Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried egg.
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Fridagg Fridagg bride
Speaker 1: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the
Speaker 1: hump course.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast,
Speaker 2: and welcome back to another Superintendent series presented by Toro UH.
Speaker 2: Today I am joined by a repeat guest, Jason Meersman.
Speaker 2: He is the superintendent at the Patterson Club in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: which is undergoing an extensive Jaeger Kovich led renovation to
Speaker 2: its golf course. They are in the kind of wrap
Speaker 2: up phase. I figured it'd be fun to talk to
Speaker 2: Jason while everything's still fresh in his mind, and also
Speaker 2: while the Bears are making an unexpected run in the
Speaker 2: in the NFL. Jason and I are fellow Bears fans,
Speaker 2: so we talked about this before our big win over
Speaker 2: the Packers this weekend less and enthusiasm, but big thanks
Speaker 2: to Jason. Big thanks to Toro for all the support.
Speaker 2: Before we get into the podcasts, I want to call
Speaker 2: out Toro Toro's Workmen utility vehicles are engineered to work
Speaker 2: as hard as you do, whether you're hauling to brief
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Speaker 2: Go to Toro dot com slash commercial, slash builder slash Workman.
Speaker 2: That's pretty neat that you can customize the Workmen, so
Speaker 2: check out Toro dot com, or you can always reach
Speaker 2: out to your local distributor. Let's get to Jason Meersman.
Speaker 2: All right, Jason, it is a pleasure to have you
Speaker 2: back on second time guest. I figured it would be
Speaker 2: fun to chat. Now. You are in the middle of
Speaker 2: a full scale renovation of the Patterson Club, where the
Speaker 2: course that you are a the fine superintendent of, and
Speaker 2: I got to ask, what's been more fun doing the project?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I imagine of a lifetime in the sense of like you
Speaker 2: you work. You don't know how many of these projects
Speaker 2: you'll have as a superintendent where you get to you know,
Speaker 2: really reshape the next fifty years of the club that
Speaker 2: you work at, or the Bears being the surprise of
Speaker 2: the NFL. Know what's been more fun this year?
Speaker 1: That's a tough one, right, Like, uh no, I it's
Speaker 1: actually an easy one. I mean, I love my Bearsna,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tilt it down. I love my beerris. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised I don't have my mustache on, you know, if
Speaker 1: I could only grow one the Uh yeah, this project
Speaker 1: has been the funnest thing I've ever done. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have those great moments in your life
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, it's seeing my kids being born,
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe the first time I met my
Speaker 1: wife that was a good night. This has been like that,
Speaker 1: day after day after day after day, so much fun.
Speaker 1: You know, It's been a long time coming, seeing it
Speaker 1: for fourteen years, you know, seeing this piece of property
Speaker 1: and the potential and slowly nagging and annoying grounds chairs
Speaker 1: and presidents and being as obnoxious as I could possibly
Speaker 1: be to keep them on, you know, focused and online
Speaker 1: when it comes to how this needs to play out.
Speaker 1: And fortunately been blessed with great people around me, and
Speaker 1: I've learned so much from everybody, and we got this
Speaker 1: thing pulled off, right, And I say pulled off, I
Speaker 1: mean getting the approval is that's pulled off. Then when
Speaker 1: you get going to the construction, that's a whole other animal.
Speaker 1: And my gosh, is it fun. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: jeger Kovich told me early on, it's got to be
Speaker 1: a good time. You know, he goes, the work will show.
Speaker 1: If it's a good time, the work will show. And
Speaker 1: if that's the case, oh my gosh, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be some of the best work anybody's ever seen.
Speaker 2: The I I love that premise, right, if you're gonna
Speaker 2: have fun, if you have fun, the work is going
Speaker 2: to show that you were having fun while you're doing it.
Speaker 2: You know, Golf architecture, golf construction is a creative process.
Speaker 2: I always, you know, talk with our team here, like
Speaker 2: our best content, it really shows that we had fun
Speaker 2: making it. The stuff that we had fun making it,
Speaker 2: it shows in the final product, Like there's there's an
Speaker 2: inherent joy that people can see, whether whether it's obvious
Speaker 2: to them or not, there's a a joy that shows
Speaker 2: up in the in the project in terms of in
Speaker 2: terms of the you know, you're doing a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, you're it's a it's a big project.
Speaker 2: What's been something that you you've had a lot of
Speaker 2: fun doing that you didn't necessarily know you were gonna
Speaker 2: have a lot of fun doing during this project.
Speaker 1: Well, so I had this delusional understanding, this delusional there
Speaker 1: are no rocks on property. Right. We're in New England, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: There's rock walls everywhere, and I've joked with everybody the
Speaker 1: entire time, there's no rocks in this area. Let's just
Speaker 1: get digging, you know. And uh, you know when you
Speaker 1: read about CB McDonald or Seth Reynard and their dragon's teeth, Well,
Speaker 1: so you realize how those things come about because there
Speaker 1: are endless rocks in the ground here in Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: what the heck do you do with all of them? Right?
Speaker 1: So I would say one of my favorite parts was
Speaker 1: all right, Dad, no clue was coming. It was like
Speaker 1: you you're you're sitting there trying to organize these giant
Speaker 1: bowlders that are like the size of a car, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a small car. But but anyway, long story,
Speaker 1: short hair, we just started stacking them and I started
Speaker 1: calling these things Polish pyramids. Because I have some polish
Speaker 1: in my blood and my my rock work does not
Speaker 1: look like Italian mason work. So I started calling them
Speaker 1: Polish pyramids. And we got some polist pyramids out there,
Speaker 1: and it's just a way to like clean up an area.
Speaker 1: It's out of play. What the heck am I looking
Speaker 1: at over there? Should be kind of fun, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a handful of those out here, kind of
Speaker 1: by accident.
Speaker 2: Is that one of the mounds that you named, Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jeffrey's Oh Jeffrey. Jeffrey showed his face yesterday. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is the snow started melting
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey was the first thing to see the sun
Speaker 1: in the fourth fair Way. Yeah, no, Jeffrey. Jeff helped
Speaker 1: us out in our Devil's Hollow. He was here for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and I did a lot of
Speaker 1: work on the driving range and and and four fair
Speaker 1: away sixty. He did the the the Devil's Hollow, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the lower I called our amen corner
Speaker 1: of our property, really neat little section of operating great golf.
