Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast.
Speaker 1: Today we have part two of our actually three part
Speaker 1: podcast with Yale golf coach Colin Shean. This podcast was
Speaker 1: supposed to be two parts, but then had to wrap
Speaker 1: up the pod after I already posted part one and
Speaker 1: then Colin and I talked for like another forty minutes.
Speaker 2: So Part three.
Speaker 1: Will be out on Monday night, Tuesday morning ish.
Speaker 2: And hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun talking with Colin, and
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is part two of the three
Speaker 1: part podcast.
Speaker 3: I miss a green.
Speaker 4: For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball
Speaker 4: in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I.
Speaker 1: Find my ball in a Frida egg Frida egg, the
Speaker 1: dreaded Frida egg Frida egg, Frida egggg Frida egg bride
Speaker 1: egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the course.
Speaker 1: Once you graduated college, you started writing and editing golfing magazine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the golfer magazine. I got this. I was,
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: I originally wanted to get into architecture. I sent a
Speaker 4: few letters. I didn't In hindsight, he didn't really pursue
Speaker 4: it as more aggressively.
Speaker 3: I was too, I was too shy.
Speaker 4: I guess God bless ron Force at least he he replied.
Speaker 4: And we we had a series of long phone calls
Speaker 4: and he was trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 4: help me out, and and you know.
Speaker 3: I wound up.
Speaker 4: I used to I used to help when I was
Speaker 4: sort of out of college, looking for work, living at home.
Speaker 4: A neighbor of mine, Tom Graham, this wonderful guys like
Speaker 4: twenty time club champion and country go to Fairfield, great player.
Speaker 4: You know, he's an RNA seminole national guy. He occasionally
Speaker 4: would ask me to, you know, drive him to the
Speaker 4: airport or pick him up in the city or whatever.
Speaker 4: It was almost like just welfare for me. And he'd
Speaker 4: give me one hundred dollars. And one time I had
Speaker 4: to go into the city to pick him and this
Speaker 4: other guy up. They were at some black tie event
Speaker 4: at the Metropolitan Club. It was like a Robert Burns
Speaker 4: night in January, and they were having a laugh and
Speaker 4: they mentioned they had served hagis and I casually said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's what Sandy Lyle served at the for his Masters
Speaker 4: for his Champions dinner in nineteen eighty nine, and.
Speaker 3: They were like, how did you know that. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: I just I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mentioned when I when I worked in the backroom
Speaker 4: at the Patterson Club one year I worked for Brenda
Speaker 4: Walsh when I was fifteen and sixteen, and I was
Speaker 4: They asked me to help clean out the attic and
Speaker 4: there was this cash of like Golf Digest from the
Speaker 4: seventies a box. It must have been every issue from
Speaker 4: like seventy two to seventy nine, and I wound up
Speaker 4: reading them all. I wound up having a sort of
Speaker 4: an unnecessary expertise in golf trivia and or just loving
Speaker 4: the game.
Speaker 3: It's really what it was.
Speaker 4: And I was very lucky to caddy the country go
Speaker 4: with Fairfield growing up, and my town had a nine
Speaker 4: hole part three course, a public course at Jeff Cornish
Speaker 4: Part three course that was a.
Speaker 3: Dollar thirty five to play.
Speaker 4: So I was always really a golf and then and
Speaker 4: this guy in the backseat was the publisher of the
Speaker 4: Golfer magazine, and he asked me if I wanted to
Speaker 4: come to work on Monday.
Speaker 3: And I was like sure.
Speaker 4: I started in early February of ninety eight, just as
Speaker 4: an editorial intern, and by the end of that year
Speaker 4: I was managing editor of a small magazine.
Speaker 3: But it was a great time to be in New York.
Speaker 4: It was was it was wonderful to be sort of
Speaker 4: writing and editing and traveling, still a healthy publishing circuit
Speaker 4: of books coming in. We'd get the galleys to four
Speaker 4: or five books every week. I remember just constantly reading
Speaker 4: them all on the train. It was like a master's
Speaker 4: degree in golf and golf architecture in those years. And
Speaker 4: the one thing I really noticed was I was sent
Speaker 4: to play a lot of new courses and they were
Speaker 4: not good. They were not and they weren't nearly as
Speaker 4: good as the old courses. It's when I really started
Speaker 4: to see a sort of develop a sort of you know,
Speaker 4: a sort of an opinion about modern courses and and
Speaker 4: versus new and old. And it was just, you know,
Speaker 4: it was it was. It was fascinating. It was fascinating
Speaker 4: to see golf in that sort of era and interviewing,
Speaker 4: interviewing architects and players, and it was I was living
Speaker 4: paycheck to paycheck, but I was like a poverty jet
Speaker 4: set lifestyle, going on press trips and and.
