Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we delve into the world of golf course
Speaker 1: ratings and rankings. But first, this episode is brought to
Speaker 1: you by the Frida Egg Pro Shop. So I don't
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Speaker 1: We have things other than the bucket hats too. So
Speaker 1: today's episode is all about golf course rankings, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the magazine rankings, the top one hundred, Top
Speaker 1: two hundred lists that are put out every couple of
Speaker 1: years by Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, Golf Week, and other
Speaker 1: golf publications. These lists have been I think enormously influential
Speaker 1: in shaping tastes about golf course architecture, and frankly, I'm
Speaker 1: very skeptical about the impact that they've had. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it's been healthy. That said, I've never had a
Speaker 1: super clear idea of how these lists are created, and
Speaker 1: so I was excited when last year a book came
Speaker 1: out that got into the nitty gritty of the golf
Speaker 1: course rating industry, because that's truly what it is, an industry.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Raiding Game, and it's by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Cummings. John is a longtime golf course raider for
Speaker 1: Golf Week and a long time presence in the community
Speaker 1: of golf course architecture enthusiasts. He knows everyone, He's seen
Speaker 1: every course. He is deeply, deeply knowledgeable about how the
Speaker 1: rating sausage gets made, so to speak. And hats off
Speaker 1: to him for coming on the podcast and talking to
Speaker 1: me in spite of my avowed skepticism about the whole deal. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here's my conversation with John Cummings.
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried egg
Speaker 1: Friday egg, the dreaded Friday, egg Frida, egg Frida, egg Brian,
Speaker 1: egg Frida, egg bride, egg Lie. I'm about ready to
Speaker 1: run off.
Speaker 2: Of the hump.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the path from being an enthusiast and
Speaker 1: a traveler somebody who's seen a lot of golf courses
Speaker 1: to becoming a raider for the magazines.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a little bit amusing. It's part of traveling around.
Speaker 2: I got a wild hair of my butt to write
Speaker 2: an annual travelog of what I of the course that
Speaker 2: i'd seen, and I actually started rating them on my own,
Speaker 2: associated any panel one to ten rating and kept the
Speaker 2: database in the back of this thing Excel spreadsheet, continually
Speaker 2: sorted and ranked my stuff, and I sent this letter out.
Speaker 2: I wrote it for five years, thirty or forty pages long.
Speaker 2: It's just a travel log, unsolicited. I sent it out
Speaker 2: to about one hundred people, including writers and architects and
Speaker 2: media types, and got responses back. You know, you're a
Speaker 2: looney tune if you think this course is better than
Speaker 2: that and the common kind of things. But anyway, at
Speaker 2: the end of that Ron Witten got a hold of these,
Speaker 2: or maybe he was a recipient of the letter. I
Speaker 2: don't remember. And he called up Topsy sitter Off, who
Speaker 2: was kind of running guid just at the time, and said,
Speaker 2: you get this wacky engineer that's traveling all around doing
Speaker 2: golf courses down in Washington, d C. You know, he
Speaker 2: seems to fit our model. Call him up and see
Speaker 2: if he wants to be digestrator. And so she called
Speaker 2: and I said sure, and they sent a package down
Speaker 2: to me and I filled it out an application. I'll
Speaker 2: send it back to her and got a frantic phone
Speaker 2: call a couple of days later. I, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we didn't realize you're washing DC. We're oversubscribed in that area.
Speaker 2: Could you go on a waiting list? Sure, I don't care,
Speaker 2: and Watten. At that time, Brad Klein was just constituting
Speaker 2: Golf Week's panel and went and called clientup and said, listen,
Speaker 2: we can't use this guy right now. They probably would
Speaker 2: fit your model. Why don't you call him up? So
Speaker 2: Brad Klein called me out of the blue and said,
Speaker 2: I got eighty people I'm starting Golf Week's rating panels
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, nineteen ninety four or ninety five. Now,
Speaker 2: would you like to be one of them? I said sure,
Speaker 2: And so I became a Golf Week grader. I still
Speaker 2: have one today.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little more about this travelogue that
Speaker 1: you were writing. It sounds like you were writing a letter.
Speaker 1: Were you printing it out and making copies and then
Speaker 1: just sending it to various people?
Speaker 2: All hand done too, you know, go to what's the
Speaker 2: Kinkos and stuff like that, and there actually things cost
Speaker 2: a ton of money and mailed these out all these clowns.
Speaker 2: Most of them threw them away too, probablly, but you
Speaker 2: know it was I got responses, plenty of responses too,
Speaker 2: but most of them were you're a wacky guy. You know.
Speaker 2: Whoever listened to what you're doing anyway? But so I said,
Speaker 2: it was only five years. There was a lot of work,
Speaker 2: I mean, two hundred and fifty pages with of stuff.
Speaker 2: But it was interesting and the architecture thing that you
Speaker 2: talk about inside these letters, and not only just write
Speaker 2: a I went to Kui, I played k was an
Speaker 2: awful day. I didn't like the golf course. I gave
Speaker 2: it a six. You know, I interjected in these letters parathentically,
Speaker 2: the little stuff I'd research about the history of rankings,
Speaker 2: the prominent people in the rankings. I actually interviewed people
Speaker 2: do incline and people like this, and that parathetical part
Speaker 2: in that became the genesis of the book, the rating game,
Speaker 2: and so that stuff that, the stuff that was in
Speaker 2: those five letters I stripped on out and became the
Speaker 2: genesis and the start of the rating game.
Speaker 1: Right. So this was essentially like a blog, you know,
Speaker 1: but done by hand and sent out physically through snail mail.
Speaker 1: The distribution mechanisms have become quite a bit easier to
Speaker 1: use these days, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Cheaper, but throw away too. I mean, it took a
Speaker 2: lot of effort to do something by hand, and the
Speaker 2: more you formalize printing. I don't know if you've written
Speaker 2: books before, but if you formalize printing and put the
Speaker 2: effort into it, there's a little bit more integrat in it.
