Tag Archives: Aquaman

May 23, 2013 · 12:54 pm

Cal Sci Algorithm Gets Moisture Adjustment

“Has it occurred to you,” begins an email from Death Valley, Ariz., “that Aquaman isn’t real? That he is a character from a comic book? That his opinion on course rankings is worthless because, I repeat, HE ISN’T REAL!!!”

Highland Links

Nova Scotia’s lovely Highland Links gained .0069 points for its many water hazards. (John Garrity)

Well yes, DV — may I call you DV? — yes, that has occurred to me. I’m familiar with the Aquaman comics, but I know the difference between a cartoon character and a first-class course rater, and it’s not as big a difference as you might think. Anyway, I had our Top 50 ratings chief, Gary Van Sickle, look into Aquaman’s background, and he assures me that our scaly friend is strictly above-board (if not above ground). As a further precaution, we require that Aquaman file his reports via Gary’s email account to guard against hacking, spamming and, most importantly, phishing.

Coincidentally, Gary has just forwarded a fresh (not frozen) report from our man in Atlantis:

Dear Mr. Garrity,

I use the title “Mr.” reluctantly. You’re just another annoying air-breather to me. I figure we denizens of the deep can wait you out, though. You’ll pollute the air and die from global warming long before the ocean temperatures rise enough to bother me down here in the air-conditioned Marianas Trench, site of my vacation home. It’s way cool, brother.

I am writing — well, telepathing my thoughts to a dolphin, who then transcribes them to what you earth-breathers call Microsoft Word — to point out a flaw in your ranking system. Two flaws, actually. One, they’re just stupid. But that’s kind of a technical point.

Second, since water is the most important thing on earth and makes up 90 percent of you annoying air-breathers’ body bags, you clearly don’t put enough emphasis on water hazards in your rankings. Courses with more and bigger water hazards are better than courses without. Ever played a really good course in the desert? Didn’t think so.

I have to interrupt Aquaman’s otherwise-cogent analysis to point out that 20th-ranked Desert Hollow in Hurricane, Utah, is a desert course, as is 27th-ranked Redlands Mesa in Grand Junction, Colo., the 44th-ranked Mission Hills Tournament Course in Rancho Mirage, Calif.,  and 51st-ranked Coyote Springs, north of Las Vegas, Nevada. But back to Aquaman.

In fact, if you, Mr. Garrity, could get your CalTech Forbin Project 800X off its lazy digital ass, you could probably reprogram it to rank courses by the amount of water in their hazards, by cubic meters or fathoms or, as we use to measure here in Atlantis, aquabergs. (It’s a little larger than a cubic meter. You can barely fit two inside a seahorse, let’s put it that way. And that seahorse is not very happy about it, let me tell you, sir!)

Measuring the total amount of water actually on a course is going to completely reorganize your thus-far lame rankings. Since I haven’t played all 15,000 courses on your dirtpile, I don’t know what course would rank No. 1. Obviously, the water hazard will have to be surrounded (or at least 80% so) by the course for its contents to count. Pebble Beach, for instance, couldn’t lay claim to the entire Pacific Ocean just because it’s got a few holes along the shoreline. That would be a lot of saltwater volume to boost it in the rankings. The water has to be inside the course boundaries to count.

I believe this numerical and logical renumbering is the best way to rank your courses. I think we all agree that the courses that contain the most of my finny friends — which I can command to do my bidding, by the way — are obviously the best golf courses.

Which reminds me, if you don’t mind a small plug, I’m beginning a new side business besides my mundane duties as King of Atlantis and Father of AquaBitch. I’m getting into the ball-retrieval business. You lose a ball in a water hazard that has live underwater denizens, and I order them to retrieve it for you. Simply sign up for an online account at AquaBalls.com, pay an annual service fee, and then we invoice you for each individual retrieval. We can also sell you other balls that have been deposited in the water and remain unclaimed. That’s an extra charge, however, plus a service and handling fee. It’s all very reasonable, and as part of our contract you need only worship me for a prescribed few minutes each day.

I look forward to seeing your computer’s revised rankings. I hope it happens soon because I’d hate to see a brigade of killer whales go ape-shit on you the next time you play in Kansas City. That would be tragic.

As usual, all the best.

