Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 1: A bride egg Friday Egg, the dread and Frida Egg
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Frida egg Egg Frida Egg bride egg Lie,
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the golf course game.
Speaker 1: And welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we have a quick golf architecture mail bag
Speaker 1: with Andy Johnson, followed by a discussion with the superintendent
Speaker 1: on how to do low cost renovations at municipal golf courses.
Speaker 1: The superintendent's name is Will Benson, and he works at
Speaker 1: Laurel Wood Golf Course, which is a municipal nine hole
Speaker 1: course in Eugene, Oregon. Now, in addition to maintaining the
Speaker 1: turf at Laurel Wood, Will actually holds the contract with
Speaker 1: the city and helps to manage the course, so he
Speaker 1: has a very direct stake in the health and success
Speaker 1: of the facility. And over the years he's made some
Speaker 1: significant improvements to the golf course, including building new greens
Speaker 1: and re routing a few holes. In the process, he's
Speaker 1: become kind of an expert on how to carry out
Speaker 1: very efficient, very cheap renovations at municipal golf courses. And
Speaker 1: that's a big question at the moment, right It's how
Speaker 1: can local courses make improvements when the margins are so tight?
Speaker 1: I think Laurelwood Golf Course is a good answer to
Speaker 1: that question. Not the only answer, but a good one,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's coming up in the back half
Speaker 1: of the episode. First, though, Andy and I are going
Speaker 1: to field a few golf architecture themed mail bag questions,
Speaker 1: so right after this break you'll hear from me and
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson. This episode of the Friday Golf pot Cast
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Toro, Up and Down, Ham
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Speaker 1: All right, Andy, we're doing part two of the Golf
Speaker 1: Architecture mail Bag. We had some leftover question from our
Speaker 1: last episode on Friday. You ready to get into it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely ready to go.
Speaker 1: All right. I got a few questions queued up here
Speaker 1: and we'll just knock a few of them out. We're
Speaker 1: not going to get to all of them. I think
Speaker 1: we had something like sixty five questions in response to
Speaker 1: your call for questions, so not possible to cover all
Speaker 1: of them, but I'll pick out a few of them
Speaker 1: that I think we can dig into a little bit.
Speaker 1: The first one that I'd like to address, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's a question we can necessarily answer with
Speaker 1: much authority, but it's from Antifaldo or antifa Oldo. His
Speaker 1: question is is Marco Simone scare quotes? Good? Now? Have
Speaker 1: you looked much at Marco Simone? Have you looked at
Speaker 1: the videos that have come out covering the golf course.
Speaker 1: Do you have a sense of whether this course is
Speaker 1: going to be any good.
Speaker 3: I've watched, I've watched a little bit.
Speaker 4: I mean the good I think the good news for
Speaker 4: golf fans is that for a Ryder Cup of President's Cup,
Speaker 4: the least important aspect of the competition is maybe I
Speaker 4: mean not least important of all competitions.
Speaker 3: Golf course is like, you know, the least.
Speaker 4: Important comparatively to like a major championship or such. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying like if you play a great if you
Speaker 4: play this event in a great golf course, the event's
Speaker 4: gonna be exponentially better. It's not like the golf course
Speaker 4: doesn't matter. But team match play can carry an event
Speaker 4: because it's really about the matches, the personalities in the
Speaker 4: matches and different things.
Speaker 3: That said with.
Speaker 4: Marco Simone, I don't think it's gonna be very good.
Speaker 4: It's in Italy, Like, there's not a lot of golf
Speaker 4: fans there. It's you know, it's.
Speaker 1: Not in Italy. Are you saying Italian golf architecture has
Speaker 1: not had a renaissance. This is.
Speaker 4: It's in Italy. So like the other things, there's no
Speaker 4: golf fans. It's like France, right, Like people don't care
Speaker 4: about golf in France. They don't care about golf in Italy.
Speaker 4: And frankly, it's not you know, from what I've seen,
Speaker 4: I haven't seen it in person, it's not a very
Speaker 4: inspiring golf design. But again, you know, this is about
Speaker 4: the team match play format, and you know, I think
Speaker 4: I think like a great example of how golf course
Speaker 4: matters would be the Walker Cup. You know, if if
Speaker 4: the Walker Cup was played at the Old Course or
Speaker 4: Marco Simone, what would generate more interest?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, the Ryder Cup is sort of coasting,
Speaker 1: maybe not coasting, but relying on its reputation, and of
Speaker 1: all events, the Ryder Cup can do that. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to go to any kind of golf course that
Speaker 1: we've heard of or that we find historically or architecturally significant,
Speaker 1: because it's the Ryder Cup. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: main point here. Now. I have looked at a few
Speaker 1: of the videos of Marcus Simone that have come out.
Speaker 1: I watched the match between Sally and DJ that they
Speaker 1: put out on the No Laying Up channel, and those guys,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're good players and they got murdered by
Speaker 1: this course, and my impression, not having been on site,
Speaker 1: my impression is that it has some of the kind
Speaker 1: of trendy aspects of modern golf course design. You have
Speaker 1: these kind of wild, undulating greens. But to me, it
Speaker 1: didn't look like there was necessarily any rhyme or reason
Speaker 1: to the undulations in these greens, like they didn't really
Speaker 1: have a clear strategic purpose that related back to the whole.
Speaker 1: They are just sort of wild. And that's one thing
Speaker 1: that I've seen in a good amount of mediocre modern
Speaker 1: golf architecture that I'm not a big fan of. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of land movement on this site. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a good piece of land or
Speaker 1: a bad piece of land. I'd really have to be
Speaker 1: on site. It seems like that's going to be a
Speaker 1: big factor in the Ryder Cup because of the drama
Speaker 1: of the topography. There are going to be a lot
Speaker 1: of obscured sitelines, a lot of blind drives, and especially
Speaker 1: a lot of blind approaches where you can't see the
Speaker 1: surface of the green because the green is way up
Speaker 1: above you and you can't see it. Now, something that
Speaker 1: confuses me about the course and it's set up, and
Speaker 1: you and Joseph sort of addressed this in a podcast
Speaker 1: that you did a couple of weeks ago. But looking
Speaker 1: at the makeup of the teams, looking at the distribution
Speaker 1: of players who are very powerful without necessarily being accurate
Speaker 1: on an elite level, I don't really understand why so
Speaker 1: many fair ways. Why the European team, which is of
Speaker 1: course setting up the course the European Tour, why so
Speaker 1: many fairway bottleneck at kind of the three twenty mark.
Speaker 1: This would make sense if this were more of a
Speaker 1: traditional comparison between the teams or contrast between the teams,
Speaker 1: where the Americans have all the big hitters who maybe
Speaker 1: spray it a little bit, but the Europeans have a
Speaker 1: lot of those players too, and so why would it
Speaker 1: necessarily be advantageous to the European side to have so
Speaker 1: many of these fairways kind of come in at that
Speaker 1: three twenty mark, which I think is going to force
Speaker 1: driver out of the hands of a lot of players
Speaker 1: at this course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I you know, I'm not sure I would say
Speaker 4: I would, you know, I think a lot of the
Speaker 4: European selections, with especially Ludwig and Oiguard, center around like, hey,
Speaker 4: distance is going to be a huge advantage with the
Speaker 4: short part fours here. You know there's going to be
Speaker 4: three or four short par fours that are potentially driveable.
Speaker 4: So I think that also, you know, lends itself to
Speaker 4: a long hitter. But with the bottleneck, I think accuracy
Speaker 4: is going to be really important, right, Yeah, Like I
Speaker 4: think that. I think it's it's not about just being long.
Speaker 4: It's to be about being long and straight, right if
Speaker 4: if you can take advantage sometimes, So I think that's
Speaker 4: that's the thing. I think the the Europeans generally, like
Speaker 4: if you look at the Europeans, they are longer hitters
Speaker 4: like rom And and Rory and uh when they're yeah,
Speaker 4: when they're going, those are very accurate long hitters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true and is probably pretty accurate too. Some
Speaker 1: of the longer players on the European side are notably
Speaker 1: accurate relative to there.
Speaker 4: Well, and that yes, go down the list, keep going.
Speaker 4: You got Fleetwood, very accurate player, Matty Fits when he's
Speaker 4: cooking is very accurate player, Terrel Hatton very accurate player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have you have a.
Speaker 4: Lot of players that accuracy is is a facet and
Speaker 4: just compare and Obviously this is we aren't talking about
Speaker 4: every player, but like you know, you Scotti shuffler is
Speaker 4: obviously very accurate, but then you get into the Jordan
Speaker 4: Speith that Justin Thomas type players for the US team,
Speaker 4: and those aren't, you know, necessarily as accurate of players. Obviously,
Speaker 4: we haven't gone player by player, and we aren't going
Speaker 4: to go player by player. But I think the one
Speaker 4: of the residing traits with with the European team is
Speaker 4: that if you probably put together a total driving stat
Speaker 4: And I have not done this research. I didn't expect
Speaker 4: to be talking about this for a architecture mailbag, but
Speaker 4: if you put together a total driving stat I think
Speaker 4: that they would probably have a pretty good advantage there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, one more note about
Speaker 1: Marcus Simoni. You mentioned the driveable part fours. Those to
Speaker 1: me look like pretty neat holes overall relative to the
Speaker 1: rest of the course. And I would also keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for the finish at Marcus Simone. The last
Speaker 1: couple of holes are pretty fun. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: drivable part four in the mix. There's a very penal
Speaker 1: par three seventeenth hole where there's real stakes as to
Speaker 1: whether you hit the green and then the finisher is
Speaker 1: a risk reward you know, water featury. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a little bit like the golf nasty now you see,
Speaker 1: you see a bit of a formula for these kind
Speaker 1: of European tour led designs that host these big events.
