Question For Tom Doak about The 10 Point Doak Scale

[John Kirk]

Hi Tom,

Which came first, the Doak scale as defined in the Confidential Guide, or the Golf Magazine Top 100 ranking?

My first Confidential Guide was published in 1994, but I thought you organized the Golf Magazine greatest courses ranking before that.  To my understanding, the Doak scale is slightly dependent on regional competition.  A Doak 8 is "one of the very best courses in its region", a bit more specific than the Doak 7 "worth checking out if you get within 100 miles".

(Give this criteria, it seems that a course like Wolf Point might fit the definition for an 8 versus the chosen rating of 7.)


The Golf Magazine rating system is not region dependent.  If every course in a given region deserved an 8, then they could all be rated 8, as long as the well-traveled rater thought they all deserved to be in the top X (50?) courses.  My understanding of the GM rating system is the rater gives a 10 when he/she believes it is a top 5 (or some small number) course, a 9 for a top 25 course, and so on.

In either case, Doak scale, or GM ranking, the result is a logarithmic type distribution.  I'm asking this question because I'm thinking about the process of evaluating things.  Is there a difference between the two ranking systems?  Did your specific Doak system evolve from the Golf Magazine method?  Any thoughts will be interesting to read.  Thanks a lot.

[Tom_Doak]

Hi John:


I’m on my phone, on a full plane, so it may be a while before I can give you a longer answer.  But the simple answer is that I started being the editor of the GOLF Magazine rankings in 1983, and started writing The Confidential Guide in 1986.


Both systems were developed by me, but they weren’t intended to be the same.


And in truth, I wrote the definitions for the Doak Scale AFTER I had put numbers to most of the courses in the original book, as a way to try to explain my numbers to the readers. When I started, an 8 was an 8, regardless of what else was within 1000 miles of it.


Over the years, I’ve leaned a little more toward the definitions I wrote, on the basis that the book is an attempt to help people decide where to play, and if I rate all the courses in an area a 5 (or a 6), I’m not providing much help, so I may be a bit generous toward the course I like best. 


I’m less likely to do that as you go up the scale, and indeed, the definition of an 8 sort of precludes that by starting to talk about the best courses in the world.  But that doesn’t mean I’m limited to giving out a hundred 8’s ... it’s kind of silly to make such a huge distinction between #100 and 101.


For the magazine, though, we needed to make hard tiers because some panelists were way too optimistic.  The list is pointless if a guy who has seen 40 of the top 100 courses votes to put 70 of the courses he’s seen on the list.  My instruction to panelists was always that they should vote for approximately the number of top 100 courses they had seen - if they thought another course should go on the list, they should also think one deserved to be off - and they shouldn’t take the easy route of assuming the course to be demoted was one they hadn’t seen.

[David Davis]

John,


Thanks for posting that, interesting question!




Tom,


This last paragraph you posted really makes a lot of sense however, I'm really curious if in your absence anyone treats the ranking process in this way.


For the magazine, though, we needed to make hard tiers because some panelists were way too optimistic.  The list is pointless if a guy who has seen 40 of the top 100 courses votes to put 70 of the courses he’s seen on the list.  My instruction to panelists was always that they should vote for approximately the number of top 100 courses they had seen - if they thought another course should go on the list, they should also think one deserved to be off - and they shouldn’t take the easy route of assuming the course to be demoted was one they hadn’t seen.
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We all run into people that have played 40 or 50 of the Top 100 and claim a course isn't in the Top 100 for example, as per your intended logic that's not too reliable or perhaps they've played 70 of the top 100 ranked and another 100 of the total list of candidates yet still rank 100 courses.

I heard the average was 65 with Golf Magazine but I have no idea if that is still true.

These aspects sure do make the ranking process a lot more difficult and arguably less accurate than it already is.

[John Kirk]

Thanks, Tom.

The key feature of your ranking system is to differentiate courses in the upper echelon of design achievement.  As you might have guessed, I'm thinking about music ratings, which are similar because they are highly subjective.  Another field where subjective ranking is used to distinguish the best from the merely excellent is restaurants.

