The Definition of Zero

[Peter Ferlicca]

The Definition of Zero

0. A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that wasted ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn’t have been built in the first place

So I recently played in a golf tournament that was played at Heritage Eagle Bend Golf and Country Club in Aurora, Colorado.  I had a practice round and two tournament rounds.  I must say this was the worst three days of golf I have ever experienced in my life.  The whole time I was playing the golf course, the zero rating was just going through my mind over and over.  I just kept saying to myself, "this has to be the most contrived golf course I have ever played."  It was built on a site that SHOULD HAVE NEVER been used for a golf course, but yet they forced it on there.  It is hemmed in by houses on every hole, but that doesn't bother me that much if they are good golf holes, but trust me this was crap.  Probably wasted a ton of money to build this course, and I'm sure that it will never ever make their money back.  Oh and one more thing it was designed by IMO the worst golf designer of this period ARTHUR HILLS.

So my question is what Zero's have you played.  This was honestly the first zero I have ever played.  There are bad golf courses out there but nothing ever came close to this.

[Chris Cupit]

My home state (GA) received the dubious distinction of two Doak zeros (interestingly one of his zeros was also an AH course) and two of his eighteen worst golf holes were from the peach state as well

[Emil Weber]

Well, I can only think of one course about 10 miles from my home here in Germany that might qualify for a one, but a zero? no.

Actually, I think Heritage Eagle Bend Golf and Country Club doesn't look THAT bad on their website.

[Eric Smith]

Prettiest zoysia fairways you could imagine.  Perfect bentgrass greens.


One heckuva nice big clubhouse.


A Merecedes Benz every other car in the lot.


Million $ Homes so close that you could eat them (if they were gingerbread).


Forgot to build a golf course. I did enjoy the dogfights when I was (briefly) a member there.  Food was awesome.

[Emil Weber]

Look how laying up close to that farway bunker short left of the green will give you a good angle for the days back right pin position?

[Matthew Rose]

I live on another Denver Arthur Hills course (Legacy Ridge). Some of the tee-shots are stupifyingly narrow. #11 is a par-five that requires a 250 yard carry over an environmentally sensitive area which must be threaded between a 20 yard gap in two huge trees.

Another par-five, #6, has a forced lay-up.

The 18th is another par-five with a fairway that is about 10 feet wide for 500 yards.

I don't hate the course (I seem to shoot low scores on it), but what I find interesting about it is that there's almost never anyone else on it. It gets no play. I suspect the duffer has become fed up with it and won't come back.

Looking at Heritage Eagle, it doesn't look quite as Mickey Mouse to me. I have yet to play a Hills course that wasn't.

[RJ_Daley]

Eric, Do you mean real dog fights, or some sort of members club politics? 

[BCrosby]

My home state (GA) received the dubious distinction of two Doak zeros (interestingly one of his zeros was also an AH course) and two of his eighteen worst golf holes were from the peach state as well

Chris - Care to identify the courses and holes? Would love to know.

Bob

[BCrosby]

I understand TD's need to have a ranking spectrum that is as wide as possible. There needs to be room on the dial for fairly small differences in quality.

But shouldn't "zero" be just a concept? A boundary condition that doesn't correspond with any actual courses? After all, even on the dullest, silliest courses you are still outdoors playing golf. Which ought to count for something. Like the old SAT's, shouldn't there be a minimum score just for taking the trouble of building a golf course?

Bob

[Mark Pritchett]

Bob,

I am going off memory but I believe one of the zeros in Georgia was Atlanta National. 

[Brad Tufts]

Bradford CC in Mass.

Several holes where the tee shot must be hit to a 10-yd wide fairway, and some must be drawn or faded to that position, with larger draws/fades or straight balls being penalized.

One hole (#3) that is a 150 yard par three, all carry over wetlands.  However, the crap in the wooded wetlands has made the green completely blind.

