Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of The Yoke with Doak.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, Tom and I discussed Michigan golf with
Speaker 1: longtime Renaissance golf design associate Don Placik. As a reminder,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in learning more about golf course architecture,
Speaker 1: check out Tom's books, The Little Red Book on Golf
Speaker 1: Course Architecture and The Confidential Guides. Now here's the latest
Speaker 1: episode of The Yoke with Doake.
Speaker 2: Tom Dolk is back and as usual, he's not holding back.
Speaker 2: But don't toss the Yolk and the famously candid Oak
Speaker 2: doesn't pull any punches. How do I make natural looking contour?
Speaker 2: Hire the biggest pool in the village and told them
Speaker 2: to get flat first?
Speaker 1: Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated over the years. If you
Speaker 1: were going to split ten rounds of golf in Michigan
Speaker 1: and you can't play any course more than twice, how would.
Speaker 2: It go in all of Michigan including private clubs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll do this for private and public because I'll
Speaker 1: take the Michigan course Michigan golf trip.
Speaker 2: Question also okay, and I should I should preface my
Speaker 2: answer to this question with the I've been playing all
Speaker 2: over the world the last few years for my book,
Speaker 2: and I barely played any golf in Michigan. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the courses in Detroit I played with
Speaker 2: Fred Muller like twenty years ago, and I really haven't
Speaker 2: played very many of them since then. It's just I
Speaker 2: stopped through Detroit Airport a whole lot. But I don't
Speaker 2: play golf in Detroit hardly ever, So I might not
Speaker 2: be the best or most up to date guy to
Speaker 2: answer this question, but I do have my favorites. So
Speaker 2: if I just have to distribute ten rounds and it's
Speaker 2: like any course public or private, I'm definitely playing Crystal
Speaker 2: Downs twice, which fortunately I get to do anyway as
Speaker 2: a member. I'm definitely playing Oakland Hills twice. I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the best golf courses in the world
Speaker 2: because it's got a great set of greens. They're hard,
Speaker 2: but I love that set of greens. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give that twice. Who I'll give the Loop twice because
Speaker 2: it's not the same golf course one each way. So
Speaker 2: that's now I'm up to six, and now I've got
Speaker 2: to think about, what are the four other places that
Speaker 2: I really want to get in there. One is Belvidere
Speaker 2: and Charlevoi, where we've consulted a little bit. Used to
Speaker 2: play the Michigan Amateur on it every year. It's a
Speaker 2: summer club. They've got a membership, but the membership's only
Speaker 2: around for like a couple months in the middle of summer.
Speaker 2: The rest of the time you can get on it
Speaker 2: pretty easily. You know. It's just a nice rolling piece
Speaker 2: of farmland that they turned into a low key golf course,
Speaker 2: but again, really good set of greens and just a
Speaker 2: really low key place. That's what more courses in northern
Speaker 2: Michigan should be like, and unfortunately they aren't very much
Speaker 2: like that at all. After that, the Dunes Club in
Speaker 2: New Buffalo just barely in Michigan only nine holes. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's only a half half, but I don't know if
Speaker 2: there's another nine home. Of course I can stick in here.
Speaker 1: Somebody else is a nine of somewhere around the front
Speaker 1: nine out Lost Dunes.
Speaker 2: We'll make that number eighth. You know, I hate to
Speaker 2: I don't. I have a lot of fun at Lost Dunes,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it was one of the first private
Speaker 2: clubs I've built, and I've gotten to go back there
Speaker 2: a lot because it's close to home, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: some people don't like it because the greens are really wild.
Speaker 2: But but once you know the golf course, it's a
Speaker 2: really interesting golf course. You always have to think about
Speaker 2: which side can I miss on and still make par?
Speaker 2: And it's not that simple. You know, you have to
Speaker 2: know the golf course to know that. But the Dunes Club,
Speaker 2: which my Kaiser built before. You know, I saw the
Speaker 2: Dunes Club when it was brand new, and I was like,
Speaker 2: who built this? And it wasn't just who was the architecture,
Speaker 2: It's like who who wanted to do this little nine
Speaker 2: hole golf course there? And a couple of people I knew,
Speaker 2: said Mike Kaiser. And then you know when I heard
Speaker 2: he was looking at something in Oregon. That's that's how
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to work for Mike Kaiser because
Speaker 2: that golf course was pretty outside the box for what
Speaker 2: was getting built in in America and in miss Get
Speaker 2: in particular, fifteen twenty years ago. That's twenty five years ago,
Speaker 2: because my son was like a newborn when we were
Speaker 2: when we stopped in to look so cool place. So
Speaker 2: I'm up to eight.
Speaker 1: Yet two rounds left. I'm trying to down your next.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think what else, you know. I've played
Speaker 2: a lot of the other courses near Detroit once or twice.
Speaker 2: I would say my next favorite was Franklin Hills, and
Speaker 2: I've not played Franklin Hills since they restored it ten
Speaker 2: years ago or fifteen years ago, whenever that was. It
Speaker 2: was a great you know, it's not far from Oakland Hills.
Speaker 2: It's very under the radar course because there's a Jewish
Speaker 2: club and they never hosted any big tournaments or anything
Speaker 2: like that. But a really good piece of land for golf.
Speaker 2: So I would say there, and as much as anything
Speaker 2: because I'm curious to see how well the restoration turned out.
Speaker 1: I heard they have a cool volcano green there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a little short part four like uh,
Speaker 2: it's like under three hundred yards and it's it's not
Speaker 2: like a volcano hole where they took a bunch of
Speaker 2: fill and put a green. It's like it plays up
Speaker 2: a hill, you know, so you're you're going uphill fairway
Speaker 2: and then a little even more abruptly uphill to the green.
Speaker 2: But it's it's a natural peak on the on the land,
Speaker 2: so it's you know, maybe twenty five feet uphill, but
Speaker 2: it just feels like you're playing up to the sky.
Speaker 2: And because it's such a short part, for it's a
Speaker 2: tiny green surrounded by trouble, and it's you know, you
Speaker 2: could take driver and try to smash it into the
Speaker 2: bunkers or something, get up and down that way. You
Speaker 2: got to hit a good second shot to stay on
Speaker 2: it no matter what you do. And then for the
Speaker 2: tenth I'd probably go with something that I haven't played yet,
Speaker 2: whether it's meadow Brook, the restoration a meadow or I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's not a restoration the redesign of Meadowbrook
Speaker 2: in Detroit, which I haven't but i've heard great things about,
Speaker 2: or the one that I always wanted to play in
Speaker 2: is just too far away from here. There's there's there's
Speaker 2: a course called the Gales right straight across the state
Speaker 2: from here, in like Oscota and Alpina, that area, like
Speaker 2: on Lake Huron. It's a it's a resort. They've actually
Speaker 2: got they've got two courses. They got one that they
Speaker 2: tried to make pine valley style. I can't remember what
Speaker 2: that one's called even, And then they've got this open
Speaker 2: thing that they tried to shape up like a Lynks
Speaker 2: course that they call the Gals after Western Gales, and
Speaker 2: some of the golf pros around here that I know
Speaker 2: really liked it when it when it opened, they were like,
Speaker 2: that's really cool. They said, it's not. It doesn't really
Speaker 2: play like a Lynx as much as you wanted to,
Speaker 2: but it was really cool that they just did something
Speaker 2: out of nothing. So I've always been to get over
Speaker 2: and see that, but it's three hours away on a
Speaker 2: bad road. You know. Forest Dunes is like less than
Speaker 2: half the distance and it's right all the way, So
Speaker 2: I never get passed there to go see it. But
Speaker 2: if you could get if you could arrange for a
Speaker 2: helicopter or a private plane, we go over and check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 1: I'm working on the plane. I think I'm further away
Speaker 1: than I've ever been.
