The Rankings

Nish: 0:01

Every story has an ending. Does our quest to play the top 100 courses in 10 years have a good ending? I’m Nish.

Chris: 0:08

I’m Chris. I’m Jim.

Nish: 0:10

And we’re here to guide you through this golfing journey. This is the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast

Nish: 0:16

, episode 13. The Rankings

Nish: 0:19

. So today we’re talking about something that almost everyone asks us about when they discuss the challenge, and that’s how the courses are rated and ranked. And I know we’ve brought it up a few times and we’re like you know what measure, like how are they doing this? Um, sort of feels like it’s a bit shrouded in mystery. It isn’t like you know the the information is all out there, but I suppose we’re here to lift the veil. Let’s find out what’s going on

Nish: 0:49

be

Chris: 0:50

doing that live on air.

Nish: 0:53

It’s not maths. It’s not maths. We’re also going to tell you about how we’re going to rank and rate the courses ourselves, as well as something we’re doing which is called the Dream 18. So we’re going to rank individual holes on a golf course that we like, which is totally subjective. It’s just how we feel on that day. I’ll put it into a Dream 18 holes on a golf course. So, if you look at the actual official ratings, there are two lists, aren’t there? There’s the official top 110, 100, sorry courses and the website, um, and then it’s golf monthly. Is that right?

Nish: 1:31

yeah, um, so we’ve gone with the official top 100 yeah courses and obviously we explained a couple of episodes ago in the q a that we’re taking a snapshot of when we started the challenge. That’s 100 courses, so we don’t end up playing 120 and all the additional cost that comes with that and logistics. Uh, unless, of course, as you mentioned rightly, a course next door opens up and it suddenly gets into that, then I think we should bump that how good would that be.

Chris: 2:02

I mean, if we’re still if we’re still alive at that point going to watch the Ryder Cup in Bolton. I mean, it feels kind of wrong.

Nish: 2:06

When are they planning to go for it?

Chris: 2:08

Is it like 2045 or 2035 maybe?

Nish: 2:11

Mate, we’re going to be alive then, what are? You planning on doing?

Chris: 2:14

I mean that’s 20 years. You never know. I was looking in your two directions rather than mine.

Nish: 2:23

I thought so. I thought, yeah, I thought death isn’t the thing that I thought would stop us from being there.

Jim: 2:30

Going back into employment at some soon. Maybe you know when you look at your retirement age and you have to review your pension benefits and things, your retirement age is your selected retirement age.

Chris: 2:40

Oh, nominating 125.

Jim: 2:42

Retirement year. Sorry, it’s 2047 2047 yeah is it?

Nish: 2:51

you’re definitely older than that. Are you lying to your financial advisor? I’m my financial advisor there you go. You’re only lying to yourself, jim the wolf of wall street over here. Um, if only I know, yeah, it’d be great.

Chris: 3:06

Um it’s not quite the same when you’re hanging out of a ford fiesta, is it?

Jim: 3:09

and you’re in manchester rather than in new york. What’s the last one, by the way? Thank you.

Nish: 3:16

So I think, looking at the, I did think it was all hidden away. And actually when I looked at the website because he’s so blinded by looking at your lists and figuring out where things are and whatever it isn’t hidden away on the website at all, is it? There’s a section right the photo I kind of thought it was but ratings and rankings. Well, I mean, you have to get to the bottom of the web page. Who does that?

Jim: 3:36

I suppose, well, yeah, exactly. Do you not read the privacy notice?

Nish: 3:39

because that’s the first thing yeah, I get sick of those like cookie consent, privacy notices. I don’t like accepting cookies.

Chris: 3:48

But there’s the occasional when you’re just like I cannot find the rejects. I’m just, I’m just accepting it.

Jim: 3:52

Yeah or the one do your worst, or those websites that actually stipulate it’s like you know, by continuing to this website, then you by default you’re agreeing to all the cookies, you must look at different websites.

Nish: 4:04

To me, jim so I think let’s explore what the official rankings and how they’re done. I gather it’s committee-based. They have a load of assessors who go out and they rate courses and then they submit it to the committee and then the committee sort of take out any biases or anything like that. I mean I don’t know what that means, but it says you know, we take out any outliers. I get that somebody might go, oh it’s amazing, and everybody else has said it’s all right, so fair enough. I suppose that’s more statistics, isn’t it? You look at averaging it out properly, but, um, so they do that. And then you had the biases bit. Didn’t really make any sense to me. I wasn’t sure what that was all about. But hey, let’s, let’s, let’s go with it. Um, but there’s five things that they look at or they’re assessing overall and ranking these courses on, and apparently it’s all about promoting strategic golf. What, yeah, exactly? So I was a bit like what is strategic golf all about?