Aquaman, King of Atlantis (Father of AquaBitch and that no-good, lazy AquaLam-o-Lad)

Persuaded by Aquaman’s reasoning, we have tweaked the Cal Sci algorithm to account for water-hazard capacity and adjusted the rankings accordingly. To our surprise, the rankings remain exactly the same, with one exception: Kansas City’s Hillcrest Golf Club moves up one spot.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but the Crowne Plaza Invitational begins today at 51st-ranked Colonial Country Club in Forth Worth, Texas. Known as “Hogan’s Alley” (because the popular TV show, Hogan’s Heroes, was shot there in the 1960s), Colonial has been ranked Fifth Best Course We Play on Tour by PGA Tour players. (Courses No. 1 through 4 in the survey were Augusta National GC, Harbour Town Links, Riviera CC and Pebble Beach Golf Links, all of which have been in the Top 50 at one time or another.)

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March 22, 2013 · 12:35 pm

“Where’s Gary?” Asks Top 50 Fan

“Your chief course rater has been notably absent lately,” complains a reader from Leh, Ladakh. Or should I say “asserts,” since the reader goes on to unfavorably compare Gary Van Sickle’s work to that of our under-the-sea specialist, Aquaman. “Judging from your persistent overlooking of incomparable Pine Valley,” writes the man from the moonscape, “it’s Van Sickle who’s all wet.”

Srinagar golfer and caddie

The golfer in Kashmir will find Srinagar’s Royal Springs Golf Course more attractive than mountainous Ladakh’s Indian Army course. (John Garrity)

Do I need to defend Gary? He’s covered the PGA Tour for several decades, he’s won countless writing awards for his work at Sports Illustrated and the Top 50, his son Mike is an aspiring tour player, and he’s a scratch golfer himself. Short of getting a degree in landscape architecture or actually designing a course himself, what more can Gary do to enhance his credentials?

Besides, Gary had nothing to do with Pine Valley Golf Club’s 52nd-place ranking. Nor am I responsible for the New Jersey landmark’s inability to crack the Top 50. (How could I be? I’ve never set foot on Pine Valley’s “sacred” soil, or even changed shoes in its highly-regarded parking lot.) The Top 50 is based on the informed judgement of entire teams of course raters, most of them over the age of 18, but no one person dictates the daily ranking. That task belongs to the Top 50 Algorithm, created by the renowned Cal Sci math genius, Charles Eppes.

As for Gary’s whereabouts, he’s neither “absent” nor “lost.” He dropped out of sight for a few months to tackle a really challenging assignment — rating fictional golf courses. He started with The Majesty in Rock Harbor, Wisc., a lakeside stunner that features prominently in the John Haines novel, Danny Mo.  “Couldn’t find it,” Gary reported after a week on Door County’s 24th-ranked highway system. He has had subsequent difficulty finding Michael Murphy’s Burningbush Golf Links, Dan Jenkins’ Goat Hills Golf Course, and Caddieshack’s Bushwood County Club.

“I was starting to think these golf courses weren’t real,” Gary told me in a recent call, “until I flew down to Texas to rate Turk Pipkin’s Pedernales Golf Club. It’s a 9-holer in Spicewood, and the locals call it Willie Nelson’s Cut-N-Putt. I give it four jalapeños!”

But as I pointed out above, Gary doesn’t get to assign the actual rankings. Pedernales currently languishes at No. 51.

Ladakh, by the way, has only one ratable course, the 9-hole Indian Army Coffee-Can Links on the road between Leh and Thiksey Monastery. Rock-strewn and grassless, it is one of the few courses ranked below the Ft. Meade City Mobile Home Park Golf Course of Ft. Meade, Fla.

Gary didn’t rate that Ladakhi course, either. I did.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but Duke Ishikawa sent in this report on the Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Fla.: “Cherry blossoms are in full bloom! Beautiful time of the year!”

Okay, Duke’s covering the API from Tokyo. But that makes sense, since Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa shot an opening-round 69 to tie Tiger Woods and eight others for fifth place. “This is Ryo’s eighth start of the season,” Duke continued. “He only made two cuts, but one was at Puerto Rico. His scoring average is 175th, his money is 183rd, both nearly at bottom. But he still keeps special invitation to next month’s Masters, which is unfair.

