Or Narrowing Your Focus

[Jud_T]

Will,

I'm a huge Deadhead, but Miles Davis was perhaps the most influential musician of the 20th century.  Dropped out of Julliard to jam with Bird and was a first rate bebopper before virtually inventing cool jazz, played a key role in hard bop and modal jazz, invented jazz fusion and was essentially a grad school for John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, Tony Williams, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Liebman, John Scofield and Mike Stern, amongst many others.

The Dead capitalized on their fortuitous participation in the acid tests and invented the Jam Band genre.  So on one hand we're left with a legacy of a huge swath of Jazz and Jazz/Rock of the 20th century, on the other....Phish.  Nuff said

[Sven Nilsen]

I don't think the point here is the subject of the study, its the exercise of studying in itself.

[Will Lozier]

Jud:  I am a huge Miles fan and have listened (continue to listen) to everything he has put out - and have even taken the time to learn how to play and play to much of his music.  I've read multiple books and worship the man as a musician.  And, great point about the huge number of great musicians that were mentored by Miles.  However, they are all jazz musicians (musicians that I love) with Herbie & Scofield perhaps doing the most to expand their horizons.  And I would still argue that jazz remains just outside the "popular" realm of music.

Cheers

[Jud_T]

Will,

The Dead had what 1 top 40 hit? I wouldn't say they were burning up the popular music charts...Miles probably had more Billboard Chart action. The Dead were a live phenomenon that was never fully understood by the broader public.  Threadjack over....

[Peter Pallotta]

See what I mean? If people read this thread and only this thread over and over again, they would eventually go deep enough to discover the gold nugget buried deep within the heart of the thread, i.e. Sven's short, understated little sentence!

(Ha - sometimes I amaze myself how clever I am....)

[Phil McDade]

See what I mean? If people read this thread and only this thread over and over again, they would eventually go deep enough to discover the gold nugget buried deep within the heart of the thread, i.e. Sven's short, understated little sentence!

(Ha - sometimes I amaze myself how clever I am....)

Peter:

I was sitting in our church one day, discussing the upcoming confirmation schedule of our son, when our pastor asked a simple question that was pretty thought-provoking: How many gathered here (there were about 20 of us) have read the entire Bible? He had, of course, but so had a few other parishoners, including my son's confirmation teacher. Those folks, I thought to myself, are dedicated Lutherans!

I think your point is a valid one, but I also think "the thing" that's studied is important, as well.

Jud -- thanks for writing what I was thinking.

[JC Jones]

no no no, my hippie music penis is bigger than your hippie music penis

[Peter Pallotta]

JC - do you have to wreck everything? Do you have to bring us all down to your level? My how times have changed since the estimable George Pazin praised your posts so highly! The next time you start an inward-looking self-absorbed thread,  I'm going to make sure to jump in at just the best/worst time and make a penis joke.  Also, you have single-handedly disproved my point!

Phil - you, like Mac earlier on, are right. But I think every era (or even series of gca.com threads) needs a little push in the direction that's opposite to the prevailing/conventional wisdom...

Peter

[JC Jones]

JC - do you have to wreck everything? Do you have to bring us all down to your level? My how times have changed since the estimable George Pazin praised your posts so highly! The next time you start an inward-looking self-absorbed thread,  I'm going to make sure to jump in at just the best/worst time and make a penis joke.  Also, you have single-handedly disproved my point!

Phil - you, like Mac earlier on, are right. But I think every era (or even series of gca.com threads) needs a little push in the direction that's opposite to the prevailing/conventional wisdom...

Peter

 

[Colin Macqueen]

Peter P,
You are very much on song again! Did you enjoy Cypress Point?

Cheers Colin

[Peter Pallotta]

It strikes me that what I'm describing is the appeal of 'the home club', of being a member of say, a place like Plainfield or Walton Heath or Garden City or the Renaissance Club and playing it everyday and experiencing it differently everyday as IT stays the same but YOU change and grow older and see more and more, and more deeply and with more gratitude and appreciation and a growing sense of MEANING. Kind of explains the appeal to me of the home course in a way I never understood before.

Peter

[David Harshbarger]

Peter,

I agree with you about the appeal of the home club to the student, who commits to internalizing the lessons to be learned. 

I have to think the best architects know that what they have birthed contains the mysteries worthy of the study.  Not that they have created the mysteries, but rather they have brought to the surface something of depth from which many mysteries may be revealed.

