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Sam Kestin

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Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« on: February 21, 2009, 09:11:47 AM »
Folks-

I hope this post finds you all getting ready to kick back, relax and enjoy the weekend coverage at the Northern Trust.

Anyway, I wanted to post on here the link to a course guide I wrote for Riviera Country Club...the place where I grew up and learned to play this wretched/beautiful (depending on what hole I'm on) game some 12 years ago. I've noticed that course guides are popular among some GCA'ers...and I hope this weekend in particular some of you guys might find some pleasure or value in taking a look at a pretty detailed one of RCC. 

The guide is available at http://www.azaleagolf.com/rivieraGuide.shtml. I just sent Mr. Morrissett an email asking if he had any interest in posting it on here as well, but in the meantime it's up on my site at AzaleaGolf.Com.

Riviera has been described as one of the more subtle and strategic layouts on the PGA TOUR by many, and its design and architecture has been a topic of discussion on this board on many occasions. I hope this guide will serve to further enrich those conversations and enhance just a little your enjoyment of the Northern Trust Open.

Sam Kestin

 


Charlie Goerges

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Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2009, 09:36:22 AM »
Wow, that's extremely detailed. Nice work. I've only had a chance to look at a couple of holes, but it is quite informative. How long did it take to get all of that together? Did you have any help?
Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this. - Marcus Aurelius

George Pazin

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Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2009, 09:37:08 AM »
Thanks for sharing, Riviera is one of the few tournaments I still watch.
Big drivers and hot balls are the product of golf course design that rewards the hit one far then hit one high strategy.  Shinny showed everyone how to take care of this whole technology dilemma. - Pat Brockwell, 6/24/04

Dale_McCallon

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2009, 09:38:32 AM »
Great guide--thanks for posting.

What else will azaleagolf.com include in the future?

PCCraig

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2009, 09:59:20 AM »
That is a pretty intense and good write up of Riviera!

Riviera was one of the first courses I remember being interested in even as a kid looking at golf books...all because they had a hole with a bunker right in the middle of the green. (Which is something that I still love and wish had caught on more).
H.P.S.

Kyle Henderson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2009, 01:38:33 PM »
Excellent work. That is a tremendous resource. Thanks for sharing.

One error I noticed:
I'm pretty sure the front-left yardage on # 6 is not 338/318 yards from any of that hole's designated teeing grounds, especially since you list the back-left at 214/185... and then again at 197/173.  ;D

Love the diagrams of green contours!

Cheers,
Kyle



"I always knew terrorists hated us for our freedom. Now they love us for our bondage." -- Stephen T. Colbert discusses the popularity of '50 Shades of Grey' at Gitmo

Kevin_Reilly

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Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2009, 01:55:38 PM »
Hmmm, couldn't get the page to load.  Will try later.

Meanwhile, would love your thoughts on #8 in this thread:

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,38691.0.html
"GOLF COURSES SHOULD BE ENJOYED RATHER THAN RATED" - Tom Watson

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2009, 02:03:14 PM »
Interesting new website... I'll be watching to see how the "home and home program" develops.   It sounds very good, and I wish you well in administering it.  I'll call attention of our club's pro to the program and hope he'll get involved in arranging a donated foursome or see if our men's club members can donate rounds. 
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Sam Kestin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2009, 11:30:28 PM »
Guys,

Thanks a lot for the feedback...I'm really glad you all enjoyed it. If there are any ways you think I can make it better, or information you want that I might not have included, just let me know. I wrote the thing for guys like you...and I want to make sure you all get as much as you want out of it.

As far as your individual comments:

Mr. McCallon-

I’m glad you asked about what else we’re up to at AzaleaGolf…though I warn you in advance--there’s no short answer to that question.

I’ll run down quickly for you what we’ve got up there now:

First and foremost, I’m really trying to get the Home & Home program up and going. Check out the site for more about this…but, in short, it’s designed to provide as many active members of the military as possible with free rounds of golf. Ideally, servicemen/women can log on, send us an expression of interest and their availability and get an email back with a tee time that’ll be set up and waiting for them someplace near home on one of their available dates.

We’re also working to build a solid library of editorial content including reviews of all things golf, essays on golf course architecture/design, travel guides, top ten lists, articles on the professional game and basically anything I feel people might enjoy taking a look at.

