Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, Frida egg, brigg Frida Egg bride egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. My name is
Speaker 3: Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about how to build
Speaker 3: a career in golf architecture, or at least we're talking
Speaker 3: about how one person accomplished that feed. My guest is
Speaker 3: Dan Hickson. He's a Portland, Oregon based golf architect who's
Speaker 3: designed a number of courses in Oregon in Washington, including
Speaker 3: Bandoned Crossings, Wine Valley, the reversible course at Silva Valley Ranch,
Speaker 3: and the brand new Bar Run in Roseberg, Oregon. Dan's
Speaker 3: career has really run the gamut from low budget renovations
Speaker 3: to ambitious and boundary pushing new builds. And while he's
Speaker 3: somewhat under the radar nationally, he is very well established
Speaker 3: and well respected in the Pacific Northwest. I've wanted to
Speaker 3: have him on the podcast for a while and we
Speaker 3: finally found a good time when he was in town
Speaker 3: and visiting his in progress renovation at the Lake Oswego
Speaker 3: Municipal Golf Course. So we'll open up by talking about
Speaker 3: that project, and then we'll dig into the way that
Speaker 3: Dan has built up his career from being a club
Speaker 3: pro at the Columbia Edgewater Country Club to a very
Speaker 3: prolific golf course designer. I think he's taken a really
Speaker 3: interesting path and it probably has some lessons in it
Speaker 3: for aspiring architects.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to it. Here is Dan Hickson?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: So, Dan Hickson, we were just out at the Lake
Speaker 3: Oswego Municipal Course a few minutes ago walking around that
Speaker 3: project that you're doing. You've just finished basically renovating it,
Speaker 3: doing an ambitious renovation out there. It's grassed in but
Speaker 3: hasn't opened yet. There are some more things to do
Speaker 3: on the site. So could you just like take me
Speaker 3: through that project? What did you do there?
Speaker 2: Well, it was an eighteen hole par three course, very simple,
Speaker 2: very rudimentary design, and the city of Lake os we
Speaker 2: Go on to build a park and or excuse me,
Speaker 2: a recreation center, an aquatic center, and so that took
Speaker 2: away the first three holes and we then had to
Speaker 2: just basically start from scratch, and a lot of it
Speaker 2: was taken out trees and turned it into a nine
Speaker 2: hole course with three par fours fairly short. That really
Speaker 2: opened up the site mostly with just tree removal of
Speaker 2: kind of poor species and poor planting.
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, a lot of trees came out there.
Speaker 3: It was pretty choked before, for sure, I've played it
Speaker 3: before and it's much more open now. But a big
Speaker 3: part of the move was going from eighteen part threes
Speaker 3: to what you have now. So you know, nine holes.
Speaker 3: What's the nature of the course now.
Speaker 2: Well, the property has some tilt to it. It has
Speaker 2: a kind of a wetland down on the bottom. And
Speaker 2: the majority of the holes on the original course were
Speaker 2: parallel to each other, just back and forth, like seven
Speaker 2: in a row and on each side, not just seven.
Speaker 1: You know, holes two through nine or anything.
Speaker 2: And so we were able to open up the gaps
Speaker 2: between them and basically build one hole per where the
Speaker 2: old ones were, and so again to gain some width.
Speaker 2: They had some incredibly narrow shots between the trees before.
Speaker 2: But really it was part of it was to build
Speaker 2: a you know, regulation type greens regulation type te's you know,
Speaker 2: built with California speck for the greens, and you know,
Speaker 2: capped teas and much bigger.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a typical Muni where you know, by May
Speaker 2: first there was no grass left on the tees for
Speaker 2: the whole season, and so we were able to really
Speaker 2: expand that part and hopefully the maintenance of it is
Speaker 2: kind of follows it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you have some interesting greens out there too.
Speaker 3: I think that's a big deal here, right. The previous
Speaker 3: course had these sort of circular push up greens a
Speaker 3: little bit domed. Maybe they weren't designed that way, they
Speaker 3: just kind of ended up that way, and it was
Speaker 3: it was fairly repetitive what was going on. Now you
Speaker 3: have some creative shapes out there, some fun little shots,
Speaker 3: you know, what were some of the things that you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, it's an introduction course for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, a lot of kids it'll be their
Speaker 2: first round of golf. You know, parents and grandparents can
Speaker 2: can take children out there and play the first time,
Speaker 2: and beginners of every age and so I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: as an introduction course that they should have some exciting stuff.
Speaker 1: So we build a.
Speaker 2: Punch bowl green. We have kind of a partial redan,
Speaker 2: a little runaway downhill green on a par three. We
Speaker 2: have a couple of swales that run through the greens.
Speaker 2: But really just to make it more exciting golf. And
Speaker 2: I use the analogy. It wasn't my idea. Somebody else
Speaker 2: said this. I couldn't tell you who that if you
Speaker 2: were introducing somebody to the world of coffee, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: take them to the service station to get it out
Speaker 2: of a you know, a little old pot that's been
Speaker 2: sitting on the burner for seven hours. You take them
Speaker 2: to a nice coffee shop. And I feel to introduce
Speaker 2: people into golf that they should have a little bit
Speaker 2: of creativity and imagination to see that a green, you know,
Speaker 2: isn't just flat or a dome, and you know, you
Speaker 2: got to aim to the left to make it break
Speaker 2: in and stuff like that. And so I kind of
Speaker 2: think that's what we did pretty well, and you know,
Speaker 2: still kept it very playable and safe for higher handicappers,
Speaker 2: but a little bit of excitement that you may see
Speaker 2: on a more of a major style course, not a
Speaker 2: major tournament course, but you know, a more classic country
Speaker 2: club or something.
Speaker 3: I feel like, I've heard the coffee analogy from Andy
Speaker 3: Johnson before from there, Yeah, maybe from or maybe he
Speaker 3: heard it from the same person you did, but it
Speaker 3: definitely holds here where. Yeah, this is the first course
Speaker 3: that a lot of people will play, and so why
Speaker 3: not make it as compelling as possible? Why does it
Speaker 3: have to be a dumbed down or mundane version of
Speaker 3: the game. If it's really fun, then presumably you're more
Speaker 3: likely to appeal the peep exact way exactly. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: So you know, one one big aspect of this project,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned before, was the reduction of the footprint
Speaker 3: of the golf course, going from eighteen to nine holes. Yep, right,
Speaker 3: this is something that a lot of golfers might have
Speaker 3: a problem with that local golfers will will, you know,
Speaker 3: usually object to projects like this. What do you think
Speaker 3: are some of the cons as well as some of
Speaker 3: the potential pros of municipality is doing this kind of
Speaker 3: thing with their golf courses where they're reducing the footprint,
Speaker 3: reducing the number of holes, but trying to improve the
Speaker 3: quality of the golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's there's there is a lot of pros and
Speaker 2: cons to that, and the one of the quick con
Speaker 2: to get it out of the way was some of
Speaker 2: the locals were worried that it would be too busy
Speaker 2: because they don't have front and back tee times on
Speaker 2: certain days of the week, and so everybody's just got
Speaker 2: to go off on ten. And that's a that's true
Speaker 2: that the city of Lake Oswego when they made the
Speaker 2: decision to build the rec center, they looked at everything
Speaker 2: kind of more of a community aspect of it and
Speaker 2: trying to offer more on that site than just golf.
Speaker 2: And so they're building this beautiful aquatic center and all
Speaker 2: the rec facilities, and so it really becomes a hub
Speaker 2: for this community. That is a real pro to that
Speaker 2: is giving up part of this golf course.
Speaker 1: For the good of the hole.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've said, hey, it's going to be
Speaker 2: a I live in the same city and I'll never
Speaker 2: put my toe in that swimming pool, but I'm glad
Speaker 2: it's here because there's a real shortage for this area
Speaker 2: for swimming and for the high school kids and younger
Speaker 2: as well as adults. So that's really neat in the
Speaker 2: community aspect of it. But as far as the golf
Speaker 2: course goes, you know, the other one was really you
Speaker 2: just basically teed off. You hit it in the trees,
Speaker 2: you chipped out, and then you hit it up to
Speaker 2: the green, and if you're not very good, you hit
Speaker 2: it in the trees again and you chipped out. So
Speaker 2: now we have you know, thirty yard to forty yard
Speaker 2: wide fair well not forty thirty yard wide fairways on
Speaker 2: the on the par fours, as well as some space
Speaker 2: around the greens and stuff with a lot of short
Speaker 2: grass around it where people can put and bump the
Speaker 2: ball up onto the green and stuff. And so the
Speaker 2: real cons is it's what I like to think of.
Speaker 2: I mean, golf is golf, but this is kind of
Speaker 2: more like real golf in the sense that there's some
Speaker 2: room that you're not just hitting a tree every time
Speaker 2: and playing off the roots and the dirt underneath all
Speaker 2: the trees. So yeah, I'm not sure if I explained
Speaker 2: you're answered your question.
Speaker 3: Well, well, yeah, I mean you're saying that, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the cons would be, of course you can't
Speaker 3: fit as many people on a nine hole course as
Speaker 3: you could for an eighteen whole course, but obviously have
Speaker 3: elevated the quality of the golf and also offered some
Speaker 3: space for the rest of the community to use and
Speaker 3: to come on to a property near a golf course
Speaker 3: and be in the presence of the game, but also
Speaker 3: share space with it. You know, this is a discussion
Speaker 3: that a lot of communities are having, like should we
Speaker 3: share the golf courses that we have in this way?
