Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butch podcast. We come to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. Happy New Year took a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks off. Everyone had a happy and safe holiday season. Um.
Speaker 1: I got a little cold weather here in Florida for Christmas,
Speaker 1: which was nice. So UM, but I hope everybody had fun. Um,
Speaker 1: So the pot is back in this week. Gil hants
Speaker 1: probably the hottest architect in in Gulf architecture. UM, certainly
Speaker 1: from a major championship standpoint. I mean, Gil seems to
Speaker 1: be that guy right now that all the governing bodies UM,
Speaker 1: specifically the US Open. Uh, they seem to be choosing
Speaker 1: Gil to come in and do a lot of the
Speaker 1: redesigns we talked about that. Um. He did a redesign
Speaker 1: of the of the wing Foot course that Bryson Dashambo
Speaker 1: won the US Open. On redesign of the U S
Speaker 1: Open course the country club that Matts Matt's Fitzpatrick went
Speaker 1: on past year and Los Angeles country Club, Uh redid
Speaker 1: that one and that's where the U S Open will
Speaker 1: be held this year. UM. I love his work. UM.
Speaker 1: I like him as a person. I think he's a
Speaker 1: really really cool guy. I like the aesthetic and UM listen.
Speaker 1: Golf architecture is is a hot topic, right UM, from
Speaker 1: an aesthetic standpoint, from a UM distant standpoint, from a
Speaker 1: design standpoint, and and Gil is definitely at the forefront
Speaker 1: of golf course architecture in two. So sit back and
Speaker 1: enjoy the interview with Gil. Hands Well, Gil, thanks UM
Speaker 1: for taking the time to do this. UM. We've had
Speaker 1: I've had golf instructors, I've had professional golfers, but to
Speaker 1: UM get a golf course architect like yourself, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a huge thing. And UM, I'm super excited to
Speaker 1: talk to full disclosure. When I was younger, my dad
Speaker 1: was building uh south Shore Harbor and clear Lake, Texas
Speaker 1: for UM Bruce Devlin and Voneggie and I worked in
Speaker 1: the summertime on helping him build the golf course. So
Speaker 1: you know what it's like, it's that's the only way
Speaker 1: to do it, get your hands. It is amazing, you
Speaker 1: know when you look at what golf course has become.
Speaker 1: I mean that experience has always kind of shaped my
Speaker 1: view of it. You know, we were you know, putting
Speaker 1: in the drains and the bunkers and then filling it
Speaker 1: up with the gravel, and you know, they were still filling,
Speaker 1: you know, grading the lake parts, and then then they
Speaker 1: were shaping the greens. When you when you see a
Speaker 1: golf course, um, from start to finish, it is an
Speaker 1: amazing process. And it's something that I think for someone
Speaker 1: like you to get to do that on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: it must just be an amazing experience. It is, and
Speaker 1: and and first and foremost it's fun. I mean to
Speaker 1: see you know, you see probably you know, with with
Speaker 1: what you do, you see a progression. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: you're you're that good that you see instant results, but
Speaker 1: you know, you work with a student and you see
Speaker 1: the progression over time and and from us it's like
Speaker 1: a daily thing you can at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I've I've said this before. My favorite time on site
Speaker 1: is when we shut the machines off and we get
Speaker 1: out of them and we look at what we've accomplished
Speaker 1: that day, and you can see what you've shaped. You
Speaker 1: can see the creation all of these things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's number one is rewarding goes quiet and you
Speaker 1: were finally got the machine, and and number two, the
Speaker 1: sons usually going down. And so it's just that special
Speaker 1: special time on site. But having the ability to see
Speaker 1: a daily result over and over again, and then you know,
Speaker 1: shifting landscapes, different projects, et cetera is one of the
Speaker 1: more rewarding parts of what we get to do. Why
Speaker 1: golf instruction for you go, I mean, talk me through.
Speaker 1: You know what made you get into this, why you
Speaker 1: did it, and how you started. Yeah, it's um. I
Speaker 1: came to golf, you know, later, like I was sixteen.
Speaker 1: I think my grandfather was the only golfer in our family,
Speaker 1: and he hung the moon as far as I was concerned,
Speaker 1: just idolized him. I've never met a nicer man, and
Speaker 1: just the way he handled himself, it was it was
Speaker 1: a great role model. And when he invited me to
Speaker 1: go play golf, it was like yes, And I think
Speaker 1: I fell in love with the golf landscape. Then. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it was because he was in that
Speaker 1: golf landscape or whether it was just the beauty of it.
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like that or experienced it. And
Speaker 1: then it got to be a point where I just
Speaker 1: you know, over time went along and you went to
Speaker 1: school study political science and history, which was where I
Speaker 1: thought I was going to go with me. I had
Speaker 1: the I had the exact same major. By the way,
Speaker 1: did you really industry? So you know, yeah, you know exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, now what are you doing to have that?
Speaker 1: So I wound up going to Cornell and studying city
Speaker 1: and regional planning and not landscape architecture. And I met
Speaker 1: a guy named Tom Griswold who subsequently went on to
Speaker 1: work for Tom Fazzio for years and years. He was
Speaker 1: studying to be a golf architect. And I went home.
Speaker 1: Tras and I were engaged at the time of Mary
Speaker 1: thirty six years. I went home and said, listen, you
Speaker 1: can do this. You can actually become a golf architect.
Speaker 1: I doodled holes for forever, and it was gonna mean
Speaker 1: another year of school because I didn't have a design
Speaker 1: undergrad but she was incredibly supportive and switched gears right
Speaker 1: then and there. So it was. It was not a
Speaker 1: linear path by any stretch of the imagination. But come
Speaker 1: to say, and I'm sure it helps you as well.
Speaker 1: You know, the history of the game, understanding appreciating it
Speaker 1: if through your eyes, the evolution of the golf swing
Speaker 1: and equipment and technology through our eyes, the evolution of
Speaker 1: golf courses and especially when we deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of these great old clubs. That's an important part of it.
Speaker 1: And you know as well, club politics are brutal, so
Speaker 1: having an understanding of, you know, sort of the political science,
Speaker 1: how you deal with people, how you handle people. So
Speaker 1: while it wasn't a direct benefit to me, it's it's had.
Speaker 1: It's that degree combination is paid off over the years.
Speaker 1: You said that you did a lot of drawings and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, I think, you know, fifty three, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're certainly not young people. And I think
Speaker 1: now you can go you can go online and look
Speaker 1: at all of the great golf courses. There's videos, there's
Speaker 1: so much content, there's so much information out there. But
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, my dad had all these
Speaker 1: great old books and there were the you know, the
Speaker 1: top hundred golf courses in the world. You know. It
Speaker 1: was a book, probably in the seventies, and I remember
Speaker 1: just looking through it and it had pictures of the
Speaker 1: holes and then it had like a little aerial map
Speaker 1: of what the layout was. And I said, go on,
Speaker 1: take you know, magic markers and you know, draw all
Speaker 1: these you know, fancy holes and try and make golf
Speaker 1: courses and my dad was like, you have no idea,
Speaker 1: what the hell you're doing. That's never gonna work. But
Speaker 1: I just loved the drawing in the the over. I
Speaker 1: remember we lived in Morocco and my dad was the
Speaker 1: first golf Royal Dar Salam Trent Jones um the fifty
Speaker 1: four holes there, and they they had I mean we
Speaker 1: moved there in the seventies and they had this like
Speaker 1: it's like a I guess it was a model of
Speaker 1: the golf course that you know that actually you know
Speaker 1: those old ones from the seventies. It was actually real,
Speaker 1: was big, it was really big, and it was covered
Speaker 1: in like a dome case and everything, and I just
Speaker 1: always remember being fascinated by that. And then after the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup in Paris, I went back to the World
Speaker 1: Arslan for the first time I back in Morocco since
Speaker 1: the seventies, and it was still there was still I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like the little you know, the
Speaker 1: little tiny flags like kins and stuff, so well, I
Speaker 1: was always fascinated with it. Um. I read a quote
Speaker 1: that you said that your job is to identify which
Speaker 1: of the properties natural elements you want to emphasize. So
Speaker 1: when you go and you look at a site. Um
Speaker 1: do you think in two gil we're getting for new
Speaker 1: build golf courses, We're getting more for you guys, more
Speaker 1: interesting sites then we have in the past. Because if
Speaker 1: you look at where great golf courses historically are being
Speaker 1: you know built, the old school ones, they're in urban areas, right.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at you know, wingfo l
Speaker 1: A Country, claud Southern these are in urban, urban areas.