A plethora of contests and promotions is a big part of the formula for AzaleaGolf as well. With the economy in the shape it’s in and the effect that has had across the game of golf, I wanted to find a way to use my site to feed golfer’s passion for the game without asking them to reach into their wallets. Rounds are down, the total number of golfers is down, business and personal budgets for golf are tightening by the minute…but I believe the immeasurable statistics regarding the game haven’t changed much at all. Golf nuts are still golf nuts, whether they can afford to be or not. Nobody loves the game less because of the economy. Hopefully, our contests can provide a way of nursing that love while offering golfers a chance to win some free golf stuff.

Our biggest current contest is the AzaleaGolf.Com Masters Match Play Shootout…a March Madness-style bracket contest using the scores of Masters Participants. We’re giving away a first prize package of $800 worth of the equipment of your choice between Titleist, TaylorMade, Calloway or Nike to the entrant who can earn the most points. As a grand prize, we’re also going to give away practice round tickets and accommodations for two to 2010 Masters Tournament to the first entrant that correctly completes the bracket and returns correct answers to the four playoff questions.

We’ve also got an Armchair Architecture Contest going (I posted about this a while back) relating to the Masters. The premise is simple: over two blank pages, in any format, entrants will give us their best shot at redesigning any of the holes on AGNC’s famed second nine. I’m giving away a $300 gift certificate to TGW.Com as well as copies of Paul Daley’s upcoming Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective Vol 5 and free golf balls to those who submit winning entries.

Finally, we’ve developed and launched the beta version of our own unique Course Rankings/Ratings system. This idea was born right here at GCA…as I read and studied the contempt of most on this site for how courses are currently ranked and rated by most major publications and websites. A common lament (and one that I share) is that there really is no such thing as “the best” when it comes to golf courses and golf course design…a “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” sort of thing. I hope the way in which we’ve structured our system will help combat what I believe is a fallacy in how course rankings are currently structured.

The fallacy I’m referring to is how existing rankings are based upon a static interpretation of the data they collect. I’ll use the Digest rankings as an example. They have a number of categories/criteria by which they evaluate the courses that are considered as part of their ratings program. Raters plug in their numbers for each category and return this data to Digest…then Digest packages it for distribution according to a formula that reflects how THEY feel each criteria should be weighted.

We’re going to do it differently. Instead of a static interpretation of course ratings/rankings, we’re going to provide our users with a fluid interpretation of that data. After we’ve collected enough ratings from enough users for enough courses, we’re going to create an interface that allows users to see an interpretation of that data based upon their own personal feelings for what makes one golf course “better” than another. Users will rate the weight they give to each of our 24 criteria and our system will spit back to them a ranking of the top X courses in a given area based upon a formula that reflects their personal tastes. Instead of getting THE Top 100 courses…you can get YOUR Top 100 courses.

We’ve got some other tricks up our sleeve too…but we’re waiting to unveil those until Masters Week when the site launches in full. For now, I hope you enjoy the features I describe above…and my apologies to everyone for this lengthy and shameless plug of AzaleaGolf.Com.


Mr. Daley-

I’m glad the Home & Home program got your attention and I thank you in advance for any efforts you might make to contribute. Though it may be a bit of a pipe dream to think I can get it off the ground and large enough to do some good for a decent amount of military folks, I’m really hoping I can make it happen. If everyone is as sympathetic to the cause as you are, I might have a shot at pulling it off.

As an FYI, in time, I’m going to have a few other ways people can contribute to the program beyond just direct round donations. I’m developing an interface for a silent auction feature as well as a way people can make tiny monetary contributions via the AzaleaGolf site. Hopefully, I can manage to procure a few cool items for the silent auction and raise some money to pay for free golf for as many servicemen as possible.

Thanks again for your support of the program, and let me know if you have any questions, thoughts or ideas about how I might be able to improve upon it.

 



Mr. Goerges--

All told, the thing took me about three really intense weeks of writing. In case you couldn't tell by my posting it at like 6am two days into the tournament, this wasn't something that I had in the works months ago. I founded AzaleaGolf around New Year's and, after a couple of weeks of work getting it off the ground and rounding some of my ideas into tangible concepts, I started working on the guide. As far as help goes, AzaleaGolf is a joint venture between myself and one of my closest friends from both college and high school...but I did all the writing of this thing on my own. I'm glad you enjoyed the results, and I hope I can scribble down some things here and there in the future you might enjoy as well. (On that note, check out Paul Daley's upcoming book Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective Vol 5 when it comes out in April...Mr. Daley was gracious enough to include an essay I wrote about RCC in there.)





