A Little Help for The Confidential Guide

[David Harshbarger]

Tom,

Do you cover any nine hole courses?  Are there nine-holers that would make it above a 4?  Is there a max you would rate a nine-holer?

Dave

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

Do you cover any nine hole courses?  Are there nine-holers that would make it above a 4?  Is there a max you would rate a nine-holer?

Dave

David:

I haven't seen a lot of nine-hole courses -- somewhere between ten and twenty -- but all that I had seen made the original edition.  The maximum I would rate a nine-holer is 9 -- and the wonderful Royal Worlington & Newmarket course in England got a 9.

[mike_beene]

Texarkana Country Club would be the most interesting Arkansas review.The Jackson CC redo certainly has possibilities.I have been to both clubhouses for functions but not played them.

[jim_lewis]

Another recommendation for:

Louisiana.....Squire Creek
Mississippi....Fallen Oak
Arkansas......Texarkana (if you don't do Alotian)

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Wyatt, you are s correct about Squire Creek. However I tried to use words that say the same thing. An average Fazio of his top tier courses. By that I mean big budget and big effort on decent to good land. However it is considered top notch in the state because it was a high budget Fazio. I will take Oakbourne or Bayou Desaird any day over it for a State Am or just for me to be a member of. As Paul noted Oakbourse is our home club.  BDCC was my childhood course which I loved during the Maxwell period and liked during the Joe Lee period. Now that it is back to Maxwell I am thrilled. When i see those shaved areas on one side of a green without rhyme or reason other than the USGA promotes them, it makes me think of BDCC and all the other classic small green complexes which were well trapped and surrounded by deep bermuda rough. You either hit the green or you developed a short game fast unless you wanted to lose your shirt and the contents of your wallet. That was how golf was played on classic designs across maxwell country as well as most of the deep south. YOu had better be smart of the tee and stay in play. You could not hold a green from the rough and it took a magic act to get up and  down. BDCC was one special place to play 36 a day as a child. Sometimes we played 18 at BDCC in the morning 18 at Monroe muni after lunch(TOC in louisiana, lots of hard pan to learn to play tight lie and trick shot golf from) and then 1 or 2 baseball games each evening. It is a great life.  As an aside an old LSU player I caddied for a few times named Tom Evans just moved to lafayette and comes to a prayer group for us cancer types each Monday. He taught me some grreat short game shots including the ball off pine straw where you hit the ball hard and it never leaves a foot off the ground and checks with one hop to dead stop. The first time he did it was on 18 in a match over a 15 yard wide bunker to a pin 15 feet from edge of the green and left the egg 1 foot from the hole to win the match 1 up.  

[Tom_Doak]

I know that Bill Coore rebuilt one of the courses at Hot Springs Resort in Arkansas a few years ago, but no one seems to have mentioned it at all.  Then again, I can't remember the last time I heard Bill mention it.

[JC Jones]

The problem I see with this is that unless he is going to visit each and every course again, the book will be incredibly misleading.  All of the old reviews are fine when everyone knows the book is 20 years old.  The old reviews are not fine when they are a part of a new book and people will think they are current.

Each course that hasn't been reviewed since the last edition should be noted as such with notations to the fact that the course could have changed because nature changes or because there has been architectural changes.

So, a new confidential guide would be great but it seems to me that in order to be accurate and not misleading, it is probably going to be pretty short compared to the last one.

JC:

The date of the last time I saw each course was in the old book, and will be in the new one as well.

I guess I just don't agree with your premise that these courses change drastically over the years.  [For example, check out my 20-year-old review of Phoenixville CC in the Guide, vs. Joe Bausch's current GCA thread on the course.]  Sure, there have been a lot of restorations over the past few years, but most of my reviews gave courses the benefit of the doubt on such stuff in the first place.  And I've got some other tricks up my sleeve, as well.

You are right that it would be hard for anyone to publish something as current as the original edition of The Confidential Guide was.  But, I've got a few tricks up my sleeve so that it will be more current than you expect.

Sounds good, Tom.  I'll look forward to it.

[Tom_Doak]

Re: above:  Note to self:  One of the tricks up my sleeve should be to find a good editor!   

At least it won't be in print as soon as I hit "Post".

[Ben Sims]

You are right that it would be hard for anyone to publish something as current as the original edition of The Confidential Guide was.  But, I've got a few tricks up my sleeve so that it will be more current than you expect.

Tom,

You probably have an order of magnitude more well known friends in the golf world now than you did when The Confidential Guide first published.  Is one of your "tricks" to have some of your course updates done by people's opinion you trust?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Tom Deomonte or something like that is or was the easily the best of the Hot Springs Resort courses. It was a great deal of up and down the hills though and frankly after 3 rounds I had enough of it. Madison Pope is the head pro there if you are curious which one is which. I think I saw another course there hosted a pretty good tourney up there this year. So Bill may have improved another course enough to take top billing away.

