Many golfers would choose Pebble Beach for their last "before I die round" anywhere in the world, but according to Conde Nast Traveler, it is not even top three in California. Courtesy: Joann Dost

There is a special place in media hell reserved for the people who run the Reader’s Polls at Conde Nast Traveler, a magazine whose ironic tagline is “Truth in Travel,” despite the fact that its polls could not be bigger lies.

Regular readers will know that I despise these polls, and each one that comes out, be it golf, skiing, cruise ships, is more insulting to the public’s intelligence than the last. Just reading the idiocy of these rankings makes me angry, because as a longtime travel media professional, I know exactly how important these ratings are, how thousands of consumers have spent good money on bad experiences because these polls have told them to. Hotels and guide books proudly fly the flags of these ratings, but “Truth in Travel” or no, I am more convinced than ever that the polls are not just terribly flawed, they are fixed.

The only question that I ask myself is, are they fixed by the editors of CNT, or by the properties that want to badly win high rating? My educated guess, having talked to lots of industry insiders off the record, is probably a bit of both.

The new golf poll in the current issue is no exception: it sent me into a rage with its staggering errors, omissions and stupidity. But we’ll come back to that.

In my last analysis, I tackled the cruise line poll, which neatly divided ships into categories based on size, in terms of number of passengers, leaving absolutely no gray area or fudge factor. The poll went on to award The Disney Magic the number one spot in the “Mega Ship” category. It did not matter t the editors that the ship clearly did not belong in this category based on CNT’s own parameters and detail on the number passengers. Under the explicitly stated terms of the poll, the Magic should have been in the smaller “Large Ship” category.

But here’s the catch: if the Magic had been in the correct category, based on its score, it would not have won. Disney, with its cruise ships, multiple hotels and multiple theme parks, is by far the largest advertiser of any company invoiced in the curies ship poll. Coincidence? For years, hotel and marketing folks have been telling me detailed, first person tales of how advertisers sway the rankings, and this looks to me like proof. Of course, putting the Magic in the wrong category could be an honest, albeit idiotic mistake, but based on my ample experience with the way large magazines and fact checking are run, it is hard to see this obvious error slipping by, especially for the big winner.

There have been many other such factual errors in previous polls, with golf resorts that have no golf courses cleaning up in the ratings, ski resorts that are not at ski mountains winning, etc, true physical impossibilities. My other favorite twisting of reality is how in every golf polls they routinely rank exactly the same course differently in terms of “course design” based on where you are staying. The recurring examples are the courses of the Pebble Beach resort, which annually get different quality ratings depending which hotel you sleep at, even though the course ratings are totally distinct from the lodging experience. This year, out of 125 “wining” resorts, there are no fewer than eight examples of different “course design” rankings for the exact same courses.

Without a doubt, Scotland's 54-hole Gleneagles is one of the world's greatest golf resorts - unless you are Conde Nast Traveler which favors unknown single course Mexican resorts.

Most of flaws are subjective, with picks that do not deserve to be anywhere near the top winning and obvious “bests” being ignored. CNT would surely say “well that’s how readers voted,” but if Bon Appétit or Food & Wine did a reader poll of the world’s best restaurant and McDonalds won, it would surely give them pause, which is exactly the way the golf and ski polls come out from CNT, with properties that should not even be in the running winning – like “golf resorts” without golf courses.

These crazy results suggest a fix at the contestant level, and the other day, someone in the know explained to me just how this works. The ballots used to be paper, but today they are “randomly” emailed to subscribers. There is nothing to stop the subscriber from non-randomly forwarding the poll to other voters. A tech savvy hotel might enlist a thousand dupes to fill out the poll in their favor. This might explain why a bevy of non-deserving Mexican resorts, many with ownership or marketing in the US, handily beat out the very best greats of Scotland and Ireland, resorts which any golfer with half a brain would choose first. Is the “problem” with golf in St. Andrews that it is not good, or is the problem that their department of online poll cheating is not good?  Such voting patterns might help explain how the Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa in Avon, CO improbably won for both Best US Ski Resort in last winter’s poll, and Best Western US Golf Resort in this one.

I don’t mean to pick on the Westin, which is a very nice property, and has a great restaurant and which I can honestly recommend as a vacation destination. But there is absolutely no chance in hell that it is the best Ski Resort hotel in the country (it barely qualifies as a ski resort, especially against tons of actual ski-in/ski-out properties from Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, St. Regis and yes, even Westin). Likewise, there is not the slightest chance it is the best golf resort in the Western US. It qualifies as a golf resort by the thinnest of margins, only because it has an exclusive partnership with the not so nearby Red Sky Ranch, an excellent private club. Yes there are other public courses you can play in the area, but if being able to drive to a public course and play makes something a golf resort, than every hotel in the country, from mid-town Manhattan to O’Hare airport is a golf resort. To make matters worse, several much more opulent resorts, including the Four Seasons Vail and the Arabelle have that same Red Sky Ranch relationship, and neither made the list. The Ritz Carlton Bachelor Gulch is the only hotel with the same Red Sky access that made the list, yet in another absolute impossibility, suspending the laws of science, the “Course Design” rating for the Ritz was 92.1, while the Westin got a perfect 100, for exactly the same courses (which are located at neither hotel).