Dave

[Peter Pallotta]

Dave - I think that's a very lovely way to put it, and, perhaps more importantly, I think it also happens to be TRUE.

Peter

[Carl Nichols]

Peter-
I agree with you, to a point. I belong to a club that has a good, but certainly not great, course. Every time I play it I learn either something good about it I didn't previously realize, or something that probably could've been done better (or that wasn't possible on the particular site). But if I didn't also have the opportunity to sometimes play much better (ie, great) courses, I would probably get bored more quickly with my course. And more to the point of your post, those courses help me better understand the good and bad of my own.  Put differently, I don't think you can fully understand even a home course -- or at least what's good or bad about it -- without also having exposure to others.

[JESII]

It strikes me that what I'm describing is the appeal of 'the home club', of being a member of say, a place like Plainfield or Walton Heath or Garden City or the Renaissance Club and playing it everyday and experiencing it differently everyday as IT stays the same but YOU change and grow older and see more and more, and more deeply and with more gratitude and appreciation and a growing sense of MEANING. Kind of explains the appeal to me of the home course in a way I never understood before.

Peter

Peter,

This paragraph is great!

How could anyone understand a course that's new to them if they don't know intimately a home course?

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks Jim - and thanks for going deeper into the subject (while using only about a tenth of the words I use, as is your way).  That's exactly it, i.e. the value of 'narrowness'.

Peter

[BCrosby]

Interesting thread. I agree with the gist of Pietro's and Jim's comments.

To take the discussion in a slightly different direction, doesn't all this put paid to the notion that raters can assess a course after a single play? Particularly if the course purports to be a 'subtle' design?

Likewise, doesn't this help explain why rating systems put so much emphasis on non-architectural aspects of a course? I'm thinking of things like ambiance, 'walk in the park' stuff, views, history, tradition, etc. Those are things you can pick up in a single visit.

Many interesting and subtle architectural aspects of a course are impossible to discern on a single visit. So rating systems pivot away from that unhappy fact. They include in their ratings a whole bunch of other stuff of limited relevance to the architectural merits of the course.

They conflate - in effect - rating the club and rating the course. Something they are essentially forced to do if raters are to give ratings based on a single visit.

Bob      

[George Pazin]

I don't think the point here is the subject of the study, its the exercise of studying in itself.

It strikes me that what I'm describing is the appeal of 'the home club', of being a member of say, a place like Plainfield or Walton Heath or Garden City or the Renaissance Club and playing it everyday and experiencing it differently everyday as IT stays the same but YOU change and grow older and see more and more, and more deeply and with more gratitude and appreciation and a growing sense of MEANING. Kind of explains the appeal to me of the home course in a way I never understood before.

Peter

Peter,

This paragraph is great!

How could anyone understand a course that's new to them if they don't know intimately a home course?

Terrific post on a terrific thread; well done, Sven, Jim and Peter..

[Adam Clayman]

My take is golf courses and the sport are so complex and have so many levels whatever it is  the parts of our brains needs, thru study and devotion, rivals art science and religion.    I hope this doesn't now turn into a rater bashing thread because many competent students can tell from one visit if a course actually holds these "secrets". It may not be imperative to figure them all out, just recognize when they exist and when they don't.

[JESII]

No Adam, I don't want it to be a rater bash...as it turns out, it seems there are plenty of them going right now for some reason.

I do want to talk about this though...

"My take is golf courses and the sport are so complex and have so many levels whatever it is  the parts of our brains needs, thru study and devotion, rivals art science and religion.    I hope this doesn't now turn into a rater bashing thread because many competent students can tell from one visit if a course actually holds these "secrets". It may not be imperative to figure them all out, just recognize when they exist and when they don't."

I agree with your first sentence which makes it impossible to buy the last.

Why is it only important to recognize that certain "secrets" exist? Isn't it imperative to learn about them in order to appreciate them? Afterall, what is a secret for you may not be for me, but others will be the reverse...

In that vein, I believe you when you tell me the sand hills region features tremendous opportunities to discover its "secrets" and I wholeheartedly long for the day when I can discover them for myself...but simply trusting that they're there (through my esteem in your outlook) can't be enough. I have to see and feel it.

One play is enough to form an opinion (even walking a course passes my smell test) but it can't be nearly enough to gain a deep understanding of a golf course.

