How essential is playing it...

[Geoffrey Childs]

Jaime Diaz on playing Augusta National for the first time after covering the tournament for MANY years

"I really didn't care what I shot as long as it didn't turn out to be one of those helpless days. I most wanted to feel what it was like to actually stand over and try to hit the shots that I'd seen the world's best pull off for years. It's hugely different from watching from outside the ropes or from a grandstand. As I took in the individual shots, I got a much more acute feeling for the distance and the lay of the land and the shape of the ideal shot required. What looks routine from outside the ropes, and certainly on television, is much more challenging and interesting with club and ball. As a golf writer, it definitely deepened my perspective of what a Masters contender must face."

For the whole article

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/masters07/columns/story?columnist=diaz_jaime&id=2838289

There is something to each side of the argument

[TEPaul]

I'll tell you there were plenty of things that blew me away about seeing ANGC for the first time and suprisingly not that many of them were what I'd been told.

And I think I'm probably as good as most on figuring out a golf course without playing it but I'll tell you one thing, it sure is a different matter trying to get an architectural impression of a golf course with 30,000 people on the golf course and grandstands and tournament facilities all over the place compared to looking at it otherwise.

If I went back there when the Masters wasn't in town, I'd probably say to myself---"this sure does look a whole lot different than what I just saw."

The other thing that was patently clear was that this PGA Tour slogan, "These Guys are Good" is definitely the flat-ass truth, no question about it!  

[Jeff Doerr]

"These guys are good"

A number of years ago I had that revelation bigtime as I watched 3 Nike Tour guys (same group) all birdie #9 at Pumpkin Ghost Creek - it was playing to 469. At the time I thought I was pretty good as my handicap had just dropped to a 4.8. After watching that display I was humbly put in my place!

On topic:

For those who do ratings is a point system on certain values the best way to come up with a number or ranking?

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I'm happy to weigh in on your last question before anybody else.

I don't believe a point system is the best way to rank courses.  You have a bunch of panelists with different views of the game, and all they can really tell you is what they like.  What is the difference between taking their consensus votes, and trying to write a balanced formula for "greatness" ?  The only reason a definition exists is to try and make the exercise look more objective than it really is.

I faced this question 25 years ago at GOLF Magazine, and I took a pass.  Who would be presumptuous enough to write the definition of what a great golf course really is?  In the end, great courses write their own definitions, and you just want people who can appreciate that.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Stupid idea: do any rating systems employ a "100 rounds" approach? You're given a list of, say, 200 courses.  You have to allocate 100 rounds of play across the list, however you want. You play a course, then decide how many rounds you'd like to play out of 100.  Zero is an option.

By forcing the choices, you don't have to come up with a definition of greatness or even of "this is a top 10."  If you play a course you feel you'd like to play 10 rounds out of every 100, you have to take the rounds from the other courses.  (Assuming you've already doled out the 100 rounds.)

Also, forced-choice would do a better job of showing just how much better the best courses are than everything else; some people might put 30, 40, even 50 on just one course.

Aggregating "scores" across a team of raters, you could normalize the rounds to a denominator of 100.

Graphically, you could ditch the ordinal system everyone seems wrongly to attach to and use a cardinal graphic like a bar chart that illustrated the scores of each course in comparison with one another.

[Jerry Kluger]

Surely one can play a course and evaluate it provided he is not so focused on his game/score that he fails to observe what is important.  You hit an excellent shot into a green and fail to observe what the consequences of a less than perfect shot will be and the recovery shot that will be required - how difficult will the bunker shot be, how tough are other pin placements, how tough is a recovery shot from the rough, are they fair and challenging, etc.  If you're just walking the course and not playing it, you will observe those features since you do not care about how you will play your particular shot.  But then again, if you're not playing, you will never see how the ball reacts to the fairways or how it rolls on the greens - I would suggest that you at least have a ball in your pocket so you can roll it on the green and see how the contours work.  

[Jeff Doerr]

Thanks Guys!

I do agree that the numbers game is hard to play. One man's 8 could be another's 9, etc.

Mark brings up an interesting idea, but probably hard to work out. Mark, I do think it is a great exercise for those considering a private club in an area with a number of options.

Rolling a ball like in a practice round is solid advice to really see what is going on.

I really like Tom's quote:

Who would be presumptuous enough to write the definition of what a great golf course really is?  In the end, great courses write their own definitions, and you just want people who can appreciate that.

My guess is that even the number scales like those in GD are worked and skewed to fit what their 'gut' truly believes..."When I do the numbers course A gets to a 72.56, while course B gets to a 70.88, yet I know in my heart that course B is the better package. After thinking it over I tweaked my first reaction on shot values and conditioning to move course B to 72.67."

I do think GD has a usable scale in their star rating which really is a 10 point system due to the 1/2 stars. Of course the 5 stars for the most part are not 10s on the Doak Scale, but they are pretty fun to play.