How do you decide one course is better than another?

[Jeff Schley]

I'm a big boy and can take feedback, I did list my actual golf course layout preferences on the essentials list, but chose to put the soft product list here as I noted. I agree it is a soft product list and I won't repeat my preferences on the essentials thread which are all architecture/routing based and would account for well over 50% of my weighted opionion for my experience playing that course that day.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised because almost all of what I listed here, the architect has no control over. 

[Niall C]

Whether some aspect moves me emotionally. Whether I'm scared, thrilled, challenged, enlightened or ideally surprised. That's all I look for now. It's why I want a little "upheaval" in my favourite art form right now.

Ian


That's an interesting quote about upheaval. I'd suggest we are perhaps coming to the culmination of "natural" bunker look and super wide fairways which seems to be a throwback or at least inspired by another age. Where do you see gca going from here ? With one eye on the past or boldly forward with a different more forward looking inspiration ?


Niall

[Jason Topp]

I'm not sure if Jason did it on purpose, but understanding the nature of the conundrum of which course is better is ultimately found in his question:


How do YOU decide.......


When its left to this, cat fights will always ensue. Its like trying to answer which is best...blondes, redheads, or brunettes...

For me answering this question gets to the heart of what this website is all about.


Deciding whether one course is better than another might be a purely subjective decision, although I would argue that there is enough general agreement that the subjective experience must be based on some factors beyond personal whim.


For me the question of whether one course is better than another is a less interesting question than "why."

[Laz Versalles]

As I've aged it boils down to a few simple questions:
1. Did I get to play a variety of shots?
2. Were there a handful of moments/shots (that weren't gimmicky) that got my heartbeat up and had me thinking; 'I've really got to execute here' ?
3. As I walked down 18, was I totally bummed that the day had to come to an end?




So to use those metrics in the Interlachen vs. Minikahda comparison, they're pretty equal, but the view of the lake and city on 18 at Minikahda makes leaving just that much more heart-wrenching.


Another factor that's becoming more and more important is the ability for a course to take you away from your surroundings. For example, when you play Rancho Park you are in the city and you know it the entire round. It has a very urban feel to it. But if you play LACC 2 miles away it's like another world. You can still see the sky scrappers, but the lay of the land just takes you someplace else.

[Phil McDade]

I'm struck by the number of responses to this question that focus on how someone plays a course. If "what's my yardage" is the single least interesting question a golf course can ask, the single least interesting pronoun one can use in answering the thread's question is "I."


I'm mostly with Sean here. Golf courses are comprised of three elements: the land on which it is sited, the man-made features of the course (including important matters like routing choices), and elements that may or may not be under the control of those who run the course (conditioning, of course, but prevailing winds, firmness, soil types...)


When I think a course is better than another one, I always consider: how does it incorporate and/or utilize those three central elements? I know of courses that utilize those three concepts in ways that raise the course to my highest levels of esteem, that I hate playing. And there are courses that do little in that regard, and yet make for an enjoyable round (and not because I scored well).


I can give examples, but I'll hang up for now.

[Lou_Duran]

It is not rocket science, Mr. Topp.  I value variety, topography, flow of the routing , balance, aesthetics, and the way the course is maintained and set-up to complement the architecture highly.  After 50+ years playing golf fairly widely, it doesn't take long to render judgment.  I simply do an ordinal ranking.  Do I like course B better than A.  If yes, it goes to the top spot.  If I like C better than A, it moves up.  Do I like C more than B?  On and on.  It does get tougher after 20 or so courses as the differences between the next tier is smaller.  No doubt that reputation and exclusivity work their way in,  but I do try to minimize their effect.  It is mostly a personal opinion.  Unlike some on this site, I have never seen where the magazine rankings insinuate that they are more than an aggregate of subjective preferences.

Funny you mention Sean.   A limitation I see with his reviews (and conversations I've had with him) is his concern for value and sustainability.  While those are important in terms of the viability of the game, it doesn't necessarily address the question of which courses are best.  A category "best bang for the buck" would be interesting (the Dallas Morning News does something like this for both private and public courses in Texas).

[Jason Thurman]

The course I'd rather play again is better.

[Sean_A]

Funny you mention Sean.   A limitation I see with his reviews (and conversations I've had with him) is his concern for value and sustainability.  While those are important in terms of the viability of the game, it doesn't necessarily address the question of which courses are best. 