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 3: Well, listening to Tom's roster, you know, i'd be to
Speaker 3: be honest, I'd be hard pressed to really come up
Speaker 3: with anything much different. And part of it is because,
Speaker 3: you know, in the time I've worked for Tom in
Speaker 3: the last twenty or twenty plus years, you know, anytime
Speaker 3: we're in Michigan and get to Plague golf. We you know,
Speaker 3: we gravitate to try and get to the downs for
Speaker 3: the same reason that reasons that Tom does, so don't
Speaker 3: I don't know that I that my list would would
Speaker 3: be much different, But I would say, in listening to
Speaker 3: Tom's answers, I think I wish there was more. You know,
Speaker 3: the places Tom described are special and cool, and you know,
Speaker 3: spots you want to get to if you have the opportunity,
Speaker 3: no question about it. But I also think in the
Speaker 3: time that I've lived in Michigan, I've watched, especially up
Speaker 3: north up here where there used to be just a
Speaker 3: whole slew of man Pa nine and even some eighteen
Speaker 3: hole golf courses that were able to sustain themselves. You know,
Speaker 3: there was the golf season short, but there was enough
Speaker 3: of an interest that you could go to these places,
Speaker 3: and there were lots of them. And then, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, with what the economy has experienced in the
Speaker 3: last decade or so, a lot of those are gone now.
Speaker 3: And it's it's unfortunate because I think, you know, some
Speaker 3: of the most fun I've ever had playing golf isn't
Speaker 3: on a great golf course. It's just playing golf with
Speaker 3: people whose company you really enjoy and laughing and hitting
Speaker 3: shots and and just having that experience. I'm I'm really
Speaker 3: lucky because a lot of the fun golf that I
Speaker 3: have played has been in a lot of the places,
Speaker 3: not just some of the best stuff in Michigan, but
Speaker 3: all over the world. And but it's, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the thing that the thing that makes that really special
Speaker 3: isn't just the architecture, it's the people you're playing golf with.
Speaker 3: And it you know that we talk a lot about, gosh,
Speaker 3: what can we do to make golf more affordable and
Speaker 3: accessible and sustainable, And that's a that's a popular topic,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not easy to figure out. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a it's a hard question to try and solve.
Speaker 3: So you know, the I would like to play more
Speaker 3: golf on the really cheap, accessible golf courses, not just
Speaker 3: in Michigan but everywhere. And and you know, it's a
Speaker 3: good reminder that golf can be really fun if if
Speaker 3: the company is is fun too, and you know, there's
Speaker 3: a place in golf for that. And it's a it's
Speaker 3: a good compliment to all the great places that Tom
Speaker 3: described that you should play in Michigan as well. And
Speaker 3: if you you know, anyone's listening and gets to play
Speaker 3: some of these places, keep your eyes peeled for those
Speaker 3: one offs that are three miles down the road that
Speaker 3: is not on any map, and maybe give those a
Speaker 3: whirl too, And they're a nice compliment to all the
Speaker 3: stuff that Tom listed for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you know, I've never been
Speaker 2: to Muskegon Country Club, which is supposedly a really good
Speaker 2: Donald Ross course. It's about an hour further from here
Speaker 2: than Crystal Downs. Is you know, it's a frog question
Speaker 2: for me. I mean, I pay four thousand dollars a
Speaker 2: year to belong to Crystal Downs, and I play out
Speaker 2: like six times, So it's really hard to justify skipping
Speaker 2: one of those six times to go an hour further
Speaker 2: to play something else. But there's a lot of good
Speaker 2: golf here, and it's not necessarily all the places that
Speaker 2: they promote as the golf Mecca or whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: There's just there's a lot of interesting land up here.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful place to build a golf course. That's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I got here.
Speaker 1: Dustin McCann has a question that's based off of Crystal
Speaker 1: Downs and most people listening probably haven't played Crystal Downs,
Speaker 1: but it's a gorgeous site. Is there anything that can
Speaker 1: be done in the game to bring back the concept
Speaker 1: of building artistically strategic public golf courses for a modest
Speaker 1: amount of money that would be similar to Crystal Downs?
Speaker 1: And he's assuming that it didn't take a big cost
Speaker 1: to build Crystal Downs.
Speaker 2: No, it wouldn't have taken a big cost to build
Speaker 2: Crystal Downs because it's on a really interesting, undulating piece
Speaker 2: of ground. Funny enough, it's you know, like all the
Speaker 2: houses of Crystal Downs overlook like Michigan, they're on a
Speaker 2: bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. The golf course never actually touches
Speaker 2: the bluff. They wouldn't they wouldn't let him go there.
Speaker 2: They had already, you know, they had already sold most
Speaker 2: of that land. When Mackenzie showed up, they had a
Speaker 2: little nine hole course and they laid out the lots
Speaker 2: and then they said, oh, well, let's get bringing him
Speaker 2: into like make the golf course better. But it's like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't go there. We've already you know, that's where
Speaker 2: we're making our money. We've already done that, So yes,
Speaker 2: you can't. You know, That's what high point was supposed
Speaker 2: to be. Take a good piece of land, build a
Speaker 2: golf course for a modest budget, open it for forty
Speaker 2: five dollars green fees. That's what we talked about when
Speaker 2: we started building it. You Know, the one thing I
Speaker 2: didn't understand about the golf business was, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: I was trying to make the golf course as good
Speaker 2: as I could make it. I didn't want it to
Speaker 2: just be thought of as, oh, it's a good forty
Speaker 2: five dollars golf course. So I'm you know, I thought
Speaker 2: it was a really good piece of land, and I'm
Speaker 2: talking to the client like, you know, this is going
Speaker 2: to be very good. I think it's going to be
Speaker 2: very good. And other people around the project were like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, this is good. Oh yeah, you could charge
Speaker 2: more than forty five dollars for this. You could charge
Speaker 2: seventy or eighty four. So by the time we got
Speaker 2: the golf course done and they were ready to open,
Speaker 2: it had morphed away from being affordable and it was
Speaker 2: an eighty dollars golf course, you know, while still being
Speaker 2: you know, being predicated on the idea that they could
Speaker 2: maintain it for a forty five or fifty dollars kind
Speaker 2: of green fee, but they weren't really you know, we
Speaker 2: talked about what the maintenance budget would be, and just
Speaker 2: because they went to eighty didn't mean they were going
Speaker 2: to jack up the maint and it's budget a lot
Speaker 2: more to keep up with it. So they, you know,
Speaker 2: they instantly got off track of what they'd been talking
Speaker 2: about at the beginning. And that's that's what happens. When
Speaker 2: people say, why don't you build more affordable golf courses?
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, there's this, there's this, there's this middle
Speaker 2: man the owner, and the owners incentive really isn't to
Speaker 2: keep the thing as cheap as you positively can. It's like,
Speaker 2: how can I make more money off this? You know,
Speaker 2: and and it's easy for them to just I even
Speaker 2: the simplest thing is, well, if we could make the
Speaker 2: same amount of money by charging more and having less
Speaker 2: people on it, that would be more attractive to me
Speaker 2: because then I could go out and play golf whenever
Speaker 2: I wanted to. So, you know, unfortunately, you know, the
Speaker 2: idea of building a new course and making it an
Speaker 2: affordable golf course, if it works, that's you know, if
Speaker 2: it's successful, it's not going to stay affordable. The affordable
Speaker 2: golf courses are the mom and pop places like Don's
Speaker 2: talking about that. They because they have no capital in it.
