Easy Golf Digest course ranking hacks

[Mark Bourgeois]

Easy hacks. No green rebuilds, SubAir systems, blah blah blah. None of that hard stuff.

If I'm Mosaic, I'm starting a reno of Streamsong C&C like now, and I'm focusing on two categories.

One is Resistance to Scoring, and I'm putting in as many new back tees as I can. (Pretty pathetic a new course is barely greater than Yeaman's Hall in this category.)

Another category SS C&C sh*t the bed is Ambience, another category anybody with a checkbook and some moxie could just slay:
* super nice comfort stations every 3rd-4th tee
* someone handing out chilled towels behind 18 green
* plant specimen trees near every tee
* stick a bunch of C&C + Doak kitsch on the walls of dining room
* create a hybrid course and make it like a video game Easter Egg and offer only to rankers (and their guests)

Easy hacks for other courses, anybody?

[Peter Pallotta]

Well, easy would be to revise the design attribution for every one of Jack's courses, say, by adding Pete Dye as a co-designer.

Too bad JK's thread on Woody Allen as architect was deleted. Besides Tony M's terrific one-liner, JK's concept of the starlet-dolt relationship as an analogy for the design-bad golfer one was worth a dozen more 'on-the-nose' threads.

So, also easy: take any course and replace 10 yards worth of rough with extra fairway and then create new back tees, adding 30 yards to every hole. Finally, find rater-dense home cities and plop down whatever course you want (e.g. Yale) within that city's  boundaries.

Peter

[Mark Pritchett]

Or you could just hire C&C and Doak and get a Top 100-Top 120 course, oh wait......

[Jud_T]

Kingsley clearly needs to build a proper luxury clubhouse, spurn unaccompanied raters, soften some of the naturally occurring OTT features so they are more fair for the one time visitor, jack up the yardage to offset fairway roll and protect par and tone down the F&F so that the greens are more "receptive".

[Mark Pritchett]

I hope Kingsley does not change a thing, but sadly your proposed changes would probably give boost it needs to crack the Top 100. 

[Mark Bourgeois]

Well, easy would be to revise the design attribution for every one of Jack's courses, say, by adding Pete Dye as a co-designer.

Whoa, a two-birds-one-stone hack: Gil Hanse builds the new back tees at Streamsong C&C. That is next-level hacking PPallotta!

Okay, what about hacking Somerset Hills' Resistance to Scoring? This course seems to be dragging its knuckles in this category.

It's par 71 and we can't go below par 70, so that leaves us one hole to convert from a par 5 to a 4 (or maybe from a 4 to a 3) -- relax, purists, we're just doing a Scorecard Renovation, not touching the hole. Calm down. Well, I guess we could use a kids tee on a par 4 cum 3 or 5 cum 4 to chunk out 50-100 yards if we needed to.

So which hole do we scorecard hack?



The 18th looks like a good candidate but everybody knows a par 3 finish will kill us in [pick a category].

How bout the 10th? Shortest of the 5s, its 496 from the backs. Heck, that's a run of the mill par 4 in US Open terms.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

In defense of GD..and I am NOT a GD rater...I think they are trying to 'solve" the problem by changing their criteria for raters as they recruit new ones and others leave thier panel.
I THINK there intent in recruiting primarily low handicap players is the they will be less influenced bu the frills surrounding a course andbe more objective towrads the course itself.
One promising sign was the Alotian change where clearly the superb quality of the service and the experience of playing there was re revaluated as being of importance in its overall position in this years final call.

Ambiance is a factor, but SHOULD NOT move a golf course up in excess of two or three spots from where the course itself should be IMHO

[Mark Bourgeois]

Michael,

I could not agree more strongly -- bringing in people who are able to more accurately assess courses by the criteria proper will only improve the accuracy of the rankings. Happily, such changes will turbocharge the easy hacks we are all coming up with. These hacks work only if the criteria are adjudged fairly and properly. A bunch of guys making up their scores as they go along serves no one's interests.

That said, I am not sure what you're talking about as far as Alotian. Every category went down including Ambience, furthermore by pretty much the same amount. (In other words, raters didn't "wake up" and say, for example, hey this course is easy. That's not what happened.)

