[Doug Wright]

I have not seen the article, but to everyone who keeps saying that they do this stuff "to sell magazines", I think that's a lie now.  They are doing it to sell advertising to those 50 courses.  Nobody's buying the freaking magazine for a list like this.

OK, Tom, let's just say "To make $$$..."  

[Sean Leary]

and the reason it would be wrong to do something like this to "sell" magazines would be what? Isn't that the point?

[Bill Satterfield]

Bill Satterfield,

thanks for that explanation, I think. My sense from re-reading your account 4X (I'm not blaming you by the way) is that either the GD criterion that raters normally work with is meaningless; or the alternative standard that the editors have here apparently come up with is simply arbitrary.

Let me see if I can do a better job.  They aren't concerned with whether a course is tough for a tour pro since there really is no course that is too difficult on a calm day for a PGA pro even when the courses are setup in championship conditions.  

Scratch golfers are generally several strokes worse than a tour pro and that is the demographic they are more focused on in regards to "fairness."  If a course is loaded with too many monster forced carries over trouble, too many green side water hazards, or too many holes running the same direction (lousy if wind is blowing hard and 7-8 holes go right into the teeth of it) it "may" be deemed unfair.  Conversly, if a course is too "fair" and not overly challenging then it would not receive as high of a score.

Some of it I think comes down to an individual's own game.  A young golfer that has to hit a 250 yard forced carry off the tee GENERALLY isn't going to have a problem with that and in fact may consider it a great feature.  On that same note, there are scratch golfers that are over 60 and they simply can't carry the ball that far in the air.  Without the forced carry, they can hit a low running drive and still be in great shape to get to the green in regulation.  They may be a scratch golfer, BUT at some courses they may not have the ability to bomb it off the back tee far enough and may not even be able to get off the box if there is too much forced carry.  In this example, the young golfer needs to consider the older golfer's game and visa versa when rating the difficulty of the course.  Determining the perfect "balance" is very subjective however.

Those two demographics (young vs old golfer in my example) probably have different opinions on "fairness" and thus opinions are going to be skewed.  Like evaluating art, I don't think there is a "perfect" way to evaluate a course and individual opinions will vary greatly under any system that offers a broad representation of golfers.

[Bill Satterfield]

I have not seen the article, but to everyone who keeps saying that they do this stuff "to sell magazines", I think that's a lie now.  They are doing it to sell advertising to those 50 courses.  Nobody's buying the freaking magazine for a list like this.

I think you may underestimate the broad audiences out there.  Lists are appealing to A LOT of people in the general public and clearly sells magazines.  Whether you like the lists or not, you are aware of them and are interesting to most people.  Some examples of the popularity of lists include ESPN's endless Top 25 lists they came out with a couple of years ago in conjunction with their 25 year anniversary.  They sold a ton of advertising to companies that had nothing to do with the lists and people watched their programs.  They had the Top 25 athletes, top 25 teams, top 25 college basketball moments, etc.

The NBA some years ago released their Top 50 players of all time.  People constantly talk about that in regards to Shaq (whether he was deserving so young in his career), Scottie Pippen (did he get in on the coat tails of Michael Jordan), etc.

Every magazine, TV Program, or other media outlet knows that lists provide a copule of key things.

1.  They are quick and easy to read (or listen to)
2.  Provide controversy.

Anytime you can stir up controversy it gets attention and works for media outlet purposes, i.e. sell magazines, get viewers, etc.

[Tom_Doak]

Bill:

I'm going to disagree with you.  I've seen the monthly newsstand sales totals for a couple of the golf magazines [GOLF and GOLF DIGEST], and they do not sell a lot more issues for the rankings.  GOLFWEEK might be an exception to that, I haven't seen their numbers.  People may talk about it (and that's why advertisers are interested), but they aren't actually selling magazines because of it, unless you've seen some numbers I haven't.

