Would the Great American Courses Be Considered the Best If...

[JNC Lyon]

They Weren't So Exclusive?

We were discussing this the other day after a round at the Addington.  Jordan's Pacific Grove v. Cypress Point got me thinking about the question again.  Are the best courses in America ranked where they are because they are so exclusive?  Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Augusta National, Seminole, NGLA, Shinnecock, etc. etc.  They all have a mystique because they are so difficult to get on.  Is this why they are ranked so highly?

Anybody who is playing these courses are going to be so thrilled going in.  They will be thrilled simply because they are getting to play a course that is impossible to get on.  People talk about donating organs to play Cypress Point.  You cannot possibly get this same feeling from playing Pebble Beach because anybody can pay $500 and play.  This feeling must affect how these courses are judged, no?

Thoughts?

[John Moore II]

I think it makes a difference, but many on here will probably say I am wrong.

Though I must say that often times, private clubs are the ones with enough money to pay for the top notch land and to get the top notch designer and such. I think it all contributes. However, if you recall, Golf Digest actually had a category for 'tradition' in their ratings until just a few years ago. That number would certainly be affected by something like being an ultra-exclusive club with a long history that most public clubs wouldn't have.

[Brett_Morrissy]

The mystique certainly adds flavour. Here in Australia it is not as big an issue and to a much lesser extent, as they are much more accessible generally (with two notable exceptions) .

I still think it depends on the merit of the courses, here there are courses that have merit, are private, but not highly ranked.

In the States, I am sure there are many that are very inaccessible but are also not highly ranked?

So is it possible, that these learned men of the early parts of last century and more, knew from the beginning, the early stages, what gems were being created and made sure they would be locked down to keep them exclusive, not ‘spoiled’ by too much traffic. In turn, this takes a different angle, that the exclusivity has no relation to a courses rank, it just maintains a different perspective for those that love GCA.

The Old course has no such restrictions, but has buckets of intangible aspects that make it very special as well as the golf. As do many of the courses in GB&I and here in Australia.

My answer would be a YES – for most of the list you supplied – they would still be great and considered the best, no matter how easy they were to access.
BM

[Phil_the_Author]

Since when is Bethpage Black exclusive?

[John Moore II]

Since when is Bethpage Black exclusive?

Since when is Bethpage Black better than any of the courses listed in the first post?

And of course there are public courses, Pebble Beach was mentioned, but don't courses with great mystique sometimes seem better than others just because there is an expectation that it will be just because of the name or whatever?

[Mac Plumart]

Here is a list I put together of all the courses in which all of the major golf course rating entities have rated in the Top 100.  And I've listed them with the course which received the highest aggregated ranking first, second second, and so on. 

I've only played a handful of these courses, so I can't speak to which ones are over-rated due to "exclusivity"...but I do noticed that quite a few public courses are in the mix.  But I've seen people one this site say Pebble is "over-rated" and it is public. 

So, based on this...it appears that the rankings seem pretty solid.  But I would love to hear others who have more experience playing the vast majority of these courses add in their thoughts.


Pine Valley
Cypress Point
Shinnecock Hills
Augusta National
Oakmont
Pebble Beach
Merion
Sand Hills
Nat'l Golf Links
Pacific Dunes
Crystal Downs
Seminole
Winged Foot West
Chicago
Fishers Island
Praire Dunes
Pinehurst #2
Oakland Hills
Whisting Straits/Straits
San Francisco
The Country Club
Muirfield Village
Riveria
Bethpage Black
Olympic Lake
Kiawah Ocean Course
Bandon Dunes
Oak Hill East
The Golf Club
TPC Sawgrass
Baltusrol (lower)
Los Angeles
Garden City Golf Club
Southern Hills
Medinah 3
Inverness
Spyglass Hill
Winged Foot (east)
Shoreacres
Maidstone
Harbour Town
Quaker Ridge
Somerset
Scioto

[Tim Martin]

The courses mentioned in the first post would retain their rankings regardless of their mystique or exclusivity. Anyone who has walked and or played Pine Valley and has some appreciation and understanding or golf course architecture is not surprised by its ranking. There are a number of fine courses that don`t have the cache of those referenced in post #1 that are considered Top 100 on most lists and are god forbid open to the "public". So I think it is the architecture that is being judged.   

[jim_lewis]

I don't buy the premises. If these courses weren't great, most of them probably would not be exclusive. Believe it or not, there is a correlation between wealth and the ability to produce a great course. I don't know any great courses that were built by Joe Sixpack.