Speaker 1: I think that there's there's certain moves that they have,
Speaker 1: and some of these moves work pretty well. So as
Speaker 1: far as the architecture is concerned, a mixed bag at
Speaker 1: Marcos Simone. Overall, it's not a golf course that I
Speaker 1: would necessarily enjoy playing more than more than many others.
Speaker 4: So yeah, not about the America team, like you know,
Speaker 4: Patrick Cantley and and Morikawa and Xander would all all
Speaker 4: skew is like really good drivers the golf ball if
Speaker 4: you if you blend accuracy with distant right, So.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it might be kind of a wash
Speaker 1: in terms of I'm not I'm not sure how much of.
Speaker 4: All Europeans have a hoblin too.
Speaker 1: That's true, Yeah, yeah, it's yeah when you have Ron
Speaker 1: Rory and Hoveland and some of those other guys. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean his iron play is really the leading characteristic anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll have we'll have plenty of time to discuss the
Speaker 1: differences between the American and European teams in the run
Speaker 1: up to the Ryder Cup, I'm sure in the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. But a more pure architecture question that
Speaker 1: I have for you, Andy, I really like this question.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a thinker. What's the best fair
Speaker 1: way in golf? Not green surrounds, not bunkering, not a vista,
Speaker 1: just fairway shapes, ground movements and contour. The question asker
Speaker 1: sees this as a very underestimated part of great architecture.
Speaker 1: And the question asker's name is Rob Key. So do
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts about this?
Speaker 4: Off the top of you, Yeah, I love this question.
Speaker 4: I had a couple ideas in my head. I think
Speaker 4: one that I immediately always go to is the fourteenth
Speaker 4: hole at Pasta Tiempo, where it has like basically the
Speaker 4: extension of the Brancas that runs through the fairway on
Speaker 4: a diagonal.
Speaker 3: It's just like I think.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing that I think about I
Speaker 4: thought about the sixteenth fairway at Saint Andrews, which has
Speaker 4: like these just great little rumples. I mean, you could
Speaker 4: pick like five fairways from Saint Andrews and and use
Speaker 4: that another one the joined fairway what should be a
Speaker 4: joined fairway of the second and seventeenth hole at North Barrick.
Speaker 4: There's just a lot of irregularity. I think, like the
Speaker 4: thing that that to me comes out when you think
Speaker 4: about this is that you have like irregular movement, choppiness,
Speaker 4: you know, and a lot of times the contours they
Speaker 4: aren't massive contours, there are about ten feet or smaller.
Speaker 4: Is what really like resonates with me. I like the
Speaker 4: little stuff, kind of the wavy contours is what really
Speaker 4: gets me.
Speaker 3: The bigger stuff.
Speaker 4: And I think this could be like a modern agronomy
Speaker 4: thing like when you get bigger movement, you're either on
Speaker 4: top or you're down right, and that's that could be
Speaker 4: just where the cut of fairways are. You don't end
Speaker 4: up on down slopes. So when you get this smaller stuff,
Speaker 4: like the the four to five foot stuff, like if
Speaker 4: you're thinking about the sixteenth at St Andrew's, when it's
Speaker 4: not cut super low right, you can end up with
Speaker 4: lots of like side hill, downhill different lies that that
Speaker 4: kind of hang. And you know, that's what I love
Speaker 4: to see. Did you have thoughts on this?
Speaker 1: I a few came to mind. You know, for one thing,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of links holes would be
Speaker 1: can of for this question. You know, the thirteenth hole
Speaker 1: at Prestwick. This is not a hole that I've played myself.
Speaker 1: I've just looked at it. Wonderful pure linxy undulation on
Speaker 1: the small scale that you're talking about. That's just a
Speaker 1: beautiful type of fairway with a wonderful sense of randomness
Speaker 1: and complexity. You just can't can't beat it for golf.
Speaker 1: But a couple more dramatic examples that did come to
Speaker 1: mind for me were one the eighth fairway at Prairie Dunes.
Speaker 1: The eighth Fairway of Prairie Dunes has these huge waves
Speaker 1: in it. So that's an example of the kind of
Speaker 1: larger scale contours that you know, a fairway can incorporate
Speaker 1: to great effect. And these these I don't know if
Speaker 1: you even want to call them contours. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're so big, but they have a strategic effect
Speaker 1: on the whole because they they can either open up
Speaker 1: site lines or obscure site line And depending on your
Speaker 1: position and the and how well you strike your drive,
Speaker 1: you can either overcome them or really be hindered by them.
Speaker 1: Then the next hole at Prairie Dunes, the ninth hole,
Speaker 1: is a wonderful example of how smaller scale waves in
Speaker 1: the land can really work. And you know, there's one
Speaker 1: side of the fairway on that hole that has bigger
Speaker 1: ripples than the other, and that makes the slightly flatter
Speaker 1: side of the fairway a bit more preferable because you're
Speaker 1: more likely to have a level lie and so.
Speaker 4: The strand ale ale get over the left, you get
Speaker 4: a way better angle. The right side shortens the hole.
Speaker 4: But especially with that wind that usually is coming right
Speaker 4: to left there too, it is like super advantageous to
Speaker 4: get over left, but it's super hard. There's a big
Speaker 4: blowout bunker on the left, and then obviously you're always
Speaker 4: dealing with the gunch there and it's scary. It's really
Speaker 4: scary to hit the ball left there.
Speaker 3: There's out.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that is I was thinking about eight to
Speaker 4: nine at Prairie Dunes. Those are two amazing fairways, and
Speaker 4: I think what you pointed out, like the difference the
Speaker 4: big scale and the small scale right, it shows how
Speaker 4: each can be super effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, two of my very favorite holes in golf,
Speaker 1: and a big reason for it is because the fairways
Speaker 1: were routed over such interesting natural contours. You know, that's
Speaker 1: a Perry Maxwell. Those are two Perry Maxwell golf holes, right,
Speaker 1: And I think Perry Maxwell was really good at letting
Speaker 1: natural land movement stay there in the middle of a
Speaker 1: fairway at Old Town Club, which I just wrote a
Speaker 1: profile for for Club TFE. One of the great things
Speaker 1: that he does Maxwell does and the routing of that
Speaker 1: course is just goes straight over the most interesting topography
Speaker 1: on the golf course, and he has the guts to
Speaker 1: put fairways on pretty severe slopes and make those part
Speaker 1: of the golf hole. I think that there's one thing
Speaker 1: that really I can identify that I don't like as
Speaker 1: much about the architecture that came out in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties and early two thousands. It's that fairways are flatter,
Speaker 1: are graded, or are not put over the most interesting
Speaker 1: contours on the property. In fact, sometimes the most interesting
Speaker 1: topography is going to be off the fairway, and that
Speaker 1: makes your lie in the fairway more consistently quote unquote
Speaker 1: fair more driving range. Like if you hit it in
Speaker 1: the fairway, then you're going to have a pretty easy lie.
Speaker 1: But it also just makes the golf a lot less
Speaker 1: dynamic to me. And so if there's one thing I
Speaker 1: can identify that I love about Links design and Golden
Speaker 1: Age design, it's that, you know, willingness to go straight
Speaker 1: over really cool.
Speaker 4: Topography, unable unable to do anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, they didn't have any other option. They
Speaker 1: couldn't move the land. You know, Essex County Club. We
Speaker 1: just did a whole of the day on social media
Speaker 1: the eighth of the of the eighth hole at Essex
Speaker 1: County Club and that I mean, it's just it's again
Speaker 1: huge contours, not little contours, but there's a huge high
Speaker 1: section of that fairway, a big low section of the fairway,
Speaker 1: and all you're thinking is just I can't believe Donald
Speaker 1: Ross put a fairway over this stuff, Like it's crazy.
Speaker 4: And on that hole, you're dying, dying to get it
Speaker 4: down on the low section. But to do that you
Speaker 4: have to hit from a blind te like kind of
Speaker 4: a draw and you're flirting without a bound and you
Speaker 4: pick up twenty extra yards if you can get it
Speaker 4: down into the low section, and if not, you end
Speaker 4: up out right. You have a worse angle into the green.
Speaker 4: The green, the angle the green sits on kind of
Speaker 4: like makes it a little bit more shallow. You might
Speaker 4: if the pins on the left, then you're bringing in
Speaker 4: out of bounds and a bunker into play on the
Speaker 4: second shot. It's a brilliant, brilliant hole. Another great, big,
Speaker 4: big fairway and a couple a couple big fairways that people,
Speaker 4: probably a lot of people listening have played, would be
Speaker 4: the thirteenth of Pacific Dunes with the hogs back down
Speaker 4: the middle. If you're able to challenge the ocean, you
Speaker 4: get a huge benefit. You don't have to take on
Speaker 4: the ocean on the second shot. If you miss the
Speaker 4: ball's gonna shoot it. If you miss it into the
Speaker 4: right side of the fairway, ball's gonna shoot right. Then
Speaker 4: that that ocean on your second shot into that narrow
Speaker 4: green is right in your periphery. Another great one is
Speaker 4: the fourth Abandoned Trails. You know you are. You've got
Speaker 4: that kind of diagonal hogs back. It's a delightful hole,
Speaker 4: and you kind of need to figure out what how
Speaker 4: far can I push it and carry that hogs back
Speaker 4: get the benefit of rolling over. But if you if
Speaker 4: you play too safe left, you're gonna run into trouble.
