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It’s never been tougher to crack our rankings. Eleven courses built within the last three years are new additions onto Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest lists, which means some mainstays got pushed out this year. The margins are tighter than ever. Four courses missed out on making our top 200 by less than a tenth of a decimal point: Grandfather Golf and Country Club, Karsten Creek (which just underwent a full-scale renovation), Dismal River’s Red course and Tradition Golf Club. Grandfather, a masterpiece mountain design by Ellis Maples, fell out of this ranking for the first time since we started ranking 200 courses in 2013. It missed out by less than two hundredths of a decimal point.
There are more new courses waiting in the wings. The Omni PGA Frisco’s East course by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner fell three tenths of a point shy of debuting on this list. Black Desert Resort, one of Tom Weiskopf’s last designs and a host to both PGA Tour and LPGA Tour events, missed by the same margin. As both venues get more exposure, it’s possible they enter our top 200.
If you’re a club that just missed making this list, you may return next time. But you’ll also face more contenders in two years as the golf industry continues to see a boom in creative and unique golf course construction. The competition is a great thing for golfers, but tough for the fringe clubs on this ranking.
177. Tributary
Previous rank: 199
David McLay Kidd built Huntsman Springs Golf Club for billionaire Jon Huntsman on an old cattle ranch in tiny Driggs, Idaho, on the west side of the Grand Teton Mountains. The site was originally flat and lifeless, between a highway and a river, with lots of wetland bogs. Kidd’s solution was to recess the entire course into the landscape to screen out undesirable buildings and generate some interesting topography—no small feat of imagination and engineering. Digging down meant the holes filled with water, so he designed a course with acres and acres of lakes, ponds and interconnecting streams. If all that sounds more like a Tom Fazio design than a David Kidd one, that’s understandable. For a Scot who loves bump-and-roll, Huntsman Springs, with bluegrass fairways and rough, is a radical departure. It also demonstrates his range as a designer.
