Speaker 1: The best way I know how to describe Ben Crenshaw
Speaker 1: is simply say, look at our company name. Tell me
Speaker 1: one other major championship winner with an unknown golf course
Speaker 1: architect who would form a partnership and call it by
Speaker 1: the other guy's name. First didn't happen. It wouldn't happen,
Speaker 1: So he has every right to be up first. I
Speaker 1: followed Bill. I'm glad. I gladly followed Bill with another logo,
Speaker 1: Nobody's getting This is the fire Pit with Mattinella. The
Speaker 1: sixth episode of the fire Pit is part one of
Speaker 1: the people, places, and things that had an influence on
Speaker 1: what Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw have become as architects,
Speaker 1: How and when they met, who was involved, and why
Speaker 1: it works. We start with Sue Corp, Bill's wife. I say,
Speaker 1: Ben Crenshaw. You say, because that is my connection, Ben,
Speaker 1: But I really think of Bill and Ben as brothers.
Speaker 1: I swear they came from the same mother, because they
Speaker 1: are so similar in temperament, They're so similar in graciousness
Speaker 1: they are. They don't pay attention to things together. They
Speaker 1: pay attention to things together, and I think they make
Speaker 1: each other better. Next, we hear from Julie Crenshaw, Ben's wife.
Speaker 1: I say Bill Kore and you say genius. Reminded me
Speaker 1: a lot of Ben. Very quiet, very polite, soft spoken.
Speaker 1: I can see why they have a lot in common.
Speaker 1: They are kindred spirits. I can tell you that in
Speaker 1: this era of golf course architecture, I believe cor and
Speaker 1: Crenshaw are the most consistent and thoughtful builders of the
Speaker 1: fun and fair adventure we seek. As avid amateurs, they
Speaker 1: move very little dirt and yet extract so much soul
Speaker 1: from the land that they leave behind. I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to chronicle the development of almost half of their portfolio.
Speaker 1: I've heard them preach restraint, celebrate strategy, and I've watched
Speaker 1: them walk raw land in search of the ideal routing.
Speaker 1: Bill is always out front, while Ben tends to fall behind,
Speaker 1: stopping on occasion to ask questions and flush out the options.
Speaker 1: As they build their thirtieth course in their thirty fifth
Speaker 1: year of being partners. Their body of work includes sand Hills,
Speaker 1: Friar's Head, and Colorado Golf Club. Some of my favorites
Speaker 1: are Lost Farm, Cabot Cliffs, and bandoned trails. Some of
Speaker 1: their restoration work on iconic venue whose includes Cypress Point,
Speaker 1: Seminal and of course Pinehurst Number Two, the Sheep Ranch,
Speaker 1: the sixth Course, Abandoned Dunes, and their third for Mike
Speaker 1: Keiser's Oregon Resort opens on June one. Julie and Sue
Speaker 1: will be used throughout this episode, as well as Rod Whitman,
Speaker 1: a longtime associative Core and Crenshaw, who has almost ten
Speaker 1: courses to his credit, one of which is cabint Links
Speaker 1: in Nova Scotia. We also hear from Scottie Sayers, Crenshaw's
Speaker 1: childhood friend and the one who makes sure this partnership
Speaker 1: is also a business. Did you ever think you'd be
Speaker 1: getting together on Skype to have a conversation reflecting on
Speaker 1: your career in the beginning of what has become Core
Speaker 1: and Crenshaw. If he weren't for Julie and my wife Sue,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be here today. I'll tell you that Julie
Speaker 1: Crenshaw confirms they're like brothers. They how they think they
Speaker 1: both don't have emails. You know that, Um, you can
Speaker 1: get them to call, you can't get them to text. Um.
Speaker 1: But they do it the old school way. Everything about
Speaker 1: them is old school. Bill Core was an only child
Speaker 1: raised by a single mom who worked multiple jobs to
Speaker 1: support the family and any of young Williams dreams and aspirations.
