My New Year's Resolution is to live the Golf Digest rankings system. Step out of my preconceptions and comfort zone and try to learn something new. Not just knee-jerk oppose the system but give it a chance.
This evening I took my first shot at actually rating a course: Yale.
I scored it 58.6667, a score that, were it to reflect the entire panel's view, would make it the 161st-greatest course in America, just a shade greater than Whistling Straits (Irish).
I did my best to do it the right way. Hopefully, that's apparent in the score -- personally, I consider the course one of the 30 greatest in the world, probably top 20.
But I don't think I did things right and could use some guidance, especially from the GD raters out there.
First problem. Originally I scored it several points lower, knowing Golf Digest panelists are not particularly favorable towards the course. I wasn't trying to make a point, I was just trying to be a good rater and do a professional job of it. I thought I scored it properly. But then I "peeked:" I took a look at the official number. And after seeing I had it "too low," I went back and bumped it up. I'm not particularly proud of doing that, I just figured maybe I didn't understand the criteria fully -- I don't -- and tried to calibrate accordingly.
Does anyone have any advice for how I can do this better? I assume Ron Whitten tells us we shouldn't look at the official score but let's be realistic: in this day and age it's impossible NOT to know what others think and impossible NOT to look at the scores. Who the hell rates for a magazine but doesn't read the magazine's ratings?!
More struggles:
I found myself fighting to avoid just "lock-stepping" Shot Value scores and Resistance to Scoring scores. After some thought I was able to see how a hole could score highly on RS but low on SV: just make it a million miles long and boring. But I'm having trouble seeing how a hole can score highly on SV but low on RS. How is that possible? Can someone share example holes that "pose risks and rewards and equally test length, accuracy and finesse" (SV definition) but are easy?
Conditioning: Yale is a course that, despite an excellent greenkeeper (he won Superintendent of the Year a few years ago), more or less is at the mercy of nature. I know to a degree all courses are but Yale really is. I'm not very good at paying attention to conditioning so I knew this would be a problematic category before I started but I ran into a very specific problem.
I've played the course in various states of conditioning. And if I were a really good golfer, maybe I even played it in an NCAA tournament, where conditioning I'm told has been above average to very good. Should I rate it for peak time of year, worst I've seen during the rating period, best, average, what??
One last point relating to my conditioning conundrum: I am glad I don't have to rate a links for some of these criteria. In particular, I have no idea how anyone could begin to sort out SV and RS. Has anyone tried??
Thanks for any help.