Chris: 5:13

You’ve not been watching me, Nish.

Nish: 5:15

I’ve only been watching you once already. You’ve not been watching me when I’m playing.

Chris: 5:17

Oh yeah, yeah, is that as strategic as it gets?

Nish: 5:22

So okay, here’s their official definition. Is that strategic golf is varied, interesting, engaging golf that asks questions answered by different golfers in different ways. Do you understand what that means?

Jim: 5:38

I think my face gives that away. That’s a load of gobbledygook yeah, I mean what does?

Chris: 5:42

that mean? Again, is he trying to say that like there’s more way, there’s more than one way of skinning a cat kind of thing, like there’s maybe different ways you could play the hole, I guess. I guess it’s that reward kind of thing, I suppose, maybe isn’t it?

Jim: 5:58

there’s different parameters they could use in terms of what they’re doing. You know, it’s the aesthetics. You know when you play, when you’re at every single hole, what does the actual that will look like?

Nish: 6:08

yeah, what is it glad you said that? Oh dear, oh god, there’s so many outtakes from that, yeah, okay, well, moving swiftly on the five criteria that they do use, I’m just trying to see if any of this applies to what you just said, jim. So number one is course, architecture, that’s what I meant.

Nish: 6:39

Is what does it look like? Strategic challenge, which we’ll understand. What that is in a bit variety is the spice of life. Yeah, uh, consistency of caliber. Uh, I don’t know if that’s to do well, I suppose we’ll find out in a minute, but that’s to do with the, the reputation of a course or something. I don’t know. I guess the consistency of calibre is are all 18 holes.

Chris: 7:05

good, right, right, yeah, okay, somewhere like Aberdeen that we’re going to go and play is renowned for having one of the best front nines in golf. It’s a thing that’s said, a lot of that course but then the back nine is less is much less interesting because it’s a bit of a flatter and you’re out of the dunes and stuff. So it’s. I guess that consistency of caliber is is all the holes good yeah, do you get all the way around with that?

Jim: 7:27

consistency, like more town. You know where you spend all the money. On one one hole, yeah, and the rest of it ironically he did.

Chris: 7:34

I think he had a good. We’re calling it consistency of caliber that’s the whole all 18 holes are good.

Nish: 7:40

Um, interesting. You say that about royal aberdeen, so I, as I was doom scrolling on instagram as you do, um, I read some on somebody’s post and it was I think they’d screenshotted the person’s person. I don’t know who this person is, but they said very well, respected golf writer has just given his top three golf courses that he’s played in the last two years, or something like that. So number one was rosapina, right? Uh, I can’t remember which one it was, but one of the rosapina it’d be the one. Whichever the one is supposed to consider the better one, not saint patrick’s, I think. Basically, that’s a new one, isn’t it? Um, royal aberde two. And guess what was number three? Was it Reddish?

Chris: 8:27

Vale.

Nish: 8:29

Imagine if it was Reddish Vale.

Chris: 8:31

Maybe that’s why the membership fees have gone up.

Nish: 8:34

It was Silith and Solway, was it? Yeah, legend, silith and Solway. Actually, I think it was because I follow them now, so it must have been because they reposted it or whatever. Yeah, yeah, because they’ve just been nominated for an award for, like, so english, yeah, english golf course of the year. Okay, so they’re making a big thing about it and I think now there’s they posted a video about. I think it’s a club president or someone like that was on saying we’re really trying to get people understanding about our course and that, how good it is. So it’s not just seen as it’s a stop off on the way to scotland, it’s like you make a way to come over here. I think they’re planning on doing a few more things with the clubhouse and stuff to make it a bit more destination. Um, but that was brilliant. Obviously, we’re playing royal aberdeen next year, so we’re playing two of those three yeah, yeah, that quick we’re getting into this good yeah, yeah, meaty.

Nish: 9:23

Maybe he’s from cumbria as well, who knows? Probably the cumbrian brainwashing. Um, yeah, and then so consistent caliber. And then the last one is golf course and land management. So let’s like dive into what each thing means. So, uh, those are your five things. Golf course architecture uh, so, they said, sound golf course architecture is not easily distilled into a few words, especially when applied to golf courses around the entire planet, I mean it’s sounding wishy-washy, isn’t it this?