Speaker 2: You know, the capital costs were thirty years ago and
Speaker 2: they've forgotten about that by now. They can just afford
Speaker 2: to operate on whatever cost to maintain the golf course,
Speaker 2: plus a little bit for themselves. That's a completely for
Speaker 2: an equation than trying to pay off how much you
Speaker 2: just spent building the golf course. Plus you're you know,
Speaker 2: you're just you know, any new course, you're just hyping
Speaker 2: the crap out of it opening it. You get all
Speaker 2: this publicity trying to make it sound good. You want
Speaker 2: to charge more if you can possibly charge more. And
Speaker 2: only client we've ever had that was different than that
Speaker 2: was common ground for the Colorado Golf Association.
Speaker 1: So they were a nonprofit, the nonprofit, that's what I
Speaker 1: was going to say.
Speaker 2: Ground, Well, even common ground even as a nonprofit because
Speaker 2: they have all the Caddy Foundation things that they've got
Speaker 2: going on, they still would like to make money for
Speaker 2: all their charitable endeavors now, so there is a little
Speaker 2: upward pressure on the green feet. But there their mission
Speaker 2: statement in the beginning. What they told us was, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is a forty five dollars golf course and we've
Speaker 2: saved up four million dollars to redo it, and we
Speaker 2: want to make at the best forty five dollars golf
Speaker 2: course in town. We don't, you know, we're not trying
Speaker 2: to compete with the seventy five dollar courses and you know,
Speaker 2: and take business away from the seventy five dollar courses.
Speaker 2: We want this to be truly affordable for everybody that
Speaker 2: belongs to the Colorado Golf Association. And and we're not
Speaker 2: in it for we have no profit motive here. But
Speaker 2: you know that that's one client in my lifetime that
Speaker 2: that had that attitude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my head when you were talking about it,
Speaker 1: I'd never thought about that. It's like, it's impossible for
Speaker 1: a golf course to be affordable and great almost because
Speaker 1: the owner, in almost all cases, unless it's a as soon.
Speaker 2: As you gets the top hundred list, they'll add one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars to the green fee the day after. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So why wouldn't.
Speaker 1: You The only possible way would be if it was
Speaker 1: like somebody that if it was like a nonprofit and
Speaker 1: that was like their whole mission was building a golf
Speaker 1: courses that are you know, have good architecture.
Speaker 3: I think that was one of the most refreshing things
Speaker 3: about that project. You know, those that's a one off
Speaker 3: for sure, that their mandate is that it not just
Speaker 3: be affordable, that it stay affordable, right, But it is
Speaker 3: interesting to see the pressures that are coming now because
Speaker 3: it's been a success. They have many programs, grassroots programs
Speaker 3: that they're trying to really move forward and advance and
Speaker 3: include a lot more people. But those don't operate for nothing,
Speaker 3: and it's hard to keep the governor turned down for them.
Speaker 3: I'm sure when they could turn it up based on
Speaker 3: the demand that they have, but it's it's interesting. I
Speaker 3: think that's something that's been interesting about golf in the
Speaker 3: US for a long time is that it's it's our
Speaker 3: perception that if it's expensive, it's good. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: if it's not expensive, if it didn't cost a lot
Speaker 3: to build, they must have cut corners. They probably didn't
Speaker 3: do as many things as they should have in the
Speaker 3: experience is going to be commensurate with the green fee,
Speaker 3: and it's you know, it's a shame that it's like that,
Speaker 3: but it's very real.
Speaker 2: Oh and I you know, I have a great story
Speaker 2: about that, you know, I mean I grew up on
Speaker 2: the East Coast and Myrtle Beach golf back in the day.
Speaker 2: The whole golf holiday thing that they put together was,
Speaker 2: you know, you call up and get a package and
Speaker 2: get a tea time on five different golf courses whatever,
Speaker 2: and stay at ex hotel and the package was the
Speaker 2: same price. All the golf courses were the same price,
Speaker 2: and so you could pick whatever ones you wanted, but
Speaker 2: they were they cost the same and so the package
Speaker 2: price was the cost of the package depended entirely on
Speaker 2: what hotel you wanted to stay at, you know, somewhere
Speaker 2: a little more and somewhere a little less. My client
Speaker 2: down there for the legends, Larry Young when he built
Speaker 2: Oyster Bay and marsh Harbor, those were the first two
Speaker 2: golf courses that charged a premium. You know, the golf courses.
Speaker 2: All they got out of the package was you had
Speaker 2: to pick cart feet of them directly. They were basically
Speaker 2: almost given the golf away, where they just got half
Speaker 2: of what they were charging. Larry was like, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to build something better, so I'm not gonna go for that.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna you know, you have to pay an extra
Speaker 2: ten or twenty dollars to play my courses, which you know,
Speaker 2: was throwing a monkey engine into the whole system that
Speaker 2: wasn't really popular down there.
Speaker 1: Probably had a lot of enemies in the Myrtle Beach air.
Speaker 2: Yah, and especially when he was like, you know, they
Speaker 2: would try to charge They tried to charge all the
Speaker 2: all the all the participants in that thing based on
Speaker 2: how much revenue they did. And he's like, well, my
Speaker 2: courses successful, so that means I got to pay more
Speaker 2: to be in the same ad with the guy across
Speaker 2: the street who gets to pay less to be in
Speaker 2: the same ad. That doesn't work. So he pulled out
Speaker 2: of the thing entirely for a while, and you know,
Speaker 2: he he had kind of an off on again, off
Speaker 2: again relationship. But anyway, it got to the point that
Speaker 2: nobody knew what course to play in Myrtle Beach. And
Speaker 2: once he broke the barrier of like, oh, I'll charge more,
Speaker 2: some of the other courses said, well, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean those COFs courses were so busy that they were
Speaker 2: in bad shape because they were so busy. Fifty sixty
Speaker 2: thousand rounds a year, and some of them said, well,
Speaker 2: why don't we raise the price and do less rounds?
Speaker 2: And they raised the price and they got more rounds
Speaker 2: because once they put their green fee up higher, everybody thought, well,
Speaker 2: that must be the best one I want to play that.
Speaker 2: There's there's some economic term for that. There's there's some
Speaker 2: like economic perceive value. Now it's named after somebody. I
Speaker 2: just don't remember what the name of it is right now,
Speaker 2: but it's absolutely true. You know, if you don't know,
Speaker 2: if there's thirty golf courses and you don't know the
Speaker 2: difference between any of them, you will automatically assume that
Speaker 2: the highest priced one is the best one. So people
Speaker 2: jack their prices way up to be the highest priced one,
Speaker 2: because that's how you you know, if you especially most
Speaker 2: of those courses back then, they didn't really have they
Speaker 2: had no signature architect's name. You think about it, Hiring
Speaker 2: a signature architect is doing the exact same thing, Jack Nicholas, Oh,
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholas, that must be the best one, you know,
Speaker 2: regardless of what you know, if you've never seen what
Speaker 2: he designed, or if you have, Oh Jack Nicholas, So
Speaker 2: you know it is crazy, but that's yet another reason
Speaker 2: why keeping a golf course affordable is not what business
Speaker 2: people will do. It's it's against their interest to do
Speaker 2: it that way. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I always recommend people to go play Ravslow in Chicago
Speaker 1: because everybody, I mean they probably get ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: emails a week from people saying where should I play
Speaker 1: in Chicago? Because I'm from there, and I'm always like,
Speaker 1: you should play Ravislow. It's like and they're like, they're like, oh, thanks,
Speaker 1: and then they email me after they're like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that place is forty bucks, you know, like it's unbelieved.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, it's but instead of going and playing
Speaker 1: like the two hundred dollars or one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars around place, It's like it it's odd to me
Speaker 1: because in actuality, the high cost is probably they spent
Speaker 1: a lot of money to build it, and they spend
Speaker 1: a ton of money to maintain.