Speaker 3: And it feels like in this situation it was a
Speaker 3: plus for the community. But that's an emotional decision for
Speaker 3: a lot of places, like we're going to chop off
Speaker 3: part of this golf course and give it over to
Speaker 3: another activity, Like it's tough to do, but in a
Speaker 3: lot of cases, it allows you to do something better
Speaker 3: with the golf course that remains right.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, I failed to mention it before.
Speaker 2: We expanded the driving range greatly, which has been popular
Speaker 2: in the past, but we've added fifty yards and better
Speaker 2: netting for safety, as well as build a They used
Speaker 2: to have two very small, like maybe two thousand square
Speaker 2: foot each putting greens that again we're just kind of
Speaker 2: domes and you'd only have a two or three cups
Speaker 2: on each one, and we built a little over ten
Speaker 2: thousand square foot putting green that happens to be at
Speaker 2: part of the facility by the swimming pools where I
Speaker 2: could easily see families coming putting the kids go swim
Speaker 2: hang out. It'll really serve the community in that sense,
Speaker 2: and that putting Green can be a hangout as well
Speaker 2: as the driving range, which you know, I mean, I
Speaker 2: love that part of golf when you just go out
Speaker 2: to the course and you're not quite sure what you're
Speaker 2: gonna do, but you're gonna be immersed in.
Speaker 1: Golf, all right.
Speaker 3: So that's the Lake Oswego Municipal Course. This is one
Speaker 3: of your many kind of recent slash ongoing projects, and
Speaker 3: we're going to get to a lot of the interesting
Speaker 3: stuff that you're doing, which is mostly around the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: But you've also.
Speaker 3: Had, I mean to me, one of the most interesting
Speaker 3: careers in golf architecture because you didn't take the ordinary
Speaker 3: path into the profession. There have been a lot of
Speaker 3: golf architects obviously who had a competitive background, which you have,
Speaker 3: but not many of them did exactly what you did
Speaker 3: to break into this career. And so I want to
Speaker 3: rewind a little bit and maybe go back farther than
Speaker 3: that decision that you made to enter the profession, back
Speaker 3: to your childhood. Your dad was in golf as well,
Speaker 3: I believe, and so you know you were around golf
Speaker 3: as a kid. At what point did you notice that
Speaker 3: golf architecture was a thing and become interested in that
Speaker 3: side of the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, youngest child with I have three older siblings, and
Speaker 2: my dad was a golf pro. He's passed. But I
Speaker 2: also have an older brother that is a golf pro, Doug.
Speaker 2: And my other two siblings, my sister and other brother.
Speaker 2: They probably love golf more than the rest of us
Speaker 2: in the family did. But anyway, when I was seven
Speaker 2: years old, my dad took me out to Eugene Country Club,
Speaker 2: which was being remodeled by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. And
Speaker 2: that golf course was being reversed. And at that point,
Speaker 2: I mean, I had already drawn a few courses, just
Speaker 2: like the little stick figure courses on the back of
Speaker 2: a scorecard. And when I saw this construction and there
Speaker 2: was dozers and excavators and Dad was kind of pointing
Speaker 2: it out. I told him that day that that's what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do. Once I discovered I kind of
Speaker 2: just thought golf courses were there as a seven year old,
Speaker 2: you know, we played it. Dad worked at a golf course.
Speaker 2: We'd walk around. But you know, I was captivated right
Speaker 2: there at that age, and I told him that.
Speaker 1: And fortunately I.
Speaker 2: Wasn't a great juden or anything, and so I wasn't
Speaker 2: smart enough to ever get a different goal. And eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, thirty years later, I made the change to it.
Speaker 2: But it was just I can remember seeing that golf
Speaker 2: course today and that point and him explaining that they
Speaker 2: were rebuilding it, and that somebody drew it and told
Speaker 2: him how to build it, and that's what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do. So I started drawing and thinking about it
Speaker 2: right from then and just looking at courses that, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and sort of self taught, just really from that one
Speaker 2: little moment in time.
Speaker 1: So Eugene Country Club was a Chandler Egan course. Right.
Speaker 3: Chandler Eagan, we might mention a good bit in this conversation.
Speaker 3: He's a Golden Age architect who worked a great deal
Speaker 3: in the Pacific Northwest, lived in Medford, Oregon for a
Speaker 3: long time and worked with many of the courses and
Speaker 3: clubs in this area. I had worked with Alistair McKenzie
Speaker 3: as well on the famous Pebble Beach renovation in the
Speaker 3: late twenties, but he is a big presence in this area.
Speaker 3: He was the original architect at Eugene Country Club. Robert
Speaker 3: Trent Jones Sr. Came in when you were a kid,
Speaker 3: made some changes, including reversing a lot of the holes
Speaker 3: and every things like that is what was every hole reversed?
Speaker 1: Every hole? That's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first he became the eighteenth green, and vice
Speaker 2: versa all the way through.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so you did you do you remember
Speaker 3: noticing that aspect of the renovation, like some of the
Speaker 3: details of what he was doing, Like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: there's this guy coming in and he's reversing the golf course.
Speaker 3: I didn't know how you could do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, But I mean, obviously, being that young,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I was comprehending everything. But I
Speaker 2: do remember for many years after that when when Dad
Speaker 2: said that to me, that they were reversing it. I'd
Speaker 2: never played the course, I think as an egan course,
Speaker 2: even though my grandparents were members there. But when he
Speaker 2: was saying they were reversing it is my train. My
Speaker 2: thoughts were when we'd play other courses, like we'd go
Speaker 2: down to our course and cottage grove, and I would
Speaker 2: look at every hole backwards, going would this hole be
Speaker 2: better going the other way, which you know, ultimately if
Speaker 2: you jop forward Sylvie's Valley Ranch, I build a reversible course.
Speaker 2: But so many years of playing golf, I would just
Speaker 2: do that. You know, if you're putting out and I'm
Speaker 2: waiting for you to put the flag in, I'm looking
Speaker 2: back up the fairway thinking would this be a better
Speaker 2: hole if it went the other way? And would the
Speaker 2: rest of the course be better if it went the
Speaker 2: other way, not just this hole. And it's surprisingly it's
Speaker 2: amazing how many projects remodels and stuff that I do
Speaker 2: that I propose reversing holes that you know, these two
Speaker 2: are right next to each other, and they'd be better
Speaker 2: the opposite direction for one reason or another.
Speaker 1: And so I think that.
Speaker 2: Subconsciously carried into the idea of Sylvie's Value Ranch, which
Speaker 2: actually Wine Valley I'd proposed to be reversible before that,
Speaker 2: but the developers at the time thought I was crazy,
Speaker 2: which they probably weren't wrong. But so yeah, it was
Speaker 2: again back to that one little half hour of time
Speaker 2: or whatever it was back in the late sixties that
Speaker 2: I made that decision.
Speaker 1: So huh.
Speaker 3: All right, So where did you play early on in
Speaker 3: your competitive career.
Speaker 1: What did that look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played at Oregon State on the golf team
Speaker 2: there for a couple of years. I played junior college
Speaker 2: before that and played basketball as well, and then immediately
Speaker 2: out of school I turned pro and went to Australia,
Speaker 2: qualified for the Australian Tour and that was in the
Speaker 2: Greg Norman years. This was in the mid eighties. Greg
Speaker 2: Norman was playing. He was flying in a helicopter and
Speaker 2: four of us, would you know, jump in a very
Speaker 2: small compact car and drive to the course and he
Speaker 2: would fly in on a helicopter. But got to play
Speaker 2: quite I think I played seven Alistair McKenzie courses there
Speaker 2: and I somewhere I still have those drawings. I saw
Speaker 2: him three or four years ago that I would make
Speaker 2: sketches at night of his holes.
Speaker 1: Courses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we played Rome Melbourne, we played the Composite course
Speaker 2: there and played uh Titterengi and in Auckland, New Zealand,
Speaker 2: we played Royal Adelaide and Metropolitan and ya Yarra and
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of them. A lot of them were
Speaker 2: side that the tour didn't play on them, but we
Speaker 2: would we would sneak off on a Monday and try
Speaker 2: to play a bunch of those and so.
Speaker 1: Great stuff. You know.
Speaker 2: I probably should have focused more on my game than
Speaker 2: the courses, but I was just fascinated with that end
Speaker 2: of it. And then I took a year off, a
Speaker 2: couple of years off, worked as a club pro, and
Speaker 2: went back out and played the mini tours, played the
Speaker 2: TPS Tour, which was the one or two years before
Speaker 2: the Ben Hogan Tour started, which it was it was
Speaker 2: not under the PGA in those days, and it was
Speaker 2: really through Texas, Florida up to North Carolina in the
Speaker 2: southeast mainly, and moderate success. Tried the tour one time,
Speaker 2: made it through stage one, lost in a playoff stage
Speaker 2: two to get to the finals, and and uh didn't
Speaker 2: really like the travel, and and you know it certainly
Speaker 2: didn't play as well as I had hoped to, and
Speaker 2: took a club pro job and then so played regional
Speaker 2: events for another ten or twelve years and really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: But you know, fifth place in the Oregon Open didn't
Speaker 2: have that big a charm to me anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: so you.
Speaker 3: Kind of settled into the life as a club pro.
Speaker 3: Were you at Columbia Edgewater right away or is that
Speaker 3: just kind of where you ended up.