Jim: 9:58

Yeah, I mean, it’s like they’ve got me to write it. Total bullshit.

Nish: 10:04

Yeah, basically so it. It says golf courses are built to suit different objectives, budgets, landscapes and climates. Yes, that’s fine. Um, so the first three fundamental principles of golf course architecture are rooting, which is a major major aspects of route routing. Should be considered is walkability. Walkability, which Is that a word? Well sounds, sounds impressive. For example, the distance between greens and tees.

Chris: 10:35

All right, Okay, fair enough. It’d be great if you just had like a golf course and you had like six miles in between holes, so you just had like a full well, six mile walk.

Nish: 10:48

They miles in between holes, so you just had like a full, well, well, six mile walk. They just said long walks and steep climbs can be indicators of unimaginative rooting that should be avoided if possible. All right, okay. So basically they’re saying have you just gone? Oh, let’s just make this difficult for people, and then that’s a challenge in itself, like you’ve got to just keep hitting it long, and long and long, and that’s not necessarily a good golf course, is it? I suppose is what they’re saying. Uh, superb examples of exceptional routings are the old course, uh, in st andrews and muirfield. Okay, green complexes so then the green complex includes the immediate approach, green side hazards as well as the putting surface itself. So the green complexes should be drivers of strategic play. So, okay, right, that makes a bit more sense. Like, is it risk reward, all that kind of thing, right? Uh? Use of landscape uh, so landscape use for golf come in many forms. There are examples of ideal natural links. Compelling golf can be found using minimalist routings.

Nish: 11:44

I mean it’s easy to find, but it’s not really so clear, is it? I suppose it’s because it’s difficult, isn’t it? Subjective, ultimately.

Chris: 11:52

I mean, I guess a lot of this kind of lends itself to links courses. Really that’s what I’m thinking in my mind. How do you work your way through all those sand dunes and kind of like, how do you make the best out of that? Yeah, you know those lumps and mounds and whatever else you’ve got going on.

Nish: 12:06

I think so, all right, let’s move on. Right course architecture. That’s that strategic challenge. So we were wondering about. That was so okay, so this is pretty good. We do not reward courses that are simply difficult. That’s that’s fair enough.

Nish: 12:19

Um, penal golf where restrictive, where restrictive and nutritional is not favored, so just because a restrictive and nutritional is not favored, so just because the course is difficult, is not going to get you right. Okay, that that’s good. Um, and I think this yeah, they said it’s because it makes it nearly impossible for weaker or average players to actually play the golf course, which is fair enough. It should be playable, but enjoyable for the weaker player that’s a new phrase on me, a weaker player. It actually says here that it rewards more width on a whole. Width is always a factor in having multiple routes and therefore options, whereas if it’s narrow, you’ve only got one place to go, haven’t you? Straight down the middle, straight down, straight down the middle. This is, this is a killer, isn’t it? This episode? I didn’t realize there’s so much innuendo bingo in this one. There’s a lot of rooting going on do they even?

Nish: 13:15

know, about this.

Nish: 13:16

Have they read it back and just gone? Oh my God, what have we done? What have we done? It’s coming up on like filters, isn’t it? When people navigate to this website it’s like sorry, you can’t see this website. It’s working hours, nsfw, is it? I don’t see it before work.

Nish: 13:33

Variety, so variety in play and presentation. Yeah, variety. So variety in play and presentation, uh, yeah. So, rather than facing the monotony of the same hole or shot type okay, I see reddish valer, do well there, I think. Variety, because there’s a lot of different types of very much different types of holes there. Um, consistency, so right, consistency of caliber, this is great. I’m just trying to make you laugh. Now I don’t see what I can say. Uh, consistency refers to the quality and consistency of both the individual holes and the golf course as a whole. So that’s exactly what you said. Is it a gentle opener and then a load of dull holes? Or, oh my goodness, they’re doing it deliberately now. Conversely, do you hit the highest notes before running out of steam prematurely? I mean, they’re having a laugh with this, surely, is it because they know nobody’s gonna get down and read this?

Jim: 14:23

I just I don’t know this feels it’s controlled, someone’s taking their piss.

