Golf Digest ratings - Specifics please

[David_Madison]

I'd like to invite those of you are aren't raters to get more specific with your ratings objections rather than in many cases just lobbing broad negative comments. This is not an effort to defend the published ratings, but instead to encourage discussion about the comparative merits of courses in question utilizing GD's ratings criteria.

We all have our copies of the ratings issue, and included is a spreadsheet of the scores for each of the top 100 courses for each of the scoring criteria as well as the definition for each criteria. What numbers don't make sense, either numbers by themselves or in comparison to each other? Where two courses are reversed, what are your specific numbers for each criteria and the totals? Or if you think a course is well out of its proper slot, what do you think the numbers should be? Here's what each of the numbers means:

6.0 - 6.9      Very Good to Excellent
7.0 - 7.9      Excellent to Exceptional
8.0 - 8.9      Exceptional to Outstanding
9.0 - 9.9      Outstanding to Truly Outstanding
10                Perfect

Comparisons with GD's numbers will only be possible for the top 100 and not for best in state, but you can still use the same comparative process for best in state. Also, please benchmark your numbers against scores that you believe do make sense.

You might find that when you throw real numbers at the ratings, two courses that you think belong in a certain order are reversed. If the "better" course is just a little bit better in five criteria but the "worse" course creams the "better" course in the other two, the final result might not work out like you first thought it should.

[K. Krahenbuhl]

You might find that when you throw real numbers at the ratings, two courses that you think belong in a certain order are reversed. If the "better" course is just a little bit better in five criteria but the "worse" course creams the "better" course in the other two, the final result might not work out like you first thought it should.

Isn't that a sign of a flawed system?

[Tom Huckaby]

Kyle:

Perhaps so.

But would you kindly posit your system, which I assume is perfect?



David:  do you really expect anyone here to answer this honestly?

[K. Krahenbuhl]

Kyle:

Perhaps so.

But would you kindly posit your system, which I assume is perfect?

David:  do you really expect anyone here to answer this honestly?

Tom,

I have no clue as to what the proper system to use would be.  It just seems to me that if you think one course is better than another the numbers shouldn't change that.

[Anthony Gray]

  OUT..........12 handicap.............


  Anthony

 

[Tom Huckaby]

Kyle:

Perhaps so.

But would you kindly posit your system, which I assume is perfect?

David:  do you really expect anyone here to answer this honestly?

Tom,

I have no clue as to what the proper system to use would be.  It just seems to me that if you think one course is better than another the numbers shouldn't change that.

Excellent.  It is my belief that such does not occur with the GD system very often, if at all.  In any case even if it does for a few, well... no system is perfect.

So flawed it is, as are they all.

Disagree?

In any case, I believe David's point was also to show that perhaps the GD raters themselves are not the idiots that people here love to think they are.  We just answer the questions given.  Try it yourself and you may find things don't come out quite how you'd predict.

TH

[K. Krahenbuhl]

In any case, I believe David's point was also to show that perhaps the GD raters themselves are not the idiots that people here love to think they are.  We just answer the questions given. 
TH

I couldn't agree more.

[Tom Huckaby]

Kyle:

You agree with my summation of David's point?

Or you agree that we raters are all idiots?

 

[K. Krahenbuhl]

Kyle:

You agree with my summation of David's point?

Or you agree that we raters are all idiots?

 

The former...I haven't met enough of you yet to comment on the latter

[Tom Huckaby]

Kyle:

You agree with my summation of David's point?

Or you agree that we raters are all idiots?

 

The former...I haven't met enough of you yet to comment on the latter

Excellent... and well done.

 

[Kalen Braley]

Now that Matt Ward is officially Deity as Anthony pointed out, and combined with his having an opinion for all of us..

...why don't we just save the hassle of having 800 or so raters and let him be the rater.  That way if and when things go bad, (not that they would because he's infallible), we'd be able to submit our questions straight to the oracle and not fool around with who's qualified or not.

How can this not work?

[David_Madison]

Tom,
I don't know what to expect here. I hoped that it would lead to some real concrete, rigorous discussions on the comparative merits of "misplaced" courses; that would be a big improvement over the broad slaps here that are far too frequent.

Kyle,
No, it is a sign of misplaced criticism. If course "A" is a little bit better than course "B" on most criteria but is by a greater degree worse on one or two, which should be the more highly rated course? The GD system says "B", but I'd guess that many here would vote "A". All I'm asking is that anyone disagreeing with the ratings, especially among the Top 100, do their own numbers and see how it all turns out. They might be surprised at the results. I know that I've been many, many times.

