The latest edition is the 7th which was published in 2005. There have been two printings of it, the first with several mistakes (such as the old routing of Banff Springs left on the map, but everything else changed, and a great howler - a picture of a bunker on the 4th at Royal St George's with a caption about Stanley Thompson. These and a few other things were corrected on the reprint.
As for the 6th on Merion West, that disppeared from the text many years ago when the Merion entry was pruned from 5 pages to 4. It was entirely fortuitous that that particular blunder was eliminated. At that time I didn't know Merion and would never have spotted that.
Obviously I cannot say whether it is worth buying the new edition because I'm connected with it. However, I would say that if ever you see a first edition grab it. Ignore ll the other interim editions, as they are out of date.
The first edition was reprinted many times. I believe there were revisions to this because additional text contributions are credited to Peter Dobereiner, Michael Gedye, Peter Hildyard, Keith Mackie, Marvern Moss, Arvid Olson, Donald Steel, Larry Wood and the late Alfred Wright.
The second edition was where it began to get its knickers in a twist. The revisions were compiled by Sachem Publishing Associates and Richard Widdows. Their brief was to add a lot more American courses and this is when Sentry World, Poppy Hills, Lakewood, Shoal Creek etc were added to the gazetteer. But the thing was riddled with mistakes. They had the wrong course map for Cascades, the text descrbed the 10th at Pasatiempo as a par five, while the card gave it as a par 4 and lots more. I pointed this out to the editor (who knew nothing about golf - her specialism was dog breeding) - and I got the job of putting it right for a new (3rd) edition. However, by then Killarney (at that stage among the main entries) had been split up into two courses and I was able to get Ballybunion in to replace it. hat was for a company called Mitchell Beazley. They are still a publishing house within the Conran-Octopus conglomeration, but they decided to concentrate on their excellent food and wine books and handed the Golf Atlas to Hamlyn, who are another part of the group with a large sports catalogue. Unfortunately none of the original art work was passed on and by then Mitchell Beazley had moved from their original offices and presumably all the at work was thrown away.
When Hamlyn decided to bring out a new edition they got a British golf journalist, Derek Lawrenson to update it, and to increase the number of modern courses in the book, particularly the gazetteer. He introduced one or two strange courses such as Schloss Nippenburg and Stavangar. He upgraded Royal Troon from gazetteer to main entry, added the Belfry, completely re-wrote my Ballybunion account, and introduced a lot of snippets related to happenings in recent tournaments, and there was much good material in this. It made the playing of these courses more relevant to those who watch televised tournaments and have no clue who Paul Runyan, Cyril Walker or Orville Moody my have been - three, chosen at random, who were featured in earlier editions. But Derek's brief was not to go through the text meticulously updating every yardage for every obscure entry from South America, India or Kenya. Unfortunately whoever put the book together did not have access to my corrections for the earlier edition and many of the mistakes I corrected were re-introduced. For some reason he expunged NGLA and Ganton.
I got in touch with Hamlyn, pointing out (in my nerdish way) what had happened and, once again, I was invited to put it right, but I could only touch text. There was no budget for artwork. I've been involved in each of the subsequent editions.
I don't have a brief to change anything I wish to or to choose to expunge one course, substitute another or seriuosly alter the balance of the book. There is very little money for change. In the most recent update we actually had quite an opportunity for change and with the assistance of a number of ken-speckled GCA regulars we've gone quite some way to weeding out weak entries and reflecting new trends such as the Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes while also bringing Crystal Downs, Riviera, Bethpage Black and others to greater prominence. We also managed to remove quite a lot of junk by restricing gazetteer entries to 100. However, there remain courses which I know you would wish to see removed. In Europe we've managed to upgrade Woodhall Spa, add Kingsbarns and to sneak in Swinley Forest, Alwoodley and North Berwick - Alwoodley is a reinstatement, but it's a long story....We removed The Belfry - but there was a lot of opposition to that.
The book is revised and updated from time to time, driven by the sales reps. If they say that their research tells them that the book does not contain enough courses currently being used on the European Tour and that there is a lot of potential for sales there, there is much pressure to reflect this and I have had to include K-Club, Le Golf National and others. K-club will go next time round, but the question will be asked why expunge a Ryder Cup venue when we keep Royal Antwerp on which only one professional event has been played since the war. There is much pressure also to remove Club zur Vahr because no professional play goes there these days.
I'm sure there'll be another update in a year or two and I very much expect that, if I'm involved in it, I'll be putting something on GCA inviting suggestions, views and opinion. The last time we did this there was some very robust correspondence! Before you offer to write or update entries let me warn you that the money is peanuts and you lose heavily on conversion from £ to $.