Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 28, 2010 · 9:51 am

No Substance to Reader’s Complaint

“Where have you been?” asks a reader from Peculiar, Mo. “Geoff Shackelford posts more in a day than you give us in a month.”

The reader, of course, couldn’t be more wrong. My Top 50 Blog is all about the adjacent list, and the list is constantly being updated by the Cal Sci math department. Last Saturday, for example, the Carne Golf Links of Belmullet, Ireland, briefly snatched the No. 2 ranking from the Augusta National Golf Club of Augusta, Ga. Yesterday, the new Machrihanish Dunes course on Scotland’s Kintyre Peninsula surged to No. 50, only to be beaten back by the Nairn Golf Links, a well-regarded Highlands course that will host the 2012 Curtis Cup matches. And now, in just the past two hours, those four courses have reverted to the ranks they held last Friday. Had the reader been paying attention, she would have spotted the activity and held off on her nagging e-mail.

My “columns,” as I like to think of them, are a different matter. I try to knock one out on at least a monthly basis, but I lead a busy life. In addition to my SI/GOLF/Golf.com duties, I serve on two Presidential commissions, take occasional gigs as a hotel-lobby jazz pianist, coach a parochial-league basketball team, assist several NBA teams with their draft choices, serve as official photographer for the Missouri Snipe-Hunt Association and  — on doctor’s orders — play golf as often as I can. Finding time to craft these columns is difficult, and readers‘ complaints don’t make it any easier.

Did I mention how much I travel? I spent the last three weeks in Scotland and Ireland checking up on several of the Top 50’s links courses. After each round I filled out the 22-page Top 50 course-rating form and mailed it off to the States, a procedure that took from two to four hours. (The longer time was for top-ranked Askernish Old, where the backup generator didn’t always kick in when the clubhouse windmill slowed.) Many of these rounds lasted until well past ten p.m. with hours of paperwork to follow, so no one, least of all my wife, should be surprised that I had to bang on a farmhouse door at 1 a.m. on the Herbridean island of South Uist to get the key to the front doors of the Borrodale Hotel, which was inexplicably locked.

That said, I hope to post several brief course reports in the next few days. They may not satisfy the reader in Peculiar, but they should go over well in Normal, Ill.

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July 18, 2010 · 10:00 am

Rolex Jumps on Top 50 Bandwagon

Reading the foreword to The Rolex World’s Top 1000 Golf Courses — which has appeared, as if by magic, on my desk in the press tent at the Open Championship in St. Andrews, Scotland — I find myself blushing with false modesty. In the just-published volume’s “Dear Golfers” opener the watchmakers boast that their book, which weighs about as much as a loaded picnic hamper, took three years to complete.

“We have a network of over 200 ‘inspectors,’” the minutemen continue, “composed of enlightened amateurs, professional golfers and journalists specializing in golf course architecture. They have anonymously worked their way around the golfing world, completing an in-depth questionnaire and adding incisive and personalized comments of their own. Our Editorial Committee has given each course a score, geared primarily to the excellence of the site, the course architecture involved, and of course maintenance and condition. After considerable deliberation and verification, we took the entire 33,000 courses currently registered worldwide and ended up with those we consider to be the Top 1000.”

Royal Dornoch Golf

Royal Dornoch rated a mere 95? Really? (John Garrity)

This, of course, is pretty much the modus operandi of The Top 50, so I accept Rolex’s imitation as the sincerest form of flattery and wish them the best as they attempt to catch up.

But now I read the next paragraph.  “For the first time in the history of golf,” the sundial salesmen crow, “a genuine world ranking has been established; like all rankings it is of course subjective but it is the result of unbiased and independent opinion with no commercial pressure.”

This preposterous claim is easily debunked. The Top 50 has been cranking out genuine world rankings since July of 2007, when, by the watchmaker’s own account, they were still looking up courses on MapQuest. Furthermore, Rolex concedes that its rankings are subjective — unlike the Top 50, which concedes nothing. As for the claim that their ratings are reached “with no commercial pressure,” I can only tip my hat in admiration. Like the Times Square huckster with a hundred watches pinned to the lining of his raincoat, Rolex cranes its neck looking in all directions and finds no corporate involvement.*

*Nothing in this paragraph should be interpreted as a criticism of Rolex, valued sponsor of the biennial Writers Cup matches between teams of golf writers from the United States and Europe.

Those points aside, I give the editors credit for compiling an impressive catalog of meritorious golf courses from all corners of the admittedly spherical earth. In addition to course addresses, phone numbers and dress codes, Rolex provides altitudes and GPS coordinates. (For example, the Moonah Links Legends Course in Fingal, Australia,  sits at an altitude of 15 meters at 38˚24‘24.27” S 144˚51‘14.68” E — information that would have kept me from missing my tee time on my last trip Down Under.) Rolex also designates a “signature hole” for each course — an important detail if you send a lot of COD packages to golfers.

