Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today I am joined by golf course architect Andy Staples.
Speaker 1: Andy is a young, up and coming architect who has
Speaker 1: designed courses such as Meadowbrook Country Club, sand Hollow and
Speaker 1: Rock One Community Links. Our discussion jumps right into a
Speaker 1: talk on municipal golf, or as Andy likes to call it,
Speaker 1: community golf, and then we divulge into his renovation of Meadowbrook,
Speaker 1: Willie Park Junior and much more. Thanks for all the
Speaker 1: ongoing support and for tuning in, and if you haven't yet,
Speaker 1: please rate and review the podcast and iTunes and subscribe
Speaker 1: if you don't already, Here's Andy Staples.
Speaker 2: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a frid Egg
Speaker 2: Friday Egg, the drided Friday, Frida Egg, Frida Egg Egg
Speaker 2: Frida Egg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run
Speaker 2: off the golf course. How did I get roped into
Speaker 2: them uni golf? Yeah? I love it well. I would
Speaker 2: tell you that themuni sector in our business was where
Speaker 2: a lot of the blue collar architects would play for
Speaker 2: a lot of years, I think maybe still today. And
Speaker 2: you know, we didn't get the calls from the top
Speaker 2: clubs when I first got in the business, so I
Speaker 2: ended up seeing a lot of that side. So I
Speaker 2: responded to a lot of our fps, you know, really
Speaker 2: as long as I've been in the business, and so
Speaker 2: it was somewhat natural to me. But it was always
Speaker 2: known as this you faction of the business that you're like, well,
Speaker 2: one day we might graduate and not have to do this.
Speaker 2: And and then the recession hit and the MUNI sector
Speaker 2: was hit as hard as anybody, and and I felt
Speaker 2: like it was something that was that was real to
Speaker 2: me and understood and and and then on top of that,
Speaker 2: it just felt you know, innovation in golf is not
Speaker 2: a word you hear a lot of, maybe in the
Speaker 2: equipment side, but not on the development side. And so
Speaker 2: I felt that there was some room for innovation. And
Speaker 2: I kind of I didn't like the word municipal, and
Speaker 2: I thought community was a lot better word. And I said,
Speaker 2: you know what I think this is this is a
Speaker 2: place for innovation and a place to make a mark.
Speaker 2: And I thought it was also a place that a
Speaker 2: lot of my competitors weren't. It was upon that they
Speaker 2: weren't fishing in and and uh so I went full
Speaker 2: board and lo and behold, I find myself being pretty
Speaker 2: successful in front of a large group and comfortable in
Speaker 2: front of a large group and been able to kind
Speaker 2: of bring people onto the side of golf. And it
Speaker 2: just has been something that I've stuck with and I
Speaker 2: think I'm passionate about it. And I think it's the
Speaker 2: value of a golf course in a community is not
Speaker 2: something that is really well thought of, and I think
Speaker 2: we should be thinking more of it as a value.
Speaker 2: And it's been kind of a mission of mine to
Speaker 2: stick with it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I see too, is like something
Speaker 1: that fascinates me is how many of my podcast guests
Speaker 1: grew up playing municipal golf like and how many of
Speaker 1: the people that get into the golf industry are grew
Speaker 1: up playing munique golf. And I mean it's so vital,
Speaker 1: Like I grew up playing Muni golf like without munich golf,
Speaker 1: you you know, the if you want to talk about
Speaker 1: growing the game, like if you didn't, if Muni golf
Speaker 1: keeps closing and on its pace that it is now
Speaker 1: like you're not going to have a game without it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think if you go back to the history
Speaker 2: of why municipal golf even started, go back to you know,
Speaker 2: Van Cortland Golf Course, the first municipally owned golf course
Speaker 2: in the country. It was it was a place for
Speaker 2: you know, the growing middle class that had some expendable
Speaker 2: income that couldn't afford to join a private club. They
Speaker 2: went down to the local municipal golf course. So I
Speaker 2: think it's you know, people don't realize that the reason
Speaker 2: why golf is the way that it is and the
Speaker 2: way that it was able to expand to the heights
Speaker 2: that it got expanded to, was because of municipal golf,
Speaker 2: or at least in part because municipal golf. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was the same way. I grew up at a plan
Speaker 2: at a place called Wanaki and outside of Milwaukee was
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin Winak golf course. It was a county Ushak
Speaker 2: County golf course, and I would meet my buddies down
Speaker 2: there after school and and we play on the weekends.
Speaker 2: It was the same thing. You know, four dollars or
Speaker 2: five dollars for somebody under sixteen, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: easy for the parents to drop us all off. So
Speaker 2: it was Yeah, I think municipal golf means a lot
Speaker 2: to a lot of golfers. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: in today's world, we're municipal golf is taking such a
Speaker 2: kind of a such a back seat and kind of
Speaker 2: a getting abused and in the media whether or not
Speaker 2: municipal municipalities should be in the golf business, and I
Speaker 2: contend that it should.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I I don't know, it frustrates me
Speaker 1: because those courses were built kind of seemingly all at
Speaker 1: like a really bad time. So they, you know, for
Speaker 1: the most part of municipal golf courses like the least
Speaker 1: innovative golf course that you'll see. It's you know, they're
Speaker 1: pretty cookie cutter and pretty unimaginative. And I think if
Speaker 1: they at the time when they were built, golf was
Speaker 1: so exclusive and they're missing the inclusive nature of a
Speaker 1: of a community course.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a lot of those a lot of those
Speaker 2: courses are integrated in to the fabric of the county
Speaker 2: or city park system, so I think it was just
Speaker 2: kind of part and parcel. You'd have open space, you'd
Speaker 2: have trails, you'd have camping, you'd have maybe a lake
Speaker 2: or something, and then you have a golf course. So
Speaker 2: it's the inclusivity of golf and the community nature of
Speaker 2: golf has been there, and I think, I think I'm
Speaker 2: one to believe that the community golf is at the
Speaker 2: very beginning of a complete revitalization. And I don't I'm
Speaker 2: not quitting that with all kinds of people playing golf,
Speaker 2: but the golf course, municipal golf course industry, I think
Speaker 2: is just prime for a pivot, and there's just too
Speaker 2: many of them out there, and there's too many success
Speaker 2: stories and too many good models that are being followed
Speaker 2: today that I think it's just at the beginning of
Speaker 2: a new awareness of golf. What I like to call
Speaker 2: community golf. I'd rather not call it municipal golf anymore,
Speaker 2: because I think we all think of that as a
Speaker 2: negative term. Because you can't have a great, you know,
Speaker 2: really interesting, strategic golf course and turns people through and
Speaker 2: maintain for reasonable budget, reasonable budget.
Speaker 1: It seems like that a better, more well designed golf
Speaker 1: course would be way more beneficial for a community because
Speaker 1: you'd be able to get people around it faster, they'd
Speaker 1: have more fun, and it'd be more beginner friendly, while
Speaker 1: it'd be way more interesting for an expert player.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what's business right now, is what
Speaker 2: exactly is the right balance of strategy and heroic design.
Speaker 2: And some might call it. You know, we went through
Speaker 2: a period of penal design, balancing the right level of
Speaker 2: challenge with with just letting people have fun and play
Speaker 2: the game. And I think that, you know, when I
Speaker 2: was brought to the game, I actually learned on a
Speaker 2: bill Langford Golf Course, Langford More Golf Course, West Bend
Speaker 2: Country Club, a little blue collar club out suburbs of Milwaukee,
Speaker 2: and I remember hitting into these big, huge grass features
Speaker 2: I was I think I started at seven eight seven,
Speaker 2: eight years old, and by the time I was ten,
Speaker 2: I still couldn't get out of these things. I would
Speaker 2: ricochet off the grass bass and I remember thinking, gosh,
Speaker 2: I better practice, I better get better at this. This
Speaker 2: is this isn't an easy game. And so I think
Speaker 2: there's a peer there's a part of that that we
Speaker 2: all as golfers liked the challenge. But I think that
Speaker 2: there's ways I think we went overboard. I think there's
Speaker 2: a there's a way to balance the challenge and the
Speaker 2: strategy and the interest to truly kind of defend the
Speaker 2: course against a better player, but let people play through
Speaker 2: it in a reasonable amount of time. So definitely an opportunity.
Speaker 1: You grew up playing golf, and did you play in
Speaker 1: high school?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I played in high school. I was on the
Speaker 2: high school team. I was on the state championship team. Actually,
Speaker 2: I guess maybe claim to fame. I played with Mark Wilson,
Speaker 2: the tour pro. He and I were He was a freshman,
Speaker 2: I was a senior. We won state, and I actually
Speaker 2: had thoughts of trying to play golf in college one
Speaker 2: day and I realized that probably wasn't gonna happened. I
Speaker 2: got in front of that kind of competition and realized
Speaker 2: that that that's when you get separated, right. I had
Speaker 2: a better chance of drawing pictures of a golf course
Speaker 2: one day as opposed to playing them for a living.
Speaker 1: So you went to school and you studied. You wanted
Speaker 1: to be a golf course architect from you know, the
Speaker 1: day you stepped out of school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I I was practicing every day. I
Speaker 2: got the bug when I was when I was a
Speaker 2: kid through high school, and my dad saw the level
Speaker 2: of interest and I actually started building my own golf
Speaker 2: course out of a sand beach in northern Wisconsin, and
Speaker 2: my dad saw me tending to it every weekend and
Speaker 2: he said, you know, you know, son, the people designed
Speaker 2: golf courses for a living. And that was the time,
Speaker 2: I think it was around twelve. I was like, that
Speaker 2: just blew my mind. I had no idea that that
Speaker 2: was even possible. I thought golf courses just appeared. And
Speaker 2: at that point I said, well, how do I do that?
Speaker 2: And of course my dad said that I don't know,
Speaker 2: and so he did some calling around and told me
Speaker 2: that I should go study. You know, the idea at
Speaker 2: the time was to go study landscape architecture in school,
Speaker 2: and so I said, right then, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to school study landscape architecture. So as soon as I
Speaker 2: got into school, you know, everybody was trying to in
Speaker 2: my department of building buildings or designing parks or you know,
Speaker 2: working in urban planning, and I was the lone golf
Speaker 2: course guy, you know, at the University of Arkansas is
Speaker 2: where I went. So that was a team that I
Speaker 2: tried to walk on the golf team, but realized that
Speaker 2: you know, the coach at the time, said, He asked
Speaker 2: me what I was studying, and I said, I'm studying
Speaker 2: landscape architecture. I want to be a golf course architect.
Speaker 2: When I grew up, he says, well, you realize that
Speaker 2: you either play golf or study architecture. You don't do
Speaker 2: both here. I'm okay, Well that's a pretty clear that's
Speaker 2: an easy decision for me. So, yeah, they were about
Speaker 2: twelve years old that there was such a thing and
Speaker 2: that that's what I wanted to do. I feel very
Speaker 2: fortunate for that.
Speaker 1: That's neat. I always think back to my childhood and
Speaker 1: I remember there was a Microsoft game golf game that
Speaker 1: you could design your own golf course, and I would
Speaker 1: do that all the time. And and and then my
Speaker 1: buddy and I would play whiffletball in our in our street,
Speaker 1: in our front yards, and we, you know, essentially designed
Speaker 1: golf holes in our own way, playing from tree to tree.
Speaker 1: Amazing the imagination of a of a kid. I bet
Speaker 1: your your philosophies of golf course design have changed a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I of course did the same thing, hitting
Speaker 2: off trees, and you know, I had a sand green.