Speaker 1: Sue Corp shares some perspective. I think that he had
Speaker 1: the most amazing mama on the planet. She just encouraged
Speaker 1: him to be the best at whatever, whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1: He came home and said he wanted to be an astronaut,
Speaker 1: she'd support that, be the best that you could be
Speaker 1: whatever he wanted to be. Um, I'm just sorry that
Speaker 1: I never met her, because she raised an incredible man.
Speaker 1: As for designing backyard golf holes, if his mom was home,
Speaker 1: he told me routing tended to go around the house.
Speaker 1: If she wasn't home, he often went over the house. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're right. I grew up at in rural North
Speaker 1: Carolina and my next door neighbor played golf and he
Speaker 1: introduced me to it, and they were he was really
Speaker 1: the only close neighbors. So we would play around through
Speaker 1: the higher backyard to his backyard, to the to the mailbox,
Speaker 1: and out across the dirt road where we lived, and
Speaker 1: even in through the corn fields when they were cloud under,
Speaker 1: so we'd make up our own toles and things, but
Speaker 1: I would caddy for him and uh, on some very
Speaker 1: special occasion, uh, he would go to pine Nurse. So
Speaker 1: he is the one who introduced me to Pinehurst. And
Speaker 1: then later when I was in high school and then
Speaker 1: of course in college, I'd go there far more regular basis.
Speaker 1: But they were they were fun times and they were,
Speaker 1: you know, the cornerstone of what I my introduction to
Speaker 1: golf and my introduction to what interesting golf architectures. All
Speaker 1: of that. Sue Corp shares some perspective. Bill wasn't raised
Speaker 1: with a father, and his parents were divorced when Bill
Speaker 1: was quite young, and there were lots of men who
Speaker 1: took over that that position and really cared for Bill
Speaker 1: and really nurtured Bill. And his mother was smart enough
Speaker 1: and confidence enough to encourage all of that. As for
Speaker 1: Ben Crenshaw, he grew up at Austin, Texas, navigating Lions
Speaker 1: Municipal and the old Austin Country Club, which was a
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell designed. The places where I was playing started
Speaker 1: me on I kind of thinking about golf courses. One
Speaker 1: of my first sort of road trips was brack and
Speaker 1: Ridge Park in San Antonio to playing the Texas State Jr.
Speaker 1: It's old tilling Hands course, very tight. I mean there
Speaker 1: were a couple of holes there. You had to threaten
Speaker 1: the needle, big boundaries. But it started me thinking about
Speaker 1: different golf holes. And then when I started traveling, I said,
Speaker 1: I've been treated to some wonderful example. So I just
Speaker 1: always I was always kind of fascinated about golf courses
Speaker 1: and how they were laid out. And then when I
Speaker 1: went to Boston when I was sixteen to play in
Speaker 1: the National Junior at the country Club, it just blew
Speaker 1: my mind. I wanted to know who built the courses,
Speaker 1: who was my friend, you know, the organization's history of
Speaker 1: the game, the players. I just from then on, I
Speaker 1: just started studying everything I could find. Although Bill Core
Speaker 1: was intrigued by the concept of golf course designed, it
Speaker 1: was Pete Due who inspired more digging. I knew I
Speaker 1: like certain courses and certain things, and I tried to
Speaker 1: figure out why, but I really wasn't that much into it.
Speaker 1: And when I saw what Pete was doing, a little
Speaker 1: public course called Okla in High Point, I just said, gee,
Speaker 1: this is different. I wonder how you do this. And
Speaker 1: obviously about to get out of the army, that was
Speaker 1: single Um, I didn't need any more money. Fortunately working
Speaker 1: for teach you weren't going to make much. But um didn't.
Speaker 1: Whatever it took to you know, myself alive. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how you get to that that. Uhum. I began
Speaker 1: to basically just badge or pete. I thought I'd like
Speaker 1: to see how this is done. And in the beginning
Speaker 1: it was with the intention I just like to see
Speaker 1: how you actually create one of these things. And I
Speaker 1: was always thinking after that, I'll go back to graduate school.