Meanwhile, Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which has THE top ranked public course in the entire country by the industry’s legit golf course rankings, plus two of the top five, and three of the top ten, a level of quality unequalled by any golf resort in the history of the world, and simply could not realistically lose this category (Western US excludes California, and thus Pebble Beach, along with Arizona and Hawaii), came in tenth.

Savvy golfers from around the globe plan epic pilgrimages to Bandon Dues for a once in lifetime golf vacation. How many wake up and say, “Man, I’ve got to play the Westin Avon before I die.”

The constant impossibilities in these rankings, the true unarguable errors, not to mention the glaring idiocy of the results, leads me to only one conclusion: the fix must be in.

To see my past analysis of Conde Nast Traveler’s badly flawed but very high-profile polls, click here, here, here, or here

With 12 courses and multiple hotels, China's Mision Hills is the largest golf resort on earth - and one of the best. But it got beaten in the new Conde Nast Traveler golf poll by a couple of "golf resorts" with no golf at all!

Just because everyone is entitled to their opinion does not mean opinions can’t be wrong. Sometimes they are dead wrong. Like if you tell me that your opinion is that 1+1=3, or that the remake of Planet of the Apes was better than the original, you aren’t just wrong – you are a moron.

Which brings us to Conde Nast Traveler.

In my last post, I looked at the reasons why I strongly believe that the magazine’s very high-profile readers polls on hotels, spas, resorts, cruises and golf, which are taken very seriously by both consumers and the industry, are fixed, both by the participating properties and the magazine itself.

Today I take a look in depth at the brand new 2011 Golf Resort poll in the April issue – and how terribly flawed it is, both subjectively and in terms of reality.

I’ve analyzed past polls and will skip a lot of chatter about the poll’s big recurring flaw, giving the same exact course a different “course design” ranking based on where you sleep, which even an idiot could see is physically impossible. This does not stop the folks at CNT which actually increased such craziness this year: The three courses at Maui’s Wailea residential community are apparently MUCH better (98.4 course design rating) if you stay at the onsite Four Seasons than at the Grand Wailea hotel (93.3), even though they are the same courses and neither hotel owns them and these ratings have nothing to do with lodging or anything else. I know Four Seasons has good service, but do they run out ahead of their guests and cut the greens just for them, then mess the grass up when Wailea guests take the tee? What if a Four Seasons guest and a Grand Wailea guest play in the same foursome? How does the course become worse for the Wailea player? Note to CNT: this is why you have editors.

If this were actually possible, it could really help disappointed golf travelers. Say you play a resort course that you know you are playing again the next day, and you find it not as good as advertised? Simply switch hotels, and when you play it the next day, it might have gotten miraculously better, just as it does in this ranking.

The same happens every poll to the course at Pebble Beach, which take a 2-point drop if you choose the better hotel (?), but the worst example is in Colorado, where the two excellent courses at Red Sky Ranch, by Fazio and Norman, get a perfect score if you stay in the Westin Avon, while dropping precipitously to 92.1 if you stay at the Ritz Carlton Bachelor Gulch. Neither hotel has anything whatsoever to do with the golf courses, which are a private club many miles away from both run by the members which allow hotel guests of these properties to play.

Okay, that bit of totally idiocy is out of the way, For more in-depth analysis of the sheer impossibility of the same courses changing their physical designs based on where players sleep, see my last look at this structural flaw.

Now it is on to the subjective part, the part about idiotic opinions. According to CNT readers, the four courses at Walt Disney World are all absolute perfection in terms of design, the best they could possibly be, averaging a perfect score of 100. Flawless. You can tell me, as earnestly as you like, that in your opinion this collection – which does not include a single course ranked in the Top 100 – is better than the courses at Pebble Beach (ranked 2, 8, and 42 in the US) or than those at Bandon Dunes (1, 5, 10 and 15), and no matter how strongly you feel, I will tell you that you are an idiot. And I will be right.

Not coincidentally, mega-advertiser Disney (whose golf, theme park and hotel products I heartily endorse, by the way) won the CNT cruise poll in a category in which it did not belong, part of my blog on why I think the poll is fixed.

The vaunted Old Course at St. Andrews is on every golfer' must-play list. But it only made it into this poll because Conde Nast Traveler editors got confused and made a mistake - seriously.

What other courses besides the four at Disney achieved absolute perfection in terms of design? None that you would expect, certainly none of the most highly ranked, regarded or critically acclaimed courses on earth. Instead perfection in golf design (again, exclusive of all other factors like hotel quality), was reserved for the two courses at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, CA (nice, but far from the world’s best, and the site of my personal Guinness World Record in golf); CordeValle, CA; Aviara, CA; both courses at Red Sky Ranch: Washington GC, NC (???); the duo at Colonial Williamsburg, VA; Hyatt Hill Country GC, TX; and the 36 on Isle of Palms, SC. Wait there is one more, the course at the Stowe Mountain Lodge in VT, where I live, which isn’t even the best course in golf poor VT, and bears no resemblance whatsoever to perfection.