Speaker 2: So this was a little cup in my little sand green.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I remember the first time, you know, this Winachy,
Speaker 2: this county course I was telling you about, had a
Speaker 2: bunch of hanging lakes. So you would go up over
Speaker 2: a ridge and you'd hit it over the top of
Speaker 2: the ridge, and then you'd come to the top and
Speaker 2: realized there was a pond there. You're like, shoot, there's
Speaker 2: a blind to sit in the water. I couldn't see
Speaker 2: it was a blind lake, right, and so me as
Speaker 2: a young golfer, well, I should have known that there
Speaker 2: was a laser, should have been able to see through
Speaker 2: that ridge. Well, the first time I realized that somebody
Speaker 2: actually placed the lake there, as a designer, it started that,
Speaker 2: you know, things started to go off in my mind,
Speaker 2: like why in the world would you put it there? Then,
Speaker 2: of course now you're blaming the designer, not not your
Speaker 2: own game, of course. But yeah, it's certainly changed and
Speaker 2: involved as you educate yourself through the business and through
Speaker 2: the through through time for sure.
Speaker 1: So after you get out of school, where'd you go work?
Speaker 1: Right off the how'd you get kind of into the
Speaker 1: architecture industry? I imagine it being somebody that came out
Speaker 1: in the nineties.
Speaker 2: It was booming yeah, So, yeah, I started working. I
Speaker 2: had a mentor through school. We did a it's part
Speaker 2: of my thesis. I did a design of a golf
Speaker 2: course on top of a landfill. And I worked with
Speaker 2: a guy named Jerry Slack out of Tulsa, which was
Speaker 2: a He was more of a land planner. He was
Speaker 2: a golf course architect on his own right. But he
Speaker 2: was the one that said, if you really want to
Speaker 2: start in this business, go work in construction. So this
Speaker 2: was probably a nineteen ninety three ninety four, and so
Speaker 2: my first my first job was really working with Wadsworth
Speaker 2: Golf Construction. I started up in Green Bay, Wisconsin and
Speaker 2: then down to Texas, and so really my entree to
Speaker 2: the business was through the construction world. And then Jerry,
Speaker 2: once he saw that I had kind of followed his
Speaker 2: kind of his path, his preferred path, he hired me
Speaker 2: to become a draftsman. So I was drawing. My first
Speaker 2: job was drawing plans by hand. It was before we
Speaker 2: had CAD or any type of computer. I remember helping
Speaker 2: him through the first computer we bought to try to
Speaker 2: get CAD in the office. But so that was in Tulsa.
Speaker 2: That's how I kind of broke in the business. So
Speaker 2: I like to say that I wouldn't have gotten that
Speaker 2: job had it not started on the construction side.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I mean back then, construction was like
Speaker 1: the thing I mean was a golf course a day
Speaker 1: that everybody was saying that America needed to build to
Speaker 1: keep up with the pace of the growing game.
Speaker 2: That's right. The NGF said, golf course today, and we tried.
Speaker 2: We definitely tried for a while. We were doing what
Speaker 2: one year, we did five hundred golf courses in a year.
Speaker 1: I mean it goes back to the you know, current state.
Speaker 1: Everybody associates golf courses closing with bad, but you know,
Speaker 1: in muni's closing with bad. But I think part of
Speaker 1: it is just a market normalizing to what it should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Speaker 2: I you know, the the idea that we were building
Speaker 2: that kind of that kind of quantity over that short
Speaker 2: period of time is really now looking back, and I'm
Speaker 2: pretty mind blowing that that it even was was possible.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm a firm believer. But it's one of
Speaker 2: my messages was as I talked to the municipal sector
Speaker 2: that that I talked to is that, you know what,
Speaker 2: closing your golf course is a real is a real option.
Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about that for a second. You know,
Speaker 2: before we even go any further about improving your course,
Speaker 2: let's talk about is there support for the course and
Speaker 2: whether it should stay open. So I'm I'm one that
Speaker 2: certainly is not a not against any closures because there's
Speaker 2: a reason for why those those courses aren't making it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I think there's there's courses that should close, and there's
Speaker 1: courses that shouldn't close. And I think, you know, there
Speaker 1: needs to be some sort of at some point in
Speaker 1: the near future, some sort of initiative from the us
Speaker 1: GA to you know, use some of their money to
Speaker 1: support the ones that really shouldn't close. And and and
Speaker 1: that's that's what bugs me is like some of these,
Speaker 1: like you're familiar with Detroit area, but like that Rackham
Speaker 1: course that was on the brink of closing, Like that's
Speaker 1: a course that you know, a ton of history, Donald
Speaker 1: Ross design, it's it's tied very closely to the city.
Speaker 1: That's that's a course that shouldn't close. It might need
Speaker 1: to be a little bit different of a concept than
Speaker 1: it is currently and have a little bit forward thinking concepts.
Speaker 1: But that's a golf course that that should be helped
Speaker 1: and subsidized from Golf's governing body. Do you, I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you think about the U
Speaker 1: s g A and and mini golf community.
Speaker 2: Golf community is here, right, So what do I think
Speaker 2: Do I think the USGA should be the one to
Speaker 2: step up into that? I think at the I don't
Speaker 2: think we're there at that point. I don't know that
Speaker 2: the municipal sector would is positioned right to be able
Speaker 2: to take those kind of funds. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the stimulus dollars just a couple of years ago, right, So,
Speaker 2: you know, I understand trying to kick start an industry
Speaker 2: and and finding maybe some showcase properties that make some sense.
Speaker 2: And to be honest, I mean that the way they've
Speaker 2: showcased it is around their Open Championship. That's that's been
Speaker 2: the way you know, they've brought it to the public sector.
Speaker 2: They've they brought the you know, the US Open you know,
Speaker 2: rotation or courses to try to get you know, the
Speaker 2: golf under a certain you know message that it's open
Speaker 2: to the public. But you know, in terms of putting
Speaker 2: money towards municipalities. And you talk about Rackham, I mean,
Speaker 2: you got some other issues there with Rackham that you know,
Speaker 2: and it's not necessarily unique to the City of Detroit.
Speaker 2: It's unique to just this idea that the backing and
Speaker 2: the ability to support public golf. There's not enough people
Speaker 2: at the highest levels of their government that support golf,
Speaker 2: and so I think unproper support. And the city has
Speaker 2: the ability more times than not to support and subsidize golf.
Speaker 2: It's just they're choosing not to because of the messaging
Speaker 2: that's happening about the negativity towards golf. But when you
Speaker 2: start thinking about all the people that actually have a
Speaker 2: chance to visit a golf course, and that's one of
Speaker 2: my messages to my community golf messages that it needs
Speaker 2: to expand the user group so that it's not just
Speaker 2: about the ten percent to play golf, that it's more
Speaker 2: about walking trails and outdoor activities and you know, any
Speaker 2: type of use. You know, it's not necessarily a clubhouse anymore,
Speaker 2: it's more of a community building. Yeah, if you start
Speaker 2: to pivot on those types of messaging messages, I think
Speaker 2: the USGA's role can help support that. But I think
Speaker 2: if we look to them to try to save municipal golf,
Speaker 2: I don't know that I agree with that, but there's
Speaker 2: certainly a powerful message there that needs to be in
Speaker 2: support of municipal golf.
Speaker 1: So getting into your community golf and on your website
Speaker 1: you've got just great resources, white paper and different things
Speaker 1: about you know, the way your kind of philosophy on
Speaker 1: what community golf should be. And I think what you
Speaker 1: said about inclusive is such a big deal. You know,
Speaker 1: we're it's almost more of a model that you would
Speaker 1: see in England and Scotland and Ireland than what the
Speaker 1: traditional community or municipal community golf is in America.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, Yeah. I think it's funny how many people
Speaker 2: when I get in front of the municipal stakeholders and
Speaker 2: tell them about the old course at Saint Andrews and
Speaker 2: the fact that it closes down on Sunday and becomes
Speaker 2: a park, people can walk across the entire golf course
Speaker 2: and property. They're blown away. They're like, I can't believe
Speaker 2: that we love walking on golf courses. We should consider that, right,
Speaker 2: And so, you know, it's funny how when you go
Speaker 2: to when you go throughout the world. You know, I studied,
Speaker 2: I studied in Denmark for a semester and I actually
Speaker 2: I actually or the study focus was on urban planning,
Speaker 2: but we had a chance to go out to all
Speaker 2: kinds of park plans and we studied throughout Scandinavia, including
Speaker 2: Stockholm and Sweden. And there was a a specific because
Speaker 2: it was part of my study, there was a specific
Speaker 2: park property called Woodland Cemetery. It was this broad open space.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a golf course, it was a cemetery, but
Speaker 2: it basically felt like a golf course, and you would
Speaker 2: go through a series of trails and transitions from space
Speaker 2: to space. There was there was chapels, there was auditoriums,
Speaker 2: there were crematory as. There was open space too to
Speaker 2: be outside in nature. And I think when you people
Speaker 2: are drawn to that kind of experience, and for us
Speaker 2: as golfers, we happen to do that. We actually experience
Speaker 2: an open space with a with a stick and a
Speaker 2: ball in our in our in our possession. And so
Speaker 2: to me, when you just start to think about the
Speaker 2: innate characteristics of being outside and playing sport, you know, golf,
Speaker 2: golf falls right in line with all of those things
Speaker 2: I think that we are drawn to and you know,
Speaker 2: so now it just tells me it's a messaging issue.
Speaker 2: It's it's how are we presenting it? And we should
Speaker 2: be presenting it not necessarily across the board. I understand that,
Speaker 2: you know, golf has many different faces, but but from
Speaker 2: these particular community golf courses, they need to be presented
Speaker 2: and the messaging needs to be proper and needs to
Speaker 2: start from the very beginning, on the very top of government.
Speaker 2: And so I think, I think we just need to
Speaker 2: we have a we have a marketing and a messaging
Speaker 2: issue as much as anything.
Speaker 1: It's funny when you're thinking about just thinking while you're talking,
Speaker 1: like something that just sticks out to me that's so
Speaker 1: so simple that no, like barely any courses in America do,
Speaker 1: is like why can't my dog come with me? Like
Speaker 1: you know how much easier it would be if you
Speaker 1: could take your dog out? Like do you know how
Speaker 1: much easier it would be for me to get my
Speaker 1: wife out if our dog could come? Like you know,
Speaker 1: it all of a sudden becomes more than you know,
Speaker 1: You're you're spending time outside in a beautiful place. You
Speaker 1: know it goes back to the landscape architecture, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much you know, you can do with a
Speaker 1: beautiful green space, a big beautiful green space. And so
Speaker 1: your kind of rock Wind Links was, was is your
Speaker 1: big calling card for a community golf It explained to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about you know, rock Wind as
Speaker 1: a golf course but also a community center.
Speaker 2: Sure. So rock Wind Community Links is in Hobbs, New Mexico.
Speaker 2: It was it was host of an old military golf
Speaker 2: course built in the forties. They did training sessions on
Speaker 2: the property right next they were housing a military personnel
Speaker 2: on the property they converted to a golf course and
Speaker 2: it was just I guess you could say it was
Speaker 2: poorly built. And then on top of that, it was
Speaker 2: on a piece of rock. It's you know, rock Wind.
Speaker 2: They called it the rock Callichi Rock. So it was
Speaker 2: it was a typical municipally on golf course that was,
Speaker 2: you know, deteriorating in front of everyone's eyes. They needed a
Speaker 2: new irrigation. They they had hard time, you know, having
Speaker 2: any quality turf. The soil wasn't great, and they kept
Speaker 2: coming up to the to the council to say, hey,
Speaker 2: we need to start putting some improvements to this, and
Speaker 2: each time, you know, they kept it wasn't as if
Speaker 2: they were saying no, but they said that there was
Speaker 2: higher priorities before we started improving the golf course. So
Speaker 2: when I was introduced to the club, I was actually
Speaker 2: hired to do a little part three course. They wanted
Speaker 2: to do an assessment to say, hey, we see a
Speaker 2: lot of these beginner courses starting to say we have
Speaker 2: an eighteen hole golf course. We have a kind of
Speaker 2: sort of a driving range. It wasn't great at a
Speaker 2: net at the back of it was really short, but hey,
Speaker 2: let's talk about putting a short course. So part of
Speaker 2: you know, my initial plan was just to build a
Speaker 2: little nine hole, twelve hole part three course. And I said, well, guys,
Speaker 2: did you think about this, you know, because it was
Speaker 2: really disconnected and went through a bunch of different ideas.
