Pebble Seaside, left, and Pacific Dunes each are visible stunners.
Getty Pictures
What’s in a quantity?
GOLF’s new rating of High 100 Programs within the U.S. is precisely that: an inventory of the greatest programs within the nation, organized in numerical order, “1” being the perfect.
Sounds simple. Onerous figures, exhausting information. However as anybody who follows the rankings is aware of, whereas the roster itself is cut-and-dried, the considering behind it isn’t. It displays the views of our course raters. Eager-eyed and well-traveled, these of us know their stuff. However finally what they’re providing are their opinions. Which brings us again to the query on the prime.
What’s in a quantity? Or, put extra straight, what makes one course “higher” than one other that occurs to take a seat decrease within the rankings?
To supply a deeper understanding of the concerns behind the rankings, we’ll be asking our raters within the days forward to take a aspect in a “which is healthier?” debate: a comparability of programs meant to make clear how our panelists take into consideration design. We’ll begin with two outstanding public-access programs, Pebble Seaside Golf Hyperlinks, in California, and Pacific Dunes, in Oregon, ranked ninth and nineteenth, respectively, on GOLF’s new High 100 U.S. listing.
Which is healthier? Learn on.
Pebble Seaside is healthier!
by High 100 Course rater Tom Brown
The latest development amongst golf architects is to talk in breezy tones about “pure golf” after which swap gears the following minute into studying topographic LIDAR survey information to clarify the utmost potential of a website from the standard of the land’s humps and bumps on the map.
No high-tech readings are required at Pebble. The response it triggers is visceral, uncooked. Relating to golf, the Monterey Peninsula remains to be the perfect nature on supply. The largest difference-maker for a course that payments itself because the “best assembly of land and sea” is, in reality, proximity to the ocean, nowhere extra dramatically than on the seventh and 18th holes, the place the assembly occurs at grade. It simply can’t be beat.
Pacific Dunes wins on grassing, inexperienced complicated selection, bunkering, movement. However Pebble edges Pacific Dunes total on the stroll, the ending gap and the seaside golf aesthetic. As for LIDAR information, who is aware of which website is healthier, however numerous golf architects hold submitting plans to enhance Pebble’s routing. Good luck with that.
As a remaining level to tip the size, I’ll consult with Jack Nicklaus, who named Pebble’s eighth his favourite gap in golf.
Pacific Dunes is healthier!
by High 100 Course rater Jeff Lewis
The extra choices there are for pictures, the higher the golf course. Hyperlinks programs are inclined to have extra greens on floor stage that may be approached in numerous methods. Additionally they are inclined to have extra selection as a result of wind shifts from hour to hour and everyday make them extra attention-grabbing.
Pebble calls itself a “hyperlinks” however it’s actually a parkland course by the ocean. A nice parkland course by the ocean. However it isn’t a hyperlinks. Pacific Dunes is a part of Bandon Dunes Resort, which has achieved the truest illustration of UK/Eire hyperlinks circumstances in the US. I’d say that solely Cabot Hyperlinks in Nova Scotia is as true to the British Isles in its circumstances.
The climate alongside the southern coast of Oregon is so much like that of the UK that the greens employees, mainly from the start, have been capable of recreate the turf circumstances discovered on basic hyperlinks programs. That’s crucial. Simply since you design a course with greens that permit a number of strategies of strategy doesn’t imply it is going to be potential if the course is simply too darned mushy. Too mushy is de facto by no means the case in Oregon.
Clearly, Pacific Dunes can also be attractive. In all probability simply as breathtaking as Pebble on any given day. However for me, it will get the nod as a result of I’ll all the time take a hyperlinks course and all that comes with it over a parkland course.
