How much does a golfer’s skill level impact his bias in critiquing a course?

[Matthew Lloyd]

This has probably been discussed here before, but it’s sort of a broad question, so it was a tough theme to search for. 

In discussing golf courses with others a recurring complaint is how “unfair” some holes are – especially some of the more controversial ones such as #14 at Bandon Trails and the like. 

I’m a very average golfer who considers breaking 85 a great round, and as a result rarely dislike or criticize a design for being unfair, or allow it to bias my “review” of a course.  If a course kicks my ass, then I generally assume that my game is just not good enough. I came close to labeling all of Wolf Run (and particularly #13) as unfair, but at the end of the day I had too much damn fun playing there to blame the course, despite what the 108 on my scorecard would tell you.

But I’ll pose this question to the really good golfers on this site (and I know there are many): if you take a really objective look at the courses you’ve played and critiqued, are there instances where you feel like you haven’t given the design its due credit because your golfing ego has been bruised?  Or, alternatively, are there courses you’ve perhaps given too much credit because it fits your game so well? 

[Tom_Doak]

Matthew:

I think everyone is biased in their critiques of courses by their own skill level, no matter what it is.

We try to imagine what the course will play like for others, but we KNOW what it played like for us.

Unfortunately, the small sample size [assuming we only played the course once or twice] makes our observations of the course for us, not much more significant than our guesses about how it plays for others. 

[Ryan Coles]

Tom

What are the strengths and weaknesses of your game and do these impact on your work to any extent?

Matthew

To answer your question (not that I'd claim to be an elite player), no, not in my case. I'm wild off the tee but relatively long. However I like shorter courses. The berkshire are ideal in length for my taste for an inland course and somewhere like saunton east when f&f is my perfect links distance. Most/more likely to cloud judgement is the weather and condition of the greens.

[David_Elvins]

In the broad world  (including art, movies, music, restaurants or drama), a critique of a piece of work  will do generally four to five  things:

1 - explain the style of the piece of work and what audience it will likely appeal to.

2 - make broad judgments about the quality of various aspects of the work.

3 - put the work into a broader context and further discussion of the art.

4 - be entertaining to read

5 - assign a numerical rating.


So to go through each point and assess the affect of bias:

1 - a golfer's skill level should not affect his critical ability to describe the style of golf course and who it would appeal to.

2 - a golfer's ability (as well as his level of creativity, intelligence, upbringing etc) will affect the way he assesses the quality of the work but this is really no different to a film critic (professional or friend) preferring action movies or arthouse movies.   Individuals have varying tastes in everything.  This in itself is not a problem if you can can put the critique into context.

3 - Going by the comments of Sean Arble and others in the layman routing thread, there seems to be a school of thought that furthering an understanding of the profession is irrelevant to critiques and reviews and the focus should be on the experience.  Personally I would love it if more reviews discussed the context of a golf course in the way that the New Yorker reviews art, plays, music and film.

4 - There are very few professional writers critiquing golf courses, either in publications, on the web or on this discussion board, leaving a vacuum for the views of the uninformed to carry more weight. A friend declaring that Rees Jones is the greatest architectect of all time carries more weight than a friend declaring that Steven Segal is the greatest actor of all time because there just isn't a great body of educated opinion that counters the claim.

5 - Whilst in the broader artistic world a lot of reviews don't even carry a numerical review, in the world of golf courses, the agregated numerical review carries such a disproportionate weight that it seems like it makes it important for critics to be 'accurate' when critics will always be biased.  

Even a website like rotten tomatoes that agregates ratings into a numerical summary links back to the individual written reviews.  In this way you can find reveiwers that you like or dislike and focus your further attention on them or way from them.  If the magazine top 100 lists are a guide to help you choose where to play, imagine ho much useful it would be if you could click on a course and it would link the score and a paragraph written by every rater who visited the course in the way that rotten tomatoes or metacritic does.  You could then find out pretty quickly which raters you respected and focus on the courses that they particularly enjoy.  

Without the ability to do this, it creates a false impression that ratings are definitive and absolute without any biases from the raters. Which then leads others to claim that their rankings are more definitive.  And on and on.  Which is the real problem IMO.

Apologies if I rambled.  In summary, of course everyone is biased, the problem is the way this is not accounted for in discussion, critiques, and rankings.  