Speaker 1: But the last thing he was pushing out was the
Speaker 1: fourth Green and did a great job and then when
Speaker 1: he left, Jaeger formed a little mound named him Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: So Jeffries, we got Jefferys all over though. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Jeffries out there.
Speaker 2: From from what I gather about. You know, your guys' property.
Speaker 2: You're in Fairfield, Connecticut. There's obviously the country Club of
Speaker 2: Fairfield is a famous course that's also there. And you know,
Speaker 2: the country Club of Fairfield, for anybody that's seen pictures,
Speaker 2: is like almost like a seaside links course. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you guys are in a completely different setting. You're it's
Speaker 2: like up in like a rocky mount almost mountainous area
Speaker 2: for the area, correct, yes, correct, Yeah, explain just like
Speaker 2: the nuance of like how different those these two properties are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we sit on like a knuckle, I call
Speaker 1: it a knuckle, just above the Merritt Parkway. So anybody
Speaker 1: that drives through this area, you're either on ninety five
Speaker 1: or on fifteen, and you're you're trying to go as
Speaker 1: fast as you possibly can before you get stuck in
Speaker 1: bumper to bumper parking lot. Basically, we sit just north
Speaker 1: of the Merritt Parkway on like I said, a knuckle.
Speaker 1: So we kind of. If there was fewer trees, you'd
Speaker 1: see the sound very easily. And I've been told back
Speaker 1: on our thirteenth hole, which is our highest part of
Speaker 1: the property, you used be able to see the sound.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of large, large trees on property.
Speaker 1: There was the superintendent before me did a great job
Speaker 1: peeling out a lot of trees, and then we've continued
Speaker 1: that for a long time. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it feels like a parkland type golf course. We're very
Speaker 1: much in. We call Greenfield Hill, which is a part
Speaker 1: of Fairfield that sits up on this hill and over
Speaker 1: looks you know, overlooks Fairfield. When storms are coming at us,
Speaker 1: they typically hit New York, break up a little bit,
Speaker 1: go over the sound, Long Island and north of us,
Speaker 1: so we dodge a lot of weather quite a bit
Speaker 1: if it's coming from the west. But it's a unique
Speaker 1: piece of property. It is like an old horse farm.
Speaker 1: Mister Banks, the I believe he's don't quote me on anything,
Speaker 1: cause I got a lot of unique stories I tell
Speaker 1: about this stuff that I don't know how many are accurate.
Speaker 1: But he's a former like Rockefeller family extension and own
Speaker 1: the horse farm next to us. We bought this property.
Speaker 1: Used to be a horse farm. You find the horse
Speaker 1: shoes from time to time, but it's it's a family
Speaker 1: golf course and it's in your neighborhood, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And and like we have the pool, we
Speaker 1: have the rackets. We have an amazing clubhouse that's going
Speaker 1: under that's under renovation right now as well. We're adding
Speaker 1: some soft seeding outside and an outdoor bar and redoing
Speaker 1: the redoing the inside bar and the dining room. So
Speaker 1: kind of a neat section of the project over there
Speaker 1: is getting done as well. So yeah, but beautiful piece
Speaker 1: of property. And Robert Trent Jones Senior did a great
Speaker 1: job laying it out back in the day nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1: He did the northwest or north south layout, great scope,
Speaker 1: a lot of room from green to tea and tea
Speaker 1: to you know, golf hole to golf hole. But yeah,
Speaker 1: very interesting, kind of beautiful piece of property out here.
Speaker 2: How did you guys kind of go about approaching this?
Speaker 2: I think that it's become very I would say in
Speaker 2: vogue if you have a name brand architect from the
Speaker 2: Golden Age, where it's just like, okay, we are going
Speaker 2: to restrict or this because we have Donald Ross design.
Speaker 2: Robert Trent Jones is you know, uh, maybe has fallen
Speaker 2: a little bit out of favor in recent in recent years,
Speaker 2: but he's one of the more revered architects of his generation.
Speaker 2: And you guys were kind of in the early string
Speaker 2: of his designs, which for the most part, you know,
Speaker 2: if you kind of look at his body of work,
Speaker 2: the best work, you know, and this is all my opinion,
Speaker 2: the best work was the earlier work. How did you
Speaker 2: guys got you and Jaeger and the club go about
Speaker 2: approaching the renovation understanding? Hey, you know, Robert Trent Jones
Speaker 2: is a big name in golf architecture, a big part
Speaker 2: of our history. But we we can possibly improve some
Speaker 2: areas of this design.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, great question. So yeah, nineteen forty six, like
Speaker 1: we mentioned before, eleventh Golf Course. Nineteen forty six, he
Speaker 1: started to working with Augusta National. Right came buzz with
Speaker 1: mister Bob Jones and and you know most you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the best golfer of all time to Bob Johns
Speaker 1: to Bob Jones is yeah. So so they were doing
Speaker 1: obviously they were doing work at Augusta National. We were
Speaker 1: a g established club. There's some great history, you know,
Speaker 1: the to the Patterson Club, let alone the Banks family,
Speaker 1: the Rockefellers that owned it beforehand, and then the ge
Speaker 1: president CEO. Most you know, there's always a standing membership
Speaker 1: open at Augusta National from what I understand, but I
Speaker 1: always choked with people that they were probably on the
Speaker 1: search committee when they hired Robert Trent Jones Senior and said, hey,
Speaker 1: come on up to Fairfield and whip us up a
Speaker 1: golf course. Right. You know, our club was Establis it
Speaker 1: was in nineteen twenty nine, but is a social club.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen forty six when they decided to build
Speaker 1: this golf course, they got the hot young you know architect,
Speaker 1: the the yeger Kovich of their time. Maybe uh so
Speaker 1: might argue it's Brian Schneider or whoever. Anyway, there's so
Speaker 1: many great ones to choose from. However, you know, they
Speaker 1: grab this young man, Sid, come build us a golf course.
Speaker 1: And you know we were as he started working at
Speaker 1: Augusta National. The next year he did Peach Tree. We're
Speaker 1: right in the middle of that and when you see
Speaker 1: the layout, you'll go, oh, yeah, I can see what
Speaker 1: he was seeing. You know, we have we have some
Speaker 1: angles on par threes that remind you of sixteen at Augusta.