Speaker 2: To write a book, you got to be passionate about something,
Speaker 2: and you got to have some depth and knowledge of it.
Speaker 2: And really the only thing I have depth and knowledge in,
Speaker 2: and I've studied and read bunches of books on its architecture,
Speaker 2: and so that that launched it in itself. Now, I
Speaker 2: was a professional engineer, and I didn't have time to
Speaker 2: do this thing until I retired. I'm sixty nine years
Speaker 2: old and retired four or five years ago, and at
Speaker 2: that time that really I've always had back my mind
Speaker 2: that those letters could metastasize into some kind of book,
Speaker 2: if you will. And it took the effort of being retired.
Speaker 2: I lived in washingt d C. And I have a
Speaker 2: little researcher card at the Library of Congress, and so
Speaker 2: I spent a year down there with all every historical
Speaker 2: magazine for Digest, Golf Week, Golf Magazine, and I just
Speaker 2: did it properly. Spent three days a week down there,
Speaker 2: eight hours a day wrote the book.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could start with what you did your research
Speaker 1: on it. Sounds like in the archives the history of
Speaker 1: the golf course rankings. When did golf course rankings start
Speaker 1: and when did they really start to gain momentum and
Speaker 1: purchase in the golf world.
Speaker 2: A few folks CEB McDonald put together a little ranking
Speaker 2: thing low did, and so they're early nineteen hundreds, nineteen tens.
Speaker 2: There are a few people that went on out there
Speaker 2: and tried to categorize in some way the components of
Speaker 2: character of golf of course character and how that's measured.
Speaker 2: But really nineteen sixty six when Digests jumped into this,
Speaker 2: and it really was by mistake they got into it.
Speaker 2: The Digest it was a big publishing company or a
Speaker 2: big golf magazine I guess the biggest golf magazine at
Speaker 2: the time, and they've had the energy and the wherewithal
Speaker 2: and they started to get the curiosity of the thing.
Speaker 2: And that really started in the magazine of seventy three,
Speaker 2: and then Golf Week, where was ninety five, and there
Speaker 2: have been some spin off others Cup and hundred. Golf
Speaker 2: more recently is a pretty good one, especially if you
Speaker 2: travel and there's some Australian ones, there's a South African one.
Speaker 2: You know there there area regional a top on hundreds.
Speaker 2: But in America, the big three or Golf Week, Golf Digests,
Speaker 2: and Golf Magazine and Golf Digest pioneered this mid sixties
Speaker 2: would be the genesis of the modern rating lists.
Speaker 1: Could you tell me a little bit about the early
Speaker 1: I suppose years of the Golf Digest ranking and how
Speaker 1: it evolved.
Speaker 2: It was Bill Davis, I think it was was the
Speaker 2: original that may have been an editor or publisher of
Speaker 2: Dice at the time. He was approached by I believe
Speaker 2: it's a real estate company or real estate efforts some kind,
Speaker 2: and said, are we be interested in you putting together
Speaker 2: a list of golf courses, And we wanted to be
Speaker 2: the hardest golf court, the hardest golf courses in the
Speaker 2: United States, called the top two hundred most difficult golf courses.
Speaker 2: And at first I just said they had no interest
Speaker 2: whatsoever doing it, and then Bill Davis thought about it
Speaker 2: for Whelm said, you know, it's mildly intriguing. And they
Speaker 2: published a list and I think the first list was
Speaker 2: based only on course rating difficulty, so I mean six
Speaker 2: point by wingfoot or whatever. It was seventy five point five.
Speaker 2: And they just went right on down the US and
Speaker 2: listed these things, and then they thought that that was
Speaker 2: the next year. They thought, well, we ought to keep
Speaker 2: on doing this thing, and so then they constituted a
Speaker 2: panel and a panel. Herbert wore Win was on the panel,
Speaker 2: I believe SM Steve was on the panel, and this
Speaker 2: little core of who's who in the mid sixties, and
Speaker 2: they became the executive panel to oversee this. But soon
Speaker 2: afterwards they start actually getting volunteers in there, which were
Speaker 2: called raiders. And those books are the executive panel or
Speaker 2: the filters, and what the raiders gave the ratings to them.
Speaker 2: They'd actually fudge them in situation that could be published
Speaker 2: for Digest, and they put at irby two years since
Speaker 2: I think sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Now. The next big stage in the evolution of these
Speaker 1: magazine rankings, as far as I can see, was Tom
Speaker 1: Doak's entrance into the scene with Golf Magazine. How did
Speaker 1: he change the process a little bit? How was what
Speaker 1: he was doing different from what Golf Digest was doing.
Speaker 2: Well, originally they didn't have orders, they didn't have rankings.
Speaker 2: They had clusters of good courses in the initial couple
Speaker 2: lists like that. And Tom was a young kid, and
Speaker 2: I think George Pepper maybe was the was the editor
Speaker 2: at the time. He contacted Pepper and said, listen, you're
Speaker 2: going about this all wrong. You need to rank them
Speaker 2: literally in order. So what they proached them said, well, Tommy,
Speaker 2: you got such a great idea, was you run the panel?
Speaker 2: And he had only done one golf course high point
Speaker 2: in time. It was a precocious little I knew him
Speaker 2: at that time, I've known for thirty five years, just
Speaker 2: very confident self. I guess came on in and said
Speaker 2: instead of a category based method like Digest was starting
Speaker 2: the formula, I wanted to put some kind of numeric
Speaker 2: system and it was an abcdef that related to what
Speaker 2: that ranking if you, as a raider, Garret said that
Speaker 2: that was an a golf course you were tailing Golf magazine,
Speaker 2: that it should be ranked them though one to ten
Speaker 2: you said it was a c golf course, it's fifty
Speaker 2: to one hundred ers. There was some scale that was
Speaker 2: related to that, but all kind of now you was
Speaker 2: tying that into actual rankings and I just did not
Speaker 2: do that. DI just assign you. And again I'm not
Speaker 2: sure the year that they did this, but it was
Speaker 2: pretty early. He assigned you as a Digest raider to
Speaker 2: go out and give ratings on categories, and the executive
Speaker 2: board mixed these in such a way that they came
Speaker 2: up at the rankings. And Brad was much much later.