Speaker 1: And I think so many of the great, great new
Speaker 1: build design golf courses are going to some amazing locations. Um,
Speaker 1: why do you think there is that push to do
Speaker 1: that now? I think we went through a period of
Speaker 1: time in the eighties and nineties and early two thousands
Speaker 1: scored golf development and design with the with a few
Speaker 1: exceptions obviously were predicated on golf as an amenity. Right,
Speaker 1: it was there to sell lots, it was there to
Speaker 1: feature housing development, or there were you know, golf wasn't
Speaker 1: the primary focus. And then we went through a really
Speaker 1: steep decline in golf construction and new golf courses and
Speaker 1: starting in the early two thousand's and running for a
Speaker 1: period of time where nobody was building golf course. The
Speaker 1: only ones who were doing it were the visionaries, and
Speaker 1: you had Dick Young's capel at Sandhills a little prior
Speaker 1: to that. Then Mike Kaiser came along and Rich mac
Speaker 1: its stream Song, and so you had people who were
Speaker 1: willing to embrace the vision of quality. Golf will attract
Speaker 1: people to go anywhere, right it's you're literally in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, and a lot of these things. And
Speaker 1: we had the great fortune of Michael wal Ref doing
Speaker 1: the same thing at a Hoopie match club. So you
Speaker 1: you had people whose primary focus was golf first and foremost,
Speaker 1: and with the concept of you know, field of dreams
Speaker 1: building and they will come the thing that you pointed out,
Speaker 1: which was interesting, and it was nowhere near as remote.
Speaker 1: But back in the day, you know L. A. C. C. Wingfoot,
Speaker 1: Southern Hills, they were outside the city. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a lot of it took up people a long
Speaker 1: time to get there, so they were considered remote as
Speaker 1: it related to the modes of transportation at the time.
Speaker 1: My stay talks about that when he comes down to
Speaker 1: Seminole because my grandfather was the head grow there for
Speaker 1: forever and he grew up there. So where the when
Speaker 1: you go into Seminole on the left hand side, the
Speaker 1: maintenance barn, the house that's there in. My dad says, listen,
Speaker 1: that's where we used to live. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: when we came here in the you know, the forties
Speaker 1: and the fifties, this was just all sand dunes. There
Speaker 1: was nothing here. So you're it's actually the golf courses
Speaker 1: like Wingfoot, they were outside the city, but now when
Speaker 1: you go out there, they're so penned in. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think that's interesting that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: I never thought of that. But a lot of the great,
Speaker 1: you know, the old school golf courses that they would
Speaker 1: want to have major championships at in two they're just
Speaker 1: doesn't the land and the infrastructure for everything that would
Speaker 1: take to have a major championship there. But you're right,
Speaker 1: I mean Southern Hills. We were just there for the
Speaker 1: p G. A that would have been way outside of
Speaker 1: the city back in the day. But you don't you
Speaker 1: don't think that that's that's a really interesting thought. You
Speaker 1: mentioned Southern Hills. They just had the PGA there in two.
Speaker 1: Um I was there. Oh gosh, it's gotta be Oh
Speaker 1: one was the last time I was there for the
Speaker 1: US Open that um retief goosen, UM one kill. That
Speaker 1: golf course is unrecognizable from what it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean I got there and I was like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't remember any of the holes because the golf course
Speaker 1: looks so so much different. Um. The task when you're
Speaker 1: I mean you're being tasked. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at last year the major Championships, the country Club, you
Speaker 1: guys did work on that, Southern Hills, you did work
Speaker 1: on that. Um l A country club where the U
Speaker 1: S open is in three you've done work there, Wingfoot. Um.
Speaker 1: When you get the call to do something like this,
Speaker 1: is it not called that a golden era golf course
Speaker 1: gives you guys the call? Is it excitement? Is it? Um?
Speaker 1: Wonder man? Is that? What's the feeling when you get
Speaker 1: the call and you know you're gonna get to get
Speaker 1: an opportunity to go to a place like the country club?
Speaker 1: You know that's you know eighteen hundreds, UM, wingfoot, all
Speaker 1: the history there. How much of it is excitement? Trepidation,
Speaker 1: responsibility that you feel that you've been given this huge
Speaker 1: task to basically take a master work of art and
Speaker 1: now change it. Uh, it's all of the above. I
Speaker 1: mean all of the emotions that you mentioned. It's I'm
Speaker 1: still at heart of the biggest golf geek nerd when
Speaker 1: it comes to golf courses. I mean when I drive
Speaker 1: into the country, but I was still wave to the
Speaker 1: cardboard cutout that's sitting in the you know, the guard shack,
Speaker 1: and it's just these little things that you you have,
Speaker 1: these pinch me moments of wow. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: trusting us with this, as you said, work of artist, masterpiece.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, the way Jim Wagner and
Speaker 1: I have always approached these things is with the ultimate
Speaker 1: amount of respect for the original architect and trying to
Speaker 1: do the best we can and back to our history
Speaker 1: um degree, trying to really delve into what did they
Speaker 1: do here? What did Perry Maxwell do at Southern Hills.
Speaker 1: I don't care what Perry Maxwell it in Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: or at Colonial, it doesn't really matter. I don't care
Speaker 1: what Tilling has did at San Francisco Golf Club. What matters?
Speaker 1: What did he do at Winged Foot and on and on?
Speaker 1: And I think that that level of precision and trust me,
Speaker 1: we were so lucky that we work at these great
Speaker 1: places that that they have great archives, so we can
Speaker 1: go back and look at aerial photographs of everage shot
Speaker 1: sequence of Bobby Jones when he won the nine US
Speaker 1: Open at Winged Foot. You know, those don't exist at
Speaker 1: some other places, and so you do the homework, You
Speaker 1: do the best that you possibly can. When we found
Speaker 1: US Women's Amateur program at Oakland Hills that had photos
Speaker 1: of every single green complex were taken from the fairway,
Speaker 1: it was like the gold mine because now we could
Speaker 1: literally stand in the same place and look at that
Speaker 1: and try to recreate it. So it's a similar formula
Speaker 1: whether it's Oakmon or whether it's Winged Foot, or whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, the Creek Club or Sleepy Hollow or
Speaker 1: some of these great old courses that are never going
Speaker 1: to host major championships. Yet still we we focus as
Speaker 1: much as we possibly can on getting all those details
Speaker 1: right and figuring it out. And then the other part
Speaker 1: of it is that we've got to trust that what
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell did at Southern Hills in NI is still
Speaker 1: relevant to challenge somebody like Justin Thomas in two and
Speaker 1: to to test the best players. And the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things that served
Speaker 1: Jim and I the best is that we've granted. We
Speaker 1: have to add back tease, we have to shift bunkers,
Speaker 1: we have to do things to accommodate the distance that
Speaker 1: they play. But at the core of the golf course,
Speaker 1: the strategy and the interest and as you said earlier,
Speaker 1: finding the best natural features. These guys did all of that,
Speaker 1: and so we have to check our ego at the
Speaker 1: door and think, hey, we're not We're not going to
Speaker 1: improve on tilling Nest. We're just going to restore what
Speaker 1: he did and try and get the picture as close to,
Speaker 1: you know, the image that was there when he first
Speaker 1: built the golf course. And if we can do those things,
Speaker 1: we just have to trust that that's going to be
Speaker 1: good enough. And you know this preparing players from major championships.
Speaker 1: We can do everything we want a need to with
Speaker 1: the course. The U s g A, the PGA can
Speaker 1: do everything they need or want with the setup. But
Speaker 1: it's all gonna come down to the weather that week.
Speaker 1: You know, if it rains, the golf course is going
Speaker 1: to play one way. If it's bone dry, it's gonna
Speaker 1: play another way. If the you know, the crazy thing
Speaker 1: about Southern Hills is we had like all four seasons
Speaker 1: in one week. So those guys they had every single
Speaker 1: possible test, which was great, and I think that added
Speaker 1: tremendously to the championship. So I think it's learning several
Speaker 1: things that we've come to accept. And for a while
Speaker 1: when we first started doing this, it was it was
Speaker 1: hard to accept. Is that, hey, once once the week
Speaker 1: of the championship starts, our hands are off the wheel.
Speaker 1: We've got nothing to do with it. And and two
Speaker 1: is just to accept that tilling as Ross Mackenzie. Those
Speaker 1: guys were so good at what they did that we'll
Speaker 1: just have to trust that their their architecture is going
Speaker 1: to be be good in this A zero as well.
Speaker 1: So let's take a quick break to thank our partner
Speaker 1: for wellness. You guys have heard me talk about it.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of their coffee, big fan of
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Speaker 1: I also put the good stuff. Put a scoop of
Speaker 1: that in my coffee, but I also put it in
Speaker 1: smoothies and take it on the road with me. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that I've been using are their energy bites. UM.
Speaker 1: I keep them with me on the golf course. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of times when I'm out on tour, I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time to sit and eat.
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Speaker 1: now let's get back to the interview. I read that
Speaker 1: in in doing some of the work you did at
Speaker 1: the country class at brook Law, and you looked at images,
Speaker 1: as you said about Oakland Hills from four, you're able
Speaker 1: to kind of look at the golf course and what
Speaker 1: it was, Um, Gil, why do you think so if
Speaker 1: you look at what you are being tasked to do
Speaker 1: with a lot of these great old school, Golden era
Speaker 1: golf courses, why do you think they have changed so
Speaker 1: much and you're taking it back to what it was?
Speaker 1: Why couldn't they stay the way they were? Because a
Speaker 1: lot of times we see golf courses now that we
Speaker 1: go back to that that you guys come into and
Speaker 1: all the designers come in, and there's this push to
Speaker 1: take it back to the original design, what the original
Speaker 1: designer wanted. Why do you think golf courses evolved and
Speaker 1: change to where you're trying to take them back? Is
Speaker 1: it just evolution? Is it just what happens with trees
Speaker 1: and earth and dirt that over eight years everything changes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's harden to contemplate that somebody would
Speaker 1: ever put a limitum siting on a Frankloyd right house.
