Paul
IMO, absolutely not. Golf courses aren't about testing data. What would it mean to apply the scientific method to golf architecture? A bunch of data is measured to what purpose? Can the data improve a golf course in aspects other than the nuts n' bolts stuff like drainage etc? In terms of how a design interfaces with a golfer, how does one conduct a fair test in an experiment with so many unknown variables at play (ie the weather)? Can we call an archie a scientist? Does anybody think of a building archie as a scientist? It could be argued that in the right hands, course design is better off being less scientific...hence the push for "random" features.
Ciao
First, economics is a science. I am an undergraduate studying economics at Harvard and have been exposed to many researchers and have conducted my own research. Just like any other social scientists, economists conduct experiments and use data to empirically evaluate relevant questions. The scientific method is key to developing economic understandings.
That the predictions made by economists are sometimes (often) wrong is not evidence of that the field is not legitimately scientific. As many of my professors often admit, economics is a new endeavor; academic methods and consensus is rapidly evolving. When serious economists make predictions and find them to be wrong, they then go back and examine how the actual outcomes differ from the projections. They look at the phenomena and the variables which could have contributed to the deviation. Being "wrong" is a good thing and contributes predictions being better in the future.
Golf Course ArchitectureThis question which you raise is a very important one. I have long thought that standard economic models have applicability to golf. In the game's most rational form, the player's goal is to minimize his score. Doing so requires that his golf course strategy be consistent with that goal. The psychologists Daniel Kahneman*** and Amos Tversky spawned a body of economic research which focuses on behavior and decision making under risk which I believe can be used to assess golf course decision making.
The first step in conducting this research would be to review the existing literature on behavior and decisions under risk as well as mathematical risk modeling and determine which papers and methods have applicability to golf.
Second, you would have to create definitions and a standard model (fully rational) of golf course strategy and behavior. The full development of this model is likely to be central to any rigorous body of research on golf course behavior.
Third, you would have to use real data on how golfers actually behave in order to test these models. The best existing data is ShotLink data which the PGATOUR has gathered over the past 10+ years.
I can think of hundreds of possible avenues to explore.
BUT, the amount of work require to develop and test a framework for golf behavior is MIND NUMBING! Especially the data analysis part. I have experience doing empirical research. My past work has taught me what would be necessary in order to clean and adapt a dataset like ShotLink so that it can be analyzed using standard econometric methods. It is hard for me to overstate how tedious and time consuming this sort of undertaking would be. There are also conceptual hurdles such as accounting for omitted variables and other biases.
These endeavors are possible, however.With respect to the golf course architecture, after developing this framework and the models, one could gain very helpful empirical insights into the design aspects which distinguish good holes. I don't think that it is controversial to assert that there are many different kinds of holes (eg. long par 3s, short par 4s, etc...). Conceptually, it should be possible to show that the best holes within each category exhibit similar risk profiles.
This is not to say that they are the same. Instead, what I am saying is that risk-reward-punishment aspects of a type of golf hole relative to its difficulty, yardage, and number of potential strategies are similar among the best holes of each category.
If you have the goal of categorizing the risk/strategic profiles of all holes in golf, I think that you would see that when normalized, there are a lot of common traits. If you disagree with this, think about the fact there is so much heterogeneity in golf courses around the world and there is no accepted standard by which people do normalizations.
After I finish my thesis in march, I am going to work on developing some of the ideas which I have discussed here. I have a professor who has promised to help me think through some of the conceptual difficulties associated with this project. Please let me know what you think.
***Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for this work.