Speaker 2: It and to promote it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to promote it.
Speaker 2: There's some of them are spending a lot on that too.
Speaker 1: Rather than the actual like value of like how is
Speaker 1: this golf? Like a lot of times, but I find
Speaker 1: the best architecture in the thirty twenty dollars golf courses
Speaker 1: in the city.
Speaker 2: Sometimes yes, And but the flip side of what you're
Speaker 2: saying is once the golf course opens, it now no matter,
Speaker 2: no longer matters what you spent building, because the only
Speaker 2: thing is it's like how many people are willing to
Speaker 2: pay X for green fee. They don't care. They don't
Speaker 2: care how much it costs to build. You know. That's
Speaker 2: the part where the owner is either like doing great.
Speaker 2: You know, if it didn't cost that much to build
Speaker 2: and everybody loves it and you can charge two hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: you make a lot of money. The flip side is
Speaker 2: if you didn't. You know, if you spend a lot
Speaker 2: to build it and you need to charge one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars to break even or pay that off,
Speaker 2: and people are only willing to pay sixty or eighty,
Speaker 2: you are doomed. And they have no sympathy for what
Speaker 2: it costs to build it. They are only comparing it
Speaker 2: to well, this course costs seventy so and I don't
Speaker 2: think you're any better, So I don't care what you
Speaker 2: spend building. But then the really really odd part of
Speaker 2: the golf businesses. So that guy who spent way too
Speaker 2: much to build a golf course and then it fails,
Speaker 2: he goes. He doesn't necessarily go bankrupt, but he winds
Speaker 2: up selling for pennies on the dollar to somebody else.
Speaker 2: And now that guy is in a good position. That
Speaker 2: guy has something that they spent ten million dollars to build,
Speaker 2: but he only bought it for one So now he's
Speaker 2: in a position to make a lot of money and
Speaker 2: drive the good, modest one out of business because he's
Speaker 2: got a lower cost pieces. That's the perverse part of
Speaker 2: the golf business. Some of the some of the biggest
Speaker 2: white elephants that have ever been built, wind up still
Speaker 2: creaming the competition when the second or third owner gets
Speaker 2: a hold of him for nothing.
Speaker 1: I've never thought about that makes total sense, and.
Speaker 2: They don't go away. Those are the ones that don't
Speaker 2: go away because the price, the resale price, just keeps
Speaker 2: going down until you get to the point where it works.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that the economy of golf, you know, from
Speaker 3: what it the price of eggs to build a golf course,
Speaker 3: whatever that is, and if you can build it well
Speaker 3: and cheaply, you're light years ahead of anyone that didn't
Speaker 3: do it that way. And it's it's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 3: you you, we all are enamored with the idea of
Speaker 3: golf being accessible and affordable, but you know, whoever is
Speaker 3: writing the checks to get our playing fields built and
Speaker 3: open for us are not gonna disregard what the market
Speaker 3: will bear. And if the market bears a high green fee,
Speaker 3: you can ask them to be do us all a
Speaker 3: favor and don't charge us so much, but you know,
Speaker 3: the likelihood of that happening isn't very good. It's like
Speaker 3: a lot of places that you see in areas where
Speaker 3: the economy is starting to emerge and you need you
Speaker 3: need labor and there's no affordable housing for people, but
Speaker 3: there's a lot of development going on, and you're you,
Speaker 3: you can't require developers to please build affordable housing for
Speaker 3: the labor force. They're going to build and get what
Speaker 3: they can out of their investment. So it's it's a
Speaker 3: very difficult pendulum to swing back the other way.
Speaker 1: So we touched on high point and we got a
Speaker 1: question about high point from Brian Hilco. He wants to
Speaker 1: know what is high point on the Doke scale. If
Speaker 1: it existed today.
Speaker 2: I think I rateed it a seven or eight in
Speaker 2: my book way back, and that was probably a point
Speaker 2: above where it should have been. But I really miss it.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had three or four of my courses close.
Speaker 2: That's the only one that I really truly missed, partly
Speaker 2: because it's the only golf course I did where I
Speaker 2: shaped all eighteen greens by myself. You know, others of
Speaker 2: my projects, I've done some of them, but that's the
Speaker 2: only one that I did.
Speaker 3: All of them.
Speaker 2: And it was a really nice piece of land for golf.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just really liked how to fit together.
Speaker 2: It was kind of hard to walk, you know. I
Speaker 2: went out they still hadn't torn up the land for
Speaker 2: the back nine as of a year ago. So I
Speaker 2: took a writer out there a year ago and just
Speaker 2: walked some of the back nine with him, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's no grass left. It kind of looks like the
Speaker 2: piece of land that I started with. It's really weird,
Speaker 2: but it kind of looks like the piece of land
Speaker 2: that I started with again. And when we walked it,
Speaker 2: I was like, shit, this is a lot harder to
Speaker 2: walk than I remember. And I was like, duh, I
Speaker 2: was like twenty eight when I built this. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm fifty six, so my perception has changed a little bit.
Speaker 2: I can relate to what other people thought of how
Speaker 2: hard it was to walk, but you know, it was
Speaker 2: different and that was worth a lot. You know, it
Speaker 2: got ranked in some of the early rankings. You know,
Speaker 2: just barely made a list of this or that back
Speaker 2: in the day, and it wouldn't now because I've done
Speaker 2: so many other good courses and it's clearly not as
Speaker 2: good as Pacific Dunes or Cape Kidnappers. You know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't that spectacular piece of land. So you know, the
Speaker 2: reason it made those lists at all was because my
Speaker 2: style was really different and there was nothing else quite
Speaker 2: like it. And now my style is a little better,
Speaker 2: a lot better known, and so it's not as unique anymore.
Speaker 2: And it's not the best piece of ground I worked on,
Speaker 2: so it wouldn't be rated as highly. It wouldn't be
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be in the rankings, but it was a
Speaker 2: neat place to go play golf, and at some level,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a more pure vision of my
Speaker 2: minimalist you know, my style kind of evolved from that
Speaker 2: piece of land. You know, I shaped everything. Everything we
Speaker 2: did I shaped with a very small bulldozer, a D
Speaker 2: four that couldn't push much dirt around if you tried,
Speaker 2: so it had to be something that was, you know,
Speaker 2: and I built it in a in six months, so
Speaker 2: it's like it had to fit the land really close
Speaker 2: because I didn't have any more horsepower to do anything
Speaker 2: different than that. And that was what was cool about it.
Speaker 2: And you know, if if you know, if my kaiser
Speaker 2: wanted to build the same golf course on that land
Speaker 2: with unlimited money, the routing probably would have been the same,
Speaker 2: but the way we shaped it and everything would I'm
Speaker 2: sure it would have turned out different. But I liked
Speaker 2: the way it was. I mean it was it was
Speaker 2: really neat. And you know, there's a couple of things,
Speaker 2: like there were a couple of greens there the third
Speaker 2: along part four fourteenth, a little short part four greens
Speaker 2: were just there was a little knob for a green site,
Speaker 2: and I just built the green on that little knob.