These kind of choices simply cannot be allowed to stand. They are not to be argued over, like which is better, Lahinch or Ballybunion? They are stupid and idiotic.

If you were to try to choose the “best” golf resort in America, there is certainly room for argument, but it has to come down to one of four: Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, Destination Kohler or Kiawah Golf Resort. Each of these has one of the top four ranked public courses in the nation, which is huge, plus multiple other good quality courses. On sheer golf awesomeness, Pebble and Bandon totally dominate all the real rankings, but since “best resort” also includes lodging and other activities, and Kiawah and Kohler offer true 5-Star accommodations and dining and spas, they are forces to be reckoned with. If you are a really free thinker you could make a long shot argument for Pinehurst or maybe even Reynold’s Plantation. Yet of these four giants, not only was none chosen as the nation’s best, only one, Kiawah, was able to even win its region. Bandon finished a woeful tenth in a “Western” region that excluded California, Arizona and Hawaii, and basically had no one to beat and still lost.

How did the actual best golf resorts in America fare: Bandon Dunes and Pinehurst both finished dead last in their regions, 15th and 20th respectively, behind resorts that not only lack good great golf, but lack mediocre golf. Kohler finished third in a weak region, losing to the Stowe Mountain Lodge, which is about as stupid a result as one could imagine. Pebble for some reason does not get treated as a resort, but rather is split up among its lodging entities unlike any other property in the poll, so it finished second and third. Reynolds finished a respectable fifth, behind three resorts it is clearly superior to.

At least all the top US resorts made the list, even though they got screwed. Overseas, most of the world’s best resorts got completely ignored.

For some reasons, Conde Nast Traveler believes it is important to include a non-golf resort among its very best golf resorts every year. I guess it comes down to how you define a golf resort, but I think it is fair and reasonable to say that it should have at least one actual full sized golf course, either on site or with associated access. Am I being picky by excluding 9-holers, par-3 courses and pitch and putt layouts? If we go below the minimum standard of a least one true course, does that make a hotel with mini-golf facility a golf resort? What about cruise ships with putting greens? What about golf simulators? Is Royal Caribbean’s massive Oasis of the Seas a golf resort? Clearly the editors at CNT do not agree with me that a golf course is required of a golf resort, because last year they awarded high ranking to the Fairmont Southampton in Bermuda, which has a par-3 course and nothing more. Even the folks at Fairmont don’t consider this one of their golf resorts (check their site!), and they have plenty of great golf to brag about. This year CNT readers switched gears and made the second best golf resort in the entire world the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman. Yes, you heard me right. Never thought of a golf trip there? Neither did I. Despite the fact that it is an awesome hotel, arguably the best in the Caribbean, it has only a 9-holer. Nope, not a golf resort.

It gets worse: the Marquis Los Cabos, which finished 22nd in the world, ahead of most of the once of a lifetime golf pilgrimage golf reports actual golfers know, has no golf course, no par-3, no pitch and putt, zero, nada. This logic might help explain why Mexico, which has exactly one curse ranked in the Worlds’ Top 100 took eight of the top intentional spots, blowing away Ireland (7 of the World’s Top 100) and Scotland (11 of the World’s Top 100). Likewise, in Canada, the Four Season’s Whistler, with no golf course, beat the Fairmont Château Whistler, which actually has a standout course. Go figure.

Among the resorts that did not make the list internationally are Mission Hills, the world’s largest golf resort, with 12 high quality courses and every other resort amenity you could imagine; Gleneagles, a Ryder Cup venue with the world’s two best inland links, luxury lodging, Michelin-starred dining and the world’s best slate of non-golf activities and facilities; Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand, most experts pick for the finest single-course golf resort on earth; stunning Cape Kidnappers, also in New Zealand, ranked in the world’s Top 50; Oitavos Dunes in Portugal, the highest ranked resort course in Continental Europe with a swank new luxury hotel on site; Carnoustie, a famed British Open venue with five courses for guests; Lough Erne, the finest golf resort in Northern Ireland; Ireland’s Doonbeg with its stunning course-side lodging; the Fairmont St Andrews with its 36 impressive links holes; and Casa de Campo, the 800-pound gorilla of the Caribbean with what has long been the highest ranked course in the islands plus two others.

