Ranking Architects

[Mike_Young]

For example you could "rank" architects based on:Total number of attributed and verified coursesThoughts?

Wow..that could be eye opening....

[Garland Bayley]

It seems to me that this ranking has to be taken with a ton of salt (instead of the proverbial grain of salt). It seems if you played well in top professional tournaments you got recognition no matter how pedestrian your work may be. One example E Els. Planet Golf has the following about this so called top 100 architect.

"Perhaps the most interesting Els project to date, was his multi-million dollar renovation of Harry Colt's beloved West Course at Wentworth. Rather than restore lost Colt features, and width, Els instead imposed his own style on the layout, with its unveiling at the 2010 European PGA causing a stir among the professional playing group. Many openly criticized the changes, which upset Els who said 'there is going to be criticism with any new design but I really wasn't expecting the backlash I got. I don't think anybody deserved it.' He added, "if they had criticisms they could've handled it differently. That's the sad part of the week – a lot of the guys I've known for a long time came out and basically put the knife in. I don't really appreciate that." Sadly Ernie's changes already need to be changed, with the 18th hole a disaster and Els also nominating a couple of others for reworking."

Tom asked for a methodology for ranking.

I would suggest setting up different categories of architects. Rank within category, and then let people draw their own conclusions about how the various individuals stack up across category boundaries.

Some suggested categories.
Three or fewer designs with at least one very highly esteemed result.
Professional golfers turned to architecture.
Professional architects who head(ed) a firm.
Professional architects that were only associates of a firm.

Separately it would be interesting to see rankings within
1850-1900
1900-1950
1950-2000
2000-

As PNW guy, it is hard to imagine how they include Macan, but not Egan.

[Niall C]

Folks

It seems to me you are largely all getting in a flap over nothing. This is no definitive ranking as they freely say. What they are doing is partially shining a light on architects which is surely a good thing ? Maybe the list isn't perfect and I can certainly see a few old and new guys in there perhaps more for their celebrity as anything else but you have to start somewhere.

Niall

[Jud_T]

I’m not convinced quantity should be worth much when ranking greatness.  Would you rank Yanni over Robert Johnson because he produced and sold a lot more albums?

[Tim Gallant]

Fun exercise to think about how you would actually go about ranking architectural work.


Right, I haven't worked out the details, but here it goes:


Start with the top 10-25 courses for each architect. We're talking about the greatest - not the most prolific. We all know MJ didn't have the most championships, but that doesn't mean he's not considered the greatest. Also, Crump, Fownes, Leeds, etc - they're not the greatest. They created great courses, but as Michael Wolf said, if I were to put my money on one architect to answer the brief, they wouldn't get the call.


The top courses for each architect are selected by a panel of architects and golf architectural historians, who have the greatest understanding for what the best courses are for each architect. The top 10 for most architects might be easy to define, even if the order is different.


Once you have the courses, you look at the Doak score for each course - or average of the Doak score from the panellists. Next you assign a Doak score to the land that the courses were built on. This is a much more difficult challenge, but one which might yield fruitful results. We would need to develop what the scale was for ranking a site, but I can already see Doak writing those descriptions now 'A site so devoid of movement and vegetation that it should have been designated for growing corn...'


So the first part of the scoring is based on the Doak score for the courses - so say a '7' gets 1 point, an '8' gets two points, etc.


For the second part, you take the difference between the Doak score of the course, and the Doak score for the land, and you take the difference (it may be a negative!!).


Then in some way, you add these together, and the architect with the highest score ranks higher! It removes one architect gaining and higher position over another simply by creating more courses, and it adds the most fundamental part of the ranking, which is, how would a given architect do relative to the land they were / are given.


I'd need to really think about this to ensure the scoring isn't skewed one way or another, but think this could be a good start!


What say you?

[Sean_A]

But really, if there are musicians' musicians (eg pianist Hank Jones, never a household name but very highly rated by his peers) and actors' actors (eg the now almost forgotten Robert Ryan, who Scorcese called one of the greatest actors of all time), surely there must be the architects' architects. Jazz music and film acting are no less 'subjective' arts-crafts than gca, and like architects, pianists and character actors work in fields/mediums  that involve many other people and where so much is beyond their control. So again: cutting through all the real or imagined 'issues' with such a ranking, aren't any of the professionals here willing to tell us simply and clearly who the 'architects' architects' are? I must be missing or misunderstanding something pretty fundamental in this discussion, 'cause I honestly can't understand what's so hard about that.
P

Pietro

I am with you.  I don't care about an archie ranking, but to have archies list their few favourite dead (or even living) archies with examples of why interests me.  I am not sure why this should be a fearful exercise for archies.  I recall an archie did do a ranking a few years ago.  The important thing was the discussion rather than the ranking. 