Nish: 14:32

Maybe I should have read this before it came off. Actually, maybe I did. I just left it to see your natural reaction um, yeah, oh, here we go. Look, there we go. A consistent course doesn’t need to be 18 holes of crescendo. They can be ebb and flow, sometimes referred to as compression and release. This is uh, this is dodgy, isn’t it? Hot stuff, isn’t it Hot stuff, isn’t it? It’s like, aaron, you need to leave, you can’t, okay, right? I think that’s consistency, golf course. They can’t make golf course and land management sound vaguely erotic in any way, surely?

Chris: 15:09

I mean, I feel like I’ve got less of an idea about how these courses are ranked.

Nish: 15:14

I’m the same. You have to listen to this. This is good. What is this all about now? So conditioning? They keep saying what it doesn’t refer to, but, ryan, he doesn’t really tell you what it is. So what is it now? Is the rough well maintained or has it been left unchecked? Long rough is not always negative, so long as it allows depends which decade you’re talking about.

Nish: 15:32

Oh my goodness they’ve done it with this as well so long as it allows one to find and advance the ball without too much bother, this is not right, is it? This is not right. Oh are the gorse and trees managed to avoid them encroaching upon play. Encrouching.

Chris: 15:52

Encrouching.

Nish: 15:53

Like a hidden dragon. Okay, okay, okay, right. I think we might be getting to now the nitty-gritty, so forget all those five things. It now says that the aspects that are purposefully excluded, so that’s good. A top 100 golf course it’s the golf course we rank, rather than the experience. That’s important, so that’s fine. A golf club’s perceived exclusivity, clubhouse amenities or level of service should not be considered as part of the golf course position in the ranking so I think you need to take this on board, chris, when you’re judging and ranking your own but it’s not about club sandwich.

Chris: 16:32

I mean, I’m pretty sure we’ll get to the club sandwich section somewhere. Somewhere I think there is, I think, in the faq. We’ll get to the club sandwich section somewhere.

Nish: 16:38

Somewhere I think there is, I think in the FAQs do you rate the club sandwich?

Nish: 16:41

Yes, I do. It says some inflate the position of a mediocre golf course in a beautiful setting, but we resist the temptation. Conversely, we must also not be biased against great golf in a less than inspired location. Carnoustie may be a good example of this. Or is it in like a really rough area or something, carnoustie? I don’t know. Somebody else said this about Carnoustie as well, was it Alex, I think? When we interviewed him and he said something about you know, like Carnoustie’s a great golf course. It’s just it has a bit of a bad rep or something. I think he said something like that. This is a new thing for me. It’s quite. It’s good to know that it’s it’s golf, yeah, so your golf, which brings me onto then our rankings.

Nish: 17:26

Yep, that’s what we’ve done, haven’t?

Chris: 17:27

we basically we’re doing club sandwiches, yeah I think it’s, it’s interesting.

Nish: 17:33

That is it, because I think we we sort of do see it, see that stuff, like I think that’s important, like what’s the experience? Like we’re not. Interestingly enough. Actually, when we rate, when we had the chat about where we do place the cause, we would have paid three. So we’ve ranked it as top three, yeah, so so what we’re gonna do, um, is we’re gonna maintain a top three, that’s the main featured ones.

Nish: 17:54

We’ll have the list expanded out to 10 yeah and then we’ll see if anything that new that we play jumps into that list at all. We did do it on the golf, didn’t we?

Chris: 18:03

probably without really realizing it yeah, I mean, obviously, you’re there to play the course, aren’t you? So you are definitely in your minds, are you’re thinking I’m here to rate this course, right? Well, not to rate it, I’m here to enjoy it, but you’re here to yeah, you’re judging. You’re judging the course rather than what goes with it. However, I’d say you know most average golfers, they’re going to go and play one of these top 100 courses.

Nish: 18:23

Yeah they’re going to pay 400 quid.

Chris: 18:25

They are there for an experience. They’re not there to, you know, pick the bones out of that course. They’re there to have a brilliant day. They’re going to pay 400 quid. They, they want a brilliant experience. That they’re not. They’re not going to forget, you know, they remember for the next 20 years of their life. Yeah, it’d be interesting to see whether the experience that we have will impact those rankings, you know, versus the pure, the pure kind of golf course rankings that they’ve got on us going in there expecting an experience, whether or not that will have a big impact on the you know, our rankings versus theirs. Because I think we will. We will take that into account more because we’re I mean, these guys probably haven’t paid to go there, right, they’re just they’re going on a jolly and they’re going to go and absolutely yeah, the cost of five hours and you know they’re not going to be there having that experience.

