Eugene man's pastime rates among the best.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Golfweek magazine said Pacific Dunes golf course in Bandon was America's second-best modern course in 2004, slightly behind Sand Hills Golf Club in Mullen, Neb., and just ahead of Friar's Head in Baiting Hollow, N.Y.

The editors of the Florida-based magazine know this because people like Kevin Greig of Eugene told them so.

Greig, a 50-year-old partner in the accounting firm of Kernutt Stokes Brandt & Co., is a "course rater" for Golfweek.

Following criteria established by the magazine, Greig and 384 other golfers around the country rate the golf courses they play on a 10-point scale. The averages of all the individual raters' scores become the course's score for the year and provide the basis for the magazine's annual lists of the top courses in America.

Greig has been a member of the magazine's rating team since Golfweek first began putting it together in 1996.

"It's just a volunteer position," Greig said, "but it's a lot of fun."

Greig, a former president of the Eugene Country Club, said he was appointed a course rater after writing a letter in response to "an innocuous blurb" in Golfweek announcing the start of a ratings system to compete with a similar one conducted by Golf Digest magazine.

Unlike Golf Digest, Golfweek maintains separate rankings for "classic" and "modern" courses, the latter being those constructed since 1960.

Greig, who's been playing golf since he was 5 years old ("but I didn't get serious about golf until I was 6 or so") is a 1-handicapper. But Golfweek's course raters include players "of all skill levels, male and female," he said.

He gets to meet other course evaluators at quarterly "Raters' Cup" events the magazine holds at various courses around the country. The events are "combination social and educational" and always include seminars on golf course architecture and design.

Attendance at Raters' Cup events is "on your own nickel," Greig said. In fact, the only benefits to being a course rater are getting to play private courses that you might not otherwise have access to, and occasionally getting to play for free.

"I'd say probably half the courses will 'comp' me and the other half will charge what they'd charge anyone," Greig said. "The (Golfweek) policy is that you don't ask for discounts ... you do whatever the club wants you to do."

Unlike restaurant reviewers, who strive to maintain their anonymity in order to assure the food and service they receive is representative of the establishment's typical offerings, golf course raters always identify themselves up front.

"We're looking strictly at the golf course, not the clubhouse, the pro shop or staff service," Greig said. "Whether they comp me or I pay greens fees just does not influence my opinion of the course at all."

While playing a course, Greig jots notes on ratings forms provided by Golfweek. Those forms call for a 1-10 score on such factors as "ease and intimacy of routing," "interest of greens and surrounding chipping contours," the "variety and memorability" of the holes (with separate categories for the par 3s, the par 4s and the par 5s,) "basic conditioning," the general feel and appearance of the course (which Golfweek calls the "walk in the park test") and an overall score.

After finishing a round, Greig completes his report and e-mails it in. Golfweek does the rest.

The magazine's rating system "has evolved now to where it's more systematized and much more professional than it was when I first got started and they were still trying to invent the wheel," Greig said.

But it's still not exactly rocket science.

"Everybody who's a rater recognizes the subjective nature of rating a golf course," Greig said. "It's like, 'Rembrandt or Picasso - which one's better?' It's highly subjective."

But the sum of dozens of subjective, but informed, opinions does produce meaningful information about the quality of the golf experience a course provides, according to Bradley Klein, the Golfweek editor who oversees the magazine's ratings and its squadron of "course raters."

"There's no science here," Klein said. "It's simply a matter of trying to quantify opinion. ... There's no right or wrong - but there is a consensus."

It's the same kind of consensus used to pick medal winners in Olympic gymnastics - only Golfweek has more than 60,000 judges' scorecards in its database.

Klein said a course has to be rated by a minimum of 15 evaluators before its score is eligible for inclusion on the "Top 100" list.

Some participants in the program rate as many as 100 courses a year. Greig figures he's probably rated that many, total, in the nine years he's been involved.

While he's rated most of the Oregon courses on Golfweek's ballot at least once, he's still looking forward to playing the new Bandon Trails, Peter Jacobsen's Stone Creek and the two courses at The Reserve.

While his colleagues at Golfweek gave Pacific Dunes a score of 9.24 last year and Bandon Dunes an 8.48, Greig says, " I find them very comparable, certainly in terms of the 'walk in the park test.' '

Greig said the course that may have received his highest rating ever is one that many people are unaware of, because it's private and has never hosted any high-profile tournaments.

"I love L.A. Country Club," he said. "It's 350 acres right in the middle of Beverly Hills. I had no expectations and had heard nothing about it. ... Wow, it was fabulous."

Golfweek's raters as a whole weren't quite as impressed. Their composite scores place it behind such classic West Coast icons as San Francisco Golf Club, Olympic and Riviera. Greig had L.A. Country Club ahead of them all.

Which underscores the fact that the ratings lists are just opinions - and opinions created mostly to help sell magazines at that.

Nonetheless, they can be very meaningful to the courses involved.

Greig said he recently read an article that "talked about the amount of money that daily fee courses can charge when they appear on a top 100 list vs. what they could charge before they were on the list - there's a tremendous economic incentive to get the high rating."

And then there's the golf course superintendent who claimed he was fired simply because his course dropped in the rankings.

"I think it's fascinating how powerful these lists have become because it's just a group of people's opinions," Greig said. "And, really, there are so many wonderful golf courses. It's like wine connoisseurs arguing over different vintages - it's fun debate, but it's pretty silly."

CAPTION(S):

Kevin Greig is serious about golf, as shown by the putting green located in his backyard. An accountant, Greig also works as a course rater for Golfweek magazine. Thomas Boyd / The Register-Guard A display case contains logo balls for some of the various courses played by Kevin Greig.