What have you learned by playing highly ranked courses?

[John Kavanaugh]

I’ve been playing great courses for the last 20+ years. If I’ve learned anything it’s that no individual hole is greater than another. Some just find their way into conversation easier.

[Paul Jones]

What I have learned is more about what I like and don't like. 


Every hole that has options off the tee... I like.
Every course that is too difficult, I do not like - some highly ranked courses fall under this category.

[Thomas Dai]

Confirmed rather than learned.
That conditioning is overrated (as are clubhouses).

Atb

[John Kavanaugh]

Confirmed is great. Not exactly sure how old I was when I learned that grass doesn’t grow as well in the shade. I just didn’t care until giant green side fan culture tried to ruin my life.

[Paul Rudovsky]

Confirmed rather than learned.
That conditioning is overrated (as are clubhouses).

Atb

To the degree that proper conditioning is necessary to keep or make a course firm and fast, do not think I agree with the above statement...but generally agree regarding conditioning measures necessary to make a course look beautiful

[Niall C]

A few years ago I was fortunate to play the Cal Club amongst other courses on a tour with some good friends. One of them was on the Committee of the club we were both members of. I asked after we'd played what he liked best about the Cal Club and what he might like to see at our club. He thought for a moment and then said he really liked the pyramid of balls on the practice tee.


Niall

[Ben Sims]

Speaking of individual holes, I think many golfers have been conditioned to think of golf holes individually. Maybe it’s the way the Masters is broadcast every year, maybe it’s carts creating large green to tee transitions, I’m not sure why. To a degree we’re guilty of it here the way we discuss holes sometimes.


But great courses taught me that the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts.

[mike_malone]

I learned nothing.

[Jim Sherma]

That highly ranked courses are more about history, conditioning and presentation than architecture. Quick mental exercise - switch the ownership/membership of the upper and mid tier clubs in any market and see where they relatively rank in 10 years. Yes, underlying land and architecture matters, but not as much as we like to think.

[Jim Tang]

I've learned that truly great golf courses are highly complex and require multiple plays to appreciate all of the strategy, subtlety and nuances they contain.

[Daryl David]

I've learned that truly great golf courses are highly complex and require multiple plays to appreciate all of the strategy, subtlety and nuances they contain.

Very well said.

[John Connolly]

I've learned they create a feeling of exhilaration when you peg your ball and look towards your line of play.

[Sean_A]

I learned that greatness is overrated.

Ciao

[Ally Mcintosh]

I’ve been playing great courses for the last 20+ years. If I’ve learned anything it’s that no individual hole is greater than another. Some just find their way into conversation easier.

I like a lot of the answers on here but I still think John’s original post is my favourite:


Sure, there are holes that excel in strategy. But seeing as strategy is overrated, there are far more holes that have just become easy touch points and standard bearers for discussions on great holes, even if they are no better or worse than half a dozen other holes on their respective courses.


For that reason, I have always advocated for the “whole” ahead of chasing individual hole greatness: The album over the three hit singles. That seems to be where I differ from other architects on here.

[Tim_Weiman]

Ally,


Do you think the 15th at Pebble Beach is no better than the 8th?

[Ally Mcintosh]

No idea, Tim. Never been to Pebble Beach. In fact, I can’t even picture the 15th.


To give an example that you are familiar with, I think there are half a dozen holes at Ballybunion Old as good as the 11th… yet the 11th is trotted out every single time a “best golf holes” conversation comes up. People aren’t very original.

[Mike Feeney]

Raters don't weight "fun-to-play" as much as I do.  And, highly ranked should mean one needs to experience more than 2 loops before assessing.

[Richard Fisher]

To Ally's point 'I have not attempted to describe the links hole by hole; for it is of a very close texture, so to speak, the holes lead from one to another as in a fugue. The beauty of the 3rd lies in its relation to the 8th, etc.' Patric Dickinson on Muirfield in A Round of Golf Courses.


We (almost) never play the greatest holes in isolation from what surrounds them, and indeed at (e.g.) The Old Course it is pretty much impossible to do so, because of the general business of the site. The Road Hole is a great hole in part because of where it sits in the round...

[Mike Hendren]

Execution of the shot trumps architecture - by a mile.

[Tim_Weiman]

No idea, Tim. Never been to Pebble Beach. In fact, I can’t even picture the 15th.