[Jay Flemma]

I have not seen the article, but to everyone who keeps saying that they do this stuff "to sell magazines", I think that's a lie now.  They are doing it to sell advertising to those 50 courses.  Nobody's buying the freaking magazine for a list like this.

Tom, I'm not so sure...I have two lunkhead golf buddies that eat this stuff alive.  They love to try the toughest courses ever, then go and shoot 90 and tell everybody they shot 80 and act like they shot 70.  I know a guy (not a GCAer) who played one course we all love on this list where he shot 85 (taking a freaking mulligan on his second shot into 18...a mulligan on the second shot on 18!), told everyone he shot 79 and panned the course as tricked up because of blind shots and big, bold contours and shaping.

Sadly, we still have to many people who just parrot what they see in the big mags...usually the most lowest common denominator stuff.

We could also sit here and rake them for where certain courses ended up as high/low as they did...three Mike Strantz courses are way up there, but they are really only more intimidating looking than behemoths to play.  but you get some 5 handicapper used to doctrine of framing and symmetry who plays tobacco road or tot hill once and it gets unfairly branded as hard and tricked up.

However, Royal New Kent, admittedly plays as hard as it looks.  That ones really tricky.  Even after several plays some people just dont get minutiae like the safe spots on the par-3 3rd and 7th are the back of the green...the very part of the hole that's not visible on the tee.  dye does the same thing sometimes...like 12 at Bulle rock or 12 at trophy club

But once you see the trick and know about it, you start to think about it at other times on other courses.  When I played both trophy club and bulle rock with the course pros, as I stood on the tee and saw the water on one side and the bunker on the other side of the water, I took an educated guess...knowing that Liddy and Dye wouldn't just leave us amateurs hanging to hit a PERFECT shot...and asked "lemme guess, the safe play is to the back of the green and they both said yes, thats right.

Moral of story?  Golfers are brighter than the mainstream media takes us for.  We can handle and are ready for strategy 201, 301 and 501, if only we get to see it.  Golfers I play with...even my lunkhead buddies...are chomping at the bit to learn the nuances.  if we give them highbrow stuff instead of canned stuff like hardest 50, they'll eat it up.

Oh, one more thing...it's completely reedonkyoulous (that's ridiculous with a donkey thrown in to show how crazy it is) to see some of the courses they list as harder than sawgrass...those greens are TINY!

[Glenn Spencer]

NCR? Augusta?

[Michael Robin]

Anybody else ever play the original back tees at Bandon Dunes? First time I played there we got the special score card and fought that beast the whole way from the way back tee on 2, to the very top on 3, to the very back blindish tee on 4, to the brutal back tee on 12, to the last tee on 15, to the 16th tee that required hitting across the 15th green! This was the hardest 18 holes I had ever played. No less than 3 wood into any of the par 3s!!!  

[Sean Leary]

Anybody else ever play the original back tees at Bandon Dunes? First time I played there we got the special score card and fought that beast the whole way from the way back tee on 2, to the very top on 3, to the very back blindish tee on 4, to the brutal back tee on 12, to the last tee on 15, to the 16th tee that required hitting across the 15th green! This was the hardest 18 holes I had ever played. No less than 3 wood into any of the par 3s!!!  

16 from that abandoned tee box was a monster.  11 also has tee boxes that keep going forever back.

[Andy Troeger]

I was surprised Desert Forest was not on the list. Its about as hard as anything I've played from the back. I thought definitely harder than Blackwolf Run and comparable to Wolf Run in terms of difficulty.

This particular list wouldn't do me much good. Hard for the sake of hard doesn't appeal to me. I like courses that are hard while still giving most levels of golfers a fighting chance. Easy to generalize, tough to specify, and tougher yet to build I bet

[Michael Robin]

Sean -

You're right about 11. I meant 11 instead of 12 in my post. That 465 tee uphill into a 3 club wind is just really a par 5. Actually, I would venture to say that par from those back tees was about 78 with the wind up and 74 in the calm.

