[Mark Bourgeois]

Scott, did that happen each time you voted?

JC, if this exercise is like the magazine efforts, when is a club going to step up and fly us out to play their course?

[David Kelly]

Moreover, given your affiliation with Ballyneal and the fact that when one googles Ballyneal your blog is on the front page of the results and how many people are following you on twitter, I have a hard time believing that there wont be a significant number of votes in favor of Ballyneal  Not that Ballyneal doesn't belong in the list, but this is exceeding any sort of "bias" that Tom Doak is casually dismissing.

That's kind of like saying, "of course you think Per Se is a great restaurant, you eat there all the time and rave about it. You're biased."

[JC Jones]

Moreover, given your affiliation with Ballyneal and the fact that when one googles Ballyneal your blog is on the front page of the results and how many people are following you on twitter, I have a hard time believing that there wont be a significant number of votes in favor of Ballyneal  Not that Ballyneal doesn't belong in the list, but this is exceeding any sort of "bias" that Tom Doak is casually dismissing.

That's kind of like saying, "of course you think Per Se is a great restaurant, you eat there all the time and rave about it. You're biased."

Actually, its not at all like that.  It's like asking people who are searching for information on how to join the Ohio State boosters club and follow a blog about B1G football written from an Ohio State fan's perspective, what their favorite university is.  (side note: Jim's blog is very good and not entirely about Ballyneal)

Like Jim said, these numbers lack much meaning and we are likely to see the same cast of characters that we always see on the tops of these GCA.com lists.

[Greg Tallman]

So confusing, i think we need to have a panel summit to discuss the criteria, collect panelist dues and categorize voting criteria.
 

[Jim Colton]

Moreover, given your affiliation with Ballyneal and the fact that when one googles Ballyneal your blog is on the front page of the results and how many people are following you on twitter, I have a hard time believing that there wont be a significant number of votes in favor of Ballyneal  Not that Ballyneal doesn't belong in the list, but this is exceeding any sort of "bias" that Tom Doak is casually dismissing.

That's kind of like saying, "of course you think Per Se is a great restaurant, you eat there all the time and rave about it. You're biased."

Actually, its not at all like that.  It's like asking people who are searching for information on how to join the Ohio State boosters club and follow a blog about B1G football written from an Ohio State fan's perspective, what their favorite university is.  (side note: Jim's blog is very good and not entirely about Ballyneal)

Like Jim said, these numbers lack much meaning and we are likely to see the same cast of characters that we always see on the tops of these GCA.com lists.

I'm not actually on the first page on search results for Ballyneal. Should we be concerned that Matt Bosela's blog is awell head of mine and folks going there might then become enamored with his extensive, glowing hole-by-hole of Sand Hills? Or should we not care since anyone who is searching for Ballyneal probably hasn't played it and thus couldn't vote on it anyways.

You win, JC. I took down the blog post. I dId get 68 referrals from the google search Ballyneal in the last 2 1/2 years, so hopefully that .075 viewers won't bias the results too much in favor of my home course that is already destined to be third or fourth regardless.

[JC Jones]

Is Matt Bosela using his blog and twitter for soliciting votes for a rating of the best modern courses that he is doing?

[Carl Nichols]

JC-
Do you really care about this poll--which I seriously doubt will ever be used by anyone to market/sell a course, a magazine, or a website--as much as your posts suggest, or do you just like to argue?

[JC Jones]

JC-
Do you really care about this poll--which I seriously doubt will ever be used by anyone to market/sell a course, a magazine, or a website--as much as your posts suggest, or do you just like to argue?

I don't care about it as much as you care about whether I care.  Nevertheless, I'm not blazing any trails here.

[Brett_Morrissy]

"The only winning move is not to play.  How about a nice game of chess?"

WarGames: 1983 - the WOPR computer, nicknamed Joshua after his deceased son, says to his builder, Professor Falken after establishing that Global Thermo Nuclear war is futile, in his '80's computer voice: "The only winning move is not to play.  How about a nice game of chess?"
Great movie.

What is the connection apart from JK comment?
... this scene takes place in Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD - not sure of my geography, but is Ballyneal actually built on top of NORAD ?
It could explain a few things

Sorry to go so far OT but this banter is getting a little drawn out.

[Tom_Doak]

JC:

Did you vote to support Kingsley?  Or abstain on principle?

[Mark Saltzman]

Sorry to go so far OT but this banter is getting a little drawn out.

I agree.  Whatever they are worth, biased or not, I am curious to see the results.

[JC Jones]

JC:

Did you vote to support Kingsley?  Or abstain on principle?

I did not participate.  Though I think you know the comparison is not apt as I am not a member of Kingsley Club, nor am I its designer.  I have no affiliation with Kingsley Club other than I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play it occasionally and I find it to be one of the best golf courses I've played.

[Jerry Kluger]

I don't see any reason for people to have a problem with this survey as Tom was upfront that he was conducting the survey and didn't ask someone to act as his surrogate and run it plus he is obviously trying to go overboard in trying to objective because he somehow gave Old Macdonald *.   There is also no required participation.  I wonder how it will compare to some of the magazine ratings.

[Sean_A]

Wow, folks really do get caught up in all sorts of tangled webs.  This exercise isn't that difficult its just that folks are overthinking or overly worried.  Mind you, placing a star system with a predermined set of top 10 corresponding with a star defeats what the Michelin system is about.  Michelin is not about top 10, its about top restaurants and thats why it makes sense.