Speaker 2: I just flattened it just barely enough that you could
Speaker 2: have some whole locations and then it was short grass
Speaker 2: peeling off the knob in all different directions. I've really
Speaker 2: never built a Green like that. Since then, you're always
Speaker 2: tempted to do a little more. And and there I
Speaker 2: was like, No, that's good, that's gonna be plenty hard.
Speaker 2: Don't need to do anything else.
Speaker 1: That's uh's gotta suck having the first fun go.
Speaker 2: That's well. You know, I've talked to a lot of
Speaker 2: other architects about that, and and it's it's much more
Speaker 2: common than you think that you're their first golf courses
Speaker 2: are either bastardized or gone, which in hindsight, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, We've talked about a lot. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, what kind of owner would hire somebody they'd
Speaker 2: never done a golf course before to do something good. Well,
Speaker 2: probably somebody that doesn't really know what they're doing very well,
Speaker 2: So the odds of it feeling are better than really
Speaker 2: smart or someone that's really smart and trying to get
Speaker 2: a good deal built. Even if they're trying to get
Speaker 2: a good deal, you know, they don't know how to
Speaker 2: operate a golf course. Yeah, you know, that's not like
Speaker 2: you know, Mike Kaiser got a lot of credibility at
Speaker 2: the beginning for hiring David Kidd when nobody knew who
Speaker 2: he was, and hiring me even though I'd already done
Speaker 2: twelve courses when people didn't know that much about me.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't do that now. It's like he can't
Speaker 2: take that chance. Now there's too much money at stake
Speaker 2: and too many you know, whoever he hires for the
Speaker 2: next person in Valley, whether it's me or Gil Hants
Speaker 2: or Mike Derez, it's going to be somebody who's already proven.
Speaker 2: He's he's not as willing to take the chance anymore
Speaker 2: because because the profile of that thing is so high
Speaker 2: Whereas when he started banded dudes, nobody knew who the hell,
Speaker 2: what the hell? Even though it was a great sight,
Speaker 2: nobody knew anything about it. So he could he could
Speaker 2: pick whoever he wanted and not worry about what people thought.
Speaker 1: There's uh. In Malcolm Gladwell's book David Versus Goliath, he
Speaker 1: talks about how like David was actually the the favorite
Speaker 1: in the fight against David at Goliath because he was
Speaker 1: this lumbering giant that was blind, and David with a
Speaker 1: slingshot was like a sniper, so like, of course he's
Speaker 1: gonna win. But the same thing goes for like these
Speaker 1: young companies that take on giant mega corporations is they
Speaker 1: can try stuff and if it fails it Do you
Speaker 1: ever feel like that as an architect, like from when
Speaker 1: you were younger to when you're now because you're building,
Speaker 1: When you build a course, it's more high profile that
Speaker 1: there's more scrutiny that comes with it, and it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I look at that as a good thing. No, I.
Speaker 2: I think I've seen a ton of other architects, and
Speaker 2: I don't have to name names. It's most of them.
Speaker 2: After they're successful, they get more and more conservative. It's
Speaker 2: really easy to do because you know, when if somebody
Speaker 2: calls me on the phone right now and wants to
Speaker 2: talk to me about doing a new project, the reason
Speaker 2: they called me is because they've seen something else I've
Speaker 2: done and they liked it. So the Rees Jones approaches, Okay,
Speaker 2: we'll do of course, just like Pacific Dunes for you
Speaker 2: on your inland play site wherever. You know, let's let's
Speaker 2: skip over all the obvious ways where you can't really
Speaker 2: do that. You know, I'm going to tell you just
Speaker 2: what you want to hear. Yes, you like that I
Speaker 2: could do that. I've already done that obviously. It's way, way, way,
Speaker 2: way way harder to say now. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: when we start keep kidnappers, Julian Robertson is like, I
Speaker 2: love the bunkering of Pacific Dunes. I would like you
Speaker 2: to do the same thing here. And I looked at him.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, I was in sand dunes. This is
Speaker 2: not sandy at all. And you know here, once you're
Speaker 2: off these little fingers aground, everything's like hanging down out
Speaker 2: of you, off the end of the world. You know,
Speaker 2: those that style of bunkers is just not going to
Speaker 2: work here. You know. I I could try, but it
Speaker 2: would look very out of place. And I'm telling you
Speaker 2: that is not what you ought to do. Really hard
Speaker 2: conversation to have with somebody who you know they want
Speaker 2: you because they love that golf course. But you know
Speaker 2: he listened and said, okay, you know, he still was
Speaker 2: like on me, why aren't there more bunkers on the
Speaker 2: back nine. I'm like, because they'd be eighty feet d
Speaker 2: you know, the next step off this green is off
Speaker 2: the world. So you know, putting a bunker there it's
Speaker 2: not really going to stop anything from happening. But now,
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like it's just it's just my
Speaker 2: personality in general, I've always been kind of a contrarian.
Speaker 2: I don't want to keep doing the same thing over
Speaker 2: and over again. So I see, so I'm crazy enough
Speaker 2: to ask somebody if I can do a reversible golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, there's all kinds of things that I'd like
Speaker 2: to do that I still haven't find the client that
Speaker 2: will let me do them. And I'm hopeful in the
Speaker 2: next ten or twenty years, or however long I keep
Speaker 2: building golf courses, I will find people to do some
Speaker 2: of those ideas, because I've still got a lot of
Speaker 2: ideas that we just haven't found the right place for yet.
Speaker 2: But you're right, most guys they're not going to be
Speaker 2: that way. You know. It's easier for somebody young to
Speaker 2: take the chance. Well, it's easier in a different environment,
Speaker 2: you know. When you know, when I did High Point,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of golf courses being built, and
Speaker 2: the reason they took a chance on me was that
Speaker 2: a lot of the local guys were busy or they'd
Speaker 2: already done too many other golf courses around there, so
Speaker 2: they didn't want the same guy that built a course
Speaker 2: across the street. So now they're more willing to look
Speaker 2: at somebody who's young and nobody knows who he is.
Speaker 2: You know, in this environment where there's only a few
Speaker 2: courses being built every year and they're you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't make any sense to build one unless it's going
Speaker 2: to be something really great and you could charge premium for.
Speaker 2: It's really hard for somebody to get the chance that
Speaker 2: I had when I was twenty seven. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: had a ton of guys work at guys and girls
Speaker 2: work for me that are really talented, that are probably
Speaker 2: pretty close to as far along as I was when
Speaker 2: I was twenty seven. You know, two things make it
Speaker 2: harder for them. One there's way more of them all
Speaker 2: want that chance. And two there's not as many chances.
Speaker 2: Oh and three there's me and Gil Hans and Mike
Speaker 2: Derees and all these you know, all these guys that
Speaker 2: have done it a bunch, you know, so it's harder
Speaker 2: for the you know, it's harder for them to get
Speaker 2: a chance. But the art grows when those people get chances,
Speaker 2: and you know, and the art grows when we let
Speaker 2: those kids work on our and they're not kids, they're thirty,
Speaker 2: but when we when we get them onto our projects,
Speaker 2: and let them contribut something. I mean, not as much
Speaker 2: as if we just turn them loose and let them
Speaker 2: do something entirely on their own. But at least they
Speaker 2: get a chance to try out some new things and
Speaker 2: see if they work or not, or see if they
Speaker 2: get past.