[Michael Robin]

Who has played Pacific Dunes from ALL THE WAY BACK, such as the crazy tee on 1 where you fire over the 18th green, and the 666 tee on 18? That course gets into this top 50.

[rjsimper]

Who has played Pacific Dunes from ALL THE WAY BACK, such as the crazy tee on 1 where you fire over the 18th green, and the 666 tee on 18? That course gets into this top 50.

Not I, however my last round there included playing the 4th from the "down below" tee and the 18th from the Lucifer tee.

Yikes.

I found this thread whilst digging around a bit and thought it was interesting, as I didn't know many of these were even around.  The tee shot from 1 at P.D. blows my mind enough as it is from the current blacks.  I can not imagine stepping back farther.

Anyway, for those unfamiliar, check it out:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=2727

[Tim Gavrich]

- No Sugarloaf in Carabassett Valley, ME???  No one broke 75 in the first year it was open, and I heard that the course record is something like 68.

- Tobacco Road is definitely not that hard, for reasons already stated.

- Neither is Tot Hill Farm, unless you put the pins in silly places.  And even then, there have to be 50 tougher golf courses.

- I thought PV held the records both for toughness and greatness.  But I've only heard.

- The International is only that hard from the Tiger tees.  And then, it's more of a novelty item than a golf course.

- As dearly as I love Yale, I'm surprised that it's in there.  It's hard, but a top-50 ranking transcends "hard," to me.

- Where is Oronoque (#47)?  I've played an Oronoque CC in Stratford, CT, a Des Muirhead design.  Surely that's not the one.

[Guy Phelan]

Tough?

I've played #5,6,8,9,1114,16,17

I would like to know how they can be in front of #32? Which I have played the most and never have conquered and probably never will.

Could #32 have been overlooked?

Or

Do they just not know how to rank?

[C. Squier]

Funny story about #48

My good friend from college has a cottage up in Hayward.  Back in school, about 10 of us would make the annual trek up to WI to go to the cottage to engage in a week's worth of debauchery.  We usually had 3-4 guys who would bring the sticks and we'd always play Ross' Teal Wing Golf Club.  To this day, though we've played more difficult courses, we still joke about how hard we found Teal Wing....especially compared to our usual bargain courses that we could barely afford then.  

Anyways, on to the story.  We're on the 3rd green when the marshall comes racing up to us.....SCREAMING!  WTH did you guys do to the first green!!!!  We're not exactly dressed to the nines, but we're all very respectful to courses we've played....most of us worked grounds crew during the summers.  The guy is threatening to throw us off the course when another marshall drives up.  The 2nd guy calls off the first.....it wasn't us that messed up the first green, but 2 male bucks who fought on it.  We drove past the green after our round, it was almost completely destroyed.....4 guys with a bulldozer couldn't produce the damage it sustained, much less 4 guys w/ just their clubs.  

CPS

[Anthony Butler]

Of the ones I have played:

1. Pine Valley-I would refuse a free membership... seriously.
2. The Shattuck-5 miles from the in-laws... makes for a lovely weekend.
3. Oakmont-The only course with members who think US Open green speeds are for pussies.
4.Spyglass-Unlike Pebble it doesn't have to be on the ocean to be a hard hole.
5. PGA West-Usually about 6 pars on each side, while shooting 85.
6. Pinehurst-If you like putting on the hood of a VW Beetle.
7. Winged Ft West-Two words. Green. Complexes.
8. TPC Sawgrass-Minus the weather, the crowds, and the TPC set-up, not that scary.
9. Moorland-Not even the hardest course at Legends

[Brian Cenci]

surprise that crystak downs is not in there...

course record is 67, I think and most good players start with a nice bogey-bogey start and nver get it back to par, from what I've heard and seen

Crystal Downs is definetly a test.  For the length, it's got to be one of the hardest.  I'm pretty sure course record (non-tournament) is 66 though, shot by one of the members back in the mid 90's.

