It’s funny because even as a New Jersey native it seems so strange to me that pine valley was (more or less) the unanimous world number one for so many years. I walked it for crump Cup a few years ago (still waiting for my invite to play ), and I agree that it’s wonderful, but somehow it feels so…arbitrary that a course in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey is considered “better” than Augusta and Cypress (and NGLA and Sand Hills and Royal Melbourne and St Andrews and Royal County Down and anywhere else ON EARTH for that matter).
If we were all dropped on to earth today with no previous knowledge of golf and no courses were private, what would the top 100 rankings look like? I feel like Pine Valley would be perceived similarly to a course like Myopia Hunt Club, Crystal Downs, or Chicago golf club (or maybe San Francisco Golf Club) where it’s definitely “woke” and very prestigious, but probably not in the top 5 globally.
Similarly, are the shot values at a course like Oakmont really that much better than pretty much all Raynor and CB McDonald courses? (As far as I know Oakmont ranks above pretty much all of their courses with the possible exceptions of Shinnecock and NGLA.) I don’t mean to pick on these top rated courses because they undeniably deserve recognition, but it feels like they’ve been elevated above their peer courses for no other reason than “that’s how it’s always been”.
Did I miss the reason why they’re playing all these courses so late in the day. I’m pretty sure they’re not playing 36 a day and, while the days are super long out there that time of day, I would have thought they’d play the competitive matches in better light.
Maybe Callaway is cutting back and only forking out for Twilight greens fees…
I think they said it’s because there’s so little day light in the winter in California. If you tee off at 12 and the round takes over five hours (which I believe is the case because of filming and whatnot) you’ll be finishing right as the sun sets. I also think the reason they don’t tee off earlier is because they have to wake up and drive to all of these places.
Monterey to Santa Cruz is an hour drive, but I guess the noon tee times could run in to dusk. Sunset is around 6 that time of year. If they had waited a week they could have gotten Daylight Savings Time. Or earlier tee times.
It could work, but someone would need to host and build the rankings website (Andy maybe?).
Courses would be listed online and people would rank them by a set criteria (the criteria would be woke, absolutely no difficulty or resistance to scoring metrics).
There are websites for rating beer that have a model that would work well for golf I’d think.
I love Pasatiempo and have played there many times both pre and post-Doak/Urbina and rank it among my absolute favorite courses…yet, this episode fell flat for me. Sorry.
Blah on Stanford as next stop. If going non-public, then why not drive a bit further north to Cal Club.
I’ve thought about this a lot KVV. I think there’s something to how Doak does it, rating courses overall from 1-10. I hate hate hate ranking them in order. A course experience is so inherently personal and I hate when I know that a course is rated highly because I start nit picking it.
I’ve long thought of a tier system. Like, there’s a clear tier one of maybe 30 golf courses in the world that just truly separate themselves from the rest. Tier 2 courses are impossible not to like, but just a clear step below the ones in tier one. Etc. etc. Crowdsourcing makes it hard because like I said, it’s so very personal. We have strong differing opinions within the group on how we’d divide rounds between Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs.
Our goal is just to showcase more and more courses for people to determine what really catches their eye. And we’ll have a series out soon that allows us to show more and more golf courses that we’ve seen.
I could get behind a tiering system. The difference between tier 1 courses is likely to be determined by your attitude and how well you played that day, rather than the subtleties of the course. Naturally, the setting/views may play heavily there as well. Sand Valley may be on par with a Bandon course (I haven’t been to Bandon yet) but the ocean setting may make you favor it personally.
Same with overseas. I would probably rank Royal Melbourne over nearly any US course, because I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN AUSTRALIA!
Tiers are the way to go. Rating a course is very difficult and as someone mentioned here, the margins are razor thin between everything from 20-200. That’s why magazines try to get more rankings but it is a a slow process.
As others have mentioned, it is so personal. I feel there are some courses severely underrated (Pasa, Cal Club, Eastward Ho, etc) but others may not feel that way. I don’t think difficult should equal good but some people do. Bottom line, keep sharing the courses you like, use the rankings the best way for you. Other than that, just enjoy the game.
The rankings thing is such an interesting convo. I’ve tried every way to justify why it’d be good for us to do a 1-100 ranking because it would be good for the #brand, but ultimately I think we all end up where @Soly is. There’s just too many personal biases and different things that people place importance on for anything to be consistent (which I think is a good thing).
I’ve always thought that, at least for us, the best bet might be to almost model it after the old school video rental places, where each employee has their own rankings, complete with their own biases, their own methodology, etc. That way, readers/followers can figure out whose rankings they most identify with, yada yada. And if there are any disagreements, you can talk to one person about their individual choices/preferences instead of a faceless panel.
Frankly, a 1-100 ranking has no interest to me. It doesn’t matter to me.
I think the thing that matters for most of us is - I’m travelling somewhere and I have the opportunity to squeeze in a round or two so where should I play beyond the obvious places.
One way to start doing this is pick an area - e.g. Pinehurst. Gather a list of the courses. Ask the Refuge to rank them 1-5 stars. Publish the list of courses with their average ranking (or better a box plot that shows the median ranking plus the dispersion of rankings). along with the number of people who rated a course. You’d quickly be able to put courses in tiers and see which ones are worth playing in area.
I guess the basic question to answer is why is the ranking needed and what is it going to be used for.
), and I agree that it’s wonderful, but somehow it feels so…arbitrary that a course in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey is considered “better” than Augusta and Cypress (and NGLA and Sand Hills and Royal Melbourne and St Andrews and Royal County Down and anywhere else ON EARTH for that matter).