Ciao

[Ulrich Mayring]

Fascinating discussion.

Let's keep the scoring extremely simple, until it is proven that it needs to be more complicated to produce an enlightening list. I love the idea that every course scores 1 point for its architect for every year it's been open!

That would clearly produce a list that rewards sustainability more than quality and as such this list could be a great addition to the quality-bound course rankings. Also, all the great old courses would start with 100 points or so and guys like Harry Colt or Donald Ross might be unstoppable, as they would gain points every year.

Keep in mind that Top100GolfCourses.com includes no unremarkable courses, so the "18 Stakes" architects will not feature too high on that list.

Ulrich

[Ted Sturges]

Tom,


This is a topic I find very interesting.  I was working on an "all-time" ranking like this about a year and a half ago.  I shared it with Ran and we were working on it for a bit, but then we kind of dropped it.


I found my old notes on this, so I will share:


I started with how many courses each architect was credited with in the World Top 100 (that was to be part of my scoring system).  I got the following data (this was from about a year and a half ago)...  Colt (7), Mackenzie (9), Old Tom Morris (6), Coore & Crenshaw (4), C.B. MacDonald (2), Tom Doak (5), A.W. Tillinghast (7), Donald Ross (4), Seth Raynor (4), Perry Maxwell (2), Robert Trent Jones (2), George Thomas (2), Pete Dye (6), Jack Nicklaus (3), Tom Simpson (3), Herbert Fowler (2), and Stanley Thompson (2).  I limited my list to architects who had at least 2 in the World Top 100 at the time I examined that list (again, over a year ago).


1.  My first score was to be based on how many are among the best 100 courses in the world.
2.  My second score was to be based on the highest quality of one's work.  For me, I am pretty much in agreement with the Doak scale, so I would apply that scale and give a second score to architects that had courses that were 9's or above on the Doak scale.
3.  My third score was to be based on how prolific the architect was, and my measure was going to be not only how many courses did they build, but how many "good" courses did they build. I settled on..."how many Doak 7's or better did they build during their careers?".  That to me, is an important measuring stick.  Pete Dye and Donald Ross built a lot of courses, and no doubt have a good list of Doak 7's or better.  Both of them would score high in category 3.  But...this is where my project lost steam...how to sort through each man's work and come up with a tally in this section of scoring, was going to be a big chore, and I was probably not going to be familiar enough will the complete body of work of each man to assess how many 7's or better they had.


But to me, those 3 categories would provide a pretty accurate and reasonably thorough measure of how one would want to rank the best architects of all-time.


Knowing what I believe to be true using these 3 criteria, my top 10 would look like this:


1.  Mackenzie
2.  Colt
3.  Old Tom Morris
4.  Tom Doak
5.  Seth Raynor
6.  Coore & Crenshaw
7.  A.W. Tillinghast
8.  Donald Ross
9.  George Thomas
10.  Pete Dye




TS

[Jeff_Brauer]

Fascinating discussion.

Let's keep the scoring extremely simple, until it is proven that it needs to be more complicated to produce an enlightening list. I love the idea that every course scores 1 point for its architect for every year it's been open!

That would clearly produce a list that rewards sustainability more than quality and as such this list could be a great addition to the quality-bound course rankings. Also, all the great old courses would start with 100 points or so and guys like Harry Colt or Donald Ross might be unstoppable, as they would gain points every year.

Keep in mind that Top100GolfCourses.com includes no unremarkable courses, so the "18 Stakes" architects will not feature too high on that list.

Ulrich

Ulrich,


Not that anyone will ever do a real statistical based ranking, but one of the reasons I would favor more categories is it would lessen the room for value judgements, and sort of self correct.  Of course, it would also bring the list closer to middle for most folks.


