A Suggestion for Golf Digest

[Phil_the_Author]

I hereby suggest that it is time for a new "Top Ten" list to be provided by Golf Digest. This should be a list of the WORST TEN courses in America!

Suggested guidelines could be:

1- Shot Values: How many shots per round does the course allow you to play as if you were on a real golf course? An example of this would be is the big hole in front of the green your ball rolled into really a sand trap if there is no sand?

2- Resistance to Playing: How many other courses are within a hundred mile radius that you can play INSTEAD of this course.

3- Design Variety: Points should be awarded for the number of holes that run straight, flat and parallell to each other with minimal distance between. Extra points can be added for added immovable hazards such as dead trees in the fairways. An additional bonus point if there are more than three abandoned cars on the course.

4- Memorability: How many times and for how many days do you wake up at night in a screaming nightmare-induced sweat after playing it for the first time?

5- Aesthetics: Is there any vegetation on the course? This CAN and should include the judicious and tasteful use of weeds in the fairway.

6-Conditioning: Can you define the difference between tee boxes, fairways and greens?

7- Ambience: Is it more likely for you and your buddies to play this course AFTER an all night drinking spree? How close in color are the hot dogs served at the "mixed grill" to the color of the soil on the course?

8- Walkability: How tempted are you to run around the course instead of walking to get your round finished quicker? Extra points should be awarded if you have to walk because the carts are normally out of service.

9- "Holy Shit!" bonus points. Please add three extra points to your score if you say "Holy Shit!" ten or more times while on the course. An example of this would be "Holy Shit! Ten holes and I finally found a rake."

[Dan Herrmann]

Since Golf Digest is now officially the WORST golf magazine published today, I thought it'd be a good idea to revisit Phil's ancient post.

Golf Digest now caters to the 21-25 yr. old crowd, and I just cancelled.  I really don't need to see articles that say (and I'm typing this verbatim):
Q:  Does anyone but the prose go back to the tee and reload after they search for their ball and discover it's either lost or out-of-bounds?
A:  Nope.  Well, OK, let us qualify that a little.  If you're playing in your club championship of a USGA-sanctioned tournament, then, yes, you have to take a penalty stroke and hit from that spot again.  But honestly?  With rare exceptions, nobody goes back and reloads.  Imagine how slow play would be.

The rag is full of men's perfume (cologne) ads which makes me sneeze.  

Oh yeah, the article on pot really irked me.  I couldn't care less what people do in private, but I don't want to see articles about illegal (outside of CO and WA) activity flaunted.

------------------------------
Back to Phil's original question - I vote for Pickering Valley Golf course in Chester County, PA.

[Keith OHalloran]

Dan,
Good luck cancelling. I haven't paid for GD in years, and it is in my mailbox every month.

[Garland Bayley]

They have to keep you on the subscription list. They get more money from the ad people by you being on the list than they lose from you in not paying for your subscription. However, I found that persistence in not paying eventually "paid" off and they quite sending the magazine.

[John McCarthy]

Dan,
Good luck cancelling. I haven't paid for GD in years, and it is in my mailbox every month.
[/quo


Keith:  Do not give up hope!  After three years of not paying they have not delivered to me since December.

[Ed Brzezowski]

Got the new issue yesterday and my wife picked it up for a look see. She thought it was a metrosexual magazine, whatever that is.  It has turned into a rag.

[Terry Lavin]

So, the magazine is so bad, somebody resurrected an 11 year-old post which had zero replies in order to make the point that the magazine lacks sufficient gravitas to merit his attention?  Lazarus should've left this one alone.

[Pat Burke]

I cancelled my GD subscription a while ago.
Jumping into the sensationalism like the National Enquirer,
especially in their online stuff lost me

[Dan Herrmann]

Terry, I was trying to be ironic.

[Jim Franklin]

I read mine yesterday and had a hard time figuring out which were articles and which were ads. The new format is awful.

[Sam Morrow]

Most magazines have sucked for the last 15 years.

[Ryan Coles]

Golf Illustrated, in the UK was very good. I think it was just too much of a niche and was subscription only. Sadly now defunct.

They keep sending me Golf World in its place despite me cancelling the subscription.

[Adam Lawrence]

I liked the resurrected Golf Illustrated too, but sales were poor and Bauer discontinued it pretty quickly.

[Lou_Duran]

I suspect that any publication or golf course who would target the active members of the DG would go bankrupt in short order.

I enjoy Golf Digest, Golf, Golfweek.  Considering all the free stuff, print and electronic, it is astonishing that they remain viable.  My hats off to all involved in making the magazines relevant and able to stay in business.