Speaker 1: Well obviously that didn't happen either, but it's uh for
Speaker 1: my whole my whole career has been a very circuitous,
Speaker 1: almost in so many ways, unplanned journey. As for meeting
Speaker 1: Nicholas at the seventy one U s Open and Marian
Speaker 1: Ben Crenshaw had what you'd call a spontaneous plan. I
Speaker 1: was changing my shoes in the locker room and somehow
Speaker 1: Jack walked in by himself, and I said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: here's my chance. I gotta gotta go to meet himself.
Speaker 1: Followed him upstairs and it was a restroom up there,
Speaker 1: so I said, oh, I got him there. So I
Speaker 1: went the wrestle so I stuck out in my hand
Speaker 1: and said Jack, I'm John. He said, well, I'll leave
Speaker 1: with him just so. But that was my first meeting
Speaker 1: with Jack. I admired the way he played everything else,
Speaker 1: but I knew at that point he was just starting
Speaker 1: to get into golf course architecture. So I I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty neat right there. And he ironically, you know,
Speaker 1: he worked with Pete Died at the heart at Harvard Town,
Speaker 1: although minimally there. Yeah, and then he sort of knew
Speaker 1: that he was he could do both uh jobs as
Speaker 1: a obviously world class golfer and and then obviously pursue
Speaker 1: architecture too, and he had a true love and a
Speaker 1: passion for it. But Jack was you know, that's a
Speaker 1: lot to take on in a career business wise and playing.
Speaker 1: But they seemed to juggle it, like Arnold Palmer did too.
Speaker 1: After chasing down Pete Die a few times in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, Bill was watching the local news which reported
Speaker 1: I was going to be building the Cardinal in Greensboro,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, not far from where Bill lived. They were
Speaker 1: talking about that Pete I was gonna be in town.
Speaker 1: They were going to start this golf course. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking he didn't even call me, you know, tell me
Speaker 1: he'd tell anyway to drive out there. And he he's
Speaker 1: with a guy named John Gray who was eats construction
Speaker 1: foreman there, an associate, and uh, he just finds finds
Speaker 1: something for this guy to do. You just want to
Speaker 1: get rid of me, you know. And you're right, mad,
Speaker 1: I started with a verry hip waiters and a chainsaw. Well,
Speaker 1: Ben Crenshaw was having success on the course. Core was
Speaker 1: going course to course with Pete and Roy Dye, which
Speaker 1: is how he ended up in Huntsville, Texas. Is Waterwood
Speaker 1: the course that that Pete kind of left you at
Speaker 1: and said, you know, you'll be the superintendent here? Is that? Yeah, Matt,
Speaker 1: that's a very kind way of putting it. He got
Speaker 1: rid of you. Beach sent me to work with his
Speaker 1: brother Roy supposedly to help Gary Grandstaff, who was the
Speaker 1: golf course superintendent and worked for Roy um to help
Speaker 1: Gary uh Spanish water with Nation. Well. When Huntsville, Bill
Speaker 1: met Rod Whitman, who was a Canadian going to school
Speaker 1: at sam Houston State. Bill quickly became a mentor and
Speaker 1: a friend. Well, I didn't have any money, so Bill
Speaker 1: always bought the pizza, and uh, I mean we played golf.
Speaker 1: I just got to hanging out with him on the
Speaker 1: weekends at water Wood, and you know, Bill was out
Speaker 1: there seven days a week, and uh, you know, over
Speaker 1: time we just got to play a little golf together
Speaker 1: and then and hang out and and I just loved
Speaker 1: being around him, and he would talk about golf course design,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was just trying to play golf
Speaker 1: at that time. I had no aspirations to become an architect,
Speaker 1: but the subject fascinated me, and he was very passionate
Speaker 1: about it. So that's uh. He has some old books
Speaker 1: that I could start to read and some notes that
Speaker 1: he had made when he worked for Pete, and uh,
Speaker 1: I became fascinated with the subject. And then certainly just
Speaker 1: talking with Bill, it was it was inspired to think
Speaker 1: about the old courses and golf of course design in general,
Speaker 1: which I had never, you know, paid much attention to.
