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 2: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 1: In a brid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg Egg, fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 1: to run off of the golf course game. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today
Speaker 1: we're digging into the story behind one of the most
Speaker 1: buzzed about new golf courses in America. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Old Barnwell near Aiken, South Carolina. This Brian Schneider and
Speaker 1: Blake Conant design has received rave reviews since opening for
Speaker 1: preview play last year. I got to play it on
Speaker 1: the Sunday before the Masters, and I can confirm that
Speaker 1: it is an incredibly inventive work of golf architecture and
Speaker 1: just a fun course to play. But another thing that
Speaker 1: makes Old Barnwell stand out in the current crop of
Speaker 1: new private golf clubs, and there are a lot of them,
Speaker 1: is it's vision for itself. This is a club that
Speaker 1: wants to have a positive impact on the world, and
Speaker 1: in this episode we'll talk about how feasible it is
Speaker 1: to have that kind of impact with a golf club.
Speaker 1: I realized that this idea of a mission focused club
Speaker 1: might provoke some skepticism, so we'll adjust that. My guest
Speaker 1: is Nick Schreiber. Nick is the founder of Old Barnwell,
Speaker 1: and this is really his passion project. He's there all
Speaker 1: the time, he was there the day that I played it.
Speaker 1: This is really his baby, So I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: digging into the nitty gritty of how he got this
Speaker 1: thing built and what he hopes it'll become. First, though,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about good Walk Coffee. I
Speaker 1: was super excited to hear that we were partnering with Goodwalk.
Speaker 1: This is a company that I've admired from Afar ever
Speaker 1: since they launched in twenty nineteen, and it's really a
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Speaker 1: big interests, coffee and golf. Goodwalk was founded by coffee
Speaker 1: nuts who also happen to be golf nuts, and they're
Speaker 1: very serious about applying the golf values of fair play
Speaker 1: and honesty to the way that they conduct their coffee business.
Speaker 1: They buy high grade beans from around the world at
Speaker 1: fair market prices from farmers who follow sustainable practices and
Speaker 1: pay good living wages to their workers. And importantly, these
Speaker 1: beans happen to be very very good. Specifically, the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg Golf blend is delicious. That's right. We have our
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Speaker 1: coffee roasted to a medium light level. It has beans
Speaker 1: from Central and South America blended with a naturally processed
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Speaker 1: save twenty percent on your entire order. Or you can
Speaker 1: use the same code to start a coffee subscription that
Speaker 1: will save you thirty percent on your first order and
Speaker 1: then you'll save ten percent on all future shipments. You
Speaker 1: can pause, skip, or cancel your subscription at any time
Speaker 1: on the website. So again, Goodwalkcoffee dot com slash fried Egg.
Speaker 1: Check it out all right? So I am here with
Speaker 1: Nick Schreiber. Nick, how did the first Masters Week at
Speaker 1: Old Barnwell go? That's a big deal for clubs in
Speaker 1: the ach in South Carolina area.
Speaker 2: You know, for not having a clubhouse, a lodge, or
Speaker 2: really a team of more than five or six folks,
Speaker 2: I think we acquitted ourselves quite well. I hope our
Speaker 2: guests felt that way. I think, like other you know
Speaker 2: clubs in the area, you know, we open it up
Speaker 2: to the public and we charge an arm and a leg.
Speaker 2: I think we have the advantage that, you know, basically
Speaker 2: the money we make during that week or eight days
Speaker 2: basically helps fund our mission programming. And so you know,
Speaker 2: we were able to We didn't we didn't hit halfway,
Speaker 2: but we got very close to hitting half of our
Speaker 2: mission programming budget for the next twelve months. So we
Speaker 2: were very lucky. We were grateful to have all the
Speaker 2: guests coming out there. And I will say that like
Speaker 2: there's like mini golf celebrities. It's really fun to see
Speaker 2: like you know, like a Bob Ford or something like
Speaker 2: that that like only point zero zero zero one percent
Speaker 2: of the population would have any you know, would care
Speaker 2: about it all. But it was fun. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should try to get as many people out
Speaker 1: there who were on those old trading cards as possible.
Speaker 1: I feel like that and put the put the cards
Speaker 1: up in the in the clubhouse. That would be great.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that you got your start in golf
Speaker 1: by being a caddie.
Speaker 2: I think cadding is the best job I've ever had,
Speaker 2: you know, as a thirteen fourteen year old to walk
Speaker 2: away with At the time, I think I was making
Speaker 2: thirty five dollars a loop in cash plus like a
Speaker 2: candy bar Minnesota was you know, you felt like you
Speaker 2: were robbing a bank. And to do it outside and
Speaker 2: you know, to meet the people that you get to meet.
Speaker 2: And so for me, catting is still such a central
Speaker 2: part of how I understand the game of golf. And
Speaker 2: I mean I look back at those times quite finally,
Speaker 2: and the courses that I got to caddy at North
Speaker 2: of Chicago were pretty fantastic, though I didn't fully appreciate
Speaker 2: it at the time because you're a little focused on
Speaker 2: just not dropping somebody's clubs or you know, making mistakes.