Speaker 2: Well, i'd worked in my years off between Australia and
Speaker 2: going on the mini tours. I worked at place called
Speaker 2: Forest Hills here in town, great course west of Portland
Speaker 2: and Cornelius.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this is a course that I often
Speaker 3: recommend to people. I think it is one of the
Speaker 3: best public courses in the area, and I think probably
Speaker 3: the best, in my opinion, affordable public course. It's a
Speaker 3: Billy Bell junior and senior collaboration and it's on a
Speaker 3: really wonderful piece of land.
Speaker 1: It's a lovely course.
Speaker 2: The owner at the time his sons. He had twins boys,
Speaker 2: and one of them now runs it. That when I
Speaker 2: knew him, they these boys were three or four years old,
Speaker 2: and you know, now there are young adult men and
Speaker 2: with families and everything, and I think I'm going to
Speaker 2: go look at it again. We've been talking a little
Speaker 2: bit about making a few changes out there. So I
Speaker 2: worked there and then when I came back from trying
Speaker 2: the tour school, I went to work right immediately at
Speaker 2: Columbia Edgewater and after about a year and a half.
Speaker 2: The head professional, Jerry Molds left to Pumpkin Ridge, and
Speaker 2: I took over his intern and interim and then eventually
Speaker 2: they gave me the head job and so I stayed
Speaker 2: there for I think all told eleven years nine as
Speaker 2: the head pro.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is a pretty plumb job for a
Speaker 3: club pro. This is one that a lot of pros
Speaker 3: would like to have. It's one of the great Portland
Speaker 3: area golf clubs. There's Columbia Edgewater, There's Waverley, There's Portland
Speaker 3: Golf Club. As far as I'm concerned, those are kind
Speaker 3: of the top clubs in the city. And so what
Speaker 3: made you think while you were working this job that
Speaker 3: I'd like to go into golf architecture.
Speaker 2: Well, I, you know, again going way back, it had
Speaker 2: always been there and it would never go away. And
Speaker 2: you know, unfortunately, I went through a divorce at that point,
Speaker 2: which kind of gave me, you know, a chance to
Speaker 2: sort of start over again. We didn't have children, and
Speaker 2: that was a big part of it where I don't
Speaker 2: think I would take the risk of starting a career
Speaker 2: that I had zero experience and probably going to make
Speaker 2: zero dollars for a year or two, you know, if
Speaker 2: I if I was in that relationship, and so that
Speaker 2: was a big part of it. The PGA also allowed
Speaker 2: a new category so I could I could still play
Speaker 2: in tournaments and teach if I wanted to those early
Speaker 2: years and become and I'm still a PGA member.
Speaker 1: I'm technically still a golf pro. I'm an a.
Speaker 2: Sixteen and but really it was, you know, just that
Speaker 2: kind of deep burning desire to try to do it.
Speaker 2: And I always I always felt confident in myself from
Speaker 2: the artistic and golf side of it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of.
Speaker 2: The other stuff I didn't know going in, but I figured,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd figure it out.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I felt smart enough and creative enough and resourceful enough
Speaker 2: that if I didn't know the answer to something, I
Speaker 2: could find out pretty quick.
Speaker 3: What were some of the first jobs that you got, Well, like,
Speaker 3: how did you break into the how did you start
Speaker 3: building your client base?
Speaker 2: Yea from something so an old teammate of mine at
Speaker 2: Oregon State, Scott Larson, who is now the superintendent emeral Valley,
Speaker 2: which is one of my first projects here. He had
Speaker 2: a construction company at the time, and so I was
Speaker 2: going to go work for him when he was building
Speaker 2: a golf course here in town, and that got delayed
Speaker 2: from permits a little bit, and so I never really
Speaker 2: went to work for him, and he, in the meantime
Speaker 2: had we got hired to do a design build.
Speaker 1: Of course down in Sparks, Nevada. It never happened.
Speaker 2: We got paid for the design, and so really my
Speaker 2: first project was to design a full eighteen whole course,
Speaker 2: and I had a whole bunch of topo maps and
Speaker 2: it was going to be a housing development course. It
Speaker 2: never got built, but I went down there three or
Speaker 2: four times and walked the site and it had been
Speaker 2: kind of staked out the property lines and stuff, and
Speaker 2: so I did a full set of plans. I really
Speaker 2: just used other plans from various jobs that that Scott
Speaker 2: had collected, and so I kind of just would look
Speaker 2: at these other plans and figure out what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do. I knew the distances in the scale and
Speaker 2: even design features, you know, shapes of greens and slopes
Speaker 2: and stuff. That was pretty easy for me. But really
Speaker 2: putting it all together and I didn't have a real rush.
Speaker 2: I mean, it probably took me, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: three to four months to do it. And you know,
Speaker 2: just kind of working on it every day. And in
Speaker 2: the meantime Scott occasionally would get clients customers courses. Basically
Speaker 2: this says, hey, you know, we want to reduce some
Speaker 2: bunkers and a green or two.
Speaker 1: Can you do it yourself?
Speaker 2: And he says, no, I got a guy that will
Speaker 2: design it for you and we'll just come and do
Speaker 2: it together. So truly we sort of started this design
Speaker 2: build con project or company. Unfortunately for him, things turned
Speaker 2: for his company ended up shutting it down, and now
Speaker 2: he's back to a superintendent and we still talked semi regularly,
Speaker 2: and great guy, but he really got me started and
Speaker 2: just a few small projects here and there, I mean technically,
Speaker 2: the first one that broke around was at the resort
Speaker 2: at the Mountain here up on Mount Hood golf Course.
Speaker 2: There we rebuilt two greens, and then I did a
Speaker 2: few teas at another course down at Mallard Creek and
Speaker 2: another some down in Medford and Columbia. Edgewater really helped
Speaker 2: where I work because with another former architect slash golf
Speaker 2: pro Bunny Mason, we decided to build a par three
Speaker 2: course in a short game area and so I ended
Speaker 2: up becoming the co designer of that and we built it,
Speaker 2: and so that was really big. So now people at
Speaker 2: other country clubs could come over and see what I
Speaker 2: could do, and that really sprung a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: other stuff, a lot of short.
Speaker 1: Game areas right away, and.
Speaker 2: Then really kind of moving along, you know, various kind
Speaker 2: of smaller clubs at first, and then Portland Golf Club
Speaker 2: hired me to do their short game area, which was
Speaker 2: huge because Portland is truly one of the top club's
Speaker 2: former Ryder Cup course, PGA of America or PGA Championship
Speaker 2: and great history of USGA events, and they hired me,
Speaker 2: and that sort of again opened a lot more doors
Speaker 2: that these other clubs thought, Hey, if Portland hires them,
Speaker 2: we can hire them and yeah, and so it just
Speaker 2: kind of kept rolling, and last year we did a
Speaker 2: very big remodel at Portland Golf Club, biggest one I've
Speaker 2: done at to date until this year.
Speaker 1: Next year and the next year it looks like so
Speaker 1: full circle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you kind of became the regional architect here
Speaker 3: in the Pacific Northwest, especially in Oregon. Your work is
Speaker 3: sort of all over the place. In those early days,
Speaker 3: like before you got your first big new build gig,
Speaker 3: which we'll certainly talk about in those early days, What
Speaker 3: was the the learning curve like for you, Like, what
Speaker 3: did you, aside from drawing plans and things like that
Speaker 3: which you talked about for your first job when you're
Speaker 3: out building stuff, what kind of skill set did you
Speaker 3: have to develop in order to really like be a
Speaker 3: golf architect and not be a golf pro who was
Speaker 3: designing stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting you say that, because I really focused
Speaker 2: on This kind of sounds funny, but I really focused
Speaker 2: on customer service.
Speaker 1: And I mean, like I said, I kind of knew
Speaker 1: the golf and I could talk golf with anybody.
Speaker 2: I felt comfortable talking about any golf course with you
Speaker 2: name it, I would be okay in that conversation.
Speaker 1: I never stumbled for what to think about a golf course.
Speaker 2: And if I disagreed with something, I usually could come
Speaker 2: up immediately why I didn't like it, And if somebody
Speaker 2: really liked it and I didn't like it, I could
Speaker 2: get a pretty good argument against that. But really I
Speaker 2: focused on I'd been around a few architects and I
Speaker 2: won't name names, but they didn't really treat the customer
Speaker 2: very well. The client the board of directors, the Greens committees,
Speaker 2: they were kind of rude to them. And I'd worked
Speaker 2: in that business being a club pro. I'd gone through
Speaker 2: hundreds of board of director meetings and Greens committee meetings,
Speaker 2: and you know, I kind of knew what country club
Speaker 2: type people or golfers in general wanted, and they they
Speaker 2: want good customer service.
Speaker 3: And so successful club pros are really good at that.
Speaker 3: They're great, they're great diplomats. They're like, if you if
Speaker 3: you meet the most successful club pros in the business,
Speaker 3: there all of them are really good people.
Speaker 2: And and it's sincere and deep, and there's there's they're
Speaker 2: not phony at all, and they don't make stuff up,
Speaker 2: and they remember your name, and they smile and they
Speaker 2: listen to you and they look you in the eye.
Speaker 2: And I really focused on that and and really just
Speaker 2: try to when I talk to a club, I'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, you've got a great place here, but we
Speaker 2: can make it better. And as opposed to saying, well,
Speaker 2: this is just awful and how could you guys live
Speaker 2: with this? And who are you to tell me what
Speaker 2: to do? And so, you know, I always felt one
Speaker 2: of my best strengths was that even though I do
Speaker 2: have an ego I was, I'm able to back it off.
