The Panel

Welcome to NCG Top 100s Our NCG Top 100s chairman, Dan Murphy, is responsible for assembling our panels and indeed the lists themselves.

 We use a different set of panellists for each NCG Top 100s list.  The one constant is Dan.

Although we refresh our panel for each and every ranking, many of our panellists have contributed to several of our lists over a long period.  What do we look for in a panellist?  Well, we insist that all our panellists are widely golfed and enthusiastic.  Panellists must also commit to visiting a minimum of eight courses from the shortlist in the year of an update.  We want our rankings to be contemporaneous. So our panellists must be active – and willing and able to get out there and see the courses in the year of a ranking update. We like to use panellists who are strong in particular countries and we are always on the lookout for additional panellists who will strengthen our group.  Rest assured that all of our panellists have plenty of experience in the field.

So why does our panel change from one list to the next?  Well, there are several good (and practical) reasons:

• We assemble bespoke panels who are specialists in a particular region or country

• We regularly refresh our panels to avoid 'groupthink' or becoming stale

• We periodically meet new panellists who can make our lists better

• We insist on our panellists committing to going out and playing a proportion of the courses on our shortlist every time we begin a project to update a list. Not all previous panellists are able to commit Now, let's meet the panel.