I guess I am semi-responsible for this thread, and am glad that harmony seems to be breaking out...all I was trying to get at in the original post was simply that the relative views on courses of local repeat-players, and occasional visitors, will often differ, in part because the first cohort will play said courses rather more frequently in a much greater range of conditions. The GCA-informed visitor will very probably have played a much greater range of courses against which to judge 'merit', but won't necessarily have played these courses in the range of seasons and weathers that some local golfers will have done. Neither view is any more scientific, or 'better' than the other, and we can all ultimately make up our own minds. As far as I am concerned the four Welsh courses I cited are all, in their different ways, special places for a game of golf, and clearly within GCA itself there is considerable debate about their relative merits. As you'll have discerned by now, I put RPGC and RStD jointly first, Aberdovey third, and Pennard fourth (and many of you won't, which is absolutely fine).
One of the (many) special features about RStD (say) is that its membership genuinely ranges from senior figures in the game who serve on various R&A, Golf Wales and ex-LGU committees and who have played golf around the world, to men and women resident locally who have never played anywhere outside Gwynedd. As far as the latter cohort is concerned, RStD is fundamentally their local golf club (for which they pay the equivalent of about $800 per annum): the fact that people want to come from around the UK and beyond to play there is a welcome bonus which helps to keep the subcriptions down (very important in such an economically depressed part of the world). Now that's not quite my own perspective on my beloved RStD, but keeping a diverse membership reasonably content is part of the balancing act that committees at Harlech and other similar British clubs have to perform all the time.