Golfweeks Best Munis

[John_Conley]

John,

Maybe everyone else here knows but exactly what are they rating? Do they have specific categorties they rate? Do some things weigh in more heavily than others? Or is this just more like the Doak scale, one number and done?

Paul, my apologies.  I assumed you were familiar with the GOLFWEEK methodology since it is oft-discussed here and has been written about in the magazine.

To answer your question: there is one 'bottom line' number between 0 and 10.  Brad has been publishing averages in the magazine in addition to the order for at least two years.

Let me get this straight.  Before you had an understanding of the process you questioned the merit of the entire list.

What is it you like about Harding Park?  I haven't played it but I've never heard anyone get too excited when describing it.

[astavrides]

What is it you like about Harding Park?  I haven't played it but I've never heard anyone get too excited when describing it.

I won't get into specifics at this point, but I'd play Harding 9 times out of 10 over Wintonbury Hills, which is rated 3 places above it.

[Brad Klein]

I would too if that's what it took for me to be in San Francisco.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

John,

Exactly how is that score calculated?

http://www.golfweeksbest.com/GolfweeksBest/

Here is the link to the web site.  As you wander through the articles,  you will find a sample rating on Tobacco Road with the categories the ratings are based on.  Modern and Classicla have slight variations. 

[Paul Payne]

John,

Thanks, I had not read the threads that talk about the rating system.

What I like about Harding besides the location? I have only played it twice but I have also played all of the TN Bear courses and some multiple times.

Harding, even though it has some very mature trees on the course has a massive feel. It doesn't feel hemmed in in spite of a few holes like #6 or #7 that have trees down both sides.

I like the way the land rolls and quite often when you are on an uphill approach the bunkers at the bluff or in front of the green look awsomely daunting. This is achieved with a modest sized lip but with the uphill angle and the sight line they can look huge and intimidating. The bunkers in general on the Bear courses are fairly flat.

I think this leads to a bigger issue for me. The Bear courses in TN are all good courses but they are extremely repetitive. Elevated tee, view of the fairway, dogleg, slightly elevated green.....even though the landing areas are generous for the most part to me the courses feel small. It is funny because my guess is that many of these courses are on far bigger parcels of land than Harding.

I also like the variation of the green complexes at Harding. There are more slopes to different angles and a few false fronts or rolling slopes that you have to pay attention to. The Bear greens are generally mundane.

That being said I did find myself wondering if the greens at Harding had been tamed down over the years to serve the public golfers. When I look at the approach and surrounds I always imagine greens with more undulation than you get but I have never asked so that is purely my own imagination.

The problem I have with the Bear trail in TN is that none of those courses are Jacks top work in fact I dont know if he was even involved directly. More importantly in my opinion they are no more interesting than hundreds of small local public operations around the country that most of us will never visit. In fact I could probably rattle off an even dozen off the top of my head. This is where I feel these lists tend to fail me in the end.

Cheers

[Paul Payne]

Thank you Mr. Cosgrove that answered my question about the ratings very well.

I also enjoyed the article about TR. I got a chance to play there a few years ago and was absolutely giddy with how much fun it was. We had scheduled to play a morning round and since it wasn't overly crowded we just kept playing until it got dark. I think we played 54 with a lunch break. Very good memories there.

[Adam Clayman]

John,

Thanks, I had not read the threads that talk about the rating system.

What I like about Harding besides the location? I have only played it twice but I have also played all of the TN Bear courses and some multiple times.

Harding, even though it has some very mature trees on the course has a massive feel. It doesn't feel hemmed in in spite of a few holes like #6 or #7 that have trees down both sides.

I like the way the land rolls and quite often when you are on an uphill approach the bunkers at the bluff or in front of the green look awsomely daunting. This is achieved with a modest sized lip but with the uphill angle and the sight line they can look huge and intimidating. The bunkers in general on the Bear courses are fairly flat.

I think this leads to a bigger issue for me. The Bear courses in TN are all good courses but they are extremely repetitive. Elevated tee, view of the fairway, dogleg, slightly elevated green.....even though the landing areas are generous for the most part to me the courses feel small. It is funny because my guess is that many of these courses are on far bigger parcels of land than Harding.