Speaker 3: My headit.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, the longer I've gotten into golf is
Speaker 1: the greatest golf courses, Like there's great variety within the
Speaker 1: golf course. You know, the great golf areas have great
Speaker 1: variety among the golf courses. The greatest era of golf
Speaker 1: architecture had great variety amongst all of US architects. You know,
Speaker 1: there were so many of them, different ones so that
Speaker 1: did different things well. And then you look at like
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, it's like the best golf is when
Speaker 1: there's a variety of different players on. Like golf is
Speaker 1: all about variety, yep. And it should be even within designs,
Speaker 1: like like every design shouldn't be the same. There should
Speaker 1: be a lot of like different styles. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's something.
Speaker 2: That no, I mean, I don't you know, people ask
Speaker 2: me about minimalism and I'm like, well, it's kind of
Speaker 2: the thing I do. But you know, I don't. You know,
Speaker 2: I've done some projects that I wouldn't call minimalist, and
Speaker 2: you know that doesn't mean I don't want to do
Speaker 2: it unless you can build a golf course without moving
Speaker 2: any dirt. But do I think all golf courses should
Speaker 2: be that way? Absolutely not? You know, should should every
Speaker 2: young architect want to do the same thing I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know you can explain minimalism and make
Speaker 2: it sound really good. I figured that out a long
Speaker 2: time ago, so it's hard to say no, I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that. I want to make a bigger
Speaker 2: splash and move more dirt around and be creative and
Speaker 2: do some things that that those guys don't have the
Speaker 2: guts to do. But you know, if somebody would let
Speaker 2: you do it, go for it. Don't just feel like
Speaker 2: you have to be the next minimalist guy in line,
Speaker 2: because A there's a long line. Now, it's hard, it's
Speaker 2: hard to get to the front of it and be
Speaker 2: Variety is important. As soon as somebody does something that's
Speaker 2: really different, really good, minimalism isn't going to go away,
Speaker 2: but it won't be the hot thing anymore. That's it.
Speaker 1: I always say that the only way you can disrupt
Speaker 1: a industry is if you do something different and continue
Speaker 1: to do something different, right, you know.
Speaker 2: It's and I you know when I when I started,
Speaker 2: I mean, what what I tried to do at the
Speaker 2: Eygepoint was radically different. I mean, you know Tommy who
Speaker 2: built the golf course with me, you know, we talked
Speaker 2: to you know, the closest golf course to high Point
Speaker 2: was the Bear at Grand Travers Resort, the Nicolas course,
Speaker 2: where they had a flat piece of ground and they
Speaker 2: shaped up all kinds of mounds and tiny greens with
Speaker 2: deep bunkers around them and lakes on every other hole,
Speaker 2: and and you know, we talked, we want to do
Speaker 2: the dead opposite of that. I mean, not one mound
Speaker 2: on the golf course anywhere, and no lakes and know
Speaker 2: this and that, you know, just picking out all the
Speaker 2: things we could try to do different, and it wasn't.
Speaker 2: That's terrible. I hate all that. It's like, God, there
Speaker 2: have been so many of those. Yeah, let's just try
Speaker 2: to do something that doesn't look anything like that at all.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a few other Jack Nico discourses.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he did a lot in the same style too,
Speaker 2: Although to Jack credit, I mean He's done so many things.
Speaker 2: He's tried everything over the years. But you know, you
Speaker 2: get to the point where you've done so many courses,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I got to do something different. I'm
Speaker 2: just I'm just tired of this. I could do the
Speaker 2: same thing, but I want to do something else.
Speaker 1: You market it differently, too, right, is different than any project.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah he's doing he might be doing one ten
Speaker 2: miles away from where he did one ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So it's you know, you got to change it a
Speaker 2: little bit. But you know, when you know, in the
Speaker 2: late nineteen eighties, everybody was building bunker everybody's bunkers looked
Speaker 2: like Pte Dieseah long sixty yard long fairway bunkers with
Speaker 2: sand fly on the bottom and a two or three
Speaker 2: foot bank up to a flat fairway. That's what the
Speaker 2: barrel looked like too, you know. And I'd just come
Speaker 2: working for Pete Dye and and I thought, well, if
Speaker 2: I do that, you know, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: First of all, that would not that would not honor
Speaker 2: mister Die at all, you know, that would just be copying.
Speaker 2: And second of all, from a business standpoint, if you
Speaker 2: wanted that, you'd hire a son, you're not gonna hire me.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't need me to do that. You
Speaker 2: could go to the source. So I need to do
Speaker 2: something different than that. Whatever else I do got to
Speaker 2: be different than that. And you know, I'd spent time
Speaker 2: talking with Ben Crenshaw about design, and I spent time
Speaker 2: and I kind of looked at all these golf courses
Speaker 2: in the UK and all the classic courses in the US,
Speaker 2: and they didn't look like that at all. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: I could make I could build a course that looked
Speaker 2: like Riviera. I could build a course that looked like
Speaker 2: would all Spa. I could build a course that looked
Speaker 2: like eighty other great old courses that nobody is trying
Speaker 2: to do now. Mostly nobody's trying to do them because
Speaker 2: nobody had a piece of land. It was very good,
Speaker 2: but you know, the piece of land doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: you have to do bunkering style a certain way. You know.
Speaker 2: So Black Forest, you know, my crew was Gill Hansome,
Speaker 2: Mike Davies, three of us built that golf course, and
Speaker 2: you know we were it's it's through the black Forest.
Speaker 2: Then there's a reason for that name. It was dark
Speaker 2: in there, those trees are so thick and so close together.
Speaker 2: It was just dark. I mean even when you cleared
Speaker 2: out the golf course, you know in the evening, in
Speaker 2: the late afternoon when the shadows are going out, it's
Speaker 2: just black where the shadows are coming across. So I thought, well,
Speaker 2: all these holes are going to look the same, you know,
Speaker 2: they just look like they're surrounded by dense trees. So
Speaker 2: we need to do big, flashy bunkering to make these
Speaker 2: look different from one another. And you know, I tried
Speaker 2: to do that a little bit at a high point,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't very good at it. I had a
Speaker 2: small bulldozer, so the bunkering was eclectic, you could say
Speaker 2: that much for a high point, but it wasn't. There
Speaker 2: were a few flashy sand bunkers that look kind of cool,
Speaker 2: but there it wasn't consistent at all because I never
Speaker 2: tried to build a bunker like that, you know, I
Speaker 2: was just trying to figure out how you do it.
Speaker 2: And so when we started Black Forest the fall, the
Speaker 2: fall before, just before we started construction in the winter,
Speaker 2: I took gill Hands to California. We started San Francisco
Speaker 2: Golf Club and we went from there to pass Tiempo,
Speaker 2: to Cypress Point, to the Valley Club, and to Riviera
Speaker 2: an La Country Club, and we looked at all those
Speaker 2: bunkers at Mackenzie and Billy Bell had built, and we
Speaker 2: kind of paste out how big they were. We paced
Speaker 2: out like how far the capes hung down into the bunkers,
Speaker 2: and then we tried to build bunkers like that for
Speaker 2: Black Forest, and nobody had tried to build bunkers like
Speaker 2: that for like at least twenty or thirty years. You know.
Speaker 2: I guess you could say that like George Fazio built
Speaker 2: bunkers that kind of looked a little like that, or
Speaker 2: Dick Wilson, but really, you know, nobody built them in
Speaker 2: the eighties, so it was at least ten years everything
Speaker 2: looked like Pete Did's. So you know, Black Forest didn't
Speaker 2: get a lot of publicity at the time it was,
Speaker 2: I was still unknown, but you know, those those were
Speaker 2: the bunkers that really those were the first time any
Speaker 2: of the modern architects had tried to build bunkers like that.