Another (#12, par 5) that requies a fairway wood, a lay up to one of two island (think half a green size) fairways, and a wedge to a tiny green over wetlands.

I think the "poison your mind" comment hits home at Bradford.  Despite all of this, the current MA amateur champ plays out of there!

[Tom_Doak]

Bob:

I disagree with the "every course is okay" point of view.  If somebody spent ten million dollars building a course and the best thing you can say about it is that it's outdoors, that's a waste of resources.  You could have built two or three decent courses somewhere else, instead.

Note that I only actually handed out about a dozen 0's in The Confidential Guide ... about the same as the number of 10's.  (You could make the same argument for the 10's, that no course can be perfect.)  And since the Guide was written, I've only seen one or two other courses which made me think about the 0 ... same as the number that made me think of the 10.

Unfortunately, though, I suspect there are more 0's out there than 10's; I just don't seek out the former.

[PCCraig]

Cinder Ridge outside of Elgin, IL. The bunkers used to use ground up coal instead of sand. The owner of the land designed the "course" and it is complete crap. I drive past it about 10 times a year going to and from St. Louis on I-55 and everytime I do I say outloud "worst golf course in the world!"

[Tom Huckaby]

Thanks for the clarification, Tom.  It warms my foul heart also, because the one course I truly do hate - the oft-mentioned RANCH AT SILVER CREEK - does indeed fit the zero definition. It is vile, it had to have cost way too much to build, and it really never should have been built.  In this economy it's not even doing the job it was supposed to do - sell homes - as foreclosures near it are widespread.

Here's the crazy thing though:  I have played it three times and unless it closes soon, will play it again.

I used to think that alone made it not a zero... now I realize that says more about me (I truly will play anywhere because I love this game so much) than it does about the course.

TH

[Sean_A]

I understand TD's need to have a ranking spectrum that is as wide as possible. There needs to be room on the dial for fairly small differences in quality.

But shouldn't "zero" be just a concept? A boundary condition that doesn't correspond with any actual courses? After all, even on the dullest, silliest courses you are still outdoors playing golf. Which ought to count for something. Like the old SAT's, shouldn't there be a minimum score just for taking the trouble of building a golf course?

Bob

Bob

I tend to agree with you.  This business of the course should not have been built is VERY subjective and something I would probably say about nearly all desert and mountain courses, yet many on this site love some of those courses.  In practical terms, the 0 and 10 on the Doak scale don't exist.  I think I even got Tom to acknowledge once that in truth the 10s are no better than 9s only they have some trait which he really likes a lot. 

Ciao

[Peter Ferlicca]

I live on another Denver Arthur Hills course (Legacy Ridge). Some of the tee-shots are stupifyingly narrow. #11 is a par-five that requires a 250 yard carry over an environmentally sensitive area which must be threaded between a 20 yard gap in two huge trees.

Another par-five, #6, has a forced lay-up.

The 18th is another par-five with a fairway that is about 10 feet wide for 500 yards.

I don't hate the course (I seem to shoot low scores on it), but what I find interesting about it is that there's almost never anyone else on it. It gets no play. I suspect the duffer has become fed up with it and won't come back.

Looking at Heritage Eagle, it doesn't look quite as Mickey Mouse to me. I have yet to play a Hills course that wasn't.

Heritage Eagle Bend is a catastrophe IMO.   Now I am fan of uphill or downhill holes, but this place brought it to a new level.  Arthur Hills just must not understand what an uphill hole should be.  5 holes were literally straight up a mountain, you drive was going straight uphill and then your second shot you couldn't even see the top of the flag, you were pretty much just guessing where to hit it.  Then to top it off the greens were tiny on the uphill holes giving you no room for mistake.  And then 5 holes go straight downhill where you can't even see the fairway below your tee box, and then the green drops another 30 yards from the fairway.  It was just comical how he routed the golf course.  He probably thought, "Hey we are in Colorado, maybe people will like this."