Chris: 19:08

So yeah, that’s true, they can kind of do that you know, in silo and just think right, we’re here to look at this course, but we’re not going to do that because we’re going to be.

Jim: 19:16

I suppose your experience is going to be different because they may have been to those courses on numerous occasions over the years, whereas you know, for a lot of these are your very first times experiencing that and being visiting those those um, those particular establishments.

Nish: 19:30

I suppose they’re probably a bit numb to it as well, aren’t they? You know, they’ve played some of the greatest courses in the world.

Chris: 19:34

Yeah and it.

Nish: 19:35

And it’s like actually we’re judging the golf now here. Yeah, yeah, we’ve played it before.

Chris: 19:38

Yeah, At the minute I think we’re still quite wide-eyed and starry about it.

Nish: 19:42

Oh, totally, I don’t want to lose that. I really don’t want to lose that. Yeah, yeah, I want to be excited for all 100. I want to get to the point where I’m who would do that the consistency of caliber today has been below par.

Chris: 19:59

I think it’s interesting that like we have to cover that, I think I think so, yeah, I think it’s important. I think that’s important for you know, if someone’s listening to this again, I might go and pick one of those from listening to us guys talking about. Yeah, I think that experience is pretty, pretty, like we said about uh, but you know, example.

Nish: 20:15

This is great because at the moment we only have the three to compare. Yeah, right, so it’s everything’s fresh in the memory. But like more town, openly, 125 quid, if they really get much for it, whatever, they actually rocked up. Yeah, and your age balls are included and it’s like okay, well, that only might cost me a few quid yeah. I thought that felt amazing.

Chris: 20:38

So when I walked up Moortown I was like that was the best round I’ve ever played. That was better than Sillith yeah but I think a lot of that was probably to do with the, the whole experience, because I think when I stood back and after a couple of weeks actually reflected on it, I was actually it’s not better than Sillith, it’s definitely a better golf course, but I think you just you get wrapped up in that experience, right, don’t you? And we just had, from start to finish, that experience was I’m gonna?

Nish: 20:59

have a look at this as well.

Jim: 21:00

So, while while you’re, chatting, so they must have some comments about each of those courses, then would you to? Yeah?

Chris: 21:06

I think they give a full, but I don’t think, I don’t think, I don’t think they’ll give you in those terms. I don’t think it’s easy to kind of unpick how they’ve ranked it on those five criteria oh okay, no, fair enough.

Nish: 21:17

So we, we, we, we ranked our top three as we’ve done so far. We’ve done Silith, number one, yeah, which was ranked 46. That’s the highest rank that we’ve played so far and it’s everybody. You know it’s a really unheralded course, like more people need to know about it.

Jim: 21:33

Yeah.

Nish: 21:33

We ranked Moortown second yeah, that was 98th. Okay. And we ranked SNA third and that was 97th, right, okay, so we’ve only switched one round, we switched one around. Pretty close anyway, pretty close, but yeah, okay.

Jim: 21:48

So kind of. But from discussing with you and hearing you on the podcasts, I mean, I think there was quite a big differential between the experiences, certainly between Moortown and SNA. But then the golf was probably closer. I think in those terms.

Chris: 22:06

I don’t know how much the experience we had at Moortown played into the rating that we gave that course. I don’t know if we went and played it again and we had some grumpy bastard greet us at the course and it was raiding or whatever. Whatever, I wonder how much our view of that course would change I don’t know.

Jim: 22:25

Quite interesting actually. You know, when you do to wales and you’ve got two back-to-back yeah, that’d be interesting, you know, particularly if you know if you would have played it the other way around, would amadavari or whatever it’s, a raw same day would be better, because you played that first and you know I get knackered. So it’s, you know you’re playing for the second day.

Nish: 22:44

Yeah, I mean that’s true, or that it tanks it down on the second day and you know it was glorious or how much you drank the night before. You know that’s always going to be a high volume of alcohol let’s be honest, well, kind of middle of the day.

Chris: 22:56

Yeah, we’ll keep that consistent over the weekend.

Nish: 22:59

Yeah, just make sure you get equally as pissed on the thursday imagine like you just get to the point it’s like right, okay, in order to be fair on these courses, we’ve got to down a couple of times we’re going to drink the exact same amount every single time.

