BTW, I just checked Golfweek's ratings.  They put Pacific Dunes above all the U.S. courses rated 9, except ANGC.  They also put it above all the Doak 10's except Pine Valley and CPC, and in a tie with Shinnie.  Overall, Golfweek ranks Pacific Dunes tied for 5th in the U.S., one one-hundredth of a point behind ANGC.  Only PVGC, CPC, ANGC and Sand Hills are rated higher.  

Jim,

Golfweek's ratings for Modern and Classic are not meant to be combined so you can't take the rating a modern course gets and plug it into the Classic list to see where it would fall overall.   Modern coursess are rated and ranked against other modern courses only and the same goes for the classic courses.

In other words the two lists are separate entities and are not supposed to be combined to achieve a Top 200 list.

Black Forest is a five, with better conditioning than what I saw, a six. IMO, Doak was under a lot of self imposed pressure when he was making Pacific Dunes, didn't want to screw up the great site. I'd give it a 10, I don't downgrade the green-tee transitions.

Voytek,
I think the Scream is still missing. But the guys who did it were just convicted in Oslo. They have not revealed where the paintings are.

Ville

 9.23 on the moderns is a different scale than 9.23 on the classics?  

Each is a relative scale for a fixed set of courses.  A relative logarithmic if you please.  Non-intersecting circles on a venn diagram. (I promise not to post a picture)

Doak numbers compared to GD ***** system is easy.  Anything with good conditioning, service and over a Doak 5 is **** or more.  Architects in NJ for example is ****1/2 last I checked the billboard near exit 44.

And yes, indeed, The Scream is still missing, but available for linking to indicate the feelings of the very sooul of golf.

Jordan - yeah, kinda hard to rate Kapalua Plantation using the Doak scale, given how that relates so closely to travel issues...

But if we can move beyond that, I'd call it an 8.  I can't get it to 9, given the definition there.  Is it really one of the best in the world with no weaknesses?  As beautiful as it is, as fun as it is, as great as it is, well... I think the glaring weakness is the cartball nature - dictated by the site, yes, but present nonetheless.  If we're allowed to cheat and use decimals, I'd get it to 8.5 though.  It's almost a 9 as I see it...

And you have to undersand also, anything over 7 is really, really good.  It's sure no knock on K-P to call it an 8....

*whispering*

oops I forgot...

Ummm, I thought Kapalua was Doak.  Ummm, mistake...

*sigh*

 

Tom,

I know an 8 is very, very good.  I was just wondering as all.  I can tell you that if ANGC gets a 9 then certainly an 8 cannot be that bad!!



btw, why does ANGC only have a 9 anyways?

Quote from: Jim Nugent on May 11, 2006, 11:21:42 PM

 9.23 on the moderns is a different scale than 9.23 on the classics?  

Each is a relative scale for a fixed set of courses.  A relative logarithmic if you please.  Non-intersecting circles on a venn diagram. (I promise not to post a picture)

I'm afraid that does not clear things up for me.  

George, think I understand now, thanks.  If I get it right, the raters can only give whole number rankings, which are based on where the course stands compared to the others in its class.  

That leads to some interesting conclusions.  Pine Valley, e.g., gets a rating of 9.46.  That means lots of the raters do not consider it to be among the top ten classic courses in the U.S.  I'm guessing none of them think it is outside the top 25.  If so, more than half of them do not put it in the top 10.  Does that seem as amazing to you as it does to me?  Which ten classic courses do those raters think are better?  

Only one course apparently is rated in the top ten U.S. classics by more than half the raters: CPC.  Merion has ranking under nine.  That means it isn't even in the top 25, at least on one rater's card and perhaps more.  At least one rater didn't put Riviera in the top 50.

I doubt half the people on this DG would rank Pine Valley outside the top ten classic courses.  Is there really that wide a difference in opinion among people who know golf courses well?  Or are some of the raters a bit under-qualified?  

Ha!  Love it.  But you gotta call that the Wall Scale.. all I did was give my version of what a 10 is.

Wall/Huckaby works also.

Funny but that is how these things work for me... I'd bet shivas/Paul Thomas/lots of other guys follow this scale also.

 

The Wallaby scale.

 

PERFECT!

Well done.

 

Tim,
   I am curious why you think PD would rate as one of the handful of best courses in the world if it were in Ireland or Scotland? How would that change how it is viewed?

Ed, I think there is a tendency to give older, historic courses the benefit of the doubt in these ratings, even in the ratings of someone like Tom Doak who has/had a reputation as an iconoclast.  So, I wonder whether some of the courses people rate as 9s and 10s would be rated that highly if they were relatively new courses like Pacific Dunes.  I guess I thought about Scotland and Ireland because Pacific Dunes plays like a links course, and it's reputation might even be greater if it were located where links golf is traditionally played.

Tom, I don't disagree that Bandon has an environment the equal of Scotland/Ireland, but it doesn't have the history, which I think gets factored into these ratings as well.  I'm not going to quibble about whether Pacific Dunes is a 9 or a 10--I was just saying it's not crazy talk to call it a 10.