Mr. Craig--

Funny you should mention liking number six even as a kid...that hole was one that always piqued my interest when I was younger. I loved the bunker in the middle...though my little sister maybe liked it more than I did-- always calling it the "doughnut" hole and asking every two shots over the first five holes when we would get to play the "doughnut" hole...

I looked forward to it when I was young because it was the only green I had a shot at hitting in regulation at RCC for a good long while. I'm by no means the biggest cat on the block now, and back then I might have been mistaken for someone's Mini Me...so distance wasn't exactly the strong suit in my golf game. #16 was shorter and more reachable distance-wise, but banging a driver up there left me with not much of a chance to hold that tiny green. I'll never forget the first time I "hammered" a driver the 120y or so over the big front bunker after spending about a year hitting the top lip every single time I played it. Amusingly, that shot ended up darn near going in before settling a few inches away...but in the decade or so since then I haven't come even half as close to making an ace there as I did that first time. Sure is a stupid game we all choose to play, isn't it?




Mr. Henderson--

I included that yardage to the front-left as it has always been a club tradition to play the front-left pin by taking a middle iron of 160y over towards the 16th tee and then another middle iron of 160y back over the trees. I felt it would be inappropriate not to include the applicable yardage in the guide. 

Just kidding...thanks for the tip about the typo. There are a few spots here and there where the web version didn't quite match up to the Microsoft Word copy...I thought I eradicated most of em' (one of the reasons this thing is coming out Saturday and not five days ago), but as Paul Daley could tell you I'm by no means a savvy editor...likely a result of too many papers in college being completed about 90 seconds before I was supposed to hand them in...

Anyway, I appreciate the head's up. I'll be fixing that ASAP.



Mr. Reilly-

Not sure why you couldn't get the page to load, but I'll call my web guy and dig around...he's been making some edits and touches here and there all day so it's possible that it was just poor timing that you tried to check it out during the few minutes every so often where he's FTP-ing files up to the site.

Also, as soon as I'm done with this post, I'll check out your post about #8 and throw in my thoughts.









My apologies to everyone for the length of this post...but I wanted to make sure I was at least half as thoughtful in my responses as you all were in your comments and evaluations of my work.

Bob_Huntley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2009, 12:01:44 AM »
Riviera has always had me in its thrall. I was a member and  lived on the course for a few years and aced the sixth and had a two on the par five(for members) on number two.

Of all the courses in LA, I have always felt that it was the superior of its competitors, namely LACC. The truly superb holes are the fourth, the tenth, twelth, thirteenth and eighteenth. A course for all seasons.

Bob

Charlie Goerges

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #10 on: February 22, 2009, 01:17:42 AM »
Well, I'm definitely entering your armchair architect contest. I completed a photoshop-job of an aerial today with before/after. I feel a bit weird defacing Augusta, but hey, somebody's got to do it.
Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this. - Marcus Aurelius

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #11 on: February 22, 2009, 02:33:38 AM »
Hmmm, I have a hunch this Azaleagolf.com is going to become a very big deal.  The planned interactivity Sam is projecting - if managed well, ought to be some real attractive features. 

Sam, I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind. 

First, are you aware of Bryon Vincent's wounded vets program up in Seattle? 

Second, are you set up to handle huge volumes of web visitors and ultimately participants?  Will you see a need to cap participation, and make folks register, etc?  I suggest an unregistered free-for-all on discussion board, and other interactive aspects might sink you before you get started if not managed.

Third, do you have your legal skirts clean?  It says you are an LLC.  Beyond your "privacy" statement, are you set to provide transparency or accountablity should your "home and home program" exceed your wildest imagination?  Once you start accepting money, I think you might need a keen legal overseer or ability to check if you can do certain things...  (I'm not calling you our, just throwing the notion out there as I don't see a definitive statement on your "in development" features of the website.

Fourth, in the ratings and rankings, do you think that one or more categories might be more specific for folks like we GCA.com nut cases, to express a rating of what we call "the TEPaul Maintenance Meld"?   That is some measure to express how well the course is intended and achieved to be maintained, usually - aside from weather conditions that may deviate the conditions on the days you rate it.  Does the maintenance regime compliment the architecture?

Good Luck.
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Sam Kestin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #12 on: February 22, 2009, 08:56:54 AM »
Mr. Goerges-

Glad to hear you're entering our Armchair Architecture Contest! I look forward to checking out your entry...and I hope you don't hold back when it comes to "defacing" Augusta. This contest was set up precisely for that sort of thing!