Speaker 1: Now in the early eighties, still in Huntsville, Bill gets
Speaker 1: a call from Pete Die He needed a guy in
Speaker 1: Austin and he needed him. Now. All we were wrout
Speaker 1: doing some work I think on the Ninth Green, and uh,
Speaker 1: he got a call from from Pete Pete wanted somebody
Speaker 1: to go to Austin. And you know, as he said
Speaker 1: later dump trucks, you know, was he watched the dump
Speaker 1: trucks dump and tell him where the dump when that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. He took the phone call, came back
Speaker 1: out and asked me if I wanted to go to
Speaker 1: work with Pete. And I just the damn nervous I
Speaker 1: could hardly talk. And uh after a little bit, I
Speaker 1: I certainly agreed to it, and he made the arrangements,
Speaker 1: had to rent me a car, and I and I
Speaker 1: drove out to Austin that day. It will all happen
Speaker 1: very fast. So Rod is now working for Pete Dye.
Speaker 1: Bill had worked for Pete Dye, and Ben was keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on Pete Dye. You know when I was
Speaker 1: saying Austin at the Austin Country Club, Pete would come
Speaker 1: to town and then you know, he would have visitors.
Speaker 1: I mean Tom Kite would come out there, and Ben
Speaker 1: Cranshaw would come out there, and they'd walk around and
Speaker 1: try to hang out with Pete a little bit and
Speaker 1: and and just watch him work. And uh so when
Speaker 1: he did come out there, I mean, obviously I got
Speaker 1: a chance to meet him because I was part of
Speaker 1: that entourage. And uh, you know, Pete told me says,
Speaker 1: you know Ben's coming out here. He says, just just
Speaker 1: listen to him and do whatever he wants. He said,
Speaker 1: So it was sort of an interesting time. I was
Speaker 1: told by Rod Whitman, who was Pete Day's foreman, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten to meet Rod, and I'm really interested in
Speaker 1: what he was doing. I saw Pete many times. They
Speaker 1: both ment and he said, you know what, you need
Speaker 1: to meet Bill Coorey. You need to you need to
Speaker 1: meet Bill core I really think that you'd like him.
Speaker 1: I would go back and forth to uh Huntsville every
Speaker 1: now and then and talk with Bill and I and
Speaker 1: I told him that I'd met Bannon. I thought, man,
Speaker 1: this guy is is is just a really nice guy.
Speaker 1: He's really cool guy. He's interested in design it and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I just know that talking to
Speaker 1: Bill that I mentioned that, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: nice if he if he met him. The seeds had
Speaker 1: been planted, but before they met, a man named Dave
Speaker 1: Kerry helped get Bill his big break down on the
Speaker 1: Gulf Coast to Texas, four hours south of Huntsville. He said, look,
Speaker 1: we've known each other now for a two years. He said, Uh,
Speaker 1: I know you're the superintendent here by No, really what
Speaker 1: you'd like to do is being the golf course design business.
Speaker 1: He said, this may be the chance, and he took
Speaker 1: me down Rockport Country Club and interesting enough, was in
Speaker 1: the middle of building their first nine holes, and for
Speaker 1: some reason, and I've never known what happened, but there
Speaker 1: were some as they say in Texas, of falling out
Speaker 1: between the the owners and the golf course architect. And
Speaker 1: so they just dismissed him on the spot. But here
Speaker 1: they are, they're digging lakes, they're doing it, they're working
Speaker 1: on this nine holes and they've got no one in
Speaker 1: charge of their design. I guess Dave carried for water
Speaker 1: with you this. He takes me down, they're introducing me,
Speaker 1: and so they're on the spot. They say, well, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to know something about this. We need somebody. This
Speaker 1: is the maximum you can spend and if you want
Speaker 1: the job, you want to and figure it out, it's yours.
Speaker 1: I guess I was so naive inside, as they say,
Speaker 1: walked into the deep end of the plume, paddled around.
