Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bright egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egggg Frida egg
Speaker 2: bride egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 2: Garrett. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing pretty well, Andy, How are you? I?
Speaker 2: You know, always Monday after the after a major is
Speaker 2: like a weird day. I feel like it's like a
Speaker 2: you're just kind of tired of working all weekend, so
Speaker 2: it's a it's just a strange, uh, strange day. And
Speaker 2: then you're thinking about all the stuff, and sometimes you
Speaker 2: get a little bit more perspective the longer you wait
Speaker 2: from that from a major championship. But what a weekend
Speaker 2: of golf, huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing weekend of golf. There was a lot of
Speaker 3: golf to watch, for sure, even not at the PGA Championship.
Speaker 3: You know, there's some interesting tournaments going on outside of it.
Speaker 3: So I definitely got a load of it. And I
Speaker 3: feel you on that. You know, the Monday after a
Speaker 3: major there's a little bit of a letdown, but you
Speaker 3: still have some of that buzz going from the excitement
Speaker 3: of the tournament, and this was definitely an exciting tournament. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean just I was just returning some stuff at
Speaker 2: the store at a couple of stores with my wife,
Speaker 2: and I was, you know, this is when I'm waiting,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Tony f now, and I looked it
Speaker 2: up and here he's finished. He's only played sixteen majors.
Speaker 2: He's finished in the top ten seven times.
Speaker 3: It's kind of nuts, I know. Well, yeah, no, completely,
Speaker 3: you know, it gives legitimacy to the idea that there's
Speaker 3: actually a curse on him. I mean, the guy plays
Speaker 3: so well so often and he just doesn't have any wins.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's amazing. But what's funny to me
Speaker 3: about that story is the fact that you were on
Speaker 3: an errand with your wife and you were thinking about
Speaker 3: Tony Finow, which is which is certainly exactly where where
Speaker 3: my head is at the Monday after a major championship.
Speaker 3: You know, I can't have a normal human conversation with anybody.
Speaker 3: So it's good that we're going to get all our
Speaker 3: takes out there right now.
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, yeah, it's a when doing all
Speaker 2: those shotguns start spotlights over the quarantine with with all
Speaker 2: those historic players, like forty top ten rate in a
Speaker 2: in the prime of your career and majors, is like
Speaker 2: really unbelievable. And that's essentially what Fenale's at right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, he's such a great player. He does so
Speaker 3: many things. Well, I'd love to figure out what it
Speaker 3: is that's holding him back. I mean, obviously he's not
Speaker 3: a great putter, but but you know, I mean, one
Speaker 3: of these weeks he's got to put it together. It's
Speaker 3: just got to happen.
Speaker 2: He made putts yesterday too.
Speaker 3: I know he was he was closing out those like
Speaker 3: five six footers down the stretch. Well, he shot sixty six.
Speaker 3: He did his job. It's just it's kind of like
Speaker 3: you and Brendan talked about on the Shotguns start. You know,
Speaker 3: Morikawa jumped out and got it, which is why it
Speaker 3: was so satisfying. But it was also a bummer for
Speaker 3: guys like Bryson and Tony Feenow who played well but
Speaker 3: just you know, not well enough.
Speaker 2: I know, for a while it looked like we were
Speaker 2: getting get a seven man playoff.
Speaker 3: That would have been that would have been interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it would have been interesting to see how they would
Speaker 3: have pulled that off.
Speaker 2: What was your what were your thoughts on the golf course.
Speaker 2: Obviously you you covered the golf course extensively between the
Speaker 2: article you wrote and as well as the docupied that
Speaker 2: is the podcast before this Golf in the City Harding Park.
Speaker 2: How did you what'd you think of the first major
Speaker 2: championship at Harding Park.
Speaker 3: Well, I thought it was a great success. I mean
Speaker 3: it certainly the tournament justified all of the things that
Speaker 3: Harding Park's supporters say about it, that it's a great
Speaker 3: championship venue, it's challenging, it stands up to the best
Speaker 3: players in the world, and it tends to create drama.
Speaker 3: It's done that in the San Francisco City Championships, it
Speaker 3: did that in the Lucky International in the sixties, It's
Speaker 3: done that in the tournaments that it's held this century.
Speaker 3: And so all of those advocates of Harding Park, like
Speaker 3: bo Lynx, who essentially narrated the story for me on
Speaker 3: that Friday Stories episode, their perspective on the course, I
Speaker 3: think was found a lot of justification this week. I
Speaker 3: think we also saw some of the things about Harding
Speaker 3: Park that are less than great. On TV, especially when
Speaker 3: you're looking at one hole against another, it's sometimes sort
Speaker 3: of hard to keep track of where you are unless
Speaker 3: you're along one of those lake holes. And you know
Speaker 3: that the bunkers the greens just don't introduce a whole
Speaker 3: lot of a whole lot of interest to the play.
Speaker 3: But you know what, it came down to the wire.
Speaker 3: There were a couple of holes that allowed more Kawa
Speaker 3: to show what he does best, that allowed him to
Speaker 3: differentiate himself, and so the course did its draw job.
Speaker 3: It was dramatic, and it felt good that this championship
Speaker 3: took place at a at a true municipal course of
Speaker 3: course that's been a true UNI for ever since it
Speaker 3: opened ninety five years ago.
Speaker 2: I thought one of the things, obviously we're in such
Speaker 2: weird times and the circumstances didn't allow fans, but I
Speaker 2: thought one of the best aspects of the golf course
Speaker 2: is the idea. I think golf in the city. You know,
Speaker 2: major championship golf within the city is so neat. It's
Speaker 2: not forty minutes away, it's not a train rider away,
Speaker 2: and it brings such an atmosphere. We got it a
Speaker 2: little bit even with just the people watching from the
Speaker 2: street on thirteen t which was really neat. But that
Speaker 2: idea of golf in the city, a municipal course and
Speaker 2: fans is such a such a cool ingredient with it.
Speaker 2: And obviously we won't see Harding Park in the PGA
Speaker 2: Roda for however long, you know that they're booked out
Speaker 2: for over a decade and the but the that's the thing,
Speaker 2: the one thing that I thought got robbed of the
Speaker 2: championship And you know, when when we weren't even sure
Speaker 2: if we were going to have major championship golf when
Speaker 2: they started planning it, I thought it would make a
Speaker 2: lot of sense to move this one and bring Harding
Speaker 2: Park back with fans because I think that was the
Speaker 2: one thing that really if that's the X factor of
Speaker 2: that venue.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, completely, And if you look at the video
Speaker 3: that's available actually on YouTube of the two thousand and
Speaker 3: five American Express Championship, the first big event that was
Speaker 3: held at Harding Park post renovation, the duel between Tiger
Speaker 3: Woods and John Daly. The atmosphere for that, for you know,
Speaker 3: a WGC was unbelievable. You know, the crowd was just
Speaker 3: so in it and it was so fun to see
Speaker 3: that course crowded and allowed like that, and that would
Speaker 3: have definitely been part of this championship. I think that
Speaker 3: that was definitely missing, and so yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 3: a bummer, but you know, we were all still watching
Speaker 3: at home. There was plenty of tension without the crowd.
Speaker 3: I kind of wonder though, I mean, this might be
Speaker 3: a bad take, but I kind of wonder like if
Speaker 3: the lack of a crowd made things even more it
Speaker 3: made this even more of an opportunity for somebody like
Speaker 3: Colin Morikawa. I think it would have just felt different
Speaker 3: to him down the stretch if there had been thousands
Speaker 3: of people crowded around found him, you know, yelling their
Speaker 3: lungs at Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's such an interesting thing to debate because even in
Speaker 2: lead up questions to the tournament, there were some responses.
Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly who press conference I was watching.
Speaker 2: It was one of the big players. It might have
Speaker 2: been even Rory God, I can't remember who it was,
Speaker 2: but they were talking about how they were struggling to
Speaker 2: really without the energy of the crowd like in regular events,
Speaker 2: but then being a major, they really knew it was that.
Speaker 2: And the other question is, I mean, was Colin Morikawa
Speaker 2: Scheffler Wolf at more of an advantage because they're basically
Speaker 2: a year removed from playing all their events just like
Speaker 2: this one was played with no fans, just basically family
Speaker 2: and officials and agents at college events. You know, that's
Speaker 2: basically the a big name player is going to have
Speaker 2: twenty agents following him around in equipment, guys following him
Speaker 2: around to a college event, and that's about it. And that's
Speaker 2: essentially what we see at these New Tour New Tour
Speaker 2: events without fans is you know, big name players have
Speaker 2: more people following them, but it's just officials and you know,
Speaker 2: different coherts of the tour. PGA Championship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and we heard about it plenty on the telecast. Obviously,
Speaker 3: Moricow was familiar with the course, but in a very
Speaker 3: real sense, this had to feel specifically familiar to him.
