Acessibility: a criterion for "greatness?"

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

On the GBI vs. USA top 100 thread the issue of "accesibility" of great courses arose.  It has made me wonder.

How about adding this to the criteria of what we conisder "great" about a golf course.  Sure, the purists might say, this has nothing to do with "architecture."  Yes, but do "ambience", "history", "beauty", "walkability" etc. really do either?

If GD etc. started marking courses down for exclusivity (rather that up, as they do with the "ambience" type criteria), might our chances of creating a golf environment in the US which is more like GBI (in terms of virtually universal--though limited--accessibility) improve?  Would this be a good thing?

[Mark_F]

Well if "walking" or "history" can qualify for greatness, then surely accessability should too.
But wouldn't there need to be some sort of cultural revolution in the USA for that too happen?  With the exception of London, a lot of the great courses in Britain are a little out of the way, built by people because of the land and their love of golf.  I'm not sure what the average dues are for the good courses in GB, but I'm sure it would be less than the US because value is held in higher esteem than conditioning.
Also, don't a lot of US clubs, in addition to dues, have a "minimum monthly dining/bar bill"?  That's strange.
There appears to be quite a few people who respond to this site that have accessed a lot of grovel grovel courses.  I couldn't be more jealous of Mr TE Paul if he was a billionaire oil sheik with a harem of supermodels.

[Tony Petersen]

Speaking of the "grovel" factor, what seems to be the best approach when trying to get on a "cherry" course? I've had luck with written letters of introduction, emails and phone calls... My home club in CO, Pole Creek GC, is a Resort course, thus a phone call from the Pro doesn't carry the weight of a private club. Regarding the post, I definitely agree that accessibility should factor into the rankings, though I'm not a big fan of the rankings per se (which has to do with the fact that there are SOOOO many rankings out there).

[Phil_the_Author]

Rich,

You wrote:


[On the GBI vs. USA top 100 thread the issue of "accesibility" of great courses arose.  It has made me wonder.

How about adding this to the criteria of what we conisder "great" about a golf course.  Sure, the purists might say, this has nothing to do with "architecture."  Yes, but do "ambience", "history", "beauty", "walkability" etc. really do either?]

What has "accesibility to do with judging a golf courses "greatness". How does an ability to play a course effect how the course is designed, measure up to different weather (e.g. - wind at a course that will normally effect play such as a seaside course), location, type of grass(es) used, bunker design, etc...

Truth be told it has NOTHING to do with the greatness of a course. An example, my all-time favorite (as many are aware) Bethpage Black. There are NO RESTRICTIONS WHATSOEVER that prevent anyone from anywhere in playing it. The reality is that with the demand to play it being so high, most have a VERY difficulty time in playing it.

Is it "accessible" to everyone for play - YES. Is it AVAILABLE for anyone to play - NO!

Actually, the only ones (and this includes me), who cry out about a ccesibility to play a course, are those who can't. I used to live within walking distance of Garden City Golf Club on Long Island. I lived on the Island for 40 years before moving and was NEVER able to get on the course. Accesible to me? No way, but what does my inability to play it have to do with defining its greatness?

It's long history in international play (history), design characteristics (beauty), dinners, dancing, parties and social functions and their unique rule allowing one to play without wearing a shirt once you start the second hole (walkability and ambience), all CLEARLY help to define its greatness.

[TEPaul]

Some of the ranking and rating "criteria" for architectural greatness is bad enough already! Does anyone really want to make it even worse?

At the very least I would recommend two lists.

One for architectural greatness, period!

And another for both architectural greatness combined with the greatness of a course's accessiblity!

But if I was interested in true architectural greatness, I think I know which one I would depend on.

[BCrosby]

Rich -

Given two courses of more or less equal architectural quality, there is little question that the private course will benefit from an exclusivity premium in the rankings. As you note, usually through the backdoor of the "ambience" category. The "conditioning" category is another indirect way of giving extra credit to private courses. They have a glow that public courses don't, and that skews ratings.

There ought to be a counter-weight to that distortion. I like the idea of an accessiblity category. Add the concept to the mix to balance things off.

In a local example, I am convinced that Peachtree GC is rated as high as it is almost solely becuse of its ambience/history/exclusivity.

Bob

P.S. I do like Phil-the-Author's suggestion however.

Whatever I may think about the quality of the golf course, if the summer dinner dance is a doozy - hey - the course gets extra points. The nice thing about his suggestion is that if the quality of a club's social functions is going to impact a course's rating, more raters will be invited to dinner dances, they will eat better food, and they will drink older scotch with richer women.

That's not an altogether bad thing.

[TEPaul]

Bob:

How would you feel about just throwing out all this extraneous "criteria" altogether and just sticking to straight architectural analysis, instead of trying to counterbalance one extraneous "criteria" against another extraneous "criteria"?

