Top Real Courses – February 2016
Glen Abbey GC by Bryan Boomer
It’s the return of my favorite list, which will now be a bi-monthly feature. I wasn’t always sure that I would be able to produce a list bi-monthly, but to all of our luck, the RCR bug really caught on in the last two months. I truly hope the trend will continue.
Royal Birkdale 2016 by T. Yeltzman
Just a note, with the regular Top 100 List it’s just kind of a given that the list clearly doesn’t encompass all of the courses in the game, but rather all of the courses that I have been able to play. The Real Course list is much more quantifiable, so if you don’t see a real course on this list that is in the game, you can be 100% certain that I simply have not played it yet. You can follow along with my progress in playing all of the real courses, and play all of them for yourself, by playing along with the Real Course Tour.
Firestone CC South (Rustic) by Brandon Pugh
| Rank | Name | Designer | Last Month |
| 1 | Whistling Straits, Sheboygan WI Overseeded | Craig Frey | 1 |
| 2 | Congressional CC | Rod Simpson | New |
| 3 | Pebble Beach Golf Links (All versions) | Brandon Pugh | 3 |
| 4 | Pine Valley, New Jersey | Craig Frey | 2 |
| 5 | Royal Lytham & St Annes 2015 | Yeltzman | New |
| 6 | Muirfield 2013 Open | Yeltzman | 4 |
| 7 | TPC at Sawgrass | Brandon Pugh | New |
| 8 | Royal Birkdale 2016 (Thursday Dry) | Yeltzman | 10 |
| 9 | Firestone CC South (Rustic) | Brandon Pugh | 5 |
| 10 | Glen Abbey GC (Canadian Open) Saturday | Bryan Boomer | New |
| 11 | Spyglass Hill 2015 | yeltzman | 6 |
| 12 | Tobacco Dunes | Steve Pope | New |
| 13 | Vallentuna Golfklubb – Sweden | Mikael Thunberg | 8 |
| 14 | Le Golf National | Dean Lowden | 7 |
| 15 | Welican National @ Llandudno | Bobby Anderson | New |
| 16 | TPC @ Boston – thurs (new textures) | Kenny Canham | New |
| 17 | TGC @ the Engish Rose (Thurs) | Wendy Airey | 11 |
| 18 | Southern Hills Country Club | Trey Coursey | New |
| 19 | Riviera Country Club – Thursday | Bryan Boomer | New |
| 20 | Mistwood Golf Course | William Bradford | 12 |
| 21 | PGA West (Palmer) [Sunday] | Rod Simpson | 13 |
| 22 | Royal Troon Old Course 2015 | Yeltzman | 14 |
| 23 | Chicago Golf Club | JELindholm | 15 |
| 24 | Cohutta Country Club | Todd Driver | 16 |
| 25 | The Walker Course Clemson, SC | William Bradford | 17 |
| 26 | Trump National Doral | Colin J. Watt | New |
| 27 | Turnberry Kintyre Course | Alan McSpadyen | 18 |
| 28 | Galveston Country Club | Trey Coursey | New |
| 29 | Kapalua Bay Golf Club | Bryan Boomer | 19 |
| 30 | Fishers GC – Fishers Island, NY | Matthew Essig | 20 |
| 31 | St. Andrews Old Course 2015 | Colin Marriott | 21 |
| 32 | Miglianico Golf e Country Club | Fabrizio Cardelli | New |
| 33 | Turnberry Ailsa course 2015 | Colin Marriott | 22 |
| 34 | Kiawah Island Ocean Course | James Olcott | New |
| UR | Magnolia National 2016 | Craig LeVasseur | |
| UR | Chambers Bay 2016 | Craig LeVasseur | |
| UR | Merion East – Ardmore, PA | Craig LeVasseur | |
| UR | Pinehurst #2 (’16 Edition) | Craig LeVasseur |
Great list Chris. Could you add which real world courses these represent? A Lot of them are obvious, but some don’t jump out (at least I don’t recognize them). Otherwise, I appreciate you making this list!
Hey Matt, I’ll see if I can find a clean way to feature real course names in the next edition. For now, here are the ones that are either an alias or not well known:
Tobacco Dunes = Tobacco Road, NC
Welican National = Conwy Golf Club, Wales
TGC @ English Rose = Wentworth West
Mistwood = Chicago, IL
Cohutta Country Club = Nob North in Cohutta, GA
Miglianico is in Italy, outside of Rome
Amazing list, so many well done real courses, if we could only get some decent gameplay that did not make a mockery of these things, life would be grand.
K I get you don’t want to sound biased but put the bottom 4 in this order, say It was me.
#1 MN
#4 PH
#7 CB
#12 Merion
Thanks Boomer! I would have a hard time ordering them anyways. I can certainly see myself ordering them the way you have, but then again, Merion is an awesome course and I would have a hard time putting it 4th in that group. Just one of my favorite courses.
Scotsdale another great real course.
Thanks for all the good work
I have that one featured on Real Course Tour v4. That and Golf Club of Houston are my next to play in the tour, so they will be on the next list for sure (and many more, I’m sure). But sure to check out all of these courses and more on Real Course Tour v1 through v5.
Is there another whistling straits? I pulled it up by name in search , and there is no way that the course I played is rated #1 . it did not even have seagrass or real dunes, could I have possibly been on a old duplicate ?