A lesson from wine

Golf Digest’s ranking of the Top 100 courses in South Africa has come and gone but still the controversy rages at 19th holes all over the country.

Some of the discussion centres on whether Leopard Creek is really better than the Gary Player Country Club or whether a private course with a R1000-plus green fee should even be in the rankings, but the most heated debate surrounds golfers’ feelings about the ranking of their own course.

And invariably the emotion expressed is one of extreme dissatisfaction. In fact, I believe the only people ever completely satisfied with the annual list are those who represent that course that comes out on top.

It is a brave undertaking to try to grade the courses given all the variables and I know the task is carried out with great care and sincerity by my old friend and colleague Stuart McLean, editor of SA Golf Digest, whom I admire for inviting so much condemnation into his life.

Having been on the panel for a few years I believe there is no mean one can apply to rate one course against another. The criteria are too plentiful, the conditions too changeable and the human element too pertinent to range a bushveld course like Leopard Creek against an amazing man-made creation such as The Links and say one is better than the other.

This was brought home to me when I fell into a discussion about the new layout at Pretoria Country Club. I admitted that I was disappointed with what I had seen; believing that the idea of the deep pot bunkers, like great dinosaur tracks, had been carried too far and that the hazards themselves were too severe; especially when I was told that senior and lady members sometimes drop out of them under penalty.

My inquisitor on the other hand felt that a superb job had been done to revive “a tired old course.” There you have it; opposite ends of the scale, no two golfers are ever in complete agreement.

Trying one evening, at one of the best watering holes in the country, to placate members of my own club, Parkview, who were deeply, and perhaps justifiably, disappointed that their course had slipped five places down the rankings to 47th I recalled a lesson I once learned about wine.

Many years ago while I was working in the Cape the Western Province Sportswriters Society obtained a sponsorship for the Western Province Sportsman of the Year banquet and awards from KWV.

As part of our agreement the awards were changed to the Winelands Sportsman of the Year - apt for the region in that it incorporated the Boland, the hinterland of our sponsor, and avoided the potential embarrassment of their having too close a tie-up with a certain province.

One of the perks of being on the organising committee was an annual planning meeting at KWV’s head office in Paarl followed by an elegant lunch accompanied by a selection of the best products of the region.

This provided an ideal opportunity for a lager-stained sportswriter to get one up on snooty, supposed, wine connoisseurs by tapping into some real knowledge so I asked KWV’s chief winemaker to name me his best wine in the region in the hope that it would provide me with a trump card for when next I was confronted with the pretentious prattle of some amateur wine fundi.

I was surprised by his reply. “What is your current favourite wine?” he asked. I mumbled a brand, probably Spier “droë rooi” which was 75c a bottle at the time. “Well that is the best wine in the Cape,” said the esteemed vintner.

What he meant was that a good or bad wine was in the palate of the taster. In other words your favourite wine is the best for you though it might not be so for someone else… and it is much the same with golf courses. It is simply impossible to decide that one is better than another given the vast differences in weather, topography and budget.

The best course will always be the one you most enjoy playing and being at and if that happens to be a course ordinaire who is to tell you you’re wrong?