[JMEvensky]

I know that Bill Coore rebuilt one of the courses at Hot Springs Resort in Arkansas a few years ago, but no one seems to have mentioned it at all.  Then again, I can't remember the last time I heard Bill mention it.

Diamante?

[Paul Jones]

Wyatt, you are s correct about Squire Creek. However I tried to use words that say the same thing. An average Fazio of his top tier courses. By that I mean big budget and big effort on decent to good land. However it is considered top notch in the state because it was a high budget Fazio. I will take Oakbourne or Bayou Desaird any day over it for a State Am or just for me to be a member of. As Paul noted Oakbourse is our home club.  BDCC was my childhood course which I loved during the Maxwell period and liked during the Joe Lee period. Now that it is back to Maxwell I am thrilled. When i see those shaved areas on one side of a green without rhyme or reason other than the USGA promotes them, it makes me think of BDCC and all the other classic small green complexes which were well trapped and surrounded by deep bermuda rough. You either hit the green or you developed a short game fast unless you wanted to lose your shirt and the contents of your wallet. That was how golf was played on classic designs across maxwell country as well as most of the deep south. YOu had better be smart of the tee and stay in play. You could not hold a green from the rough and it took a magic act to get up and  down. BDCC was one special place to play 36 a day as a child. Sometimes we played 18 at BDCC in the morning 18 at Monroe muni after lunch(TOC in louisiana, lots of hard pan to learn to play tight lie and trick shot golf from) and then 1 or 2 baseball games each evening. It is a great life.  As an aside an old LSU player I caddied for a few times named Tom Evans just moved to lafayette and comes to a prayer group for us cancer types each Monday. He taught me some grreat short game shots including the ball off pine straw where you hit the ball hard and it never leaves a foot off the ground and checks with one hop to dead stop. The first time he did it was on 18 in a match over a 15 yard wide bunker to a pin 15 feet from edge of the green and left the egg 1 foot from the hole to win the match 1 up.  

Tiger,

I have never played Bayor Desaird.  When you get back into town, lets make a road trip.

Paul

[Greg Tallman]

You are right that it would be hard for anyone to publish something as current as the original edition of The Confidential Guide was.  But, I've got a few tricks up my sleeve so that it will be more current than you expect.

Tom,

You probably have an order of magnitude more well known friends in the golf world now than you did when The Confidential Guide first published.  Is one of your "tricks" to have some of your course updates done by people's opinion you trust?

Shirley Knot

[Mike Nuzzo]

The maximum I would rate a nine-holer is 9 -- and the wonderful Royal Worlington & Newmarket course in England got a 9.

Why does the 9 hole course have a ceiling of 9?
Would anything less than 18 holes have the same ceiling?
Cheers

[Ulrich Mayring]

I don't know about Tom, but my justification for having a ceiling for less than 18 hole courses is that there is a ceiling for variety on these courses. The same amount of golf played over them will be more repetetive compared to an 18 hole course of the same quality.

Ulrich

[Howard Riefs]

Re: above:  Note to self:  One of the tricks up my sleeve should be to find a good editor!   

At least it won't be in print as soon as I hit "Post".

Volunteering.

[Tom_Doak]

The maximum I would rate a nine-holer is 9 -- and the wonderful Royal Worlington & Newmarket course in England got a 9.

Why does the 9 hole course have a ceiling of 9?
Would anything less than 18 holes have the same ceiling?
Cheers

Mike:

See Ulrich's answer.  If you think about it, there are probably a few more courses that would be a "10" if you could throw out their weakest holes by only using one nine or the other, so I think you've got to take at least one point off for not comparing apples to apples.  But I think that's all.  The front nine at Crystal Downs, on its own, would and should get a higher score from me than any of the courses I rated an 8.

[Tom_Doak]

P.S.  I looked up the courses at Hot Springs -- the course that Bill and Ben re-worked is the Arlington course at Hot Springs C.C.  And, for what it's worth, I was amazed at how many different courses there are in Hot Springs.