[Martin Del Vecchio]

As for the International, I played the Pines in the Ouimet tournament in Boston a few years ago, and it is quite hard.  The tees we played were the third from back, and were about 6950.  My playing partners and I had fun laughing at how far back the "Tiger tees" were on each hole.  The placement of some of them is absurd, and the course really does set up aesthetically to the tees we played.

One par 3 especially, on the front 9, had the mid-back tees for us playing about 195-200 downhill over a ravine with a pond at the bottom to a green benched half-way up the far hillside.  The tiger tees were about 60 yards behind us, down the hill towards the woods, maybe 10-15 ft. below the crest where our tee was.  So from there, it's 265, completely blind to a rather pretty par 3 surrounded by trouble.  Does that make any sense?

That green mentioned in the article comes at the end of a miles-long par 5, where my 260 yard drive didn't reach the shortest tee box.  The green is as big as a parking lot, with four or five distinct quadrants each larger than a normal green.  We joked that if we had caddies, we'd hear, "well pards you have 127 to the stick, umm...48 to the front...."

The Pines is not a bad course, a bit of a 1960s slog even from the appropriate tees, but Fazio's new Oaks course has given the club quite a lift.  Compared to the Pines it's a gem, but probably at least on the level as Waverly Oaks and Pinehills, maybe close to Red Tail as well.

I played the Pines in a member-guest about 4 years ago.  Like you said, it's a 1960s-era course tricked up with some ridiculous Tiger Tees.  Some of them were 10-yard-wide chutes, but 40 to 50 yards into the woods.  

I think we played it from about 6500 yards, from which it was mostly a pushover.  

I would add a vote for Sugarloaf.  It's mountain golf at its most difficult.

[Bill Satterfield]

Bill:

I'm going to disagree with you.  I've seen the monthly newsstand sales totals for a couple of the golf magazines [GOLF and GOLF DIGEST], and they do not sell a lot more issues for the rankings.  GOLFWEEK might be an exception to that, I haven't seen their numbers.  People may talk about it (and that's why advertisers are interested), but they aren't actually selling magazines because of it, unless you've seen some numbers I haven't.

I don't know whether that particular issue would sell considerably more as much as the fact that those magazines are going to sell more subscriptions by having their annual rankings, lists, etc. that seem to generate a lot of talk within the golf community in general.

[Alex_Wyatt]

How is Sebonack NOT on this list??

[Brad Tufts]

I think BB is toughest I've played of courses where it's very easy to end with the same ball you began with.

BB from 7200 is as demanding as it gets.  It's about 76.2/145, and there are at least 5-6 approach shots that are super hard.  During my only round there, I was driving the ball 10-15 yards longer than normal, averaging about 275, and it didn't even help.  The distance isn't so much the killer as the elevation change and target-style approaches.  I had only 170 on #15, but the green being 40 feet up over a huge bunker probably made it play 200-210 at least.

Of Jungle courses, Princevill comes to mind as very hard to keep it in play, compounding your score with penalty strokes.

[Glenn Spencer]

I think BB is toughest I've played of courses where it's very easy to end with the same ball you began with.

BB from 7200 is as demanding as it gets.  It's about 76.2/145, and there are at least 5-6 approach shots that are super hard.  During my only round there, I was driving the ball 10-15 yards longer than normal, averaging about 275, and it didn't even help.  The distance isn't so much the killer as the elevation change and target-style approaches.  I had only 170 on #15, but the green being 40 feet up over a huge bunker probably made it play 200-210 at least.

Of Jungle courses, Princevill comes to mind as very hard to keep it in play, compounding your score with penalty strokes.

Good comment about the Black and one ball. I agree. I will nominate NCR as well. It may, may be a bit easier, but it is also a little easier to keep the same ball.

[Jonathan Cummings]

I found the list fresh and amusing. An Alaska course? Makes me want to go see it.

This is not a serious rater list but rather a fun collection of suggestions.

JC

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()