Speaker 1: You know. You have you have the uphill that disappeared
Speaker 1: over time. You have the downhill par three, a lot
Speaker 1: of variety. You can tell he picked out the par
Speaker 1: threes early on and then and then kind of built
Speaker 1: the rest of the golf course through it. We have
Speaker 1: like a three shot par five, you know, part five
Speaker 1: that you almost cannot cannot reach in two. So when
Speaker 1: we first started doing this, you know, when I first
Speaker 1: got here. First of all, you know, this golf course
Speaker 1: was built. I think they spent one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: building it, and the driving range sat where the eighteenth
Speaker 1: hole was supposed to be so long story short. Nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, they ran out of treework money to remove
Speaker 1: these trees and finish the eighteenth hole. They had already
Speaker 1: built the green, so they instead of playing through the
Speaker 1: driving range a little dog leg right with a stream
Speaker 1: running through it, they decided to put the t's on
Speaker 1: the top of the hill and play it down the hill.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure they said we'll do this next year,
Speaker 1: never got to it. So we've been playing that goof
Speaker 1: It was a goofy golf hole. It was not supposed
Speaker 1: to be there. Nobody realized why we didn't like it.
Speaker 1: But during you know, during our original like when I
Speaker 1: first got here, we had this this very beautiful clubhouse
Speaker 1: was just built. I knew for we weren't spending money
Speaker 1: for a long time. We just did a small, a
Speaker 1: smaller golf course renovation at that time, unfortunately making our
Speaker 1: t boxes smaller. It was great work, a lot of
Speaker 1: great work was done, but we made tea boxes smaller,
Speaker 1: and we had the kind of the Beth Page Rhys
Speaker 1: Jones bunkers, very exhausting push mowing bunker banks and tying
Speaker 1: up maintenance dollars. So we saw a lot of room
Speaker 1: for improvement on those things. But we started planning. We
Speaker 1: did a plan with the Fasio Group and that kind
Speaker 1: of gave us, that kind of gave me the freedom
Speaker 1: to start working on a plan that was approved by
Speaker 1: the membership. You know, we had a cross section of
Speaker 1: members on this Golf Long Range Planning Committee, so every
Speaker 1: one of our members was represented. We'd walk the golf
Speaker 1: course with Tom mars Off and speak to every single
Speaker 1: golf shot that every single person would play and seeing
Speaker 1: the golf course through everybody's eyes is a unique experience,
Speaker 1: you know, it's you learn so much during those of
Speaker 1: what you think you know just is not so. And
Speaker 1: during that time we created a master plan, goals, key
Speaker 1: initiatives that we still have today. One of them was
Speaker 1: create more golf practice. We needed a short game practice area.
Speaker 1: We only had eight stalls on a range tea. You know,
Speaker 1: we're northeast, we're locked. We're locked with land. We got
Speaker 1: the Myott Parkway right next to us, and we got
Speaker 1: we got members who don't plan on moving, ey our
Speaker 1: neighbors who don't plan on moving anytime soon. It's a
Speaker 1: hard one to expand upon. So how can we take
Speaker 1: what we have, improve it and get all these things
Speaker 1: that we need done? So, you know, and our key
Speaker 1: initiatives I wrote a couple of notes here. Our key
Speaker 1: initiatives are pretty simple. It was like, keep up with
Speaker 1: replacing infrastructure right. You have to keep up with irrigation system,
Speaker 1: your bunkers, make sure the sands right, anything, cart paths, maintenance, facility, drainage,
Speaker 1: all these things that fail, golf course components that fail.
Speaker 1: Keep up with that. That was always number one. Number
Speaker 1: two was to improve practice both short game and long term.
Speaker 1: And you know you're overall driving range, so create more
Speaker 1: golf practice for this very hungry golf golf addicted membership
Speaker 1: that we have and we're in their backyard, so let's
Speaker 1: improve the practice, make the course enjoyable, more enjoyable for
Speaker 1: higher handicappers while making it more strategic for lower handicappers.
Speaker 1: And then the other one was kind of improve the greens.
Speaker 1: Create more whole locations so we're not at risk of
Speaker 1: losing turf because we have to use the same whole
Speaker 1: locations every day. You know, green that has three to
Speaker 1: five hole locations, it's very challenging to to keep grass
Speaker 1: alive in those areas. So those were kind of some
Speaker 1: of our goals. So how do we do, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we do a golf project that takes all
Speaker 1: in that into you know, we focus on all that.
Speaker 1: You know, those are kind of our pillars, but every
Speaker 1: time we looked at something, does it match that? So
Speaker 1: jaeger Kovich was asked, all right, we want a better
Speaker 1: shortcame practici er, we want driving RNG. We feel like
Speaker 1: this part of our property would be good for it.
Speaker 1: You tell us what you see and he came up
Speaker 1: here of a stroke a genius. There's a redance style
Speaker 1: of par three sitting on a hillside that we've been
Speaker 1: playing up and down for so long, and let's just
Speaker 1: play it from a different angle. So he saw that
Speaker 1: with that we could take our old seventeen that was eighteen.
Speaker 1: We could take our old seventeen and make it a
Speaker 1: par five. So we used to finish on a par four,
Speaker 1: par four, par four, part four finish four in a row,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a hay maker at the
Speaker 1: end of the round. It was exhausting. We saw this
Speaker 1: opportunity to go part four, par four, par five, par
Speaker 1: three finish and create this great short game practice area,
Speaker 1: make two better golf holes than what we had, and
Speaker 1: kind of solve the appetite. With that, we got to
Speaker 1: change the routing of the golf course front nine, back
Speaker 1: nine switch, which in my opinion is even better for
Speaker 1: the overall product, because you know, you're now you're finishing
Speaker 1: on your most exciting part of your golf course, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you let's go back to August and now
Speaker 1: everybody laughed my comparison to gusta national and and and
Speaker 1: rightfully sod the gust.
Speaker 2: It could be the gust, you know. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: maybe that's what your goal is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well we're just linked in time and uh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the first round of golf ever
Speaker 1: played at the Patterson Club was Bob Jones, Jean Sarazen
Speaker 1: and then two gentlemen from ge Okay, so, uh, I
Speaker 1: believe they tied. Mister Bob Jones bogied the last hole
Speaker 1: and uh, the one that was supposed to play through
Speaker 1: the driving range and play down the hill. So he boged.
Speaker 1: It wasn't his fault. Uh, he boged it. They tied.
