Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried.
Speaker 2: Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Egg
Speaker 2: brid Egg, Frida egg brid Egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to run off of the course. Welcome back to the
Speaker 2: Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson.
Speaker 2: Today we are going to talk golf course architecture. There's
Speaker 2: been a minute, you know, the pro golf season gets
Speaker 2: cooking and uh, you know, the topics kind of find
Speaker 2: themselves and we haven't talked golf course architecture for a while.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to do that. We're going to do one
Speaker 2: of our mail bags. I'm bring in Garrett Morrison, one
Speaker 2: of our talented personalities at Friday Golf, the host of
Speaker 2: the Designing Golf podcast, a podcast all about golf architecture.
Speaker 2: So if you like this podcast, you should go check
Speaker 2: out Garrett's podcast Designing Golf. So we're going to dive
Speaker 2: into a bunch of different questions that were submitted about
Speaker 2: golf course architecture. But before we do that, let's take
Speaker 2: a quick minute to talk about our friends at golf Genius.
Speaker 2: Golf Genius is a tournament management software. They are the
Speaker 2: industry leading platform for managing golf events and tournaments. We
Speaker 2: use this for all of Friday golf events. I can
Speaker 2: say it has greatly improved our events. It has greatly
Speaker 2: reduced some of the stress induced in our events. As
Speaker 2: someone along with Will who ran the events pre golf Genius,
Speaker 2: I have to say that post golf Genius a lot smoother.
Speaker 2: We aren't turnaround cards. I mean I always remember us
Speaker 2: having like these, Like you know, we were just like
Speaker 2: going through the scorecards as quickly as we possibly could.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't even get to just registration. So we
Speaker 2: used to register with Google Sheets and then transfer it
Speaker 2: into golf Genius. Golf Genius has made it so much easier.
Speaker 2: And it's not just us. It saves the pro shop
Speaker 2: hours of prep work and helps deliver a great experience
Speaker 2: for golfers. If you're interested in all of the things
Speaker 2: that golf Genius can do for you, visit golfgenius dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, let's bring in Garrett. Garrett, welcome back to
Speaker 2: the podcast The Friend. This has to feel like you're
Speaker 2: home away from home of.
Speaker 3: Course it is. Yeah, it's always very welcoming here, and
Speaker 3: I'm glad to be on.
Speaker 2: You know, you're a former resident of this podcast.
Speaker 3: Now like going back to your childhood home and saying hey,
Speaker 3: and you know, noticing that they remodeled the kitchen and
Speaker 3: being like, oh, that looks better, you.
Speaker 2: Know, or worse or worse the backyard the landscape project
Speaker 2: we've done. Then turn out turn out well, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's all good. We need your guidance back here. All right,
Speaker 2: We're going to dive into a bunch of questions about
Speaker 2: golf architecture and and we we got some really nice submissions,
Speaker 2: so let's just get into it. Usually we have grand
Speaker 2: hopes of getting through like twenty of these questions, and
Speaker 2: we get through five. So we'll see how many of
Speaker 2: these we get through today.
Speaker 3: That's so true. That is so true. But we got
Speaker 3: a lot of good ones. We got a lot of
Speaker 3: good ones, especially in Friday Golf Club, where we put
Speaker 3: out a call for questions. A lot of our members
Speaker 3: there in Friday Golf Club came through with some interesting topics.
Speaker 2: Let's let's go with He asked, actually two questions. We're
Speaker 2: going to get to both of them. I thought they
Speaker 2: were great, but we're going to do this one first.
Speaker 2: The debut of Field's Ranch East in the LPGA Major
Speaker 2: seemed to get a lot of criticism. I think that
Speaker 2: might be an understatement.
Speaker 3: That's fair, that's an accurate, an accurate characterization of what happened.
Speaker 2: Just looking at the golf course architecture and how the
Speaker 2: players played the course. Do you think negative critiques were
Speaker 2: warranted or overdone? What if any changes would you make
Speaker 2: to the course to make it better for the PGA
Speaker 2: Championship in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of critiques. Now you have been
Speaker 3: to this facility, I have not, so that creates a
Speaker 3: difference between your and my perspectives on this issue, or
Speaker 3: at least a difference in the validity of them. I
Speaker 3: thought that there were a lot of critiques of Field's
Speaker 3: Ranch East. You know, a lot of different tax were
Speaker 3: taken by the critics of this course. Some of those
Speaker 3: critiques were valid and some I found less valid. I
Speaker 3: don't think the course was unfair or too hard. I
Speaker 3: don't think it failed to showcase the skills of the competitors.
Speaker 3: That was the big claim made by the telecast by
Speaker 3: mel Reid in her very expertly delivered piece on this
Speaker 3: issue on Golf Channel, I just didn't see that. I
Speaker 3: saw a tough golf course that brought out the best
Speaker 3: from Minji Lee and the others who were around even par.
Speaker 3: It was difficult to score on the course, and I
Speaker 3: don't think that embarrassed the competitors. I think it highlighted
Speaker 3: the ones who were really playing well and made it
Speaker 3: seem more impressive because they were actually administered a difficult test.
Speaker 3: I do think from my perspective, at least, you know,
Speaker 3: looking on the telecast and studying some of the imagery
Speaker 3: from the course and just looking at the whole designs,
Speaker 3: I think there are a lot of interesting holes out there,
Speaker 3: and that the telecast really failed badly to understand or
Speaker 3: highlight what made those holes interesting. Now, admittedly this is
Speaker 3: not a pretty golf course. They are in the middle
Speaker 3: of some housing construction, and I think actually once those
Speaker 3: houses are finished that it will look a little bit
Speaker 3: better so that you don't have kind of this chaotic
Speaker 3: half finished look to some of the sightlines and the
Speaker 3: horizons on the holes. But Fields Ranch East is just
Speaker 3: never going to be a beautiful course to look at.
Speaker 3: I don't think, and that's partly because of where it is.
Speaker 3: This is not beautiful land, so it's really not going
Speaker 3: to be an overwhelming esthetic experience at editing point. And
Speaker 3: to me, a lot of the criticism on social media
Speaker 3: Fields East was really essentially rooted in esthetics because that's
Speaker 3: what people were seeing on the telecast. They weren't seeing
Speaker 3: anything pretty, they weren't seeing anything especially eye catching or impressive,
Speaker 3: and so they didn't like the course. And that's understandable,
Speaker 3: but you know, you have to look a little deeper
Speaker 3: to really assess a course. The final thing here, and
Speaker 3: this is something you've talked about, Andy, that you've referred
Speaker 3: to that Joseph has talked about Joseph Lamania, our colleague
Speaker 3: at Friday Golf, this is apparently a bad spectator course
Speaker 3: and that's a huge miss. And in order to stage
Speaker 3: big championships, it seems like some holes will maybe need
Speaker 3: to be re routed, There might be an issue with
Speaker 3: where nine and eighteen are, and it just bewilders me
Speaker 3: that this was not better executed as a spectator venue
Speaker 3: because that is one of its big purposes. Now, I
Speaker 3: guess my question for you is the other course at
Speaker 3: Fields Ranch, Fields Ranch West? Do you think that course
Speaker 3: is going to be better in some of these respects.
Speaker 3: My understanding is that the Field's Ranch East layout is
Speaker 3: sort of spread out and wandering, and that's part of
Speaker 3: the reason why it's a tough spectator venue. Fields Ranch
Speaker 3: West looks maybe a little more compact, even has some
Speaker 3: spectator mounds, which, while they maybe don't look that good,
Speaker 3: will at least serve the purpose of concentrating the gallery
Speaker 3: in certain spots and giving them places to watch the tournament.
Speaker 3: So do you think Fields Ranch West is actually going
Speaker 3: to be going to be superior in some of those ways?
Speaker 2: There's a lot to unpack here. I've spent actually a
Speaker 2: decent amount of time at Fields Ranch. I was there
Speaker 2: before it opened for a couple of days doing some
Speaker 2: photography and videography, and I played it then, and then
Speaker 2: obviously played it for the YouTube video that I did
Speaker 2: with Luke Colton and Bones, which was super fun.
Speaker 1: And to play it in like video, really cool video
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: To play it in a competitive setting I thought was very.
Speaker 1: Illuminating.
