Does anyone know when the match play comparison thing started?
I ask because I remember many years ago arguing with Ran about a comparison between two courses, and just blurting out off the top of my head that course X "would win that match 5 and 3," without thinking about actually doing it. And then he made me go through it, hole by hole. I wonder if we invented it here?
For me it is a useful tool when I am trying to decide if some course is worthy of the top 100 or not, or trying to place a course on the Doak scale. If one course doesn't convincingly beat another course in match play, it probably shouldn't be rated higher on the Doak scale, no matter how much I prefer the surroundings or stylings of one course to the other. But it's not for splitting hairs, because as others have noted, there is so much room for bias in the match-ups.