The Consensus Problem: Classic vs Modern

[Mark_Fine]

Let’s hope GD and GM never decide to publish the correct Top 100 list because we would have nothing to debate about.  Maybe these incorrect lists do serve a valuable purpose after all 

[Ben Sims]

Don,


For many years I’ve had to defend my desire to “understand” golf courses and I’m just over it. I’ve been around too long and care too much to be chastised for wanting to analyze. The point I’m desperately trying to make in these threads is that over time we have gained something between subjective and objective. We’ve batted around these subjects with too much detail and analysis for it all to be wistfully brushed aside as trivial and what really matters is what the individual “likes.” I agree with you that we shouldn’t care what one person thinks is better but I’d also argue we shouldn’t care what person necessarily likes either. I think we should instead try to better drill into the WHAT and WHY. I enjoy what Blister Review does in the outdoor space. They have perfected near unbiased reviews of outdoor gear, primarily snow sports, without the need to rank anything. They are absolute geniuses at comparing and contrasting without assigning merit. We don’t have that in the golf architecture world. But magazine lists provide a decent starting point for us to try.


Kalen,


I see what you’re asking. My subjective opinion is that modern courses are underrepresented in many of the rankings. But I was trying to use objective numbers to show that under representation using the GM Top 100 America list. My opinions *are* crappy. As are many opinions. The lists are important for the reasons I’ve stated (and others I haven’t) and I still think it’s clear, objectively, that modern courses aren’t represented accurately.

[Tom_Doak]

Ben,
Why should I care which courses you think are "better". 
You have me interested if you talk about courses you like. Courses that stir your soul. Those courses that bring you to a different emotional state.
Tell me if you want to go back, or join and why. Better?  There's been 1000s of posts here with this vs that or why this or that. Most of them are just people trying to empirically describe why they like something.  Lets get past that and talk about why we are willing to drop everything on a moments notice and drive 5 hours for the chance to play a course that brings a feeling you don't get anywhere else.
To me, the greats are the ones that suck me in and make me NOT want to analyze what makes them special.

I don’t disagree with this, but only a very few people in the world are in the business of trying to create such places.  And I think that’s part of the problem with this whole discussion — if that is such a small subset of the business, should it be what the rankings and the discussion are about?  It’s really irrelevant even for the vast majority of the new courses being built.


And for those in the minority who do get to work on such projects, how much of it is golf course architecture, and how much is setting or attitude or things that are independent of us?


Everything I think about is what will make a course special, not about what will make it good or great.

[Will Thrasher]

BLUF: Modern courses are getting screwed.


TL;DR: Using Golf Magazine’s Top 100 in the US list (someone please feel free to do this with other lists and across other regions or worldwide), by my count, only 1 of the top 10 were built in the last 40 years. 4 of the top 30. 25 of the top 100.


Were the ODG’s just THAT much better? Or is consensus too hard to break? Or are a lot of those classic courses that are still great precisely because a lot of the new good guys have worked extensively on them?


Philosophically, it just doesn’t add up to me. I’ll go one further. I think overall that the top modern courses are distinctly better than their classic counterparts.

All rating systems deal with "consensus" bias to a degree, but if trends and history are any indication, the Golden Age has rightly earned its recognition. The Golf Digest ratings from '77 are JARRING! Look at the number of courses ranked above Chicago GC. If anything, I would say recency bias tends to be stronger. Will courses like Old Barnwell (which I haven't played but am fairly sure I would love) age like some of the Dick Wilson and RTJ courses in terms of ranking over time? Only time will tell, but I doubt the trends will ever conclude that the top tanked classics are overrated.

https://golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2024/americas-100-1977.jpeg.rend.hgtvcom.1280.960.suffix/1720711307695.jpeg

[MCirba]

The gods gave Prometheus permission to provide humans with "fire" in the form of unlimited earth-moving capabilities, digital measuring techniques and applications, budgets meant to be busted, and virtually free advertising on social media.


In way too many cases sterility, homogenization, and tedium have been the result.

[Mark_Fine]

Will,
Not sure how you can say that 1977 list is JARRING?  No question there are a few courses on there we might beg to differ about but most every one of them are pretty good tracks (only two or three I haven’t seen or played).  Forget the order they are in as that is a impossible task; the fact that they are on the list is really all the matters when you are talking about the top 100 out of literally thousands and thousands of designs. 