As for the Rolex rankings themselves, what can I say? First of all, they aren’t true rankings. To avoid hurt feelings, the Editorial Committee scored the courses in five-percentile blocks, corralling the top 15 into the “100” category, the next 73 into the “95” category, and the rest of the sorry lot into “90s,” “85s,” “80s,” and “75s.” It’s an original scheme, but you wind up with a 73-way tie for sixteenth that puts Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2 and Prairie Dunes on the same level. (Their scientifically-accurate Top 50 ratings are 6, 51, and 7, respectively.) Furthermore, Rolex’s top-15 reads like an tardy schoolboy’s test paper, correctly guessing only three courses from the Top 50 blog (Augusta National, Cypress Point and St. Andrews Old Course), while canonizing Top 50 no-shows such as Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines South.

The real problem with the Rolex Thousand is that they published it. I love hardcover books as much as the next man — if the next man is Johannes Gutenberg — but I don’t take my grocery lists to the bindery. Golf course rankings, to be meaningful, must be updated every few hours, and only the Top 50 performs this valuable service. Rolex, having to meet printers’ deadlines, doesn’t even mention the new Castle Stuart course in Scotland. The Top 50, attuned to the digital age, has the Highlands masterpiece at No. 10.

Still, I give the Rolex 1000 a solid 95 for effort. It’s not their fault that the Top 50 is a perfect 10.

(10-4.)

Top 50 on TV: The tour pros are still hogging the tee times on the St. Andrews Old Course, No. 16, as I type this on a breezy Sunday afternoon in the Kingdom of Fife. Fortunately, there are three other Top-50 courses within easy driving distance of the R&A clubhouse. (The Balcomie Course at Crail, the Torrance Course at St. Andrews Bay, and Kinghorn.) And that doesn’t include the wonderful Kingsbarns Golf Links (alt. 30 feet), which will debut in the Top 50 as early as next week, pending resolution of drainage issues at Catch Basin, our Kansas City headquarters.

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July 14, 2010 · 12:57 pm

Castle Stuart: Still Lookin’ Good

A reader from Lake Lotawana, Mo., has a question about tenth-ranked Castle Stuart, the brilliant, one-year-old links course on Scotland’s Moray Firth. “A few months back,” he writes, “you wrote that the Castle Stuart clubhouse has the best men’s room view in all of golf. But you didn’t back up your claim photographically, and you left the impression that Castle Stuart’s high ranking was based solely on clubhouse amenities.”

I’ll address the reader’s points in order. First, the claim that Castle Stuart’s lavatory view is unsurpassed. The Top 50 staff photographs the clubhouse and halfway house interiors of all our ranked courses, and if the facility has windows we document the view from every window. We can’t publish all these photos, obviously, so we go by the old adage, “A thousand words is as good as a picture.” I described the view from the Castle Stuart men’s loo. That seemed, to me, to be sufficient. But if my correspondent needs to have it spelled out for him in pixels, here is a selection of photos taken from the second-floor men’s lavatory of the Castle Stuart Golf Links.

Lavatory view

Castle Stuart's 9th green, as seen from the clubhouse lav. (John Garrity)

View of driving range

The Castle Stuart driving range from the men's shower room. (John Garrity)

9th Green Castle Stuart

Close up of 9th green from loo. (John Garrity)

Panoramic photo

Panoramic loo view, Castle Stuart Golf Links. (John Garrity)

The second point of the e-mail, implying that we ignored the Gil Hanse/Mark Parsinen golf course in our evaluation of Castle Stuart, is totally off the mark. No course in the Top 50, with the obvious exceptions of Sand Hills and Cypress Point,* achieved its elite ranking until it had been played by yours truly, either anonymously or (in the case of courses with outrageous green fees) not. Just last week, in fact, I played Castle Stuart in conditions that some would call extreme — wind gusts of 75 miles per hour — and left convinced that Inverness is home to the greatest new links course in the British Isles and one of the top ten golf courses in the world. It would not surprise me to see Castle Stuart, given a year or two to mature, to wind up in my top three with Askernish and Carne.

*And a couple of others.

I’m not the only one to be enchanted by Castle Stuart. Golf Digest managing editor Roger Schiffman, who played it last week as a member of the U.S. Writers Cup team, used words like “unforgettable … magnificent … stunning … beguiling … arresting …,” stopping only when he forgot whether he was describing the course or the barmaid in the third-floor lounge. George Peper, the author and former GOLF Magazine editor, calls Castle Stuart “the most significant British Isles debut since Loch Lomond in 1993 …. Think Pebble Beach, Pacific Dunes, Royal County Down …. restrained, insightful design combined with a breathtakingly beautiful site ….” Since I arrived in St. Andrews for this week’s Open Championship, I have been approached by total strangers asking if  I have played the new Highlands course that rivals or even surpasses Royal Dornoch Golf Club. “You’ll be blown away,” one of them told me, unaware of the irony.