Sam

John Mayhugh

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #13 on: February 22, 2009, 09:54:13 AM »
Sam,
Your Insider's Guide has made watching this weekend's play even more entertaining.  Many thanks. 

The Home & Home concept is a great one.  I would certainly be interested in hosting some active duty military guys.  I think all of the base realignments over the last few years have been good for saving money, but have reduced military presence in many communities and reduce the interaction of active duty folks with civilians around the country.  Golf seems like a nice way to say thanks. 


Sam Kestin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2009, 10:01:08 AM »
Mr. Daley-

Again, thanks a bunch for the kind words...they're certainly confidence building. As far as your questions are concerned:

1- I haven't heard of Mr. Vincent's program, but I'm certainly going to check it out.

2- We're definitely set up to handle a high volume of traffic and participants on our site. InMotion (our host) can accommodate almost infinite expansion with little trouble so I shouldn't have to cap the number of users. As far as registration on the site is concerned--we're aiming to only require it for site features where such a requirement is actually a benefit to our user. For example, if you want to rate a course or read our editorial, there will never be any extra work on your end in terms of registration or signing in. However, for the discussion board, there is a registration and sign-in process as it prevents the free-for-all problem you mentioned.

Also, I completely agree with you that preventing the interactive aspects of the site from getting out of our hands should be a high priority. To that end, we've been working closely with our web designer to make sure the site is structured from the beginning in a manner that anticipates some of those types of problems.

3- Don't worry...I know you're not calling me out. Your concerns about the legal side of the Home & Home Program are not only valid but important to share with me as they highlight how critical it is that I provide ample transparency and accountability so as to ease the potential worry on the part of any potential donor. In fact, it is those concerns that currently keep the Silent Auction and Direct Money Donation aspects of the program in development and not up on the site. 

Though I'm currently structured as an LLC, I'm also in the process of setting up a sister organization for the Home & Home Program and filing for 501(c)3 status. I'm still learning about what that means and the various requirements involved, but its my preliminary understanding that doing so in the US subjects your financial records to IRS review to ensure compliance with the laws and regulations that relate to the activities of non-profit organizations. This should address your concerns. If it doesn't, I'm happy to just post the monthly financials directly on the website or do whatever my users want to make sure they know there's no monkey business going on. I wouldn't want to give anyone a reason not to donate or participate, and I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen.

4- Thanks so much for this suggestion. Currently, I handle conditioning of the course in two categories...putting surface conditioning and general conditioning (excluding the greens)...but I never liked the general conditioning criteria setup at all. I just needed a way to isolate the greens as their own category, and "general conditioning" is basically everything else. The TEPaul criteria is way way better...and I'll be including that as the second conditioning criteria soon. If you have any other ideas for how to make the categories better, by all means let me know. When it comes to this project, my ears are always open.

I hope I did a decent job answering your questions and speaking to your concerns. If not, just let me know how I might be able to do it better. Either way, thanks again for taking the time to review my site and give me your input.



Sam Kestin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #15 on: February 22, 2009, 01:18:41 PM »
Mr. Mayhugh-

Thanks so much for the compliments on the Guide. I'm really glad it enhanced your enjoyment of the coverage. More importantly, thank you for your willingness to support and donate to the Home & Home Program. I know that asking anyone to go out of their way to do something nice for a complete stranger (as the Home & Home Program does) is a tall order--so I really appreciate your willingness to participate.

Sam

Kevin_Reilly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #16 on: February 22, 2009, 01:28:36 PM »
Just an FYI, the page still does not load for me...it times out after a minute or so -- you might ask your web guy about it.  Comcast, Mac OS X with both Firefox and Safari.  Must be some quirk.
"GOLF COURSES SHOULD BE ENJOYED RATHER THAN RATED" - Tom Watson

Sam Kestin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Insider's Guide to Riviera Country Club
« Reply #17 on: February 22, 2009, 03:56:20 PM »
Mr. Reilly-

Thanks for bringing the quirk to my attention. Definitely due for a chat with my web guy about the scattered compatibility issues some people are having with the site on some web browsers versus others. By the way, I posted in the topic you created to discuss #8...the thoughts are long winded, but if you've got the stamina it's up there if you're interested in reading...

As soon as I get an answer about the compatibility problem I'll let you know.

-Sam

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