Cost of a Round of Golf

Theamount of money we pay to play a specific golf course depends on anumber of things. Availability, accessibility, desire to play,architectural interest (for some) and course conditions are some ofthe reasons. But what do these things mean individually and how dothey determine a fair rate?

Thereare two parts to this question. First, upon researching a course andgetting information on it, what do you feel the course is worth, siteunseen? Second, after you have played, was the price you paid worththe course you saw?

Howare we to define this five factors, however?

Thefirst two factors are used to formulate an opinion of the courseprior to knowing the rate.

ArchitecturalValue: This will mean different things to different people. Somegolfers might want courses with soft, understated features, like Old Macdonald or Rustic Canyon. Other golfers might want eye poppingvisual stimulation or "eye candy" like that seen at PebbleBeach or Shadow Creek. But each golfer knows roughly what he likes tosee in a golf course, what he considers great, good, average, bad andso forth. Any golfer will pay a premium price for a golf course thathe considers to be great. Just the same, very few, if any, golferswould pay a premium price for a course considered by them to beaverage or bad. It is up to the golfer to determine how he definesthese words in the context of golf courses.

Course Conditioning: This, again, is a subjective category. If a golferloves golf courses that play extremely firm, where the ball might beplayed along the ground and the turf flashes a yellowish-green color,the courses at Bandon Dunes will fit his eye quite well. If heprefers a vibrant green, be it firm or not, a course like Pine Valley or Pebble Beach will suit him better. But it is certainly on thegolfer to research and determine if the course in question fits hiseye. Soft and Slow, Firm and Fast, whatever the combination, golferswho prefer one style will pay to play golf courses that are of thatparticular style.

Fromthese two factors, the golfer is able to determine his desire to playthe course.

Desireto Play: For either of the above, and the two below as well, thedesire of the golfer to play a certain course greatly factors intowhat is a reasonable rate to pay. If the golfer has no desire to play Shadow Creek and would rather play the local municipal course, thenthe $500 rate will seen absurd. The golfer with a strong desirehowever, will do whatever it takes to come up with the $500 requiredto see the course.

Oncethe level of desire is established, the golfer works into the lasttwo steps, availability and accessibility.

Availability: How easy is it to obtain a tee time? Most golf courses charge moremoney for peak times and seasons. Some golf courses charge one ratefrom opening to noon, drop the rate at noon, and then drop the rateagain at 2 or 3 pm. So, people who want to play earlier in the daywhen the conditions and weather are more favorable must pay a primerate and a great number do. In the same way, golf courses typicallyhave peak seasons. In the North Carolina Sandhills, that peak isduring Spring and Fall. In Miami, peak is winter. In Michigan, peakis summer. Just the same as with peak times of the day, golferswishing to play during these peak seasons will pay a premium. It isup to the golfer to determine if it is worth it to him to pay thefull rate to play at these peak times; this writer chooses not toplay at peak times whenever possible. 

Accessibility: This basically boils down to the privacy level of the club. Thenormal public golfer might be willing to pay a significant premium toplay a private course simply because it is private, even though itmight be of lesser quality than the public options in the area. Ithas been said that some private clubs charge upwards of $700 forunaccompanied guests, $500 for accompanied. But because they are highend, highly ranked, exclusive courses, people pay the rate. There arepublic courses that charge rates this high as well, Pebble Beach andShadow Creek come to mind, and this ends up being an access point aswell. Pebble Beach is one of the top 5 courses in America and ShadowCreek is typically top 20 or better. There are a select handful ofpublic courses that are ranked that highly and golfers will have toopen up the wallets in order to play. This leads to the third factorin price and that is desire to play.

So,what then, is a reasonable amount to pay for a given course? For thiswriter, he uses the top two criteria to make a preliminarydetermination on where the course will fit on his 1 to 10 scale. Howgood does the course appear to be? Things to consider are the routingof the course, meaning is the course routed smoothly and can it bewalked. Courses that do not allow walking at all get marked downaccordingly. Does the course appear to have a solid variety of holes?Does it have a variety of shot selections? And is the course in topnotch condition; reasonably firm and fast is typically the desiredset-up. If the course is great, a 10, then the desire to play is highmeaning that all reasonable efforts will be made in order to play thecourse. If the course is average, the desire is average as well, thiscourse may be played if convenient. If the course seems poor, well,the desire will certainly be low and without some other circumstancesfactoring into the decision, this course will most likely be skipped.