Speaker 1: Even with his raw talent and ambition for architecture. Bill
Speaker 1: Core couldn't go it alone. He called upon Jerry Clark,
Speaker 1: a k A. Scrooge, who had been helping him with
Speaker 1: coursework at Waterwood. And so when Rockport came along us
Speaker 1: and Scroogey wanta you wanna go? You wanna go? Let
Speaker 1: me and try and see if we can make some
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, I think I'll go with you. And
Speaker 1: and so we the two of us, go down there
Speaker 1: and and we we start working on this basically just
Speaker 1: to us start with. And then another guy who lived
Speaker 1: there named Mike McKay who ended up working with Vann
Speaker 1: and me for years, and it actually became the nucleus
Speaker 1: or the cornerstone that you're the guys that we have
Speaker 1: today because you're Jerry Clark and Mike McKay trained like
Speaker 1: Jimbo right and and and Dave Accellent and these guys
Speaker 1: who have now gone on to train all these other guys.
Speaker 1: So you can trace it right back to that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we we finished the nine holes in the Rockport. It
Speaker 1: turned out, you know, they thought it was good. We
Speaker 1: actually did a second nine holes there immediately after. So
Speaker 1: it was eighteen. The guys and I were kind of
Speaker 1: tiptoeing along, but we were I guess, uh, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say we were officially in the golf course design.
Speaker 1: I asked Rod Whitman for his thoughts on Rockport, the
Speaker 1: first original Bill Core design. I love Rockport. It was
Speaker 1: a great little setting in a small town, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: every day you get up you just want to play golf,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was a lot of fun. I
Speaker 1: can see where anybody looking at it, knowing it it
Speaker 1: was new, I'd say, man, that's pretty classic. Rockport was
Speaker 1: good enough to get that team some attention, but according
Speaker 1: to several potential clients, they were missing something. One most
Speaker 1: memorable story, at least to me, happened in Houston, Texas.
Speaker 1: Uh with the man who was a very successful real
Speaker 1: estate developers, had a nice, beautiful office and I guess what,
Speaker 1: at the time was the tallest building in Houston. He
Speaker 1: goes Bill. He said, I've seen your golf course in Rockfort.
Speaker 1: It's really good. He said, it's really good, he said,
Speaker 1: but nobody has ever heard of you. Nobody knows who
Speaker 1: you are. This business is about selling real estate. This
Speaker 1: is not so much about golf. You walk in here
Speaker 1: tomorrow with late Travenue on your arm or Tom Watson
Speaker 1: or you know some somebody like that. He said, I'll
Speaker 1: hire you until then, and he walked over to the
Speaker 1: window of his high rise office. We looked down on
Speaker 1: the street. He said, until then, until I can walk
Speaker 1: down there on that street and call out your name
Speaker 1: and people stopped to look around to see where you are,
Speaker 1: you don't get hired. So well, I don't do that,
Speaker 1: and I said, I just haven't really felt like I said,
Speaker 1: how did John we got another job? We hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: get another one. I don't know. I just it's just
Speaker 1: not something that I'd really given much thought to. He said,
Speaker 1: what if he did, who would be? You just referred
Speaker 1: to it man. Ben had just won the Master's nur
Speaker 1: and this probably was happening maybe the month after that.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know Ben. But I just I had
Speaker 1: read the articles in the magazines where Ben's talking about
Speaker 1: golf and golf architecture. And I said, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I guess there're gonna be anybody be Ben Crunchhaw. The
Speaker 1: guy who looked at me, and he just goes, God,
Speaker 1: don't mighty Bill, He said, I'm no Ben romantic and
Speaker 1: naive as you are you guys together be his master.
Speaker 1: So then along comes Charlie Bellair, another wealthy Texas businessman
Speaker 1: who had land on the Gulf Coast. He wanted to
Speaker 1: have Bill core and again a well known player, take
Speaker 1: a look, and although he still didn't know him, Bill
Speaker 1: floated the idea of Ben Crenshaw again. But Bill's first
Speaker 1: visit to that land was by himself. As for his
Speaker 1: first impressions of the potential project, Man, it wasn't gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's just one of the worst sites you'd ever see.