Speaker 2: And maybe where some of the criticism comes uh is
Speaker 2: that I having when I played it the first time around,
Speaker 2: I was like huh, all right, like got around okay.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that happens when you
Speaker 2: play in a competitive environment, even though, like I mean
Speaker 2: like YouTube filming, YouTube golf like is like a half
Speaker 2: competitive environment because you're kind of like you're trying to,
Speaker 2: like I was trying to like administer a show while
Speaker 2: playing a match, right, But what I felt when I
Speaker 2: played it in a normal setting, it felt very spacious. Uh,
Speaker 2: when you play it in a competitive environment, and I
Speaker 2: think everybody that's played, like you know, any slick of
Speaker 2: competitive golf, even like club championship golf beef like club championship,
Speaker 2: when you get little bit when you get that competition in,
Speaker 2: everything kind of shrinks down. And I think the thing
Speaker 2: that I noticed was that you felt, really felt that hazards.
Speaker 2: There are a ton of hazards at Fields Ranch East,
Speaker 2: the guild Course, and typically those hazards are in the
Speaker 2: form of like little like ravines or rivers, and if
Speaker 2: you hit your ball down in them, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like a lost ball. Not a lost ball, it's a hazard.
Speaker 2: So it's a drop, it's not. But what's happened the
Speaker 2: golf is like you see that and you're just like
Speaker 2: very afraid of it, and you start aiming away from it.
Speaker 2: Gill's like design was really smart. I've talked to Zach
Speaker 2: Blair a ton about this. Zach obviously has a lot
Speaker 2: of golf architecture chops, and I've always you know, through
Speaker 2: the years, he's been so consistent, Zach with what he
Speaker 2: says is the thing to challenge pro golfers with.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 2: He says, like, I don't think you can design a
Speaker 2: golf course that is really strategic without a lot of
Speaker 2: hazard lines, is what he says and feels. Ranch East
Speaker 2: has a ton of hazard lines. Now you can go
Speaker 2: down and like find your ball. Oftentimes you could play it.
Speaker 2: If you watch the YouTube video, you can see me
Speaker 2: attempt to play it from some of these places not well,
Speaker 2: and you can go find your ball, you can play
Speaker 2: from it. But what happens with pro golfers is they
Speaker 2: see a red line and they aim away from it.
Speaker 2: This is what all this strategy coaches teach. Just aim away,
Speaker 2: don't even mess with it, move your shot distribution cone
Speaker 2: so that you can't hit it in there. So what
Speaker 2: Gil did was he put a bunch of red lines
Speaker 2: down sides of fairways and with red lines like they
Speaker 2: aim away, and then what he did effectively was build
Speaker 2: greens that countered it that run away. And I think
Speaker 2: that for that standpoint, it's a really actually interesting golf
Speaker 2: course for pro golf. It's different. It's really different. I
Speaker 2: can't think of many pro golf courses that have as
Speaker 2: much red and that have strategy that relates so well
Speaker 2: to the red. I get why people didn't like it,
Speaker 2: and that's because they didn't take the time to understand
Speaker 2: it and the fact that it's different. You know, Like
Speaker 2: if you think back to new golf courses, new challenging
Speaker 2: golf courses, they've pretty much all been met with like
Speaker 2: stark criticism. Think about PGA West, the peat die design
Speaker 2: called it to described as golf on the moon. Like Mark,
Speaker 2: I think people were saying that pets his mind kiw
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 3: Pretty much all of Pete Diye's courses got a pretty
Speaker 3: angry reception at first.
Speaker 2: TPC sawgrass go back to when Robert Trent Jones redesigned
Speaker 2: Oakland Hills. It was called a monster, and not in
Speaker 2: like a nice way. If you're more interested in that story,
Speaker 2: check out Garrett's documentary podcast series around it.
Speaker 1: That's a built in promo there.
Speaker 3: Maybe it wasn't a good course, maybe it didn't stand
Speaker 3: the test of time, but it was new and it
Speaker 3: got criticized. So the pattern that we're saying is that
Speaker 3: new is disturbing to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Fast forward, Chambers Bay, I think was criticized for a
Speaker 2: lot of things, like the criticized beyond the greens, which
Speaker 2: were separate issue to criticized the fact that the par
Speaker 2: changed on eighteen. There was a ton of criticism for
Speaker 2: Chambers Bay. The golf course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now it's beloved, Like all these people pretending that
Speaker 3: they liked the course at that US Open, ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the people who are calling for the US Open
Speaker 3: to go back to Chambers Bay didn't like it when
Speaker 3: the US Open was actually played there.
Speaker 1: That's my theory. Aaron Hills.
Speaker 2: Criticized greatly, Trinity Forest criticized completely, just criticized. So like,
Speaker 2: just if you look at the theme here, I think
Speaker 2: there's somewhere in between the player criticism and is this
Speaker 2: course good? Right, there's somewhere in between. That's probably the
Speaker 2: right place for it. It probably needs some tweaks, there needs
Speaker 2: to be some stuff done, but I think it's actually
Speaker 2: a pretty interesting golf course.
Speaker 1: It's just different.
Speaker 2: And now, like if we get to just the overarching
Speaker 2: there are some issues. Like the housing development around it
Speaker 2: is awful. I have the first time it went they
Speaker 2: hadn't been built yet and going back and like seeing
Speaker 2: it with houses it sucks. There's no way around it.
Speaker 2: And like I don't know if they can do like
Speaker 2: a stop work order for the PGA where like the
Speaker 2: trucks don't show up, but that would help, Like if
Speaker 2: there wasn't just like a ton of construction going on
Speaker 2: around the golf course, it might help with like some
Speaker 2: of the atmosphere. Yeah, and then and then like aesthetically yes,
Speaker 2: it's it's not going to ever win any like beauty contest.
Speaker 2: This is not Cyper's point, but there are a lot
Speaker 2: of like unesthetically like, not all great golf courses are
Speaker 2: aesthetically pleasing. You know, there there are tons of places
Speaker 2: with houses all around them. You know, Oakland Hills has
Speaker 2: houses all around them. Now they're nice houses, Uh, they
Speaker 2: aren't kind of like the McMansion houses that are going
Speaker 2: to go on going and Frisco. Uh, but it's also new,
Speaker 2: so you always have to remember, like stuff needs time.
Speaker 2: To grow in uh stuff. But all in all, like
Speaker 2: the spectator experience not being great, that that's not good.
Speaker 2: And I think like one of the reasons is and
Speaker 2: I notice, is it at Oakmont? And I'm curious your take.
Speaker 2: You just did a podcast all about trees. I think
Speaker 2: trees are super important for the spectators.
Speaker 3: A little shade.
Speaker 2: At Oakmont, I was like dying and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: like I just the week after Oakmond, I went played
Speaker 2: golf in like one hundred degree weather, hotter than Oakmont, humid,
Speaker 2: and I realized I was more comfortable than Oakmont because
Speaker 2: I could walk into shade.
Speaker 3: Gotta go stand under that elm by the third tee
Speaker 3: basically at Oakmont.
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, like my early existence on Earth
Speaker 2: was filled with playing competitive golf in Chicago in August.
Speaker 2: And you know what you do. You just go under
Speaker 2: trees and you hang out in the shade. And I'm
Speaker 2: not suggesting plants a ton of trees all over the place,
Speaker 2: but I do think trees by tea boxes in particular
Speaker 2: have the most are the best place to put a tree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because to be careful about canopy management when you're
Speaker 3: putting them by tea boxes. Because you don't want the
Speaker 3: shade to get on the surface of the tea box
Speaker 3: too much. But if you manage the tree and make
Speaker 3: sure that the shade is around the tea box as
Speaker 3: opposed to right on top of it, and given how
Speaker 3: how good arborists and agronomists are at their jobs these days,
Speaker 3: they can accomplish that, then then you have something that's
Speaker 3: useful for a spectator venue for sure.
Speaker 2: So for like Frisco or Oakmont for that matter, like
Speaker 2: ways to make the spectator experience better is trees that
Speaker 2: are placed like well out of play, that are in
Speaker 2: areas that you know, people want to congregate and.
Speaker 1: Watch golf shots.
Speaker 2: Because to me, that's the biggest issue with the spectator
Speaker 2: experience is they're hosting this event at the end of June,
Speaker 2: which is not a good time to host. But it
Speaker 2: did provide delightful conditions with like the wind and the
Speaker 2: bountiness and the you know, the the temperature though was
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees, Like who wants to go watch golf
Speaker 2: in one hundred degree weather? Like, that's not something I'm
Speaker 2: interested in actually when there's no shade. One other thing
Speaker 2: I think, like if you were going to have like
Speaker 2: a critique of Frisco. I think that the surrounds of
Speaker 2: the green need a little work because I do think
Speaker 2: like those need to play, especially for the women's game,
Speaker 2: very bouncy, and bermuda.
