Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Angela Moser on September 18, 2014, 03:38:14 AM
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Good morning everybody,
Please don't turn this into pieces!
Three questions to answer (and please stay calm!!!):
1- How do you like this ranking of the 100 best European Courses issued by Golf Journal (Germany)?
http://www.golfjournal.de/travel/plaetze/die-100-besten-golfplaetze-europas/?no_cache=1&cid=5429&did=2942&sechash=55e4b229
Obviously something went wrong when Rye (96) and TOC (30) are ranked so poorly and behind far less interesting (but maybe spectacular looking - no names here) courses. Germany is not as far along with its interest in GCA as America is.
2- What do you think went wrong in their ranking?
3- What do you think is the right way to raise awareness of GCA in Germany?
Thanks for your thoughts!
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Hi Angela, its certainly an interesting list. Before getting into lots of hand-wringing, can you let us know what the criteria were? There is an index for each course so, presumably, there were several criteria where each course was allocated points. That may explain some of the surprises. Also, do you know how many judges were involved (a small number could explain some surprises) and what their backgrounds were?
Thanks for sharing!
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I think the Top-6 is an excellent choice....
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I haven't been to Adamstal, but it is highly rated in a number of surveys. From photos, it is very spectacular and beautiful - irrespective of its architectural merits it is the sort of course you could see people rating highly for that alone.
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Someone agrees with me on Sunningdale New!!
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Well look, let's be constructive in our analysis.
Being generous, the list shows that Germany is a newer golfing nation. It has less need or desire to place emphasis on history. Being part of the European continent, it also has less need or desire in being so GB&I-centric.... So it pulls out some of the best of modern European design and has these courses as a more prolific presence in the list...
Being less generous, because Germany is less familiar with great, classic GCA - being far removed from it give or take a couple of courses - it is more likely to be wowed by the new, high-profile and high-end courses that are marketed well or that can be seen on the television hosting tournaments. Or - as Adam says - are just beautiful to look at.
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Greg,
they have it on their website, but it is only in German. So this is my translation to it:
THIS IS HOW THE GJ RANKING WORKS
We work with a 100 point system for the course testing, though you will see an index on the ranking. This is why:
The last 306 candidates for the 100 best courses in europe were ranked with the 100 point system. After that we eliminated the category condition, because the condition is especially dependant on the season, month, day or even hour. For an absolut fair and comparable result we would have to play all the courses in the same season and same weather which is impossible.
If we would have eliminated the 12 point for the condition from the beginning, there would have been a big confusion. For an example: The Stadium Course at Bro Hof Slott GC recently ranked with 91 points (published GJ 6/14). Without the condition it would only get 79 points. So instead of confusing by publishing two different results, we worked with an Index.
First step: calculating an average value of all of the tested courses (basic index) and set it to 100. Because Europes courses are very high leveled and very close to another, we received a lot of identical results. So we specified further if 10 or even 15 of the courses were on the same rank. With the three categories, requirements (Anspruch), Design and setting, we calculated a bonus, which we added to their basic index, but without changing the overall ranking itself.
THIS IS HOW GJ RANKS
Demand
mostly decided through the general Course Rating, for countries with SSS-System there is a special Formula. men's and women's tees are included in the rating. After the officially defined level of difficulty our Rater will evalutate.
condition
maximum 12 points. quality of greens, fairways, approaches, bunkers, rough... only a snapshot of the day the Rater was playing there.
design
maximum 24 points. It doesn't matter if the routing or layout is from a famous architect. The core question: Is it fun?
Whether the round of golf has enough variation and also offers enough strategic choices or thinking, we check with a list. This list has more than two dozen criterias: form, size, ondulations of the greens, gradient and length of fairways, location of sand and water hazards, fairness, memorability...
setting
if the course is pleasing to the eye it can earn up to 20 points. Displeasing are: power lines, wind wheel, too many Villas on the side of the Fairway, Noice....
Service
maximum of 15 Punkte. The offer of practice areas, also the restaurant and locker rooms, cars and ballwasher (??? GJ even says on their website that they don't give a full point for ballwashers...)
Bonus
up to 5 extra points for the golfer's dream destination: TOC, Pebble, Valderrama...
GJ Index
With this number the golfer is able to find the price-performance value of each course in a second. If it is 1.0 there is a good relation between the quality and the costs. Higher Index courses are cheap, in the case of a 0.x the price is too expensive.
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24 points for design and 15 points for "service" (practice area, restaurant, ballwashers!). Now I know how Celtic Manor got so high up the list. I did like the core question though - is it fun?