Nish: 23:14

We’re having a club sandwich everywhere, so we’re drinking the same amount everywhere as well. That’s how we’re going to do it. Okay, that’s quite, I suppose, quite nice to know that that’s then validated what we thought course wise as I mean it was it was definitely better than more talents at SNA. Yeah, okay, but, yeah, but that that’s what we’re going to do, but that has to be subjective. Ours can’t be based on any scores or anything like that. It’s just how we felt on the day and the goal, but we are going to try and strip that back to the golf I really enjoy the golf at moortown, I thought that the holes are so um interesting to look at everywhere we went.

Nish: 23:50

Yes, that’s what we’re gonna do, but what we will do because I do think that experience bit is important because, like, that is a very valid way of looking at it, that most people and us included, we’re experiencing this, as you know, rank amateurs and and that bit is important. And if you’re going to go and spend four, five hundred quid somewhere with everything included, you need to know am I, am I getting good value for, for what I’m doing, and what does that entail? So, does that entail? You know? I mean, ed Eddie was amazing at more times in terms of talking to a representative of a golf club. You couldn’t find anybody better. He was so good.

Jim: 24:29

And then, yeah, you’ve got 97 people out there who are all thinking fuck you now. We’ve got to up our game now.

Chris: 24:36

The only problem is that none of those 97 people are listening to this. Jim Eddie’s been tapped up.

Nish: 24:40

I reckon that none of those 97 people are listening to this. Jim Eddie’s been tapped up.

Chris: 24:43

I reckon One of the top courses are going for trying to get Eddie involved now.

Nish: 24:45

I think that’s how we’re going to do our system, and obviously that’s going to be all on the website. We’re going to type it up properly. Yeah, okay, but then, following on from that, we’re also then doing something called the Dream 18, which is every course we play. We’re going to see if there’s a hole that we really, really, really liked that we want to nominate as one of the best holes we’ve ever seen okay, I think I’ve misunderstood the dream 18.

Chris: 25:06

I thought this was just you ranking your best. Nick doherty dreams top 18 18.

Jim: 25:12

Top 18 dreams featuring nick doherty, so it’s not like it’s not the best first hole, best second hole.

Nish: 25:18

Well, you know it’s, it’s no, I don’t think we can do it like that.

Jim: 25:21

To be honest, I think it’s too um you know it’s easy now, but though, yeah, we’re getting into almost like what’s the ebb and flow of a golf course, and that’s like getting into golf course.

Nish: 25:31

Proper design, isn’t it? And don’t really know that, do we? It’s probably too much, it’s just, these are going to be your memories of our memories. Yeah, something jumps out at us. We think, oh my god, that was just an amazing golf hole to play. Then it will. It will hopefully land somewhere in the in the top 18.

Chris: 25:48

We’ll keep a couple in reserve. I think, interestingly, I think, that five lists that you know, that five criteria that they’ve got, I think ultimately it just boils down to the architecture, right, because that’s, that’s pretty much what it looks like, what it’s like to play. I think it’s yeah, it pretty much, if you has it been positioned right in the landscape that it’s in yeah is it enough of a?

Nish: 26:06

you know when there was. Uh, well, we’ll sort of get to them. You know, the third on at sillith, I mean that probably out of the 54 holes of golf that we played, that is that stands out, doesn’t it?

Chris: 26:16

I mean, that’s the one of my favorite holes of all. It’s a great golf hole.

Nish: 26:18

Yeah, yeah, it’s a brilliant golf hole and it’s interesting because there’s no, there’s nothing, there’s no imagery that can capture that. I don’t think.

Jim: 26:24

What’s so good about it? I mean, I’ve never played so good I don’t know.

Chris: 26:27

I mean it’s lovely.

Nish: 26:45

It, you can hit an eye. I mean, it’s a blind, no winds up, yeah, and you’re going into a valley, so it’s like a perfect v, isn’t it? So you’ve just got this little v of like, but then you, if you hit too big, you’ve gone, because it turns a little bit to the left. So you go over the valley at the v sorry, you get into the, into the dip, and then the golf hole turns to the left and there’s a, there’s a big dip, and then the, the t, it’s. It’s a mckenzie designed hole actually.

Nish: 27:03

So the the greens elevated big rays, elevated green yeah, and it, everything on the left of it just falls and it’s just crap like. And then, if you didn’t, to the right, there’s a big bank up there, so, yeah, the ball goes well over that or gets stagged in there. So it’s, you know it’s a, it’s a demanding approach shot.

