Just because I've been accused of both being a curmudgeon and not liking any PGA Tour courses in the past few days, here's a baker's dozen of my favorite courses on the regular tour calendar (excluding majors, as well as other events where the venue can vary from year to year), evaluated both for their raw architectural merit and because they help facilitate exciting golf among the best players in the world:
Kapalua (Plantation)
Pebble Beach
Riviera
TPC Sawgrass
Muirfield Village
Austin CC
Torrey Pines (South)
Harbour Town
The Greenbrier
East Lake
Colonial CC
Detroit GC
TPC Scottsdale
(Quail Hollow is probably next up on the above list for me; Augusta National is of course the best course played by the best pros every year, but it belongs in a category of its own.)
They are ranked roughly in my order of preference, although any course on this list could probably rise up or fall down 3-4 places in any given year depending how I'm feeling. I'm biased toward classic, traditional courses; I mentioned in the PGA Championship thread how important good green complexes are to me, but I'd also add that any course with naturally rolling terrain is preferable to me to courses with flat fairways and very few uphill/downhill/sidehill lies. (Of course, the biggest problem with choosing courses both on the PGA Tour and at major championships is that the ball flies too damn far, rendering many of the greatest courses in the world obsolete for modern tournament play and forcing others to buy more land and build new bunkers and trees to keep up with technology...but there I go, being curmudgeonly again.)
I'm happy to hear nominations for courses not on the above list that are among your favorites on tour - either now or when normal PGA Tour service resumes next week.