Golf Digest Ranking Runs Incorrect Numbers After Touting Commitment To "Objective Data"

The top 25 based on published data before the numbers were removed from GolfDigest.com

With the release of their latest top 100 ranking Golf Digest featured the usual oddball emphasis on theatrics beyond golf architecture.

This prompted a plea from to pay attention to things that make a course fun and timeless, but the damage was already done.

There is also the matter than you can pay to join the panel here for $1300.

Not great.

But that’s their business.

For the sport of golf, the elements consistently rewarded by Golf Digest tend to lean expensive, unsatisfying to play and obnoxious for the planet. There’s a case to be made that the ranking has been one of the worst influences on course development since its 1966 inception. But they bill it as the “oldest and most respected list in golf.”

Thankfully, the golf world is trying to move away from the values endorsed by Golf Digest, with fun and low key atmosphere’s revered, but that doesn’t mean the 2021-22 ranking improprieties should be laughed off.

In the latest ranking rollout, Derek Duncan touts how Digest’s “commitment to emphasizing objective data in an inherently subjective endeavor has only intensified.” He lays out a system to get course votes more timely and to no longer count votes after for a course since modified significantly, plus other ways to keep the list relevant.

Then Duncan writes how close things get among the Top 100 courses.

The space between those fractions of a point might not seem like much, but they matter. Though acknowledging that it’s hard to do, we ask panelists to sweat the details and carry their 1 to 10 scores to two or even three decimal places. This is to delineate between contenders because the scores become increasingly compact the farther down the ranking one travels. What separates No. 114 (Mayacama in Santa Rosa, Calif.) and No. 115 (Stone Eagle in Palm Desert, Calif.) is miniscule: .0003. The difference between being comfortably inside the 100 Greatest (Pete Dye Golf Club in West Virginia, No. 87) and outside (Baltimore Country Club East, No. 102) is only five-tenths of a point. This means a club could elevate its numbers across each category by .07 and potentially improve position a dozen or more places.

That attention to math seems excessive at best and might explain why the panelists are focusing on analytics instead of artistry. But the number crunching looks downright absurd after a former panelist noticed the 2021-22 posted data was not matching up with its revamped category and scoring system.

Jason Jones initially posted on GolfClubAtlas.com about the discrepancy featuring No. 1 Pine Valley:

So, what is interesting about this list is that if you take the methodology described, and the data that is provided, their math is wrong.

For example, their described methodology is to take (2x Shot Options) plus (the other 6 categories). 

For Pine Valley, their published total score using this methodology is: 72.1554

However, if you take the published categories and enter them into their formula, Pine Valley's total score is: 71.8386.

Given that most of these scores are within tenths (or less) of each other, some rankings are different mathematically than their published ranking.

Jones later posted all of the numbers and highlighted the discrepancies in another post ranking the top 100 based on Golf Digest’s initially published numbers.

Those numbers were taken off the website and an updated version now appears.

It’s unclear if the published ranking was off the data since removed or an accurate counting of the numbers or some other combination. No editor’s note or asterisk was attached to the updated page, casting even more doubt about the legitimacy of the process.

On top of the compromised data, the magazine is also not taking criticism well from its own.

Pat Craig posted on GolfClubAtlas of his dismay at dreary Butler National landing above the magical Shoreacres, hardly a controversial sentiment. Craig also posted an emoji after writing simply: “Spring Hill at #100….sure………….”

Craig said he received a note from panel leaders Duncan and Stephen Hennessey with “a screenshot of my comment above which they understandably not happy with.”

Craig then posted he had resigned from the Golf Digest panel and questioned its direction after the installation of a $1300 entry fee that seems to allow anyone to join.

So they are attempting to squelch panelist opinions after publishing incorrect numbers, all while touting the data. What a mess. And even more reason to discount a profit-focused ranking that has rarely bettered the art of golf architecture.