Speaker 2: And for instance, if I'm in a Greens committee and
Speaker 2: somebody on the outside of that Greens committee says, hey,
Speaker 2: what about if we did this, I have to recognize
Speaker 2: that that's a better idea than mine, because a good
Speaker 2: idea is a good idea, it doesn't matter where it
Speaker 2: came from. And so it's and if it's a bad
Speaker 2: idea to diplomatically.
Speaker 1: Tell them that we're going to do something else.
Speaker 2: And so I think, I think, you know, I'm fortunate
Speaker 2: when I did start that golf was really turning, I.
Speaker 1: Think to an upgrade.
Speaker 2: You know, the Bandon World really helped people could see
Speaker 2: that there was this better golf courses out there, better thinking,
Speaker 2: better work through all the details. And fortunately I'm pretty
Speaker 2: observant on stuff like that and could see that that
Speaker 2: you just can't build the things that were maybe getting
Speaker 2: built in the eighties and nineties with really more designed
Speaker 2: in the office, and you know, containment mound type golf
Speaker 2: courses that you know, you just hand the plans and
Speaker 2: a guy on a dozer just builds mound after mound
Speaker 2: after mound.
Speaker 1: And so I think I'm rambling here and getting off topic,
Speaker 1: but I think I can't even remember.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the time that you got into the business.
Speaker 3: In the Pacific Northwest especially, people were starting to understand
Speaker 3: what design build golf looked like, correct, and that was
Speaker 3: probably helpful for you, and you were running kind of
Speaker 3: a design build operation or you know, you had some
Speaker 3: control over the build process from fairly earlier in your career,
Speaker 3: it sounds like, and that is something that sets your
Speaker 3: courses and your work apart from a lot of other
Speaker 3: regional golf architects that that I've come to know over
Speaker 3: the years. You know, every region kind of has its guy, right,
Speaker 3: Often it's an ASGCA guy, and some of them are
Speaker 3: really good. Others are a little bit cookie cutter, and
Speaker 3: the work isn't that compelling. But you know what sets
Speaker 3: your work apart and has for years, is that there's
Speaker 3: a little bit of craftsmanship to it. There's that design
Speaker 3: build element, and so I guess it was probably helpful
Speaker 3: for there to be some examples of that around for sure.
Speaker 3: And then the other part of it that I'm curious
Speaker 3: about is the taste element. Right, Good architects need to
Speaker 3: have good taste, need to like have seen really good
Speaker 3: golf courses and understood what makes them good for you.
Speaker 3: Was a lot of that from your experience in Australia,
Speaker 3: you know, when you think about developing your taste, you know,
Speaker 3: when you look at a golf hole, like what makes
Speaker 3: it look good to you? What makes it feel like
Speaker 3: a good golf hole? Where do you think you got
Speaker 3: that from? Or is that just an eight?
Speaker 1: I think it's just probably a little bit of both.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, again, at such an early age,
Speaker 2: I would always look at courses in like our family
Speaker 2: and buddies and teammates when we would we'd play a
Speaker 2: tournament somewhere, I would always ask, Hey, what's your favorite
Speaker 2: hole on that course? What else you like about that course?
Speaker 2: What do you like about that course? What do you
Speaker 2: think of this hole? Is that crazy or is it
Speaker 2: a good hole? And so I sort of always had
Speaker 2: that interest in it. And even the really bad courses
Speaker 2: have some really good things on them. It might just
Speaker 2: be a little bump here or there next to a green,
Speaker 2: or the way that green sits into a corner somewhere.
Speaker 2: And so I think, you know, you can learn a
Speaker 2: lot just looking at anything, and a lot of times
Speaker 2: you're learning what not to do, and that's you know,
Speaker 2: the whole mounding thing and just the you know, the
Speaker 2: over elevation of teas, a lot of stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and the overplanting of trees.
Speaker 1: Just really hurts the site.
Speaker 2: And granted, I'm not like a lot of guys that
Speaker 2: have played you know, eight thousand courses or two thousand
Speaker 2: courses around the world and all the top hundred stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, I've played twenty or thirty of them. But
Speaker 2: I think I'm really observant towards our local areas. And
Speaker 2: you know, one real advantage I think I have, or
Speaker 2: at least I call it my advantage. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's an advantage over anybody else, but I feel
Speaker 2: like it's an advantage to the customer. Is like Portland
Speaker 2: Golf Club last year, it's like half an hour away.
Speaker 2: I probably went out there close to one hundred days.
Speaker 2: And so a guy shapes a bunker and it's a
Speaker 2: little bit off, I can make him switch it before
Speaker 2: he's even out of that bunker moving on to the
Speaker 2: next one. And I and so we can really get
Speaker 2: the details down when you're there just pretty much every day,
Speaker 2: you know, I would leave for another project for a
Speaker 2: day or two and miss something. But just that day
Speaker 2: to day element is is really important and so working
Speaker 2: local you can kind of do that. And that's the
Speaker 2: you know, I had no idea when I got into
Speaker 2: this business that the construction side would be so fun
Speaker 2: and rewarding and exciting, you know, just.
Speaker 1: To watch it happen.
Speaker 2: Even you know, I'm working at Oswego Lake Country Club
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Another channel regan, and.
Speaker 2: We're you know, three quarters the way through of a
Speaker 2: big bunker project, a lot of new tea work, a
Speaker 2: lot of surrounds of greens and stuff like that, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's just fascinating to watch it come and
Speaker 2: to think it through and say, you know, this isn't working.
Speaker 1: Let's do this.
Speaker 2: And and if you're there every day, you can you
Speaker 2: can dial that in.
Speaker 1: If you're there once every two weeks, you have to
Speaker 1: approve a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: Otherwise the thing falls by schedule and and oh and
Speaker 2: if you change it, it gets off off budget.
Speaker 1: You know, you start spending wasting money. You just have
Speaker 1: to say good enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes yeah, I mean yeah, it'd be great
Speaker 2: to say, hey, I built two courses in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: And one and you know, somewhere else and all that.
Speaker 1: But I got it pretty good. You know, I'm pretty content.
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Speaker 3: All right, so let's talk about the first big new
Speaker 3: build project of yours, at least that I became aware of,
Speaker 3: and that is Bannon Crossings, which is the local public
Speaker 3: course in Bandon, Oregon, not associated with the famous Bandon
Speaker 3: Dunes golf resort, but it is the course that all
Speaker 3: the caddies play that you know, everybody who lives there
Speaker 3: loves this course, plays this course a lot. How did
Speaker 3: this project come about? Like, what is there a connection
Speaker 3: to the resort that I'm not aware of that you
Speaker 3: know produced this golf course or is it just unrelated unrelated?
Speaker 2: But backtacking just a little bit, So when I did
Speaker 2: start the business, I did have a little bit of
Speaker 2: a marketing concept in mind, and that is through because
Speaker 2: of my dad and my brother being golf pros and
Speaker 2: myself being a golf pro.
Speaker 1: I knew all the golf pros in the.
Speaker 2: Northwest, or they knew my dad or my brother, or
Speaker 2: they certainly knew our name because dad was a very
Speaker 2: good player, my brother was a very good player regionally,
Speaker 2: and so I knew through the golf pros that a
Speaker 2: lot of times the golf pros in that room of
Speaker 2: a board, a director or a greens committee when they say, hey,
Speaker 2: we want to remodel something, does anybody know an architect Well,
Speaker 2: nobody really knows architects.
Speaker 1: Most in Oregon, there was.
Speaker 2: Only a Nope, there wasn't a plethora of them. But
Speaker 2: everybody sort of knew that this guy left Columbia Edgewater
Speaker 2: in the golf in the golf pro business. He left
Speaker 2: Columby Edgewater started business on his own to do something
Speaker 2: he's never done. You know, they kind of thought I
Speaker 2: was crazy, but they remembered that. So going forward, all
Speaker 2: my early projects really came through golf pros. In that
Speaker 2: section well happens to be for the Bandon Crossing Ones.
Speaker 2: One of my good friends, Mark Keating worked at Shadow
Speaker 2: Hills and some of his members, the Rex and Carla Smith,
Speaker 2: were going to develop a golf course because of his
Speaker 2: love of Bandon Dunes, and they wanted to talk to me,
Speaker 2: and so they sent me a packet from the American
Speaker 2: Society Golf Course Architects to list all my former projects
Speaker 2: and how many courses I'd build on the coast and
Speaker 2: all this experience. And the only thing I could answer
Speaker 2: was put my name an address in there. And I
Speaker 2: couldn't say yes to any other question on this three
Speaker 2: or four page backet. So I just called Carla up
Speaker 2: and told her. I said, hey, I would give my
Speaker 2: left leg to do this project, but I have zero experience.
Speaker 2: I told her exactly. I mean I'd built some stuff,
Speaker 2: I hadn't build a full course. And she said, well
Speaker 2: that's okay, just put on there what you can. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, what you know, what are you guys
Speaker 2: doing right now? Rex will be home in an hour
Speaker 2: And I says, well, I can be there in about
Speaker 2: an hour and a half.
Speaker 1: They were in Eugene, and so.
Speaker 2: I literally grabbed my keys and got my car and
Speaker 2: met them that day and they hired me that day,
Speaker 2: and with a few stipulations that I could you know,
Speaker 2: I could get a routing for him and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. But yeah, it was just a shot
Speaker 2: in the dark, one phone call and there it happened.
Speaker 1: And most of them happened that way.
Speaker 2: It just suddenly you get a phone call and it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: we want to build a course and come and talk
Speaker 2: to us. And you know, fortunately I haven't lost any
Speaker 2: of those I get those projects.
