Golf Digest's New 100 Greatest List

[Matt_Ward]

Tom H:

Nobody says ratings are fair -- sure that's true! But I always thought the casinos were fair before I walked in the door -- for some reason I always left a bit lighter when I left.

It's the process Tom -- if GD really wanted to ensure some element of a J.D. Power Associates study then credibility would have a better shot at being preserved.

Shivas:

To be fair --

The Ocean Course runs circles around Greenville CC and I say that as a grad of the Univ of S Carolina and I had numerous times playing Greenville CC when visiting friends in the area. I don't doubt the course is very good and will fight you each step of the way -- however, it is not top 100 IMHO.

I have NOT played The Ocean Course since the changes were made, but from the two times I have played it the course is clearly beyond 70th position. I also have to ask regarding courses in the Palmetto State how Harbour Town gets such a high mark when for the most part the course is usually in mediocre shape -- especially the greens. The only time the course is on target is just prior and after the PGA Tour stop.

matt kardash:

I mentioned previosly my thoughts on how The Golf Club really got screwed. This is one of Pete's Dye's finest layouts and it can't even crack the top 50! Pete is the finest and most influential designer for the second half of the 20th century and he doesn't get even one course in the top 50. As they say in my neck of the wood -- something amiss in Schaefer city!

Corey M:

Your point on how a course can simply meld into something else when new tees are included is a good one. Unless I'm mistaken the game plan for Baltusrol for the '05 PGA is to be longer and grow the rough.

Regarding a few other courses that were mentioned:

Losing Wilmington / South is no great loss -- the course represents the RTJ philosophy and I've seen better layouts of his that were never in the top 100. But consider the consistency of GD when you have two other RTJ courses that are rather similar in style still within the Top 100 -- Old Warson Bellerive. What about St. Louis CC?

quassi:

Agree 100% with you on Shoal Creek and Shoreacres. I'd keep Desert Forest because it really personifies what desert golf can be given the limitations of turf development for the region. Black Diamond is a 50/50 call as well as Estancia in my book.

[THuckaby2]

You lost me re the JD Powers thing.  But I loved the casino comment!

The absurdity of it all just gets clearer and clearer to me.  And by that I mean, not the process, but how seriously people take it.

I know, it matters, people lose jobs/money based on this.  Damn I wish that weren't the case.

TH

[Matt_Ward]

Tom H:

J.D. Power and Associates is respected because of the methodology it employs, the separation it maintains from the products it reviews and the detailed analysis it gives to validate its findings.

GD would be better served in reforming a number of issues relating to how it identifies "America's 100 Greatest." Using the J.D. Powers model would be a good step. In fact, not too long Dan Kelly suggested a methodology that would be useful. Please don't get me wrong you cannot ensure with 100% perfection and quanitify an outcome that at its heart is a qualitative matter.  

Tom, I've mentioned a couple of ways to do that already and my fingers are getting a bit sore from all the verbiage.

I salute you and others as panelists who do take the time, expense and try to be fair at all times. There are many out there no doubt. But there are others who are clearly agenda oriented by having conflicts of interests. GD specifically manipulates the end result with the inclusion of a topic (tradition) that has nothing to do with what is clearly about architecture -- I know you feel differently but when one adds tradition you might as well rank baseball teams by the size of the hot dogs they sell in the stands. I'm interested in the baseball team -- not the concessions!

[THuckaby2]

Matt, you had me nodding my head in agreement at all of that until the last line.

Of course you know way more about this than I do, all I do is follow the directions GD gives us and rate the criteria they tell us to rate.  To continue with your phrasing, none of that has anything to do with the hot dogs at the stadium.

You know this, likely better than anyone... yet you continue to cast aspersions.  That mystifies me.

So ok, a certain portion of GD raters suck, don't know their heads from their asses, are over-awed by surroundings of a course and its trappings and inflate their ratings due to this.  Fine.  Good.  That's human nature.  I'd defy any ratings group not to have at least SOME of this occur....

Just please do remember that the criteria itself is good.  It matters, all of it.  I know you disagree with this, but you think your fingers are getting sore.... I guess we ought to just agree to disagree.  I really think we agree on way more than we disagree on re this whole issue anyway.

In any event, why does any of this have to be clearly about architecture?  I guess that's where you and I have our biggest fundamental disagreement.  You take this as an assumption, I take it as fundamentally wrong.  I could ask twenty of my best golf friends what a redan is and none of them would know... to me that shows how important "architecture" is.  You denigrate their view as "golf experience", but what occurs on a golf course other than a set of experiences?  Why should factors beyond the architecture NOT COUNT?

I'm never going to understand that.  And no, I'm not talking clubhouse, cart girls, quality of beer in the taps.  I'm taling the exact definitions GD uses to award bonus tradition points.  All of those, as defined, DO MATTER.

Tell my friends not to go look where Watson chipped in at 17 Pebble... tell them not to think about it as they play the shot.  Obviously that has absolutely nothing to do with the course's design, but to say it has no effect is really just plain wrong.

Golf course architecture can and should be evaluated as a separate entity - most properly by those who do it for a living.  Just don't ever say that this a total evaluation of the course.  It won't be.

TH

[Norbert P]

 I wonder if Jeff Sagarin could devise a system to eliminate all debate on this endless subject of ranking, once and for all.  

Or would that just create another brawl in the commons?