Daily Archives: April 6, 2005

Golf Digest’s Greatest 100 American golf courses

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no 17 TPC hole.jpgGolf Digest’s annual survey of America’s Greatest 100 Golf Courses is always an interesting and controversial article, and this year’s edition is no exception.
The following is Golf Digest’s Top 10 courses in the United States or, as one friend of mine from the Midwest points out, “the Top 10 courses near the East and West Coasts”:

1. PINE VALLEY G.C.
Pine Valley, N.J.– George Crump & H.S. Colt (1918)
2. AUGUSTA NATIONAL G.C.
Augusta, Ga.– Alister Mackenzie & Bobby Jones (1933)
3. SHINNECOCK HILLS G.C.
Southampton, N.Y. — William Flynn (1931)
4. CYPRESS POINT CLUB
Pebble Beach, Calif. — Alister Mackenzie & Robert Hunter (1928)
5. OAKMONT C.C.
Oakmont, Pa. — Henry Fownes (1903)
6. PEBBLE BEACH G. LINKS
Pebble Beach, Calif.– Jack Neville & Douglas Grant (1919)
7. MERION G.C. (East)
Ardmore, Pa. — Hugh Wilson (1912)
8. WINGED FOOT G.C. (West)
Mamaroneck, N.Y. — A.W. Tillinghast (1923)
9. NATIONAL G. LINKS OF AMERICA
Southampton, N.Y.?C.B. Macdonald (1911)
10. SEMINOLE G.C.
Juno Beach, Fla.?Donald Ross (1929)

One cannot quibble much with most of this list, although Golf Digest’s Eastern U.S. bias shows with the inclusion of both Shinnecock Hills and National Golf Links of America. Both of those are fine courses and clearly should be included in the Top 100 somewhere, but neither are Top 10 material.
In addition to its East Coast bias, Golf Digest’s annual survey has long had an anti-Texas bias, reflected by its inclusion of only a couple of Texas courses each year in the Top 100. This year, Golf Digest includes the deserving Tom Fazio-designed Dallas National Golf Club (65th) and traditional favorite Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth (73rd), which is really not one of the top ten golf courses in Texas anymore. Texas might not have the number of great golf courses of such golf meccas as Florida, California, and Arizona, but it does have its share of outstanding golf courses that compare favorably with golf courses anywhere. Golf Digest’s persistent failure to include more Texas golf venues among its Top 100 U.S. courses borders on the absurd.
Golf Digest’s annual survey also includes a list of the best courses in each state, and here is its list of the Top 25 Texas courses:

1. Dallas National G.C. Dallas
2. Colonial C.C. Fort Worth
3. Whispering Pines G. C. Trinity
4. Spanish Oaks G. C. Bee Cave
5. The Club at Carlton Woods, The Woodlands
6. Briggs Ranch G. C. San Antonio
7. Champions G. C. (Cypress Creek ) Houston
8. Brook Hollow C. C. Dallas
9. Shadow Hawk G. C. Richmond
10. Crown Colony C. C. Lufkin
11. Royal Oaks C. C. Houston
12 The Rawls Course, Lubbock
13. The Tribute G.C. The Colony
14. River Oaks C. C. Houston
15. Cimarron Hills C. C. Georgetown
16. The Vacquero Club, Westlake
17. Preston Trail G. C. Dallas
18. The Hills C. C. (Flintrock Falls) Austin
19. Barton Creek Resort & Spa (Fazio Foothills) Austin
20. The Club at Comanche Trace, Kerrville
21. Pine Dunes Resort & G. C. Frankston
22. Austin Country Club, Austin
23. Deerwood at the Clubs at Kingwood, Houston
24 Hyatt Hill Country G. C. San Antonio
25. Barton Creek Resort & Spa (Fazio Canyons)

Here are the Houston area golf courses included in that Top 25 list:

3. Whispering Pines G. C. Trinity
5. The Club at Carlton Woods, The Woodlands
7. Champions G. C. (Cypress Creek ) Houston
9. Shadow Hawk G. C. Richmond
11. Royal Oaks C. C. Houston
14. River Oaks C. C. Houston
23. Deerwood at the Clubs at Kingwood, Houston

Golf Digest does a reasonable job with its Texas list, but there are several errors and oversights. As noted above, Colonial is rated far too highly and realistically should come in around number 20 or so. Houston’s Lochinvar Golf Club, which Golf Digest usually rates in the top 10 or so of Texas courses, is not even rated in the top 25 this year. On the other hand, Golf Digest always rates Houston’s River Oaks Country Club highly because of its Donald Ross design, and it is certainly — along with Memorial Park Golf Course — one of Houston’s finest old golf courses. However, there are at least a dozen golf courses in the Houston area alone that are superior to River Oaks, so its rating as number 14 in Texas and six in Houston is a bit too high. The inclusion of Houston’s Royal Oaks at no. 11 in Texas and no. 5 in the Houston area is downright bizarre as that nice but otherwise pedestrian course probably would barely eke into the Top 20 courses in the Houston area, much less all of Texas.
Of Houston’s top three courses, Golf Digest gets it right, although I would rate Champions Cypress Creek first, Whispering Pines second, and Carlton Woods third. I would put Lochinvar at four, followed by Shadow Hawk, Deerwood, and The Woodlands East Course (formerly the TPC at The Woodlands) as the top seven golf courses in the Houston area. By the way, the picture of the golf hole above is no. 17 at The Woodlands East Course — the notorious “Devil’s Bathtub” — and one of the best holes in Houston.
One final note. Two new Houston-area golf courses that are about ready to open may edge their way into the top courses in Texas and the Houston area. First, Rees Jones’ long-awaited tournament course for the Shell Houston Open golf tournament will open this summer at Redstone Golf Club. And then, Tom Fazio’s new course in The Woodlands — where many folks believe the Shell Houston Open should be played — will open on a beautiful piece of land later this year. These two new courses will surely add to the outstanding array of courses that makes Houston one of the truly under-rated golf venues in the United States.

