Myopia Hunt to Nanea?

[Sven Nilsen]

For a resort course to be great it should be great on the first play.

You’d be surprised at how many returning guests have had the same multiple play experience as I did at Trails.


 You’d probably also be surprised at the rate of Bandon recidivism.

[Ronald Montesano]

"Can you imagine being the architect working for years on a design and someone goes around once and decides they know enough to judge it  "


Who judges who has the right to judge? And who judges those judges of judges of golf courses?

What happens if one of those judges (at any of the three levels of judgement) has an epiphany or a stroke, and begins to judge differently? Are all prior judgements rendered injudicious?

Any architect will know that there will be waaaaaaaay more golfers that get only one play of their/her/his course, than have the opportunity to play it repeatedly/redundantly. Ergo, architects need thick skin and short memories.

[Sean_A]

Or Merion to Apache Stronghold or to Talking Stick or to Estancia?


Or Sand Hills to The Country Club? 


How do you compare such diverse golf course designs and say with confidence that one is better than the other?  Well it isn’t easy and we will never know for sure or have 100% consensus but like eating an elephant you do it one bite at a time and you don’t do it in just one sitting - the best courses multiple go arounds and careful study to determine just how good they really are.

I'm not fussed about how good a course is. The pertinent questions for me are is the course good enough for me and would I organize a return visit? Most of the time courses are plenty good enough for me. Yet I often wouldn't care to return, usually because the cost is too high. Whether or not I think A is better than B is for the most part irrelevant.

Ciao

[jeffwarne]

Or Merion to Apache Stronghold or to Talking Stick or to Estancia?


Or Sand Hills to The Country Club? 


How do you compare such diverse golf course designs and say with confidence that one is better than the other?  Well it isn’t easy and we will never know for sure or have 100% consensus but like eating an elephant you do it one bite at a time and you don’t do it in just one sitting - the best courses multiple go arounds and careful study to determine just how good they really are.

I'm not fussed about how good a course is. The pertinent questions for me are is the course good enough for me and would I organize a return visit? Most of the time courses are plenty good enough for me.

Ciao

Agreed, and often the real question is how much fun is the course and how much fun did we have.
Increasingly, I find this waaaay more often on courses where the $$ is not there to chase the latest fads in agronomy or design or attract any box tickers.
I played a State run muni twice(best greens I've seen this year) and a County run muni this week and I'd say the courses, experiences, pace of play and fun factor were far better than those I have experienced at many Top 100's.

[Mark_Fine]

Lots of good points by everyone.  I think we all recognize you have courses out there that are as varied in design as the ones mentioned and you have Top 100 lists that are trying to compare ALL these different courses to one another to determine which are supposedly the best. Talk about a challenging task.  These lists are for all intensive purposes “first impression lists” because most of the courses are only seen one time by each person reviewing them. Is it any wonder why there is variety and discrepancies in the different lists.  Most of us here could quickly identify a course that is very low on the Doak scale but to accurately assess whether you give a course a 7 or 8 or 9 usually takes more than just one quick go round.  As I said the difference between a 7 and a 7.5 can be the difference of whether the course is considered say #75 in the country vs not even make the list.  It is that fine a line.