Speaker 2: Brad was Bradston come on till ninety five was the
Speaker 2: first Golf week.
Speaker 1: List, right, So Bradley Klein took over the Golf week
Speaker 1: List and then take it over he inaugurated it, right,
Speaker 1: And so how was what he was doing then different
Speaker 1: again from Golf Digest and Golf Magazine.
Speaker 2: Each one of them had the little foothold. And what
Speaker 2: Golf Week did is there was a pitcher in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: He pitched for the triple A braves. He's probably still
Speaker 2: a panelist, I don't know, but he came to climb
Speaker 2: when Climates formed this panel or formed the idea of
Speaker 2: a pianel and said, listen, Digest and magazine are taking
Speaker 2: old traditional golf courses in the golden age of architecture
Speaker 2: like that, and they're mixing it with these modern basio
Speaker 2: and theliss highly engineered type golf courses. Never really apples
Speaker 2: and oranges. Golf wek would have their own foothold and
Speaker 2: the soul ranking things that they segregated the two of them,
Speaker 2: and that's what they start off with. The top hundred
Speaker 2: classical list that's up till nineteen sixty. It was kind
Speaker 2: of an arbitrary number, and then nineteen sixty was the
Speaker 2: architect and so that's their foothold. And then they also
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years ago they also took that expanded
Speaker 2: both lists from the top and top two hundred, and
Speaker 2: so effectively you're getting four hundred top four hundred golf
Speaker 2: courses every time you see one of those lists come
Speaker 2: out and Golf Week and that exposes some wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 2: tradition New England courses that no one will ever hear
Speaker 2: of like that, And so it's a very it's a
Speaker 2: good idea, it's good advertising for Golf Week. It's these
Speaker 2: little clubs are early and the enamored by the fact
Speaker 2: that they're on these lists, and digestin magazine don't have
Speaker 2: that interesting.
Speaker 1: And in order to have a list that's that long,
Speaker 1: that includes that many courses, you need a fair amount
Speaker 1: of raiders. And the issue of recruiting raiders and assessing
Speaker 1: raiders is a really interesting one that you take up
Speaker 1: in your book. Maybe we could start by talking about
Speaker 1: what you perceive to be the differences between the raider
Speaker 1: panels at Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and Golf Week. How
Speaker 1: are the bodies of raiders different at those three publications.
Speaker 2: I think they have distinct equalities. Digest always is proud
Speaker 2: of the fact that the raiders are They're not architects,
Speaker 2: they're not industry people, and they're low handicaps and they're
Speaker 2: supposed to go back and evaluate golf course from the back.
Speaker 2: Teams and so this is a very special group of
Speaker 2: accomplished golfers that now are going out in view from
Speaker 2: only that lens the golf Course magazine now the hand
Speaker 2: Ran Morrison now runs Golf Magazine. You probably know this.
Speaker 2: What RN has is eighty to one hundred luminaries in
Speaker 2: the golf world. And these folks are very well traveled,
Speaker 2: no question about it. And they have a small ballot.
Speaker 2: They only have four or five hundred courses worldwide that
Speaker 2: they're supposed to see, so they are more who's who
Speaker 2: in golf. I mean, Nicholas Palmer was a panelist at
Speaker 2: one time, and Jan Stevenson and Wise Cough and Jones brothers,
Speaker 2: you know, you can run it on down. So they
Speaker 2: were getting the cream of the crop up there Golf Week.
Speaker 2: On the other side is the pedestrian panel. They've got
Speaker 2: a to z, they've got couples, they've got people are
Speaker 2: good golfers, bad golfers. Frankly they have It's more of
Speaker 2: a panel of eight hundred people that really like to
Speaker 2: go out and see golf courses. But their criteria, their
Speaker 2: their qualifications, you know, are not as is looked at
Speaker 2: so hard. It's more of their willingness to go out
Speaker 2: there and see golf courses, which is a very important
Speaker 2: parameter on a good raider.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of interesting issues in there. Now. I
Speaker 1: think you agree with me on this what I'm about
Speaker 1: to say. But the handicap requirement, the low handicap requirement
Speaker 1: that Golf Digest has, strikes me as absurd on its face.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what being an expert golfer has
Speaker 1: to do with having insight into architecture. And so why
Speaker 1: why does can you speak to this? Why why does
Speaker 1: Digest have this requirement?
Speaker 2: Well you have to interview them, get written on here
Speaker 2: and tell you it was a wrong approach. The only
Speaker 2: in my opinion, the only thing that would cost the
Speaker 2: best raider out there is one who travels a lot,
Speaker 2: sees a lot of different golf courses. So when he
Speaker 2: sees a new course, he kind of knows where this
Speaker 2: goes his own personal ranking. I think of a deck
Speaker 2: of cards, or find valleys on the top and lemuni up.
Speaker 2: The road is on the bottom, if you will, the
Speaker 2: courses that you've seen. When you see a new golf
Speaker 2: course like that, the whole thing is to slide that
Speaker 2: card in where the courses above it are better and
Speaker 2: the courses below it are worse. And I think the
Speaker 2: Digest in their method of doing this thing is flawed.
Speaker 2: They should look at people see a lot of golf
Speaker 2: courses and not people play the game well. And then
Speaker 2: the other thing is they've got a criteria system there
Speaker 2: which I think is just completely flawed. And there's a
Speaker 2: chapter in the book about categories, and I think Ron
Speaker 2: Wooden is not wildly pleased about that chapter. Freely.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe we could take that side road for a second.
Speaker 1: What is in essence your objection to using categories to
Speaker 1: determine the quality of golf course? Now, Golf Digest you
Speaker 1: spoke to this a little bit earlier, but just to
Speaker 1: be clear, Golf Digest has what number of categories? Is it?
