How To Rate A Golf Course | Golf Monthly
How to judge the quality of a Golf course your are playing on?
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00:00 Hello everyone and welcome to Walpoleston Golf Club and this video in association with Peter
00:04 Millar in which we're going to take a look at how you judge the quality of golf course that you are
00:09 playing. So I'm going to be joined by Rob Smith and Jeremy Elwood who run our Top 100 Courses panel
00:15 and the editor of Golf Monthly Mike Harris as well to look at the Golf Monthly list of Top 100
00:20 courses and in particular how we rank those golf courses. Now there are five different criteria
00:27 that we use to help us judge where each of the golf courses sits. We're going to talk through
00:31 each of those with some key discussion points along the way that well worth bearing in mind
00:35 whenever you're out playing a golf course for the first time. Right let's get started.
00:40 Okay so it's important to say right at the beginning of this part that the way in which
00:51 Golf Monthly rank its Top 100 courses is slightly different to the way some other people do it in
00:56 that we have five different categories and we're going to look at those in order starting with the
01:01 one that's weighted the most, so the most important. So 35% of the score of a golf course will be on,
01:08 Rob, the quality of the test and design. Now obviously the Top 100 courses have all got great
01:14 test and design. What makes those so good in terms of the way in which they're laid out?
01:18 Well what you're looking at for this category and as you say it's the most important of the categories
01:22 is that you want a golf course that has got every kind of variety of hole on it and will therefore
01:28 keep you interested all the way around but also test you all the way around. So you want to come
01:33 off the course having probably used every club in your bag. You want bunkers in different places,
01:37 you want strategic thoughts, you want some risk and reward holes, you want holes that turn to the
01:42 right, holes that turn to the left. This is very much about how you would look at a hole if it was
01:47 drawn for you on a piece of paper. That's what you're evaluating that hole on, where the hazards
01:52 are, where the landing areas are, how do you approach into the green and so on. So you want
01:57 something that's fair, that all golfers can play but it's still testing so that you've really got
02:02 to think about what you're doing. So that's what we mean by the design and test. It's really what
02:08 the golfer has to do to get from the tee into the hole. Yeah and I guess it's a really good point
02:14 that, Rob, that balance that you want from a golf course in terms of testing you, being challenging
02:19 but also being rewarding as well if you play well. Now Mike and Jess, give us some examples of golf
02:24 courses on the list that performed well in terms of the quality of the test and design.
02:28 Well I would pick out somewhere like Royal Lytton maybe, where it's maybe not the most
02:35 visually attractive surroundings, enclosed by houses, but each individual hole will make you
02:41 think all the way from tee to green because of its bunkering, because of its topography, because
02:47 of its shape and you're at the far end near the turn as it changes in elevation where you play up
02:53 towards a couple of greens up there. So it's got everything even though externally it's not got
02:59 ocean views and glorious sights to behold but it is still a very, very well designed golf course.
03:07 And a tough closing stretch. What handicap you are. Mike? I think, do you know where we are today,
03:11 Wafflestone is fantastic for its variety of shots. There's some nice elevation changes,
03:17 you play up some holes, you play down to some other holes. Again, you know, as Rob said,
03:22 you've got that variety of dogleg left, dogleg right, you've got some shorter, you know, par
03:28 fives you can get at and then you've got a couple of really long par fours that are really going to
03:32 test you. The par threes are not all the same length, you've got the lovely par three across
03:36 the water which you feel like that's a really great chance to have a birdie. Some of the other par
03:40 threes here, you know, longer, more testing. But I think it's that variety across the AT.
03:46 So I'm going to play devil's advocate here. I'm not asking you to name any courses that are on
03:50 the top 100 because there probably aren't any. But what are the things that golf courses do
03:54 that bug you in terms of the quality of the test? I'm going to start one because one that you always
03:58 say to me, Mike, which is growing up long rough beneath the trees. So you hit it in the trees and
04:03 then you can't actually get it out because you're in the thick rough. Is there anything else that
04:06 you can think of that that is a bit frustrating when you find that at a golf course? I think if
04:11 you've got a relentlessly long carries, I think is something which is fine for tall players and for,
04:20 you know, for low, you know, single figure golfers. But for the ordinary golfer, too many forced
04:27 carries, I think is, you know, I wouldn't, you know, I'd probably mark a course down for that.
04:33 Right. OK. I think for me it would be that demand, as I mentioned earlier, for variety. I don't want
04:40 18 holes that are the same regimented through the trees. The four par threes are pretty much
04:46 the same length and you've got the same shot coming. I want that variety and therefore to
04:51 have to think about different things on each hole. Yeah. Jez? I would go for already long par
04:56 four, testing long par fours, 450 yards, and then they throw a really tricky green and a very narrow
05:02 entrance at you as well. And you're thinking, I've done the hard par here, I've got the green now,
05:07 I don't want to take three or four more shots to get down. I think, you know, if you've got a long
05:11 par four, don't make the green amongst the most tricky on the golf course. Yeah, I would agree
05:17 with that. I think there's always a really good principle of hard par, easy bogey, again, I think
05:24 is something which, you know, yes, there should be a test and you should feel like, you know,
05:29 you've done some achievement if you've made par, but making a bogey is like, that gives you,
05:33 you know, that option to have a bailout shot. A way out. Yeah, you know, to not, you know,
05:39 cross 18 holes, not keep on forcing carries whether it's over bunkers or over walls. Yeah,
05:44 I believe that is what Bobby Jones wanted all the holes at Augusta to be. He used that very phrase,
05:49 effectively, hard par, easy bogey. Yeah, and I think we can all agree that's a fairly good golf
05:54 course. So 35% of a course's mark goes on quality of test and design. 30% goes on the conditioning
06:03 and the presentation of the golf course. Rob? Well, that's obviously vital because there's no
06:08 point in having a lovely golf course in front of you, but you can't play it because the surfaces
06:12 aren't correct. What you want is true greens, are of a consistent pace all the way through all 18.
06:17 You don't want them to be really fast. Absolutely not, but it's the consistency. It's the only
06:22 important thing really. Obviously you don't want them to be stale pace, but you want them to be
06:26 the same pace all the way through so that you don't suddenly get caught out because that's so
06:30 different from what you've just played. And it's the same with the way all the way. You want the
06:33 bunkers to be well presented. You want any hazards, if you can use that word anymore,
06:38 such as walled houses and so on, to be nicely lined and to look good. So the whole presentation,
06:43 first cut of rough, if there is one second cut of rough and so on, you want it to look and feel,
06:47 and then most importantly, play consistently all the way through. Yeah, and actually it's
06:51 quite an interesting point here because I feel as if there are some golf courses that can look and
06:56 feel rugged, but they're also well maintained. I think sometimes when you talk about condition,
07:00 people get caught up in that sort of Augusta mindset of having it absolutely pristine,
07:05 but actually it can be rugged, but it could also be in fantastic condition as well.
07:09 Oh, a hundred percent. I think if you talked about Royal West Norfolk, Brancaster,
07:14 or someone like Royal North Devon, they are meant to be natural golf courses. Some of the links in
07:21 Ireland and Scotland, they're not meant to be pristine. It wouldn't be appropriate. I think
07:25 appropriate conditioning is... So on an inland course, particularly on a parkland course,
07:31 I think you do expect courses to be, of course, the immaculate. I know a Dare Manor perhaps is
07:37 the ultimate inland, conditioning wise, ultimate inland. It's incredible. You said of the tees,
07:44 you could almost be greens at some golf courses. The approaches are incredible.
07:50 Yeah. That comes at a cost too.
07:52 Absolutely. They obviously have a lot of maintenance teams, big green grouping teams.
07:58 I think almost they'd have as many for 18 holes as 36 hole course would have, but that's appropriate
08:06 for that type of golf course. It wouldn't be appropriate for a link to be absolutely pristine.
08:11 I think it needs to have that element of pristine.
08:14 And feeling natural, totally natural to its environment.
08:17 Yeah. Jezza, give us another course that you'd like to give a shout out to in terms of conditioning.
08:21 Conditioning. Well, Rob's home club, it's probably better that I speak,
08:25 Tannridge is not very far from us. Probably the closest top 100 course to my home, Tannridge in
08:30 Surrey. And I've played it a few times and thought it's kind of on the cusp of top 100.
08:36 I played it last summer with these two gentlemen and it was just absolutely immaculate and the
08:42 best condition I've ever seen it. And when you're on the cusp, just that little extra percentage in
08:47 that category can't be enough to be over the edge. Because there's so many great golf courses.
08:51 There's so many great golf courses.
08:52 Because it's important to say there is a lot of fantastic golf courses in the UK,
08:55 they're not in the top 100, that are well worth obviously considering. And we do consider them
09:00 very dearly. You know, our next 100, you wouldn't be disappointed if you played any of them.
09:04 And probably the next 300 beyond that, but somehow we've got to differentiate between them.