Speaker 1: Epic battle and I come. I came to find out
Speaker 1: recently that I found it. It was like maybe his second
Speaker 1: to last round of golf he had ever played. What really, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was towards the end of his life.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, you makes sense with the time time frame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the same time he was working on
Speaker 1: Peachtree with mister Robert Trent Jones Senior. Right.
Speaker 2: So uh, anyway, I mean if you think about when
Speaker 2: it was built, like peach Tree is extraordinary. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's funny. I you know, I played there, you know,
Speaker 2: and I turned I turned to my host, who's you know,
Speaker 2: very versed in golf history golf architecture, and I turned
Speaker 2: to him on like the second green, I'm like, why
Speaker 2: didn't Robert all of Robert Trent Jones courses have greens
Speaker 2: like this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And his response was, well, he only built one course
Speaker 2: with Bob Bob Jones. Yeah, you know, right, but Peachtree.
Speaker 2: You go there and it's like this is these are
Speaker 2: some of the best greens in the world. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's building Patterson Club at the same time. It's
Speaker 2: it's kind of a pretty fascinating it's funny. P J
Speaker 2: producer PJ Played played golf recently on a trip back
Speaker 2: to college where he was giving a He was giving
Speaker 2: a speech on journalism, you know, the hard hitting journalism
Speaker 2: of golf media for students. He played one of his
Speaker 2: early designs also in New York. I think it's like
Speaker 2: green Finger State Park or something along the lines of that,
Speaker 2: and he took a picture of a green and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, like, that's an amazing green.
Speaker 2: And I think, like, what's what's fascinating about the RTJ
Speaker 2: history is kind of how like his career was so long.
Speaker 2: He he spanned so many generations of golf and just
Speaker 2: how the style like changed with the trends of society
Speaker 2: almost you know, his early career was working for these
Speaker 2: you know, the very the peak of the Golden Age,
Speaker 2: the end of the Golden Age. He survives the you know,
Speaker 2: he lives with the Great Depression, and then his early
Speaker 2: career starts and you see the flare of the Golden Age.
Speaker 2: But then it became almost sanitized with society into the fifties,
Speaker 2: you know six you know, like and you just see that,
Speaker 2: and then it's like the you know what society became of,
Speaker 2: Like how can we just like pump out you know,
Speaker 2: the same products. You know, there's this I think about
Speaker 2: this all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's this.
Speaker 2: Uh there's this burger place in Chicago called Chival and
Speaker 2: they have a small they have this other side, you
Speaker 2: know chain. A Chival is just a standalone restaurant. But
Speaker 2: they created these at first in the city, these little
Speaker 2: like neighborhood burger places called small Cheval and you go
Speaker 2: in and you get the Auschivals known. You know, it
Speaker 2: got voted as the best burger in America by somebody.
Speaker 2: So then they have these small chivals where you can
Speaker 2: go get the burger, but they are just burger stands, right,
Speaker 2: and there's just this great like I got it. The
Speaker 2: first thing I got when I got back to Chicago
Speaker 2: for a winter break was a small cheval burger if
Speaker 2: you go and you get like a burger and fries.
Speaker 2: And nowadays it's like, you know, it's like thirteen dollars
Speaker 2: for burger and fries or may fifteen dollars. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's gone up considerably. But the idea of
Speaker 2: a neighborhood burger stand where it was like your local
Speaker 2: burger stand, if you think about McDonald's, that is the
Speaker 2: place that McDonald's made extinct. During the same era of
Speaker 2: golf design, like the trends of society went around, like
Speaker 2: how do you just like create like the same product
Speaker 2: at a like large scale. And that might be part
Speaker 2: of why Robert Trent Jones And you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons, and you could get into a lot
Speaker 2: of reasons why, but like part of why Robert Trent
Speaker 2: Jones golf courses became so almost monotonous in comparison to
Speaker 2: his early designs, as part of it was society norms
Speaker 2: pushing you know, almost against art in this period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, yeah, creating the cookie cutter stamp. Just need
Speaker 1: the signature, good sir, we're gonna use it. You know.
Speaker 1: I always imagined he had like a notebook of like
Speaker 1: thirty two greens and he was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a five twelve six for you know, and
Speaker 1: then But I mean, but if you look at the
Speaker 1: template holes, right, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I always jokeing Seth Rayner. You know, I think somebody
Speaker 1: said one time Seth Rader is the most overrated architect
Speaker 1: of all time because he was just tracing what his
Speaker 1: good buddy did. And it's like, well, that's not accurate.
Speaker 1: He's also the greatest, possibly great civil engineer of all
Speaker 1: time as well. But you know, yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing in a way, right, Like he had
Speaker 1: these and again when I went to Peachtree, I was
Speaker 1: forced to play Peachtree. I mean, what a what a
Speaker 1: unique gem. Oh my goodness, But there's holes out there
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh, there's our fourteen. You know, there's
Speaker 1: our old six, there's thirteen. And it would be a
Speaker 1: little bit bigger or a little bit smaller or a
Speaker 1: little bit different or but it was kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of there's a lot of similarities
Speaker 1: when it came to that. And I think when Jaeger
Speaker 1: came out here and suddenly we were like, we got
Speaker 1: all of the greens approved to redo. And after the
Speaker 1: first three he did, everybody's like, oh my gosh, we
Speaker 1: got to do them all and thank god we had
Speaker 1: a little extra. You know, I didn't make this project
Speaker 1: about grass types. I wanted to reuse all the grass
Speaker 1: that we had during the project, all the fairway greens,
Speaker 1: Tea's approaches, we just reused it. It was a little
Speaker 1: spotty or something. But so during that but I had
Speaker 1: budgeted the entire project with SOD, so that money alone
Speaker 1: covered us to do the added eight greens that we
Speaker 1: needed to do budget wise, And so suddenly we were
Speaker 1: off to the races. And then you're you know, Jaeger
Speaker 1: would pull up to a golf hole like our eleventh, right,
Speaker 1: this is early. This is probably the fifth when he did,
Speaker 1: and it was our eleventh new number two and it's
Speaker 1: a par five and the screens kind of banks in
Speaker 1: their sideways and it's very you know, he could have
Speaker 1: done whatever he wanted in that stage. But the reality
Speaker 1: is he paid. You know, he sits there and looks
Speaker 1: at it. He's like, this is what should be there
Speaker 1: to gentle walk up to the green. It has a
Speaker 1: little fall off on the back left, it has a
Speaker 1: little right kicker. So he he made it just better.
