Confidentiality, Waived

In making my monthly pilgrimage to John Garrity's Top 50 site, John made me aware of something I had missed a couple of years ago, namely that Tom Doak is working on an update to his The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses.

If you're not familiar with this book, here's the background. Doak is a golf course architecture rock star in the present, after wild success with Pacific Dunes, Ballyneal, Old Macdonald and Cape Kidnappers, amongst others. But 15 years ago he was an absolute nobody, touring golf courses and writing out his opinions without fear or favor. These strong opinions were published in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, which has achieved cult classic status in the intervening years. The initial publishing run was 12,000 copies, and it can still be found but at $278.00 for a used copy has been too rich for my blood.

The fun of it is that Doak called it as he saw it, which some found to be self-righteous and self-promoting, but most took to be wicked fun. From a 2012 Golf Course Architecture post, a small sample of the names named:

Initial editions of the Guide described Jack Nicklaus' PGA West course as having some of the 'worst-looking mounds' in golf (Doak and Nicklaus have since combined to design Sebonack on Long Island in New York) and declared Cypress Point's eighteenth was one of the worst finishing holes he'd seen.

Of Seaton Carew in northeast England, Doak lamented in previous editions: "I was too chilled by the setting to even walk the course," before adding that the nearby cooling towers were "too reminiscent of Three Mile Island for there to be any joy in golf here." 

Garrity also mentioned a Doak Newsletter summarizing the best golf courses and golf holes discovered in 2013. I can't find this anywhere, which is really ticking me off. Though time spent at Doak's Renaissance Golf website is not hard duty, as it features some great photography, including this Hannah Smith photo of the new Punchbowl Putting Green at Bandon Dunes:

Assuming Doak delivers (and that the new Confidential Guide is not too sanitized), that will solve one of my two out-of-print golf book issues.  The second is George Bahto's 2002 biography of Charles Blair Macdonald, The Evangelist of Golf, currently available through Amazon for $690 and change.