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I haven't been to Adamstal, but it is highly rated in a number of surveys. From photos, it is very spectacular and beautiful - irrespective of its architectural merits it is the sort of course you could see people rating highly for that alone.
Looking at the pics, I can see how the spectacular mountainous setting could garner it support, but I guess it comes back to priorities - do you think a list like this should prioritise great architecture or should setting, service, difficulty, tournament pedigree and other extraneous things be given as much attention as they are here? Obviously, most people on this board would place a strong emphasis on architecture - probably on the basis that high end service and a beautiful setting can be found in any resort around the world, golf or otherwise - and difficulty is not exactly difficult to design into a golf course - much harder is achieving a truly great design. Don't get me wrong, I like the intangible stuff also - but the kind of intangibles that you can't get just by throwing money at something.
Naturally, I largely agree. But not everyone in golf would! Different strokes for different folks.
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Angela
I would think the goal of any quality rankings has to place what is important as the essential criteria comprising most of the "points". This essentially means the design, conditioning and aesthetics should take the lion's share of points. So, I think it is a big mistake to ignore conditioning.
By conditioning I don't mean beautifully presented with greens stimping 11. I mean how well does the condition of the course support the design? Therefore, the nature of the soil/turf is critical. Are the trees and rough well managed?
By aesthetics I don't mean solely how lovely the mountains are, but how well do the features (man made and natural) of design enhance the visual aspect of the course? Is there good variety/balance of features and land movement? Are good internal/external (especially internal) views available or unnecessarily blocked?
Design doesn't stand alone, that is why I think the above two elements are essential in an overall assessment. I like the is it fun criteria. But I also think playability is critical which feeds back to rough and tree management and essentially gets back to width - is there enough? Do the greens interact well with the features? Are the greens decent quality surfaces with interest and challenge?
By my reckoning, if we are talking about ranking by quaity, these three criteria should make up at least 80% (if not closer to 90%) of rating. Course difficulty, clubhouse ambience, service, location etc are not inconsequential, but they are the cream on the cake.
All in all, I am not surprised by the rankings. But I am surprised there are so many awesome Euro courses I never heard of :)
Ciao
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Interesting list, I'll refrain from being too critical. The weighting is a bit subject however I'm certain knowing the Germans as I think I do (spending half my time in Germany) they would put a large emphasis on challenge something that the tree house certainly does not do, in fact quite the contrary. Germans like to be beaten up on their golf courses. Courses like Les Bordes and Morftontaine might not be in the list because they didn't allow them to play them. Which would make sense. That might also explain why some courses were so far down the list assuming there is some kind of panel that votes. If not enough people vote then a course may receive deductions.
Of course I like where Noordwijkse is ending up ha ha....though I personal don't believe that one for a minute being a member there. I know the Germans love it and we welcome them with open arms and make them lose buckets of balls during their visits.
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Sean
I have the deep wish of the following statement to come true: It is time that the golfing world wakes up and stops limiting the greatest golf courses to GB&I and America.
There is real cool stuff on Continental Europe (!), but there needs to be more people travelling here and talking about them...
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Sean
I have the deep wish of the following statement to come true: It is time that the golfing world wakes up and stops limiting the greatest golf courses to GB&I and America.
There is real cool stuff on Continental Europe (!), but there needs to be more people travelling here and talking about them...
Angela
Can you give me your personal Euro cool list? I have very little experience playing on the continent in large part because I don't have a clue as to what is cool and I haven't seen al there is on offer in GB&I. I did a few ad hoc visits to places like PGA Catalunya (could believe it was ranked let alone so high), Praia del Rey (good, but not outstanding - would play again if in the area) and Circolo Venezia (a good course, not special, but I really liked the vibe - great place to chill in busy Venice).
Ciao
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so... I am trying to get my head wrapped around this.
I would answer my three questions like this:
1- woops, what went wrong here (my first thought).
2- probably different priorities and not played all of them?
The Ranking is so different because GJ includes Service and (IMO not so important) other stuff in it? In that case I wonder how different the ranking would be if it is not including those factors at all and just concentrate on the golf and fun part. (Even if it is not fun to not find a toilet if you need one)
3- no true blog or articles about GCA in the german language. It is mostly advertising a destination and not explaining the great strategy about some holes.
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Perhaps the German raters have not been told what to like by other magazines,editors, and GCA afficianados, like so many panelists here in our rankings........
and just voted objectively based on what THEY had seen in their travels.
