2 In The Top 25 Isn't Too Shabby

The World's 100 Greatest Golf Courses

The dominant theme of our new ranking of the World's 100 Greatest Golf Courses is proximity to the sea.

4 Cypress Point Club

• Pebble Beach, Calif., U.S.A. / 6,524 yards, Par 72
• Alister MacKenzie's masterpiece, woven through cypress, sand dunes and jagged coastline. In the 2000s, member Sandy Tatum, a former USGA president who christened Cypress Point as the Sistine Chapel of golf, convinced the club not to combat technology by adding new back tees, but instead make a statement by celebrating its original architecture. So Cypress remains timeless, if short, its charm helped in part by re-establishment of MacKenzie's fancy bunkering.

12 Pebble Beach G. Links

• Pebble Beach, Calf. / 6,828 yards, Par 72
• Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf – the fourth through 10th plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble's sixth through eighth are golf's real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over a ocean cove on eight from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble will host another U.S. Amateur in 2018, and its sixth U.S. Open in 2019.

Complete list (GolfDigest.com)