Speaker 1: Is hard in this standpoint.
Speaker 2: It's sticky, but you have to figure out how to
Speaker 2: make that bermuda really bouncy so that it really allows
Speaker 2: for a lot of run up shots. I think that
Speaker 2: there were run up shots available that weren't attempted, but
Speaker 2: that needs to play like electric around in the surrounds,
Speaker 2: and I don't necessarily think it did and I and
Speaker 2: this could be just like you know what, the grass
Speaker 2: this time of year can't do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, there are a lot of advances happening
Speaker 3: in bermuda grass science these days, and so I'm sure
Speaker 3: some experimentation can be done there. But the main thing
Speaker 3: is that if there is a turf type that would
Speaker 3: be bouncier or function better in the surrounds at Fields Ranch,
Speaker 3: then they should definitely consider just having that turf type
Speaker 3: around the greens and not being devoted to having the
Speaker 3: same turf type in the fairway as they have in
Speaker 3: the surrounds. A lot of people shy away from that
Speaker 3: because of the esthetic consequences of having a transition when
Speaker 3: you approach the green. But there are some great golf
Speaker 3: courses worldwide that are doing this right now, including Royal
Speaker 3: Melbourne where they have those fscue approaches and they look
Speaker 3: different from the couch grasses they call it there, the
Speaker 3: Bermuda grass that's in the fairways, but it plays really well.
Speaker 3: It's a great feature of that golf course, and I
Speaker 3: hope that more courses start to experiment with this, especially
Speaker 3: in Southern California. Riviera, let's let's see some let's see
Speaker 3: some bouncy surrounds there that would really improve that golf course,
Speaker 3: even if it has a set of consequences that are
Speaker 3: not all that appealing to.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about Riviera a lot next year
Speaker 2: with the Olympics going there. Yeah, it does feel like
Speaker 2: a huge myss that we're hosting the Olympics there, Like
Speaker 2: Rio got a brand new golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and I wish we had.
Speaker 3: Wish there had been some some kind of push to
Speaker 3: to restore the place, but I don't think there's any
Speaker 3: apple well for that among the ownership.
Speaker 2: What about not restoring the place, but what about renovating
Speaker 2: Rancho Park or.
Speaker 3: Or Griffith Park. Doing something with Griffith Park. Griffith Park
Speaker 3: would be would be perfect, and Rancho is very centrally located.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what they would do about parking there.
Speaker 3: I really no idea, but uh, but Griffith Park they could,
Speaker 3: they could do it. There's a lot of space out there,
Speaker 3: and and that course could use some love.
Speaker 2: Like part of the Olympics coming to town. Just generally
Speaker 2: is you get all these like great community.
Speaker 1: Assets that are the benefit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and LA has like incredible potential. I would say that,
Speaker 2: you know, behind San Francisco maybe the most potential. You know,
Speaker 2: DC obviously, which is well underway with with what the
Speaker 2: National Links Trust is doing there, but LA, and and
Speaker 2: LA has just incredible public golf potential when you factor
Speaker 2: in all the courses, Rancho Park, Griffith Park, you go
Speaker 2: to the county, they have Santa Anita, which is a
Speaker 2: really cool golf course that could be you know, just
Speaker 2: some some light touch ups. Not talking like twenty million
Speaker 2: dollar jobs too, but these there's just it just feels
Speaker 2: like a tremendously missed opportunity in terms of creating a
Speaker 2: public set when the Olympics come and just kind of
Speaker 2: going to RIV, which I like RIV. I love RIV,
Speaker 2: but I think that there was an opportunity to do
Speaker 2: something good for the community as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just sort of the easy way out, I
Speaker 3: guess for choosing a.
Speaker 2: Venue as far as Frisco West, I guess it's maybe
Speaker 2: a better spectating option, but it is not a better
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are signed by bo Welling, So bo Welling
Speaker 3: did West, Gilhans did East.
Speaker 2: There are some wild greens out there. My main critique
Speaker 2: of Frisco West is there are some really cool greens,
Speaker 2: but the every so many holes are lined by bunkers
Speaker 2: on the right and left side on the exterior, and
Speaker 2: it's almost as if the architect doesn't want the cool
Speaker 2: greens to have to doesn't want to amplify some of
Speaker 2: the cool greens that were built by allowing people to
Speaker 2: push to the edges, and it's more like hit it
Speaker 2: down the middle. And I think that, you know, there's
Speaker 2: also some like construction critiques that I would have, and
Speaker 2: there's a big hill that they have to navigate that
Speaker 2: it can get a little redundant. I you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not an expert. When it comes to routing,
Speaker 2: I think there probably could have been a better routing.
Speaker 1: They're also.
Speaker 2: I think there was a time at which they thought
Speaker 2: that maybe the PGA Tour would be going there. So
Speaker 2: the mounding you see was actually a PGA Tour directive.
Speaker 3: So there's life and then they just said, uh, never mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's actually like a great story. This was like
Speaker 2: right after Trinity Forest when it was being constructed, and
Speaker 2: you'll see if you played, if you played the West Course,
Speaker 2: there's like some really cool like shared fairways with minimal mounding,
Speaker 2: like cool like break mounds and bunkers. The PGA Tour
Speaker 2: fresh off of Trany Forest was like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we need containment mounting, we need these hole siloed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look at it.
Speaker 3: And by the way, part of the issue with Trinity Forest,
Speaker 3: where the PGA Tour went for like what two or
Speaker 3: three years?
Speaker 1: Two years, two years, it was a short instant.
Speaker 3: Is what you referred to earlier, the lack of shade.
Speaker 3: Spectators really didn't enjoy not having trees to stand under
Speaker 3: a Trinity Forest. But it was but it was a
Speaker 3: really cool golf course and in other ways, and so
Speaker 3: so maybe a bummer, but anyway, going gone with the story.
Speaker 2: So anyways, they they then then were like you have
Speaker 2: to build these mounds, and they so they built these
Speaker 2: like mouths like basically like three holes. There's like all
Speaker 2: these containment mounts and then nowhere else and they're on
Speaker 2: the back nine, so they just come out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: like wait, worm these where did these come from? But
Speaker 2: it's I I think, like I think that West Course
Speaker 2: there's some like you know, catch basins, which I don't
Speaker 2: need to go and do. I think everybody knows. I'm
Speaker 2: not a fan of that, like are awful around the greens,
Speaker 2: But honestly, if you got rid of like all of
Speaker 2: like almost all the bunkers at the West Course, it
Speaker 2: would get dramatically better. Like that golf course should have
Speaker 2: like twenty five bunkers and it would be really cool
Speaker 2: because the greens are really neat, like there's some wild
Speaker 2: neat greens. It's just like completely over bunkered for what
Speaker 2: it is and I just don't I don't understand why
Speaker 2: there's so many bunkers. But anyways, so that's those are
Speaker 2: my thoughts on the West Course is would it be
Speaker 2: a better spectator course.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think you're kind of you're taking change out of
Speaker 2: one pocket and putting in another pocket.
Speaker 1: To be completely honest.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really make any sense to me that these
Speaker 3: courses are not better spectator courses. But maybe that's a
Speaker 3: discussion for a future future episode or or an investigation
Speaker 3: of why things went the way they went.
Speaker 2: One other question I have is like, why can't we
Speaker 2: build grandstands with more like roofing? Is that just like
Speaker 2: exorbitantly expensive?
Speaker 1: No idea?
Speaker 2: That would be Like Another solution i'd have is can
Speaker 2: we get more grandstands with roofing? And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, like you can sit in shade? As someone
Speaker 2: who's gone to a lot of golf tournaments, I mean
Speaker 2: you just can cook in a grand stand.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, well because of the reflected light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a different level of hot when it's hot.
Speaker 1: It's like that's not.
Speaker 2: The place I want to be either, right, I'd like
Speaker 2: like to be next to the grandstand in the shade.
Speaker 2: So really the key is shade. There needs to be
Speaker 2: more shade, and people wouldn't complain. So there we go.
Speaker 2: Oh we're twenty five minutes in one question one question. Perfect,
Speaker 2: here we go. I've got this question for you.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: Many of the best funded new projects This is from
Speaker 2: James Roth. So many of the best funded new projects
Speaker 2: on the best sites tend to go to the Big
Speaker 2: four of golf course architects. Does this limit innovation? Also?
Speaker 2: Is Gil Hans the new open Doctor?
Speaker 3: Also, oh my gosh, three questions.