Speaker 3: You know, he's he's played events that that probably looked
Speaker 3: quite a bit like this in very recent history. You know,
Speaker 3: all that added up to an opportunity. But you know
Speaker 3: that's that's not to take anything away from how impressive
Speaker 3: what he did down the stretch was. It's really one
Speaker 3: of the most unbelievable finishes from a player in a
Speaker 3: major that I can remember. I mean, who's gone out
Speaker 3: and grabbed it like that recently Brooks did at Aaron Hills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did it at Aaron Hills. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think Shinnacock, he kind of did. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of guys fell apart there. Yeah, Tiger, Tiger.
Speaker 2: Everybody fell apart around Tiger.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's it's amazing when you think back because everything's like
Speaker 2: all the recent memories almost Brooks, It's like Brooks Brooks there, Gary,
Speaker 2: Gary Woodland. I will say he he kind of did that.
Speaker 3: He was good.
Speaker 2: He played so good on Sunday.
Speaker 3: That shot, that shot on seventeen, that the chip.
Speaker 2: Or the shot on fourteen getting home there, that and
Speaker 2: the way he started, the way he answered Brooks is
Speaker 2: charged in that first six holes. That was Those first
Speaker 2: seven holes of that tournament were electric. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: would I think, I mean what an iconic finish, And
Speaker 2: I think that was what had to happen, was like
Speaker 2: just pure excellent play. And who knows if you play
Speaker 2: eighteen more holes, like some tournaments we see like if
Speaker 2: we just kept going, if we keep playing three more days,
Speaker 2: Hendrix stens into probably winning at Troon if that tournament
Speaker 2: turns into a ninety hole tournament or a one hundred
Speaker 2: and eight hole tournament. This tournament, I have no clue
Speaker 2: who'd win if it was one hundred and eight holes,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's the I think one of the
Speaker 2: things with it is that we would if it if
Speaker 2: it picked back up today and we're playing Monday, a
Speaker 2: fifth round, it's still anybody's tournament.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, it was. It was an unbelievable level of golf.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, people really didn't didn't fall apart. It was
Speaker 3: it was just uh and that and that might be
Speaker 3: more fuel for the uh for the notion that fans
Speaker 3: do create a little bit more pressure at majors. It
Speaker 3: gives it that atmosphere. It reminds you of what the
Speaker 3: stakes are on a regular basis, And so when you've
Speaker 3: got a more or less empty course, you know you're
Speaker 3: you're a little more able to lock in. And there
Speaker 3: were just a whole lot of guys who were locked
Speaker 3: in on Sunday at at Harding Park, and and I
Speaker 3: think it was fun to watch, but I'm not sure
Speaker 3: that i'd want it every major. I think when we
Speaker 3: see three or four more like this, we're going to
Speaker 3: start to yearn for the fans back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what what do you think about the setup?
Speaker 3: So, you know it was it was PGA Championship through
Speaker 3: and through. I real listened to your podcast with Kerry
Speaker 3: Haig this morning and and you know, he was very
Speaker 3: circumspect and professional in that in that podcast. But I
Speaker 3: you know, I I saw, you know, his sort of
Speaker 3: personality coming through in the setups. And this is what
Speaker 3: he's done for a number of PGA Championships in a row,
Speaker 3: where basically it's a pretty conservative setup and you know
Speaker 3: it's it's plenty challenging, but there's no nothing that the
Speaker 3: pros are going to object to. But then there are
Speaker 3: a couple of holes here and there where there's some
Speaker 3: creativity introduced to the setup. So you had the sixteenth hole,
Speaker 3: which I think between the first day, second day, third day,
Speaker 3: fourth day, there were some really really smart changes made
Speaker 3: to that hole to make it different and it influenced
Speaker 3: play in exactly the ways that I would imagine were intended.
Speaker 3: So they used both the championship tee and what's normally
Speaker 3: the forward tee at Harding Park, which is about two
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty to two hundred ninety yards and then
Speaker 3: they used a bunch of different pin positions on that green,
Speaker 3: which has these kind of three different lobes in a
Speaker 3: middle section. They put the pins on all of those edges,
Speaker 3: and they moved the te's backward and forward, and the
Speaker 3: dynamics from day to day were really interesting, really cool,
Speaker 3: and it paid off in a spectacular shot from Colin
Speaker 3: or Kawa down the stretch. The defining shot of the
Speaker 3: tournament was enabled by that smart, varied setup. And so
Speaker 3: I think that that's the mo of the PGA Championship
Speaker 3: Championship right now that we're seeing. We're not seeing big
Speaker 3: mistakes on the setup, and the reason for that is
Speaker 3: that it's pretty tentative for the most part. But there
Speaker 3: are certain places on the course where there are some
Speaker 3: smart changes made to the whole, some variety in the
Speaker 3: playing dynamics from day to day, and I thought it
Speaker 3: really worked this time. Now that said, I can't say that,
Speaker 3: you know, watching just a player who was a few
Speaker 3: shots off the lead, not a few shots off the lead,
Speaker 3: say a player who was a number of shots off
Speaker 3: the lead Sunday morning. Just watching that player play this
Speaker 3: course shot by shot, I'm not sure that that would
Speaker 3: be that interesting, Whereas if this were Melbourne, that would
Speaker 3: be fascinating. Roll Melbourne as it was set up at
Speaker 3: the at the President's Cup, you'd want to watch any
Speaker 3: player in any situation play that course shot for shot.
Speaker 3: I don't think you could say the same about Harding
Speaker 3: Park as it was set up for this tournament. You know,
Speaker 3: I think the players had to rise above and provide
Speaker 3: the drama on their own. I don't think the course
Speaker 3: was necessarily giving us anything that was super fascinating in
Speaker 3: and of itself, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like the only holes that created drama
Speaker 2: were the short par fours seven and sixteen. I felt
Speaker 2: like eight, nine, ten was a great stretch of golf
Speaker 2: I did enjoy, and Will Knights tweeted this from the
Speaker 2: Frida Egg account. But the pacing of the golf course, now,
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about the design characteristics of the greens
Speaker 2: or bunkers, but just the way the rhythm of the
Speaker 2: difficult verse is gettible holes. I thought, you know, you
Speaker 2: have that first seven holes where you felt like you
Speaker 2: really had to take advantage of those holes because eight
Speaker 2: and nine were, you know, pretty much playing at if
Speaker 2: you played those in eight, you know, a bogie and
Speaker 2: a par you were, you were playing, you were, you
Speaker 2: weren't going to lose ground, and then you had ten,
Speaker 2: you could get one, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: you have another tough stretch of golf for a few holes,
Speaker 2: and then you got a couple of gettable holes coming
Speaker 2: down the stretch, and then eighteen's another tough hole. I
Speaker 2: thought I liked the way the rhythm of the round
Speaker 2: where you had these periods of you know, you got
Speaker 2: to get this done. And I think if you look
Speaker 2: back on Dustin Johnson's round, him not making a birdie
Speaker 2: grant he parted eight nine, he played those great, but
Speaker 2: not getting one at ten from a great drive was
Speaker 2: really the nail in his kind of coffin and one
Speaker 2: that you look back on, and every every guy in
Speaker 2: that in that top eight players this event look back
Speaker 2: on a couple of things, and I think that that
Speaker 2: was a cool The rhythm of an aspect of it
Speaker 2: was really neat, and I liked that the short part fours,
Speaker 2: it weren't like a four gone conclusion. What was going
Speaker 2: to happen? You know what somebody was going to do
Speaker 2: off the tee, which was which was neat and something
Speaker 2: we don't see when the tour goes to the players
Speaker 2: at the twelfth hole, like where that's everybody's going for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Morikawa made a legitimate in the moment choice on
Speaker 3: the sixteenth tee in the fourth round of the tournament.
Speaker 3: You know, he said to the press afterwards that he
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the tournament he thought he was
Speaker 3: going to be laying up on that hole, but you know,
Speaker 3: he called an audible on the tee and he and
Speaker 3: he pulled the driver out. You just don't hear that
Speaker 3: that often from pros. That I deviated from what I
Speaker 3: thought my plan was going to be, and that speaks
Speaker 3: to a really good setup for that hole. And I
Speaker 3: think that hole specifically does I mean it, you know,
Speaker 3: the design of it and the setup of it just
Speaker 3: worked really really well here. Yeah. I mean so you're
Speaker 3: mainly though, talking about the pacing of the round, the
Speaker 3: mixture of easy and hard holes. I think you do
Speaker 3: have to work it both ways at this golf course,
Speaker 3: right that there's there's a you know, a balance.
Speaker 2: Of but what I mean limited amount of working. You know,
Speaker 2: nobody really works it outside of Bobba.
