Every ranking of golf courses is political. No matter the publication, no matter the system used, no matter the people behind it, the process of ranking anything is subjective and open to personal and professional manipulation.
What we at Golf Guides pride ourselves on -- and the reason our Top 30 is so well respected in the Met Area -- is that the political process that runs our rankings is democracy.
We consider these rankings as a vehicle for the golfing public to speak out. As this list is only concerned with truly public courses, we thought the most relevent ranking would be one that was created by the people who play those courses, day in and day out, and like them for any number of reasons, both rational and irrational.
These rankings evolve, just like the courses themselves. In what is an ongoing process of interviews with local professionals, local media, our own panel of golfing enthusiasts, and as many ‘Average Golfer Changing His Shoes In The Parking Lot’ as we could talk to, this is really as close as we could get to a democratic ranking.
As in all democracies, you must speak out if you want change. If you don't vote, you have forfeited your ability to gripe about what is going on around you. Same here. If you don't contact us, tell us what you think, and tell us how to change the Top 30, then your gripes will fall on deaf ears.
As much as we'd like to, we don't have the chance to play every course in the area we cover (although we do our best). So we rely on our readers, the public, to tell us what they think. At times, we here at Golf Guides, disagree with what the public thinks. Do we impart our own opinions on the Top 30? Yes. Is it a Top 30 made entirely of the opinion of Golf Guides USA? Not even close.
So, please, participate. We encourage your constructive criticism and welcome all of your positive comments. There is no need to be nasty, to belittle courses because you have a personal vendetta against them.
If you don't like a course, or the way it's ranked, let us know -- and let us know why. Explain your ideas to us, and those ideas will be reflected here, in this, the lone democratic golf course rating system anywhere in the New York Metro area.
We look forward to hearing from you, your thoughts and opinions really matter to us.
Here's our ranking of the Top 30 Public Golf Courses in our coverage area for 2023, developed by the process described above.
This is an annual list, to be reset every January, and will not be changed or altered until the following January (which is sometimes quite difficult, with the opening of new courses or the influx of feedback received from courses that have made renovations that run the gamut from minor to major overhauls).
Here, we have linked to a blurb description of each course, which should make it easier if you don't want to go course-by-course with the "Previous" and "Next" buttons below. Yet, to get a quick feel for the whole list, the page-by-page browsing works best.
On each course's Top 30 blurb page, we have a description, along with readers comments, all abbreviated compared to the information we provide on each course's individual page in our database. If interested, links to each course's more-detailed page can be found within each blurb.
Enjoy, and the more feedback that you can provide us with the better, so, again ...