Speaker 1: But that happened. You know, people look at technology and
Speaker 1: what's new and what's and you also have to think
Speaker 1: that back in the day Donald Ross tilling Hast, they
Speaker 1: weren't gods. They were just guys. And there were competitors
Speaker 1: of their as younger men who came along in the
Speaker 1: generation after them, who didn't have this reverence for their work,
Speaker 1: and they were more than happy to put their fingerprints
Speaker 1: all over it and change it in the in the
Speaker 1: basically under the guise of hey, we're modernizing because the
Speaker 1: game has changed so much. We've gone from hickory chefts
Speaker 1: to skille chefs, we've changed golf balls, et cetera. Not
Speaker 1: unlike what happens, you know, it's just the history of
Speaker 1: golf and the reaction to golf courses have doesn't change.
Speaker 1: That's been was happening in the twenties, thirties, forties, and
Speaker 1: so those guys were not reticent at all to move
Speaker 1: a green below up a green, do this, do that,
Speaker 1: And so I think you had this period of time
Speaker 1: where and they also had heavy earth moving equipment come
Speaker 1: into the construction process. You know, it wasn't mules and
Speaker 1: scrapers moving a green, It was a bulldozer and excavator
Speaker 1: just pushed it over there and go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: So I think it was a combination of all those factors.
Speaker 1: The other thing that really added dramatically too, it was
Speaker 1: the Asian And when these guys built golf courses, you
Speaker 1: didn't have wall to wall irrigation. You didn't have the
Speaker 1: ability to go ahead. And and so what happens over
Speaker 1: time is when the first irrigation systems went in, they
Speaker 1: weren't five row, they weren't three row. There were one
Speaker 1: row irrigation system. So that went down the center. And
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, you've got this big open
Speaker 1: golf course with one row of irrigation down the center,
Speaker 1: and you've got this green swath and all this brown
Speaker 1: around it. Well, that doesn't look great. So what do
Speaker 1: we do when we fill the space for treats. We
Speaker 1: start putting trees in where the irrigation doesn't get And
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, the trees start to grow
Speaker 1: in and we start to change and alter the look
Speaker 1: of the landscape. And well, what do trees do? They grow?
Speaker 1: So eventually the trees grow, they filled the space. The
Speaker 1: golf course becomes narrower, just through that type of evolution.
Speaker 1: So you have a combination of all these steps, and
Speaker 1: that's where you get to and then you don't get
Speaker 1: until maybe the late eighties when Frank Hannigan writes his
Speaker 1: piece on a w telling has and it's called the
Speaker 1: Forgotten Genius in the U. S G. A golf journal.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing you know, there's a Don
Speaker 1: Ross Society, and there'd be is this appreciation for great
Speaker 1: golf course architecture, and these Gulf architects become cult figures.
Speaker 1: And then it becomes, as you mentioned earlier, part of
Speaker 1: the the Internet, and you can go on and you
Speaker 1: can google, and you can learn, and now there's a
Speaker 1: Reiner Society in Mackenzie society. And so this evolution gets
Speaker 1: us to where we are now, where you know, it's
Speaker 1: on the back of every scorecard is Seth Reiner design
Speaker 1: aw telling us and the clubs have appreciation. And thankfully,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a generation of golf course architects who
Speaker 1: also recognized that, hey, what they did pretty special. Let's
Speaker 1: go back. So I think that's kind of the timeline
Speaker 1: of where we got to where we are, and we're
Speaker 1: we're really happy that we've been entrusted to what we
Speaker 1: think is do the right thing by putting that stuff back.
Speaker 1: When we look at the great golf courses. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I went through and I saw that you listed your
Speaker 1: this was in but you listed your top ten golf
Speaker 1: courses in the world. St. Andrew's National Golf Links, Chicago Golf,
Speaker 1: Cycrus Point, l A C. C. Marion, Nearfield, Pine Valley,
Speaker 1: Royal County Down, Royal Melbourne. All of those golf courses
Speaker 1: originally were designed by the great. Um. They stood the
Speaker 1: test of time. Yes, they've had some tweets to them.
Speaker 1: But what is it still that you think made those
Speaker 1: golf courses that you put on the list? What are
Speaker 1: the similarities, but what is what do you think made
Speaker 1: them so great by the designers? Because if you look
Speaker 1: at what you all know now about grass, about agronomy,
Speaker 1: about the ability to be able to move earth and
Speaker 1: things like that, they they were so not like that.
Speaker 1: And I think there is this big push right now
Speaker 1: in golf course architecture. Wouldn't you agree that it's to
Speaker 1: try and move as little earth as possible. And there
Speaker 1: was a time in the eighties, you know, the Nicolas
Speaker 1: stuff was all of these big pushed locks of hatchee
Speaker 1: on here in Jupiter, these big giant mounds everywhere Pete
Speaker 1: died did that at at Um the players came to
Speaker 1: all of this earth move and it seems to me
Speaker 1: there's this throwback move now to try and move as
Speaker 1: little earth as possible. And if you look at the
Speaker 1: golf courses you listed as some of your favorites, they
Speaker 1: aren't they're they're not golf courses that have a lot
Speaker 1: of earth moving to them. You've never seen me swinging
Speaker 1: a golf club. So if you look, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of those are wide golf courses. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of options and width, and I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of what those courses do is they allowed the
Speaker 1: player to determine the way they're going to play the
Speaker 1: golf courses versus the architect determining it for you. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's that's the best set of golf,
Speaker 1: is that the questions that are asked are compelling for
Speaker 1: the best players in the world, but they're also compelling
Speaker 1: for a thirty handicap, and they're also compelling for a
Speaker 1: ten handicap, And and so that there are options and
Speaker 1: ways to play. And I think that's a similar you know,
Speaker 1: with the exception of Pine Valley. Pine Valley asked questions
Speaker 1: and that you have to step up and hit a
Speaker 1: golf shot. Bill Kittleman is the is the great old
Speaker 1: pro at marian who has worked with us on several projects.
Speaker 1: Turned ninety the other day, So shout out to Bill.
Speaker 1: Not that he listens to podcasts, but anyway, he was
Speaker 1: an amazing um mentor to Jim and I. But he
Speaker 1: you know, there would be occasional times where we put
Speaker 1: a bunker or something in or you to force carry
Speaker 1: and he would just look at us and say, you know, son,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just got to hit a golf shot, and
Speaker 1: that's just part of the test. But I think in
Speaker 1: in by and large, those golf courses occupy great natural sites.
Speaker 1: The architects maximize the potential of those sites. They gave
Speaker 1: you options, They asked really interesting questions within the landscape.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what we look for. I think
Speaker 1: is is as they mentioned earlier, the move to these
Speaker 1: more remote sites were and and the questions that were
Speaker 1: asked to Mackenzie and Crump is you know, just build
Speaker 1: us the best golf course. Not build us the best
Speaker 1: golf course and hide the car pest because we want
Speaker 1: have waldwell carcass, not build us the best golf course,
Speaker 1: and oh, by the way, we need a waterfall that
Speaker 1: we need to lake. Oh by the way, we need
Speaker 1: to photograph this. It was solely purely about golf. And
Speaker 1: I think that's ultimately what what led them to be
Speaker 1: so great. And that's what the you know, the Mike
Speaker 1: Kaisers of the world, they're looking at there just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: find the best piece of property and build us something
Speaker 1: that's solely related and predicated on quality of golf. And
Speaker 1: I think if you look at those ten and you
Speaker 1: can quibble whether some belong, some don't, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the great things about what we do,
Speaker 1: right we talked about golf, is why do you like this?
Speaker 1: Why do you like that? I understand fully the Shinnecock
Speaker 1: Hills is probably a better quote unquote test of golf
Speaker 1: than national. But I'd rather play a national because it's
Speaker 1: just more fun, it's more interesting, there's more opportunities to play.
Speaker 1: But you, as as accomplished player, you might be like
Speaker 1: kid so much better than so there's and that's the
Speaker 1: great thing about that. We get to we get to
Speaker 1: argue the merits based on what we see, and there's
Speaker 1: and there's no right or wrong. One of the quotes
Speaker 1: that I and and looking to talk to you today,
Speaker 1: I love that you said that the soul of what
Speaker 1: you were doing is trying is about the playing of
Speaker 1: the game, right, not about all of the other things.
Speaker 1: You know, Gil, I worked at Austin Golf Club, not
Speaker 1: Austin Country, but I worked at Austin Golf Club for
Speaker 1: Ben ben prenchase home course um that he did with
Speaker 1: Bill and I worked there for a year. And there
Speaker 1: was a new course that opened up in Austin. This
Speaker 1: is like two thousand five, um, another new course. And
Speaker 1: somebody said, hey, Ben, have you played that? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: played at the other I thought it was great. And
Speaker 1: some guys said, yeah, well it was really really nice.
Speaker 1: But I mean a tour pro would just destroy that
Speaker 1: golf course. And and Ben crunch I said, you know there,
Speaker 1: there will never be a professional golf event at the
Speaker 1: golf course, right. He said, if you look at all
Speaker 1: of the golf courses on the planet Earth, it's less
Speaker 1: than one percent that will ever have a professional golf
Speaker 1: tournament on there. But everyone that plays golf looks at it,
Speaker 1: I think through the lens of the professional right. So
Speaker 1: how do you balance all of this out, because obviously
Speaker 1: you're trying to balance out building golf courses, doing a restoration.