Speaker 3: These days, what what qualifies as working the ball has
Speaker 3: definitely changed. But when we see even a little bit
Speaker 3: of curve, we kind of get excited. And and then
Speaker 3: the you know, the routing of the course we talked
Speaker 3: about on the on the Story podcast that we did.
Speaker 3: Bo Links talked about it. Ron Kreutzchek talked about it.
Speaker 3: It starts on the inside of the property, and then
Speaker 3: when you get to that thirteenth hole, the green sits
Speaker 3: against Lake merced and then you know that you're really
Speaker 3: heading down the stretch right and and and that makes
Speaker 3: it a really fun, dramatic turn make golf moment where
Speaker 3: everything starts to tighten up right as you get out
Speaker 3: to Lake Mercaid, and it just feels right. It's it's exciting,
Speaker 3: and so, you know, I think that people are looking
Speaker 3: for simplistic takes on golf courses. Either this golf course
Speaker 3: represents everything that's bad about architecture or everything that's good
Speaker 3: about architecture. But I don't think that's the right way
Speaker 3: to go with Harding Park. I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of things that the course does brilliantly and a lot
Speaker 3: of things that could be much better about the course.
Speaker 3: Just because this was a great championship doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: the course couldn't be better. And just because there are
Speaker 3: some critiques that we have of the greens and the
Speaker 3: bunkers and various other aspects of the course and the setup,
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that, you know, a great tournament can't occur here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing, is that we live in
Speaker 2: this world of where there's only one right now thing.
Speaker 2: And I always keep going back to the idea that two,
Speaker 2: even three, even four things can be true about the
Speaker 2: same thing. Like you know, the TPC Harding Park had
Speaker 2: a great championship on it, TPC Harding Park isn't necessarily
Speaker 2: the greatest championship golf course. And I you know, I
Speaker 2: think TPC Herding Park will be as rumored will be
Speaker 2: a great year in year out tour stop. I think
Speaker 2: that's it's going to be a really cool atmosphere. And
Speaker 2: I think I like the trend that we're starting to
Speaker 2: see with more and more events going into cities, and
Speaker 2: I think it will draw a great field because one
Speaker 2: of you know, obviously Riviera is a great golf course
Speaker 2: and it always gets a great field. But one of
Speaker 2: the reasons it gets a great field for with superstar players.
Speaker 2: Is the idea like, hey, we got to go spend
Speaker 2: a week in LA like that, and going and spending
Speaker 2: a week in San Francisco is a is appealing to
Speaker 2: PGA Tour players versus going to spend it in you know,
Speaker 2: suburbs of x YZ city. Being able to stay in
Speaker 2: the city, especially as this tour gets younger and younger,
Speaker 2: is going to be an appeal. And I think that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that we you know, another municipal
Speaker 2: golf course that's hosting a regular PGA Tour event is
Speaker 2: Memorial Park in the city, you know, in Houston, So
Speaker 2: that should be another neat tournament with its own unique atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should briefly say a little bit about what
Speaker 3: you're referring to. So there's going to be it sounds
Speaker 3: like an annual tournament at Harding Park in the fall,
Speaker 3: hosted by Steph Curry. And I talked a little bit
Speaker 3: to ron Kreutzchech about this, but it didn't make the
Speaker 3: story podcast. But it sounds like it's basically a done deal.
Speaker 3: Steph Curry is involved, and it will be an event,
Speaker 3: and there are a couple of things that are really
Speaker 3: cool about that. One is that fall is the time
Speaker 3: to be in San francs Cisco. Right right now is
Speaker 3: not the time to be in San Francisco, though he
Speaker 3: said something about the coldest winter I ever spent is
Speaker 3: a summer in San Francisco. Except so, I wrote a
Speaker 3: dissertation chapter on Mark Twain about his time in the
Speaker 3: West Coast, and I found absolutely no evidence that he
Speaker 3: said anything of the sort. This is not something that
Speaker 3: Mark Twain said.
Speaker 2: Very complectic, you know.
Speaker 3: But in any case, it's in the fall. San Francisco
Speaker 3: is great. You know, it's sunny, it's like seventy degrees.
Speaker 3: It'll be beautiful. And because the tournament is going to
Speaker 3: have the involvement of Steph Curry, I think that'll give
Speaker 3: it a little bit of extra juice and it'll make
Speaker 3: it feel a little more distinct from the normal fall
Speaker 3: of events, right which which do I think kind of
Speaker 3: blur together and need something to make them stand stand out.
Speaker 3: I really believe that that Steph Curry is one of
Speaker 3: the few people who is involved in the golf world
Speaker 3: who can make an event feel bigger than events in
Speaker 3: the fall normally feel.
Speaker 2: I I agree. I think I believe the plan is
Speaker 2: to keep safe way too. So you know, when when
Speaker 2: players are laying out what they're going to do, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, a week in Napa, a week in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, that is pretty appealing. I mean, right now
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it, and I don't cover I don't
Speaker 2: go to and cover many tour events, but now I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know what, it's pretty good. Two weeks there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Napa is amazing, awesome.
Speaker 2: It is such a great golf city, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's a unique and cool golf city. As you cover,
Speaker 2: you know, pretty thoroughly in your podcast with all the
Speaker 2: other you know, the dedication to municipal golf, in public golf,
Speaker 2: and then overall golf in the city. There's so many
Speaker 2: golf courses there and so many golfers in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: It's a rich golf culture. I think it's a unique
Speaker 3: golf culture. You know. San Francisco has long been a
Speaker 3: city where it can be difficult to be a blue
Speaker 3: collar person, and it's become more and more difficult recently.
Speaker 3: But I think golf, and this is surprising for a
Speaker 3: lot of people to hear, has for many decades been
Speaker 3: an outlet for blue collar people in San Francisco. Harding
Speaker 3: Park has been a place where, you know, the Plumbers
Speaker 3: Union holds its annual tournament. And so the people who
Speaker 3: play golf in San Francisco tend not to be kind
Speaker 3: of your stereotype of golf, and that gives the courses
Speaker 3: a distinctive feel. I don't know if you've been to
Speaker 3: Glenn Eagles, but that's such a fun place to just
Speaker 3: b I mean, it's a fun golf course, nine hole
Speaker 3: golf course in McLaren Park, and the hang in the
Speaker 3: clubhouse at the bar is one of the most fun
Speaker 3: things that I think you can do in golf. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, the golf.
Speaker 2: Course basically it's basically a dive bar at a ninehole course.
Speaker 3: It's great. I mean, it's and it's got a great
Speaker 3: view too, Like it's got this amazing view and you're
Speaker 3: sitting there and people are telling stories and it's just
Speaker 3: a wonderful place. And so I think that's part of
Speaker 3: what's really valuable about San Francisco golf and what needs
Speaker 3: to be preserved and defended in that city is a
Speaker 3: certain kind of rough and tumble culture to the golf courses.
Speaker 3: These are really welcoming places. These are places where you
Speaker 3: feel comfortable. Even after Harding Park got renovated and turned
Speaker 3: into this sort of higher class of PGA tour course,
Speaker 3: it still retains a lot of that, I think significantly
Speaker 3: through the Fleming nine, which is within the course and
Speaker 3: and and that's the place that a lot of people
Speaker 3: will just kind of play casually. But yeah, even Harding
Speaker 3: Park I believe partakes of this kind of feel of
Speaker 3: San Francisco golf, which which I believe is different from
Speaker 3: a lot of different cities. And I hope to see
Speaker 3: it preserve. You know, San Francisco is a tough place
Speaker 3: to live now, and and I'm I'm I'm a little
Speaker 3: bit doubtful about the future of the golf courses there,
Speaker 3: but I hope people stick by them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's obviously there's a cost of living issue there
Speaker 2: and housing issue.