[Andrew Summerell]

I was on a ranking panel for a while then chose to step down a few years back. In the end, I failed to see any purpose to these lists & I was concerned how many courses & clubs chased higher positions on these lists often to the detriment of their course. There were one or two other issues that concerned me that I won’t get into on this thread.

I know this is not exactly the argument you want from this thread, but this is where I’m at regarding ranking lists at the moment.

[Mark Smolens]

What can possibly make one course a "little bit better" than another   Is Gisele a little bit better looking than Elle or Heidi   And how in God's (or should that read "Matt's"?) name can you place numerical values on the quality of a golf course

[jim_lewis]

Dave:

I don't know if the problem is the system or the raters, and I really don't care. I can only pass judgement on the end product. I have not bought the magazine in years, but I understand that Pinehurst Number 2 is ranked #32. That's is all I needed to know to disregard the whole list. We won't live long enough to see 31 courses better than #2. I hope the editors and the panel are embarrassed. I regret that this ranking reflects badly on all of us who serve on the various course rating panels.

Jim Lewis

[David_Madison]

Jim:

I agree with you regarding Pinehurst #2. While the course probably has fallen off a little, a drop from the #10-#15 area down to the 30's is incomprehensible. Maybe that'll be the thing that gets them thinking at GD headquarters that something is off, as it's so obviously glaring. My guess is that the "arts and crafts" categories as interpreted by the panelists have way too much influence, and that lower keyed but more substantive courses without the expensive whiz-bang eye-candy are graded down when their understatement and "pure golf" aspects actually should be graded up.

David

[Jeff_Brauer]

Watching the top courses move around suggested to me that the ones currently in the spotlight seem to rise and others seem to fall. That further suggests that emotion and familiarity still trump numbers, no matter how objective you try to make them.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I agree wholeheartedly with your last comment.  When I used to run the GOLF Magazine list, you could practically guarantee that hosting a US Open or British Open would bump a course up a few spots, and then it would start falling back to where it had been as it dimmed in people's memories.

That's probably true of all courses, to be honest -- people are more enthusiastic about the "8" they just saw than the "8" they haven't seen for 5-10 years.  But it was easier to spot when a course hosted an event so you could track it.

David M:

Having seen Pinehurst #2 last summer, I would agree with its demotion in the GOLF DIGEST rankings.  It was always a "10" on the Doak scale but I would not have given it even a 9 based on last summer's visit.  The course's reputation relies in part on getting all the subtle things right, and right now all the subtle things are wrong.

[David_Madison]

Tom:

Good feedback on #2. I haven't seen it for a few years, but even then it was obvious that it had been losing much of what made it special. As an aside, doesn't the GD panelists taking down one of this country's "sacred" courses counter some of the comments about ratings being pre-ordained for courses that are ranked highly and have been so for many years. Seems that the panelists actually rated what was there as they found it.

One thing I wrestle with as a panelist is seeing a course who's maintenance and playing conditions are contrary to the architecture and what you'd have to believe the architect intended. For example, #2 was designed to play wide, with lots of angles and choices. Set up as designed and intended, it belongs in or around the top 10. The greatness is still in there, but it's been grown over or otherwise put to sleep. Narrow the corridors with rough, and then raise that rough to pitch-out height and all that's gone. The shot values, variety, and other factors should be graded down, but I wonder just how much when so much of what's wrong can be fixed in no time with a lawn mower.

[John Moore II]

I'd be interested in knowing how Brad Tufts rated Pinehurst #2 last year when he played. I remember playing a few of the holes out there last year and thinking "is this all?" I thought the rough was grown in tight in some places, I also looked at 18, with the green shaped like it was with the bunkers and thought that the best angle, for those who can really position the ball well off the tee, was somewhere about 20 yards deep in the left rough, which obviously makes that play out of the question. But with that hole in particular, I thought width to the left could have made for a much better hole. Now I am not certain if that width was ever there to start with, but that was my thought on the hole.

Now as far as where it should fall in these rankings, I can't really say. I've played none of the courses ranked above it, and at a glance, only one (Eagle Point) ranked below on these rankings. Of the courses ranked in other polls from other magazines and the GD public list, those being Pine Needles, Forest Creek North, Tobacco Road, and perhaps some others that I can't think of off hand, I can say that from what I've seen of #2, its better than those, BUT not worlds better.

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