Speaker 2: I said, well, actually, what we need to be thinking
Speaker 2: about is broadly, how is this facility attracting golfers and
Speaker 2: training them and transitioning them from the beginnings through on
Speaker 2: to the serious golfer. And I presented them the community
Speaker 2: links concept. I said, this is it isn't just about golfers. Anymore.
Speaker 2: Now we'll talk about developing people through life and family
Speaker 2: and those types of things. And the city manager at
Speaker 2: the time was listening to me and he's like, you
Speaker 2: know what, that's interesting. I can I can sell that
Speaker 2: and my my council will buy into that. So we
Speaker 2: went in front of council, said this is what we're thinking.
Speaker 2: And it turned from you know, a sim irrigation project
Speaker 2: or a part three course, to now the golf course
Speaker 2: becoming a central component of their entire community. That Hobbs
Speaker 2: is oil and gas driven, so timing is everything. They
Speaker 2: were seeing oil prices on the rise at the time
Speaker 2: and in a very pro golf mayor and a couple
Speaker 2: of people on the council that played golf. Not everybody,
Speaker 2: but a couple. So when we went in front of
Speaker 2: them and said, hey, before we go any farther, we
Speaker 2: want to see if you're if you're interested in this,
Speaker 2: and we're really proud to say that every time we
Speaker 2: went in front of council with what we tried to do,
Speaker 2: we got seven to zero votes in favor that this
Speaker 2: golf course should become a central part of the city
Speaker 2: plan and it and and that this idea that we're
Speaker 2: going to diversify the user group to attract more than
Speaker 2: just golfers. Was tangible. They saw that, So we have
Speaker 2: a trail system. We've got an open We built a
Speaker 2: five acre affluent water storage that the golf course here
Speaker 2: uses for irrigation, which then has an open space adjacent
Speaker 2: to it. So if the trail system connects through the
Speaker 2: through the clubhouse, community center area and then has a
Speaker 2: spot where where golfers non golfers can actually watch people
Speaker 2: play golf. There's a par three real close across the water,
Speaker 2: so they can sit on a little seat wall. There's
Speaker 2: a nice big open green space next to the range,
Speaker 2: so that we have you know, kids programs. SNAG golf
Speaker 2: is a big part of what they do. SNAG is
Speaker 2: now in all their schools as a part of this project.
Speaker 2: The community college plays there, so you know, they have
Speaker 2: expandable outdoor event areas, so they put on symphonies and
Speaker 2: you know this in Hobbes, this is this was the
Speaker 2: basically the middle of the city. Now everything happens at
Speaker 2: their golf course. And it couldn't have come together any better.
Speaker 2: We had support from everybody across UH there, their level
Speaker 2: of government, government and uh. And speaking of the us J,
Speaker 2: they've they've now they've labeled it as the model MUNI
Speaker 2: if you will, for others to look at.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people like you go in
Speaker 1: and say, hey, like, you know, let's fix this golf
Speaker 1: course up. Let's you know, make it this and this
Speaker 1: and this, so this this course you know needed obviously irrigation,
Speaker 1: which is a big and it's a good timing piece
Speaker 1: for doing a project. But in terms of economics, like
Speaker 1: you know, how can how can IMMUNI look at this
Speaker 1: and say we're gonna we're it's not going to crush
Speaker 1: our bottom line with with the project.
Speaker 2: That's that's the biggest question. I guess like, okay, well
Speaker 2: great you did that at rock winn There's no way
Speaker 2: we can do that here. And I always turn around
Speaker 2: say are you sure that you can't? So you know,
Speaker 2: most every city is making some pretty major investments in
Speaker 2: the quality of life, and so to me, it's about
Speaker 2: understanding what's important. And so the very first thing is
Speaker 2: is a is a marketing and a messaging issue that
Speaker 2: that I'll stand in front of the council and I'll say, okay,
Speaker 2: who here plays golf? And more than likely one or
Speaker 2: two out of seven or nine will raise their hand.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, well who here has played golf? And
Speaker 2: then a couple more people raise the hand, and so
Speaker 2: to me, I immediately go back to the discussion that
Speaker 2: if if we don't understand the value of what this
Speaker 2: golf course could mean to the city or for the
Speaker 2: minispet or the area, the community, the county, then we
Speaker 2: shouldn't even be talking about anything. I would tell you
Speaker 2: that you should be considering closing this golf course. And
Speaker 2: then of course everyone's like, no, we can't close this
Speaker 2: golf course. You know, well, you know, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of people to play golf here. We'll ultimately only have,
Speaker 2: you know, a few thousand rounds a year. And so
Speaker 2: I start to say, let's start building pride. So that's
Speaker 2: number one is messaging and support of golf. And then
Speaker 2: almost always there are practice facilities, short tees, you know,
Speaker 2: open space that you can carve out. It's really challenging
Speaker 2: this idea that an eighteen hole regulation course is what's
Speaker 2: right for for cities across the country. So not every
Speaker 2: golf course needs to be seven thousand yards sixty two
Speaker 2: hundred yard golf courses just fine for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: So we look at kind of carving out spaces within
Speaker 2: the space to be able to do that. And then
Speaker 2: I also I talk about it in terms of a roadmap,
Speaker 2: So this isn't going to happen over a short doesn't
Speaker 2: always have to happen over a short period of time.
Speaker 2: It just needs to be the messaging needs to be accurate,
Speaker 2: It needs to be repeated over and over and then
Speaker 2: implemented at the pace that you guys feel is appropriate
Speaker 2: for funding. But if you're not going to fund it,
Speaker 2: then I would just tell you that you consider closing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like they got to get behind it
Speaker 1: or get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think differentiation to me is something that always
Speaker 1: sticks out too, is that I've been dealing with this
Speaker 1: a little bit with the course I grew up playing,
Speaker 1: is thinking about closing, and you look at the landscape
Speaker 1: and they're all the same golf course that were built
Speaker 1: in the same period, and this just row of everything
Speaker 1: around it, and it's it's just like, of course, then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it becomes price is the thing
Speaker 1: that you compete on because you're no different than everything else.
Speaker 2: I I wholeheartedly agree that that that in order for
Speaker 2: community golf to be successful, it has to be able
Speaker 2: to provide something that not not anyone else is providing.
Speaker 2: So if you look around your golf landscape, you need
Speaker 2: to find what it is that you know that that
Speaker 2: that that the private business isn't isn't providing or doesn't
Speaker 2: want to provide. So that's where these these short courses,
Speaker 2: that's where the practice facilities and driving range concepts. That's
Speaker 2: why top golf, I think, is becoming so so popular.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's providing something that that the that the
Speaker 2: rest of the golf community is not not giving everyone.
Speaker 2: And so as long as you can stand up and
Speaker 2: say that this is a course that's providing a benefit
Speaker 2: to my community in ways that the private market is
Speaker 2: is not able to, then that's that's our niche. That's
Speaker 2: where the community golf starts to say, all right, then
Speaker 2: a two hundred thousand dollars subsidies starts to make sense
Speaker 2: because one, it's a smaller footprints, so we're using less resources,
Speaker 2: less less dollars. Oh, by the way, you can play
Speaker 2: it much quicker, and and it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's able to attract an area that of the of
Speaker 2: the population that wouldn't necessarily go to that championship eight
Speaker 2: you know, eighteen whole seven thousand yard golf course.
Speaker 1: I even think about it with the course I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: like in the area, there's no good driving ranges. Like alone,
Speaker 1: having a driving range, you're going, like a really quality
Speaker 1: driving range, You're going to attract people that are members
Speaker 1: of the country clubs that have subpar driving ranges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's quite interesting for me to look back
Speaker 2: on properties that we're all built in this this window
Speaker 2: that we're we're talking about in the nineties, how the
Speaker 2: driving range was was you know, the history says you
Speaker 2: were lucky to have a driving range, and then when
Speaker 2: you did, it was just for warm up purposes. So
Speaker 2: it really wasn't really thought of as a place that
Speaker 2: people would come and just bang balls and you know,
Speaker 2: tear up turf and dig holes. They would they would
Speaker 2: basically take a couple of swings and go out and
Speaker 2: play golf. That that entire mentality has shifted, and that
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about this myself. That's that's my life,
Speaker 2: That's that's what makes sense to me. I don't go
Speaker 2: out and play eighteen holes with my buddies. Anymore, I
Speaker 2: go out and play four or five holes with my kids.
Speaker 2: I got three young boys, and then I'll take them
Speaker 2: to the to the range to hit balls, and then
Speaker 2: I might take them in and get a soda, right
Speaker 2: so that or maybe put on the green then Dennesota.
Speaker 2: So that to me is a shift in the and
Speaker 2: how we use a golf course. And I think that
Speaker 2: that is a real If you don't have that, if
Speaker 2: you're not trending in that area and the practice facilities
Speaker 2: of driving ranges, then then I think you're missing out.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny. I was talking to my buddy that
Speaker 1: I grew up playing this golf course with, and you know,
Speaker 1: we played in high school together and grew up riding
Speaker 1: our bikes there and we were the same guys that
Speaker 1: were hitting chewing up our neighbor's lawn. But we talked,
Speaker 1: you know, we had coffee. We were talking and it's
Speaker 1: like we spent the most time on that course is
Speaker 1: putting green, and I you know, you start to think
Speaker 1: about why, and it was it was, it was massive,
Speaker 1: it was it was you know, probably like a ten
Speaker 1: thousand square foot putting green. So you we could do
Speaker 1: and you could chip and everything, and you we'd spend
Speaker 1: hours there and we'd never get tired with it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a great green like in the sense of like
Speaker 1: it wasn't like supremely interesting with contours. But what it
Speaker 1: was was it was free, it was open, and it
Speaker 1: allowed us to like, it was a place we could
Speaker 1: just spend time, you know, and I think exactly, and
Speaker 1: it's like you think about it, it's like we spent
Speaker 1: more time on that putting green, chipping and putting than
Speaker 1: we did playing the golf course.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah. So the uh, the city manager got and
Speaker 2: Hobbs for saying, you know, if you're not if a
Speaker 2: city is not too concerned about green fee, you can
Speaker 2: really start to grow the game. And this idea that
Speaker 2: you'd have a bucket of putters next to your putting
Speaker 2: green where there was a walking trail, that someone might
Speaker 2: actually pull a putter and hit a ball because they've
Speaker 2: never done that before. You know, the business mind in
Speaker 2: golf says, well, I should charge them for that. That
Speaker 2: should be a five dollars putting course fee, right, And
Speaker 2: so this this is back to this idea of community golf.
Speaker 2: I understand they're doing really good things like down in
Speaker 2: winter Park. You know this idea that that it's not
Speaker 2: all about a green fee, and it's not all about
Speaker 2: you know, revenue. Sometimes it's more about an asset and
Speaker 2: the quality of life and spending time with your family discussion,
Speaker 2: and you know, those are the ways to do it,
Speaker 2: and it's proven we just haven't. We just ignored it
Speaker 2: for twenty years. That's why I'm saying that I think
Speaker 2: that it's it's prime for a comeback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you look at golf and how it changes and
Speaker 1: how there's these different innovations and the last big one
Speaker 1: was the minimalist movement that you know, Tom Doak and
Speaker 1: Bill Kohrr and Ben Crenshaw started with building golf courses
Speaker 1: that were much more lay of the ground. And with
Speaker 1: the ground movement, and you start to think about, like,
Speaker 1: what's going to be this next innovation with golf courses,
Speaker 1: and you have to look no further than abundance of
Speaker 1: golf courses that were built that really don't fit needs
Speaker 1: or aren't any good. And you know, it also makes
Speaker 1: me think about the residential golf courses that just aren't
Speaker 1: very good golf courses. But we're built to make money,
Speaker 1: you know, with residential developments and and that kind of
Speaker 1: fits into this. And I think reimagining those golf courses
Speaker 1: are is what the future of golf course development is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with all that. I think I think
Speaker 2: it's going to be interesting because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: there's a lot of sticky parts of that, because there's
Speaker 2: there's zoning regulations and open space and those types of things.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't agree more. And I think I think
Speaker 2: that the idea that we're going to look back on
Speaker 2: courses like sand Hills and the development like Bandon dune'es I.
Speaker 2: You know, we talk a lot about the dark ages
Speaker 2: of golf, but I think those will be the facilities
Speaker 2: that really, you know, we'll look back and saying that's
Speaker 2: where the golf industry turned to another direction. I can't
Speaker 2: help but think even some of these residential courses are
Speaker 2: going to have to then change away from just being
Speaker 2: a golf course, are going to have to be more
Speaker 2: park open space, because I just don't think those are
Speaker 2: those are the ones that aren't going to make it.
Speaker 2: I think everyone's proven that when you get out into
Speaker 2: open space, free of development and out in nature that's
Speaker 2: when we really really that's when we know we really
Speaker 2: love golf.
Speaker 1: A house on a golf course is like an immediate
Speaker 1: detractor for people. It's it's amazing, it is. I remember
Speaker 1: I was talking about Philly Cricket Club with somebody and
Speaker 1: somebody goes. Somebody was like, you know, there's those condos
Speaker 1: on the thirteenth hole just ruin everything. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, one hole like having condos by there.
Speaker 1: But this guy, you know, he just was offended by
Speaker 1: those condos, like and like, I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the assence of golf as being out and they open
Speaker 1: and getting to you know, disconnect from the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that whole idea of development
Speaker 2: and the right balance for all of those those elements.
Speaker 2: You know. The one thing that I believe happened over
Speaker 2: a twenty or three year period is that the golf
Speaker 2: course wasn't the number one driver. So you chose sites
Speaker 2: that you didn't necessarily you wouldn't necessarily build a golf
Speaker 2: course by itself. It wasn't a great piece of land,
Speaker 2: and you ended up, you know, moving a lot of dirt,
Speaker 2: and you raised the houses on the outside and dropped
Speaker 2: the golf on the on the middle of the center.
Speaker 2: It just got to be repetitive and boring tunnels exactly.
Speaker 2: And it's still occurring there. There's properties that are happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a big development here in Phoenix going
Speaker 2: and I was just that yesterday that you know, they're
Speaker 2: building houses all over the place and there's a golf
Speaker 2: course in the middle of it. But but what I
Speaker 2: found interesting about it is is the clubhouse was not
Speaker 2: just a clubhouse. There was I walked in, the very
Speaker 2: first thing I saw was a bike rental shop. It
Speaker 2: was a clubhouse kind of built in a U and
Speaker 2: so they saw bike rentals, and then see kayaks because
Speaker 2: you could actually take it out on a big lake
Speaker 2: that they were building. And and then there's there's a
Speaker 2: whole open space that went off into the center of
Speaker 2: the property. And the very first thing you see as
Speaker 2: you walk in the back of the clubhouse was a
Speaker 2: big open outdoor seating area and then the driving range.
Speaker 2: So it was right in line with all the things
Speaker 2: that I'm talking about that the driving range becomes more
Speaker 2: of a social center and people are hanging out and
Speaker 2: you just go over, hit some balls and come back
Speaker 2: over here, you know, it was so So the residential
Speaker 2: part of this is I don't think is necessarily gonna
Speaker 2: go away entirely, but I think how we use some
Speaker 2: of these central spaces is definitely evolving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard a statistic that a golf course within
Speaker 1: walking distance of your home is worth like ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to your home.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. That wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: That's just something I heard with this research I've been
Speaker 1: doing recently, which it's crazy, but you think about like
Speaker 1: these big residential like why doesn't the clubhouse or have
Speaker 1: like a coffee shop, you know, if I live like
Speaker 1: down the street, like I'm going to go there rather
Speaker 1: than I'm going to go like spend ten minutes in
Speaker 1: my car going to get coffee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I think you're you're kind of touching on
Speaker 2: some of the things that I that I've been in
Speaker 2: the middle of. You know, it's one thing to be
Speaker 2: talking about a message. It's another thing to actually implement it,
Speaker 2: implement that message. And you know, so our golf business,
Speaker 2: if you will, is really they've got the management companies
Speaker 2: and the operators, they've got it pretty well oiled to
Speaker 2: a golf business, so they know golf. What they're not
Speaker 2: really good at is or not. I mean they can be,
Speaker 2: they just haven't chosen to be good at doing other
Speaker 2: things like coffee houses, bike rentals. They don't understand it.
Speaker 2: So now, how do you position the economic there for
Speaker 2: these guys that actually can come in and diversify the
Speaker 2: user without having the risk of losing That's that's what's
Speaker 2: really that's an interesting part of this. I talked to
Speaker 2: a management company a lot about this and he says, well, Andy,
Speaker 2: this all sounds great. I love the community links concept,
Speaker 2: but right now, no one's hiring us to do that.
Speaker 2: Well I'm going to change that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So having working with a municipality versus a private club, like,
Speaker 1: what are you what are the differences that you see?
Speaker 2: Do you have enough time? You know? I couldn't you know?
Speaker 2: There would Let me start with some of the similarities.
Speaker 2: So the similarities are there's always a discussion about money,
Speaker 2: there's always a discussion about budget, and there's always a
Speaker 2: discussion about downtime and disturbance and so so there's certainly
Speaker 2: some similarities that it crossed, you know, both types of projects.
Speaker 2: Probably the biggest difference with the municipality. You know, the
Speaker 2: kind of the community golf perspective is just all of
Speaker 2: the other buy in that has to happen. It's it's
Speaker 2: just takes longer to make decisions and more people have
Speaker 2: to weigh in. And that's that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that I think that I've done well at and I
Speaker 2: kind of promote myself as I've got the patients that
Speaker 2: kind of go through that I'm not going anywhere. So
Speaker 2: this doesn't have to happen in six months. It can
Speaker 2: happen in twelve months or I don't like to take
Speaker 2: too long. But and so the stakeholder buy in the meetings,
Speaker 2: to the town hall meetings negotiating certain aspects of the plan.
Speaker 2: You know, this is where you start to see, you know,
Speaker 2: if I kind of diverge a little bit to see
Speaker 2: what a golfer really looks like. You know, when you're
Speaker 2: in a town hall of one hundred and twenty one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty people and you have half golfers, half nons,
Speaker 2: you start to see how we as a group, as
Speaker 2: a golfing group react, And I gotta be honest, you know,
Speaker 2: the golfers are not very organized. They're not they They
Speaker 2: they come in, they say this is our golf course,
Speaker 2: and then if they're upset, they'll leave, a lot of
Speaker 2: golfers will walk out. They'll say that I'm never coming back,
Speaker 2: you know. Whereas the mountain biker Mountain Bike Association or
Speaker 2: the equestrian, you know, they'll come up with a PowerPoint presentation,
Speaker 2: they'll present everything to us very matter of factly. And
Speaker 2: when you actually look back and you start to see
Speaker 2: how how the process is going, you know, I find
Speaker 2: myself defending golf just from a from a group standpoint,
Speaker 2: you know, not necessarily just me individually or what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to do. And so, you know, managing all those
Speaker 2: different type of community uses is by far the the difference,
Speaker 2: the big difference. But I will say from a club
Speaker 2: from a private club membership is you still have opinions,
Speaker 2: but generally it's really driven by, you know, by being
Speaker 2: a member at that club.
Speaker 1: That's I think like one of the things in my
Speaker 1: experience with municipalities and and the dynamics of the municipal
Speaker 1: golf course is like how much stock is put into
Speaker 1: their the random group of players that show up for
Speaker 1: whatever meeting, and what they say and and how they'll
Speaker 1: you know, if you raise the race time out of
Speaker 1: here is like, is that really the customer that you want?
Speaker 1: If you if you I'm giving you a better golf
Speaker 1: course and it's ten dollars more, you're out of here.
Speaker 2: You know, It's that's real, that's real. And I've I've
Speaker 2: been in those meetings where the golf you know, three
Speaker 2: or four golfers will get in front of the council
Speaker 2: and raise their voice and tell the council that there
Speaker 2: will never come back, and it scares the council and
Speaker 2: because this is their constituents, they don't they don't want
Speaker 2: that negativity. So they end up saying, oh, well, we better,
Speaker 2: you know, we better, you know, change our message or
Speaker 2: the golfers are going to be upset. And you know
Speaker 2: that's you know, I find my I'm the golfer, right,
Speaker 2: that's I'm a golfer. But I also understand I'm looking
Speaker 2: at it from a kind of a you know, I
Speaker 2: think a bigger picture, and I you know, losing a
Speaker 2: customer is a really difficult thing. And I think with
Speaker 2: all this discussion about technology in the game and the
Speaker 2: distances and all this evolution of the game, I think
Speaker 2: one of the biggest things we're going to have a
Speaker 2: question about is what defines a golfer, what is a
Speaker 2: traditional golfer, and and the challenges of this evolution. You
Speaker 2: know you mentioned about bringing your dog out to the course.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. But I've also seen it where
Speaker 2: golfers don't like it when two dogs are barking next
Speaker 2: to each other and in their backswing rights. That's the
Speaker 2: traditional golfer that doesn't want those dogs there. You know,
Speaker 2: we as a as an industry are our own worst enemy. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: You got your MBA from in Berkeley in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I don't think that's a degree that many
Speaker 1: architects have. And how has it helped you from your
Speaker 1: business side?
Speaker 2: So quick clarification, it's not a full MBA. It was
Speaker 2: it was an executive education. Uh, pretty intense study. But
Speaker 2: I can't say that I have an MBA, but thank
Speaker 2: you for giving me the.
Speaker 1: All that I'll go with it.
Speaker 2: I will say this that that the two things that
Speaker 2: that I wish I would have learned quicker were that
Speaker 2: it's not about what you know, it's who you know.
Speaker 2: It's a relationship business. And then two would be understanding
Speaker 2: business from how to allocate dollars and how you know,
Speaker 2: we talkt we talk a lot about a design fee
Speaker 2: and how much people charge for a design. You know,
Speaker 2: for a young guy like me, my design you know,
Speaker 2: generally my design fee has to last almost two years
Speaker 2: because I've got twelve months of design and then there's
Speaker 2: going to be a permitting window and then we might
Speaker 2: get the whole construction done in six months or twelve months.
Speaker 2: And so you know the economic behind you know, how
Speaker 2: the dollars and cents of operating a design business. You know,
Speaker 2: we we drop pictures. We're creative people and typically don't
Speaker 2: We're not really good at sales, and we're certainly not
Speaker 2: good at business by nature. So it's really showed me
Speaker 2: what I don't know more than it's kind of given
Speaker 2: me what I do know. So I keep trying to
Speaker 2: be better at that. Business is hard.
Speaker 1: Let's transition into one of your more recent projects. You
Speaker 1: did a restoration renovation of Meadowbrook Golf Club up in Detroit,
Speaker 1: Michigan area. A Willie Park design it, and I think
Speaker 1: you know I've been I've gotten countless emails from people
Speaker 1: saying that it's a spot that I must check out.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about meadow Brook and
Speaker 1: how that job came about.
Speaker 2: Sure, your meadow Brook Country Club, Northville, Michigan, about twenty
Speaker 2: five miles or so outside of well, about three miles
Speaker 2: outside Detroit, and it was the private club. Family family dominated.
Speaker 2: It's got swim tennis, active social program, and they chose
Speaker 2: to undergo some master planning. I think it was in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen when I first It was
Speaker 2: early fourteen when I first met him, and they interviewed
Speaker 2: fifteen guys. I happened to get on the list, and
Speaker 2: we went through a process of elimination. You know. That's
Speaker 2: that's the other thing about our business today is it's
Speaker 2: like it seems like you're either dealing with one or
Speaker 2: two guys or you're dealing with twenty guys. So this
Speaker 2: was one of the ones that you end up end
Speaker 2: up just kind of having patience and providing as much
Speaker 2: information as you as you can. And I made a
Speaker 2: few visits where I actually started to get to know
Speaker 2: some of the people. The general manager, Joe Morine and
Speaker 2: I kind of kicked it off right from the beginning.
Speaker 2: We just kind of got along right away, and it
Speaker 2: narrowed down to five and we did a big interview
Speaker 2: and I laid out some ideas and you know, I
Speaker 2: focused a lot of about how I can sell a
Speaker 2: plan and be in front of them membership and all
Speaker 2: my focus group, you know, kind of concept. I have
Speaker 2: a big portion of my master plan where I get
Speaker 2: in front of the members and get to know them
Speaker 2: and it it it escalated into a contract and it
Speaker 2: was my first project in Michigan, and and it was
Speaker 2: quite quite a coup for someone from Arizona coming to Michigan.
Speaker 2: You know, the state of Michigan's pretty pretty specific about
Speaker 2: who they worked with up there. They love their state.
Speaker 2: And so I'm originally from Wisconsin, so I guess I
Speaker 2: could I could play off that I was a Midwesterner
Speaker 2: at by heart, but it could have been better. I
Speaker 2: can't imagine finding another club that I've gotten along with
Speaker 2: better and had a better working relationship, and probably more importantly,
Speaker 2: a club that really trusted me and let me, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of go through the process and then design a
Speaker 2: course that that I think reflected what we tried, you know,
Speaker 2: what the club needed and what we wanted to do.
Speaker 2: It was a Willie Park Junior original design, but it
Speaker 2: was only six holes. Willie Park couldn't couldn't finish the
Speaker 2: rest of the course because of financial issues, so Collis
Speaker 2: and Deray ended up expanding it from Chicago. There they
Speaker 2: expanded it to eighteen holes.
Speaker 1: Those guys did a course up in Chicago called, I
Speaker 1: think Gone Flora Country Club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, you know the Olympia Fields. They have
Speaker 2: some connection there, and then Phloso Moore have some connection
Speaker 2: between the two and they brought they actually brought I
Speaker 2: believe they brought Park over to do Olympia Fields eventually
Speaker 2: the North of course. Yeah, the North course. Right.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. So when you get this kind of a project,
Speaker 1: what kind of research goes into the architects and the history?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well a lot. And I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that I just have an appreciation for, whether or
Speaker 2: not it's one hundred years old or if it's fifteen
Speaker 2: or twenty years old, is let's find some history about
Speaker 2: why it is what it is, because you there's always reasons.
Speaker 2: There's always a permitting issue, there's always a budget issue,
Speaker 2: or there's something that goes into the process of why
Speaker 2: that golf course looks the way it does, and so
Speaker 2: one of the big things about Meadowbrook is you could
Speaker 2: tell that it had been expanded upon over a number
Speaker 2: of years and then they ultimately in the seventies did
Speaker 2: an Art Hills master plan with a couple hole renovation
Speaker 2: and Jerry Matthews was another one that had some work
Speaker 2: on bunkers and a tree planting plan, so they they
Speaker 2: did a fair bit of planting through the eighties. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there was so yeah, there's a huge amount of history.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I clued in on
Speaker 2: is obviously wondering what it was that Willie Park Jr.
Speaker 2: Really wanted it in his eighteen hole design, because there's
Speaker 2: an indication that he did eighteen hole design, but we
Speaker 2: didn't have any drawings for it, and so I dove
Speaker 2: deep into that. So I looked at his green design.
Speaker 2: I tried to do as much local history. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a tremendous amount of research that goes into it.
Speaker 1: So Willie Park Jr. Is I think in America a
Speaker 1: little bit underappreciated, but he I mean, he has some
Speaker 1: of the some of the best designs in the United
Speaker 1: UK and and obviously he did, you know, he's Maidstone
Speaker 1: and Olympia Fields North were two of his designs. Here,
Speaker 1: what are some of the traits of a Willie Park
Speaker 1: course that might get overlooked?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Battle Creek outside of Detroit. There is another good,
Speaker 2: really good Willie Park. I actually I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the better ones. But so to me it feels
Speaker 2: like he's very driven on locating his greens. And you know,
Speaker 2: so one of the parts of the of the research
Speaker 2: is we went over to England and we did as
Speaker 2: much as we could to see the work in the US.
Speaker 2: But this place called Huntercombe and a place called Sunningdale
Speaker 2: Old were two places that we knew or I knew
Speaker 2: that I wanted to get to get a hold of
Speaker 2: and actually see. And so we.
Speaker 1: Got a little history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little bit. It's hard, well it's hard
Speaker 2: for me to figure out exactly how much is still
Speaker 2: Park versus Colt. But nonetheless we knew that Huntercombe was
Speaker 2: his and relatively untouched. And so when you compare what
Speaker 2: he did in the US and then you look at
Speaker 2: what we all think is really pretty good indication of
Speaker 2: what he liked about golf or what he thought he liked,
Speaker 2: it was a little bit of his experimentation course at Huntercombe.
Speaker 2: You didn't quite you didn't quite relate. So it was
Speaker 2: obvious that the courses that he were building here, he
Speaker 2: was doing a lot of work. He came back in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen, back from from the UK, landed i think
Speaker 2: on tax day in April April fifteenth of nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: and you see all the courses he was doing at
Speaker 2: one time. So you know, the whole Donald Ross discussion,
Speaker 2: how many times can he get to a course? And
Speaker 2: so the Huntercombe project really resonated with us, you know,
Speaker 2: so a lot more interesting green contours, a lot more diversity.
Speaker 2: You know, I think Willie Parks tends to do a
Speaker 2: lot of the same kind of greens. Hey that's a
Speaker 2: little you know obviously nuances, but you know, back to front,
Speaker 2: a big deep swale behind. So he was always very
Speaker 2: specific about locating his greens and and uh and then
Speaker 2: a Huntercombe you know, he he did a fair bit
Speaker 2: of drainage ditches and grass bunkers that weren't always didn't
Speaker 2: have sand in them. Originally what they call over there
Speaker 2: Willy park potts, you know, park pop bunkers. And so
Speaker 2: I think we for us, we realized that it wasn't
Speaker 2: all eighteen hole, an entire eighteen hole Willy Park Junior
Speaker 2: at Meadowbrook, and that gave us some latitude to bring
Speaker 2: some of this flavor from from from England. And then
Speaker 2: I had a committee that that a couple of them
Speaker 2: went with me to to England to see the work.
Speaker 2: And we came back to the US and said, man,
Speaker 2: if we could bring some of that over here, it'd
Speaker 2: be cool. And I said, let's do it. And so
Speaker 2: we started to kind of you know, so I would
Speaker 2: say it's a sympathetic Uh, I don't know if i'd
Speaker 2: use the word restoration, but it's sympathetic to parks work
Speaker 2: that we saw. But you know, it was as much
Speaker 2: of our own interpretation as it was anything that we
Speaker 2: had any documentation on.
Speaker 1: M It's how important is it to get you know,
Speaker 1: your committee out to see stuff when you're when you're
Speaker 1: undertaking a project.
Speaker 2: Like this, I would tell you it's important and incredibly important.
Speaker 2: It's one of the things that continues to be very
Speaker 2: difficult because getting everybody in the same place to go
Speaker 2: travel across the country is is is time intensive, resource intensive.
Speaker 2: It's great when you have work locally, so the area
Speaker 2: around Detroit has a lot of the stuff that we
Speaker 2: would have wanted to see. But you know, we went
Speaker 2: to Pittsburgh, went to the to Long Island, and so
Speaker 2: one of our members is very familiar with the North
Speaker 2: Course at Olympia Fields, and so, you know, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: It's very important. If nothing else, it's a team building exercise.
Speaker 2: You actually get a chance to go stand on a green.
Speaker 2: I remember we went and played Garden City Golf Club.
Speaker 2: We stood in that you know those greens. Okay, what
Speaker 2: do we like? What we don't like? And that that's
Speaker 2: a really cool part of the job I believe is
Speaker 2: that you know, you get to sense what people are
Speaker 2: comfortable with. And I'll tell you that my committee was
Speaker 2: was really comfortable with doing something cool.
Speaker 1: So architecture. I always feel like people have kind of
Speaker 1: awakening moments at different different times. Is are there a
Speaker 1: handful of courses or you know one particular golf course
Speaker 1: that you feel has inspired your career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple of backups, but the
Speaker 2: number one, without any question is the old course at St. Andrews.
Speaker 2: And it's one of the things that I was in
Speaker 2: the business for a while before I actually got over
Speaker 2: there to see it. So as soon as I saw it,
Speaker 2: that was you know, that was my if you want
Speaker 2: to call it an awakening, and it was. It was
Speaker 2: certainly that same question that we all asked, like, how
Speaker 2: in the world did we get so far away from
Speaker 2: this in the US. And so I got to come
Speaker 2: back the old course all the time. And then and
Speaker 2: then number two is you know, just understanding the impact
Speaker 2: that it's had on our businesses, the Sandhills Golf Club.
Speaker 2: I mean that that that one really started to show
Speaker 2: you that that that some of this this kind of
Speaker 2: ethic that you brought from that you had from from
Speaker 2: the old country of Scotland, that was actually coming over
Speaker 2: here and in such a beautiful place to do it
Speaker 2: in the sand dunes without an ocean, but you got
Speaker 2: this ocean of dunes. And so I would say those
Speaker 2: are probably two of the ones that come right to mind.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah.
Speaker 1: They I gotta get over to the old course. That's
Speaker 1: high on the high on the list of things to do.
Speaker 2: But sand the best part of the old course is
Speaker 2: walking it on Sunday. I mean, well, one of the
Speaker 2: good one of the best parts of the old course
Speaker 2: is getting out there on Sunday and walking around and
Speaker 2: seeing the greens and watching people walk their dogs and
Speaker 2: and all that stuff that that's just that's just so cool.
Speaker 1: When you when you go out to say a site
Speaker 1: visit for a potential project, what's your prep look like?
Speaker 1: Do you do a lot of prep before do you
Speaker 1: go walk it blind without knowing it?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 2: So one of the things that that I always it's
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting because I've had this happen to
Speaker 2: be a number of times where I go out and
Speaker 2: I visit a committee with a committee and we go
Speaker 2: out and walk the golf course, and everybody is looking
Speaker 2: for me to just start talking, you know, well, I'm
Speaker 2: looking at this and look at that, when in fact,
Speaker 2: all I'm doing is just I'm taking it in. And
Speaker 2: I think a lot of my feelings of design and
Speaker 2: my philosophy on design is what does it feel like
Speaker 2: I'm visualizing hitting shots, I'm looking at the forms and
Speaker 2: features are cool, but I'm just taking it in. And
Speaker 2: so one of the difficult parts that I've always I've
Speaker 2: always felt one of the difficult parts of what what
Speaker 2: we do is is not only looking at it for
Speaker 2: the first time and seeing it through our eyes, but
Speaker 2: then knowing how a membership plays it and understanding the
Speaker 2: differences between the better player versus the the average player.
Speaker 2: And and so I've been commented that people who just
Speaker 2: stop me and say, Okay, Anny, what what are you
Speaker 2: saying now? What are you what are you seeing now?