09:09 Which is one of the challenges that you chaps face. Now, the next one is for me,
09:14 is really important because I always want to play a golf course that is fun and has an element of
09:22 excitement about it. And I think that probably manifests itself in the visual appeal, which
09:26 we give 15% of the weighting to. Rob, tell us a bit about that side of things.
09:32 Well, it covers two aspects really. One is, as you're standing on the tee or on the fairway,
09:37 what do you see in front of you? What's the test in front of you? How good does that look? How
09:41 much does it get your juices going? How much does it excite you? But also you're really talking
09:45 about the backdrop. So behind the hole, what's going on over there and outside the course?
09:49 And obviously you've got so many links courses, there's views over the sea, if you're lucky to
09:53 have those, really count for a fair bit too. So we've got 15% of visual appeal. And I think that's
09:58 really important. So it's what takes the original architect's design off the page and brings it into
10:03 life. The visual appeal is really important. Yeah. Yeah.
10:06 It's interesting. I see Rob's got three courses down there that he's sort of
10:10 picked out because I'm going to sort of steal Rob's homework there. I talk about Old Head
10:14 over in Ireland. You'll see many, many, many famous photographs of Old Head. It is a spectacular
10:20 place. It's incredible. It's almost these high cliffs, you've got dramatic drops, you've got
10:28 amazing, the lighthouse. It's almost like one of those fantasy golf holes. Yeah, absolutely.
10:34 And then you've got Hollingwell, Knott's Golf Club.
10:36 Which is interesting because it's so different to Old Head. It's like a totally different thing,
10:40 isn't it? And I think that's about inner beauty, that the holes look lovely. Really, really
10:48 fantastic, peaceful place to play golf. And then the other one you put there is Glen Eagle.
10:51 And actually, interestingly, for this ranking, we have bought in the Centenary course. It's
10:56 been sat outside of the Top 100. I think we just feel like the presentation of the golf courses,
11:02 all three of the Glen Eagles have been moved to another level. And then, of course, you've got the
11:06 beauty of the Perthshire Hills, the backdrop for all three of the courses that we've moved
11:13 the Centenary course in alongside the Kings and the Queens. I think there's three.
11:19 I think to carry the Glen Eagles on a bit further, the first time I played there,
11:24 it didn't stop raining the whole day. I played 36 holes and I loved every minute of it because
11:29 the setting just blew me away. I couldn't hold a club by the end. It was just such a beautiful
11:34 place to play. It is. It's spectacular. Now, so you go from 15% for visual appeal to 10%
11:40 for the facilities, which is, again, a really important part of the mix because you want to
11:47 play a golf course, a great golf course, but also there's other stuff that goes on around that that
11:51 elevates the experience even further. Well, it's a big day out for all of us to play a Top 100
11:56 course is a real treat for many people. It's a treat they can't do that often. So it's absolutely
12:01 the whole day out that we're looking at here. So you want to be in a clubhouse that's comfortable,
12:06 is welcoming, is friendly. You want if you're the kind of person who warms up beforehand,
12:12 you want a practice ground where you can get your swing going, a halfway hut that's not as nice as
12:18 good. And sometimes it's at the clubhouse sometimes and we've got some real crackers.
12:22 We mentioned something earlier out on the course as well. You want the whole thing. You want the
12:27 whole package for your for your day out, I think. Without a doubt. So give us something that you
12:32 think. Well, let me say Dun Donald is another course that's come in this time and it's always
12:37 been a strong golf course. It's hosted the Scottish Open and it's on that glorious stretch of coast in
12:42 Ayrshire. But it never had a clubhouse. Now it's got a fantastic clubhouse as well as the
12:49 accommodation, which is a separate thing. But just getting that proper clubhouse rather than,
12:53 all right, it's a nice, nice cabin, nice temporary clubhouse. But now it's got the proper facility
12:59 to match the experience you're getting out on the golf course. And when you're right on the
13:04 cusp again, it's just enough to take you from outside to inside. I think it's really important,
13:09 I mean, as Rob said, to play a top 100 golf course, it's a significant investment on the
13:14 green fees, because the green fees are really high. So we are ordinary golfers. We're not
13:20 professionals. You know, that's the whole thing about the golf club. It's sort of
13:23 for golfers by golfers. And if you don't play brilliantly and if that perhaps the quality of
13:30 testing design is, you know, sort of beats you up. Yeah. Yeah. You still want to see a beautiful golf
13:34 course that's well presented. And from when you arrive to when you leave the facility that is for
13:40 us part of our rankings. I know for some other rankings, they're literally first tee to 18 green.