Oncedesire is established, availability and accessibility are evaluated.Obviously the availability means looking at whether or not it is apeak season or peak rate time. Obviously in places like Minnesota,Michigan, New York, Canada, and other northern locales, the seasondoes not matter. If the course is open for play, it is basically peakseason and the golfer will be charged as such. But for Southernlocations, golf courses are open year round. Typically the golfcourse will not be vastly different from one season to the next,though this is not always the case. But take Doral, a high end resortin Miami, FL. The peak season rate to play the Blue Monster TPC is$325 and the off season rate is $210 (these rates valid according toDoral Resort website on September 5, 2012) The golfer must come to adecision if it is worth it to him to pay the $115 premium to play thecourse in January when the average high temperature is 76 or in Julywhen the high is 90. For this writer, it would not be worth thepremium, so the lower rate, out of season, would be the selection.Same goes with twilight hours. There is, in this writers mind, noneed or purpose whatsoever in paying extra money to play a course.Why pay $25 to play at 8am when you could pay $15 playing at 2pm?

Buthow does a rough breakdown go? What is a fair rate for a 10? What is fair for a 5?

Something like this is probably fitting:

10:Virtually no limit to what would be considered a fair rate. $495 wasconsidered fair at Pebble Beach. Other courses that might be 10's,Pinehurst #2, The Old Course, Augusta National, Pine Valley, would befairly priced that the rate and the necessary steps would be taken inorder to play.

9:There are more courses that fall in the 9 category than there are10's, certainly. But these are still rare. These courses would stillhave no ceiling for pricing. Shadow Creek charges $500 and that is afair rate to play there.

Belowthe 9 though, the rating gets more complex.

8: $250 is likely the max for an 8 without something else attached. Thepremium might sneak a little higher for a private club, special eventor something with exceptional history, but in general, $250 would bea maximum.

7: $150 max. These courses are somewhat easy to find, even on the publicside, and can easily be played at a non-peak time.

6: $100 max. Some might think this is low, might even think $150 is lowfor a 7. But consider that, when using off-season rates, the Bandon Dunes courses can be played for under $100, all of them being 7's orbetter, the number looks different. There are a lot of 6 qualitycourses out there that can be had for far less than $100 if one takestime to look around.

5: $75 max. This course is above average and worth the hard earnedmoney.

4: $55 max. Certainly don't spend more than this on a 4 course if you can help it. There are likely many other courses within closedistance that will be better values.

3: $40 max. This course is just average. No need to fork over more thana half-day's pay to play something that you feel is just average.

1 & 2: If you really consider a course to be a 1 or a 2, paywhatever you think is reasonable. For this writer, $20 is the maximum, and even then, it might feel like too much, depending on thecourse.

These numbers work two ways though. First is the initial evaluation. Thearchitectural quality is determined and a preliminary numberassigned. Typically desire to play will be a function of thisnumber, though that might be inflated or deflated by other factors.But if the preliminary rating was a 7, then you might look at therate page to determine if you felt the rate the club was asking wasreasonable. Bandon Dunes can be used as an example here. The ratethis time of year for a resort guest (and let's face it, baring anextraordinary circumstance, if you are playing Bandon, it will NOT beas a golf-only player) is $230 for the first round of the day and$115 for replay rounds. So, looking at those rates, all courses atthe resort are under their respective max cost. But does the desireexist to pay that max cost? Golfers willing to brave the elements canplay the course for less than 1/3 that peak rate. All depends onpriorities. Either way, that is how the max figures could be used inthe preliminary determination.

But these numbers can also be used after the fact. After playing a given course, golfers will often try to determine if it was worth the money they just paid. Sometimes they find they made a good decision, but sometimes the might feel that they did not. One story that comes tomind was when, not too long ago, this writer played a course that hadall the credentials to be top quality. Top notch Golden Age designer, seemingly solid routing, what appeared to be exceptional turfconditions and so forth. Initial research made this course out to bea 6 or better, worth the rate of $80 they were charging. But uponplay it became apparent that very little of the Golden Age designerswork was left, the routing was slightly above average, turfconditions were below what one would expect for that rate and thecourse was just generally a disappointment. It was not worth $80, notin the slightest. It was closer to a $50 course. This makes the $130 peak rate they charge even more befuddling. So in this situation, therate scale is used to make the decision as to whether or not you gotvalue for the money you paid.

