[paul cowley]

....when rating courses ,would it be benificial to include a new category that allows a rater to assess the designers ability to incorporate the new design with the existing site?

 alot has been said about pebble being a great course without the atlantic,
or pinehurst #2 in the pines , or sand hills and bandons rapid rise given 'to die for ' sites.

 or built from scratch courses [i.e. shadow creek or even lido].

 did the course yield the most out of what was given ?

 how creative was the designer in utilizing the site and budget ?

.....i know this assumes a certain level and ability on the raters behalve , but maybe thats not bad either.........

[Jonathan Cummings]

said about pebble being a great course without the atlantic

cringe......

[A_Clay_Man]

I just assumed Paul is from elsewhere, so subbing Atlantic for Pacific is not so unforgiveable.

Paul- My take on what I think your asking is that the rater has to evaluate what is on the ground and not what might have been.

Using Spanish Bay as the epitome of such a debate, on what could've been, is fruitless. The criteria Dr. Klein uses, that does cover this issue is, "overall land plan". Which if a rater feels strongly enough about, can be reflected in this category. But one again, the final tabulation is not directly related to the number given to one category or criteria. I believe this allows for the whole to be greater than the sum of it's parts. Or, better known as Art.

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

 alot has been said about pebble being a great course without the atlantic,
or pinehurst #2 in the pines , or sand hills and bandons rapid rise given 'to die for ' sites.

Just to clear things up... that big body of water off the left side of the U.S. map is the Pacific.  The Atlantic is off the right side... you know, adjacent to Kiawah Island...

[J_McKenzie]

In Paul's defense, he has been traveling almost weekly between our office on the Ga. coast and a nine hole project under construction near Reno, Nevada.  Weekly red-eye flights eventually take their toll.

John

[Dan Kelly]

Just to clear things up... that big body of water off the left side of the U.S. map is the Pacific.  The Atlantic is off the right side... you know, adjacent to Kiawah Island...

The Pacific: The Atlantic of the West Coast.

[paul cowley]

.....just so you know ,i looked in my atlas and ,well, its seems i was wrong......and i would like to admit it.

  which makes alot more sense to me now , because when i worked there i could never quite figure out why the sun wasn't rising over the water !

   the ability to learn from one's mistakes marks a progressive mind...

[Jonathan Cummings]

Paul - I like your idea though.  Living in the DC area, if Pebble had an Atlantic address, it would reduce my travels to play that icon!  

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

  which makes alot more sense to me now , because when i worked there i could never quite figure out why the sun wasn't rising over the water !

   

Due to a quirk in our geography, being on the eastern tip of a 10-mile long island with the beach facing south, at certain times of year the sun sets over the Atlantic when viewed from The Ocean Course...  

[Forrest Richardson]

Adam says — "Paul- My take on what I think your asking is that the rater has to evaluate what is on the ground and not what might have been."

The probalem, Adam, is that this logic has no place in a diverse world. I.E., Planet Earth.

For example, when I was in Asiatic Russia in the early 90s I had the worst possible salad and bread...but it was the absolute "best" that was available for the region...and so I felt blessed. Yet, when I've been in the "Food Capitol of the World" — let's say, Venice, Italy — I've had remarkably bad salad and bread...yet it was probably leaps and bounds better than Russia's.

Raters are smart people. Let them rate! And...allow them whatever tools and systems there may be...even special categories and considerations.

[A_Clay_Man]

Forrest- Not sure what your point, to me, is ?

But, if your saying I should rate a course higher, that's built on a difficult site,  giving extra credit for the effort, I don't agree. I believe I can personally hold it in higher esteem for that reality, even if The finished golf course may not jibe with my preferences. But I still feel I can pick a cooresponding numerical value, which properly places it, within the thousand or so courses up for consideration, based on the golf course on the ground and the criteria set forth by the panel. More criteria will not help a course that is "dis-jointed" by site restrictions.

[Forrest Richardson]

Yes, a course does deserve consideration when it is created upon a difficult site — and it also might deserve a negative mark for the initial choice of sites! All of the factors in creating a course — all decisions — should be taken into accout during rating.

Apache Stronghold is a solid course, but I hardly think it's Tom Doak's best work — or even near his best work. It's a great site. Both the architect and the site could have attained a better end result. Perhaps the client or other factors got in the way. This is just one example. There are always nuances associated with projects — to not take them into account would be against human nature.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Paul Cowley,

....when rating courses ,would it be benificial to include a new category that allows a rater to assess the designers ability to incorporate the new design with the existing site?

Do you think that amateur raters, with no architectural education or training are qualified to make that assessment ?

did the course yield the most out of what was given ?

What qualifies the rater to make that assessment ?
What understanding would they have of the site problems that are invisible to the naked eye or their eye ?

how creative was the designer in utilizing the site and budget ?

What professional qualifications would the rater be required to have in order to make those assessments?

How would they be privy to budget information, site problems, acquisition of land and remediation costs

.....i know this assumes a certain level and ability on the raters behalve , but maybe thats not bad either.........

A CERTAIN LEVEL ??

Only a highly qualified, active architect, with ALL of the facts at his disposal could make that assessment, and even then, that assessment would only be his opinion.

Would Doak, C&C, Gil Hanse, Pete Dye and others all build the identical golf course on the same site ??

Don't take this personally, but this is ONE of the dumbest ideas that I've ever heard of regarding ratings.

[Kelly Blake Moran]

Pat,

I agree whole heartedly.  If an architect wants the raters to fully understand the project before rating, then have a big shindig for them, feed them let them play it, give them a full dissertation on the whole process then treat them to some good old fashion entertainment "Colorado football recruiting style"

[THuckaby2]

I'd concur that asking raters like silly me to assess these things would be foolish and not worth more than these letters I just typed.  We have no way of knowing any of these things.

BUT... what if these "ratings" were done by people in the industry - those actually doing this work?

I've often thought that all of this matters big time, in terms of quality of "architecture", but that only those in the business would be qualified to assess it.

I have no idea if this would be at all practical, if the people in the business could be objective or would want to be, in the end who would care about this list for sure...

I just do think that to do assess the best "golf course architecture", well... it sems logical to me that all the things Paul lists do have a great deal of relevance.

TH

[Mike Benham]

BUT... what if these "ratings" were done by people in the industry - those actually doing this work?

It is now evident that a new rating system needs to be finalized.  Let's not change the raters or each magazines criteria.  

First, let's add 2 more polls:

(1) As Huck suggest, a poll by the insiders (architects), similar in fashion to the Coaches Poll in college football with the caveat that you can't vote for you own courses and in typical Chicago style politics, dead architects can vote, but not for their own courses (if you are a dead architect and Tom Fazio has restored your course or made "improvements", you do have the option of voting for the shell of your original design)

(2) the other poll would be the Reader Poll or Joe 6-pack poll.

In true BCS fashion, let's take all the polls (GW, GD, Michelin, USA Today, Matt Ward (the Sagrin of the golf world), throw them into a large computer (I hear the W.O.P.R. is available) and the results will be deemed the C.R.A.P. Rankings  (Course Rating Analysis Process).

Just a thought ...

[THuckaby2]

hell of a good idea, Mike.  You must have a top-notch education.

TH

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