Can Canyon Golf be great golf?

[Mike Benham]

if you were a golf course owner, who would you rather rely on for your customer base:  a relatively small group of very serious golfers who play 100+ rounds a year or the masses who play 1 or 2 rounds a year?  Which group do you think is more likely to abandon you for a course with a bigger waterfall?  Which one do you think is more likely to become scarce when the economy gets tough?  

David -

Any owner of a business would prefer a high percentage of repeat business ...

Where does the economics of a course, the price point of its green fees play into your equation?  It would be a fair assumption that during this economic downturn, the $ 100 CCFAD courses have suffered a reduction in revenue far greater than a local muni.

For the majority of non-country club golfers, including juniors and seniors, the variables on where to play golf is based on 1) Cost  1A) location 2) Accessibility ... so where does GCA fall into the priority for Joe 6-pack?

Mike

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Once again, Tom, I'm just asking you to be true to what you believe, and not to accentuate the positive if you really don't mean it. It is not an attack on your good-natured character.

--Me.

Tom,
Sorry for the mistake on the hours. It was not intended to be that way, It was in fact 6:30am, and I didn't know when they changed it back to the original time when the course first opened. Maybe it was at the end of Daylight Savings? But once agian, I have to ask, why would you have even wanted to get a time for the family at Rustic Canyon when,

They were jumping out of the cart RAVING about how cool, fun, and yes, GREAT, Moorpark was... saying up and down how much more they liked it than Rustic.

--Tom Huckaby--Re:Can Canyon Golf be great golf? Reply #7 on: 12-8-03 at 07:02:33am

Didn't you ask me for a suggestion regarding where you could get them on for affordable and/or free with the use of your GD Rater Card? Didn't I respond to you that accessing any course as a rater on the busiest day for golf in SoCal would be close to impossible? What was my suggestion to you? How and when was Rustic Canyon included into this paticular email conversation?

Tom, as far as you being sincere and true to yourself, that is it--"To Thy Own Self Be True!" I'm trying to offer you the chance to say what you want to say without repraisals. When you say if you have nothing good to say, don't say it, then, what is one supposed to assume? Also, how come you then edit it? Until then, there is always that shade of doubt of your intentions--this is not my fault. I

Personally, I don't want to argue, I just want the truth and not have to guess if you are spinning me a accentuated positive, when in fact, you don't mean it. It's not fair to you or me.

[ForkaB]

George P

I do not believe I ever said "All golf holes are 'strategic'" particularly because I do not believe that any golf hole is "strategic" or "happy" or "Republican" or "second-hander" or whatever humanoid adjective you want to use.

What I might have said (and do mean) is that "All golf holes have strategic interest, but some have more (often much more) strategic interest than others."  I see all opinions we have about GCA to be on a continuum, not binary.  Maybe that's just me being a Libra.....

PS--this thread ought to be sent to Jerry Springer's people.  I would make for a great show.  Huck's family on one side, Moriarty and his Hollywood lawyer/forensic golf architect friends on the other.  Sand wedges and Max Behr quotes at 20 paces.  Now, That's Entertainment!

[THuckaby2]

Tommy:

I already answered you as to why I wanted to take the family back to Rustic Canyon on the Friday after Thanksgiving - read above.  In a nutshell, I wanted to go there myself, because I do love the course and so rarely get a chance to be anywhere near it.  I also figured a second round there might help them to learn more about it, and love it more, so that in the future they would ASK to go there rather than having me tell them to.  Moorpark was never considered - if we were going to drive that far (from Pasadena where we all were), it was going to be for Rustic and Rustic only, because heck, I was in charge of getting the tee time.

More importantly, this time I really do want an apology such as you promised before.  You have stated a blatant falsehood above, when you say that I asked you where I could get on where I could use my GD rater status to get us reduced rates.  Tommy, I asked you where I could get on PERIOD on that most busy of all days that wouldn't cost us too much, and decried the fact that I couldn't, and WOULDN'T use my GD status for anything that day.  In other times, such as at Moorpark, I have used it to avoid the tee-time phone-call hassle.  It worked at Moorpark and yes, they were nice enough to give my Dad and I the pro rate there, so we saved $15 or something compared to what my brother and brother in law paid. [Note also I tried to pay the balance to make it the full rate for my Dad given GD rules that only the rater should receive any comps, but the pro there wouldn't let me - thus my searching for things to buy after the round.]  This matters to us - neither me nor my Dad are anything but limited in our golf budgets.  So yes, that does matter from time to time and heck yes, if it saves my Dad some money in situations like this (he refuses to allow me to pay for him), then damn right I'm going to do it.  But I would never do it at busy times like that, and I sure as hell didn't ask you for any favors for such at times like that - what I asked you about was advice on where we could succeed in getting a tee time PERIOD.  This is a very big difference and yes, I'd like an apology.

As for the rest, all I can say Tommy is that you've "tried" me for this before, and I'll tell you again what I've told you then:  I am honest and far truer to you, and to myself, than you give me credit for.  I do have a optomistic/positive nature though, so if you ask me about Moorpark, I'm likely to tell you about the holes I liked more than I will about all the things I didn't like.  You and others here are the opposite in this, and that's just fine.  But I cannot change my nature.  I am not telling you falsehoods or half-truths... What I am telling you is my take on any golf course, which does accentuate the positive.  We rarely have TIME for the lengthy discussions required to give every detail of impressions, and if we do someday, then you will see that I do find negative aspects.  But in these "sound-bite" type conversations we have, unfortunately you're always going to get what's on the top of my mind, and given my nature that is nearly always going to be some positive.