[Tom_Doak]

Will:  I played Chicago golf Club for the first time in the spring of 1981.  They had shaggy bluegrass fairways with only quick couplers for fairway irrigation - because they only had 105 members and they couldn’t afford to keep up with Medinah (or even Cog Hill).  It’s surprising to me it was in the GOLF DIGEST list at all, apart from history.

[Will Thrasher]

Will,
Not sure how you can say that 1977 list is JARRING?  No question there are a few courses on there we might beg to differ about but most every one of them are pretty good tracks (only two or three I haven’t seen or played).  Forget the order they are in as that is a impossible task; the fact that they are on the list is really all the matters when you are talking about the top 100 out of literally thousands and thousands of designs.

I see your point, but respectfully I do think the order matters on some level. A world where Firestone South is a top 30 course with many below it that almost everyone on this discussion board would agree should be above it is notable. Disney Palms is another that is hard for me to believe was ever seen as a top 100 as I found it to be relatively unremarkable.


My larger point is simply that I do not think modern courses are getting shafted in the rankings, as historically they tend to be overrated and then fall off over time while the classics have much more staying power. The exceptions to this rule (Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes, etc) are already solidly in the top 100.

[Will Thrasher]

Will:  I played Chicago golf Club for the first time in the spring of 1981.  They had shaggy bluegrass fairways with only quick couplers for fairway irrigation - because they only had 105 members and they couldn’t afford to keep up with Medinah (or even Cog Hill).  It’s surprising to me it was in the GOLF DIGEST list at all, apart from history.

Tom, appreciate that context. I confess I wasn't around in '81 so that would be a blind spot for me  . With that being said, I still try to limit how much course conditioning impacts my rating when I see a course. If a course has obviously good bones (or generationally good bones in this case) and is a bit scruffy, it will still beat pristine courses with uninspiring architecture. Of course, there are limits to this.

[Mark_Fine]

Here is the other challenge we are dealing with and there is no right or wrong answer.  I have played Oakmont before and after all the tree removal.  It might be the most dramatic before and after difference out there.  And I have talked to well traveled knowledgeable golfers/critics that are diametrically opposed as to which version is better!!! So when you have personal opinions that are that different, how could we ever agree on what golf courses are “the best”?  It’s all good fun and other than when it was all about trying to match Augusta’s conditioning (we are beyond that now at least GD is) they have been mostly good for the game as they promote dialogue about golf course design.

[Chris Hughes]

Philosophically, it just doesn’t add up to me. I’ll go one further. I think overall that the top modern courses are distinctly better than their classic counterparts.

All rating systems deal with "consensus" bias to a degree, but if trends and history are any indication, the Golden Age has rightly earned its recognition. The Golf Digest ratings from '77 are JARRING

https://golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2024/americas-100-1977.jpeg.rend.hgtvcom.1280.960.suffix/1720711307695.jpeg

WOW!  That's amazing!!


Champions GC jumps out at me....Cypress Creek listed at #22 and Jackrabbit in the top-100.


I looped in the 1993 US Am there.  Justin the defending champ (nice win last week!), was hitting the miniscule 7* Pittsburgh Persimmon with the gold/boron shaft, wear spot the size of a nickel right in the middle of the face.  Notah was there with a Bullseye putting left-breakers righty, and right-breakers lefty (gold loop earring in both ears).  His future Stanford teammate was there and had crowds 20X+++ following him vs. any other player (not an exaggeration) -- he lost to an Englishman named Paul Page in round 2, but won the next 3 US Am's.  We were paired with Miller Barber's step-son, he was a beast.  Brian Gay was there, did any player ever max-out their talent more than him? 🙌 A forty-something guy won the tourney, turns out he was one of the baddest and most under-the-radar great athletes in history, All-American in hockey (NCAA Champion) and golf (Big-10 individual & team Champion). Lumpy was there pining for a matchup with Notah's future teammate, suggesting he was going to show the youngster "what bigtime amateur golf is all about"...     Jay Sigel and Justin (30yrs age difference) sat at the 4-top next to us for dinner at a great Mexcican joint one night.  Mr. Burke was omnipresent -- a man's man that fella was!!
👊

Sorry for the stream of consciousness...  That said, I sure would like to get back down there and fish those lakes!