“Simon Clark works for Ryo this week because Ryo’s regular caddie, Kato, returned home for a while. Another Japanese worked for Ryo the last three tournaments, but he did not work out. Simon worked for Ryo two tournaments last year in Japan. Ryo finished 35th in the Japan Open and sixth in the Casio World Open. Some Japanese media say, ‘Ryo’s fifth place in the first round at API must be the result of Simon.’ I don’t know yet. Ryo has been playing pretty bad in his second round. I really hope he will make a cut this week.”

Duke signed off in his inimitable way: “That’s all my basic information about the Ryo and Simon (not Garfunkel) relationship. Hope this makes you fill up of your curious stomach.”

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January 5, 2013 · 5:03 pm

The Deep Six Will Leave You Gasping

Underwater golf path

Golfers on the way to Davey Jones’ Locker after a round with Aqualad. (Photo credit: Waterstudio)

All our course raters, both paid and unpaid, report to Top 50 V.P. and Director of Course Rating, Gary Van Sickle. He massages the raw data and forwards it to the basement computer room here at Catch Basin. A few of our raters, however, are so specialized in their knowledge that Gary encourages them to bypass the Cal Sci guys and submit their rankings directly to me. That explains the email and bulky attachment that arrived yesterday:

To: Gary Van Sickle. From: The Coraldesk of Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis. Date: Benday, Germcember 9, 2012

Aquaman was quivered when he failed to get a response from you earlier. So he surmised that his half-man/half-walrus manservant emailed the following piece to the wrong address. So, here it is again for your puny human enjoyment:

Atlantis, Under the Sea—It is obvious from John Garrity’s absurdly biased course rankings that he wouldn’t know a mashie from a porcupine or a dog-leg left from a unitard (that’s the offspring from a unicorn and a minotaur—duh). It has become increasingly difficult to read Garrity’s rankings, which are embarrassingly biased toward courses played by you annoying air-breathers, while you continue to ignore the world’s greatest underwater courses here on our fabulous Continent of Atlantis.

Oh, that’s right. You can’t breathe water like I can. That Kevin Costner guy tried once in a really bad movie. If only he’d spent more time underwater in that film, he might have had a winner. Still, I know a lot of people wish he’d take a dirt nap and stop being so insufferable based on so little.

But I digress. Since Garrity isn’t going to go anywhere near Atlantis for golf because of his picayune whining—“But I’d drown!”—I have decided to help his sorry website (which is drier than those things you airbreathers call cracked wheat bread) by providing you with a list of the Six Best Courses in Atlantis. (We call ‘em The Deep Six.) Just for the suspense factor, I’ll start at No. 6 and count down. I believe one of your air-breathing gods does something similar—David Letterman.

No. 6, Nautilus Golf Club. This is a stellar and demanding 1,424-fathom layout that winds back and forth through scenic kelp fields. Which means you can stop and have a snack at your leisure. Thus, no beverage & snack sub service is provided by the club. The signature hole, obviously, is the 96-fathom par-3 13th hole, which drops practically straight down into a dormant volcanic dome. My son, Aqualad, once aced it with a 7-iron, having shrewdly played the typical left-to-right underseas current just right. It hit the pin, hung on the lip and dropped just before a deadly manta ray stung Aqualad’s caddie, killing him instantly. I’ll never forget the look of satisfaction on Aqualad’s face. It was his first hole in one!

No. 5, The Links at Mariana Trench. I’m sure that I, Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis, don’t have to tell you what a tough track this is. It’s 6.8 miles down, kind of near a dirt clod you air-breathers call Guam. Because of the depth, well, the ball just doesn’t carry well. You will wear out your fairway woods here. It’s longer than a thing that’s the opposite of short. (Ha-ha—another of our favorite Atlantan sayings. One more: Ha.) The finishing hole, one nasty par 5, plays through the Challenger Deep, a slot between two mountains at the Trench’s southern end. It makes Pebble Beach’s 18th hole look like a piece of snot from a blue whale. It really does.

No. 4, Atlantis Country Club. Well, I don’t think I need to even mention the obvious attributes of the most famous course in Atlantis. I’m sure you all remember the time King Neptune made an obsquidian on the 14th, the hardest par-7 on the planet. (What? You don’t know that an obsquidian is a hole played in 5 under par? Why do I waste my time with you air-breathing clodhoppers?) Neptune holed an eel-wood for a deuce en route to winning the Oceanic Masters in ’97, duh. Most famous shot ever, double duh.

