About Our Rating

We do not score courses out of ten, and we do not rank them one through a hundred. Every course in the Book has already cleared the bar that matters most, which is getting in. From there, we sort them into four tiers.

The tiers borrow the language of travel, but do not take them too literally. We are not actually telling you how many miles to drive. Distance is just the easiest way we know to say how much course is waiting for you, and how far the kind of golfer who cares would happily go to find out.

Pilgrimage. The rare ones you build a trip around.
Destination. The ones worth real effort to reach.
Detour. The ones worth bending your route for.
Standout. The ones worth knowing when you are close.

A Standout is not a lesser course. It is an excellent one that happens to be near home, and for the golfer who lives there, that is the best news on the page. The tiers are a way to feel the difference in quality, not a measurement of it.