can make sure those raters have the best experience possible. Beyond that, however, expecting raters to have no relationship whatsoever with these clubs seems naive. Given the interconnected relationships between people in clubs, it’s difficult to expect that anyone’s rating is truly, truly private.
Access Journalism
Providing a glimpse behind the curtain into exclusive clubs is genuinely part of the business model for many golf media outlets. Logically, this asymmetric relationship leaves publications with a classic principal-agent problem when it comes to journalistic integrity: if they make their money by covering clubs most of their readers will never actually get to play, is it really worth biting the hand that feeds them? When we look at it this way, it’s easy to see how clubs would be able to exercise some unofficial editorial control over the outlets they actually allow to cover them. This type of positive coverage in exchange for continued access would again give exclusive clubs a positive skew in ratings.
4. Rating Capture: When Reviewers are Compromised
So far, I’ve only discussed topics where nobody is actually compromising their values in writing these reviews. I just think that we shouldn’t be so optimistic about objectivity when so much money is on the line, both for the clubs and for the publications. Let me indulge, then, some ethical concerns we should have when we think about course ratings.
Relationships of Access
The relationship between the rater and the club is an obvious concern. In a world of exclusive clubs, just having access is a benefit to the rater, and that means it’s in the rater’s best interest to be friendly to the club’s members. I find it entirely plausible that raters might be very, very wary of offending these members who’ve been so kind as to allow them onto their exclusive course. This puts the rater in a very difficult position. For this reason, I could easily see a rater leaving out some of their more nitpicking criticisms of an exclusive club even when they might leave those same types of criticisms in when reviewing, say, a high-end resort course. If the ethos of the club being rated is perfection, anything less than perfection may be a perceived slight. And in the world of exclusive clubs, there may be no way to get back into good graces once the damage is done. The takeaway lesson here when reviewing exclusive courses would be, “if you’re going to err, err on the side of praise - or else you may not get a second chance.”
Financial Relationships
Obviously we should be concerned if the publications ranking golf courses, or at least the raters, have direct financial interests in the courses they are rating. In late 2023, Darius Oliver of Planet Golf wrote a piece suggesting just this. Prompted by another article written by David Jones, Oliver’s post suggests that GOLF Magazine panelists’ financial interests in Cabot, as well as its relationships with architects, might be compromising the outlet’s ratings. Garrett Morrison did a nice write up about the row, discussing David Jones’ initial article that led to the ruckus:8
Jones, who operates a UK-based golf-travel outfit, also wrote a lengthy and insightful analysis of the ranking… He comments skeptically on the high ratings of some very new courses, including the not-yet-open Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot St. Lucia. Finally, he laments the descent of Cape Wickham Golf Links, which appeared at No. 70 in Golf‘s last world ranking but has now dropped out of the top 100.
The latter two points apparently resonated with Darius Oliver, a golf-travel writer and co-designer of Cape Wickham. In a scorched-earth blog post on his Planet Golf website, Oliver describes Golf‘s list as “the magazine ranking with the most professionally, and personally, conflicted panelists.” He mentions that Ran Morrissett, the head of the ranking panel, was an “initial investor in the Cabot business” and is a “consultant on one of their projects in Florida.” (Cabot is the development company behind Point Hardy as well as Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links, Nos. 52 and 79, respectively.) Oliver also asserts that Morrissett is a “cheerleader (or promoter)” for the architect Tom Doak, who helmed the Golf ranking in the 1980s and 90s, currently serves as a panelist, and has eight designs in the top 75.
Ironically, here, this type of potential corruption would lend itself toward inflating the rankings of public courses. When it comes to the epistemology of golf course rankings, the scandal suggests that there is justification for cynicism after all.
This concern should be more relevant going forward as publications have started programs that provide some access to private clubs that are otherwise inaccessible.9 This should provide both the club and the publication a monetary benefit, and thus a financial relationship. This would again lend itself to skewing more toward some public and private clubs ratings being inflated, depending on the relationship. Again, I actually really appreciate that more golf outlets are providing access to private golf clubs. This is a huge benefit to people who appreciate architecture everywhere. It doesn’t mean anything nefarious is going on, it only means it’s worth keeping an eye on.
