Wednesday
Mar142007
What Tree Management Can Do For You...
Bradley Klein on Augusta National's drop in the Golfweek Top 100 Classic Course ranking :
The biggest news this year is that the country's most prominent championship venue has lost valuable ground. After years of renovation and modernization designed to keep Augusta National a fresh test for the Masters, the storied 1933 co-design by Alister MacKenzie and Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones today clings to a spot among the very elite, having fallen seven spots in the last year to No. 10.
It's a rating that folks at most courses would die for. But for students of architecture (including our team of 410 raters), the slide is what happens when a prominent course stretches and narrows itself contrary to its original design intent. In an era when virtually every other championship course is removing trees to recapture interesting angles of play, Augusta National in Augusta, Ga., (joined only by Atlanta's East Lake Golf Club, which dropped from No. 48 to No. 52) is that rare classic layout that's still planting them.
The two newcomers to the Classic list, No. 82 Eastward Ho! Country Club in Chatham, Mass. and No. 83 Engineers Club in Roslyn, N.Y., both got there through sustained restoration programs that included greens recapture, putting back lost bunkers and sustained tree management.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 09:17 AM
Reader Comments (25)
Bravo to the Golfweek people who have seemed to have gotten it right.
Sorry, but to me anyone's course rankings are good fodder for conversation, but not to be taken seriously. Not unlike movie or restaurant reviews.
The Augusta National belongs to the members and they can do as they please. They account to no one, which is part of the club's "original intent". And they care not what anyone thinks -- Brad Klein, Ron Whitten, Tom Doak, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Martha Burk, et al.
The only mandate to stay true to the "design's original intent" comes from outsiders, people with an opinion but no vote. The game and its equipment has changed irreversibly, and so must the fields of play adapt to those changes.
I'd hardly describe the fall of The National in the course rankings list of the smallest (by far) of three national publications who compile such lists "the biggest news this year". That smacks of hubris; Golfweek should just announce its list and leave assessing its newsworthiness to outside critics. With their course freefalling all the way down to No.10 in Golfweek, I'll bet the members at The National are cleaning out their lockers as we speak.
As a longtime GD Top 100 panelist I've always had to play any course I rate. I wonder how many of Golfweek's 410 raters have actually played the course. Or how many raters from any of the magazines, for that matter? How valid, then, are ratings done from outside the ropes, or from in front of a TV? Will/has The National suffer a similar fall from grace in the Golf Magazine and Golf Digest rankings?
4p
While I think Pine Valley should be #1, no way is AN 10th.
Also, many of the Golfweek Raters don't have the necessary skill set to deal with the nuisances of AG.
Also, many of the Golfweek Raters don't have the necessary skill set to deal with the nuisances of AG.
>>
What a terrific typo! (at least, I suspect you meant nuances rather than <strike>members</strike> nuisances).
I think AN has been made better for the pros, but worse for the avg player.
Which is better, allowing Phil to "choose" between wedge over the pond or a wedge from the way right, taking the pond out of play, or "forcing" him to hit driver and 6 or 7 iron over the pond, approximating Hogan's play of the 50s.
With all due respect, of the nationals that do rankings, Golf Digest (1.58 million circulation) and Golf magazine (1.42 million) are the major publications in this arena. Their lists have the most history, the greatest exposure and therefore the most prestige.
However, the GD Top 100 Courses in America list is considered the consensus benchmark in the industry. It ranks Augusta National No. 2.
Golfweek is a second-tier slick with about 150,000 subscribers and has been ranking courses for only about 10 years or less. Some might consider its panel's ranking of Augusta National a thinly-disguised attempt to call attention to itself, especially when it calls that ranking "the biggest news this year". Uh-huh.
I know several Augusta National members. They won't be losing any sleep over their Golfweek ranking, The prestige at The National centers on its clubhouse, its course, its place in history, its Invitational, its winners' and members' jackets, the worldwide attention it commands, and the uniqueness and rich history of the club.
It doesn't need validation from any golf publication, that's for certain.
4p
GolfWeek may be a "second tier slick" but I have to tell you that everyone I know that is a good player and/or works in the industry (and I put myself in both groups) much prefers it to Golf Digest. In fact, it's not even close. I think for that reason alone in a lot of ways the GolfWeek ranking may be even more important than the Golf Digest rankings. For fair disclosure, I am also a Golf Digest rater.
I agree with PC that members at Augusta care a lot more about this stuff than they let on, at least the members that I know.
Second tier meant "in terms of circulation" numbers and not in philosophy or content.
GD and GM are so big they need six weeks lead time on each issue and therefore cannot be as newsworthy and topical as a weekly that runs on a heat-set web press with wire-stitched binding.
GD and GM are the 800 lb. gorillas. Most people that read Golfweek also read one of the other two, if not both, but for different content. They are the mainstay for selling equipment and schools. Golfweek would love to have their ad pages.
GD and GM are the bibles for the average golfer -- hence so many articles on "player secrets" and "slice-cures" -- which have the necessary shelf life (six weeks).
Golfweek is mainly targeted for serious players and people in the industry. So the only apt comparison is in the circulation arena.
I guess we'll disagree on the impact of Golfweek's ratings, though. You must know different members than I.
But we all know the Augusta National is not run as a democracy. If the Golfweek criticism really is a negative factor and hit the decision-makers hard, then the changes would stop and previous alterations reversed.
I won't hold my breath.