13:48 And that was just really looked at the golf course. We don't take into account accommodation,
13:53 but it's pretty much everything else that as a regular vision golfer, you will experience. So
13:58 the locker room, so the shower is good. You know, the quality of food is really good as well. Yeah.
14:03 You know, and again, appropriately priced. I've got a good section of beer behind me.
14:09 For us three, four of us, you know, a really nice pint of beer at the end of the round or good,
14:14 you know, a good glass of wine is, you know, that's what it is encapsulated in that facility.
14:20 I think I just mentioned, you know, the facilities don't have to be grand. You have to match the,
14:25 you know, I've just been to Porthcawl and the clubhouse there is not grand in any way. But
14:30 if you sit in that wood panelled room looking out to sea with a little tipple of something up
14:35 around, however badly or well you've played, all is kind of well with the world. That's a place I
14:42 love going to. Yeah. Okay. So 10% of the weighting goes to the facilities, but 10% also goes to
14:48 something that we're calling experience, which is a bit more subjective, isn't it? It's hard to kind
14:53 of put an exact mark against it, but it's a really important part of the mix when it comes to judging
14:58 these golf courses. It's very important, but it recognises the fact that we're all different and
15:02 we all like different things and get pleased by different things. But ultimately, we kind of end
15:06 up marking these in the same way. It's the most subjective of the five criteria because it's
15:12 about how did you feel? How great was the occasion? How warm was the welcome? So it's about the touchy
15:19 feely stuff that you really can't write down and define very clearly, but it's still important to
15:24 the overall experience of your day out at a lovely top 100 course. Yeah, because I guess a lot of
15:28 people watching this may have been to a fantastic golf course where perhaps the welcome hasn't been
15:33 perhaps as good as they were looking for, because you really want to be treated like and feel like
15:37 you're a member for the day when you go to these golf courses, don't you? Yeah, I think it's
15:40 interesting. North Berwick actually have it as a sign. There is a sign just coming in, "Pay a visit
15:46 to Greenfield. You are a member for the day." Again, I'm cribbing off Rob's notes again here.
15:52 It's the welcome from both staff and from members as well. I think that can be you guys, Neil and
16:00 Jez, you'll remember the time that we went and played at a course that shall remain nameless,
16:04 where we were running late. We were on the way back from the Turnberry Open and we'd stopped in.
16:09 We'd been held up by traffic. We had to get out the car onto the tee to make our tee time
16:14 and quickly change shoes in the car park so we could get out quickly. A member came over and said,
16:20 "You can't change your shoes in the car park." It could have said, "Do you need to know where the
16:26 locker room is?" It makes a difference. People who are investing their hard-earned money and
16:34 going to the Top 100 golf course really want to make it feel like it's a special day.
16:38 Jez, tell us somewhere that you feel as if comes out really well when it comes to the experience.
16:44 Well, I think a lot of them do because, as Mike says, they're charging a lot of money.
16:50 It may be in the last 10 to 15 years, a lot of them have really come on in that regard.
16:57 A lot of the top clubs, the traditional members clubs, maybe 15 years ago,
17:02 did think it's a privilege for you to come here, so you'll do it how we want to do it.
17:07 There's definitely been a real change in focus that these people are paying ÂŁ200, ÂŁ300.
17:12 They need to be treated like customers.
17:14 I think it's interesting because the number of club managers, secretaries as you would have
17:23 called them, have experience in the hospitality sector. They go and do a lot of research in the
17:28 hospitality sector to see how great hotels, great restaurants, what do they do to, again,
17:36 make their customers feel really welcome, a really special experience. Again, you want to come back,
17:42 regardless of how well you play. You go, "I had such a great day there. What did you shoot? I
17:46 don't know, probably millions, but I want to go back." I think that, for me, is always the mark
17:51 of a really great experience. It doesn't matter how you play, I want to go back because I had
17:54 such a great day. Yes, and if you can add that to that sense of occasion that you get from turning
17:58 up to play somewhere that has that spectacular look and feel to it, then you're on to a real
18:02 winner. There you have it. That's our look at how we rank golf courses at Golf Monthly.
18:08 Now, it's important to say here that we haven't actually changed the criteria for
18:13 Jez. I think we had a minor recalibration maybe 10 years ago where we weighted something
18:18 slightly differently. In essence, very little has changed since day one. Yes, so it shows you that
18:23 hopefully the consistency that we brought to the rankings provides a bit of confidence that
18:27 hopefully what you're getting with our top 100 are just fantastic golf courses that are going to,
18:32 in different ways, tick every single box that you've got. That's it for now from Wapleston.
18:38 Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you next time.