"It's like looking at a painting. Do you prefer impressionism or do you like abstract painting better?"

John Paul Newport files an excellent history of rankings, meaning Joshua Crane and the National Golf Review get mentions, as well as today's lists.

In my view, unless you own a hugely expensive new resort course or belong to an elite club that just spent $15 million redoing its masterpiece, there's no reason to treat these lists as anything other than good fun. "It's totally subjective, isn't it?" said Ben Crenshaw last week at the Masters, even though several of the courses he designed with partner Bill Coore, including Sand Hills, have been treated "very, very kindly" by the raters.

"There are certain places and certain types of courses that elicit some people's emotions but don't necessarily affect other people the same way," Mr. Crenshaw said. "It's like looking at a painting. Do you prefer impressionism or do you like abstract painting better?"

Robert Lohrer scores an informative Q&A with Golf Digest's Jerry Tarde about the process and panel, and gets Tarde to explain how the balloting works (Augusta's score includes 8 years worth of evaluations, but thankfully, little has changed there architecturally in that time!). Tarde also concedes that perhaps in the future we'll get to see how many votes are being counted for top 100 courses.