Tag Archives: golf travel

August 7, 2010 · 5:58 pm

Top 50 CEO Comes Clean on Golf Trip

First, a confession. I have been telling friends (and foes) that my recent trek through Scotland and Ireland was a golf holiday. “Fourteen rounds in three weeks!” I say with a self-satisfied smirk, trying to leave the impression that I have nothing better to do with my post-retirement days than chase old-man Bogey up and down a Celtic shore.

Truth is, I was working. And although I would like to ratify that old saw about “my worst day on the golf course being better than my best day at the office” — I can’t. (I work at home, so my best days at the office consist of a lot of napping, snacking, piano playing and careful monitoring of Rumpole of the Bailey and Rockford Files DVDs.)

Next, an apology. To the dedicated staffers here at Catch Basin and to the equally-dedicated Cal Sci mathematicians who manage the Top 50 Algorithm, I publicly announce: “I am sorry.” Sorry for doubting you. Sorry for challenging the raw data. Sorry for sprinkling talcum powder in your pay envelopes.*

*The Company pledges to honor all legitimate claims for emergency room services, doctor visits and treatments for PTSD up to the state-mandated cap of fifty dollars per household.

Third, an explanation. Reader mail, in the past year or so, has consistently challenged the Top 50’s claim to be “the only truly authoritative and scientific course-rating system” by pointing out seeming anomalies. “Pine Valley is not on your list!” complained one correspondent, while another grumbled that “the Augusta National practice range [No. 47] is not even a golf course.” I brushed off most of these criticisms as the product of parochial minds clouded by the puffery of local chambers of commerce and golf-tour operators. But I found it hard to dismiss the charge by a few dozen golf-industry insiders — some of them with college degrees — that my list was top-heavy with links courses in the British Isles. “Five or six Celtic courses is believable,” wrote a Moroccan travel agent. “But 38 of the top fifty? Highly implausible.”

Sunset Golf at Askernish

Links courses: Overrated? Underrated? Properly rated? (John Garrity)

The Moroccan’s claim of 38 was pure hyperbole, but a quick glance at the current Top 50 [see sidebar] reveals no fewer than 16 courses of the British links variety. What’s more, ten of the remaining layouts either have the word “links” in their name or boast of links-style features in their designs — e.g., Pebble Beach, Fancourt, Sand Hills, and Medicine Hole. I have long argued that traditional links courses get the highest marks for one simple reason: They are better golf courses.

Because they are.

But even I began to have doubts last year when Castle Stuart, a brand-new course on the banks of Scotland’s Moray Firth, debuted at No. 10. That was followed by another improbable leap (Kingsbarns to No. 40, pushing the Irish parkland gem, Druids Glen, into the second fifty) and a weird oscillation at No. 50, where Scotland’s Nairn and Ireland’s Donegal have been alternating every hour or so like one of those ballpark banner ads behind home plate.

Was there a flaw in the Top 50 algorithm? Had a mole infiltrated our Catch Basin headquarters? Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?

I had to find out. And the only way to test the integrity of the Top 50 ranking, as I explained to my wife, was by traveling to the British isles and playing the disputed links courses. Which I did. (Note to IRS: I will not be claiming non-golf expenses as deductions.)

Finally, my report. But that will have to wait a day.*

* Negotiations with Ryan Lawn and Tree have taken longer than expected, due to their lead agronomist’s insistence that sod cannot be laid over the hardwood floor in our TV room.

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May 20, 2010 · 4:28 pm

China’s Best: Lost in Translation?

Sunset Photo, Mission Hills China

The 7th on the Sorenstam course, Mission Hills, China

“Here’s an idea for a new Top 50 list,” writes the 14-handicap owner of a restaurant on Spring Street in NYC. “You could rank the world’s Mission Hills courses. I mean, there must be a thousand of them.”

A thousand? Well, maybe — if you count “Mission Hills Labradoodles,” one of the Google options that popped up as I typed “Mission Hills” into the search box. (“We are a small breeder of Australian Labradoodles located in the heart of America,” reads their home page. “Our goal at Mission Hills Labradoodles is to raise top quality dogs that will be a joy and an asset to your home and family.”)