As I said in a follow up post, a point per finished course and another point per year open might give prolific and older architects an unbeatable advantage.  If so, use fractional points to bring down the importance of total production.  (i.e., the Bendelow rule)


There will always be value judgements, but setting rules for each category lessens the impact.  Still questions however.  Does Old Tom get 700 point for TOC, or just since the 1860's when he was working there.  It could be his changes contributed to longevity (I doubt it) but he shouldn't get credit for early work.


I would give a point for any course never re-routed, as that would indicate the routing would stand the test of time.  But what about San Fran CC?  It moved holes for reasons beyond its control when a highway expanded, so would that only be a half point deduction compared to one that eventually re-routed to fix a golf problem (like no range or crossing fw?)


And I agree with Ted, too. There needs to be some way to factor in the % of quality courses over pure numbers.


I like these mental gymnastics, but I figure anyone who started such a project would soon find it too daunting, and it probably wouldn't sell any more magazines or get more clicks, which was the main purpose of the original article covered in the OP.  Being controversial is more important if a news outlet does it than getting close to a real ranking.  And, its like sports figures or all types, its all to spur good natured debate anyway.

[Anthony Butler]

To paraphrase another Tom... Watson in this case... "Golf Architects should not be ranked, they should be enjoyed."

As a consultant, I guess I should be all about the data.. but someone on Twitter put up a data-driven argument that Arsenal's Mustafi has performed better as a center back during the EPL season than  Van Dijk from Liverpool... the only human being who would agree with this POV is Skrodhan Mustafi's mother.

Based on that, any number needs to be looked at with a healthy dose of skepticism when it is being used to win an argument.

[jim_lewis]

It seems to me that everyone should decide what results they want and then design a method to produce their desired ranking.

[William_G]

thread title should read "golf course architects"


as the use of architect itself is a bit of a convenient stretch as it is


more like comparing artwork or design and how it fits for hunting golf balls through wonderful sites


9 18 36 par 33 34 35 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 etc... or 13 holes, what can we fit and how to make it work


cheers

[Jim Nugent]

I'm about 99% sure the website's rankings are by groups of ten only.  i.e. Colt is not ranked number one, but one of the top 10, along with the others in his group.  Similar, in a way, to how Doak gives 10s to a select group of courses, but doesn't put the 10s (or 9s or 8s or other scores) themselves in order. 

[Tom_Doak]

I'm about 99% sure the website's rankings are by groups of ten only.  i.e. Colt is not ranked number one, but one of the top 10, along with the others in his group.  Similar, in a way, to how Doak gives 10s to a select group of courses, but doesn't put the 10s (or 9s or 8s or other scores) themselves in order.

Jim:


Do you want to give me 99:1 odds on that?  I'll bet you as much as you are willing to lose. 
The exercise was data-driven so they have numerical results from 1-to-whatever. 
If they really wanted to do as you say, they would have rearranged the first ten architects somehow.  Tell me how it looks to you like they did that?  It's not alphabetical or chronological.
I'd bet anything the pictures are in order of the results, but they've just tried to back off from those results.


I had a good back-and-forth email exchange today with their editor-in-chief, who explained some of their process to me.


It was a cumulative thing, awarding 1000 points for the #1 course in the world, and stepping down from there, right on through their regional rankings.  This would explain the positions of Nicklaus and RTJ Jr. in the top ten - they've done a lot of courses on multiple continents that show up in the rankings in Asia, Europe, etc.


They also divided the points for each course among the architects who worked on it, on a case by case basis, which could cause a lot of angst:  do you give all 1000 points for Cypress Point to MacKenzie, or do you give some to Robert Hunter based on his time there, or Seth Raynor based on the story about #16, or whomever?I wouldn't want to be the guy who had to make all of those calls . . . but, the effect is that it breaks up the points earned for a lot of older, famous courses, and not for relatively new ones by signature designers.


I do wonder how many points the great Philadelphia courses were worth, compared to the rest of South Korea's top ten, but seeing where William Flynn placed in their ranking I would guess their numbers did not jib with the Doak Scale which has the tenth best course in Philadelphia above all but one or two in Korea.

[Kyle Harris]

I do wonder how many points the great Philadelphia courses were worth, compared to the rest of South Korea's top ten, but seeing where William Flynn placed in their ranking I would guess their numbers did not jib with the Doak Scale which has the tenth best course in Philadelphia above all but one or two in Korea.

