Best/Favorite Courses

[Mando]

After reading the superlative sharing thread, which is great,I've been thinking about a formula to identify not just the best courses, but also factor in the favorites. This is what I came up with;
Trusted reviewers ratings plus percent favorited for a best-favorite total.
I used TR ratings because they eliminate the local drive-bys and are easy to pull up.
I included temporary courses and extinct courses to see how they all would stack up.

So, here are the results so far;
Flip City 5.4
Flyboy Aviation 5.4
Birds of Paradise 5.3
Black Jack 5.3
Selah Lakeside 5.27
Idlewild 5.24
Maple Hill 5.18
Blue Gill 5.18
Bucksnort 5.18
Highbridge Hills-Blueberry 5.15
Sugaree 5.15
Harmon Hills 5.13
Beaver Ranch 5.13
Gran Canyon 5.11

And yea if you are wondering, I'm bored and snowed in.

 

[Dave242]

How can anyone's "best" be any different than their "favorite"?

The only valid reason I can think of is sentimentality - fond memories of the course you learned to play on could make a course your favorite even if now you think the course is nothing special in and of itself.

 

[mrclc]

How can anyone's "best" be any different than their "favorite"?

The only valid reason I can think of is sentimentality - fond memories of the course you learned to play on could make a course your favorite even if now you think the course is nothing special in and of itself.

For me personally, the gap between "best" and "favorite" is based upon my skill level. I can play something that is way too difficult for me and recognize it as the "best" course I've ever played. However, I'm more likely to pick my "favorite" as a high-quality course where I had the most fun.

 

[biscoe]

In my opinion the 2 are not necessarily related. The Woodshed is definitely one of my 3-4 favorite courses but there are huge design flaws in it that make it far from the best course i have ever played.

 

[jaimem26]

After reading the superlative sharing thread, which is great,I've been thinking about a formula to identify not just the best courses, but also factor in the favorites. This is what I came up with;
Trusted reviewers ratings plus percent favorited for a best-favorite total.
I used TR ratings because they eliminate the local drive-bys and are easy to pull up.
I included temporary courses and extinct courses to see how they all would stack up.

So, here are the results so far;
Flip City 5.4
Flyboy Aviation 5.4
Birds of Paradise 5.3
Black Jack 5.3
Selah Lakeside 5.27
Idlewild 5.24
Maple Hill 5.18
Blue Gill 5.18
Bucksnort 5.18
Highbridge Hills-Blueberry 5.15
Sugaree 5.15
Harmon Hills 5.13
Beaver Ranch 5.13
Gran Canyon 5.11

And yea if you are wondering, I'm bored and snowed in.

Wow, it is funny that you did this because just today as I was browsing courses I noticed that Flip City was no longer listed as number one and I added took a look at the reviews for the new top two courses. While i did that i noticed that some of the higher rated courses do not have nearly as many reviews as others and thought it would be interesting to have a more weighted score to represent a more true rating.

Good call.

 

[scarpfish]

How can anyone's "best" be any different than their "favorite"?

Water Works in Kansas City is my favorite course. I only gave it a 4, largely because due to progress in our game its really not at the top of the heap in regards to challenge anymore.

 

[thatdirtykid]

Its nice to see Beaver Ranch on the list, its much better than the currenly better ranked Buckhorn (fun course but not diverse enough to be top 10)

Although in an ideal world Beaver would be ranked best, and buckhorn more peoples favorite...

 

[Jukeshoe]

After reading the superlative sharing thread, which is great,I've been thinking about a formula to identify not just the best courses, but also factor in the favorites. This is what I came up with;
Trusted reviewers ratings plus percent favorited for a best-favorite total.
I used TR ratings because they eliminate the local drive-bys and are easy to pull up.
I included temporary courses and extinct courses to see how they all would stack up.

So, here are the results so far;
Flip City 5.4
Flyboy Aviation 5.4
Birds of Paradise 5.3
Black Jack 5.3
Selah Lakeside 5.27
Idlewild 5.24
Maple Hill 5.18
Blue Gill 5.18
Bucksnort 5.18
Highbridge Hills-Blueberry 5.15
Sugaree 5.15
Harmon Hills 5.13
Beaver Ranch 5.13
Gran Canyon 5.11

And yea if you are wondering, I'm bored and snowed in.

Seems like a legit list at first glance.

 

[Jukeshoe]

For me personally, the gap between "best" and "favorite" is based upon my skill level. I can play something that is way too difficult for me and recognize it as the "best" course I've ever played. However, I'm more likely to pick my "favorite" as a high-quality course where I had the most fun.

^This exactly.

