{"id":226,"date":"2011-02-24T16:55:32","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T21:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomharack.com\/?p=226"},"modified":"2012-04-12T09:43:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:43:34","slug":"ratings-are-for-raters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/golf\/226\/ratings-are-for-raters","title":{"rendered":"Ratings Are For Raters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Pebble Beach green fees have increased tenfold since first appearing at or near the top of "best-of" lists<\/p><\/div>\n

Lately I\u2019ve rehashed a conversation with Steven Hahn in the media lounge at the recent PGA Show. A single-digit player, golf editor of Atlanta-based The 19th<\/sup> Hole Magazine<\/em>, and overall good guy, we met on a media trip to the Dominican Republic several years ago.<\/p>\n

As a golf course rater for one of the national magazines, Steven defended the practice \u2013 at least that publication\u2019s version of it \u2013 while I played devil\u2019s advocate. Logic notwithstanding, I feared I was being a bit churlish.<\/p>\n

After all, rankings of any kind are first and foremost an editorial gambit conceived to sell magazines, the centerfolds of special-interest publications: Even readers skeptical of the findings can\u2019t resist a look. And isn\u2019t it tough enough trying to move magazines these days? Why deny them this gimmick, if that\u2019s what it is? Hadn\u2019t I also served intermittently as a rater myself? I had.<\/p>\n

The rhetorical cavalry arrived in the form of last week\u2019s issue of The New Yorker<\/em> (February 14 and 21), with an article by Malcolm Gladwell: \u201cThe Order of Things,\u201d subtitled, \u201cThe problem with college rankings.\u201d Coming from one of the best non-fiction writers working today, the treatment cogently skewers the plausibility of ranking \u201csystems\u201d \u2013 \u201can act of real audacity when a ranking system tries to be comprehensive and<\/em> heterogeneous\u201d \u2013 but uses US News & World Report\u2019<\/em>s ratings of colleges and universities, not golf courses, as a punching bag.<\/p>\n

This ought to be required reading for every rating panel. Of course, I\u2019m hardly the first to question their probity. Several years ago, George Peper offered a 3,000+-word apologia in LINKS Magazine<\/em> for his part in inventing the idea of course ratings while editing GOLF Magazine<\/em> for decades.<\/p>\n

Peper offers a much more comprehensive taxonomy of the shortcomings of specific rating approaches. No reason to repeat that here. But in the OK-now-we\u2019re-really-going-to-tackle-declining-participation mode said to pervade this year\u2019s PGA show, it seems pertinent to reiterate one of the inherent flaws of ratings, according to Peper: \u201c\u2026countless courses have gone without the recognition they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same goes, naturally, for golf course architects.<\/p>\n

The itinerary on another media trip, this one to Quebec, included an afternoon stop at a course we\u2019d typically describe as a dog track: ponderous right-angle doglegs, blind shots with little or no visual cues as to target lines, marginal conditioning, you name it. So bad was it that my golf writer-playing companion deemed it unsuitable for mention to his readership.<\/p>\n

The only trouble with his analysis was that the place was packed<\/em>. Clearly, a segment of the local golfing public and\/or visitors to this major vacation area preferred this \u201cunpretentious\u201d track to the resort\u2019s top-notch \u2013 but top-dollar and mighty tough \u2013 full-sized layouts.<\/p>\n

Realistically, I\u2019m not optimistic that ratings are ever going to go away. But I do think they\u2019re symptomatic of the talk-amongst-ourselves syndrome that plagues many industries, and certainly ours.<\/p>\n

At the very least, maybe a grasp of marginal practices in attempting to attract participation will result in a bit less whining about middling results. Acknowledgement that ratings are for raters is somehow preferable to lofty claims of reader service.<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately I\u2019ve rehashed a conversation with Steven Hahn in the media lounge at the recent PGA Show. A single-digit player,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[396890,537,397162,655,397346,397560,1860,3126,1206,251804],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-courses-and-travel","tag-the-19th-hole-magazine","tag-dominican-republic","tag-steve-hahn","tag-the-new-yorker","tag-malcolm-gladwell","tag-us-news-world-report","tag-links-magazine","tag-george-peper","tag-golf-magazine","tag-quebec"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2011\/02\/PBGL-no.-7.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tomharack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}