Chris: 27:20

Um, the green wasn’t as it’s a relatively flat green, like as a gentle kind of slope on it I’ve nailed you with the approach.

Nish: 27:29

I’m not. I’m gonna go easy on you on the yeah, that’s actually it’s quite.

Chris: 27:32

If you play it well, it’s quite an easy hole to play, but as soon as you get out of position on that cut, on that hole.

Nish: 27:36

Oh yeah, you’re done, you’re done, yeah, um, so I think that, and I’ve I’ve uh attempted to anyway sort of describe a little bit about that, that hole as well, so people can get a bit of a flavor of it, because I certainly didn’t know anything about, about the third until, if it’s all and it was, you would play it off memory, weren’t you? Like I know this is a good hole, so we did that. We had the fifth at moore town, which was a great golf hole. So you tee off, uh tees, next to another green, I think, and then there’s a brook running right in front of you, but the whole, like the tee box is pointing you to not at the green or anything like that. It’s pointing you sort of down this direction, it’s avoiding loaded. There’s two trees that are in the way to the green. The green is drivable, I think, for big hitters and it’s like it’s like pick your, pick your tree that you’re going to go for, really, I think yeah, aim for the aim just left of the big tree.

Chris: 28:29

Yeah, seven iron and go to the right of it. You go to the right of it and then that’s strategic. You could do, I did, and just hit a five wood into the shit, into the brook, yeah that’s it I actually I I picked there were two trees.

Nish: 28:40

There’s one, that’s the tree that, if you hit that and you get clear that tree that’s heading towards the green, or there’s the one that’s just the right of it. I picked that one and I it’s a very rare occurrence this gym I said that’s the tree that I’m going over and that’s exactly where the ball went. I was like, oh man, so even when I’ve hit this absolute peach of a drive, I’ve just it’s just stupid, really, why don’t you just go? Yeah, great, well, good shot. I was like, why didn’t I pick the tree? Because I absolutely spanked it and it went dead straight over that tree and it was just a fantastic hole of golf. It’s a great hole, yeah.

Nish: 29:15

Yeah, I really, really enjoyed it, and again not too difficult, lovely approach, shot it’s amazing what you remember actually.

Jim: 29:25

I mean, I couldn’t say I could create a top 18, because I’ve only played about five courses in my life, but you do remember some of the good offers.

Chris: 29:30

Yeah, yeah, you’ve always got that one or two holes that you just take away with you, don’t you?

Jim: 29:33

Yeah.

Nish: 29:34

Well, usually it’s associated with playing it well.

Chris: 29:45

But the next one, which is the fourth, I’m saying I didn’t play well at all. Um no, you really didn’t. Did you really didn’t?

Nish: 29:48

um I mean I actually don’t think you could have played it much worse. Yeah, it was awful, wasn’t it? But I, I totally agree that it was a great again, a great golf ball. Because it’s a sort of semi-blind t-shirt you don’t have to.

Chris: 29:55

I mean it is a blind because it doesn’t look that blind, but actually you don, actually you don’t fully appreciate what’s kind of below you and kind of down to the right. So you’ve got this big kind of fairway that runs off down to the right, so actually it looks like a really daunting tee shot, but actually in reality it’s not. There’s a massive wide fairway and you basically hit it anywhere towards the left and it’ll just run down to the right.

Nish: 30:20

And you could easily take an iron off that tee and let it run down down. I mean, I think it’s sensible play, is it? Yeah, because it is, yeah, yeah, what I do to the driver. Um, so that was again, that was another, and then again I think it’s the. The green is raised up again, isn’t it?

Chris: 30:27

I don’t really know it’s not raised up, but it’s just there’s, like it’s cut away down the right hand side.

Chris: 30:32

So there’s this huge kind of like down the right side, it’s a very narrow green yeah, kind of thin green that runs up to the side. But then there’s just, if you make any, anything right, and basically it’s yeah, you’ve had a double bogey. Um, so you’ll be really accurate, like it’s not. It’s not a long shot in, but if you’re in a wedging, but if you miss it by, you know, 10 yards to the right, yeah, that’s it, it’s all over.

Nish: 30:52

That was a good, good, good hole. And then we then for the last one, we picked the third at southport and ainsdale. Okay, sni, yeah, for that’s for a couple of reasons. It was the t shot is quite high up and you can, on the left hand side, you see the, the famed train line.