Speaker 1: How did you get into it in the first place.
Speaker 2: So in my family, I'm one of eight kids, and
Speaker 2: in our family, you know, my father did not grow
Speaker 2: up with much and so he and my parents have
Speaker 2: been very successful together. But it didn't matter, you know,
Speaker 2: in our family was like when you turn thirteen, you
Speaker 2: get a summer job. And so I washed dishes and
Speaker 2: at a local restaurant and caddie and that was just
Speaker 2: the easiest. There was very little application, you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't have to interview. You basically show up for training
Speaker 2: and then they kind of let you go out. And
Speaker 2: after that first summer, I was at Old Elm basically,
Speaker 2: you know, which was a fifteen minute twenty minute bike
Speaker 2: ride from where I grew up. So I would go there,
Speaker 2: you know, basically every weekend and would we you know,
Speaker 2: during the summer, would be able to get loops you know,
Speaker 2: pretty much every day of the week. And so it
Speaker 2: was just a very easy transition into never having worked
Speaker 2: before into having a job.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward a little bit. What led you
Speaker 1: down the path of becoming the founder of a golf club.
Speaker 1: You're not You're not a career long golf industry type,
Speaker 1: and so what got you to this point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I had no business doing this, and I
Speaker 2: think that my awareness around that has has served us
Speaker 2: quite well, I think because it means that we really
Speaker 2: focus on getting people who do know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: But basically it does kind of start with that caddy
Speaker 2: mentality and the opportunity that it gave me. And you know,
Speaker 2: my colleagues. I don't know if you can call fellow
Speaker 2: caddies or colleagues. It sounds a little too fancy, but
Speaker 2: basically that always stuck with me, and I fell in
Speaker 2: love with the game of golf. After that. My father
Speaker 2: did not play, and so at that point my brother
Speaker 2: and I started to convince him to play. And though
Speaker 2: I was never a great golfer, by the time that
Speaker 2: I was in my professional career, golf had done something
Speaker 2: very similar to what it had done for me when
Speaker 2: I was a caddy. I was meeting people that benefited
Speaker 2: my I was worked at a software company and I
Speaker 2: ran sales, and so you're starting to meet clients or
Speaker 2: potential partners and eventually, you know, you know, the private
Speaker 2: equity group that purchased us. You know, some of those
Speaker 2: relationships were honed on the golf course. And so that
Speaker 2: just always stuck in my mind as something that this
Speaker 2: is a game that we all love, but it's way
Speaker 2: more powerful than people, I think give it credit. So
Speaker 2: you know how I got into this. You know, I
Speaker 2: mentioned this earlier and I think it's really important to acknowledge.
Speaker 2: So my parents have been remarkably successful. And so when
Speaker 2: we sold our business, you know, and I've told this story.
Speaker 2: I don't love telling this part of the story, but basically,
Speaker 2: I was the last kind of co founding executive standing
Speaker 2: at the company when we sold it, and I stuck
Speaker 2: around for the transition. They merged us with a portfolio
Speaker 2: company of theirs, and then I actually went to treatment.
Speaker 2: So I had a substance abuse problem and a drinking
Speaker 2: problem that i'd hid pretty effectively for a long time,
Speaker 2: and so I actually went away and I had to
Speaker 2: get myself right. And as you can imagine, this is
Speaker 2: not a fun thing to talk about, particularly when I
Speaker 2: had an eleven month old at the time, and you know,
Speaker 2: you turned your life upside down. But when I got
Speaker 2: back and you know, uncertain about what's going to happen,
Speaker 2: really in every category of my life, I was in
Speaker 2: this really unique and fortunate position one to have a spouse,
Speaker 2: my wife, Sarah, who encourage me to consider what it
Speaker 2: was that I wanted to do to make you know
Speaker 2: that I would be happy, you know, passionate about doing
Speaker 2: because as much as I love starting a business. We're
Speaker 2: an HR tech, don't I don't love performance reviews or
Speaker 2: you know, employee engagement surveys, right, And so that kind
Speaker 2: of led me to consider something along those lines. And
Speaker 2: then yes, like my kids at two boys now, they
Speaker 2: are not they are taken care of because of the
Speaker 2: success that my parents have had. There's no other way
Speaker 2: to say it. And so it allowed my wife and
Speaker 2: I to really think about or, in this unique and
Speaker 2: fortunate position financially, to do something as crazy as starting
Speaker 2: at golf club. And so that's really the genesis behind
Speaker 2: just the conversation starting between Sarah and myself.
Speaker 1: You've described Old Barnwell before as a mission focused club,
Speaker 1: So what is the mission here and why is that
Speaker 1: so critical to you?