The only great golf resort of the British Isles that made the list at all is Scotland’s Turnberry, whose Aisla is quite arguably the finest course on earth, with a luxury hotel, great second course, and spa to match, easily better than anything else on the list, yet it finished 15th. The wonderful Old Course Hotel in St. Andrews, which is a great place to stay made the list, but only because the idiots at CNT made the mistaken assumption that the hotel has something to do with the Old Course. If this was true, their ranking is even worse, because if the Old Course –and its five links siblings – was part of the hotel, it should have finished number one, blowing away the worldwide winner Mayakoba, with one very nice course that’s not even the best in Mexico. But saying the Old Course Hotel has the Old Course because they are next to each other with similar names is like saying the Ritz Carlton Central Park South owns Central Park –  totally wrong. Nonetheless they put a little balloon box linked to the hotel on their chart not only erroneously associating it with the Old Course, but for some reason they feel the need to rewrite golf history. The editors at CNT stupidly claim the Old Course began as a 10-holer in the 1830s, when it actually began hundreds of years earlier and had 22-holes by 1764.

Why do they have to make this stuff up?

Portugal's Oitavos Dunes is the highst ranked rsort course in Continental Europe, with a luxury boutique hotel to match. But there was no room for it in the CNT golf poll because it got beat by places with a 9-holer or no golf at all.

Bottom line: You can access the accuracy, veracity and validity of the poll with one simple question.

If you could take a golf vacation to any golf resort on earth, is there one you would rather visit than a hotel in Mexico or Canada with no golf at all? If you answer yes, throw this poll away as fast as you can. If you answer no, congratulations, there is a job opening on the editorial staff at Conde Nast Traveler with your name on it. Maybe you could edit next year’s golf poll.

Can the winner of the 2010 PGA Championship nab another Major at the Masters this weekend? Yup!

As loyal readers know, I was the first pundit this side of Germany to recognize the greatness that was Martin Kaymer, heralding his ascent and predicting he would finally step into that huge void the media has been harping about the last several years, the role of “the next Tiger.” While I doubt anyone will accomplish what the phenomenal Mr. Woods has done to date (with more to come I hope!), Kaymer is the best non-Tiger player in the world today, and has shown incredible mental toughness and the ability to finish begin Majors. It is no surpise that he very quickly became World Number One in both rankings, an incredible feat to accomplish so fast, whereas most famous golfers playing today have never been number one.

So without further adieu, I am letting you know that I just turned in my Masters pool entry, and I have picked Martin Kaymer to win it all, and as a tie breaker, selected his final score at 273.

I won’t be watching any of the Masters for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that I am not a big fan of long term welfare programs, they don’t give people a hand up, but rather stop them form helping themselves, and this is the case with Augusta National. As long as the public will carry all the costs of running their club and course through TV rights and merchandise, they will never have an incentive to behave rationally, and while there are plenty of ultra-private rich men’s clubs I have no problem with, the others are not hypocritical in taking that snooty position while relying entirely on the American public to pay for their playground. I can’t be part of that, would rather make my charitable contributions elsewhere, and thus, won’t be tuning in and generating ad revenues for the folks in green jackets.

So I will have to wait till Monday and read in the paper how my top three fared:

Martin Kaymer
Tiger Wood
Padraig Harrington

Read all of the great stories on The Masters by TheAPosition.com writers, we’ve created a directory to all of them here!

The Celebrity Solstice got the highest rating among entrants in the Mega Ship category of Conde Nast Traveler's cruise poll. But it did not win. Why not? Read on...

Regular readers know I can’t stand the several reader polls Condé Nast Traveler magazine puts out every year – and they just did it again.

It is not that I dislike the magazine or its readers (after all I am one!). It is because as a longtime expert in the travel and travel journalism business, I know how important these polls are, how seriously readers take them, and how like the Golf Magazine and Golf Digest Top 100 Courses lists, they directly influence how people spend their time and money. That is a tremendous responsibility, so the editors and staffers who work on the poll owe it to the public to get it right – but they never do.

I’m not even arguing over the winners or losers, though those are always problematic (meaning ridiculously idiotic) in these polls, elevating middle of the road properties over the world’s best. My problems are more with the frequent glaring errors of reality. To quickly recap, in the golf polls, which I have written about at length, they regularly give the exact same course a different course quality rating based on where you sleep, even though it is not a combined rating, and hotel and course ratings are different. Pebble Beach Golf Links, just the course itself, is considered to be better or worse depending on which of the resort’s multiple hotels you stay at, including the Inn at Spanish Bay or Lodge at Pebble Beach. That is so stupid as to be offensive. And Pebble Beach is not the only such example.

To make matters worse, they give high marks to golf resorts that are not even golf resorts, and do not have real courses, putting places with a par-3 executive layout – or no onsite golf at all – in among the world’s best, while omitting venerable destination-worthy golf resorts with luxury, history and multiple courses, places that are widely acclaimed by experts who actually know about golf travel.  Likewise, in their recent poll of best ski hotels, despite the existence of numerous slopeside ski-in/ski-out true 5-star luxury choices across North America, they chose a hotel that is not even at a ski area as the number one. It boggles the mind.

My feeling is that the folks who edit these pieces simply know absolutely nothing about golf or skiing, and haven’t left their trendy New York neighborhoods long enough to become educated about anything other than latte. Ironically, the magazine’s motto is “Truth in Travel,” but the poll results are complete and utter falsehoods, and at best, lies of omission.

