So You Always Wanted to be a Course Rater

By Tony Leodora

For about the last 10 years I have served as a member of the Golfweek America’s Favorite Courses panel. Along with an assortment of golf writers, golf business people and various golf nuts we rate the courses that make up America’s Top 100 Classical and Top 100 Modern Courses.

The question I am asked most often is, “How did you get to become a rater?” Most people think the main qualification is to have played more golf courses than anyone else.

Of course, playing a wide variety of courses doesn’t hurt. I have now played a total of 694 … and have the scorecard from each one.

But more important is the hours spent in seminars, at conferences, in roundtable discussions and at the side of some of the brightest minds in the game. The ability to listen and absorb when in the company of architects, superintendents and professionals is probably the most important precursor to becoming a rater.

All that being said, most avid golfers would love to be a golf course rater … and they often do their own version of rating, every time they play a new course.

On a recent trip to Myrtle Beach, 32 very avid golfers played five days of competition on five different courses. The event, the Freedom Trail Challenge, has been played all over the world for the last 15 years. This was the first time the group had come to Myrtle Beach.

Oddly enough, some of the players were Myrtle Beach regulars, others had been to Myrtle Beach in the past but had not returned in many years, and others were making the first trip to the area.

The courses they played were all on the northern end of the Grand Strand – Thistle, Tiger’s Eye, the Fazio Course at Barefoot Resort, Oyster Bay and Tidewater.

The players were asked to rate the courses. Although the rating system was far from scientific, the results provided some interesting opinions.

There was not a huge difference in the rankings – all five courses received multiple first place votes.

However, three of the courses were faced with issues that would not always be evident, and that hurt their rankings.

Thistle was just coming out of overseeding and carts were restricted to cartpaths only. That made for a long, arduous round. Oyster Bay also was coming out of overseeding and the greens were unusually slow. At Tiger’s Eye the group played behind a large group of seniors playing an international competition with visitors from Great Britain. The pace of play was intolerably slow – close to 5 ½ hours for the round.

Those factors hurt the rankings for each of the courses. The final results showed Tidewater in first place, followed closely by the Fazio Course at Barefoot. There was a drop to a very close grouping of Thistle, Oyster Bay and Tiger’s Eye.

More important may have been the comments of the players, who all agreed there was no weak sister in the group of courses.

“I hadn’t been to Myrtle Beach in at least 15 years,” said Mark Freeman, a recent full-time resident of West Palm Beach, after moving from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. “I was amazed at the quality of all five courses. Every detail, from the clubhouses, to the service, to the courses was excellent.”

“I found the biggest difference to be in the service,” said Florida golf writer Jack O’Leary, who was a regular to Myrtle Beach for years but has not been in the area during the last five years. “The assembly line approach to golf is gone. The courses really provide genuine service in every department.”

Henry Wadsworth from Blue Bell was one of the newcomers to the Myrtle Beach area and he admitted, “I couldn’t possibly rate the courses. To me, they were all really good. Each one had its own distinctive pluses. I honestly didn’t expect to find that kind of quality in Myrtle Beach.”

The South Florida contingent of Harv Hennessey, Tommy Williams, Jeff Burley and Roger Casserta may have had the most eye-opening experience. They enjoyed the restaurants and the nightlife as much as they enjoyed the golf courses.

“We had a couple of superb meals at Martini’s and Chianti South,’’ said Casserta, who is used to the finer restaurants of the Fort Lauderdale scene. “Myrtle Beach has come a long way from the days when all you could get was fried fish.”

“The layouts at the courses we played were really spectacular,” said Hennessey. “The architects used a lot of imagination to build interest into courses that were built on flat pieces of property. Each course had its own unique characteristics that made them special.”

For not being raters, this group of golfers did a pretty good job of rating the courses they played in Myrtle Beach. But, no, I’m not ready to give any of them my job as a Golfweek rater.