Speaker 2: Just focusing on sites that that are to host championships
Speaker 2: force architects to the middle.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's tackle these one at a time. So the
Speaker 3: Big four question, whether the a lot of the best
Speaker 3: jobs quote unquote going to David McLay Kidd, Gil Hans,
Speaker 3: Corn Crenshaw, and Tom Doak. Does that limit innovation? I'm
Speaker 3: not sure that that's where the limitation on innovation comes from.
Speaker 3: I think what really limits innovation in golf architecture is
Speaker 3: cost and risk, which makes clients conservative. And so it's yes,
Speaker 3: that's part of the reason why clients choose the same architects,
Speaker 3: the same successful architects, over and over. But the main
Speaker 3: thing there, the main dynamic there is that the clients
Speaker 3: ask the architects to do what they did before that
Speaker 3: made those courses successful.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna step in here. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: musa say something else limits innovation.
Speaker 4: Okay from specifically or the paraple shotgun, start soundboard, making
Speaker 4: it into the fried egg pot.
Speaker 3: Oh, people are gonna be so mad.
Speaker 2: The fair police. The idea of fair is the greatest.
Speaker 2: I mean, we just talked about fairness at a major
Speaker 2: championship where you had genotitical and and MinJe Lee, two
Speaker 2: of the greatest women's players of the last five years,
Speaker 2: duking it out, the only two that really had a
Speaker 2: chance to win on Sunday going into Sunday on a course,
Speaker 2: and they were both like under par one, and we're
Speaker 2: talking about whether it was fair or not fair. Golf
Speaker 2: is unfair. If you live your golf life with the
Speaker 2: lens of understanding the game is inherently fair unfair, you
Speaker 2: will play better golf just in general. But it also
Speaker 2: if every golfer lost the idea of fair from their
Speaker 2: dictionary of golf terms, golf architecture would would go nuts.
Speaker 2: There'd be just wild golf courses, wild bad, wild good.
Speaker 2: But the problem is people. People believe that if they
Speaker 2: hit the green, they should automatically be like guaranteed a
Speaker 2: two putt. You know what, one of the greatest short
Speaker 2: par threes in the world is National Golf Links Short
Speaker 2: par three, and it's got one of the craziest greens
Speaker 2: in the world. And one day I hit I played there,
Speaker 2: I hit a terrible wedge to like forty feet. It
Speaker 2: was just a bad shot. The pin was front right,
Speaker 2: and I was standing over the putt and I said,
Speaker 2: if I hit it at the hole, it's going off
Speaker 2: the green into the bunker.
Speaker 1: If I try and make this, I laid up.
Speaker 2: I laid up the putt because I knew I hit
Speaker 2: it in the wrong place. I was in a place
Speaker 2: I hit a terrible shot. So like people like believe
Speaker 2: like if I hit the green, I should I should
Speaker 2: be as long as I don't screw up, I should
Speaker 2: be able to putt like this is one thing that
Speaker 2: limits innovation in golf architecture. The idea of par in
Speaker 2: handicaps limit the innovation in golf architecture. We've begun to
Speaker 2: see some golf courses that don't have scorecards. But like,
Speaker 2: the number one thing that is limiting innovation in golf
Speaker 2: architecture is absolutely the public in America's perception of fair
Speaker 2: The game is unfair. And as soon as you every
Speaker 2: golfer that's listening to this podcast wraps their head around
Speaker 2: it accepts that the game's unfair, you will play better golf.
Speaker 2: You will without a doubt. Like when you get a
Speaker 2: plugged line in a bunker, you say, oh, this is fun.
Speaker 2: This is an opportunity to hit a great shot when
Speaker 2: you roll into a divot. If you accept it that
Speaker 2: that's just part of the game and that these are
Speaker 2: moments that are giving the opportunities to hit a once
Speaker 2: in a lifetime shot that you will never forget, you
Speaker 2: will play better golf. And that is also would allow
Speaker 2: golf architects to build better golf courses.
Speaker 3: And also probably be a happier person if you just
Speaker 3: accepted that certain things are unfair, because even on a
Speaker 3: course that's designed with the idea of fair baked essentially
Speaker 3: into it, unfair things are going to happen just because
Speaker 3: it's golf, you know. I think any golf course design
Speaker 3: needs to balance randomness and quirk with a sense of
Speaker 3: fairness because a completely or you know, absolutely unfair course
Speaker 3: would just be ridiculous, and so there needs to be
Speaker 3: some idea of fair play. You know, baked into the design,
Speaker 3: but probably a lot less of it than people think
Speaker 3: or than people want to accept. And so, yeah, completely
Speaker 3: agree Andy preaching to the choir, and so I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how to begin changing that, but it is certainly
Speaker 3: an epidemic in the discussion of the pro game, whether
Speaker 3: golf courses are fair or not, and it makes people conservative,
Speaker 3: you know. I think about this a lot with comparisons
Speaker 3: between golf architecture and other art forms. If you look
Speaker 3: at an art form like like pop music, like rock music,
Speaker 3: the pace of innovation and the variety of experiments that
Speaker 3: musicians have done over the decades are so much broader
Speaker 3: and so much bigger than what golf architects have done.
Speaker 3: And part of that is because not only be famished.
Speaker 3: Part of that is because there's way more of of
Speaker 3: production of music than there is of golf architecture. But
Speaker 3: also part of it is that there there aren't like
Speaker 3: the same limitations on what musicians do that the consequences
Speaker 3: don't seem to be as severe for a bad experiment.
Speaker 2: In that.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's what I'm talking about with cost and risk,
Speaker 3: right where where the client has to be conservative because
Speaker 3: you put out an album and it flops. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: that's a bummer and you might lose a little money,
Speaker 3: but only a little bit. You put out a golf
Speaker 3: course and it flops, that's a disaster.
Speaker 2: There's there's so many great like essays centered around especially
Speaker 2: like I think Elsa McKenzie wrote about it, but like
Speaker 2: the finality of design, how it's like it's done, especially
Speaker 2: when you get to the municipal space at like a
Speaker 2: big time resort, at a at a at a private
Speaker 2: club or at a you know, so of course that
Speaker 2: say a very wealthy individual's building, you can always make
Speaker 2: changes at a municipal golf course, you know, municipal golf
Speaker 2: course saves up, gets the funding and spends you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen million dollars. That's that's it. The course is what
Speaker 2: it is for the next sixty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't you have to earn the money back,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't have that more.
Speaker 2: That's that's the thing that is like the there is
Speaker 2: like this idea of design, like once you lock in
Speaker 2: a routing and build it, it's really hard to change
Speaker 2: it anywhere, you know. But I think like preconceived notions
Speaker 2: just generally are bad for art. The idea of like
Speaker 2: rules and limitations. If you wanted to talk about, like
Speaker 2: how would we get the most abstract innovative ideas in
Speaker 2: golf would be to throw away the preconceived notions. So
Speaker 2: you think about things that limit, like that limit your innovation,
Speaker 2: number of holes, the idea of score, right, the you know,
Speaker 2: I think you could go into equipment like fourteen clubs limit,
Speaker 2: Like I think you'd get more innovation with like if
Speaker 2: you created golf courses that were like four club courses,
Speaker 2: people might find that really interesting. But that would be
Speaker 2: against like the handicap system overall, very huge limit or
Speaker 2: inhibitor because you can't even do interesting setups because if
Speaker 2: it's like, well, what tea did I play?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you have to rate the separate courses and yeah.
Speaker 2: So and then if you start to think about it,
Speaker 2: it's like all right, well, like if I wanted to
Speaker 2: build a golf course, I've always thought about this is
Speaker 2: like build a golf course and have like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have like thirty two different unique setups with like whole locations.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll tell this this is.
Speaker 2: Like one of my like far fetched ideas. My favorite
Speaker 2: restaurants in the world are the ones with no menus
Speaker 2: to me, Like, why if I'm going to a great
Speaker 2: restaurant with a world class chef, like just give me whatever.