Speaker 3: Were my wife and I were just looking out of
Speaker 3: curiosity because we lived in San Francisco for three years
Speaker 3: and we basically got priced out of the city. We
Speaker 3: couldn't live there anymore. And that was that was more
Speaker 3: than ten years ago. We were just looking at apartments
Speaker 3: just out of curiosity, see what they what what they
Speaker 3: go for now, and you're looking at five six thousand
Speaker 3: dollars month and in a lot of places it's yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's tough. They've got some issues there, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the golf courses are are on great pieces of property
Speaker 3: and and I hope that they choose to save them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So with the golf course, I think that we're
Speaker 2: going to see a really similar setup at this year's
Speaker 2: US Open, but we're going to see completely I could
Speaker 2: probably couldn't get more opposite of green complexes at Wingfoot
Speaker 2: versus Harding Park, where where even CBS is commentating about
Speaker 2: how flat the greens are, there will be no such
Speaker 2: remarks about about wing Foot. How do you think that
Speaker 2: will impact the power players We saw, you know, always
Speaker 2: having wedge in their hands, but not always necessarily and
Speaker 2: obviously Marco one largely thanks to his putting, but you know,
Speaker 2: probably more thanks to the fact that you love the
Speaker 2: field and driving accuracy. How do you think that's going
Speaker 2: to impact the Bryson. I mean, Bryson drove it pretty
Speaker 2: pretty dang well, but we saw him in the rough
Speaker 2: a lot. How do you think that will play out differently?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure and I'd like to actually hear
Speaker 3: your thoughts about this, because you've you've been to Wingfood
Speaker 3: and you've looked at those greens. But you'd have to
Speaker 3: assume that iron play would become really, really important, or
Speaker 3: would become at least more important than it was at
Speaker 3: Harding Park. Which makes you think about Morikawa again. If
Speaker 3: he's winning at Harding Park, it would seem almost that
Speaker 3: wingfoot is better suited to him because there there's going
Speaker 3: to be a real premium on being in the right
Speaker 3: section of the green.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I iron play is going to be huge. One
Speaker 2: of the things that Jeff Ogilvie always says about US
Speaker 2: Opens is the underrated US Open skill is shipping and
Speaker 2: the and pitching around the greens is that you have
Speaker 2: to have a great chipping week because you're going to
Speaker 2: miss greens and then it becomes about how you recover
Speaker 2: and get up and down and and we're going to
Speaker 2: see a lot more treacherous surrounds if you miss. That's
Speaker 2: where you know, almost always a double bogie is in
Speaker 2: play around those greens when you miss. When you miss
Speaker 2: the greens, it's almost like, oh boy, I better hit
Speaker 2: a great shot to have even you know, just save bogie.
Speaker 2: And I think that's maybe a little bit of the
Speaker 2: difference between what we're going to see at the two
Speaker 2: is like Harding Park, if you got it around the greens,
Speaker 2: you were going to have a pretty good chance at
Speaker 2: making par. If you're in the wrong spot at wing Foot,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, your focus some point in some
Speaker 2: points means turns to how am I going to save
Speaker 2: bogie and avoid having to make a six foot or
Speaker 2: for bogie? You know, how am I going to make this?
Speaker 2: You know, I miss my shot? How am I going
Speaker 2: to make this an easy bogie as opposed to you know, easy.
Speaker 3: Par Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I think, well
Speaker 3: we'll see a lot more guys get in jail around
Speaker 3: Wayne Foot's greens. That that was something that you didn't
Speaker 3: see as much of this week, right, people were you know,
Speaker 3: there weren't a lot of like triple quadr quadruple bogies
Speaker 3: when when people missed in the wrong spots.
Speaker 2: That's that's one thing I felt like we missed a
Speaker 2: little and we saw it obviously, like Joel Damon triple
Speaker 2: bogie at the end of Friday was you know, but
Speaker 2: that was more the case of Okay, he hit he
Speaker 2: bladed a forty five yard bunker shot, which is something
Speaker 2: that could happen. I you know, I think about what
Speaker 2: happened at Shinnikok Hills with you know, Tiger with a
Speaker 2: wedge in his hand making triple on the first first
Speaker 2: hole of the tournament. And you know, I think Speeth
Speaker 2: made an eight on ten if I remember correct.
Speaker 3: And guys just not being able to get anywhere near
Speaker 3: the pins from certain bunkers.
Speaker 2: Keep it even keep it on the green from certain bunkers,
Speaker 2: and I think that's what we're going to see. The
Speaker 2: other idea is when you've got a wedge but you're
Speaker 2: in the rough and you're hitting across the greens at Wingfoot,
Speaker 2: and we're going to have a video pretty soon all
Speaker 2: about the greens. But the greens at Wingfoot sit up
Speaker 2: and then they have really big pronounced slopes. So if
Speaker 2: you're on the wrong side of into the rough on
Speaker 2: a hole hitting to short side, your ball is landing
Speaker 2: on a grade and the green say it's a five
Speaker 2: percent six percent slope, you have no chance. Versus at
Speaker 2: Harding Park, we didn't see slopes above two percent.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious the players seem to like Harding Park
Speaker 3: a lot. You know, they said really positive things about it.
Speaker 3: They usually like PGA championship setups. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: respect for this championship gets set up. Obviously not the
Speaker 3: same as true of the US Open and the USGA
Speaker 3: and the players. What do you what do you think
Speaker 3: the players are going to think of wing Foot or
Speaker 3: does it depend on setup?
Speaker 2: I think it's they they're going to feel sometimes. The
Speaker 2: one thing Carrie Haig said so much in the in
Speaker 2: in the interview that I did with them was fair,
Speaker 2: the idea fairy, and I think it showed in the
Speaker 2: setup it was nobody's ever going to complain about the
Speaker 2: way that that PGA was set up. It was imminently fair.
Speaker 2: I mean, so are they were complaining about the lack
Speaker 2: of sand and bunkers, I mean, which is a hazard.
Speaker 2: It just kind of gives you a lens into the
Speaker 2: and I've been there at playing as an amateur. Now
Speaker 2: obviously not but where I you totally buy into the
Speaker 2: unfair thing. There's a fair there's an entitlement thing as
Speaker 2: a player in a tournament where you feel like everything
Speaker 2: should be fair. But at wing Foot, you definitely have
Speaker 2: the potential of a situation where people the crowd could
Speaker 2: start to think that it's unfair. And by the crowd,
Speaker 2: I mean the players and the locker room talk might
Speaker 2: push it in a certain direction of oh, can you
Speaker 2: believe where they put the pin? Just because you know that?
Speaker 2: And I think that's the It's where I get frustrated
Speaker 2: a lot. Is like your point of the point of golf,
Speaker 2: overarching is overcoming the obstacles in front of you with
Speaker 2: the equipment you have, you know, yeah, right, And that
Speaker 2: gets lost sometimes when you get in the discussion of
Speaker 2: fair it's like, well, it was it the same for everybody? Yes,
Speaker 2: then it was fair, right, yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it doesn't feel like it to players because
Speaker 3: from their perspective, they may have played well or hit
Speaker 3: a good shot and it didn't work out for them,
Speaker 3: And that's really disappointing in a major right, And that's
Speaker 3: hard to deal with emotionally, and so you have to
Speaker 3: deal with it somehow, right, You've got to process it somehow.
Speaker 3: And it seems like the way that at least between
Speaker 3: the players and the USGA, it's worked out that they
Speaker 3: process it by blaming the USGA. And and you know
Speaker 3: that didn't happen as much last year at Pebble Beach
Speaker 3: because we saw the setup get a little more toward
Speaker 3: the PGA Championship end of the spectrum. So I wonder if,
Speaker 3: given the severity of Wingfoot's greens, whether they're going to
Speaker 3: be really cautious at Wingfoot.
Speaker 2: I think, and I think you could set it up
Speaker 2: very fairly and Wingfoot's still going to do its job,
Speaker 2: you know. I think one of the things that the
Speaker 2: USGA has to deal with at your shinnecocks and your
Speaker 2: wing foots also that doesn't get talked about is the
Speaker 2: balance with dealing with the membership side of things, where
Speaker 2: they are being welcomed into these clubs that are very
Speaker 2: closed off normally, and the idea of the members have
Speaker 2: a view of what the score should be, you know,
Speaker 2: and golf is changing so much with distance and scoring
Speaker 2: that the idea of trying to pease this, you know,
Speaker 2: to the public silent party that is pretty much invisible
Speaker 2: the week of the championship. They're in a tough position
Speaker 2: where they have to balance both sides of the coin
Speaker 2: there a little bit, because we all know that memberships
Speaker 2: love to puff their chests out about how difficult. Their
Speaker 2: golf course is like, I can't go and play Butler
Speaker 2: without them insisting on me playing the back teas. And
Speaker 2: I'll say that I don't want to play the back sees.
Speaker 2: That won't be fun at all, Like I'm going to
Speaker 2: get my ass kicked, and you know, sure enough, then
Speaker 2: I shoot like a seventy eight with no birdies and
Speaker 2: it's like, well, that wasn't fun at all. But it's
Speaker 2: like that that feeling of it has to be hard
Speaker 2: for the pros, which I don't even understand at the
Speaker 2: long You know.
Speaker 3: That's that's been with us for a long time, right,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a big part of the story. At
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy four wing Foot US Open, which was
Speaker 3: famously difficult, the members were advocating for they were happy
Speaker 3: the course, that the course was that difficult, and and
Speaker 3: I don't think that that's changed much. And what you've
Speaker 3: got at Wingfoot also is a very powerful membership too,
Speaker 3: Like the people who belong to that club are not
Speaker 3: nobody's in the world, and they can throw their weight around.
Speaker 3: And so that's very interesting because at a place like
Speaker 3: Chambers Bay you don't have that. So it's open season
Speaker 3: on Chambers Bay.