5. Secondhand Insights: Literature Bias and First Impressions
Most raters are probably amazing at rating resort courses. These courses are often designed to be accessible the first – and likely only – time visitors play. There isn’t much point to hidden depth at these courses. I’d even say it’s arguable that any hidden strategy at these courses is bad design. One of the most interesting resort courses I’ve played is Talking Stick’s O'odhom Course. The course, as I experienced it, had a significant amount of elegant strategy. Looking at the yardage book however, it was pretty obvious what was happening. With hole names like “Left is Right – O:gig o sape” and “Left is safe – O:gig o ma sape” the course is clearly signaling the strategic elements. This makes for a course that’s easy to understand, and easy to rate.
The opposite is typically true for member clubs. Member clubs are courses designed to be played over a lifetime. They shouldn’t be obvious. They should have the depth and complexity to generate new interest even after 100 rounds. These courses should have nuance, and much of that nuance needs to be in the form of heroic recovery shots, contours that are only useful from certain angles. A truly great members’ course has experts discovering new strategies just by watching the members reveal these tactics. My favorite example is this discussion of Corner of the Dyke from Alister MacKenzie:10
Twenty years ago I described the 16th at St. Andrews…
‘As in the majority of good holes, it is the subtlety of the slopes that makes it so. The green is tilted up slightly from right to left… the approach from the right is easy, as all the slopes assist the players, and the approach from the left is exceedingly difficult. The point about the hole is that it is so difficult to get into the best position to approach the green because of the proximity of the Principal’s Nose bunker to the railway… there is a perfectly easy route free from all risk to the left… but the player in all probability will lose a stroke by taking it.’
This description of the 16th was entirely wrong…
Ted Blackwell is a man of action, but few words… I watched him play the hole… and noticed that when he placed his drive [10 yards left of the Deacon Sime bunker], he played a run up approach so near the flag that he not infrequently got a three. I then discovered that he took advantage of a small valley (which I had previously overlooked) in the bank of the green leading up to the place where the hole is usually cut on medal days.
If the tee shot is placed ten yards to the left… or right, the advantage of this valley is lost.
Is there any course in the world that presents such subtle strategic problems?
That’s quite an endorsement! But how can new courses be rewarded for this type of complex depth when even the best reviewers won’t notice much of these nuances for years? Honestly, most of this nuance in these old courses is “noticed” simply because it’s written about at length in the canon of literature. The reason why C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor’s template courses are so celebrated is exactly that they have all that subtle nuance built in, and well-read players can understand these nuances long before ever playing.
Raters will understand the nuances of a historic course because researching and reading about those nuances is part of the job. Without the ability for significant, repeat play for modern courses, raters won’t have the opportunity to notice or discover, let alone appreciate, these nuances. I would even suggest it’s an intractable problem. Without many plays under their belts, raters likely have limited knowledge of potential pin locations, pairings of pin locations and tee boxes, differing conditions, seasonal winds, seasonal conditions, etc.
Yes, experts are supposed to infer this stuff during their visit, but do we really think that even the best raters are able to consistently account for this sort of thing? If they cannot, or if even a subset cannot, is it unreasonable to expect reputation to influence rating? When new courses are rated on a single play, or at most a handful of plays, the lack of literature about the nuance and complexity of the design will likely put downward pressure on their rating. Until those subtleties enter the canon (which, for most courses, might be never) the ratings will simply be favoring the old, established clubs simply because they’re old and established.
6. Hidden Costs: Price Bias in Ratings
One of the most obvious biases I see is the disconnect between ticket price and total cost. This is most overt when it comes to comparing high-end public clubs to high-end private clubs. Because most private golf clubs are nonprofit entities, we can actually look at this using public data. If we look at Pine Valley, we can see that their revenues from golf fees are only a small proportion of revenue when compared to membership dues.11 This delta would suggest that the total costs of private courses feel lower to outsiders, simply because they don’t show up in the green fees. In contrast, for-profit golf courses will feel more expensive, because everything shows up on the receipt. While this might seem insignificant, I only really see “value for money” discussions appear on public course reviews. More importantly, when the course is high-profile, they are always meantioned as a downside.
