Is Bandon Dunes overrated?

[Pete_Pittock]

I was a bit behind JVDB and was (I believe) the first unaffiliated golfer to putt on #1. Prior to this I had taken multiple trips to Scotland, England and a bit of Ireland and Wales. 36 holes with caddy and the only player on the course. I was blown away, especially by 4-6 and 12-17. Top 25. If how you played affects how you rate, it jumps up a bit as the shot result is much more predictable than the other courses at the resort. Personally I have it lodged behind PD and PT because of the ground game. Being able to see and pull off a particular shot is more satisfying on the later two[size=78%].[/size]

It might have slipped a tad with the changes listed it is still ranked appropriately.

[John Kavanaugh]

Pete,


I love the term “unaffiliated golfer”, what does it mean?

[Mike Wagner]

It's perennially rated in the Top100 courses in the World.


Both Golf Digest / Golf Magazine have it in their Top50 courses in the USA. It always seems to be rated ahead of the Streamsong and Sand Valley group of courses.


Is the original course at Bandon overrated? Why? Why not? What's so good / not so good about it? 

The only constant with rating the Bandon courses is that your opinion will change over time.

[Daryl David]

Not a knock against any of the courses, but if I were to return, I might spend the bulk of my time playing Pacific Dunes and trails. I enjoyed them the most.

Resembles my last two visits with the exception of some time on Old Mac.

[Doug Bolls]

When I return I will play everything but the Trails - I just did not fully appreciate the elevation changes through the hills so close to magnificent ocean links golf.  I must admit to liking Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Old Mac fairly equally. 

[Ally Mcintosh]

I have not been to Bandon Dunes. But I wish to extend the question because of my lack of knowledge:


Is Bandon Dunes (the resort i.e. all 5 courses) overrated?


I ask this because it is the only resort in the world with 3 / 4 / 5 courses continually knocking on a World Top-100 list? It’s clear that the courses are uniformly excellent, even great. But does the fact that most people consider them reasonably close in quality and difficult to separate result in the feeling that “if one is Top-20, they must all be Top-100”?

[Tom_Doak]

Is Bandon Dunes (the resort i.e. all 5 courses) overrated?

I ask this because it is the only resort in the world with 3 / 4 / 5 courses continually knocking on a World Top-100 list? It’s clear that the courses are uniformly excellent, even great. But does the fact that most people consider them reasonably close in quality and difficult to separate result in the feeling that “if one is Top-20, they must all be Top-100”?

Ally:


That's a good question and I am not sure anyone can really answer it.  There is certainly a large divergence of opinion as to how resort guests rate the five, and that might drag up the rankings of the 3rd or 4th best course at the resort, whatever it should be.  For certain, the initial ranking of Bandon Dunes by GOLFWEEK as the #2 modern course [which, most would agree now, was an overrating] made it easier for Pacific Dunes to get to where it is, because if the panelists liked it better than Bandon, there was only one place it could go.


The truth is that for most panelists, there are many "games within a game" going on in their head when they try to rank courses.  Many of them have unwritten quotas for how many courses they should vote for in a particular state or country or region; what is the ceiling for any particular architect, and so on.  [And you've got to, to some extent:  anyone who put fifteen Seth Raynor courses in their top 100 would be rightly accused of having a narrow vision of what's great.]


You can verify this by noting that when I have a new course enter the top 100 [St. Patrick's], some of my other courses fall a few notches, on the theory that if St. Patrick's is their favorite course of mine, then Pacific Dunes must not be quite as good as they thought before, and Old Macdonald maybe shouldn't be in the top 100, even though nothing about those courses has changed to warrant their moving up or down.


So, a background question in the rankings for the courses in Bandon is whether Bandon Dunes is one of David Kidd's best courses; whether Bandon Trails and The Sheep Ranch are two of Coore & Crenshaw's best; and whether Pacific Dunes and Old Macdonald are two of my best.  My guess is that's probably why three of them [one for each] wind up in the top 100 in the world, and the other two only in the top 100 in America.


