[Tom Kelly]

Having read the comments regarding rankings and value for money on a few of the other current threads I have a question or two.

If magazine rankings were changed to include a value for money factor how would it affect the golf industry?

 - Would golfers be influenced by the rankings enough to change their habits  and therefore force a change in pricing, maintenance and running costs of courses?  

 - Would the architecturally stronger courses benefit more than the poorer but cheaper courses?

 - Would if eventually affect the average cost of golf? For better or worse?

 - Would anybody take any notice?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I have had several owners set their greens fee below $50 to keep in the GD "Best New Affordable" category, which is easier to win, place, and show in.

I think most golfers are value conscious to start with.  I bet most seek out the best new value courses in their area.  How many of us really travel just to see a "best new" resort course?  Presuming we average one golf trip a year (maybe two) there are still far too many courses out there that we want to play.  It is a rare course that bumps an old timer off the list to be must play in place of some other famous course.

Obviously, GD recognizes that you can usually do more with more money.  I suspect the big winners would be courses on spectacular sites, but then, what else is new?

Can we really parse it more than over/under $50?  Would taking Pebble Beach's 8.whatever score and dividing it by $400 to yield a value adjusted score of 0.02125 make people want to play it less than Rustic Canyon, that might have a 7 score divided by $40 (estimates, I don't know the actual numbers) for a 0.175 score, or about 8X better by that system?

I think most of us here would say the rankings game is maxed out and already hard enough to understand, justify, etc.  In general, I think the mags do a good job of having writers just tell us whats pretty good out there for the price, without any more detailed rankings.

Just my $0.02

[Phil McDade]

The difficulty with this exercise, of course, is defining exactly what "value" is -- and what it costs. GD presumes it to be $50, but I've played some of the courses that have shown up on that list over the years and think I overpaid (by about two times!) for the "value" I got out of it. By the same token, I'm guessing most folks think they got tremendous "value" out of their rounds at Cypress Point, regardless of what it cost them to play there. Cypress is probably an outlier in that regard, but so is (arguably) a place like Spring Valley, the Wisconsin Langford that many of us like that provides more architectural fun than 90 percent of the courses in the state for less than $25 (all-day fee) on weekends.

[John Kavanaugh]

Most of the courses are private.  The golf is free after you join.

[jeffwarne]

It depends entirely on region, and/or who your competitors are.

Bandon seems very expensive UNTIL you compare it to Pebble Beach, or Pinehurst, suddenly it's a relative bargain

Rustic at $45 (that's their current internet rate) is probably better value than Aiken GC at $25 given the relative income of their respective areas.

[David_Tepper]

"I think most golfers are value conscious to start with."

While the majority of golfers may be value conscious, there is clearly an appreciable segment of the market that is not. That segment of the market is driven by status and image and is willing to pay (or even overpay) to satisfy their desires in that regard. Exclusivity has long been part of the game here in the U.S. and it is hard to imagine that ever changing.

My guess is the vast majority of handicap golfers could not tell the difference in their games between using a Titleist Pro-V and a Titleist Solo, yet they are willing to pay two to three times as much for former vs. the latter.   

[Tom Kelly]

Phil, I don’t really want the discussion to get bogged down in how you would determine a fair value factor as I would prefer to discuss the effects it might have on the market and be abit more hypothetical about the subject but….

I was thinking along the lines of asking what the raters were willing to pay for a round at each course given its quality and then compare that to the actual green fee and factor that figure into the overall score. So say TOC cost £100 and I was willing to pay £150 (which would be decided in relation to the cost of the other courses it competes against in it’s market) you could times TOCs overall score from all the other attributes in the ranking by 1.5. It wouldn’t be overly radical but enough to alter the rankings slightly.

If courses such as The Belfry or Wentworth dropped down the UK rankings massively (they are hugely overpriced imo), would that affect golfers willingness to pay the exorbitant fees? Would the courses react to the market and reduce their fees? What about the other questions I pose in the original post?

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

I'm not sure how it would impact the rankings. Hasn't there been pretty ample evidence that course owners -- I'm thinking of the high-end, public, Country Club For a Day (CCFD) model -- willingly price their rounds well above a given market, in order to capture a market that equates prices with quality? I'm just not sure golf round pricing follows any rationale model anymore, and my sense is that's infected golfers' perception of courses and quality (and thus notions of value). And I assume raters aren't really all that different than your average plays-a-lot golfer regarding these things.

[C. Squier]

There are 17,672 courses in the US according to the world's most accurate source on everything: Wikipedia.  We're talking about the supposed BEST 100 courses, which is roughly the top 0.6%. 

Tell me, if you're looking at any other hobby/pastime/sport/wine/jewelry/whatever's top 0.6% when does "value" ever come into play?  Nobody is price sensative when it comes to the VERY best in whatever they're talking about. Except golfers

But point is, it makes no logical sense to add "value" to the ratings of the very best golf courses.

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