Speaker 1: I Think. Welcome back to another edition of the Fried
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Speaker 1: we welcome on golf writer, author and historian, also podcast
Speaker 1: hosts of the Renovation Report for turf Net, and the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Seth Rayner Society, Anthony Piapi. Anthony
Speaker 1: joins to talk about the history being made this week
Speaker 1: with the US Women's Open being hosted at the Country
Speaker 1: Club of Charleston. It marks the first time that a
Speaker 1: US Men's or Women's Open has been hosted at a
Speaker 1: Seth Rainer designed golf course. With no rain in the
Speaker 1: forecast and the best women in the world teeing it up.
Speaker 1: The golf should be fantastic this week and highly recommend watching.
Speaker 1: It'll be on FS one. I know Fox does a
Speaker 1: ton of coverage. I'm really excited for it. Anthony talks
Speaker 1: about Anthony goes in detail about Seth Rayner and where
Speaker 1: the Country Club of Charleston fell in his career template
Speaker 1: holes him much more so. Without further ado, here's Anthony
Speaker 1: Piapi on Seth Rayner.
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a brid egg Friday,
Speaker 2: egg Frida egg fridayg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about
Speaker 2: ready to run off the course.
Speaker 1: It's kind of surprising that this is the first Women's
Speaker 1: or US Open at a Rainer course.
Speaker 2: I'm stunned by that. I mean, I knew this years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, we started looking at it. It's just amazing
Speaker 2: when you think about it. They had to get somewhere right,
Speaker 2: and the answer is no, they never did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like you can't even get like so,
Speaker 1: you know C. B McDonald gets the design credit typically
Speaker 1: from magazines of Chicago Golf, but Rayner did the complete redesign.
Speaker 1: There sure sure letters that say stay out of his way.
Speaker 1: And even then, you know, Chicago Golf didn't host anything
Speaker 1: after he redid it.
Speaker 2: A Walker cup that goes to the Walker Cup in
Speaker 2: what two thousand and five or two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: But you're right, that's absolutely it. You just thought somewhere
Speaker 2: along the line something had to drop onto one of
Speaker 2: his courses, especially the stuff on Long Island, and it didn't.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I'm most fascinated about it
Speaker 1: for this week is that if you look at you know,
Speaker 1: the women and the distance they hit the ball today,
Speaker 1: it's about, you know, the same as the distance players
Speaker 1: were hitting it in the late twenties when Rainer was
Speaker 1: really in his heyday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this course is going to set up absolutely perfect
Speaker 2: for them. You know, when I talked to Frank Ford
Speaker 2: about it, the longtime member, he was saying that if
Speaker 2: it gets windy, they're going to move teas around, you know,
Speaker 2: they have that kind of if it's firm and windy,
Speaker 2: the USGA wants to kind of mess with these holes.
Speaker 2: So they're playing different yardages and the fourteenth might be
Speaker 2: was it, the fourteenth might be drivable, you know, all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. It's going to be really fun.
Speaker 2: It's going to be hot. As you see the temperatures
Speaker 2: for the week, it's all it's nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very warm. I'm hearing right now that it's
Speaker 1: extremely firm, and fast, so roughly the rain holds off
Speaker 1: and it can stay that way because I think that
Speaker 1: when you get that conditioning, you know, the rainer contours,
Speaker 1: especially out there is so many elevated greens, really the
Speaker 1: architecture really comes alive.
Speaker 2: Right and and it would be so cool if you know,
Speaker 2: if they start playing the ball on the ground. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's going to be the most fun is going to
Speaker 2: be if people start doing that. You know, it's so firm,
Speaker 2: it's down wind. I guess the not I guess, but
Speaker 2: the Frank Frank wod told me the prevailing wind is
Speaker 2: into your face on the second hole, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of crossing quartering, crossing against you on the first. If
Speaker 2: they get the prevailing wind, they're going to be able
Speaker 2: to play some down wind shots and some up wind
Speaker 2: shots keeping the ball on the ground. And that's going
Speaker 2: to be great to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is I think I think Charleston
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, say, you know, you're the obviously executive
Speaker 1: director of the Rainer Society, and few people have dedicated
Speaker 1: as much time and energy into researching you know, a
Speaker 1: man that's got very very few records about him, Seth Rayner,
Speaker 1: but you know, where does Country Club of Charleston fall
Speaker 1: in the rainer kind of timeline? What what stage of
Speaker 1: his career is the nineteen twenty five design.
Speaker 2: You know, Unfortunately it's at the end. He dies and
Speaker 2: he dies in late nineteen dies in January of nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty six. So this, you know, it's the it's at
Speaker 2: the end of his career, which his career was exploding
Speaker 2: at that point. I mean, Camargo is under construction, Southampton's
Speaker 2: under construction, Fisher's Island is just about finishing up, and
Speaker 2: the second Course at this point is still going to
Speaker 2: be built. Yale is Yale just opens. So he's at
Speaker 2: the height of his you know, his creativity at this point.
Speaker 2: It's all the great courses. Blue Mound is another one.
Speaker 2: You know, he's he'd gone and laid out Wili and
Speaker 2: Mid Pacific. He was he had done the work in
Speaker 2: California that never got built, you know, because he died.
Speaker 2: He's at the he's all over the country and he
Speaker 2: has these amazing designs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and so at Country Club of Charleston. He
Speaker 1: that the site in terms of you know what the
Speaker 1: topographical interest, I think it would it would lend itself
Speaker 1: on the lower end, but obviously it's very beautiful right
Speaker 1: there on the Wapoo River and the marshland of Charleston,
Speaker 1: very close to the city center. How would you compare
Speaker 1: Country Club of Charleston to some of his other designs.
Speaker 2: So this, to me is one of the classic examples
Speaker 2: of you watch what he or another great architect does
Speaker 2: on a flat piece of land. Right at a place
Speaker 2: like Yale and Fisher's Island that has massive amounts of
Speaker 2: movement and even some something like Wantam autonomy, there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of fairway bunkers because he's going to create
Speaker 2: hazards and preferred angles of play using the topography. But
Speaker 2: here on the flat round at Charleston, he's going to
Speaker 2: put his bunkers in places that force you to think,
Speaker 2: that create the optimum roots, that that make players seek
Speaker 2: out angles to play greens into greens on certain conditions.
Speaker 2: He you know this is this is him designing on
Speaker 2: a flat piece of land. Uh. And it shows to
Speaker 2: me his brilliance in that there's some holes where it's
Speaker 2: important to be very precise off the tee, and there's
Speaker 2: other holes where it's very important to be precise, precise
Speaker 2: on the on the approach shot, and so he kind
Speaker 2: of spreads that, spreads that out, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a course that it's of course what he created.