You went to Jeffersonville?! 

[Ulrich Mayring]

Yes, you cannot compare #3 in one country to #3 in any another. I would assume the numbers must come from a World Ranking. Or you could introduce a weight for the country, which I think is actually feasable. If you have a World Ranking of 200 courses and it includes five Korean courses, then Korea has a weight of 5/200.

Ulrich

[Mike Hendren]

We all have our favorites, but I can't fathom how Donald J. Ross continues to be under-appreciated.  For me, he built the mannequin and everyone else merely dressed it to suit their taste, ethos or aesthetics. 

Hopefully, Paul Turner is loitering here with intent and can weigh in with his convincing advocacy of H. S. Colt.  I'm calling you out Turner.

Travis has also become a favorite of mine, so I'd throw him in as being underrated as well. 

With apologies to Tom, Bill and Ben, my pals Barney and John Kirk - DGR.  Dead guys rule.

Bogey

[Mike_Young]

The ranking I would think would be interesting would to rank by the soil type. 

[Jonathan Mallard]

Back in high school, my parents gave me a copy of Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract.


Of course, he faced the same dilemma.


His solution was to offer two separate lists: Career Value and Peak Value.

That's one of my favorite books.


However, as I mentioned above, I don't think Career Value in golf architecture means much once you go past a certain # of courses, unless you just want to honor guys that had a great career. 


Example:  Jerry Mathews designed around 100 courses in Michigan, so how would you compare his career to mine, or to Mike DeVries?

Back to the original question...


Keeping with the theme of peak value vs total output value and qualifying the exercise as it should be somewhat objective...


Why not start with the premise that the peak value is the difference in standard deviations between their best 1 - 3 courses against the mean of the Doak Scale.


Then the overall value could be something like their total standard deviation from the mean of the Doak scale. Other metrics could be inserted here as well.


This would also encourage more Doak Scale raters (up from the current 4) and encourage more courses to be evaluated under this scale.


This method may have to be refined, but I like the concept of comparing the work against the relative value of the course against a logarithmic scale.

[David Kelly]

Please, someone else chime in on what's the best way to do this.  I've got some ideas, but since I'm on the list, I will get a lot of grief for suggesting anything.

I think a numerical list is ridiculous and there isn't any way to improve it so that it is legitimate.  However, many may already know this but film critic Andrew Sarris wrote a seminal book on his (and the French critics)  auteur theory of film directing.  The book was called The American Cinema and attempted to group directors into different categories.  In the book he writes about each director and fleshes out his reasons for putting them in specific categories. 


Something like this could be adapted for golf architects.


Taken from the website They Shoot Pictures Don't They, here are the categories and some examples. Keep in mind the book was written in the 1960s:

Pantheon Director These are the directors who have transcended their technical problems with a personal vision of the world. To speak any of their names is to evoke a self-contained world with its own laws and landscapes. They were also fortunate enough to find the proper conditions and collaborators for the full expression of their talent. Includes John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir and Charles Chaplin. The Far Side of Paradise These are the directors who fall short of the Pantheon either because of a fragmentation of their personal vision or because of disruptive career problems. Includes Frank Capra, Blake Edwards, Joseph Losey, Vincente Minnelliand Douglas Sirk. Expressive Esoterica These are the unsung directors with difficult styles or unfashionable genres or both. Their deeper virtues are often obscured by irritating idiosyncrasies on the surface, but they are generally redeemed by their seriousness and grace.Includes Stanley Donen, Joseph H. Lewis, Don Siegel, Frank Tashlin and Budd Boetticher. Fringe Benefits These directors occupied such a marginal role in the American cinema that it would be unfair to their overall reputations to analyze them in this limited context in any detail. Includes Claude Chabrol, Sergei Eisenstein, Roberto Rossellini,Michelangelo Antonioni and Roman Polanski. Less Than Meets the Eye These are the directors with reputations in excess of inspirations. In retrospect, it always seems that the personal signatures to their films were written with invisible ink. Includes David Lean, Lewis Milestone, Billy Wilder, John Huston and Rouben Mamoulian. Lightly Likable These are talented but uneven directors with the saving grace of unpretentiousness. Includes John Cromwell, Delmer Daves, Henry Hathaway, Mervyn LeRoy and Andrew L. Stone. Strained Seriousness These are talented but uneven directors with the mortal sin of pretentiousness. Their ambitious projects tend to inflate rather than expound. Includes Jules Dassin, John Frankenheimer, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet and Robert Rossen. Oddities, One-Shots, and Newcomers These are the eccentrics, the exceptions and the expectants, the fallen stars and the shooting stars. They defy more precise classification by their very nature. Includes John Boorman, John Cassavetes, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Laughton and Lindsay Anderson. Subjects for Further Research These are the directors whose work must be more fully evaluated before any final determination of the American cinema is possible. There may be other unknown quantities as well, but this list will serve for the moment as a reminder of the gaps. Includes Clarence Brown, Tod Browning and Henry King. Just a thought.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Like it, David.


