WEBVTT - An Insider’s View of Golf Course Rankings 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.640 Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:06.840 and today we delve into the world of golf course 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:11.440 ratings and rankings. But first, this episode is brought to 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:15.040 you by the Frida Egg Pro Shop. So I don't 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.079 know if you've noticed, but spring is on the way, 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.560 golf season is on the way, Winter and fake winter 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.799 alike are almost over, and it's going to be time 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.960 to think about sun protection. Now. Nothing beats sunscreen, obviously, 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.040 but an additional thing that really helps is a bucket hat. 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.839 A Fried Egg bucket hat, to be precise. You can 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.440 find one in our pro shop at proshop dot, Thefrida 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.959 Egg dot com. Good looking bucket hat with the classic 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:46.320 Frida Egg logo pro shop dot, Thefrida Egg dot com. 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:50.199 We have things other than the bucket hats too. So 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:54.160 today's episode is all about golf course rankings, and I'm 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.480 talking about the magazine rankings, the top one hundred, Top 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.040 two hundred lists that are put out every couple of 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:05.520 years by Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, Golf Week, and other 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:10.200 golf publications. These lists have been I think enormously influential 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:15.000 in shaping tastes about golf course architecture, and frankly, I'm 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.480 very skeptical about the impact that they've had. I'm not 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:22.280 sure it's been healthy. That said, I've never had a 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.880 super clear idea of how these lists are created, and 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.039 so I was excited when last year a book came 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.480 out that got into the nitty gritty of the golf 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.920 course rating industry, because that's truly what it is, an industry. 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.080 The book is called The Raiding Game, and it's by 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:42.520 Jonathan Cummings. John is a longtime golf course raider for 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.760 Golf Week and a long time presence in the community 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:50.200 of golf course architecture enthusiasts. He knows everyone, He's seen 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:54.320 every course. He is deeply, deeply knowledgeable about how the 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.480 rating sausage gets made, so to speak. And hats off 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.080 to him for coming on the podcast and talking to 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:04.640 me in spite of my avowed skepticism about the whole deal. So, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.320 without further ado, here's my conversation with John Cummings. 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.320 I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:13.440 I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.480 And when I find my ball in a fried egg 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.880 Friday egg, the dreaded Friday, egg Frida, egg Frida, egg Brian, 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.200 egg Frida, egg bride, egg Lie. I'm about ready to 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:21.920 run off. 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:22.200 Of the hump. 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.040 Tell me about the path from being an enthusiast and 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:51.160 a traveler somebody who's seen a lot of golf courses 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.040 to becoming a raider for the magazines. 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:59.120 Well, it's a little bit amusing. It's part of traveling around. 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.240 I got a wild hair of my butt to write 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:06.040 an annual travelog of what I of the course that 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.680 i'd seen, and I actually started rating them on my own, 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.240 associated any panel one to ten rating and kept the 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.160 database in the back of this thing Excel spreadsheet, continually 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.400 sorted and ranked my stuff, and I sent this letter out. 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:21.799 I wrote it for five years, thirty or forty pages long. 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.840 It's just a travel log, unsolicited. I sent it out 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:29.080 to about one hundred people, including writers and architects and 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.480 media types, and got responses back. You know, you're a 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.440 looney tune if you think this course is better than 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.040 that and the common kind of things. But anyway, at 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.440 the end of that Ron Witten got a hold of these, 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.720 or maybe he was a recipient of the letter. I 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.840 don't remember. And he called up Topsy sitter Off, who 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:50.040 was kind of running guid just at the time, and said, 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.840 you get this wacky engineer that's traveling all around doing 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.200 golf courses down in Washington, d C. You know, he 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.120 seems to fit our model. Call him up and see 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.280 if he wants to be digestrator. And so she called 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.000 and I said sure, and they sent a package down 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:07.040 to me and I filled it out an application. I'll 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.240 send it back to her and got a frantic phone 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:12.080 call a couple of days later. I, oh my god, 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.920 we didn't realize you're washing DC. We're oversubscribed in that area. 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.800 Could you go on a waiting list? Sure, I don't care, 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.280 and Watten. At that time, Brad Klein was just constituting 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.359 Golf Week's panel and went and called clientup and said, listen, 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.159 we can't use this guy right now. They probably would 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.080 fit your model. Why don't you call him up? So 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:33.880 Brad Klein called me out of the blue and said, 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.440 I got eighty people I'm starting Golf Week's rating panels 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.200 nineteen eighty four, nineteen ninety four or ninety five. Now, 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:43.039 would you like to be one of them? I said sure, 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.400 And so I became a Golf Week grader. I still 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:46.159 have one today. 