Crystal is a really interesting comp, for sure. I haven’t been there, but it probably does get helped by being a northern Michigan course that’s only open a handful of months and so shows out for raters only at times when conditions are good in summer and fall. Fully private as well.
Meanwhile, Pasa is open year round, and a rater (or anyone else) can come by any time, whether conditions are great or not. I played it last September and it was in better condition than any golf course I’ve ever seen. This February, per this TS episode, it still looked good, but inevitably given the winter wet and with slower greens than typical, etc.
Also, golf rankings are a big deal about very small differences. CD is 65.6377 points and is #13 in the country, per Golf Digest. Pasa has 60.8314 points, which isn’t really giving up that much overall, and doesn’t even crack the Top 100. Who know how many bad reviews that is? Also, I don’t know all about the GD process. How long do reviews stay valid? Pasa before the Doak renovation had gotten seriously scruffy and overgrown. If someone visited then, or while the work was ongoing, that could knock it down a peg, as well.
And I agree with Soly as well. Private cache means a ton in the rankings.
I would like to renew my call for NLU/Fried Egg crowdsourced collaboration that gives us a true Top 100 American golf courses. I’m tired big corporate media telling us what to like! (Wait a minute…) But seriously, I know it would be a massive project, and massively controversial. But how much would you be into a True Top 100 that wasn’t influenced by advertising or outdated thinking? Andy seems to think it would be a gigantic headache, and he’s really one of the people who would have to be on board. But I feel like it would be the most shared (written) piece he or my boys here have ever done.
This is why we make it crowdsourced, in some sense. And why you need Andy as the final arbiter, who, even if he hasn’t played a course like Crystal Downs (and he probably has), he can likely tell you why it’s so good.
I haven’t played Augusta National but having been there four times, I can tell you why it’s good.
I despise that the methodology includes “Resistance to Scoring” from the back tees, as well as the ever objective “Ambiance”. That effectively ignores play-ability as a factor, it equates “hard” with “good”, and it means that exclusivity will always drive the rankings because the “Ambiance” will always seem great when you’re a guest at a place (also doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the actual golf)
Bang on. It reminds me of when Golf Digest includes “buzz” or “demand” in some of its club evaluations. Dude, I literally couldn’t give less of a fuck about how buzzy these irons are, how about telling me if they’re good.
As someone who was into obscure NBA jerseys back in the early 2000s (worked at Reebok when they had the NBA contract so I got some DEEP discounts, which helped) I came here specifically to applaud @Tron on his jersey game. I believe that was a Dan Majerle throwback.
