47 Three contenders from left: Yas Links, Cabot Links and Stone Forest Another quirky Scottish favourite, Cruden Bay, comes in at 29th, again significantly higher than in most rankings. Like North Berwick, Cruden appeals more to the golfer looking for smiles rather than a rigorous and ‘fair’ championship examination, with blindness aplenty among its towering dunes. At number 50, Mike Strantz’s Tobacco Road in North Carolina is perhaps the modern equivalent to North Berwick and Cruden Bay. Here, though, the quirk is created, with huge rolls in greens, blindness and forty foot deep waste bunkers. British architect Robin Hiseman, who is working on a biography of Strantz, wrote that the Road was an inspiration to him, and for anyone who has played the course, it is easy to see why. Finally, at the very end of the list, comes Woking in southern England, one of the most important courses in the history of golf architecture. It was at Woking that members Stuart Paton and John Low did so much to create the strategic school of design, with features such as the famous central bunker complex on the fourth hole. Woking inspired the great Tom Simpson to become a golf designer, and has continued to inspire architects ever since. On the flipside, what of the courses that might have made the list and didn’t? The glaring omission is the entire continent of Asia; this was a source of some disappointment to us. We did receive votes from Japanese golf architects, but even so, the most famous clubs in that country, Hugh Alison’s Hirono, Kawana and Tokyo, failed to place highly enough. Clearly, relatively few of the architects who participated in our poll, have been to Japan. China, where golf has boomed in the last ten years, is starting to open courses that look like realistic World Top 100 contenders. Most obvious among these is Coore & Crenshaw’s Shanqin Bay, which has been placed in at least one such list. But Shanqin Bay is neither easy to get to, or to get on. Another contender, SchmidtCurley’s Stone Forest course, has received little play (though much photo-driven publicity), and our stricture that architects must have seen courses in the flesh to vote for them obviously made it less likely that those off the beaten track, especially new courses, would poll highly. In future lists, who knows? Chinese golf is clearly starting to mature, with developers identifying sites more inherently suited to golf, such as the exhilarating sand dunes of Inner Mongolia that play host to Schmidt-Curley’s new Dalu Dunes course (and where architect Dana Fry is also at work). There were Chinese courses named on our list, but they failed to score sufficiently highly to make the Top 100: maybe next time? Another boom area for golf, the Middle East, also failed to register. Here, there are a few possible contenders: The Emirates Club, which to some extent paved the way for golf in this region. And Kyle Phillips’ magnificent Yas Links in Abu Dhabi, which did indeed receive some votes. But with Gil Hanse and team now at work on the Trump Dubai project, and rumours of more courses being considered as the region’s economy picks up, who knows what the future will yield? It is inevitable in a poll of this kind that fame and publicity help a course score well: if a place is high profile, and ideally close to other well-known courses, it’s easier for people to pay a visit without having to travel many hours just to get there. To that extent, it is testimony to their quality that remote courses such as Prairie Dunes in Kansas, or Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand scored so well. On a personal level, therefore, I hope that, when we next produce this list, my personal favourite omission does better. That’s Stanley Thompson’s Highlands Links in Cape Breton, Canada, my vote for the single best walk in golf, but unarguably one of the most isolated great courses in the world, at least until recently. Now, though, with the opening of Rod Whitman’s Cabot Links, and, before long, of its sister course, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s Cabot Cliffs (both of which are or will surely be strong contenders for this list in their own right), maybe Highlands will grab more visits... and next time I can write happily that my own favourite has made it in! “ Chinese golf is clearly starting to mature, with developers identifying sites more inherently suited to golf”
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