130. Rudo Reaches Two Major Milestones...and Makes Important Announcement

130.  Rudo Reaches Two Major Milestones...and Makes Important Announcement

Major Milestones:  Over the past two weeks or so, I have taken three trips:

1.  a day trip to Portsmouth, NH open June 4 to play Golf Club of New England and Portsmouth Country Club;

2.  a three day trip (departing June 9 and returning June 12) to Ireland and England to play Mount Juliet (Ireland), Sunningdale GC-Old (England), Huntercombe GC (England), Worplesdon GC (England), and St George's Hill GC-Green and Red 9's (England);  all four of the English courses are located within 30 miles of London's Heathrow Airport;

3.  a three day trip (departing June 16 and returning June 19) to Michigan to play two courses in northern Michigan (Arcadia Bluffs-South and Treetops Resort-Smith Signature on June 17) and five courses (to be announced at a later date) tentatively scheduled for June 18 and 19.

By playing Huntercombe GC and Treetops Resort-Smith Signature, I have now completed the World Top 100 EVER as well as the USA Top 100 EVER.

Readers of this Blog should recall that this is my third ascent of the top of the World Top 100.  The first occurred at Cabot Cliffs, in Nova Scotia, Canada, on July 8, 2016.  At the time the list was composed of 295 (still existing) courses.  Over the following 22 months, the list had grown to 322 still existing courses, of which I had not played two.  During a trip to Australia, China, and Japan I played these two thereby "re-ascenting" the World Top 100 EVER on April 8, 2018 by playing Yokohama Country Club-West.  Huntercombe GC on June 11, 2019 represents my third ascent...and by now the list totaled 343 still existing courses (plus 5 that no longer exist).  Of these 343, I have played 140 multiple times and 203 a single time.

This afternoon, I played Treetops Resort's Smith Signature course.  As readers of may blog may recall, I had previously made two trips to Treetops (12 holes in July 2013 and the other 6 holes in June 2018...Post #111) to play what turned out to be the "wrong" Treetops course.  I learned later last summer that I had played the wrong course so I needed to get back to play Smith Signature.  That completes the USA Top 100 EVER (for the first time for me).  This list now consists of 369 still existing courses and 4 that no longer exist.  I have played 118 of the still existing multiple times and 251 once.  Of the four NLE's, I played two once, but never played the other two.

To my knowledge, no one else has ever complete either of these lists, although a fellow member of the Global Golf Centurions Club is now within 12 courses of finishing the World Top 100 EVER, and hopes to complete it by the end of 2019.

Four of us have completed the Golf Magazine World 100 Ever (a subset of the World Top 100 EVER consisting of 201 courses); in order of time of completion the four are Tom Clasby, Paul Rudovsky, Bob McCoy, and Hong Seh Lim.

For your information, I have created a set of spreadsheets to show the courses on both of these EVER lists.  However, I do not think I can post spreadsheets on this blog.  The email announcing this post includes these spreadsheets.  If you did not receive this email, please contact me by and I will send the spreadsheet to you.

Important Announcement:  Having achieved the milestones cited above I am hereby announcing that I shall no longer "chase" World or USA Top 100 lists.  This can be a never ending cycle, and there comes a time to step off the treadmill.  This is that time for moi.

Please note...the above does not mean that I will stop visiting new (or previous played) courses.  And it does not mean that I will not work to finish some still remaining bucket lists.  What it does mean is that when top100golfcourses.com, golfclubatlas.com, or another other list generator comes up with a new list, I will not automatically work to finish that list.  If there are courses that interest me, I will go play them...if they do not interest me (in my sole judgement) I will not.

It has been great fun...but it is time for someone else to take over.

Oh...and I do plan to continue publishing my blog.