July 31, 2020 By: Jason Lusk — Welcome to Golfweek’s Best list of top 200 Modern courses, built in or after 1960.

Each year we publish three lists that are the foundation of our course-ratings program: Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses, Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses, Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play, state by state. We also have Golfweek’s Best 2020: Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play.

The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged together to produce a final rating for each course. Each course is then ranked against other courses to produce the final rankings.

To make these lists more up-to-date, Golfweek’s Best has altered how the individual ratings are compiled into the rankings. Only ratings from rounds played in the past 10 years are now included in the compilations within these pages. This will help ensure that any course in the rankings still measures up.

With the change from previous Golfweek’s Best rankings, in which ratings older than 10 years were accepted, there were a few courses that shuffled, and that’s as it should be. Golf courses are never static, and these rankings should not be, either.

Any course that appears on the top 200 Modern or Classic lists has been reviewed by at least 3 percent of Golfweek’s Raters, which works out to 25 entries. The benchmark for the Best Courses You Can Play list doesn’t require as many votes, so you might notice a few discrepancies on courses that appear on those lists but not on the top 200 Modern or Classic lists. 

We hope you enjoy poring over these rankings, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on this Best Modern Courses list.

See the list here.

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