[Tommy Williamsen]

BLUF: Modern courses are getting screwed.


TL;DR: Using Golf Magazine’s Top 100 in the US list (someone please feel free to do this with other lists and across other regions or worldwide), by my count, only 1 of the top 10 were built in the last 40 years. 4 of the top 30. 25 of the top 100.


Were the ODG’s just THAT much better? Or is consensus too hard to break? Or are a lot of those classic courses that are still great precisely because a lot of the new good guys have worked extensively on them?


Philosophically, it just doesn’t add up to me. I’ll go one further. I think overall that the top modern courses are distinctly better than their classic counterparts.

All rating systems deal with "consensus" bias to a degree, but if trends and history are any indication, the Golden Age has rightly earned its recognition. The Golf Digest ratings from '77 are JARRING! Look at the number of courses ranked above Chicago GC. If anything, I would say recency bias tends to be stronger. Will courses like Old Barnwell (which I haven't played but am fairly sure I would love) age like some of the Dick Wilson and RTJ courses in terms of ranking over time? Only time will tell, but I doubt the trends will ever conclude that the top tanked classics are overrated.

https://golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/golfdigest/fullset/2024/americas-100-1977.jpeg.rend.hgtvcom.1280.960.suffix/1720711307695.jpeg

We must remember that the courses are ranked as they were in 1977, not 2025. I dare say the Chicago Golf was not the course that it is today.

[Ira Fishman]

Will:  I played Chicago golf Club for the first time in the spring of 1981.  They had shaggy bluegrass fairways with only quick couplers for fairway irrigation - because they only had 105 members and they couldn’t afford to keep up with Medinah (or even Cog Hill).  It’s surprising to me it was in the GOLF DIGEST list at all, apart from history.

I may have skimmed the list too quickly, but I think Chicago GC is the only MacDonald or Raynor course on the list.

[Sean_A]

Everything I think about is what will make a course special, not about what will make it good or great.

That’s saying something!

Ciao

[Will Thrasher]

Will:  I played Chicago golf Club for the first time in the spring of 1981.  They had shaggy bluegrass fairways with only quick couplers for fairway irrigation - because they only had 105 members and they couldn’t afford to keep up with Medinah (or even Cog Hill).  It’s surprising to me it was in the GOLF DIGEST list at all, apart from history.

I may have skimmed the list too quickly, but I think Chicago GC is the only MacDonald or Raynor course on the list.

I saw that too - WILD. I suspect the conditioning issues Tom referenced at Chicago GC plagued other MacRaynors at the time. Even still, I find it very interesting that Dick Wilson and RTJ had multiple courses where MacDonald and Raynor only had one. I guess that's the dead horse I continue to beat here, which is that I think modern courses are getting a fair shake at the rankings. At the end of the day, rankings are always inherently subjective (which makes it so fun to debate). I've never played a Doak or Coore Crenshaw course I didn't absolutely love - no shade to the great modern architects who have ushered in a second golden age! But there is a reason the OGs are where they are.

[Michael Felton]

No NGLA at all in the top 100? Is there anything going on there? I was kind of surprised that Cypress and Shinnecock are both not in the top 10, but NGLA missing from the top 100 is quite the outlier.

[Joe Zucker]

The biggest stand out to me is seeing Cypress and Colonial, Pine Tree, and MV in the same group.  If we think of the courses in the same group as comparable, I can't imagine anyone thinking it's a toss up if they want to tee it up at CP or Pine Tree tomorrow.  It's wild to me that at some point in time, people viewed that as a coin flip.

[Ira Fishman]

And yet it is hubris for us/we/groupthink/consensus to believe we know better only 50 years later.


Ira

[Tim Martin]

Will:  I played Chicago golf Club for the first time in the spring of 1981.  They had shaggy bluegrass fairways with only quick couplers for fairway irrigation - because they only had 105 members and they couldn’t afford to keep up with Medinah (or even Cog Hill).  It’s surprising to me it was in the GOLF DIGEST list at all, apart from history.

I may have skimmed the list too quickly, but I think Chicago GC is the only MacDonald or Raynor course on the list.

A similar fate for MacKenzie with only Cypress Point, ANGC and partial credit for North Shore on the 1977 list.

[Ben Sims]

And yet it is hubris for us/we/groupthink/consensus to believe we know better only 50 years later.