Speaker 2: Sure? Well, I'll take a step back and kind of
Speaker 2: say that in the beginning, you know, when I kind
Speaker 2: of brought up these ideas to Sarah, I didn't know
Speaker 2: if it'd be a golf club. I mean we talked
Speaker 2: about doing a par three course, something public, something private,
Speaker 2: like there were so many different options on the table,
Speaker 2: and I think that at the heart of all those uh,
Speaker 2: you know, options, was this idea of doing something that
Speaker 2: would make an impact on the community, as cliche as
Speaker 2: that sounds, and so as we kind of refine the
Speaker 2: ideas around it, you know, I'll go back to my
Speaker 2: catting experience and then the experience that as I got
Speaker 2: older and you know, having the opportunity to play some
Speaker 2: of you know, not a ton, but some of the
Speaker 2: best clubs or you know, private courses in the country.
Speaker 2: You know, you realize that all great private clubs have
Speaker 2: two things at their disposal that they can use to
Speaker 2: impact their community in a positive way. And the first
Speaker 2: is the golf course itself, whether that's you know, literally
Speaker 2: providing a space for people to network, to being a
Speaker 2: you know, a location where you can have charity events
Speaker 2: that benefit great causes. And then the second thing, which
Speaker 2: is much more important, is the members. You know, every
Speaker 2: great golf club has successful and a diverse array of
Speaker 2: experience within their membership that they can again bring to
Speaker 2: bear to benefit those in the community around them. And
Speaker 2: so that when we kind of thought about that, we
Speaker 2: realized that we could do something a bit different. And
Speaker 2: so the mission is, you know, broadly stated, to bring
Speaker 2: people together through golf, and what that means for us
Speaker 2: is creating a community of members that's a bit more
Speaker 2: inclusive than you might see. So when I say inclusive,
Speaker 2: I'm not just talking about women or folks of color.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about beginners or families. Really kind of expanding
Speaker 2: the tenth around that. And then the other component, of course,
Speaker 2: is then taking those members in the course and putting
Speaker 2: into good use for programs that you know, for I
Speaker 2: mean programs that support or celebrate groups that are generally
Speaker 2: underrepresented or underserved in the game. So that's kind of
Speaker 2: the idea behind it.
Speaker 1: You know, most people wouldn't think of founding a private
Speaker 1: club as a way to have an impact on the world, right.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of people consider that idea somewhat
Speaker 1: off putting, right or or almost ridiculous, Like a private
Speaker 1: golf club, really, this is this is the way that
Speaker 1: you're going to do it. So so why why do
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 2: Of it that way? So I think it does kind
Speaker 2: of I think those two components that private golf clubs
Speaker 2: have that public off courses don't are really powerful, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that a public golf course doesn't have that
Speaker 2: that like, basically the dedicated membership that that we can
Speaker 2: kind of lean on, so like in our process, basically
Speaker 2: as part of our membership process. You know, we say, hey,
Speaker 2: we're trying to create this exceptional golf experience, and we're
Speaker 2: trying to offer it at a reasonable price. But in return,
Speaker 2: we're asking you to commit to participation. And so we're
Speaker 2: getting that buy in from members in a way that
Speaker 2: you wouldn't. It would be much tougher to do when
Speaker 2: you're dealing with the broader public. Now, I will also
Speaker 2: say that that those critics or those skeptics, are entirely
Speaker 2: correct in their skepticism. Right. The idea of an inclusive
Speaker 2: private club is oxymoronic. It doesn't make any sense. But
Speaker 2: our thought was, well, golf does a lot of great things,
Speaker 2: or can do a lot of great things, and this
Speaker 2: is one idea that that we felt really comfortable with,
Speaker 2: you know. And then you know, from like a like
Speaker 2: a you know, nuts and bolts perspective, the idea of
Speaker 2: a private club. You know, we're not again, it's not
Speaker 2: cheap at all, but with initiation and dues being significantly
Speaker 2: below what the market would bear, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like we're we're not making money, right, but I will
Speaker 2: say that that does like extinguish some of the risk.
Speaker 2: So knowing that we could raise. You know, I think
Speaker 2: we've raised five million dollars through initiation fees so far
Speaker 2: with three hundred and thirty members, maybe a little bit
Speaker 2: more than five million. That is a fraction of what
Speaker 2: it costs to build a golf club, let alone to
Speaker 2: operate it moving forward. But you know, just from a
Speaker 2: you know, you can't do a whole lot of good
Speaker 2: with a golf course or a golf that isn't functioning,
Speaker 2: and so the idea of that helping us diminish the
Speaker 2: risk at the front of the process is an important
Speaker 2: part too.
Speaker 1: You've kind of addressed why the private golf club idea
Speaker 1: was more powerful or appealing than a public golf course.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if you could maybe talk a bit
Speaker 1: more about why you didn't choose to build a public
Speaker 1: golf course. Did you ever think of going that route
Speaker 1: as you were making this decision?
Speaker 2: Sure, we did, and I think where we kind of
Speaker 2: fell short and moving in that direction, I guess. You know.