[Old Macdonald, funnily enough, also gets compared to the best of Macdonald and Raynor's work, and the fact that it's also a real links course and the only one in that class bumps it up a bit.  I suspect the same will be true for Lido once the votes are in.]




I have always wondered if there were a blind taste test of all these courses, with no architect labels and no concerns for geography, how places like Bandon Dunes and Barnbougle and Lost Farm and Paraparaumu Beach would stand up against not just Dornoch and Lahinch, but Machrihanish and Deal and other British links that don't make the top 100 lists.  Supposedly, that's what the lists are all about, but I have heard too many panelists' rationalizations for their votes to think that it's all just one big playing field.

[Sean_A]

Is Bandon Dunes (the resort i.e. all 5 courses) overrated?

I ask this because it is the only resort in the world with 3 / 4 / 5 courses continually knocking on a World Top-100 list? It’s clear that the courses are uniformly excellent, even great. But does the fact that most people consider them reasonably close in quality and difficult to separate result in the feeling that “if one is Top-20, they must all be Top-100”?

Ally:


That's a good question and I am not sure anyone can really answer it.  There is certainly a large divergence of opinion as to how resort guests rate the five, and that might drag up the rankings of the 3rd or 4th best course at the resort, whatever it should be.  For certain, the initial ranking of Bandon Dunes by GOLFWEEK as the #2 modern course [which, most would agree now, was an overrating] made it easier for Pacific Dunes to get to where it is, because if the panelists liked it better than Bandon, there was only one place it could go.


The truth is that for most panelists, there are many "games within a game" going on in their head when they try to rank courses.  Many of them have unwritten quotas for how many courses they should vote for in a particular state or country or region; what is the ceiling for any particular architect, and so on.  [And you've got to, to some extent:  anyone who put fifteen Seth Raynor courses in their top 100 would be rightly accused of having a narrow vision of what's great.]


You can verify this by noting that when I have a new course enter the top 100 [St. Patrick's], some of my other courses fall a few notches, on the theory that if St. Patrick's is their favorite course of mine, then Pacific Dunes must not be quite as good as they thought before, and Old Macdonald maybe shouldn't be in the top 100, even though nothing about those courses has changed to warrant their moving up or down.


So, a background question in the rankings for the courses in Bandon is whether Bandon Dunes is one of David Kidd's best courses; whether Bandon Trails and The Sheep Ranch are two of Coore & Crenshaw's best; and whether Pacific Dunes and Old Macdonald are two of my best.  My guess is that's probably why three of them [one for each] wind up in the top 100 in the world, and the other two only in the top 100 in America.


[Old Macdonald, funnily enough, also gets compared to the best of Macdonald and Raynor's work, and the fact that it's also a real links course and the only one in that class bumps it up a bit.  I suspect the same will be true for Lido once the votes are in.]




I have always wondered if there were a blind taste test of all these courses, with no architect labels and no concerns for geography, how places like Bandon Dunes and Barnbougle and Lost Farm and Paraparaumu Beach would stand up against not just Dornoch and Lahinch, but Machrihanish and Deal and other British links that don't make the top 100 lists.  Supposedly, that's what the lists are all about, but I have heard too many panelists' rationalizations for their votes to think that it's all just one big playing field.

Tom, for me the bottom line is 100 is an artificial and meaningless number. If we are talking about 100 it could easily be 100 other courses that could be top 100. The marketing of 100 has skewed the complexity of comparing and contrasting with an open mind. It really shouldn't be the case that a rater likes all the courses they vote for as top 100.

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

Tom, for me the bottom line is 100 is an artificial and meaningless number. If we are talking about 100 it could easily be 100 other courses that could be top 100. The marketing of 100 has skewed the complexity of comparing and contrasting with an open mind. It really shouldn't be the case that a rater likes all the courses they vote for as top 100.

Agreed!


When we expanded the GOLF Magazine list to 100, I actually suggested starting at 85 [or whatever year it was], and expanding by two more spots each year, to make room for new entries without having to bump another course off.  If they had gone with that suggestion they would be rating the top 123 now!