Speaker 1: It went underwater, salt water, so, I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna Bill had seen enough and he left town. Charlie
Speaker 1: calls me back and he says, Bill, can you come
Speaker 1: down here. Ben Cranshaw is gonna come down here. I
Speaker 1: don't want you guys to look at this. He was
Speaker 1: still hopeful. I knew I got down the Gulf coast.
Speaker 1: Ben comes over. Ben looked at the sight in a
Speaker 1: nano second. You know, Robin Williams would say, no, we're
Speaker 1: not building the golf course, but that man did, at
Speaker 1: least from my side of the equation. He's the one,
Speaker 1: uh who who got us together that day. We you know,
Speaker 1: we met for the first time. We ended up that
Speaker 1: afternoon going over to Rockport. It was really close. And
Speaker 1: then I walked the holes. I mean, I'm walking with
Speaker 1: Bend Crunch, the Master Champion, and I'm not saying I
Speaker 1: think that this is just I hope you worked the course.
Speaker 1: And I looked at that golf course and there was
Speaker 1: there was something totally different about what I saw. It
Speaker 1: was interesting, it was natural. It looked like it sprang
Speaker 1: right out of the ground, and it had a put
Speaker 1: It had a particular appeal to me, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is this guy has a really sense of feel
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere or where he's working. About this time,
Speaker 1: Crenshaw had just left i MG and had hired his
Speaker 1: childhood friend and business partner, Scotty Says as his manager.
Speaker 1: Says recalls seeing Ben when he got back to Austin UM.
Speaker 1: He walked into the library at his house after spending
Speaker 1: the day with Bill and Julie was in there, and
Speaker 1: I've seen him excited, but this was one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting times UM for him, just because he really
Speaker 1: didn't have a partner or didn't have a plan on
Speaker 1: how to get into the business. They had met, there
Speaker 1: was interest, and in Ben's mind it was a done deal.
Speaker 1: It was It was just unbelievable. How this happened is
Speaker 1: when Wade decided to make a go at this, and
Speaker 1: that was the year I married Julie. So I made
Speaker 1: two really good decisions. Remember Julie, when I came back,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was god us playing. He was
Speaker 1: still going to play tournaments. I said, Julie, I made
Speaker 1: a decision. I said, I'm gonna Bill Cournan get a
Speaker 1: former partnership. And she said, what in the world are
Speaker 1: you doing that? You're so you're a player, And I said,
Speaker 1: you don't have to trust me on this, Julie. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Wow, what are you kidding um? And
Speaker 1: I was like, are you sure you want to do this?
Speaker 1: You know, because what he was struggling with his health,
Speaker 1: struggling with this game. We just got married. We weren't
Speaker 1: even certain he was ever going to play competitive golf again.
Speaker 1: In Ben Crenshaw missed the cut in thirteen of his
Speaker 1: first nineteen tournaments. He was eventually diagnosed with what's called
Speaker 1: Graves disease, an overactive thyroid. He could not break eighty,
Speaker 1: could not put, could not Chip could not just play
Speaker 1: terrible golf, blamed it on stressed, lost like thirty pounds
Speaker 1: instead of Sports illustrated, putting him on the cover for
Speaker 1: whenning the Masters, they were like chasing him on the
Speaker 1: golf course because he was shooting eight and missing cuts
Speaker 1: and it was horrible, horrible, poor. It was sad and horrible,
Speaker 1: and I mean he really we had no idea if
Speaker 1: he was gonna ever compete. And so when we got
Speaker 1: married November, they did a blood test on him and
Speaker 1: checked us. They were like, your thorro is huge. Well
Speaker 1: it was off the charts. So they gave him radioactive
Speaker 1: iodine to kill it, and um, they said, six weeks later,
Speaker 1: you should feel better. Six weeks to the day, he
Speaker 1: finished tied for six at the US Open at Shinnecock
Speaker 1: and we skipped around that place like he had one
Speaker 1: a tournament. I remember Raymond winning and then we were like,
Speaker 1: well we won, you're back, you are back. Four weeks
Speaker 1: later he won the Mule Open and then he was off.