Speaker 2: They change it all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can never keep track. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: different components of golf course excellence, and you can imagine
Speaker 1: what they are. Basically, the one that really sticks in
Speaker 1: my cries on beyond which you know, I have no
Speaker 1: idea what that means. I think it has something to
Speaker 1: do with tradition. But for some reason, bethpage Black score
Speaker 1: is super low on ambiance and I'm like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: doesn't Beth Page Black have amazing tradition. But yes, there
Speaker 1: are these different categories that Golf Digest uses. Your objection
Speaker 1: to them is not so much that they're the wrong categories,
Speaker 1: but just that the category system itself is prone to error.
Speaker 2: You know, if I asked you to rank, of course
Speaker 2: as you mister panel, the new individual and whole panel
Speaker 2: like that, why in the hell would I want to
Speaker 2: introduce an intermediate step in there? As it does is
Speaker 2: offuscape the end product. What I really want is to
Speaker 2: get a bunch of raiders to give me their rankings
Speaker 2: and for me to come somehow merge those rankings together
Speaker 2: in one list and publish a rankings list. But when
Speaker 2: you have a bunch of numbers in there, one, I
Speaker 2: don't believe they can publish or they can these raiders
Speaker 2: have the ability to resolve these numbers, these seven point
Speaker 2: two to eight out to these decimal points. It's a ludicrous,
Speaker 2: But they like to keep this. They think they're in
Speaker 2: the science world doing that, and I think it's just humorous.
Speaker 2: But I would take the whole category thing. It's an
Speaker 2: unnecessary step that introduces air into the thing. You have
Speaker 2: bias air, you have resolutionaire, we have all the simple
Speaker 2: little measurement airs that happen when you make the measurement
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world. And it's something that should be
Speaker 2: cast aside. And the great evidence that I believe it
Speaker 2: doesn't work is they change it all the time. They're
Speaker 2: continually fiddling with it after sixty years of this piano
Speaker 2: fifty years, sixty years. And if that's not evidence that
Speaker 2: you know, something's flawed, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So maybe we could get back to the issue
Speaker 1: of raiders. Who raiders are, who's able to be a raider?
Speaker 1: So who, in your mind, what kind of person makes
Speaker 1: the ideal radar?
Speaker 2: Oh, I can be biased. It's someone older like myself,
Speaker 2: who's retired and has the ability to get in the car,
Speaker 2: getting an airplane, getting curiosity, do that travel and see
Speaker 2: a number of golf courses. That also has some financial
Speaker 2: means because none of these panels they don't pay raiders
Speaker 2: like that, and so people travel maniacally and they pull
Speaker 2: those travel fees out of their pocket. And I think
Speaker 2: that the best raiders are the ones that have seen
Speaker 2: the broadest spectrum of golf courses, classical courses, modern courses,
Speaker 2: geographically diverse courses, because now they have the best thing
Speaker 2: when they see another course to weigh it against. And really,
Speaker 2: that's what it's all about. Is if I've only seen
Speaker 2: twenty courses around my local area and I get a
Speaker 2: Raider card and I'm so happy and I'm running out
Speaker 2: and see cog Hill, I think it's a ten. It's
Speaker 2: the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. And
Speaker 2: this is why that the best raiders. And if I
Speaker 2: would formulate my own pianel, I wouldn't care about anything
Speaker 2: other than how broad a number of courses they see,
Speaker 2: how willing they are to travel and see other courses,
Speaker 2: and that really would be And to some extent, seem
Speaker 2: to see some great golf courses, so they have to
Speaker 2: weigh augustus are to get on and find valley insite
Speaker 2: person all these But if they've seen things that they've
Speaker 2: seen great golf courses, they have some barometer to wait
Speaker 2: what they just saw on the course up the street
Speaker 2: against it. And that's important. But see a lot of
Speaker 2: golf courses is the most important thing. Willing to travel,
Speaker 2: have the means to travel.
Speaker 1: Right, it makes good sense that a raider should have
Speaker 1: a broad range of experience to draw on and has
Speaker 1: seen a lot of courses so that they don't go,
Speaker 1: you know, see a course that might be somewhat mediocre
Speaker 1: and think, hey, it's the best course I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So it's a ten. But of course, the problem that's
Speaker 1: introduced here is I think a significant one that in
Speaker 1: order to be a raider you have to not only travel,
Speaker 1: but have the means to travel and have the time
Speaker 1: to travel, which to an extent limits the range of
Speaker 1: people that can be raiders. And so what ends up
Speaker 1: getting rated is the taste of a specific subset of golfers,
Speaker 1: a specific social class of golfers, really, and so how
Speaker 1: can magazines address that problem or is that just inevitable.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I can answer that thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you don't have means to get around, and I'm
Speaker 2: asking you to go around and see golf courses and
Speaker 2: you can't afford to go there, that's a problem I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how you can solve. You know, college game
Speaker 2: gets out of college, he's got a fascination about golf
Speaker 2: course architecture. He's been starving for four straight years. He's
Speaker 2: got a twenty thousand dollars year job. How in the
Speaker 2: world can he get around and you know, how can
Speaker 2: he go to some of these outings, these these architectural
Speaker 2: summits that they magazines sometimes ask for. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to solve that.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I don't either, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think it really is a problem because you know, raiders
Speaker 1: are predominantly coming from kind of one class of golfers,
Speaker 1: but their opinions are pulled and then presented as somewhat objective.
Speaker 1: I suppose that's the framing of these lists. These are
Speaker 1: the one hundred greatest golf courses in America. It's not
Speaker 1: the one hundred greatest courses according to this particular band
Speaker 1: of the golfing population. Know, these are the greatest courses.