[Sean_A]

Matthew

I think most golfers willing to write on the subject eventually develop a sense of what they enjoy and why.  The issue is to be clear on what those preferences are.  Most of the time the reader will get a sense of the writer's preferences after a small handful of reviews.  For myself, I try to check my preferences by thinking of how my grandmother gets around the course and if in doing so they are playing essentially the same course as me.  In other words, it doesn't impress me when an archie uses five sets of tees to accomplish playability or tries to create similar shots by sticking bunkers in all over the place.  On the other end of the spectrum, can the course challenge expert golfers (so far as I understand how expert golfers play  )?  Though, over time this has become less meaningful for me for two reasons.  1st, the gap between a +5 and a 28 has grown considerably in my lifetime; making it almost a futile goal to create a course for all players.  2nd, it isn't nearly as important that we have more championship courses as we do fun, playable courses for the bogey golfer.  Still, if a course can accomodate both ends of the spectrum without changing its character its a most impressive accomplishment for a championship course.  I am convinced that this is one of the biggest reasons TOC gets so much love even if it is a championship course like no other.  Its so unsual that many don't think it is a championship course 

David

I don't think its useless to further the understanding of the profession.  Its just that I think its better left to guys who know what they are talking about and that doesn't include me. 

Ciao

[Brent Hutto]

What's the difference in "bias" and "ability to evaluate"?

I can play a course four or five times and have a pretty good idea of how it plays for a short-hitting bogey golfer. And if I play with other people maybe a fair sense of how it plays for certain other types of players.

But no way I can make an informed judgement of how it plays for elite golfers, not unless I was there watching some sort of serious competition being played.

It gets back to that thread about people talking about stuff as though it were fact, when they can't possibly have a frickin' clue. For me to hold forth on the quality of a course or its playing value relative to the game of a US Amateur, big-time NCAA or professional golfer would be pure hogwash or at the very best highly speculative.

So I think "bias" in this context should be taken more of "point of view". Anyone judging a course on its presumed merits for a game with which they are not themselves familiar is trading so-called "bias" for the pretense of knowledge they do not possess.

P.S. And don't even get me started on a course evaluation in which a handicap golfer spends 6-1/2 hours on the property (90 minutes of which are spent in the dining room and locker room) goes around and shoots 79 (while also taking 100 photos) and then writes up a detailed critique of how it plays for everyone from a 90-shooter to a Tour pro based on their single round. The main "bias" there is thinking they know anything at all about the course, given they haven't even seen the right side of half the holes or the left side of half the others.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom

What are the strengths and weaknesses of your game and do these impact on your work to any extent?

Ryan:

Take a guess 

I've always been a good putter and I used to have a really good short game to go with it -- not so much of the latter now.

I used to be a very wayward driver, but I'm much better at that now with the new equipment.

My handicap is 11 so I'm pretty erratic.   

And, yes, my golf courses generally cater to these elements of my game.  However, I would build them differently if I didn't think this was the sort of game that many golfers play.  It makes sense to design courses for them -- not just for me. 

I think a lot of architects design for themselves [I'm even pretty good at guessing whether they hit a fade or a draw, after seeing one of their courses].  But that may also be the problem, because most architects are good golfers and therefore their courses tend to be difficult for the average guy.


Kudos to Brent for his post just above mine.  The word "bias" is overused here.  Everyone has a slightly different point of view.

[Thomas Dai]

Didn't one famous player say about another famous player from a later generation something like - "he plays a game with which I am not familiar"

atb

[Peter Pallotta]

Maybe I'm simplifying this too much. Brent says there's no way he can make an informed judgment on how a course plays for elite golfers. Well, I don't think I need to be all that informed to make a good guess about that. The elite player will split the fairway with a long drive and then hit the green on the fly and then two putt, over and over again -- except for the 3 times or some he doesn't get up and down from a bunker or hits a poor first putt from the wrong side of the green. And he'll end up shooting a 75 or so, give or take -- whether it's on Tom's course or Jack's course or Pete's course or CBM's course. That's why he's an elite player -- his skill set tends to ameliorate architectural differences between one course and another.  

Meanwhile, if a play a round alongside a 60 year old veteran with a deft short game and a 6 handicap, a 30 something that hits it a mile and is probably 12, a 50 year old who hits some great shots but is erratic and a poor putter and is a 16, and with me mucking it around 'thinking' like I'm Hogan and Tom D about the architecture, getting distracted, flubbing chips, hooking drives, and stumbling in around 90, I think I can get a good idea of how a course plays for the REST of us, even after one round. Our various skill sets DON'T ameliorate architectural differences, and I think this fore some would notice and could meaningfully comment on how a course by Tom D vs Jack vs Pete vs CBM 'works', ie. how well it succeeds for them; and indeed could also probably articulate the differences between one Tom D course and another in this regard.

Peter  

[Brent Hutto]

Peter,

Would you be a course rater by any chance?

