How to rank a golf course

Introduction

Greetings Golfers!

Ranking golf courses is a serious business.

Golf club members are very proud and protective of their golf course, and position in rankings can have a material impact on visitor green fee revenue.

As a result, the practice should not be taken lightly.

In this blog we consider some of the key elements taken into account in golf course rankings and then discuss specifically how golflists.com ranks golf courses now and how that will evolve in the future.

Two Common Approach to Ranking Golf Courses and the Pitfalls

Golf course ranking providers such as Top 100, Golf World, Golf Monthly and Golf Digest all have a different methodology for ranking golf courses.

But there are two primary 'approaches' all of them use, panel based rankings and rating based rankings.

Panel Based

Panel based rankings compile a group of golf course 'experts', typically golfers who have played a large number of the best golf courses in a location, and produce a discussion or vote based ranking. The panel typically, but not always, debate their way to a final ranking, lobbying for courses they favour with the panel ultimately led by the ranking provider.

A panel based approach is subject to biases and commercial or political pressures. For example, golf magazines make money through advertising. Let's say a prominent golf course spent alot of money with a magazine, could this impact the rankings?

Even more basic, let's say the editor of a golf magazine is a member of a golf club. Is he going to walk through the clubhouse comfortably knowing he's just signed off binning his course 20 spots down their rankings?

You be the judge.

Ratings Based

Rating based rankings often get a larger group, i.e. the general golfing public, to rate courses - for example this could be out of 10, out of 5, or whatever system the provider devises. This can be a composite rating where x number of smaller factors average up into an overall rating.

The rating based approach is not perfect either. First of all, a composite ranking often loses focus on the crux of the debate, which I believe must be the quality of the golf course.

Whether you are greeted with a smiling or a grumpy Head Pro should not affect a golf course's ranking. But it does, because we are human. Political leanings even come in to rating based rankings.

For example, what is the first thing many golfers do when using a ratings / review site?! Rate their own golf course 10/10. They want their course to be perceived as good, it is only natural. The score element of a rating also allows a golfer to be inconsistent with their scoring magnitude, a 10 today could be an 8 next month.

What is the alternative?

The rankings I have appreciated most, come from an individual. One example is "The Doak Scale" where course architect Tom Doak rated courses in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses from 0 to 10. I don't agree with all his ratings, which focus on architectural nuance, but you can see a clear logic to the ratings. You are able to predict which courses Doak will prefer quite accurately. This consistency in a rating system is something I think you only get when an individual provides an entire rating or ranking.

Another example is the UK Golf Guy, who uses a 20 point system borrowed from the Peugeot Golf Guide. Again, I don't agree with every score but there is consistency in his ratings and incidentally I find it more reflective of the average traveling golfer's perspective that Doak's more "academic" leaning.

So should I just be that individual ranker for Golf Lists?

No!

Although I like the consistency of an individual ranking system, it does not deal with the biases and pitfalls we discussed earlier.

To be honest, I have felt the same internal pressures with compiling GL's inaugural rankings.

As a member of two golf courses myself, it is hard to be objective when placing them in the rankings. Therefore we need a more objective, but also consistent method.

The Golf Lists Method

Currently the Golf Lists rankings can be considered as a placeholder, suffering the same biases as other rankings providers.

They are rankings I have compiled considering a number of factors including my own experience of the course, opinions of golfers and architects I have researched and consideration of the many existing rankings.

For courses of which not much is known, I have visited their website, viewed pictures and 'location weighted green fees' to try and give a reasonable first go at the rankings.

If I could, I would not actually have a ranking yet, but the website does not function properly without at least indicating which courses are rated higher than others, so it is a neccessary evil.

However, it is my ambition, to rip up this ranking list and instigate a new approach, as soon as Golf Lists has the data to do so.

The method Golf Lists will implement is an "Experience Weighted Ranking". I want to use our members' personal Golf Lists course rankings to compile the ultimate people's ranking.

