GCA "Blank Stares"

[JSPayne]

This could be amusing.....

I just had to start a topic on this because, while I don't claim to be anywhere near an expert on GCA as many on this site are, I am aboslutely amazed and baffled at times when I try to carry on a conversation with other golfers about golf, golf courses, GCA's and other ideas and topics that are at the core of this discussion group.

I titled this thread as such because I often will try to start a conversation with someone at the course, and attempt to drop a few key phrases or words, only to be greeted by a "blank stare." If I can ask 3 consecutive "Are you familiar with.....", "Do you know who.....is?", or "Have you ever heard of....." without getting any affirmatives, I usually abandon the conversation, shaking my head and wondering how these people ever manage to get themselves out of bed in the morning.

So here are a few phrases and words I've used that, surprisingly, get me alot of blank stares:

Pine Valley
Tom Doak
Royal County Down
Ground game
Sand Hills
Ballyneal
Not playing the back tees
Match play

There are tons more......but I'll let you all share yours. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Cheater line

[Mike Benham]

Beard Pullers ...

[Tim Taylor]

Firm and fast.

Tim

[Adrian_Stiff]

This could be amusing.....

I just had to start a topic on this because, while I don't claim to be anywhere near an expert on GCA as many on this site are, I am aboslutely amazed and baffled at times when I try to carry on a conversation with other golfers about golf, golf courses, GCA's and other ideas and topics that are at the core of this discussion group.

I titled this thread as such because I often will try to start a conversation with someone at the course, and attempt to drop a few key phrases or words, only to be greeted by a "blank stare." If I can ask 3 consecutive "Are you familiar with.....", "Do you know who.....is?", or "Have you ever heard of....." without getting any affirmatives, I usually abandon the conversation, shaking my head and wondering how these people ever manage to get themselves out of bed in the morning.

So here are a few phrases and words I've used that, surprisingly, get me alot of blank stares:

Pine Valley
Tom Doak
Royal County Down
Ground game
Sand Hills
Ballyneal
Not playing the back tees
Match play

There are tons more......but I'll let you all share yours. 

I had not heard of Tom Doak until I started visiting this site. Until 2005 I would say he had virtually no press in the UK and the Bandon resort was nothing to us here, probably only 1 in a hundred have heard of Bandon now... Sand Hills, Ballyneal the same. very few members know who designed their course and probably quite a few managers too. It is just not important to them

[Shane Wright]

JS - I'd imagine most of subjects on your list would result in a blank stare by most golfers.  Many of us who are either in the golf profession or GCA nerds take it for granted how much research and knowledge we've acquired thru years of research, discussions, and experiences.  

Unless they discuss it on the golf channel or play a golf tournament there, most golfers haven't heard of the places you mentioned....even after reading about them in the occasional magazine article.

[Jim Colton]

"I'm going on a golf trip to Nebraska"

"I'm playing golf w/ 12 guys from the Internet, most of whom I've never met before."

[Jon Spaulding]

In no particular order:

Octo
Access whore
The Emporer
Mayhugh
Yale golf course
HAMMERED
Waterfalls are children of Satan

[Karl Kocher]

"I'm really playing within myself today".

[rjsimper]

You really wonder how someone gets out of bed in the morning if a golfer does not know Tom Doak, Royal County Down, and Ballyneal??

I'd be shocked if 2% of the golfing public can correctly answer the following multiple choice query -

Tom Doak is a/an...:

a) Senator from Indiana
b) Swordboat Captain
c) Golf Course Architect
d) Reality show star from Survivor Vanuatu

Blank stare statement numero uno:

"Do you post on golfclubatlas.com?"

[Scott Warren]

I was playing golf with a cricket/drinking buddy yesterday. Our discussion about the 5th green at Traditions GC in Surrey went like this:

Me: Wow, that is awesome, there is so much movement in there.
Him: Huh? What the fvck are you talking about? You're away.

[Anthony Gray]

  JS,

  EXACTLY....This is why I became addicted to the DG at first. Out of 190 members at my club only one had heard on Bandon. There is this coat rack in the pro shop with C B Macdonalds picture on it. He is seated and wearing a red jacket. Noone knows who he is.

  Anthony

 

[Trey Stiles]

Nothing is worse than leading your team to work towards firm and fast conditions ... As soon as they achieve anything near firm and fast , the regulars beat the living snot out of your team :

" These greens are terrible , they won't hold a shot "

" Why did you " kill " all the grass "

" Your course is terrible , my ball kicked into the bunker "

" Your greens are too fast ( when they are running about 8 )

" Your greens are too slow " ( when they are running about 10 )

" Why did you screw up that hole with the bunker in the middle of the fairway ? "

" You cut down my favorite tree ! "

I could go on an on , but I'm trying to choose celebration of the rare conversation when my fellow golfers are clued in.