Ciao

[Jim Colton]

Tom asked me to post these final results. As hard as I tried to fix the system, I just couldn't get Ballyneal ahead of Sand Hills. The number of entries for each course is listed in parentheses. We had 116 total ballots, 109 of them from bonafide GCAers and the rest from lurkers and/or old members.

EDIT: FIXED FOR WOLF POINT/DIAMANTE ERROR
1. Sand Hills (62)
2. Pacific Dunes (106)
3. Barnbougle Dunes (23)
4. Ballyneal (70)
5. Friars Head (52)
6. Wolf Point (
7. Ellerston (3)
8. Cape Kidnappers (13)
9. Rock Creek (28)
10. Old Macdonald (62)
11. Lost Farm (17)
12. Castle Stuart (11)
13. Kingsley Club (50)
14. Old Sandwich (19)
15. Bandon Trails (93)
16. Kingsbarns (41)
17. Sebonack (41)
18. Diamante (
19. Cal Club (27)
20. Bandon Dunes (98)
21. Gozzer Ranch (9)
22. Whistling Straits (Straits) (53)
23. Boston Golf Club (16)
24. Alotian Club (9)
25. Chambers Bay (44)


Because some courses had relatively few ballots, I put the results for the top 40 courses in a graph with a +/- 1 standard deviation  confidence interval around each course's best estimate. This should allow you to make any adjustments you deem necessary to the raw results above.

[Jud_T]

 

[John Kavanaugh]

Thanks, finally proof that the Golfweek list has been corrupted by advertising dollars and free golf for raters.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks much for doing that Jim. I'm a complete outsider on this thread, but the graph is very interesting to me, the steady (but sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtle) downward slope painting a better picture of what voters think about the 'relative quality' of these courses than a bunch of numbers would.

Peter

[John Kavanaugh]

Bandon Dunes opened before Pacific and has 9 less votes.  We need the names of people who play Pacific and not Bandon Dunes when visiting the resort.

[Jim Franklin]

Where is Ellerston? There were no minimum amount of plays to count? I certainly do not have an issue with the results although RCCC is still #1 in my eyes. As much as some complain about butt boys or beard pullers (no clue frankly), Doak is as talented a GCA as there is and has been. Not to slight some of our other member GCAs (loved Quarry at Giants Ridge, have not played Wolf Point but it is obviously fantastic, loved Kingsley Club) because there is alot of talent out there. Congrats to Tom and his crew for placing so many in the top 10.

[Greg Tallman]

Thanks, finally proof that the Golfweek list has been corrupted by advertising dollars and free golf for raters.

With all due respect I doubt this list proves anything beyond what was already known, that being the fact that most on this site prefer a course of a certain style an by certain designers. While I might agree more with this type of a list I would further suggest that it is no more accurate than any other given the like mindedness of most who particpated.

Interesting that Diamante scored so low among those who like that type of golf course and setting. I imagine Paul Cowley and his cohorts will be much more pleased when GOLF comes out with their list in the coming weeks.

[Kalen Braley]

I'm a little surprised to see a course up there I've never even heard of in Ellerston.

I'm with Jimmy, I would think there should be a minimum number of votes to qualify...

Outside of that, I don't see any other issues with that top 25 list...looks about right!

[Kalen Braley]

Ellerston CC, downunder!

http://www.ausgolf.com.au/guide/club/EllerstonGolfClub/review

Some pics of it on Greg Normans site:

http://www.gngcd.com/course_detail.php?course_id=39

I also read in a forum that the place only gets less than 10 rounds per week on average!!  Sounds pretty exclusive!

[Jim Colton]

I'm a little surprised to see a course up there I've never even heard of in Ellerston.

I'm with Jimmy, I would think there should be a minimum number of votes to qualify...

Outside of that, I don't see any other issues with that top 25 list...looks about right!

Kalen/Jim,

 Like I said in the post, I put the raw rank, number of votes and confidence intervals out there, so you can choose to dismiss or discount Ellerston or any other course however you see fit. I was going to rank the courses with the standard error in mind, but since there's no right or wrong way to do this, I didn't want to be the one making that call.

 I do agree with Greg, the numbers do seem to be an accurate reflection of the pool of respondents. Take a different pool and you'd likely come up with different results. For comparison, here are the current top 10's from the major publications:

Golf Digest (US Only)
1. Sand Hills
2. Alotian Club
3. Pacific Dunes
4. Whistling Straits
5. Bandon Dunes
6. Friar's Head
7. Victoria National
8. Canyata
9. Black Rock
10. Sebonack

Golf Mag (2009 World)
1. Sand Hills
2. Pacific Dunes
3. Friar's Head
4. Cape Kidnappers
5. Whistling Straits
6. Barnbougle Dunes
7. Nine Bridges
8. Bandon Dunes
9. Kingsbarns
10. Old Sandwich

Golfweek (U.S)
1. Sand Hills
2. Pacific Dunes
3. Old Macdonald
4. Whistling Straits
5. Friar's Head
6. Ballyneal
7. Bandon Dunes
8. Sebonack
9. Old Sandwich
10. Kinloch

[Brad LeClair]

Jim,

On your chart what does the Y-axis represent?

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