Speaker 4: If you play too far, too aggressively on the right,
Speaker 4: you're either gonna be blind or you could find one
Speaker 4: of those bunkers. That is a brilliant, brilliant fairway. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's so many great fairways. It's a it's honestly, it
Speaker 4: would be a great little post is to just kind
Speaker 4: of go through some of our favorite favorite fairway features.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love thinking about this question, so so thank
Speaker 1: you Rob Keys for an excellent topic there. All right, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's do a little bit of discussion of teas. I
Speaker 1: think this is a pretty interesting subject that maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: get discussed very often. I don't think we've gone we've
Speaker 1: gone in depth on it recently. So Suzanne Woodrow asks
Speaker 1: rectangle teas or free form question mark and Alex DeLange asks,
Speaker 1: in your opinion, what makes a great tea box. So
Speaker 1: we can kind of put these questions together and just
Speaker 1: generally discuss tea design.
Speaker 3: This is why everybody wants to hear.
Speaker 1: This is This is why it's the third question. This
Speaker 1: is not the leadoff question where we're getting We're getting
Speaker 1: in the weeds here, but I think this is an
Speaker 1: underrated subject. Let me frame it this way. We think
Speaker 1: a lot about how greens are tied into their surroundings. Right,
Speaker 1: We're really insistent that greens need to be gracefully designed
Speaker 1: in relation to their surroundings. Right, we really focus on that.
Speaker 1: I don't think we focus on that nearly as much
Speaker 1: with teas. We're kind of fine with tea's just being
Speaker 1: these lame, little built up things that don't really have
Speaker 1: any design to them. So I wonder if this is
Speaker 1: something that's important to you, Andy, or whether this is
Speaker 1: something that's okay to kind of disregard when you're designing
Speaker 1: a golf course, if it's just not that important, not
Speaker 1: as important as a green, not as important as fair
Speaker 1: ways or hazards.
Speaker 3: I think teas are super important.
Speaker 4: As for rectangle or free farm, I think it's super
Speaker 4: syite dependent. And that's kind of a non answer there, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, a parkland course that has kind of
Speaker 1: simple land, I think that rectangle is often the way
Speaker 1: to go because freeform teas on that kind of piece
Speaker 1: of land, relatively flat, normal parkland land, they look a
Speaker 1: little dinky, don't they free form?
Speaker 4: Well, it depends too how you're tying them into the greens.
Speaker 3: How far away are they?
Speaker 4: Like I think the free forms look really cool when
Speaker 4: you can do some like tie into the green surrounds
Speaker 4: in its short grass that flows into a tea, Like
Speaker 4: that's really great. But that's not always going to be
Speaker 4: the case. Like maybe there's one hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 4: between tees. You know, maybe it's a course trying to
Speaker 4: get distance, like I think, but overall, like you know what,
Speaker 4: I think, that's super sight dependent. I think the thing
Speaker 4: that I think about a lot, and you see a
Speaker 4: lot at older golf courses that were renovated in the
Speaker 4: nineties or two thousands are elevated teas, teas that are
Speaker 4: built up. And what it does is, you know, it
Speaker 4: doesn't sound like a lot, but if you give six
Speaker 4: feet and you put them up in the air six feet,
Speaker 4: it really changes the site line and it loses a
Speaker 4: connection with the ground. Right when you're down on the ground,
Speaker 4: it changed. It really obscures the way you see the
Speaker 4: whole and you know, you see horizon lines, right. So
Speaker 4: I think like one of the biggest things that I
Speaker 4: see around is like just getting the tea boxes back
Speaker 4: down on the on the ground makes such a big
Speaker 4: impact on on a golf course. And like something that
Speaker 4: we've talked a lot about I don't think privately, but
Speaker 4: like you know, it creates a lot of obscured.
Speaker 3: Views and obscured.
Speaker 4: Blindness kind of like a little bit of like subtle
Speaker 4: blindness to a golf course. And I can't think of
Speaker 4: like many great golf courses that don't have a lot
Speaker 4: of obscured obstruction of views and in blindness like where
Speaker 4: there where it's kind of hiding different things from from
Speaker 4: you from the tea box, and when you elevate up
Speaker 4: the tea's you lose that. Even it doesn't sound like
Speaker 4: a lot and it's like not a very sexy thing
Speaker 4: to do, but almost like I and I'm not like
Speaker 4: a lot of golf courses have done tea box projects,
Speaker 4: but almost every like non renovated golf course that I
Speaker 4: visit in the last twenty years could could have a
Speaker 4: lot of good from just having the tea boxes put
Speaker 4: down on the ground, right.
Speaker 1: I think that something that is easy to do in
Speaker 1: a renovation and doesn't get much put pushback is just
Speaker 1: pushing up those teas. You know, nobody seems to really
Speaker 1: object to that, and it gets done a lot, but
Speaker 1: I think probably people should object to that more tees
Speaker 1: that are at grade often are more effective when it
Speaker 1: comes to what the architecture is trying to do. At
Speaker 1: so many great courses, what you see and what you
Speaker 1: don't see at a given time is very intentional on
Speaker 1: the part of the architect. This is something that Coren
Speaker 1: Crenshaw do better than just about any modern architect. When
Speaker 1: you're on a Coren Crenshaw course, just pay attention to
Speaker 1: what you're allowed to see and what you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to see depending on your position from the tea box,
Speaker 1: from different positions than the fairway, etc. What can you
Speaker 1: see and what can't you see. It's always really specifically
Speaker 1: worked out at corn Crunshaw courses. And this is something
Speaker 1: that also is so great about Augusta National. You are
Speaker 1: always being shown things or not shown things for specific
Speaker 1: reasons at that golf course, and it's one reason why
Speaker 1: it's so great and why it uses its land so well.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that renovating tea boxes can unintentionally
Speaker 1: kind of mess up the site lines that are intended
Speaker 1: by the architect. Now, something that I thought about a
Speaker 1: lot when I visited Old Barnwell, a new course that
Speaker 1: is under construction outside of Ake in South Carolina being
Speaker 1: designed by Brian Schneider and Blake Conant, who have done
Speaker 1: a lot of work for renaissance golf design Tom Doakes firm.
Speaker 1: Really interesting golf course that has a lot of forward
Speaker 1: thinking design concepts in it. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I appreciated about what they're doing out there is that
Speaker 1: all of the tea boxes are as well and as
Speaker 1: cleverly tied in to the surrounding landscape as the greens are,
Speaker 1: and they're also as varied as the greens. There's not
Speaker 1: like one type of tea box out there. It's always
Speaker 1: different and the way it relates to its environment is
Speaker 1: always different and specific to the site of the tea box. Now,
Speaker 1: part of the reason that this works is that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of short grass around right. The tea box
Speaker 1: is not a defined area of short grass. There's short
Speaker 1: grass that kind of flows into the fairways and flows
Speaker 1: into the preceding green and kind of, you know, surrounds
Speaker 1: the tea box as opposed to being one discrete area.
Speaker 1: But I did really love the shaping they were doing
Speaker 1: around the tea boxes and how each one was interesting
Speaker 1: in its own right in the way that each green
Speaker 1: is interesting in its own right, and I think that
Speaker 1: that's a good goal for really sophisticated architecture. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the next level there. When you're treating each tea
Speaker 1: box with as much care as a green, then you're
Speaker 1: really showing that your detail oriented as an architect and
Speaker 1: that you care about every single component of the golf course.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's something that a lot of
Speaker 1: courses can think about when they're doing restorations or renovations.
Speaker 1: How can we treat the tea boxes with as much
Speaker 1: respect as we treat the greens? All right? Unless we
Speaker 1: have any further thoughts about teas, Brentley roman asks a
Speaker 1: question that we hear quite a bit, and maybe we
Speaker 1: don't need an end depth discussion of this because maybe
Speaker 1: we've addressed it in different ways before. But when you
Speaker 1: hear the phrase best course on worst piece of land,
Speaker 1: what comes to mind? That's Brentley Romine of Golf Channel.
Speaker 4: I'd probably say the Garden City Men's Club is up there.
Speaker 4: It's a really awkward property. It's like an l and
Speaker 4: then also it's it's very very flat now the way
Speaker 4: it's used it just it uses like the gentle movement
Speaker 4: of the land so well, and I think a lot
Speaker 4: of it it centers around the greens. The greens out
Speaker 4: there are terrific. They're just wonderful greens, and they're they're
Speaker 4: so difficult to approach because you know, you the ground
Speaker 4: being so flat obscures what's going on with the ground
Speaker 4: at the green, if that makes sense. Where it's just
Speaker 4: hard to get like an idea. Okay, like when when
Speaker 4: the movement's big and you see a green kind of
Speaker 4: perched on the ground, you're like, okay, that green's running away.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of almost like depth perception or or
Speaker 1: like you know, relative scale, or.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like, yeah, it's like when like when
Speaker 4: shooters talk about shooting and like one of the big
Speaker 4: arenas at the Final four where the fans are set back,
Speaker 4: they can't they lose a little depth perception, and so
Speaker 4: what happens is like you're hitting shots into greens there
Speaker 4: and your wedge runs runs out and you're like, wait,
Speaker 4: I thought that was going to be right next to it,
Speaker 4: and it's like, oh this the screen runs away a
Speaker 4: little bit or you can't tell that it's then the
Speaker 4: next one spins back and you just have like all
Speaker 4: this difficulty of really understanding what's going on because of
Speaker 4: the obscurity of it. And then obviously at that golf course,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of above ground features that really you know,
Speaker 4: make a big impact. So with you know, it's just
Speaker 4: a mixture of like really utilizing the little movement that
Speaker 4: exists combined with some built features that make you know,
Speaker 4: really exciting golf. Like a good example the part three
Speaker 4: on the back the green that was restored by Tom
Speaker 4: Dok and Brian Schneider that has kind of like the
Speaker 4: really flat part of the ground. I apologize for not
Speaker 4: remembering the exact whole number, but it's part three and
Speaker 4: they have just these like kind of like elephants in
Speaker 4: the green, and it's just like, this is really brilliant
Speaker 4: built green on dead flat land, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Garden City kind of leans into
Speaker 1: what it has, right, It had really subtle movement, and
Speaker 1: so that's what the golf course. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not as big as we're used to seeing from
Speaker 1: golf courses, but it uses the subtlety that is there.