[Steve D]

This conversation caused a blank stare of disbelief from me when discussing a course with a friend who golfs very regularly.

Me:  The slope is pretty high here.
My friend: I thought it was pretty flat out there

Steve

[Charlie Goerges]

"I'm playing golf w/ 12 guys from the Internet, most of whom I've never met before."

This definitely resonates.

Tell coworkers you're going on a golf trip to some remote destination with guys you met from the internet and they're already measuring for new curtains in your cube.

[Scott_Burroughs]

Some good ones on here.

Very few that I encounter have ever heard of Bandon Dunes, including club pros.

[CJ Carder]

There are two guys who I consider to be good golfers and well-traveled at that.  After looking at Tim Gavrich's pics of Yale Golf Club the other day, I forwarded on to my friends the pictures of the biarritz green there.  To my utter amazement, the responses I got back from these two guys were 100% negative:

"Where's the windmill?"
"WTF is that ugly thing?"
"Why on earth would you ever build something like that?"
"That has to be the most hideous thing I've ever seen."

When I told them that the biarritz was a classic design feature and offered up the suggestion that maybe this was a pretty neat hazard that was used in lieu of crowding the place with bunkering, etc, or that it's a good way to change up the playing options of the hole from day-to-day, the responses didn't improve.

I was floored.

[Jason McNamara]

For me in Houston it was somewhat more local:

"So there's this cool new course in Lubbock..."

[Bill Brightly]

JS,

Great topic! I know that blank stare! Here are my top ten

Macdonald
Road Hole
Biarritz
Eden
Short (The scratch players at my club think we should take out the nursery and add a new tee 30 yds back...)
Alps
Raynor
National
Doak
C & C

(They know Redan)

And I play a MacRaynor...

[John Mayhugh]

Pretty much any architect that didn't play professional golf

[Ben Sims]

It's amazing to me that the relatvely small amount of info I've amassed in studying this site and a few books baffles 99% of golfers.  I can understand people being clueless about Ballyneal and even Sand Hills.  I understand that containment mounding isn't at the forefront of everyone's mind that plays.  I can even understand someone not knowing Bill Coore or Tom Doak; or that Ben Crenshaw does anything but play golf.  Turf cultivars and cutting heights, drivel.  

But the one that continues to just send me to the moon is the lack of knowledge about Bandon.  Forget individual courses.  It astounds me how many rabid golfers don't have a clue what, where, how many, anything about that place.  Forget the fact that it now rates among the best 3-4 golf resorts worldwide.  Forget that it represents a paradigm shift in what public golf can provide.  Forget that it is arguably the biggest risk in golf business history.  90% of golfers have never even heard of the place!  Truly sad.

That said, NGLA is also on my list of things that people have no clue about.  When I tell other golfers that it is my number one place to study and experience, they say, "what is National Golf Links?  I've never heard of that course."

[Chris Flamion]

This one is fresh from today....

"Why would they put a tree right in front of the fairway bunker?"......

They actually said "So people don't hit into it"

[Phil McDade]

Ben:

I dropped "Bandon" to a buddy of mine the other day -- one who plays a fair amount of golf, and knows pretty good architecture when he sees it. He'd never heard of it.

[Anthony Gray]

"I'm playing golf w/ 12 guys from the Internet, most of whom I've never met before."

This definitely resonates.

Tell coworkers you're going on a golf trip to some remote destination with guys you met from the internet and they're already measuring for new curtains in your cube.

  Charlie,

  Just tell your coworkers it is a new course on Brokeback Mountain.

  Anthony

[Bill Brightly]

Here's some I forgot:

"Don't you just love all the great side views and back views now that we took out all the friggin' white pines?"

"Wouldn't this be a great skyline green if we took out those 50 trees?"

"We really screwed up our Eden when we put in this stupid pond."

"We really f'd this hole up when we dug out our Alps hole so we could see the fairway from the tee."

"Our restored Biarritz is NOT a goofy hole, it is a Macdonald classic." (Double blank stare, at which point I spend the next two holes telling them who Macdonald was, what National represents, who Raynor was, and how Banks came to build our course. Where are they gonna run? It's only Hole 3, and they gotta wonder if I am going to keep this up for 15 more holes   )