From the Archives - Course Rankings!

[Peter Pallotta]

Golf Club Atlas, in the Jazz Age!

A 1927 "Golf Illustrated" article entitled "Famous Golf Courses of America: Pine Valley" includes hole-by-hole details, and course rankings. According to Joshua Crane (if I've read his list correctly, as it's a little hard to read):

1. National
2. Merion
3. Pine Valley
4. Kittansett
5. Myopia

He also ranks 4 British courses higher than the National:

1. Muirfield
2. Gleneagles
3. Prince's
4. Troon

And then ranks the rest of the great British courses this way (i.e. in this order):

Sandwich
Hoylake
Walton Heath
Sunningdale
Turnberry
Deal
Prestwick
Westward Ho!
North Berwick, and
St. Andrews.

Well, Mr. Crane, I believe you may have some explaining to do, or at least an argument on your hands  

Peter
(still hoping I read it right)






 

[TEPaul]

Peter:

Joshua Crane's rating or ranking system was extremely controversial in his own time. He inspired some excellent counterpoint articles from the likes of Max Behr and perhaps even some books his rating or ranking system was so controversial.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom:
thanks, that's a very neat (and to me, surprising) piece of information.

I posted because I thought some would find the rankings interesting, but I'd thought that the interest lay mainly in discussing the rise and fall/birth and death of reputations, and in wondering about how the vagaries of fate and changing cultural and aesthetic values impact on such rankings. It never occurred to me that Crane's list could've raised as many questions 80 years ago as it does now.

Is this whole process roughly analogous to the one that Golf Digest's "Top 100" will go through?    

Peter

[Tony_Muldoon]

He also ranks 4 British courses higher than the National:

1. Muirfield
2. Gleneagles
3. Prince's
 

For anyone who has the time to do a proper search of these archives it would be fascinating to know why Prince's was held in such high esteem in it's original, pre WW2, 18 hole version.  I've read several books of the time where Prince's was obviously ranked as one of the best and in part it's those memories that cause people to look at todays course with a jaundiced eye.  The origianal Prince's may just be one of the greatest NLE's.

[Sean_A]

Tony

I think Prince's used to play over the dunes much more than today's modern version of a links.  Prince's was also a very hip place for Londoners to hang out in season so it became very popular in that many more people saw the course relative to the more high brow Sandwich and Deal.  

I have no idea if Prince's former reputation has anything to do with people looking at the modern course with a jaundiced eye.  I have a lot of time for Prince's and am perplexed that the course isn't thought more highly of.  

Ciao

Sean  

[wsmorrison]

Bob Crosby has been searching for articles on Joshua Crane for some time now.  The USGA is making his task a lot easier.  Hooray for the USGA!  Peter, I'll tell Bob that you found this article among others he was looking for--unless he's already done his search.  

I bet he's already seen Crane's article on St. Andrews in the Feb 1926 Golf Illustrated.

[TEPaul]

Peter:

As Wayne said Bob Crosby has been after those Joshua Crane articles, or I guess I should say ranking controversy for a long time, and I'm sure will add to this thread.

As far as I know Crane developed his own rather cold and impersonal mathematical system on how to determine the quality of golf courses.

I can't say at this moment precisely what it was other than to say it viewed any golf course in some odd scientific/mathematical way that Crane developed that was obviously so devoid of the inclusion of what makes golf courses unique and individual perhaps in such things as topographical make-up and individual character that it basically incurred the wrath of people such as MacKenzie, Behr and others, particularly when his system just happened to rank the Great Old Course as it did.

Apparently, it's not that Crane didn't like TOC just that TOC came in way low when he applied his system to it and back in that day one just didn't criticize TOC that like that and get away with it.

Such as Behr and MacKenzie (maybe Hunter too) knew Crane and they let him have it when they were all together at TOC (in what they claimed was a harsh but friendly way) and then they began to write about how how inappropriate and  inapplicable his system was in determining the actual playing value and overall quality of a golf course (and architecture?).

Apparently it inspired some writing that began to explore and explain far better the importance of "aura" or the "intangibles" of architecture that were not necessarily measurable by such things as a ruler or slide rule which is what Crane was apparently attempting to do, or at least do too much.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom:
thank you.  This is getting more interesting to me all the time.  Your use of the word "mathematical" seems to be spot on: Crane's article is full of numbers and percentages, comparing not only one course to another but also one hole to another. (His ranking categories include "Design", "Quality", and "Course as Whole".)  

His "system" must have been quite intricate; and whatever its worth, it did rank Pine Valley highly, which course he praises for being "boldly designed". (Maybe TOC was too "natural" for him - i.e. it was the work of human hands that appealed to him most.)