Speaker 1: And and so that's a good example of you know,
Speaker 1: taking what you're given, which is what a lot of
Speaker 1: golf architecture can do better now that we can move land.
Speaker 1: We might see a site like Garden City and make
Speaker 1: it less subtle, make it bigger because we think it
Speaker 1: should be. But you know, it's sort of a rarity
Speaker 1: now because it is it just like let itself be itself.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think of this question, I think
Speaker 1: of Pete die courses and how he almost always was
Speaker 1: designing courses on really ill suited pieces of land and
Speaker 1: coming up with clever drainage solutions and managing to build
Speaker 1: really interesting golf And so that's something that immediately comes
Speaker 1: to mind. And I think you'd have to put the
Speaker 1: leado in this discussion as well. I'm not sure this
Speaker 1: is a It can be a bad piece of land
Speaker 1: when its seaside and when you had views of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan skyline, but certainly it was a constructed artificial golf
Speaker 1: course and so you know the land wasn't offering much there.
Speaker 1: All right, let's wrap this up maybe with one last
Speaker 1: question about courses that have great bones but are not
Speaker 1: in very good shape. So can good bones always make
Speaker 1: courses worth playing despite unplayable course conditions? And where is
Speaker 1: the tipping point that's a question from Parmeshan Cheese. I'd
Speaker 1: like your brief thoughts on that, Andy, you know, do
Speaker 1: do does good bones, you know overwhelm the how poor
Speaker 1: conditions of a certain course can sometimes get.
Speaker 4: For me, Yeah, I think for for different I don't
Speaker 4: expect everybody to have that opinion. For me, I'd much
Speaker 4: rather be playing a course with great bones that's in
Speaker 4: poor shape than a course with no bones that's in
Speaker 4: great shape, right, okay? To me, like the obstacles that
Speaker 4: architecture presents, even when the maintenance of the golf course
Speaker 4: is not really up to par is, is really exciting.
Speaker 4: I think like a great example of this is like
Speaker 4: probably my two favorite courses to play in Chicago that
Speaker 4: are public, you know, in the general Chicago land area.
Speaker 4: I love going down to Kankakey Elks and playing that
Speaker 4: length from a row. There's just some massive obstacles that
Speaker 4: you have to overcome that were built features, and there's
Speaker 4: just some beautiful greens that even in a reduced state
Speaker 4: small circles are still incredible greens that you like have
Speaker 4: to hit great approach shots into to score. And Spring
Speaker 4: Valley is the same way. Spring Valley's got a little
Speaker 4: bit more natural movement. And it's the way that ground,
Speaker 4: the golf course, you know, interacts with the ground is
Speaker 4: really great. But yeah, for me, like I'd rather go
Speaker 4: play those courses than go play the Glen Club. Like
Speaker 4: in the Glen Club charges one hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 4: it's in great shape all the time. But for me,
Speaker 4: I just that's just my personal preference that that there's
Speaker 4: a certain thrill that golf architecture that really well thought
Speaker 4: out golf architecture provides for me that i'd rather And
Speaker 4: the thing I get to do when I go to
Speaker 4: a course with great bones it's not in great shape,
Speaker 4: is I get. I get to spend four hours dreaming
Speaker 4: about what it could be.
Speaker 1: That's what I was just going to say. I think
Speaker 1: you like this because you like thinking about what a
Speaker 1: course could be. And I like that as well. And
Speaker 1: so it's enjoyable in a certain way to go to
Speaker 1: a course that isn't everything it could be because you
Speaker 1: get to have a little bit of imagination time when
Speaker 1: you're there and think, man, what would I do with
Speaker 1: this whole How would I make this better without spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Now, when the question asker refers
Speaker 1: to course conditions. I think that I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: parmesan cheese means by course conditions, but I do know
Speaker 1: that often you and I think of something different when
Speaker 1: we talk about course conditions than what a lot of
Speaker 1: people think about when they think about course conditions. And
Speaker 1: you know, no one way of the doing this is
Speaker 1: better than another. I'm just going to articulate what we
Speaker 1: often mean when we say course conditions. Often I would
Speaker 1: prioritize good tree management, good vegetation management, firm turf, things
Speaker 1: that I don't really care about, how pure and fast
Speaker 1: the greens are, how green the turf is. If you
Speaker 1: look at a course and think it's in bad shape,
Speaker 1: if it has slower greens and brownish turf, then that's
Speaker 1: certainly one way to view a golf course. But it's
Speaker 1: not something I share. It's not something I care about.
Speaker 1: So if a course is said to be in bad shape,
Speaker 1: I want to know more specifically what that means. Now,
Speaker 1: what gets in the way of my enjoyment of a
Speaker 1: golf course in terms of conditioning or presentation is too
Speaker 1: many trees in the playing corridor that affect the strategy
Speaker 1: of the whole mowing lines that are too far in
Speaker 1: on the greens or in the fair way and turf
Speaker 1: that is always soggy and so doesn't run out in
Speaker 1: the way that you would hope it would. Now, even
Speaker 1: if those things are present in a golf course, I
Speaker 1: would always rather see something of architectural interest. But certainly
Speaker 1: those factors can affect how the architecture plays and how
Speaker 1: much you can actually enjoy the architecture and bring it
Speaker 1: into the game that you're playing on the grounds, and
Speaker 1: so those are certainly factors that are important. I would
Speaker 1: never say that course conditions or the presentation of golf
Speaker 1: course is unimportant to me, But of course, yes, I
Speaker 1: always want to see good bones. I always want to
Speaker 1: see interesting architecture, and even if it's not in the
Speaker 1: best shape that it can be, then that's okay. A
Speaker 1: lot of the times. So a lot of the times,
Speaker 1: it's understandable some courses don't have a lot of funds,
Speaker 1: and I'm good with that as long as I get
Speaker 1: to see something in the ground that spurs my imagination.
Speaker 1: So I think that would be my response to that question.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna move on at this point to an
Speaker 1: interview that I did with Will Benson, But you can
Speaker 1: consider the interview with Will Benson to be an answer
Speaker 1: to this question from Andrew Shannon. Andrew asks, lay out
Speaker 1: the formula for a great muni renovation, money included if
Speaker 1: you know average numbers. Now, I'm going to talk to
Speaker 1: Will Benson, who is the superintendent and also the facility
Speaker 1: manager at Laurel Wood Golf Course, which is a local
Speaker 1: municipal nine hole golf course in Eugene, Oregon, near the
Speaker 1: University of Oregon campus. And what makes Will's story special
Speaker 1: is that he has managed to make ambitious, significant changes
Speaker 1: to this golf course without getting a huge amount of
Speaker 1: outside funding. He has done this stuff on the cheap.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about millions of dollars. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about anywhere approaching millions of dollars. We're talking about tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars. We're talking about setting aside little
Speaker 1: portions of the management contract that he has with the city,
Speaker 1: and you know, doing things over the course of years
Speaker 1: rather than doing them all at once. And so I
Speaker 1: talk about all of that with Will Benson and how
Speaker 1: he managed to pull it off at Laurelwood Golf Course,
Speaker 1: and the improvements are ongoing at Laurelwood. I would imagine
Speaker 1: he has much more to do there, but I think
Speaker 1: the story is a really good one and a nice
Speaker 1: illustrative one about what can be done for very cheap
Speaker 1: at a nine hole municipal golf course. All right, thanks
Speaker 1: Andy for doing mail bag Reducks. Talk to you again soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Garrett.
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Speaker 1: All right, Will Benson, We are in a unique setting
Speaker 1: for the Friday podcast. We're actually outdoors right now at
Speaker 1: Laurelwood Golf Course, and so maybe you could start off
Speaker 1: just by describing what we're looking at, where we're sitting,
Speaker 1: what the whole kind of environment around here is like,
Speaker 1: so that people get a sense for that kind of
Speaker 1: sounds they're hearing and all that kind of stuff in
Speaker 1: the background.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the area where we are now was once
Speaker 5: my spot I hated the most because this was a
Speaker 5: fence all the way behind us and there was garbage
Speaker 5: and leaves and it was never used. So then we
Speaker 5: remodeled the golf course and moved nine down the hill
Speaker 5: and opened this area up. All of a sudden, we
Speaker 5: got picnic tables and everybody started to sit here, and
Speaker 5: so this kind of ended up. What was my least
Speaker 5: favorite spot is now my most favorite spot to just
Speaker 5: hang out in.
Speaker 2: The evenings and the.
Speaker 5: Sun is setting and kids are putting and people are
Speaker 5: putting and people are having dinner, and it just I
Speaker 5: think it kind of exemplifies that the change in this place,
Speaker 5: how much different people use it.
Speaker 1: So we're at a picnic table. Right behind us is
Speaker 1: a parking lot, the parking lot for the golf course.
Speaker 1: Right in front of us. What do we have going
Speaker 1: on here?