Speaker 2: That he created the angles and the with with the
Speaker 2: use of hazards, and it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that too. I think, like
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a Chicagoan, like there's it reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of Chicago golf, where you know, the
Speaker 1: the interest is much more created than you look at
Speaker 1: some of his sites you mentioned Yale and Fisher's Island,
Speaker 1: like Short Acres is a perfect example in Chicago where
Speaker 1: he had a ravine scape, this unbelievable natural topography to
Speaker 1: route the course around and right, you know, far fewer
Speaker 1: bunkers and much tame or greens at Shore Acres. Then
Speaker 1: if you go down, you know, across town to Chicago
Speaker 1: GoF you'll see some of the most epic green complexes
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot more bunkers comparatively.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting and another course I think that would
Speaker 2: have fit into that, but it's been changed so much
Speaker 2: as Country Club of Fairfield. When you see the original
Speaker 2: drawing and you see the foot of the nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: four aerial. You know there's bunkering all over that because
Speaker 2: again that's for the most part a flat piece of land.
Speaker 2: He's right on the water. I don't think he looked
Speaker 2: thinking about it. I don't think he had the acreage
Speaker 2: to do the massive width you know that he might
Speaker 2: have wanted to do in some holes. But he creates
Speaker 2: all his strategy with bunkers, and it's fantastic how he
Speaker 2: does it. And like you said, it's sue acres. He
Speaker 2: uses the ravines, it doesn't need bunkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's something I've thought a lot about. And
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, these guys, especially the Golden Age architects,
Speaker 1: they just understood what the right level of interest and
Speaker 1: challenge was. And you see at short acres like the
Speaker 1: very boldest greens or features like the cross bunker on
Speaker 1: one or the burrits on six come on the very
Speaker 1: flattest land right out there. And then you know, you
Speaker 1: look at the same way at at Country Club of Charleston.
Speaker 1: You know, the really bold bunkering, you know, like the
Speaker 1: you know, the the leaven hole fourth, the you know,
Speaker 1: the par five fifth come on like the flattest least
Speaker 1: interesting land, right.
Speaker 2: And you know when Ron Forest did a lot of
Speaker 2: work at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, and we
Speaker 2: were talking about that's a very flat piece of land
Speaker 2: for the most part, there is some elevation change. But
Speaker 2: he talked about how telling has had for what we
Speaker 2: would consider placid greens because old greens on a windy
Speaker 2: site didn't make sense because even in the days day
Speaker 2: when it opened, it would have made things crazy. So
Speaker 2: here are these kind of placid greens again in the
Speaker 2: context of killing ms, not pleasant greens. But then he
Speaker 2: takes in bunkers that property, so that you have to
Speaker 2: the strategies created by him with these bold bunkers. And
Speaker 2: it's like you said, it's the Golden Age. Guys understood
Speaker 2: that they let if the land was there, they let
Speaker 2: the land do the do the talking, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's so Seth Rayner's career, I think is
Speaker 1: from with respect to the other Golden Age architects, most
Speaker 1: of them came from, you know, a great playing lineage,
Speaker 1: and Rayner it was definitely kind of the black sheep
Speaker 1: of them. You know, for our audience that might not
Speaker 1: know that much about Seth Rainer, who was Seth Rayner
Speaker 1: before he met CEB MacDonald.
Speaker 2: He was the city engineer for the town engineer for
Speaker 2: the town of Southampton, New York, and he was brought
Speaker 2: in to do to drag the chains and do the
Speaker 2: surveying of the property that that National was built on.
Speaker 2: And he had no background whatsoever in golf. He had
Speaker 2: been on the when Shinnacock was expanded at one point
Speaker 2: his dad, who was also a civil engineer, had done
Speaker 2: that work. And Rainer had been on that golf course.
Speaker 2: But that's it. And he didn't play prior to getting
Speaker 2: into the business. And when McDonald hired him, there's no
Speaker 2: indication that he was ever thinking of anything beyond just
Speaker 2: that one job. And Rayner did such fantastic work that
Speaker 2: he kept him on.
Speaker 1: So he gets on with National and then he starts
Speaker 1: he's McDonald's guy, and you know the next course, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of how did that progress?
Speaker 2: Well, let me back up just a second. I have
Speaker 2: a theory, and there's no way I can prove it,
Speaker 2: or I don't think it can be disproved. McDonald wanted
Speaker 2: to build a golf course, right, he was going to
Speaker 2: be the first guy in the United States. Maybe in
Speaker 2: the world to create a golf course. He was going
Speaker 2: to make greens to certain sizes, right, he wanted him
Speaker 2: so high, so wide, so long. He needed somebody who said,
Speaker 2: if you build this, you need x amount of soil
Speaker 2: to do that, and then here's where you can take
Speaker 2: them from. If you build these five bunkers, you want
Speaker 2: to build this big, we can take that soil and
Speaker 2: build that green. And so after that, I think that
Speaker 2: this kind of hits McDonald that he needed that person.
Speaker 2: And the second place they go to his piping rock,
Speaker 2: you know, and that was a million bunkers at that place,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of elevation change at times. A
Speaker 2: lot of elevation changed there. And from then on, however,
Speaker 2: many courses McDonald designed after that. Somewhere around fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 2: no matter what he was doing, Rayner was the head
Speaker 2: of construction. He was the guy on site. Even later
Speaker 2: in his career when when Rayner had his own design career,
Speaker 2: which started in about nineteen fourteen nineteen fifteen, he would
Speaker 2: go back and lead the projects for McDonald. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the most interesting things I've found when I
Speaker 1: was doing research for the US Senior Women's at Chicago
Speaker 1: Golf last year was a letter from McDonald to the
Speaker 1: club that it was saying, you know, Rayner had designed
Speaker 1: golf courses from Saint Louis to Maine, which you know
Speaker 1: is like, oh, you know, in essence, McDonald's kind of
Speaker 1: saying Saint Louis is you know those Rainers the design.
Speaker 2: Really, I think he was really good at promoting Rayner.
Speaker 2: When you when you read Scotland's Gift, McDonald's biography and
Speaker 2: you see some of his other quotes, I think he
Speaker 2: was really really good at at promoting Rainer and giving
Speaker 2: Rayner credit. You know, he calls he calls Leedo a
Speaker 2: Reino golf course, right. We know that, we know that
Speaker 2: Yale is unequivocally we have the there's board minutes and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It's a Rainer golf course. But he
Speaker 2: calls Leedo a Rayner golf course. And I think that
Speaker 2: could be disgusted or or argued. And you know, he
Speaker 2: says in the in the book that Rainer designed three
Speaker 2: hundred golf courses, which he didn't do. He never designed
Speaker 2: a golf course in Maine. We know that, you know,
Speaker 2: for sure, unless something pops up.