Speaker 1: I mean. The issue with this that I see is that,
Speaker 1: you know, when people are forming their impressions about what
Speaker 1: makes greatness and a golf course, often they go to
Speaker 1: these lists. I know I did when I was a
Speaker 1: kid and I got an issue of Golf Digester. My
Speaker 1: dad got it, and it was tremendously exciting to see
Speaker 1: these top one hundred golf courses ranked, and it was
Speaker 1: really formative in my impressions about what made a great
Speaker 1: golf course. And what made a great golf course, according
Speaker 1: to those Golf Digest rankings, was not only a hard
Speaker 1: course that might appeal to a low handicap, as we
Speaker 1: discussed earlier, but predominantly ultra exclusive private clubs or really
Speaker 1: expensive daily fee courses. There just weren't a whole lot
Speaker 1: of courses that struck me as being very accessible to me.
Speaker 1: And so I began to think of greatness as something
Speaker 1: that was just out of reach or or something that
Speaker 1: potentially I could aspire to later in my life. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't really connecting with my own existence as a golfer,
Speaker 1: and I was fairly privileged. And I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: this problem can be solved. But from what you've seen,
Speaker 1: is it something that the people who run these rankings
Speaker 1: are concerned about that you know, they might be presenting
Speaker 1: the tastes of a pretty specific set of the golfing
Speaker 1: population as being authoritative.
Speaker 2: No, the thing that drives them are advertising these less
Speaker 2: sell and that's the number one thing about it. Real
Speaker 2: estate to some extent, oh and travel too. Just like
Speaker 2: you just said, is when I go to the best
Speaker 2: golf courses in the state, the best you can play
Speaker 2: in a state and I know I'm traveling to Missouri
Speaker 2: or something like that. I go down these lists and
Speaker 2: I say, oh gosh, I can get on this one,
Speaker 2: this one, and this one. You know, it kind of
Speaker 2: defines if I'm going on a golf trip. It defines
Speaker 2: where I want to focus my efforts, the highest quality courses,
Speaker 2: assuming I can get access to them. But as far
Speaker 2: as a niche exposing just a small niche, not one
Speaker 2: of these magazines is going to say that. They're always
Speaker 2: going to say, you know, this represents everybody. But like
Speaker 2: you said, I don't know you ever could solve that
Speaker 2: in any way, shape or form unless the magazine. You've
Speaker 2: had a very deep pocketed owner of a magazine. He
Speaker 2: underwrites this whole thing and sends these raiders out and
Speaker 2: signs them courses and they don't pay anything like that,
Speaker 2: which is not going to happen.
Speaker 1: But in fact, as you alluded to, many raiders pay
Speaker 1: to be on these panels. I don't know if I'll do.
Speaker 1: I know they do a golf digest.
Speaker 2: I do golf week, two half of them do. It's
Speaker 2: a very bizarre thing that there's a legacy membership of
Speaker 2: two three hundred of them, I think that are veterans
Speaker 2: that do not pay, but the majority do. And I
Speaker 2: think Milstein has actually talked round about monetizing Golf magazine.
Speaker 2: And you have to check on this because I don't
Speaker 2: know this is true, but I think that came back
Speaker 2: and said, we have one hundred panelists, you know what
Speaker 2: kind of money you're going to make amiss and he
Speaker 2: realized that that was kind of kind of fiction, but
Speaker 2: digest is very much money. They followed golf Wey was
Speaker 2: the first to do that, and they followed Golfee and
Speaker 2: they really monetize it. A thousand to get in and
Speaker 2: two point fifty years with two thousand raiders, I mean
Speaker 2: they're generated a million bucks with their revenue out of
Speaker 2: this panel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's perhaps a realization that this is a
Speaker 1: kind of exclusive golf club that the rating panel itself
Speaker 1: is functioning in somewhat that way. There's access so obviously
Speaker 1: to a tremendous number of courses there are, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's also we know now what three
Speaker 2: pounds now thirty two hundred United States raiders now, and
Speaker 2: these poor courses are getting innovating with raiders. At one
Speaker 2: time there weren't that many out there before Golf Weak
Speaker 2: was around. I just had a panel of four or
Speaker 2: five hundred. Magazine was sixty or eighty people, and so
Speaker 2: it was much rareer to get the knock on the door,
Speaker 2: can I play the golf course? And now they get
Speaker 2: them all the time some of these courses. How many
Speaker 2: raiders do you guys have, because they made so many
Speaker 2: phone calls? Go to a Florida golf course middle of
Speaker 2: winter like this, when the raiders in the northeast or snowbound,
Speaker 2: they come down here and they knocking every door they can.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Something I was interested to find out
Speaker 1: in your book, something that I didn't really put together
Speaker 1: before think about before, is that raiders themselves are getting assessed.
Speaker 1: So what are the ways in which you think a
Speaker 1: raider should be judged once he or she is part
Speaker 1: of a rating panel. What constitutes good performance on the
Speaker 1: part of.
Speaker 2: A raider certainly the number one thing I know that
Speaker 2: Dean k Nuth has kind of formalized the policing of
Speaker 2: his panel on Golf Digest Golf Week probably less so
Speaker 2: it's informal, but they've got it's an online you look
Speaker 2: at performance and it got to be the number one
Speaker 2: thing is are you active? You know, if you have
Speaker 2: a radar card and you spend a year you didn't
Speaker 2: rate a golf course like that, you know, hello, are
Speaker 2: you still interested in this? And so you write a
Speaker 2: check for two and fifty dollars you never each year,
Speaker 2: and you never attend any of the events you never
Speaker 2: you know, heard of. That's got to be the number
Speaker 2: one thing. You've got to actively participate in this thing,
Speaker 2: or thank you very much for find someone else. And
Speaker 2: there are other things that you have to watch their
Speaker 2: numbers too, because you imagine a bell curve of one
Speaker 2: hundred votes around a golf course like this, and you
Speaker 2: see a person's way outside this consistently outside high or low,
Speaker 2: that's a bias and that's a warning bell. And we
Speaker 2: have the wherewithal and these magazines, with websites and with
Speaker 2: software if you will, to police this a little bit
Speaker 2: and have warning flags come up when someone is voting
Speaker 2: way outside of range. It's reasonable like that, and that
Speaker 2: should be recognized quickly by a panel, and a person
Speaker 2: should be given a little education and say, listen, you're
Speaker 2: way outside here, and the rest of your fellow raiders
Speaker 2: and that's a policing that can be done and it
Speaker 2: is reasonable own.
