Carlos Amoedo
Golf Digest has published America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses since 1966, making it the oldest and most respected ranking in golf. Our 2025-2026 ranking is based on nearly 88,000 evaluations over our 10-year scoring cycle submitted by our course-ranking panelists, who judge courses on a 1-10 scale in the six below scoring categories (scroll down for our definitions).
Our statisician determines the rest. After panelists filed their evaluations, all outlier scores were removed, and each course’s scores were age-weighted by year, so that more recent evaluations hold more value than older evaluations. That allows our rankings to more accurately reflect a layout’s current state since courses are always evolving. Our formula involves doubling Shot Options and Layout Variety and adding our other category scores together to determine the overall score.
Courses must have a minimum of 50 evaluations over our 10-year scoring period to qualify for our 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest lists. Most courses have between 100 and 175 ballots submitted, so these rankings represent a strong consensus among a large number of panelists trained in our criteria.
This is our most data-driven set of rankings to date—and we’re sure you’ll enjoy digging deeper.
Scroll on for the entirety of our America’s 100 Greatest rankings, listed from #100 down to #1. We urge you to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography, drone footage and reviews from our course panelists. Plus, you can now leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … to make your case why your favorite should be ranked higher. Explore Golf Digest’s new Course Reviews feature here.
Our panelists evaluate courses based on the following six pieces of criteria:
Shot Options: How well does the course provide a variety of options involving risks and rewards, and require a wide array of shots?
Challenge: How challenging is the course for a typical scratch golfer playing from the normal back tees?
Layout Variety: How varied is the physical layout of the course in terms of length, hazard placement, green shapes and green contours? How distinctive is each hole, and how effectively do they connect to each other?
Aesthetics: How well do the scenic aspects of the course and architecture add to the pleasure of a round?
Conditioning: How firm, fast and rolling are the fairways, how firm yet receptive are the greens, and how true is the roll of putts?
Character: How well does the course exude ingenuity and uniqueness compared to other courses, or possess characteristics considered profound or outstanding for its era?
Explore Golf Digest’s new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We’ve collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts’ opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!
Explore Golf Digest’s new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We’ve collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts’ opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!
Explore Golf Digest’s new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We’ve collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts’ opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!