On course, tour players still find older generation most appealing
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| Pebble Beach is No. 4, but it's not the highest-ranked course on the West Coast. (Getty Images) |
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Rank is an amusing, utilitarian word.
Singularly or as a root, it works in all sorts of directions or applications, and can be employed as a positive or negative, if not something of a 'tweener.
By itself, of course, it can mean smelly or rotten, which is assuredly not the definition to be associated with. Rank-and-file is a synonym for middling, mediocre. Rank can also imply an air of prestige or superiority.
End up on the wrong end of somebody's list and rank can rankle, which is what makes today's particular topic so compelling in an era when it takes a titanium howitzer to compete on many PGA Tour courses.
In a survey that took nine months and hundreds of hours to compile, one of the game's most influential magazines has completed a comprehensive survey of 81 tour veterans, assembling the first no-holds ranking of tour venues in history.
By a landscaping landslide, the older, established tour venues dominated the subjective rankings, and the newer tracks, including a spate of TPC courses designed with tournament play foremost in mind, were mired at the bottom of the list.
Forget the flat-billed orange hats, pink driver shafts, Poulter's paisley pants and the myriad Twitter accounts -- the young guys on tour these days have short attention spans but can still muster the long view. They recognize a gen-u-wine masterpiece when they see one, too.
Golf World magazine sought to survey 100 players, but the time required to thoughtfully complete the survey took upward of an hour, so the number of lab rats used for the study was scaled back. Not that it would have made much difference.
"I think even if we had surveyed 100 players, it wouldn't have changed much because they were pretty consistent with their reviews," said Geoff Shackelford, a book author, Internet blogger, course designer and writer who penned the piece and helped conduct the interviews. "What it shows is that the guys were more thoughtful, insightful, than I thought they'd be on architecture and design issues."
One of the few survey ground rules was that comments had to be limited solely to the drafting board, and not influenced by a course's playing condition, whether the locker-room attendants were sober, if the venue had enough parking spots or whether any cute girls were working in daycare.
"Ultimately, we got some pretty solid analysis and looked past their neurotic tendencies," Shackelford laughed.
The unanimity of their voice was powerful and absolutely worthy of mass scrutiny. This wasn't a capella squawking, it was a complete chorus, mostly in 81-part harmony. The results, published in the Jan. 16 edition, have already spurred conversation at tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and should do likewise at club board meetings across the continent. Because the comments and rankings were anonymous, nobody risked getting fined by tour brass for speaking their mind.
Most civilians rank courses they play based on the scorecard's final number. This went way beyond that measure.
The top course in the eyes of players is Augusta National, the venerable Georgia cathedral that, for those who enjoy a good snicker at PGA Tour expense, isn't run under the auspices of tour officials. The venue is largely prepped, set up and staged by club members, and ranked 8.96 on a scale of 10 in the eyes of players.
OK, no surprise there, but Augusta was just the beginning of the throwback throwdown.
Four of the top five courses in the ranking have been in use by the tour since the post-war era or longer: Augusta, Riviera, Pebble Beach and Colonial. Meanwhile, many of the newer venues used on tour, including a couple designed specifically for PGA Tour events, were rather savagely panned.
The nostalgia or personal reverie that comes with playing a historic venue, where players like Hogan, Snead and Nelson might have trod, seems to mean as much to the current crop as it does to many older aficionados. Contemporary designs, built with the elbow room required to host a modern PGA Tour event these days, were almost universally ranked in the middle of the pack, or worse.
The last time this many classic tracks topped a U.S. list, Casey Kasem was spitting out the American Top 40 in 1979.
Broadly, the clear winner was: older, shorter and conservatively attired. Which is not a Tim Finchem joke, for once.
But here's the conflicting, confusing part: Throw out Augusta, which is a major championship and has a limited field, and many of the top vote-getters in the poll weren't courses that typically attract top fields. None was more surprising in that regard than claustrophobic Harbour Town, which finished a shocking second behind the Masters venue.
Harbour Town, a shortish shot-maker's course that first hosted the tour in 1969, last year ranked 20th-best on the tour in terms of world-ranking points awarded, or right in the middle of the seasonal pack in terms of field strength. So, if Harbour Town or even Colonial are such great tracks with heightened shot values, why are the fields so pedestrian?
"That was the logical question when you'd hear them swoon about it," Shackelford said. "Most of them said, 'Oh, I don't play that week.' "
Excuses aside, the laments were familiar. Players universally decried the addition of distance merely as a means of holding down scores. To a man, they were critical of one particular symptom of modern mediocrity: brutish par-3 holes measuring well over 200 yards, where players generally aim for the middle of the green and settle for par. No tactics, no theatrics, just mind-numbing, rote golf by group after group after group.
"More than the older courses being ranked so high, that was the No. 1 thing they talked about," Shackelford said. "Not because the holes are hard, but because those holes are not a good test and because there's no strategy involved."
To be included on the venue eligibility list, a course had to have been used within the past three years in PGA Tour-sanctioned play. Outside of Augusta, a permanent site, other venues used for the rotating majors were not considered.
While it was dark and dank down there, the bottom of the barrel was every bit as illuminating in another fashion. Finishing dead last at No. 52 was tricked-up Liberty National, the host of the 2009 Barclays event, which was carved from a New Jersey waste dump. Golfers can take a ferry shuttle from the tip of Manhattan to play the course, although a USS destroyer might be better.
Three of the last four on the list were either TPC courses, in which the tour has historically held a stake in licensing, ownership or operations, or venues used for WGC events.