Speaker 1: I'm particularly interested in the bias piece of this. Where
Speaker 1: would you locate the difference between a valid variety of
Speaker 1: opinion and bias? In other words, at what point does
Speaker 1: somebody's individual opinion, which might be different from other people's opinions,
Speaker 1: become an unuseful bias.
Speaker 2: We got to identify it first. If again you use
Speaker 2: a little bit of statistics and you look at this
Speaker 2: one golfer goes to Donald Ross's golf court, which he
Speaker 2: loves old time architects. Is every single one of them
Speaker 2: are high from the rest of his brethren, they're voting
Speaker 2: for it. That as a bias, a clear bias. Constantly.
Speaker 2: If he hates Fassio and every one of them is
Speaker 2: low like that, this is a bias that's not only recognizable,
Speaker 2: it's also measurable. I can measure the bias from the
Speaker 2: central number of the mean, if you will, and actually
Speaker 2: calculate a number that he's biased by. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's pretty much a numeric thing that you can identify
Speaker 2: and you can call out on this person.
Speaker 1: What if you went to a raider who was overrating,
Speaker 1: say tom Fazio courses compared to other raiders. That where
Speaker 1: the scores for tom Fazio courses for this particular rader
Speaker 1: were much higher than normal. And you went to this raider,
Speaker 1: and the raider just said back to you, well, I
Speaker 1: think Tom Fazio is the best golf architect in the world.
Speaker 1: I think he's way better than everybody else. That's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Then what would the response be to that, Well.
Speaker 2: You can't contaminate these numbers, I mean, and if you
Speaker 2: are contaminating those numbers with known bias, I as if
Speaker 2: I were policing these things, I'm going to get rid
Speaker 2: of your ratings, not put them into the mix if
Speaker 2: you will, or get rid of you. You know, it's
Speaker 2: if there's clear bias. There's by all kinds of bias.
Speaker 2: There's people who have told me before that that they
Speaker 2: there's no good golf course that has been built by
Speaker 2: a living architect, and so all the great golf courses
Speaker 2: by dead architects. And right there, that's a bias. Or
Speaker 2: you know, how can you work with that? He goes
Speaker 2: out and sees a modern golf course, he is it
Speaker 2: a three? Even care what it is and be you know,
Speaker 2: whistling Straits or Eui. I don't care stream saw, but anyway,
Speaker 2: that's that's a clear bias. But there are others. There's
Speaker 2: bias towards geography. There's bias towards seaside. Some folks, you know,
Speaker 2: go to a links golf course and they just they melt.
Speaker 2: They're so in love with it. I don't care what
Speaker 2: it is. It's just there at the sea in there
Speaker 2: and Ireland and they're they're playing golf and everything's nirvana.
Speaker 2: And those can all be identified if you watch, if
Speaker 2: you study just a little bit on the distribution of
Speaker 2: the scores of a person, your scores, if you are
Speaker 2: a raider, shouldn't be like it's not lockstep with everybody
Speaker 2: giving the same number, but within reason, they should be
Speaker 2: distributed around a central number for Eddigven golf course. And
Speaker 2: if you're varying way outside of that, that's identifiable and
Speaker 2: it's policeable and correctable.
Speaker 1: I would be the guy who melts in front of
Speaker 1: any seaside golf course, I'll admit to that. So the
Speaker 1: serious question, though, is is there a danger when you're
Speaker 1: policing bias like this, which is an understandable thing to do.
Speaker 1: If you're running a ranking panel, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: an obvious thing to do. If somebody is just crazy
Speaker 1: different than everybody else with their numbers, then you've got
Speaker 1: to address it. But at the same time, does that
Speaker 1: policing of bias risk developing a herd mentality as you
Speaker 1: refer to it in your book. Does it end up
Speaker 1: encouraging incentivizing raiders in fact to be conformists, Because of
Speaker 1: course anybody who's a of these rating panels wants to
Speaker 1: keep their membership on the panel, there are significant privileges
Speaker 1: that go along with it. Is there a danger that
Speaker 1: working against the bias in the way that you're talking
Speaker 1: about it encourages people to try to settle around a
Speaker 1: kind of mean number for each course and therefore produce
Speaker 1: kind of predictable rankings.
Speaker 2: I think there is a little bit of danger if
Speaker 2: you have that in very well traveled, well versed golf
Speaker 2: raiders who have a big spread of numbers, If they
Speaker 2: never give tens, nines, and eights because it'stead I've never
Speaker 2: seen one, then they're biased on one side of this.
Speaker 2: But I think generally speaking, the small distributions that you
Speaker 2: see within the bell curve of various raiders for a
Speaker 2: given golf course is a rich enough variation and an
Speaker 2: important enough variation to give me a solid average like
Speaker 2: that that I can get rid of these outliers and
Speaker 2: I don't need them, and I don't they're more harmful
Speaker 2: than they possibly can be good. I'm kind of searching
Speaker 2: for an answer here. I can see what you're saying,
Speaker 2: but I'm I still think that they're more harm than
Speaker 2: good on these people that have our big outliers. And
Speaker 2: the last thing I want is golf Course ABC to
Speaker 2: be ranked in the twentieth in the country, and because
Speaker 2: I've had a couple of outliers in there, it goes
Speaker 2: to the ninetieth the next year or some radical change,
Speaker 2: and that's unrepresentative of what should happen. These things should
Speaker 2: move unless a redesign is happened or something like that,
Speaker 2: that they should move within no small amounts really, especially
Speaker 2: the classical side. For Golf Week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfectly understandable and logical answer. So in general, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that the three major magazines that we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, and Golf Week. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that those three institutions do golf course ranking
Speaker 1: very differently. What would you change about the way magazines
Speaker 1: conduct rankings today?