Which bring us to the best cruise ships poll, which I read it yesterday.  I actually was hopeful, thinking this is too narrow a topic to screw up. I mean even Condé Nast Traveler couldn’t do something like put a landlocked hotel on the list and pretend it was a cruise ship, or accidently choose an airline rather than a cruise line. Or could they?

Well, it turns out the editors know as much about math as about golf and skiing, which is to say, not a whole lot. I guess math skills are not so much a Condé Nast Traveler job requirement as having a lot of all black outfits in your closet or knowing the hippest new cocktail lounge in Dubai.

The poll breaks down ships by sizes, and the two biggest categories are below, and this is verbatim from the poll:

Large Ships (Large Ships carry between 500 and 2,500 passengers)
Mega Ships (Mega ships carry more than 2,500 passengers)

Pretty straightforward definitions right? I mean only an idiot could f*ck up which one a ship belongs in.

So guess what won as the Number One Mega Ship, the best ship on earth that carries over 2,500 passengers?

The Disney Magic. And according to CNT, how many passengers does it hold? 2,400. That’s right. Now I have to say, I am actually very good at math, and somewhere along the way between my excellent high school, my prestigious college and my Ivy League grad school, I was taught that 2,400 is “between 500 and 2,500” rather than “more than 2,500.” I guess not everyone had the benefit of such a well rounded education.

But it gets better. What do you think won Number Two Mega Ship, as the second best ship on earth carrying over 2,500 passengers? Disney Wonder, which according to CNT, is exactly the same size as its sister ship, the Disney Magic.

I have nothing against Disney, and I am sure they do a great job with their ships, just as they do with their golf courses. But how would you feel if you were the Celebrity Solstice, which actually won, and got the highest reader rating among ships that belong in the Mega Ship category, yet will never be able to claim its Number One title in ads or to passengers because the editors at CNT are math illiterate. Of course, if it is not math skills to blame, it could be something far worse. Given the score of the wining Disney ship, it would have come in a respectable fifth in the correct Large Ship category, but not first, and I’d hate to think the “mistake” might have been on purpose because maybe Disney buys a lot of ads?

So there you have it. Once again, the outright winner, the very best in the world according to Condé Nast Traveler’s poll, is flat out, indefensibly wrong, another total screw up.

Truth in Travel? I don’t think so.

The latest book from acclaimed golf writer Michael Patrick Shiels teaches you how to have more fun in life!

Need something to read on the plane? On the beach? On your way to the golf course? Here are two recommendations that have something in common: yours truly.

Michael Patrick Shiels is a fellow member of TheAPosition, blogs at Travel Tattler, and is a very well-known golf journalist and radio personality, and the author of numerous golf and non-golf books including Short Game For Dummies,; Good Bounces and Bad Lies (with Ben Wright); The Works of Art (with Arthur Hills) and Secrets of the Great Golf Course Architects.

His latest is Invite Yourself to the Party, just released last month, and it is part memoir, part advice, part rollicking story of a life well lived. Michael’s premise is that in order to have a good time you have to want to have a good time, and instead of waiting for things to happen, you should make them happen – thus, you have to invite yourself to the party, something he has been doing all around the world for two decades. Michael recounts his adventures and meetings with celebrities and royalty, his golf trips, basically the parties to which he has invited himself, along with concert advice on how you can do the same.

How do I fit in? I was with Michael on a golf trip to Thailand, and he recounts the story of how we went out for a night of Thai boxing and dinking and needed up turning the tables on the bookies who fix the fights.

Dan Dunn's rolicking new book is all about going through life drunk.

Dan Dunn is another golf lover, but his real specialty is booze. Dan’s website is TheImbiber and he pens a very popular column of the same name for Playboy Magazine and Playboy.com. His books is also a funny mostly memoir tale of adventures, revolving around booze. His writing follows in the footsteps of his mentor, since Dunn has the unique claim of having been a personal assistant to the late great Hunter S. Thompson, and he continues the gonzo tradition with his brand new book – out tomorrow – Living Loaded. The name sort of says it all. We think we have it good because we are paid to play golf, Dan thinks he has it good because he is paid to drink, and needless to say, that gives him access to some very funny adventures, all recounted here.

As an added bonus, it includes a dozen original signature cocktails created by top mixologists like Dale DeGroff just for the book.

My role? I was with Dan at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Classic two years ago (Dan will be leading a panel at this year’s event), during which I not only got to play the most famous course in the nation drunk, but got to spend a weekend with Dan, some hot cougar sisters, and – well you’ll have to buy the book.

Can you name this course? It is one that Brandon Tucker and I both agree belongs on "best of" lists.

It was a rough year for the golf business, with less new courses opening than in any year I can remember, ever, and lots of closings, all the bad news. For the first time in history, my man Tiger couldn’t win, also and the professional golf highlight of the year, two guys shooting the all-time record low of 59 a few weeks apart, was widely ignored so the world could focus on LeBron’s decision where to continue not winning championships.

