The Golfer's Course Guide: The Official National Canadian Golf Guidebook

C. Stephen Gray is Toronto-based communications consultant.

This is a classic example of a good idea poorly executed. The guide is
badly produced and incomplete, contains errors, and is only marginally
informative.

In her foreword, the editor claims that the work is a definitive guide,
containing “vast and varied information about all course facilities in
Canada, which, until now, has never been conclusively brought together
between the covers of a book.” Alas, the claim does not bear up under
close examination. A number of fine Ontario courses, all operating in
1994, when the guide was published, are omitted; this suggests that
similarly slipshod treatment may have been given to golf facilities in
the other regions.

The book is divided into sections covering the ten provinces and
northern Canada. Each section begins with a badly reproduced map
(Ontario’s is illegible), which is followed by a few paragraphs of
cliché-ridden travelogue—of little use to inquiring golfers.

A handful of courses—those with large advertisements—receive
prominent coverage, while others (Glen Abbey and the Toronto Golf Club,
for example) rate only a line or two, and some, such as Ontario’s
George’s Golf and Country Club, do not appear at all. The result is
inconsistency: Courses that paid for coverage got it, while those that
chose not to pay for inclusion seem to have received either a small
entry or none at all. It may be that the economics of book publication
made this approach necessary, but this should be acknowledged somewhere
in the book. And in any event, it results in bizarre omissions.