Speaker 1: What say, at a place, you know, like Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Country Club, the members are going to play it, so
Speaker 1: it has to be playable for them, but it also
Speaker 1: has to be a test to professional golfers and an
Speaker 1: own thing. And you probably are. You're in the same
Speaker 1: world that I am. I don't think our listeners realize
Speaker 1: the difference between professional golf, tournament golf, major golf, the
Speaker 1: caliber of shots, the type of golf you have to
Speaker 1: play to play those golfers, and then what the rest
Speaker 1: of us do who aren't on television right there is
Speaker 1: a massive difference. How do you balance it out between saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: what am I going to try and test here for
Speaker 1: the players? You know, for a major championship, you know
Speaker 1: that if you're going into l A c C. The
Speaker 1: U S opens there in So whatever design work you're
Speaker 1: going to do to change a golf course to take
Speaker 1: it back to old pictures, and ultimately the showcase is
Speaker 1: going to be this June, this coming June, when the
Speaker 1: best players in the world or there. How are you
Speaker 1: trying to balance that test, Well, it comes down to
Speaker 1: know two things. One thing that you know what Ben
Speaker 1: was talking about, which, by the way, Bill and Ben
Speaker 1: are they've been so so good to me and Jim
Speaker 1: and they're just the best just the best people but
Speaker 1: also the best designers and so h they're they're incredible.
Speaker 1: And from that standpoint, you know, but we all work
Speaker 1: for clients, right, Everybody seems to think, oh, well, Jill
Speaker 1: Hans thought that was a great idea to do a
Speaker 1: hoopie match club. That was Michael all Rs idea, and
Speaker 1: he came to us and he said, Hey, I've got
Speaker 1: this crazy idea. I want to build a golf course
Speaker 1: where you don't ever write your score down you can play.
Speaker 1: And you were like, yeah, that's incredible. And so we
Speaker 1: have to work for what the clients looking for. If
Speaker 1: the client's goal is to host a major championship, like
Speaker 1: you know, we just built the new course of e
Speaker 1: G Frisco, which is going to host a senior interest
Speaker 1: of that. Yesterday that that first kind of leaked out
Speaker 1: online again it looks very very minimal kind of that
Speaker 1: that bunkering that looks like kind of found object bunkering
Speaker 1: and things like that. Yeah, and and that's you know
Speaker 1: interesting we be We found nine holes and we had
Speaker 1: to construct nine holes, and so I'm hopeful that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, Jim and I think, if
Speaker 1: you can't figure out which ones we built and which
Speaker 1: ones we found, then we've actually done a really good
Speaker 1: job out there. Um So, but you're working for the client,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately is what you have to build your
Speaker 1: golf course for. Like if he's saying, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to challenge all my buddies are single digits,
Speaker 1: and that's who's gonna play out here, and that's the reputation.
Speaker 1: Well great if it's you know what, No, my mom
Speaker 1: and dad are gonna play golf out here with me,
Speaker 1: and I want them to be able to enjoy the
Speaker 1: test of golf. So there's a lot of that baked
Speaker 1: into new course design. From a restoration standpoint, it gets
Speaker 1: back to that whole just trusting the original architect and
Speaker 1: then ultimately, as they say, when our hands are off
Speaker 1: the wheel, when Carrie Haig and John Bodenhammer step on
Speaker 1: site for setting up major championships, and we have built
Speaker 1: such a great relationship with both those guys and their
Speaker 1: teams that we trust that they get it and they
Speaker 1: have ultimately goals for what they're you know, everybody says,
Speaker 1: well they must have a target score. No they don't,
Speaker 1: because it's all down to the weather that week and
Speaker 1: the way that the setup ultimately works. But George Thomas
Speaker 1: at l ECC was such a genius that he figured
Speaker 1: out ways that's through the setup of the golf course.
Speaker 1: And that's something that we focus a lot on. We
Speaker 1: focused in Frisco, we focused in Rio for the Olympics,
Speaker 1: was that on any given day, if the architecture is
Speaker 1: good enough, they can set that golf course up as
Speaker 1: hard as they want or as easy as they want.
Speaker 1: So if you give options to tuck pins or berry pins,
Speaker 1: where it actually you know the interesting conversation And I
Speaker 1: would ask you this question because the guys that you teach,
Speaker 1: you know, our angles relevant anymore? They hit it so
Speaker 1: far so well. Did really care if they've got a
Speaker 1: bad angle coming into a green? Do they really care
Speaker 1: if the pins tucked up behind a punk? Or do
Speaker 1: they ever think? You know, do I want to get
Speaker 1: to this side? And I think a lot of what
Speaker 1: we see in major championship preparation is that that becomes
Speaker 1: more relevant because the penalties are that much more severe
Speaker 1: if you don't hit the shot the roughest, thicker is harder.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like a regular tour set up
Speaker 1: every week in, week out. And so I think ultimately,
Speaker 1: if the original golf architect has provided enough set up
Speaker 1: opportunities that um, you know, the Wednesday Seniors after lunch
Speaker 1: event at L A c C. Those guys can go
Speaker 1: out and have fun, and in June they can set
Speaker 1: it up so that it's difficult enough for the best
Speaker 1: players in the world, and you're spot on the difference
Speaker 1: in quality between what they what they do. I mean,
Speaker 1: people always say, well, how are you gonna Absolutely we're not.
Speaker 1: You know, the golf course is going to be, the
Speaker 1: weather is going to be what challenges them, whether it's firm,
Speaker 1: and I think that's sorry to digress and ramble, but
Speaker 1: you know, that's ultimately the best defense if we have
Speaker 1: good architecture we have if the wind blows and if
Speaker 1: the golf course is firm, because you work with these
Speaker 1: guys and in my mind, I'm thinking you're working with
Speaker 1: them to have a predictable outcome every time they swing
Speaker 1: the golf club. When they swing a seven iron. The
Speaker 1: outcomes predictable when they swing the driver, it's predictable, predictable.
Speaker 1: But when the ground is firm and bouncy, they don't.
Speaker 1: That's not a predictable predictable. Is it going to bounce
Speaker 1: twice and stop? Is not going to stop? Is it
Speaker 1: going to check? You know, those types of things ultimately
Speaker 1: add so much to the test, and those are completely
Speaker 1: out of our hands. So let's take a short break
Speaker 1: and we will be back right after this. Alright, let's
Speaker 1: get back to the interview. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things in major championships, Gill, when we're walking around with
Speaker 1: players over the twenty years that I've been doing this,
Speaker 1: I don't think the people that are listening would would
Speaker 1: they'd be blown away what we're talking about. I'd say
Speaker 1: the majority of the time when we're talking about non
Speaker 1: technical stuff on the golf course, from a strategy standpoint,
Speaker 1: at majors, it's all about where you want to miss it, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's this this spine line between talking about
Speaker 1: where you want to miss it and where you're trying
Speaker 1: to hit it. And I remember I worked years ago
Speaker 1: Trevor Immleman was a good friend of mine he has
Speaker 1: been in the podcast. Um, Trevor was too smart for golf, right.
Speaker 1: His brain was just smart. He overthought everything and he
Speaker 1: would just obsess about outcome outcome outcome outcome outcome right.
Speaker 1: And we played a practice round with Tiger when he
Speaker 1: wanted Royal Liverpool where he just shot zero. We're super
Speaker 1: baked out and had that great round. Were never hit
Speaker 1: driver when we played a practice round and tigering. This
Speaker 1: is like you know, in the day Tiger Tiger Mania
Speaker 1: and watching I mean Trevor watched the way Tiger and
Speaker 1: Steve Williams and around that golf course and everything was
Speaker 1: about Okay, that's where we're going to hit the golf ball.
Speaker 1: That's where we're going to hit the golf ball. And
Speaker 1: if we miss it, we miss it there. And that
Speaker 1: was it. It was point A to point B and
Speaker 1: if we are going to miss it, the miss is
Speaker 1: better from here than it is from there. We're either
Speaker 1: going to lay short of these bunkers or we're going
Speaker 1: to take it over it. And I think it was
Speaker 1: interesting to watch a young kid early in his career
Speaker 1: like that. For drug Or, he was like, Tiger just
Speaker 1: makes golf so easy. And I was like, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he focuses on where he's trying to hit the golf ball,
Speaker 1: and then he thinks about where he's going to miss
Speaker 1: the golf ball, if he's gonna miss it, And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, that's a pretty the pretty good philosophy.
Speaker 1: But we are doing a lot of from a technique standpoint,
Speaker 1: you know, we are doing a lot of the players
Speaker 1: looking out, Okay, can we get it over those trees?
Speaker 1: What's the risk versus the reward? Um? Obviously, Still, the
Speaker 1: players I'm working with don't have distance issues. Right, there's
Speaker 1: this massive debate in you know, in my earned golf today. Um, distance,
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that as an architect? So
Speaker 1: I'll give you a great example of marrying in thirteen
Speaker 1: the the first part three is that part three in
Speaker 1: the composite three and um, it's a little into the breeze.
Speaker 1: And DJ was playing with Jeff Ogilvie and Lucas Clover.