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.000 So tell me a little more about this travelogue that 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:51.880 you were writing. It sounds like you were writing a letter. 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.520 Were you printing it out and making copies and then 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:55.839 just sending it to various people? 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:02.080 All hand done too, you know, go to what's the 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.760 Kinkos and stuff like that, and there actually things cost 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.200 a ton of money and mailed these out all these clowns. 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.880 Most of them threw them away too, probablly, but you 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.800 know it was I got responses, plenty of responses too, 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:16.919 but most of them were you're a wacky guy. You know. 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.200 Whoever listened to what you're doing anyway? But so I said, 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:22.880 it was only five years. There was a lot of work, 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.720 I mean, two hundred and fifty pages with of stuff. 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.000 But it was interesting and the architecture thing that you 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:31.760 talk about inside these letters, and not only just write 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.920 a I went to Kui, I played k was an 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:36.920 awful day. I didn't like the golf course. I gave 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:41.839 it a six. You know, I interjected in these letters parathentically, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.760 the little stuff I'd research about the history of rankings, 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.200 the prominent people in the rankings. I actually interviewed people 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.320 do incline and people like this, and that parathetical part 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.200 in that became the genesis of the book, the rating game, 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.920 and so that stuff that, the stuff that was in 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.400 those five letters I stripped on out and became the 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.240 genesis and the start of the rating game. 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.000 Right. So this was essentially like a blog, you know, 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:17.039 but done by hand and sent out physically through snail mail. 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.360 The distribution mechanisms have become quite a bit easier to 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:22.480 use these days, I suppose. 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.279 Cheaper, but throw away too. I mean, it took a 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.320 lot of effort to do something by hand, and the 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:30.880 more you formalize printing. I don't know if you've written 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:34.479 books before, but if you formalize printing and put the 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.760 effort into it, there's a little bit more integrat in it. 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.560 To write a book, you got to be passionate about something, 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:43.000 and you got to have some depth and knowledge of it. 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:45.120 And really the only thing I have depth and knowledge in, 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.640 and I've studied and read bunches of books on its architecture, 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.200 and so that that launched it in itself. Now, I 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.279 was a professional engineer, and I didn't have time to 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:57.719 do this thing until I retired. I'm sixty nine years 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.920 old and retired four or five years ago, and at 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.160 that time that really I've always had back my mind 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.880 that those letters could metastasize into some kind of book, 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.560 if you will. And it took the effort of being retired. 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:12.080 I lived in washingt d C. And I have a 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.960 little researcher card at the Library of Congress, and so 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.400 I spent a year down there with all every historical 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:23.720 magazine for Digest, Golf Week, Golf Magazine, and I just 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.200 did it properly. Spent three days a week down there, 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:27.600 eight hours a day wrote the book. 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.520 Maybe we could start with what you did your research 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.640 on it. Sounds like in the archives the history of 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.040 the golf course rankings. When did golf course rankings start 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.760 and when did they really start to gain momentum and 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:44.320 purchase in the golf world. 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:49.040 A few folks CEB McDonald put together a little ranking 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.080 thing low did, and so they're early nineteen hundreds, nineteen tens. 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:55.000 There are a few people that went on out there 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:59.120 and tried to categorize in some way the components of 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.840 character of golf of course character and how that's measured. 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.440 But really nineteen sixty six when Digests jumped into this, 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.640 and it really was by mistake they got into it. 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.080 The Digest it was a big publishing company or a 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.160 big golf magazine I guess the biggest golf magazine at 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.560 the time, and they've had the energy and the wherewithal 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:22.040 and they started to get the curiosity of the thing. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.440 And that really started in the magazine of seventy three, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.320 and then Golf Week, where was ninety five, and there 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.120 have been some spin off others Cup and hundred. Golf 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:33.520 more recently is a pretty good one, especially if you 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:37.480 travel and there's some Australian ones, there's a South African one. 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.720 You know there there area regional a top on hundreds. 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.680 But in America, the big three or Golf Week, Golf Digests, 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.720 and Golf Magazine and Golf Digest pioneered this mid sixties 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.319 would be the genesis of the modern rating lists. 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.360 Could you tell me a little bit about the early 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:59.559 I suppose years of the Golf Digest ranking and how 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:00.000 it evolved. 