[Tom_Doak]

JNC:

I don't agree with all of what Jim Lewis said, but I don't buy your premise, either.  Some people are impressed by exclusivity, but those are all great courses you are talking about.  If Pine Valley and Cypress Point are rated ahead of the best British courses for a general reason, it probably has to do more with some people's ideas of good conditioning than it does about them being exclusive.

I used to think architects who built ultra-exclusive private courses had an unfair advantage in the rankings against my public designs.  Instead, I found out that building a great course that the public CAN play is the ultimate home run for one's reputation.  Pebble Beach gets ten times as much publicity as Pine Valley, because it's public.  And Pacific Dunes gets more than Sand Hills, for the same reason.

[Steve Salmen]

I put my club membership on hold last year.  Since I've been playing a lot of public courses, I got to thinking about what I miss most about private club golf.  Besides friends, I could only come up with two things: 1. Condition of putting greens and 2. Pace of play.

My opinion is that these two factors go a long way in determining one's conclusion about their experience at the course, and the course in general.  Private clubs see far fewer rounds than public courses so the greens are truer.  Also, since there is ownership, members take better care of their greens by fixing any pitch mark they see, not just the one they made.

Fewer rounds also means faster play.  If you don't move, word will get out and you will lose playing partners.

JNC, I did not acknowledge architecture at all but I believe my simple reasons go a long way to explaining why private clubs rank high.

The obvious explanation is that two or three golf addicted people get together and decide to form a golf club exclusive to people that share their love of golf.  They purchase phenomenal pieces of land and hire a top architect.  Since there is a tremendous amount of pride in the club, members are willing to spend a lot of money to have their course in excellent condition.  This is possible because these folks generally have the means to make it so.  Combine these factors and success is not an outlier.

[Richard Choi]

Whenever a subject like this comes up, I alway refer people to this study - http://www.news-medical.net/news/2008/01/15/34284.aspx

Here are the quotes that summarize this study:

They found that the more "expensive" wines (even though they were all identical) were given higher ratings when it came to the amount of pleasure experienced and the part of the brain responsible for pleasure showed significant activity.

The authors say it has been known for some time that people's perceptions are affected by marketing, but it can now be seen that the brain itself is affected by price which may make marketing companies think twice about reducing prices.

What does this mean for exclusive clubs? It means that more exclusive it is and harder to get on, more pleasure people will experience when they play that course because the perceived value will be very high.

Does that mean that Cypress and Pine Valley are mediocre course? No.

But given courses of same inherent quality, the one that is more exclusive (or expensive) will probably always be rated higher.

[Matt_Ward]

JNC:

Actually, it's the reverse -- the exclusivity adds to their aura. The people who bitch about high prices -- correctly I might add in so many instances -- could play such places and the aura element then becomes less so.

[Scott Warren]

One thing I wondered to John and Sean the other day at The Add that I am interested in other peoples' take on is whether exclusive American private clubs - let's not just restrict ourselves to the two or three very, very best - get some extra oomph in how they are viewed because they are so hard to access.

I wonder if Sunningdale, Dornoch, Co. Down and Royal Melbourne would create even more fizzing in golfers' chests if they were super private and never hosted tournaments.

I am not arguing any case, I'm not really sure whetheer they would, I just wonder is all.

I can definitely see merit in Tom D's counter argument - the opposite can also be true and by getting more golfers through a course there is greater scope for all out hysteria like Bandon has created, though I also wonder if that's not only because it gave American golfers great public golf, but also a style of golf they seem to have been largely denied all these years and is, in my opinion, the most fun golf you can play. That's two pretty huge Eureka!'s in one.

[Jud_T]

There's no question that they get a slight bump.  There are certainly some courses on the list that probably wouldn't be quite so highly ranked if they were high-end public.  One of the things that makes places like Pac Dunes so highly prized IMHO is that they are, to some extent, the exception-i.e. there really aren't that many public courses in the states that are that good on that type of property that play F&F....Especially when you have things like tradition and conditioning as criteria...

[BCrosby]

There is a modest exclusivity premium. But exclusivity means more that access limited by membership. It also means $$$. It's damn expensive to play Pebble or Bandon or PII. Bethpage is the obvious exception.

Anyone in marketing will tell you that asking a higher price (or limiting the possible buyers) confers on the item bought a higher value in the mind of the consumer. Whether or not that higher value is really justified.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Not to butter him up because that's not my intention but sometimes when I read some of Tom Doak's posts on here it really does occur to me just how valuable he and his take on various things has been to this website and those on it. His post on this thread is one of them. The thoughts, logic and clarity on some of those posts makes it seem to me like he's the Master Class teacher presiding over a bunch of clammering and yammering middle-school students! 