Speaker 2: So I live in Charleston, South Carolina, and like a
Speaker 2: lot of other cities in the Southeast, you can't you
Speaker 2: can't get on a wait list for the private clubs
Speaker 2: around here, and even if you want to go to
Speaker 2: the Charleston UNI. You know, you got to get up early,
Speaker 2: two weeks in advance. You know, it's like it's tough
Speaker 2: to get a tea time, and there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of great affordable public options around here. And so when
Speaker 2: we thought about that, we thought, okay, well, let's maybe
Speaker 2: we could create a public course in the area that
Speaker 2: would serve everybody, and you know, we could keep it cheap.
Speaker 2: But then you realize that, you know, if you're going
Speaker 2: to buy two hundred plus acres near a city center
Speaker 2: that's within driving distance, I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 2: golf club going up outside of Charleston now and they
Speaker 2: paid eleven and a half million dollars for I think
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty acres. That's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And again that puts you in the hole immediately, and
Speaker 2: it puts a lot of pressure on Okay, now we
Speaker 2: got we got to turn a profit, so that sixty dollars,
Speaker 2: you know, you know green speed that you're kind of
Speaker 2: hoping to stay at or under it, like you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we have to make it seventy five or eighty,
Speaker 2: and then the compromises begin. And so then we thought
Speaker 2: about well, what if we did like a par three course,
Speaker 2: And again some of that became there's not so much
Speaker 2: in an economy of scale around developing eighteen holes or
Speaker 2: thirty six holes like you'd think that there would be,
Speaker 2: but there really aren't. But I will say that the
Speaker 2: what's the phrase, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in
Speaker 2: terms of the amount of effort and infrastructure you have
Speaker 2: to build for any golf facility for it to be
Speaker 2: kind of effective, and to do that I think would
Speaker 2: have it just couldn't have had the same impact I
Speaker 2: think that we can have. So the idea of doing
Speaker 2: a private club where you've got members that can come
Speaker 2: from all over the country. You know, this national membership
Speaker 2: model is popular for a lot of reasons, but for
Speaker 2: us it was ideal because again, we have people that
Speaker 2: we can we can provide this experience that are bought
Speaker 2: in on this mission, that are willing to pay again
Speaker 2: a not insignificant amount of money, but they're not going
Speaker 2: to be there every day, and it allows us to
Speaker 2: kind of build a club that is efficient, Like right
Speaker 2: now we have a very small team will continue to
Speaker 2: grow as we add the clubhouse and the lodge which
Speaker 2: is both which you are under construction, but we're also
Speaker 2: as a result of the kind of the path that
Speaker 2: we took, we can now invest more heavily and more
Speaker 2: quickly in our kids course, which we'll have you know,
Speaker 2: public access certain days of the week, and we'll help
Speaker 2: programming for our mission. You know. It allows us to
Speaker 2: think about building a third course down the line, maybe
Speaker 2: more soon, sooner than we had anticipated, which again we
Speaker 2: can provide up public access or do charity events or
Speaker 2: things like that. So it's a very complicated thing, but
Speaker 2: in our mind we try to keep it as simple
Speaker 2: as possible. And we realized that we can get a
Speaker 2: bigger bank for our buck if we if we took
Speaker 2: the route of a private club that wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five minutes from Charleston or thirty minutes from Charlotte
Speaker 2: or Atlanta, but kind of in a great place that
Speaker 2: was maybe in the middle of nowhere, but two hours
Speaker 2: to everywhere sort of thing. And that's what turned out
Speaker 2: to be. I mean, if we had found the land
Speaker 2: in central Georgia, we would have bought it, but it
Speaker 2: happened to be in Akin, South Carolina, which was a great,
Speaker 2: great thing.
Speaker 1: If you're imagining where Old Barnwell might be ten or
Speaker 1: twenty years from now in terms of fulfilling its mission
Speaker 1: or having some kind of impact on the community or
Speaker 1: the world. What exactly would the club be doing, what
Speaker 1: would the programming be, and what would be the kind
Speaker 1: of mechanisms of making change or kind of having a
Speaker 1: positive impact in the world. What what would those mechanisms be.
Speaker 2: Sure, So I think that I kind of look at
Speaker 2: it in two ways. The first way is within our
Speaker 2: own programming the outcomes that we're trying to drive. And
Speaker 2: so we've been open, you know, our eighteen holes have
Speaker 2: been open for nine months now, for almost nine months.
Speaker 2: And so for example, our partnership with the Evan Scholars Foundation,
Speaker 2: which is a youth caddy organization. You know, I was
Speaker 2: thinking that we might have ten or twelve caddies when
Speaker 2: we opened. We now have one hundred plus caddies. We
Speaker 2: have one hundred and twenty. Who have you gotten three
Speaker 2: or more loops that's produced you know, fifteen hundred loops
Speaker 2: overall and probably two hundred grand in the like local
Speaker 2: economy of kids, you know, like we to talk about, like,
Speaker 2: you know, how much it costs to take a loop
Speaker 2: plus you know, tips and then some of those opportunities.
