I started playing golf in the 1990s. Digital was just a twinkle in the eye at that time so if you really wanted to know a course you had to get your hands on a physical yardage book. Of course during my Coore Crenshaw quest, you know I was going to collect as many yardage books as possible. Since we are living in modern, digital times, many golf courses have phased out the physical yardage book but those that I do have I figured, why not rank em? These rankings are COMPLETELY subjective and only reflect the yardage books I have collected on my quest at the halfway point. Once my quest is finally over, I hope to have a definitive ranking (I can tell you are all waiting with baited breath for that one). Courses NOT ranked because no books were printed or available at the time of my visit include Sand Valley and Barton Creek. Here we go! 10) Tie We-Ko-Pa and Talking Stick Sigh Arizona. I know you are like 1,000,000 degrees during the Summer so yardage books made out ...
The one word that comes to mind when thinking about the Cliffs course is DRAMATIC (like "hitting you in the face with a cold mackerel" dramatic). Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw structured the routing to wring every inch of sea views, to squeeze every inch out of quirkiness out of lands in the dunes, and to maximize every natural feature on the holes that didn't have much of the first two. In other words, this course is cranked up to an 11 when the knob only goes to 10. That isn't a bad thing. The 18 starts off with a gentle handshake of a par 5 (the course has an even distribution of holes, 6 par 5s, 6 par 4s and 6 par 3s) with rumpled fairways and C&C's classic blown-out bunker looks. The second hole is a superstar, all-world golf hole with an elevated tee shot to a tidal plane surrounded by dunes and pine trees. The second shot is to an elevated green with awesome disguising features. I loved this hole and even though I hit 4 iron both ti...