The U.S. Golf Association announced five upcoming sites (and a greatly enhanced prize fund) for the U.S. Women’s Open on Friday, adding to a lineup that already was vastly improved over many of the courses that have hosted the major championship in some past years.
But how much have things really improved? Judging by Golfweek’s Best rankings of courses and their average ratings, the outlook for women’s championship golf has never been better.
There has been criticism in the past that the Women’s Open, while visiting relatively nice courses if not always great layouts, hasn’t been contested on the same level of courses as the men’s U.S. Open. The Golfweek’s Best course ratings show that much of that criticism was fair.
Taking the 10-year roster of layouts from 2000-09 for the Women’s Open, for example, the average rating of host course was 6.99 on Golfweek’s Best 10-point scale. The average rating of host course over the past 10 Women’s Opens in 2012-21 improved to 7.23, a marked increase.
With the five courses added to the women’s lineup in Friday’s USGA announcement – Riviera, Inverness, Pinehurst No. 2, Interlachen, and Oakland Hills’ South Course– the average rating of the next 10 host courses is 7.92, nearly a full point higher than the average of the 10 sites starting in 2000.
How big is that difference? For comparison’s sake, imagine a hypothetical course with the equivalent rating of the host sites from each 10-year period mentioned above. Such a hypothetical course with the average rating of the 2000-09 courses (6.99) would rank No. 107 on Golfweek’s Best 2021 list of classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S. The average rating of the 10 courses from 2012-21 (7.23) would rank No. 75 on that list of classic courses. The average rating of the upcoming courses (7.92) would be good for a No. 25 ranking on that classic list. That’s a huge improvement.
But does the average rating of the upcoming sites equal the upcoming men’s Open sites? No.
There is overlap among the men’s and women’s host sites – Pinehurst No. 2, Oakmont, Pebble Beach, and Merion – but the average rating of all the announced upcoming men’s Open sites is 8.67, more than a half a point ahead of the women. That’s because men’s Open sites where the women aren’t playing – The Country Club Composite Course in Massachusetts, Los Angeles Country Club, and Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, New York – rank so high, especially Shinnecock with its 9.24 rating.
So the Women’s Open has closed much of the gap in course ratings, but not all of it.
Some background on where all these numbers originate: Golfweek’s Best utilizes hundreds of members of its course-ratings panel to continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses
Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses
Golfweek’s Best public-access courses by state
Golfweek’s Best private courses by state
Following are the specifics on how the courses and 10-year periods mentioned above stack up, utilizing the data from the 2021 Golfweek’s Best rankings: