So is every new course a world beater?

[Tom_Doak]

This is a minor point about the lists, but two ideas that are coming out in the ranking side are Paul's contention that courses are moving UP, while Ben discusses courses falling DOWN.

I'm curious about this, as I could see both being true depending on the parameters. Could it be that courses that land on the most prestigious top 100 lists are moving up, but courses landing on less prestigious lists can be falling down?

Paul said they moved up in their second time on the lists; Ben said they fall down and then out after five or six times [10-15 years].  Both are probably correct.


It's been true of many of my courses.  Ballyneal was ranked pretty low when it first appeared and has slowly and steadily moved up . . . which is not true of very many others.  Pacific Dunes has moved down since Tara Iti opened, and surpassed it as my best work, in the minds of a fair subset of panelists.  Bill Coore has built a bunch of wonderful courses, but none that have challenged Sand Hills for the top spot, so they are elbowing each other down the list as other new courses appear.


It's stupid for the ranking of Pacific Dunes to go down 5-6 spots when I build one course that people think should rank more highly -- Pacific Dunes hasn't changed a bit in these past 23 years -- but that's the way many raters think, that any architect's courses have a pecking order that should be laddered down the list somehow.  That is a strong indication that they can't look at the design independent of the designer's name.

[Mike Hendren]

Can Yale’s resurgence in the ratings be attributable to the current trend (if there is one) favoring  bold design rather than nuanced architecture or is it solely a function of maintenance and other improvements?  Note: I found it to be fantastic and deserving of its higher rankings.

Second absurd question: Given current trends, would anyone hire Donald J. Ross?

[Sean_A]

This is a minor point about the lists, but two ideas that are coming out in the ranking side are Paul's contention that courses are moving UP, while Ben discusses courses falling DOWN.

I'm curious about this, as I could see both being true depending on the parameters. Could it be that courses that land on the most prestigious top 100 lists are moving up, but courses landing on less prestigious lists can be falling down?

Paul said they moved up in their second time on the lists; Ben said they fall down and then out after five or six times [10-15 years].  Both are probably correct.


It's been true of many of my courses.  Ballyneal was ranked pretty low when it first appeared and has slowly and steadily moved up . . . which is not true of very many others.  Pacific Dunes has moved down since Tara Iti opened, and surpassed it as my best work, in the minds of a fair subset of panelists.  Bill Coore has built a bunch of wonderful courses, but none that have challenged Sand Hills for the top spot, so they are elbowing each other down the list as other new courses appear.


It's stupid for the ranking of Pacific Dunes to go down 5-6 spots when I build one course that people think should rank more highly -- Pacific Dunes hasn't changed a bit in these past 23 years -- but that's the way many raters think, that any architect's courses have a pecking order that should be laddered down the list somehow.  That is a strong indication that they can't look at the design independent of the designer's name.

Tom

There may be other reasons. Different panelists is an explanation. 23 years brings in a new generation of golfers. Plus, panelists can change their minds. I don’t see an issue with that. In fact, it might be considered positive.

Bogey

Good question. Would Ross be hired as a top tier archie these days? I have my doubts. But be reason is we can can see his body of work and understand the overall quality despite not having that many home runs given the number of at bats.

I don’t know if all these high profile new courses are world beaters, but many look awfully good.

Ciao

[Ally Mcintosh]

The issue is the changing motivation of those who are developing courses. With the demise of large-scale residential based golf development (it still exists, but obviously in tiny quantities compared to twenty or thirty years ago), most people who are developing golf are doing so for its own sake and because they want to do something great.


The developer wanting to do something great doesn't mean that it will be so, but it is the single most important part of creating great golf. Everything else follows from that.

Adam has nailed this. In my opinion the three things you can definitively say are making this generation’s golf courses better than the previous are:


- Developers are looking at great golf as their core driver.
- The quality of the sites are far superior.
- The intricacy of the detail in the design and build is far more nuanced.


Other variables are - to a degree - not differentiators; this because they are either subjective (e.g. preference of design philosophy) or difficult to gauge for the outsider (e.g. routing skills).


One final aspect we need to consider is that golf courses are getting presented the way architects want them to be. As with many Golden Age courses (also built on good sites with core golf as their driver), will some of these courses lose their bite as they age over the next 50-100 years through owners with different priorities and maintenance practices that outweigh design intent?