Speaker 2: But but or Aaron Hills or Aaron Hills, Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think there was there was a period too
Speaker 2: where you know, the usg didn't go back to win.
Speaker 2: They haven't been back to wing Foot or Shinnacock until
Speaker 2: two years ago for a while because of maybe said politics,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, yeah, so it it that should be.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited. That's probably the thing I'm looking for
Speaker 2: to most the rest of the golf season.
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, Yeah, I mean definitely. You
Speaker 3: look at the schedule, and certainly the US Open sticks
Speaker 3: out as being being the interesting tournament that that we
Speaker 3: have left in the year. Aside from the Masters, We've
Speaker 3: got what the Windom this week and then the then
Speaker 3: the FedEx Cup playoffs and you know we kind of
Speaker 3: know what that's going to be like mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Olympia Fields will be somewhat interesting. But I think
Speaker 2: that'll that'll kind of get beat up by these guys.
Speaker 3: But have they have they started the work there. They're
Speaker 3: supposed to do some work there, right, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 3: too recent to to have come to fruition yet. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't know what course they're going to do first.
Speaker 2: And so that's but the one of the things we
Speaker 2: talked about earlier, the pacing of around so Harding Park
Speaker 2: you kind of had this mixture of of getible holes,
Speaker 2: tough holes, gettable holes, tough holes. And then you have
Speaker 2: like your your Augusta where you know, at Harding Park
Speaker 2: Matthew Wolf could have posted a great score and he
Speaker 2: might have won, right, And at Augusta you post a score,
Speaker 2: you really have no chance of winning, right. And at
Speaker 2: Wingfoot it's you know, the last five holes, if you
Speaker 2: post a score, you're you're probably in the driver's seat,
Speaker 2: like you can't get to the clubhouse soon enough.
Speaker 3: Out there, Yeah, there are courses where the longer you
Speaker 3: stay out there, the less of a chance you have,
Speaker 3: and courses where the shorter the time you spend out there,
Speaker 3: the more of a chance you have. Obviously, at Augusta
Speaker 3: you want to be out there late on Sunday having
Speaker 3: a shot at thirteen, fifteen and sixteen and going low. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it'll be I don't know, like the Wingfoot it'll be
Speaker 3: obviously the seventy four Open and and what was it,
Speaker 3: the chess oble be six Open. Those were wars of
Speaker 3: attrition like we remember those well. I wonder if it's
Speaker 3: possible for that kind of championship to happen anymore. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know we've had a couple fairly recently, but it's
Speaker 3: been because the greens have been really hard and things
Speaker 3: like that. I wonder if it's possible in this era
Speaker 3: of the USGA and the US Open for there to
Speaker 3: be a five over par winning score at a place
Speaker 3: like Wingfoot.
Speaker 2: I don't think it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think so either. I think that the
Speaker 3: era of that occasional change sixty eight, right, Julie might
Speaker 3: have to start doing pretty soon. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I think that I think that that era is gone.
Speaker 3: The time when you have that occasional championship where the
Speaker 3: winning score is seven over or whatever, I just don't
Speaker 3: think we're going to see that anymore, unless something kind
Speaker 3: of goes wrong and and they lose the golf course,
Speaker 3: you know, to quote zj.
Speaker 2: Or or fisted just crazy windy or something right which
Speaker 2: we put in a heavy wind would not be fun
Speaker 2: at all. So I want to talk more about the
Speaker 2: Muni aspect. You wrote a piece about the Mega Muni
Speaker 2: and uh, you know the theme of it and is
Speaker 2: TPC Hardy Parks one of the few of these where
Speaker 2: the idea of a community, a city getting behind a
Speaker 2: municipal course and renovating and pouring money into it with
Speaker 2: hopes of a championship. And I thought this was just
Speaker 2: an interesting article topic and something that we have seen
Speaker 2: less and less, if not any of maybe one attempt
Speaker 2: here in my city of Chicago recently to get something
Speaker 2: like this off the ground. And how we've seen a
Speaker 2: shift to the the mini Muni. But as we know, trends,
Speaker 2: they go both directions all the time. They could you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to see swings in different directions. Talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the Mega Beauty and how it's fared
Speaker 2: across the country.
Speaker 3: So the Mega Muni is a kind of municipal course
Speaker 3: that gets renovated or built with the intention, as you said,
Speaker 3: of hosting major championships. And you know, while they are
Speaker 3: city courses, they do charge high green fees for outsiders
Speaker 3: while giving discounted rates to locals. But the whole idea
Speaker 3: is to kind of bring money to town right when
Speaker 3: these championships are held there. The city gets free advertising
Speaker 3: and everybody's happy about that, and the course gets some
Speaker 3: extra stature and starts to attract tourists tourists to town.
Speaker 3: Basically the golf court versus a kind of driver for
Speaker 3: the local economy, and it's also supposed to fund other
Speaker 3: things that the local government does. And so the main
Speaker 3: examples of this that I think currently exist that currently
Speaker 3: function as mega munis are TPC Harding Park, Bethpage Black,
Speaker 3: Tory Pines, and then most recently Chambers Bay. Chambers Bay
Speaker 3: obviously is a new build, and then the other three
Speaker 3: are renovations of older courses. And so, you know, I
Speaker 3: refer to these as mega muni's because I think they're
Speaker 3: pretty distinctive and they represent their kind of own model
Speaker 3: of municipal golf course. And most of them got built
Speaker 3: or renovated in the early two thousands. Bethpage Black was
Speaker 3: the first, right. It got renovated in the late nineties
Speaker 3: with the intention of hosting the two thousand and two
Speaker 3: US Open, And to my mind, that sort of started
Speaker 3: the trend. Right around two thousand and one, two thousand
Speaker 3: and two, two thousand and three, you saw Tory Pines
Speaker 3: get renovated by Rhys Jones. You saw TPC Harding Park
Speaker 3: get renovated by Chris Gray and the PGA tour, and
Speaker 3: you saw the county government, Pierce County government up in
Speaker 3: Washington start to move on the Chambers Bay build and
Speaker 3: so all of these courses kind of came about in
Speaker 3: the same era. This was the late nineties early two thousands,
Speaker 3: and I think it was a result of a couple
Speaker 3: of factors. One is the rising economy obviously of the nineties,
Speaker 3: but also the Tiger era. People just had a feeling
Speaker 3: during that early Tiger Woods era that golf was the
Speaker 3: sport of the future and that it was a really good,
Speaker 3: high potential investment to build a big golf course that
Speaker 3: would attract high green fees and championships. And so all
Speaker 3: of these courses got to renovated right around the same time.
Speaker 3: And obviously they're still with us and they're still kind
Speaker 3: of doing their thing hosting championships, but since the recession,
Speaker 3: none of no more have been built, and so they're
Speaker 3: more and more starting to feel like relics of a
Speaker 3: bygone era of golf course development, of specifically municipal golf
Speaker 3: course development, and so I thought it was just time
Speaker 3: to kind of look at those in context and consider,
Speaker 3: you know, how much are we really rooting for these
Speaker 3: golf courses. Would we rather see municipal governments kind of
Speaker 3: take on smaller golf projects or do we want to
Speaker 3: keep seeing them kind of shoot for the stars and
Speaker 3: build a golf course that has the potential to bring
Speaker 3: in a lot of revenue. And I should say that
Speaker 3: you know, Bethpage, Black and Tory Pines do pretty well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean they fund a lot of things,
Speaker 3: and for those local governments TPC. Harding Park hasn't done
Speaker 3: as well as people thought, but it does fine. You know,
Speaker 3: it's super busy.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing it's going to do great after this.
Speaker 2: I think part of that so too. I mean, I
Speaker 2: mean part of the huge appeal of these championships is
Speaker 2: seeing people getting a commercial on TV like you referred
Speaker 2: to for the city and also the golf course. And
Speaker 2: then you know the years following where people are going
Speaker 2: to be like, well, I want to go play where
Speaker 2: they played that PGA. And I think that is a
Speaker 2: huge part that Harding Park, like beth Page was lucky
Speaker 2: they got that championship right after, yes, And I think
Speaker 2: it was all.
Speaker 3: Part of the plan, right, I mean that it was
Speaker 3: the USGA really drove that it started in about nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five, and yeah, it happened quickly, but it was
Speaker 3: you know, the fact that David Faye, that the executive
Speaker 3: director of the USGA at the time, wanted to take
Speaker 3: a championship to Bethpage Black is really what drove that.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the key is where where these
Speaker 2: have really thrived has been with the major championship imminently
Speaker 2: in the future upon finish, and that to me is
Speaker 2: where I think about it today is how these could
Speaker 2: continue and you could see maybe new places pop up Munie's.
