Golf Digest Looks To Double Size Of Course Rating Panel By '20
Golf Digest Editor In Chief Jerry Tarde reveals in his February, 2017 column that the America's 100 Greatest Courses panel is looking to double by 2020 from its current size of 954 raters.
Tarde writes:
Dean Knuth, known as the Pope of Slope for his decades of work on the USGA's handicapping system and the chief statistician for Golf Digest's course rankings, advises us that we need to raise our minimum qualifying number of evaluations from 45 to at least 70 to make the 100 Greatest statistically above reproach. To reach that goal, we're dedicating our efforts to double the size of the panel by 2020.
Given that many courses will tell you they're tiring of the phone ringing from Golf Digest, Golfweek and Golf Magazine requests, this certainly won't cut down on the volume of requests!
The requirements?
We'll tell you upfront: It's a thankless though ultimately rewarding activity.
It's not cheap. Panelists pay a membership fee and are expected to cover their travel and lodging and arrange their tee times with the assistance of a great many clubs who are eager to have Golf Digest review their courses. We allow clubs to offer panelists complimentary green fees, but only that. Panelists are continually lectured by Senior Editor Ron Whitten on the seven criteria of judgment and reminded by Associate Editor Steve Hennessey to get their ballots in on time. Every score is scrutinized by Knuth for outliers, and every two years panelists get a letter grade on how they are doing.There's also a code of conduct.
"Panelists are welcomed into a lot of great private courses," Whitten says, "but if they accept so much as a lunch or a logoed shirt, they'll get booted off the panel."
Whitten revealed on the Golf Digest podcast that the fee to become a panelist is $1000, with a $250 annual dues payment also required.
Besides the cash, Tarde writes that the Handicap Index requirement will remain.
If you'd like to be part of this exclusive club, hold a Handicap Index of 5.0 or less, and have enough time to play and evaluate at least two dozen courses a year, or know of a player who fits this description, contact us at 100GreatestPanel@golfdigest.com, and we'll start the process for membership. (The same panel also votes on our World's 100 Greatest, but a less-rigorous ballot is used because of the geography covered.)
The expansion news hits as the latest ranking received its bienniel dose of criticism for focusing on experience, conditioning and course difficulty over design. GolfClubAtlas.com's Ran Morrissett wrote:
A great playing experience, a great clubhouse and great architecture sometimes go hand in hand - but frequently don't. It is a disservice to the game when a prominent magazine masquerades a list of large, expensive clubhouses under the banner of great courses.
Andy Johnson at The Fried Egg pointed out that 37.5% of the Golf Digest criteria has little to do with architectural character. Unless you think resistance to scoring is something to be celebrated.
Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 11:58 AM
Reader Comments (35)
Expanding the panel to people who are only good players will just lead to more hard, exclusively, manicured places on the list. At least it'll maybe help keep Golf Digest in business?
So, I will live in my little bubble that says that Taconic and the Upper Cascades, and the Old Course are about as good as it gets in golf. But no one is asking my opinion. Shame, because not everyone is a sub 5 handicap.
That's actually a great point KG.
I've played with a few Golf Digest raters over the years and I can assure you the 5 HCP must be a "soft" one...
I think the problem in all of this is many of the raters have come to expect "free" rounds. That's an unrealistic expectation. These clubs should just charge the typical unaccompanied rate green free. That's unless they're with a sponsoring member in which case the rater and sponsor can settle between themselves.
Comped rounds with raters is unfortunately de rigueur these days.
Surely Golf Digest should pony up the green fee, on behalf of the panellists?
If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to the same criticism of potential bias by only rating courses that pander to their raters rather than an anonymous ‘ordinary’ visitor experience.
The only difference is they want to be the high-cost......not high class..... hookers at the party!
Tarde's bullcrap "Golden Ticket" prose combined with Knuth bullcrap statistical lie (that 70 vote minimum distributes better than 45) produces the new VERY LOW benchmark for GD ratings.
Many of the clubs who've never liked, or now will never like:
A) The crassness and general arrogance of many GD raters.
B) Their hard-lined and artifically narrow categories.....that emphasize difficulty, don't recognize sportiness, and penalize or reward, for conditioning variables often for no fault of the course.
C) The fact that they are learning how much GD is charging their raters
D) The expansion, by double, of the number of these supposed arbiters.
E) Their exclusion or penalty to their rankings by missing a small number of pre-requisite votes..even when their head pros have lists of recent visits that exceed the number of necessary votes.
