Interesting article on restaurants, rating v. ranking, hit 'n' run, etc.

[Michael Moore]

"There's a snowball effect, too: Once a restaurant hits this level of global renown, more of what you might call the world's dining elite — a roving group of chefs and gastro-tourists (and 50 Best voters) — fill the dining room's limited number of seats, and when the place is great, they tell more people, so even more members of that roving critical group stop by and praise it as well. Eventually that restaurant gets its high ranking and the gastro-rovers head off in search of somewhere new to eat."

http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/05/how-worlds-50-best-list-changed-elite-restaurants-business.html

How has ranking instead of rating changed the practice of golf course architecture?

[Tom_Doak]

In hindsight, suggesting to George Peper that GOLF Magazine could rank the greatest courses IN ORDER was not my proudest moment of my career.

[Brett_Morrissy]

Michael,
I not sure I can add anything to how, why or if ranking golf courses instead of rating them has actually changed GCA ? Can you?
- maybe the architects can answer that, or the CEOs and GMs, it that will be about rounds and foot traffic.

I for one, think the rating system is far more beneficial ( to the punter), and the comparison between restaurants and golf courses is surprisingly similar. But golf courses can't, or won't change their "menu" each, day, week, season or month, I suppose they can change their "style"?

The food is so good at those top 50 restaurants, that it is splitting hairs, as they would all have 9 or 10's on the Doak Scale ( "go out of your way to experience it once in your life") or 3 flags on the Darius Oliver Planet golf ratings.

The ranking is purely marketing and froth and bubble, I've no doubt many deserve their positions, but it is also fashionable. The Aussies that make the top 50 list, vary vastly year to year, purely based on how many judges visit. Accuracy is not a key feature.

Same applies to golf courses, unless every judge guarantees to visit every ranking period, then it is seriously flawed.

This is why the rating system is far fairer, more accurate, as there is no pressure to change or update every year. Tom is talking about only now releasing an updated version of the Confidential Guide, that shows what great longevity the ratings systems has, and with modern technology now, it is not hard to keep the reviews and ratings fresh online, so if a course closes, or renovates, a disclaimer can be added simply and communicates effectively to the punters. Isn't that who these things are really for anyway.

So, with a ratings system embedded in the GCA community, quality will stay at the top, fairly and squarely. But a renovation when added, will have real and immediate impact, as it will be rated and not ranked.

Tom, I can't believe you of all people would have instigated this ranking debacle. 

[Mark Bourgeois]

One inference from the article is it encourages courses / clubs to "churn" their courses via restorations, renovations, tweaks, etc. Change becomes tantamount to quality.

[Carl Nichols]

One inference from the article is it encourages courses / clubs to "churn" their courses via restorations, renovations, tweaks, etc. Change becomes tantamount to quality.

If it's just change for change's sake.  But change through innovation often equals improvement.  Cell phones are constantly changing, but each new phone almost always better than the one that preceded it.  In the food world, roasted/broiled brussel sprouts are way better than my mom's boiled/steamed ones (to pick a simple example).

[Mark Bourgeois]

Carl,

No one who adds length, flattens greens, narrows playing corridors, adds bunkers, reshapes bunkers, plants trees, improves drainage, changes grasses, etc etc ever says they're doing it just to do it. The same goes for faithful restorations. The argument is always "improvement."

But sometimes the decision makers do let slip their rationale is to maintain or to improve a ranking and that is the behavior the article calls out. Whether that change represents improvement is irrelevant -- except insofar as the change molds the course more closely to a golf magazine's criteria and / or calls back raters for another look.

[Carl Nichols]

Mark:
I don't disagree that that's someteimes the case.  But it's also not the case, at least IMHO, that there are no golf course changes [whether to existing courses or in design philosophy generally] that are improvements.  Ditto with food and restaurants. 

[Mark Bourgeois]

Carl,

I think it comes down not to the quality of the change -- decision makers will always say the quality is high, otherwise why change? -- but the quantity.

The magazine article points out the contrast in ordinal vs cardinal systems; restaurants might be as good as they can get but an ordinal system incents them to change for change's sake, the inference being that rankings incent a greater amount of change than do ratings.

We can argue about whether more change is more likely to degrade the quality of a design than is less change, and I certainly have an opinion about that, but that's not the point I am inferring from the article.

[Dan Kelly]

In hindsight, suggesting to George Peper that GOLF Magazine could rank the greatest courses IN ORDER was not my proudest moment of my career.

LOL.

[Jud_T]

As they say in Happy Gilmore it's all circular, doin' the bull dance, circle of life crap.  Many of us have paid up dearly to play a highly rated track in our formative bedpost-notching, herd-following years only to find the experience rather underwhelming (paying a grand for a charity event at Rich Harvest, being forced to change in the men's room, given a caddie who's balls hadn't yet dropped but who nevertheless managed to cost the pro you were stake-horsing two strokes, the match and a small fortune would be the poster child for this).  Eventually as we get over the initial excitement of ticking off name tracks to ourselves and our friends (admit it, we've all done it) and have played a sufficient number of interesting and well known layouts, we realize what our playing and aesthetic predilections are and that enjoyment and value is more important than style.  Only at this point, let's call it the post-bedpost-notching-period (PBNP), does one finally get some perspective.  Then one can finally take the respective rankings with a grain of salt and look not for status points but rather for interesting newcomers and off-the-run gems that might just allow one to skip that little blue pill for an evening in one's dotage, or early middle age (ahem JC).