Speaker 2: So like we measure our programming in those ways, and
Speaker 2: in five years, I would like to have not only
Speaker 2: a large group of caddies, but a group of caddies
Speaker 2: that are really good at what they do and we've
Speaker 2: provided their ample training and we're giving them the right
Speaker 2: connections to our members. And the same is true with
Speaker 2: our partnership with you know, Vorhees, which is the local HBCU,
Speaker 2: with the Anaka Foundation, and our aspiring female pros. So
Speaker 2: in each of those cases, without going into a ton
Speaker 2: of detail about them, we have these grand plans, right,
Speaker 2: but really we want to start small and in five
Speaker 2: ten years, if those relationships work out well, then we'd
Speaker 2: like to expand those programs a little bit by a
Speaker 2: little bit and maybe even add different mission partners along
Speaker 2: the way, you know. And I think frankly, we've learned
Speaker 2: a lot in some of the relationships that we've tried
Speaker 2: to build and haven't worked, and so that next five
Speaker 2: to ten years will be really important as we make
Speaker 2: sure that again you know, get the most bang for
Speaker 2: our buck and really kind of make an impact. But
Speaker 2: more broadly, in five or ten years, what I would
Speaker 2: love love to see is other clubs in the Southeast,
Speaker 2: for example, where there's not really a culture of youth caddies,
Speaker 2: they see this and they realize that not only is
Speaker 2: this a service for their members, but it's a service
Speaker 2: for the kids in their community. And it can be done,
Speaker 2: you know, by partnering with Evan Scholars. It can be
Speaker 2: done in a way that's really hands off, like they
Speaker 2: do everything, they do all the work. Or if we
Speaker 2: can have a program that supports for aspiring female pros
Speaker 2: each year in Aiken, South Carolina, Like you can make
Speaker 2: one work in Jacksonville, you can make one work in Scottsdale.
Speaker 2: So that is all that to say. It'd be really
Speaker 2: really great if what we've been able to do and
Speaker 2: learn from our mistakes, and you know, if we can
Speaker 2: transfer those to other clubs that are interested in doing
Speaker 2: the same things, because none of the nothing that we're
Speaker 2: doing is a new idea, not like nothing. They all
Speaker 2: come from other places. A lot of these you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of clubs are already doing these things. We
Speaker 2: just have the benefit of we're like a laboratory. We
Speaker 2: can build it from the ground up and hopefully we
Speaker 2: can kind of again, provide some sort of framework to
Speaker 2: export it to other clubs that are interested in doing
Speaker 2: some of the same things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in building the club, you're being unusually
Speaker 1: explicit and intentional about what your goals are with it.
Speaker 1: And it seems like you might have recognized early in
Speaker 1: your life that golf clubs are kind of these incredible
Speaker 1: concentrations of power. On the one hand, like power and money.
Speaker 1: Successful people often belong to golf clubs and they're all
Speaker 1: in that same place, and presumably that can be harnessed
Speaker 1: in some way. They're also passionate about what they're doing there, Right,
Speaker 1: Golfers are passionate, and they spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: with this activity at this club. And it appears to
Speaker 1: me and I wonder if you see it this way,
Speaker 1: that you're just trying to capture some of that energy
Speaker 1: and power and push it to some ends that you
Speaker 1: yourself for a passion about.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm active. I'm on the board of the
Speaker 2: First Tee here in Charleston, and what I love about
Speaker 2: the First t is that it's basically like a trojan
Speaker 2: horse for youth development. I mean, yes, golf is like
Speaker 2: the idea behind it, but really it's not so much
Speaker 2: about golf for the participants, and I think the same
Speaker 2: is true for some of the things that we're doing,
Speaker 2: Like our caddies, many of them have never step foot
Speaker 2: on a golf course before, and they probably won't end
Speaker 2: up playing much golf, but they're getting to meet members
Speaker 2: who can really It sounds cliche or maybe sounds overblown,
Speaker 2: but like, I think it's really true, like they can
Speaker 2: change the trajectory of an individual's life. And the same
Speaker 2: is true with some of our other mission partners. And
Speaker 2: so I think that selfishly, like I'm having the absolute
Speaker 2: time of my life doing this, and I love golf
Speaker 2: and I love what it can provide. And so there's
Speaker 2: that component like I like, this is not I am not,
Speaker 2: Like we are not Mother Teresa doing something for the
Speaker 2: goodness of others out of the goodness of our hearts.
Speaker 2: We're having so much fun and we get to be
Speaker 2: a part of something like who wouldn't want to work
Speaker 2: with Brian Schneider and Blake Conant and see the drawings
Speaker 2: they come up with and walk land with them. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think that this is a great way
Speaker 2: to harness. Again, what I think every great golf club
Speaker 2: has and just putting it to good use. And again,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of when I started this process,
Speaker 2: I think I came into it really of the opinion
Speaker 2: and I think incorrectly that all these golf clubs are
Speaker 2: like so traditional and it's all this and that, and
Speaker 2: like they have no interest in, you know, doing a
Speaker 2: lot of the things that you know, we talk about doing.