I admit, I had plenty of fun in 2010, the highlight being an extended tour of great Australian golf, which will be revisited in detail shortly, along with stops at some of my absolute favorite resorts, including Kiawah and Destination Kohler, plus playing in a couple of PGA Tour pro-ams, especially at the Reno-Tahoe Open, where we actually won something. But for fans of golf travel in general, 2010 was largely a write off, and I am hopeful 2011 will be much better. The signs are already in the air: there has been a recent uptick of people actually playing golf, according to the National Golf Foundation, something that has not happened in many years, even when the economy was rolling. Developers are starting to make plans again, there are a few high profile openings and re-openings I am waiting on, and I am quickly assembling a wish list for my golf travel in the coming 12 months.

So rather than bore you with a “best of” list for my own year, which included more tried and true great courses than new ones from the slim pickings, I will suggest you read my peer Brandon Tucker’s Best of Golf in 2010 Travel Awards. It doesn’t hurt that he is actually paid full-time to travel around the world playing golf – Tucker logged 100,000 miles and visited four countries in 2010, both figures I easily crushed myself – except lots of my miles and countries had nothing to do with golf, unless you count drinking beer at the 200th Oktoberfest as golf (check out my cool pics!). Where Tucker won in a lopsided victory was in the number of courses played in 2010, over a hundred, or one every three days. I think my final tally is about half that, so if you are looking for a 2010 travel recap, look at his. I’ll be busy bringing you something classic and timeless.

Should you be carrying this in your golf bag?

Tis the season for weird golf gimmicks to start popping up in every catalog under the face of the sun. If you are like me, your mailbox is overflowing with the likes of Brookstone, Sharper Image, Herrington, etc.

In years past I have received such items as the slightly useful but impractical item as the golf ball personalizer; pointless items like the golf ball locating sunglasses; and I admit at one point I even carried and used the drink keg/pump booze dispenser hidden inside a faux driver (I was younger).

This year’s crop includes all of the above and some equally bizarre items and I admit I was tempted to order the 73-degreee wedge (yes 73 degrees!) from the Herrington catalog because if skill cannot help my short game, surely spending money can. The only reason I held back is because I have way too many golf clubs and way too little disposable income. Maybe next year.

But this is the one that leapt out at me, from the pages of Hammacher Schlemmer, known for its eclectic, often very expensive, and sometimes great gift selection. But this time they struck out.

“The Weed Whacking Golf Driver.”

This is December not April’s Fools, so I kid you not. The point of this is to carry a second (fake) driver that has an actual motorized mini string weed whacker concealed within its head.  Or as the catalog copy reads: “This is the golf driver with a built-in grass trimmer, ideal for surreptitiously improving one’s lie… Requiring only the semblance of a square stance and proper grip for activation, two thumb buttons built into the handle activate the trimmer for a quick clearing of obstructive grass.”

So when you hit your ball into the rough, which was designed to penalize you for missing the fairway, you simply removed the rough? Get it?

This is the stupidest golf product I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot, in addition to being an utter slap in the face to golf, the rules of golf, and even if like me you don’t exactly follow the rules of golf, the spirit of the game. It also presupposes that destruction of the actual golf course by visiting players is acceptable.

In order to buy this product – and they should not sell even one – you need to buy into several assumptions:

Your friends won’t questions why you carry two drivers.

It’s either worth substituting for an actual cub or carrying too many and cheating on every single shot instead of just those in the rough.

That the situation in which you need a weed whacker on the course will arise with regularity.

No one will question why you keep thinking about hitting driver out of the rough, lining up, changing your mind and putting it back in your bag to hit wedge.

That you are a pathological liar who should not be playing golf anyway.

That if you are going to cheat anyway in the rough, this is a better way to do it than simply moving your ball.

That it is okay to do your own landscaping/destruction on someone else’s very expensive and manicured golf course when that grass is there on purpose. Admit it, you are a vandal.

Only $39.95.

Room service breakfast with a view! Good enough for me and the world's most affluent travelers - but not for Conde Nast Traveler (Peninsula Hong Kong)

I know many of you enjoyed my multi-part rant on how stupid and poorly constructed the annual Conde Nast Traveler golf resort poll was because it was among the most visited blogs I have ever written.

Well, I was just flying home and read the magazine’s newest “effort,” if you can call it that, its annual Top 100 issue. This one is general travel, not golf travel, and it is not quite as ridiculous as the golf one, which had not only errors but many physical impossibilities (see my rants, part 1, part 2 and part 3).

This one is more, well, plain silly.

The author’s note says it all: “The No. 1 property in the world this year is…”

See the problem with the poll is that they have a different number one (and often much, much different top ten and top hundred) every year. Think about that. If a hotel really is the best on earth, isn’t there a pretty good chance it would still be the best on earth 12 months later? Or at least second or third best? Compare this to the golf rankings: Pine Valley is usually number one, sometimes Augusta edges it, but the top five are essentially the same. Imagine if this year Pine Valley is number one, next year it is not even in the top ten and to make it worse, none of the courses that replaced it are new. That’s what happened in this poll.