The club's scores slipped across the board; ie not a rater "problem" but something to do with the course/club itself. If raters had been incorporating Ambience into their other category scores, and if what you say occurred indeed occurred, then the Ambience score should have been unchanged while the other categories fell.

Anyway, the drop in each category was really small, like 0.2 points. Probably just random movement.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Actually I was just using the Alotian as an example without studying the numbers and because it appeared to experience the biggets drop.
In reality what it probably means is that MORE RATERS saw the course  and as such those judging were less impressed overall, thus the initial "spoiled" raters reviews were watered down and reality set in.
As such I dont think it was random, similar to what has happened at Shadow Creek over the years, both good golf courses just dont in the rarifed air of rankings they first appear.
I would expect a similar but probably less dramatic fall in two years time for similar reasons.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Michael

Now that we've discussed that, can you help me get this thread back on topic? You are a smart and accomplished golfer: give us a few ideas for how to hack Alotian back into the top 20. It wouldn't take much as it's already close.

[Stephen Davis]

Easy hacks. No green rebuilds, SubAir systems, blah blah blah. None of that hard stuff.

If I'm Mosaic, I'm starting a reno of Streamsong C&C like now, and I'm focusing on two categories.

One is Resistance to Scoring, and I'm putting in as many new back tees as I can. (Pretty pathetic a new course is barely greater than Yeaman's Hall in this category.)

Another category SS C&C sh*t the bed is Ambience, another category anybody with a checkbook and some moxie could just slay:
* super nice comfort stations every 3rd-4th tee
* someone handing out chilled towels behind 18 green
* plant specimen trees near every tee
* stick a bunch of C&C + Doak kitsch on the walls of dining room
* create a hybrid course and make it like a video game Easter Egg and offer only to rankers (and their guests)

Easy hacks for other courses, anybody?

I fail to see how any of those things should affect the Ambience score. According to GD the definition they give for Ambience is... 7. Ambience
How well does the overall feel and atmosphere of the course reflect or uphold the traditional values of the game?

How do comfort stations, people handing out towels, etc, uphold the traditional values of the game? Considering the definition GD gives, should public courses score higher in this criteria than private facilities (St. Andrews is a public course after all)? Should walking courses score higher than courses that require a cart?

[Paul Gray]

Well, easy would be to revise the design attribution for every one of Jack's courses, say, by adding Pete Dye as a co-designer.

Whoa, a two-birds-one-stone hack: Gil Hanse builds the new back tees at Streamsong C&C. That is next-level hacking PPallotta!

Okay, what about hacking Somerset Hills' Resistance to Scoring? This course seems to be dragging its knuckles in this category.

It's par 71 and we can't go below par 70, so that leaves us one hole to convert from a par 5 to a 4 (or maybe from a 4 to a 3) -- relax, purists, we're just doing a Scorecard Renovation, not touching the hole. Calm down. Well, I guess we could use a kids tee on a par 4 cum 3 or 5 cum 4 to chunk out 50-100 yards if we needed to.

So which hole do we scorecard hack?



The 18th looks like a good candidate but everybody knows a par 3 finish will kill us in [pick a category].

How bout the 10th? Shortest of the 5s, its 496 from the backs. Heck, that's a run of the mill par 4 in US Open terms.

Only three sets of tees? Must be rubbish. 

[Mark Bourgeois]

Google Mrs Forman's or Auld Daw, for starters. Golf Digest is spot-on: greatness in architecture is not possible without ambience. Comfort stations are a huge and integral ingredient in ambience, and have been for centuries. Centuries. Nae comfort stations, nae golf. Purists, don't go hating on me for keeping it real!

[Peter Pallotta]

You're brave to fight the purists, Mark - especially as you know that we can snip and snipe and snarl back at you with the yapping intensity of a pure-bred lap dog, and with the mind-numbing regularity of a cuckoo clock.  Yes, Ambience -- golf architecture's most vital and quantifiable quality, the battleground of debates going way back to Behr and Crane, and further to Old Tom Morris himself! (Indeed, he and Robertson ended their decades long friendship over it, when Robertson -- foolishly, in Old Tom's presence -- rated  Deal's Ambience a 9 and the Ambience of the Old Course a 7.5).    

