Preconceived notions

[Brad Swanson]

What percentage of courses played for the first time meet or exceed your preconceived opinion of its quality?  

Are the hyped up greats always meeting or exceeding your expectations?

Maybe I'm just a softie, but I can't remember the last time I was let down after playing a golf course for the first time (I guess Nicklaus North at Whistler comes to mind some 8 years ago.)

Cheers,
Brad

[Ken Moum]

What percentage of courses played for the first time meet or exceed your preconceived opinion of its quality?  

The single biggest letdown for me was (Gasp!!) Royal Dornoch.

I think it was due to a several things

- I was playing absolutely awful when I got there
- We got a couple of Jr. caddies who were nice but not very helpful
- My friend who was playing well, had been whining the whole trip.
- I was playing awful
- He can't play a shot without having it "all out in front of him."
- I was playing awful
- It's a darned hard golf course.
- Did I mention that I was playing awful? <grin>

In retrospect, I also spent too darned much time taking pictures and trying to help him figure out what to do on every tee.

But the Jr. caddies were really a problem. Neither of them got to play the course much, as they played Struie, so they couldn't really give you much help on lines off the tee, clubs to hit.

Adding to the distress, my friend and his wife are a little slow on the course, and we got told to hurry up. Which set everyone on edge, especially my wife, who can get around a course just fine and hates to be told she's out of position.

All in all, it was probably the least enjoyable round I played in Scotland.  Fortunately, the next day we played Brora, and I ignored his complaining about the "rustic" condition enough to have a wonderful time.

If there's a moral in this tale for me, it's choose your travelling companions carefully (I knew going in about his attitude on the course) and don't spend so much time looking through a viewfinder that it takes away time spent soaking it all in.

Brora, as mentioned, exceeded expectations. And so, I think, did the The Old, New and Jubilee.

But I'll be honest, it's hard for a highly touted course to live up to expectations. Apache Stronghold and Black Mesa a wonderful courses, but i went in with such high hopes that I can't see how they could have exceeded them.

I'm a lot more likely to get that from a simple, unheralded course that delivers a fun round at a reasonable price.

Ken

[Tom Huckaby]

Funny you should write that, Ken.

I've told the story on here too many times already about my trevails one time at Dornoch... to make a long story short, I was playing so awful I threw my whole bag into the bushes next to the 9th tee... then sat there and thankfully had an epiphany about what a jackass I was, how little it really mattered how one played at such a great course, and how I was ruining what ought to have been a great experience with my idiotic self-pity.

Now I don't mean to cast aspersions on you - your travelling companions seem to have negatively effected your experience more than anything you yourself did - but I do see a lot of myself in that story.

And I am happy to read it, actually... you writing it seems to indicate you've had a similar epiphany that I did.

Which brings me to my extremely long-winded point:  if a course fails to meet expectations, it's damn near never the fault of the course, but rather the "expector", one way or the other.

I learned that long ago, thankfully - my slipup at Dornoch notwithstanding.

Thus I can't think of a course that didn't exceed my expectations.  And I do tend to have very high expectations.  But my imagination just isn't sufficient to take in a place like Cypress Point, Sand Hills, NGLA, etc.

And the expectations are lower for courses that I don't tend to know so much about, so the reality gets exceeded there as well.

It's a fun way to go about playing this game.

TH

[Ken Moum]

Now I don't mean to cast aspersions on you - your travelling companions seem to have negatively effected your experience more than anything you yourself did - but I do see a lot of myself in that story.

I have to take some of the blame, but you're right. I had been playing a lot with him--a couple of times a week--and his act was wearing thin before we ever left home. Nevertheless, I should have given myself permission to smell the roses a bit.

It's a fun way to go about playing this game.

This summer, after a three-year uptrend in my handicap (from 7 to 16), I started playing with a bunch of guys who don't gamble, don't complain, don't want to play the ball up, and who are mostly bogey golfers. It has transformed my attitude. And I am having lots of fun. Not  surprisingly, I am playing better, too.

[Tom Huckaby]

Ken:  very cool.

It is interesting how IN GENERAL the more serious one is about the game, the less fun one is to play the game with.

It's food for thought, anyway.

TH

[Jeff_Mingay]

Upon reading Brad's question, Pine Valley immediately jumped to mind.

Prior to playing Pine Valley, I thought I knew quite a bit about the course. After playing it, I clearly realized I knew very little.

Talk about exceeding expectation... I arrived thinking, how can this course consistently be considered the world's perennial number one, and left thinking, yep, there's a very, very good chance that is indeed the world's perennial number one.

I definitely place St. Andrews-Old and National Golf Links of America in the same category.

[Jeff_Brauer]

To balance the scales, my first round at Dornoch (in 1980) was probably the greatest unexpected pleasure I have ever experienced in golf!  Too bad you played it under the wrong circumstances.

You would be hard pressed to know if from my defense of modern architecture here, but most of my dissapointments have come from new courses that just don't live up to the hype, and older courses that once hosted a major, but clearly couldn't anymore and might not have been the best choice even then.  There were questionable major venue choices before Hazeltine in 1970 IMHO.

[Greg Krueger]

I played TOC this summer and was worried that it would not
meet my expectations. You hear often that people play it &
don't get what all the fuss is about. Gladly it was off the
charts!! It did help that it was a remarkable day, 65 degrees,
not a cloud in the sky with a 10mph breeze. It was one of
the best, if not the best day I have ever had on a golf course!

Played Dornach 2 days later, I don't know what to say
other than AWESOME!!!

[Brad Swanson]

The anecdotes are great, but what are your estimates of % of courses that fail to meet expectations and why?

Cheers,
Brad

[Tom Huckaby]

The anecdotes are great, but what are your estimates of % of courses that fail to meet expectations and why?

Cheers,
Brad

Less than 1%.
Because I don't let it happen, that's why.

 

[Andy Troeger]

I would guess for me that its about 20%. That's not to say that I don't still enjoy playing those courses, just that in evaluating them they don't end up being quite what I had thought they would be.

I would guess that of the rest about 40-50% meet expectations and 30-40% exceed expectations. One could argue I need to have higher expectations to divide things into thirds, but oh well.

I just figure that if I take a trip and play five courses, there will be 2-3 that are about what I expect (which might be very good, if its a top 100 course I expect it to be impressive), 1-2 that surprise me and are even better than expected, and 1 disappointment. In thinking about the last 4-5 trips I've taken, that's about right every time.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Isn't playing a new course really akin to going on a blind date?  As such, perhaps none should be a dissapointment, and a few should be exceptional surprises.

Yes, I know we get info through ads, mags and the net that make us feel we know a course well, but we also get recommendations on the dates, too, no?  Of course, I want to see pictures rather than have a friend tell me a course has "a nice personality" but just like those photos on dating sites, we know that they try hard to show themselves off to best advantage, and we shouldn't expect a Mona Lisa when we arrive.

Off to hockey night in Dallas!

[Willie_Dow]

Jeff - As an old timer at hockey, playing on the natural ice at Dartmouth, it is like a round at Dornoch.  There isn't a greater feeling for the game.