[Mac Plumart]

No Adam, I don't want it to be a rater bash...as it turns out, it seems there are plenty of them going right now for some reason.

I do want to talk about this though...

"My take is golf courses and the sport are so complex and have so many levels whatever it is  the parts of our brains needs, thru study and devotion, rivals art science and religion.    I hope this doesn't now turn into a rater bashing thread because many competent students can tell from one visit if a course actually holds these "secrets". It may not be imperative to figure them all out, just recognize when they exist and when they don't."

I agree with your first sentence which makes it impossible to buy the last.

Why is it only important to recognize that certain "secrets" exist? Isn't it imperative to learn about them in order to appreciate them? Afterall, what is a secret for you may not be for me, but others will be the reverse...

In that vein, I believe you when you tell me the sand hills region features tremendous opportunities to discover its "secrets" and I wholeheartedly long for the day when I can discover them for myself...but simply trusting that they're there (through my esteem in your outlook) can't be enough. I have to see and feel it.

One play is enough to form an opinion (even walking a course passes my smell test) but it can't be nearly enough to gain a deep understanding of a golf course.

Boy, that is a good post(s).  Reminds me of 13 at Baltusrol. 

First of, what a great hole!!  Secondly, I think it would take me 4 total plays to figure out all of its secrets and/or what is the best way to play it for me.  For those of you who don't know, it is a dog-leg right par 4 playing over a diagonal stream with diagonal-ish bunkers behind the fairway.  I played it safe and far left the first time, but I saw at least 4 tee shots available to me.  I know the hole is good/great due to risk/reward options available, but have only played it one way. 

Do I have a "deep" understanding of the hole and/or the golf course?  No.  Did I see it and comprehend the basic layout of it?  Yes.  Interesting question.

Is a Marine just out of Basic Training a Marine?  Yes.  Will he go to war and fight and potentiall die for his country?  Yes.  Does he know his inner-self and have complete understanding of the field of battle?  No.  But we trust him with defending our nation, nonetheless.

Good posts guys!

[BCrosby]

Jim/Mac -

Good stuff.

This thread reminds me of something Tom Simpson once said. It went something like: if you can understand a course after just one play, it's not a very good course. 

Along the same lines, if Simpson were alive today he might have said about golf course raters that "anyone who believes he can rate a course after a single play has no idea what it means to understand a golf course."

Bob

[Sean_A]

It strikes me that what I'm describing is the appeal of 'the home club', of being a member of say, a place like Plainfield or Walton Heath or Garden City or the Renaissance Club and playing it everyday and experiencing it differently everyday as IT stays the same but YOU change and grow older and see more and more, and more deeply and with more gratitude and appreciation and a growing sense of MEANING. Kind of explains the appeal to me of the home course in a way I never understood before.

Peter

Pietro

On a very high percentage of what I consider the best courses the relationship between course and golfer is far more than one way because courses should be allowed to change on practically a daily basis.  To me this is perhaps the biggest difference between GB&I and American courses.  It seems to me that a great many even great American courses strive for daily consistency while in GB&I this may be a goal but usually it is doomed to failure.  Hence we get courses changing to a radical degree on the whim of nature.

Bob

My take is a  bit different with evaluating a course.  I accept I can't see or know all about a course in one or twenty games, but I can decide if what I see is enough to want to revisit.

Ciao

Ciao

[Mac Plumart]

Bob


My take is a  bit different with evaluating a course.  I accept I can't see or know all about a course in one or twenty games, but I can decide if what I see is enough to want to revisit.


Ciao

I feel this is just the point.  Mackenzie talked about learning something new every time he played St. Andrews.  In this instance, you could NEVER learn all the secrets.  But like Sean and Adam have said, you know they are there and you want to play these types of courses again and again to try to figure them all out.

If Mackenzie didn't know 100% about The Old Course, then no one is going to unlock the secrets to a truly great course.  But most astute observes will know they are there.

[BCrosby]

Sean says -

"My take is a  bit different with evaluating a course.  I accept I can't see or know all about a course in one or twenty games, but I can decide if what I see is enough to want to revisit."

I like that. A realistic approach to assessing courses you don't know well.

That's not an approach, however, that a rater can take. Trying to figure out whether Oak Hill is the 43rd or 44th best course in the US doesn't allow for that kind of healthy humility.

Bob