Add the word “golf” or “country club” and you narrow the search to a few dozen courses from Texas to Thailand. There is a Packard & Packard-designed Mission Hills C.C. in Northbrook, Ill. and an Al Watrous-designed Mission Hills G.C. in Plymouth, Mich. There is an admirable Mission Hills C.C. about a mile from the Top 50’s Kansas City headquarters. (Situated in the aptly named town of Fairway, Ks., this Mission Hills track was laid out by Tom Bendelow, the Johnny Appleseed of American golf. Bendelow is best remembered for Medinah Country Club No. 3, site of next year’s Ryder Cup.)

If we were to create a Mission Hills list — and all that’s holding us back is a lack of outside funding — the top spot would have to go to the one Mission Hills layout that is already in the Top 50. That would be Desmond Muirhead’s 44th-ranked Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., permanent site of the LPGA’s Kraft Nabisco Championship.

But given our correspondent’s Chinatown address, I’m guessing that she’s carrying water (or oolong tea) for the Mission Hills Golf Club of Shenzhen, China. A resort complex that is roughly the size of Delaware, China’s Mission Hills has the largest tennis center in Asia (51 courts and a 3,000-seat stadium court), several golf academies, four clubhouses, four spas, a convention center, a 5-star hotel, and no less than a dozen courses designed by the likes of Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Annika Sorenstam. Mission Hills is so big that it isn’t content hosting the Asian Amateur Championship and the occasional World Cup. It sponsors football matches between world-class teams such as FC Barcelona and, uh … opponents of FC Barcelona.

Photo of Olazabal course, Mission Hills China

The 3rd at the Olazabal Course, Mission Hills, China

The helmsman of this golfing supertanker is Tenniel Chu, executive director of Mission Hills Properties Holdings Ltd…, a really big outfit. “Golf is the fastest growing sport in China,” Mr. Chu told me at this year’s Masters, where I chatted up a number of international golf titans before playing second-ranked Augusta National Golf Club as a guest.* “By 2020,” Mr. Chu continued, “China will have the world’s largest population of golfers.”

*I am not a member of either club, although I would never rule out a future alliance.

It is not lost on me that China, with a population of roughly 1.3 billion souls, might have a golf course worthy of a Top 50 ranking. Unfortunately, our Chinese course-raters/calligraphers submit their reports in the 50-year-old simplified Chinese character system employing the common caoshu shorthand variants, while our Cal Tech analysts read only traditional Chinese characters, which use standardized forms dating to the Han dynasty. That has led to some anomalous results, including the counter-intuitive ranking of the aqua-range at the Chung Shan Hot Spring Resort at No. 64, ahead of the world-renowned Pine Valley Golf Club of southern New Jersey.

We’ve got our best minds working on this problem. In the meantime, we’re provisionally ranking the Mission Hills Shenzhen complex — all twelve courses, including the Zhang Lianwei-designed par-3 course — as No. 1 in China.

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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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February 24, 2010 · 3:55 pm

Castle Stuart Soars in World Ranking

The surprise of the latest Top 50 ranking (see sidebar) is the new Castle Stuart Golf Links of Inverness, Scotland, which debuts at No. 10.  A collaborative effort by Philadelphia-based architect Gil Hanse and American developer Mark “Kingsbarns” Parsinen, Castle Stuart opened last July to rave reviews from the dead-tree publications: “Destined to become one of the best courses in the world.” (Links Magazine. … “A Masterpiece!” (Bunkered) … “Effortlessly blends the best elements of St. Andrews and Pebble Beach, Ballybunion and Royal County Down.” (Golf World, U.K.)

Castle Stuart Golf Links

The 11th green at Castle Stuart, Inverness, Scotland

“Yes, it is that good,” wrote the Links reviewer, prolific author and former GOLF Magazine editor, George Peper. “Succinctly put, Castle Stuart will be the most significant British Isles debut since Loch Lomond in 1993. It should be well on its way to the top echelon of the world rankings.” I’m guessing that Peper was paid by Links to write that, but you can’t argue with his call.  Castle Stuart, at No. 10, is the highest-ranked new course in Top 50 history.

My own first impression*, garnered on a bright, windy afternoon in late July, was as positive as Peper’s. Most of the holes have views of the miles-wide Moray Firth, from the Kessock Bridge to the Chanonry Lighthouse, and an improbable number seem to be right on the water. It’s an illusion. When you play the holes that parallel the Firth on the higher ground, it’s like playing the cliffside holes at second-ranked Pebble Beach Golf Links; you don’t see the beach or the lowland duffers, you see only sparkling water and breaching whales. (Or, in this case, breaching Loch Ness Monsters.)