I also like the variation of the green complexes at Harding. There are more slopes to different angles and a few false fronts or rolling slopes that you have to pay attention to. The Bear greens are generally mundane.

That being said I did find myself wondering if the greens at Harding had been tamed down over the years to serve the public golfers. When I look at the approach and surrounds I always imagine greens with more undulation than you get but I have never asked so that is purely my own imagination.

The problem I have with the Bear trail in TN is that none of those courses are Jacks top work in fact I dont know if he was even involved directly. More importantly in my opinion they are no more interesting that hundreds of small local public operations around the country that most of us will never visit. In fact I could probably rattle off an even dozen off the top of my head. This is where I feel these lists tend to fail me in the end.

Cheers

Paul, It appears from your post that you are relatively new to appreciating some the of finer points that distinguishes architecture. Some of your observations are insightful and I encourage you to continue feeling your way around the descriptions of the gca you provide this group. I would take issue with the line about the hundreds of small publics. Often, they have some uniqueness, and collectively are not the same commercialized repetitive look and playability.

[Paul Payne]

Adam,

Edit check, I just converted a "that" to a "Than". I am not sure I understand what you meant.

You are right, I am both a GCA enthusiast and newbie.

What I meant to say was that I believe there are hundreds of small courses around the country that have more merit and interest than the Bear courses.

Possibly that is what you meant as well?

[Adam Clayman]

Yes Paul, you got it now.

But here's a first year lesson, Everything about gca is hard to stereotype because there's too many exceptions and site specific issues.

In the end, the worst course is almost always better than no course. 
 

[John_Conley]

Harding, even though it has some very mature trees on the course has a massive feel. It doesn't feel hemmed in in spite of a few holes like #6 or #7 that have trees down both sides.

...

I think this leads to a bigger issue for me. The Bear courses in TN are all good courses but they are extremely repetitive. Elevated tee, view of the fairway, dogleg, slightly elevated green.....even though the landing areas are generous for the most part to me the courses feel small. It is funny because my guess is that many of these courses are on far bigger parcels of land than Harding.

...

That being said I did find myself wondering if the greens at Harding had been tamed down over the years to serve the public golfers. When I look at the approach and surrounds I always imagine greens with more undulation than you get but I have never asked so that is purely my own imagination.

The problem I have with the Bear trail in TN is that none of those courses are Jacks top work in fact I dont know if he was even involved directly. More importantly in my opinion they are no more interesting than hundreds of small local public operations around the country that most of us will never visit. In fact I could probably rattle off an even dozen off the top of my head. This is where I feel these lists tend to fail me in the end.

Paul, great, then you shouldn't worry about any magazine rankings.  Seems like you've determined that your tastes aren't fully accounted for.

Thanks for your comments about Harding.  I have not played it.  I noticed in describing it you continually referenced comparisons and contrasts to the Bear courses in Tennessee.  There are literally thousands of courses, is that why you take excption?  Nobody has played all 30 of these courses...maybe you'd like some of the courses behind Harding more that you like that one.

Help me out here.  How is your comment any different from someone saying a list of the best presidents has no merit because they like Cleveland more than Taft (assuming Taft is ranked ahead of Cleveland)?  Or saying Rolling Stone does a bad job when they say "Baba O'Reilly" is a better song than "Reelin' in the Years"?  If you want someone else's list to exactly match your list that's not happening.  However, if you are in an area and want to see a low-cost municipal worth seeing you probably won't be disappointed by North Palm, Wilmington, or Wintonbury.

Your feelings about the Bear trail mirror many folks' impressions of Tom Fazio courses.  If you've only played one  you'll probably like it.  What's not to like?  They are usally long enough to challenge everyone, well-maintained, and offers up some eye candy.  Play a few dozen and they tend to look the same.  Is it fair to say you think less of the Bear courses having played them all.  My guess is that you probably liked the first one you saw.

I remember once a friend told me a course in Lake Las Vegas was too low on the GOLFWEEK Modern list.  He said it should have been 20 or 30 spots higher.  While I understand the sentiment, there are a few things to consider.