Speaker 2: You're gonna do whatever you want, you know, like you're
Speaker 2: the chef, Like you know I'm not. It'd be like
Speaker 2: me getting in a New York cab and being like, well,
Speaker 2: like I've spent like five days in the city, I
Speaker 2: think you should go this way, right, Like that guy
Speaker 2: knows where to go. The chef knows how to make
Speaker 2: the food. So like one idea I've had is like
Speaker 2: build a golf course with like a lot going on
Speaker 2: and then have like a unique setup that like so
Speaker 2: many of them that are like and you they're just
Speaker 2: like this is what you're eating today, and you know,
Speaker 2: you could play one whole six hundred yards one day
Speaker 2: and then the next day it could be two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty. But make it like really diverse and that
Speaker 2: all the setups work together and the architect who designed
Speaker 2: the golf course lays it out like something I think
Speaker 2: that's kind of weird is that architects design these great
Speaker 2: golf courses and then like superintendents set them up. And
Speaker 2: I love superintendents but like over time, a superintendent's like
Speaker 2: job is rooted in becoming efficient, and golf course setup
Speaker 2: is the way someone experiences a golf course, and that
Speaker 2: should not be efficient. It should be very intense. It
Speaker 2: should be like, Okay, this hole is doing this, like
Speaker 2: this is how I can get the most out of
Speaker 2: it and maybe put somebody into like a tough spot
Speaker 2: by setting up this, or make a hard decision that
Speaker 2: they have never had to make before.
Speaker 1: And I think.
Speaker 2: That these preconceived notions are what limit golf course innovation.
Speaker 2: I will say though that like, yeah, like having like
Speaker 2: the same arts, Like if you have the same they're
Speaker 2: only four rock band, you would see a minimal amount
Speaker 2: of innovation. Now like the flip side, as you said,
Speaker 2: there aren't a lot of projects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean if you look at the number
Speaker 3: of songs that have been released since nineteen twenty versus
Speaker 3: the number of golf courses that have been built since
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty, there's there's a big difference. But what made
Speaker 3: me think of this is that I've been reading a
Speaker 3: really great biography recently of the Beatles. Really it's like
Speaker 3: an eight hundred page book just about the first the
Speaker 3: first five years of the Beatles, like Mark Lewison, it's
Speaker 3: called tune In, and it's extremely detailed. It's almost like
Speaker 3: a day by day, week by week account of the Beatles.
Speaker 3: So if you're you know, if you've already read some
Speaker 3: other stuff about the Beatles, maybe this would be the
Speaker 3: book to read. But I found it completely fascinating. You know,
Speaker 3: where did this band come from? How did this band
Speaker 3: become so great? When did they become so great? And
Speaker 3: one thing that's so interesting about them is the is
Speaker 3: the pace of their changing styles. If you look at
Speaker 3: the Beatles, but you know, in the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: they were just a bunch of teenagers. They had really
Speaker 3: they were very talented, but they were just like a
Speaker 3: skiffle band. They were playing on really basic instruments and
Speaker 3: playing in a style that was very easy to applicate.
Speaker 3: And by nineteen sixty seven, if I have my years right,
Speaker 3: they were making Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. That's
Speaker 3: seven eight years. How does that happen? How does one
Speaker 3: band progress that quickly and just become so different so
Speaker 3: quickly every few months. In the nineteen sixties, the Beatles
Speaker 3: were changing who they were and there's really no comparison
Speaker 3: in golf architecture for all the reasons that we've laid out,
Speaker 3: but it does make the art form less dynamic overall.
Speaker 3: And so if there's any way that we as a
Speaker 3: golf community can allow golf architecture to be more vital
Speaker 3: and more dynamic like music and film and literature have
Speaker 3: been historically, I think that the better off we're.
Speaker 1: Going to be.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that. I think, like when you
Speaker 2: when you get into it too. There are certain architects
Speaker 2: like I think Tom Doak's been probably the most experimental.
Speaker 2: He's brought the most new stuff to the industry.
Speaker 3: He's been intentional about about changing. Yeah, the way he
Speaker 3: does things.
Speaker 2: And he's it's in response is to what's going on
Speaker 2: in the market, kind of like the way the music
Speaker 2: industry happened. He brought in with and he's pushed back
Speaker 2: on with and he's gone like much more economical in
Speaker 2: recent I mean his newest design in Texas, like so
Speaker 2: few bunkers, right, so few, so little earth moving, and
Speaker 2: you know, I think like that's such a that's such
Speaker 2: a you know you think about like compare that to
Speaker 2: stream song blue or something it's such a big change
Speaker 2: from that over the course of I mean that would
Speaker 2: have been almost twenty years now, you know, fifteen years.
Speaker 3: Stream from string Soong Blue to now is fourteen fifteen,
Speaker 3: fourteen fifteen years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then you have like I think, like Bill Krer
Speaker 2: and Ben Crenshaw, like they kind of have like their methodology.
Speaker 2: They they find they build like really great natural holes.
Speaker 3: It's about the land for them. I think Bill cor
Speaker 3: trusts in the distinctiveness of each piece of land, and
Speaker 3: that is what he's about. He's about capturing whatever that
Speaker 3: is in the land, and so it's just a completely
Speaker 3: different approach to the art form. It's very interesting that
Speaker 3: these two architects who are considered similar to each other
Speaker 3: or or standard bearers of the same movement, are actually
Speaker 3: very different in the way that they approach their craft.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: Michael would care be sharing that I was. I went
Speaker 2: and saw Rodeo Dunes a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: one thing that Michael said that he pushed Bill Bill
Speaker 2: Corrers doing the first first course there. The site's incredible,
Speaker 2: it's unbelievable. One thing he pushed Bill on was like,
Speaker 2: and we can we try and do stuff differently, and
Speaker 2: and his his directive was make it less neat, you know,
Speaker 2: like you have such an elegant like elegance to your designs,
Speaker 2: like just leave weird stuff. And I think it turned
Speaker 2: out pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: That's a good directive from an owner to say, here's
Speaker 3: something I've noticed about your designs and that elegance that
Speaker 3: that all tied in kind of smoothness is a feature
Speaker 3: of Corn Crenshaw's designs that would be interesting to see
Speaker 3: messed up a little.
Speaker 2: That that site. I can't say enough that site's extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I like cannot believe that it was just sitting an
Speaker 2: hour from Denver.
Speaker 3: And then found on Google Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's awesome. You know. There are other questions
Speaker 2: in here that I think, like in terms of innovation,
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of new golf being built that
Speaker 2: will open in the next year or two, and I
Speaker 2: think you're going to see a lot of new artists,
Speaker 2: new architects attempt to build or you know, possibly break
Speaker 2: through with their with their designs. Is Gil Hand's the
Speaker 2: new open doctor.
Speaker 3: Not really. No, He's not nearly as dominant as Robert
Speaker 3: Trent Jones was, or even as Rhys Jones was in in,
Speaker 3: you know, shaping the destinies of these championship venues. But
Speaker 3: of course he's become a go to architect for both
Speaker 3: USGA venues and PGA of America venues, which is interesting, right.
Speaker 3: It's not like he has a relationship with one organization
Speaker 3: or the other. It's more that he works with these
Speaker 3: courses that happened to show host championships, so the connection
Speaker 3: is less he worked. I think he works well with
Speaker 3: those organizations, but but that's not the primary relationship. And
Speaker 3: then Andrew Green, of course has a lot of the
Speaker 3: jobs that either gill Hand was unable to take on
Speaker 3: or just got those jobs, like he got the o
Speaker 3: Kill job, he got the Invernous.
Speaker 2: Job, and got the Olympia Field's job.
Speaker 3: Got the Olympia Field's job, and he there's there's an
Speaker 3: equally strong argument that he is a kind of open
Speaker 3: doctor PGA championship doctor at this point, the one that
Speaker 3: flies under the radar. The real open doctor in the
Speaker 3: world of golf right now is the open doctor. Mackenzie
Speaker 3: and Ebert. They have a close relationship with the RNA.
Speaker 3: Martin Ebert is a member of the RNA, has served
Speaker 3: on committees in the RNA, has served on committees that
Speaker 3: choose championship venues for the RNA, and if you want
Speaker 3: to host an open championship, basically it's known that you
Speaker 3: need to hire Mackenzie and Ebert. That's an open doctor,
Speaker 3: not really what what Gil Hans and Andrew Green are doing.
Speaker 2: And that's that's more similar to the relationship that Joe
Speaker 2: Dye and the USGA had with Robert Trent Jones and
Speaker 2: one fifties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where it was like an exclusive relation relationship. You know,
Speaker 3: here there's nobody else that that Joe Die was going
Speaker 3: to recommend than than Robert Shen Jones.
Speaker 2: And maybe maybe it's similar also. I'm not I haven't
Speaker 2: seen all the work all over the place, but I
Speaker 2: think you could categorically or pretty emphatically now look back
Speaker 2: and this is all trends, but you look back now
Speaker 2: and you say that, wow, Robert Trent Jones and Joe
Speaker 2: Dye together ruined a lot of great golf courses.
