Anyone who posts (or reads) this discussion group has likely heard their fair share of hot takes when it comes to golf courses. These days, though, I find there's a bit of a cohesive groupthink: people generally are afraid to deviate too far from the established guidance of what's good and what's not---but maybe that's just my own bubble.
That said, I've always appreciated when people go against the mould and deviate from the standard line of thinking. At least in my friendship circles or people I talk to about golf courses, that standard set usually derives from the Confidential Guide series.
With that said, what's your biggest Doak Score difference from the Confidential Guide? Maybe it's something you have as an 8 or 9 that the group of authors (or the OG guide) has as a 5 or 6; or maybe something in the guide is a 10 you just can't see.
I generally tend to put more weight on Ran and Tom's scores over Darius and Masa because of my own tastes and how the first two scores generally align more with my personal tastes versus the second two: as an example, in Volume 3: Summer Destinations, Masa gave Blackhawk, a very good Rod Whitman design near Edmonton, Alberta a 4 (Darius a 6), and Darius gave Dakota Dunes, a below-average Graham Cooke near Saskatoon, a 6: by most Canadian standards, Blackhawk is a top 20 golf course in Canada, and Dakota Dunes just squeaks into the Top 100: for me, Blackhawk is a 7 (or maybe an 8 if I'm feeling spicy but more likely a 7), and Dakota is a 4... quite the difference! In their defence, they last saw Blackhawk in 2004, and Rod Whitman tweaks the layout almost every year and it's gotten a lot better since it opened, but the point stands.
The reasoning? Blackhawk's routing is pretty astute, with the front nine working its way around this central knob, with the 2nd and 5th playing into the it, the 3rd and 6th off, and the 7th directly over it, while the back nine sidewinds its way down into the valley against the North Saskatchewan River. That, and it's a really great set of greens. The individual holes---2nd, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 18th---are excellent too, with a lot of shot options and strategic decisions. Dakota Dunes is in a Doak 10 level property, cut through a sandy dunescape property like some of the Nebraska heavy-hitters, but Cooke built a parkland golf course with near zero strategic value and a monotone set of greens. Largely, the property holds Dakota up from being a Doak 3.
Anyways, that's a bit of a ramble. What says you?