* there's probably not a lot of difference between #60 and #85 on that list
* tastes vary, and not everyone thinks just like you do
* there are TONS of courses out there and it isn't good to base impressions off a comprehensive list because you don't agree with relative placement of a couple courses

I have played 7 of the 30.  If it were my list alone some of those wouldn't make it, some would be higher, and one high-profile course would drop more than a bit.  Does this mean the list has no merit?  Not to me.  At the very least I have a course recommendation for the next time I'm in Newton, Kansas or Golden, Colorado.

[Matt_Ward]

Since they were left off the listing -- be interested in how people view the muni's in the Cape Cod area. Plenty of towns have there own courses and a few of them do have some noteworthy design elements. Dennis Pines comes to mind -- ditto Cranberry Valley in Harwich. Don't know if they would merit a national placement but wonder what others think.

One other candidate to consider is Stone Mountain -- RTJ's neat layout just outside Atlanta. Great opening hole -- don't know if it's on the new configuration but it was the 452-yard opener before they added nine additional holes. And the old Key Biscayne GC in FL or what is called now, I believe, Crandon Park.

[Mike_Cirba]

Allow me to be a homer and suggest that should Cobb's Creek be restored to its original design and the infrastructure is upgraded, there is a Doak Scale "7" languishing under the present Doak Scale "3".   

[Kyle Harris]

Allow me to be a homer and suggest that should Cobb's Creek be restored to its original design and the infrastructure is upgraded, there is a Doak Scale "7" languishing under the present Doak Scale "3".   

I'd say Cobb's is a Doak 6 both ways, maybe a post-restoration 7, but I definitely wouldn't put it so low as a 3, even in its present state.

Heck, I think our local muni, the venerable and elite Warminster's Five Ponds Golf Course is a Doak 4.

[Mike_Cirba]

Kyle,

Do you believe the past/present routings at CC are really a wash??

I almost gave the present Cobb's a 4, but....it's a tough one to rate given present conditions and restrictive routing.

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle,

Do you believe the past/present routings at CC are really a wash??

I almost gave the present Cobb's a 4, but....it's a tough one to rate given present conditions and restrictive routing.

Mike,

Here's the thing.

To me, there's really only one hemmed in hole in the present routing, and that's the 15th. Everything else is pretty darn good as is. Stepping back from the course emotionally for a moment, does the restoration of the old 6th and 12th holes (add the 13th if you wish) really push the golf course up 4-5 Doak Scale points? I think between the stretch from 3-5, and 11-14 make for more than enough to merit Doak 5-6 consideration. Throw in the old green sites like today's 6th and 16th holes and we still have what amounts to a really cool golf course.

I think one of the neat things about the Doak scale is that two very different golf courses can rate the same and I think we see that with the present Cobb's Creek and the potential restoration Cobb's Creek.

[Mike_Cirba]

Kyle,

I think we'll have to disagree on that one, although I do like much of the present course.   However, holes like 14, 7, 8, 16, 4, and 9 have an awkwardness about them that I always felt even before knowing they weren't original.   
 
Seven holes were affected when the club lost about 20 acres to the anti-aircraft battery and I can't think of a single one of them that wasn't superior in the original iteration. 

Believe me...I've played them both ways. 

[Kyle Harris]

Mike,

Fair enough. But a Doak 3!? Surely the course is above average...

...we should really discuss it at Dixie Cup, which you really would enjoy attending...

 

[mtp]

I shall definitely play George Wright soon, I had always considered Triggs the better layout, albeit I was rained out at GW 13 holes in. Regardless, I am looking forward to it- the extent I saw, paled in comparison to the beloved Providence Muni.

[Paul Payne]

John,

The reason I compared Harding with Bear Trace is that I thought that was the context whithin which the question was asked.

While I understand your logic I am not sure I agree with your explanation. For one, we all love lists. We love them because we love do agree, disagree, debate, and recognize what is on them. Magazines sell because we all like lists so much, yet it seems you take issue with the fact that I am doing just that. 