Speaker 1: He maximized its potential. But it's a very similar golfle
Speaker 1: like it hadn't changed much. We just got the fairway
Speaker 1: bunkers right. You know, he painted a mask, you know,
Speaker 1: everywhere he went. It's like a it's like a price
Speaker 1: is painting. You know, these guys are so talented, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I always tell people it's like he's he's out here
Speaker 1: building prices paintings that my members are going to get
Speaker 1: the exercise on. Like how cool is that? You know,
Speaker 1: Like what are we doing out here? Like it's just
Speaker 1: so good. And when you're looking at it and you're
Speaker 1: seeing the lines move, and you know, and and and
Speaker 1: his right hand man, Nick Mills, who comes from Australia,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can't wait to play Nick Mills
Speaker 1: golf course. I mean he's young in his career, but
Speaker 1: good god is he Yeah, the influence from the Australian golf,
Speaker 1: which I need to go see someday. You know, it
Speaker 1: would have been a much more Australian feel out there
Speaker 1: if Nick had to say. But like, but you know,
Speaker 1: the two of them together, they really did a great
Speaker 1: job with the lines and carrying you through the property
Speaker 1: and just drawing interest to everything you're looking at while
Speaker 1: not changing certain things that much. Like eleven, twelve, thirteen
Speaker 1: are new, two, three, four, five, seven. A lot of
Speaker 1: those didn't change much, you know, like they got better,
Speaker 1: a lot better. But you know, there wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: like we needed to reinvent the wheel on those holes.
Speaker 1: Some some we did, you know, the the re routing.
Speaker 1: The two new holes are new eight to nine, old
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen. Those two are brand new golf holes. I
Speaker 1: would say, so is our new number one number old
Speaker 1: number ten. It's in the same place. But the green
Speaker 1: got pushed back twenty yards, brand new green. Much different
Speaker 1: feel when you walk out into the property. But so like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, you just kind of then
Speaker 1: he got to that back now and he made quite
Speaker 1: a few changes, but at the same time, like just
Speaker 1: improving what we already had there.
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Speaker 2: And let's get back to Jason. How how important is
Speaker 2: the sequencing of where you start and end your project,
Speaker 2: like picking the places to start construction now that you
Speaker 2: look back on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a good question. This is a
Speaker 1: strategic question. And to answer this properly for anyone, you
Speaker 1: would need to know every detail of their project. For instance,
Speaker 1: we're doing work with the Clubhouse, so the overlap between
Speaker 1: us where fine art meets legos is challenging. Sorry all
Speaker 1: you engineers and builders out there, But where fine art
Speaker 1: meets legos, you're like, uh, okay, this is hard. Jager
Speaker 1: can't give you an engineered rendering of what it's going
Speaker 1: to look like until he's done with that gigantic bulldozer
Speaker 1: of a paintbrush, you know what I mean. So we
Speaker 1: ended up having to get to the clubhouse area in
Speaker 1: August to prep the area and give them what we
Speaker 1: thought was best for them to now build a new
Speaker 1: a new turn building. We have a new turn building,
Speaker 1: we have a future outdoor teaching like a golf practice center,
Speaker 1: and then expanded patios and things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: like where we butt uped, all that was very strategic.
Speaker 1: We had to get that right and then get out
Speaker 1: of dodge and then come back and clean it up
Speaker 1: when they're done. So that was kind of forcing us
Speaker 1: to where we started and where we're going to end.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for us, we did. We did a soft
Speaker 1: close right, so we were July seventh, you know, second
Speaker 1: week of June. Since then, it has been like gas
Speaker 1: pedal to the floor, drinking out of the fire hose, right,
Speaker 1: pulling an Oakmont there, I'm stealing Oakmont's drinking out of
Speaker 1: the fire hose. I mean, it has been game busters,
Speaker 1: just going like crazy. You know. We had to have
Speaker 1: our invitational back to back invitational club championships, you know,
Speaker 1: cram it all in there before we lost three holes.
Speaker 1: We took three holes at first. We made them right
Speaker 1: around the maintenance facility. Was great because we were really inconvened,
Speaker 1: you know, it was very minimize inconvenience to our golfers.
Speaker 1: We kind of got to stay in this little footprint
Speaker 1: and bang out three of our golf holes right around
Speaker 1: the maintenance facility. That took about two weeks before we
Speaker 1: needed to start deconstructing. And you know, the deconstruction process
Speaker 1: is always a week or two, sometimes three four ahead
Speaker 1: of the construction. The sequencing of these projects is mind blowing.
Speaker 1: You're like you you go in there and in a day,
Speaker 1: rich Lebar's army, all right, lgr Lebar Golfer Innovation's army
Speaker 1: comes out and they rip apart a golf hole. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is they take the sod
Speaker 1: off the green, put it on tarps. Oh, I got
Speaker 1: to keep this alive for two weeks on tarps two
Speaker 1: weeks max. Don't ever go longer than that. Then they
Speaker 1: take the sod and they flip it to something that's
Speaker 1: already the side from the faraway and the t's and
Speaker 1: put that somewhere where it's already ready to go. So
Speaker 1: you have to have somewhere that's ready to lay the
Speaker 1: and then you just kind of rip out all the
Speaker 1: rough grass, take all the top soil, put that into
Speaker 1: a pile. Store that somewhere. Take the old bunker sand,
Speaker 1: get ready to reuse that for drainage, so put that
Speaker 1: somewhere else. It's it's very precise chaos. And then they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, Jaeger, here you go. And then he goes
Speaker 1: and bulldozes it, and you're licking your chops. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this has turned out better than I
Speaker 1: thought it could be. And then it's two weeks of complete.
Speaker 1: You know, you scan it. That was our big thing.
Speaker 1: Scan it, all right, scan it, you know, Jagger would
Speaker 1: be a quarter of the way done with something. You'll
Speaker 1: scan it and anyways, then we scan it. That way
Speaker 1: we could put it back together with the light ar
Speaker 1: and and then it's two to three weeks of construction.