Speaker 5: Well, you can see the entire golf course, which is
Speaker 5: kind of unique to this place, where the clubhouse is
Speaker 5: set up above the valley that the course is in.
Speaker 5: So I mean you can see the butte all the
Speaker 5: way across, and you can see four or five holes
Speaker 5: from here, and you just basically have a beautiful view.
Speaker 1: And directly in front of us, we have the practice
Speaker 1: screen where we have some people practicing putting, including a
Speaker 1: father and daughter. And I'll say this quietly because I
Speaker 1: don't want to make them uncomfortable as if they're being surveilled,
Speaker 1: but it's very, very cute and lovely. So we're in Eugene, Oregon,
Speaker 1: pretty near the University of Oregon, kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: next to it. Yeah, almost next to the University of Oregon.
Speaker 1: So can you just tell me about this piece of
Speaker 1: land that Laurel Wood Golf Course, this nine hole golf
Speaker 1: course occupies.
Speaker 5: Well, it used to be eighteen holes, and it was
Speaker 5: the original country club in town, and they actually had
Speaker 5: trolley service up to it originally, and then it really
Speaker 5: kind of just got lost in the sixties. I think
Speaker 5: the plan was to build an eighteen hole course on
Speaker 5: Alton Baker Park, or by the old Oak Way, which
Speaker 5: was eighteen holes, and they gave it to the school
Speaker 5: district and was going to become a school district, and
Speaker 5: it just kind of sat here for years, kind of
Speaker 5: became known as the Weed to everybody because the fairways
Speaker 5: were all weeds and you couldn't find your ball, and
Speaker 5: there's arbor vited trees planted in the middle of the
Speaker 5: fairway and barbed wire fence around the driving range and
Speaker 5: clubhouse was wrapped in netting and plexiglass because we're getting
Speaker 5: pounded by golf balls from the ninety all the time.
Speaker 5: And it just kind of sat here forever till we
Speaker 5: showed up in two thousand and seven and kind of
Speaker 5: started this whole journey we've been on here all right.
Speaker 1: So we're definitely going to talk about that journey. And
Speaker 1: that's a big thing that I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: put out to listeners, is the story of this golf
Speaker 1: course and how it went from what it was the weed,
Speaker 1: Laurel Weed. You what it is now, which is a
Speaker 1: really nice, public, affordable nine hole golf course on a
Speaker 1: terrific piece of land. So we're going to tell that story,
Speaker 1: but I think I'd like to find out some more
Speaker 1: about like how you found yourself here, how you got
Speaker 1: started in the turf industry, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So what was your path into this profession.
Speaker 5: So at the time, I was just an avid golfer
Speaker 5: and I lived three blocks from here, and we ran
Speaker 5: a construction company. So we did residential commercial construction. We
Speaker 5: did a lot of landscape construction also, and we always
Speaker 5: drove by it and we're like, you know, it's got
Speaker 5: that clubhouse, nobody ever uses it, the whole upstairs is empty.
Speaker 5: You got nine hole course with views, just seems like
Speaker 5: it could be fixed. And so we put in a
Speaker 5: bid when it went out to bid, and we won,
Speaker 5: and so we kind of were planning on working here
Speaker 5: a little bit, but we're still going to run our companies.
Speaker 5: And then two thousand and eight financial crisis hit and
Speaker 5: construction was just basically had just dried up. It was over,
Speaker 5: and so my business part of the time. Todd Matthews
Speaker 5: and I we came here and we met Chris Gone
Speaker 5: over at Eugene Country Club and he came out and
Speaker 5: helped us a little bit.
Speaker 2: And Pat Cook, who.
Speaker 5: Was a construction superintendent. He came out and they just
Speaker 5: kind of started to teach us the ropes a little bit,
Speaker 5: and we kind of took over on stuff and we
Speaker 5: got a little bit more involved in it, a little
Speaker 5: bit more involved in it, and that's just kind of
Speaker 5: how it started there. So it went from Avid Golfer
Speaker 5: to kind of getting into saying, you know, I might
Speaker 5: kind of like to do this.
Speaker 1: So then tell me about getting more and more involved
Speaker 1: with Laurelwood Golf Course and how you ended up building
Speaker 1: up the turf operation here and the business as a whole.
Speaker 1: So I know that's probably a big story, and feel
Speaker 1: free to give as much detail as you want, But
Speaker 1: how did that all unfold?
Speaker 5: Well, originally, when we first did some improvements in nine,
Speaker 5: I met the guys from uh Scratch Golf, Ari Techner
Speaker 5: and Patrick and they came out and they actually hand
Speaker 5: dug this bunker on number four every morning before they
Speaker 5: went to work at Scratch Golf, and they were telling me,
Speaker 5: they're like, you know, this piece of land is better
Speaker 5: than the country club's piece of land. At the time,
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, I don't know, Ari, you might
Speaker 5: be a little wild here with that.
Speaker 1: In one second, so scratch golf is the did they
Speaker 1: make the wedges and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: They made those, like the hand ground wedges and all
Speaker 5: that stuff, really nice stuff. And so he drove me around,
Speaker 5: and you know, I didn't know architecture from anything, you know,
Speaker 5: twenty years ago untill I met Ari. And then Ari
Speaker 5: took me to uh, I guess it's eastern Colorado where
Speaker 5: bally nilis and we played golf there for like four
Speaker 5: or five days. We played with Hickory's and and and
Speaker 5: that was when all of a sudden, I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: there's more to this than just you know, teas, fairways
Speaker 5: and greens. You know, that's when I, I mean, just
Speaker 5: seeing that dope course just kind of blew me away
Speaker 5: and saying, you know, staying there and they had the
Speaker 5: nice food at night. And so that's when I kind
Speaker 5: of started to read about it and learn about it
Speaker 5: and bought a couple of books and just kind of
Speaker 5: began to look at it differently. But when I was
Speaker 5: in construction, we always did a lot of creative stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean I was always.
Speaker 5: Looked at things a little bit differently, did different types
Speaker 5: of work. I liked the old school construction, the various
Speaker 5: like architecture of the craftsmen era, and then even just
Speaker 5: like taking that thought pattern to here and just looking
Speaker 5: at the land and seeing what needed to be moved
Speaker 5: and how you could get the traffic to flow better
Speaker 5: rather there be backlogs every evening on the back part
Speaker 5: of the property. And so that's when we just started,
Speaker 5: like move a tea box here, or at a bunker
Speaker 5: there where we had to drainage issue. And that was
Speaker 5: just the very beginnings of making the course better through
Speaker 5: architecture and not just conditions.
Speaker 1: And I want to get into the various changes you
Speaker 1: made because they are really interesting. They might be hard
Speaker 1: to you know, tell to, you know, non visually, but
Speaker 1: but I think the stuff that you've done is really interesting.
Speaker 1: But first, maybe like a little bit of history on
Speaker 1: Laurel Wood golf Course is there is there a significant
Speaker 1: architectural history here that we know about.
Speaker 5: So it was Clarence Sutton was the architect, and I've
Speaker 5: heard various stories about different things over the years, but
Speaker 5: he designed a couple other smaller nine hole courses, and
Speaker 5: he was rumored to have been involved with Chandler Egan
Speaker 5: in terms of like being kind of on site construction
Speaker 5: overseeing what Chandler was traveling.
Speaker 2: And then some was even claiming.
Speaker 5: That those guys were involved with the work down in
Speaker 5: the Pebble Beach area. You know, I don't know how
Speaker 5: much design they did, but they were involved in day
Speaker 5: to day construction and that was kind of their deal.
Speaker 5: And so I think later in his life, I think
Speaker 5: Clarence Sutton designed this eighteen holes and he played in
Speaker 5: the league here for years. And then obviously Dan Hickson
Speaker 5: came here and helped us reroute seven, eight and nine.
Speaker 5: And Dan's dad was the assistant golf pro here in
Speaker 5: the fifties and sixties, and we have the photos of
Speaker 5: Dan's parents getting married.
Speaker 2: Here in the hall up there.
Speaker 5: And then, you know, once Eugene Country Club kind of
Speaker 5: moved downtown and Trent Jones reversed the course, a lot
Speaker 5: of people went to the flat courts, and this place
Speaker 5: just kind of faded away until six seven years ago
Speaker 5: when we really started changing.
Speaker 1: Stuff became a nine hole course. Had some issues. What
Speaker 1: were some of these specific problems that the course had
Speaker 1: before you arrived here.
Speaker 2: So neglect was probably number one.
Speaker 5: There was, you know, some attempts at drainage, but I
Speaker 5: don't know if they really had like a comprehensive view
Speaker 5: of how to get the water off of the course.