But these numbers are generally reasonable and can be used as a good baseline to determine if you really want to play a course. Of course each golfer must determine what rates are acceptable for him or her, given their situations and desires. But I think all golfers would agree that if the opportunity to play Augusta National was afforded them tomorrow, this being a course that virtually all golfers would consider a 10 and the rest would surely consider a 9, they would do and pay whatever was necessary (while still being legal of course) toplay. That is the real definition of a 10 in terms of cost. Everything else just falls into place from there.

Review of trip to California

For the first four months of this year, I was in California on duty with the Coast Guard. I was able to play some spectacular golf during that time; don't go crazy about your tax dollars not being used efficiently, even the Coast Guard gets off (some) afternoons and (some) weekends. The highlights of the trip, in order, were the John Daly designed Sevillano Links, Rustic Canyon, Bandon Dunes Resort with the GolfClubAtlas guys, Pebble Beach (highlight of the year, certainly), Harding Park and Edgewood Tahoe.

When I went to Sevillano Links, I didn't have very high expectations. I went there solely because the course was over 7,800 yards from the back tees, something like going to see the World's Largest Alligator at the State Fair. But what I saw there was very good. Good movement in the fairways, top class greens and a stern but fair challenge. It certainly exceeded my expectations.

Rustic Canyon came with higher expectations. It was partly a let-down, but more of an exposure to a new type of golf course, one which I had not seen before. The course very much resembles the courses at Bandon in that everything about it is rather understated, but none of the holes come in as below average. Overall, this is a very good golf course, and certainly worth the drive I made to see it.

Next came the trip to Bandon Dunes for the King's Putter match. This was a fantastic trip. The first round of the trip was at the newest course at the resort, Old Macdonald. This is an awesome course, and the course I would recommend people play first on their first trip to the resort. The view from the third fairway after cresting the hill is incredible. In this match, I teamed up with Joel Zuckerman from South Carolina against the team of Alex Stavrides and Evan Fleisher. After falling behind in the match early, Joel and I came back strong with Joel making some tough par's and birdie's along the way, and me making back-to-back birdies on 14 and 15. We closed out the match on 17, coming home with a win.

The afternoon round came at Bandon Trails with myself and Micheal Whittaker teaming up to play Joel Lahrman and Matt Bosela. This course is very good, not quite as good as Old Macdonald, but still top class. This course works through three different types of terrain, starting with dunesland for the first two holes and eighteenth, moving to a rolling meadow and then to a dense forest parkland. The routing makes the transitions seamlessly. The holes out here are very good individually with not a weak hole among them. It does an exceptional job with the par 3's, having holes requiring shots from 9 iron to 3 wood. Speaking of the 3 wood par 3, the 242 yard 12th hole, it was there that one of the funniest things I have ever seen on a golf course happened. Matt hooked his tee shot into the trees left of the hole. He went into the trees to look for his ball, after all, $4 Titleist ProV1's are worth looking for. As he was in there, according to him, he heard a large rustling in the trees and a large black creature lumbering towards him slowly. He comes running like a madman out of the woods, white as a ghost, and says "guys, I think there's a bear in the woods!" As he says that, the "bear" comes out of the trees, except its not a bear, it is a rather large Bandon player assistant, holding up a golf ball, saying "one of you guys hit a Titleist 8?" We all started laughing quite a bit, completely failing to really play out the hole. On the next hole I made the longest putt I've made in a few years, probably 40 feet or more, about 2/3's the way across the green, to bring Mike and I to 4 up with 5 to play in our match. On 16, our friendly marshal made another appearance, this time from up on top of the hill to the right of the fairway, yelling down to us where one of our tee shots had wound up. After that, I called him the Bandon Ninja Ranger. I closed out the 18th with my best shot of the week, a sand wedge to about 3 feet and made the putt for birdie.

The dinner that night was spectacular, hanging out with numerous guys from all over the world, Bill McBride a former Navy man from Florida, Matt Bosela from Canada, Little Joel from South Carolina, Big Joel from Cincinnati, Mike Hendren from Tennessee, a bloke from Australia whose name I can't for the life of me recall (since said to be David Elvins) but who was wearing a shirt with pictures of courses such as Oakmont, Augusta National, Golden Horseshoe (???) and others. What a great group of guys.