Promising new drug to treat alcoholism

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Alcoholism.jpgA new Journal of the American Medical Association ($) article (abstract here) described in this summary reports on a once-monthly, injectable medication that has been shown to reduce heavy drinking substantially among alcoholics.
The drug is a formulation of naltrexone, a drug that is currently approved to treat alcohol dependence. However, the drug is currently rarely prescribed because it must be taken daily, which most alcoholics simply will not do. Cambridge, Mass.-based Alkermes Inc. filed an application with the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month to approve the drug, which will be known under its brand name of Vivitrex. According to the study, Vivitrex — which must be taken only monthly — has the “potential to improve intervention strategies for alcohol dependence.” Alkermes funded the JAMA-Vivitrex study and the development of the drug was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a unit of the National Institutes of Health.
The NIAAA estimates that up to 18 million Americans have an alcohol-related disorder. Alcohol dependence is defined as women who consume four or more drinks a day on a regular basis and men who consume five or more drinks, which researchers used to define a “heavy drinking” day in the JAMA study involving Vivitrex.
James C. Garbutt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill headed up the study, which involved 624 alcoholic adults. The patients received either an intramuscular injection of 380 milligrams of Vivitrex, 190 milligrams of Vivitrex, or a placebo (i.e., a fake injection), and all of the patients received counseling. Overall, the study showed that the number of “heavy drinking” days was cut by 25%, a drop that researchers deemed “significant” among those using the highest dose of the drug.

Enron-AIG-Berkshire: Regulating earnings management

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Holman Jenkins2.jpgDon’t miss Wall Street Journal ($) columnist Holman Jenkins’ Business World piece today. In analyzing the Lord of Regulation’s assault on American International Group, Inc. and its long history of being rewarded by the market for its adroit management of earnings, Mr. Jenkins makes an interesting point about the importance of trust — or, as he dubs it, the “predictability premium” — in AIG’s business, something that was touched on in this earlier post:

That Mr. Greenberg did his accounting as he thought best was no secret to anybody, even before recent revelations. Money Magazine called AIG a “faith stock,” lumping it with other giant, complex money machines such as GE and Citigroup. This newspaper dubbed it one of the economy’s great “black boxes.” Indeed, the whole reason to own AIG in the 1990s was to reap the predictability premium built into its stock price thanks to Mr. Greenberg’s ability to generate uncannily rising earnings from a complex of more than 100 businesses, including not just insurance, but aircraft leasing, commodity trading and much else.
In some ways, this model was already falling out of step with the business mainstream by the 1980s, long before Enron made “transparency” the central virtue of the new corporate value system. But exceptions were granted to AIG and a few others (like GE). Their opacity might have earned them skepticism in the marketplace, but instead they were awarded higher share prices. AIG sold for about 26 times its earnings, compared to 10 or 15 for most insurers.
Let’s dwell on this for a moment: When the market was the arbiter, it unambiguously rewarded Mr. Greenberg and AIG’s shareholders for applying the techniques of earnings management. The market understood that behind the screen lay all the volatility and mishaps that insurance is heir to, but it applauded Mr. Greenberg for using his wiles to create a security (AIG’s stock) that transmuted that volatility into unnaturally smooth reported earnings.
One big albatross for [former AIG chairman and CEO, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg] will be the Enron overhang. By far, the largest factor in AIG’s stock decline is the evaporation of its predictability premium, not the accounting scandal. But that won’t stop trial lawyers, prosecutors or the media from assuming that the distance between AIG’s peak and its ultimate low reflects the damage Mr. Greenberg personally did to investors.

And in closing, Mr. Jenkins notes that it may still be a tad early to be making a play for AIG stock, which is down almost 30% in value from the beginning of the year:

[AIG’s board of directors] no interest in defending any of this, since board members have learned that their personal fates are best served by running up a white flag. Eliot Spitzer, New York’s attorney general, let it be known this week that their compliance had met with his approval.
There’s also a question of whether, in a market where skepticism rather than trust is the rule, it’s possible or sensible to maintain an organization as complex as AIG. Hold onto your seats for the battle over Starr International, a peculiar entity set up years ago and holding much of the incentive wealth of the company’s top executives. We can’t think of a quicker way to destroy the morale of AIG’s remaining leadership, and thus perhaps the company.