Speaker 2: Kevin Clark had a great Kevin Clark Ringer employee. He's
Speaker 2: got a great podcast, NFL Ringer Show, but he's an
Speaker 2: avid golfer, avid golf fan, and he tweeted, I think
Speaker 2: the PGA Championship, if it wants a real identity, should
Speaker 2: be the major that plays on great and interesting public
Speaker 2: muni courses every year. Golf should be fun and accessible,
Speaker 2: which I think this does have a larger appeal whether
Speaker 2: or not. You know, I'm not a fan architecturally of
Speaker 2: Harding Park, but I am a fan of the of
Speaker 2: championships going to Munie's. And I think where Beth Page
Speaker 2: and Tory have succeeded so much is because right when
Speaker 2: that work is done, had a championship in the next
Speaker 2: year or two. And where maybe Harding Park struggled more
Speaker 2: is that the championship didn't come right away.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, this is the first major that they've held,
Speaker 3: even though obviously the renovation happened almost twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, I think you're right that the
Speaker 3: future of TPC Harding Park is bright. You know, it's
Speaker 3: going to have a regular tournament there. It's going to
Speaker 3: be in the public eye pretty often, and maybe that'll
Speaker 3: drive more and more people to want to go play there.
Speaker 3: I think, certainly after this week this week, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of more people who are going to be
Speaker 3: interested in playing Harding Park. I'm not sure it's been
Speaker 3: on people's radar in making a golf visit to the
Speaker 3: Bay Area that Harding Park is a must play, but
Speaker 3: maybe maybe this week kind of pushed it to must
Speaker 3: play status because of how well it was received generally,
Speaker 3: And so there's a lot of hope there. What I
Speaker 3: need to see, though, what I'd really like to see
Speaker 3: out of the Megamuni model is an ability to fund
Speaker 3: an entire city's golf system. So San Francisco does have
Speaker 3: a golf fund, but it's a second priority for TPC
Speaker 3: Harding Park behind paying back the money that it took
Speaker 3: to get renovated. And I'm not sure they've really gotten
Speaker 3: to a point where they can start building that golf fund.
Speaker 3: And for that reason, you've seen San Francisco very hesitant
Speaker 3: to renovate courses like Lincoln Park, Glen Eagles, Sharp Park
Speaker 3: down in Pacifica, which San Francisco owns and has a
Speaker 3: great history. Those courses have continued to decline in terms
Speaker 3: of their condition, just the general shape of the facility.
Speaker 3: They haven't gotten money injected into them since the renovation
Speaker 3: of Harding Park, and I think that that was part
Speaker 3: of the hope of the movement to renovate Harding Park
Speaker 3: in the first place, was this will be a great
Speaker 3: thing for San Francisco golf in general. So maybe that'll
Speaker 3: happen in the future. Maybe this week has made that
Speaker 3: more possible, But I would really like to see these
Speaker 3: Megaminis actually do that thing where they're able to lift
Speaker 3: up all of the golf courses that the city owns
Speaker 3: around them. I'd love to see Tory Pines eventually lift
Speaker 3: up Balboa Park, which frankly is the better golf course,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't have that tournament held on it, and
Speaker 3: so it hasn't gotten as much attention. But Balboa Park,
Speaker 3: city owned course in San Diego, awesome place, but it
Speaker 3: needs some attention. It needs a little bit of money
Speaker 3: put into it that they're not going to spend on
Speaker 3: the clubhouse that they're going to spend on the golf
Speaker 3: course to restore it to that wonderful design that it
Speaker 3: had in the nineteen twenties. I'd love to see that happen.
Speaker 3: But even though Tory Pines makes a lot of money,
Speaker 3: that just hasn't happened yet. And I'm not sure of
Speaker 3: the reasons exactly. It may just be the complexities of
Speaker 3: city government. It may be because Tory Pines has continued
Speaker 3: to need renovations, right, they had to go back and
Speaker 3: undo or redo what they did in the first place.
Speaker 2: Lost some money for not a lot of work.
Speaker 3: I know that much because a ton and so you
Speaker 3: just have to wonder, when is this model going to
Speaker 3: really work in the way that people hoped it would,
Speaker 3: And I still hope it does. I think it's a
Speaker 3: great idea, you know, I want cities to have these
Speaker 3: big golf courses that attract a lot of attention and
Speaker 3: a lot of cash that they're able to use in
Speaker 3: other ways to lift the city up and improve the
Speaker 3: services that the local government provides to people. But it
Speaker 3: just hasn't quite worked that way yet, and I hope
Speaker 3: it does, and I think once it does that you'll
Speaker 3: see more cities trying it.
Speaker 2: The other thing with obviously in Chicago Marivi, which is
Speaker 2: a nine hole er right on the lake, and the
Speaker 2: driving range, Diversity Driving Range, which has got to be
Speaker 2: one of the best settings for a driving range in
Speaker 2: the in the world, but it's also at the same
Speaker 2: hand one of the worst driving ranges in the world
Speaker 2: because of just the ball. It's just a it's just
Speaker 2: a brutal experience going down there. But that driving range
Speaker 2: in the golf course Marivits they float all of the
Speaker 2: other golf courses. They cover up the losses at every
Speaker 2: other golf course. And then and I know in La
Speaker 2: the same is for Rancho Park and Rancho Park's driving range,
Speaker 2: where they basically cover the the losses of the rest
Speaker 2: of the golf courses that the that LA operates. And
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting that those two in those two cases,
Speaker 2: the Rundown golf Course that is, you know, great location,
Speaker 2: Rancho Park unbelievable, Bones could be a great golf course
Speaker 2: with with some money, it is a great golf course
Speaker 2: to go play. Chicago's the driving ranges are such and
Speaker 2: maybe that's a way is focusing in on also practice
Speaker 2: facilities with these mega munis to generate revenue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you've got to look at creative ways to
Speaker 3: use the space.
Speaker 2: You know, you.
Speaker 3: It's not a mega muni if it doesn't have eighteen holes.
Speaker 3: It's not a mega muni if it's not a championship layout,
Speaker 3: which means that you need to devote a certain amount
Speaker 3: of room to the golf course. But at a place
Speaker 3: like Jackson Park and South Shore, where there has been
Speaker 3: a proposal to turn that into a championship facility for
Speaker 3: several years now, but that just hasn't found the support
Speaker 3: or funding that it needs. I think that that that
Speaker 3: whole idea, you know, you could you could quibble with
Speaker 3: some of the details of it, but the idea as
Speaker 3: a whole, where you're taking basically twenty seven holes of
Speaker 3: golf turning it into an eighteen hole championship course and
Speaker 3: then developing a practice facility and a number of other
Speaker 3: drivers of revenue at the golf course place around the
Speaker 3: championship layout itself. I think that that's got to be
Speaker 3: the way to go, because, you know, it just seems
Speaker 3: like for municipal golf courses specifically, that affordable rounds of
Speaker 3: golf for local people is not the way that you're
Speaker 3: you're going to make money. It's just not you know,
Speaker 3: it's a great service for the government to provide, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to knock that part of it. I
Speaker 3: think we have to remember that these are public facilities
Speaker 3: that the government is providing to the people. That's a
Speaker 3: great thing. But yeah, the mega muni model relies on
Speaker 3: the notion that these courses have a high potential to
Speaker 3: generate revenue, and yeah, you need to look at other
Speaker 3: ways to do that than just green fees.
Speaker 2: Well, and what we've seen with like winter Park, the
Speaker 2: mini muni has generated revenue profits for a city of
Speaker 2: winter Park, where going the complete opposite direction of the
Speaker 2: idea of the mega muni, it has has generated money
Speaker 2: where it's affordable, it's fun, it's welcoming to beginners. It's
Speaker 2: a it's not an easy course for you know, expert
Speaker 2: players by any means, but it's not challenging for beginners.
Speaker 2: Has been and creating a welcoming atmosphere, which that's I
Speaker 2: think one of the issues with the Megamuny is it's
Speaker 2: not it never is going to be a welcoming atmosphere
Speaker 2: to a beginning player, and I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the pitfalls of it, is that you're you know, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's a way that there could be
Speaker 2: the Megamuni mini Muni model blended together in any way.
Speaker 3: And I think Harding Park more or less does that
Speaker 3: with the Fleming Nine. The Fleming nine is a mini Muni. Now.
Speaker 3: I think it needs to be updated architect I think
Speaker 3: it could be more fun to play, you know, if
Speaker 3: it's a course, it's a nine hole course that's supposed
Speaker 3: to be for kids and for older people, you know,
Speaker 3: why not make it a little bit more fun. I mean,
Speaker 3: it is fun. It's a cool little golf course. But
Speaker 3: you know, while Harding Park has gotten some attention and
Speaker 3: him has been kind of polished up, the Fleming Nine
Speaker 3: has has sort of remained more or less the same
Speaker 3: so Harding Park does that. That said, there are people
Speaker 3: who used to play at Harding Park before the renovation
Speaker 3: who are still mad about the fact that it was
Speaker 3: turned into this golf facility that charges a bit a
Speaker 3: higher green fee, even for locals that host championships. They
Speaker 3: wanted their old golf course.