[John Kavanaugh]

No medium has done more to harm the game than the written word supported by advertising dollars. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Dan,
Good luck cancelling. I haven't paid for GD in years, and it is in my mailbox every month.

Why Dick Gregory believed his phone was being tapped in the '60s/'70s:    "I'm the only black man in America who owes Bell Telephone $12,000 and whose phone has not been cut off."

Who knew that the FBI and GD use the same playbook. 

[Bob_Huntley]

I suspect that any publication or golf course who would target the active members of the DG would go bankrupt in short order.

I enjoy Golf Digest, Golf, Golfweek.  Considering all the free stuff, print and electronic, it is astonishing that they remain viable.  My hats off to all involved in making the magazines relevant and able to stay in business.

Lou,

I thought that you of all people would have been the last person to like the current iteration of Golf Digest. As attractive as the  Gretzky girl is, I wonder if she  does indeed play golf. I would be somewhat annoyed if my partner in a better ball match decided it was okay to get stoned  rather than win a golf match.

Golf Digest has lost the way.

Bob

 

[John Kavanaugh]

I suspect that any publication or golf course who would target the active members of the DG would go bankrupt in short order.

I enjoy Golf Digest, Golf, Golfweek.  Considering all the free stuff, print and electronic, it is astonishing that they remain viable.  My hats off to all involved in making the magazines relevant and able to stay in business.

Lou,

I thought that you of all people would have been the last person to like the current iteration of Golf Digest. As attractive as the  Gretzky girl is, I wonder if she  does indeed play golf. I would be somewhat annoyed if my partner in a better ball match decided it was okay to get stoned  rather than win a golf match.

Golf Digest has lost the way.

Bob

 

Don't be naive.

[Jud_T]

Oh yeah, the article on pot really irked me.  I couldn't care less what people do in private, but I don't want to see articles about illegal (outside of CO and WA) activity flaunted.

Most interesting thing I've seen in the rag in years.  Maybe if they required their raters to light up before a round they might have a different take on the "Resistance to Scoring" criteria...

[Terry Lavin]

Terry, I was trying to be ironic.

And here's me, having no business being literal!

[Lou_Duran]

Bob Huntley,

I suspect that many things about me might surprise you.

While I am pretty conservative and somewhat set in my ways, I understand that except for human nature, very few things remain the same.  I pay for my own subscriptions for Golf Digest and Golf- I get Golfweek from other sources- not because their latest formats fit my preferences to a T, but because for under $1 per issue, I get enough of the information I like in a format I am comfortable with, all without having to get out of my chair.  Some blow a year's worth of magazine subscriptions at Starbucks in a couple mornings.

I also understand that any business has to connect with its customers to remain viable.  The future of golf is not me and people of my generation.  Unlike some others here, apparently, I am not that easily offended or hard to please.

I am actually perusing the Gretzky issue you referenced, and though I can't verify her skills on the course, I was told by the folks at their home club that she is very involved and an excellent member.  BTW, the best golf teacher I ever had was JR Abels when I was at Ohio State and I could beat him like a drum.  Judging solely from close study of her body, I have no doubt that Ms. Gretzky could teach me a thing or two about physical fitness, something I need much more than how to make a better turn (which for me is a function of not being flexible enough) or a new set of irons.  But even though I am not much into instruction, clubs and balls, I do glance at the articles and ads in the magazine.  I find it rather confusing that people here with so much confidence in their own abilities are so concerned with the frequency of product cycles and the effects of advertising.  It must be because they are such good people that they are always thinking of the lesser folks amongst them.

John Kavanaugh,

Please stop being cryptic.  Spell it out.  I still have some hope that the good JK will one day come through.  

[John Kavanaugh]

Lou,

Don't be naive.

[Lou_Duran]

Lou,

Don't be naive.

I am not often accused of being naïve.   Hard-headed/closed-minded sometimes.  Stupid occasionally.  Let her rip John.  Tell me what you really think, what's got your goat.

[Dan Kelly]

This is a letter I sent to an upper-level editor at Golf Digest (a guy who used to work for our newspaper) on April 4th of this year:

Kate Upton, Holly Sonders, Paulina Gretzky.

The magazine's "values" are as clear as day.

And they're not mine.

I can't tell you to cancel my subscription, because I don't have one anymore -- but I can tell you, as the father of an excellent female golfer (and as a man living in the 21st century, not the mid-20th), that I am amazed by the magazine's self-incrimination.

Sincerely,
Dan

His reply:

[Tim_Cronin]

I find great irony that Jerry Tarde's short mention of the redesign – not that we couldn't tell – ran at the bottom of the second page of his Editor's Letter, a delightful and hilarious essay on Frank Hannigan. Oh, what Hannigan would have thought about the turn in direction of the world's largest-selling magazine devoted to the game.