This list was not published as "A sampling of the best municiple courses" it was published as "The best municiple courses" infering that there is some ultimate analysis that has been done. At the same time you readily admit that the compiling of the list was really as subjective as my view of the list. Seems you want to have it both ways, present the list as an end all, but waiver when challenged. 

Your two comments "nobody has played all 30 courses", and "maybe folks would like the first of a series of cookie cutters" do not go far in improving my confidence in your list. I would have thought your job would be to inform me at a higher level than that. That is why you are the experts, no? Besides, I work in a world of statistics and I know how rife with error these things can be. For one example how do you mitigate the bias between a course sampling of 14 ratings vs a course sampling of 500 ratings?

I'll use your music example since you brought it up. I have been reading Rolling Stone and Billboard since the early '70's. Back then there was virtually one list. Since then the music industry has been turned on its head with the rise of the internet. As a result the heavy hitters in the industry have struggled but we consumers have more access than ever to what kind of music is out there and how we want to listen to it. One result of this change is that now there are dozens of lists, Pop, Rock, Alternative, Rap, Urban Rap, Indi-indutrial Hip-Hop...... and so on.

The golf industry is under different pressures but I believe your challenge is to find newer and better ways to get information out to us consumers. Who cares about a guy who keeps telling us about the latest Who or Steely Dan efforts when they have never even heard of Gnarles Barkley?

With the technology available today you have the ability to enlist thousands if not millions of virtual raters in your system. Your job would be how to make sense of it all. Possibly more lists, more niche lists, complied lists.... etc. More lists, more sales, more readers to agree, disagree, and recognize what they see.

I just don't agree with your position that "we do the best we can with what we've got" and then take issue with someone who challenges that position.

Don't get me wrong however, I still love lists 

[John_Conley]

Paul:

I haven't taken issue with your comments as much as pointed out that you won't be happy with any list given your concerns.  Who on earth has played all 30 of these?  How could anyone?  Because as soon as you've done that a new course opens and another that's worthy is added to the ballot and you'd have to play those too in order to be as comprehensive as you're requiring.

There are something like 1,100 courses in Florida.  I've played more of them than anyone I know and am still probably only at 20% of the total.  It is a big world out there and nobody will ever play all of our nation's 17,000 or so courses.

You can continue to play Devil's Advocate or you can accept the list for what it is. Collectively enough of the panel has played every course under consideration for this ranking and there is an effort to continue to seek out all worthy new courses that open.  An example is that the North Palm Beach CC has not even been open two years since the renovation but it makes the list.

I can play your game with any statistic you show me.  Daily we are given figures on the decline of home prices.  Just today I read Miami is off 25% or so versus a year ago.  But the houses that sold this year aren't the ones that sold last year.  I have two choices - accept that this best-efforts method really is representative or ignore it.  I suppose choice three is to come up with my own.

One course has 12 visits by panelists and another has 100?  Yeah.  So.  Is this remedied by telling 88 people their opinion doesn't count?  No.  What Dr. Klein has done is probably what everyone else would do.  He alerts panel members which courses are more in need of site visits than others and strives to educate all panel members to make evaluations consistent, while allowing for reasonable individual variation.

Challenge the process all you want, I don't really think there is anything to hide.

This list was not published as "A sampling of the best municiple courses" it was published as "The best municiple courses" infering that there is some ultimate analysis that has been done. At the same time you readily admit that the compiling of the list was really as subjective as my view of the list. Seems you want to have it both ways, present the list as an end all, but waiver when challenged. 


There has been an 'ultimate analysis'.  While you may think it is imperfect, I don't know that anyone ever said it was perfect...for 'perfection' cannot even be defined.  The presence of subjectivity is only to the extent that it cannot be eliminated.

Your two comments "nobody has played all 30 courses", and "maybe folks would like the first of a series of cookie cutters" do not go far in improving my confidence in your list. I would have thought your job would be to inform me at a higher level than that. That is why you are the experts, no? Besides, I work in a world of statistics and I know how rife with error these things can be. For one example how do you mitigate the bias between a course sampling of 14 ratings vs a course sampling of 500 ratings?