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Very interesting take on the top European golf courses. Having spent a few years in Germany from 1998-2001, I was surprised by the number of newer German courses that made the list.
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Angela:
Rain day today?
The two criteria that make this list so different from the other top-100 lists are "service" and "demand". It actually didn't say how many points were awarded for "demand", but by process of elimination, it looks like 24 points are left over ... so, 39 points for these two categories. That's enough to make the list completely different than others.
"Service" has nothing to do with golf course architecture, so if you are rating great architecture, it's irrelevant. If you're rating places to go, I still think it's pretty irrelevant, but I find it interesting that Europeans place more emphasis on it than Americans, when you consider the speed of service in many European countries!
"Demand" is much the same as GOLF DIGEST's "Resistance to Scoring", except that relying on course ratings and slopes is very sketchy, because there is so much discrepancy from one region to the next in how the courses are rated. This certainly explains how so many modern European courses push out so many older British courses -- because the modern courses are all 7000 yards from the back tees and the British courses are 6600, and that's worth 1.82 strokes in the USGA handicap formula.
P.S. I didn't look at the list until after my post. Most interesting omission: there are five French courses in the list, but none of them are in the "top 5 in France" thread which was here just a day or two ago. Not even Morfontaine!
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Forgive me. I don't know the Continental courses but to aid in establishing the validity of this ranking I have listed only the quoted GB & I courses. This is how the GB&I listing looks -
Royal County Down GC
Turnberry Resort (Ailsa)
Royal Dornoch GC
Portmarnock GC
Royal Portrush GC
Ballybunion GC (Old)
Royal Birkdale GC
Woodhall Spa (Hotchkin)
Sunningdale GC (New)
Royal Troon GC (Old)
Muirfield
Trump International
Carnoustie Golf Links
Kingsbarns Golf Links
Lahinch GC (Old)
Ganton GC
Royal Aberdeen GC
Sunningdale GC (Old)
Wentworth Club (West)
Waterville Golf Links
Gleneagles (The King‘s)
St Andrews Links (Old)
North Berwick GC
Castle Stuart Golf Links
Swinley Forest GC
Cruden Bay GC
Walton Heath GC (Old)
Old Head Golf Links
Prestwick GC
Royal Porthcawl GC
Royal St. George‘s GC
Druids Glen
Royal St. David‘s GC
Celtic Manor Resort (Twenty Ten)
St. George‘s Hill GC (Red & Blue)
Rosapenna Golf Resort (Sandy Hills)
Western Gailes GC
St. Enodoc GC (Church)
The Machrihanish GC (Championship)
Lough Erne Resort (Faldo)
Royal Cinque Ports GC
Royal Liverpool GC
Ballyliffin GC (Glashedy Links)
The European Club
Tralee GC
Trevose G&CC
Adare GC
The Grove
Royal Lytham & St Annes GC
Nairn GC (Championship)
Saunton GC (East)
Portstewart GC (The Strand)
Royal West Norfolk GC
Formby GC
West Sussex GC
The Berkshire GC (Red)
Rye GC (Old)
I know that various points related criteria have been used to determine the GJ ranking but I cannot help but think that if any poster herein proposed an overall GB&I ranking as above howls of criticism would descend upon them. My hope is that the ranking of the Continental courses is less 'iffy' than that of the GB&I ones and that the criteria are refined over time - maybe they should have been refined (changed) before this publication!
As a minor aside, if a journal is going to publish a top-100 listing published over a photograph of a golf course I would also have expected the photo used to be of their 'number 1' ranked course, namely Royal County Down, but it's not, the photo is instead of Royal Portrush. Does that send a message about professionalism and credibility?
Sorry to be so negative although rankings and listing processes are partly a learning process and the possibility does exist to develop and enhance them over time so perhaps there is hope for future editions.
atb
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We had the discussion about this list earlier
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,59003.0.html
One thing I'd like to add. I'm pretty sure a lot of the rating are based on one or two reviews and not all of them by the same people. That would explain the strange rankings
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I was at Morfontaine today. It's a masterpiece and in immaculate condition. Any list that does not Morfontaine at least in Europe's top 100 can be dismissed as the work of clowns.
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I was at Morfontaine today. It's a masterpiece and in immaculate condition. Any list that does not Morfontaine at least in Europe's top 100 can be dismissed as the work of clowns.
To be fair: the list excluded private clubs
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I was at Morfontaine today. It's a masterpiece and in immaculate condition. Any list that does not Morfontaine at least in Europe's top 100 can be dismissed as the work of clowns.
To be fair: the list excluded private clubs
????
