"The unanimity of their voice was powerful and absolutely worthy of mass scrutiny."

Steve Elling takes a closer look at the Golf World PGA Tour Player Course Ranking project, talks to yours truly, and offers his thoughts after reading all 9000 words in his issue of the magazine.

In a survey that took nine months and hundreds of hours to compile, one of the game's most influential magazines has completed a comprehensive survey of 81 tour veterans, assembling the first no-holds ranking of tour venues in history.

By a landscaping landslide, the older, established tour venues dominated the subjective rankings, and the newer tracks, including a spate of TPC courses designed with tournament play foremost in mind, were mired at the bottom of the list.

Forget the flat-billed orange hats, pink driver shafts, Poulter's paisley pants and the myriad Twitter accounts -- the young guys on tour these days have short attention spans but can still muster the long view. They recognize a gen-u-wine masterpiece when they see one, too.

Comments

[East End Golfer]

Torrey Pines surprises me with its low score.
I'm happy to see the other results generally, since they are simpatico with my views. Most of the top courses are great walking courses, while the reverse holds true for the bottom.

[bsoudi]

East End, Torrey is pretty boring, and I don't think there's a lot of strategy. Nearly all the holes are straight and the ocean only makes an impact on 2-3 holes. Others move around an office park and massive parking lot. One Par 3 has a massive water pipe between the tee and green. TV makes it look a lot better than what it is.

Geoff, really interested in Elling's note about the contradiction – many of the courses these pros say are so great don't get great pros. You and some of the players intimated that "If they go to better courses, guys will play them more." But the evidence shows that's not true. Probably because top pros show up because of the $$$ or where a tourney fits relative to the majors.

So why not go to crappy TPC courses? Sponsors still get a show, the TOUR (r)(TM) keeps the dough.

[Brad Ford]

I noticed that TW doesn't play at many of the good courses. In the unlikely event he ever finishes one of his designs, my expectations would be low.

[Geoff]

bousdi,
The Harbour Town one is a strange deal because of the love for the course and consistent non-participation of top players. Mostly, the week after a major is just a no-win.

That said, there are more examples where the course does attract a few more people that might otherwise not play, with Riviera being a prime example the week before the match play. Put a lesser course in that spot and a lot of guys probably don't come a week early. So it does make a difference if the timing is right.

[Boobtube]

Liberty Nat'l at the bottom. How dare they.

[annika]

surprised to see Kapalua Plantation all the way down at 42. I've played a lot of these courses (including 5 of the top 10, including Augusta) and when people ask me which Tour course is my favorite, I always say Kapalua, qualifying that it's the most fun to play. I wonder if Tour guys don't value the same things we ams do-- and also wonder if Coore/Crenshaw courses, which I love, aren't as interesting to pros as they are to ams.