Speaker 1: You know, that's right, one of the things I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1: I want to go on a quest to see if
Speaker 1: they're visit every course in Maine.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I've had the discussion with a lot
Speaker 2: of main people about is there any you know, is
Speaker 2: there anything there that would make you think, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is Rainer. And now with all these newspapers getting digitized,
Speaker 2: you know, we can look into small town Maine in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and nobody's come up with any I mean,
Speaker 2: it would be fantastic. We still don't know how we
Speaker 2: get to the squamakin and did that work there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me a little bit about, you know, your
Speaker 1: research on Rayner, and I think people are you know,
Speaker 1: genuinely interested, like a is a historian and you know
Speaker 1: you've written some club histories, You've written your book Finest Nines,
Speaker 1: and you know, tell us a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: the process of of tracking down Rayner, who was notorious
Speaker 1: for no not having correspondence notes or anything.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And we should really put that in the
Speaker 2: context with that virtually every other Golden Age architect wrote
Speaker 2: at some point right, wrote about architecture, and Rayner never
Speaker 2: did that. And as far as we know, He was
Speaker 2: interviewed once by the Olympic Club for of course he
Speaker 2: designed for them that was never built. We don't have
Speaker 2: all the other quotes we have from him are secondary.
Speaker 2: Rayner said, at you know, this will be the great
Speaker 2: greatest course ever. It's somebody from the club talking. It's
Speaker 2: not Rainer saying to a reporter. So you just kind
Speaker 2: of do this thing where you start looking through club
Speaker 2: you know, you try to get you get in touch
Speaker 2: with clubs and see what they have, and you talk
Speaker 2: to them, see what they have in their files. You
Speaker 2: try to get the club history books and see that,
Speaker 2: and you find mistakes. You know, it's it's interesting. They
Speaker 2: have him in the one of the early histories of
Speaker 2: the history books from Rasquamicket. They have his name spelled
Speaker 2: wrong and they don't even know his first name. And
Speaker 2: that book came out in nineteen ninety six, I think.
Speaker 2: And then you know, so then you just get on
Speaker 2: digitized newspapers and you just start searching out SETH. Rayner
Speaker 2: or SJ. Rayner, which he signed his name a lot
Speaker 2: or Seth J. Rayner. The problem with that is Rainer
Speaker 2: is a very common name on Long Island and now
Speaker 2: into New Jersey and Seth Rayner wasn't an uncommon name,
Speaker 2: so you bump into more than one Seth Rainers even
Speaker 2: in that time period. And then the other thing, and
Speaker 2: I give a talk to superintendents on how to track
Speaker 2: the how to discover the architectural history of your golf course.
Speaker 2: One of the things you have to do is learn
Speaker 2: to spell wrong. You have to learn how how would
Speaker 2: rainer be misspelled in a newspaper? And R A Y
Speaker 2: N E R is one of those ways. We've actually
Speaker 2: found some good stuff spelling it wrong. And the two
Speaker 2: big biggest websites right now that people use our newspapers
Speaker 2: dot Com, which you have to pay for, which is fantastic,
Speaker 2: and chronic it's called Chroniclingamerica dot gov. It's run by
Speaker 2: the Library of Congress. And because some of these newspapers
Speaker 2: still have copyright, they're only up into the twenties of
Speaker 2: what they're allowed to if they don't get permission from
Speaker 2: the paper to use. So we're not into the late
Speaker 2: twenties yet. We haven't seen like twenty three, twenty four,
Speaker 2: twenty five, twenty six, and a lot of newspapers, which
Speaker 2: is we know we're going to find some more rainer stuff.
Speaker 2: But you just kind of start doing something like that,
Speaker 2: and it's really kind of strange how you bump into it,
Speaker 2: because you'll find you'll do something like I found that
Speaker 2: it's much better or not much better. But you always
Speaker 2: would search the word links besides golf course. And always
Speaker 2: make sure that if if you're searching out, say country
Speaker 2: club at Fairfield, you call it Fairfield Golf Club in
Speaker 2: a search, because somebody's gonna get it wrong along the line.
Speaker 2: And sometimes club change, clubs change names, and you do
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, and you just go down a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole and you look up and you've been spending
Speaker 2: four hours doing that, and you found some cool stuff.
Speaker 1: What's spend your favorite SETH Rayner Discovery Wow.
Speaker 2: So I did the book for Sure Acres and they
Speaker 2: had had a club house fire in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Then they thought they lost every thing, and I asked
Speaker 2: them just to check to see what they could find,
Speaker 2: and they found an old what am I thinking? In
Speaker 2: a bank a safe deposit bucks that had five or
Speaker 2: six letters in it, and some of the letters are
Speaker 2: directly related to hiring Rayner. And then they hire Rayner
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixteen and nineteen seventeen, they stopped the project
Speaker 2: because of World War One, and then they come back
Speaker 2: and they restart the project in nineteen nineteen, and there's
Speaker 2: some letters between the founders talking about bringing Donald Ross in.
Speaker 2: Maybe they could get Donald Ross to draw a plan
Speaker 2: and then they'll decide which plan they like better. It
Speaker 2: sounded like they didn't want to pay Ross. And one
Speaker 2: of the references in the letter is we could something
Speaker 2: along the line, and we could do what they did
Speaker 2: at Old Elm and locked them in the room together.
Speaker 2: And then it was Colton Ross, but locked Rayner and
Speaker 2: Ross in the room together and have them battle it out.
Speaker 2: And it's just stunning that they even thought that. And
Speaker 2: there's no history that that Ross was ever involved. I've
Speaker 2: talked to the Tough's Library, the Donald Ross archives down there.
Speaker 2: There's no there's no record of him ever being involved
Speaker 2: in Shore Acres. But for a second they were gonna
Speaker 2: they were gonna pause the Rainer Planet bring in Donald Ross.
Speaker 1: How about the idea of just putting two professionals in
Speaker 1: a room and letting them duke it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as if what happened at Old Elm was okay,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Like that like that was
Speaker 2: a good experience for everybody involved. I know it was
Speaker 2: really kind of it's really kind of crazy. I mean,
Speaker 2: you bump into some funny things. I found out that
Speaker 2: I found out that Rayner was robbed when he was
Speaker 2: down doing the Gibson Island project. We know that he
Speaker 2: was in a train he was in a train accident
Speaker 2: where the engineer got killed. We know that he lost
Speaker 2: his vest one time in Southampton and some indigent person
Speaker 2: returned it and was given a reward. I can tell
Speaker 2: you what car he drove for a few years. I
Speaker 2: know what his license plate was for a couple of years. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean you can bump into some crazy stuff. And
Speaker 2: and Rainer's grandniece, uh is still alive. So she never
Speaker 2: met Seth, but she knew her aunt was Ara Minta
Speaker 2: or they called her aunt Minta, but Seth Rainer's wife.
Speaker 2: And so there's a you know, a direct connection. There's
Speaker 2: a direct connection to him through his through this grandie.
Speaker 2: And that's great to hear that.
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Speaker 1: Member SIPC. Now back to Anthony Piapi. If you could
Speaker 1: ask him one question, what would your question be?