Speaker 2: That's what I kind of think about, is like Harding
Speaker 2: Park kind of lost its soul when it went mega
Speaker 2: because that you know, at a even you know, sixty
Speaker 2: dollars is not expensive for golf, but it's not cheap.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. That's right. It's not where you're going to
Speaker 3: play every single weekend or or multiple times a week,
Speaker 3: like I think a lot of the Harding Park regulars
Speaker 3: were in the nineties leading up to the renovation. But
Speaker 3: you know, that said, in San Francisco, it's a particular
Speaker 3: situation because there are plenty of other city golf courses
Speaker 3: within a short distance, including inside the routing of Harding
Speaker 3: Park itself, where you can go to play a cheaper,
Speaker 3: more casual round of golf. But if a city has
Speaker 3: fewer golf courses, if it's looking to megafy one of
Speaker 3: its very few golf courses, then these questions I think
Speaker 3: become a lot more urgent and a lot more difficult
Speaker 3: to answer, and as you're saying, the minimuni and this
Speaker 3: is why I said in my article, I think that's
Speaker 3: the real future of municipal golf and that even after
Speaker 3: the success of Winter Park, even after the success of
Speaker 3: Goat Hill Park and places like that, that it's still
Speaker 3: not quite catching on the way I'd like to see.
Speaker 3: And that might be be becase because people are imagining
Speaker 3: that the only way to renovate a municipal golf course
Speaker 3: truly is to go the Beth Page Black PPC, Harding
Speaker 3: Park Chambers Bay direction. But there are so many other options,
Speaker 3: and we're starting to see this. You know, we've got
Speaker 3: the Reversible Course in Atlanta, the Bobby Jones Golf Course,
Speaker 3: We've got you know, rock Wind, community links, Andy Staples's
Speaker 3: community links model. It seems to be appealing to a
Speaker 3: lot of people. These are creative, smaller, less expensive ways
Speaker 3: of creating a great municipal golf experience without attaching to
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour or the USGA or trying to attract championships.
Speaker 3: But man, I just wish we saw more of it.
Speaker 3: I wish it were happening at a at a higher pace,
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, maybe I'm just impatient about it
Speaker 3: and unrealistic, but I just you know, there there are
Speaker 3: so many options out there for making municipal golf courses
Speaker 3: great places to be that don't involve, you know, gunning
Speaker 3: for a US Open.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The So this is where I kind of quibble
Speaker 2: and my kind of opinion on the Chicago project falls
Speaker 2: is that I think that became entirely too big of
Speaker 2: an ask. And one of the aspects of that is
Speaker 2: they could have started small. And you know, they had
Speaker 2: the perfect opportunity with Sydney Merovitz the nine holer, which
Speaker 2: is it got its lakefront property. I mean it as
Speaker 2: it is now is packed. It's a jam pack golf course,
Speaker 2: but that has the opportunity to be one of the
Speaker 2: best nine hole golf courses in the world because of
Speaker 2: its setting. I mean I used to play there early
Speaker 2: in the morning before I'd go to work. I'd play
Speaker 2: at five in the morning and I'd be done at
Speaker 2: six fifteen, six thirty and watching the sun come up
Speaker 2: over the lake and playing golf along Lake Michigan and
Speaker 2: then hitting t shots with high rise apartment complexes as
Speaker 2: your backdrop. It's one of the neatest experiences and it
Speaker 2: has this opportunity where you could and it could have
Speaker 2: been done for fractions of the money. Obviously, the big
Speaker 2: hurdle that that Jackson Park and any megamuni project is
Speaker 2: gonna run into is funding, and that's the issue that
Speaker 2: Harding Park's having is paying back the funding, you know,
Speaker 2: And where I almost think there is a potential way
Speaker 2: of the mini muni allowing the megamuni to happen with
Speaker 2: these big city golf systems where pouring. If you put
Speaker 2: two million dollars in higher a talented young architect at
Speaker 2: Sydney Marovitz, you're going to get an unbelievable golf course there.
Speaker 2: And then from there, all of a sudden you've built
Speaker 2: up the trust and then that megamuni becomes more of
Speaker 2: a realistic opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah you said it, I mean trust, community trust. That's
Speaker 3: such a huge deal, and every project builds it differently.
Speaker 3: In San Francisco, that was a huge part of the process.
Speaker 3: Sandy Tatum and the group that he was leading managed
Speaker 3: to garner the trust of the community and the buy
Speaker 3: in of the community enough to make it happen now.
Speaker 3: There are still people who objected to it, for sure,
Speaker 3: but increasingly toward the end of the project, those voices
Speaker 3: became more and more marginalized. Jackson Park, the way that
Speaker 3: they went about introducing that project to the community was
Speaker 3: all wrong.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was completely top down. People who lived in that
Speaker 3: area were looking around and saying, I haven't heard anything
Speaker 3: about this. Who was asking me about this? Completely the
Speaker 3: wrong way to go about it. Of course they're going
Speaker 3: to resist it if you're coming in and saying we're
Speaker 3: going to blow this place up and turn it into
Speaker 3: something completely different. And you know, here we are a
Speaker 3: bunch of rich, well connected people and you're just going
Speaker 3: to be grateful for it. No, that's bs You've got
Speaker 3: to go about it completely differently. And I think it's
Speaker 3: a great idea to start small, especially in this day
Speaker 3: and age, when you know golf it's much different than
Speaker 3: twenty years ago that the idea of golf and the
Speaker 3: public consciousness right now, you need to help people understand
Speaker 3: that golf is may not be what they think it is.
Speaker 2: And that it can be intertwined with the community.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, that places like Winter Park exist and are
Speaker 3: very woven into the community in an unobtrusive way that
Speaker 3: you know, almost everybody is happy with. Now there are
Speaker 3: people who even objected to winter Park. There's always going
Speaker 3: to be conflict. But yeah, I think starting small and
Speaker 3: showing what a golf course can be and how it
Speaker 3: can improve a community, and how it can be open
Speaker 3: and accessible to a community that's huge, and then it
Speaker 3: makes it a lot more possible. And that this is
Speaker 3: the argument essentially, that you're making a lot more possible
Speaker 3: that you can make big moves right and get that
Speaker 3: mega UNI. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's uh,
Speaker 3: it's hard either way. To get the funding, even to
Speaker 3: get a little bit of funding for a small project.
Speaker 3: That's hard to you know.
Speaker 2: And so I always think back to when I was
Speaker 2: in sales. I had a boss who told me, you know, here, Andy,
Speaker 2: one of the things you got to remember when you're
Speaker 2: selling somebody is if I came to your house and
Speaker 2: asked you to put a political sign in your house,
Speaker 2: and this is not going to be a political statement
Speaker 2: in any way. We're steering clear of that. It's just
Speaker 2: about the science here. But if I come, as you've
Speaker 2: reassured me, thank you, and and I'm comfortable now if
Speaker 2: I come ask you to put a small, you know,
Speaker 2: eight by ten inch sign in your yard, versus if
Speaker 2: I come and ask you to put a you know,
Speaker 2: a four foot by four foot sign, You're way more
Speaker 2: likely to put the eight by ten inch sign in
Speaker 2: your yard then right off the bat. But if I
Speaker 2: get that eight eight inch by ten foote in your
Speaker 2: yard and then I come back in you know, six
Speaker 2: weeks or whatever, four weeks and I say, hey, you
Speaker 2: know I got some bigger signs. Do you mind if
Speaker 2: I put this bigger sign, The chances of the person
Speaker 2: saying yes to the bigger sign are exponentially more likely
Speaker 2: now that they've had the small sign in there. And
Speaker 2: I think the same thing goes for golf within these
Speaker 2: local government is just being able to start small and
Speaker 2: if if it's a if it's a beauty, that's a
Speaker 2: little worse, worse for the wear that hasn't has seen
Speaker 2: better days. Even if you get them to do a
Speaker 2: small project that really significantly upgrades the golf course and
Speaker 2: does it at a small capital expenditure, is the way
Speaker 2: to get that bigger, bigger spend because you've shown, hey,
Speaker 2: we can improve this and then the community and the
Speaker 2: bottom line sees a benefit from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and we've seen that a p coach
Speaker 3: succeed usually in smaller towns.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I can't think of a big city that has gone
Speaker 3: about it in this way because big cities are just
Speaker 3: you can't do anything ever. But but yeah, that seems
Speaker 3: very reasonable. The issue is that it's just it's almost
Speaker 3: like it's easier to do the huge project because it
Speaker 3: attracts people in their money, whereas if you talk about
Speaker 3: something small, it's not going to appeal as much to
Speaker 3: the people with the money. You just kind of have
Speaker 3: to do those smaller things on your own. It has
Speaker 3: to be your own initiative.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm starting to get this to know. The superintendent done
Speaker 3: in Eugene, Oregon at Laurelwood Golf Course, and he's been
Speaker 3: there for almost for ten years, maybe even up to
Speaker 3: fifteen years now, and he's just been making these gradual
Speaker 3: improvements to the course and he's really turned that place around.