Speaker 2: And then as you get to know people within the industry,
Speaker 2: you realize that some of the most traditional, you know,
Speaker 2: the thing the places that people think of as the stodgy,
Speaker 2: you know, backwaters of you know, nineteen twenties, you know,
Speaker 2: access like they're doing some of the most impressive work.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think like august National, I think is
Speaker 2: a great example of that. You know, they've got their
Speaker 2: own history, and I think they recogniz that and they
Speaker 2: have done more in the last twenty five years than
Speaker 2: I think. I really think that any other golf organization
Speaker 2: to truly grow the game. Like when we talk about
Speaker 2: drive chip and put, when you talk about the Women's
Speaker 2: Amateur to say nothing of they don't ask for credit,
Speaker 2: but the amount of money that they invest in the
Speaker 2: community in Augusta, whether that's with the United Way or
Speaker 2: other organizations. It's absolutely incredible, and they're not asking for
Speaker 2: any credit on those things. Like you know, we talk
Speaker 2: about the patch, which is a really exciting thing that
Speaker 2: they're doing, but there's so much beyond the surface, and
Speaker 2: so to me, you know, shame on me. I think
Speaker 2: coming into this, I would have thought that they were,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of what's wrong with private golf,
Speaker 2: and now I realized that they are. Probably they're they're
Speaker 2: the best example of what golf can do to make
Speaker 2: an impact on a community.
Speaker 1: The patch project that you just referred to, by the way,
Speaker 1: is for Augusta municipal golf course, where Augusta National is
Speaker 1: partnering with the First Tea and a local community college.
Speaker 1: I believe too. Yeah, I guess a tech right to
Speaker 1: renovate the patch, and they've hired Tom Fazio and Bowwelling
Speaker 1: to carry out that work. That's certainly a story that
Speaker 1: that we'll be following in fried Egg. But in any case,
Speaker 1: I want to get into a bit more of the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of building this club. Now that we've
Speaker 1: kind of talked about it on a on a high
Speaker 1: level philosophical kind of way, let's let's get into how
Speaker 1: this actually happened, how you how you pulled it off right,
Speaker 1: or how you're continuing to pull it off, because it's
Speaker 1: obviously ago. What came first. Hiring an architect or finding
Speaker 1: the piece of land.
Speaker 2: They happened simultaneously. And so I started looking online. So
Speaker 2: I have you know, I still subscribe to this map
Speaker 2: application mobile app where you can. I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 2: simple stuff. I'm sure a lot of real estate agents
Speaker 2: have this. But I could see parcels, the size of
Speaker 2: the parcels, the soil types with some degree of accuracy,
Speaker 2: the topography, all of that stuff. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: without really saying anything to Sarah as we were kind
Speaker 2: of talking about these things, I couldn't help myself, Like,
Speaker 2: I started to look at land. And then at the
Speaker 2: same time she said, okay, well be the first step,
Speaker 2: and I said, identifying a good piece of property. And
Speaker 2: then I realized to do that. You know, I can
Speaker 2: look online as long as I want, but really I
Speaker 2: needed somebody like Brian and Blake, Brian Schneider and Blake
Speaker 2: Conan to actually be the judges of what was good land.
Speaker 2: And sure enough, you know, so I met with them
Speaker 2: and it was very informal. We did not have any contract.
Speaker 2: It was handshakes. Brian happened to live on Daniel Allend
Speaker 2: here in Charleston, and so we met and you know,
Speaker 2: they said, sure, we'll come and look at properties with you,
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of take it from there. And
Speaker 2: I think from their perspective it was probably a good
Speaker 2: business development tactic, even though, and I think I told
Speaker 2: this pretty early on, like they were who I wanted anyway, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, having read some Brian's essays, having listened to
Speaker 2: him and Blake, talked to you and Andy, you know,
Speaker 2: it was clear to me that they were at the
Speaker 2: top of the list for me. So basically, after that conversation,
Speaker 2: if I found a piece of property that I thought
Speaker 2: was good, I would go visit it. If I thought
Speaker 2: it was good enough to warrant, you know, telling them
Speaker 2: about it, I would and then they would come down,
Speaker 2: and you know, I jerk around about this, but like
Speaker 2: they would come down, they tell me why I was
Speaker 2: an idiot, and I would go back to looking for
Speaker 2: a new piece of property. And over time I kind
Speaker 2: of learned what it was that they were looking for
Speaker 2: that goes beyond just like sandy soil and you know,
Speaker 2: land movements, it's more than that. And so you know,
Speaker 2: it took about, I would guess, eighteen months to find
Speaker 2: the piece of property that we did, and I remember
Speaker 2: Brian came down and it was not a great The
Speaker 2: shape of the parcel originally was not great. It was
Speaker 2: originally four hundred and forty four acres and it would
Speaker 2: have been tough to route because it kind of came
Speaker 2: together a couple of pinch points. And Brian, you know,
Speaker 2: as we're walking around and said, I don't care, get it,
Speaker 2: we'll figure it out. And sure enough, you know, they
Speaker 2: almost immediately started routing golf holes on land that we
Speaker 2: didn't known, and so we kind of had to go
Speaker 2: from there. But yeah, it really started with both kind
Speaker 2: of looking for land and hiring Brian and Blake.
