America's Closest-To-Perfection Course Designs

I was asked to put the emphasis on design for this slideshow at GolfDigest.com and went a little snobbish in pursuit of highlighting perfection.

In thinking about some of America's best and pouring over rankings, restorations and thoughts of their architects, I was astounded by how many elite courses have well-documented design flaws or are living off their reputation as merely difficult-to-play. (It was also amazing to consider how many Macdonald-Raynor designs have seen restorations take them to places maybe never even imagined by their creators.)

Anyhow, here is my list of designs (with scrollable explanations in the upper right) where all of the parts are in place and presenting the kind of architecture we wish we had more to experience.