Speaker 3: So what are some of the basics about that course
Speaker 3: for people who haven't heard of it or know about it?
Speaker 3: What's the course?
Speaker 2: Like, well, it's it's inland about a mile and a
Speaker 2: quarter or a mile and a half from the ocean,
Speaker 2: so it gets quite a bit warmer weather than actually
Speaker 2: the resort does because it's right on the it's right
Speaker 2: on the shore line basically.
Speaker 1: So that's nice.
Speaker 2: It's a bit warmer, a little bit less wind. It's
Speaker 2: kind of half basically nine holes. The first three or
Speaker 2: four and the last four or five are kind of
Speaker 2: in pasture lands, and then the other holes are kind
Speaker 2: of in the forest or this bottom land that divides
Speaker 2: the property. It was old, ancient sand dudes that we
Speaker 2: build on, so we were able to build it with
Speaker 2: on site sand. We could kind of mine in those
Speaker 2: dunes a little bit and build our greens out.
Speaker 1: Of that sand.
Speaker 2: Had just a beautiful plethora of plant life on it,
Speaker 2: from all these native pasture grasses to it had a
Speaker 2: little bit of gorse on it, which is great at
Speaker 2: the resort. It's kind of a nice it's kind of
Speaker 2: a maintenance sore, but we had mans anitas and rhododendrons
Speaker 2: and firs and pines and cedars and just tons of underbrush.
Speaker 1: So it was really a it was visually. It was
Speaker 1: so fun to work on it because there was just
Speaker 1: so much of stuff.
Speaker 2: And kind of really nice piece of ground as far
Speaker 2: as the basic contours with the difficulty of going down
Speaker 2: through this bottom land where it drops down, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty sixty feet and dividing the course.
Speaker 1: But no, it was just a great project. I'm so
Speaker 1: thankful they hired me for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it turned out really good, obviously. I mean it's
Speaker 3: I think it's one of those things where people can
Speaker 3: go to that town many times over the years, go
Speaker 3: to the resort over and over, and then finally, you know,
Speaker 3: on their fifth or sixth trip, somebody says, you really
Speaker 3: need to go out to Bandon Crossings and they go
Speaker 3: out there. I'm like, wow, this is a truly excellent
Speaker 3: golf course, and so it's kind of kind of need
Speaker 3: in that way where it's it's almost like a hidden gem,
Speaker 3: except it's in one of the most famous and over
Speaker 3: exposed golf towns in the in the country. When you
Speaker 3: were building it, I mean, were they building bandoned trails
Speaker 3: around the time that you were building across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were a year behind.
Speaker 2: Trails they opened one year before us, and I was
Speaker 2: able to go out to trails because we used Tony Russel,
Speaker 2: a local contractor that had built most of the Bandon
Speaker 2: stuff was ours, and so we would go out there
Speaker 2: and that's when I first met Bill cor for the
Speaker 2: first time and able to walk some of those holes
Speaker 2: with him when they were making some modifications and stuff.
Speaker 2: But no, the resort was they were very friendly with us,
Speaker 2: and like you mentioned earlier about the caddies have just
Speaker 2: been a huge deal for us. And now a lot
Speaker 2: of them go to bar Run, which is about ninety
Speaker 2: minutes away the course I just opened last year, and
Speaker 2: they sort of have that same feeling.
Speaker 1: I have a little Bandon Caddy fan base. Without sounding
Speaker 1: cocky or.
Speaker 2: Anything, but they really support those clubs and so I'm
Speaker 2: very thankful for them. I should send them a bunch
Speaker 2: of beer or something. I'm sure they would like that exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the caddies do like to mention Bandon Crossings to guests
Speaker 2: who are like, Okay, so where do you play? Do
Speaker 2: you play out here a lot?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they get to play the resort courses a lot,
Speaker 3: but you know, they really the Bandon Crossings is kind
Speaker 3: of the spot where they have their matches and their series.
Speaker 3: A lot of them are really good players. Yes, So
Speaker 3: that's that's kind of the vibe out there.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: So the next course of yours that I'm really keen
Speaker 3: to talk about is Wine Valley. This is out in
Speaker 3: Walla Walla, Washington, Okay. Now, Walla Walla is a neat
Speaker 3: little town. It's very remote for you know, being the
Speaker 3: kind of size and significance of town that it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not big, but there's a college there,
Speaker 3: Whitman College that that is well known and well regarded.
Speaker 3: About a four hour drive from Portland, slightly more than
Speaker 3: that from Seattle, though not much more, you know, three
Speaker 3: hour drive or so from Spokane. So it's out there.
Speaker 3: How did this projects come about?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 3: Why did they decide to build this kind of golf
Speaker 3: course out in Walla Walla.
Speaker 2: Well, it again started with a golf pro friend of mine,
Speaker 2: John Thronson Thorstness Excuse me. John Thronson was a golf
Speaker 2: course architect, John Thorstness. He had this idea and he
Speaker 2: found a landowner out there that had the same idea
Speaker 2: and same thing. They said, do you know an architect?
Speaker 2: And John says, well, I've played a lot of tournament
Speaker 2: golf with Dan. He's starting to make his way in
Speaker 2: the business and let's just have him come out, And
Speaker 2: so I did, and I drove home after being spending
Speaker 2: a night there and walking the property, which wasn't actually
Speaker 2: the property we built a course on. But I came
Speaker 2: home and did a whole bunch of drawings that very
Speaker 2: night and stayed up real late and made all these
Speaker 2: pretty drawings and went to the post office next day
Speaker 2: and sent it to him, and basically they said, you're
Speaker 2: our guy, just based on you know, one day on
Speaker 2: the site and make in these pretty drawings. You know,
Speaker 2: being able to draw helps too, especially when you use color.
Speaker 2: That cap that gets people's mind racing to the good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're at your drafting table right now. Actually, so
Speaker 3: there's some of Dan Hixon's are sitting around here.
Speaker 1: And so that actually was before Bannon Crossings.
Speaker 2: That conversation happened, and I hadn't even talked to the
Speaker 2: people at Bannon Crossings.
Speaker 1: So we started to move forward.
Speaker 2: We actually switched to a different piece of land where
Speaker 2: we actually ended up building, and then suddenly Bannoned Crossings
Speaker 2: came in and it took a long time for the
Speaker 2: city of Walla, Walla to change their regulations because nobody
Speaker 2: had tried to build a golf course there since the sixties,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: And there's Walla Walla country club in town. But yeah,
Speaker 3: and then that's Memorial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the country club is in the twenties or thirties probably,
Speaker 2: And so it took the city a while to figure
Speaker 2: out how they could approve it, and so eventually they
Speaker 2: did and yeah, and so that.
Speaker 1: Was really great.
Speaker 2: So I sort of broke her to deal for Jim Puliska,
Speaker 2: who is the owner of Emerald Valley that I'd known
Speaker 2: many years before that through amateur golf, and kind of
Speaker 2: brought him into it. The reason I say a broker
Speaker 2: to deal is that that's probably not even the right term.
Speaker 2: We had a development group based out of Denver that
Speaker 2: was going to help us raise money and put it together,
Speaker 2: and that kind of fell through, and so the project
Speaker 2: looked dead, and I talked to Jim and he was
Speaker 2: interested in a second course, and so he jumped right
Speaker 2: in once he saw the land and the deal, the
Speaker 2: price and everything, and so we went to work within
Speaker 2: probably six months of him seeing the site, and we
Speaker 2: built the thing in fourteen months. From the first time
Speaker 2: we shovel hit the dirt. We were open in fourteen months.
Speaker 2: Which helps because there's no trees on it. It was alfalfa
Speaker 2: field made it a lot quicker and easier.
Speaker 3: Right, And when you say a fell off field, I
Speaker 3: want people to envision the right thing. This is not
Speaker 3: a flat piece of land. This is a broad, rolling,
Speaker 3: pretty dramatic piece of land that has landforms that are
Speaker 3: smoother and larger than you would find in dune land.
Speaker 3: And so it's not dune land by any means, but
Speaker 3: it has some of that. Look if you if if
Speaker 3: a golfer shows up at this site, they might be
Speaker 3: reminded of a dune type of landscape. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: lots of those kind of native grasses and quite a
Speaker 3: bit of topographical movement across the site.
Speaker 2: Great soils, low soils which were deposited there back in
Speaker 2: the in the Ice Age when the when the Missoula
Speaker 2: floods would break through millions.
Speaker 1: Million years ago. I forget that.
Speaker 3: I wasn't manorgiologists, but it's you know, you're talking about
Speaker 3: low soils like fine, silty, yes kind of soil. It's
Speaker 3: not sand, but it's you know, it's pretty good for golf.
Speaker 1: And it was deep. They're well drillings.
Speaker 2: It was eighty feet deep before they hit anything other
Speaker 2: than lose, and so it was like playing in just
Speaker 2: in a sand dune, except it was loose. Technically, it's
Speaker 2: not the Polue Country. The Poluice Country is a little
Speaker 2: bit north of the Snake River and in eastern Washington,
Speaker 2: but the characteristics are identical. It just doesn't fit in
Speaker 2: their geographic area. Really good. Jim really wanted a top
Speaker 2: notch course. He's a tournament player still is today. Wanted
Speaker 2: tournaments there. So we built a pretty pretty stout golf course,
Speaker 2: you know, not super super hard, very playable for people
Speaker 2: that knock it along the ground, but you know, some
Speaker 2: severe greens and the ability to play it really long
Speaker 2: and play tournaments was really fun.