Not trying to be snide but the exact belief that you just expressed is pretty much the underlying justification for the entire rating process..that along with a belief that taking averages cures all manner of ills in the original data...

FWIW, I completely reject both of those beliefs and the whole rating thing but that's just a personal opinion. Although I believe it's a good one!

[Peter Pallotta]

Brent - I'm not sure if I should say thank you or how dare you! No, not a rater or a ranker, just a writer who read all the posts before mine and let them roll around in my head and then found my fingers typing out that response. (Btw, not that it would probably change your post, but note that I've been tinkering with my response and may have added/taken away something that moderates it/the meaning.) But I'll have to think about this, because if there's something I wrote that relates to the 'taking averages to cure all ills in the data' I'd have to rethink it.

Peter

[Brent Hutto]

Here's the key to taking averages. They smooth out random noise but do nothing to eliminate invalid data.

In the case of course ratings, if you could get raters to stick to only taking into account the things they are most able to evaluate (i.e. how the course plays for a game very much like however they played on that day) and if you get a nice, broad representation of player types and abilities and if the majority of them are playing something like "their usual game" on the day then by averaging you get a sense of how the course suits that broad variety of players.

But my suspicion is, even if you instruct otherwise the raters conceptualize themselves as issuing a broadly applicable rating of the course's quality generally speaking. They are unlikely to limit themselves strictly to their own game that day, they will also use their imagination to determine how such and such hole would have played from the fairway or how tough some certain holes would play for a slicer or what it would be to be able to carry those fairway bunkers from the back tees. As such, much of what influences each rating is highly speculative.

Averaging over highly speculative ratings will tend to produce a smoothed-out estimate of groupthink, not a more accurate rating of a courses true nature.

[Sean_A]

Brent

At least to some degree, I think you are mistaken.  Many folks have played many golf courses in many conditions over a great many with many people of varying ability.  That is a ton of experience and information.  You may not like how the experience is applied, but that doesn't negate the validity of the information or that some guys will get it spot on or so close it doesn't matter.

Ciao 

[Brent Hutto]

Sure, some guys will. I don't think the vast majority of people who think they can do that, can in fact do that. It requires either a truly staggering amount of experience or it requires a very disciplined attempt at evaluating to a pre-planned rubric of some sort.

Either of which is quite believable. I just don't believe that every guy who thinks he knows how to rate a golf course is in fact able to do so in a way that minimizes what the original poster called "bias".

P.S. Let me put a finer point on it. To the extent there's any issue with a Sean Arble evaluation of a golf course being off the mark for someone who read it, the problem is almost certain "bias". You're experienced enough to know how to take the measure of a course so all that's left is your own self-described predilections for things like affordability or being suitable for a group of variously-skilled players to have a fun game all playing from a single set of tees. That sort of thing. You may have biases but you're not just making stuff up or over-generalizing.

Same for Tom Doak. If he says something about a course it's either the gods honest truth or if it's not then there must be some sort of bias that causing him to up-rate or down-rate particular features or attributes. It can't be that he failed to notice something because his "notice" is so highly tuned.

But if I try to make general statements about the quality of a course in some objective sense or where it stands on a world-wide rating scale, any biases I might have are beside the point. The real point is I've only seen a small number of courses representing a narrow range of types and I am not nor have I ever been a highly-skilled player. So for me to generalize isn't a "bias" thing it's a "making stuff up" thing. I think there are more people comment on and/or rating golf courses with "making stuff up" problems than we might care to admit on this forum.

[Chris DeToro]

I think Brent makes a great point about bias and ability to evaluate.  But as most of us get one, maybe 2, cracks at a particular course, I think unfortunately bias ends up forming a lot of our evaluation and thoughts about a course.  I also think the frame of mind going into a particular round plays a role as well.  I think we all go into a round wanting to play our best, but playing a more competitive round wanting to play your best and playing a casual round wanting to play your best are two different mindsets, in my opinion

[Sean_A]

Brent

I don't think its that complicated.  At the end of the day, its an opinion.  Folks can take it or leave it.  I automatically assume when folks write that it isn't fact, just thoughts, observations, assumptions and conclusions - I hope folks offer me the same courtesy  .  Its sort of the same thing when talking about great courses.  Great is a given so I reckon when a guy slams something about a great course that it is in relation to other great courses, not a muni in Delaware  .  

Ciao

[Brent Hutto]

I'm sorry for the hijack of the thread into ratings. That's my real beef.

As for detailed opinions posted here, fortunately they always come labeled as to their sources. And I know my sources, one from another. Yes indeed I do!