Admittedly, new courses often are held to a harsh standard -- it can take a couple of decades for some designs to reach maturity -- and thus tracks such as the venues used at the Accenture Match Play and former Bob Hope Classic stand out as architectural whiffs in the eyes of players.
The Classic Club, which was included in the survey but not ranked because it has been yanked from the ex-Hope rotation, finished with 3.11 points on the 10 scale, worst of any venue. The windblown Arnold Palmer design was built by the organization that runs the Palm Springs event to serve as the host course but has since been mothballed for tour use.
The Accenture course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, was created specifically as a track to host the match-play event but finished second to last on the list. Like with Liberty National, tour players were extremely critical of the sloping, potato-chip greens, which whetted nobody's appetite.
In two Texas-sized slaps, the host venue for the Byron Nelson, the revamped TPC Las Colinas, finished 49th, despite a complete redesign in 2008. TPC San Antonio, a course that opened two years ago for use at the Texas Open, finished 50th.
The lone TPC venue to crack the top 20 was Sawgrass, which finished 11th, and the 10 others were largely deemed average or outright forgettable.
As driving distances continue to spike and more courses are deemed too short or tight to host the modern tour circus, with its many tents and corporate elephants, sentimentality starts to take root. So, enjoy the West Coast Swing, with its visits to highly regarded, storied and familiar locales such as Riviera and Pebble Beach.
Just like with their white belts, funky hats and patterned pants that look like relics from the '60s and '70s, 'tis the season for seasoned, and for we traditionalists out there, that's a very good thing.
| Golf World rankings |
1. Augusta National (Augusta, Ga.; The Masters)
2. Harbour Town (Hilton Head Island, S.C.; The Heritage)
3. Riviera (Pacific Palisades, Calif.; Northern Trust Open)
4. Pebble Beach (Pebble Beach, Calif.; AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am)
5. Colonial (Fort Worth, Texas; Crown Plaza Invitational)
6. Muirfield Village (Dublin, Ohio; The Memorial)
7. Shaughnessy G&CC (Vancouver, B.C.; occasional venue for RBC Canadian Open)
8. Aronimink (Newtown Square, Pa.; occasional venue for AT&T National)
9. Innisbrook Copperhead (Palm Harbor, Fla.; Transitions Championship)
10. Congressional (Bethesda, Md.; main venue for AT&T National)
11. TPC Sawgrass Stadium (Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.; The Players)
12. Firestone South (Akron, Ohio; WGC-Bridgestone Invitational)
13. Spyglass Hill (Pebble Beach, Calif.; AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am)
14. Quail Hollow Club (Charlotte, N.C.; Wells Fargo Championship)
15. Sea Island Resort Seaside (St. Simons Island, Ga.; McGladrey Classic)
16. Ridgewood Composite (Paramus, N.J.; occasional venue for The Barclays)
17. Plainfield (Edison, N.J.; occasional venue for The Barclays)
18. East Lake (Atlanta, Ga.; Tour Championship)
19. Monterey Peninsula Shore (AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am)
20. Waialae (Honolulu, Hawaii; Sony Open)
21. Mayakoba Resort El Camaleon (Riviera Maya, Mexico; Mayakoba Classic)
22. St. George's (Etobicoke, Ontario; occasional venue for RBC Canadian Open)
23. TPC Southwind (Memphis, Tenn.; FedEx St. Jude Classic)
24. TPC Deere Run (Silvis, Ill.; John Deere Classic)
25. TPC River Highlands (Cromwell, Conn.; Travelers Championship)
26. La Quinta (La Quinta, Calif.; Humana Challenge)
27. PGA National Champion (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Honda Classic)
28. TPC Scottsdale (Scottsdale, Ariz.; Waste Management Phoenix Open)
29. TPC Boston (Norton, Mass.; Deutsche Bank Championship)
30. Cordevalle (San Martin, Calif.; Frys.com Open)
31. Torrey Pines South (La Jolla, Calif.; Farmers Insurance Open)
32. Doral Resort TPC Blue Monster (Miami; WGC-Cadillac Championship)
33. Bay Hill Club & Lodge (Orlando, Fla.; Arnold Palmer Invitational)
34. Greenbrier Resort Old White TPC (White Sulfer Springs, W.Va.; Greenbrier Classic)
35. Sedgefield (Greensboro, N.C.; Wyndham Championship)
36. PGA West Palmer Private (La Quinta, Calif.; Humana Challenge)
37. Montreux (Reno, Nev.; Reno-Tahoe Open)
38. Walt Disney Magnolia (Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Challenge)
39. TPC Summerlin (Las Vegas; Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals For Children Open)
40. Glen Abbey (Oakville, Ontario; RBC Canadian Open)
41. Trump International Championship (Rio Grande; Puerto Rico Open)
42. Redstone Tournament (Humble, Texas; Shell Houston Open)
43. Kapalua Plantation Course (Kapalua, Hawaii; Hyundai Tournament of Champions)
44. PGA West Nicklaus Private (La Quinta, Calif.; Humana Challenge)
45. TPC Louisiana (Avondale, La.; Zurich Classic of New Orleans)
46. Cog Hill (Lemont, Ill.; BMW Championship)
47. Walt Disney Palm (Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Challenge)
48. Torrey Pines North (La Jolla, Calif.; Farmers Insurance Open)
49. TPC Las Colinas (Irving, Texas; HP Byron Nelson Championship)
50. TPC San Antonio AT&T Oaks (San Antonio; Valero Texas Open)
51. Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain (Marana, Ariz.; WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship)
52. Liberty National (Jersey City, N.J.; The Barclays)