[Sean_A]

Tom, for me the bottom line is 100 is an artificial and meaningless number. If we are talking about 100 it could easily be 100 other courses that could be top 100. The marketing of 100 has skewed the complexity of comparing and contrasting with an open mind. It really shouldn't be the case that a rater likes all the courses they vote for as top 100.

Agreed!


When we expanded the GOLF Magazine list to 100, I actually suggested starting at 85 [or whatever year it was], and expanding by two more spots each year, to make room for new entries without having to bump another course off.  If they had gone with that suggestion they would be rating the top 123 now!

But I don't think it should be a specific number. It should be something like the last course listed can't be more than X rating score behind #1 and there should be a natural break off. A significant gap between courses. Si the number could 89 one year and 121 a few years later. Would also prefer grouping with significant gaps between groups. Where a course is listed within a group is really just for convenience. What is important is that the panel is claiming all the courses in the higher group are better than the next group down. A group could be 1 course or whatever. I don't think it would be that many groups before it's obvious the scores have drifted significantly from the highest group.

The way systems now is far too clean to fit reality. Too much shading is lost for the sake of an easy marketing number.

Ciao

[Sven Nilsen]

The way systems now is far too clean to fit reality. Too much shading is lost for the sake of an easy marketing number.

Blame the Egyptians. 

[Jeff Schley]

Tom, for me the bottom line is 100 is an artificial and meaningless number. If we are talking about 100 it could easily be 100 other courses that could be top 100. The marketing of 100 has skewed the complexity of comparing and contrasting with an open mind. It really shouldn't be the case that a rater likes all the courses they vote for as top 100.

Agreed!


When we expanded the GOLF Magazine list to 100, I actually suggested starting at 85 [or whatever year it was], and expanding by two more spots each year, to make room for new entries without having to bump another course off.  If they had gone with that suggestion they would be rating the top 123 now!

But I don't think it should be a specific number. It should be something like the last course listed can't be more than X rating score behind #1 and there should be a natural break off. A significant gap between courses. Si the number could 89 one year and 121 a few years later. Would also prefer grouping with significant gaps between groups. Where a course is listed within a group is really just for convenience. What is important is that the panel is claiming all the courses in the higher group are better than the next group down. A group could be 1 course or whatever. I don't think it would be that many groups before it's obvious the scores have drifted significantly from the highest group.

The way systems now is far too clean to fit reality. Too much shading is lost for the sake of an easy marketing number.

Ciao

Sean great idea, your on it!  Someone could do this themselves by putting the actual scores into statistics software and you can customize your rating based on that. Where you have statistically significant gaps you can separate them into tiers. I haven't even seen the scoring myself, but with the numbers it can be done easily.

[Kalen Braley]

I too think Sean is on to something.

How about something akin to a list of the top courses, listed in alphabetical order by DS rating.  For example:

List of 10s
Then 9s
Then 8s.

And if that total number works out to be 157 or whatever, then so be it.

[Ira Fishman]

Kalen,


If you use that methodology and agree with the four CG raters, BD would be somewhere in the 80s in the US and the lowest of the four courses at Bandon (Sheep Ranch in its current form did not exist at the time of publication).


The DS numbers are in the back of each volume if you ever want to create a spreadsheet.


Ira

[Sean_A]

I too think Sean is on to something.

How about something akin to a list of the top courses, listed in alphabetical order by DS rating.  For example:

List of 10s
Then 9s
Then 8s.

And if that total number works out to be 157 or whatever, then so be it.

I have long disliked DS being used the same as ranking. I never got the impression the two were interchangeable when reading any of the books.

Ciao

[Tim Martin]

I too think Sean is on to something.

How about something akin to a list of the top courses, listed in alphabetical order by DS rating.  For example:

List of 10s
Then 9s
Then 8s.

And if that total number works out to be 157 or whatever, then so be it.

I have long disliked DS being used the same as ranking. I never got the impression the two were interchangeable when reading any of the books.

Ciao

Agreed as the Doak Score doesn’t tell you which is the highest rated 7,8 or 9.

[Kalen Braley]

Wait so its not obviously implicit that a 10 is ranked higher than a 7?  I mean the descriptions pretty well do that

7 - An excellent course if within 100 miles, but not necessarily anything unique.
vs
10 - Nearly perfect, you would miss something if you missed just one hole.


That's why I've always really liked it as a hybrid rating system because its a good way to apply a relative rating, without needing to split hairs why a DS 10 like Pine valley is better than CPC, or to limit oneself to top 50, 100, or whatever.

[Tim Martin]

Wait so its not obviously implicit that a 10 is ranked higher than a 7?  I mean the descriptions pretty well do that

7 - An excellent course if within 100 miles, but not necessarily anything unique.
vs
10 - Nearly perfect, you would miss something if you missed just one hole.


That's why I've always really liked it as a hybrid rating system because its a good way to apply a relative rating, without needing to split hairs why a DS 10 like Pine valley is better than CPC, or to limit oneself to top 50, 100, or whatever.

Kalen-My point was that there is nothing to differentiate all the 7’s as an example. Like Sean I’m good with that.

[Kalen Braley]

Wait so its not obviously implicit that a 10 is ranked higher than a 7?  I mean the descriptions pretty well do that

7 - An excellent course if within 100 miles, but not necessarily anything unique.
vs
10 - Nearly perfect, you would miss something if you missed just one hole.


That's why I've always really liked it as a hybrid rating system because its a good way to apply a relative rating, without needing to split hairs why a DS 10 like Pine valley is better than CPC, or to limit oneself to top 50, 100, or whatever.

Kalen-My point was that that is nothing to differentiate all the 7’s as an example. Like Sean I’m good with that.

Yes, I can certainly agree on that point, I'd think its better to just list them

If GD or Golf Magazine or Golf Week wanted to avoid controversy and provide a more honest assessment of courses they would not try differentiate two courses with same DS rating. I don't know how well received Michelin is, but getting a 1, 2, or 3 star rating seems to work well enough.

[Sean_A]

My point was the DS is specific for travel advice as evidenced by the travel language. They are recommendations, not rankings. Doak started to use DS as a convenient way to quickly express his points and gradually the DS came to be used as rankings. This never sat well with me, but maybe the two are interchangeable. Only Doak knows for sure. Which is another reason not to use the DS...its his system and as such will incorporate his bias as he sees them for recommendations. The score for Castle Course is evidence of this. There is no way a 0 score translates to the quality of the course. It's considerably better than loads of courses with higher scores.

Ciao

[Ben Stephens]

My point was the DS is specific for travel advice as evidenced by the travel language. They are recommendations, not rankings. Doak started to use DS as a convenient way to quickly express his points and gradually the DS came to be used as rankings. This never sat well with me, but maybe the two are interchangeable. Only Doak knows for sure. Which is another reason not to use the DS...its his system and as such will incorporate his bias as he sees them for recommendations. The score for Castle Course is evidence of this. There is no way a 0 score translates to the quality of the course. It's considerably better than loads of courses with higher scores.

Ciao

Sean,


Have you read the book 'The Seventh at St Andrews'? its a worthwhile read and well written which focuses on the design and build journey of the course plus the 4 main people involved in it. I have met two of them already and both are doing very well now.


I have not played it however judging it from other comments, reading the book and aerial images surely it is a lot better than a DS 0.


Cheers
Ben

[Ally Mcintosh]

The Castle Course is a very good course. It has a couple of issues but it is way better than many of the alternatives that could have been built on that site.


I understand why Tom gave it a zero but Sean’s point is well made using it as an example.

[Ben Stephens]

What were the reasons that Castle Course was given a DS 0?

[Tony_Muldoon]

What were the reasons that Castle Course was given a DS 0?

"0
A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that waste ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn't have been built in the first place."

It fits and the resultant controversy can't have hurt the publicity for the book launch!

[Ben Stephens]

What were the reasons that Castle Course was given a DS 0?

"0
A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that waste ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn't have been built in the first place."

It fits and the resultant controversy can't have hurt the publicity for the book launch!

Thank you Tony. Looks like your team is heading into the new year as no.1 team in the world