Somehow you are confused here.  It is not my job to explain GOLFWEEK's methods and I have only offered an explanation to you as a favor.  When challenged I have stood by the process.  I believe in it very much, and comments like yours only harden those beliefs.  Everything you highlight is something that has been addressed.  Some courese are seen more than others.  People will disagree that this course is better than that one.  (I know Klein himself occasionally sees courses higher or lower than he thinks they should be.)  It would  be better if the list matched my own personal taste.  Et cetera.  Raise a concern that hasn't been brought up and addressed and we'll break new ground here.  Doug Ralston felt some courses were missing because they probably weren't on the ballot.  When shown the ballot he indicated some were actually on the ballot and others weren't.  Great, there's a mechanism to add them.

The golf industry is under different pressures but I believe your challenge is to find newer and better ways to get information out to us consumers. Who cares about a guy who keeps telling us about the latest Who or Steely Dan efforts when they have never even heard of Gnarles Barkley?

I have always found Brad Klein to be very receptive to feedback.  You need to share with him your ideas for addressing this challenge.  It seems to me that GOLFWEEK has done an excellent job.  Annual rather than biannual lists.  Modern vs. Classic.  Residential, Casino, Municipal, and New sublists.  In your example the New list is a way to highligh Gnarls without affecting Led Zeppelin.  Let's face it, Augusta, Cypress, and Pine Valley aren't budging from their spots any time soon.

With the technology available today you have the ability to enlist thousands if not millions of virtual raters in your system. Your job would be how to make sense of it all. Possibly more lists, more niche lists, complied lists.... etc. More lists, more sales, more readers to agree, disagree, and recognize what they see.

Funny, GOLFWEEK has been criticized for having too many lists!  Movie critics and the general public don't agree on what is and what isn't a good movie.  Easy to see when the latter may go to a theater once a month and the other sees 10 movies minimum each week.  The more you see the more it takes to impress.  I think you really need to look at Golf Digest's "Places to Play" instead of asking "America's Best" to dilute the product.  Everyone that's played one Fazio course loves it.  Talk to them after they've played 30-40 different ones and only then will they be able to see them with a critical eye. 

In the interest of statistical integrity GOLFWEEK has expanded the "America's Best" panel from 165 when I was added to about 450 today.  I think Golf Digest has 600-700.  Not sure about GOLF Magazine, but hat was always a more selective panel.  Maybe 200?  It seems at some point you have enough people evaluating golf architecture and there is no need to go to the millions you mention.  How on earth could the leader, in this case Brad, control the process?  I've met someone that didn't like a new course because they didn't have numbers on the sprinkler heads.  One friend bases a place off the attractiveness of the beverage car driver.  Someone could unfairly attack a competitor.  There are people that shouldn't have input into a list evaluating golf architecture.  Conversely, they also should know their own preferences well enough to determine how much credence they give to a ranking.

[Mike_Cirba]

John,

Very well stated.

[Mike Demetriou]

Sorry to get back to discussing courses, but the ranking for Thunderhawk frustrates me. The course has a par five (#16) where you cannot hit driver.  

Isn't there a rule for courses designed in the "Tiger" era, that prohibits high course rankings if you cannot hit driver off the tee on a par five? There should be.

It is actually a really nice course, but the set-up is just too difficult for many muni golfers and in my limited experience there (on weekends) extremely slow play abounds.

Also, does Audobon Certified have mean that you're going to get eaten alive by bugs?

[PCCraig]

Mike,

Walking before 8am on weekdays is about half price as well as a quick round (as long as you can get off of work).

I think the 16th is a pretty good hole, and an easy tee shot. It is really a two iron, five iron, wedge hole.

[John_Conley]

Isn't there a rule for courses designed in the "Tiger" era, that prohibits high course rankings if you cannot hit driver off the tee on a par five?

Is this a rhetorical question or are you really expecting an answer?

[Mike Demetriou]

I'm just being sarcastic - but am I alone? Does anyone agree with my frustration over this design aspect? It is forgiveable, but only in the right context, and that context does not exist at Thunderhawk.  The course is meant to be tough, and long, and yet it throws this wrench into the works - on 16 no less.