Speaker 5: Obviously we talked about the tea box on nine would
Speaker 5: just pummel the clubhouse. So the clubhouse was just wrapped
Speaker 5: in netting. The driving range had an eight foot chain
Speaker 5: link fence with barbed wire everywhere. I think the number
Speaker 5: three had a bunker that was like heart shaped on it,
Speaker 5: and they were just little brown bunkers like ten foot
Speaker 5: by twelve foot. Six had one two, so there was
Speaker 5: three bunkers. And you could tell that they had shrunk
Speaker 5: the greens as they mowed in and in, so they
Speaker 5: were smaller. So they're all just little circles, and you
Speaker 5: know they had tea boxes that kind of pointed the
Speaker 5: wrong direction, and you know cart paths just cutting through
Speaker 5: holes and pinching stuff, and just I think it's just
Speaker 5: a conglomeration of two operators that I guess it was
Speaker 5: just a different era. They just weren't in They just
Speaker 5: were maintaining it, running it as a business. I mean,
Speaker 5: the first guy supposedly just drank beer and played golf
Speaker 5: all day and that was you know, some of his
Speaker 5: family members did maintenance exactly the next guy, IRV, was
Speaker 5: an insurance agent. He tried to do some stuff and
Speaker 5: then I know there was some dynamics between him and
Speaker 5: the city at the time in terms of what it
Speaker 5: should be. He's trying to go back to eighteen holes,
Speaker 5: so he settled on. He decided he was going to
Speaker 5: try and do two greens on every hole, So Hoole
Speaker 5: one had two greens two, and then whole three, and
Speaker 5: then there was no double greens after that. So then
Speaker 5: the pace of play and where people were supposed to
Speaker 5: go was so confusing because new people didn't know what
Speaker 5: green to hit to, and then they got to the
Speaker 5: next one, and you know, regulars had like hit around
Speaker 5: them to go to the other greens so they could
Speaker 5: go faster, and then they got back to five, six,
Speaker 5: and seven. It would just be a clustered mess because
Speaker 5: nobody could flow through and play. They were always stuck
Speaker 5: in the evenings and it was just kind of a mess,
Speaker 5: is really what it was.
Speaker 1: And then tell me about some of the main design
Speaker 1: changes that you've made here. I'm sure there's many other
Speaker 1: things that you've done as well, with the agronomy and
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff, But maybe we could
Speaker 1: just start with the architecture. You mentioned Dan Hickson earlier.
Speaker 1: He's been advising as an architect here for a few years,
Speaker 1: and just to make sure that people know who Dan is,
Speaker 1: he is a significant Pacific Northwest architect who has worked
Speaker 1: a lot of different places. His best known designs are
Speaker 1: probably Wine Valley in Walla, Walla, Washington, Sylvie's Valley Ranch
Speaker 1: in Eastern Oregon, Bandon Crossings, which is the local public
Speaker 1: course in Bandon, Oregon. And then he has bar Run,
Speaker 1: which I just visited down in Roseberg, which is about
Speaker 1: an hour a little more or so south of Eugene.
Speaker 1: And so he has done a lot of work in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. He is sort of like the Chandler
Speaker 1: Egan of the modern era, and he does very good work.
Speaker 1: And something else that he does is he he consults
Speaker 1: it courses like this and at Rose City, which is
Speaker 1: a municipal course in Portland. So that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of background on Dan for when he enters the picture
Speaker 1: of this story. But what were some of the architecture
Speaker 1: changes that you made here and why did you make them?
Speaker 5: So the biggest one was obviously re routing seven, eight,
Speaker 5: and nine, and then on six We put the creek
Speaker 5: back above ground because in the nineteen seventy they plumbed
Speaker 5: all the creeks underground on the course, so whenever it rains,
Speaker 5: rather than the water going into the creeks and leaving,
Speaker 5: it all just sits on top and anything that flows
Speaker 5: into the property goes into pipe and leaves. So the
Speaker 5: creek was the first really big change. That's what we
Speaker 5: did number one. And I'd been calling Dan trying to
Speaker 5: get him to come here, and then I was just
Speaker 5: struggling with how to re route seven, eight and nine.
Speaker 5: And I knew that I needed to get nine down
Speaker 5: the hill so that this upper area could be developed
Speaker 5: into multi use. And I was really struggling because where
Speaker 5: were we going to put these teas on?
Speaker 2: It was going to be number eight.
Speaker 5: I just it was just it was just going to
Speaker 5: be really difficult to get it to work that way.
Speaker 1: And one quick detail. Nine used to be a par
Speaker 1: three playing up the hill. So if you can imagine
Speaker 1: the clubhouse sits on a hill above the golf course,
Speaker 1: Nine played from the bottom of the hill up to
Speaker 1: the top to a green that was essentially right next
Speaker 1: to the clubhouse. And so as you can imagine the
Speaker 1: clubhouse was getting beamed all day long by golf balls
Speaker 1: and the cars in the parking lot, and so safety problems.
Speaker 1: And then also you know that this lovely practice screen
Speaker 1: that we're looking at right now wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: exist because obviously the ninth green was occupying that spot
Speaker 1: on the property. So your goal was essentially to eliminate
Speaker 1: the ninth hole, the par three ninth hole, and do
Speaker 1: some sort of rerouting farther back in the course in
Speaker 1: order to get to nine hole and make what used
Speaker 1: to be the eighth hole this you know, longer hole
Speaker 1: playing up to where the ninth tea used to be.
Speaker 1: Make that the last hole on the course. So and
Speaker 1: you were getting into how you're going to make that happen.
Speaker 1: You had to relocate the ninth tee or you know,
Speaker 1: find some new places for all these different areas on
Speaker 1: the course. So tell me about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So whole number seven was a it's a neat hole,
Speaker 5: but over the years the trees grew so much that
Speaker 5: from the tea box you could not see where you're
Speaker 5: supposed to hit the ball. So I knew there was
Speaker 5: some old tees in the woods from when it was
Speaker 5: eighteen holes, and I'd always gone back there and looked,
Speaker 5: and I always thought, well, that's where we got to
Speaker 5: go from these teas to there. And that also increased
Speaker 5: the travel time from six green to seventy, which allowed
Speaker 5: the flow to go better because in the old spot,
Speaker 5: people thought they could drive the green, so they would
Speaker 5: be waiting to drive the green, and then the people
Speaker 5: leaving the seven green would actually be walking back into
Speaker 5: play where they slice it. So I knew I had
Speaker 5: to get over there. So then it was just the
Speaker 5: old adage of like how do you get out of
Speaker 5: the corner and create two holes to make this thing flow?
Speaker 5: And that's when I kind of was just standing there
Speaker 5: one day on what used to be the old ten green,
Speaker 5: which was be this first double green, and then I
Speaker 5: looked out through the trees and there was the old
Speaker 5: waste airy where everybody throw their garbage at Laura Wood
Speaker 5: for forty to fifty years, and I was like, well,
Speaker 5: this is a par three right here, if we could
Speaker 5: just get rid of a couple of these trees. And
Speaker 5: then we turned nine into this par five that kind
Speaker 5: of has a blind shot, which I didn't think goes
Speaker 5: that bag because I grew up in New England. We
Speaker 5: had lots of blind shots when we played golf, and
Speaker 5: then the ninth hole that we're moving down the hill,
Speaker 5: that par three was completely blind too. It was one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty to two hundred and ten yards uphill,
Speaker 5: you can never see your ball and it wasn't much
Speaker 5: of a hole. So then I brought Dan out to
Speaker 5: show them my idea, and he was really worried about
Speaker 5: the guy's house on nine, and I was like, well,
Speaker 5: we'll put a net here and we'll do trees, and
Speaker 5: so it ended up working out. We had to remove
Speaker 5: some poplars so we could move over a little bit.
Speaker 5: And I mean, obviously I agree with Dan's idea that
Speaker 5: we should just reroute the whole nine and rebuild it
Speaker 5: and be fantastic, but it just wasn't in our budget or.
Speaker 2: Time frame to do that.
Speaker 5: So we kind of made the best of the situation,
Speaker 5: I think. I mean, obviously I'd changed one or two
Speaker 5: things for sure in that green complex on nine now,
Speaker 5: but overall everybody's really happy with it and play's gone
Speaker 5: way up since we've done it.
Speaker 1: How did you get connected with Dan Hickson and what
Speaker 1: did you observe of the way he worked out here.
Speaker 5: So I'm not sure how I got his number, but
Speaker 5: obviously i'd been around him. He I think he went
Speaker 5: to college with my friend Mark Keating, who's the pro
Speaker 5: up at Oga, and so they knew each other. I
Speaker 5: might even gotten his number through Mark. And so I
Speaker 5: just called and a couple times. I mean, I knew
Speaker 5: he was busy, and he eventually called and came out
Speaker 5: and we just you know, he's telling me about his
Speaker 5: parents and everything, and so we went through the routing
Speaker 5: and we ranged everything, and so he told me, you know,
Speaker 5: I'll be there in like ten to fourteen days and
Speaker 5: we'll start building this ninth green. And about four or
Speaker 5: five days before he came out, he sent me a
Speaker 5: text message. He says, Oh, by the way, we're gonna
Speaker 5: need twelve hundred and fifty cubic guards of phil to
Speaker 5: build that green. And I was like, I did not
Speaker 5: have the fill or anything, and so I went into
Speaker 5: I got into this panic mode. And they were rebuilding
Speaker 5: Hayward Field, so I was trying to get filled from them.
Speaker 5: But those companies were so big they didn't care about me.
Speaker 5: And I was standing in the parking lot with my
Speaker 5: employee Eddie, and all of a sudden, this giant dump
Speaker 5: truck and a huge excavator goes driving up the road.
Speaker 5: So I followed him to their site and literally two
Speaker 5: blocks away they were digging a basement for a house
Speaker 5: and they had something like fifteen hundred cubic guards to
Speaker 5: dispose of, so they actually didn't have to drive all
Speaker 5: the way across town to get rid of everything. They
Speaker 5: just dug dropped everything down there, stockpiled it, and then we.
Speaker 1: Had they're probably pretty happy about that too.
Speaker 5: They saved a ton on that one, and so I
Speaker 5: got them. They they did the initial like kind of
Speaker 5: shape like they pushed it all over the excavator. They
Speaker 5: grounded in in the basis, time for Dan to come
Speaker 5: in with the cat and shape it the way he wanted.
Speaker 1: Really cool, So you know Dan was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of the shaping out here initially.
Speaker 2: Right correct.