The solution effectively uses an algorithm to "average" out all our members' personal rankings. This will consider each golfer's experience of playing different golf courses. It also excludes any golf course they are a member of. This solution considers a golfer's playing experience as a proxy for their fitness to rank a golf course.

If a golfer has played the top 100 courses in England, they are better placed to rank a course number 1 than a golfer who has only played 3. As such our algorithm will build in a golfer's experience and weight their opinion accordingly. This cannot be achieved objectively with a panel based ranking and cannot be achieved at all with a ratings based ranking.

At least that's the theory...

Timeline

This will not happen overnight, because we will need 1000+ people to submit their rankings to get a statistically significant master ranking.

In all likeliehood there will be a more static golf lists ranking and a dynamic people's ranking which both serve a purpose.

In terms of building a panel, in the future I will consider putting together local experts at a county level to enrich the static Golf Lists county rankings and then build these into national rankings, in a bottom up approach. If you have played lots of courses in your county and would like to apply to become a Golf Lists Ambassador please get in touch via our contact page.

Golf Course Criteria

Now my view of what a good golf course looks like will be irrelevant in the "people's ranking". Political leanings will be impossible and the algorithm methodology will be public. However if you are curious what I like in a golf course, I look for:

• Massive variety in hole layouts - no two holes should look the same
• Uniqueness - I love a good golf hole I have never seen before and tend to remember them
• Year round play - if a course doesn't drain well it can prevent enjoyable year round play
• Generous off the tee - no one enjoys losing tee shots

A really good summary of what makes an "ideal" golf course was put forward by one of the greatest golf course architects in history Alister Mackenzie. You can view his 13 principles in the appendix at the bottom of this blog.

Considering Cross-Border Rankings

Another feature of golf course rankings is cross-border lists, such as a World Top 100 or GB&I Top 100.

I do not like these lists, because so few people have played enough of these courses to compare them, that they are a bit of a waste of time. This is the primary reason why the site is currently limited to UK and Ireland. If we grow beyond that from a ranking perspective it will be many years down the line.

I believe it is more useful to consider a golf course in the context of the country it was built in. This is a personal opinion, but I envisage Golf Lists sticking to country rankings at least in our early days. Similarly, I think county rankings are fantastic, because the landscapes and history are even more localised and therefore the rankings even more useful.

Join the conversation!

If you have any ideas for how we can improve our golf course rankings please share them in the Discord forum!

Thanks very much for reading and happy golfing!

GolfLists.com

Appendix

Mackenzies Ideal Golf Course Design Principles

(Source: Golf Architecture: Economy in Course Construction and Green-Keeping by Alister Mackenzie )

1. The course, where possible, should be arranged in two loops of nine holes.
2. There should be a large proportion of good two-shot holes, two or three drive-and-pitch holes, and at least four one-shot holes.
3. There should be little walking between the greens and tees, and the course should be arranged so that in the first instance there is always a slight walk forwards from the green to the next tee; then the holes are sufficiently elastic to be lengthened in the future if necessary.
4. The greens and fairways should be sufficiently undulating, but there should be no hill climbing.
5. Every hole should have a different character.
6. There should be a minimum of blindness for the approach shots.
7. The course should have beautiful surroundings, and all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself.
8. There should be a sufficient number of heroic carries from the tee, but the course should be arranged so that the weaker player with the loss of a stroke or portion of a stroke shall always have an alternative route open to him.
9. There should be infinite variety in the strokes required to play the various holes — viz., interesting brassy shots, iron shots, pitch and run-up shots.
10. There should be a complete absence of the annoyance and irritation caused by the necessity of searching for lost balls.
11. The course should be so interesting that even the plus man is constantly stimulated to improve his game in attempting shots he has hitherto been unable to play.
12. The course should be so arranged that the long handicap player, or even the absolute beginner, should be able to enjoy his round in spite of the fact that he is piling up a big score.
13. The course should be equally good during winter and summer, the texture of the greens and fairways should be perfect, and the approaches should have the same consistency as the greens.