The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses

Most fun, though, is the "Gazeteer" Doak concludes with. It offers list after list of roll calls like the most beautiful clubhouses, best walks, courses worth groveling to play, courses most fun to play, hardest courses, longest courses, best opening holes, best finishing holes, and unusual hazards (like the goats at Lahinch, the wild horses at Pennard, and the railway at Prestwick). If The Confidential Guide does not exactly qualify as sacred text, it's certainly one of golf's more deliciously profane ones. --Jeff Silverman

Once you've browsed through, read cover-to-cover, and pored over the pictures, "Confidential Guide" is a book that you will refer back to every time you travel for golf.

I don't know which is more impressive... that Doak has visited all of these by a young age, or the way his lifetime of impressions from world travel is summarized for the reader.


An Intelligent (and Irreverent) Examination of Golf Courses   July 27, 2001
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

There will be plenty of readers who will disagree or even take offense at some of Tom Doak's course ratings and observations (for example, he does NOT give Augusta National a perfect score of 10), but that's all the more reason to peruse this wonderful guide.

There are essentially three sections to this book. In the first part, Doak serves up his "Gourmet's Choice," which includes the best work from golf's best architects - Ross's Pinehurst No. 2, Perry Maxwell's Prarie Dunes, C.B. MacDonald's National Golf Links, and nature's own St.Andrew's (Doak, being a course designer of note himself, includes his own High Pointe in this section).

The second part is a regional/world wide breakdown of courses that Doak has either played or visited. What becomes apparent in this section is that 1) Doak favors courses that are both challenging to the expert player and playable for the average guy, 2) he's not above critical observation of his peers, and 3) has an affection for older courses that employed a minimalist approach (i.e.; limited land-moving, no waste areas, etc.).

Finally, "The Gazeteer" offers a number of quirky, humorous lists of hazzards, best and worst holes, courses to be avoided at all costs, and courses that one's spouse would enjoy.

Again, some may accuse Doak of arrogance and self-promotion, but there is no denying the love he displays for his craft, or the passion of his convictions. As with most books dealing with golf architecture, this one contains a lot of great photography. Plus it's interesting to note that Doak has been hired on as a consultant to do restorations on a number of courses that he panned in this book, including two Seth Raynor designs (Blue Mound, in Milwaukee WI, and Yeomans Hall, in the Charleston, SC area) that had been either "over beautified" or neglected through the years.


Must read   August 8, 2000
 5 out of 6 found this review helpful

This book is one of my favorite books relating to golf. Tom Doak's analysis of courses is dead on, unlike what one other reader erroneously mentioned. If you don't like the courses considered great by Tom Doak, you don't like real golf. I have played his recommended courses whenever possible, and have always been thrilled that I did so. Buy this book, and read it!


I like it more and more.   July 14, 1999
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I sent a note about this book two years ago and I'm sending another because I like it more and more. I've taken some golf trips recently and have used the Confidential Guide to point me in the right direction. Through this book, I've "discovered" some superb courses that I would not have found. And, to boot, said courses are quite often completely unhyped, friendly and unsnobby. If you get the chance to travel quite a bit and you like to find those hidden gems, then this is a great place to start.