Speaker 5: I just rented him a dozer and we had a
Speaker 5: little sand pro and he cut everything in on eight
Speaker 5: and nine's green. He did the t's on nine and eight,
Speaker 5: and he helped a little bit up on seven grinding
Speaker 5: the tees and with the dozer, but it wasn't quite
Speaker 5: the right machine for it.
Speaker 2: So we did that a little bit different after that.
Speaker 1: Pretty nice to have a design build architect as opposed
Speaker 1: to hiring a big firm with all sorts of different people.
Speaker 1: If you can have the architect out on the dough,
Speaker 1: that helps you out, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it helps out a ton. And then I learned
Speaker 5: a ton because I sat there with him the whole time.
Speaker 5: So it was my first I mean I used a
Speaker 5: laser a lot in construction, but it was my first
Speaker 5: time ever, like getting the degrees and learning about how
Speaker 5: you get the water around the bunkers and which way
Speaker 5: you slope the greens and kind of laying out with
Speaker 5: the posts in the middle of the fairway and looking
Speaker 5: back and building off that.
Speaker 2: So it opened up a whole new world to me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I learned tons from Dan on that first run.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine you applied some of these lessons
Speaker 1: to what you've done recently. There's a rebuilt green out here,
Speaker 1: so maybe you could describe that to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So when it came time to do number three,
Speaker 5: Dan was super busy, but he drew me a sketch
Speaker 5: for it.
Speaker 2: So that was the first green I ever.
Speaker 5: Built by myself, So it was me Parrish and dug
Speaker 5: the excavator, and then Dan came in one afternoon right
Speaker 5: at the end, and he just did a little finish
Speaker 5: shaping with my sandpro just to be like, okay, you
Speaker 5: guys are good to lay the sod down. And so
Speaker 5: then we did number seven Parish and I did number
Speaker 5: seven ourselves, and that one was kind of Dan was
Speaker 5: a little bit head scratched, like he wasn't sure about
Speaker 5: the idea, but it was just sometimes you just you
Speaker 5: only have set amount of space and you just use
Speaker 5: it the best you can.
Speaker 2: It may or may not be perfect, but.
Speaker 5: It solved a lot of our problems. And then the
Speaker 5: following year I redid number six. I didn't redo all
Speaker 5: of it, but we did all new drainage, all new bunkers.
Speaker 5: We lifted up the front like eighteen inches because it
Speaker 5: used to have like a seven percent slope on the
Speaker 5: front quarter, so if you put it anywhere near there,
Speaker 5: it was gone. And then four, I think it is
Speaker 5: kind of the culmination of all of it.
Speaker 2: I redid four.
Speaker 5: Dan came out helped me figure out that it was
Speaker 5: going to be two tiers no matter what. And then
Speaker 5: that's the first one I designed. The contours, did everything
Speaker 5: myself and so that one came out great. Almost killed me,
Speaker 5: but it came out great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we've got a we've got a Dan Hickson
Speaker 1: out influence on it here and a Will Benson influence
Speaker 1: as well architecturally. So there's definitely a number of different
Speaker 1: ideas going on out on this course, a great piece
Speaker 1: of land, and so definitely some interesting stuff has come
Speaker 1: out of this process. I'm sure a lot of people
Speaker 1: are interested in how you were able to pull this off,
Speaker 1: how this was able to happen at a course that
Speaker 1: doesn't have the enormous resources of a well to do
Speaker 1: private club, right, because that's most of the work that
Speaker 1: we hear about. Most of the really interesting architectural work
Speaker 1: happens at places that have a ton of money to
Speaker 1: do what they want to do. Here, you have managed
Speaker 1: to do it at a local, public nine hole course,
Speaker 1: and so maybe you could just start by telling me
Speaker 1: about the ownership structure here. How do you work that out?
Speaker 1: How does everything work in terms of operating the course.
Speaker 5: So there's two of us that basically run it. There's
Speaker 5: Nick Sam's who's been a restaurant tour his whole life,
Speaker 5: and he's basically like the CFO, and he's great in
Speaker 5: that realm. He's just very good with money, he's very
Speaker 5: good with employees, he's very good with people. And the
Speaker 5: restaurant business is not an easy one to be and
Speaker 5: the margins are slim, and so to bring someone with
Speaker 5: that experience to come into the golf realm was beneficial
Speaker 5: because it freed me up to just kind of get
Speaker 5: to work. It wasn't where I always had to watch
Speaker 5: all the finances and do what I could do and
Speaker 5: deal with the employees. So he just took fifty percent
Speaker 5: of the crap off of my plate. It was just
Speaker 5: gone and you were free. And then we had the
Speaker 5: City of Eugene when they negotiated the last contract with us,
Speaker 5: we had an attorney, Larry, and they worked together for
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks, and so we had back funds
Speaker 5: that were not used. I think like sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 5: that were you know, put into account that we did
Speaker 5: not use. And then the city brought another chunk of
Speaker 5: money to the table, and so then basically it was
Speaker 5: just up to us to you know, work with Dan
Speaker 5: do the improvements. The city agreed upon the improvements, and
Speaker 5: that's when we did the six, seven, eight, and nine
Speaker 5: improvements and then once that funding was gone, basically there's
Speaker 5: just a small chunk every year for improvements. And so
Speaker 5: that's where we've been redoing the irrigation on the greens
Speaker 5: and some of the greens, like two is such a
Speaker 5: good complex. You know, we did the irrigation, but there's
Speaker 5: no reason to recontour it.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's nice.
Speaker 5: But then like three, that's where we did new irrigation,
Speaker 5: we recontoured it in one year.
Speaker 2: So that one year, I mean.
Speaker 5: I was able to rebuild number three and number seven
Speaker 5: with all new irrigation with that one year funding. So
Speaker 5: doing it all in house, and we have an excavator
Speaker 5: guy that's great, you know, so he can it shaping,
Speaker 5: putting the irrigation in. The employees do it, so it's
Speaker 5: just a it's an in house effort.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously there have been challenges over the past few years.
Speaker 1: You came to this business after the recession, and so
Speaker 1: that was one big earthquake in the economy, and then
Speaker 1: another one happened in twenty twenty. Yeah, and at that
Speaker 1: point I remember meeting you around that time and hearing
Speaker 1: about some of the improvements you were making, and it
Speaker 1: was sort of a punch in the gut. But things
Speaker 1: have gone well for the golf industry after COVID. So
Speaker 1: how did Laurel would first of all deal with with
Speaker 1: that initial shock of COVID and then come out of
Speaker 1: it afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was a wild time. Huh. I hadn't
Speaker 2: thought about it in a little while.
Speaker 5: So we we really were getting more rounds once we
Speaker 5: did the improvements like I did. Definitely wasn't uptick. And
Speaker 5: then with the beginning of the outdoor dining there was
Speaker 5: definitely like an uptick and stuff. And then COVID hit
Speaker 5: and we closed for probably three weeks. And uh, our
Speaker 5: maintenance regime is different than a lot of courses, so
Speaker 5: we don't pull a lot of cores of that stuff.
Speaker 2: But we're closed.
Speaker 5: So Paris and I were just the only two here,
Speaker 5: so we just cored everything.
Speaker 2: Because there's nobody around.
Speaker 5: We're like, now's the time to do it and then
Speaker 5: hopefully we'll open up and uh. And then Nick Sam's wife,
Speaker 5: Sadie Sam, she came and joined us, and uh, and
Speaker 5: then we're we're getting ready to open back up and
Speaker 5: we're trying to find employees, and there wasn't really a
Speaker 5: lot of employees and uh, and then this young gal
Speaker 5: from Thurston High School, her senior year was canceled, so
Speaker 5: she came to work with us, and so we just
Speaker 5: kind of opened up and it just started the process
Speaker 5: of I think I think restaurants were open for a
Speaker 5: little while after that. I can't quite remember how it
Speaker 5: all went down, but so the course of stayed open
Speaker 5: after that three weeks ever since.
Speaker 2: And it was crazy.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've never seen anything like it, and we
Speaker 5: just got overrun for a while there. Then all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, they were almost killing everything because there was
Speaker 5: no pin positions on some of the greens because they're
Speaker 5: so sloped. And that started also to lead me into
Speaker 5: redoing some stuff with the greens to be able to
Speaker 5: withstand the amount of play that were suddenly having. And
Speaker 5: even coming out of COVID, we're still increasing rounds to
Speaker 5: this day, finding new people around here.
Speaker 1: That's really good to hear. Yeah, one of the you know,
Speaker 1: great things that's happened is that the initial surge in
Speaker 1: interest in golf turned out to be more sustainable then
Speaker 1: I personally thought it would be. I thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be one year of kind of like, this
Speaker 1: is all we can do, so we might as well
Speaker 1: do this. But there has been a you know, it's
Speaker 1: not there's been a bit of a leveling off, but
Speaker 1: things have definitely stayed at a higher level than they
Speaker 1: were before COVID. How do you account for that? Do
Speaker 1: you think there's a different perception of golf that has
Speaker 1: taken hold in the post COVID times here? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 5: I do think, and I wonder a little bit. Is
Speaker 5: just golf, you know? Is it hiking too? But it
Speaker 5: feels like like people think about life a little bit
Speaker 5: differently than they did before. I don't know, I can't
Speaker 5: necessarily put my finger on it, but I seen more
Speaker 5: people kind of hanging out together. I see more people,
Speaker 5: you know, wanting to be outside, kind of living a
Speaker 5: little bit. I don't it's odd. I just there's more people,
Speaker 5: more diversity in people like here. And it couldn't have
Speaker 5: just been like, well, I just found golfing again and
Speaker 5: it's great. There's just some different switch in certain populations
Speaker 5: of people where they felt better about being out here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and I hope it continues. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: almost like we were reminded of of some of the
Speaker 1: things that were specific about golf, you know, being being
Speaker 1: outdoors and relaxing and tending to yourself a little bit.