Speaker 3: They didn't do a whole lot of good. And I
Speaker 3: mean the thing that can be said without a subjective assessment,
Speaker 3: an assessment that I agree with, of course, but the
Speaker 3: thing that can be said, is that pretty much all
Speaker 3: of their work has now been redone. Yes, all of
Speaker 3: it doesn't. It doesn't none of it, almost none of
Speaker 3: it remains. And I think maybe not maybe, I think
Speaker 3: probably we'll see something similar with the open road of
Speaker 3: venues in a couple of decades.
Speaker 2: I've numerous numerous architects. This is don't try and play,
Speaker 2: this is numerous architects. Other people said to me, have
Speaker 2: said to me offline, thank god for Rhese Jones because
Speaker 2: he is making my job easy.
Speaker 3: Because all I have to do is be better than that.
Speaker 2: All I get to redo is work all the time.
Speaker 2: So just just.
Speaker 3: So we're you know, I wonder if Riest Jones takes
Speaker 3: that as a genuine compliment.
Speaker 1: I still get work himself.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: He's busy, busy guy.
Speaker 3: Everybody's busy at seventy nine eighty years old.
Speaker 2: And then this final I would just get to this
Speaker 2: real quick. Just focusing on sites that are that are
Speaker 2: to host champ championships, force architects in the middle. Yes,
Speaker 2: because their fairness. You have to balance fairness. You have
Speaker 2: to consider infrastructure. It's a lot to what we just talked.
Speaker 2: There's so many things you have to think about that
Speaker 2: lead to like constantly making concessions on design. Championships naturally
Speaker 2: lead you to watering down the design or the the
Speaker 2: restoration of a place because oh, it can't be this wide,
Speaker 2: Oh we need we need a car path here for
Speaker 2: access for equipment. Oh we're going to put a grand
Speaker 2: stand here. I mean, like think a lot of these
Speaker 2: open courses. Like the one thing that Mackenzie and Eber
Speaker 2: comes in, Like the first thing they do is like
Speaker 2: spectator flow, we need to move this green.
Speaker 3: Right, even if it's a good hole, we're getting rid
Speaker 3: of it because because we need to build up this
Speaker 3: this championship hosting infrastructure.
Speaker 2: So I think like you could unequivocally say that modern
Speaker 2: championships are bad for golf courses if you're interested in
Speaker 2: the golf course design.
Speaker 3: Especially for old courses that are or were what they
Speaker 3: were and were designed to be what they were. To
Speaker 3: retrofit those into a modern US Open or PGA championship
Speaker 3: venue often does a lot of damage to what those
Speaker 3: courses are. And I think you just have to look
Speaker 3: at the difference between gil Hans's work for championship hosting
Speaker 3: courses and gil Hans's work just as an architect for
Speaker 3: the amateur player, I would say he takes a lot
Speaker 3: more risks when he's designing a place like the Hoopy
Speaker 3: Match Club or Rustic Canyon than he does with even
Speaker 3: Southern Hills Country Club, which I love.
Speaker 1: In that one was the one that.
Speaker 3: I love that course. I love that course. I think
Speaker 3: it's terrific and there's a great kind of ingenious compromise
Speaker 3: between the requirements of a modern championship venue and just
Speaker 3: a restoration of a Perry Maxwell golf course. But if
Speaker 3: the PGA Championship or the Ryder Cup or whatever else
Speaker 3: they want to host wasn't a consideration, I think there
Speaker 3: would have been some other things that gil Hans was
Speaker 3: able to do there.
Speaker 2: I agree, and I think that transit. Here's a good question.
Speaker 2: I really like Trent Godby. Besides the old course, what
Speaker 2: Scottish courses have had the most influence on golf courses
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question, isn't it. It's such a historical question.
Speaker 3: I think probably the first place I'd go would be
Speaker 3: North Barrick, not just because of the template holes, not
Speaker 3: just because of the Ridan, but just in general as
Speaker 3: an influence on especially modern golf architecture. I think North
Speaker 3: Barrick is a kind of guiding light for quirky golf
Speaker 3: course design. I think that course freeze architects up to
Speaker 3: try things because certain aspects of North Barrick are so weird.
Speaker 3: The other ones that I think of would be would
Speaker 3: be pressed Wick, just because Presstwick really represents the the
Speaker 3: professionalization of golf architecture. That was one of the first
Speaker 3: courses that was really designed by a person who was
Speaker 3: devoting himself or at least devoting a portion of his
Speaker 3: time intentionally taking on golf course design as a profession
Speaker 3: in Old Tom Morris and so just as a as
Speaker 3: a statement of early golf architecture, pressed Wick very influential.
Speaker 3: And then we're all Dornick is the I think say that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because because of Donald Ross and and whatever influence Dornick
Speaker 3: might have had on Donald Ross's, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: budding ideas about golf architecture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dornet Royal Doric being the place that the most
Speaker 2: prolific American architect spent a lot of his early life
Speaker 2: playing and seeing. I think, uh, then there's like themes
Speaker 2: that people bring over from it. Unfortunately, like usually it's
Speaker 2: all all the wrong stuff that have an influence I think,
Speaker 2: like Ireland Irish golf like influences rough in America.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like Iri Irish golf, they're very like steeped in competition
Speaker 2: and hard hard, like they like the idea of hard
Speaker 2: and competition and metal play, which I think, like listen,
Speaker 2: like I love. One of the things I think is
Speaker 2: intoxicating is when you go to Ireland or Scotland is
Speaker 2: like how much they love competition, like you're always playing
Speaker 2: a match, but they play a lot of like you know,
Speaker 2: metals and and I think like one of the things
Speaker 2: that Ireland like, one of my criticisms of Irish golf
Speaker 2: would be like how much lost ball rough exists. It's
Speaker 2: obviously a place that gets a lot of rain, so
Speaker 2: the rough gets very thick and you're off it's wetter.
Speaker 3: It's that's one big difference between Irish links and Scottish links, right,
Speaker 3: Irish links are wetter so that the rough is kind
Speaker 3: of thicker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think like that that is something like
Speaker 2: people we'll take at that come back with that nobody
Speaker 2: thinks about like oh wow, like you know, the green
Speaker 2: speeds here are like delightful like I you know it
Speaker 2: helps with their pace to play, like why did they
Speaker 2: play golf faster than us? And in general whether greens
Speaker 2: are slower, so it's like you get off the green quicker.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: These are things like you know, a bunker as a hazard,
Speaker 2: like there's not this like notion that you should be
Speaker 2: able to just get out and and and have a
Speaker 2: perfect lie all the time. The people don't take away
Speaker 2: the good things generally with with with golf in Ireland
Speaker 2: and in Scotland and England, they take away the things
Speaker 2: you don't want don't want to take away. So that
Speaker 2: that would be my my other thing. Let's go back
Speaker 2: to uh to Dale Miller here Henry Phones Phones, Henry
Speaker 2: Phones never built a golf course, then goes to Scotland
Speaker 2: to study the courses. He comes back and build Ougmont.
Speaker 2: Hugh Wilson never built a golf course, then goes to
Speaker 2: Scotland to study the golf courses. He comes back and
Speaker 2: built Marion. I think you could add Cebe McDonald goes
Speaker 2: over to Scotland.
Speaker 3: Well and George Crump. It might be the best example within.
Speaker 2: This is golf courses built in National Golf Links George Crump. Similarly,
Speaker 2: Pine Valley is tons of experience needed to create a
Speaker 2: world class golf course.
Speaker 3: This is a really interesting and well set up question,
Speaker 3: so thank you Dale. There are different kinds of experience.
Speaker 3: I think there is studying golf course design, and then
Speaker 3: there's actually practicing it. There's actually constructing a golf course.
Speaker 3: And so, first of all, the extent to which cebe McDonald,
Speaker 3: Henry Phones, Hugh Wilson and other kind of first time
Speaker 3: architects of the Golden Age were immersed in and utterly
Speaker 3: fascinated by golf architecture, would I think stun twenty first
Speaker 3: century golfers. The amount that these guys read about golf courses,
Speaker 3: studied golf verses, talked about golf courses with their friends.
