In our travels to play the current and past Top 100 Public ranked courses from the Golf Digest lists, I have arrived at several conclusions regarding the ranking methods. No matter how objective the methods used by Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and Golf Week, there has to be a lot of subjective emotions that influence the panelists. Every golfer has their own characteristics that they favor in a course design or experience. Let me elaborate a little more on the difference between course design and course experience. If you are going to rate a course and rank it against other top courses you have to designate whether the rankings are based on design or experience. I consider the following characteristics when I am determining whether I like a course design: hole variety, interesting features, flow from one hole to the next, number of forced carries, options off the tee, challenging versus penal, fairness and finally, two items that are purely subjective, “character” and “fun factor”. One of the criteria that a particular publication uses to determine a course rating is “resistance to scoring”. What is that all about? I completely disagree with that criteria. Golf is supposed to be fun even though it can be challenging. Rewarding a hole or course by using resistance to scoring sounds like you are rewarding a penal design. I prefer to judge a hole on options it gives you to score and whether it is fair regardless of the hazards presented.
I believe there are four other main factors that affect a course’s rating that have nothing to do with its design. First, the condition of the course always influences a golfer’s opinion about the quality of a course. It should have an affect on your golf experience, but less than perfect conditioning does not change the quality of the design. Most courses today that have less than perfect conditioning are suffering from lack of funds. It is no secret that the golf course industry has been suffering in the past few years due to fewer paying customers, whether they be the daily public fee player or the private dues paying member. Most superintendents today are doing a tremendous job of keeping their courses in the best shape possible within the budgets they are provided by ownership. But when you have to cut back due to a lack on money, you normally see one or more of the following characteristics: less than stellar bunker maintenance, turf diseases, weeds, poorly maintained landscape areas, broken down cart paths and facilities that need painting or cleaning. I have even noticed that the condition and cleanliness of on-course restrooms give you a good clue to the courses present state of finances. We have all experienced courses like this and it always makes me a little sad as an otherwise top golf course design is losing its battle for survival. I understand that poor conditioning has to affect its ranking, but it does not make it a poor design. With the right attitude, playing a course in less than stellar condition can still be a very enjoyable experience.
The second item that can greatly influence you and your golf experience is service. I don’t expect the employees of a club to fall all over me from the time I arrive, but it always makes for a better day when the folks at the bag drop, in the pro shop and the starter are welcoming, friendly and helpful. That would seem to be a fairly easy task since they are in the service business, but there have been several instances in our travels where we have encountered staff members that ran the gamut from uninterested to “I really do not want to be here, I do not want to help you and why are you bothering me?” You try to not let that influence your opinion of the golf course but it most definitely influences your course experience. I must say though, the vast majority of golf course staff members, as well as other golfers we have been paired with, are great people. The folks that make you smile can make a day at an ordinary course an extraordinary experience.
The third, and probably the most influential item that has an affect on your course experience is the surroundings. Does the course sit on the edge of the ocean, look up to the mountains, nestle in the sand hills, wind through a tree lined park, or is it situated within a housing development? Everyone has their favorite course setting and the beauty of the surrounding area certainly is very influential to the overall course experience. You can see that it is difficult, if not impossible to rank courses in order of greatness. I know that it is done to create interest and discussion, and I am glad several publications do this as it helps traveling golfers like us locate great courses to play. Although each magazine or website has what they consider an efficient method for their ranking lists, I prefer to simply list my favorite courses in alphabetical order because I cannot differentiate between them. How can you say that any one of the three outstanding courses at Streamsong is better than the others? Is David McLay Kidd’s Bandon Dunes course better than his course at Gamble Sands because it sits on the Pacific Ocean? I get asked all the time, “What is your favorite course?”. I usually answer by copping out and I tell them that there are too many to mention. I prefer they ask me about a particular course and I will then give them my opinion of that course. They may not agree with me when they play that course but that is what makes golf so interesting. We all have our favorites and for different reasons.