If raters aren’t actually paying for their rounds, fair enough, but when they are, that price bias may make people think “is this really worth that much?” It’s a selection bias in which the apparent downside will only show up for one type of course, and should materially affect ratings.
Solipsism and Scope: How Flexible Frameworks Adapt
Most golf course architect fans I know generally turn to Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide when they talk about golf course rankings.12 Why? I think epistemological concerns and his credibility have a lot to do with it. First, Doak’s ratings are published in book form, not in a kind of repeat, periodical form. Next, Doak publicly published the book after he’d already established himself as a well respected voice in golf with access to the kinds of courses most people will likely never visit. The book takes real shots at some well respected courses and highly praises some courses that are relatively little known. Finally, the framework Doak uses clearly states that his ratings are only his opinions. All of this points away from the kinds of frictional chilling effects discussed earlier in this post.
Note, however, some scores have changed a bit in later editions, which could still point to some epistemological problems. When Doak’s ratings change, those changes could be due to any of the topics discussed above, but they could also simply be due to the course changing over time. Still, when a rating is framed as a specific opinion given at a specific time these changes aren’t a problem for the framework.
Next, I’m a skeptical guy by nature, but I think there are plenty of good reasons to think twice about why certain types of courses get the rankings and ratings they do. The golf industry is tough, there is a lot of marketing out there, and even though most of it may be perfectly fine, the incentive structure is so wild that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a bit of skepticism.
Finally, this article comes as a “part two” to my previous article, From Doak to Digest: Golf Rankings Are Built on Assumptions No One Talks About, exactly because the scope of Doak’s rating framework really eases concerns about most of these potential shortcomings. A rating framework that’s effectively just one person’s impression has space to get some things wrong, miss nuance, and allow in some biases without giving a misleading impression about a course. Whereas any rating framework that suggests itself as an authority suffers pretty significantly here.
In the end, for the vast majority of us, none of this really matters. Golf course ratings are meant to be a fun exercise that gets clicks. Do I think the way they are structured is bad for golf culture? Absolutely. The manufactured drama of who’s up, who’s down, who is worthy and who isn’t… it's a kind of sensationalism, and that’s what sells. But it’s too bad how easy it is for the whole system to end up rewarding the status quo while at best ignoring, and at worst disproportionately disparaging, more interesting, newer, scrappier, and usually more accessible courses. When we sit down to read a course review or profile, we’re not often thinking of all the politics and business incentives involved in that review being written. This is why I will always recommend finding publications who use frameworks that share your values, and reviewers you can trust.
Schupak, Adam. “Mud balls! Jordan Spieth talks taboo subject at 2025 Masters.” Golfweek. April 12, 2005. Accessed July 28, 2025.
Relevant quote:
“It's just so frustrating because you can't talk about them here. You're not supposed to talk about them. Mud balls can affect this tournament significantly, especially when you get them a lot on 11 and 13. They're just daggers on those two holes,” he said. “They've done a better job – there's like less than normal, but I still had them today on those holes, too. I had them yesterday on those holes. It's something to pay attention to for sure for leader groups, because you just have to play so far away from trouble or lay up when you'd normally go for it, just random stuff, because it will affect it significantly. And if you're on the wrong side of the hole, you're either in the water or you almost can't make par depending on what hole it is.”