Ira

Thanks for that Ira. Pretty funny. I’m not quite sure if we fall on the same “side” of this discussion but sheesh, yeah, you’d think we’d learned a thing or two since the Golden Age. Or even 1975.

[Tim Gavrich]

CP has a better entree and Pac Dunes is the better meal. One thing the modern guys do is design better “weak” holes than the ODG’s. I put weak in quotations because the term is relative when we’re comparing the tippity top of courses. I think PD’s weaker holes are distinctly stronger than CP’s weaker holes.

Like you I have played PD a number of times and CP once. I think CP is one of the very best I’ve ever seen. But so is Pac Dunes. That one is seen as clearly better than the other smacks of groupthink to me. Not hard won consensus.

This is the point I’m wildly gesticulating to make. These courses aren’t better because of any reason other than the fact that we’ve been told they’re better for a couple generations.

I think time has a tangible physical impact on golf courses, and that it takes years not just for the maintenance to be dialed in, but for three-dimensional aspects of the playing field to become their best selves. Even some of the most sensitively built modern golf courses that I've seen, when relatively new, have a less lived-in look and feel than the contours and bunkers of courses that are older. I know "patina" has been the term used, but it might actually be something closer to "umami." There's a depth of physical flavor, if you will, that abides at golf courses that have not been heavily touched over the years. The curing process does something similar to golf courses to what it does to cheeses or the finest jamon iberico.

[Charlie Goerges]

CP has a better entree and Pac Dunes is the better meal. One thing the modern guys do is design better “weak” holes than the ODG’s. I put weak in quotations because the term is relative when we’re comparing the tippity top of courses. I think PD’s weaker holes are distinctly stronger than CP’s weaker holes.

Like you I have played PD a number of times and CP once. I think CP is one of the very best I’ve ever seen. But so is Pac Dunes. That one is seen as clearly better than the other smacks of groupthink to me. Not hard won consensus.

This is the point I’m wildly gesticulating to make. These courses aren’t better because of any reason other than the fact that we’ve been told they’re better for a couple generations.

I think time has a tangible physical impact on golf courses, and that it takes years not just for the maintenance to be dialed in, but for three-dimensional aspects of the playing field to become their best selves. Even some of the most sensitively built modern golf courses that I've seen, when relatively new, have a less lived-in look and feel than the contours and bunkers of courses that are older. I know "patina" has been the term used, but it might actually be something closer to "umami." There's a depth of physical flavor, if you will, that abides at golf courses that have not been heavily touched over the years. The curing process does something similar to golf courses to what it does to cheeses or the finest jamon iberico.

I believe that's the case Tim, but going back in time, I vaguely recall Darwin being ready to call Lido the greatest before the flavor fully developed. Why was he ready to do that, but we aren't?

[Tim Gavrich]

I believe that's the case Tim, but going back in time, I vaguely recall Darwin being ready to call Lido the greatest before the flavor fully developed. Why was he ready to do that, but we aren't?

I think that probably has to do with the golf course construction methods of that day vs. today. I think that if a course were built today entirely with pre-WWII equipment/techniques, it would probably come out of the box feeling truer to that patina/umami feel than most anything built with contemporary methods.


FWIW, Lido is the American course I've seen that seems the closest in spirit to The Old Course, so maybe Macdonald got something unusually right back then, and Tom and Renaissance Golf were so successfully faithful to the original that they managed to transmit it in a way that included whatever patina/umami the original had.

[Charlie Goerges]

I believe that's the case Tim, but going back in time, I vaguely recall Darwin being ready to call Lido the greatest before the flavor fully developed. Why was he ready to do that, but we aren't?

I think that probably has to do with the golf course construction methods of that day vs. today. I think that if a course were built today entirely with pre-WWII equipment/techniques, it would probably come out of the box feeling truer to that patina/umami feel than most anything built with contemporary methods.


FWIW, Lido is the American course I've seen that seems the closest in spirit to The Old Course, so maybe Macdonald got something unusually right back then, and Tom and Renaissance Golf were so successfully faithful to the original that they managed to transmit it in a way that included whatever patina/umami the original had.

I'd really like to hear the opinions of the architects and builders of new courses on your first paragraph. That could be interesting to hear.

[Tags:]

Tags: