2024 Year in Review
It was a tough year for the blog, but not for the wiki.
The name of this blog is an archaic colloquialism that means a fist fight between gentlemen, and I want to make sure I’m not immune to criticism. So, I’ve decided to do another year in review. I like to briefly discuss the articles I wrote and ask for feedback again, especially constructive criticism. Please let me know what you thought of these articles, where I’m doing well, and where I could improve.
Course Profiles
Gleneagles GC at McLaren Park
This year was dominated by an urgency to bring attention to one of my favorite municipal courses in the Bay Area: Gleneagles GC at McLaren Park. The course is rough around the edges (many people hate it for this reason), and it isn’t particularly pretty, but it’s one of the most challenging courses in the city. Most importantly, I think the architecture there is subtle, and worth studying.
Unfortunately, there had been some loose talk about the city potentially closing the course, and my understanding is that the lease last year was month-to-month, which basically makes the situation impossible for the operator, who has to balance investing in an asset with the fact that the place could be closed at any point. Thankfully the city has reached a deal with the operator, and the course should remain open at least for another year.
Here were the articles:
Holes #1 & #10
Jan 10, 2024
Holes #2 & #11
Feb 02, 2024
Holes #3 & #12
Mar 27, 2024
Holes #4, #5, #13 & #14
Jun 26, 2024
Holes #6 & #15
Jul 30, 2024
Holes #7 & #16
Aug 23, 2024
Holes #8 & #17
Aug 30, 2024
Holes #9 & #18
Sep 26, 2024
Hole #19: Old Peculiar’s
Oct 10, 2024
I spent the vast majority of my writing on this project, and the lease renewal made me glad that I was able to help bring attention to the situation in the little way that I could. Unfortunately, this meant I didn’t have a lot of time for other writing.
Golf Architecture in Yosemite National Park
Nov 13, 2024
This was really an interesting course. I sort of think about the idea that there must be some courses out there with very minimal maintenance, that sort of just exist in nature without constant upkeep. This might be the way it is in rural Scotland, but there aren’t many here in America. However, there are a few and this is one of them. It’s worth a visit for that reason. The greens are fuzzy, and the air is thin, but I had a good time there with my persimmons.
Abstract Golf Architecture in the Middle of Nowhere
Dec 13, 2024
This was a pretty critical look at Marfa’s municipal golf course. It was a very strange experience to play there, expecting quite a bit, but leaving more confused than when I arrived. I really did love the town and plan on going back there.
Others
Courses that I probably could have written a profile of but didn’t include Poppy Hills, Lake Merced, Olympic Ocean, Talking Stick O’odham, the Lido, and a few others. I don’t think any of these high-end courses needs someone like me writing flowery prose about them, but I’ll give my honest assessment in here.
Poppy Hills is very focused on being very pretty. I really felt unsettled by it nearly the entire time I was there. The idea of a perfectly manicured course really clashes with rustic the sandy pine tree feel within of the S.F.B. Morse Botanical Reserve. The course is fine. It’s worth it if you’re an NCGA member. I really just couldn’t get past the obvious commitment to verdancy.
Lake Merced I really enjoy. The holes I really like are not the darlings of the “restovation.” I think the sixth is my favorite hole. I love the speed-bump contours on the two greens that have them (four and six). I really like the ninth green.
Olympic Ocean I think has an appropriate reputation. The people that love that style of architecture (basically Harding Park with elevation) seem confused by the criticisms. The people who criticize it seem to pile on for no reason. It’s nice enough. I really enjoyed the third hole because of it’s Biarritz-like approach. Some holes really impressed me, others seemed like they looked very nice, but played very plain.
Talking Stick O’odham I went to see on the same trip to Marfa. It went there because it’s supposed to be interesting, and it is interesting. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but my point is that something can be extremely interesting and worthwhile even if you don’t love it. It’s extremely flat, and some of the holes seem repetitive. I do think the highlights are really something special: two, four, five, eleven, twelve. I think the best part of the course is that it probably gets better with repeat play, because the width is huge, and worth exploring. I also think it probably plays very well in different wind conditions.
My visit to the Lido was very special. The unique private-but-not-private status of the course is a bit strange, however, the course speaks for itself, and I was very, very impressed. I wrote about this at some length on Golf Club Atlas, so you can see the more thoughts there. I just think that many people won’t like this course because it’s truly from a previous era of golf, and it’s not supposed to play the way people thing it’s supposed to play. I also speculate they intentionally made the bunkering deeper than it maybe should be, because they seem absolutely surreal, and we know that they had limited information on the z-axis of the course when they were building it.
Articles
Golf Course Rankings are Mostly Useless
May 02, 2024
I think this was the most significant piece of the year. The article is about the non-polarity of aesthetics. I really wanted to explore the ideas of Howard Moskowitz when applied to golf course rating systems, as the ratings industry that drives much of quality golf development seems to be a perennial source of interest and frustration.
This is the type of post I most like writing. A solid idea, some feedback (often confused and/or hostile), all while I try to communicate an idea that I think I correct, even if it is uncomfortable and/or we don’t want it to be correct.
Quick Posts
Quick posts are ones that I consider just publishing something on, even if my ideas are not entirely well thought out, and that I might be wrong about:
I Think We Need to Talk About the Implications of the New Push to Copyright Golf Courses.
Feb 27, 2024
This was an article about an extension of copyright to golf course architecture. I think that’s a very bad idea, simply because copyright is already extremely over-expansive, and shouldn’t apply to practical things, like clothing, recipes, games, and landscapes in general. Some might disagree, but we are lucky we don’t live in a world where something as commonplace as “athleisure” is illegal to produce because the copyright will be held by a designer for the next 90 years.
Home Sick
Aug 01, 2024
This was a quick article about what I was working on because I had nothing to do since I was home sick for a week or so. Not much of interest, but I always like giving people a chance to remember this blog is mainly about supporting the golf course wiki project.
San Francisco Public Golf Alliance Fundraiser
Oct 30, 2024
The fundraiser came and went. Nobody even bid on my favorite item, but it was quite expensive. I occasionally volunteer there and so I wanted to give them a shout.
Golf Course Wiki
Tournaments
The changes I’ve been working on for the wiki have been a slog. This year I developed a tournament operating system that uses the wiki data so that clubs can, ideally, host tournaments very cheaply. I’m still slowly finishing that and will start beta testing it this year. That has all happened behind the scenes, but it’s quite challenging to program. I’ll have to figure out a way to deal with posting scores because that seems like the most important part of the post-tournament data entry. We’ll see what happens.
Scotland
I also added every course in Scotland that I can find. That has gone well, if being very time consuming. I touched on that on the Home Sick post. I think I will focus on California again next year.
Vector Tiles
Probably the most important change of the year is that I completely switched the back end mapping system from Leaflet to MapLibre. This let me switch from raster tiles to vector tiles, which ended up saving me at least $20 on site operation costs. Hopefully the only change you notice is an improvment in rendering. A big thanks to the folks who operate OpenFreeMap, I’ll probably throw some cash there way soon as a thank you.
Lists
Some most recent work I’ve been doing has to do with creating lists. I’ve only made a few so far: Club TFE’s course profiles (which need updating), Golf Club Atlas’ course profiles and custodian list (they have added The Park since I last updated), and I’m currently working on a list of courses with grazing animals. Figuring out a way to sort of open up this list so that people can publish their own lists is a definite goal.
Courses Added/Updated
Finally, I’m very pleased with the new work that got finished. I got a few message from people this year that wanted to know if the site was actually active (it is), and I thought it wasn’t great that people might thing that. So, I added the feature that posts the number of courses added/updated in the last week/month/year (depending on the threshold of courses that have been).
This actually ended up being a lot of work, because I run the site on a shoe string, and this update actually kind of overloaded the memory a lot (it happens but not every day), and so I had to completely rewrite how the front page is cached. I think the result is quite nice, and lets people know that others are using the site and contributing.
If you want to check out this update, it just takes same variables in the URL:
Added in the last: day, week, month, year.
Modified in the last: day, week, month, year.
What’s Next
I’ll try to get back to my more traditional style of long form nerd-shit this year. I’m currently working on something about a private histories of private clubs. I’ve been trying to get to it on-and-off for a while now, and it’s been a tough one to write because I haven’t found a framework to discuss the ideas behind the facts in a way that I’m comfortable with.
So, again, it’s been a different year than I expected on this blog, but I’m excited to get things back to normal. I always tell people to reach out, especially if you’re in the Bay Area. I’d be happy to grab a round of golf.
Thanks for reading again this year,
Matt
Some great insights and variety throughout the year. Keep up the good work