Did I not see the likes of Sunningdale, on this list, I dont think they would appreciate being viewed as "non" private?
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Regular Joe can play Sunningdale, but nor Morfontaine. That was the criteria
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Out of curiosity, does Regular Joe need a handicap certificate, or know a member or just have a wedge (of cash £) to play at Sunningdale?
atb
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Out of curiosity, does Regular Joe need a handicap certificate, or know a member or just have a wedge (of cash £) to play at Sunningdale?
atb
Just a wedge of cash, Thomas.
Although £160 for a round on both courses after 1st November doesn't seem too bad.
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Regular Joe can play Sunningdale, but nor Morfontaine. That was the criteria
But my man Brian S is a regular Joe ;)
After all is a a Man United fan, he and I are both jst regular Joe's, in other words a rather lame criteria for any "Best od Courses ' to sue.
Truly how Private is private ? and any exclusion of Morfoantaine makes a list pointless
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Strange. Just had the correspondent of German Golf Journal visit Holland, and his ranking of top Dutch courses was completely different:
1. Kennemer
2. Royal Haagsche
3. Noordwijkse and Eindhovensche
4. Lage Vuursche, De Swinkelsche and De Pan
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Would it not be accurate to suggest that this is a rankings list of venues, rather than just golf courses?
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I was at Morfontaine today. It's a masterpiece and in immaculate condition. Any list that does not Morfontaine at least in Europe's top 100 can be dismissed as the work of clowns.
To be fair: the list excluded private clubs
Then the title of the list should be: 100 Best European Public Courses.
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Angela,
to answer your questions..
1. I don't really like it, but looking at the purely GB&I list from Thomas' post, it could just as well be from any other international golf magazine. As others have mentioned and I find to be the only truly odd thing about these rankings is how highly the continental Europe resort courses are rated.
2. Besides giving too many points for service and demands, there is another simple answer: Even if they are trying to stay objective in the rankings, they will still give higher ratings subconsciously to courses they like seeing/playing. And the majority of Germany, and in this case raters, still love to see the American style resort course with water hazards etc. So they are really just a few years behind in GCA/ Golf knowledge.
3. Difficult question. I recently played with a young couple who had just started playing and learnt their golf in a Schnupperkurs and it was a beautiful monday evening just for fun round. They wrote down their scores on a scorecard, marked balls and adjusted the lines on their golf balls before putting and took 17 practice swings before hitting a ball. Then we came to a par 3 with a forced carry over water. They had no chance, lost balls, were frustrated about it and still thought it was the coolest hole they've ever seen.
It's simply still a different game here compared to a GCAer's dream world, and I wish I could say I have a better answer than: it needs time!
Cheers
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Angela,
1. The criteria is all over the place and reads more like something Travel & Leisure would produce than something devoted purely to the game of golf.
2. Paradoxically, I like the respect Portmarnock gets as I think it doesn't quite get the love it deserves. (I'm guessing the wind was up when the raters played it!).
3. As the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Why not start a German-Language blog about GCA yourself? Start with a tour of some Continental courses you respect discussing the specifics of the land, turf, design and maintenance that you enjoy. Sprinkle in some interviews, be critical and make a difference! Good way to make friends and enemies and perhaps make a few business contacts along the way...
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This reminds me of another ranking by GJ done a few years ago, which was basically a reader poll. In the continental Europe Top Ten were like five courses from Mallorca and Belek and, if I remember correctly, two from France, which were close to the German border.
So this was more a reflection of where people actually go.
The same goes for this ranking. No set of sensible criteria can explain Bro Hof Slott at #7 and Ganton at #17. It has got to be a function of a rater by chance stumbling upon Ganton, while on holiday there or whatever. Modry Las in Poland another such place - maybe the rater has family there, but there is absolutely no other reason to go there.
Ulrich
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Just like most of you guys, I largely disagree with the german ranking.
But it raises a very important question in my opinion:
how do you assess a golf course if you step in for the first time with little or no golf culture?
You will for sure appreciate service, landscape, pristine grass before more than any design subtelities.
Here at GCA we are a) under the influence of each other and b) golf educated.
It's hard to appreciate objectively a course about which you've read thousand of praises before.
But let's be honest: if you would walk by Mona Lisa without knowing it's the most famous painting in the world, would you really stop? I probably wouldn't. The same could be said about wine or champagne. Is Petrus that good? Don't know I have never tried but honestly I think Dom Perignon is one of the worst champagne I ever drunk. I am sure at least 50% of the thrill when you open a Petrus or a Dom Perignon is the prestige behind the name and not the product itself.