Speaker 1: Some of those things seem to have become more important,
Speaker 1: and golf seems to have become a more important purveyor
Speaker 1: of of those kinds of services.
Speaker 5: I guess, yeah, yeah, there's just there's just something about it.
Speaker 5: I mean they just you know, not kind of watching
Speaker 5: TV all the time, being outside, and then there's the
Speaker 5: comfort of being isolated a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not.
Speaker 5: I mean we went to a Chelsea Handler like comedy
Speaker 5: show at the Holt Center and you're just looking around
Speaker 5: at everybody around you. Everybody rump person coughs and the
Speaker 5: whole place looks you. But here outside like you just
Speaker 5: don't have that. There's no there's like freedom. I mean,
Speaker 5: I still go to the grocery store and I still
Speaker 5: still see people, you know, looking at you out of
Speaker 5: the corner of their eye, worried someone's got a mask,
Speaker 5: and it just feels like here like that worries not there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it frees you up from thinking about it
Speaker 1: because we were all sort of collectively traumatized in a
Speaker 1: way during that time, and there's still a lingering thing
Speaker 1: about indoor spaces where you're kind of like, I don't know, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's that's I hadn't thought of it that way. So,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that I've been thinking about a
Speaker 1: lot lately, and with the National Link Stress Symposium coming
Speaker 1: up in Washington, d C. That is kind of on
Speaker 1: this theme, I've been thinking about it more. But you know,
Speaker 1: I like learning about different ways that municipal and local
Speaker 1: golf courses can manage to get a piece of the
Speaker 1: pie when it comes to money golf, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money flowing into golf right now, more than
Speaker 1: there was before, and predictably, quite a bit of it
Speaker 1: tends to be diverted to the usual places, to high
Speaker 1: dollar resort courses, to private courses, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that or that
Speaker 1: that offends me. I just want local courses to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of that. But it seems like operators
Speaker 1: really have to fight for that and to be savvy
Speaker 1: about it. So I mean, if you were to go
Speaker 1: into advice mode for how different golf course operators or
Speaker 1: even superintendents could help fund improvement projects, like the ones
Speaker 1: that you've done over the past several years. What kind
Speaker 1: of advice would you give around that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, I mean there's so many different approaches
Speaker 5: to it. I mean, you have like Winter part down
Speaker 5: in Florida where the town themselves decided we're going to
Speaker 5: have a great nine hole golf course and you walk
Speaker 5: that thing and all the money is on those greens complexes,
Speaker 5: so they decided that's what they wanted. And there's some
Speaker 5: creative people involved there. Like when I went down there
Speaker 5: and I was looking around, I was like, look at
Speaker 5: these clever shirts, look at these clever signs. You could
Speaker 5: tell that there's some very thoughtful people involved in that.
Speaker 5: And I do think municipal golf courses in general are
Speaker 5: leery of creative people and people with ideas, and people
Speaker 5: want to change some things. And I'm not saying, like,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm not saying that change is the most
Speaker 5: important thing in the world, but you do have to
Speaker 5: change in order to become different to offer stuff that
Speaker 5: people want. And I mean, I have some their caddies
Speaker 5: down at Bandon, and I think it is there.
Speaker 2: Catle Bluffs in Michigan are buffs. Yeah, bluffs. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So they they didn't even call me or anything. They
Speaker 5: just sent me a DM afterwards and they said, hey,
Speaker 5: we'd heard about you on the Twitter or whatever. And
Speaker 5: we came out and played and we caddy and played bandon.
Speaker 5: We caddy played back there and we love what you're
Speaker 5: doing there. Just keep doing the improvement. It's just a
Speaker 5: little bit better.
Speaker 2: It's great. I love it.
Speaker 5: And and so I think that's also important too, Like
Speaker 5: everything doesn't have to be a five million dollar master
Speaker 5: plan and everyone doesn't have to have all nine greens
Speaker 5: perfectly done that year, and we closed for nineteen months
Speaker 5: and month everything's perfect.
Speaker 2: Not a drop is out of out of place. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's okay to be kind of a little rough as
Speaker 2: you do it.
Speaker 5: I mean I remember one guy left a review after
Speaker 5: we did seven eight nine and writes this review on
Speaker 5: Google or whatever, and he's like, well, obviously I didn't
Speaker 5: have enough money to finish everything and complaining about it.
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, we didn't, but in time we have.
Speaker 5: And so that's the one of you that we've taken
Speaker 5: is you know, I don't offer perfection every day, but
Speaker 5: it's a hell of a lot better than we started.
Speaker 1: There's something else about the process that you've gone through
Speaker 1: that stands out to me, and that is that Dan
Speaker 1: at the beginning was out on the dozer designing and
Speaker 1: shaping the greens himself, and then as that went on,
Speaker 1: he handed off more and more responsibility to you, and
Speaker 1: so now the changes can be more and more in house.
Speaker 1: And that seems kind of rare to me. It's pretty
Speaker 1: rare that an architect would be like, oh, you don't
Speaker 1: really need me. Usually architects want to say, yes, you
Speaker 1: do need me. Maybe that started to change because architects
Speaker 1: are so busy. I know Dan is very busy, and
Speaker 1: so that could be part of it. But you have
Speaker 1: learned to do a lot of this stuff yourself, and
Speaker 1: that is kind of like the ultimate efficient, right learning
Speaker 1: how to do construction, to do design, and to be
Speaker 1: able to carry out some improvements almost on your own
Speaker 1: with help. But you are sort of the point person
Speaker 1: of it. Have you felt that kind of emerging over
Speaker 1: the past couple of years.
Speaker 5: Definitely, And he got so busy. I mean it got
Speaker 5: to the point where it was like he'd call me
Speaker 5: like six or eight weeks after I called him, he'd
Speaker 5: be like, sorry, dude, I am just slammed.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you need?
Speaker 5: And I was like, I just when we redid four,
Speaker 5: I was like, I just need a little bit of
Speaker 5: help shooting the grades and getting this correct. And so
Speaker 5: he came out and we were shooting on it and
Speaker 5: he's like, well, you're gonna have to do two tiers.
Speaker 2: This is the way it's gonna have to be. I
Speaker 2: was like, that's fine, that's fine, and then he kind
Speaker 2: of hinted.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh god, he's gonna stay another day
Speaker 5: help me shape those things. That's so tired from getting
Speaker 5: the utilities in and stockpiling the sand. And you know,
Speaker 5: I have very inexperienced staff, very young staff, and so
Speaker 5: it's a heavier burden at times on a larger project.
Speaker 5: And he's like, all right, you're good to go, see
Speaker 5: you later, and he drove off, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I got to design the whole thing myself here on
Speaker 5: the end. And so we just went for it. But
Speaker 5: it has been like that. He's like comfortable, vere Matt.
Speaker 5: He's busy. I can call him, we talk about stuff.
Speaker 5: I see him at the shows and he comes out
Speaker 5: every once in a while and we just look at
Speaker 5: stuff and walk the property and just get a feel
Speaker 5: for it.
Speaker 1: I think that's how a lot of the best renovations
Speaker 1: and restorations happen is just sort of piece me all
Speaker 1: over time. The ones that happen all at once can
Speaker 1: turn out great too, but those are pretty expensive and
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily achieve a better result than the little
Speaker 1: bit of a time. Let's try this, and let's see
Speaker 1: how it plays, and then we can learn something from
Speaker 1: that to apply to the next thing. And so in
Speaker 1: a way, you know, the lack of funds to just
Speaker 1: blow it all up and then redesign the course is
Speaker 1: as cool as I'm sure a Dan Hickson course out
Speaker 1: on this property would be. It is there is something
Speaker 1: to be said for not having the funds to do
Speaker 1: that and having to be a little more clever and
Speaker 1: patient in uh in in the process. So you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you think about the next several years,
Speaker 1: do you have an idea of of kind of where
Speaker 1: you want to go next with the golf course?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I have a I have a list
Speaker 5: of things. Obviously, after four which was it was really
Speaker 5: difficult on me and to covid all just it was
Speaker 5: difficult to say the least, so everyone's like, when are
Speaker 5: you gonna do number five? I need a year or
Speaker 5: two oft to do that. So we're gonna do a
Speaker 5: little recontouring on the number one green, and we have
Speaker 5: a little bit of irrigation work to do on the
Speaker 5: other side that we may or may not do. I've
Speaker 5: talked to Dan about doing a Himalayas Green over on
Speaker 5: the other side for the citizens, which I think would
Speaker 5: be fantastic use of space over there. And there's some
Speaker 5: drainage work to do. There's bringing one more creek kind
Speaker 5: of above ground. There's a number of areas I'd like
Speaker 5: to add a few more bunkers, and then I, you know,
Speaker 5: for playability, I think we're at the stage where we
Speaker 5: can take X amount of that funds and start top
Speaker 5: dressing the fairways just to try and increase playability different
Speaker 5: times of the years. And so I think we're we're
Speaker 5: most of the way through a lot of the architectural changes.
Speaker 5: There's just a few more years of stuff to do
Speaker 5: to kind of tighten it up.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you for taking some time out
Speaker 1: of your busy day to talk to me. This has
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. This is definitely the best setting for
Speaker 1: a podcast that I've ever recorded one of these interviews in,
Speaker 1: so really appreciate that, and good luck with the future
Speaker 1: of this golf course.
Speaker 2: Here, all right, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf podcast was produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One thing that
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening.