Peper: I "created a monster"

Former Golf Magazine editor George Peper's latest mea culpa comes in the form of a cover story lead in the new Links:

Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The magazine got great publicity and sold more ads and copies, and I was proud of our biennial list, the first to rank courses from one to 100. Over time, however, I came to realize I’d created a monster.

...

Among golfers, we’ve seen the spawning of a new species: the conspicuous course collector, whose life mission is to play as many of the Top 100 as possible. Then there is the subspecies, the conspicuous club joiner, who collects Top 100 memberships as if they were bag tags—which essentially they are.

This wretched excess would be harmless if not for two problems. First, the lists are inherently flawed. No matter how experienced and knowledgeable, a selection panel will not—cannot—get the ratings right, simply because there is no “right.” Rankings are no more than a collective guess, an objective average of subjective opinions.

And... 

The GOLF panel also includes public relations execs, resort owners, tour operators, photographers, writers and others with close links to courses. The last I knew, all these conflict-of-interest votes counted.

Uh George, you left out the multiple USGA staffers to. Well at least you are mentioning the rest now! Continue...

I have little knowledge of the Golf Digest panel, except that it includes more than 800 low-handicap golfers, whose identities, unlike GOLF’s panelists, are kept anonymous. With a group that size, some raters inevitably will be more knowledgeable and responsible than others. I’m also not sure whether all low handicappers may be able to judge the capacity of a course to be enjoyed by all levels of player.

Amen to this...

The second weakness of the rankings is more important. The magic number—100—is simply too small. There are more than 30,000 courses in the world; to celebrate only 100 is ludicrous. Hell, there are 100 great courses within a three-hour drive of Manhattan!

Page 2 includes his list of the ten most overrated. Shockingly, none were designed by good buddy Rees Jones!