Speaker 3: It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, actual experience in golf course construction didn't
Speaker 3: prove to be crucially important to them, but they had
Speaker 3: experience and knowledge in other ways. And then on top
Speaker 3: of that, Hugh Wilson, George Crump, and CB McDonald especially
Speaker 3: sought advice and enlisted help from a lot of smart
Speaker 3: and experienced people in designing their courses. The Oakmont story
Speaker 3: is a little different because the Phoneses really did just
Speaker 3: kind of build that course after having not done anything
Speaker 3: like that before, and that's part of why Oakmont is
Speaker 3: so distinctive and interesting. But they also spent four decades
Speaker 3: refining the course and turning it into the course that
Speaker 3: we more or less know now, and so that there
Speaker 3: was that kind of just time and effort spent on
Speaker 3: the golf course design that maybe compensated for their initial
Speaker 3: lack of experience. And then the final point would be
Speaker 3: comparing these kind of first time golf architects of the
Speaker 3: Golden Age to what an amateur golf architect might do
Speaker 3: now is tricky because golf course architecture has become a
Speaker 3: lot more complex since the early twentieth century. Just the
Speaker 3: amount of earth that gets moved, the machinery that gets used,
Speaker 3: the agronomic expectations of golfers, the drainage and irrigation infrastructure,
Speaker 3: the planning, the environmental regulations, all that stuff has started
Speaker 3: to require I think a degree of professionalization that wasn't
Speaker 3: as important in the early twentieth century. But I do
Speaker 3: think that a certain kind of amateurism or naivete might
Speaker 3: be interesting to introduce into golf architecture, because once you
Speaker 3: get experienced, maybe you start to become a little more conative,
Speaker 3: because you know all the pitfalls when you look at
Speaker 3: the early work of certain architects like Somerset Hills Aw
Speaker 3: tilling Hast, when when you look at that course, you think,
Speaker 3: this guy didn't really know how he wanted to design
Speaker 3: a golf course. He didn't really know what a tilling
Speaker 3: Hast course was yet, and that makes the golf course
Speaker 3: more interesting probably, And so allowing for a bit of
Speaker 3: inexperience to come back into golf architecture maybe wouldn't be
Speaker 3: a bad idea, but that needs to be tempered by
Speaker 3: or informed by experienced advisors and people who just kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, teach you how to do the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that, like a lot of the fresh ideas
Speaker 2: come from when somebody doesn't know any better. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think like again, like most innovation in society comes from outsiders.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think that's why you see like a
Speaker 2: lot of the great golf courses our first time efforts
Speaker 2: or like you know, and in the case of CEP McDonald,
Speaker 2: if you throw out Chicago Golf Club's first attempt, his
Speaker 2: greatest golf course is probably his first golf course.
Speaker 3: And National Golf Links is so different from the original
Speaker 3: Chicago Golf Club that it might as well have been
Speaker 3: his first course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think like the you know, the reality is
Speaker 2: like innovation, and then what happens is like especially with
Speaker 2: modern designers, I think they get beat down by the developers,
Speaker 2: like developers are actually like in owners are constraints and
Speaker 2: they beat down on them, and over time it warps
Speaker 2: their idea of whether they can what they can and
Speaker 2: can't do. When they have been told by or a
Speaker 2: owner developer numerous times that they can I don't want this,
Speaker 2: it becomes built in perception that people don't want this.
Speaker 2: The best way to innovate is to have a clear conscious,
Speaker 2: uh in free of preconceived notions. I think it's what's
Speaker 2: like fascinating is you know, Corn Crenshaw hired a lot
Speaker 2: of shapers who had no golf experience. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that one of the you know, huge advantages
Speaker 2: that presents is that they had never built golf for
Speaker 2: for Fasio or for you know, Robert Trent Jones or
Speaker 2: for you know, Pete Die and you know, and had
Speaker 2: those like built in memory of what they were building
Speaker 2: and they should do that. That's how they were able
Speaker 2: to get a new look. Outsiders provide new ideas, and
Speaker 2: that's why it's like really important for like young architects
Speaker 2: to get chances because they are going to be the
Speaker 2: ones that usher in the next style of golf architecture.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think I think that are there's like a lot of
Speaker 2: credence to you know, the idea of early golf courses
Speaker 2: being sometimes the best, but other architects get better, they
Speaker 2: get more refined, and and I think like always like
Speaker 2: there are gonna be like issues with like first builds
Speaker 2: from people like that are going they're gonna learn more
Speaker 2: elegant drainage styles and different things. But some of the
Speaker 2: the ideas, the ideas behind the golf course are going
Speaker 2: to be the best ideas because they've thought about them
Speaker 2: for the longest period of time. Right. You think about
Speaker 2: somebody who's like I've spent ten years thinking about this
Speaker 2: golf course I've been built. The first time I get
Speaker 2: a crack and it's those ideas and then it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's a lot like music music forres. Yeah, that made
Speaker 2: like how hard is it to have the second album
Speaker 2: is because they've the first album is a compilation of
Speaker 2: ideas their entire life has been devoted to, and then
Speaker 2: you have to create a second album in a year or.
Speaker 1: A golf course architecture song. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So So anyways, that that's that answer Grant Gates had had.
Speaker 2: He's tying this to our previous pot. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you listened, Garrett, but with Joseph we talked about
Speaker 2: the PGA Tour building a new slash mega site. What
Speaker 2: part of the US would you like to see it.
Speaker 3: In, Well, the Pacific Northwest, of course, that would that
Speaker 3: would never happen. You know, they're going to build it
Speaker 3: in the southeast, but or they would build it in
Speaker 3: the southeast if they were to do this. I don't know, ideally.
Speaker 3: I know people get frustrated with the kind of West
Speaker 3: Coast bias and emphasis and golf tournaments, but there's no
Speaker 3: doubt that West Coast venues occupy a nice little viewing
Speaker 3: window for at least most of the US, and so.
Speaker 2: They just have a big challenge in land costs, available land,
Speaker 2: natural resources, environmental restriction.
Speaker 3: Not to say there aren't some limitations, but the PGA
Speaker 3: Tour can just bust right through those with private equity
Speaker 3: and you know, a little bit a little infusion from
Speaker 3: the sovereign Wealth Fund. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'll tell you where I don't need another
Speaker 2: another championship venue.
Speaker 3: Texas, Yeah, Texas or you know whatever, Florida for PGA
Speaker 3: Tour events, but.
Speaker 2: Line up probably not either in terms that they've got
Speaker 2: a lot of terms there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say my real answer here is is
Speaker 3: a big city somewhere outside a big city somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be hard, I know, I.
Speaker 3: Know, but we're being asked where we would want about. Oh,
Speaker 3: Cobbs Creek would be great. But I think they're doing
Speaker 3: something different there than looking for championships.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I feel like that would have been that
Speaker 2: was a golf course that was when it was built,
Speaker 2: considered as good as anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in Philadelphia for people who don't know, but
Speaker 3: they're currently doing something there that is more focused on community,
Speaker 3: giving back to the community as opposed to attracting championships necessarily.
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Speaker 2: game today. All right, let's get to the next question
Speaker 2: here with Garrett. All right, uh, well, we'll get to
Speaker 2: Dogwood Maple's question here. Which of the upcoming men's major
Speaker 2: champion venue championship venues are you most and least interested
Speaker 2: in viewing?
Speaker 1: And why?
Speaker 3: Fascinating name? First of all, Dogwood Maple? Is that a
Speaker 3: Is that a real name or is that a that
Speaker 3: a non de plume? What is a Dogwood Maple? Was
Speaker 3: that on Friday Golf Club? I think it was, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Dogwood Maple. Maybe maybe that's the the guy or Gal's
Speaker 3: given name.
Speaker 2: If so, makes me, makes me think of Maplewood Brewery
Speaker 2: in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Makes me think of the Yeah, makes me think of
Speaker 3: of Augusta National mainly. But in any case, Dogwood Maple.
Speaker 3: Most of the least interesting upcoming US Open, PGA slash
Speaker 3: Open venues, I would say the upcoming PGA championship lineup,
Speaker 3: which is at this moment for the rest of the
Speaker 3: twenty twenties, ironomanc, PGA, Frisco, Olympic Club, Baltis Rawl and
Speaker 3: then Congressional in twenty thirty. All of those I'm pretty
Speaker 3: interested in, really, once we've gotten past quil Hollow here,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm pretty in on the future PGA Championship venues.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that they're all going to be super interesting,
Speaker 3: but they're I'm looking forward to seeing all of them
Speaker 3: in different ways. Maybe Ironomank the least, because we have
Speaker 3: seen that and we've seen at the PGA Tour events
Speaker 3: that IRONOMC has held that it doesn't necessarily do anything
Speaker 3: that interesting. I'm hoping that it'll be firm, but in May,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that that's a reasonable expectation for Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: But Olympic Club has been restored slash renovated by Gil
Speaker 3: Hants fairly recently, saying with Baltus Roll Congressional has a
Speaker 3: brand new design courtesy of Andrew Green. So all of
Speaker 3: those I'm kind of looking forward to. But of them,
Speaker 3: I would say Baltus rall I'm most interested in. And
Speaker 3: then of the future US Open venues, Marion in twenty
Speaker 3: thirty is one that I'm really looking forward to. Shinnecock
Speaker 3: Hills next year is going to be great, but we
Speaker 3: kind of know what to expect.