Speaker 1: DJ hit three wood and came up short, and Lucas
Speaker 1: and Jeff both hit driver and came up short. And
Speaker 1: as we're walking up to the green, Jeff Ogilvy looked
Speaker 1: at us and says, now, what a great hole? Huh?
Speaker 1: We all just missed the green with the driver and
Speaker 1: the three wood. And I think there is this philosophy
Speaker 1: for the average golfer that we've got to make golf
Speaker 1: courses longer and length But the players don't want that.
Speaker 1: The best players in the world who are the longest,
Speaker 1: don't want that. They don't want the golf clubs or
Speaker 1: the golf courses to be longer. They want to be
Speaker 1: I think they want to be questions and forced to
Speaker 1: hit good shots. And as you know, the Rory mclroys
Speaker 1: of the world, the John ROMs, the Justin Thomas Is,
Speaker 1: the Dustin Johnson Campston, they want the golf course as
Speaker 1: hard as possible. They want hard golf courses. I mean
Speaker 1: we did, we've we've we've gone so much still in
Speaker 1: looking at players, We've looked at stats and going, okay,
Speaker 1: your type of golf is predicated on your good ball strike.
Speaker 1: You're this again, using Trevor Immlement as an example. Trevor
Speaker 1: hated go into places like Palm Springs, hate going to
Speaker 1: places like that. I remember once I was working with him,
Speaker 1: this is like two three years ago. He was in
Speaker 1: Palm Springs and he was shooting. You know, he missed
Speaker 1: the cup and he's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot
Speaker 1: a hundred when I go to Tory Pines next week.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you'll play great at Tory Pines next week.
Speaker 1: It was a hard golf course and he finished top
Speaker 1: ten and he was like, I have no idea how
Speaker 1: I finished top ten because I go to go to
Speaker 1: Palm Springs. I'm like, the was golf course. It's like
Speaker 1: you said, they're wide open, they're easy, there's no kind
Speaker 1: of premium. The best players in the world want their
Speaker 1: games to shine and be identified. So how do you,
Speaker 1: from a distant standpoint deal with that today because everybody's
Speaker 1: saying the golf ball and the players are too far.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's just the natural constraints of the property,
Speaker 1: Like if you're dealing with an old golf course. We
Speaker 1: Jim and I believe strongly that we hate to create
Speaker 1: what we call it disconnect where you know what we
Speaker 1: what most of us love about great old golf courses.
Speaker 1: You walk off the green, you're pretty much right on
Speaker 1: the next team if you if you've got to create something,
Speaker 1: and you know, Wingfoot was one example, we're number twelve.
Speaker 1: You know you could you walk back a hundred yards
Speaker 1: to to a t that's appropriate for them? I hate
Speaker 1: that we didn't create it. It was there, but it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where we don't want to
Speaker 1: break up the flow of the round of golf. Those
Speaker 1: guys are so used to just walking back that it's
Speaker 1: not like they're noticing the fact that they're walking back.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I might notice what this is
Speaker 1: getting tiresome. Not that I'd ever played back there, but
Speaker 1: you know, we this is getting tire and so we
Speaker 1: try to as best we possibly can just say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the distance that ultimately correlates the best with
Speaker 1: what Thomas was trying to do, with what Ross was
Speaker 1: trying to do, and that may wind up being seventy
Speaker 1: dred yards and that's fine, you know, and that's long,
Speaker 1: but it's not long for them. We don't feel there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do to physically challenge those guys
Speaker 1: with length. They can hit it so far it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. If it's just gonna be boring to watch
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. We'd rather have a more compelling
Speaker 1: and interesting test. And then the other thing you start
Speaker 1: to think about is, okay, do the math if we're
Speaker 1: trying to build and the the best golf courses in
Speaker 1: the world have the variety of shots. They have a
Speaker 1: Part three like the third at Marion Um, and then
Speaker 1: they have a Part three thirteenth of Marion that's a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty yards. You can't have a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty yard Part three and a three hundred and ten
Speaker 1: yard par four and do the math and get to
Speaker 1: seventy hundred. So you start to sacrifice vice, the variety
Speaker 1: and the quality of golf holes in order to reach
Speaker 1: this mythical number. And so we don't we don't ever
Speaker 1: focus on the art each it's not the primary thing.
Speaker 1: Our primary goal is to create the best, the most
Speaker 1: compelling and interesting set of eighteen golf holes. And on
Speaker 1: these major championship tests, um, you know that's been somebody
Speaker 1: else's work and we've stuck to that. We haven't said, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, we could get fifty yards here, but
Speaker 1: it would just totally destroyed the way the golf hole
Speaker 1: was intended to be played. So we we just Jim
Speaker 1: and I are not on the sort of beating the
Speaker 1: bandwagon of Okay, we gotta roll the ball back. We
Speaker 1: go to this it's like, listen, the smarter people will
Speaker 1: figure that out. We're just working with what we have.
Speaker 1: You know, could be next year that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden we gotta roll back. And now now we've got
Speaker 1: to think about shortenings and golf courses. But I think
Speaker 1: it's distance is never the primary focus. Withertain distance. But
Speaker 1: we also don't think that that's going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: the be all end. Now that being said, we built
Speaker 1: a golf course in Texas in Frisco that you know,
Speaker 1: if you stretch from back to back and back whole
Speaker 1: locations back tiste can play yards. But that is really
Speaker 1: again just to provide options for Carrie Haig. You know,
Speaker 1: he may get a down wind and he may be
Speaker 1: able to pull a tea back fifty yards that because
Speaker 1: the winds blow howling out of and down wind And okay,
Speaker 1: now that makes sense, but it's within the context again
Speaker 1: getting back to set up as architecture from major championships.
Speaker 1: As as many tools as we can give those guys
Speaker 1: in their toolbox, then they're going to create a better
Speaker 1: test for the best players in the world. But yeah,
Speaker 1: distance isn't it's nothing. It's not something Jim and I
Speaker 1: dwell on one of the things my dad has always said, Um,
Speaker 1: if you think about all of the great iconic par three's,
Speaker 1: they're not ten, they're not one nine. All of the
Speaker 1: great great par three's that provide from a major championship standpoint,
Speaker 1: they provide great theater. Um, you know twelve augusta true,
Speaker 1: there's these great holes. I think I thought you guys
Speaker 1: did a great job with that little short hole at
Speaker 1: um the country Club this year down the hill. All
Speaker 1: the players, um Gil loved that. They all got there
Speaker 1: and went, oh, it's just really really cool, whereas you
Speaker 1: would think that they wouldn't think a short hold downhill.
Speaker 1: I mean that guys are hitting too much and stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you missed that green, you're you're
Speaker 1: struggling to get it up and down. Um, what do
Speaker 1: you think that is that all these great iconic par
Speaker 1: three's aren't super super long, and they tended to be
Speaker 1: a kind of cool, almost funky design. I think that,
Speaker 1: I mean, from our perspective, the hardest souls to designer
Speaker 1: long part threes, because they're already hard by their nature
Speaker 1: because they're long, right, and so you're asking somebody with
Speaker 1: one shot to hit a green with a wood in
Speaker 1: their hands, not to hit a fairway, hit the green,
Speaker 1: and then so what do you do to make them
Speaker 1: more difficult? You don't want to put water on let
Speaker 1: me one, put bunkers all over them, whereas a lot
Speaker 1: of the more iconic holes have got sit in in
Speaker 1: the landscape beautifully, and because they've got bunkers around them,
Speaker 1: because it's a hundred and thirty or a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty yards, or there's an ocean along the side of
Speaker 1: the gulf hole because you know, it's all right, it's
Speaker 1: not that long. So I think it's a combination of
Speaker 1: all of those things. Is how do you make long
Speaker 1: holes interesting? And I've talked to tour players and they
Speaker 1: look at long part three and then I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to hit the green and
Speaker 1: get out of here with three and move on. There's
Speaker 1: never any sort of feeling of aggression. And architecturally, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, we don't feel like physically we can
Speaker 1: do anything to challenge those guys with length, and so
Speaker 1: the focus then goes back to the mental and a
Speaker 1: hole like eleven at the country Club last year, if
Speaker 1: those guys have a wedge in their hand, they can't
Speaker 1: help but be aggressive. It's just not in their d
Speaker 1: n A. They can't stand there and I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: and miss this fifteen feet short, so I got an
Speaker 1: uphill put. Yeah, they're looking at the yardage showing okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just growing right out. If it's one one fifteen downhill,
Speaker 1: You're right. No matter where they put the pen, where
Speaker 1: they put it front, right, front, left, back, where wherever
Speaker 1: they put that pin in the tournament, and that whole
Speaker 1: significant bearing on the championship. I'm Scottie Shuffler. If he
Speaker 1: played that whole, you know, if he'd parted, he probably
Speaker 1: would wins the US Open Championship. And so it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where we understand that there's a certain
Speaker 1: mentality and aggression that that, and we almost want to
Speaker 1: give them enough rope that if they take take the bait,
Speaker 1: then we've got them. And I think Pete I was
Speaker 1: so good at that. You know, we think about the
Speaker 1: angles that he set up, and you know that a
Speaker 1: player will look at a shot and go, okay, what's
Speaker 1: my cover on the hazard, what's the distance to the whole,
Speaker 1: And okay, if the cover is this and the distance
Speaker 1: is that, then they're like, all right, I know I
Speaker 1: can't be short. But if the cover is on this
Speaker 1: line is a hundred and thirty, and if you play
Speaker 1: to the right of that, it's a hunt that covers
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty. And if you played to the
Speaker 1: left of it's one forty. Now it's like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I missed. If I played the one thirty and
Speaker 1: I pull it just a little bit, now I'm in trouble.