Speaker 3: But it's been so hard, and that's a nine hole course,
Speaker 3: and the things that he's been doing have been you know, minor,
Speaker 3: very minor compared to the mega muni renovations that we
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier, and it's been just all his
Speaker 3: energy and initiative and talent, all of that has been
Speaker 3: necessary to make even the smallest things happen. And so
Speaker 3: it's just it's just hard.
Speaker 2: And uh yeah, here's what other one other thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to touch on briefly with Hardig Park. So they
Speaker 2: adjusted and narrowed their faaraway lines for this championship. What
Speaker 2: do you think the chances of those faraway lines ever
Speaker 2: getting pushed back out to their original size again are.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's pretty small, right, don't you think isn't
Speaker 3: that messed up? Yeah? Totally? But but it's now the
Speaker 3: PGA Championship Course, right, that's the PGA Championship Course, So
Speaker 3: why would they why would they change it? People want
Speaker 3: to come and play the PGA Championship Course. Now they
Speaker 3: come and they see wider fairways, and that might you disappointing.
Speaker 3: I mean that that's said. You know, Pebble Beach consistently
Speaker 3: takes us fair ways in and puts them back out
Speaker 3: after the US Open comes to town. But that's Pebble Beach,
Speaker 3: you know, It's it's uh, it's not a municipal golf course.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no that I agree, that's a that's a bummer.
Speaker 3: What do you think they're going to do about the rough?
Speaker 3: The rough has got to be gonna going to go lower, right,
Speaker 3: they're gonna.
Speaker 2: I'll tell what. I played it in March. It was
Speaker 2: not high, but it was still just so punishing.
Speaker 3: It's because that grass, you know, it's just yeah, it's gnarly.
Speaker 2: It's just was not not an enjoyable experience. I was
Speaker 2: not driving the ball well, and and I was just
Speaker 2: in the in the rough all day. And you know
Speaker 2: that you saw the best players in the world. The
Speaker 2: rough wasn't necessarily that long, but they were hitting shots
Speaker 2: that were just incredibly horrible because of you know, how
Speaker 2: thick it is and how.
Speaker 3: But of course that course is unbelievably hard for an
Speaker 3: average golfer, and it raises the whole subject of whether
Speaker 3: it's possible for one of these courses to truly be
Speaker 3: enjoyable for the average golfer. And this is where we
Speaker 3: need to shout out Chambers Bay, which I think pulls
Speaker 3: this off really well. You know, that's a that's a
Speaker 3: fun golf course, but it obviously was plenty hard for
Speaker 3: the players in the in the twenty fifteen US Open. Now,
Speaker 3: the reason that it was hard then was was that
Speaker 3: it was it was firm, obviously, and the players didn't
Speaker 3: like that. And if the championship went back, maybe it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be the same way. But you know, the way
Speaker 3: that it goes about being challenging for good players but
Speaker 3: accessible for less skilled players, I think is really admirable
Speaker 3: and presents a better model frankly than Harding Park and
Speaker 3: Tory Pines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's one of my big complaints about.
Speaker 2: You know, what happens when the Mega Muni comes is
Speaker 2: then the golf court, the key golf course characteristic tends
Speaker 2: to you know, center around difficulty, and and you know
Speaker 2: when they that happens, then bad architectural decisions are made.
Speaker 2: And you know, for the every ten years it has
Speaker 2: the major Championship, every twenty years it has the Major Championship,
Speaker 2: there's there's fifty two weeks for those twenty two or
Speaker 2: twenty years. One week, you know, I can't do the mathem.
Speaker 2: I had a thousand weeks of pain and suffering for
Speaker 2: the regular players versus the one week where it stands
Speaker 2: up to the best players in the world, or it doesn't,
Speaker 2: because that's the other thing is sometimes it just doesn't
Speaker 2: even stand up to them.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, it was a par seventy this week, so
Speaker 3: we should always remember that too when we look at
Speaker 3: the final sort of what was it minus thirteen number,
Speaker 3: that this was a par seventy golf course. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, and maybe that's fine. You know,
Speaker 3: maybe people maybe people really want to come and get
Speaker 3: abused at the PGA Championship venue. Maybe they want the
Speaker 3: same from the Tory Pine South Course.
Speaker 2: Well then they built the North course the same way.
Speaker 2: That's the that's that's the big blunder on San Diegos.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a little wider and the greens are
Speaker 3: a little but no, you're you're right, and and and
Speaker 3: Balboa Park also go back there again. That the whole
Speaker 3: idea is okay, So if you're going to set up
Speaker 3: a championship course for one of your courses, the other
Speaker 3: courses in the city should be different. And that's and
Speaker 3: that's what I'm looking for out of San Francisco. You know,
Speaker 3: make put a little bit of money into Lincoln Parker
Speaker 3: or Glenn Eagles and make those courses what they should be.
Speaker 3: And uh and if you can do that, then great,
Speaker 3: you know, make the fairways at Harding Park even narrower,
Speaker 3: make the rough even higher, you know, whatever you have
Speaker 3: to do. If you're going. If that enables you to
Speaker 3: attract enough money to fix up your other golf courses,
Speaker 3: then then awesome. I'm fine with it. But it doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like that's quite happening yet. M hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the Mega Beauty, Well, see what happens next. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's going to be a proposed project pop up
Speaker 2: one of these days somewhere.
Speaker 3: I mean, Memorial Memorial Park is the closest thing that
Speaker 3: has happened in recent years. That's that's kind of a megamini.
Speaker 3: But I don't think they're looking for a major championship.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting one too in the architectural sense. They
Speaker 2: didn't hire the open doctor. They hired the guy that's
Speaker 2: known for building the most playable golf courses, right.
Speaker 3: Tom Duck. Yeah, so uh huh yeah, well it, I mean,
Speaker 3: what's that, what's that tournament going to be?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: I don't really know, you know, we've uh, the Trinity
Speaker 3: Forest experience has made me a little bit gun shy
Speaker 3: about best practices of current architecture as it matches up
Speaker 3: with the PGA tour. So, you know, I hope Memorial
Speaker 3: Park works out. And it certainly seems like Doak was
Speaker 3: intentional about reaching out to play and asking them what
Speaker 3: they thought, you know, involving Brooks, Kopkin and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, and so maybe maybe it'll work out
Speaker 3: a little better. But I think that's going to be
Speaker 3: an important moment for the kind of nexus between high
Speaker 3: level tournament golf and current golf course design. You know
Speaker 3: that that could be a moment where we either go
Speaker 3: one direction or another. If it works out brilliantly, if
Speaker 3: they if they all love the course, then maybe we'll
Speaker 3: get a few more like it. If they hate it
Speaker 3: and it's a disaster, then I'm afraid about what's going
Speaker 3: to happen next.
Speaker 2: I know that, you know, Tom's talked extensively on the
Speaker 2: podcast about you know, the slopes and the greens, and
Speaker 2: they're being handcuffed there. So I think what we'll see
Speaker 2: is probably a low score and you know, a golf
Speaker 2: course that's Trinity Force without as much as not you know,
Speaker 2: necessarily to stereotype it, but Trinity Forest ask from tee
Speaker 2: to green, but then on the green very very.
Speaker 3: Tame. Yeah, well I'll take it still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's better than the TPC circuit, that's right.
Speaker 2: So all right, Garrett, any party thoughts, No.
Speaker 3: I mean, what a what a great week of golf.
Speaker 3: And I'm definitely looking forward to the US Open.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, awesome week of golf. And it's cool to
Speaker 2: seek golf on a municipal golf course.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it's and it's so cool to see Colin
Speaker 3: Morikawa when there, and and you know, the whole story
Speaker 3: is is just great. You know, obviously it got driven
Speaker 3: into the ground by the telecasts, but the fact that
Speaker 3: he is he is familiar with the era area, has
Speaker 3: has roots in the area, and uh and is emerging
Speaker 3: just now as a superstar at this municipal course. Fantastic stuff.
Speaker 3: And I think that we'll definitely remember this one. This
Speaker 3: will be this will be a major kind of point
Speaker 3: in the history of you know, this part of the
Speaker 3: tournament golf's history, and so yeah, we're just processing it now.