Speaker 1: With the rollbackball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it could be and recently again restored by
Speaker 3: our Open doctor Gil Hans. But I am looking forward
Speaker 3: to seeing what Marion does that's different from the last
Speaker 3: time it held the US Open, which was basically just
Speaker 3: all about rough least interesting. You know, Pebble Beach is
Speaker 3: just going to be what it is. They're not making
Speaker 3: any moves there to improve that golf course in any
Speaker 3: significant way, and so in twenty twenty seven for the
Speaker 3: US Open, we're just going to get Pebble Beach as
Speaker 3: it usually is, and then next year a Rolldale. I
Speaker 3: am interested in seeing what mackenzie and Ebert have done
Speaker 3: there because it seems like they've done some provocative things,
Speaker 3: including a brand new par three that faces in an
Speaker 3: esthetically pleasing way at the clubhouse. So good thing they
Speaker 3: have that.
Speaker 2: Now hopefully members can play it this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, hopefully they don't have to. I think I
Speaker 3: think the routing is a little better.
Speaker 1: They don't have to walk backwards walk.
Speaker 2: They just don't walk to the next hole.
Speaker 3: They don't just skip the hole and make it a
Speaker 3: seventeen old round because they're like, I don't want to
Speaker 3: deal with that one but Royal Birkdale has always been
Speaker 3: kind of my one of my least favorite of the
Speaker 3: Open road to venues that there's there's not much there
Speaker 3: that I'm that fascinated by, but it's fine and so yeah,
Speaker 3: and then in the future for the Open, they're going
Speaker 3: to go to Portmarnock eventually, maybe before the decade is out,
Speaker 3: and I'll be fascinated to see how that goes.
Speaker 2: I would say most interested. Listen, I'm just gonna try
Speaker 2: and dig here. This might be I'm actually I'll say
Speaker 2: most interested in twenty twenty eight wing Foot I'm very
Speaker 2: curious about golf course setup. Yeah, at that point.
Speaker 3: What are they going to do differently than they did
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine they roll out what they rolled out
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. That was a really bad setup. And
Speaker 2: I think like there's a lot of things with those greens.
Speaker 2: They pretty much they took one of the five greatest
Speaker 2: sets of greens in American golf and made them as
Speaker 2: uninteresting as you possibly could with their setup. And well,
Speaker 2: they're fascinating greens. And when you make the fairways twenty
Speaker 2: five yards wide and have very thick rough on each side,
Speaker 2: you kind of reduce what those greens how they can play.
Speaker 2: And it became the strongest fastest player one because he
Speaker 2: he and I want to say that this was like
Speaker 2: an incredible approach to the golf course. He just hit
Speaker 2: it as far as he could to the side of
Speaker 2: the hole. That allowed him an open approach to the greens. Now,
Speaker 2: like people would say, like just grow the rough up more,
Speaker 2: that's just that's the natural thing to do, to think,
Speaker 2: and that will just play more into Bryson's hands. And
Speaker 2: I want to say it was an incredible game plan,
Speaker 2: an incredible execution of said game plan. He played really
Speaker 2: well to win, and it was a championship well earned.
Speaker 2: But like a way I would mitigate that is with
Speaker 2: like less less rough because then it's not just like
Speaker 2: about getting to the angle and running it up and
Speaker 2: only one player or ten players have the strength and
Speaker 2: power to do said said strategy. I'd also widen the
Speaker 2: fairways a little, because nobody can hit a lot.
Speaker 1: Of fairways there.
Speaker 2: So I'm very interested in the setup of that one.
Speaker 2: I would say I would echo your thoughts on Birkedale.
Speaker 1: It just like.
Speaker 2: I get variety, I get different parts of the I
Speaker 2: know it does really well from like a venue standpoint,
Speaker 2: from financially speaking, but like the Open Championship is I
Speaker 2: want to go. I want to go to old golf courses.
Speaker 2: This is a nineteen fifties golf course and it's got
Speaker 2: a nice list of winners. But at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, I love the Open going to old links
Speaker 2: golf courses and this is this is this, ain't it
Speaker 2: for me?
Speaker 3: And uh, you know what word the pros most often
Speaker 3: used to Berkdale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair right in front of you.
Speaker 3: The most fair course on the Open. Roda PJ right now,
Speaker 3: by the way, is requesting that we layer in the
Speaker 3: siren as a as a sound effect.
Speaker 4: Just to make it clear who is the primary should
Speaker 4: not have even brought it up.
Speaker 3: You really you really broke down the fourth wall there.
Speaker 3: That's not the right term, but something happened there that
Speaker 3: was a little disturbing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very happy about the PGA, as you allude to.
Speaker 2: I'm quite happy that we're past Quail Hollow and Valhalla.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're getting We're getting to a cool stretch here,
Speaker 3: not necessarily of courses that are the greatest courses in
Speaker 3: the world. I mean a lot of them, are sort
Speaker 3: of like the the US Open cast offs, the courses
Speaker 3: that were that were not deemed worthy for the the
Speaker 3: new US Open Rhoda. But the fact that we're going
Speaker 3: to good quality courses that have recently recently had interesting
Speaker 3: work done is appealing to me.
Speaker 2: One that is actually I was just thinking about that
Speaker 2: could be extra fascinating is that one of my one
Speaker 2: of my favorite things about the Olympic Club is that
Speaker 2: it naturally rolls you back. When you go play the
Speaker 2: Olympic Club, you do not hit the ball very far
Speaker 2: because of the weather. It is cold, is damp always,
Speaker 2: it's experience. Yeah, it just the ball goes nowhere. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I play there a couple of times a year,
Speaker 2: and I can attest that the ball goes significantly shorter.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty eight, it will be the second major played
Speaker 2: with the roll back ball. Conditions are a roll back
Speaker 2: The ball could be going nowhere. It could be it
Speaker 2: could be awesome.
Speaker 3: We might we might have some unhappy boys.
Speaker 2: And you're playing on like the side of the mountain, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is like, it's kind of I think Olympic is
Speaker 2: Olympics kind of underrated. Is it my favorite course to
Speaker 2: play every day. No, does it ask you to hit
Speaker 2: a very very wide range of shots throughout throughout the
Speaker 2: course of a round. Absolutely. I think like there might
Speaker 2: be a case that like very severe topography, while not
Speaker 2: enjoyable for everyday play, is actually very much a quality
Speaker 2: that would that would be good for championship golf.
Speaker 3: That's sort of what the Olympic Club brings to the table, right,
Speaker 3: That's its X factor is how severely tilted that land
Speaker 3: is and the fact that you're hitting some of these
Speaker 3: crazy shots with the ball way below your feet or
Speaker 3: the ball way above your feed. It's a characteristic national Yeah.
Speaker 3: Two and fairly petite targets, right, And so what it
Speaker 3: brings to the table is kind of what Pebble Beach
Speaker 3: brings to the table. That's interesting, these tilts and these
Speaker 3: small targets, But Olympic Club does it in a more
Speaker 3: severe way, and so it's probably more interesting in that regard.
Speaker 2: All Right, I think that does it. Well. We can
Speaker 2: get to more of these questions maybe in club TFE.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll get.
Speaker 3: In there and answer some questions, and yeah, a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of good, good material here from from
Speaker 3: Friday Golf club members.
Speaker 1: That does it.
Speaker 2: Big thanks for you guys for listening, but also for
Speaker 2: PJ Clark. I promised him no cuts, but I forgot
Speaker 2: to do our second ad, so he's gonna have to
Speaker 2: put it in there. Bigness by me the host. The
Speaker 2: host blew through the break, and big thanks for PJ
Speaker 2: making up and work extra hard today. We'll be back
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna do something.
Speaker 2: On the Ryder Cup next week, so we'll we'll get
Speaker 2: a couple of guests and batter around the Ryder Cup
Speaker 2: where we stand what we're hoping to see for each
Speaker 2: side coming down the stretch, and it feels like the
Speaker 2: right time for a little Ryder Cup check in on
Speaker 2: this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks Garrett for coming on.
Speaker 2: As always is a pleasure to UH to have you on.
Speaker 3: Thanks Andy,