Speaker 1: So it's it's those sort of setups where you've got
Speaker 1: the angles, which ultimately, like I said, Pete was was
Speaker 1: a magician with those things. I know, it's interesting. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. You know, back when it was younger, um,
Speaker 1: we did work at Drout, which was part of the
Speaker 1: regular tournament ROTA, and so the first year that the
Speaker 1: tournament was there after the renovation, and you know, players
Speaker 1: will now nowadays with social media, you know, they set
Speaker 1: the stage in the first practice round. If somebody doesn't
Speaker 1: like something, it gets tweeted, etcetera. And so there was
Speaker 1: some chirping. I don't even think maybe Twitter was around,
Speaker 1: but there was some chirping some players in interviews and
Speaker 1: I was walking following I grew up and your dad
Speaker 1: was there and he was walking and he pulled me
Speaker 1: aside and he used colorful language which I won't use,
Speaker 1: but he said, he said, don't let these guys get
Speaker 1: you down. He said, this is a hard golf course.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with it. And there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: these guys playing a hard golf course. You did a
Speaker 1: great job here. So getting back to that, you know,
Speaker 1: and and those golf courses identify the best players. And
Speaker 1: we had great, great players win at Drout was three
Speaker 1: years after the rest, you know, the renovation of the
Speaker 1: golf course. So I agree the great players they like
Speaker 1: it hard. They want to play difficult, and you know,
Speaker 1: you hear the stories about Jack walking into the into
Speaker 1: the locker room and guys grumbling. He's like, okay, I know,
Speaker 1: I got that guy beat. And so it's there's the
Speaker 1: great players in this day and age grories. They walk
Speaker 1: in Tiger obviously in his day they know, okay, you
Speaker 1: know this is like you're saying with Trevor Immelman, you know,
Speaker 1: when it's a shootout, anybody in the room can win.
Speaker 1: When is this when it's a major, then you know
Speaker 1: there's really only twenty guys. Maybe some guy gets really
Speaker 1: lucky and gets hot that week, and I think that,
Speaker 1: so we have to remember that when we do work
Speaker 1: and we've had a little bit more over because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say wing foots bag because Gil
Speaker 1: hands did anything. It's telling us golf course, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's ultimately and we love to go into the
Speaker 1: weeks of major championship saying, hey, focus on Thomas, focused
Speaker 1: on telling us, etcetera. But when it's our own work,
Speaker 1: you know, you hear this chirping and I'll be perfectly honest.
Speaker 1: You want to get on your soapbox and say, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what we're trying to do. But then you
Speaker 1: come across the sounding defensive and shrill, and so it's
Speaker 1: just like, okay, And as you were saying, the golfing
Speaker 1: public takes because he's great at golf, he must know
Speaker 1: what he's talking about when it comes to architecture. He
Speaker 1: must know that this is a bad golf hole because
Speaker 1: he said it's a bad golfhole, versus it's a bad
Speaker 1: golful because he may double when he may right. So
Speaker 1: so we I've learned to be more patient with those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. Let's take a quick break and we
Speaker 1: are back. Whether it's your work or whether it's the
Speaker 1: of course, you come in and and and helped change um.
Speaker 1: When there is a major championship there. When you watch
Speaker 1: players um, not struggle, but when you watch players hit
Speaker 1: shots um and don't make pars um that get into
Speaker 1: trouble as an architect or you like, Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: we wanted to do. That's we wanted to try and
Speaker 1: challenge and it makes you feel good. You take you know,
Speaker 1: some weird perverse thing kind of going hot we got.
Speaker 1: I have always wondered that because you know the golf course.
Speaker 1: When you play golf course, it's it's hard to remember
Speaker 1: the guys that designed them, they're they're doing it to
Speaker 1: to challenge you. The golf course is supposed to be challenged.
Speaker 1: I think I read somewhere I want to say this
Speaker 1: is correct. Al Stair Mackenzie was he did you do
Speaker 1: camouflage in the army and you did something? So it's
Speaker 1: designed by design. The the architect is trying gordless of
Speaker 1: your handicap. They're trying to test you. So when you
Speaker 1: watch your golf course, do you get after the US
Speaker 1: Open it at the country club, do you and just
Speaker 1: get together, you know, by yourselves and say, hey, we
Speaker 1: did a good job on this whole, because that's the
Speaker 1: challenge we wanted. We liked that they but they struggled
Speaker 1: with this. We like the fact that he hit it
Speaker 1: to twenty feet may par and somebody else in the
Speaker 1: group down the stretch may double because twenty feet was
Speaker 1: a good shot, not to five feet. Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: definitely we watch. We're nervous, um and the for two reasons.
Speaker 1: There's so the the learning curve, like you mentioned, is
Speaker 1: important us because we're fortunate now we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing this for a while. We've got a crazy lineup
Speaker 1: of course, is that we're involved with that are gonna
Speaker 1: host major championships over the next decade um, and so
Speaker 1: we want to learn and get better that our craft,
Speaker 1: and so we focus on things from that perspective and
Speaker 1: see see what works and what doesn't. The bigger perspective
Speaker 1: of how we get nervous is really more the perception
Speaker 1: of the golf course, and that's mostly through the member's eyes,
Speaker 1: because rightly or wrongly, um, you know, if Justin Thomas
Speaker 1: shoots fifteen under instead of I know it was six
Speaker 1: or seven or whatever he won with somebody's can say, oh,
Speaker 1: Southern Hills too easy, and you know that golf course
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough to host a major championship, but they
Speaker 1: shoot at Fitzpatrick shoots five or six under. You know, hey,
Speaker 1: that was a tough test of golf. That was great,
Speaker 1: and the members walk away, you know, kind of excited
Speaker 1: and pumped that their golf course stood up to the
Speaker 1: best players in the world. And you get a crazy
Speaker 1: situation like Wingfoot, which was just an odd open because
Speaker 1: of COVID and the whole thing. You know, Bryson shoots
Speaker 1: six nme. He's the only guy under part in the
Speaker 1: entire field. And somebody said to me, you know, well,
Speaker 1: what what was it like giving up the you know,
Speaker 1: the record low score for the US Open at Wingfoot?
Speaker 1: Like that was your takeaway from the whole because the
Speaker 1: one guy I you I heard that there as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, the way Bryson was playing that week, and
Speaker 1: you know, my my family has so much history there,
Speaker 1: and you felt like there were a number of members
Speaker 1: at that Wingfoot that were upset that Riston came in
Speaker 1: and was doing the things he's doing as opposed to
Speaker 1: going listen, he's doing something amazing on a really really
Speaker 1: hard golf course. Like you said, it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: six under one and lost in a playoff, and then
Speaker 1: there were two guys at five and four, at four
Speaker 1: and three, I mean with one guy. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that so so everybody gets fixated on the score
Speaker 1: as being the sort of the arbiter of equality. And
Speaker 1: and as we've been discussing, that's really got everything to
Speaker 1: do is set up and weather that week, and that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what what dictates the house score, goes our stand
Speaker 1: From our standpoint, the most important thing is that we
Speaker 1: get a great champion. You really just want, hopefully the
Speaker 1: work that we've done in the golf course to identify
Speaker 1: a great champion, and so that when people look at
Speaker 1: who won the major championship on that year in that place,
Speaker 1: they go, yeah, we're really proud to have Justin Thomas,
Speaker 1: We're really proud to have Matt Fitzpatrick. We're really proud
Speaker 1: that there are great players that won these events versus
Speaker 1: I no no offense to to the lesser known players,
Speaker 1: but you really would rather not have that happen. So
Speaker 1: I think if there's any rooting interest you might start
Speaker 1: to think, okay, coming down the stretchy, you know, all right,
Speaker 1: we'd rather have that guy being the major champion versus
Speaker 1: that guy. And so I think that's the only being
Speaker 1: completely honest, that's really the only rooting interests. We're not
Speaker 1: sitting there going. Boy would love to see them both
Speaker 1: double the last sole because I think, honestly, we Jim
Speaker 1: and I, in our own designs, we'd like to see
Speaker 1: positive outcomes win championships. I think it's much more memorable
Speaker 1: for a guy makes the last two in a major championship.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, yeah, one guy made a boat. You know,
Speaker 1: the guy made a double too. Was that That's not
Speaker 1: our mindset when it comes to golf and set up.