The way the poll is conducted, with so few votes and no qualifications on who votes or whether they have even been to the properties, or maybe work for the properties, lends itself to high-beta swings and in the all the years I gave been reading it, I don’t recall ever seeing a property repeat two years in a row, which should happen – a lot. In fact, I have seen properties win and 12 months later vanish from the rankings as if they never existed. Common sense would suggest this makes no sense at all, which is my point about the polls.

In contrast, I have been the editor running the travel polls for upscale Cigar Aficionado magazine for the past five years, and the number one hotel has always been either the Peninsula Hong Kong or the Four Seasons George V in Paris, and these are pretty much top two year in and year out, because they remain, as they have for decades, among the very best hotels ever built. I can’t give you a link to the new Cigar Aficionado poll, out right now in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue because it is not available online – you’ll have to buy it (you can see past year’s polls online).

I do not want to argue the merits of relative hotels on this list of the world’s top 100 but certain discrepancies leap out. I have stayed at many of these properties, but let us consider the Westin Riverfront Resort at Beaver Creek, Colorado. Let’s forget for a second that the resort is not at Beaver Creek, it is the middle of Avon, but that is neither here nor there. It is a fine hotel as ski hotels go, quite pleasant, and I cover the ski hotel industry a LOT. Depending on your opinion of the Osprey (actually slopeside in Beaver Creek), the Westin is either the third or fourth best hotel in the general vicinity of Beaver Greek (and the only one that is not ski-in/ski-out), and not remotely within the top ten ski hotels in the country – probably not even in Colorado.

Yet according to Conde Nast Traveler’s poll, it is not only the World’s Best ski hotel (ahead of several Four Seasons, Ritz Carltons, a Montage, a Capella, many Fairmonts and every grand hotel in the Alps) but it is the twelfth best lodging of any type on earth – ahead of the vaunted Peninsula Hong Kong, the Four Seasons George V in Paris, every grand hotel in London, every single Mandarin Oriental, Aman,  Rosewood, Oberoi, Ritz Carlton, InterContinental, and Orient Express property ever built.

The Victoria Jungfrau, in Switzerland's Interlaken, is one of the world's grand ski hotels - one CNT readers apparently do not know about.

Okay, so “best” is a matter of opinion, but opinions are like a**holes – everyone’s got one. If your opinion was that the Yugo was the finest car ever built, you would be wrong, opinion or not. I don’t mean to pick on the Westin, which is a very good place for a ski vacation, but to even consider seriously, for one second, that it is better than dozens or even hundreds of other great hotels I could name is utterly preposterous and indefensible. Stay at the Peninsula Hong Kong – or any Peninsula for that matter – and try to convince me the Westin is better, and you need to be institutionalized. It’s hard to compare a tiny luxury tented safari camp to a full service resort or urban hotel, but it is easy to compare these types of properties to one another, and no matter how you look at it, the poll fails.

Just among ski resorts, there are only two on this entire list (I don’t count the Amangani near Jackson Hole because it is really a summer place), and the second is the Stowe Mountain Lodge at number 90, (a fine enough hotel despite the fact that they lost my luggage and crashed my valet parked car, all in a two night stay – though they handled these incidents very well). Neither the Stowe Mountain Lodge nor the Westin Riverfront could sanely be argued to be better than the Four Seasons Jackson Hole, the Arrabelle in Vail, the Four Seasons Whistler or Chateau Whistler, the Ritz Carlton Bachelor Gulch or Ritz Carlton Northstar, the Little Nell is Aspen, the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek, Badrutt’s Palace in St. Moritz, or several other ski hotels I can think of. That is simple fact, not opinion. It is not just the Westin, there are many properties on this list that do not belong, the very best are way too deep in the list, and many of the best are missing.

New month, new poll, same old crap.

"Pet us, don't kill us. And don't let Michael Vick be MVP."

As a fan of the pro football, when I travel overseas I like to turn on the ticker on Sky Sports or CNN International and check the latest football happenings.

So you can imagine my shock when the ticker last week (I was in Europe) said “Michael Vick’s MVP Chances Rise Sharply.”

My reaction was “Please God, no…”

Michael Vick is a dirty dog killer, plain and simple. He should never have been allowed back into the league, never allowed to play football again, and certainly should not be most valuable anything. And I don’t care how he plays or whether he “deserves” it or not. What he really deserves is a lifetime ban from football. Pete Rose was a much more accomplished player and did much less and got a lifetime ban from baseball, and he didn’t even kill anything.

I know Vick served his time, and from a criminal law perspective in this country paid the price for his crimes. But there are certain things you cannot undo, cannot be sorry enough for, cannot pay back. I can’t forgive 9/11 terrorists, serial killers, pedophiles or Hitler, no matter how repentant they might become, and I can’t forgive Michael Vick. In fact, I don’t believe he is even sorry – like many celebs I think he is just sorry he got caught.