From the Wikipedia page for the Michelin Guide:

Following the usage of the Murray's and Baedeker guides, the guide began to award stars for fine dining establishments in 1926. Initially, there was only a single star awarded. Then, in 1931, the hierarchy of zero, one, two, and three stars was introduced. Finally, in 1936, the criteria for the starred rankings were published:
 

• : "A very good restaurant in its category" (Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie)
• : "Excellent cooking, worth a detour" (Table excellente, mérite un détour)
• : "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey" (Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage).

Beyond golf courses, pop music, and restaurants, I can't think of another common activity that is routinely ranked in this fashion.  I'm sure there are a few others.  Ranking baseball players, or other sports figures, is different because there tends to be statistical evidence that correlates to personal or team success.  Who is the fastest man who ever lived?  It's probably Usain Bolt.  Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?  The stats say it's Babe Ruth, but that's a bit more complicated.

One more point.  My music collection now has about 11,500 songs, and I rate them on a vague system where 1 star means "good enough to be included", and 5 stars means an all-time favorite, occasionally influenced by universal high acclaim.  Over the years, the percentage of 4 and 5 star songs has fallen, despite the fact the overall quality of the collection has clearly improved.  The breakdown of songs, in percentage by stars, is approximately 1-5-15-39-39-0.  So for me, the logarithmic relationship breaks down when distinguishing between one and two stars.  If you read the Wikipedia page for the Michelin Guide, the logarithmic relationship is maintained for 1, 2 and 3 star restaurants.  There is also an interesting section on the lonely, demanding life of the Michelin rater that might resonate with the course raters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide

In my case, the reason the percentage of top rated songs has decreased has something to do with the finite nature of favorites.  There are approximately seven hundred 4 and 5 star songs, favorite mantras, most of which have been been in my head for decades.  It's my opinion you can only accumulate so many favorite songs.  I'm not sure whether that applies to golf courses, but I think it's worth considering.  I would guess the older one gets, the less open they are to being "knocked out" by a new golf course experience, because there are precious past experiences which will always exceed it. 

[Tom_Doak]

John:


As I’ve mentioned to a few people, one of the inspirations for The Confidential Guide was The Bill James Baseball Almanac, produced for a few years in the 1980’s, where he ranked MLB players at each position and wrote an often irreverent paragraph or two about each.


Robert Parker does the same thing for wines, and makes a lot more off his scale than I have off mine.  Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report ranks resorts in the same fashion.

[Nicolas Joakimides]

Tom ,


Talking about CG , I haven’t received Vol 5(I took the special offer)
I wanted to give my new adress by your website contact page but it hasn’t been working for the last two months.
What can I do ?


Will you visit ,in 2019 ,golf course in Africa for Vol 4?


Many thanks !

[Jeff Schley]

Nicolas,
Volume 5 was released in November 2018, before Vol. 4, which isn't out yet.  I think that is due out 2020 when they will send it, which covers Europe, Middle East, Africa.  I would email Brian from Renaissance Golf who shipped my sets I ordered or sent to people: brian@sistersnorth.org

[Nicolas Joakimides]

Jeff,


I was wrong with the numbers : I haven’t received Vol 5
Thanks for the e-mail !

[Tom_Doak]

Tom ,


Talking about CG , I haven’t received Vol 5(I took the special offer)
I wanted to give my new adress by your website contact page but it hasn’t been working for the last two months.
What can I do ?


Will you visit ,in 2019 ,golf course in Africa for Vol 4?


Many thanks !

Hi Nicolas:


It's likely that we weren't able to process your credit card because you had to get a new one at some point in the last two years.  So we need the new number / expiration / etc.  If you send it to the address Jeff printed below, Brian will get a book on its way, though I don't know how reliable it is to get it to Morocco . . . we've had huge problems shipping to a few overseas addresses, though mostly in Asia.

[Nicolas Joakimides]

Tom


Thank you .
I send the e-mail already to Brian.


Shipping in Morocco works fine , I can tell you.,
But anyway, I live close to Mortefontaine and Chantilly !!