'Best New Course' Fiasco

Why can’t a playable course be a best course? Do they have to all be 7000+ yards, where one mistake gives you a clear shot at 8 on any hole? And don’t take my expensive golf ball away from me if I make a bad shot. Having to shoot out of high rough or over and around trees should be penalty enough.

I’ve had the good fortune to play some top notch courses in my life – some old classics and some ‘best of the new’. I have a bone to pick with many of these new and supposedly ‘best’ courses. Their primary design goal seems to be to make someone’s ‘Top 100’ list. Apparently, to do this, your course must be over 7000 yards long and playable only by someone who’s at least gotten as far as Q School.

Classic Scottish courses weren’t built this way and as a result they’re actually fun for everyone. You can play The Old Course and walk off after 18 with a huge smile on your face and not feel like you’ve been in a fist fight. Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes at Bandon, Oregon are this way. Both these courses are hard, but they are also fun, easily walkable and enjoyable for high and low handicappers. On the other side of the coin, I have some friends who live in the Palm Springs area who won’t play the PGA Stadium course. They’re very decent golfers, have the money to play any course they want, but they say it just isn’t enjoyable because the course is way too penal. So they play it once and never go back.

I’d like to see someone with a more thorough understanding of golf and it’s evolution come up with a ‘Best New Courses’ or ‘Top 100’ list that doesn’t give out points just because Tiger Woods is the only person on the planet who could even hope to shoot par on the thing.

To make my list of ‘Best New’ courses, they would have to be able to be played and ENJOYED by anyone. And they have to be designed so that they can be easily and preferably walked. I wish Alister MacKenzie were still alive. He explained this concept a lot better than I ever will.

Maybe it’s just a common problem with our current era. Look at what happened to architecture in major cities in the last half of the twentieth century. To be great, all you had to be was tall. Unfortunately many cities around the world are now stuck with a bunch of hideous giants in their midst. Is the golfing landscape doomed to follow the same misguided trend?