100 Best European Golf Courses by Golf Journal Germany

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Regular Joe can play Sunningdale, but nor Morfontaine. That was the criteria

But my man Brian S is a regular Joe
After all is a a Man United fan, he and I are both jst regular Joe's, in other words a rather lame criteria for any "Best od Courses ' to sue.
Truly how Private is private ? and any exclusion of Morfoantaine makes a list pointless

[Frank Pont]

Strange. Just had the correspondent of German Golf Journal visit Holland, and his ranking of top Dutch courses was completely different:

1. Kennemer
2. Royal Haagsche
3. Noordwijkse and Eindhovensche
4. Lage Vuursche, De Swinkelsche and De Pan

[Paul Gray]

Would it not be accurate to suggest that this is a rankings list of venues, rather than just golf courses?

[Steve Okula]

I was at Morfontaine today. It's a masterpiece and in immaculate condition. Any list that does not Morfontaine at least in Europe's top 100 can  be dismissed as the work of clowns.

To be fair: the list excluded private clubs

Then the title of the list should be: 100 Best European Public Courses.

[Emil Weber]

Angela,

to answer your questions..
1. I don't really like it, but looking at the purely GB&I list from Thomas' post, it could just as well be from any other international golf magazine. As others have mentioned and I find to be the only truly odd thing about these rankings is how highly the continental Europe resort courses are rated.

2. Besides giving too many points for service and demands, there is another simple answer: Even if they are trying to stay objective in the rankings, they will still give higher ratings subconsciously to courses they like seeing/playing. And the majority of Germany, and in this case raters, still love to see the American style resort course with water hazards etc. So they are really just a few years behind in GCA/ Golf knowledge.

3. Difficult question. I recently played with a young couple who had just started playing and learnt their golf in a Schnupperkurs and it was a beautiful monday evening just for fun round. They wrote down their scores on a scorecard, marked balls and adjusted the lines on their golf balls before putting and took 17 practice swings before hitting a ball. Then we came to a par 3 with a forced carry over water. They had no chance, lost balls, were frustrated about it and still thought it was the coolest hole they've ever seen.
It's simply still a different game here compared to a GCAer's dream world, and I wish I could say I have a better answer than: it needs time!

Cheers

[Jud_T]

Angela,

1.  The criteria is all over the place and reads more like something Travel & Leisure would produce than something devoted purely to the game of golf.

2.  Paradoxically, I like the respect Portmarnock gets as I think it doesn't quite get the love it deserves. (I'm guessing the wind was up when the raters played it!).

3.  As the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself.  Why not start a German-Language blog about GCA yourself?  Start with a tour of some Continental courses you respect discussing the specifics of the land, turf, design and maintenance that you enjoy.  Sprinkle in some interviews, be critical and make a difference!  Good way to make friends and enemies and perhaps make a few business contacts along the way...

[Ulrich Mayring]

This reminds me of another ranking by GJ done a few years ago, which was basically a reader poll. In the continental Europe Top Ten were like five courses from Mallorca and Belek and, if I remember correctly, two from France, which were close to the German border.

So this was more a reflection of where people actually go.

The same goes for this ranking. No set of sensible criteria can explain Bro Hof Slott at #7 and Ganton at #17. It has got to be a function of a rater by chance stumbling upon Ganton, while on holiday there or whatever. Modry Las in Poland another such place - maybe the rater has family there, but there is absolutely no other reason to go there.

Ulrich

[Patrice Boissonnas]

Just like most of you guys, I largely disagree with the german ranking.
But it raises a very important question in my opinion:
how do you assess a golf course if you step in for the first time with little or no golf culture?
You will for sure appreciate service, landscape, pristine grass before more than any design subtelities.
Here at GCA we are a) under the influence of each other and b) golf educated.
It's hard to appreciate objectively a course about which you've read thousand of praises before.
But let's be honest: if you would walk by Mona Lisa without knowing it's the most famous painting in the world, would you really stop? I probably wouldn't. The same could be said about wine or champagne. Is Petrus that good? Don't know I have never tried but honestly I think Dom Perignon is one of the worst champagne I ever drunk. I am sure at least 50% of the thrill when you open a Petrus or a Dom Perignon is the prestige behind the name and not the product itself.
As a conclusion, there might be 2 ways to enjoy a golf course : with or without education. Depending how educated you are, you don't enjoy the same courses (although some maybe ranked highly in both cases).
One last question: is the enjoyment of the educated golfer higher then that of the non educated golfer? Do you need to study art to feel goose bumps when looking at a masterpiece?