No. 3, The Neptunia Club. This is the favorite course of my daughter, Aquabitch. Sure, it’s on the short side and is only a par 68, but there’s no debating the beauty of the coral reef formations that you land-clods haven’t yet destroyed.  Also, it’s well-lit by phosphorescent plankton. What, you’ve never heard of that? Well, I’m not telling you where this place is. Plus, there’s always a sense of excitement as it plays through a popular white shark breeding ground. No biggie, since my telepathic powers enable me to control all of the finny minions. Which is why I never have to pay for a caddie. It’s good to be Lord of Atlantis.

No. 2, Oceania Golf Links. The Big O is a brute. Small greens, lots of foliage, and lots of current. As we say down here, If there’s nae current, there’s nae gawlf. Most of the back nine plays into the prevailing current, so it’s a real bitch, no relation to my daughter. No course in Atlantis has tougher greens to read or faster greens to putt on, either. You may as well try to putt on a squirming dolphin. I have, and trust me, it’s just not as much fun as you thought it would be. Par is a good score at The Big O. The 17th is the signature hole. It’s a double seahorse-leg par 5 with trouble everywhere, including the Wreck of the Mary Deare left of the green (but not really in play unless you really yank one) and assorted and dreaded coral traps. Man, you go in those and you’re just taking a drop unless you’ve got a death wish—which, if you’re an air-breather, I, Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis, encourage.

No. 1, The Jules Verne Club. No surprise here. It’s the most exclusive club in Atlantis and the toughest course to get on. You’ve gotta know somebody who knows somebody who eats whale bait. The course is iconic, having hosted the Atlantis Open in the tournament’s early years. Most people already know every hole from watching those old telecasts, so it’s a thrill beyond sonic pings if they’re afforded a rare chance to play. You can shoot 30 on the back nine, which is spectacular, or you can shoot 51. It’s the most exciting layout in Atlantis, although part of it is due to those discarded underwater mines from WWII. The 18th is arguably the greatest hole here. From an elevated tee, you cross a bottomless trench that probably goes directly to the earth’s core. (We think. We don’t know since nobody has ever made it back, but it was probably an old shortcut through the planet left by alien spaceships). You don’t clear that with your drive, you’re re-teeing, lemme tell you. From there, your second shot is a long carry over a cavern (where Magellan’s bones are stored—but that’s another story!) and an adjacent trench that features submarine wreckage from The Thresher. There’s no good place to miss this elevated green, which is surrounded by poisonous sponge fields (bet you didn’t know about that, either, you clod-breathers!), a jelly-fish bunker (hah!) and a false front that hides the entrance to the cave that holds the button we can push to create a tsunami anywhere in the world we want. I don’t want to brag, but I birdied the 18th last time I played there, taking 250 golden pazoosas off Aqualad, who still has no short game even though I tell him to practice. I won two presses and a Hawaiian carryover. I would’ve bought Aqualad an adult beverage after the round, but he forgot to bring a splacket to wear over his mer-tail, as club rules state, so we weren’t allowed in the men’s grill-cave.

Well, there you have it. As you can plainly see, John Garrity’s Top 50 is irrelevant when compared to The Deep Six. We play real golf here in Atlantis, Garrity, not patty-cake air-breathing glop-along. Your so-called Top 50 list? It’s just a silly fantasy. May the kelp be with you.

All the best—

Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis.

Despite his prickly and provocative outbursts, Aquaman has proven to be one of our most reliable raters. (He’s cheap, too. He works for sand dollars and the occasional package of Mrs. Paul’s Crunchy Fish Sticks.) He was way off-base, though, in thinking that we didn’t receive his original email. We were simply waiting for our underwater photogs to return to port with their catch of course photos.

Unfortunately, we’re still waiting. Look for a photo gallery in the near future.

Top 50 on TV: Speaking of underwater, the Hyundai Tournament of Champions is underway on the 34th-ranked Plantation Course (home of the Garrity Bunker) at Maui’s Kapalua Resort. Forty-mile-an-hour winds and heavy rain washed out Friday’s first round, but today’s forecast of 40-mph winds and heavy rain should be perfect for 36-holes of catchup golf. (The top-7 guys in the World Ranking passed on Kapalua. They must be kicking themselves right now.)