Speaker 1: Why Brian and Blake at the time, they didn't have
Speaker 1: any original regulation eighteen hole designs to their name, correct,
Speaker 1: and so you know, a lot of developers might might
Speaker 1: see this as a risk. Obviously, I knew that they
Speaker 1: were a great choice, you know, you know, people who
Speaker 1: are who are really into golf architecture knew that these
Speaker 1: guys should be at the top of any list. But
Speaker 1: why was it that you went with them and were
Speaker 1: willing to kind of take what many people would interpret
Speaker 1: as a risk with them.
Speaker 2: So again, because we're in this really unique and fortune position,
Speaker 2: we could take the long approach. We were not talking internally,
Speaker 2: like my wife and I about like a short term
Speaker 2: profitable business plan. We were talking about something a little
Speaker 2: bit different. And so to me, you know, there's obviously
Speaker 2: a ton of value in the name associated with you know,
Speaker 2: like back in the day, I mean, you know, having
Speaker 2: grown up when like the Tom Fazio real estate development
Speaker 2: was like such a bit. I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 2: That's how you make money, right, you sell real estate
Speaker 2: connected to a brand name. But I think that we
Speaker 2: didn't want that. We wanted a really fun and interesting
Speaker 2: golf course. And you know, I've told Brian and Blake this,
Speaker 2: But originally so my idea was that I wanted to
Speaker 2: build thirty six holes, and the first course I wanted Brian,
Speaker 2: and the second course I wanted Blake. But it turns
Speaker 2: out that I was I reached out to Blake via
Speaker 2: Golf Club atlass before I met Brian, and then the
Speaker 2: first thing he said was, oh, well, if you're in Charleston,
Speaker 2: you should meet Brian. So I was like, okay, perfect.
Speaker 2: And then they you know, having worked together at Hollywood,
Speaker 2: Atlantic and other places, you know, I give him a
Speaker 2: ton of credit. They asked if they could work together
Speaker 2: on it and so and I you know, so that
Speaker 2: was for the first course, and then Brian is the one,
Speaker 2: Brian and Blake. But Brian came to me and said, hey,
Speaker 2: before we get to the next eighteen, what about doing
Speaker 2: a kid's course? And I was like, well, what's a
Speaker 2: kid's course? And so he told me all about that,
Speaker 2: and you know how they have these places in Scotland
Speaker 2: that are truly for the kids. So like, at some
Speaker 2: point it became clear that Brian and Blake were not
Speaker 2: just hired for the first one, they were going to
Speaker 2: do everything on the property. And I think that what
Speaker 2: began is just you know, me being a how would
Speaker 2: I say, a very amateur you know, golf course architecture nerd,
Speaker 2: and having read the books and listened to the interviews,
Speaker 2: like their philosophy just seemed to jove and plus I
Speaker 2: think the biggest thing for me was I just wanted
Speaker 2: to create something that was unique. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the greens that you know, Brian's famous for those
Speaker 2: are really unique greens. And then when you know, Blake
Speaker 2: on your podcast talked about I mean, you talked about
Speaker 2: a lot of things, but the sense of play, and
Speaker 2: you know, we wanted to be a good steward within
Speaker 2: the community, then we better be of the community. And
Speaker 2: so you know, to have those kind of philosophies come
Speaker 2: together was really like it's perfect. And so to me,
Speaker 2: I didn't worry about the long term value because I
Speaker 2: knew that there was going to be a market of
Speaker 2: nerds like you know, you and me that would love
Speaker 2: to see a course by Brian and Blake, and the
Speaker 2: rest of the world would figure it out sooner or
Speaker 2: later if they did what I thought they would be
Speaker 2: able to do, which is what has been greatfully, very
Speaker 2: very true.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break here to talk
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Speaker 1: You know, involving Brian and Blake in the site selection
Speaker 1: process was a very smart decision and also an unusual one.
Speaker 1: Maybe in golf development. Maybe it's maybe it's less unusual now,
Speaker 1: but usually when architects come into a project, the piece
Speaker 1: of land is selected and they just kind of work
Speaker 1: with it. And it sounds like Brian and or Blake
Speaker 1: went with you to view a few different sites and
Speaker 1: were able to tell you one that you might have
Speaker 1: thought was really looking good actually wasn't suitable for what
Speaker 1: you wanted to do. So I'm curious about what you
Speaker 1: learned in that process. Were there any kind of big
Speaker 1: surprises or revelations that came up for you when you
Speaker 1: were looking at a piece of land and you thought
Speaker 1: it looked great, but Brian came over and said, actually
Speaker 1: that doesn't work for reasons X, Y, and Z. What
Speaker 1: did you learn in that process?