And after the golf and the pure architectural analysis we just take you on down to some fancy supper club and we can all hang out with some rich women and drink some Old Scotch whiskey!

[BCrosby]

Tom -

I am your new best friend. I'm on the way.

Bob

[Scott_Burroughs]

Yes, I do consider walkability to be an essential part of architecture.  And this from someone who considers every golf course walkable.  Some are just more walkable than others and contributes to the design and pleasure of playing.  Non-walkable courses (to others) are mostly (not always) design/routing/available land problems.

[Tim Weiman]

Rich Goodale:

I would probably side with Tom Paul. Aren't we already going too far with non architectural related criteria to add still another?

You are going to have a hard time convincing me that Dornoch should be marked down because it really isn't "accessible".

Oh, sure, I can play it. But, it is an awfully long way from where most people live and that presents an obstacle many, many people can't overcome.

I'm not going to hold that against Dornoch. No way.

[TEPaul]

Tim:

Hilarious on Dornoch! It's a wonderful golf course but could anyone actually live way up there? So it has to be considered inaccessible! But if you ever happen to get there accesiblity has to be a snap because there can't be anyone there!

As odd as this might sound, Coore & Crenshaw seem to care about that sort of thing or at least consider it. When I first got to know Coore he surprised me by asking what I thought about them building a course that must have been pretty far removed from things in New Mexico. Naturally, I said I had no idea at all because I'd never been there.

And recently they'd looked at a site somewhere up in the very farthest reaches of Scotland that he described as otherworldly beautiful and extremely potential for golf but alas they passed on it as they couldn't see how anyone could really get there!

Interesting!

[brad_miller]

Private clubs most often benifit from the speed of play, ambiance aspect also. I believe "hard to get on clubs" benifit from this in the magazine rankings.

[THuckaby2]

TEP: Coore & Crenshaw care about this, yet they did Sand Hills?  That sets new records for remoteness in my book... I guess it's all relative but Mullen, NE is OUT THERE.

Some sites are just too good to pass up no matter what - this proves it!

TH

[TEPaul]

TomH:

It's odd, isn't it, that Coore and Crenshaw would pass on other remote sites they feel are naturally really good after hitting such a homerun with Sand Hills?

So who knows really? Maybe Coore and Crenshaw have some of that Mercedes mentality! It seems to me that as soon as Mercedes has a model that hits maximum popularity the first thing they do is discontinue it and go on to something else!

[THuckaby2]

Very good thought, TEP.  Kinda hard to top Sand Hills by any measure... and particularly in the "great golf in remote site" category!

TH

[TEPaul]

TomH:

And to complicate things even more, it appears to me that Coore & Crenshaw don't seem to give that much thought to whether their next project tops one of their other ones. If you ask me the biggest interest to them is in "difference". That's what I hear most of the time--that the next one can be "different" in some way. I guess they're quite interesting in various ways to stretch themselves.

[THuckaby2]

Difference... ah yes, I get it.  They seem to have succeeded mightily in that, haven't they?

TH

[BCrosby]

Rich can speak for himself (and I trust that he will) but I don't think by "accessibility" he means geographical accessibility. If the only reason you haven't played an important course is because you haven't bothered to travel to it, that's not the fault of the course.

(Speaking of accessibility, Royal Dornoch is not that much farther from Atlanta than, say, Pebble Beach. I have first hand, empircal evidence. Flight from ATL to Inverness, car to Dornoch requires about the same time as flight to SF, getting lost in SF airport parking lot, getting out of the SF airport, getting stuck in traffic in SF, getting lost after taking a detour to show my daughter Stanford, gridlock in San Jose, etc.)

Rich is talking about private clubs that severely restrict non-member play.

And I think he has a point. If few people will ever play a course because of its exclusivity, the public's interest in where that course may rank is lessened. I am a case in point. I am much more interested in GB/I rankings because I've played more of the top courses there.  

That same exclusivity has a curious and mirror image impact on raters who actually play these courses. They give these courses bonus points for ambience, conditioning or whatever. Think of it as a sort of extra credit for letting the lowly rater through the front gate.

It is harder to build and maintain a great course that is open to the public than it is to build and maintain a great course that is not. So apporpriate adjustments to rankings should be made.

Or, on second thought, we take TEP's suggestion. Drop all non-architectural categories; rank only design features. Then after the round find a local bar and have a couple of scotches with you friends. Skip the pictures on the clubhouse walls, the oak-paneled grill room, the overstuffed chairs and all the other stuff.

Bob

[THuckaby2]

Well said Mr. Crosby.