[Bill_McBride]

Wyatt, you are s correct about Squire Creek. However I tried to use words that say the same thing. An average Fazio of his top tier courses. By that I mean big budget and big effort on decent to good land. However it is considered top notch in the state because it was a high budget Fazio. I will take Oakbourne or Bayou Desaird any day over it for a State Am or just for me to be a member of. As Paul noted Oakbourse is our home club.  BDCC was my childhood course which I loved during the Maxwell period and liked during the Joe Lee period. Now that it is back to Maxwell I am thrilled. When i see those shaved areas on one side of a green without rhyme or reason other than the USGA promotes them, it makes me think of BDCC and all the other classic small green complexes which were well trapped and surrounded by deep bermuda rough. You either hit the green or you developed a short game fast unless you wanted to lose your shirt and the contents of your wallet. That was how golf was played on classic designs across maxwell country as well as most of the deep south. YOu had better be smart of the tee and stay in play. You could not hold a green from the rough and it took a magic act to get up and  down. BDCC was one special place to play 36 a day as a child. Sometimes we played 18 at BDCC in the morning 18 at Monroe muni after lunch(TOC in louisiana, lots of hard pan to learn to play tight lie and trick shot golf from) and then 1 or 2 baseball games each evening. It is a great life.  As an aside an old LSU player I caddied for a few times named Tom Evans just moved to lafayette and comes to a prayer group for us cancer types each Monday. He taught me some grreat short game shots including the ball off pine straw where you hit the ball hard and it never leaves a foot off the ground and checks with one hop to dead stop. The first time he did it was on 18 in a match over a 15 yard wide bunker to a pin 15 feet from edge of the green and left the egg 1 foot from the hole to win the match 1 up.  

Tiger,

I have never played Bayor Desaird.  When you get back into town, lets make a road trip.

Paul

How far is that from Pensacola?   Might meet you dudes there.   

[Tom_Doak]

How far is that from Pensacola?   Might meet you dudes there.   

Bill:

Speaking of that, I remember years ago reading about an Air Force Base golf course in Florida that was touted to be very good ... almost like another Bethpage Black, back in the days when the Black course was not well maintained.  Do you have any idea which course that was, and what has happened to it?

[David Harshbarger]

Tom,

Having seen few quality courses, and not having the Guide, could you share your rating of any of these courses to help me calibrate?

St. George's (NY)
Wykagyl
Yale
CommonGrounds
Presidio
Fossil Trace

Thanks, Dave

[Tom_Doak]

Yale was / is an 8.

Don't remember if I had been to St. George's when the book came out.  It would be a 5 or a 6.  Same for Common Ground.

I haven't seen the others.

[David Harshbarger]

Thank you.  Funny thing, and I don't disagree with how you rate these, St. George's is the one I most want to play again.  Yale, I loved playing, and I know that I've learned more from that course in my education on golf architecture than any other course.  I look forward to the next time I play it.  But St. George's was enchanting, or should I say enchanted me.  She may not be the prettiest girl in class, but she literally made me laugh.

Thanks again, Dave.

[Sam Morrow]

Wyatt, you are s correct about Squire Creek. However I tried to use words that say the same thing. An average Fazio of his top tier courses. By that I mean big budget and big effort on decent to good land. However it is considered top notch in the state because it was a high budget Fazio. I will take Oakbourne or Bayou Desaird any day over it for a State Am or just for me to be a member of. As Paul noted Oakbourse is our home club.  BDCC was my childhood course which I loved during the Maxwell period and liked during the Joe Lee period. Now that it is back to Maxwell I am thrilled. When i see those shaved areas on one side of a green without rhyme or reason other than the USGA promotes them, it makes me think of BDCC and all the other classic small green complexes which were well trapped and surrounded by deep bermuda rough. You either hit the green or you developed a short game fast unless you wanted to lose your shirt and the contents of your wallet. That was how golf was played on classic designs across maxwell country as well as most of the deep south. YOu had better be smart of the tee and stay in play. You could not hold a green from the rough and it took a magic act to get up and  down. BDCC was one special place to play 36 a day as a child. Sometimes we played 18 at BDCC in the morning 18 at Monroe muni after lunch(TOC in louisiana, lots of hard pan to learn to play tight lie and trick shot golf from) and then 1 or 2 baseball games each evening. It is a great life.  As an aside an old LSU player I caddied for a few times named Tom Evans just moved to lafayette and comes to a prayer group for us cancer types each Monday. He taught me some grreat short game shots including the ball off pine straw where you hit the ball hard and it never leaves a foot off the ground and checks with one hop to dead stop. The first time he did it was on 18 in a match over a 15 yard wide bunker to a pin 15 feet from edge of the green and left the egg 1 foot from the hole to win the match 1 up.  

Tiger,

I have never played Bayor Desaird.  When you get back into town, lets make a road trip.

Paul

How far is that from Pensacola?   Might meet you dudes there.   

 

[Tom_Doak]

Thank you.  Funny thing, and I don't disagree with how you rate these, St. George's is the one I most want to play again.  Yale, I loved playing, and I know that I've learned more from that course in my education on golf architecture than any other course.  I look forward to the next time I play it.  But St. George's was enchanting, or should I say enchanted me.  She may not be the prettiest girl in class, but she literally made me laugh.

Thanks again, Dave.

David:

Have you ever seen Huntington Country Club?  If you like St. George's, you would probably like it, too ... although it is even wilder, and possibly too wild for some people's tastes.