… about to be announced. BuffaloGolfer would like to thank the 877 golfers who took the time to vote in this poll. Interestingly, all 25 courses in the debate received at least one vote, so there’s certainly love for everyone. By the time the polls closed and ballots were counted, the gap between first and all the rest was clear, with no margin for error nor debatable vagaries. More on the winner in a bit.

We measure ourselves by our most popular poll, which happens to be the “Best 15th Hole” back in 2012. That year, BuffaloGolfer asked its viewers to select the best 1st hole to the best 18th hole in Buffalo-Niagara, in separate votes. In those contests, public and private courses battled for supremacy. We held to our one IP address, one vote method, as we felt that any more opportunities to vote would skew the results (since some golfers’ love for their favorite course would doubtless lead to click-madness.) In that poll, Byrncliff’s memorable 15th won out, and 1159 votes were counted.

We’re done with polls for 2015, unless you the viewers can suggest new ones for the coming months. You can only go to the well so often and best courses and best holes don’t vary that much … or do they? On to the winners…

Take a look at the lists below. On the left are the BuffaloGolfer.Com Top Five public courses in Buffalo-Niagara in 2015; on the right are the Top Five as selected by viewers.

What’s interesting to us is the lack of overlap. Only Seneca Hickory Stick appears on both polls. As in any general election, it’s all about organizing the voters and getting them to the polling place. The five courses in the right column did that better than any others. BuffaloGolfer sent multiple email and social media (Facebook, Twitter) notices to all twenty-five courses listed on the ballot, encouraging each course to alert its supporters via email, social media, skywriting, you get the idea. The rest was up to the courses and the voters.

Congratulations are due to Terry Hills golf course, the venerable, 27-hole complex in Batavia, New York, and the 2015 Best Public Course winner. There is so much variety over those three nines that a golfer can’t ever get bored. The topography varies among the nines, from dramatic elevation shifts to gentle down- and uphill cascades. Terry Hills is a worthy champion.

View complete results of the 2015 Best Public Course in Buffalo-Niagara poll, conducted by BuffaloGolfer.com.

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