Wayne: I downloaded and saved the pdf file of the "Golf Illustrated" I mentioned. If BCrosby IMs me I'll be happy to email him the file and save him the search.

Peter  

[Garland Bayley]

You downloaded the article? Can you post the link to where you downloaded it from?

[BCrosby]

Crane was a fascinating guy. He grew up in Boston, was an amateur tennis champion, world class sailor and a superb golfer. Heir to the Crane fortune, he spent his life as an international sportsman. (Where might I appy for that job?)

He was in many respects the antagonist to MacKenzie's protagonist. They did not like each other. MacK liked Crane's analysis and ranking of golf courses even less. He gets mentioned prominently in the first chapter of MacK's Spirit of St Andrews.

As for Prince's, it must have been something. The '32 Open was held there and the consensus view was that it was a top 10 UK course. My guess is that the current course isn't even a pale shadow of the pre-WWII course.

There is an article on Prince's in one of the GI's on the USGA website. It's hard to make sense of the descriptions of the holes in the article without a routing of the pre-WWII course. Does anyone happen to have one? Tom MacW?


Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Garland,
I downloaded the entire January 1927 Golf Illustrated that contained the article.  The USGA archives have it as a single pdf file, so it was easiest to download/save it that way. If you go to the USGA link that Peter Pittock provided:

http://www.usga.org/aboutus/museum/library/segl.html

you get right to the site's search engine. I typed in "Pine Valley" and a number of hits came back, in this case because the name of the article is "Famous Golf Courses of America: Pine Valley".  

By the way: 1) I tried to email the file to others, but my system at least won't let me attach it to an email because it exceeds the 10mb limit, 2) I printed out some pages, but it is actually easier to read either on line or on your acrobat reader, as I think you can magnify the print size, and that's helpful (though either way it can be a tough read in parts)

Peter

[Garland Bayley]

Got it.

Thanks Peter

[Peter Pallotta]

It may be interesting to compare/contrast the past with the present. So, according to the January 1926 Golf illustrated, Joshua Crane's "method" for ranking courses was as follows:

"Each hole is rated on Design and Layout (as if a plasticene model were used), and then on Condition and Upkeep, separately, so as to be able to compare them with others in regards these main divisions, a thousand points being maximum for each. This 1000 points is divided under Design and Layout as follows:

Tees (including size and contours): 40
Rough (including character, width and contour): 80
Fairways (including width and contour): 250
Traps (including all forms of shot control, location, size and shape): 140
Greens (including shape, size and contour): 250
Parallel Holes: 20
Visibility (Tee shot, 65; Green shot, 135): 200
Distance Green to Tee: 20

There are also 1000 points under Conditions and Upkeep:

Tees (quality of turf, condition and fixtures): 80
Rough (quality of grass, condition and drainage): 130
Fairways (quality of grass, condition and drainage): 300
Traps (quality of sand, condition and drainage): 100
Greens (quality of grass, condition and drainage): 200
Parallel Holes: 10
Caddies (a vital point nowadays): 50
Surroundings: 30
 
Then by averaging all the holes, and combining the Design and Layout with the Condition and Upkeep, a percentage is obtained which represents the value of the course. This value is then modified by certain elements which apply to the Course as Whole, such as Length of Course, Exposure to Winds, Order of Holes (and in this is included the requirements of the proper number of one, two and two and a half shotters, their fairly equal division into two equal nines, the importance of fine finishing holes, etc), and Difficulty Walking (an important item in pleasure of playing). The only item left out is the annoyance of mosquitoes,flies, and other local pests, a real one when playing....."

Well, there you have it: the way one (controversial) ranker ranked the great courses in the mid 1920s.

Peter  

[Tony_Muldoon]

As for Prince's, it must have been something. The '32 Open was held there and the consensus view was that it was a top 10 UK course. My guess is that the current course isn't even a pale shadow of the pre-WWII course.

There is an article on Prince's in one of the GI's on the USGA website. It's hard to make sense of the descriptions of the holes in the article without a routing of the pre-WWII course. Does anyone happen to have one? Tom MacW?


Bob

Bob I found this.

This is from “The British Open” by Francis Murray.  There are these drawings of each course the open has been played on at the end of the book.  I’ve yet to find any errors so I assume this is accurate.



I imagine that the second shot on 8 and the tee shot on 11 played blind.  As you walked to the top of the dune on 8 you would get a fantastic view of Pegwell Bay something largely missing today.

This is the current layout. Unfortunately it's drawn at 180 degress to the other one.  I have pictures that I’ll post on a separate thread.