The final round of the weekend came at Pacific Dunes, Tom Doak's masterpiece on the ocean. I think the ancient definition of Masterpiece is more suited to this course than the current one. The ancient definition means a work that was done by a apprentice or journeyman to prove his skill in order to become a Master craftsman. Looking at Tom's high quality, but modest work done before Pacific Dunes, and his work after Pacific, to include Ballyneal, Cape Kidnappers and others, it is apparent that Pacific Dunes was the work that elevated him from a skilled journeyman to a Master Craftsman in his field. Onto the match...This match pitted me against Alex Stavrides with whom I had played on Saturday morning. Big Joel and Little Joel filled out our group with their match. Pacific Dunes is a tremendous golf course, but on this day, the course got the best of me and I lost my match to Alex. But it was a great match on an even greater golf course. After a quick bite to eat, I had to leave in order to make it back to California for class for class on Monday, but what a weekend this was.

However, I must admit, that the Bandon weekend was topped just a couple of weekends later when I was able to play Pebble Beach. Pebble was all I thought it could be and more. Its very difficult for a course to exceed such incredibly high expectations, but Pebble did. This was a top quality trip, I went down on Saturday morning with a friend of mine, Nik Faulk (who was, prior to joining the Coast Guard, a professional bull rider) and made a full day of it. I played Pebble, he rode around, took some awesome pictures, and we ate at a top notch Japanese Steakhouse and it was a heck of a day.

After playing Pebble, the quality of courses played obviously decreased, and to be frank, I may never see another course as good as Pebble Beach. A little while after Pebble, I met up with some guys from GolfClubAtlas again for a little outing that Joel Lahrman and myself put together at Metropolitan Golf Links in Oakland. That was another fantastic get together with those guys. This event was originally intended to be played at Callippe Preserve, that did not happen, but I managed to play over there a couple of weeks later. Both those courses were good courses, not great, but good, well priced golf options for the area.

The next real top quality course I played was Harding Park in San Francisco. This course has hosted its fair share of professional events and has a great routing. The movement in the land is very good, the views from the lakeside holes are very good. With a better set of greens, this course could be stunning. This is another fantastic municipal golf course that the citizens of San Francisco (well, the golfing citizens) should feel privileged to have.

The final really good course of the trip was Edgewood Tahoe. I finished school on a Wednesday, my wife had flown out to see my school graduation, and we decided to go to Lake Tahoe for that weekend; it was the next weekend after Mother's Day if I recall, and her first. So, on Thursday, we had a good time at lunch and I went to the golf course, teeing off at about 3pm. This golf course is very good, and could be even better with some winter tree removal. Some of the trees are so dense as to prevent proper turf growth, the encroach into some of the holes, making aerial hazards, and some holes, especially the 11th, have nearly unplayable corridors through the trees. But overall, the course is exceptional. The 18th hole gets all the press, but in my opinion, the 16th is a better par 5. This course is a real treat to play. My trade-off for being able to play Edgewood was a trip to the Spa in Harrah's for my wife; I think it was quite a fair trade-off.

I played some other courses in between these, Northwood was a good one, a 9 hole Mackenzie design. Chardonnay in Napa was fair, the 8th green has been featured in Golf Digest as some superlative, and its interesting I suppose, something like 100 yards wide, 6 tiers and so forth. But its quite out of character with the rest of the course. Wildhorse in Davis, a Jeff Brauer design was also rather interesting, if not exceptional.

Overall, this was a wonderful working golf trip. I played 25 total courses, 3 in Oregon, 1 in Nevada, 1 in Wyoming and Kentucky on the drive back to Virginia, and 19 in California. I doubt the volume or especially the quality of courses seen in the first 4 months of 2011 will be equaled soon, if ever.

Pacific Dunes vs. Links at Bodega Harbour: A study in the good and bad of ocean front design

In the past week I have had the pleasure (and displeasure) of playing two oceanfront golf courses in back to back rounds. Last Sunday I played Pacific Dunes in Bandon, OR. Today I played the Links at Bodega Harbour.  I should note from the start that Links at Bodega Harbour doesn't try to market themselves as being better than Pacific Dunes, however, given their website marketing saying they are "one of Northern California's most impressive golf courses" and "a true Scottish style links course" I feel that the comparisons are fair. I suppose the best way to start is a general comparison of the two courses:

Similarities
Both courses have three holes that play very close to the ocean

Both courses occupy exceptional sites with varied terrain, wind, and incredible views of the Pacific Ocean


Differences
At Pacific Dunes, Tom Doak uses the ocean and the views of it the same way a great chef uses a fine wine to accentuate the taste of an exceptional Filet. At Bodega Harbour the ocean is used much the same way as the backyard griller uses beer to mask out an otherwise tasteless and burnt hamburger.