France Park is probably my most favorite course to play...it's pure fun geared for my personal tastes and skill set.

That said, I gave it a 3.5.

West Lake Park is a course I HATED playing. But I gave it a higher rating than my favorite course because objectively that's just how they stack up.

 

[Dave242]

Water Works in Kansas City is my favorite course. I only gave it a 4, largely because due to progress in our game its really not at the top of the heap in regards to challenge anymore.

For me personally, the gap between "best" and "favorite" is based upon my skill level. I can play something that is way too difficult for me and recognize it as the "best" course I've ever played. However, I'm more likely to pick my "favorite" as a high-quality course where I had the most fun.

^This exactly.

France Park is probably my most favorite course to play...it's pure fun geared for my personal tastes and skill set.

That said, I gave it a 3.5.

West Lake Park is a course I HATED playing. But I gave it a higher rating than my favorite course because objectively that's just how they stack up.

So, what you guys are saying is that you presume to know the exact/ideal person for whom courses are designed....and that person is not you. Who is this person? How many perfectly designed elementary school courses have you assigned a 4+ rating to? If you want to be consistent with your mindset here, I hope you have taken this into consideration in your ratings.....otherwise you do a disservice to the designers.

In my opinion the 2 are not necessarily related. The Woodshed is definitely one of my 3-4 favorite courses but there are huge design flaws in it that make it far from the best course i have ever played.

This is the only argument that carries some sort of logic: the rating of the technical design of the course. Problem is, most people are not experienced/qualified to do this (you are, John), and unless you have an in-depth conversation with the designer about the constraints put on him/her, you cannot fairly/accurately grade design decisions/implementations.

For these reasons, "Best" has got to be the same as "Favorite" on DGCR. But as you guys point out, unfortunately it isn't.

 

[Jukeshoe]

Haven't we discussed the differences in rating rubrics ad nauseam in other threads, Dave?

 

[sisyphus]

...I mean that in a good way.

We all would love to quantify greatness, but to each his own!

 

[reposado]

How can anyone's "best" be any different than their "favorite"?

well, it also brings in a different set of people/votes...

some people don't write reviews, but do favorite courses.

others, me included, don't favorite courses

 

[BogeyNoMore]

For me personally, the gap between "best" and "favorite" is based upon my skill level. I can play something that is way too difficult for me and recognize it as the "best" course I've ever played. However, I'm more likely to pick my "favorite" as a high-quality course where I had the most fun.

Boom.

Idlewild... way above my skill level. I don't necessarily relish going to play there again, and will make a point to play Mt Airy and Lincoln Ridge before I play Idlwild next time I visit the Cincy area. Nonetheless, Idlewild is an incredible course for the intended skill level.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

That said, I think some of us (myself included) don't necessarily do that good a job of separating how good a course is, from how challenging it is. If you start digging around the ratings, you'll see that championship level courses tend to get higher ratings and the more beginner level courses typically lower rated.

That's why I really like courses that do a truly great job of accommodating different skill levels with alternate tees and pin placements... some definitely do it better than others.

 

[Dave242]

Haven't we discussed the differences in rating rubrics ad nauseam in other threads, Dave?

Isn't that all that happens on DGCR forums - discussing the same topics ad nausea?

Admittedly, this is an attempt by Mando to re-quantify something a maybe a new way.

I wonder how different his list comes out from just using course ratings. If it doesn't come out much different, my point is moot....and so does his exercise. If it does come out significantly different, we'll have to make sense of the data.....and my points are sure to be a big contributor to making sense of the difference.

 

[Dave242]

well, it also brings in a different set of people/votes...

some people don't write reviews, but do favorite courses.

others, me included, don't favorite courses

Excellent point! I had not really thought of that.

 

[Jimb]

Knobley Mt. is one of my favorites... because it's in my yard, errr... woods.

But, realistically, it's not one of the best due to so many physical site limitations.

Relevance to this thread??? I'm not really sure!

And is there anything wrong with "sentimentality - fond memories of the course" making it one of your favorites?

This measure could be a blend of objectivity and subjectivity. Assuming that ratings are subjective, which we know they aren't a lot of the time, it could be an interesting bit of trivia. And since the op went with TRs, maybe there's enough subjectivity to make this a valid experiment.

 

[Jukeshoe]

Isn't that all that happens on DGCR forums - discussing the same topics ad nausea?

True true.

 

[Dave242]

After reading the superlative sharing thread, which is great,I've been thinking about a formula to identify not just the best courses, but also factor in the favorites. This is what I came up with;
Trusted reviewers ratings plus percent favorited for a best-favorite total

What is your exact formula? How do you factor in favorites?