Has A GREAT course ever been described this way??

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Has A GREAT course ever been described this way??
 
I know people are into the numbers thing, top 10, top 100, etc. etc., but I can't believe that somebody hasn't yet talked about Ron Whitten's written description of Black Rock.  Now please keep in mind, I haven't seen or played Black Rock and it might well be fantastic, and if it was, I would be the first to stand up and applaud, so this is not about bashing Black Rock and it's definitely not a slam on Jim Engh, because I think he's a terrific guy.  So here goes.  Has a GREAT course ever been described this way?  (Hey Pat, maybe after reading this you will understand why maybe KB wouldn't want to have to bear reading a detailed written description of FH by Ron Whitten)
 
 
As published in Golf Digest
By Ron Whitten
 
What magic formula, if any, does Engh have in his architecture? The answer is the element of surprise. Built on a high plateau overlooking Idaho's Lake Coeur d'Alene, Black Rock contains all the now-familiar Engh trademarks: player-friendly recessed fairways, ball-collecting punch-bowl greens and steep-edged serpentine bunkers. But it also contains a few holes with features you've probably never seen before. Engh likes to call them "trapdoors and hidden staircases," unexpected aspects of his funhouses that delight us when we stumble upon them.
 
Thus, after a pair of conventional (for Engh) opening holes, we face the 611-yard third, which drops 180 feet from tee to green, down an extraordinarily narrow, twisting fairway between two mountain slopes. It's part ski jump, part slalom slope and pure Engh. For added thrills, he placed the wide-but-shallow green on the far side of a gorge. Imagine the 12th at Augusta National with Rae's Creek as a 30-foot-deep ravine.
 
An even bigger hoot is the 398-yard 10th, with its green far downhill from the landing area, fronted by a squiggly little bobsled run of a bent-grass fairway, curving around a lonesome pine. If you judge the bank shot correctly, you can use a putter from 120 yards away and have it bound onto the green. It's Engh at his Rube Goldberg best.

Yet that hole is topped by the 413-yard 11th, downhill off the tee to a tabletop fairway (with a steep drop-off on the right), then left and uphill, over a pond and a pair of waterfalls to a perched green tucked behind and between huge mushroom-shaped outcroppings of black basalt rock. In appearance and strategy, the 11th is the closest thing golf has to a giant pinball machine.

With its immense diversity of meadow, lakefront, wetland and pine-lined holes, and with periodic panoramas of Lake Coeur d'Alene, Black Rock is a slick presentation. If there's a flaw, it's that three of its five par 5s are of a similar configuration, double-doglegs that move right, then left. But Jim Engh's magical architecture is such that few will notice.

[George Pazin]

I wonder if Huck's masses would treasure such different architecture. I guess they would - they voted for it.

Hmmmmm, Bandon, Australia, the Auld Sod or Idaho...which should I start working on figuring out a way to get to? Whoops, Black Rock is private so that part of the decision is easy!

[A_Clay_Man]

Sounds like a number one to me.  

Anybody catch Moyers last night on the corruption of morals in our society being perpetuated primarily by the pentagon?

Whitten shows as much integrity in the reiviews I've read, to warrant a cabinet seat in one of the two politico parties.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Substance, Give me the substance.

In Golf Digest’s Best New rankings, I noted that all of the courses are rated for Shot Values, Design Variety, Memorability, and Aesthetics. Playability is the 5th category for Upscale and Affordable Public, but not for Private or Canadian, and Resistance to Scoring is the 5th category for Private and Canadian, but not public. Why should WE care about a Best New Private list when there is no concern for Playability?  Why should we care if they don't take Playability into account? Isn't Playability one of the key architectural elements of a GREAT golf course?

 How would NGLA do in a modern scheme of Best New if it was based on the Golf Digest Critiera and resistance to scoring was one of only 5 review criteria and playability, one of NGLA’s greatest strengths, was not??

[RJ_Daley]

Tommy, I continue to be amazed how you and others dwell on every detail of these rankings in terms of keeping the discussion going, and now even apparently critiquing RWs writing style.  His use of hyperbole and so forth is actually Dan Kelly's job to ferret out

But, why do we find the need to endlessly pick apart RW's method, style, and motives.  Why not take these rankings and RW at face value that his ranking system and his writing style are what they are, his own, and respect that for what it is, in and of itself?  Over the years anyone who follows golf course architecture and likes to study the subject and enjoys discussing golf courses knows full well who RW is, and what to generally expect from him, either his own writing or what his ranking system produces.  Why do we either get perturbed or defensive about what he and his system produces in the way of golf course design observations?  Is it possible for us to simply discuss the latest rankings with simple observations that lead to one stating agreement or disagreement with the writing or ranking product, without picking at the heart of the author and his particular methods?  Some like the writing of Bernard Darwin, some Max Behr, some Fred Hawtree (zzzzzz).  But, why do we have to mount a crusade of criticism that personalizes disagreement.  Does anyone think RW is actually going to change his writing style, or his ranking system?  Is Brad Klein going to change his?  Will Doak modify his scale to include some other evaluative criteria?

I can only get back to my personal preference of reading what others on GCA.com have to say about various courses, (most of which I'll never get a chance to see anyway) and weigh their comments rather than pay much attention to the rankings.  And, I would rather read what I would acknowledge as a course description filled with hyperbole by RW above (which suggest to me certain pro and con aspects as he describes the course) than rely on a raw ranking of 1rst 2nd 3rd place, etc.  

[Kevin_Keeley]

Tommy,

I have found many great courses and holes described this way. Every year my wife Louise gives me those "World's Greatest Golf Hole" calendars. You know, the ones with the holes playing to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and doglegging around volcanos.

KK

[ForkaB]

I'm not sure from that description if I'd necessarily call it great, but I'd sure call it fun!  The pinball analogy kinda reminds me of a track in North East Fife called the Old Course, or something like that.  I thought we liked that stuff!?

[A_Clay_Man]

Rj- I think it's important to analyze gca from somewhere other than a pop culture perspective. Lord knows enough has been lost because of mans ability to follow other men who repeat themselves enough times for their words to be accepted as fact.

All I can ask you to do is go and look at RW's archives and read his reviews. The only one that I read that had substance was Wild Horse's.

I compare it to anyone who actually tried one of Martha Stewarts recipes this holiday season. Following Martha's recipe will lock in an almost 80 percent chance of yielding nothing great.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tommy,

The GD definition of playability, is I believe, how it adapts to golfers of lesser skill, which is presumably more important in a public design than a private, or at least that is the common perception.  With several foced carries, NGLA mightnot fare all that well in the playability category, even given its wide fairways.  Who knows, as it wouldn't ever be up for the best new competition unless Fazio remodels it (a la Pinehurst 4) and puts it in for best new.....

Is that the definition you use when describing NGLA's playability?

As to Ron's writing style,I know he goes for light and breezy in all his GD writing, as GD now asks the columns to be good "toilet reads."  Perhaps you think that architecture reiviews demand a "appropriately serious tone" but he has his marching orders from the boss, as do we all.....

He does a great job of describing a lot, in a fun way, and without wasting a lot of words!t   The most amazing thing iabout his writing is that he started as an attorney, for Gawd sakes!  I'll bet if you look at his earlier articles, they are much more scholarly in tone, with the appropriate "heretofors" and "whereas" clauses in there!  Given the space he has, I think the style he writes in is just fine.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tommy,
I'm not rapping his style but that review is like a whole vacation 'rapped' into 5 paragraphs. From the fun-house to the ski slope to the sled run to the pool hall and finally we get to my favorite area, the pinball machines. I got tired out just reading it.  
I liked the old pin-ball machines better. They only cost a nickel, you could build up odds and they paid off better.   p.s. No flippers to bother with either!

[RJ_Daley]

Adam, After reading RWs stuff over 15 years or more, I think I generally recognise his style and how he is more prone to jazzing up descriptions of holes.  Again, I take his writing for what his style is, and choose to agree or disagree.  I have seen holes and courses RW has described and then weigh what I have seen personally compared to what his descriptions have been.  I liked his recent Sutton Bay description and generally agreed with his Wild Horse assesments except on one count where he got an aspect wrong as to the boys manufacturing some of the little pre green noses.  I believe that their not grading them out from how they actually existed on the raw land was sort of the minimalist distinction that sets them apart.  Not, doing something conventional like grading them smooth or manufacturing quirk by grading them into the design, rather than not messing with something naturally occuring that is unconventional, the latter of which the boys did (or didn't do).  And, the last sentence is why I don't write for some publication

RW writes commercially by definition of his identy with one particular magazine, and oversees that magazines annual rankings.  They have their own flavor.  I would much more prefer a write-up of say Friar's Head as we are lucky enough to have here on GCA, to anything RW would write.  But, that isn't even a fair statement.  Ran didn't have word or space limitations.  RW is held to strict word and space and pictoral limitations.  So, naturally RWs can't even come close to Ran's efforts on such a subject.  So, RW has to grab the reader with hyperbole and can't take the purist cerebral approach inorder to make his points.  Why don't you or Tommy write up Black Mesa or some other course you are really excited about and want the readers to get your drift in as few as 340 words like RW did on the above BR.  Perhaps you guys can, and that would be a great talent.  But, I don't think it is all that easy.  

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Jeff,
Here's GD's playability description:

"How well does the course challenge the low handicap golfers while still providing enjoyable options for high handicappers through the use of shorter lengths, alternative routes, placement of hazards and accessible pins?"

I'd say National would do well in that category. In fact, I can think of a lot of courses that would fare well (or want to fare well) under that definition. After all, the playability description is basically the mantra of most architects today ("we built something that will challenge the good player while still fun for the average golfer, strategy, options, variety, yada, yada, yada").

It's a mystery how that category does not pertain to all golf courses, only publics.
Geoff

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Dick & Jeff Brauer,
Kevin's wife obviously gets what I'm saying.

The point is that WHY should we care?  (And I'm not the one that cares to give any creedence to the subject, just as you, even though we still keep on posting on the subject!)

I accept the results for what they are.  I just want to make sure that we all understand the limited criteria that the raters were required to use.  People get so caught up in the numbers.  I’m just trying to get all of us to focus on the actual criteria so that we can maybe better understand the results.  "Fair and Balanced” is Golf Digest’s criteria right? Shouldn't a GREAT golf course be playable to all golfers? Are Golf Digest's well traveled panelists able to discern what is good for the goose, is good for the gander? Are they themselves also "Fair and Balanced?" I mean, are they judging to a single-minded criteria? (TOUGH aka Resistance to Scoring on a private course=Good; Playability on a private course=Bad, so Tough wins every time?)
I wasn’t taking RW to task for his writing style.  I sincerely thought it was very entertaining.

What I was trying to get at was that he wrote what he wrote in the first place.  It actually made me think about him sitting there writing the thing, handed the results and being asked to write about the winner.  So let me put it in this perspective.  If you were Black Rock (or is it Black Mesa or Black Creek or Black Forest???) and wanted to use quotes from RW’s article (think Movie Ads), do you think they would say:  

Come visit Black Rock, which according to Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s pre-eminent architecture critic, is the home to:

-features you've probably never seen before

-trapdoors and hidden staircases, unexpected aspects of Jim Engh’s funhouse

-a pair of conventional opening holes

-an extraordinarily narrow 611-yard par 5 which has a twisting fairway between two mountain slopes - it's part ski jump, part slalom slope

-a par 4 fronted by a squiggly little bobsled run of a bent-grass fairway, curving around a lonesome pine.

-A hole which is the closest thing golf has to a giant pinball machine.

-three par 5s of a similar configuration, double-doglegs that move right, then left.
??

[RJ_Daley]

Tommy, a point well taken about imagining RW being handed the results and then having to get behind his system that identified it and write it up.  BTW, did I  mention 'hyperbole'?

[SPDB]

Repeatedly.

ball-collecting punch-bowl greens and steep-edged serpentine bunkers.

I can think of a number of Raynor and MacD courses (which many on this site, including me would say are "great") that have been described thusly.

features you've probably never seen before.

I've never seen ruins in play (Pennard), I'm sure most have not seen bunkers located in the center of a green (Riviera). I am certain, though, that I've seen reviews of these courses which uses language similar to Whitten's.

pair of conventional opening holes

I've seen countless "great" courses described this way, viz. Bethpage.

611-yard third, which drops 180 feet from tee to green, down an extraordinarily narrow, twisting fairway between two mountain slopes. It's part ski jump, part slalom slope

I fail to what's wrong with this description. If you object to the alpine references, then you might want to tell NAF that, uh, errr...Alpine CC (Tillie) is not "great" since they actually refer to their 10th as the "Ski Hole"

Ditto for many of Scotland's (or the World's) "greatest" courses -

If you judge the bank shot correctly, you can use a putter from 120 yards away and have it bound onto the green.

