Top 100 Golf Courses in the U.S.

Team Members: Joshua Kulas, John Thompson, John Stasko

Run the System


    Press Release about project

For many years the magazines Golf Digest and Golf have been ranking the top 100 golf courses in the United States. They both have published rankings of all courses (public and private) and just the public courses, with each ranking typically occurring every other year. We have gathered their rankings from nearly the past 20 years and created a visualization depicting the lists, the courses and their locations, and the top architects of these courses.

This visualization presents a map of the U.S. in the center with all courses that have been in at least one of these rankings highlighted. Public courses are green and private courses are brown. A list of all 377 courses making the lists is shown on the right. It can sorted alphabetically or by a weighted, cumulative ranking we created. Clicking on course in the list highlights it on the map.

In the upper right are a set of filters for the two magazines and their yearly rankings. You can toggle these on or off just by clicking on a magazine name, the "All" or "Public" words, or a block representing a year's ranking. When you use the filters, only the courses listed in the remaining rankings are shown in the master list.

When a course is selected on the map or from the list, its specific rankings are shown in a line chart on the upper left. The colors of each line match the color of the respective ranking in the upper right filters. You can mouse over the bubbles in the line chart to see the specific year and ranking of each course. More info about the selected course is presented below too.


Golf Top 100 Golf Courses
Golf Digest Top 100 Golf Courses

Golf Top 100 Public Golf Courses
Golf Digest Top 100 Public Golf Courses