[Jud_T]

Anyone in marketing will tell you that asking a higher price (or limiting the possible buyers) confers on the item bought a higher value in the mind of the consumer. Whether or not that higher value is really justified.

Bob

Bob,

Why didn't you tell us this before we all went broke chasing our champagne tastes with beer budgets?   

[Phil Benedict]

I think access should be taken into account in the rankings in the sense that, all other things being equal, the easier the access the higher the ranking.  While it may not be a better course I think Bethpage Black is more 'special' than Winged Foot because thousands of people get to play the course every year, whereas access to Winged Foot is mostly limited to members (who represent a pretty narrow strip of the American socioeconomic spectrum) and their guests.

[JNC Lyon]

So it seems to be that most people think that courses are "exclusive" because they are "great," and not necessarily the other way around. 

Tom Doak,

I definitely see how a great public course will get a boost over a great private one.  More people know about Pacific Dunes than Sand Hills as you said.  However, this seems to be a recent phenomenon, no? The USGA really started its campaign for public course recognition in the late 1990s when they selected Bethpage Black to host the Open.  Since then, people have become infatuated with public access courses.  Additionally, economics have made it more difficult for private clubs to survive.  How many people can you really get to join the newest exclusive private club?  At the same time, the exclusivity bump still lingers from earlier years when public access were not so admired.

Again, I am throwing out ideas.  I do not necessarily believe that Pine Valley gets rated the best course in the US because it is so exclusive.

Phil Benedict,

I cannot say I agree that Bethpage is more special than Winged Foot because it is public access.  I would rather play a quiet round with friends at a place like Winged Foot than fight the mobs, wait on every shot, and finish in six hours at Bethpage.  Just my personal preference.

An aside on Bethpage: I think it has its own "access atmosphere" because it can be exhausting to actually get to play the course.  The sleeping-in-the-car mystique is probably just as strong as the access mystique at the ultra-private courses.  This mystique might also be in place at St. Andrews, where golfers have to go through a lottery to get to play.  Does this add to or detract from the overall impression of these courses?  It might at Bethpage, but I doubt it does at St. Andrews just because St. Andrews has been so highly regarded for so long.

[J Sadowsky]

I agree with DSchmidt.  

I also think there's a "major championship" bump as well.  In my area, I think Congressional is a fine example of this.  It is a solid course, but probably no more solid than, say, 4 Streams, Bethesda CC, or Woodmore.  But it's Congressional, it's hosted majors, and it regularly ends up in the top 100 when the other 3 do not.

I also don't think such a bump happens with only private courses and the most national ratings.  I would put my home public (Glenn Dale GC) against any of the big CCFADs, but because you can play there for $13 offseason twilight (and because it is not 7000 yards, and because public golfers never appreciate great greens anymore), it will never get respect in any of the local ratings.

[Phil_the_Author]

John Moore,

My response about Bethpage Black was entirely tongue-in-cheek, yet it is styill ranked in the Top 20 in the U.S. It doesn't have to better then the courses mentioned to be recognized as a "Great American Course." Some would rank it even higher while others lower... yet the same both can and have been said about the courses named.

[George Pazin]

How exclusive can any of these clubs - save maybe Augusta - claim to be when so many of the posters on here have played them?

Might have a small influence, but it's probably not a determining factor.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom Doak,

I definitely see how a great public course will get a boost over a great private one.  More people know about Pacific Dunes than Sand Hills as you said.  However, this seems to be a recent phenomenon, no? The USGA really started its campaign for public course recognition in the late 1990s when they selected Bethpage Black to host the Open.  Since then, people have become infatuated with public access courses. 

Again, I am throwing out ideas.  I do not necessarily believe that Pine Valley gets rated the best course in the US because it is so exclusive.

JNC:  I don't think it's just a recent phenomenon.  Pebble Beach has been feasting off it for 40 years ... I think it would still be rated very highly, but I don't think it would be rated #2 if it were private.  For that matter, people were sleeping in their cars for weekend tee times at Bethpage way before the USGA came along, which points out quite well that exclusivity is not just based on price ... because price is based in large part on DEMAND.

[Carl Nichols]

For that matter, people were sleeping in their cars for weekend tee times at Bethpage way before the USGA came along, which points out quite well that exclusivity is not just based on price ... because price is based in large part on DEMAND.

Except for Bethpage's case, where the price actually isn't set by demand, but is set by the government.  If Bethpage were owned by Trump, I'm sure it would cost a lot more.

[Mark Chaplin]

Is there a top 100 US course with access that doesn't cost $200+ or involve camping out to play?