And yes, geographic inaccessibility is in the eyes of the beholder... It would be tough to convince someone in Inverness that Dornoch is less accessible than Pebble Beach!  But methinks "remoteness" is what people have in mind here.  Dornoch is indeed remote.  So is Sand Hills.  Shinnecock and NGLA aren't exactly easy to get to.  Many others fit in this..  Is this good or bad?  I think you're right that this shouldn't matter... but often it does.  My take is when I finally reach one of these remote places, I want something for my trouble!  So if it meets or exceeds expectations, then it gets marked up even further... it's worth the effort, per se... the same thing goes in the reverse... that's just human nature.

And you hit square on the head the difference in perception here.  I don't mean to pick on Darren K. or single him out, but in the GB&I v. US Top 100 thread he seems to mark UP those exclusive US clubs just for the exclusivity... that it's "special" to get inside the gates... and I for one can sure understand that.  By the same token, Rich marks them down for this, cuz so few can get access.  So there are two ways to think of this most definitely and both have been expressed.

So in the end perhaps you and TEP are right - IF the sole purpose is to assess the "greatness" of the architecture of a golf course.  Me, after my round, I want my hot whiskey in the members bar at Portstewart, or a pint of Bellhaven's in the bar at Dornoch, or an Arnold Palmer in the grillroom at Shadow Creek, or an ice-cold Heineken and the world's greatest hamburger on Ben's Porch at Sand Hills, or a pitcher with my buddies at the bar at my home course Santa Teresa - this is all part of the fun!  Maybe I won't assess each course "correctly" and be unduly biased, but I'll have a damn good time doing it wrong.

Man does certainly not live by architecture alone.  

TH

[TEPaul]

Bob:

I'm familiar with how long it can take reeling around the SF airport and even the city and environs but wouldn't it take as long or longer to get to Dornoch with all the necessary reeling around in Scotish pubs and such on the way to the golf course?

[THuckaby2]

PS - Bob - next time fly into San Jose!

TH

[Dan Kelly]

Rich --

As much as I'm enjoying people's thoughts on this thread -- particularly Bob Crosby's ("[E]xclusivity has a curious .... impact on raters who actually play these courses. They give these courses bonus points for ambience, conditioning or whatever. Think of it as a sort of extra credit for letting the lowly rater through the front gate") -- I don't see many direct answers to the questions you asked.

To wit:

If GD etc. started marking courses down for exclusivity (rather than up, as they do with the "ambience" type criteria), might our chances of creating a golf environment in the US which is more like GBI (in terms of virtually universal--though limited--accessibility) improve?

My answer: I don't know. Do these now-exclusive courses CARE where Golf Digest (etc.) ranks them?

If the answer is yes, they do care: Surely a rankings penalty for exclusivity would give them an incentive to be more open to America's Guests -- and if they responded to that incentive, American golf would more closely resemble the GBI model.

Would this be a good thing?

My answer: Yes. (Duh.)

[THuckaby2]

Dan:

I didn't answer Rich's direct questions because to me they're so obvious as to be rhetorical, and I thought he meant them that way.

Do clubs care about these rankings?  Some do, some don't.  

Would they change their policies if the magazines added a category for access?

Not on your life.  No freakin' way.  They care but not THAT much.

Would it be good if they did and US courses followed the GB&I model?

What, you want me to paint a picture?  OF COURSE it would!

TH

[Tim Weiman]

Guys:

Very few people I meet have ever been across the pond to play golf. For them the idea of going to Dornoch, Scotland just to see a golf course isn't part of their reality. No way. The place just isn't "accessible". They could care less whether restrictive access policies or the time and cost associated with travel is the barrier. They just can't do it.

That's the real world for most golfers.

Fanatics like us lose sight of that.

A couple years ago I was playing at a local 9 hole muni. That week the pros were playing at the Olympic Club. One of the guys I got matched up with brought up the tournament.

So, I said: "I really like the Olympic Club".

"You mean you've been there?", he asked.

"Yes"

After thinking for a few seconds he asked whether I had ever played Pebble Beach.

When I told him I had played it several times he said:

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Never before had he met anyone who had played either Olympic or Pebble, something we so casually take for granted.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Good thoughts, everyone.  I think I was trying to get a way to Tom Paul's ideal, i.e. cutting out all the extraneous crap and looking at the architecture.  This is, however, probably not possible due to human nature.  On this site, however, I think we ought to try our very best to try to look objectively at the courses and not let the fact that the ambience does or doesn't meet out own predilections color our analysis.  Not that these things aren't important--I like my turtle soup as much as the guys that Tim Weiman plays with do--but those should be reserved for separte threads.

As for physical remoteness as being part of the "accessibility" issue, I really wasn't thinking of that, but perhaps we should.  If Mike Keiser and Tom Doak build the world's greatest golf course on the magnificence of Loch Eriboll, but don't let anybody else see it or play it, how "great" will it be?   It's like that "If a tree fell in the forest and nobody was there to hear it would it make any 'noise'?" question from Philosophy 101...............