Speaker 1: You mentioned set up of a golf course that once
Speaker 1: you get to, once the design happens, you guys come in,
Speaker 1: you do to the renovation, the redesign, the tournament goes on.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned set up. Um, there are so many
Speaker 1: times that I think sometimes the setup can make the
Speaker 1: golf course almost unplayable. You know, We're at Marion and
Speaker 1: it was someday and one of the members was working
Speaker 1: the driving range and he said, you know, our course
Speaker 1: is held up pretty good. They haven't beaten it up.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking in my head, you you've never played
Speaker 1: this golf course. You first of all, you can't play
Speaker 1: the configuration of what it is. But on someday at
Speaker 1: the US Open, nobody is ever going to play a
Speaker 1: golf course from a set up standpoint that is that
Speaker 1: baked out, that the greens are that firm, that the
Speaker 1: rough has gotten that much up. You the average golfer
Speaker 1: couldn't finish that golf course. And I think sometimes is
Speaker 1: it not frustrating? But as you said, golf is an
Speaker 1: outdoor sport. They look like they're gonna get whether they're
Speaker 1: they're trying to stay away from that is sometimes is
Speaker 1: there sometimes not so much frustration, but you look at
Speaker 1: and go off. I wish we could have kept the
Speaker 1: golf course set up this way as opposed to it
Speaker 1: being set up that way. It's usually on the the
Speaker 1: easier side, right, It's usually And we had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. And you know, back earlier I had
Speaker 1: a small career in television when we do the U
Speaker 1: s O going Fox at the coverage and Wednesday at
Speaker 1: Oakmont in that was the best conditioned golf course. I
Speaker 1: think I've ever seen him on life. It was incredible.
Speaker 1: It was so good. And then you get two and
Speaker 1: a half three inches of rain Wednesday night into Thursday morning,
Speaker 1: and it totally changed everything. And it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine the heartache from the superintendent and
Speaker 1: the staff and everything. They had it so good playing bouncy,
Speaker 1: it was playing firm. You had guys from the fairway
Speaker 1: and the rough thinking, okay, maybe I can chip us
Speaker 1: out and get this just. I mean DJ on the
Speaker 1: first hole, I remember his first hole of the tournament.
Speaker 1: He hit it into the left rough f okmon and
Speaker 1: I'd already seen a bunch of guys try and go
Speaker 1: for that green, catch the flyer out of the rock,
Speaker 1: bounce it over, go down that little hump, and I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. DJ laid it out front, edge, chipped it up,
Speaker 1: put it up, made but made Burke made park. And
Speaker 1: afterwards A J said, you don't even know who my
Speaker 1: brother was in the on the first hole. Normally we're
Speaker 1: going white at that pin, we're making double or triple.
Speaker 1: And he had learned that. But the way that course
Speaker 1: was set up, like you said on Thursday, can be
Speaker 1: so different than the way it is by the time
Speaker 1: it gets the Sunday. Yeah, and and we so, I
Speaker 1: guess the best way to is you want to set
Speaker 1: up we we do, other people may the priorities maybe
Speaker 1: reversed as we want to set up to flatter the architecture.
Speaker 1: Is to show off every aspect of the architecture that's
Speaker 1: available to the set up guys, different whole locations. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't wanted to be so firm and so biked
Speaker 1: out that we can't use that whole location because it's
Speaker 1: just over the over the edge. You don't want it
Speaker 1: to be so soft that they're starting to say, oh man,
Speaker 1: we've got to go two and a half paces from
Speaker 1: the edge instead of three, you know, and you're starting
Speaker 1: to go the opposite direction. You really just the thing
Speaker 1: that most people don't realize, and I've been fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to be involved in all of these conversations and just
Speaker 1: or fly on the wall, is how much thought and
Speaker 1: preparation goes into Like you know, there's there's set up
Speaker 1: visits start eighteen months before a championship and then they're
Speaker 1: coming in they're constantly refining and tweaking, and so for
Speaker 1: people to think that oh, they just made that random
Speaker 1: decision to put a whole location there today and it
Speaker 1: didn't work out. No, they've been thinking about that whole
Speaker 1: location for over a year. And so if the setup
Speaker 1: flatters the architecture, and the architectural flatters the setup and
Speaker 1: allows them to use everything, that's the that's the sweet spot.
Speaker 1: That's exactly where you wanted to be. I think we
Speaker 1: look at it is we don't wanted to go so
Speaker 1: far to the easy side and the conditions because of
Speaker 1: the mother nature. Um, that's worse than going although you
Speaker 1: don't want it to get gimmicky, you know where it
Speaker 1: goes so far on the hard side that you know,
Speaker 1: the best players in the world, you're you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to beat it up, but you know there's
Speaker 1: like seven at Shinnekock back in two thousand four. I
Speaker 1: think of those guys. I mean, the best players in
Speaker 1: the world can't hit a green with a mid iron,
Speaker 1: and it's like that's there's something wrong there. That's not
Speaker 1: right either. So you just hope and I know that
Speaker 1: John Bodenhammer, Kerry Higg and their teams they don't want
Speaker 1: to be part of the story. They want to get
Speaker 1: through the week and not have anybody have any blow
Speaker 1: ups or any any issues. So it's the combination of
Speaker 1: the preparation hopefully the certainly the talents of the superintendent
Speaker 1: and if but the wild card is always mother nature.
Speaker 1: That's what it comes down to. As an architect um
Speaker 1: we we've talked there does seem to be a trend
Speaker 1: towards taking golf courses back to the way they used
Speaker 1: to look um that style and the agronomy. I think
Speaker 1: it's changed there. There's been this, in my opinion, this
Speaker 1: augustification of golf courses where there can't be any brown.
Speaker 1: Everything's got to be green. And as a result, still
Speaker 1: you have to put so much water on the golf
Speaker 1: course to have it have this aesthetic look, so it
Speaker 1: looks like Augusta and no disrespect to what they do
Speaker 1: at Augusta Nashville, but a lot of times when you're
Speaker 1: out at that golf course, it looks somewhat not the
Speaker 1: only term I could come up with, Parts of it
Speaker 1: look like it's fake that it's it's so overdone right,
Speaker 1: it's so over manicure. There's these great photos that I
Speaker 1: come across every now and again with my grandfather when
Speaker 1: he won there in hit at the water on thirteen,
Speaker 1: and the water on thirteen looks like a ravine you'd
Speaker 1: find in West you know, in Texas. There's grass and
Speaker 1: there's all this stuff. None of it looks ultra ultra pristine.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's been cool. I mean, you
Speaker 1: went um two years ago and they went back to
Speaker 1: this here Congoe on the PGA tour where they went
Speaker 1: and played what a cool golf course? Wasn't necessarily perfect
Speaker 1: green everywhere. It had a little brown to it. It
Speaker 1: had what you talked about to where you walked from
Speaker 1: the green to the t but it it had some
Speaker 1: some natural parts to it. And as a designer, how
Speaker 1: do you judge up? Because again, if the client wants
Speaker 1: it to look like Augusta and looked super super green
Speaker 1: and super super perfect, that's really a different design than
Speaker 1: someone saying, hey, just go find the golf holes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that that comes down to clients selection, right.
Speaker 1: I mean we're and you know, I realized how fortunate
Speaker 1: we are and that we have the ability to say no.
Speaker 1: And so if somebody comes and says, hey we want
Speaker 1: to I guess so we want to perfect consider we've
Speaker 1: got to really think long and heart of it. That's
Speaker 1: something that that we want to do because I agree
Speaker 1: with you, I'm much we're much more in the line
Speaker 1: of natural presentation. Firm asked. I got to spend a
Speaker 1: year in Great Britain and part of a scholarship from
Speaker 1: Cornell and that's what that's really what all of my
Speaker 1: principles and focus came from that and the natural presentation
Speaker 1: of golf course as well as the natural design of
Speaker 1: golf courses. Augusta National does what they do, They do
Speaker 1: it better than anybody else. It's the most anticipated tournament
Speaker 1: of the year. We all look to it. But I
Speaker 1: think if you gave truth serum to every superintendent the country,
Speaker 1: they hate it because they look at that and the
Speaker 1: members come in the next day like, oh, did you
Speaker 1: see it was great? Degrees? Are fourteen? To look at
Speaker 1: that was beautiful? And look at that little brown spot
Speaker 1: of the right. Can you get rid of that? Because
Speaker 1: they don't have that. Yeah, And so that's that. It's
Speaker 1: very frustrating for superintendents because nobody has the well very
Speaker 1: few of course, to do that and make sure that
Speaker 1: they can keep it and maintain it. But it is
Speaker 1: it is and You're right, that's the evolution of Augusta.
Speaker 1: August has evolved into that. It is so iconic, as
Speaker 1: they said, it's so anticipated. There's no way they could
Speaker 1: ever change that. I mean, they just can't go back
Speaker 1: to the weedy banks and the grasses and the Mackenzie
Speaker 1: bunkers with all the rough un edges, etcetera, etcetera. That's
Speaker 1: sale and maybe for the better because you know, we
Speaker 1: all love it. It's not like people turn off the tournament.
Speaker 1: And that golf course has maintained too well. I don't
Speaker 1: want to look at that, those white stands, bunkers, it's amazing. Lastly,
Speaker 1: gil Um in two. From a design standpoint, Um, what
Speaker 1: role do you think that the designers designing golf courses
Speaker 1: today have to play in trying to grow the game? Um?
Speaker 1: We've built a nine hole my dad and Kelly Gibson
Speaker 1: here we built a nine hole part three course. UM
Speaker 1: where I think the longest holes probably a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty yards. It's nine holes. It's it's changed the club,
Speaker 1: gil Um. Guys play the main course and then they
Speaker 1: get done. They have launched and they load up on
Speaker 1: you know, booze and and get the music. Going and
Speaker 1: go play, you know, ninety yards eighty yard shots um.