Speaker 1: He let.
Speaker 2: We brought in some first class shapers in Ky Gobi
Speaker 2: and Dan Proctor and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if people don't know those names, I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're in golf architecture, you know about Kai and Dan.
Speaker 3: But Dan Proctor, a great architect in his own right,
Speaker 3: has teamed up with Dave Axlan to build some of
Speaker 3: the best public courses in the country, including a wild
Speaker 3: Horse out of Nebraska, and ky Golby has worked on
Speaker 3: numerous projects with any architect that you can name, including
Speaker 3: Tom Doak and all the firms that you would imagine.
Speaker 3: Dan Proctor has a long association with Corn Crenshaw. So
Speaker 3: these are aces, right that you're bringing in. I assume
Speaker 3: part of the reason that they were available, you know,
Speaker 3: not that they wouldn't want to work on an exciting
Speaker 3: project like this, but it was around the financial crisis, right,
Speaker 3: and so did their schedules open up a little bit
Speaker 3: around this time?
Speaker 1: Basically yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And it was funny because you know, thinking about being
Speaker 2: a golf course architect, and you know, say in the
Speaker 2: mid nineties, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: America is building three hundred golf courses a year.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I can find that I can get
Speaker 2: one of those, right, And you know, then a few
Speaker 2: years later, America is building two hundred and fifty. Then
Speaker 2: America is building two hundred, then they're building one fifty,
Speaker 2: and by six is I think when we started on
Speaker 2: that or seven, you know, America is closing fifty courses
Speaker 2: a year, right and building ten. And so it was
Speaker 2: very fortunate timing that was, and that was the year
Speaker 2: it really tanked. But unfortunately, you know, fuel costs went up.
Speaker 2: It cost is quite a bit more to build it.
Speaker 2: But Jim Pullisko own service stations and he's in the
Speaker 2: fuel business, and so he didn't worry about that because interesting,
Speaker 2: he was doing fine. And uh, it's probably too much information,
Speaker 2: but I said it, and here it is, and so
Speaker 2: but he just loved it. He and his father were
Speaker 2: involved at the time, and we were. They came up
Speaker 2: all the time, and you know, he was very involved
Speaker 2: in everything. And but it was really interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: working with guys that are much more experienced than me
Speaker 2: and I'm in charge. It was you know, there was
Speaker 2: Kai and I and he and I've talked about it.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a couple of times where you know,
Speaker 2: I really had to check my ego because you know,
Speaker 2: my plan was this, but I would come back after
Speaker 2: being away for three or four days and Kai built
Speaker 2: something a lot better. And at first my natural instincts
Speaker 2: would say, why didn't you do what I said? But
Speaker 2: then you know I had to back off enough to say, God,
Speaker 2: that's way better than I thought of. And so I
Speaker 2: really learned a lot from those guys. Very inspiring. You know,
Speaker 2: Kai was just awesome. Dan was awesome. One time we
Speaker 2: did a Jim and his father were in town and
Speaker 2: gave him an update schedule and yeah, we've got this done.
Speaker 2: This done was right towards the end, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the eighteenth t is ready to see. And
Speaker 2: we go driving around after this meeting and Kay's just
Speaker 2: got it blown up with a big dozer, and you know,
Speaker 2: I have to walk over there and say, what are
Speaker 2: you doing in front of them? And and his simple
Speaker 2: answer is that those teams just looked like it was
Speaker 2: a chop architect built him. I'm building you something really cool.
Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of passion to buy
Speaker 2: it and stuff. And so, you know, in front of
Speaker 2: those guys, I might not have had that, even though
Speaker 2: deep down I always had that passion. But you know,
Speaker 2: it even spurred it on more. I wanted to shape
Speaker 2: and I wanted to understand and get better. You know,
Speaker 2: even though that course ended up, you know, it's got
Speaker 2: a lot of It's been in the top hundred. I
Speaker 2: think it's slightly out of it right now, but it's
Speaker 2: been in the down to the fifties or sixties and
Speaker 2: still is, you know, highly ranked and stuff.
Speaker 1: But I even when we finished that, I thought.
Speaker 2: I could do better and get a lot better, and
Speaker 2: I still hope to keep getting better by you know,
Speaker 2: just opening up my mind different ways to recognize that.
Speaker 1: Moment when something has to change. And so that was
Speaker 1: great working with those guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And those are the kinds of builders who definitely
Speaker 3: have enough confidence in themselves to depart from the plan.
Speaker 3: And certainly that's part of what they were trying to do.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: The both are are coming out of the Pete Dye tree,
Speaker 3: even if they didn't work with Pete Dye specifically, that
Speaker 3: is that's kind of the spirit they're bringing to a project.
Speaker 3: So it's not surprising to hear that that Kai went
Speaker 3: rogue a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know.
Speaker 2: And it was you know, when I saw him a
Speaker 2: few years after the course and stuff, I brought him
Speaker 2: a hat and he was like, gosh, I didn't think
Speaker 2: you'd even like me after that, And I was like, no,
Speaker 2: it was awesome.
Speaker 1: I can I can.
Speaker 2: Differentiate you know, those moments and and and like I said,
Speaker 2: it was, you know, I carry what a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff that I learned there. You know, like for instance,
Speaker 2: we're building at Oswego Lake Country Club, is I have plans,
Speaker 2: we have square footages and total work areas and all
Speaker 2: these things that will control the budget, but what happens
Speaker 2: within those really has to happen in the field. And
Speaker 2: you know, a bunker is best when you touch it
Speaker 2: at the very end, not when you just copy a drawing.
Speaker 2: And so, and those guys really really helped and opened
Speaker 2: up my eyes even more for that, even though that's
Speaker 2: kind of where I was going anyway, and so I
Speaker 2: learned a.
Speaker 1: Lot from them.
Speaker 3: So Wine Valley opened in two thousand and nine. Obviously
Speaker 3: at that point the golf course construction business was slowing
Speaker 3: way down. But over the past decade or so you've
Speaker 3: had a couple of really interesting projects. I mean, one
Speaker 3: of the things about your work in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 3: is that it's all sorts of different things. You're not
Speaker 3: just turning out eighteen whole courses. You have a real
Speaker 3: variety of projects, and you've gotten to do some experimental
Speaker 3: and frankly weird stuff. A couple of those experiments happened
Speaker 3: way out in eastern Oregon at Sylvie's Valley Ranch.
Speaker 1: You built not only a.
Speaker 3: Reversible golf course out there, but probably the craziest short
Speaker 3: course that I've ever seen in my life, and will
Speaker 3: probably ever, see why don't we start with the reversible course?
Speaker 3: So how does that work for people who are unfamiliar
Speaker 3: with it? How does that specific reversible course at Sylvie's
Speaker 3: Valley Ranch work?
Speaker 2: Well, the easiest way to imagine it is just think
Speaker 2: of a big, eighteen whole golf course that uses a
Speaker 2: lot of land. There's big nature areas between them, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of low sagebrush and ponderosa pines between. And
Speaker 2: so imagine a complete, full eighteen hole, par seventy two
Speaker 2: golf course, you know, seven thousand yards long, and then
Speaker 2: kind of forget about it and say we're just going
Speaker 2: to build the opposite direction, and we're gonna build another
Speaker 2: one right over the top of it. And in some
Speaker 2: cases you use a lot of the same features. A
Speaker 2: tee that might play in both directions, a green that
Speaker 2: you come into from two different directions. But because the
Speaker 2: ground is very diverse, there's lots of elevation change. I
Speaker 2: didn't want to just use only eighteen green sites. There
Speaker 2: was better holes. If I said, hey, even though there's
Speaker 2: a green on the first course over here, it doesn't
Speaker 2: really work.
Speaker 1: Come in the opposite direction as well.
Speaker 2: But there's a really great green site eighty yards away,
Speaker 2: and so this hole may have been a par five
Speaker 2: one time, this time, this next time, around the opposite direction,
Speaker 2: it's a par four that's you know, four fifty or something.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: It's hard to get a handle on to even explain,
Speaker 2: you know, if somebody said, well, how many fairways you got,
Speaker 2: and it's like, hell, I don't know. They're all hooked together,
Speaker 2: and there's twenty seven greens. So of the twenty seven,
Speaker 2: there's basically, think of it this way, there's nine of
Speaker 2: the greens that are double so there's eighteen of the
Speaker 2: thirty six holes, and then there's nine for the Hankins course,
Speaker 2: and there's nine for the credit course that are individual greens.
Speaker 2: And so that wasn't a plan that just sort of
Speaker 2: worked out that way. It could have been seven, it
Speaker 2: could have been eleven, you know, different ones.
Speaker 3: It's just any given day, nine greens are not in use,
Speaker 3: single greens, and then nine are kind of shared between
Speaker 3: the courses. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think that
Speaker 3: if you had gone for a pure reversible course quote unquote,
Speaker 3: where every single green is in use every day, it
Speaker 3: would have been hard to do that out there, right,
Speaker 3: because it is it's a It's not like Saint Andrews.
Speaker 3: It's not like the Loop in Michigan, the reversible course
Speaker 3: that Tom Doak built, where the piece of land is
Speaker 3: pretty subtle and is that kind of a similar grade
Speaker 3: throughout the site. There's a big movement on this site.
Speaker 3: It would have been tough to do a pure reversible course,
Speaker 3: I feel like, because there's some slopes that you can
Speaker 3: just play down one direction correct and you're not going
Speaker 3: to be able to go back up exactly.