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:02.640 It was Bill Davis, I think it was was the 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.200 original that may have been an editor or publisher of 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.680 Dice at the time. He was approached by I believe 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:11.760 it's a real estate company or real estate efforts some kind, 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.000 and said, are we be interested in you putting together 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:18.600 a list of golf courses, And we wanted to be 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:20.920 the hardest golf court, the hardest golf courses in the 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.280 United States, called the top two hundred most difficult golf courses. 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.640 And at first I just said they had no interest 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.520 whatsoever doing it, and then Bill Davis thought about it 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.719 for Whelm said, you know, it's mildly intriguing. And they 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.080 published a list and I think the first list was 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:40.920 based only on course rating difficulty, so I mean six 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.920 point by wingfoot or whatever. It was seventy five point five. 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:47.000 And they just went right on down the US and 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.120 listed these things, and then they thought that that was 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.400 the next year. They thought, well, we ought to keep 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:54.600 on doing this thing, and so then they constituted a 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:58.120 panel and a panel. Herbert wore Win was on the panel, 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.480 I believe SM Steve was on the panel, and this 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.720 little core of who's who in the mid sixties, and 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.480 they became the executive panel to oversee this. But soon 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:13.000 afterwards they start actually getting volunteers in there, which were 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.640 called raiders. And those books are the executive panel or 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.920 the filters, and what the raiders gave the ratings to them. 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:22.560 They'd actually fudge them in situation that could be published 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.000 for Digest, and they put at irby two years since 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:26.160 I think sixty eight. 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.640 Now. The next big stage in the evolution of these 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.720 magazine rankings, as far as I can see, was Tom 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:39.600 Doak's entrance into the scene with Golf Magazine. How did 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.719 he change the process a little bit? How was what 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.880 he was doing different from what Golf Digest was doing. 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:49.120 Well, originally they didn't have orders, they didn't have rankings. 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.640 They had clusters of good courses in the initial couple 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.160 lists like that. And Tom was a young kid, and 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.160 I think George Pepper maybe was the was the editor 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.640 at the time. He contacted Pepper and said, listen, you're 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:02.920 going about this all wrong. You need to rank them 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:08.120 literally in order. So what they proached them said, well, Tommy, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.319 you got such a great idea, was you run the panel? 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.600 And he had only done one golf course high point 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.679 in time. It was a precocious little I knew him 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.480 at that time, I've known for thirty five years, just 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.480 very confident self. I guess came on in and said 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:28.000 instead of a category based method like Digest was starting 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.080 the formula, I wanted to put some kind of numeric 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.720 system and it was an abcdef that related to what 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.760 that ranking if you, as a raider, Garret said that 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.800 that was an a golf course you were tailing Golf magazine, 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.560 that it should be ranked them though one to ten 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.240 you said it was a c golf course, it's fifty 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:49.800 to one hundred ers. There was some scale that was 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:51.800 related to that, but all kind of now you was 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.680 tying that into actual rankings and I just did not 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:57.920 do that. DI just assign you. And again I'm not 0:11:57.920 --> 0:11:59.280 sure the year that they did this, but it was 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.280 pretty early. He assigned you as a Digest raider to 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:06.119 go out and give ratings on categories, and the executive 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.360 board mixed these in such a way that they came 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.440 up at the rankings. And Brad was much much later. 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.440 Brad was Bradston come on till ninety five was the 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:15.360 first Golf week. 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.560 List, right, So Bradley Klein took over the Golf week 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:24.320 List and then take it over he inaugurated it, right, 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.200 And so how was what he was doing then different 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.520 again from Golf Digest and Golf Magazine. 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:33.520 Each one of them had the little foothold. And what 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:38.719 Golf Week did is there was a pitcher in Atlanta. 