Without question, the most important golf book of my adult life (excluding my own!) has been Tom Doak’s The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. I recently learned that Doak’s groundbreaking one-volume work – long out of print and now a valuable collector’s item – is now being updated, expanded and republished as a five-volume series, a revelation which makes me at once giddy, scared and wistful.
The concept behind Doak’s Guide, first published to a general audience in 1996, is as simple as it was revolutionary: take one of the world’s best golf course architects and let him talk freely and pointedly about the best – and worst – designs in the world. Doak is ridiculously well-travelled, and the original Guide rates more than 1,000 courses on five continents on a 1-10 scale with two quirks: the average golf course in the world merits a “3” instead of a “5”, giving him more scope to differentiate between superlative courses; and a special rating of “0” is reserved for courses “so contrived and unnatural, wasting ridiculous sums of money in their construction, that they may poison your mind and probably shouldn’t have been built in the first place.”
That quotation reflects the Guide’s origins as an unvarnished dossier for 40 of his friends who were always asking him where to play golf. Doak isn’t impressed by fancy clubhouses, manicured greens, historical tradition or big-name reputations: he simply assesses the quality of each design and how one might go about engaging the architecture. Doak’s reasons for liking golf courses – foremost among them being memorable natural terrain and holes built to use it productively, not artificially – almost perfectly match mine. (No wonder he’s probably my favorite architect working today.) And his informal and utterly readable tone turned a potential coffee table snoozer into a font of knowledge worth perusing and poring over again and again.
Other golf books from my youth perhaps shaped my life more than the Guide; anthologies by Dan Jenkins and Herbert Warren Wind inspired me to write about golf, while Wind and Michael Bamberger’s To the Linksland first prompted me to consider living in Scotland. But ever since my first adolescent trip to the Monterey Peninsula, I’ve always craved exposure to great golf course architecture. I mean, I chose which university I’d attend largely because in trying out for the Harvard golf team I’d probably get to play the team’s home course – a certain Ryder Cup and US Open venue in Brookline, Massachusetts – at least once or twice. And here, in the Guide, I now discovered the intimate secrets of golf’s most wondrous treasures.
Consumption of the Guide went hand in hand with the discussion forum at GolfClubAtlas.com, a website teeming with architectural savants and strong opinions in copious measure. I used GolfClubAtlas to scratch the itches with which the Guide covered me, learning more about what made architecture good and discovering more and more places I wanted to play. When I moved to London, I befriended several fellow connoisseurs and crisscrossed the country in their company, each new trip more memorable than the last: Pennard (Guide rating: 6) and Royal Porthcawl (7) in Wales; Burnham and Berrow (5) and Saunton East (6) in the west of England; Ganton (8) and Woodhall Spa (8) in the north; Swinley Forest (8) and many others southwest of London. In 2001 I travelled to a GolfClubAtlas rendezvous at the Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon and played my first Tom Doak course, Pacific Dunes (a perfect 10 in my book). Doak himself joined me and more than a dozen GCAers on a pilgrimage to Painswick in Gloucestershire, a bastion of quirky architecture which instantly became legendary on GolfClubAtlas after another member posted photos of it. An Australian GCAer even helped arrange my golfing tour of the Melbourne Sand Belt in 2003: Royal Melbourne West (10), Kingston Heath (8), Commonwealth (8), Victoria (7)….
A turning point arrived in 2004. Another GCAer organized a game for me at Pine Valley, widely considered the best course in the world, during a forthcoming work-related training trip to New York. But two nights before my flight, another company made me a job offer I couldn’t really refuse. Should I immediately tell my employer the truth, and possibly forfeit the ultimate golf course experience? I did, and I did: integrity cost me a date with architectural destiny. Possibly for the first time, I chose not to be ruled by my strongest golfing passion.
The scales before my eyes began to fall. I now lived on Scotland’s “Golf Coast”, belonged to two golf clubs – nearby Dunbar and distant Machrihanish – with wonderful links courses, and played competitive golf everywhere from Royal Dornoch to Silloth-on-Solway. The Guide and GolfClubAtlas now instilled jealousy of faraway fantasies, spoiling my contentment with the abundant riches on my doorstep. Was I really a student of golf course architecture, or merely a bedpost notcher addicted to the thrill of new conquests? My answer to that question – probably a bit of both – didn’t feel right enough.
So I drifted away from GolfClubAtlas, and I stopped studying the Guide, and ultimately I’m probably happier for it. I’m already blessed beyond belief at the golfing life I’ve managed to live, far beyond what I ever dreamed growing up in suburban Atlanta. I’ll probably never play Pine Valley or Sand Hills or Barnbougle Dunes or Cape Kidnappers…but that’s OK. The publication of a new five-volume Guide – now featuring ratings from three new contributors, including GolfClubAtlas founder Ran Morrissett, in addition to Doak himself – frightens me, much as a recovering alcoholic might fear a new pub opening next door to his flat. But as with most of life, I’ve found that the secret to golfing happiness involves moderation in all things, including moderation. Now, I wonder: has Doak properly revised his overly hasty rating of Dunaverty Golf Club in Argyll from a “2” to at least a “4” or “5”? I jolly well hope so.
The first two volumes of the updated Confidential Guide can be purchased via www.renaissancegolf.com/books/.