Golf Digest’s Top 100 Courses, as Land Values

A clear look at Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest. I tried to translate it into estimated land values, market tiers, and a format built for easy online reading. For those interested in further details, reach out to me on HERE. I can send along further detail on the underlying assumptions and methodology that went into the analysis.

Special thanks to DAVID TOBIN at NEXT CAPITAL for helping me develop and synthesize the data into something useful.

Introduction

This post presents Golf Digest’s 2025–2026 America’s 100 Greatest golf courses in a new way. Attached is asummary of the analysis. The underlying table breaks out each course’s

Estimated acreage,
Per-acre value range,
Total land value range,
Market tier,
Development potential,
Ownership profile.

I’ll be posting further analysis here in the coming weeks . . .

The Sebonack Data Point

Back in 2006, the Pascussis in Long Island bought the land next to National Golf Links of America for about $46M. The rumor is that it cost over $100M to develop it into the high end facility that it is today.

20 years on, my guess is that the land has doubled in value twice to about $184M. How did I get that? I took said that high end Southampton real estate probably increased in value 7.2% a year over 20 years. I don’t think that’s a stretch! At that rate of return, the initial value should double every 10 years. (For finance dorks, I just used a very basic “Rule of 72 Calculation” for this rough cut)

This takes none of the other factors in the development of that kind of parcel into account.

For further information, check Geoff Shackleford’s reporting on the project below.

https://www.geoffshackelford.com/homepage/2006/5/31/sebonack-membership-story.html