Speaker 2: You're not saying anything like what I now. I've gotten
Speaker 2: to the point where I just warned them. I said, guys,
Speaker 2: don't think that I'm gonna talk too much. I'm out here.
Speaker 2: I'm taking it all in. But overall, it's It's one
Speaker 2: of the things that I like about the focus group
Speaker 2: portion of my of my process is that I get
Speaker 2: to know how these guys are actually playing it and
Speaker 2: not how I would play it. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: to me, that's there's a lot of time just understanding
Speaker 2: what they how they play it, what they like about it,
Speaker 2: what they don't like about it, and then start to
Speaker 2: overlay my own feelings on top of it under through
Speaker 2: that lens. So that's that to me is so there's
Speaker 2: a lot of time, and when it comes down to
Speaker 2: the actual ideas, I always talk. I'm an eighty twenty guy.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that with eighty percent twenty percent,
Speaker 2: I get eighty percent right or eighty percent finished, and
Speaker 2: then twenty percent you can leave open kind of and ended.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of where my planning always goes, is
Speaker 2: a you know, let's get into eighty percent, but twenty
Speaker 2: percent we can start to refine in the field. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's one hundred percent. Sometimes you start all over,
Speaker 2: of course, but but I always leave a little bit
Speaker 2: of my interpretation to kind of evolve when we finally
Speaker 2: get the construction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with obviously, with restoration is a big topic with
Speaker 1: the you know, do you put it all back into
Speaker 1: place exactly how it was at the best time they
Speaker 1: determined for the golf course, or do you you know,
Speaker 1: modernize it a little bit and move bunkers into where
Speaker 1: they would have been given technology and distance lengthening. Where
Speaker 1: do you have a stance on that or is every
Speaker 1: situation kind of different?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the easy answer is every situation is different.
Speaker 2: But I I would I would contend that that if
Speaker 2: you're going to call something a restoration, you better be
Speaker 2: darn sure that it's restored to what was actually built
Speaker 2: in what it actuallytually was. And so to me, the
Speaker 2: word restoration. I kind of laugh on it because you know,
Speaker 2: it's one of those words that everyone loves and everyone
Speaker 2: gets it, but then it becomes so overused, like just
Speaker 2: the idea that someone's restoring something sort of gives it
Speaker 2: this connotation that that it must be exclusive, must be
Speaker 2: really good. And so so I I'm one that that
Speaker 2: that tries to, you know, to understand the logistics of
Speaker 2: restoration and understand if that's even possible, and even if
Speaker 2: it's if it's something they want to do. I'm working
Speaker 2: with a club in California right now. We've had this
Speaker 2: exact conversation. We've got a really good aerial that shows
Speaker 2: some some the golf course in a state that that
Speaker 2: a couple of really famous architects have worked on it.
Speaker 2: And we said, hey, do we want to restore to
Speaker 2: this and and some of it's not possible, and and
Speaker 2: then you know, then we have those bunkers that are
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty yards off the tee right in
Speaker 2: the right in the landing area of Missus Jones and
Speaker 2: and and those types of things. So what what I've
Speaker 2: tried to do is I always try to go back
Speaker 2: in and restore the location of that bunker and give
Speaker 2: it the feeling that there was a bunker there. But
Speaker 2: I'll maybe soften it, make it rough, but make it
Speaker 2: part of the composition of the golf hole. Not necessarily
Speaker 2: put bunkers back, but then use mowing lines and try
Speaker 2: to do something in turf to actually accentuate that what
Speaker 2: that course was like. And not necessarily if that is,
Speaker 2: if we're not going down the restoration tack. But I
Speaker 2: always like to pay homage to those old features, even
Speaker 2: if it's a little bump offen the rough that only
Speaker 2: me and the superintendent know about. At least we know
Speaker 2: that that's where it was.
Speaker 1: What's your pet peeve at a golf course. I've got mine.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious what yours are.
Speaker 2: Where do I start green speeds? I can't tell you
Speaker 2: how many golf courses I know that that consumed way
Speaker 2: too much energy and too much thought and re versus
Speaker 2: around trying to trying to get speeds to a certain level. Uh.
Speaker 2: And then I would also say that, you know, one
Speaker 2: of my pet piece personally is this idea of designing
Speaker 2: courses for the better player while making them playable and
Speaker 2: interesting for the you know, the average player, and you
Speaker 2: know to me that that is that sounds so easy
Speaker 2: to do when you apply those to a particular piece
Speaker 2: of property, and especially a renovation that has limitations it.
Speaker 2: You know, playing the right set of tease is so
Speaker 2: important and and so from a golfing standpoint, the idea
Speaker 2: that any man would ultimately move forward to us at
Speaker 2: a teas that aren't you know, in his wheelhouse, to
Speaker 2: me that that's a major pet peeve. But all of
Speaker 2: the things around length and and teeing teeing grounds is
Speaker 2: something that that that I probably would describe as a
Speaker 2: pet peeve.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I so I played golf with a guy
Speaker 1: that I've played golf with like dozens of times in
Speaker 1: Florida recently. He's an older guy, and yeah, he likes
Speaker 1: playing back with me when he and he you know,
Speaker 1: he's a guy that's played in in a ton of
Speaker 1: USGA events, Like this guy's a stick. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the best players in Ohio for a long
Speaker 1: time and as an am and and it's funny. He's
Speaker 1: he's getting I think he's close to seventy now. But
Speaker 1: we played and we had another older guy in the
Speaker 1: group and he played way up. I mean he played
Speaker 1: under probably under six thousand yards fifty seven hundred yards,
Speaker 1: and like, all of a sudden, like this guy was
Speaker 1: a stick again. And it's like and I talked to
Speaker 1: him about it, He's like, I love it. Like I
Speaker 1: play like I used to play, because I'm hitting shots
Speaker 1: and I'm getting birdie putts when I hit a good drive.
Speaker 1: I've got a short iron end when I hit you know,
Speaker 1: on longer part fours, I've got I've got long iron
Speaker 1: mid irons. But I'm not just chipping up all the
Speaker 1: time anymore. Like if I mean, he can go play
Speaker 1: at the back to he's and shoot seventy six, seventy eight,
Speaker 1: but now he can shoot in the sixties every time
Speaker 1: if he plays up awesome, and it's just more fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a little bit going back to Meadowbrooks for
Speaker 2: a second, there were some people, some gals on our
Speaker 2: on our committee and in the focus groups, that thought
Speaker 2: the game of golf was meant to be played driver
Speaker 2: three would on every part four and part five, and
Speaker 2: in some cases driver on every part three. That's what
Speaker 2: they thought golf was. And and when you start to
Speaker 2: think about that, that there's there's a whole generation of
Speaker 2: golfers that have not been able to experience the game
Speaker 2: the way that we talk about you know, the driver
Speaker 2: short end or a driveable hole. You know, they think
Speaker 2: of a driverable hole being a part three. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's yeah. I think that that playing the right t
Speaker 1: is like one of the biggest epidemics in American golf
Speaker 1: and then in you know, Kingdom. Just there's so many
Speaker 1: golf courses that are like, you know, fifty six hundred
Speaker 1: yards that's fine, right, Well.
Speaker 2: That's the difference. That's the difference where because there's this
Speaker 2: discussion about how many t's, how many tea and grounds
Speaker 2: on a golf hole or too many? Is is three?
Speaker 2: The right number is four? Is five? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: we can't do six. That's way too many. Well, that
Speaker 2: only happens when you get yardages above the sixty three
Speaker 2: hundred yard mark. You know a lot of these even
Speaker 2: if you get the sixty six hundred yard you might
Speaker 2: have a little small, little back tea, but you know
Speaker 2: it's now when you go from seventy three hundred yards
Speaker 2: all the way down to four thousand, which is what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do. It's trying to get this diversification.
Speaker 2: It's it's hard to make a golf hole look classic
Speaker 2: and like it fits with all these little pads. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that I think we're really
Speaker 2: you know, we're really working hard to give that diversity.
Speaker 2: And you know, combo sets of t's are really popular
Speaker 2: in my world, where you can only you know, only
Speaker 2: have to build three or four sets of t's, maybe
Speaker 2: ones all the way up in the fairway so you're
Speaker 2: not really mowing that as a tee and then combo
Speaker 2: in between, so that you have the right yardage that
Speaker 2: you're looking for, but you're only utilizing three t's. To me,
Speaker 2: that's that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, playing more tees and different teas on different
Speaker 1: holes like is only going to add to the variety
Speaker 1: of the golf course, especially if you play the the
Speaker 1: course on a daily basis or a regular basis.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. So so san Holo, I worked on
Speaker 2: a product in Saint George's Utah Sanjalo, and when I
Speaker 2: take friends there, I never play from the scorecard. We
Speaker 2: always have a game. You know, not all my friends
Speaker 2: are all great players, but you know, well I'm not
Speaker 2: a great player, But I mean some of them are
Speaker 2: lesser than I am, but I'll take them to a
Speaker 2: set of tees to say, Okay, this is what we
Speaker 2: were thinking about here, and this is where you play
Speaker 2: it now. And then there's a there's a twenty it's
Speaker 2: twenty seven holes and one of one of the nines
Speaker 2: is a kind of an open all mode together concept
Speaker 2: called the Links nine, and we specifically intended that course
Speaker 2: to be played from multiple sets of tees so that
Speaker 2: you could have a different feeling as you played it through.
Speaker 2: So to me, I never go back to my courses
Speaker 2: and actually play from the card. I will always take
Speaker 2: my friends, especially if it's only one time. All right, guys,
Speaker 2: let's go play from this tea, because this is where
Speaker 2: it really based on who I'm playing with, this is
Speaker 2: exactly how it was meant to be played. And to
Speaker 2: me that you know, of course, that's a little inside
Speaker 2: knowledge from my standpoint, but the it's it's not very
Speaker 2: well accepted and not not not well no, not well
Speaker 2: practiced within our industry for sure.
Speaker 1: We talked about Bandon Dunes earlier, and I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that was one of the big philosophies of that
Speaker 1: whole place, was like designing a golf course around like
Speaker 1: at a yardage where people would enjoy golf.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, well the original course, they've they've even
Speaker 2: added some tea's going forward. You know, my friend Art
Speaker 2: Little has been a part up there helping out with
Speaker 2: this idea of relating swing speed to actual yardage on
Speaker 2: a golf course. And when you actually use something somewhat
Speaker 2: technical like that, you start to say, Okay, you know
Speaker 2: there's certain limitations for actual abilities based on how you're
Speaker 2: swinging and how far you could actually carry the ball,
Speaker 2: because that's a lot a lot of what it comes
Speaker 2: down to is these force carriers are getting up to
Speaker 2: the fairways. So yeah, but I couldn't agree more. They've
Speaker 2: done done a great job of you know now they
Speaker 2: even funnel everybody right to the sixty three or sixty
Speaker 2: two hundred yard golf course.
Speaker 1: You got your start in the industry in a role
Speaker 1: for a construction company that is regularly contracted to do work,
Speaker 1: and curious your take on kind of this design build
Speaker 1: and versus design contract not really schism is I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the right word, but debate that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, prevalent in golf course architecture.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's a big, big discussion. So anybody who's
Speaker 2: worked in a really you know, a good open design
Speaker 2: build relationship where where not everybody, not nobody on the
Speaker 2: team is going to get penalized and there's not a
Speaker 2: major schedule. It's not that we're milking time or whatever.
Speaker 2: But uh, the design build is by far the you know,
Speaker 2: the best way to get results and and certainly have
Speaker 2: you know, some pretty good fun doing it. Where where
Speaker 2: the design contract starts to become uh, you know, more
Speaker 2: of a role and there's a lot of talk about
Speaker 2: design build and and how you know, in the in
Speaker 2: the twenty thirty years ago, architects would drop plans and
Speaker 2: then hand them over to a contractor. You know, I
Speaker 2: get that, and in a lot of cases I've been
Speaker 2: a part of some projects like that. But that happened
Speaker 2: for I think a real reason. Even today, even when
Speaker 2: you when you're doing a design build, you're still having
Speaker 2: to have a contractor as part of the as part
Speaker 2: of the team. I've yet even today, you know, to
Speaker 2: find those That's what we did at San Hollo. We
Speaker 2: had all everyone on of time of materials, and we
Speaker 2: started the project and we didn't stop until we were
Speaker 2: happy with it. But that is so rare these days.
Speaker 2: Owners want budgets, they want time frames, certainly on a
Speaker 2: on a renovations schedule. They only want to be closed
Speaker 2: for a certain part of the season or only one
Speaker 2: season and that's it, or else it's not going to pass.
Speaker 2: And so contractors start to bring the ability for architects
Speaker 2: to meet those goals. And I think, to me, when
Speaker 2: you apply, then when you apply the actual business of
Speaker 2: design and being able to only have a certain amount
Speaker 2: of time in your in your schedule that you know
Speaker 2: to be able to spend one hundred percent of your
Speaker 2: time on a golf course, you know that limits you
Speaker 2: on a lot of other areas. So what I've done
Speaker 2: is I've set my I try to include design, shaping
Speaker 2: and part of my contract. I've got a guy that
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of work with. His named Scott
Speaker 2: Scott Clem. But I've a great guy, great at architecture, geek.
Speaker 2: He understands it from what we're all trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2: But I've other guys that I've worked with. I always
Speaker 2: try to have somebody there to support me. But but
Speaker 2: I think as long as you're able to spend the
Speaker 2: right amount of time in the field, which is what
Speaker 2: I always try to do, even though I'm not on
Speaker 2: a piece of equipment. However, I have, I have operated.
Speaker 2: I just I just don't anymore. And so those guys
Speaker 2: are a lot better at it than I am. And
Speaker 2: so you know, the designed contract works for me in
Speaker 2: the in the times that clients dictate it, and then
Speaker 2: I'm able to spend a lot of time in the field.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if I've answered a question, but
Speaker 2: that there's a lot there on that on that discussion.
Speaker 2: You know, I've always wondered for guys that are really
Speaker 2: promoting design build, you know, especially when you know the
Speaker 2: self operators. You know, I just think of it in
Speaker 2: my own my own time. I've got a family, I've
Speaker 2: got three young boys are playing baseball, you know, So
Speaker 2: I I prefer to try to get it in a
Speaker 2: position where I where I work with contractors on a
Speaker 2: regular basis or shapers that on a regular basis, because
Speaker 2: you know, Scott goes you know, months of a time
Speaker 2: at certain places when when it's the right project. But
Speaker 2: you know, the design build has its own limitations, and
Speaker 2: there's only so much time in a day that if
Speaker 2: you're going to want to do multiple projects, or if
Speaker 2: you're lucky enough to have multiple projects going on at
Speaker 2: one time, design build gets a lot more difficult when
Speaker 2: you when you spread yourself then.
Speaker 1: Is the efficiencies of running a business. It definitely it
Speaker 1: hinders how many projects you can take on. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's a huge value to you know,
Speaker 1: the design, build and the work. I think it's a
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating aspect because you know, I think everything
Speaker 1: in all of the world kind of tends to swing
Speaker 1: on pendulums, you know, and in the eighties and early
Speaker 1: nineties it was way over on the contractor side, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the way to do it, you know.
Speaker 2: And yeah, what i'd say about that though, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that that that I have to say
Speaker 2: about the contractor side is that, you know, because the
Speaker 2: business became so so busy, you now have a lot
Speaker 2: of people building golf courses who don't even play golf.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the things that I feel. You
Speaker 2: talk a lot about the dark Ages, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: a reference that before you know, a lot of it
Speaker 2: is people just didn't understand the game and you're now
Speaker 2: you're asking somebody to put a little curl in a green,
Speaker 2: a little wrinkle, a little little bump, and you know,
Speaker 2: Scott and I will shape it in and we'll try
Speaker 2: to get it in there right, and you know, I'll
Speaker 2: be out there with my rake and shovel and getting
Speaker 2: it exactly right, and then the finished crew comes through
Speaker 2: and wipes it out because you know, the last ten
Speaker 2: FASIO jobs they've done, that was something that got wiped out.
Speaker 2: We removed it. Well, no, that was something I specifically
Speaker 2: wanted there and they'd never seen it before. And so
Speaker 2: to me, to me, what what the design Builds concept
Speaker 2: today is really doing is it's putting the focus back
Speaker 2: on understand the game of golf. And to me, that's
Speaker 2: that's what's really cool about it, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think you can get you can get there. You know.
Speaker 2: Back to that eighty twenty year old we need to
Speaker 2: make it at least eighty percent right now. The question
Speaker 2: is how much of that twenty percent. I try to
Speaker 2: get as close to one hundred percent as I possibly can,
Speaker 2: and the only way to get one hundred percent is
Speaker 2: actually being there doing it yourself. Design building. But then again,
Speaker 2: if I'm there for the last two months doing that.
Speaker 2: More than likely I missed out on another RFP. I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to, right, you know, make a visit to go
Speaker 2: inquire about this other project. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: I just missed three baseball games. And so you know,
Speaker 2: life happens in between there. And to me, that's where
Speaker 2: I wonder how the design build will stand up from
Speaker 2: a business standpoint, because the contracting happened for a reason,
Speaker 2: and that was to be able to do a lot
Speaker 2: of golf over a very short period of time. Now
Speaker 2: we've swung back the other way to your analogy with
Speaker 2: the pendulum, I just wonder how much we're going to
Speaker 2: actually be able to you know, whether a design build
Speaker 2: will actually be a sustainable model for guys like me.
Speaker 1: Hey, I think it ends up settling somewhere in the
Speaker 1: middle where you know, there's there's a you know, there's
Speaker 1: a role of each and different projects call for different methods,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think well, and I think a five million
Speaker 2: dollar renovation is a lot different than a six hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars bunker project, right so I think I think
Speaker 2: to me, to me, scale and and logistics start to
Speaker 2: play right in line with, you know, the right construction process.
Speaker 2: Do you need this kind of contractor with this kind
Speaker 2: of financial financial sense, you know, or for financial backing
Speaker 2: to be able to get this project done. I went
Speaker 2: back to Meadowbrook and I went to them and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, guys, if you're asking me how to do
Speaker 2: this right, we should design, build and get get a
Speaker 2: contractor to help support us, and bring in some some
Speaker 2: support staff and put everybody on the time of materials
Speaker 2: so that there's no there's no feeling of you know,
Speaker 2: of everybody but he getting you know, lost or or losing.
Speaker 2: And the president of the club at the times that Andy,
Speaker 2: we just can't do that. We need a number, We
Speaker 2: need to go to the membership with a number. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, I can give you a number. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we don't have a contract that says that it's
Speaker 2: not going to exceed that. Well, no, it's a time
Speaker 2: of materials. But yet you're gonna we're going to manage this.
Speaker 2: It just didn't fly. Now looking back, he looks at it,
Speaker 2: he says, oh, now I see what you're saying. That
Speaker 2: would have been some value there, But there's no way
Speaker 2: I could have convinced Metalbrook to do that. They're just
Speaker 2: so we picked our battle and we designed contract at it.
Speaker 2: Scott and another couple of guys were shapers on it,
Speaker 2: and then we had a contractor you know, doing the
Speaker 2: heavy lifting.
Speaker 1: Let's get into some lighter stuff, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: who do you consider the most the least appreciated architect.
Speaker 2: Least appreciated, underappreciated, underappreciated. You know, I I go back
Speaker 2: to a guy like Perry Maxwell. I know he's probably
Speaker 2: gained a little bit more traction in our architecture world
Speaker 2: than he has in years past, but I got a
Speaker 2: chance when I live back in Arkansas and Oklahoma in Texas,
Speaker 2: I got a chance to see some of his stuff,
Speaker 2: and he built you know, in today's world, he would
Speaker 2: have been able to build golf courses for almost nothing.
Speaker 2: He was a great router of golf courses and and
Speaker 2: did things in the depression that that is probably equal
Speaker 2: to her or greater than what we did through our
Speaker 2: own great recession. So I'm gonna say, Perry Maxwell, all.
Speaker 1: Right, what's your favorite design feature that flies under the radar?
Speaker 2: Chocolate drops? I think that I'm a guy that that
Speaker 2: when you go see a place like gardens of the
Speaker 2: golf club, or even go to Huntercombe and and see
Speaker 2: see these old school kind of you know, you excavate
Speaker 2: and then put a pile of dirt and it just
Speaker 2: has fescue growing on the top of it. And there's
Speaker 2: three or four or five of them in that area,
Speaker 2: and they become part of the the aesthetic of the
Speaker 2: whole course and the hazard and the strategy. So those
Speaker 2: I'm a big I love stream features and I love
Speaker 2: rock walls. I love things that are able to make
Speaker 2: something look interesting and authentic and maybe old. And I
Speaker 2: think a good old fashioned chocolate drop does that.
Speaker 1: You like artificial rock walls.
Speaker 2: Well, if they're done in a way we did these.
Speaker 2: We did these series. I like them when they're done
Speaker 2: when someone thinks they one hundred years old. So we
Speaker 2: was getting that. I was helping that. We did a
Speaker 2: rock wall behind the first screen and along the second
Speaker 2: tier at Meadowbrook. I did a lava lava rock wall
Speaker 2: at at st at Sanjalo. We imported this lava from
Speaker 2: like three miles away, and everybody who sees it thinks
Speaker 2: it's been there one hundred years. So we work really
Speaker 2: hard to make it look cool.
Speaker 1: Nothing drives me more than seeing like a brand new
Speaker 1: rock wall that like you can tell was just installed
Speaker 1: and just as like screams like waste of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. So so one of the best parts
Speaker 2: of this rock wall that we did at San Hollo
Speaker 2: is we stacked them all up and then we'd go
Speaker 2: periodically with an excavator and push it over like yes,
Speaker 2: that's right, it fell over right there. So and we
Speaker 2: go to the next spot and then we took sand
Speaker 2: and blew it up over the top of it. You know,
Speaker 2: we crossed one of the holes at San Hullo right
Speaker 2: in front of the second tee and the links course,
Speaker 2: so it was right in front of the tees, so
Speaker 2: the average guy could skip it over the wall. So
Speaker 2: so we actually piled up and ramped up the sand
Speaker 2: as if it was a dune that kind of blew
Speaker 2: over the wall.
Speaker 1: All Right, you ready for overrated, underrated?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, so let's do this, all right, cross bunkers,
Speaker 2: cross bunkers. Well, they I would call them underrated in
Speaker 2: the fact that people just don't appreciate their why they're there,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of a tended it's kind of a
Speaker 2: signal on what's happened with the game of golf, where
Speaker 2: where if a cross bunker is one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: yards off the tee and everyone hits into it, the
Speaker 2: idea that you should have played around it has been lost.
Speaker 2: So I guess I'll call cross bunkers underrated because they
Speaker 2: for a period of time they just all but disappeared
Speaker 2: on our golf courses. But slowly, with this restoration, you
Speaker 2: kind of you know where restoration has been going, and
Speaker 2: you're seeing a lot of them come back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, they I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: them fell fell to mowing lines shrinking.
Speaker 2: Also, well, I think a lot of them are on
Speaker 2: the tee. But the ones that I'm having some really
Speaker 2: good success bringing back are the ones that are short
Speaker 2: of the greens. And when when golfers actually see that
Speaker 2: they're there to distort, you know, and that that the
Speaker 2: better player has an equal problem with seeing where that
Speaker 2: where it heads, where how far it is from the green,
Speaker 2: and whether or not they know it's further away, but
Speaker 2: yet it still kind of gets them thinking. And so
Speaker 2: that fifty yard bunker off of the green, on the
Speaker 2: you know, off of the green, and the approach bunkers,
Speaker 2: I'm starting to see those starting to gain some really
Speaker 2: good traction, which I'm really happy about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I lost my yardage gun a few months ago,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry about that. Well, I to tell you
Speaker 1: the truth, I've like really enjoyed playing golf without it,
Speaker 1: Like especially when I got to new golf courses because.
Speaker 2: I don't have one of those.
Speaker 1: I get tricked all the time.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things that we could
Speaker 2: do in the in the in the rules of golf
Speaker 2: as we start to bring on this new ball or
Speaker 2: whatever's going to happen with technology and distance, is it
Speaker 2: is to allow or to try to promote you know, six,
Speaker 2: six club, nine club something, you know twelve, you know,
Speaker 2: eleven clubs, something other than four team. So you get
Speaker 2: into the tweeter shots where you're actually hitting a seven
Speaker 2: iron from one hundred and forty yards, And when you
Speaker 2: start doing some of those things, those four bunkers really
Speaker 2: become interesting and you actually use them because you know
Speaker 2: why they're there. You just hit them over the top
Speaker 2: of it and it runs it out. So I love
Speaker 2: It's one of the things as a golfer, I try
Speaker 2: to do more of it. You know, it's harder nowadays
Speaker 2: because it's rare when well, I shouldn't say rare, but
Speaker 2: it You know, a lot of golf courses don't well
Speaker 2: for the runouts anymore. We're trying to get that change.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, I mean, you catch that backside of
Speaker 1: a bunker that's twenty yards short and you get the
Speaker 1: it's like a springboard that kicks it right to the greens.
Speaker 1: That's one of the cool things I feel like has
Speaker 1: been lost with the way the games changed in terms
Speaker 1: of the aerial game, is that all these like especially
Speaker 1: when you go to these Golden Age courses, all these
Speaker 1: cool little slopes that are short of the green that
Speaker 1: just don't get it used anymore, or if they haven't been,
Speaker 1: you know, if the mo lines are off or just
Speaker 1: sitting there and rough.
Speaker 2: That's right. Well. One of the things that I feel
Speaker 2: really proud about is the people that have opened their
Speaker 2: minds to some of the features we did up at
Speaker 2: Meadowbrook is that the guys that are guys and gals
Speaker 2: that are struggling are are recovering around the greens like
Speaker 2: they always do. Just a sandwich and try to get
Speaker 2: it up and stop near the hole. But when you
Speaker 2: start seeing the different you know, different backstops and the
Speaker 2: places for it to feed down into different pins people.
Speaker 2: You know. I had a guy the other day say, hey,
Speaker 2: and you have played Meadowbrook last fall. You want you
Speaker 2: want to know what I thought of it? So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, he says, I thought it was fun? Is
Speaker 2: that what you? Is that? What you? Is that all right?
Speaker 2: That I thought it was fun? I'm like, heck, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right. And the guys who open their minds
Speaker 2: of those types of shots are just fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a I mean, like I like to hit
Speaker 1: like punch drivers on when I play a Burrit's hole
Speaker 1: that's like a rainer now, just so I can see
Speaker 1: the ball run through the dire yeah, and and run
Speaker 1: up to the bat like a lot of times I
Speaker 1: end up making a bogie because it's or but I
Speaker 1: don't really care because like I have hockey with that.
Speaker 2: If you played it, you tried it, absolutely better better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all right. Next, overrated underrated car paths.
Speaker 2: Car pass Well, it's certainly not underrated. I'd call them overrated,
Speaker 2: all right. I think you're I think you're finding a
Speaker 2: lot more people being open to other alternatives. I think
Speaker 2: people people get what we're what we're coming where we're
Speaker 2: coming from from a design standpoint, more more than just
Speaker 2: a few years ago. So I think that's certainly overrated,
Speaker 2: and I think it's trending in the right direction.
Speaker 1: I think my pet peeve, like the ultimate one that
Speaker 1: bugs me the most is when you see a car
Speaker 1: path at like a old school golf course that's running
Speaker 1: down where the fairway should be.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny you mentioned that with what what
Speaker 2: comes right to mind is one of the courses we
Speaker 2: went to go visit in England was Swinley Forest, and
Speaker 2: I guess I shouldn't pick on Swindley, but you know
Speaker 2: a lot of those UK courses, they when you think
Speaker 2: about how carpaths have evolved, they didn't have car pass
Speaker 2: so then all of a sudden people started driving these
Speaker 2: buggies and they all drove in the exact same spot,
Speaker 2: and then they drove in a straight line. So oftentimes
Speaker 2: they go right down the middle of the fairway. And
Speaker 2: then what do you do next, Well, there's a path there,
Speaker 2: we better put some paving, or it might better put
Speaker 2: some gravel. As opposed to someone saying, you know what,
Speaker 2: we don't want them to go there, we wanted to
Speaker 2: go over here, so we don't see the path, and
Speaker 2: so a lot of times you get to these old courses,
Speaker 2: the car pass are in no different place than where
Speaker 2: it was when they first got their first car pet,
Speaker 2: you know, first golf carts, and so you know, the
Speaker 2: one of our committee members said, yeah, and you talk
Speaker 2: about car pass but look at this place. This is
Speaker 2: a Swinley forest. They're right in the middle of the fairway.
Speaker 2: So but I agree with you, the less you see
Speaker 2: a car pass, better would it be.
Speaker 1: I just was thinking about this as like, could you
Speaker 1: go no car path but then just change like you know,
Speaker 1: the signed and would that work or would that just
Speaker 1: not work? You know, like I think it Yeah, never
Speaker 1: would it work?
Speaker 2: Well no, I mean it would work in some places.
Speaker 2: But I mean the reason why there's car passes because
Speaker 2: everyone drives in the same exact spot and it gets
Speaker 2: compacted and it wears out the turf and then next
Speaker 2: thing you know, it has a low spot and it
Speaker 2: becomes mud. So you know, there's car pass for reasons
Speaker 2: because we have a thing called a car path or
Speaker 2: golf cart. So as long as we have golf carts,
Speaker 2: there's going to have to be passed. And I think
Speaker 2: if as long as we just you know, there's a
Speaker 2: way to do them well, and I think we It's
Speaker 2: one of the things we spend an examinant amount of
Speaker 2: time thinking about, probably more than we'd like to. I'd
Speaker 2: hoped one day not to do a golf project without
Speaker 2: car pass.
Speaker 1: Do you think it could work at a at a
Speaker 1: community golf level, no car path, no carts golf course.
Speaker 2: Well, you certainly could try. I think ultimately you're gonna
Speaker 2: end up getting into something where everyone rides in the
Speaker 2: exact same spot. You'd end up having to time.
Speaker 1: I'm saying no carts completely.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, yeah, I could. I think there's got
Speaker 2: to be a commitment to to kind of going back
Speaker 2: to the the caddies and golf push carts to trolleys,
Speaker 2: if you will. You know that that's the other thing too.
Speaker 2: A pet peeve is this idea that that push carts
Speaker 2: or trolleys are are munique golf, that they're not, they're
Speaker 2: not worthy of the top clubs in the country, and
Speaker 2: and that I think that it all kind of goes
Speaker 2: to this erosion of of of the caddies and walking
Speaker 2: and and you pushing your card, carrying your bag, those
Speaker 2: types of things. So I think there have to be
Speaker 2: a concerted effort to be more, to be more health
Speaker 2: conscious and exercise and really utilize the fact of carrying
Speaker 2: your bag is that I could workout. And that's what
Speaker 2: the only workout I get these days is carrying my bag.
Speaker 2: You got a cool little McKinsey bag. I just I'm
Speaker 2: not almost always the only one walk and whenever everyone
Speaker 2: else is on a golf cart and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: this is my exercise. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really tired on my recent trip with Zach
Speaker 1: through northern California, and you know, I played an exorbitant
Speaker 1: amount of golf over a few days and and Zach's like,
Speaker 1: he should just he should just ride. We were at
Speaker 1: mont Ray Peninsula Club and I was like, you know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't think I can. My my listeners would be
Speaker 1: upset with me if I if they saw me riding
Speaker 1: on a seaside course on a seventy degree day.
Speaker 2: Here's a model that I think needs to be thought
Speaker 2: of more. Is a golf cart with four, four or
Speaker 2: five places for carts where the where someone drives it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and and and that way, you know, someone's not you know,
Speaker 2: you're not using two or four caddies, and you got
Speaker 2: a golf cart and then someone's driving it where they
Speaker 2: are supposed to drive it. That's part of the reason
Speaker 2: why golf carts you get in trouble is because you
Speaker 2: just can't control where people drive carts these days to
Speaker 2: drive them everywhere. So that's where you have these issues.
Speaker 2: But I played a little part three course here. You know,
Speaker 2: they funneled us right into a golf cart on a
Speaker 2: Part three course and it was a four seater, and
Speaker 2: my buddies were like, yeah, a force seater, and we
Speaker 2: put all of our bags on there and I walked
Speaker 2: alongside of them. And so I think we do have
Speaker 2: an opportunity to kind of look outside the box. I
Speaker 2: think if there's more of a concerted effort to do
Speaker 2: something other than just ram everybody in cards, I think
Speaker 2: I think there's things that can work.
Speaker 1: Last overrated underrated music on the golf.
Speaker 2: Course man totally underrated. I think I've never been You
Speaker 2: would never have thought that that would have brought up
Speaker 2: so many passionate feelings about whether or not loud music
Speaker 2: on a courses is good or bad, you know, to me,
Speaker 2: I love it. You know. Of course, it's a little
Speaker 2: harder to be having music on the course when you
Speaker 2: don't have a golf cart. You know, someone carrying a
Speaker 2: speaker along with you is a little bit different, kind
Speaker 2: of muffled in your bag. But headphones, I think it's
Speaker 2: an integral part, and I think it's just a matter
Speaker 2: of time before we start to see it everywhere. Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: What do you listen to?
Speaker 2: What music do I listen to? Yeah? What would be
Speaker 2: your goat? You know, I'm still on the twenty one
Speaker 2: pilots recently, so I can't get off of that. But
Speaker 2: I'm an eighties guy. So I go back to YouTube,
Speaker 2: I go back to Midnight Oil. That's a not a
Speaker 2: good one.
Speaker 1: Chili Peppers.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: It's chili peppers? Your time there coming up?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, I like chili peppers. That's not a not
Speaker 2: a go to, but it's definitely in my music list.
Speaker 1: That's hey, the eighties. Yeah, I've always wanted I got
Speaker 1: to do an architect comparison to bands from like the
Speaker 1: Golden Age.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of the things that I that
Speaker 2: I think is so I was at a conference through
Speaker 2: Marriotte Golf the other day, and so I was a
Speaker 2: speaker on one of their panels, and every time one
Speaker 2: of their guys got up on stage, they picked their
Speaker 2: own entrance music. And I'm like, that is awesome, and
Speaker 2: it's like, we don't have we have so many opportunities
Speaker 2: to make our to create our own entrance music. Why
Speaker 2: don't we do that? So I was thinking the next
Speaker 2: interview that I have, I was gonna try to figure
Speaker 2: out how to play and you know, enter Sandman from
Speaker 2: Metallica or something like that is my entrance music.
Speaker 1: The PGA tours doing it at Zurich.
Speaker 2: Now there it is. Yeah, se.
Speaker 1: Becoming more and more prevalent. So hey, Andy, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for your time. It's been a good talk, and
Speaker 1: we'll have to have you on again, all.
Speaker 2: Right, anytime. Man. I enjoy what you're doing. You're doing
Speaker 2: it the right way, I think, and I'm honored to
Speaker 2: be a part of it. So thanks again.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 2: We do the digging for you.