Pacific is built on land that drains very well, allowing for the course to be playable almost all the time. Bodega, even though it is built on a mountain directly above the ocean, somehow retains massive amounts of water in the fairways, making walking difficult.

Pacific Dunes has no houses on the property, while Bodega has houses on several holes that are so close to the playing areas, and running side-by-side down the entire length of the hole on both sides, as to make the course nearly unplayable in high winds (which are certain to occur given the location)


At Pacific Dunes, you have three holes that play directly by the ocean, 4, 11 and 13; there are also a few greens that overlook the ocean, but those are the three holes that in my mind play directly on the ocean/cliffs. Links at Bodega Harbour plays on the ocean for holes 16, 17 and 18. That is where the similarity ends however. At Pacific Dunes, these ocean front holes merely amplify the interior holes before and after them. Indeed, in my opinion, the 4th at Pacific Dunes may be the weakest hole on the course, and I say that in a most praiseworthy way. At Bodega Harbour, it is as if some form of drama is built through out the round towards a "big finish" by having teaser views of the ocean on the first 15 holes, yet after walking off the 16th tee and into the fairway, the ocean is not at all visible in spite of being only 50 yards away due to a row of dunes (and given how 'perfect' the dune line is, I suspect these were man-made). The same is the case with the other ocean front holes, if 17 can really be considered an ocean front hole given that it plays away from the 16th green back inland a ways, but I am being slightly generous today, so I'll give them the benefit and say the course has three holes on the ocean. 18 is much the same given that the ocean is in view from the tee and on the second shot, but again, at the green the ocean is 50 yards away and yet nowhere to be seen. At Pacific Dunes, not only is the sound of the surf below you somewhat distracting, the view of the cliffs and the ocean below really give the player a lot to think about standing over the three tee shots. What it really comes down to is that when the ocean is used at Pacific Dunes as a hazard, it adds to the natural beauty and strategy of the course; at Bodega Harbour, when given the chance to excel and use the ocean as part of a dramatic finish, falls woefully short and winds up with no real views of the ocean and the ocean never coming into play.

In dealing with the site similarities, I am quite frankly inclined to say that Bodega Harbour has a better site than does Pacific Dunes. The site has more movement and elevation change, yet is not so extreme as to prevent a course from being built on it. However, it is in the execution where the similarities end.

As I stated before, Pacific Dunes uses the ocean somewhat sparingly in order to keep your attention on the other, more substantial and important features of the course. At Bodega, it is as if the ocean is intentionally placed within your view on every hole in order to take your mind and eyes off the actual hole and the golf course. Otherwise, people might understand how poor this course really is. In spite of my listing houses and the ocean as two separate differences, it is impossible to address the weaknesses of the course and the ocean views without addressing the housing problem. It is rare that I am distracted by houses on a golf course. However, at Bodega, the homes are so close to the fairways in some cases that I actually feel the golf course is unsafe, not for the golfers, but for the home owners. Played in high winds like today, it is nearly impossible not to, in fact, aim FOR houses on some holes, 1, 2, and 9 come to mind as the worst offenders. With a strong cross-wind it is basically impossible to keep your ball out of the houses to the right of the 9th fairway without aiming over the houses on the left. 1 and 2 are not quite as bad, but they are very tight and generally not appealing in any way. After arriving on the 5th tee, golfers are treated to what would be one of the most spectacular views in all of golf, however, it is quite encumbered by views of a few hundred roof's and then the hole that proceeds from there is quite frankly one of the worst holes I have ever seen.

I think in the end what I am trying to say here is that Pacific Dunes was blessed with a spectacular site and had an exceptional designer and owner come in with enough skill to not let it be destroyed. At Bodega Harbour, they were blessed with certainly the best site I have ever seen, and frankly the best I have ever heard of, better than what I have seen of Pebble Beach, Turnberry and the rest. Yet for whatever reason, the potential course was so devastated by a housing development and a likely substandard original designer (Robert Trent Jones, II is listed as the designer, I have to believe is the Renovation designer and not the original designer given other work I have seen from him, therefore I do not hold him responsible for the original routing and without changing the routing, there is only so much polish one can place on a pile of manure) that I can honestly say that Bodega is the biggest letdown of a golf course I have ever played. Given what could have/should have been here, I am actually incline to say it is the worst golf course I have ever played and is the first course I have ever said is a Zero on a scale of 1-10; I doubt there has ever been a golf course fall so far below its potential. (Pacific Dunes is a 10, by the way)