Do you think there is also an impact from the presumably improved ability to move earth around? An architect (given the budget) these days who pictures a significant change to the topography of the site can do that, where a century ago that wasn't an option. I'm thinking of Bayonne in particular as a site that was built rather than discovered.

Yes, but I don’t think that matters to a huge extent when the sites are good, as they are now and as they were in the Golden Age.


It’s the period in between where huge earthmoving equipment came in to its own. Sure, there have been some really bold, heavy construction jobs in the last 20 years but they generally haven’t been the ones that make their way in to Top-100 lists…


…in fact, I’d argue that on a really good site, you can get by with excavators and no dozers.

Doesn’t the modern equipment help with details?


Ciao

Yeah sure: Equipment gets refined, tilt buckets were introduced in the 80’s etc…


But the question was around heavy earth moving and nothing has got easier now than with the previous generation.


Better detailing has come about from a desire to sweat the small shapes and finished look rather than to rely on contractors to build straight from plan. Even the best architects can’t draw the small detailing that can add immeasurably to a course. That desire to sweat the small detail has then improved the building skills far more than equipment has.


Mike H has started discussing nuance vs bold, subtle vs non-subtle. But that has nothing to do with my original point.


You could summarise my original point - which was one of the three reasons that I suggested modern courses are better than the previous generation - by saying that design/build beats traditional methodology. But that would be far too simplistic. Regardless, architects have to have heavy presence on site during construction to get the best results.

[Ben Hollerbach]

I took another look at the Golf Magazine rankings over the last 30 years.

181 courses have been ranked in the top 100 during this time. with 51 of them being ranked in all 16 editions. Of those 51, The average ranking today is 33 and the median is 29. Those 51 account for 22 of the top 25 and 40 of the top 50.

Within the remaining 130, 81 have been in the rankings for 6 or less editions, with only 25 of those currently ranked.

Of the 25 who are still ranked: 15 have risen in the rankings, 5 have fallen, and 5 are in their first edition of the rankings. They have been in the rankings an average of only 3 editions.

Of the 56 who are no longer ranked and had been ranked for 6 or less editions: 33 entered at their highest rank, 23 rose in the rankings before eventually falling, 32 of them left the rankings at a worse ranking than when they entered and surprisingly 9 left the ranks at a higher rank than when they entered. They were in the rankings an average of only 3 editions.

[Charlie Goerges]

It's stupid for the ranking of Pacific Dunes to go down 5-6 spots when I build one course that people think should rank more highly -- Pacific Dunes hasn't changed a bit in these past 23 years -- but that's the way many raters think, that any architect's courses have a pecking order that should be laddered down the list somehow.  That is a strong indication that they can't look at the design independent of the designer's name.

Just to make sure I understand, when Tara Iti jumped Pacific Dunes, Pacific Dunes dropped below courses that it was previously ranked higher than?


If that's the case, yes it doesn't make sense.

[jeffwarne]

I was told by one of the most prolific architects of the era in the late mid-late 90's that all of the good sites were gone, and that's why we all worshiped the older courses.....
THis was AFTER Sand Hills mind you.


You don't know what you don't know, and if your formula is providing popular and $$ success,and the consumer/market isn't demanding something different, why change(grow)?


Thankfully the market and developers willing to take a chance on a different model further paved the way,and other talented less "brand name" architects that had done their due diligence and paid their dues were ready to step up and provide what we and the market(evidently) had been clamoring for.

[Ronald Montesano]

When was the last time that a municipality said "Hey, we're sitting on this tract of land and we'd like to use it for recreation. We don't want to build youth athletic fields, or swimming pools, or a park. What else might we use it for?" My guess is, a long time ago.

New, municipal public golf has gone away. CCFAD has also gone away. I remember stumbling onto Washington Golf Monthly and was amazed at the number of courses that Jeff Thoreson and his staffers were covering. #RIPBeechtree #RIPCharlotteGolfLinks

Golf in the USA is high-end, private stuff these days, with the exception of the Keisers and the Dewars, and they are building onto what they've already built. I remember asking Mr. Keiser the elder, the first time I interview him, if he would ever build a course in western New York. His answer was, find me sand and I'll build a course. He felt that the Canadian side of Lake Erie offered more promise than the USA side.

