"B-List" Courses

[A Brandt]

With all this talk of rating courses, I've decided to give it a go. I will be using a rating system similar to the one I used for the most recent contest, with some minor adjustments. My main focus is to provide a list of 100 courses that are top notch in virtually every aspect. It may end up being the same as a list of Dar's top 100 courses, but I'm hoping to give new players (and hopefully everyone) a different looking list, or at least solidify Dar's selections. I am certainly not the best player, my average round is 71.6, so I will be looking at courses with the average/newbie player in mind. I will focus on things like playability/difficulty, quality of design and construction, overall atmosphere, and realism. It will take me a while, but I know there a ton of courses that, upon stepping to the first tee, I can skip to the next one. Wish me luck!!

[ADC]

Good luck!

[tincup]

Good luck Adam... That will be quite a chore

Dar

[Indy Anna Jones]

I don't think I'd like that fine a grading scale, Dar. Some of the IAJones and IndyGoBlue courses might have just made it!!!
It reminds me of when I graduated from nursing school at my junior college. I was second in line alphabetically behind the 1 Magna Cum Laude, 5 Summa Cum Laudes, and 8 Cum Laude grads. After they had lauded and praised the achievements of these honor grads and "the rest of us" were coming up, the guy in front of me turned and said "I wonder how they'll announce us? 'And now the rest of the idiots who somehow made it.'"

But what I wouldn't mind is a list of what people would consider the best of types of courses:
Best links
Best seaside
Best desert
Best parkland
Best par 3
Best renditions
Best mountain/mtn valley

[Mr Whiffle]

hey gang:

I gotta say, I check in on y'all on occassion and gotta say Dar, thanks for the considerations of my courses on your lists. Its greatly appreciated. I hope everyone is doing well and have had many successes these past few years. Am proud of all of our gains and sad to hear of our losses as well. May God shine on all of you and blessings to all.

Mark (Mr Whiffle)

[tincup]

Mark, you ol dog. Good to hear from you. We were playing one of your courses yesterday (Whitefish South) and one of the guys said "next time you see Whiff, slap him for me" Just kidding.

Good to see you are still around.
Dar

[DrewDiv2]

In all fairness to Dar, the course ratings are a compilation of the opinions of all of the online players. Everyone playing gets to add his/her input and view. Generally, we seem to agree on most courses and if we dont, the predominant opinion is usually given credence.

[stillgolfing]

Indy,
Nope. One reason a course might NOT be a A-Lister is because it is way too easy and gives up ridiculously low scores. Those type of courses aren't really all that much fun to play... and are certainly not top tier courses in my mind.

In the case of Augusta 2001, my guess is that we were playing it and with the pin placements we had, we ran into a bunch of spikes or something like that. Besides that, the graphics are dated and the course has a grungy look compared to what designers are doing today.

As I have always said, ranking courses is subjective business. You don't have to agree.

Dar

Dar this is a great rating system for you oldtimers, but would not work for even talented newbies (that's a reference to me by the way) . I don't have any issues with your statement, but you might have got some argument from some players 10 years ago when the game was still fairly new. I think I'm currently as good at this game as I'm ever going to get. Life is short and then you die!
Anyway, I started my own Newbie rating system (Excellent, Good, O.K. and Unplayable). My intention was to play all the original 33 courses and, concurrently, based on your top 400, randomly pick courses to test and rate them as I went along. So far I have noted a couple of designer course that I consider Excellent, but on your list (picking courses randomly) I was surprised there were so many I just could not play. I realize that's my problem not the designers, however, it struck me that since I didn't have any real problems succesfully playing the original courses (I ended up with 10 goods and 23 OK's while shooting a low of 69 and a high of 78), there must have been some point in time (and some reason) why the designers decided to toughen up the courses, because there are a awful lot of recommended courses I can't complete, so there isn't anyway to rate them. I'm just interested in the history here, so that I could be more objective if I decided to spend a little more time to create a fair Newbie rating system.
Thanks, Dave

[Indy Anna Jones]

I hope that any "negative" comments I've made have been taken in a spirit of facetiousness as they were intended. I appreciate that this work has been done, and especially after it was explained that some of the really nice looking courses aren't rated well because they're not a challenge to scoring, it's even easier to accept. I also realize that these are opinions based on personal tastes and experiences; I have no problem with them really. I'd also say that my threesome agree with at least 90% of them; some we'd rate higher, some lower.

Even "back in the day" there'd be courses that envious/jealous would post a bunch of "1s" on to knock the rating down; no system based on opinion, no matter how reasoned, is ever going to be perfect. I'm just happy that we still have all of them available to play as we choose and form our own opinions on. My visor is off to Dar for ALL of his hard work (and BrianZ also) and for all the designers past and present. As Jack, Gary and I were playing one of those, umm, not very good courses the other day I said, you know, this isn't much but the guy probably still put several hours of effort into it, and as a designer who's had pretty good ratings over the years, I can appreciate all the work that any designer put into one of these courses.

[Robert@]

Dave
Courses got harder as players got better..with the stock courses players that play the game today would more then likely birdie every hole. Very few real courses are difficult enough to test the better players.As a designer its not pleasing when you spend months building a course to have players shoot the lights out on it the first or second time out..wheres the challenge? Without some difficulty in a course players play it once or twice then file it away..is that worth building a course?
As for your skill level...you`ve only scratched the surface of your potential. Dont sell yourself short..your going to get alot better and soon you as well will find no interest in those stock courses.