Every year around this time we’ve pieced together a “Best of” Golf Digest review, but it was often using the traditional framework of the best-read articles on our website. While that's still a big part of what we do, we thought it important to expand our retrospective to include the broad and creative assortment of treatments that have come to represent Golf Digest in 2023—articles, yes, but also podcasts, videos, social posts and interactives.

In reviewing this list, what’s apparent is that while a chaotic 2023 might not have been the best golf year by some definitions, it was still a good one from Golf Digest’s staff of writers, editors, producers, videographers, photographers and designers who enjoyed trying to explain the game in clever and innovative ways.

Most popular story of 2023

The Best Golf Courses in Every State: It’s somewhat heartening to see that even in such a turbulent time in the competitive game, most golfers care foremost about a simple question: What are the good courses to play?

Throughout its history, Golf Digest has answered this question better than anyone. This comprehensive list, powered by our network of trained course panelists and overseen by architecture editors Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey, provides an answer for each state, and allows users to start their journey through this fun interactive map.

Most popular Golf Digest+ story

The inside story of Jack Nicklaus' legal battle against his own company: By now we hope you know that a Golf Digest+ membership provides unlimited access to our most valuable game-improvement content, our complete archive, and the type of journalism that readers have come to expect from Golf Digest magazine each month in their mailbox. This is best represented by this compelling account by veteran legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin of the acrimonious legal battle between Jack Nicklaus and his one-time business partner, Howard Milstein.

Most popular instruction story

Collin Morikawa's 'weird' new way of teeing up the ball is actually really smart: It says something about golf’s enduring intrigue—not to mention the nerdy obsession of golfers— that a simple story about how a tour pro tees up his ball would take off in the way that it did. But this is one of the great gifts of our senior editor Luke Kerr-Dineen, who knows golfers will lap up any insights that shave a few strokes, or in this case, keep their backs intact as well.

Most popular Golf Digest video

The Genius Trick of Augusta National’s 12th hole: Speaking of golfer obsessions, we’ve known for years they can’t get enough of Augusta National, and if there’s one hole of fascination in particular, it’s the short par-3 12th. Enter this brilliant video by Kerr-Dineen and producers Jamie Kennedy and Ben Walton, who unpack the hole’s strategic genius, and how some players navigate it better than others.

Most popular podcasts

Golf Digest boasts three regular podcasts with three distinct viewpoints. In Local Knowledge. Shane Ryan dives into the game’s rich history to explain moments and people of significance, as well as their relevance today. The Loop, hosted by Alex Myers, Christopher Powers and Steve Hennessey, is a lively, irreverent roundtable discussion between the hosts and special guests cover an eclectic mix of topics around the game today. Finally, Golf IQ is where host Luke Kerr-Dineen identifies topics specifically geared toward helping golfers understand and play the game better. All three podcasts produced stellar shows in 2023, and these were the most popular.

Local Knowledge

The Loop

Golf IQ

Most popular interactives

Golf Digest took encouraging strides in 2023 in finding new ways to tell golf stories in richer detail. In some instances, like with Joel Beall’s thought-provoking look at Augusta National's expansion debate, an assortment of interactive elements helped bring an already exhaustively reported story to life.

In other cases, the interactive experience was the story, as was the case with How Do You Compare?, a comprehensive statistical look at how golfers of varying abilities perform in different aspects of the game.

Most popular social posts

And finally, we leave you with our most popular posts on Instragram in 2023, which covers the full range of pop culture ...

. . . current events . . .

. . . and aspiration.