The Rosetta Stone that TW mentioned, has indeed been deciphered and translated. Unlike the punishers of the 1950s-1980s, who valued difficulty and frustration over enjoyment, today's archies worship at the altars of width, options, and fun. Not easy, simplistic fun, but complicated, geometric fun.

How will Grove 23 and the Apogee courses rank on the lists? They aren't blessed with great, turbulent topography, but neither was Chicago Golf Club. They are blessed with moldable, malleable sand, and that's the gold standard for all time.

You can only fit 10 courses in a top-ten list, and the same goes for 100 in a top-hundred list.

My college buddies and I talk about what will happen with college football. We believe, ultimately, that 30 programs will find their way into two super conferences. We believe that our beloved Wake Forest will compete with the Northwesterns, Dukes, Boston Colleges, Vanderbilts, and other universities with very good football and an emphasis on academics for all enrollees. I think that a parallel might be drawn to great golf courses.

[Paul Rudovsky]

I went down to SC to play Tree Farm 1/10 and Old Barnwell 1/11 and then returned 1/12 and found Tom Williamsen’s new thread with posts dealing with a number of issues.  Made some notes and was about to make a long post when the site went down around 1:30 EST Saturday!

My first thought deals with the importance of site quality.  I think this is HUGE…and I learned it from a conversation with Herb Warren Wind in the 1980’s.  I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Herb while participating in a six day tour of great Scottish and English courses in July 1981.  We played (in order) Prestwick, Turnberry, Muirfield, TOC, Royal Birkdale, and Hoylake.  The tour was to be for a max of 16 paying players but only 5 of us paid and showed up!   It was led by Herb, Ben Crenshaw, and Ron Garl, and Brian Morgan provided the photography.  AS a result of only 5 paying participants, I got to play Prestwick, Muirfield, TOC, and Hoylake w Ben.  If my memory is working correctly, it was about $5,000…a fair amount of cash in those days.  Included hotels, all meals, transportation within UK, all golf fees (excluding caddies), etc etc.  Simply an amazing trip…during which Herb and I realized we lived about 3 blocks from one another in Manhattan.  After heading to Sandwich for the Open Championship (won by Bill Rogers) the following week, I headed back to NYC and Herb and I would meet for dinner about every two months.

At one of those dinners we were discussing the Golden Age in comparison with golf architecture in the post WWII period  At one point, Herb stopped in mid sentence., looked up to the ceiling, and after a few seconds collecting his thoughts said something like “I am not sure I am being fair to the post WWII architects.  When the War ended, the GI’s came flooding home and most wanted to get married and raise families as soon as possible.  That in turn resulted in a huge demand for homes and the industry responded by buying up all available large tracts of land near all of the USA’s major cities (for example, Levittown on Long Island), leaving few if any quality sites for new golf courses.”  For reasons I cannot explain, that conversation has stuck with me for over 4 decades. 

I believe that Dick Youngscap and his Sand Hills Golf Club were necessary for the commencement of the Second Golden Age…by killing the theory that a course had to be convenient to players/members.  Mike Keiser was an early member of Sand Hills and I have heard that he made his “go” decision to close on the Bandon land after watching Sand Hills’ membership roll fill so quickly despite its remote location.

[Paul Rudovsky]

Part 2:


So there are 216 courses that have ever been included on a GM World 100 or World 50.  Of those 216, I show 126 Classic (through 1960), 49 as Modern but pre Sand Dunes (1961-1994), and 41 as 2^nd Golden Age (1995 to today)…and of those 41:

                        Oceania                                   8
                        Canada                                    2
                        Asia                                         3
                        Cont Europe                            3
                        GB&I                                        6
                        Mexico & Caribb                     2
                        Middle East                             1
                        USA                                         16

Other ?? of interest:

1.      Out of the box, how did courses do (in other words was 2^nd listing better or worse than initial:
4 only first appeared on GM 100 in 2023 so have not been on a second ballot (Lido/Te Arai-S/Lofoten/Point Hardy)

2 had second appearance in next list at same position (Castle Stuart & Ayodhya)

23 were on the next list after first appearance and moved UP

9 were on the next list after first appearance and moved DOWN (Old Head, Cape Kid, Trump Bedmin-Old, Kauri Cliffs, Kingsbarns, Ballyneal, Bandon Trails, Chambers Bay, and Old MacDonald)
****************************************
2.      Between initial appearance and 2023…did the course move UP or Down (overall):
10 moved UP (Barnboug Dunes, Cabot Links, Tara Iti, 9 Bridges, Ardfin, Ballyneal, Ohooppee, Rock Creek, Sand Hills, Friars Head (biggest jump by far…from #74 to  #23 over 10 lists)