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.920 He pitched for the triple A braves. He's probably still 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:45.800 a panelist, I don't know, but he came to climb 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:48.720 when Climates formed this panel or formed the idea of 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:53.080 a pianel and said, listen, Digest and magazine are taking 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:56.920 old traditional golf courses in the golden age of architecture 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.640 like that, and they're mixing it with these modern basio 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.559 and theliss highly engineered type golf courses. Never really apples 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.000 and oranges. Golf wek would have their own foothold and 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.680 the soul ranking things that they segregated the two of them, 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.360 and that's what they start off with. The top hundred 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.880 classical list that's up till nineteen sixty. It was kind 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.960 of an arbitrary number, and then nineteen sixty was the 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.320 architect and so that's their foothold. And then they also 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.800 ten to fifteen years ago they also took that expanded 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.600 both lists from the top and top two hundred, and 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:36.000 so effectively you're getting four hundred top four hundred golf 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.199 courses every time you see one of those lists come 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:42.760 out and Golf Week and that exposes some wonderful, wonderful 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.800 tradition New England courses that no one will ever hear 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:48.480 of like that, And so it's a very it's a 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.760 good idea, it's good advertising for Golf Week. It's these 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:53.880 little clubs are early and the enamored by the fact 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.240 that they're on these lists, and digestin magazine don't have 0:13:57.400 --> 0:13:59.160 that interesting. 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.640 And in order to have a list that's that long, 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:08.400 that includes that many courses, you need a fair amount 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:13.240 of raiders. And the issue of recruiting raiders and assessing 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:16.000 raiders is a really interesting one that you take up 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.320 in your book. Maybe we could start by talking about 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.680 what you perceive to be the differences between the raider 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:27.560 panels at Golf Digest, Golf Magazine and Golf Week. How 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:31.800 are the bodies of raiders different at those three publications. 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:37.400 I think they have distinct equalities. Digest always is proud 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.160 of the fact that the raiders are They're not architects, 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:45.280 they're not industry people, and they're low handicaps and they're 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.320 supposed to go back and evaluate golf course from the back. 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.600 Teams and so this is a very special group of 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.680 accomplished golfers that now are going out in view from 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.680 only that lens the golf Course magazine now the hand 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.360 Ran Morrison now runs Golf Magazine. You probably know this. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.760 What RN has is eighty to one hundred luminaries in 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.160 the golf world. And these folks are very well traveled, 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:11.560 no question about it. And they have a small ballot. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.800 They only have four or five hundred courses worldwide that 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:19.040 they're supposed to see, so they are more who's who 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.840 in golf. I mean, Nicholas Palmer was a panelist at 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:28.600 one time, and Jan Stevenson and Wise Cough and Jones brothers, 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:30.800 you know, you can run it on down. So they 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.720 were getting the cream of the crop up there Golf Week. 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.320 On the other side is the pedestrian panel. They've got 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:39.760 a to z, they've got couples, they've got people are 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.200 good golfers, bad golfers. Frankly they have It's more of 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.080 a panel of eight hundred people that really like to 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.440 go out and see golf courses. But their criteria, their 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:55.000 their qualifications, you know, are not as is looked at 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.880 so hard. It's more of their willingness to go out 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.000 there and see golf courses, which is a very important 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.560 parameter on a good raider. 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:05.920 There's a lot of interesting issues in there. Now. I 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.680 think you agree with me on this what I'm about 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.840 to say. But the handicap requirement, the low handicap requirement 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.400 that Golf Digest has, strikes me as absurd on its face. 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.640 I have no idea what being an expert golfer has 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:25.320 to do with having insight into architecture. And so why 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.120 why does can you speak to this? Why why does 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.680 Digest have this requirement? 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.200 Well you have to interview them, get written on here 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.640 and tell you it was a wrong approach. The only 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.760 in my opinion, the only thing that would cost the 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.240 best raider out there is one who travels a lot, 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:47.400 sees a lot of different golf courses. So when he 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.280 sees a new course, he kind of knows where this 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.080 goes his own personal ranking. I think of a deck 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.640 of cards, or find valleys on the top and lemuni up. 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:57.400 The road is on the bottom, if you will, the 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.280 courses that you've seen. When you see a new golf 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.600 course like that, the whole thing is to slide that 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.399 card in where the courses above it are better and 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.520 the courses below it are worse. And I think the 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.480 Digest in their method of doing this thing is flawed. 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:16.480 They should look at people see a lot of golf 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.080 courses and not people play the game well. And then 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.720 the other thing is they've got a criteria system there 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:25.080 which I think is just completely flawed. And there's a 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.720 chapter in the book about categories, and I think Ron 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.680 Wooden is not wildly pleased about that chapter. Freely. 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:35.080 Well, maybe we could take that side road for a second. 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:39.840 What is in essence your objection to using categories to 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.520 determine the quality of golf course? Now, Golf Digest you 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:44.600 spoke to this a little bit earlier, but just to 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.959 be clear, Golf Digest has what number of categories? Is it? 