Sweet Lou

I do try to throw out all my design and experience preferences when trying to do a best ranking. I can definitely drop all the extra stuff which I use for favourites, but dropping my design preferences is to be honest, impossible to know if I have done it because preferences are so ingrained in me after 30+ years of golf.  One thing is for certain though, turf and soil is very high on my list of what is important to me and I heavily discount this for best of rankings.  Some US courses which may have great designs would drop off the map when compared to British courses in this way because their turf is far inferior.  This is why I think it is very important to see a course for what it is design-wise in its environment and make some conclusions prior to comparing with other courses.  It is also the saving grace for some GB&I courses which I don't think are particularly special designs, but are generally ranked very highly. 

I just finished a top 100 England ranking for a magazine.  To some degree it didn't matter what I thought because the criteria was somewhat different to mine. There were categories like consistency...I could care less about consistency.  I will put up with a few average/poor holes if a course delivers a handful of exceptional holes....but in this system that was a negative to have a spread of quality.  So not surprisingly what I produced for that magazine is somewhat different to my personal ideas about the best courses in England.

At the end of the day, I am much more interested in the courses folks cite as their favourites because I more likely to be introduced to courses which may have some very interesting holes I haven't ever heard of before.  The best of lists are largely boring because the same 200 courses are largely cycled around. 

Ciao

[George Pazin]

Annoyed post deleted.


Have a nice day!

[Bill Brightly]

For me it is the 18th green test. How much do I want to go straight to the first tee after playing 18? Royal County Down always comes to mind. I played it as a single with a caddy and all the groups in front of me were so damn nice the round was over in a mere two hours... I wanted to run to the first tee but I did have a flight to catch later. When I played Concession in FL I could not wait for the round to end and you could not have paid me to play another 18. Those are my extremes, but it is a really accurate test.


I played North Berwick once and knew I made a terrible blunder by not scheduling a second round...


A friend from my home club was planning a trip to Northern Scotland, showed me his itinerary, and asked my advice. I said play Royal Dornoch two times. (Even though I've not yet played it...I trust my GCA buddies...) He did and thanks me evert time he sees me!


Yup, 18th green test never fails.

[Phil McDade]

Honest question:


Is it reasonable for people to decide one course is better than another without their own experience playing a course being a determinative factor?


Based on responses so far, apparently not.


If not, that would seem to throw away decades of judgments about golf courses made by lots of folks who are intimately involved in golf course architecture.

[George Pazin]

Phil, I think you're asking two different questions with your single question.


Is it possible to separate your play from your evaluation?


and


Is it necessary to even play to make an evaluation?


The question on this thread is specifically asking how any poster decides which course is the better of two. When asking about the thought process, I don't think it's possible for anyone - and I do mean absolutely none of us or anyone else in the golf world - to completely remove his own experiences from the equation.


How can you or anyone else comment on the topography a golf course has without actually experiencing it? Even if you just walk a course, you are using other memories to infer how a particular feature will play.


How can you or anyone else comment on the routing of a course without thinking on some level about how you personally interact with a routing? Easy start, hard finish, brutal stretch, birdie stretch, complete variety - there are all things that on some level we all have to relate to how the game is played, whether it's by ourselves or by some other mythical figure - Joe Six Pack, Joe Tour Pro, Jane Tour Pro or Jane Retiree.


You seem bothered by the notion that a poster would reference his interaction with a golf course in evaluating it. I'd personally argue it's the single most important thing. That doesn't mean you blame the architect for every mishit you have, but you can't just look at it clinically, either.


To use again your example of evaluating the land a golf course occupies, I can't say I have much more than an extremely limited understanding about how important the raw land is, and I think anyone on here who hasn't actually built a course is kidding himself if he feels otherwise. I've seen many before and after photos on here and the one thing that always strikes me is, how did the architect see what he saw, because it sure doesn't look like what I saw.


Deciding between two courses is not a scientific, clinical thing that one can detach himself from, not matter how much you want it to be that. You're no different from the posters on here who are referencing their own play, they're just being more obvious about it.

[Phil McDade]

Worked for Doak, among others.

[George Pazin]

Ask Tom if he believes that.


And while yo're at it, ask him how many courses he's built. Compare it to the rest of us.

[Phil McDade]

Ask Tom if he believes that.


And while yo're at it, ask him how many courses he's built. Compare it to the rest of us.

George:


I'm not bothered by anything.


I am interested in having an informed discussion about Jason's central question (a very good one): How do you decide one course is better than another?


Jason admitted up front his views are colored by his overall experience -- note his bias toward playing a course that, by consensus, doesn't rate among the top 10 in Minnesota by our distinguished panelists.


I'm struck by how several responses are colored by that person's own experience playing a course.