Morrison, Garrett. “Pebble in the Rough.” Fried Egg Golf, Feb 2, 2024. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Covey, Tony. “The Pebble Beach Pro-AM is why People Hate Golf.” My Golf Spy. Feb 12, 2016. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Johnson, Andy. “Design Notebook: Bandon Dunes at the Quarter-Century Mark.” Fried Egg Golf. May 6, 2024. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Dempster, Martin. “‘Horrified’ Tom Doak to petition R&A over Old Course changes.” The Scotsman. 27 Nov 2012. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
“St Andrews Old Course bridge paving dug up after backlash.” BBC News. 7 Feb 2023. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Corrigan, James. “Why so many golfers hate St Andrews... and then grow to love it.” The Telegraph. 11 July 2022. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Porter, Kyle. “Rory McIlroy used to hate the Old Course at St. Andrews.” CBS Sports. Oct 8, 2014. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
I’ll admit this suffers from a falsifiability problem. However some prominent folks might agree that it’s an issue. We don’t see genuinely exclusive places show up in the rankings, and there should be an upper limit on the exclusivity of a course and its ability to have enough ratings to even qualify for most publications. Still there are a few courses that have rave reviews, that if ever made more accessible, we could test the amount of influence exclusivity has on most reviewers. I’m immediately thinking of Morefar Back O'Beyond, Dye Course at White Oak, or the aforementioned Wolf Point Ranch.
Tarde, Jerry. “Editor's Letter: The Golden Ticket.” Golf Digest, Jan 09, 2017. Accessed 28 July 2025.
Again, this is just a hypothetical. I’ve never played any of Woods’ courses and I honestly think Payne’s Valley looks really interesting.
Morrison, Garrett. “Ranking Row.” Fried Egg Golf. Oct 27, 2023. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Jones, David. “The 2023 GOLF Magazine World Top 100.” UK Golf Guy. Oct 23, 2023
Oliver, Darius. “Golf Magazine – World Top 100 2023.” Planet Golf. Oct 2023. Accessed 1 Aug 2025.
Oliver’s relationship with Morrissett and Doak via coauthorship of the Confidential Guides: https://www.doakgolf.com/confidential-guide-to-golf-courses/
Fried Egg Golf events: https://www.thefriedegg.com/events
Random Golf Club events: https://randomgolfclub.com/pages/rgc-events
The Golfer’s Journal events: https://www.golfersjournal.com/tgj-events/
Links Magazine events: https://linksmagazine.com/events/
Outpost Club events: https://www.outpostclub.com/faq
Alister MacKenzie. The Spirit of St Andrews. Sleeping Bear Press, Chelsea, MI, 1995.
Revenues from “golf fees” is only about $3M, but revenues from membership dues is about $7M. This information is from Part VIII: Statement of Revenue on Pine Valley Golf Club’s 2023 Form 990.
ProPublica. “Pine Valley Golf Club.” Nonprofit Explorer, ProPublica. Accessed 22 July 2025.
Now, it’s difficult to say how much of those membership dues went to maintaining the golf course and staff, and how much went to other aspects. However, given the ratio of $3M:$7M, I think it’s fairly reasonable to suggest that any golf fees paid need to be multiplied by three to resemble the costs incurred per round of golf.
Estimating the actual cost per round is obviously speculative. Some places suggest that 30,000 rounds/year (Golf Property Analysts) is middle of the road, so that would put Pine Valley at $333/round. Honestly, not bad at all. This however would not include things like hospitality or lodging, but those have separate line items.
However, with Pine Valley, if we are going to continue this blind speculation, one user on Reddit says that they only offer about 15 tee times per day, which would end up being about one tee time every 50 minutes assuming a 12 hour day. If every 15 minutes is resort status, every 50 minutes seems a bit extreme but plausible. Given the golf season in the northeast, let’s say March-November or 275 days, that ends up only netting 16,500 rounds per year. This would net to about $600 per round. Definitely much higher, and in line with the cost of places like Pebble Beach, but Shadow Creek still reigns supreme at $1000/round.
Doak, Tom. The Confidential Guild to Golf Courses. Sleeping Bear Press, Chelsea, MI, 1996.
Matthew--I just wanted to say thank you for this excellent piece of writing. I regularly have this conversation in private with my issues on the golf rankings but this is the first time I've ever read somebody discuss it publicly. You brought a lot of angles I'd never considered before. Really grateful for the time you put into this.