Speaker 2: And if you made if the big drop off par
Speaker 2: four t shot, for instance number eight on the Hankins course,
Speaker 2: if you played up that hill, it would be an
Speaker 2: awful hole. And so in order to get up top again,
Speaker 2: we just took a different piece of land and build
Speaker 2: a par three and a par four to get basically reconnected.
Speaker 2: And I can honestly say that if you did an
Speaker 2: eighteen hole peer reversible, just eighteen greens and they all
Speaker 2: double up, it would not have been anywhere near the
Speaker 2: quality of golf that it is today. And I was
Speaker 2: just so thankful that the owner was just awesome in
Speaker 2: the sense that he was just a very much not
Speaker 2: even a golfer, but a little bit part time golfer,
Speaker 2: but innovative businessman, smart guy, and could see really quickly
Speaker 2: that building the reversible course. This is kind of a
Speaker 2: little bit of the background of how it came about.
Speaker 2: He wanted to build this eco friendly resort and he
Speaker 2: could build two courses on the land of one plus
Speaker 2: a little bit more. That really made a lot of
Speaker 2: sense in his mind. Instead of having two hundred acres
Speaker 2: over here and two hundred acres over there.
Speaker 1: To have a thirty six sold course.
Speaker 2: He knew location stuff that we would be you know,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have one hundred and fifty players a day
Speaker 2: or anything like that. It's going to be a smaller
Speaker 2: because of the location. And so but he recognized very
Speaker 2: quickly that that idea made a lot of sense. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm really proud of that work. It was a it
Speaker 2: was about a seven year experience for me going over there,
Speaker 2: and I would I would spend from the middle of
Speaker 2: April until close to the beginning of November during our
Speaker 2: construction season building it. And it was really just myself
Speaker 2: and one or two shaper guys and then a couple
Speaker 2: of local kids and stuff.
Speaker 1: Wow, And so it was it was a lot of work.
Speaker 2: We did a lot of stuff, but you know, just
Speaker 2: a great, great experience, from rebuilding dozers to trimming tree
Speaker 2: limbs and making big burn piles at the end of
Speaker 2: the year, to shaping greens and doing all the subtle
Speaker 2: stuff and growing it in and planting aspens, and it
Speaker 2: just it's like ten careers right there, you know. And
Speaker 2: I was sort of doing the job that say, at
Speaker 2: Wine Valley there was like seven people and I did
Speaker 2: kind of that thing, and and it really inspired me
Speaker 2: to work even harder.
Speaker 1: Just like the more I work, the more I it
Speaker 1: meant to me.
Speaker 2: And so I've never been afraid to work hard and
Speaker 2: kind of do extra work because it just means that
Speaker 2: much more to me.
Speaker 1: It's like my wife now says, are you going to
Speaker 1: be okay?
Speaker 2: You got a lot of work. It's like, no, I
Speaker 2: want more because it just means more, you know. So
Speaker 2: maybe that's a workaholic, but I hope not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and part of part of the reason
Speaker 3: that kind of effort was necessary is that I called
Speaker 3: walla walla remote. I mean, Sylvie's is remote remote. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Way the hell out there nowhere. And then you go another.
Speaker 3: Hour yeah, exactly. It's you know, once you get if
Speaker 3: you're going out there from Portland or something, you'd get
Speaker 3: through the Bend area. You don't pass through the Bend
Speaker 3: Area literally on your way out there, but you get
Speaker 3: through where that is central Oregon and just keep going
Speaker 3: for a long long time and you don't see anybody
Speaker 3: or anything for ages. And so it's it's beautiful but
Speaker 3: very much frontier golf. And I like that they've kept
Speaker 3: it rustic out there, that the cart paths, at least
Speaker 3: when I went out there were dirt. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: it was you know, it really felt like you were
Speaker 3: at the edge of the earth, and the golf courses
Speaker 3: presented nice and firm and fast and pale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's a really cool place. Now.
Speaker 3: The other course that I mentioned, the short course, Mcveigh's Gauntlet,
Speaker 3: I mean, you look at that piece of land and
Speaker 3: it's impossible to put a golf course on it, right,
Speaker 3: it's too it's way too severe. You've got you've got
Speaker 3: these greens. I mean, it's like you made it up
Speaker 3: in a video game or something. I don't even understand,
Speaker 3: Like how did you build that course? Like were you
Speaker 3: getting were you getting heavy equipment up there, and some
Speaker 3: of those green.
Speaker 1: Sites we did somehow.
Speaker 2: So back to my very first trip to the property
Speaker 2: for Sylvie's with Scott Campbell, the owner, Doctor Campbell, we
Speaker 2: looked around and that is such a striking piece of land.
Speaker 2: He thought we could build the whole golf course up there,
Speaker 2: and then we weren't even talking reversible at this point.
Speaker 2: He just thought this could be an eighteen whole course.
Speaker 2: And I told him very quickly, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: this is spectacular, but it's you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: go a mile this direction and a mile that direction
Speaker 2: from right here.
Speaker 1: And this is just wait, you know, this is sick
Speaker 1: the acres or whatever it is. And I said, it's spectacular.
Speaker 2: You could have a hole that goes out into that property,
Speaker 2: maybe a little part three and then play out of it.
Speaker 2: But I said it would be great for a short course,
Speaker 2: and he filed that away. And you know, as we've
Speaker 2: started to finish the big course and we built the
Speaker 2: other part three course, Egan's Chief Egan Course, which is
Speaker 2: more of a traditional short part three course, lower, simpler ground,
Speaker 2: he says, well, what.
Speaker 1: About what about that one up there?
Speaker 2: And you know I hadn't I'd been up on the
Speaker 2: property many times, being there that many years, you know,
Speaker 2: just hiking around and looking around, and so I drew
Speaker 2: up a plan of you know, something a five hole
Speaker 2: course or something, and he came back a week or
Speaker 2: two later, and we walked it, and he says, well,
Speaker 2: you know, why couldn't we just make it a little
Speaker 2: more And ended up ended up with seven holes, with
Speaker 2: there's places that we could connect and make even more
Speaker 2: spectacular holes, I mean, not just more holes, but more
Speaker 2: spectacular and turn it into nine or twelve or whatever,
Speaker 2: and just keep doing it from ridgetop to ridgetop. Anyway,
Speaker 2: so he approved a plan, and I tried to figure
Speaker 2: out how to do it, and we just made these
Speaker 2: very small roads where I could get a dozer up.
Speaker 1: In there and shape them myself.
Speaker 2: And then but I still had to get a I
Speaker 2: still needed a dump truck to get sand into the greens,
Speaker 2: and so we brought these big dump trucks full of
Speaker 2: sand up there. But you know, kept the pathways pretty
Speaker 2: small and and trying not to ruin.
Speaker 1: Too much of the natural vegetation.
Speaker 2: There was a few roads up there that we were
Speaker 2: able to piggyback off of and you know, it took
Speaker 2: me a couple of months to build it, and then
Speaker 2: we had an irrigation company come in there and just
Speaker 2: you know, water the greens and the tees and big
Speaker 2: teas are pretty much connected to the former the green
Speaker 2: before and.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was really fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you make it sound so simple, but it's yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it has to be. I took some I
Speaker 3: got some pretty good pictures of it when I was
Speaker 3: up there, and I'll post I posted those a couple
Speaker 3: of times. And people always kind of lose their minds
Speaker 3: when they see where some of these golf holes are.
Speaker 3: But really it is, you know, like little peaks that
Speaker 3: greens are just kind of set on and there's nothing
Speaker 3: around it except for wilderness, and you're just kind of
Speaker 3: hopscotching from one to the other. So that's a it's
Speaker 3: a it's a pretty cool place, all right. So your
Speaker 3: your latest course opening is bar Run, which is in Roseberg, Oregon,
Speaker 3: kind of in southern Oregon, south of Eugene. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: not far from where you would kind of enter the
Speaker 3: mountains to go out to Bandon Dunes. You know, I
Speaker 3: played the course earlier this summer, going around looking at
Speaker 3: some of the shaping, I could tell that you were
Speaker 3: experimenting with some stuff out there. You had a piece
Speaker 3: of land that didn't necessarily have like significant natural features
Speaker 3: on it to work with, and so some of this
Speaker 3: shaping that you did, the mounding, the shapes around the greens,
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff was really interesting looking. I
Speaker 3: was wondering where you got your ideas for that stuff
Speaker 3: or what the thinking behind it was.
Speaker 2: Well, it took a while to formulate what it was
Speaker 2: going to look like, because, like you said, it was
Speaker 2: a sand and gravel cory and it has these massive
Speaker 2: rectangular ponds on it and other areas that they had
Speaker 2: mined before and just sort of abandon and let brush
Speaker 2: and trees take over. And we really didn't know what
Speaker 2: we had until really until I jumped on a big
Speaker 2: tractor with a with a big brush hog behind it
Speaker 2: and started cutting through you know, fifteen foot tall blackberries
Speaker 2: and over you know, kind of willow shoots and all
Speaker 2: this stuff to be before we could really see the land,
Speaker 2: and the routing changed.
Speaker 1: Forever until right till not till the end.
Speaker 2: But you know, we'd built quite a bit of it
Speaker 2: before we knew where the next holes were going. To
Speaker 2: go because we were having to fill ponds in and
Speaker 2: they would get filled. They were to fill sight as well,
Speaker 2: and so they would get they would excavate these ponds
Speaker 2: to get the sand and gravel that they would produce
Speaker 2: concrete and sell the stone and stuff and then have
Speaker 2: to fill it in with you know, old concrete and
Speaker 2: clean dirt and fill and stuff. And so it was
Speaker 2: there was a lot of well, we need to fill
Speaker 2: this pond, and it's like, what do you think like
Speaker 2: ten feet and it's no, like one hundred and ten
Speaker 2: feet and which takes.