That’s about as close as you can get.


A numerical order is indeed foolishness, way more random and uncertain than ranking courses.


A ranking of “architects by the quality of their courses” is easier but please don’t call any list “best architects”.

[Sven Nilsen]

Taking David's categories to the world of GCA.  Who goes where?  Tweak it as you like.

I started thinking about where different guys would go in these categories and it seemed like the Pantheon would get a bit top heavy.  Seems like there's room for a Pantheon and a group just below that sit above the "Far Side," with the Pantheon being reserved for game changers and those who truly perfected the craft.  With this thought in mind, I'd put CBM in the Pantheon, with Raynor being in the group below.

Pantheon Architects - Architects who have transcended their technical problems with a personal vision of the world of golf.  To speak any of their names is to evoke a self-contained world with its own laws and landscapes.  They were also fortunate enough to find the proper conditions and collaborators for the full expression of their talent. 

The Far Side of Paradise - Architects who fall short of the Pantheon either because of a fragmentation of their personal vision of because of disruptive career problems.

Expressive Esoterica - Unsung architects with difficult styles or unfashionable genres or both. Their deeper virtues are often obscured by irritating idiosyncrasies on the surface, but they are generally redeemed by their seriousness and grace.

Fringe Benefits - Architects who occupied such a marginal role in the world of golf course architecture that it would be unfair to their overall reputations to analyze them in this limited context in any detail.

Less Than Meets the Eye - Architects with reputations in excess of inspirations. In retrospect, it always seems that the personal signatures to their courses were written with invisible ink.

Lightly Likable - Talented but uneven architects with the saving grace of unpretentiousness.

Strained Seriousness - Talented but uneven architects with the mortal sin of pretentiousness. Their ambitious projects tend to inflate rather than expound.

Oddities, One-Shots and Newcomers - The eccentrics, the exceptions and the expectants, the fallen stars and the shooting stars. They defy more precise classification by their very nature.

Subjects for Further Research - The architects whose work must be more fully evaluated before any final determination is possible. There may be other unknown quantities as well, but this list will serve for the moment as a reminder of the gaps.

[Adrian_Stiff]

If Donald Steel is ranked above me it is a crap list.

[Ulrich Mayring]

And if the director of gazillions of John Wayne movies is ranked above versatile Stanley Kubrick, it is also a crap list

Ulrich

[Tom_Doak]

From everything I've read on this thread so far, I think it's an even worse idea than I thought it was before.


The engineers and the math-inclined guys keep forgetting that none of this is "data" [apart from how many courses we've built] but just subjective opinion.  The idea of a "standard deviation" of Doak Scale scores is meaningless; there is bias built into them.  Plus it's an uneven, semi-logarithmic scale; 4's and 5's and 6's are way, way more common than 7's and 8's and 9's, so you couldn't analyze it with linear math even if it was somehow less subjective.


Likewise, to the guys who want everyone to have their own category . . . how does that serve any purpose?  And who the hell should be the ones to categorize us?  Please keep in mind that many "journalists" who professes to know much about golf course design is also sneaking around the margins of the business trying to make consulting fees to recommend architects to potential clients, at most just one step away from trying to score some of those clients for themselves!


As Peter Pallotta implied early on, the only ones who really know much about how to rank architects are other architects, and that would likely be as petty of an exercise as you could devise.


At least if you are ranking courses, you're making direct comparisons.  Ranking architects seems to be mostly a matter of projection.  If you want to affect how an architect is regarded, hire him . . . but only if you then promise not to micro-manage his work