The Law of Diminishing Returns

[Steve Lang]

  Mike,

 congrats on 31 yrs... does your wife play golf?    is she amazed at things more than you??? 


ps... ms sheila & i have you by 51 days...

[Ally Mcintosh]

Before I got involved with golf course architecture, I would routinely get thrilled by golf courses. I just loved playing new courses.

As my understanding of GCA rapidly grew, I found myself playing better courses but having less of a thrill, primarily because I always found something that I didn't like so I'd spend time analysing and critiquing.... A little glass half empty some of the time....

In recent years, I do everything I can to turn off my GCA brain during my round / day and just enjoy the experience. The learning, analysing and possibly utilising can wait until I need it. It's more objective that way. Difficult to do though.

[mike_beene]

I think it is human nature to get less excited about anything once it becomes more familiar. We need reminders of how unique and worthwhile familiar places are. The real battle is not to become a know it all entitled jerk. I wish I could win that battle more often than I do,and not just in golf.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I gotta get out more. 

[David Davis]

I think this is a rather interesting post and conundrum in and of itself.

Michael I'm not sure I'm in the same boat as you. I'm traveling and seeing courses now and certainly loving every minute of it. However, as you mention it's rare to be blown away, especially the more you see.

This affects me when I think about the future and makes me wonder a lot about whether taking the red pill was the wise choice. (that's a Matrix reference for those thinking wtf - "You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

Now that I've seen most of the depths of the rabbit hole and I approach a stage in life when I might not yet have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up (I'm 45 btw) but I may have to face up to deciding where I want to live when I grow up and have to determine what impact golf will have on this. In only a couple years my kids will be grown up to the point I could think of leaving The Netherlands after 25 years here. Or even worse I could consider staying put. The options are perfectly open. From a golf standpoint places like St. Andrews, North Berwick/Gullane, Melbourne and to a certain extent Bandon seem like the best places to live if you can find work. The Netherlands is not bad either.

[John Kavanaugh]

Shocking isn't it that people who run around the world going from course to course wake up one day and find it all so empty.

[Brent Hutto]

Having seen quite a few really good to great golf courses, lately I find my daydreams are often along the lines of returning to some course I really enjoyed and playing it many more times than about seeing new courses I've never played before.

For my part, once I can name 20 courses I'm 100% certain I'd enjoy playing again it's hard to get too excited about "finding" yet another fine course that's new to me. I get it, there are more good golf courses than anyone could play in a lifetime. The marginal utility of the 20th or 50th or 200th different good golf course is minuscule.

Beyond a certain level of golf-course quality, the enjoyment I get from playing golf is entirely about the occasion or the weather or the companionship or the competition or how I play that day. After a while the novelty of the course matters not at all.

[David Davis]

Shocking isn't it that people who run around the world going from course to course wake up one day and find it all so empty.

John, ignorance is bliss isn't it?

I often remark how much simpler life would be growing up in the Mid West out in Kansas (for lack of a better example) and never leaving or traveling outside of the state/let alone country. Keeping the TV and radio off and not getting an internet subscription.

I know from a non-golf world view this sure would of made life easier, less stressful and as long as I didn't know what I was missing I could be eternally happy 

But then again I would of never made it to the some of the best places on the planet for golf. Like Bandon, or Melbourne. Tough choice.

[Mike Hendren]

Shocking isn't it that people who run around the world going from course to course wake up one day and find it all so empty.

I know how much you enjoy playing golf - I have you in my top five.  Your statement has merit.  Regardless of how fascinating golf courses are, they will never be as fascinating as the game itself.   I just can't seem to get my love of the game back.  It's disheartening.

Bogey

[John Kavanaugh]

Mike, I know you have read what I am about to say before. You can not find the innocence of true love until you get rid of your sense of privilege. Drop your Rater status, quit a site that you are embarrassed to post under your real name and go enjoy golf for the golf.  Not for where you are and who will be impressed because you are there.

[Mike_Young]

Shocking isn't it that people who run around the world going from course to course wake up one day and find it all so empty.

I know how much you enjoy playing golf - I have you in my top five.  Your statement has merit.  Regardless of how fascinating golf courses are, they will never be as fascinating as the game itself.   I just can't seem to get my love of the game back.  It's disheartening.

Bogey

Bogey,
Golf is like women.  If you think you will find a love for the game in running around playing all the "great ones" and continue to seek the merits of each you will become completely frustrated.  You got to find that one you can play each day for the rest of your life.  Then you will get it back.  I love reading and seeing the greats but my most fun is playing with my buddies at our own spot...Think about it...lots of correlation between the two.....cheers...