Speaker 1: Like you have to rebuild the thing three times before
Speaker 1: it's done. It's maddening. It's maddening. You're like looking at
Speaker 1: it and your eye could vision just put sod on it.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, we need drainage, we need bunker liners, we
Speaker 1: need you know, we need to core out the green
Speaker 1: we need to and then we got to put it
Speaker 1: back together. They're just like the paper rush at it
Speaker 1: so oh mad name.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it? Reusing the grass and the decision
Speaker 2: to do that. I feel like it's a big trend
Speaker 2: with these with with golf renovation projects that you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to do this project and I need the
Speaker 2: latest and greatest mono stand And what I mean by
Speaker 2: monostand is like single type of grass is kind of all.
Speaker 2: It seems like the trend versus taking your grass that's
Speaker 2: been played on for you know now home close to
Speaker 2: eighty years and and and saying this is this is
Speaker 2: our grass and we're going to reuse it. What's what
Speaker 2: are the benefits and drawbacks to making a decision to
Speaker 2: reuse your grass? Grass?
Speaker 1: So in a perfect world, I would love to have
Speaker 1: Oakmont or wing football of greens where I on this planet.
Speaker 1: That would be perfect. Maybe actually make it all fairways
Speaker 1: approaches and teas as well, not as well, right, let's
Speaker 1: just go make it all that. And then that black
Speaker 1: beauty rough too much turf type tall because it grabs
Speaker 1: the club face a little bit, but just enough. Some
Speaker 1: people are using the fine fescues in the rough now,
Speaker 1: but it would be nice to have. It's a nice
Speaker 1: to have Patterson Club. We had a lot of necessary things.
Speaker 1: We had a new irrigation system we needed, We needed
Speaker 1: to redo all the drainage. We needed to pore out
Speaker 1: the greens and get those things right. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of needs, and I didn't feel like Monostan was
Speaker 1: one of them. And also, you know, I always joke
Speaker 1: with people, I've never found a golf course. It didn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never once played a golf course. I
Speaker 1: was like, up, that was a miserable day. You know,
Speaker 1: this just doesn't happen unless you're got there miserable right,
Speaker 1: and then had a terrible burger. But anyway, never had
Speaker 1: a bad d and a golf course. So one of
Speaker 1: my I'm gonna tell a quick story here, one of
Speaker 1: my members take me to Ireland. A member guests in
Speaker 1: Ireland every year and dune bag and it was so
Speaker 1: much fun and man, good living. Well. One year we
Speaker 1: went over to another golf course. He had just joined
Speaker 1: Hogshead and we took the airplane over there, and and
Speaker 1: about a couple of months beforehand, he goes, you know, Jay,
Speaker 1: he goes, what's with all these weeds in our native area?
Speaker 1: You know what's going on here? Like God, looks terrible.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're in the United States, it wants
Speaker 1: to be perfect, fine fescue and an inland parkland golf
Speaker 1: course which makes zero sense, right, can't have any weeds.
Speaker 1: It has to be just that. Then it has to
Speaker 1: be just the rough, then just the fairways. Anyways, we
Speaker 1: go out to this other golf course in Ireland and
Speaker 1: I grabbed the bag from my cadde so I got
Speaker 1: to get out of here. I can't be here anymore.
Speaker 1: And he looks at me all confused. I go, they
Speaker 1: got weeds in their native areas. I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: I'm going back to the bar.
Speaker 2: I can't hear you jammed them?
Speaker 1: I damned it, Yeah I did. Anyway, So after a
Speaker 1: couple of chuckles, you know, the reality is, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been fortunate to play a lot of great places
Speaker 1: all over the world, and Royal Dorni's not out there
Speaker 1: worrying about monotypes, you know, North Barracks, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: It's a mixed salad and it's amazing. It's show stopping,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the best thing you could have, you know, Royal.
Speaker 1: What about Barrora, If you ever played Barrora, You're like,
Speaker 1: that's where I want to wake up if I die.
Speaker 1: When I die, if I get a chance to play
Speaker 1: golf every day in the afterlife, it might be Borro
Speaker 1: If I had to pick one. I got sheep walking around.
Speaker 1: I have electric fences around the greens, and nothing's perfect,
Speaker 1: but everything's perfect, you know. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's so I'm a big anti monostand I guess it
Speaker 2: would be my stand, especially for an old golf course. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think Bruce Happener once called it on this podcast
Speaker 2: the grass and when the way they they blend together
Speaker 2: and become what it is over one hundred years. That's
Speaker 2: like the Patina exactly golf course. And one of I
Speaker 2: think the more disturbing trends in golf is like we
Speaker 2: we do these twenty five million dollar projects and they
Speaker 2: come out and it's had one hundred year old golf course,
Speaker 2: and you come out and you look at it and
Speaker 2: it looks brand new because it's all brand new, singular
Speaker 2: type of grass, and it's like you've actually lost You've
Speaker 2: lost the nature and the essence of the interconnectivity of
Speaker 2: what Bobby Jones and Jean Sarasen played on when and
Speaker 2: the first year, you know, like you can at least say,
Speaker 2: you can say it's the same grass and a lot
Speaker 2: of clubs. What happened is that they have they've just
Speaker 2: swapped out grass and it's it's not an expensive line item,
Speaker 2: like you said, because you chose to keep the grass,
Speaker 2: is that had no issue there were it wasn't an
Speaker 2: issue because you chose to do that. You got to
Speaker 2: do eight new greens instead, which is going to make
Speaker 2: such a more bigger impact than a grass that over
Speaker 2: time is just going to become the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you know, going into this project, we were
Speaker 1: going to add you know, we were going to add
Speaker 1: putting green square footage right about a half acre. So
Speaker 1: a good friend and someone that I trust, one of
Speaker 1: the guys I steal ideas from steal you know again,
Speaker 1: I'm as smart as my buddies, right, Like, that's it,
Speaker 1: Steve rabbitue wing Foot I called him up. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm building some nurseries. I know you're great at it.
Speaker 1: Let me how'd you do it? Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Long story short, I dropped off a container and he
Speaker 1: filled up container full of his cores when he was
Speaker 1: doing erification. And you know I bought got him a
Speaker 1: Colony pizza truck for his efforts. You know, the whole
Speaker 1: staff was out there. I think Lebar's staff was there
Speaker 1: during that time of year as well. We had a
Speaker 1: big pizza party for him allowing us to use his course.