Speaker 2: Like Tom Doke says, the best rate ranking in the
Speaker 2: world is for me. Asked Garrett to rank his top
Speaker 2: one hundred and he writes them on down in order.
Speaker 2: I can argue with you that you're you're crazy. You
Speaker 2: know one is B is so much better than C
Speaker 2: and you've got to reverse and all that. But what
Speaker 2: I can't argue about is your the methodology. The methodology,
Speaker 2: it's one hundred percent subjective, that's all it is. There
Speaker 2: is no methodology. It's your opinion, and dok always says
Speaker 2: that's the best thing. The problem is that I worried
Speaker 2: about is I was writing this book and I didn't
Speaker 2: have it when I got halfway through the book. The solution,
Speaker 2: it took me a while, is Garrett's top one hundred list.
Speaker 2: John Cummings is the top one hundred list, Next, next, next, next,
Speaker 2: next person has merged these together latterly into one list,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know the math involved in that. As
Speaker 2: it turns out, I got some help from two nephews
Speaker 2: who both getting doctorates and masks, so they're pretty smart kids,
Speaker 2: and they say there's a there's a method that was
Speaker 2: discovered three hundred years ago in France. That's a voting
Speaker 2: thing that's called cair wise comparison, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to go into it with anyway. What it does very
Speaker 2: effectively merges these things together into one list. So what
Speaker 2: I would do for all three magazines is I would
Speaker 2: use it's easy to do with computers. Now, it's simple.
Speaker 2: I would use this kind of thing, and that would
Speaker 2: eliminate all this bias, all the air in it. It
Speaker 2: wouldn't matter if you've got a guy who put fasciest
Speaker 2: courses of one through ten on there. Really you've got
Speaker 2: way too many of these lists together. You're merging laterly,
Speaker 2: and the beauty is you wouldn't have all these resolutionaires
Speaker 2: almost the simple math airs of once you get into
Speaker 2: the measurement game, and what you come out with is
Speaker 2: a composite, merged lateral rank list of all my panelists.
Speaker 2: And I think that to me seems like the best
Speaker 2: method to reduce air and maximize the subjectivity of this
Speaker 2: whole thing, which is really what you want.
Speaker 1: It should be sad that a fair portion of your
Speaker 1: book is taken up with considering this question of what
Speaker 1: is the most rigorous way of retaining the representation of
Speaker 1: a panel's opinion as purely as possible. And you go
Speaker 1: through these various ways in which that community opinion does
Speaker 1: tend to get distorted through the methodologies the magazines use.
Speaker 1: And I certainly would have you know, no ability really
Speaker 1: to object to the methodology that you settle on it.
Speaker 1: It seems quite thoughtfully arrived at. I suppose my question
Speaker 1: starts at the very beginning of it. Though. If we
Speaker 1: say that the ideal ranking is an individual's ranking, then
Speaker 1: why do we do these lists? Have you ever thought
Speaker 1: about whether we should be doing this at all?
Speaker 2: Magazines have published and Arta Palmer stop one hundred. You know,
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholas says, I don't know that's true, but I
Speaker 2: got to believe you could search and find that somewhere.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it has the pull a reader will
Speaker 2: look and say, Jack Nicholas Thinkspeble Each is the numb
Speaker 2: one course in the world. I believe that's true, and
Speaker 2: that's a rarity. Very few people would rank that as
Speaker 2: number one in the world for a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 2: But you know, and it's just one person's opinion. I
Speaker 2: think it's just not as interesting as having a panel formed.
Speaker 2: It sounds like there is a congress of folks going
Speaker 2: out and they're definitively, you know, determining what these this
Speaker 2: annual ranking list would be. And I don't know, I
Speaker 2: just get the sense that that the herd of raiders
Speaker 2: out there has got more pulled than just an individual.
Speaker 2: What do you think. I mean, that's just my opinion,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure I'm even right.
Speaker 1: No, I think you're definitely right that these panels. Certainly
Speaker 1: in the way that the lists are presented as authoritative
Speaker 1: as they are. This is this well respected magazine's list
Speaker 1: of the best courses in the world, or the best
Speaker 1: courses in America or what have you. Certainly they have
Speaker 1: more polls. Certainly they have a huge impact. But I
Speaker 1: sometimes wonder what their impact has been, and I wonder
Speaker 1: how it's changed changed the golf course industry, the way
Speaker 1: golf courses get built and the way golf courses get designed.
Speaker 2: Well, it sure could. There are owners and I'm sure
Speaker 2: you know this too, there are owners that hire a
Speaker 2: tony architect like that and they say, first thing, build
Speaker 2: me a top one on a golf course. Right, Like
Speaker 2: there's a magic ingredient that this poor architect isn't go
Speaker 2: out there, and you know, he's got to get a
Speaker 2: great piece of land first to have something to work with.
Speaker 2: It's a tough question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean what what these architects and owners
Speaker 1: in your hypothetical scenario are dealing with is trying to
Speaker 1: divine what the opinions of these panels might be. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's I think it's too bad
Speaker 1: if architects and owners are thinking have that thought at
Speaker 1: the front of their mind that we want to be
Speaker 1: a top one hundred golf course, because to me, it's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear how you get there. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what constitutes a top one hundred golf of course.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had anybody ask you like, how can
Speaker 1: I how can I make this a top one hundred
Speaker 1: golf course? Have you ever had an owner kind of
Speaker 1: put that question to you in some form not.