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April 29, 2010 · 10:19 pm

Top 50 Critic is All Wet

We get some unusual e-mails here at Top 50 headquarters, but this is the first one that’s dripped on the carpet:

From the desk of:  Aquaman.

Dear Landlubber: I read your latest missive about Aqua-ranges with much regret. The words, they were as jumbled and unintelligible as the thoughts of a Jolothian sea slug (as only I would know–see my Adventures of, #71). I told Aqualad about your piece (he’s not much on reading but boy, can he put down the shrimp scampi) and he agreed. You couldn’t be more wrong if you were King Neptune himself. (Whom I dethroned in a righteous coup, you may recall, in Adventures of, #52.)

A story about Aqua-ranges without a mention of the Atlantis Golf Range & Giant Squid Ranch, a state of the art facility, is worse than insulting. It’s like an hour without water. Unthinkable. (And incredibly painful — Adventures of, # 7, #12, #21-28, #42 — and dangerous — obviously Adventures of, #99 and #100 featuring the lecherous Scallopsface.) Once again, you have missed the submersible boat. The Atlantis Golf Range & Giant Squid Ranch (or AGRGSR, pronounced agger-gasser in dolphin — the official language of Atlantis, as you know) is not only a lock for the top three on any list of Aqua-ranges — any legitimate list — it is clearly the No. 1 Aqua-range of its kind.

You can ask Aqualad, who spends way too much time there, in my opinion. For one thing, he’s 31 and still living at home in the sea cave and borrowing the keys to the Torpedo Car and watching “Stargate: Atlantis” reruns. Plus, what’s with the Aqualad name? He’s grown up. It’s time to become a man. So I’m going to start calling him Ken.

Aqualad was just at AGRGSR last week to pound a whole conch shell of range balls (still only 4 starfish, the best bargain in Atlantis!) and commented again on the exquisite beauty of the undersea dome where it’s located and the quality of the floaters. (Hope you like that clever pun–that’s our nickname for you landlubbers when you go swimming in saltwater, although the mako sharks prefer to think of you as appetizers). Of course, AquaKen mostly pounded drivers to make himself feel like more of a man instead of working on his short game like I told him, the key to golf. He still can’t beat me on his best day because he’s crap around the greens. If only he spent some focused time on AGRGSR’s 54-hole Minerva Putting Course or the Patrick Duffy (he’s with us now) Short Game School, he might have a sea turtle’s chance in a kiln. But no.

It is a 360-degree range and yes, while that does make it a little toasty (but not as toasty as the attempt by the evil Gatorflame to invade my kingdom — Adventures of, #102, available soon), it provides plenty of room for all the minions of the sea to hit balls and work on their swings when they’re not busy doing exactly what I telepathically command them to do.

Your rankings aren’t misguided. They’re not guided at all. I can’t believe a couple of your landlubber gods like Jupiter and Zeus haven’t straightened you out, or at the very least turned you into a pillar of limestone. A tall pillar, in your case, which could be quite a windfall for a nimble mining outfit ready to pounce (like Aquaman Zirconium & Gravel Inc., est. 1994 — we’ve got T-shirts and our own golf outings and everything).

AquaKen was right. You’re about as useful as a titless mermaid with razor sharp fangs. The citizens of Atlantis ask — no, demand — that you revise your lame rankings to represent reality and immediately install AGRGSR as the No. 1 Aqua-range. Don’t make us aqua-kick your ass (check out what’s left of the Chum Master for details — Adventures of, #37). We’ve got a trident here with your name on it, landlubber. I hope we make ourselves clear.

Until such time as you correct your awful mistake, stay out of the water.

Your loving omnipotent undersea master,

Aquaman.

P.S. We love the photo on your website of the god called Van Sickle biting into a shiny moray eel. An amazing feat of power. Let’s hear more about his exploits. We may want to start worshipping a god as powerful as he. Tell him Ken says “howdy!” I am not sure what that means.

Nobody here at Catch Basin takes this note seriously, but in the interest of caution I have turned it over to the Harbor Police. The course rankings, of course, are what they are, and no form of intimidation — up to and including threats of violence — can influence one’s place in the Top 50. (“Bribery might work” our founder used to say with a chuckle. But he was almost surely joking.) If our snide correspondent wants to pursue this further, he can complain to our corporate sponsor, the Red Lobster restaurant chain.

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