26 moved DOWN (biggest being Kauri Cliffs from #46 to gone)
********************************
Most prolific architects…no surprise here…of the 41 our TD has his fingerprints on 9 as does C-C have 9 to their credit:  (Barn Dunes/St Pat’s/Cape Kid/Tara Iti/Ballyneal/Rock Creek/Old Mac/Pacific Dunes/Lido) and (Lost Farm/Cabot Cliffs/Shanqin Bay/Te Arai-S/Point Hardy/Old Sandwich/Sand Hills/Friar’s Head/Bandon Trails).
************************************
More to come in next couple of days…but Tom D…there is a very similar pattern between Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes (and for that matter with Whistling Straights)…all three had good jumps up right out of the box …and then a gradual slide downward since:

            BD—jumped from #80 to #57 between ’99 and ‘07 and since has slid to #94
            PD—jumped from #26 to #13 between ’01 and ’05 and since has slid to #32
            WS—jumped from #65 to #40 between ’99 and ’07 and since has slid to #91

I must confess to not having played any of these in about 10-12 years…but the numbers would hint at courses getting slightly worn down and in need of the restoration…it has been 25-30 years!

[Kevin Pallier]

More to come in next couple of days…but Tom D…there is a very similar pattern between Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes (and for that matter with Whistling Straights)…all three had good jumps up right out of the box …and then a gradual slide downward since:

           BD—jumped from #80 to #57 between ’99 and ‘0 and since has slid to #94
           PD—jumped from #26 to #13 between ’97 and ’01 and since has slid to #32
           WS—jumped from #65 to #40 between ’99 and ’07 and since has slid to #91

I must confess to not having played any of these in about 10-12 years…but the numbers would hint at courses getting slightly worn down and in need of the restoration…it has been 25-30 years!

Paul


Of the current GM World Top100 list 24 have opened since 1995. That's virtually a quarter of the list! There's a constant squeeze that goes on: to add a new one in you have to take one out ...


With regard to your resort course comparisons - I can understand Bandon D's slide - when it opened it attracted widespread acclaim. I would argue all subsequent courses built there were better than it (I haven't seen Sheep Ranch). Personally I've always thought Bandon T's was a much stronger course than it and only in the last listing did it finally move ahead of it.


I for one struggle with Pacific Dune's slide. Is Tara Iti better than it? I'm not so sure about that. I think Pacific Dunes is a better course than Friar's Head but hey that's me.


In the end, each to their own I suppose. 

[Paul Rudovsky]

Kevin--absolutely agree that this stuff is a matter of personal opinion...ask I sometimes say...it is like picking a spouse (except perhaps more important  )


seriously...the "bar" to cross the 100 threshold for World or USA is getting so so high!!  One thing I never put on my spreadsheet was the publications actual "rating " of the course (typically on  1-10 scale) for each listing.  Would be interesting to see how the actually average ratings (should call it "scores" ?) moved when say Bandon Dunes., Whistling St and Pacific Dunes drifted downward since their peaks in there's of where they sit amongst 1-100.  But recreating all that data at this point is way too much ebven for a numbers freak like moi.


I did need the scores on GW ratings and you can see them on my USA spreadsheets for all years (I needed these to be able to "merge' the modern and classic lists to create a single GW list for each year...and GW has published these scores starting in 1995 and continued since). 


am working to get the spreadsheet on a data base which would open up graphing opportunities for all etc

[V_Halyard]

The issue is the changing motivation of those who are developing courses. With the demise of large-scale residential based golf development (it still exists, but obviously in tiny quantities compared to twenty or thirty years ago), most people who are developing golf are doing so for its own sake and because they want to do something great.

The developer wanting to do something great doesn't mean that it will be so, but it is the single most important part of creating great golf. Everything else follows from that.

Adam has nailed this. In my opinion the three things you can definitively say are making this generation’s golf courses better than the previous are:

- Developers are looking at great golf as their core driver.
- The quality of the sites are far superior.
- The intricacy of the detail in the design and build is far more nuanced.