So, here’s what I’ve got to say to that reader in Lake Lotawana and anybody else who thinks he or she can trip up the Top 50 staff: Forget it. When it comes to golf courses, we cover all the basins.

Top 50 on TV: The one, the only, Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland. The 139th Open Championship begins tomorrow morning on the Fife muny, which is the only God-designed course in the Top 50. The Bottom 50, however, features the unforgettable Ft. Meade City Mobile Home Course Golf Course of Ft. Meade, Fla., which is reputed to have been built by God, Jr., with help from his brother Rees.

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July 4, 2010 · 10:01 am

Confused Carne Correspondent Strays into Legendary Dublin Pubs

I was preparing to write a few lines about the wonderful CordeValle Resort Golf Club, No. 50, when the chime rang and Woodcock ran in with the latest dispatch from our chief Irish course rater, David McCormick. McCormick, a New Yorker, moonlights as my literary agent, but his real passion is golf. Or at least I thought so until I read the synopsis of his recent trip. “I played 36 holes each day except Saturday,” he wrote, “when I went into Dublin (instead of playing Portmarnock Golf Club) to see the sights and meet a friend.”

McCormick at Carne Golf

Course rater David McCormick, in an obviously doctored photo, at Carne Golf Links, Ireland. (John Garrity)

Instead of playing Portmarnock? Turning to Woodcock, I quipped, “Those must be some sights, and that must be some friend.”* In any event, the absence of fresh data on the eight-time Irish Open venue forced me to move course-designer/golf pro Eddie Hackett’s longtime workplace to No. 4 on the Top 50 Contingency List, behind The Country Club at Brookline.

*Showing that he’s the consummate professional, McCormick submitted a concise and sober report on his Dublin frolic: “Almost every pub I passed or went into had the U.S. Open on the big screens. It was fun to watch with such passionate golf fans, and with McDowell in the chase the pints were plentiful.”

To be fair, we sent McCormick to report on courses in the scenic northwest counties of the Irish Republic. And report he did. “Well, I fell in love with Murvagh Golf Club, a course in Donegal. Played it in the morning with two members from near Belfast and in the afternoon with a young Irishman living in England, who was home for a golf holiday. Murvagh is just a sweet layout. Doesn’t have the elevation extremes of Carne, but it’s deceptive and, when the wind kicked in, quite challenging. I loved the County Sligo Golf Club*, too. Very stately and many memorable holes. Their #17, the number-1 handicap hole — long, blind, uphill, with a second shot to a sloping green — is not as hard as Carne’s 17th, but I bogeyed it both times.”

*Also known as “Rosses Point.”

David’s multiple references to the Carne Golf Links, No. 3, comes as no surprise, as the Hackett-designed Mayo landmark is the benchmark for untamed Irish links courses. “Carne is extraordinary,” David continues. “Also, they were incredibly kind to me — comped my golf and my hotel, wouldn’t even let me buy lunch. I played with Eamon Mangan*, John Healy and Noel Reilly, this year’s captain of the Belmullet Golf Club. Very nice gents. I also met Edmund McAndrew, who told me about a somewhat eccentric guy named Geraghty who comes in to the post office to pick up his pension dough and is clearly a relative of yours.”**

*For more about Mangan, who worked with Eddie Hackett on the design and construction of Carne, read my book, Ancestral Links: A Golf Obsession Spanning Generations, available online and at better bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic.

** All of the Geraghtys are eccentric, and they’re all relatives of mine.

“Eamon also took me on a tour of the new nine, and that was a total treat. I think you or somebody — Chip McGrath? — should write a piece on the building of that nine, working with the architect [Jim Engh], but also telling how the locals have taken matters into their own hands in lots of interesting ways. There aren’t too many stories (or new courses) like it, as you know.”

David sounded only two false notes in his Carne report. Here’s the first: “The weather was perfect.” (To back up this absurd claim he sent a terabyte of photographs showing Carne’s fairways as parched and brown as a hillside in Sudan. Amazing what you can do with Photoshop!) Here’s the second: “I told Eamon I’d help spread the gospel of Carne.” That, of course, would violate the Top 50 Code of Acceptable Practices. Personally, whenever I praise an agreeable links such as Carne or Askernish — as, for instance, when I call either or both of them “the greatest golf course in the world” — I am careful to point out that the Top 50 is the last word in course rating, and thus immune to subjectivism and bias.

Lodging Tips: The spiffy Broadhaven Bay Hotel in Belmullet is by far the best choice for Carne-ivores, but architect Engh swears by the old Western Strands Hotel, a just-off-the-square inn with good food, closet-sized rooms, and a warm and cheery pub. For both charm and scenery, however, you can’t beat Terry and Francis McSweeney’s four-star Stella Maris Hotel, which is an hour’s drive up the coast, between the towering North Mayo Cliffs and Downpatrick Head. “I had a very nice night and a delicious dinner at the Stella Maris,” David McCormick wrote in a post script. “Oh, and Terry says hi.”

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