Tom,
I think the notion of a bunch of similar (but engaging - this is crucial) courses across the country sounds unpleasant to those of us with the opportunity to travel far and wide, but the vast majority of golf is played near the golfer's home. This proposal is aimed more at the masses than the avid traveler. I haven't had the opportunity to play CommonGround, but I have heard pretty uniformly good things about it. Don't you think the energy that CommonGround instills in its regular players would be worth replicating in other municipalities, even ones that may have more limited budgets?
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I should have highlighted this better, but the subtext in what David Chang, a very savvy (IMO) voice in food, is saying is that in reality, Domino's is not as bad in absolute terms as what he calls the "culinary snob patrol" would have people believe. He'd probably extend the same generosity, more or less, to McDonald's.
The development that is interesting to me is that McD's and other chain food restaurants are embracing trends that we can pretty much all agree are positive. Broadly, big chains know that consumers are more conscious of what they're eating, and where it's coming from, so they're caring more about the ingredients they use than they used to. The introduction of fresh beef to McDonald's burgers is a big example.
Likewise, the golfing consumer is a bit savvier these days re: what makes a golf course worth playing. With so many boom-era courses due for renovation/restoration/etc., we are at an important juncture. A lot of course operators want to do something, but probably cannot afford either the time or expense of a super-involved project. What can be done to give them the greatest chance at success within their means? Wouldn't something like the menu of expert-approved greens you mentioned be even a bit helpful?
Tim:
I don't mean to be a member of the "golf snob patrol" for the purposes of this thread. For the record, I have five kids and five grandkids now, plus I travel half the time, so I've eaten at McDonald's and Domino's and other convenience restaurants way more than my doctor would suggest. I respect them for what they are.
That said, I think it would be a stretch to say that they have raised the level of culinary excellence in the world, just by providing a baseline of quality for fast, cheap food. The standards Kalen alludes to above are a function of the business reality, which is that those restaurants compete on price, not on quality. You're not looking for quality when you eat there.
I did not go to business school, but my understanding is that the above paragraph is the reality for nearly all businesses, and golf courses are businesses. Either you're competing on quality -- to be the best course in the local market -- or you're competing on price.
When I started out as a designer with High Pointe, I thought if I could make a better affordable golf course than the other affordable courses in my area, that would be a road to success, but in fact it's not. If you're competing on price, you can't charge $10 more than the other guys for something "better". If you're competing on "quality", then you are held to the same maintenance standards and have to project the same prestige as the Jack Nicklaus course down the street [which is difficult, since it loses money every year as a loss leader for the resort attached to it!]. So you wind up with what we have now in northern Michigan ... two or three courses at the top of the market that can charge what the market will bear, and 75 courses [it used to be 100] which are all killing each other in the race to the bottom on price.
So I don't know about these Domino's golf courses. They're going to have to deliver quality at the same price as their neighbors, but that's really impossible for a new golf course, whose competitors have all written off the cost of construction long ago -- either by paying it off, or by going through bankruptcy and resetting the cost basis.
That's why the only courses you see being developed from scratch today are high-end courses that try to compete on quality, and charge a lot of money for it. Lots of posters here complain about it, but that's where we are.