The final item that has an impact on how you feel about a great course is the cost in relation to the quality of the course and the overall experience. In other words, the value of your golf experience. I would rate my experience at Wild Horse in Nebraska at $65 to be better than the $300 experience of Karsten Creek in Oklahoma. Karsten Creek is a wonderful course and highly rated on most lists, but in my mind, I would much rather play Wild Horse four times for the same money. If they were priced the same, I would rate them very close with respect to course design and overall experience.
I think that the courses I did not enjoy the first time I played them may be more appreciated the second and third time around. A great example of this would be one of the courses that I am currently a member, True Blue in Pawley’s Island, SC. I remember playing it many years ago on a buddies trip and being overwhelmed by the waste bunkering and large greens. I did not care for it at all but after a few times around this Michael Strantz gem, I feel it is one of the most outstanding courses in the entire country. I love its challenges and I really appreciate the strategy that Strantz presents the golfer on each hole. One of my biggest regrets on this journey to play all 193 rated courses on our list is that I will not have the opportunity to play many of them a second time. In talking to many golfers that we meet during our travels, we hear about other courses we should play that have never been on a Top 100 list. I am looking forward to visiting some of these recommendations in the years ahead.
I am amazed by the number of outstanding courses in our great country, rated or otherwise. My recommendation to avid golfers is to just go play as many as you can. Don’t try to rank them or compare them. Just enjoy!
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People take seriously what they measure. This adage was certainly true during my long career working with international humanitarian organizations where my vocational engagement also allowed me to pursue a side interest in playing golf when and where I could. I quickly began keeping lists and then, in 1996, I set goals for myself to play several of the Top 100 Golf Courses in the World as ranked at the time by Golf Magazine. It took me twenty years but I eventually played 35 of them, plus 15 new courses that were subsequently added over that 20-year period. On the way, I played a total of 394 different courses in 30 countries and 30 states including all venues on the British Rota for The Open Championship.
It’s with this background that I read Michael Allen’s reflection about ranking and rating golf courses. What’s important to me and why? This, of course, involves subjective values but declaring them is a key piece of creating a public discussion. Here are mine. First, courses high on my ranking include a collection of MEMORABLE holes. Great courses, in my opinion, have several holes, if not most, that are far beyond the ordinary. This is why I am such a big fan of Mike Strantz. His layouts at Royal New Kent and Tobacco Road offer innovative layouts that are rarely encountered elsewhere. Second, and perhaps closely related to the first, are courses that that are immensely BEAUTIFUL. They offer views from the tee that render a feeling of stepping into a great landscape painting. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder but most of us know it when we see it. For me, I immediately think of A.W. Tillinghast’s Bethpage Black, which I’ve played multiple times and continue to love. I also recall one critic who described Arrowhead in Colorado as the ultimate “dumb blonde” course, i.e., physically beautiful but without substance. My recollection was “yes,” it was beautiful but with greens that were perhaps the most difficult of any that I’ve putted around the world. Third, I appreciate courses that are PLAYABLE. Golfers like high risk / high reward choices but well-designed courses, in my opinion, always provide golfers at various levels with genuine alternatives. Finally, I highly value golf courses that respect and accent the given NATURAL environment of their location rather than defying it through massive artificial manipulation. Desert courses are most vulnerable to such abuse. Though I have never played it, all that I’ve read convinces me that Shadow Creek in Nevada would never receive an elevated position on my course rankings. I would, however, travel to play the Snake Hole Golf Course in Apache Junction, Arizona, but apparently they have a very strict “members only” policy.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments Terry. I agree with them totally. I think that in most rankings, a course’s history and difficulty carry too much weight. The average golfer does want memorable holes, beauty and playability. I would have to disagree with you on one point though. I have played Shadow Creek and it has every characteristic you listed; memorable holes, beautiful setting, challenging but playable. It is true that it is all contrived, but once inside the grounds, you have no clue that you are in a desert. It seems that you could be playing golf at Muirfield Village in Ohio. I guess when you have an unlimited budget, a great architect can make any course look natural. Another example of this would be the Straits Course at Whistling Straits.