Nish: 31:09

Oh yes but you can see all of hillside, the whole course to your left. You can see a little better. Uh, no comment. Uh, yeah, you see the whole of that, but then you could also see a really good chunk of sna at that point as well. It’s all sort of laid out in front of you. So it was a great tee box yeah, I love it.

Chris: 31:31

I love an elevator. Elevator is always good, isn’t it?

Nish: 31:34

it was a bit of a daunting drive because where the bunkers it would, that was definitely like a bunker left, 20 yards on bunker right, 20 yards on bunker left. So you’re thinking I’ve got to hit this narrow, not a big hit, but you’ve got to hit it narrow, or five wood. Um, and then lovely approach shot because it’s, uh, the green has like a fringe of trees all behind it.

Chris: 31:56

So as you approach, I mean I love that anyway, when you hit your approach shot or any shot, and you can see the ball against contrasting, against the trees yeah, it’s quite an unusual view for a links course, because you don’t normally get that kind of no, you don’t tree, you know sort of trees around the back of the grease is almost a bit of a weird mix between which I think south sna was really, wasn’t it? Yeah, it’s kind of it is a links course, but in some aspects it kind of it feels like a parkland and a lot of it so there’s trees behind the green, but it feels very much like a parkland so it’s.

Chris: 32:25

I guess it’s kind of unusual just for that. For that reason, isn’t it a lot of?

Nish: 32:28

it sheltered, weren’t they? Yeah but again, it was a. It was a magnificent hole of golf, and I think we both parred that as well. Yeah, so we both played it really well, so that obviously helps, doesn’t it?

Jim: 32:37

what’s quite interesting from my perspective is that you know you from our discussions. Before you did the two courses I mean, I don’t think we touched on it at sillith particularly, but certainly for more town and sni, we did what were the signature holes, and it was gibraltar at more town and it was the 16th at sni, and neither of you chosen those to be no, no, no, no, we haven’t.

Nish: 33:00

No, it’s an interesting point, yeah I mean I wonder with the more time, with I mean we said it, didn’t we? I wonder with more town, if the whole, all the budget got spent on this one whole kind of thing. I think that I feel I feel they’ve been railroaded into. That’s our signature hole, that’s the best hole, you know all this kind of stuff.

Chris: 33:17

I think they’ve got better golf holes there I really well that’s a judge selection actually, because I just have a look. I was trying what it was. But yeah, the 13th at sell if is considered its signature hole which is a great hole I don’t remember it.

Nish: 33:30

What’s the par five you?

Chris: 33:31

know it’s the par five that’s in like two weird sections I hated that, you hated that hole I mean, I hated it for two reasons.

Nish: 33:39

I thought I felt that was overly penal. That felt too hard. Yeah, it’s a hard hole. That was like if you play there and you know what to sort of do with it, that’s fine. Yeah, if you just rock up, you know you haven’t got like a yardage.

Jim: 33:53

Look at the scorecard you’re thinking, oh right, it goes there.

Nish: 33:57

I knew because I was with Chris and he knew he was like yeah, so that’s where we’re going. But yeah and then you sort of get through. You have to hit through this little valley and you can’t. It’s high up but it’s a V. But then you go through it and you’re like what’s on the other side? I just have no idea and you’re expecting, because if it ends up in some goals.

Chris: 34:15

So of those, once you play it a couple of times, it’s actually not that difficult, it’s not if you play it as a par five and play it as a three shot. It’s actually. It’s not that difficult. You can drive a seven iron wedge into it and it’s actually the third shot isn’t that difficult.

Jim: 34:28

It’s the first two shots that are difficult yeah, I think what we’re trying to say, basically, is that, um, that you need to play all these courses twice, because the first time it’s just yeah, so they’re in the second time 200 in 20, yeah, right.

Nish: 34:41

Well, that’s our dream. 18 and that’s that. So that’s the official ratings which we’ve obviously our ranking system, which we’ve obviously found out, is just innuendo central.

Chris: 34:49

Our ranking system isn’t it’s just what innuendo is innuendo central?

Nish: 34:53

yeah, we just see what we see and we just like, yeah, let’s whack it in there, and but we’re going to put more commentary about the actual course and stuff like that on the on the site. So and obviously we talk about it on the podcast.

Jim: 35:04

So, yeah, I think it’s a really good reference actually for other people who are interested in going to play in the new courses next time on the top 100 in 10 golf podcast.

Nish: 35:14

It’s our christmas special.