[John Moore II]

I understand TD's need to have a ranking spectrum that is as wide as possible. There needs to be room on the dial for fairly small differences in quality.

But shouldn't "zero" be just a concept? A boundary condition that doesn't correspond with any actual courses? After all, even on the dullest, silliest courses you are still outdoors playing golf. Which ought to count for something. Like the old SAT's, shouldn't there be a minimum score just for taking the trouble of building a golf course?

Bob

Bob

I tend to agree with you.  This business of the course should not have been built is VERY subjective and something I would probably say about nearly all desert and mountain courses, yet many on this site love some of those courses.  In practical terms, the 0 and 10 on the Doak scale don't exist.  I think I even got Tom to acknowledge once that in truth the 10s are no better than 9s only they have some trait which he really likes a lot. 

Ciao

To bring up yet another old thread, I think Sean hits it right here. The 0 and the 10 rating are over-exagerated, I think. I have played one course that was rated a 0, and had I known it was a 0, I may not have played there at all for the reason of it being a 0 on the scale. While not impressed, I was not exceptionally disappointed. I may go back again to take a closer look at the course and see if it deserves to be lower than the 3 that I gave it. Same with the 10's. I think within the definition of a 10 is the real answer. It says something to the effect of 'a course you MUST play once' to see how good a golf course can be, or something like that. So in many ways, these might just be courses that amount to the finest work that an individual architect did, that was also exceptional. Although, with one of the 10's the designer is in question, one designer was nature and another was an amateur. But is NGLA not the finest representation of MacDonald and Raynor's work? Same with Cypress and Mackenzie or Pinehurst #2 and Ross. I think the 10's come from having a special feeling about them, being the best examples of individuals work and having something other-worldly unique about them.

The zero's are on the opposite end. They were forced into a spot where they shouldn't have been and artificially made up to the point they have no natural look at all about them. They also amount to huge disappointments in regards to prior knowledge and expectations.

[Tom_Doak]

Okay, so some of you are not so passionate about golf courses that there is such a thing as a "0" or a "10" for you.  That's an individual decision and it is fine for you to make it.  But I will defend my right to disagree with you.

One of the biggest problems in the golf business [in fact, in business nowadays, with no better examples than what's coming out of Wall Street and Washington the past two years] is that nobody is willing to call their peers out for ANY behavior, no matter how extreme.  You want to invent a CDS full of absolute worthless junk and then sell it to overseas investors who aren't paying attention, so one of our friends can get rich, and you can make a lot of commissions?  Well, it doesn't seem noble, but I guess you are still indoors, making money for your company.  A "0" is the golf architecture equivalent of that.

Likewise, nobody in golf really has any credibility with the environmental movement because we have never admitted that we've done ANYTHING wrong.  Until someone has the balls to contrast the bad with the good, and learn from the bad examples, we will always be looked upon with deep suspicion.  

[Ally Mcintosh]

What's the point of having a ranking system between 0 & 10 if you don't allocate 0's and 10's to anything?

You may as well rank courses between 1 and 9...

Which in turn means you may as well rank them between 0 and 8...

[Carl Johnson]

"The Definition of Zero

"0. A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that wasted ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn’t have been built in the first place."

Mountain Air Country Club's course in Burnsville, NC is as close to a zero as I've ever played.  From the club's website: "Architect Scott Pool carved the course into the very contours of Slickrock Mountain, weaving ribbons of green through dense hardwood forests and sheer outcroppings of granite. Hundreds of boulders weighing thousands of tons were meticulously stacked to create dramatic tees unlike anything you've ever seen. Streams, waterfalls, and ponds punctuate the magnificent course with glimmers of crystal blue and sparkling silver."

Anyone else have thoughts about that one?

[TEPaul]

"One heckuva nice big clubhouse."

And from the photograph of it apparently its architect knew about 9 1/2 different architectural expressions and decided to use them all on the same building. Too bad he didn't get the iconic Mercedes grill and hood ornament in there as well.