Speaker 2: That say, but it's very uncomfortable. And raiders have this
Speaker 2: for owners after they host you in a place, to
Speaker 2: sit you down and say, now, what can I do
Speaker 2: to make this golf course better? And theoretically, a raider
Speaker 2: is supposed to be able said, I had deficiencies when
Speaker 2: I saw the character of this, this and this out there,
Speaker 2: and I saw very positive things with this, this and
Speaker 2: this out there. Landforms conditioning, you know, the verious thing
Speaker 2: one looks at when you when you determine character of
Speaker 2: a golf course. You know you're supposed to not piss
Speaker 2: them off for one thing, and you know, oh I,
Speaker 2: you know this is a piece of junk. I can't
Speaker 2: stand like that. You So you got to be somewhat
Speaker 2: diplomatic on this thing too. But also, even if you
Speaker 2: really really played the course many times had a good
Speaker 2: sense of the golf course, you wouldn't have the same
Speaker 2: sense of another raider that's coming in there, and you
Speaker 2: might see positives and negative slightly different and give this
Speaker 2: guy other information. An owner sat a person down and
Speaker 2: then sat me down before and asked these questions like that.
Speaker 2: Probably doesn't understand this and probably shouldn't ask that question.
Speaker 2: He should ask, all right, you should go to the
Speaker 2: magazine and say you've seen you we've post twenty thirty raiders.
Speaker 2: What are their comments. I want to know their comments
Speaker 2: of those And that's a fair thing to ask. And
Speaker 2: someone may be wacky some of them may be inaccurate,
Speaker 2: and others might give them interests. Oh my gracious, I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that four or five these raiders took issue
Speaker 2: with X y Z. That can't change a golf course.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to re route a golf course because
Speaker 2: a bunch of raiders come in there and you know,
Speaker 2: give it a poor rating or something like that. But
Speaker 2: there may be individual things that they can address, sitelines
Speaker 2: and may be a barn and there may have may
Speaker 2: be a ferris wheel in the distance, and people like
Speaker 2: us a grocery trees and ask it out or something.
Speaker 1: See barnes and the ferris wheels sound sound great to
Speaker 1: me by all the golf course owners. Let's let's have
Speaker 1: more barnes and Ferris wheels. Maybe not in the middle
Speaker 1: of the fair way. So I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: one thing that we could agree on is that these
Speaker 1: rankings really aren't going anywhere. They're They're a big business
Speaker 1: at this point. They're you know, every year. I'd have
Speaker 1: to imagine that each of these magazines, one of the
Speaker 1: most popular issues is their top one hundred golf courses issue.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you've been in this in this
Speaker 1: community for a while. You've seen a lot of different
Speaker 1: versions of the rate and ranking business, and I think
Speaker 1: you've probably seen golf course tastes shift over time. Have
Speaker 1: you seen that? Have you sensed that that tastes are
Speaker 1: beginning to shift? And how would you describe that trend?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, the fair Boys, the gill Hants and the
Speaker 2: Tommy Doaks and the now Andrew Green is you know,
Speaker 2: a new one that's coming on up, and people are
Speaker 2: enjoying going back to the roots. These courses that built yesterday,
Speaker 2: it looks like they've been there one hundred years. They're
Speaker 2: getting very highly ranked. And in fact, it has been
Speaker 2: proposed informally internally the Golf Weight that the classical and
Speaker 2: modern viifurcation of these two lists should now have a
Speaker 2: third one called the Renaissance and the back to the
Speaker 2: roots or something like that. And where you draw the line,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety six sand Hills or something is a turning
Speaker 1: point that a lot of people point out. But there
Speaker 1: are a few courses before that that people would want
Speaker 1: to put on that kind of list, you know, the
Speaker 1: Second Golden Age or whatever you call.
Speaker 2: It, the Second gold Age, because the intermediate, the modern
Speaker 2: one isn't engineering is the highly The Clusive Pines and
Speaker 2: Shadow Creek are great examples of just pure engineering. They're
Speaker 2: marvelous places, absolutely marvelous, but they are constructed completely, every
Speaker 2: square inch of it. And you get the other things
Speaker 2: like Crunchhaw saying at the first green at sand Hills
Speaker 2: like that, it costs three hundred dollars, and those grass
Speaker 2: seed for the green, you know, through three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: with a grass seat. Now the whole was finished. I
Speaker 2: think he's exaggerating a little bit. Also, kids a great
Speaker 2: example his Mammoth Dunes and his Gamble Sands there. These
Speaker 2: are marvelous golf courses that are highly playable. They're relatively easy.
Speaker 2: Instead of making the hardest golf course in the world,
Speaker 2: is the goal of these folks getting back to something
Speaker 2: that plays a little easier, more friendly, bold landing areas,
Speaker 2: bold greens where mishots are cycled back towards your target line,
Speaker 2: and feel good golf courses, if you will. And that's
Speaker 2: another class of the modern golf course. It's also kind
Speaker 2: of a renaissance too, and kids leading it, and I
Speaker 2: think I'd be very surprised if that isn't a little
Speaker 2: bit of a movement. Now they're very successful for one thing,
Speaker 2: but they get great reviews. People go there that if
Speaker 2: they want to go back, they feel great about Gamble Sands.
Speaker 2: They shot their first seventy eight and you know, oh
Speaker 2: my god, you know it's nirvana.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So no, it's an extraordinarily smart move you know,
Speaker 1: it's so savvy on the part of kid, because people
Speaker 1: do feel wonderful when they go to those courses and
Speaker 1: they come away saying, not only was that a beautiful
Speaker 1: course and there are some cool strategic scenarios and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, but also they usually played well,
Speaker 1: you know they And I wonder if that's going to
Speaker 1: prompt a change. You know, certainly Golf Magazine and Golf
Speaker 1: Week are are well prepared to adjust to this emerging
Speaker 1: trend in golf course architecture and to give these kinds
Speaker 1: of courses high ratings. But Golf Digest might be a
Speaker 1: little held back by their resistance to scoring category, which
Speaker 1: is another category of golf digests that people often object to.
Speaker 1: Kind of wondering why that should be a factor in
Speaker 1: determining the greatness of a golf course. I wonder if
Speaker 1: Golf Digest at some point is going to be forced
Speaker 1: to get rid of that category or to reinvent it.
Speaker 2: I hope so.
Speaker 1: Once again. John Cummings's book is called The Rating Game.
Speaker 1: You can get it wherever you get books. One thing
Speaker 1: before you go, though, The Frida Egg twenty twenty one
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