And at this point, I am getting very tired of defending myself.  I am not you, I am not David, I am Tom Huckaby and I am quite different from both of you.  I can live with this and have asked you to do so several times before.  Can you do so now?

Here's hoping.  We've had a darn fun electronic relationship for many years now, and I hope for many more years, where we can remove the "electronic" qualifier.

All the best,

The Accused

[George Pazin]

Damn, caught doing the anthropomorphic thing again, and just when I thought I was getting on Rich's good side.

Dave M -

That was a better way of saying what I was trying to say.

I think Shivas meant to call you an entertaining lawyer.

[Lou_Duran]

I haven't been following this thread, but in perusing the last page I came upon the following revelation from our good friend David Moriarty:

"But even if these masses do spend most the money, I still question the reasonableness of catering to their tastes when it comes to golf course architecture.  Does it really make sense to make huge capital investments based on the opinions of golfers who dont really care that much, one way or another?  I am no economist, but when it comes to interest groups wielding political or economic power, I am a believer in the existence and efficiencies of a Madisonian reality, where a smaller group with strongly held beliefs should wield disporportionate power, when compared to a larger group with divergent but weakly held beliefs."

David-

I know you have little confidence in business people, but do you think that course owners like the City of Arlington would pay $500,000 to Graham and Panks to design its municipal course because the masses could have cared less?  We have at least three other local architects who could have built a very nice course for those ignorant masses for less than half of that fee.

I may be misinterpreting your last sentence, but it seems that you are saying that if one has more to gain or loose in a fight, he should be afforded disproportiante power.  If so, this is a rather elitist view which does conform with my image of today's liberal, but how do you reconcile it to our tax system where nearly a half of the population pay no federal taxes?  I thought that your party was advocated everybody voting including the illiterate, infirmed, illegal, incarcerated, paroled, some of the deceased, but not the military.  I guess that I am an elititst myself because I believe that lobbying is perfectly fine and that stakeholders, particularly those who keep laying the golden eggs for the rest of us, should be alloted a greater voice.

In your example, if my 100 rounds per year guys made up a disproportionate part of the business and were more price/feature sensitive, I would give their preferences greater consideration.  If the "masses" had a greater impact on the bottom line, I would push that side of the business.  Unlike government which seeks to force a square peg through a round hole, the good businessman would do what is possible to satisfy both types of patrons.  In the process he may lose some from one group, and perhaps add some from the other.  A client base is much like income classification, it is highly mobile.  Today's "masses" guy could be a GCAer next year, just like poor Lou Duran might become more like the affluent David Moriarty (on economics, not politics, of course).

Shivas-

David saying that he is not an entertainment lawyer is a little Clintonian, but probably technically correct.  Let's just say that he is a litigator whose clients have included well-known people in the entertainment field.  A difference without a distinction?  Who knows!

   

[DMoriarty]

David -

Any owner of a business would prefer a high percentage of repeat business ...

Where does the economics of a course, the price point of its green fees play into your equation?  It would be a fair assumption that during this economic downturn, the $ 100 CCFAD courses have suffered a reduction in revenue far greater than a local muni.

For the majority of non-country club golfers, including juniors and seniors, the variables on where to play golf is based on 1) Cost  1A) location 2) Accessibility ... so where does GCA fall into the priority for Joe 6-pack?

Mike

Mike, we are in agreement with all of the above.   My answer to your last question is that GCA barely makes the priority list when it comes to Joe Sixpack.  It is precisely for this reason that I feel that GCA is misguided if it tries to cater to Joe Sixpack's priorities.  (at least as TomH described Joe Sixpack)

_________________________________

Lou,  please take a look at the previous discussion;  I think it will address your concerns.  

Thanks for the post though . . . I got quite a kick out of seeing you argue against a Madisonian/Hamiltonian model of interest group politics and economics.  Whatever it takes to attack the liberal I guess . . .  

But please do me a favor, my friend, explain to me (preferably off-line) why all these topics tend to lead you back to a discussion of my politics, occupation, education, household income, state/city of residence?   Sort of odd fodder for a site devoted to the discussion of golf course architecture dont you think?

___________________

Shivas,  no worries regarding the job classification.  In this legal community "Entertainment Lawyers" are generally considered to be transactional attorneys--  deal makers.   Some of them like to think that this makes them a part of the Entertainment Industry/ Community.   They would never describe someone who sometimes litigates entertainment matters to be an 'Entertainment Lawyer.'  (For example my old firm has an Entertainment Dept and a Litigation Dept.) This is perfectly fine with me because I have absolutely no desire to label myself as part of that industry, community.  I am, or rather was,  a commercial litigator, nothing more or less.  Now I am presently a housewife and much happier and healthier for it.

[By the way, some old-timers (and some of the best lawyers in town] both litigate and negotiate for their clients.  In my experience these guys dont need or want industry labels, they just call themselves lawyers.]

So which of my two groups do you want frequenting your course?