Speaker 3: Checking in like to hotels and stuff.
Speaker 4: It was you know, it was a good It was
Speaker 4: the only time I could have done that when I
Speaker 4: was sort of twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, and
Speaker 4: but I still had an ambition to move beyond that.
Speaker 4: As much as I enjoyed it, and I really did,
Speaker 4: I wanted to get into uh, you know, design and
Speaker 4: development projects eventually. The and the one sort of moment
Speaker 4: that really sort of helped kick that along was visiting
Speaker 4: Kingsbarnes in two thousand. I was so impressed with the
Speaker 4: course in the context of what I had seen the
Speaker 4: previous couple of years, when generally just seeing as just
Speaker 4: a string of poor and mediocre new courses, uninspired, unwalkable, artificial,
Speaker 4: just a litany.
Speaker 3: Of just sort of.
Speaker 4: Of demerits on every every course you went to. Kings
Speaker 4: Barnes was amazing. And I was equally impressed by the
Speaker 4: sort of restraint on the clubhouse, sort of small scale
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 4: Made it a point to find out who was involved
Speaker 4: in the project, who developed it, and and I eventually
Speaker 4: got in touch with Mark Parson, and super smart individual,
Speaker 4: someone you should definitely have on your podcast, and we
Speaker 4: became friends, and I eventually tracked him down. You know,
Speaker 4: I tracked him down and we had a series of
Speaker 4: just you know, two hour long phone calls, and he
Speaker 4: told me about this. His next project was going to
Speaker 4: be Castle Stewart in the Scottish Highlands, and you know,
Speaker 4: I sort of agreed to you know, two or three
Speaker 4: to be an intern on that project and move there.
Speaker 4: And eventually, with a little bit of delay in the
Speaker 4: permitting and entitlement process, it led to a moving there
Speaker 4: in two thousand and six. I was there for the
Speaker 4: majority of two that I was there for most of
Speaker 4: two thousand and six and in portions of two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven getting a witness a really complicated project from
Speaker 4: the from the sort of ground up.
Speaker 3: It was really cool.
Speaker 1: So so at that point you're probably thinking you want
Speaker 1: to go dive into golf architecture and that was your
Speaker 1: big break?
Speaker 2: What what uh?
Speaker 1: Why didn't you get all the way into architecture.
Speaker 4: I guess I'll admit that, you know, it's in hindsight,
Speaker 4: I wasn't I wasn't willing to live the sort of.
Speaker 3: Constant road warrior lifestyle.
Speaker 4: I I probably should have been doing that and first
Speaker 4: six ten years out of college, but you know.
Speaker 3: I love living in New York.
Speaker 4: I loved having all of my friends from from college,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of a lot of friends from
Speaker 4: college there.
Speaker 3: Eventually met my wife. You know.
Speaker 4: It's just being being on the road, being living out
Speaker 4: of a living out of a suitcase. I guess just
Speaker 4: wasn't just wasn't practical, and I understood the trade off
Speaker 4: and I but really it was about seeing things from
Speaker 4: the point of view of the developer, and I was
Speaker 4: I was more intrigued. I was interested by this concept
Speaker 4: of maybe being only involved in five projects in a career,
Speaker 4: but having them, but having them, but being involved in
Speaker 4: the sort of on the development side of them as well,
Speaker 4: and having them, you know, having a much longer and
Speaker 4: relationship with those projects, sort of how I had envisioned
Speaker 4: it at the time, you know.
Speaker 3: And and then then.