Speaker 2: What they he What did he suddenly realize? You know,
Speaker 2: he was an engineer that didn't understand anything about golf
Speaker 2: when he looked at those template holes and McDonald showed
Speaker 2: him what a good golf hole is like, what did
Speaker 2: he grasp right away even though he wasn't a player?
Speaker 2: Because he has artistry to his work. He doesn't repeat
Speaker 2: holes from golf course to golf course, and I'll argue
Speaker 2: that on a lot of his golf courses, the best
Speaker 2: holes out there are the ones that he created.
Speaker 1: I completely agree with that.
Speaker 2: My favorite hole at Fisher's Island, and I caddied there
Speaker 2: for three years, is the short par four to seven.
Speaker 2: There is so much chada right and if you understand
Speaker 2: the wind and you understand the contour, and the angle
Speaker 2: of the green in relation to the small pond. I
Speaker 2: think it's a genius hole. What is it? Three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty yards, three hundred and fifty yards. It's a
Speaker 2: genius golf hole. And you can have sandwich in your
Speaker 2: hand and make seven in a heartbeat. And you can
Speaker 2: have six iron in your hand and make a tap
Speaker 2: in power and walk to the eighth hole.
Speaker 1: So this, yeah, I'd say the same thing with like
Speaker 1: Shore Acres, Like eleven and fifteen might be the two
Speaker 1: best golf holes on that on that course, and two
Speaker 1: of the best holes in the world, and they're they're
Speaker 1: they're completely his own original holes.
Speaker 2: Right. You know, in the world of art, you kind
Speaker 2: of look at somebody's career, you look back to see
Speaker 2: when they you know, they're they're different time periods and
Speaker 2: when they got good and when they made certain changes.
Speaker 2: The same thing with musicians. To me, when you look
Speaker 2: back at Rangers' career, Shore Acres is this thunderbolt that says,
Speaker 2: this guy knows how to route a golf course. He's
Speaker 2: got five ravines on that piece of property, and he
Speaker 2: uses them in every way possible. You play alongside of them,
Speaker 2: you play over them, you play to them, you play
Speaker 2: away from them. It's just amazing. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the first golf courses he ever wrote.
Speaker 1: It you play over them, into them. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's that.
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole article about that, that cadence of
Speaker 1: the routing. How and it's always different, you know, in
Speaker 1: different spots. It's incredible. That is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: routings in all of golf history.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think so too. I mean, obviously I'm biased
Speaker 2: because I'm such a huge Rainer fan, but when you
Speaker 2: walk that, I've never sent anybody I've never known aboudy
Speaker 2: who's playing that golf course? That just didn't come back stunned.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is it? How far is it from
Speaker 2: the back teeth? And you'll use every club in your
Speaker 2: bag because there's places you want to lay up, there's
Speaker 2: places you want to be bold. There's these angles you
Speaker 2: have to play. You hit balls to certain spots and
Speaker 2: it turns out that's wrong. If you play a hole
Speaker 2: and boy, if the flag was on the other side
Speaker 2: of the green, I would have this would have been
Speaker 2: the perfect angle. But it's on the right side, So
Speaker 2: now I have to play away from the flag. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's he routed that in nineteen sixteen. It's among the
Speaker 2: three or four first courses that he ever routed.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable and you think about it in that context,
Speaker 1: and right, I mean, that's why it's a great, great
Speaker 1: first question. And I was gonna say so, so templates
Speaker 1: have have come and in vogue in the last I'd say,
Speaker 1: I mean, really, I think the Evangelist probably was like
Speaker 1: the first, you know, kind of key domino in this,
Speaker 1: you know, and then the Internet obviously with people being
Speaker 1: able to find information and everything, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of get steering. This a little back bit back to
Speaker 1: Country Club of Charleston. What it's you it's in your sense,
Speaker 1: what are the most impressive template holes that we'll see
Speaker 1: this week at the US Women's Open.
Speaker 2: I have a problem with people who who who rank
Speaker 2: I don't know if you do this, but rank the
Speaker 2: best of I hate that because it's they're not the same.
Speaker 2: It's really difficult to rank the best short hole and
Speaker 2: the best I agree with, Like, you know, you get
Speaker 2: to you get to someplace like Hodgkist School and you
Speaker 2: play this downhill Eden Part three and it's supposed to
Speaker 2: be a slightly uphill hole, and and the green works
Speaker 2: so well on that on that whole. How how do
Speaker 2: you put that up against the Edens, say at country
Speaker 2: Club at Charleston, right or at Yamen's Hall. I don't understand.
Speaker 2: I just think it's a great hole in the setting.
Speaker 2: So I like that. The hole that stunned me at
Speaker 2: Charleston was that that the road hole, which is what
Speaker 2: three hundred and ten yard par four. It's usually a
Speaker 2: stiff par four or or a par four and a half.
Speaker 2: And he really created the strategy using the road hole green.
Speaker 2: Even in the day when that when that with the
Speaker 2: with the longer, longer grass and balls even burned out,
Speaker 2: probably not running as far, it's still a drive and
Speaker 2: pitch hole. The strategy that's there because of the of
Speaker 2: the the bowing of the fairway. Balls run off to
Speaker 2: the right, balls run off to the left. You get
Speaker 2: yourself in these situations. You're staring at this the hell bar,
Speaker 2: not the hell bar, the road bunker right in front
Speaker 2: of you, you know, and you're just kind of sitting
Speaker 2: there like what do I do with the shot? And
Speaker 2: you realize you're holding a sandwedg in your hand. You know,
Speaker 2: and you can really, you can really make a quick
Speaker 2: five or quick six there with one bad swing. And
Speaker 2: when I was talking to Frank Ford about this, you know,
Speaker 2: here's this, here's this guy that won the you shot
Speaker 2: sixty two there, he won the Azalea Invitational six times.
Speaker 2: He said, you get off of eleven, which is this
Speaker 2: ridiculously difficult reverse for Dan, and you let down because
Speaker 2: you're saying to yourself it's just a three hundred and
Speaker 2: ten yard hole, and you make a bad swing with
Speaker 2: the driver and you're in a lot of trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think that's an amazing, amazing strategy that just
Speaker 2: revolves around you know, this convex fair way and this
Speaker 2: road and classic road hole green.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that old tree that sits there. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get a little over zealous that you're like, your ball's
Speaker 1: definitely get to hit that tree. You know, you get
Speaker 1: trying to take off a little bit more. And then
Speaker 1: the green site, like we talked about, like the you know,
Speaker 1: on such a you know, modest piece of land from
Speaker 1: terms of movement, that green, the way it sits there,
Speaker 1: with the way what you talked about with that fairway slope,
Speaker 1: how if you if you play safe over left, it's
Speaker 1: just going to keep trundling down into the left in
Speaker 1: that green. It sits on that subtle little knoll that
Speaker 1: they have, you know, those three greens that you know twelve,
Speaker 1: fourteen and sixteen on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read your arkd about that. That's that's really
Speaker 2: interesting observation that he put. He found that knob and
Speaker 2: he built those three greens on it. The other thing
Speaker 2: that's amazing is that when people see the eleventh the
Speaker 2: reverse for Dan, that was a natural outcropping that was
Speaker 2: just some in this on this flat piece of land,
Speaker 2: was this huge amount of soil earth and he just
Speaker 2: put he put a green on there, and that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: But you're right, I mean, he found those that little ridge,
Speaker 2: he places those three greens on it. They're all amazing.
Speaker 2: It's a very cool, you know, it's very cool. But
Speaker 2: the other thing about that hole is it is an
Speaker 2: easy hole. If you play it right. Maybe you lay
Speaker 2: up off the team, Maybe you hit a wedge into
Speaker 2: the to the green and give yourself a twenty footer
Speaker 2: and you take you know, problems, all the problems away,
Speaker 2: and you make your two pott and you go to
Speaker 2: the next hole.
Speaker 1: It's that's a hole where you know it. Mcdonn MacDonald
Speaker 1: talked about this with the Haskellball in his biography about how,
Speaker 1: you know, certain holes became infinitely more interesting and how
Speaker 1: some great holes became you know, very average, and you
Speaker 1: know these average holes became great. And I think that
Speaker 1: twelfth hole with the longer drives has become actually more
Speaker 1: interesting because you get all those odd little half ledges
Speaker 1: up around that tiny, skinny little green. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a very very good hole in today's modern setting,
Speaker 1: and you know it might be better today than it
Speaker 1: was fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: I think you're right for the average player, and I
Speaker 2: think it will be that way for the women too.
Speaker 2: From what I understand, the guys in the Azilia not
Speaker 2: just driving it up next to the green, you know,
Speaker 2: they're hitting it three hundred and ten yards and just
Speaker 2: rendering the architecture obsolete. But I can see that happening
Speaker 2: this week, coming up with somebody sitting there and just
Speaker 2: you know, even thinking that they've laid back further enough
Speaker 2: and now you have this really weird little numbers sixty
Speaker 2: four yards to a flag that's just right of the
Speaker 2: bunker in front of the green. I mean, what do
Speaker 2: you do? You know you're not You're not gonna be
Speaker 2: it's not gona you shut you're comfortable over you know,
Speaker 2: you're just gonna you're it's not gonna feel right. I
Speaker 2: agree with you. You can, you can you get a
Speaker 2: good drive and being an awful spot.
Speaker 1: That little knoll back there. I mean, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: bummed out. I had a late minute, last minute conflict
Speaker 1: that I can't go down this weekend. That would be
Speaker 1: just such a fun spot to sit and watch golf.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I agree with you. And you know, the
Speaker 2: seventeenth is right there, and that's a really good short
Speaker 2: hole and the green is a lot of fun and
Speaker 2: they're going to stand there and play it somewhere between
Speaker 2: like one forty five and one sixty, and you know,
Speaker 2: comes Sunday, it's gonna have you know, depending on where
Speaker 2: that flag is. You you hit into that green and
Speaker 2: you hit it in the middle, and that means you're
Speaker 2: you're putting out of the thumb print. There's no easy
Speaker 2: puts on that home. Yeah, I grean unless you fire
Speaker 2: at the Unless you fire at the flag, and you
Speaker 2: don't want to do that because if you fall off
Speaker 2: an edge. You know, you're in those bunkers.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the I think Raiders Part three, the
Speaker 1: short designs with the thumb prints.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's.
Speaker 1: What made him so brilliant was how subtle the challenge was,
Speaker 1: but how difficult it was at the same time to like,
Speaker 1: so hard to make two, but oh absolutely not really
Speaker 1: that hard to make a four.
Speaker 2: No oh no, oh no, I've made a lot of
Speaker 2: easy fours on his short holes. It's really you know,
Speaker 2: you could, I can three putt from anywhere because you're
Speaker 2: going through the thumb print a lot. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: but you're right.
Speaker 1: It's like nine thousand square foot green or seven thousand
Speaker 1: square foot green and one hundred and forty yard shot
Speaker 1: and at first look, it's like, oh, this is really easy.
Speaker 2: I played in the Connecticut Foe ball at Yelled a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, two years ago, and it was
Speaker 2: an off. It was soft and wet and whatever. We
Speaker 2: made one birdie and I burdied the short hold and
Speaker 2: I wasn't trying to burd it. I was trying to
Speaker 2: get a pot away from the So I had a
Speaker 2: two footer for par and I pushed it, and it's like,
Speaker 2: I think that might be the only birdy I've ever
Speaker 2: made on a raider short hole.
Speaker 1: It's yes, it's They're very, very difficult, and they almost
Speaker 1: get more difficult over time because they get in your head.
Speaker 2: Oh because you know too like you know, you get
Speaker 2: a shot and you're like, if that flag's there, I
Speaker 2: can't be here because I'm going to have to put
Speaker 2: through or around or over, you know, and watch the
Speaker 2: pros deal with it when they played it, when they
Speaker 2: played Greenbrier, I mean it was they have difficulty with it.
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about some of his
Speaker 1: early projects, and Country Club of Charleston was one of
Speaker 1: his leaders. How would you say Rayner evolved as an
Speaker 1: architect from his early work to his later work.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. The problem I had with making that make
Speaker 2: you a comment about that is so few of the
Speaker 2: golf courses are exactly the way he designed them, do
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? So I'm really hesitant to
Speaker 2: say he did this or or he did that. I think, jeez,
Speaker 2: that's a good question. I think he really got into
Speaker 2: understanding bunkering a lot more later on. I think in
Speaker 2: some of his later courses, it's when you see a
Speaker 2: lot like with with Yeman's and with Country Club at Charleston.
Speaker 2: But I think he really understood, he really understood strategy
Speaker 2: and early on, and I think he just get better
Speaker 2: and you know, better and better at it. There's a
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever saw the letter at
Speaker 2: Chicago where he went out to work there. He had
Speaker 2: never been to the plains, and so in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: Wheaton with this golf with Chicago Golf Club is is
Speaker 2: the plains, and he sat in a tower for two
Speaker 2: days and just looked out at the planes to kind
Speaker 2: of get this absorb this feel of what was what
Speaker 2: the landscape was, and so he could design a golf
Speaker 2: course that fit into the landscape. And that's astounding, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like just taking in the nature to you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that so I would say, I'd
Speaker 1: classify Rainer as Golden Age maximal.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting way to put it.
Speaker 1: I mean, but like, so Golden Age maximal meant like
Speaker 1: move dirt where you absolutely have to, you know, to
Speaker 1: generate interest, which usually came at the green sites, right,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, just so sympathetic to the
Speaker 1: to the land because you can couldn't afford to move
Speaker 1: changed the way or or feasibly do it. Changed the
Speaker 1: way a fairway moved, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: And you're absolute right in this. I mean, look at it.