Other variables are - to a degree - not differentiators; this because they are either subjective (e.g. preference of design philosophy) or difficult to gauge for the outsider (e.g. routing skills).

One final aspect we need to consider is that golf courses are getting presented the way architects want them to be. As with many Golden Age courses (also built on good sites with core golf as their driver), will some of these courses lose their bite as they age over the next 50-100 years through owners with different priorities and maintenance practices that outweigh design intent?

Love Ally and Adam’s take
Folks are leading with golf, not houses.
And consider this:

“we proudly present an unremarkable design built on mediocre ground”

That makes for a ‘less than compelling’ new course announcement.
Expect hyperbole.

[Tom_Doak]

The issue is the changing motivation of those who are developing courses. With the demise of large-scale residential based golf development (it still exists, but obviously in tiny quantities compared to twenty or thirty years ago), most people who are developing golf are doing so for its own sake and because they want to do something great.

The developer wanting to do something great doesn't mean that it will be so, but it is the single most important part of creating great golf. Everything else follows from that.

I would agree with this [as Ally and Vaughn already have].


My client in Florida has as his goal to build one of the top 3 golf courses in Florida.  My client in Texas has as his goal to build the #1 golf course in Texas.  It's a very high bar. 


On one of those sites it means we have to change the world; on the other it means we shouldn't do very much at all.  It's kind of funny to be working on them simultaneously.

[Paul Rudovsky]

The issue is the changing motivation of those who are developing courses. With the demise of large-scale residential based golf development (it still exists, but obviously in tiny quantities compared to twenty or thirty years ago), most people who are developing golf are doing so for its own sake and because they want to do something great.

The developer wanting to do something great doesn't mean that it will be so, but it is the single most important part of creating great golf. Everything else follows from that.

I would agree with this [as Ally and Vaughn already have].


My client in Florida has as his goal to build one of the top 3 golf courses in Florida.  My client in Texas has as his goal to build the #1 golf course in Texas.  It's a very high bar. 


On one of those sites it means we have to change the world; on the other it means we shouldn't do very much at all.  It's kind of funny to be working on them simultaneously.

Frankly I view these requests of Tom to be huge progress.  I recall JWN saying many times how an owner/developer wanted him to build the world's TOUGHEST course.  Given that JWN had some periods with substantial business/financial issues (not to mention substantial recessions and/or financial crises) and a fair number of mouths to feed, it would have been difficult to turn these jobs down.

Somehow I get the sense that "world toughest" requests have been in sharp decline and replaced by "world best" (which of course is harder to define)

[Tom_Doak]

I recall JWN saying many times how an owner/developer wanted him to build the world's TOUGHEST course.  Given that JWN had some periods with substantial business/financial issues (not to mention substantial recessions and/or financial crises) and a fair number of mouths to feed, it would have been difficult to turn these jobs down.

Come on, Paul, that's ridiculous.  Jack Nicklaus could afford to take or not take any job he looked at.  He was very quick to lay off a lot of his people when the recession hit; he never had to have such a big company.  He took all of those jobs because he wanted them.


I could never really understand that, because as a golfer he focused on winning majors, planned the rest of his schedule around those, and took plenty of weeks off to stay fresh.  That has been kind of my model for my business -- I treat every job like a major, and there are only a few of them on the calendar. But once Jack got to the business world, his mentality was totally different -- my sense was that he wanted to do everything and make all the $, and he got himself in too deep a number of times in various ways.

[Paul Rudovsky]

Tom--I think you just made my point about Jack.  His business personality was so different than his golf personality.  And yes he did try to do way too much...and that got him in very deep trouble (e.g. St Andrews in NY).  That put him into a big hole and that forced him to say yes to every possible job in an attempt to generate cash.  And I can tell you from experience that it always takes much longer to dig your way out of a hole than creating the hole in the first place.


In any case, my major point of the above post was that I think golf is better off w owners/developers asking for "best" rather than "toughest".

[Ben Hollerbach]

When was the last time that a municipality said "Hey, we're sitting on this tract of land and we'd like to use it for recreation. We don't want to build youth athletic fields, or swimming pools, or a park. What else might we use it for?" My guess is, a long time ago.

• Skyway Golf Course (Jersey City, NJ) 2015

• Mallard Golf Club (Lake Charles, LA)2021

• Old Bridge Golf Club (Old Bridge Township, NJ) 2023