Hmmm, you just taught me a few things. IMO, there may be better strains out there, but the breeders that have won a cup usually have a very unique strain. I've smoked Super Lemon Haze. I must honestly say that it is a awesome smoke.
"Awesome" when used in regards to a strain is a relative term that is based on one's experience with and exposure to either a lesser or greater number of strains.
An example: When The Church was released it, for a while, was the 'flavor of the month' strain here. Some people were writing as if it were 'The Holy Grail' itself. In most cases though at some point in a thread where The Church was made out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread the person or people saying it would reveal that it was their first experience growing professional genetics or their second or third time growing professional genetics. Their comparative base was highly limited and restricted mainly to that of commercial grade pot and compared to much of that a strain like The Church could seem to be great. Compared to average grade commercial virtually any professional genetics, if grown well, would seem to be really good.
To see how overblown the praise for The Church was I grew it and I would say that it is decent and I would even go beyond that and say for the price you pay for it you receive a good value in return, especially for someone with a lesser budget for genetics. But it is nothing like it was being made out to be.
Super Lemon Haze does have it's qualities, but it also has it's drawbacks, like being rather hermie prone. It is pretty good, but it is not spectacular. Try growing Mr. Nice Seeds Mango Haze (By Shantibaba and Neville) or Mr. Nice Seeds Neville's Haze (by Shantibaba) or Mr. Nice Seeds Super Silver Haze (by Shantibaba and Neville) and then compare the them all and see if the word; "awesome" is actually a good fit when used about Super Lemon Haze.
Super Lemon Haze, as you likely know, is a cross of Green House Seeds Lemon Skunk, another GHS strain that I would call decent and a good value in return for what little you pay for it, but it's not spectacular, and Green House Seeds knockoff Super Silver Haze. It's not a bad combination, but like all other 'flavor of the month' strains, it is not as good as many make it out to be.
Have I grown it? Nope. Have I smoked it? Yes. One of my friends grew two runs of it and I did sample his and yes it did get me fairly high and it was pleasurable. But it was not one of the better modern hybrids I have ever smoked. A side note to my friend's grows. The first went great, not a hermie in the bunch. The second run was pure hermie hell ... and he's no beginner, he doesn't have a shoddy setup, he doesn't have light leaks ... he doesn't make mistakes. It's just in the genetics and it is a pure luck of the draw, a roll of the dice, as to what you will get.
One problem I have with the more recent Cup winners is many are unstable hermie prone strains. That sort of thing was never taken into consideration in competitions but as time passes such traits are becoming more and more common and I believe things like that should now begin to be factored into the judging and help decide who wins.
If someone were to grow 10 plants and get 4 or 5 different phenotypes and have true hermie problems I don't care if the good phenotype that didn't hermi would be more potent than another strain where out of 10 plants there were 2 phenotypes and did not have a hermie among them would be. I could not give the nod to the unstable strain knowing that my vote might be what results in it winning and knowing that so many people make the mistake of putting too much emphasis on a strain winning a Cup these days that so many would race to their computers to order the unstable strain.
And consider how the judging is performed. Sampling strain after strain. How can someone actually know or accurately claim that after a few hits if the next few that would naturally make them higher made them higher if they would have had the same number more hits from the strain before? At what point does pleasurable impairment begin to cloud one's judgement? How does one know if the big rush they just got actually came from the hit or hits they just took or if it is actually due to the last hit or hits of a strain having a killer creeper affect?
The testing procedure was always flawed. Unless there were at least a four hour or longer break between samples how could someone accurately judge what strain was really responsible for what and to what degree? I read an article written by someone who was a judge one year and he referred to it as basically being; "a pub crawl." He said after a while you are basically guessing.
Then factor in the well known behind the scene politics that goes with Cups now and consider the well known cases of attempts to influence judges, like when Arjan was caught and barred from the competition one year, and then there was the Ooky Kabuki" affair where it seems a couple of con artists from NYC tried to pass off a wicked strain of weed, "Ooky Kabuki," as if they'd grown it themselves, when in all probability, they just bought it from an Amsterdam dealer, along with other irregularities known to have occurred, and occurred more and more as time passed since the competition began.
How can anyone believe their remains any shred of credibility to a Cup win anymore?
The visual inspection tests or judging is really a joke. It doesn't matter how frosty something is because frost does not equate to potency or to longevity or level of pleasure of a high or stone. There are strains that are uber-frosty but do not contain a high percentage of THC or have a poor balance of cannabinoids and terpenoids and as people know, it's the mix, it's the blend, it's the ratios of various cannabinoids and terpenoids along with THC that create a potent or less than potent high and a long lasting or short lasting high. To a point the visual part is a joke. It's like picking a wife by looks alone and later finding out she's the biggest bitch in the world, or worse yet, the hottest looking tranny in the world. Looks can be deceiving. I have smoked strains with far less frost than some others had but they were way better than the ones that looked like high mountain peaks in the middle of winter.
Cup competitions for the most part have become a joke and anyone who bases their purchase of genetics on any wins in roughly the last five six is highly likely to be making an error to some degree or another, and even for a few years farther back it's a gamble where maybe 1 out of every 3 or 2 out of every 5 winners actually won on merit and merit alone.