[Mike_Young]

Okay, so some of you are not so passionate about golf courses that there is such a thing as a "0" or a "10" for you.  That's an individual decision and it is fine for you to make it.  But I will defend my right to disagree with you.

One of the biggest problems in the golf business [in fact, in business nowadays, with no better examples than what's coming out of Wall Street and Washington the past two years] is that nobody is willing to call their peers out for ANY behavior, no matter how extreme.  You want to invent a CDS full of absolute worthless junk and then sell it to overseas investors who aren't paying attention, so one of our friends can get rich, and you can make a lot of commissions?  Well, it doesn't seem noble, but I guess you are still indoors, making money for your company.  A "0" is the golf architecture equivalent of that.

Likewise, nobody in golf really has any credibility with the environmental movement because we have never admitted that we've done ANYTHING wrong.  Until someone has the balls to contrast the bad with the good, and learn from the bad examples, we will always be looked upon with deep suspicion.  

TD,
You are correct above....

Let me take a stab at calling out the industry.....I have my doubts as to whether we are justified in putting these golf courses to American standards in many of these places we are now putting them around the world.  Many have zero chance of making it and many of us would not be considering doing them if there was a market here....IMHO most will need to be subsidized by either RE or a deep pocketed investor who will eventually tire of such and the course will collapse....
There just aren't that many golfers in these countries that could play the courses in the first place....and we don't know that the tourist will...JMO

[Tim Nugent]

One of the biggest problems in the golf business [in fact, in business nowadays, with no better examples than what's coming out of Wall Street and Washington the past two years] is that nobody is willing to call their peers out for ANY behavior, no matter how extreme.  You want to invent a CDS (GOLF COURSE) full of absolute worthless junk (HOLES) and then sell it to overseas investors (GOLFERS/HOMEOWNERS) who aren't paying attention(OR DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER), so one of our friends(DEVELOPER) can get rich, and you(ARCHITECT) can make a lot of commissions?  Well, it doesn't seem noble, but I guess you are still indoors, making money for your company.  A "0" is the golf architecture equivalent of that.

[Mac Plumart]

Per Tom Doak's confidential guide...Golf Club of GA Creekside is a zero.  I believe that is his other zero.

I've played it a few times and am looking forward to playing it again soon.  The course is hard to play with very odd and very demanding shots.  However, for some strange reason I like to play it.  Perhaps playing something Tom says is a zero over and over again, helps me "get" what a bad golf course is.  And then playing a good golf course that people don't "get" right away over and over again, helps me understand what a good course is (perhaps #2, TOC fall in these categories).  I remember in Tom's writings, he said that "if people don't think (course x) is good, then they don't know what good is".  That quote stuck with me as very interesting.

Also, someone once told me...you've got to play clunkers to be able to appreciate the gems.  

[Ronald Montesano]

Let's always remember, mates, that this was TOM DOAK'S LIST!!!  He can give out as many zeroes as he chooses.  If your scale doesn't include that integer, FINE.  I love capital letters...shouting for the hear-less.

The majority of we are not professionals in this field.  We may be enlightened, enhanced, educated and experienced, but pros, we are not.  I know that, of the Spanish students I have taught over the past 23 years, some are zeroes and some are tens.  Tom wouldn't know why, but I would.  If he wished to rank them differently, I would allocate him that opportunity and perhaps learn something from him.  I imagine he learns a great deal from our opinions, reducing the "Tom always gets great pieces of property" argument a bit.  If archies aren't in touch with a segment of the golfing population, then they don't gain the advantage that Ground Control To Major Tom does.

We have a few municipal courses in western New York that are close to 0 for me.  I don't go back to them ever, as they are quite uninteresting and not worth my $$$$$.  If there is one legitimate hole, one viable green site, it gets to point-five.  This is like that Biblical lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah...give me 50, 30, 10, 1...how low are you willing to go to avoid the zero rating?