Speaker 1: A while to do all that.
Speaker 2: And so the sharp edges on the ponds, and there
Speaker 2: was a lot of between a lot of the ponds
Speaker 2: were dykes that had really steep edges. And in the site,
Speaker 2: even though the bigger site is real large, the the
Speaker 2: golf area is not all that huge because the water
Speaker 2: takes up so much of it. And there was kind
Speaker 2: of these natural low areas that we sort of have
Speaker 2: to stay out of. And uh so the design style
Speaker 2: kind of emerged. You know, I was looking at a
Speaker 2: lot of courses and a lot of things to try
Speaker 2: to find the right inspiration and loosely Norman Macbeth's course.
Speaker 2: Wilshire in LA had the burnt the the not brancas.
Speaker 1: What do they call them?
Speaker 2: They're the kind of the swales next to the green
Speaker 2: and stuff. It's part of the wash system of Greater
Speaker 2: Los Angeles City. Yeah, I thought they call themcas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe it does bran yeah, yeah, and so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's really just ditches, just interplayable and
Speaker 2: occasionally when that floods, water rips through them. And we
Speaker 2: didn't build anything that extreme, but we use that. You know,
Speaker 2: as we talked earlier today, the eighteenth Green has a
Speaker 2: swale that cuts through it and out in front of it.
Speaker 2: And that's loosely just from I've played Wilshire and watched
Speaker 2: the LPGA event there every year just to kind of
Speaker 2: see it, and uh, you know, so that was part
Speaker 2: of the inspiration. But a lot of times we just
Speaker 2: would push dirt in a funny way, and you know,
Speaker 2: we made these peaks instead of mounds to kind of
Speaker 2: separate visually between holes, even though they're not continuous. We
Speaker 2: would push this dirt up as straight as we could
Speaker 2: make it with a dozer, and then we hydro seated
Speaker 2: it with fescue and just you know, one's the this
Speaker 2: is the Andes, and and this is the Himalayas, and
Speaker 2: and and so yeah, just kind of evolved, you know.
Speaker 2: The The overall theme is that it's an industrial air.
Speaker 2: We weren't trying to make a country club or anything
Speaker 2: really smooth. We just wanted to have it kind of
Speaker 2: quirky to fit along with these sharp edges of things.
Speaker 2: And then, of course I made the crazy decision to
Speaker 2: copy the pit from North Barrick with a yes rather
Speaker 2: than a rock wall.
Speaker 1: That North Barrick, you.
Speaker 2: Know, one of my favorite holes in the world, if
Speaker 2: not the famous maybe of something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1: Decided to copy that and that was almost on a whim.
Speaker 2: The hole just kind of reminded me of it, but
Speaker 2: it needed the wall, and so we build this sixteen
Speaker 2: inch average sixteen inch high concrete wall that kind of
Speaker 2: diagonals in front of this green very similar, not an
Speaker 2: exact copy of the pit, but it's really funny when
Speaker 2: people play it. They come in and say, what the
Speaker 2: hell is the concrete wall in front of it? And
Speaker 2: it's then they tell the story and the people often
Speaker 2: it's not uncommon, they go, oh, I just love it.
Speaker 1: It's just the greatest thing.
Speaker 2: Especially that story that's just so cool, right, and it
Speaker 2: creates this just like North Barrack, or well not just
Speaker 2: like it, but a certain intimacy when you get behind
Speaker 2: that wall and you're down by in that pit.
Speaker 1: Of the green, it just really feels it's fun and playful.
Speaker 2: And that's what to me, that's what golf is. It
Speaker 2: should be, you know, it should bring a smile to
Speaker 2: your face. That that hole is kind of humorous to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know if other people feel it that way,
Speaker 2: but it's like, why not, Who cares if there's a
Speaker 2: you know, it is.
Speaker 1: A funny hole. Yeah, And there's there's not enough.
Speaker 3: You know, serious golf architecture out there that's willing to
Speaker 3: be willing to be humorous.
Speaker 1: And there is a.
Speaker 3: Connection to the site. You know that that concrete wall
Speaker 3: that you built it is it's light like the cart
Speaker 3: paths that a bart Runner made out of concrete basically
Speaker 3: from the from the site that the course was built on.
Speaker 3: And so there's some of that history kind of preserved
Speaker 3: in the design of the golf course. So that's that's
Speaker 3: brand new, actually opened just last year and is just
Speaker 3: getting going, and they're up that whole area. They have
Speaker 3: an RV resort sort of and when I was there,
Speaker 3: they were building a lazy river, they told me. And
Speaker 3: so they've got a whole deal going there at Roseberg.
Speaker 3: It's kind of unique and it's you know, as far
Speaker 3: as I can tell, you know, I can't remember the
Speaker 3: last time that a relatively affordable public course was built
Speaker 3: in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of great golf courses
Speaker 3: have been built, but most of them have been of
Speaker 3: this high dollar resort variety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably Bannon Crossings is last.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And so it's a significant event I think for golf
Speaker 3: in this area that this course has been built and
Speaker 3: you can go play it for around eighty or ninety dollars,
Speaker 3: I believe is the is the green fee right now.
Speaker 3: So that's pretty cool. All right, So what's the What
Speaker 3: are some projects that you have coming up or going
Speaker 3: that you can talk about and that you're excited about.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of maybes. Yeah, I'm doing gosh.
Speaker 2: I think I have five or six new long range
Speaker 2: plans that I'm working on at various stages of just
Speaker 2: going to the site that would be Billingham golfing country
Speaker 2: Club up in Billingham, Washington, Glendale. I'm about to present
Speaker 2: a bigger plan to them. We'll see what happens with that.
Speaker 2: North Shores a public course in Tacoma, much like you
Speaker 2: described affordable golf course.
Speaker 1: I think they're potentially going to We're going to rebuild
Speaker 1: the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's sixty five years old, no, a little less than that,
Speaker 2: fifty five years old and still original irrigation, and it
Speaker 2: really needs to be upgraded. The golf course at Birch Creek,
Speaker 2: which was formerly Pendleton Country Club. I just started a
Speaker 2: long range plan with them. I do have a couple
Speaker 2: of new courses that I'm talking to people, but they're
Speaker 2: definitely not public for public knowledge.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to know until I have.
Speaker 2: Them, just to keep people away. But I think those
Speaker 2: I think one of them's getting real close to being possible.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. My board over there.
Speaker 3: Is yeah, I've got a board. I was, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's the it's probably not out of my line. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I see, uh, I see a few a few names
Speaker 3: on there. I'm not going to read it out last,
Speaker 3: but basically you're you're busy, yeah, right now, things are
Speaker 3: picking up for you, as they are for a lot
Speaker 3: of golf architects. So so yeah, it's honestly pretty pretty
Speaker 3: exciting times. Even though costs are rising, it seems like
Speaker 3: people are still forging ahead with some golf course projects.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there I'm working on a little course in Washoogle,
Speaker 2: which is just east of Vancouver, which is really part
Speaker 2: of almost part of Portland. It's just across the Columbia
Speaker 2: River in Washington, a bunker project to a golf course
Speaker 2: that was built in thirty four. The front nine, the
Speaker 2: backside was in the sixties, and they've never really done
Speaker 2: anything other than they put in a new irrigation system
Speaker 2: about twenty years ago. And we're redoing all their bunkers
Speaker 2: and making some surround changes around their greens and stuff,
Speaker 2: and fixing one green that's too steep. And it's really
Speaker 2: a big project for them. It's not on the scale
Speaker 2: of some of these other ones I'm doing, but it
Speaker 2: means just as much to them, and so I want
Speaker 2: to give them just as I want to give them
Speaker 2: more for their money, almost, because this is a really
Speaker 2: big project for them, and it's really exciting to We're
Speaker 2: about a month into it and We've completed the bunkers on.
Speaker 1: The back nine, and I get out there.
Speaker 2: Roughly every other day during the week, and it's really
Speaker 2: fun to see them, see their golf course kind of
Speaker 2: open up with tree removal and this bunker work, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, I'm in a unique spot now where I have,
Speaker 2: you know, two projects under construction and just finished two
Speaker 2: other ones earlier this year, and a whole bunch coming
Speaker 2: and just starting to dream about new courses, you know,
Speaker 2: new projects and stead so you can kind of see,
Speaker 2: you know, from day one to you know, the Muni's
Speaker 2: grasped in and growing in getting ready to open. So
Speaker 2: I kind of have a little bit of everything going now.
Speaker 4: So I'm very lucky.
Speaker 3: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by
Speaker 3: Matt Rusius.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Matt.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to do us as solid, leave us
Speaker 3: a rating and review in the Apple Podcasts area where
Speaker 3: you do ratings and reviews. Can you tell I don't
Speaker 3: use Apple podcasts. I use Pocket casts. I think it's
Speaker 3: a lot better. But you know what, the ratings and
Speaker 3: reviews and Apple podcasts really help us out. So if
Speaker 3: you happen to be there, then tell people how much
Speaker 3: you love the Friday Golf Podcast. Okay, I think that's
Speaker 3: pretty much yet. Thank you so much for listening, and
Speaker 3: we'll be back again soon.
Speaker 4: Ca