4p
Sorry, you need to go walk the property and check out some aerial photos up until 1997. It was virtually the same throughout in terms of width and trees.
As disturbing as the trees on 11, 15, 17 are in the context of the original design, the tackier looking plantings throughout the course to stop recovery shots from the large trees have proven to be just as bad (1, 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 18).
Listen, I am a GD rater as well. From a pure golf architectual standpoint I personally think that these lists aren't worth the paper they are printed on. That being said, they are read by millions..... whether it's GD, GM or GW and they all have a HUGE impact on the golf course industry as a whole....from courses selling property lots to architects gaining notoriety. Your point about GD and GM being the largest pub's is obvious. My point is not to argue who has the largest publication. My point rather is this....GW is a player and them moving AN down the list could be the first domino to fall in a long line of domino's discrediting AN, thus affecting the publics view of the "Augusta image". Although this is perhaps only at the ground level, it could swell and you would be kidding yourself if you think that the members aren't paying attention.
By the way, I find that the most glaring move away from the original intent is the rough to the right of the 10th fairway. That's likely the place where angle of approach meant the most, because the green was very hard to hold with the right-to-left slope on the green being more of a downhill slope for the approach if the drive was hit straight instead of drawn. Further, the pushed tee shot won't find its way onto the pine straw anymore. My point is: Hasn't the "second cut" made more of a difference than any planting of trees, in terms of diverting from the original intent?
I seriously doubt more than a few of the Golfweek Raters actually played Augusta National and if they did, they would not have made it #10.
>>
I agree wholeheartedly. ANGC should be somehwere in the 2nd quarter (25-50).
Not that architecture should be judged on soley conditioning, but I'd be curious what kind of points it gets in the department. The regular conditions aren't quite up to "par" with what everyone sees on TV in April.
You make good points. But any effect on AN -- one way or the other -- won't be known anytime soon, if at all. At this point, it's all speculation.
GW may be a player, as you say, but it still has a long way to go to equal GD in status.
We rate public courses in our market area, but arranging them in numerical order 1-50 became totally unfair following the golf boom of the 1990s when we added 115 new public courses to the market.
Developers were spending money like crazy, and we ended up with a plethora of upscale courses very similar in overall quality. We now assign five through four stars, with four and a half in-between. We adopted this system because when we had a top 50 ranking, the quality difference between courses at the very top were pretty clear, but the courses ranked from 6-15 weren't that much better than those ranked from 20-30. The difference between the number 10 course and number 30 wasn't as significant as the vast numerical difference seemed to imply.
Even this current system isn't perfect, as there isn't that much rating-point difference between the worst five-star and the best four-and-a-half. But you have to drawn a line somewhere.
My feeling is that the other numnerical lists may suffer from the same problem.
I guess the bottom line is no system is perfect.
4p
You make good points. But any effect on AN -- one way or the other -- won't be known anytime soon, if at all. At this point, it's all speculation.
GW may be a player, as you say, but it still has a long way to go to equal GD in status.
We rate public courses in our market area, but arranging them in numerical order 1-50 became totally unfair following the golf boom of the 1990s when we added 115 new public courses to the market.
Developers were spending money like crazy, and we ended up with a plethora of upscale courses very similar in overall quality. We now assign five through four stars, with four and a half in-between. We adopted this system because when we had a top 50 ranking, the quality difference between courses at the very top were pretty clear, but the courses ranked from 6-15 weren't that much better than those ranked from 20-30. The difference between the number 10 course and number 30 wasn't as significant as the vast numerical difference seemed to imply.
Even this current system isn't perfect, as there isn't that much rating-point difference between the worst five-star and the best four-and-a-half. But you have to drawn a line somewhere.
My feeling is that the other numerical lists may suffer from the same problem.
I guess the bottom line is no system is perfect.
4p
As for the national acceptance, the GCSAA dropped GD and now uses GW as their top 100 rating list standard.
JC
As for the national acceptance, the GCSAA dropped GD and now uses GW as their top 100 rating list standard.
JC
Means absolutely nothing. It's all pure political backscratching, Jonathon, and nothing deeper. So don't read anything into it about "national acceptance."
The GCSAA did this for one reason, and one reason only -- Golfweek is owned by Turnstile Publishing (owned by Rance Crain) -- which also just happens to be the publisher of "Superintendent's News..."
What a surprise. Not-so-strange bedfellows.
And while the "Classic" and "Modern" breakouts are a good idea, there is no way GW would attempt to duplicate GD's list methods exactly. GD has the concept trademarked and copyrighted. So Golfweek HAD to do something different because even without the copyright issues it is not strong enough to stand with its own "Top 100 in America" list against Golf Digest's... No way.
4p
I had a conversation with a Golf Digest course rater (an expert player for many years, a club champion of a prestigious west coast golf course many times over) and asked him to define the criteria for a great golf course.
I am not a great golfer--12 hcp, and 10 is the best I've ever been--but I think I'm smart enough to understand golf terminology and the challenges facing expert players, and this nice gentleman could not deliver a convincing set of criteria of greatness for me.
I think when you get up into the upper tier of golf courses, ranking them is a bit like ranking Victoria's Secret models--it sorta comes down to individual preference.
Incidentally, I think criteria for greatness might be dependent on the population playing the course. I've played many courses that rank very high in Golf Digest's ratings, and some of them were downright awful for a middle handicapper, even playing from appropriate tees.
Or maybe that's just my preference...like preferring brunettes. ;-)