[Ulrich Mayring]

I don't mind someone not recognizing the significance of Mona Lisa, but I would mind if said person were charged with producing the list of top ten paintings in the world.

I don't think one should assume that Germany has no golf culture. It has more than a century of it. There are enough knowledgeable German golfers. It's just that sometimes they aren't the ones put in charge of projects requiring such knowledge.

Ulrich

[Jud_T]

Patrice,

A good bottle of Petrus from the right Vintage is that good...

[Mark Pavy]

Why isn't there a GCA Top 100 ?

Would I be right in saying that even with the modest amount of members it would still be the largest amount of people involved in formulating such a list?

Happy to provide HD access to my database of 3D golf courses to assist.

[Sean_A]

Why isn't there a GCA Top 100 ?

Would I be right in saying that even with the modest amount of members it would still be the largest amount of people involved in formulating such a list?

Happy to provide HD access to my database of 3D golf courses to assist.

Mark

I don't think its that difficult to do...you have a template.  The last time we used the top 100 lists from a few mags (can't remember which) as a baseline for nominations then did a GCA nomination process to add courses to the overall nomination list.  I don't recall the voting criteria, but none of the GCA nominated courses made the top 100.  There were a also handful of courses that received good enough scores to be top 100, but not enough people voted for them.  I reckon in an update there may be some of these making the top 100 and perhaps a GCA nomination or two also making the top 100.   

Ciao

[Tony Ristola]

Greg,

they have it on their website, but it is only in German. So this is my translation to it:

THIS IS HOW THE GJ RANKING WORKS

We work with a 100 point system for the course testing, though you will see an index on the ranking. This is why:

The last 306 candidates for the 100 best courses in europe were ranked with the 100 point system. After that we eliminated the category condition, because the condition is especially dependant on the season, month, day or even hour. For an absolut fair and comparable result we would have to play all the courses in the same season and same weather which is impossible.

If we would have eliminated the 12 point for the condition from the beginning, there would have been a big confusion. For an example: The Stadium Course at Bro Hof Slott GC recently ranked with 91 points (published GJ 6/14). Without the condition it would only get 79 points. So instead of confusing by publishing two different results, we worked with an Index.

First step: calculating an average value of all of the tested courses (basic index) and set it to 100. Because Europes courses are very high leveled and very close to another, we received a lot of identical results. So we specified further if 10 or even 15 of the courses were on the same rank. With the three categories, requirements (Anspruch), Design and setting, we calculated a bonus, which we added to their basic index, but without changing the overall ranking itself.


THIS IS HOW GJ RANKS

Demand
mostly decided through the general Course Rating, for countries with SSS-System there is a special Formula. men's and women's tees are included in the rating. After the officially defined level of difficulty our Rater will evalutate.

condition
maximum 12 points. quality of greens, fairways, approaches, bunkers, rough... only a snapshot of the day the Rater was playing there.

design
maximum 24 points. It doesn't matter if the routing or layout is from a famous architect. The core question: Is it fun?

Whether the round of golf has enough variation and also offers enough strategic choices or thinking, we check with a list. This list has more than two dozen criterias: form, size, ondulations of the greens, gradient and length of fairways, location of sand and water hazards, fairness, memorability...

setting
if the course is pleasing to the eye it can earn up to 20 points. Displeasing are: power lines, wind wheel, too many Villas on the side of the Fairway, Noice....


Service
maximum of 15 Punkte. The offer of practice areas, also the restaurant and locker rooms, cars and ballwasher ( GJ even says on their website that they don't give a full point for ballwashers...)

Bonus
up to 5 extra points for the golfer's dream destination: TOC, Pebble, Valderrama...

GJ Index
With this number the golfer is able to find the price-performance value of each course in a second. If it is 1.0 there is a good relation between the quality and the costs. Higher Index courses are cheap, in the case of a 0.x the price is too expensive.
 
 

I wonder how many are rating conditioning ... and I feared they would include "Service" in the ratings. Bonus points for "Dream Destination"... "GJ Index" also unnecessary.

If they're going to rate the golf course... rate the golf course. All the other stuff is meaningless.

If the place has no parking, no real clubhouse, and the staff is clueless... what does that have to do with the golf course?
Nada.

There are a couple courses ranked up the list that seem to have no business being there... but that's the nature of rankings.