I've said this a few times now--but I would love to see the efforts to "rate" courses against one another done in a manner reflective of the notion that the process of comparing one course to another is inherently personal. What I like or what defines a great golf course to me is necessarily going to be different than what defines a great golf course to someone else.
I'd like to see the entire process both broadened in scope and democratized/personalized in delivery.
Here's what I'd do if I got to run this initiative for GolfDigest:
More granular ratings criteria. Conditioning could easily be a ton of different categories--the speed/firmness of the greens, the consistency of the fairways, the consistency of the rough, the quality of the sand, etc. Shot values is another one--this is a category that rolls up such a broad range of thoughts. Same thing with aesthetics--how much of it is natural beauty of the site, how much of it is actually the golf holes themselves creating the aesthetic value, etc.
Why not dig in and rate these courses in a more granular (and therefore precise) fashion?
Editable ratings content. The user should be able to go to the GolfDigest website, give the weight to each category that best describes what THEY like in a golf course and see the list reformulated per their own architectural priorities. If I am the guy that cares the most about conditioning and aesthetics--then so be it. If I am the guy that thinks Resistance to Scoring is a stupid way to grade a golf course--swell. Let us view the list with our own priorities in mind!
Editable minimums. It's ridiculous that there is an arbitrary cut off for how many ratings submissions it takes to make the list. Lord only knows how many courses have gotten shafted by this for a wide variety of reasons. Let me as the person consuming the content decide what their "minimum" should be. I'd love to know that through 44 submissions course X has grades that put it in the top 50--but the GolfDigest list would leave me unaware that this course even exists at all!
Filters. This is an expansion of the above notion--but I should also be able to filter the list by nearly any criteria you can think of. I should be able to filter by facility type (public, private, resort, etc.), location, course architect, design date (give me the top X before 1950 or since 1990 or whatever), [/size][/size]state, city, within X miles from my house, etc.[/size]
Transparency. There should be no data point that goes unshared with the public. If you want to make the names on the ballots blind--that's fine I suppose. I can understand the value in panelists not having to worry about their submissions being made public. Short of that, however, I can see no argument in favor of not releasing every data point that this process generates.
Completeness. Do not eliminate any courses from the list. I don't care how bad their ratings were or how few submissions were completed for them. I want every grade in every category for every course available in this database. It's ridiculous that the worst course in the country and the 201st "best" course in the country are equally ignored by the rankings.
I know that economically there are so many reasons why the GolfDigest rankings cannot and will not ever take on a shape like this--but I do think (despite what I assume will be said) that it would actually make for more heavily trafficked, respected and engaging content as compared to the long list of thumbnails we get to scroll on the current formulation of the rankings before we come here and bash how stupid they are.
Editorially, you could change the packaging to "See My List"--where you'd get four or five big names to give their own personal top 10s as well as adjust the sliders on their weighting preferences to see what the top 100 for them would look like. You could still have all the same arguments--you'd just be doing it with more precise and more malleable data.[/size]