To give an example that you are familiar with, I think there are half a dozen holes at Ballybunion Old as good as the 11th… yet the 11th is trotted out every single time a “best golf holes” conversation comes up. People aren’t very original.

Ally,


To be honest, I thought about exactly the example you cited - the 11th at Ballybunion - but decided against it. But if you want a half way original example at Ballybunion, I would cite the 6th hole compared to either the 4th or 5th.


I say half way original because Tom Doak commented on 4 & 5 in the first published version of the Confidential Guide, but I apply “original” to #6 because I don’t recall many people praising this hole. I simply think it is much better than 4 or 5, especially in certain wind conditions.


As for great courses where identifying holes that really stand out is most difficult, Pine Valley might be the best example.

[BCrosby]

I learned that greatness is overrated.

Ciao

Bingo!

[Tommy Williamsen]

I learned that nothing compares with a good Links course.

[jeffwarne]

Very often, a rater analysis, opinion and rating of a course is tossed out? due to the outlier rule.
So in effect, raters are told not to think outside the box, and by extension what rating range to give, if they want their vote to count?


From Golf Digest



"To maintain the integrity of our rankings, it has been a long-standing practice for Golf Digest’s statistician Dean Knuth to perform “outlier analysis”—in which he statistically removes any extreme outliers that deviate from the mean of the panel by more than two standard deviations—in order to calculate a course’s scores. The category-by-category scores published Tuesday contained scores that had not undergone our normal outlier analysis, although the actual 1-200 ranking did include that analysis, thus the discrepancy.
To illustrate why our outlier analysis is needed, consider Pikewood National, for instance, ranked 33rd on our most recent 100 Greatest. In the 122 evaluations we had for Pikewood National, eight of them were deemed extreme outliers. One of them, submitted by a veteran panelist, would have scored Pikewood National at 74.2000. That is nearly two full points higher than the No. 1-ranked course on our list, Pine Valley. We deem that deviation—in that example, a difference of more than 11 points—to be an extreme, emotional reaction to a course."


Perhaps Derek can elaborate, but...
Maybe a phone call to the ranker in question-"a veteran panelist" in this case- could disclose the reason or identify the potential conflict?
But to throw out the vote seems extreme-it would seem the vote could still be counted at whatever max(or min) value they deem acceptable.
I'm curious of the 8 outliers for Pikewood National (which I have not played)that were outside the two standard deviations from the mean...how many were too high, and how many too low.And were those votes indeed discarded? or simply adjusted-which would make more sense to me.
Thanks in advance Derek.

And as far as an emotional reaction, it would seem to be an essential part of the equation to be celebrated,(and yes, perhaps adjusted or accounted for) rather than discarded.
I mean, who isn't moved by a first time visit to Augusta, TOC or Pebble Beach?

To put it another way, what if an inconsistent 18 handicapper low ball hitter absolutely hated his round at Pine Valley,and witnessed an 8 hdcp  in his group shoot 102(which happens) and the scratch player having a poor day shoot 85(which can easily happen)and decided to mark it down(2 standard deviations below the mean) due to (in his opinion) its "one dimensional penal nature".and his limited anecdotal sampling. With a course already number #1, a rater is basically told to rate it somewhat high or his vote won't count.
I would argue all votes should count, especially those at a course that is played so often by raters.
Every round is anecdotal....and they should all contribute in one way or another.
Or, perhaps the high 8 and low 8 are thrown out(out of 100), rather than simply outliers that incentivize raters to provide scores that WILL be counted.

[Charlie Goerges]

How can this be true:

I’ve been playing great courses for the last 20+ years. If I’ve learned anything it’s that no individual hole is greater than another. Some just find their way into conversation easier.

If this is also true:

Learn? I’ve been on this site for a couple of decades and see little evidence of anyone learning anything.

Anyway, that first statement is contradictory. If you translate it slightly it reads as (less poetically):

No individual hole is greater than another, but some are more worth talking about. What makes them more worth talking about?

Translated further: No individual hole is better than another, but some are better than others. Ok.


That said, it's prompted some good replies, which is fair enough.

[Ira Fishman]

I learned that golf architecture is a marriage of art and practical function about which I know virtually nothing. I learned that I know what I like. I could even tell you why I like what I like, but in no conceivable universe could I design a course that is even close in quality to those that I like.


So perhaps most significantly, I learned humility.


Ira