As a conclusion, there might be 2 ways to enjoy a golf course : with or without education. Depending how educated you are, you don't enjoy the same courses (although some maybe ranked highly in both cases).
One last question: is the enjoyment of the educated golfer higher then that of the non educated golfer? Do you need to study art to feel goose bumps when looking at a masterpiece?
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I don't mind someone not recognizing the significance of Mona Lisa, but I would mind if said person were charged with producing the list of top ten paintings in the world.
I don't think one should assume that Germany has no golf culture. It has more than a century of it. There are enough knowledgeable German golfers. It's just that sometimes they aren't the ones put in charge of projects requiring such knowledge.
Ulrich
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Patrice,
A good bottle of Petrus from the right Vintage is that good...
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Why isn't there a GCA Top 100 ?
Would I be right in saying that even with the modest amount of members it would still be the largest amount of people involved in formulating such a list?
Happy to provide HD access to my database of 3D golf courses to assist.
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Why isn't there a GCA Top 100 ?
Would I be right in saying that even with the modest amount of members it would still be the largest amount of people involved in formulating such a list?
Happy to provide HD access to my database of 3D golf courses to assist.
Mark
I don't think its that difficult to do...you have a template. The last time we used the top 100 lists from a few mags (can't remember which) as a baseline for nominations then did a GCA nomination process to add courses to the overall nomination list. I don't recall the voting criteria, but none of the GCA nominated courses made the top 100. There were a also handful of courses that received good enough scores to be top 100, but not enough people voted for them. I reckon in an update there may be some of these making the top 100 and perhaps a GCA nomination or two also making the top 100.
Ciao
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Greg,
they have it on their website, but it is only in German. So this is my translation to it:
THIS IS HOW THE GJ RANKING WORKS
We work with a 100 point system for the course testing, though you will see an index on the ranking. This is why:
The last 306 candidates for the 100 best courses in europe were ranked with the 100 point system. After that we eliminated the category condition, because the condition is especially dependant on the season, month, day or even hour. For an absolut fair and comparable result we would have to play all the courses in the same season and same weather which is impossible.
If we would have eliminated the 12 point for the condition from the beginning, there would have been a big confusion. For an example: The Stadium Course at Bro Hof Slott GC recently ranked with 91 points (published GJ 6/14). Without the condition it would only get 79 points. So instead of confusing by publishing two different results, we worked with an Index.
First step: calculating an average value of all of the tested courses (basic index) and set it to 100. Because Europes courses are very high leveled and very close to another, we received a lot of identical results. So we specified further if 10 or even 15 of the courses were on the same rank. With the three categories, requirements (Anspruch), Design and setting, we calculated a bonus, which we added to their basic index, but without changing the overall ranking itself.
THIS IS HOW GJ RANKS
Demand
mostly decided through the general Course Rating, for countries with SSS-System there is a special Formula. men's and women's tees are included in the rating. After the officially defined level of difficulty our Rater will evalutate.
condition
maximum 12 points. quality of greens, fairways, approaches, bunkers, rough... only a snapshot of the day the Rater was playing there.
design
maximum 24 points. It doesn't matter if the routing or layout is from a famous architect. The core question: Is it fun?
Whether the round of golf has enough variation and also offers enough strategic choices or thinking, we check with a list. This list has more than two dozen criterias: form, size, ondulations of the greens, gradient and length of fairways, location of sand and water hazards, fairness, memorability...
setting
if the course is pleasing to the eye it can earn up to 20 points. Displeasing are: power lines, wind wheel, too many Villas on the side of the Fairway, Noice....
Service
maximum of 15 Punkte. The offer of practice areas, also the restaurant and locker rooms, cars and ballwasher (??? GJ even says on their website that they don't give a full point for ballwashers...)
Bonus
up to 5 extra points for the golfer's dream destination: TOC, Pebble, Valderrama...
GJ Index
With this number the golfer is able to find the price-performance value of each course in a second. If it is 1.0 there is a good relation between the quality and the costs. Higher Index courses are cheap, in the case of a 0.x the price is too expensive.
I wonder how many are rating conditioning ... and I feared they would include "Service" in the ratings. Bonus points for "Dream Destination"... "GJ Index" also unnecessary.
If they're going to rate the golf course... rate the golf course. All the other stuff is meaningless.
If the place has no parking, no real clubhouse, and the staff is clueless... what does that have to do with the golf course?
Nada.
There are a couple courses ranked up the list that seem to have no business being there... but that's the nature of rankings.