Speaker 1: So he took you know, took a gamble on getting
Speaker 1: married to me, took a gamble on Bill, and you know,
Speaker 1: didn't know he was going to get better. But it
Speaker 1: all worked out and he did get better, thank goodness.
Speaker 1: So who end what gets credit for this chance encounter?
Speaker 1: P die of course, But they couldn't have done it
Speaker 1: without Rockport Country Club. I mean, there's no question that
Speaker 1: the routing there very traditional and not much distance between
Speaker 1: the going from the grain to the tea easily walkable course,
Speaker 1: very interesting, good bunker work, and and it was it
Speaker 1: was early Bill Kore, but you could sure see what
Speaker 1: was gonna be in his mind in the future as
Speaker 1: he designed courses, and sure that's where it been. Really
Speaker 1: really was hooked on Bill Core. And they probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have met without Rod Whitman. They just seem like they
Speaker 1: would become pretty good friends. You know, they're they're both
Speaker 1: at the same sort of age and and and mental stability,
Speaker 1: if I can call it that. You know, they just uh,
Speaker 1: they just there. I thought that they'd get along very
Speaker 1: well and and uh, you know, I could talk architecture
Speaker 1: on a level that that made some sense and and
Speaker 1: just had a feeling. And apparently this doesn't happen without
Speaker 1: some perseverance by Ben Crenshaw. And I'll confess I was
Speaker 1: the one who pursued Bill in the elite Bill was
Speaker 1: not interested in partnering up with any one, and I
Speaker 1: think I don't know much. Maybe three went by and
Speaker 1: I it got to when I may have tried to
Speaker 1: talk him into it, and he wasn't really interested. You know,
Speaker 1: I I kind of you know, I can understand that.
Speaker 1: And it finally it came around and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe we could give this a go. This
Speaker 1: beginning to sound like a fairy tale. You know. We
Speaker 1: met in eighty four, um, and then over a period
Speaker 1: of over a year, I mean significantly over a year,
Speaker 1: we would just occasionally get together or we'd have phone
Speaker 1: conversations about golf architecture. Ben would call sometimes have you
Speaker 1: ever seen this or that? You know? Of course, and
Speaker 1: and think, but there was never really this great game
Speaker 1: plan to make this happen, and it's been has been
Speaker 1: said he he um he. He likes to take the blame,
Speaker 1: I guess for us being together. I think he pursued it.
Speaker 1: It was often something, uh to say that I don't
Speaker 1: it was just such a natural evolution. But at some
Speaker 1: point in time, man, and I can sincerely say, there
Speaker 1: wasn't this great dinner, there wasn't this great whatever. There
Speaker 1: wasn't too many beers out someplace and then said let's
Speaker 1: do it. It just evolved and we said let's try
Speaker 1: some of this together. F A t In retrospect, I
Speaker 1: looked back on it, and Fate had effectle hand in
Speaker 1: all this. I've had some nice things happened to me
Speaker 1: in my career and this this is one of them.
Speaker 1: In Part two, which will go live in a week,
Speaker 1: we're taking this partnership all the way to send Hills
Speaker 1: and the Brown Esca, the sand based trampoline that vaulted
Speaker 1: these guys into another atmosphere of architecture. Are you looking
Speaker 1: for good value on great golf apparel as a listener
Speaker 1: to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth and Jeff Cunningham
Speaker 1: at Link Soul in Oceanside, California are offering you a
Speaker 1: discount on all future orders of what I Wear all day,
Speaker 1: every day, on and off the course. Whenever you go
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Speaker 1: G M A T T Y G. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to the fire Pit. It's produced by Alex Upeggy.
Speaker 1: It's edited by Rex Lint. The theme song is by
Speaker 1: Joe Horowitz. Please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and we might track you down and send you one
Speaker 1: of our new Imperial Road Pads. I got a question, comment,
Speaker 1: or a story for us to track down, you can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Matt Janella or on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Matt Underscore Genela. And if you haven't already done so,
Speaker 1: please subscribe to the fire Pit on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher,
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Speaker 1: You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is
Speaker 1: where we post portions of our podcast and add some
Speaker 1: visual surprises. H