Speaker 4: That sort of fuels aspects of what I'm you know,
Speaker 4: what you know, what we're what I'm trying to do now,
Speaker 4: And in some way or another, that's what led to
Speaker 4: me to sort of try to put the you know,
Speaker 4: try to get the project in Cobtown going. It's sort
Speaker 4: of what interests me about Kanka Key, That's what interests
Speaker 4: me about uh, you know, those types of projects, maybe
Speaker 4: having them come fewer and fewer than sort of idea
Speaker 4: of coming in building something and leaving.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like having a long term connection, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the saddest things is you go, yeah, I
Speaker 1: go see a ton of places, and most of the
Speaker 1: places I see that are public and once were great
Speaker 1: are now at year sixty of the demise of them.
Speaker 1: But I was in Philly recently and I saw Gill's
Speaker 1: first project, Enniscrone, and I was walking around, and you know,
Speaker 1: for what it is right now, it's a great public option.
Speaker 1: But like you're walking around and I was just looking
Speaker 1: at it and you see bent grass, long bent grass
Speaker 1: and rough, you know, in the rough, and you realize like, well,
Speaker 1: this is really this is almost more depressing because it's
Speaker 1: ten years into the fifty or sixty year slide that
Speaker 1: you see most courses.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is architects, once they're done with a project,
Speaker 1: it's kind of done, you know, It's it's out of
Speaker 1: their hands then, and that that aspect of the business
Speaker 1: is is almost the more important aspect, right.
Speaker 4: That's interesting, Like you they don't have control after the
Speaker 4: fact of how it's presented or but you know, it's it's.
Speaker 4: It reminds me to an extent of the helplessness I
Speaker 4: felt when I was sort of arguing with my publisher
Speaker 4: about how he was going to present the book and
Speaker 4: he wanted to do you know, three three volumes and
Speaker 4: a slipcase, and and you know, I in the end
Speaker 4: it was he was the publisher. I didn't have a choice,
Speaker 4: even you know, in spite of the sort of you know,
Speaker 4: all the hard work I did you hear that from
Speaker 4: you definitely hear that from architects. You know, they spend
Speaker 4: all that time working on stuff and then it's up
Speaker 4: to the owner of the developer, or you know, the
Speaker 4: market forces take place and the next thing you know,
Speaker 4: it's right, it's been compromised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's brutal.
Speaker 1: It's I can only imagine how that feels like as
Speaker 1: an architect, it was when you know something's going the
Speaker 1: wrong way and and you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: I saw one of Mike Devreeese's early courses and on
Speaker 1: one of the holes a center line bunkers now a
Speaker 1: center line pond. It's like, couldn't drain the bunker, so
Speaker 1: you just make it a pond. It's like it makes
Speaker 1: the it turns the hole from like a spectacular hole
Speaker 1: that you know you could you felt like you were
Speaker 1: on at Prairie Dunes once you get past the center
Speaker 1: line pond on but instead like it's just offensive because
Speaker 1: there's a pond in the center of the fairway right,
Speaker 1: it's like exactly, and it's just And I remember texting him,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sure the center line pond's not Originally
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, dot dot dot. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: you lose so much of it. So you're you're a
Speaker 1: big student of golf course architecture. If you were going
Speaker 1: to put together a mount rush for more of architects,
Speaker 1: who would it be on it?
Speaker 4: I feel like, uh, I feel like when you're on
Speaker 4: the best of Alice mackenzie, I feel like you're on
Speaker 4: the work of genius. I do love Ah, I do
Speaker 4: love McDonald. I do and it's even with this relatively
Speaker 4: small sample size. Always always loved coult I've always loved
Speaker 4: his work in the UK.
Speaker 3: He was blessed with sort of sort of wonderful sites.
Speaker 4: And then I do think and I think that I
Speaker 4: probably could come up with a better answer, But I
Speaker 4: still think Ross is sort of somehow underrated. He gets
Speaker 4: like knocked for having so many courses. There's some in
Speaker 4: his but the sort of I think that would be
Speaker 4: my quick answer that.
Speaker 3: You only get four for a Rushmore comparison.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, yeah, yeah, we uh, who would be who would.
Speaker 1: Be the one that is you'd say underappreciated where you'd say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's not Mount Rushmore guy, but he's a
Speaker 1: guy that everybody that the general public doesn't understand or
Speaker 1: or that his you know that their work wasn't you
Speaker 1: know it was misinterpreted or lost whatever.
Speaker 4: Well, I agree that I agree with you that yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, Langford, Langford and Moreau we're building, We're we're building.
Speaker 4: We're ambitious in their in their projects in there, in
Speaker 4: the degree of difficulty of the sort of shots around
Speaker 4: the green I put them in there, I don't know,
Speaker 4: So you have to in the in the met section,
Speaker 4: you just you can see all these debreuemic courses that
Speaker 4: are just sensational.
Speaker 3: Walter Travis.
Speaker 4: I can't even get over how good everything Walter Travis
Speaker 4: ever did was fabulous, and I love his variety of bunkering.
Speaker 4: William Flynn is there. I mean, there's not a more
Speaker 4: perfect golf course than Shinnecock. You know, then his best work.
Speaker 4: Who else isn't getting you know, he's well covered.
Speaker 2: Perry Maxwell, Harry.
Speaker 3: Maxwell, jeez, I just took the team this fall. I
Speaker 3: took it.
Speaker 4: The UH old Town had an event. For the first
Speaker 4: time in the history of Wake four and in fifty years,
Speaker 4: Old Town hosted a Wake Forest tournament this past September
Speaker 4: on a Monday Tuesday. The practice round was the Sunday
Speaker 4: that Tiger won the Tour championship. By the way, that
Speaker 4: place is sensational. That's what Augusta wants to be. The
Speaker 4: width of the course was incredible, that the sort of
Speaker 4: and yet the angles that the critical sort of preferred
Speaker 4: angles were or something my players.
Speaker 3: Love figuring out. I'm blown over.
Speaker 4: Perry Maxwell's sensational.
Speaker 2: So how do you how do you go about building
Speaker 2: a schedule?
Speaker 1: Did you see that they were going to host an
Speaker 1: old Town and immediately or like we have to go there?
Speaker 4: We got invited? That was an invite? UH coach hoss Uh,
Speaker 4: he's a friend. But maybe Dunlop White their their golf
Speaker 4: care recommended Yale. We always bring a little you know,
Speaker 4: we bring a touch of class to an event when
Speaker 4: when Yale Yale's there, we bring our twenty one national
Speaker 4: championships to the UH. But UH, that was just an
Speaker 4: honor to get invited. And we went down on Saturday morning.
Speaker 4: It was a Monday Tuesday event and so we we
Speaker 4: flew down Saturday morning. We played an extra practice round
Speaker 4: which was which was really useful. And but yeah, so
Speaker 4: we we we we generally play in the Northeast. Were
Speaker 4: limited to sort of a certain number of degrees on
Speaker 4: the road. Days on the road, you know, dates of
Speaker 4: competition are limited, uh to an extent. We definitely have
Speaker 4: a sort of a cap on our Monday Tuesday tournaments.
Speaker 3: We basically try to play one of those a year.
Speaker 4: But so that was a cou to get in it.
Speaker 4: We played the team the boys were boys played great.
Speaker 4: They played their way into the final pairing for with
Speaker 4: with Wake and Louisville. On the sort of final round
Speaker 4: on Tuesday morning, we stubbed our toe a bit and
Speaker 4: finished sixth. But it was a fabulous experience that that
Speaker 4: that there needs to be more events like that, and
Speaker 4: you know, and I and we're invited back, but the
Speaker 4: club only gave Wake a.
Speaker 3: Two year contract.
Speaker 4: They you know, yeah, there one more year than augustin
Speaker 4: National gives CBS.
Speaker 3: But hopefully that becomes a fixture because that that was a.
Speaker 4: Perfect example of an event where, you know, seventy five
Speaker 4: college golfers were treated to a pre World War two gem.
Speaker 4: Those walkable, fabulous scores were low, but who cares? Best
Speaker 4: best team won, the best player the best player one.
Speaker 1: I kind of feel that way with like great architecture.
Speaker 1: It's rendered you know, it's rendered less, you know, challenging
Speaker 1: by distance and technology, but I feel like it still
Speaker 1: separates the class because of the green complexes and the
Speaker 1: angles that they force, Like especially at really great golf courses,
Speaker 1: like you still have to play them really well to
Speaker 1: take advantage of the distance because you can be in
Speaker 1: positions on a good you know, well designed great greens
Speaker 1: like Maxwell greens. If you're out of position, you know
Speaker 1: you have you just have no chance. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're fifty yards or two hundred and fifty yards.
Speaker 4: Absolutely you get the I love the sort of the
Speaker 4: the scoring, the elasticity of scoring, where a player plays
Speaker 4: well shoots sixty seven and someone else plays poorly and
Speaker 4: it's seventy seven. It's like you can and then you could.
Speaker 4: Those two golfers could flip roles and flip scores.
Speaker 3: The next day. You know.
Speaker 4: It's I find that interesting, Like it appears easy until
Speaker 4: it's not. Until you're out of position and you're making bogies.
Speaker 4: It's like there's something. It's it's not always apparent, like
Speaker 4: why you're able to stay underneath the hole, it's because
Speaker 4: you set it up with the good t ball. And
Speaker 4: I was blown away by Old Town being like probably
Speaker 4: as close to what Augusta National looked like, and when
Speaker 4: when Old Town opened in nineteen thirty nine, it had to.
Speaker 3: Be like a twin with Augusta.
Speaker 4: National in nineteen thirty nine, that had to be so
Speaker 4: remarkably similar.
Speaker 2: It's I'm really kind of bummed out.
Speaker 1: I always make like every start of the year, I
Speaker 1: have five courses that I want to see for the year,
Speaker 1: and it was like one of the five that I
Speaker 1: wanted to see just because of like the way Bill
Speaker 1: Krr talks about Old Town. It's like that's the place
Speaker 1: you got to go see and now you're hearing that,
Speaker 1: hearing you say that, and I was talking to a
Speaker 1: guy and he was like, Oh, they a flood washed
Speaker 1: away one of their holes, so they have to rebuild
Speaker 1: one of the holes out there. And I'm like, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't, can't go down there until the next year.
Speaker 1: I'm like, ship, you know, I didn't. I didn't get
Speaker 1: that one. Get that one done this year?
Speaker 3: How recently was that?
Speaker 1: Like, I think it was like a couple of weeks ago. Wow,
Speaker 1: so you might must have gotten it right before. I
Speaker 1: think it was the hurricane. It was hurricane enough, it
Speaker 1: was flow.
Speaker 4: Oh well, the major. It's possible they had just they
Speaker 4: had sidestepped the one that hit the hit.
Speaker 3: The coast, but maybe I don't know. Yeah, you know
Speaker 3: the one that came up.
Speaker 2: So uh you you I know you love golf in
Speaker 2: the UK. Have you been to Australia?
Speaker 3: Definitely?
Speaker 4: I went on one trip in March or April of
Speaker 4: two thousand and three. It might have been there thirteen
Speaker 4: days and played like eighteen courses. It was an aggressive visit.
Speaker 1: Very the way it has to be, though, when you
Speaker 1: don't know when you're going to go back there, you
Speaker 1: never know.
Speaker 3: It was beautiful.
Speaker 4: Fell in love with the Seven Sisters loved New South Wales,
Speaker 4: could live in Sydney, enjoyed Newcastle, did not get to
Speaker 4: and then finished in Natelaide, did not get to any
Speaker 4: of the islands. At that point I sort of figured
Speaker 4: out I'd have to get back.
Speaker 2: You got to take a team dream trip down there.
Speaker 3: I know we're allowed to do so.
Speaker 4: One of the great sort of legacies of my predecessor
Speaker 4: is the international trip. I was so fortunate to go
Speaker 4: on it in tw nineteen ninety six as a junior coach.
Speaker 4: Patterson began in nineteen seventy five. He took the team
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy six on the first of what must
Speaker 4: have been eight quadrennial trips. So the ENNSAA allows you
Speaker 4: to have an international trip to compete internationally once every
Speaker 4: four years, so essentially one time in your undergraduate experience,
Speaker 4: and he takes them to England and Scotland. He took
Speaker 4: them to England and Scotland for two weeks and played
Speaker 4: matches against Oxford and Cambridge and the Universities of St
Speaker 4: Andrews and Edinburgh and equally fun like club matches against
Speaker 4: the Old Buffties at Mierfield and Royal Sinkport's and Royal
Speaker 4: Liverpool and that trip to me in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 4: our spring break trip. We went in March, two weeks
Speaker 4: a fortnite in the UK during March where we played
Speaker 4: alternate shot and played winter golf and we got snowed
Speaker 4: out at Oxford and that was the sort of most
Speaker 4: important two weeks of my time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where you.
Speaker 4: Know, it's like golfing diplomacy. It was just fascinating to
Speaker 4: play links courses, to play Heathland courses, to just just
Speaker 4: completely fall in love with the culture of golf, the
Speaker 4: pace of play, the way they sort of the way
Speaker 4: everyone had a crooked swing and they were all so competitive,
Speaker 4: the ground game. I just love the camaraderie, you know,
Speaker 4: just and that became I sort of spent. I returned
Speaker 4: in ninety eight, and then I between ninety eight and
Speaker 4: sort of two thousand and eight, I probably made thirty
Speaker 4: five trips to the UK and lived over there for
Speaker 4: you know, it's probably easily spent over a year and
Speaker 4: eighteen months of my life over there.
Speaker 1: So I was gonna ask you, like, if you could
Speaker 1: play one area the rest of your life, where would
Speaker 1: it be. But I almost would say, like if you
Speaker 1: at ten rounds and you're in the in the UK,
Speaker 1: where would it be?
Speaker 3: Everywhere?
Speaker 4: There's not a There's there's literally seventeen regions with a
Speaker 4: week's worth of golf that you could play. But I
Speaker 4: would say, uh, every time I want to say I'm
Speaker 4: partial to Scotland and Ireland, I sort of realize I'm
Speaker 4: partial to England. I've only spent one week in Wales
Speaker 4: and it's beautiful there. But I guess I would. To me,
Speaker 4: I would have told you in two thousand that I would.
Speaker 4: My goal would have been to retire with a or
Speaker 4: have a small house in Ireland near Ross's Point, County
Speaker 4: Sligo Golf Club, or a sort of a dream would
Speaker 4: be to sort of spend six weeks in Sligo every
Speaker 4: summer playing Ross's Point at five pm, playing.
Speaker 3: Twilight like golf there.
Speaker 4: It was before, of course was probably uh modified by
Speaker 4: Pat Ruddy and I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have the same affection for it anymore, but
Speaker 3: I think now I might.
Speaker 4: I probably would probably sort of live somewhere in the
Speaker 4: west of Ireland, probably in St Andrew's. I also could
Speaker 4: see myself down on the coast near uh Sandwich, any
Speaker 4: anywhere yeah, I couldn't. You know, you can't spend enough,
Speaker 4: You can't spend enough days of your life golfing in
Speaker 4: the UK and Ireland. You really can't.
Speaker 1: What's what's your favorite course that you've never nobody ever
Speaker 1: talks about?
Speaker 3: You know, Well, my whole, my.
Speaker 4: Whole advice everybody when I send them is is to
Speaker 4: make sure you you you you pace your itinerary with
Speaker 4: more than a few hidden gems. And it's not just
Speaker 4: you know, Open Rota World Top one hundred courses. They're
Speaker 4: all great, but in my experience of running running tours,
Speaker 4: they are taking groups from the Outpost club or even
Speaker 4: the Yelle golf team when we've gone we went in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, in twenty twelve and sixteen. For
Speaker 4: every Royal Dornick, there's a there's a Brora, There's there's
Speaker 4: losty Mouth, There's Montrose, Kraale, London, leaven Ely. You know,
Speaker 4: you can name the whole all of the courses in
Speaker 4: the in Cornwall and dev and I took my seventy
Speaker 4: seven year old father this summer on a on a
Speaker 4: tour of a few courses in England and we and
Speaker 4: we played Polborough and Broadstone and Saunton East and Burnam
Speaker 4: and Barrow and Minchhampton Old and Wentworth East, and you
Speaker 4: could have and they were all short and fun and
Speaker 4: they were a delight there. Even there's something so gratifying
Speaker 4: about a course that's where you're the only Americans there
Speaker 4: that day, and and there's one hundred and fifty examples
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 3: I love.
Speaker 4: But of course, if I had to say one, if
Speaker 4: I had to pick a course where I actually I
Speaker 4: realized where I would live now, I would play my
Speaker 4: golf at the Royal West Norfolk Golf Club. I'd play
Speaker 4: Brancaster while it still exists, and I'd live somewhere in
Speaker 4: Wells next the sea, on the sort of on the
Speaker 4: North Norfolk coast, and and I would hide out there
Speaker 4: and I'd play my two ball golf and and wear
Speaker 4: long socks and uh and have and have and have
Speaker 4: my golfing days be spent with, you know, playing singles
Speaker 4: and foursomes golf with friends and family coming in to visit.
Speaker 3: That'd be a good answer.
Speaker 1: That that course has the original short hole right is
Speaker 1: the fourth hole right correct?
Speaker 4: And the road is only accessible to the club during
Speaker 4: certain you know, is occasionally inaccessible during high tides, and
Speaker 4: it's probably the most vulnerable links to coastal erosion of
Speaker 4: any course in the UK or one on the short list.
Speaker 3: And it's fascinating.
Speaker 4: It's just how beautiful and fragile it is, and how
Speaker 4: sort of quirky and unusual, and and how much and
Speaker 4: how much fun it is. It's really incredible. I took
Speaker 4: a group of sixteen I think I took twelve players
Speaker 4: there in twenty seventeen and they all loved it.
Speaker 3: They all loved it.
Speaker 4: And then of course around the corner is Hunt Stanton
Speaker 4: and on that trip we played Jeez, we played Royal Worlington,
Speaker 4: played around at nots hallin'well and then maybe England's best
Speaker 4: inland course, Woodhall.
Speaker 3: Spa, which is like a pine valley, which is unreal.
Speaker 4: Yale and Woodhall Spa are some our two courses that
Speaker 4: could sort of be compared favorably and they should both
Speaker 4: be in any world top thirty if the if you know,
Speaker 4: or top forty in terms of the just design the uh.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of Woodhall. The scale of the bunkers
Speaker 1: is just out of this world, you know, and when
Speaker 1: it shows in photos it's like you know, it's big
Speaker 1: like Yale's scale and photos shows, but then when you're
Speaker 1: there you're even more like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: out of this world.
Speaker 2: How big this is, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Then you think about how they played it back in
Speaker 1: the day, and it's like, God, if they could play
Speaker 1: it now and they That's the saddest thing to me
Speaker 1: when you play these courses like Yale is like you
Speaker 1: realize that no modern architect can even do this now
Speaker 1: because of the critics and the way people will just
Speaker 1: be like.
Speaker 2: No, you can't do this.
Speaker 1: You can't have a blind shot off the tee and
Speaker 1: then a blind shot over a blind twenty foot bunker
Speaker 1: into a green like that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: We can't do that. It's like, why what everyone's you do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well everyone's are right, because you get in trouble.
Speaker 4: All these self important critics out there, like you know,
Speaker 4: the not Andy Johnson's of the world are gonna say
Speaker 4: that this is unfair. You know, I am all for
Speaker 4: this presentation of fair, fun and fair. But you know,
Speaker 4: like when golf was played in the teens and twenties
Speaker 4: with with the equipment they had now, granted they weren't
Speaker 4: as long and the ball did roll on irrigation less fairways.
Speaker 4: You know, when the game was challenging, it wasn't patronizing,
Speaker 4: it wasn't dumbing itself down. And the literature of the
Speaker 4: game was never better. The architecture of the game was
Speaker 4: never better.
Speaker 3: The it's its.
Speaker 4: Attention as a mass, as a sort of you know,
Speaker 4: as a as a headline grabbing sport with Bobby Jones
Speaker 4: and others.
Speaker 3: It was. It was this true golden age.
Speaker 4: And I don't remember, you know, think about those think
Speaker 4: about how difficult it was, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: that's what Yale was partially about, like in this this
Speaker 4: sort of old fashioned Victorian you know, ethics of of
Speaker 4: just you know, you're it wasn't recreation, it was it
Speaker 4: was this. It was this sort of process that helped,
Speaker 4: you know, a Teddy Roosevelt style kind of battle of
Speaker 4: self improvement and overcoming adversity and you know, you know,
Speaker 4: over you know, you know, responding to the challenge and
Speaker 4: the task at hand without any sort of whimpering or
Speaker 4: or you know, complaining. Then I think that's what how
Speaker 4: you how they must have played it must have thought
Speaker 4: of Yale in its difficulty. It's like, well, you only
Speaker 4: have to beat your opponent by one whole or one stroke,
Speaker 4: and it's out there, and in some ways the architecture
Speaker 4: is there to break you, to get you, to get
Speaker 4: you to give up, to capitulate. You know, that's partially
Speaker 4: what was going on there. Can you can you can
Speaker 4: you sort of persevere through this, through these challenges, through
Speaker 4: these bunkers, through these seemingly unfair shots.
Speaker 1: What fastest it fascinates me is like the popularity of
Speaker 1: golf at that time was insane too. You know, in
Speaker 1: the twenties and the thirties, it was become before the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, it was becoming one of the biggest sports,
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it in America. You know,
Speaker 1: it was on the rise, and it was all centered
Speaker 1: around this. It wasn't like the the difficulty of.
Speaker 2: Golf is what makes the game great. It's not.
Speaker 1: It's not like if it was easy, people wouldn't have
Speaker 1: these sicko obsessions, like I wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Like I just would be bowling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Like it was, Uh, it
Speaker 4: was a challenge. And by the way golf like it
Speaker 4: took off, it populated throughout America, like they went from
Speaker 4: they went from they went from three holes in an
Speaker 4: apple tree to like five hundred courses and clubs within
Speaker 4: thirty years. Like it was incredible. The way it spread
Speaker 4: to every.
Speaker 3: Corner of America. It was it was unreal.
Speaker 4: And I and and I think they were able to
Speaker 4: take exist they were taking They took advantage of beautiful properties,
Speaker 4: often you know, existing land that had been existing, farmland.
Speaker 3: That had been already drained, or beautiful coastlines.
Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by how the game grew, by how they
Speaker 4: even just watching architects, shapers and construction crews rebuild a
Speaker 4: bunker and imagining them building the amount of golf courses
Speaker 4: they did in that era, and how hard it must
Speaker 4: have been to just just to move soil, and it's
Speaker 4: it's really incredible. We have to, you know, some ways
Speaker 4: we should that, you know that we have to honor
Speaker 4: that instead of trying to sort of remove bunkers, dumb
Speaker 4: down courses, make them easy.
Speaker 3: Your make you know, fear losing.
Speaker 4: You know, even these rule changes are all sort of
Speaker 4: geared towards kind of softening the game.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not.
Speaker 4: It's there's no way that should be the sort of
Speaker 4: the sort.
Speaker 3: Of trend that we're going in.
Speaker 2: But see how it is, Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1: It's that's like I think the biggest problem with municipal
Speaker 1: golf and in general is like they think it because
Speaker 1: it's for the public, it has to be dumbed down
Speaker 1: and boring. If anything, it should be like more interesting
Speaker 1: and more captivating and and so much wildly more different
Speaker 1: than your status quo golf because it's for people that
Speaker 1: are just you're trying to introduce the game, to introduce
Speaker 1: them to the best type of golf, don't introduce them
Speaker 1: to the to the worst, most watered. Like if you
Speaker 1: were going to try and get somebody to be interested
Speaker 1: in drinking coffee, would you give them the worst taste
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee?
Speaker 2: Like it's kind of crazy that we think this way.
Speaker 4: Well you know what, but I you know, and then
Speaker 4: yet it's such a it's such a beautiful game that
Speaker 4: even in those moments like when I used to take
Speaker 4: the when I was living in Brooklyn and take the
Speaker 4: R train out to Uh out to Dyker Dyker Beach,
Speaker 4: uh and it would be like the winter solstice and
Speaker 4: there'll be forty golfers on the course playing a muddy wet,
Speaker 4: you know, golf course, and yet it's it's just something
Speaker 4: even even I'm blown away by when, even when it's
Speaker 4: presented in such poor conditioning, how the appeal just still
Speaker 4: shines through. How there's still one hundred thousand rounds at
Speaker 4: Rancho Park. Or you know, I'm always driving when we
Speaker 4: go to our visit my family, my, my, my, We we
Speaker 4: drive to Long Island and we on the sort of
Speaker 4: throgs Neck bridge. Is that is the clear you see
Speaker 4: the you see the public course from the bridge, and
Speaker 4: it's it's the wind. Sure, it's Christmas Day and it's
Speaker 4: there's there's four there's golfers everywhere.
Speaker 3: And then we pass a driving.
Speaker 4: Range uh in Bayside and there's and there's every stall
Speaker 4: is filled with golfers in the winter.
Speaker 3: It's like incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're sickos. You know, we're all sickos, We're allis
Speaker 2: and it's.
Speaker 1: All because you're trying to trying to get better. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever feels like they're the best they can be ever.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the whole.
Speaker 1: That's everything in sports though, it's all about overcoming adversity.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast. We do
Speaker 2: the digging for you,