-I thought "we" liked the ground game, and celebrated courses designed to encourage it.  

Let's be clear, this nitpicking is motivated by disappointment that FH wasn't the #1 Best New. That the outcome of GD's list could motivate disappointment in an Electrician in LA, but not in those who shelled out $175K  is a rationalization that I can't simply get my mind around. I'm not saying that FH members will live and die with the outcome, but to say that it doesn't affect them in the slightest (en masse) is ridiculous.

[Forrest Richardson]

Yes, Tommy...

"But to the casual observer he may feel it is the closest thing golf has to a giant pinball machine."

— A.W. Tillinghaust, "My Greatest Love Affairways" (Gin Berry Books, 1922)

[Thomas_Brown]

Tommy - I agree w/ your thoughts on playability as one of the more important aspects towards GCA.

Though, I agree w/ Rich Goodale.
I read the piece w/o looking ahead and thought of the capricious nature of North Berwick, Prestwick, or even Western Gailes.  That style of golf can be a lot of fun.

Also, I'll admit to being a consumer of RW's writing style.
Although dramatic, I feel like it puts me on the ground of these courses I'll probably never see.

Tom

[HamiltonBHearst]

It is funny that because these rankings turn out in a way that we do not agree with we object to the CRITERIA.  I suspect the problem lies more with the raters genuine opinions on the relative merits of various courses.

Just as some say (myself included) that human nature would lead many at FH to want to win an award, I also think it is human nature to rate a course without much regard to CRITERIA.  Shouldn't that be the only criteria anyway.

If you want to see a fudged number (ex. tradition) please someone post ratings for "walk in the park".

Blame the raters themselves on this one, not the methods.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tommy Naccarato,

If Ken Bakst and none of the members at Friar's Head care about the perception of their golf course, then why, either be on the cover of "The MGA Golfer" or agree to a four page feature interview about the golf course ?

If you really didn't want any sort of exposure, publicity or notoriety, wouldn't you decline any interviews ?
Wouldn't you decline any photo-ops ??
Wouldn't you decline being the focus of a featured article on your golf course by a golfing magazine ?

Ken Bakst and the members of Friar's Head have every reason to be proud of their golf course and golf facilities, but please, get off this ridiculous notion that they don't care about how Friar's Head is perceived in the golfing world.

I was critical of Ron Whitten's assessment of Jasna Polana, which I've played about 30 times.  I can't comment on anything written about a golf course that I've never played, and neither should you.

[Forrest Richardson]

Patrick says..."I can't comment on anything written about a golf course that I've never played, and neither should you."

Patrick, Ol' Chap...let us be realistic. All of us CAN comment on courses we've never played — including courses which no longer exist; courses of long ago which are now so changed that are, yes, different; and even recent courses we shall not likely visit soon due to their distant locales.

Such comments are valuable. And, such comments must certainly be taken into context...which I believe reasonable and insightful people are capable of arranging in their minds.

Don't tell Tommy not to do something that he is quite good at doing. Leave that to me.

[HamiltonBHearst]

Pat-There is also a wonderful review with fabulous pictures of FH on this website.  This may be considered a form of publicity also.    Isn't it markting 101 to appeal to the snob (GCA) element?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Forrest Richardson,

I've always found it difficult to assess and comment on the playability of a golf course that I've never seen, but many experts on this site, who are far more qualified then I, seem quite comfortable in engaging in that practice.

I played the Arizona Biltmore about 6 times, but that was many years ago, and only remember a few holes where something unusual happened.

Good luck with your venture, and keep Tommy real  

[T_MacWood]

Hambone
That's pretty harsh. Aren't you part of the GCA element?

[Forrest Richardson]

I would agree that discussing plability without playing a course is a bit stretchy...but I find many other components to comment about.

What unusual happend at the Biltmore Adobe Course? What possible could have occurred?

[HamiltonBHearst]

Mr. Macwood-

Being a golf architecture snob is not a bad thing.  Many that frequent this site are doing so for their love af architecture, and the knowledge that this site provides.  Contributers such as yourself and Mr. Mucci and Mr. Naccaratto are a big part of this.  To get here though, one has to be a little proactive and open to new ideas.  Read the G. Peper interview here, where he states most Golf magazine readers are not very interested in architecture.  Most of the members at the clubs I belong to could care less.

In fact, I was drawn to this site from the article in SI.