Top 100 golf courses - Erin Hills Golf Course



A wild Irish rover that unfolds over heaving farmland 35 miles northwest of Milwaukee is already named as the site of the 2011 U.S. Amateur. This Michael Hurdzan/Dana Fry/Ron Whitten design remains on the short list of possible future US Open venues. Stretching 7,824 yards from the back, Erin Hills has all the length it will ever need, plus an endless variety of lies, stances and angles.

Top 100 golf courses - Chambers Bay Golf Course

Having been named the site of the 2015 U.S. Open, Chambers Bay does not suffer from a lack of accolades, but this spiritual cousin to Ballybunion does suffer from misconceptions. First, unlike Bandon Dunes, which can be challenging to get to, Chambers Bay is practically a suburban park course, just minutes from downtown Tacoma, Washington and 45 minutes from Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Second, do not let the tips yardage of 7,585 bother you: the slope from the back tees is only 135, so while this walking-only track will test your hamstrings, you will find it tough to lose a ball, which might be the true genius of the design.

Third, for anyone who has a preconceived notion of what a Robert Trent Jones II design is supposed to look like, forget it. Chambers Bay is a true collaboration of the RTJ II team which included Bruce Charlton, Jay Blasi and Jones himself. The golf course is simply a strategic masterpiece with wild elevation changes, split fairways, enormous dunes, tattered-edge bunkers and stunning scenery. It will give a great test to the participants of the 2015 Open.

Top 100 golf courses - Fallen Oak at Beau Rivage

Sure, it is an magnificent Tom Fazio design open only to guests of an MGM hotel 20 minutes to the south, but it is not quite fair to call Fallen Oak a southern-fried Shadow Creek. It stands on its own. While Shadow Creek was created from an absolutely barren landscape, this 7,487-yard layout flaunts its natural attributes, from the rolling terrain to its streams, lakes and wetlands. The Southern mansion clubhouse adds greatly to the Gone With the Wind ambience, but it is the individual holes that lift Fallen Oak from merely "pretty" to "pretty great."

Top 100 golf courses - We-Ko-Pa Golf Club

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have fashioned a fun romp through the desert with enough retro shot values and eye-candy backdrops to please both purists and tourists alike. We-Ko-Pa's Saguaro course features extra-wide fairways framed by its namesake cacti. The superb variety and imaginative green contouring, along with panoramic mountain vistas in every direction and no homes or roads on a parcel owned by the Yavapai Tribal Nation, create a worthy companion to We-Ko-Pa's seven-year-old sibling, the Cholla course.

Top 100 golf courses - Tidewater Golf Club & Plantation

Tidewater was once ranked in the high 30s on the Top 100 You Can Play list before slipping off. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Tidewater offers uncommon elevation change and variety for the Myrtle Beach region. Holes 3, 4, 12 and 13 afford views of the Atlantic, while the closing trio skirts the Intracoastal Waterway. Architect Ken Tomlinson did not sprinkle mounds over the course, and so his bunkers and greens are on the flattish side, a design treatment that fell out of favor for a few years. But a recent reexamination of the course's virtues has vaulted it back onto the ranking of the top 100 golf courses.