Speaker 1: We built three quarters of an acre of bn sorry
Speaker 1: wing Foot Poa greens nurseries before this project, knowing we
Speaker 1: needed to do expansions priceless right like right, we have
Speaker 1: this old beautiful grass and he's not that far away,
Speaker 1: so it's I would always hope it would become that
Speaker 1: over time. So you know that's when you come out
Speaker 1: here the first year, two years, you're gonna notice that
Speaker 1: the grass doesn't match up exactly the whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a little more poe on this screen than bent
Speaker 1: whooped dee do You got to get it in the hole, right, like,
Speaker 1: just get it in the hole.
Speaker 2: So is the is the obviously Oakmont wing Foot legendary
Speaker 2: POA greens and the manner in which they kind of
Speaker 2: like do there what you talked about the sod farm,
Speaker 2: the aerification. They take the head of the plugs and
Speaker 2: then they grow their grass from the aerification plugs so
Speaker 2: that they always match. So is your hope then that
Speaker 2: over time that wing foot poa that you put in
Speaker 2: as part of your expansions will override the bent and
Speaker 2: you will effectively have the you know, yes, wingfoot poa
Speaker 2: greens at the Patterson Club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's kind of the idea. We'll take our
Speaker 1: favorite grass types when we redo our nurseries, and we
Speaker 1: will verify those greens and we'll go build some nurseries
Speaker 1: with it. Might even try to get another truckload from Rabbie.
Speaker 1: But yeah, basically, you just put down the greens mix
Speaker 1: you build kind of a I didn't build an entire green.
Speaker 1: I kind of went three to four inches of mix,
Speaker 1: minimal drainage, laid it down, rolled the snot out of it,
Speaker 1: keep rolling it, then start mowing it, top treuss it, whatever,
Speaker 1: and just get that stuff right. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Yeah, over time, if I get a if
Speaker 1: I'm out plugging out bad spots on greens when it
Speaker 1: comes to ballmarks or whatever, somebody spills of cocktail. You know,
Speaker 1: wing foot poets going in and then over time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't promote seed heads, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to like overset it that way. But yeah,
Speaker 1: over time the poe will just slowly creep in there.
Speaker 1: And and I think somebody told me one time in college.
Speaker 1: They were like, this is back before all the growth
Speaker 1: regulators when it comes to controlling post seedheads. Was if
Speaker 1: you want, if you want perfect poe of greens, you
Speaker 1: basically you know, you see them benkrass and wait seven
Speaker 1: years you'll have it. But you know, there is something
Speaker 1: to say with these monostands. And I understand what people
Speaker 1: are striving for. You know, when I was working at
Speaker 1: Caves Valley as a young sure like that was the
Speaker 1: hardest place to grow grass. Transition zones one of the
Speaker 1: hardest places grow grass in the country. And and you
Speaker 1: know you're on the fence. Do I do warm season?
Speaker 1: Do I do cool season grasses? And and having that
Speaker 1: that mono stand that kind of with stands, they heat better,
Speaker 1: less disease, it's better with disease. Pressure can be cut
Speaker 1: a little lower. All that stuff is helpful. And you
Speaker 1: do see some you know, you do see the equality
Speaker 1: of golf is the quality of the turf, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the golf. It is noticeable at times, but it's not like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know again, it's still going to just kind of
Speaker 1: revert to what it naturally wants to be, you know,
Speaker 1: over time. You know, I always joke also with my
Speaker 1: brothers in Philly, right, Philadelphia Cricket Club, and they just
Speaker 1: do an amazing job over there when they did their renovation.
Speaker 1: They went to one hundred percent mole of stands everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know. They they killed off the fairways, reseated them,
Speaker 1: rested all of their rough and then sat it out there.
Speaker 1: Creams approached his t's and you know, it's slowly over time,
Speaker 1: the poe is going to come in no matter what,
Speaker 1: and you don't notice it out there. Like it's been
Speaker 1: a while now since that work's been done, and it
Speaker 1: feels as good as it did the date opened. So
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't see that much value
Speaker 1: in it either, you know, I really don't.
Speaker 2: I heard you were camping on site during the project.
Speaker 2: What was that? What was that?
Speaker 1: So? So my role during this project as many hats,
Speaker 1: but the number one roll is to make sure everybody's
Speaker 1: planning it cool. Right, I think it was at a
Speaker 1: point in the project where you know, you can't see
Speaker 1: the light at the end of the tunnel. But we've
Speaker 1: been out here for a long time eating dust. We
Speaker 1: were in a major drought this year, and it was
Speaker 1: perfect for construction, terrible for watering sod. And everybody was
Speaker 1: just like, oh God, somebody shoot me. It was a
Speaker 1: long stretch. And at the same time we had this
Speaker 1: feature coming up one in eight, which is now are
Speaker 1: going to be our ten and seventeenth and and I
Speaker 1: couldn't visualize what these guys were seeing. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if they had an idea what they were seeing yet,
Speaker 1: but I knew everybody needed a good night. A neighboring club,
Speaker 1: Reading Reading Country Club, brett chap and the superintendent there
Speaker 1: hosted us that day. He said, Hey, come on out,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about our golf course,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll have play some golf and have
Speaker 1: some dinner. So this is like the only day off
Speaker 1: we took all like throughout the entire time, you know,
Speaker 1: And we went over there and played some actually worked
Speaker 1: in the morning, but they went over there, played golf,
Speaker 1: had dinner, came back to what I have this big, large,
Speaker 1: old Booie turned into a fire like a fire pit.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really cool. It's it's as cool as
Speaker 1: like as the Polish pyramids. But we had this set
Speaker 1: up between the old one in eight future ten seventeen,
Speaker 1: and you know, we had some adult beverages. We had
Speaker 1: tents set up. Zach Varney, the project manager from Labar,
Speaker 1: set up a little miniature tent in a bunker, so
Speaker 1: that bunker will forever be Zach's bunker. Steve Kabicki, our
Speaker 1: golf course superintendent here he set up underneath the tree,
Speaker 1: similar tent underneath the tree. Jaeger and I ended up
Speaker 1: driving back to my airstream and I was like, you
Speaker 1: stay on that side of the airstream. I'll stand this
Speaker 1: side of the airstream. But yeah, we walked the property,
Speaker 1: had drank some adult beverages and laughed and talked and
Speaker 1: looked at what we had done and talked about what
Speaker 1: we should do. And that night I think again, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take full credit to what might be the greatest
Speaker 1: surprise on property, which is that one in eight complex.