Speaker 2: One of the misnomers of rainers that he moved a
Speaker 2: lot of dirt and he didn't you go to a
Speaker 2: place like Fisher's Island. Do you go to a place
Speaker 2: like Wanam Autonomy or Hodge Kiss or country club with Chelsea?
Speaker 2: What did he move dart for? He created teas and greens, right,
Speaker 2: that's it. And bunkers, that's it if the land did
Speaker 2: if the land didn't need bunkers. He didn't create bunkers.
Speaker 2: He didn't move a whole lot of dirt.
Speaker 1: Golden Age Maximall right, I'll go with that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like the right you know, I don't know. That's my
Speaker 1: thought is like it's kind of you know, the right
Speaker 1: way to do construction. Now, it's like Golden Age Maximumill
Speaker 1: move it where you have to, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: be extremely sympathetic to the land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I agree with you, and it just you know,
Speaker 2: I don't like this whole full minimalism thing where you
Speaker 2: move six hundred million square yards of cubic yards of
Speaker 2: dirt and tell me that it's foe that's minimalism because
Speaker 2: it looks minimalism. I don't like that. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can do some good stuff with the land without without
Speaker 2: having to create all this stuff. You don't make as
Speaker 2: much money because you don't move as much land, move
Speaker 2: as much dirt. But I like that. I agree with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you go again going back to Newport Country Club.
Speaker 2: Look how much earth out there didn't get moved, and
Speaker 2: what a fantastic golf course that is?
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's it's so true. It's like it's so
Speaker 1: Garrett Morrison, who he edited the Country Club of Charleston article,
Speaker 1: and like the first thing he said to me after
Speaker 1: reading you know, my art, he was like, man, we
Speaker 1: need more golf courses like country.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely true. I mean, you just kind of what's
Speaker 2: the word. I mean, you you meander, you know that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. It's you don't go on a hike,
Speaker 2: said that you meander, you know, you kind of wander.
Speaker 2: You just kind of wander through that property. It's just
Speaker 2: so nice and it just flows so easy, and you
Speaker 2: know there's all these bunkers but they're not offensive, and
Speaker 2: they're not flash sand, and they're not taking your eye
Speaker 2: away from nature. They're not taking your eye away from
Speaker 2: the golf course. Yeah. Yeah, it's all brilliant stuff.
Speaker 1: I agree. And it's like, I think one of the
Speaker 1: big things with like Country Club of Charleston is when
Speaker 1: you look at it at a bigger scale, like I'm
Speaker 1: a say, I'm a county that has a you know,
Speaker 1: a modest piece of land like Country Club of Charleston
Speaker 1: is a taint of attainable for every county in America, right, Like.
Speaker 2: Every county course this way. You don't need greens that size,
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree with you. But other than that, you
Speaker 2: could have a strategic, fun golf course and not have
Speaker 2: to move a lot of dark. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, like that's the thing that I think,
Speaker 1: like everybody, you know, it's like what we see with
Speaker 1: Augusta Nationals. Everybody seems to take away the pristine conditioning
Speaker 1: and doesn't look at all the other great things, like
Speaker 1: the other great things that Augusta National has.
Speaker 2: You know, right, you get you get caught up in
Speaker 2: all of that stuff. Yeah, well we know that. I
Speaker 2: mean I've said this for a long time. People will
Speaker 2: drive by really good, low well nine hole golf courses
Speaker 2: for sure, to get a great nine old golf course
Speaker 2: to get to a mediocre eighteen whole golf course. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just but you're right. To get to your point, Yes,
Speaker 2: municipality could get one hundred and forty hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: acres and build a fantastic golf course with very few bunks.
Speaker 2: Is just make it, just make it a fun layout,
Speaker 2: you know, and go from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a couple a couple kind of quick uh
Speaker 1: quick hitters, and we'll do you know, we'll have to
Speaker 1: do another one of these on a on a grander
Speaker 1: scale one of these days. You know about mister Jagger, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like my favorite, my favorite fact about Seth Rainer.
Speaker 2: Seth Seth Jagger Rainer.
Speaker 1: The middle name is Jagger.
Speaker 2: He has to be related, right exactly. He can hear,
Speaker 2: he can hear somehow related.
Speaker 1: He's got gotta be Okay, So most what would you say,
Speaker 1: what what do you find to be of years of
Speaker 1: studying what's your What do you think is the most
Speaker 1: overlooked aspect of the brilliance of Rainer?
Speaker 2: I think what we said before is his his own
Speaker 2: golf holes. When you get to a golf course and
Speaker 2: you find the non template holes and you realize how
Speaker 2: good they are, I mean, it's it's it's really quite amazing.
Speaker 2: The thing is. And I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: his Charles Banks is his project? What did he teach Banks?
Speaker 2: Banks knew nothing about golf design. He didn't even played
Speaker 2: golf in high school or in college. He was he
Speaker 2: was a baseball player and he was a he was
Speaker 2: a track star. What did what did he what would
Speaker 2: he be able to impart on on Banks to make
Speaker 2: Banks such a great designer as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, I his stuff and that's him.
Speaker 1: And Langford and Moreau were like the evolution of McDonald Rayner.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, yes, I agree. Have you ever.
Speaker 1: Uncovered any connection with Langford, Moreau and Rayner?
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm trying to think. I think it was
Speaker 2: Ron Forst told me that there was absolutely like two
Speaker 2: eras of Langford Moreau design. Yeah, he has a theory
Speaker 2: that somewhere Langford saw or Rainer or McDonald golf course
Speaker 2: and what, okay, this is what I have to do.
Speaker 1: I wonder, well, there was Langford before Moreau? Right, and
Speaker 1: then Langford after Moreau and Langford before Moreau is so
Speaker 1: subtle but like really good strategically. I always wonder if
Speaker 1: he went back and played Yale or something, right, because
Speaker 1: that could have been it.
Speaker 2: Right. Oh yeah, And he's out in the Midwest. Does
Speaker 2: he see Saint Louis, Does he see Chicago?
Speaker 1: I mean he had.
Speaker 2: Milwaukee, right, Carmargo. Does he see those golf courses? Because
Speaker 2: if he does, you know that's gonna that's gonna change him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, I mean because they're like a very
Speaker 1: clear evolution in my mind.
Speaker 2: Right. But the other thing, but the other thing about
Speaker 2: what you say about Banks is that's fascinating is he's
Speaker 2: more McDonald than Rainers. I mean, I find his green
Speaker 2: complexes to be boulder and you know he does stuff
Speaker 2: like puts a spine in the middle of a reverse
Speaker 2: for Dan at Forsgate. But he also wrote he's like McDonald,
Speaker 2: he wrote, Rainer didn't write Yeah, it's yeah. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just you know, Yer raynerd never as far as
Speaker 2: we know, right wrote one newspaper article, had a diary,
Speaker 2: had more than you know, the interview for the Olympic
Speaker 2: Club isn't isn't in depth. He doesn't. The interviewer talks
Speaker 2: about how Rainer doesn't doesn't want to reveal anything, doesn't
Speaker 2: want to talk. Yeah, yeah, and then you get and
Speaker 2: then you get Banks, who goes out and writes a
Speaker 2: seven part series. Four was an American golfer about golf
Speaker 2: course design and it's fantastic, had seven part series.
