The parenthetical is doing the work of replacing the word "rating" for a number of reasons.
I've taken to finally listing out all the golf courses I've played, their location, the "type" of course in terms of business model, the last time I've set foot on the property, and the architects known to be responsible for their creation and evolution.
Once the list was curated I set about to give each course a rating to plot my own personal trends and to see how/if/where I skewed results. I also added another number which largely represented my likelihood to return to a place if given the chance for my next round.
Whole numbers are used.
The latter number "returnability" was meant to represent my own biases and emotional responses to the course.
I tried my best to make the ratings quickly and without much thought other than a reaction to the name of the course and any memories elicited.
With the two ratings I added a third "Delta" rating to quantify the difference between how I rate the golf course on architectural merits and how my emotional response/biases skewed the experience. A high negative value requires a low rating but a high emotional response. This may not be a "value" proposition per se.
1% of my golf courses were both "10s" and these were the usual suspects that litter the top of a few lists. Oakmont. Pinehurst #2. Crystal Downs, etc. I see very few arguments/conflicts here.
This wasn't the Doak Scale so a 5 is the middle rating.
My average rating is 5.9 with a Standard Deviation of 1.42. Median/Mode: 6
Some of the interesting-to-me biases:
Last Played:
Courses I last played 20+ years ago were the lowest rated on average. I was in high school and college and had limited resources to travel or be choosy. The highest rated were Whitemarsh Valley, Toftrees Golf Club, and Hershey Country Club - East all at a "7". Whitemarsh Valley was the only one with a delta value of "-1". The lowest ratings are also found in this range with the only "1" and the only "3" ratings here. Standard deviation was also the smallest.
As time wore on the amount of courses I played with in a ten year range both increased and the quality also increased as my ability to travel and my selective nature skewed the results. My "oldest" 8 is Merion West back in 2006. My "oldest" 9 is Merion East in 2008 and the only other 9 not within the last ten years is Lancaster Country Club. All of my "10s" were within the last ten years with the "oldest" as Pinehurst #2 in 2015.
Business Model:
Municipal courses, by a good margin, have the highest (lowest?) delta values. Largely driven by an unbothered experience from the car to the first tee, the general walkability of the course, the price point, and the relative mediocrity of the golf course itself.
Resorts are the opposite and for the opposite reasons. They can be a fuss to play but often times offer a golf course worth the fuss.
The private clubs largely had low delta values but high ratings and returnability factors.
Daily Fee courses were all over and I think this was largely skewed by word-of-mouth recommendations creating an echo chamber. Curiously, the higher rated Tom Fazio courses for me were mostly in this category.
Architect(s):
By frequency Donald Ross has a clear lead and likewise has the more varied ratings because I will generally seek to play a neglected Donald Ross course over a higher rated course by someone else. Tom Fazio and Ron Garl are tied for second. Tom Doak and William Gordon are tied for third. Alex Findlay, A.W. Tillinghast, Gil Hanse, Bill Coore, and William Flynn round out the Top 10 in frequency.
Interestingly, the architect with the "best" delta value (of architects where I've played more than 10 courses) is A.W. Tillinghast!
Summary:
So I like municipal/low-key private golf courses designed by well regarded architects and generally value a more unbothered golf "experience" to that of the factory type places.
I definitely rate moments of "Hmmm!" during a round highly enough to skew the results as some of the more modest places I've rated highly will attest.
The other curious thing is that the "comparisons" didn't so much paint a qualitative picture for me but rather a wistful desire to return to some places over others. I struggled most with recalling the center-tendencied ratings and the "extreme" emotional responses either way elicited a desire to return. I think this, moreso than anything, biases how I would verbalize a review while also quantifying a rating.