Doak wasn't DOAK when he took off to the U.K. and Ireland to study courses over there. By his own admission, he didn't play all of the courses he evaluated and saw, and he even gave Doak ratings to courses he didn't play. I've never been terribly bothered by that -- he's a pretty astute observer of these things. But he had to start somewhere, and I'm guessing his trip overseas -- although perhaps not the first place he began to get ideas about what he liked and didn't in a golf course -- provided a pretty good foundation. I think he's been quoted as saying that every idea in golf architecture is a copy of -- or direct reaction to -- the architecture at The Old Course, and I'm guessing that round after round of caddying -- not playing (although playing helped, I'm sure) -- at TOC informed that view. (If I'm wrong about that quote -- I take everything back. )


I've learned less about some courses that I've played a lot than some I've walked a few times. When I'm walking a course, I'm almost always looking for architectural elements to consider and study. When I play a course, I'm mainly chasing my wayward shots.


Roger Ebert used to be confused about directors and other movie moguls who didn't like his reviews. How could he know what went into making a movie? He was merely some guy in the back row of a theatre...


Let's do a little test. Doak gets invited to the full 18 opening this year at the new Mammoth Dunes course here in Wisconsin. Instead of playing the course, he decides to walk it a couple times. Think he'll have any ideas about the course as a piece of architecture, before playing it? I do.


But I don't think his superior ability to do that -- compared to, say, your average GCA poster -- prevents the rest of us from making valid observations by doing the same.

[Sean_A]

Honest question:

Is it reasonable for people to decide one course is better than another without their own experience playing a course being a determinative factor?

Based on responses so far, apparently not.

If not, that would seem to throw away decades of judgments about golf courses made by lots of folks who are intimately involved in golf course architecture.

Phil

I think it is reasonable to conclude that folks can use practically any criteria they wish.  To me, the crux of the matter comes down to experience.  After a certain point, the more experienced folks are the more homogenized the lists.  Some folks suggest this could be proof of a measure of objectivity at work in that the best courses have innate qualities which are recognized by golfers.  I think it is more likely to be group think at work.  Who knows, maybe its a bit of both?

A few observations

How do folks know if their experiences colour their thoughts about quality?  If they do know this to be the case, this suggests that there must be separate thoughts about the experience of playing and the quality of the course. If so, why can't the kept separate?

I am not convinced that I can learn more by playing a course compared to watching others.  In fact, I think sometimes it can be a negative thing to play a course...plenty of folks I know cannot come close to separating how they play from what they think about the course.

I cannot relate to movies, books and music etc in the least about what is the best. I can only experience movies, music and books as what I like or not...usually depending on my mood.  I simply cannot understand stars for songs ala itunes style....its an alien concept.  Yet for some reason, I thought this might not be the case for courses.  Even though emotionally I know its a bunch of bunk, intellectually something digs at me that suggests it should be possible to rank courses with certainty.  However, I have yet to come up with a ranking which satisfies.  Maybe there are too many variable to accurately compare. 

Ciao

[George Pazin]

It's clear to me I should have left it with my previously deleted annoyed post. Not wasting any more time, peace out.


Interesting post, Sean.

[Sean_A]

I am not fussed about which courses are best, but I have gone through the process a few times.  I never feel completely satisfied with the results so something isn't right about the process.  I am not sure the process will ever feel right, but I reckon I will come as close as possible after ranking courses I know fairly well several times over the course of 6-10 years. One play is usually enough to figure out very roughly where a course belongs compared to others, but it usually takes me 3-5 plays over several years to get a good handle on things.  I think this is why I just lose interest...its too damn hard to try to eliminate subjectivity and I am not sure it is worth doing. 

Sean,

It works slightly differently for me.

Yes, I'm of like mind that upon first play I have a pretty good idea where the course "fits." And since I don't replay a good many of the courses I see, that first impression is where it's left and that's what I have to be comfortable with.

But when I have the opportunity to play a course numerous times over a period of months or years, my conclusions usually cloud rather than clarify.

Either from comfort, expectation, past experiences, learning how to best play the holes or whatnot, I find the more familiar I am with a course the more I accepting I am of its flaws. Familiarity breeds a certain level of fondness and I become less critical.

Of course, this only applies to courses that aren't legitimately excellent. I haven't had the chance to replay on a regular basis courses that would rank among the very best.

Derek

My acceptance of flaws depends on the flaw on how often I play a course.  For instance, trees over-crowding a course (and the classic green wall effect) is something I have little time for and may only play a course once a year because I find it so annoying.  I certainly wouldn't join a club with bad tree issues and I have chosen not to pursue membership of a few clubs for this reason.  I also have history of one and done history if a course takes effort to play.  Slap dash bunkering I can much more easily forgive partly because it is rare to find a course with good looking, well placed bunkering which doesn't crowd out other meaningful features...though I admit to being a harsh judge on this matter.  Most of the time I think bunkering reduces variety and simply needs more judicial placement. 

Ciao