Speaker 1: If you follow us on Instagram, you'll see some of
Speaker 1: the pictures have come out. Jaeger posted a couple. I've
Speaker 1: posted a couple. It's spectacular. It's like it's so good,
Speaker 1: and it used to be just two greens kind of
Speaker 1: butted up with like a fox hole in the middle
Speaker 1: where the fox hole kind of stopped the interaction of
Speaker 1: the two holes kind of playing together. So instead of
Speaker 1: butting up, one went six feet higher and slightly right
Speaker 1: and the other one, as you're playing it went slightly
Speaker 1: lower and slightly right. So they kind of like are
Speaker 1: and intertwined with these really great bunkers. It's really great bunkering.
Speaker 1: And it might be the coolest surprise on the property.
Speaker 1: And it's our golf pro Chris Kenny called it that
Speaker 1: it's the best surprise that we've had so far. And
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent Nick Mills came up with this
Speaker 1: and I have to take full credit because it was
Speaker 1: on our camp out that that I'm taking full credit for.
Speaker 1: That idea came to came to existence, so and then
Speaker 1: Yager plowed it into you know, painted in with his dozer. Gosh,
Speaker 1: so much fun, so much fun.
Speaker 2: I mean it kind of ties. It's a great idea,
Speaker 2: you know, when you when you think about, like how
Speaker 2: do we make this this fun. And it sounds like
Speaker 2: in the particular time the camp out happened in the
Speaker 2: doldrums of the project as as a baseball fan would say,
Speaker 2: the dog days of August. Yes, is kind of when
Speaker 2: you in that project timeline infusing fun. And I think
Speaker 2: that's like, you know, the one of the hard things
Speaker 2: with anything, you know, you you as the superintendent, you're
Speaker 2: kind of you set the culture for you know, the
Speaker 2: the you know, outside of probably the weight staff at
Speaker 2: a club, the largest team at at a club, you
Speaker 2: set the culture and and it's important, you know, to
Speaker 2: know when you need to infuse something special or something
Speaker 2: into something to lighten the mood. And I think these
Speaker 2: people having been on site, it's these projects, they it
Speaker 2: is just such a uh, it's such a grind day
Speaker 2: in day out, and if you don't lighten that mood,
Speaker 2: it it you know what you said, how do we
Speaker 2: have the most fun? That's where it can turn in
Speaker 2: terms of of I always imagine that you're at the
Speaker 2: point you guys have done the raw construction work. And
Speaker 2: I always feel like if you're moving houses, you get
Speaker 2: done with all the big stuff and you're like, I'm
Speaker 2: almost done, But then you realize that you've got like
Speaker 2: just as much work with all the little stuff getting
Speaker 2: it into boxes. And the last is the seeming end
Speaker 2: of a move, is the worst part of the move.
Speaker 2: What is it? What's left for you guys? Now that
Speaker 2: you've you've got all the construction done, the grass is down,
Speaker 2: What are the kind of finan final pieces you have
Speaker 2: to do before opening day? And what does that look
Speaker 2: like for you and your team?
Speaker 1: Oh, we're yeah, we're gonna be sprinting to opening day.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, we have endless stuff to tie up.
Speaker 1: There's not a hole that's like done right, there's car
Speaker 1: path edges, there's car paths, there's there's endless workout there
Speaker 1: to be done. We still have a couple of teas
Speaker 1: to finish up. We have the driving range and the
Speaker 1: practice areas that are right up next to the clubhouse.
Speaker 1: Work that are going to kind of be last. So
Speaker 1: we will be you know, we'll be fighting it right
Speaker 1: to the very end, and then when we open up,
Speaker 1: we'll probably stuf have some other stuff to do. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things I always joke with our members
Speaker 1: is I'm you know, my president might put a little
Speaker 1: choke collar on me right now because I'm usually used
Speaker 1: to annoying just my president or my grounds chair. But
Speaker 1: you know, I always joke with people that we're not
Speaker 1: going to settle down. We're not going to let it rest.
Speaker 1: We're going right into what I call beyond the rough,
Speaker 1: so beyond the plane areas basically right, We're gonna do
Speaker 1: more rock art, We're gonna do more beehives, pollinator pathways.
Speaker 1: You know, how can we We want to do a
Speaker 1: little pumpkin gardens so I don't have to buy its
Speaker 1: defensive pumpkins every year, you know, right next to our nurseries.
Speaker 1: So there's endless work to be done after the project,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be a race to the end.
Speaker 1: And then you know, we have this horse farm next
Speaker 1: door that's owned by the autubond and they have a
Speaker 1: life the horse farm has a lifetime lease, so you know,
Speaker 1: when that thing comes available someday down the road, that's
Speaker 1: our pollinator par three. And then we hope we can
Speaker 1: get a beach club someday. And you know, so it's
Speaker 1: long range planning is the name of the game, and
Speaker 1: just you know, just keeping everybody focused on the big
Speaker 1: picture down the road. So I'll be distracting people with
Speaker 1: that while we're tying up the loose ends, getting ready
Speaker 1: to open up this golf course. But you're never done,
Speaker 1: You're never done.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, Jason, I can't wait to come out and
Speaker 2: see Patterson Club. It's going to be on my short
Speaker 2: list of places to see in twenty twenty six. I
Speaker 2: got to play more golf in Connecticut, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's a good place to start. And thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2: I hope you have a great holidays, and most importantly,
Speaker 2: go bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bear down, buddy, bear down. Happy holidays. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Great stuff.
Speaker 2: Cheers all right, big thanks for listening to our final
Speaker 2: podcast of the year. Big thanks to everybody for making
Speaker 2: this a great year, as well as a thank you
Speaker 2: to PJ Clark, our faithful editor and who's produced this
Speaker 2: podcast brilliantly over the course of the year. PJ and
Speaker 2: I had a long call about next year. Really excited.
Speaker 2: We're going to cook up some new stuff and try
Speaker 2: and push this podcast up another level. So thank you
Speaker 2: to everybody who's been with us for a long time.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everybody who listened to their first episodes
Speaker 2: this year. Can't wait for twenty twenty six and to
Speaker 2: get back on the grind. I hope everybody has a
Speaker 2: great holiday season and a great, safe new year. We'll
Speaker 2: see you in twenty twenty six.