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:49.360 They change it all the time. 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.320 Yeah, I can never keep track. But it's you know, 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:56.200 different components of golf course excellence, and you can imagine 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:58.560 what they are. Basically, the one that really sticks in 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.880 my cries on beyond which you know, I have no 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:04.159 idea what that means. I think it has something to 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.040 do with tradition. But for some reason, bethpage Black score 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:10.000 is super low on ambiance and I'm like, wait a minute, 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.720 doesn't Beth Page Black have amazing tradition. But yes, there 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.440 are these different categories that Golf Digest uses. Your objection 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.280 to them is not so much that they're the wrong categories, 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:24.320 but just that the category system itself is prone to error. 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:27.680 You know, if I asked you to rank, of course 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.959 as you mister panel, the new individual and whole panel 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.159 like that, why in the hell would I want to 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.399 introduce an intermediate step in there? As it does is 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.520 offuscape the end product. What I really want is to 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.520 get a bunch of raiders to give me their rankings 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.560 and for me to come somehow merge those rankings together 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.640 in one list and publish a rankings list. But when 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:51.359 you have a bunch of numbers in there, one, I 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.439 don't believe they can publish or they can these raiders 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.920 have the ability to resolve these numbers, these seven point 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.280 two to eight out to these decimal points. It's a ludicrous, 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:03.959 But they like to keep this. They think they're in 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.600 the science world doing that, and I think it's just humorous. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:08.720 But I would take the whole category thing. It's an 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.760 unnecessary step that introduces air into the thing. You have 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.040 bias air, you have resolutionaire, we have all the simple 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.200 little measurement airs that happen when you make the measurement 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.639 anywhere in the world. And it's something that should be 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:25.399 cast aside. And the great evidence that I believe it 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.560 doesn't work is they change it all the time. They're 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.280 continually fiddling with it after sixty years of this piano 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.960 fifty years, sixty years. And if that's not evidence that 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:37.920 you know, something's flawed, right. 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.040 Yeah, So maybe we could get back to the issue 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.600 of raiders. Who raiders are, who's able to be a raider? 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.359 So who, in your mind, what kind of person makes 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:49.280 the ideal radar? 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.080 Oh, I can be biased. It's someone older like myself, 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.680 who's retired and has the ability to get in the car, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:01.159 getting an airplane, getting curiosity, do that travel and see 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:05.280 a number of golf courses. That also has some financial 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.440 means because none of these panels they don't pay raiders 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.720 like that, and so people travel maniacally and they pull 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:14.560 those travel fees out of their pocket. And I think 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:16.960 that the best raiders are the ones that have seen 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:21.600 the broadest spectrum of golf courses, classical courses, modern courses, 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.640 geographically diverse courses, because now they have the best thing 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.680 when they see another course to weigh it against. And really, 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.000 that's what it's all about. Is if I've only seen 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.320 twenty courses around my local area and I get a 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:37.479 Raider card and I'm so happy and I'm running out 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:39.960 and see cog Hill, I think it's a ten. It's 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.400 the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. And 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.440 this is why that the best raiders. And if I 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.919 would formulate my own pianel, I wouldn't care about anything 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.040 other than how broad a number of courses they see, 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:55.760 how willing they are to travel and see other courses, 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.480 and that really would be And to some extent, seem 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:02.760 to see some great golf courses, so they have to 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.000 weigh augustus are to get on and find valley insite 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.800 person all these But if they've seen things that they've 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:11.879 seen great golf courses, they have some barometer to wait 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.440 what they just saw on the course up the street 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.320 against it. And that's important. But see a lot of 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.200 golf courses is the most important thing. Willing to travel, 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:21.760 have the means to travel. 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:25.600 Right, it makes good sense that a raider should have 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:28.399 a broad range of experience to draw on and has 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:30.640 seen a lot of courses so that they don't go, 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.440 you know, see a course that might be somewhat mediocre 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:36.480 and think, hey, it's the best course I've ever seen. 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.600 So it's a ten. But of course, the problem that's 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:44.280 introduced here is I think a significant one that in 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:48.280 order to be a raider you have to not only travel, 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.240 but have the means to travel and have the time 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.159 to travel, which to an extent limits the range of 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.479