Criteria you use to judge a course’s architecture.

[mike_malone]

I’m heading to England and all of the courses are ranked highly by various rating groups.


  I don’t tend to rank courses. I tend to go by feel. Is it ok, very good, or great? Is it ranked highly by others but I feel something amiss?


What is your style?


Are you rigorous?

[Jeff_Brauer]

If I want to go right back to the first tee and play again, I think it's a pretty great course.

[Michael Moore]

Aesthetics - natural beauty with an absence of houses, roads, power lines and other infrastructure


Memorability - how many holes I can remember because they were different from a normal or average hole


Shotmaking - diversity of targets, stances and winds causing the golfer to think about what he is doing and perhaps even use every club in the bag

[Tommy Williamsen]

Does it matter if I place my ball on a certain part of the fairway off the tee? Are the shots into and around the greens interesting and demand skill and imagination? Do the greens have slope and/or undulation that makes green reading and putting challenging?

[Peter Pallotta]

Tommy's post reminded me of a simple fact, ie we play golf - and every golf course we play - one shot at a time, and in between shots we walk and discover that course one step at a time. Which means that any kind of rigourous or detailed rating / ranking process is a rather artificial one, in that we engage in it post facto -- after we have finished playing, and sometimes long afterwards, when we look back and try to assess the experience in terms of shot values and flow and strategic interest etc. In other words, it's not the actual (physical and emotional and subjective) experience we are describing but instead some neatly packaged (reasoned and rationalized and 'objectified' for public consumption) version of it. If I am content to stay with the simple experience in real time, I usually find that by my 12th-15th shot I can already tell whether or not I'm enjoying myself and thinking the course a good one.



 

[Ira Fishman]

My criterion is the degree to which I am both mentally exhausted and mentally exhilarated at the finish. The first part means that the course requires me to solve some real challenges, and the second part means that those challenges were enjoyable because a well thought and executed out shot was the solution.


Ira

[Paul Rudovsky]

IMO Jeff Bauer hit the nail on the head.   Fun is the key word and the great thing is that everyone has a different definition of what constitutes fun. 


What is "fun" for a Bryson deChambeau is not fun for me (and vice versa) and that is one of the things that makes this game so special.  The aggregation of what a group of raters say is what the ratings say.  And it is important that the panel be fairly diverse (in the golfing sense...not the political sense)...otherwise the listing will work only for others who are the equivalent of the uniform panel

[Sean_A]

Routing - the walk, views, green sites & use of natural features

Site - types of grasses & quality of soil

Greens - firm, true, well draining & variety of styles & sites

Man - Made Features - placement, economy of design, balance & variety

But to a large degree all the above is really only useful as justification for ranking courses. Sometimes its not even completely useful for that because editors have their own criteria. My bottom line is am I willing to pay to return? Those are my favourite courses and that means far more to me than playing what I think are the best courses. A lot of the best courses are not ones which I enjoy the most.

Ciao

[Stewart Abramson]

[size=78%]I[/size] definitely do not want to feel exhausted, mentally or physically, at the end of a round.

To me, a well designed course has (a) a good "flow" to the round and (b) interesting greens.

Good flow needs a both a good routing and a variety of holes throughout the round. The variety I am looking for relates to both (i) challenges, (both in type of shots required and in level of difficulty) and (ii) hole footprints (e.g. lengths, elevations, directions, and straightness (vs doglegs) of the holes. However, all that variety has to fit together like pieces of a puzzle as opposed to feeling disjointed (like so many housing development courses).  If in the middle of the round I'm thinking about how many holes do I have left to play, that's not a sign of good architecture. On courses that I think are well designed, it's more of a sense of "wow, we already played 18... I can't believe the round is over already".  I do not want to feel beat up nor do I want to be bored. I like to replay a round in my head on a course I think is well designed and think about what I might do differently the next time around.

[Thomas Dai]

Would I once again be prepared to travel to a course and remove money from my wallet to play it another time is a starting point although the thread title mentions judging a courses architecture which isn’t quit the same thing as what I might describe as ‘venue experience’.


Atb

[John Emerson]

Ask myself 2 questions.

• “Did I have fun?”
• “Am I sad the round is over?”

[/size]If both answers are yes then it’s a “good” course in my book
[/size]

[Ira Fishman]

[size=78%]I[/size] definitely do not want to feel exhausted, mentally or physically, at the end of a round.

To me, a well designed course has (a) a good "flow" to the round and (b) interesting greens.

Good flow needs a both a good routing and a variety of holes throughout the round. The variety I am looking for relates to both (i) challenges, (both in type of shots required and in level of difficulty) and (ii) hole footprints (e.g. lengths, elevations, directions, and straightness (vs doglegs) of the holes. However, all that variety has to fit together like pieces of a puzzle as opposed to feeling disjointed (like so many housing development courses).  If in the middle of the round I'm thinking about how many holes do I have left to play, that's not a sign of good architecture. On courses that I think are well designed, it's more of a sense of "wow, we already played 18... I can't believe the round is over already".  I do not want to feel beat up nor do I want to be bored. I like to replay a round in my head on a course I think is well designed and think about what I might do differently the next time around.