But the NFL is not the criminal court system, and no one has a right to play professional football. It is a privilege, a very big and high paying privilege and one the NFL can take away regardless of criminal court outcomes. After all, they theoretically have standards of conduct for players.

"I just want to play, not fight to the death. How could Michael Vick do such a thing?"

But enforcing those standards is a lot to expect from a league that suspends players with a reputation for being sexual predators a few games for locking an underage girl in a public bathroom or does not ban players who drive drunk and run down and kill pedestrians in the middle of the day. So why should they punish Vick?

Because he is a dirty dog killer.

63% of American households have dogs, more than 77.5 million of them (more than people) and we as a society spent nearly $45 billion on pets last year. That is about seven times the amount of revenue the NFL in its entirety took in last year.

In short, Americans love their dogs, and love them a whole lot more than football when it comes time to pony up at the cash register, and if the guys running the league had any common sense they would have banned Vick for life, both because it was the right thing to do and the right thing to do for their bottom line. I know many people who lost interest and faith in football when Vick was allowed back. I’m a fan but I will never, ever watch another Eagles game, even after Vick is long gone, because the team crossed a line into unacceptable behavior. I host a big Superbowl party every year, and if the Eagles make the final, I will cancel it. I’d rather spit on them than contribute to their advertising revenues.

See, here is the thing. Michael Vick made a LOT of money playing football (and still does). Like running a meth lab or dealing crack, running a dog fighting ring is a very bad and criminal thing, but most of the people who do it do it out of desperation. I can’t condone dog fighting at any level, but I can understand why in an impoverished area where people can make money off it, desperate people might try, just as they might try a variety of criminal activities. But dog fighting was small potatoes for Vick, who clearly did not need the money. The only other explanation is that he did it for fun. Killed dogs for fun. So the NFL sets an example for American viewers and youth by saying a guy who kills dogs for fun is okay to play in the league, okay to make millions, okay to be MVP. The only other people you hear about who do that are serial killers in their formative stages and neither they nor Vick should be allowed to play football on TV.

Australia's eagerly awaited Barnbougle Lost Farm, by Coore & Crenshaw, did not make Golf Digest's 2010 "Best New" list though plenty of lesser courses did. Why? Beats me. Is it really open? Yep, played it last week.

Got a press release announcing Golf Digest magazine’s list of Best New Courses 2010 issue. As usual, it did not disappoint – from a controversy perspective.

I was immediately suspect, considering that anyone who follows golf knows that these days there are almost no new courses, and the few notable ones are overseas. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that author Ron Whitten, sometimes an architect and sometimes a critic of other architects, began the story by noting the dismal industry conditions and asserting that they would skip this year.

Rather than speak for him, I’ll put it in his own words:

“Golf Digest’s annual survey of America’s Best New Courses is in abeyance. No point in producing top-10 lists like Best New Public and Best New Private when only 24 new courses opened in the last half of 2009, and just 18 more opened in 2010, plus a smattering of international nominees.”

Okay, so the format is changed, but the title of the article is still “2010 Best New Courses,” which he then goes on to cover (let’s just forget for a second that, unlike the Oscars, winners for 2010 did not actually have to open in 2010). It took awhile to figure out how this put the list in “abeyance” but I finally got it – because of the lack of courses, the “survey” part is being skipped, but not the “best” part or the “list” part, they just left those up to Ron. I guess the list had to be produced anyway, because that is what golf magazines thrive on, so their perspective is ‘reality be damned, here is a list of 2010 best new courses anyway.’

So I went through the story and added up the courses covered – not counting renovations – and there were 25. Based on Whitten’s assertion about the number of new courses, which I haven’t tracked so precisely, about half of the 52 courses that opened in the past 18 months made the “best new” list. Talk about critical standards. As with so many of the ratings in America, “best” now means upper 50th percentile.

I don’t want to sound overly picky about this (stupid) list, but one other thing caught my eye, especially since I received the release (not directly from Golf Digest to their credit) about this story on Veteran’s Day. As someone whose late father served in the Pacific Theater in WWII,  I find Whitten’s description of a hole (in Illinois) as “the Iwo Jima of golf,” somewhat disquieting. I hope thousands of volunteers didn’t die trying to make par there.

Anyway, I won’t get into a course by course look – too many of the courses included are ones that would never be covered if more had opened. They are “best” by virtue of simply having hung out a shingle. I will leave it you, dear reader, to check out the weird story and figure it out for yourself. Instead, I will leave you with one of the most incomprehensible statements ever written, one that I think speaks volumes to the “rankings” golf and travel magazines produce (for more on this subject see my rants about the Conde Nast Traveler faux ratings):

“Unshackled from the obligations of objectivity, I really got to be a critic for a change…”

Hello? If a critic wasn’t objective he wouldn’t be a critic, he’d be a booster. Wait. Yeah.