*I have no financial, professional or prurient interest in the Castle Stuart development, but my middle name is Stuart and I claim, by royal birthright, to be the rightful monarch of both Scotland and England via my great-great-great-great-etc.-cousin, Mary Stuart — a.k.a. Mary, Queen of Scots — and the other golfing Stuarts, including James IV of Scotland — “the first golfer known to history” — and James I of England, who is best remembered for appointing the first royal club maker.  For more on the Stuart golfers, see the just-released paperback edition of my book, Ancestral Links: A Golf Obsession Spanning Generations.

I’ll discuss the course layout in later postings, but there’s no reason to withhold the fact that Castle Stuart dominated our “top lavatory view in golf” category, displacing Newport Country Club of Newport, R.I. The shower stalls and urinals on the third floor of Castle Stuart’s art-deco clubhouse provide panoramic views of the course and the shoreline through eye-level, wraparound windows. Dropping to No. 3 is the locker room pissoir at California’s venerable Cypress Point Golf Club (No. 13). “An awning somewhat restricts your view,” reports Sports Illustrated’s Gary Van Sickle, “but you can see a big tree and some of the ocean.”

Equally surprising is the disappearance from the Top 50 of the Jupiter Hills Club of Tequesta, Fla., which held the No. 10 spot now occupied by Castle Stuart. Knowing how computers work, I suspect that the Jupiter Hills listing has somehow been covered up by Castle Stuart, concealing a tenth-place tie.

We’ll get to the bottom of that. In the meantime, Jupiter Hills moves to No. 1 on the Challenged and Disputed List, replacing Liberty National Golf Club of Jersey City, N.J..

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February 23, 2010 · 11:00 pm

Askernish Still No. 1 in Latest Top 50

The Top 50 has finally been updated, and Askernish Old of South Uist Island, Scotland — a ghost course — remains the top-ranked layout in the world. I’ll have more to say about the new list tomorrow, but I have told my weary staffers to take the rest of the night off, and I plan to do the same. So, until tomorrow … fairways and greens!

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January 17, 2010 · 2:48 pm

New England Courses: Underrated?

A persistent correspondent from the Bay State wants to know why there are no New England courses in my Top 50. My first instinct is to answer in the soothing voice I employ with grandchildren whose grade school teams have lost by more than thirty points (or 8 wickets, if they’re Aussies): “There’s no disgrace in being average, Johnny. George W. Bush was average, and he grew up to be a two-term president of the United States!”

I’ll resist that temptation. The truth is, no fewer than 37 northeastern courses are ranked in my Top 100. It’s just their bad luck that I only publish the Top 50.

For example, three New England courses are currently tied for 53rd place with scores of 8.09. They are: The Country Club (Willie and Alex Campbell, Rees Jones), Brookline, Mass.; The Ledges Golf Club (William Bradley Booth), York, Maine; and the 9-hole Tatnuck Country Club (Donald Ross), Worcester, Mass.

It’s hard to argue against their inclusion. The Country Club is the oldest golf club in the U.S., host to the 1999 Ryder Cup and the site of the 1913 U.S. Open, won by Francis Ouimet.  The Ledges was  GOLF Magazine’s “best new public course in New England” for 1999, and Golf Styles New England calls its 18th hole “the toughest finishing hole in New England.” Tatnuck, according to a reviewer at golflink.com, is “a plush, scenic 9-hole Donald Ross design with tree-lined fairways and nice elevation changes. There are 18 tees … [and] the restaurant is arguably the best in Worcester.”

I’d be surprised, however, if any of these courses move up when the new Top 50 is posted next week.*

*There’s been another delay. The raw data sheets were inadvertently put in the clothes washer, causing them to clump together in a pulpy mass.

I’m basing that on a recent phone conversation with one of my Vermont course raters. “Have you looked out a window lately?” he asked me. “It’s a frickin’ Ice Age out there! All the courses are covered with snow, and I don’t see relief coming until spring, at the earliest.”

He’s an excitable guy, but he knows his golf courses. Sorry, New England! Unless that “global warming” thing pans out, your courses are destined for second-tier status.

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