Speaker 1: He was just a surveyor, you know, he was a
Speaker 1: surveyor from Southampton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But Banks was an English teacher and a
Speaker 2: fundraiser at the Hodgkis School.
Speaker 1: But he was an English teacher, English and engineering. There's
Speaker 1: two different two different wavelengths.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, I'll get you. Okay, so the
Speaker 2: English part, we can get the writing. But where does
Speaker 2: he get to design stuff? Right? That's right?
Speaker 1: Very cool? So, uh all right, last last question here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's uh give us your your your favorite little known
Speaker 1: Rainer fact that you know you like to drop that
Speaker 1: that most people, most schmucks like me, wouldn't know.
Speaker 2: All right, So, je you took away my Jagger one
Speaker 2: because nobody knows that his middle name is Jagger, right.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm thinking about just calling him Jagger from.
Speaker 2: Now Jagger Rainer. I think the funny the thing that
Speaker 2: I found out about him, you know, when you see
Speaker 2: all the photos, he seems to be a be a
Speaker 2: very stoic person, almost unemotional. And from what I understand,
Speaker 2: what I've found out from his grandiees, is that his wife,
Speaker 2: Minta was was a card. She was really funny and
Speaker 2: full of life and always bubbly. And the four or
Speaker 2: so photos of I have of them together, she's laughing
Speaker 2: or doing something in every photo. And she traveled with
Speaker 2: him later in his career. She went everywhere with him.
Speaker 2: So when Banks wrote this piece a year after McDonald,
Speaker 2: excuse me, after Rayner died about being with Rayner at
Speaker 2: Lookout Mountain which was then called Ferry Lane Golf Club,
Speaker 2: and and she was with him and and and when
Speaker 2: they spent a week there, and Banks stayed at Lookout,
Speaker 2: And according to Banks, Rayner went to Cincinnati, which was
Speaker 2: ben Camargo, Milwaukee which is Blue mount He goes out
Speaker 2: to California, he goes to Hawaii. Ara Minta's with him
Speaker 2: for that whole time. So he's working sun up to
Speaker 2: sun down at Lookout and she's doing her thing on
Speaker 2: the mountain or going into Chattanooga or whatever, and you
Speaker 2: just see these photos and she just looks like such
Speaker 2: a funny person. And and and Mary Cummings, Rayner's granny,
Speaker 2: said she couldn't wait to see Aunt Minta, that she
Speaker 2: was always always fun and always great to be around,
Speaker 2: and she just seems this opposite personality than than Seth Rainer.
Speaker 2: But I think it's it's a huge window into who
Speaker 2: Seth Rayner was.
Speaker 1: Do you think he was more like his wife than
Speaker 1: than the photos which suggest or do you think this
Speaker 1: is an opposite attract situation.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of those ones where he really
Speaker 2: appreciated that, do you know what I mean? Like I'm guessing,
Speaker 2: I don't know, But she's just when you see the photo,
Speaker 2: she just looks like like she's up to no good,
Speaker 2: Like she's gonna crack a joke, like she's giggling about something.
Speaker 2: You know, when he's standing there, like he looks like
Speaker 2: a statue in one of the famous photos, and you're
Speaker 2: just like wow, and he's he was like, this is
Speaker 2: the person I want with me when I go cross
Speaker 2: country on these crazy train trips. You know, to get
Speaker 2: to California from from Tennessee, you had to go where
Speaker 2: Omaha change trains there, you know, and then go to
Speaker 2: Sacramento and change trains there to get down to you know,
Speaker 2: San Francisco, and then take the steamer to Hawaii.
Speaker 1: And she was with him that the travel is just
Speaker 1: wild to even think about. And I'm sure the train
Speaker 1: cars were like had some, had some and against going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know about one of the good There's
Speaker 2: two other guys who do a lot of research with me,
Speaker 2: Brett Lawrence, who's a member at Hodgekiss, and a guy
Speaker 2: named Nigel Islam. And you know, Brett Lawrence pointed out
Speaker 2: to me that there wasn't a cross country train. You
Speaker 2: didn't get on a train in New York and end
Speaker 2: up on the West coast. You were changing in Chicago
Speaker 2: and you were changing in Omaha, and it's like this
Speaker 2: wasn't just get on the train and I'll see you
Speaker 2: and we'll be there in five days. There was a
Speaker 2: lot going on. So it's quite amazing. And he traveled
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 1: Is there any notes in the clubs about Rainer actually
Speaker 1: playing golf at his courses?
Speaker 2: Nothing that we've ever seen, And I've never known him
Speaker 2: to be on site of a golf course once it
Speaker 2: was completed right, Yeah, I mean right, but even like
Speaker 2: you said, in those days when they're they're they're building slowly,
Speaker 2: some holes would be grassed and playable by the time
Speaker 2: the last holes are being grassed. And you never hear that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the crazy other crazy thing
Speaker 1: think about with Seth Rainer's like, you know, arguably the
Speaker 1: architects most deserving to be in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2: That's not you know, without a doubt, without a doubt, right, And.
Speaker 1: He may never have never really played golf.
Speaker 2: Right, right, we know, right, it seemed like he picked
Speaker 2: up some clubs every now and then, and he said
Speaker 2: at some point or he was quoted as saying that
Speaker 2: he didn't want to get good at the game because
Speaker 2: then he'd start to design for himself for his game,
Speaker 2: and he didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: See, that's that's a fascinating thing, because you see it
Speaker 1: with almost every architect. They are blind to their own game,
Speaker 1: whether they like.
Speaker 2: It or not. Right, and didn't Jack Nicholas finally admitted
Speaker 2: that right that all on his courses, the high fade
Speaker 2: was the best shout to play into all his greens.
Speaker 2: He finally admitted that a lot of people knew that before,
Speaker 2: before he knew it.
Speaker 1: It's like McDonald's it all America was doomed from the
Speaker 1: start with golfing architects, you know McDonald with his with
Speaker 1: his fade, when everybody, because the clothes were too tight,
Speaker 1: designed a golf course with like ten holes on out
Speaker 1: of bounds, left, none without of bounds right.