I predict this will further spotlight the glaring flaws of GD's ratings and quite possibly lead to banning their access entitlement altogether before long.
Good Going Greedy Jerry.
Why should it not be the same for the panelists.
There are far fewer 5 handicappers and so we get a skewed result in favor of what they consider to be great.
Both Tarde (~10) and Steve Hennessey (~15) have handicaps that would disallow them from participating in the panel they oversee, too.
Bizarre.
I've been studying golf course architecture the last few years, including reading several of Geoff's books, and it was pretty clear that the canvas of a golf course had nothing to do with my ability to play as a low handicapper, it's starts with how the architect uses the many different land forms and features that were present before a single tree was removed, dirt was dug and grass was grown. Raters need to spend some time educating themselves about all of things, not just paying for "access" to certain courses as Allen Roberston stated in this thread because they have a certain handicap.
What surprises me is that Jerry Tarde still gets awards for his greatness in journalism. Sorry I don't see the greatness in which he charges his readers to do work that they make money off of.
On top of that how can you award this man with awards for great journalism when he has the blood of hundreds of people he fired while he still makes is millions from Conde Naste?
Sorry I find this very rude and very happy that Geoff has made us aware of what Golf Digest is doing.
Having said that, I'm at the point in my life where I really don't care about rankings etc...I'll go and play it and form my own opinion - it is, let's face it, the only one that really matters.
I would trust these folks way more than I would trust Jerry Tarde and Golf Digest.
They haven't done anything of substance in years because they are too afraid of pissing off advertisers. This is now the biggest problem with all of these magazines from Golf Digest to Golf Week to Sports Illustrator. They won't write anything negative for fear of losing advertisers.
So with Pebble Beach and Pinehurst spending so much money in ads with Golf Digest, how do we know that they aren't getting more favors??? Just look at how many courses that are on Golf Digest top-200 list also advertises, doesn't that make you think twice?
That is why we need to trust another source in telling us what is the best, it can't be done by magazines like Conde Naste, sorry Golf Digest anymore.
Really? Isn't that exactly the problem with the whole rankings? I like the couses who say "that's alright, leave us off your rankings if you must, we'll be just fine." The rankings should be a fun thing to look at, not a necessity to survive. Some of my favorite golf courses in the world have never sniffed a GD ranking...and that's OK.
Your comment suggests that perhaps you might be either a shill (paid or not?) for GD or reading impaired?? Which is it?
The expansion (2X) of panelists doesn't make their results more statistically sound. Requiring a minimum of 70 votes over the existing 45 doesn't accomplish anything significant statistically either. If you do the math it basically suggest that once the panel is doubled, it makes it harder to nudge the more historically popular off their protected perches. It further hardens an existing methodically-rigid system that skews hard against quirk, sporty and fun!
GD already charges their existing 900+ panelists $250 per year, so that more than adequately covers the cost of running the program and tabulating the results....all to produce content that is specifically catered to selling ads, magazines, panel forums and ancillary products (plaques, peg boards, etc...)...so your argument about "covering costs" is pure hogwash! They'll make a minimum of $1.25 million over the next three years (and probably closer to $1.5M).....so please explain which administrative "costs" those cover ...other than Jerry Tarde's private jet airfare and club dues?
Lastly, the integrity of Tarde, Knuth ...and maybe to a lesser degree Whitten is more complete bullcrap.
Tarde and his bosses engineered this money grab. Knuth gave him some bullcrap statistics cover (that even he had to know was statistically insignificant) designed solely to deceive and snow people. And Whitten had to condone all of this to save both his face ( he's trapped in a quandary as he designed the original parameters and has privately admitted he's dismayed with some of those and about the addition of initiation and yearly fees).
Have some cohones and recognize you are being conned by what once had some integrity, but is now nothing more than a sheer and blatant money grab!
I'm a rater and was an employee for many years. I know the 70 figure is no "cover," since Knuth has talked about it for years. I know what the costs of programs like these are. I know that Golf Digest makes a concerted effort to be fair and consistent, and to train panelists so that they are, too. I'm not sure what world you live in, but your tone, and your disparagement of the integrity of three of golf's really good people, people who take this process seriously and want their list to be the most defensible, is just sad or ignorant. Which is it?
I've played with a number of GD raters and there wasn't a 5 handicap among them. Pompous asses but not 5 handicaps.