It's a golf question for the ages. What makes a golf course fun? There are probably as many answers as there are golfers. After all, fun is in the belly laugh of the beholder.

Golf Digest has made various attempts through the years to identify fun golf courses, as if some common thread could be gleaned. This ranking of the most fun courses in the U.S., however, is the opinion of our long-time architecture editor Ron Whitten, who has scoured his memory for courses that he considers fun primarily because of their architecture.