You just described the course that I would find both mentally exhausting and mentally exhilarating.


Ira

[Tim Martin]

Ask myself 2 questions.

• “Did I have fun?”
• “Am I sad the round is over?”

If both answers are yes then it’s a “good” course in my book

John-Your # 2 hits home with me. When I really like the course the feeling creeps in somewhere in the middle of the inward holes of “I can’t believe the round is almost over.”

[Jason Topp]

My impressions are pretty holistic but when I try to break it down, here are the things I notice:


1. Temptation - am I tempted to take an aggressive line and is the choice of whether to do so an interesting choice
2.  Does the course reflect its setting?  I find the best courses reflect their location both in general terms and in specific contours.  Generally, does it feel like I am visiting an interesting place, whether that be the desert in Arizona, the rolling terrain of Minnesota, the links of the U.K. or the Sandhills of Nebraska.  Specifically - are the slopes and contour of the golf terrain in keeping with the natural terrain.
3.  Can a wide variety of skill levels enjoy the course?  I don't think a course needs to be all things to all people but if a feature makes the game less enjoyable for a subset of players, the design must make up for it by being spectacular in some other respect.
4.  Are the greens interesting and do they lend interest to shots before one reaches the green.
5.  Is the course maintained in a manner consistent with natural conditions.  I love the condition of Northland Country Club - it plays great and is usually firm but usually is a bit rough with the short season, it contains all sorts of different strains of grasses, it has many different micro-climates and it is rare that a significant search for a golf ball is a part of the experience.  It is unlikely its turf will appear in a turfgrass ad but it more courses were maintained in that fashion, I believe the game would be better.
6.  How well does the course lend itself to walking - both distance between holes and nature of the terrain.
7.  Variety - Am I hitting a bunch of different shots when playing the course at a reasonable length for me?

[mike_malone]

My impressions are pretty holistic but when I try to break it down, here are the things I notice:


1. Temptation - am I tempted to take an aggressive line and is the choice of whether to do so an interesting choice
2.  Does the course reflect its setting?  I find the best courses reflect their location both in general terms and in specific contours.  Generally, does it feel like I am visiting an interesting place, whether that be the desert in Arizona, the rolling terrain of Minnesota, the links of the U.K. or the Sandhills of Nebraska.  Specifically - are the slopes and contour of the golf terrain in keeping with the natural terrain.
3.  Can a wide variety of skill levels enjoy the course?  I don't think a course needs to be all things to all people but if a feature makes the game less enjoyable for a subset of players, the design must make up for it by being spectacular in some other respect.
4.  Are the greens interesting and do they lend interest to shots before one reaches the green.
5.  Is the course maintained in a manner consistent with natural conditions.  I love the condition of Northland Country Club - it plays great and is usually firm but usually is a bit rough with the short season, it contains all sorts of different strains of grasses, it has many different micro-climates and it is rare that a significant search for a golf ball is a part of the experience.  It is unlikely its turf will appear in a turfgrass ad but it more courses were maintained in that fashion, I believe the game would be better.
6.  How well does the course lend itself to walking - both distance between holes and nature of the terrain.
7.  Variety - Am I hitting a bunch of different shots when playing the course at a reasonable length for me?

I forgot something.
 Am I playing with Jason Topp, John Mayhugh, or Bill Gayne?


That usually means it’s a great course.

[cary lichtenstein]

Eye candy, challenge in and around the greens, variety, openness to recovery shots (I always hated overly narrow tree lined courses) doglegs, then eye candy again.

[Tim_Weiman]

If I want to go right back to the first tee and play again, I think it's a pretty great course.

Jeff,


I don’t know. Cypress Point made me wish I could come back, but it is so thrilling that I just wanted to savor being there and didn’t need to rush right back to the 1st tee. Ditto for Pebble, Pine Valley, Crystal Downs, Shinnecock, NGLA to name a few.


There is some wine so good that just a glass or two will suffice.

[Jim_Coleman]

  How many times did i stand on a tee and say “whoa!”? Could I remember all the holes,, most of them, some of them?

[Mike Hendren]

If I want to go right back to the first tee and play again, I think it's a pretty great course.

Jeff,


I don’t know. Cypress Point made me wish I could come back, but it is so thrilling that I just wanted to savor being there and didn’t need to rush right back to the 1st tee. Ditto for Pebble, Pine Valley, Crystal Downs, Shinnecock, NGLA to name a few.


There is some wine so good that just a glass or two will suffice.

Well stated Tim.  Truly great courses can be savored.


Mike

[Duncan Cheslett]

“If I lived locally could I see myself being a member and playing here every week?”


Very few courses pass this test!