Speaker 1: From an instruction standpoint, guilt getting people on golf courses.
Speaker 1: They're not good enough to go play. Even if you
Speaker 1: take them to the ladies tease, they're not good enough
Speaker 1: to play the golf courses. Do you think I know
Speaker 1: it's not call its defective, but do you think we're
Speaker 1: going to see more maybe nine whole, three whole, twelve
Speaker 1: whole golf courses that aren't necessarily super super hard that
Speaker 1: our user friendly to help try and grow the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we built a golf course in in a little
Speaker 1: nine holer and pine Hursts the cradle, it's it has
Speaker 1: you know, and Bob Demman, Tom Pastially, you know, they
Speaker 1: took a chance to make fun the front door for
Speaker 1: the clubhouse at Pinehurst, and you know with the putting
Speaker 1: giant putting green and then the cradle. And I get
Speaker 1: more pleasure out of watching people just tooling around out
Speaker 1: there with their grandkids or parents sitting in the aderundics
Speaker 1: watching their kids play, or ate sums of you know,
Speaker 1: knuckle heads playing barefoot and had drinking beers and just
Speaker 1: the somehow that just clicked in the magic of it,
Speaker 1: and that so excitement of getting people the introductory level.
Speaker 1: So the game is based on fund versus frustration. You've
Speaker 1: got plenty of time to get frustrated with this game,
Speaker 1: have fun, get to it in a fun manner, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's incredibly important. We've got, um, you know,
Speaker 1: people I do Instagram occasionally and you get you know,
Speaker 1: I've stopped because like, I don't really need that in
Speaker 1: my life. But you know, whenever we put up pictures
Speaker 1: of these great private clubs that we've done, et cetera,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh great, you know I'm never going to
Speaker 1: get to play there. Thanks for putting that up. And
Speaker 1: it's like that's all we do. But we probably are
Speaker 1: most anticipated golf course is just going to open sometime
Speaker 1: next year is the park in West Palm Beach, because
Speaker 1: we fly over that when we land into two p
Speaker 1: B I. If you're coming in off the ocean, it's
Speaker 1: over there on the on the left. If you're taking off,
Speaker 1: it's over there on the right. And that looks very
Speaker 1: much like when you fly over. It looks like when
Speaker 1: you fly over Seminole just looks like a bunch of sand,
Speaker 1: and it really does have that same kind of look. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's uber wide, very playable, interesting, But then again
Speaker 1: it's just that there's enough there that you know, somebody's
Speaker 1: beginning in the game could just bunted, bunted, bunted, get
Speaker 1: up on the green. You know, you've got to think
Speaker 1: a little bit. But then somebody like you would get
Speaker 1: out there and be like, Okay, I'm gonna attack this pin.
Speaker 1: That pin. You can really set that whole set up.
Speaker 1: And then with the sandy areas and they're all kind
Speaker 1: of you're not gonna lose the golf ball. There's no water,
Speaker 1: there's no water on the golf course. It's super friendly,
Speaker 1: you know, just go out and play golf and not
Speaker 1: get frustrated with it. And so we're almost when we're
Speaker 1: as excited about the opening of that because it can show,
Speaker 1: hopefully from in our opinion, that great architecture, honestly speaking,
Speaker 1: great maintenance, playability, wide corridors, et cetera, can actually happen
Speaker 1: in the transferred to municipal golf course where anybody and
Speaker 1: everybody can go out there for a reasonable price and
Speaker 1: play that. So I think we'd love to be in
Speaker 1: a position to help to grow the game. We've done
Speaker 1: that wherever we possibly can do in pro bono stuff
Speaker 1: with first Tease and and municipal golf courses. Um whole fully,
Speaker 1: not only are we doing something that will make the
Speaker 1: game we're playable and enjoyable, but that's somewhere in some
Speaker 1: person who's just coming to the game. They'll they'll start
Speaker 1: to think, I wonder why I like that whole. I
Speaker 1: wonder why I don't like that whole. I wonder why
Speaker 1: this is there and that? And then I think, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you you know. It's when you start
Speaker 1: to get to a level where you appreciate architecture and
Speaker 1: you start to appreciate thought, that opens up such another
Speaker 1: element of the game versus just trying to get the
Speaker 1: ball airborne and and survive. When you get to a
Speaker 1: place where you can actually start to think about, okay,
Speaker 1: there are questions that are being asked out here, then
Speaker 1: I think the entirety of the game, and then the
Speaker 1: the entire beauty of the game really becomes apparent to
Speaker 1: two players. Well, I really appreciate you talking to me, Um,
Speaker 1: I could talk to you forever. I didn't even get
Speaker 1: to my favorite golf courses, lay bored in France, and
Speaker 1: I know you guys have done the second course there. Ye,
Speaker 1: I love that place. That's to me, that is a magical,
Speaker 1: magical place. Yet to see the new readsign at l
Speaker 1: A Tree Club where the US Open is going to
Speaker 1: be this year. But I'm super excited. And if it's
Speaker 1: anything like um, the rest of the work that you
Speaker 1: guys do, it's it's going to be amazing. Uh. If
Speaker 1: there's somebody better that in Gulf and our design, then
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing. I don't know who it is,
Speaker 1: because you guys are doing, you know, some amazing, amazing work.
Speaker 1: So how to talk to you guys, And uh, thanks
Speaker 1: for talking to us, and we'll look forward to seeing
Speaker 1: you at another major. I mean you're like, you're like
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods at this point, he's walking around and all
Speaker 1: the other golf course architectures architects are looking at you,
Speaker 1: going and another major and you're just going yet another
Speaker 1: major another. It's funny because people say are you gonna go?
Speaker 1: And I'm going, yeah, usually go sort of Tuesday through
Speaker 1: Saturday maybe and then leave and they're like, you don't
Speaker 1: stay for the end. I was like, if they're talking
Speaker 1: about the golf course on the weekend and something probably
Speaker 1: went wrong. So we cover all our bases. When once
Speaker 1: those guys show up, that's what the focus should be,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's on them there. And so we
Speaker 1: talked about the golf course going into the tournament, but
Speaker 1: after that we we let them play it and see
Speaker 1: how it goes. But thanks, I really enjoyed. It was
Speaker 1: a great time to talk to you. And uh, we'll
Speaker 1: hope to see you here. So that was Gil Hants
Speaker 1: UM really really cool interview and hopefully, UM something that
Speaker 1: I want to try and get more on the pods
Speaker 1: golf course architects because they're the ones that are designing
Speaker 1: the golf courses that all of us are trying to play.
Speaker 1: And I think anytime you can kind of listen to
Speaker 1: what they're talking about and how they're doing things. UM,
Speaker 1: I actually think it can help you to be honest
Speaker 1: with you play better golf. So UM, I want to
Speaker 1: thank Gil for doing that. UM. I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: on a sad note, the passing of Barry Lane. For
Speaker 1: those of you that don't know, Barry was a stalwart
Speaker 1: on the European tour. UM he died New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: was sixty two years old. And uh he was a
Speaker 1: friend when I worked on the European Tour in the
Speaker 1: early part of the two thousand's. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: worked with Barry for a number of years. Um. He
Speaker 1: was a five time winner in the European Tour. Uh
Speaker 1: he was a big part of their Ryder Cup UM
Speaker 1: teams in the late eighties in the early nineties and
Speaker 1: was just one of really one of the coolest people
Speaker 1: I've met. And um, he will be missed. Um, I
Speaker 1: think the outpouring of condolences and um the emotions that
Speaker 1: a lot of um, kind of the old school guys
Speaker 1: on the European Tour, from Ian Woosnam to Thomas Born
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know, Barry he played the tour, the
Speaker 1: European Tour for over two decades, never lost his card
Speaker 1: and uh was was was playing on the European Tour
Speaker 1: Champions their Champions Tour. But um, you know, my condolences
Speaker 1: go out to his wife Camilla and um you know
Speaker 1: a lolways look back fondly on the times that I
Speaker 1: got to spend with with Barry. He was he was
Speaker 1: just an unbelievable ball striker. Um, he was kind of
Speaker 1: one of the first of the old school guys. UM.
Speaker 1: He played from a very very shut position like we
Speaker 1: see a lot of the modern players. UM. He hit
Speaker 1: the golf ball miles. He had a lot of speed.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a very big guy, but UM, I think
Speaker 1: anybody that got to watch him hit golf balls, UM
Speaker 1: was just beyond impressed. And he was just he was
Speaker 1: a gentleman. And uh, you know he will definitely be
Speaker 1: UM missed and UM yeah really really sad to hear
Speaker 1: about his passing. UM, but want to thank everybody for
Speaker 1: all the listens for last year. UM. You know it's
Speaker 1: a new year. We're gonna try and continue to get
Speaker 1: good guests. UM. Hit me up on social and let
Speaker 1: me know the kind of guests, UM that you want.
Speaker 1: You want, you know, more guests from the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: Do you want more guests from live? Do you want
Speaker 1: more guests from outside the golf space? UM, let me
Speaker 1: know and uh I will do my best to get
Speaker 1: them on but rate reviews. Subscribe to wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast Son of a which comes to you every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: We will see you next week.