Speaker 2: Right, you know. And to get back to a question
Speaker 2: you asked me before and maybe surprising things about Seth Rayner,
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting. He's one of the few golfers,
Speaker 2: a few architects that I can think of, that doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily open a course with an easy hole because you know,
Speaker 2: in those days there was no practice, you had no range,
Speaker 2: so you went out and they kind of eased you
Speaker 2: into the round. And you think about something like the
Speaker 2: first hole at Yale, or the first hole at the
Speaker 2: country club at Charleston, and the first hole at Hodgekiss
Speaker 2: right away you have to golf your ball. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he had other and but he didn't follow those patterns
Speaker 2: because then you could go to other courses where the
Speaker 2: first hole wasn't difficult. You know what, the first hole
Speaker 2: was a manageable part four or part five. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the other things I found out about, you know,
Speaker 2: is that he did he did things as the site dictated,
Speaker 2: not by following any kind of structure.
Speaker 1: He really loved two shot radance.
Speaker 2: Too, and he's the guy that I think he's the
Speaker 2: guy that invented it. The author in that piece for
Speaker 2: the Olympic Club refers to a two shot radand he
Speaker 2: actually uses that phrase in that article, and that's nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure that anybody else came up with
Speaker 2: that came up with that phrase or I've we've never
Speaker 2: found it before then, you know, but you're right, and
Speaker 2: it's a wonderful strategy. It's a wonderful hole because even
Speaker 2: if you knock down your drive, you can still play it.
Speaker 2: I played holes that are two shot short holes that
Speaker 2: don't work because you have to lay up. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: with a two shot radan, you can knock down your
Speaker 2: drive or be well back and still play that ground
Speaker 2: game and get it to where it's supposed to go,
Speaker 2: or at least get it onto the green. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, like one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: combat wedges is with a green that falls away. And
Speaker 1: that's like what makes two shot redance, so good. Now
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, twelve at Fisher's won it one
Speaker 1: and uh one at Chicago Golf. That's kind of one.
Speaker 1: And you got one at Fox Chapel. You got I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all over the place.
Speaker 2: One eight at Yale, Yeah, one at Hodge Kiss. I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to think.
Speaker 1: Of eleven at Yale.
Speaker 2: Two, yes, eleven at Yale. Right right, so you have
Speaker 2: two of them there, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to one. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to explain eight at Yale. That's like a cape reverse, Dan, Dan.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a cape, I would yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: Banks refers to it as that green side is as
Speaker 2: having cape properties in Banks is in McDonald and Rainer's mind,
Speaker 2: the cape was all about the green They had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the TA shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you go into that. This is kind of
Speaker 1: one of my pet peeves.
Speaker 2: So somewhere along the line, people came to came to
Speaker 2: believe that a cape hole involved a bite off T shot.
Speaker 2: So you kind of played out to a peninsula as
Speaker 2: if you were playing from Boston out on to Cape
Speaker 2: cod But to McDonald and Banks and Rainer, the cape
Speaker 2: aspect was the green, that the green was what was
Speaker 2: sticking out into the hazard, whether it be water like
Speaker 2: the hole at mid Ocean, or whether it be surrounded
Speaker 2: by have sand on you know, two sides like the
Speaker 2: eight at Yale or this.
Speaker 1: Week's two at country Club at Charleston.
Speaker 2: Correct. Correct, And so the cape has absolutely nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the tea shot. Rainer and Wigga, I mean
Speaker 2: McDonald and Wigham co. Wrote an article about it, and
Speaker 2: they refer to it as just as the green. And
Speaker 2: when Banks writes about Yale for the Yale Daily or
Speaker 2: the Yale Alumni Magazine, he talks about the green having
Speaker 2: cape qualities. It's never, never, never about the tea shot.
Speaker 2: And there can be bite off te shots, but that's
Speaker 2: not the cape aspect of them, all their whole designs.
Speaker 2: When they refer to poles, they're talking about the green.
Speaker 2: That's why when you look at something like the long
Speaker 2: gone nine hole Ocean Links, they refer to the Is
Speaker 2: it the second I'm going to get confused, but I
Speaker 2: think it's the second hole they refer to as shore Acres,
Speaker 2: and there's no hole at shore Acres that ever look
Speaker 2: like that. It's the green of that hole that mimicked
Speaker 2: the green or or was patterned after green at shore Acres.
Speaker 2: That's why it's called shore Acres. And so so for them,
Speaker 2: the concept of cape is all about the green. Yes,
Speaker 2: you can have a bite off T shot, but it's
Speaker 2: not required. The second hole at Yale is referred to
Speaker 2: as a cape. It does not have a bite off
Speaker 2: T shot. We know who the original t's are, we
Speaker 2: still play them. There's no bite off T shot there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's a lot of times they create that
Speaker 1: that with a cross bunker or Yale you kind of
Speaker 1: have you have like the chasm down the left, you
Speaker 1: know that mimic, but it's not the yeah exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: like the bunkers they usually use, or you know, shore
Speaker 1: Acres has the ravine. There's something that protects the ideal
Speaker 1: line on all of them, but it's not that's not
Speaker 1: the fundamental part.
Speaker 2: Of the whole right and and and the problem is
Speaker 2: for the player is if you take the conservative route,
Speaker 2: that's going to cause you to have an approach shot
Speaker 2: that requires you to play kind of across the green
Speaker 2: or diagonally into the green, rather than down the fall
Speaker 2: line or i mean down the access of it, not
Speaker 2: down the fall line. Down the access of it. And
Speaker 2: that's that's I think where people get the strategy wrong
Speaker 2: is and they and they miss why they missed the
Speaker 2: whole Cape concept is they don't understand the importance of
Speaker 2: placing the T shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: a good way. That's the you know last Uh we'll
Speaker 1: give people a little bit of you know, education here.
Speaker 1: It's one of my like pet peeves when I hear,
Speaker 1: like you hear it on telecasts all the time, Oh,
Speaker 1: this Cape T shot. It's like this not a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a thing as far as we know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a thing for McDonald, banks and Rayner.
Speaker 2: I mean that's not how they think of k Pole,
Speaker 2: which you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, uh well thanks for coming on. Uh well,
Speaker 1: we're excited to watch Rainer on display. I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: you're really excited.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean it's great, right, we get to
Speaker 2: see Rainer, we get to see Brian Silva's restoration of
Speaker 2: the golf course, we get to see the work to
Speaker 2: Kyle Franz did it's we finally get to see Rainer
Speaker 2: and you know USGA Primetime, The PJ tours had in primetime.
Speaker 2: But I love this golf course and I can't wait
Speaker 2: to see it. I can't wait to see the women
Speaker 2: play it.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, it'll be awesome. I hope for good
Speaker 1: weather and I think we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: of relevant architecture on TV, which it doesn't happen every week.
Speaker 2: Right, and being played like we talked about before, being
Speaker 2: played the right way. Right, we're going up. We hope,
Speaker 2: we want to. We hope to see the ball on
Speaker 2: the ground running onto these greens and that that would
Speaker 2: be fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thanks so much and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you for the invite. It was a pleasure. You've
Speaker 2: been listening to the fried Egg podcast. We do the
Speaker 2: digging for you.