Peter

[Stephen Davis]

Google Mrs Forman's or Auld Daw, for starters. Golf Digest is spot-on: greatness in architecture is not possible without ambience. Comfort stations are a huge and integral ingredient in ambience, and have been for centuries. Centuries. Nae comfort stations, nae golf. Purists, don't go hating on me for keeping it real!

These are interesting, but 2 examples does not a tradition make.

I think the comfort station idea, as it is currently interpreted by many courses, is far from reflect the traditions of the game.

Would showing off a large car collection that happens to be stored at a golf course qualify as ambiance? How does that jive with the GD definition?

[Jud_T]

Don't knock the car collection.  It's easily the best part of the experience...

[Tim_Weiman]

In defense of GD..and I am NOT a GD rater...I think they are trying to 'solve" the problem by changing their criteria for raters as they recruit new ones and others leave thier panel.
I THINK there intent in recruiting primarily low handicap players is the they will be less influenced bu the frills surrounding a course andbe more objective towrads the course itself.
One promising sign was the Alotian change where clearly the superb quality of the service and the experience of playing there was re revaluated as being of importance in its overall position in this years final call.

Ambiance is a factor, but SHOULD NOT move a golf course up in excess of two or three spots from where the course itself should be IMHO



Michael,

What makes you think low handicap players are less subject to frills surrounding a course than mid or high handicap players?

Personally, I would be more interested in how well travelled a potential rater was. Feels like the more good stuff a person has seen, the more likely they are to filter out the frills.

[Paul Gray]

I don't even know what a comfort station is.

[Stephen Davis]

Don't knock the car collection.  It's easily the best part of the experience...

Doesn't that say something.

[Bruce Wellmon]

Got it.
They detail your car while you are playing.
Cue "The Hangover" (#1) where the dad goes something like "spray Armour All on the tires" while in Vegas.

[Ruediger Meyer]

If GD only hires single handicappers as raters, yet the average handicap is still 18. Won't they distance themselves from reality even more? Won't it heighten the influence of Resistance to Scoring since single handicappers need more difficult courses to be challenged?

[Sam Morrow]

Yall are forgetting about personal misters in the carts and guys handing them towels in the locker room.

[Mark Pavy]

Another category SS C&C sh*t the bed is Ambience, another category anybody with a checkbook and some moxie could just slay:
* super nice comfort stations every 3rd-4th tee
* someone handing out chilled towels behind 18 green
* plant specimen trees near every tee
* stick a bunch of C&C + Doak kitsch on the walls of dining room
* create a hybrid course and make it like a video game Easter Egg and offer only to rankers (and their guests)

In the other thread, the ambience criteria was described as:

7. AMBIENCE
How well does the overall feel and atmosphere of the course reflect or uphold the traditional values of the game?

This should be amended to:

How good is the overall feel and atmosphere of the space occupied by the golf course to play golf?

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Tim
Example.
New Tiger Woods course opens at Diamante in Cabo.
I happened to be there for the week and as such was in a great place to get judgements.
Out of every 10 people asked, 7 said they preferred the new Tiger course over the Dunes course ranked in the top 50 in the world.
I also asked the handicaps etc...and why it was a "better" course.
Lost less balls, easier to get around etc...NOBODY with a handicap lower than 6 preferred the Tiger course...EVERYBODY above a 15 liked Tiger's more!!!!

A sample size of just over 40 members, all of whom are well enough travelled to splash the cash to join Diamante.
Just a thought.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Don't knock the car collection.  It's easily the best part of the experience...

Doesn't that say something.

No, it doesn't. Rich Harvest Farm's ambience score is worse than...The Quarry at La Quinta, Flint Hills National, Eagle Point, Diamond Creek and on and on. Newsflash: it ain't about the car collection. BOOM! You two just got scoreboarded.

Raters aren't a bunch of mouth-breathing club draggers -- haters, feel free to leave your high horse in the vintage car barn! Maybe an easy hack for Rich Harvest Farms to increase their Ambience score is to eliminate the car collection, ever think of that? Maybe if the haters and high-horsers turn their telescope around they can come up with some on-topic, high-quality easy hacks?? Turn that frown upside down and get with the program. Work the numbers, make some constructive suggestions.

Just a thought!