Speaker 2: And now that's all that anybody ever does. So you
Speaker 2: know it's time to go a different direction from that. Somebody,
Speaker 2: please go a different direction. From that.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing project in time, like the three man
Speaker 1: crew there of you, Gil and Mike and where everybody
Speaker 1: is now.
Speaker 2: You know, and it is. Yeah. I've had cruise like
Speaker 2: that on a lot of other projects, but they weren't
Speaker 2: quite as long ago. So you don't know who those
Speaker 2: guys are yet. Yeah, and you may never know because
Speaker 2: some of them have to get out of the you know,
Speaker 2: they're not all staying in the business. But we've had
Speaker 2: a ton of talent, you know, I've had you know,
Speaker 2: I've had golf courses where we had six guys like
Speaker 2: that on site. The hell done. Don was talking about Stonewall.
Speaker 2: The second course of Stonewall we had we had me
Speaker 2: and him and all of my current associates shaping stuff,
Speaker 2: and Bruce Heppner and Dan Proctor who worked for Bill
Speaker 2: Corr forever, and Kyle fram when he was an intern,
Speaker 2: and Philip when he was an intern, and Kai. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's like Kelly Blake Moran, the architect who lives in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: came to visit one day. I'd never met him before.
Speaker 2: He just he just emailed me and said, can I
Speaker 2: come and see what you're doing? I said, sure, so
Speaker 2: he spent all day walking around with me on site
Speaker 2: while I was like editing guys and checking in and
Speaker 2: seeing how things were doing, and like every twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: I'm pulling somebody off a piece of equipment to introduce him.
Speaker 2: And like at the end of the day, he's like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe how many people are working on this
Speaker 2: that I you know, not just not just people, but
Speaker 2: like guys who are sharp, who I've heard of and
Speaker 2: you know, have heard good things about their work. It says,
Speaker 2: how do you get all these people in one place
Speaker 2: at the same time. And it's like, well, you just
Speaker 2: have to, you know. Part of it says I had
Speaker 2: to be willing to pay them all to be there.
Speaker 2: You know, the client will pay more for talent, but
Speaker 2: only to a point. So at some point you get like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is as much as we'll pay you to shape
Speaker 2: all of it. Now, who can you afford to have
Speaker 2: do that? You know, Like unfortunately a lot of the
Speaker 2: golf courses build overseas one shaper. You know, there'll be
Speaker 2: other guys that are kind of finishing up behind him
Speaker 2: or helping out at the start, but it's really just
Speaker 2: one guy who's who just built another course for another
Speaker 2: architect four months ago, and he comes in here to
Speaker 2: just jam out all the bunkers and greens on a
Speaker 2: golf course in three or four months, working eighty hours
Speaker 2: a week, and then boom, he never sees it again.
Speaker 2: That's the way construction companies work.
Speaker 1: That's tough too, because you lose the collaborative aspect about it,
Speaker 1: and you also lose like when you got a bunch
Speaker 1: of young, hungry guys, there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a competitive aspect amongst them.
Speaker 2: Oh, when they're.
Speaker 1: Building out, you know, there's no question everybody wants to
Speaker 1: build the you know, there's.
Speaker 2: No question, and you know that can go too far.
Speaker 2: We have done courses where I look back and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I just keep having to slap people down, like,
Speaker 2: don't you know we don't need the eighteen wildest holes
Speaker 2: anybody's ever seen here, So don't don't try to make
Speaker 2: this hole even wilder than that green that Brian just
Speaker 2: built over there. But but yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of golf courses that are built where
Speaker 2: there's only one talented guy and he doesn't even stick
Speaker 2: around till they finish the green to plant it. So
Speaker 2: the guy that follows up and like floats out the
Speaker 2: green and plants it isn't the guy who shaped it.
Speaker 2: And then the guy who shaped it. On some of
Speaker 2: those jobs, they never come back. And see, like when
Speaker 2: we Lost Dunes, we were doing three courses at the
Speaker 2: same time. So Lost Dunes was one of the one
Speaker 2: of the few golf courses that I've had that I've
Speaker 2: done that was built by one of the big golf
Speaker 2: course contractors with their shapers. Amazingly enough, one of my
Speaker 2: most severe sets of greens. But the the one key
Speaker 2: shaper guy they had there was a guy named Jeremy
Speaker 2: Miller who was really talented, and it was like the
Speaker 2: first time anybody let him like go wild and be creative,
Speaker 2: and he he did some really cool stuff, and then
Speaker 2: he got hired by Jack Nicholas. He worked for Jack
Speaker 2: for a bunch of years after that. But but there
Speaker 2: was this older shaper on that project, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was he was shaping up the side of this
Speaker 2: one hole, and you know, he was just making everything
Speaker 2: too big and too exaggerated. And I was looking at
Speaker 2: and I was thinking, you know, he's trying to make
Speaker 2: it look a certain way. In the dirt when everything's monotone,
Speaker 2: and he's not really visualizing that there's going to be
Speaker 2: long grass over there and that's going to provide contrast.
Speaker 2: And you don't need to be going up and down
Speaker 2: like he's going up and down to you know, he's
Speaker 2: just trying to make contrast. And I got something else
Speaker 2: that's going to do that. So I don't really need
Speaker 2: him to be doing what he's doing. So I went
Speaker 2: over to talk to him. I was just I didn't
Speaker 2: know him for it. I didn't know him at all.
Speaker 2: Striking up a conversation, I said, do you ever go
Speaker 2: back to the courses that you built and see what
Speaker 2: they look like? No? No, twenty years in the business
Speaker 2: and he had never seen anything he'd shaped with grass
Speaker 2: on it. We have a different approach to that.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's that's a I guess when you look
Speaker 1: at a lot of golf courses, it makes sense, but
Speaker 1: it's it's very frightening. It's kind of sad, actually, is
Speaker 1: that I couldn't imagine building all those golf courses never
Speaker 1: going to play.
Speaker 2: Them, right, I mean, yeah, for the I mean like
Speaker 2: all the young people that work for me or you know,
Speaker 2: the only thing that motivated me when I was twenty
Speaker 2: years old and working on a construction crew for Pete
Speaker 2: Dye and Blistering Sun at Long Cove. You know, it's like,
Speaker 2: what's this going to look like when it finishes it?
Speaker 2: And what's it going to be like to come back
Speaker 2: and play here? And you know, if if you don't
Speaker 2: have something like that in your head through the construction process,
Speaker 2: I don't know why anybody would stay in the business
Speaker 2: very long. I mean, other than that, it's just a
Speaker 2: lot of long days in hot and nasty weather that
Speaker 2: you get really dirty, and you know, if you're not
Speaker 2: visualizing the finished product at some level of I want
Speaker 2: to enjoy this when it's done, you know, it would suck.
Speaker 2: That's I mean one of the things about when you know,
Speaker 2: the few times we've built, of course it's like super
Speaker 2: exclusive private, it's kind of the same problem. It's like
Speaker 2: even my crew is like, we ever going to be
Speaker 2: able to come back here? You know, they lose motivation
Speaker 2: at some point if it's like, well no, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, you guys, maybe you can come with Tom someday.
Speaker 1: Thanks for spending a few months here.
Speaker 2: We'll see it. We'll see it right. And I hate
Speaker 2: to say it, but you know, the quality of the
Speaker 2: work goes down if those guys aren't that motivated about
Speaker 2: that part of it. So it's hard to keep the
Speaker 2: morale up from start to finish. That's one of the
Speaker 2: hardest things about building a golf course. It takes a
Speaker 2: long time, and you get excited about it for a
Speaker 2: little while, but it's hard to keep that going for
Speaker 2: six or nine months or more or two and a
Speaker 2: half years. And and you can tell when it looks
Speaker 2: like you know, when it looks like you get to
Speaker 2: a really dull stretch of the golf course, or it
Speaker 2: looks like they ran out of money to build it.
Speaker 2: That's usually the problem. It's like too late in the game.
Speaker 2: Everybody moved on, got to get it finished.
Speaker 1: It's like when I have a newsletter that I is
Speaker 1: due the next morning and it's like midnight on a
Speaker 1: Tuesday night and it's going out at six am on
Speaker 1: the next Wednesday. You know, there's topics I just decide
Speaker 1: that don't need very much color to them. It's uh,
Speaker 1: so we got we got a little off subject. We'll dive,
Speaker 1: we got a couple quick questions, and then we'll do
Speaker 1: a few overrated underrats. What's the most overrated and most
Speaker 1: underrated course in the state of Michigan.
Speaker 2: Oh oh man, what's the most overrated course in the state.
Speaker 1: Of Mission And this is from Chris McCann.
Speaker 2: I mean, usually the most overrated course is is a
Speaker 2: tour course that you know, you know about because they've
Speaker 2: been playing it forever, but it's not really good. They've
Speaker 2: just been playing it forever, so everybody knows it. But
Speaker 2: there's not really much of that here. I mean Warwick
Speaker 2: Hills where they had to buick open. Nobody ever thought
Speaker 2: that was a great golf course. Now I remember. It's
Speaker 2: It's fun tell you how things change. I mean, like
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy that was one of the harder courses on
Speaker 2: tour because it was fairly long and narrow, and then
Speaker 2: by like two thousand it was like who could choose
Speaker 2: twenty eight under here? So things do change. But so
Speaker 2: the most overrated course, unfortunately, in that case, will be
Speaker 2: the one that, you know, some very expensive, modern, hyped
Speaker 2: up project that doesn't really live up to it. I
Speaker 2: might have to take a pass on which one that is.
Speaker 2: Your readers, your listeners can probably fill in the blanks.
Speaker 2: But I'm just going to take a pass on that
Speaker 2: most underrated Belvedere Never. It shouldn't make a list of
Speaker 2: the best courses in the country. It's not that good,
Speaker 2: but a very good golf course. You know that, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty much under the radar except for people in Michigan
Speaker 2: that played in the Michiganian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people that listened to our first podcast. Yes,
Speaker 1: because I got I got emails all the time. I
Speaker 1: went to Belladere Man that was awesome.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: So that's uh, sooner.
Speaker 2: Or later we'll ruin it and I'll jack the green
Speaker 2: fie up tow one hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the Michigan, Michigan Dam's back there this year.
Speaker 1: I think somebody told me that, all right, m overrated,
Speaker 1: underrated the southeast Michigan golf scene. And this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is a question turned overrated, underrated. But it's in
Speaker 1: comparison to like Philly, New York, Columbus.
Speaker 2: Oh so the Detroit area as compared to well, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: I think comparing it to that might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean compared to Philadelphia. It's not even close
Speaker 2: to Philadelphia. But I don't know that anybody's I don't
Speaker 2: know that anybody's made that comparison. Yes, Detroit is definitely better.
Speaker 2: I mean there are there's a good little second tier
Speaker 2: of golf courses around Detroit that people don't talk about
Speaker 2: that much. But they're actually pretty good courses like Meadowbrook
Speaker 2: and Red Run and Birmingham. And I'd never been to
Speaker 2: Barton Hills and ann Arbor till a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago I went there. Somebody suggested I'd go there and
Speaker 2: get it in the confidential god, way better than I
Speaker 2: expected it to be, way better. In fact, I probably
Speaker 2: should have had that. I was one of my ten
Speaker 2: rounds of golf in Michigan. But but do those courses
Speaker 2: compare to this? You know, the second tier in New
Speaker 2: York is like the Creek Club and Piping Rock and
Speaker 2: Garden City and Quicker Ridge. So now Detroit isn't Detroit.
Speaker 2: If I had to rank ten best metropolitan areas, it
Speaker 2: might be around tenth, but it's not in the top five.
Speaker 2: So I don't think I don't think it's underrated. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's overrated because you know, people don't talk
Speaker 2: about it like it belongs in there, or at least
Speaker 2: outside Michigan, they don't.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things I find with Detroit. I've
Speaker 1: never played in Detroit, but just from one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I think I'm going to go visit there this
Speaker 1: summer is that they have such a variety of Golden
Speaker 1: Age architects that work there, Right, Walter Travis, Donald Ross,
Speaker 1: Willie Watson, Alison Colt, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, Allison Allison was based there for like five or
Speaker 2: six years. You know, he ran Colt's Office in America
Speaker 2: out of Detroit in the twenties. That was his base
Speaker 2: of operation in the twenties when he was building Milwaukee
Speaker 2: Country Club, and you know, and he did he did
Speaker 2: the country He redid the Country Club of Detroit. I
Speaker 2: have not been to Orchard Lake, but I hear it's
Speaker 2: really good too. He did two or three things around
Speaker 2: there that are that are very good, that kind of
Speaker 2: fly under the radar a little bit. You know, his
Speaker 2: name just doesn't you know. There's there's mackenzie and McDonald
Speaker 2: and Ross and tilling Hast and Colet, and he's not
Speaker 2: in there, so people overlook him a lot. And yeah,
Speaker 2: from that standpoint, you're right, there's a lot of there's
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff in Detroit that that weren't designed
Speaker 2: by the big name guys that are pretty good, and
Speaker 2: they just don't get near as much publicity because they
Speaker 2: weren't designed by Ross or tilling.
Speaker 1: Hast Lions Analysis overrated, underrated Oakland Hills South Course.
Speaker 2: I think Oakland Hills South Course is a great golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, they have tinkered with it a ton. The
Speaker 2: present version of it is probably not as good as
Speaker 2: the one I remember from twenty five years ago when
Speaker 2: I first moved here. But they still have the same
Speaker 2: set of greens, and that's at least fifty percent. You know,
Speaker 2: it's still a good piece of land. It's still the
Speaker 2: same routing. They still have a great set of greens
Speaker 2: that goes a long long way. So I still think
Speaker 2: it's a great golf course. You know, I wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to play it from anywhere near the back tees anywhere
Speaker 2: near them now, But that's another story.
Speaker 1: So if you built a golf course with eighteen great greens,
Speaker 1: like how enft would you have to be with everything
Speaker 1: else for the golf course not to be like pretty good,
Speaker 1: You'd have.
Speaker 2: To be you know, you'd have to be stumbling around
Speaker 2: and just making the visibility into them would have to
Speaker 2: be horrible. You know, a great set of greens that
Speaker 2: you can't really see what's going on from the fairway.
Speaker 2: That wouldn't be very good. But it's hard to believe
Speaker 2: that you're going to do get the greens right and
Speaker 2: get that wrong.
Speaker 1: All right, another edition in the books and we'll be
Speaker 1: back in a couple of weeks. But thanks again for
Speaker 1: the time, Tom and Don.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming to visit us up here.
Speaker 3: Our pleasure any thanks for making the trip.
Speaker 1: Thank you you've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 2: We do the digging for you.