There weren't many good things to speak of during the year 2020, but golf was one of them. For the first time in decades, business at golf courses flourished as many folks worked from home and generally had more free time. It also seems that thankfully the virus isn't spread easily in the great outdoors or last long on surfaces so while much of life "shut down", golf kind of "opened up." I was somewhat fortunate as I managed to stay employed through the year, but from April to November I only worked half-time, so golf was a nice way to spend the additional free time. Now, as I type, a nor'easter predicted to dump up to two feet of snow swirls outside, so I thought this might be a good time to revisit memory lane.
I did this exercise for the first time last year and it was pretty well received with some good debate and back and forth and the one thing I see right away is that I played way, way more golf and golf courses in 2020 than I did in 2019. However, since many of those courses were ones I could drive to without a lot of risk (re: local), I think you'll see the quality (and my overall scoring on the Doak Scale) is down considerably. Still, I'll try to keep it an entertaining read. I'll start with some boilerplate I stole from last year's first post to reiterate how this works, only this time with updated numbers for 2020. Let's roll.
I've decided to chronologically document and offer a Doak Scale score (with half decimals) and critical summary of the courses I've played in 2019. First the numbers to date, with hopefully more to come this month.
(estimated) 89 total rounds (2019 was 49)
76 Total Courses (to date)
10 9-hole courses
66 18-hole courses
33 Courses Played for the First Time
43 Course Replays
1,163 Courses Played to date Lifetime
So, with that business out of the way, let's jump into it. I've determined that each course should be a separate post so that any subsequent questions or commentary can be properly isolated and focused. I'm hoping that you'll find these reviews worth your time to read and critique and even argue about if you feel differently.
A caveat - If I have an obvious bias or sentimental attachment to a particular course I'll make sure I point that out so you can take my words with the proverbial grain of salt. Likewise, if there is something about a course that I find contrary to where I think the game or golf course architecture should be going I may mark it down more harshly than others might and in those cases I'll also spell it out.
I'll also include a photograph of each course so you can get a general sense of the aesthetic.
One last item. I enjoy playing golf courses from the wonderfully sublime to the atrociously ridiculous so it may be that a course with a rating of, say 2.5 is really a decent, fun, reasonably architect-ed track with a good economic value meant to serve a market and grow the game. We are not comparing apples and oranges here and not every course aspires to be one of the best in the world. That doesn't mean we can't learn something from them and appreciate them for what they are.
Cheers.