If you're going to rate courses on the basis of which clubs let Andy Johnson make $ selling tee times to his club members, for promotional purposes, remember the old saying, you get what you pay for.
I'm am confused by this take. Yes, I'm sure the clubs and the hosts make some money from these events, but I mean, I'm still usually paying a visitors fee when I'm invited to a course. I've looked at the tax code, and this is as close as a club in America can get to opening up their doors without losing their tax-exempt status.1 2 I don't think these clubs need the money.
Matt: No, the clubs don't need the money . . . they are chasing prestige and rankings by allowing some of these groups to play. Several people on this thread apparently played in one such event, which has facilitated this discussion, which is the whole point. I don't know the financial arrangements between the clubs and the organizers, but I sure don't think they are charging the same as they get for corporate outings, say. The organizers are selling access, in the exact same way that GOLF DIGEST and GOLFWEEK have panelists pay for rater cards to gain access.
I appreciate that SFGC doesn't play that game. I can tell you for a fact that they DO care about their ranking -- I was surprised to hear it mentioned in green committee meetings, but it was. However, their only response was to ask if it meant that they should be doing something different to the course. I told them it was just a blip on the radar and they shouldn't make any changes to chase rankings.
Now, I'm even more confused. The only one preventing SFGC from being in this conversation is SFGC. That's all well and good, and as I said before, they value their privacy and they can have it. If I wanted to dunk on SFGC, I could say they very
selectively value their privacy, while opening their doors for the exactly the folks who will maintain their status, and I've yelled about the access economy in American golf here before, but that's not really even relevant here.
This isn't a conversation of raters who have any influence on rankings, it's just a conversation of golf nerds on an (admittedly influential) golf website, but again, there is nothing about the events that even involve this website or membership to any website (the LM event was just open to the public). If a course gains status because a bunch of people are talking about it, because they enjoined it... isn't that just a course being a good course?
You say you appreciate that SFGC doesn't play "that game." I assume by "that game" you're talking about is "selling access." I agree that selling rater cards to get access is a kind of grift that I
very much find objectionable, but that's not at all what we're talking about. We're talking about courses "selling access" like every public course does. It's effectively no different from opening their doors to the public (and legally the closest thing to that). If allowing random interested people to enjoy the place is a kind of marketing, then "yay" I guess? Isn't allowing people to try the product a pretty noble form of marketing?
Now, I will agree with you that new clubs are probably trying to build hype. And bringing people in to establishing equity value for their members could be a bit objectionable. This is explicitly why I skipped their Bay Area event at Brambles. That seems like clear marketing to me. Establish that everyone loves this place, then close the doors, and maximize the mimetic dominance, and thus value. That kinda sucks.
But again, we're talking about Lake Merced and SFGC here, they've both been around a long, long time. They aren't trying to sell memberships or make good on price discovery for their equity. It honestly just seems like LM's just proud of their reno-redo (redovation?) and wanted to invite some golf nerds to appreciate it. I guess that's a form of marketing, but it's marketing to people who have effectively no influence on ratings beyond potentially being in a conversation that the actual raters maybe see? And again, there's literally nothing stopping SFGC from just letting people in every once in a while, god forbid they get prestige by demonstrating their excellence to the public.
Again, I do value the opinion of folks who've been in the industry for a long time, but I'm not sure what I'm missing here.