Speaker 2: I learned a lot, I think, And my guess is
Speaker 2: I've only worked with Brian and Blake, so I'm sure
Speaker 2: that it's different in each case. And my guess is
Speaker 2: that you know they're in a unique position given their
Speaker 2: the work that they continue to do with Renaissance golf
Speaker 2: design on their own and alongside Tom Doak, that you
Speaker 2: know they've seen some really good sights and they've also
Speaker 2: worked on sites that are not great, but they're not
Speaker 2: in a position where they feel like they need to know.
Speaker 2: They were very honest about what was good and what wasn't.
Speaker 2: They weren't like angling for the job in a way
Speaker 2: that I think some understandably as somebody who comes from sales,
Speaker 2: like I get it, like if I want a job,
Speaker 2: like I'm gonna tell yeah, this this land looks great,
Speaker 2: let's let's do it. But the first piece of property
Speaker 2: that I brought them down to, I had spent like
Speaker 2: four or five days on my own just walking around
Speaker 2: and it was a bit It was like five hundred acres.
Speaker 2: It had a lake at the bottom. There was some
Speaker 2: swampy areas and wetlands that we probably wouldn't have, you know,
Speaker 2: couldn't have touched. But there was some land movement. Was
Speaker 2: very sandy. And when they visited, they actually showed up
Speaker 2: maybe three hours before I showed up that day, and
Speaker 2: by the time I was walking towards them, they were
Speaker 2: walking up and like you could tell, like they were
Speaker 2: just shaking their heads, like yeah, you know. And I
Speaker 2: think the way that they described it was they could
Speaker 2: build a good golf course there, but they couldn't build
Speaker 2: a great one. And their rationale was a few things. One,
Speaker 2: so some of it was like just completely logistical, common
Speaker 2: sense stuff that I wasn't thinking of. One, you know,
Speaker 2: that property owned eight of the shoreline of that you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen acre lake at the bottom of the property, but
Speaker 2: it didn't know on the other twenty percent, and that's
Speaker 2: an issue. Two the land there was some good land
Speaker 2: movement and probably sixty to seventy five feet of elevation change.
Speaker 2: It was almost all in one direction going down to
Speaker 2: that lake, and you know, you want it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: if you've got five feet or one hundred feet for
Speaker 2: playing to go up and down, and you know the
Speaker 2: way that they would want to round it. They needed
Speaker 2: something more than that, something more diverse than that. The
Speaker 2: other thing is, which I thought was really surprising, but
Speaker 2: you know, they, I guess in blake In, particularly given
Speaker 2: as fine er background, they think of golf courses in
Speaker 2: this like narrative sense, and so they wanted different environments
Speaker 2: to work within throughout the course. And so what ended
Speaker 2: up happening at Old Barnwall is we've got, you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of holes that kind of play in and
Speaker 2: around a central valley with no trees, and then a
Speaker 2: few holes that wind through you know, mature pines, and
Speaker 2: then a couple of hole that are on the edge
Speaker 2: of the property that are almost in and I guess
Speaker 2: we've lost a little bit of the original look but
Speaker 2: like prairie and so you know, that's not the only
Speaker 2: thing that dictates the narrative of the routing for them,
Speaker 2: but it's part of it. And so that was a
Speaker 2: really that first property where they kind of walk me
Speaker 2: through all that stuff was really enlightening. The other thing
Speaker 2: I will say is that one of the reasons I
Speaker 2: thought that that property was really good is because there
Speaker 2: were very few trees and so I could see the
Speaker 2: land movement. They can see the land movement when it's
Speaker 2: covered in trees. You know, it's not just looking at
Speaker 2: the topo maps, because those are pretty accurate, but they're
Speaker 2: not always accurate. But more than that, like they can
Speaker 2: they can really like the valley. There's a sixty five
Speaker 2: foot drop in the valley at Old Barnwell where we
Speaker 2: did end up building the course, and that was covered
Speaker 2: in like ten to twelve year old pines, so not
Speaker 2: tall pines, but it was covered and it looked mate.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, I would have guessed it was
Speaker 2: like a twenty or twenty five foot valley and it
Speaker 2: was huge, and they knew that and they saw the
Speaker 2: I mean I remember the second time we were on
Speaker 2: Brian and Blake took me probably about twenty five yards
Speaker 2: from the first tee and said, looking out into the trees,
Speaker 2: like this is going to be your clubhouse, Like this
Speaker 2: is where you're going to see everything. And sure enough,
Speaker 2: and it's probably one hundred and fifty feet away from
Speaker 2: where that you know porch is going to be. It's
Speaker 2: just incredible. So they just have the ability that I
Speaker 2: a visual the vision that I just don't have. So
Speaker 2: that's another component is understanding that no matter what I see,
Speaker 2: they see something different.
Speaker 1: So aside from that view from the clubhouse position on
Speaker 1: the current piece of land, and aside from the narrative
Speaker 1: consideration of there are different sections of this property that
Speaker 1: are routing, can explore what to them was good about
Speaker 1: the site that you ended up choosing.
Speaker 2: So you know, they talked was there's certainly some sand
Speaker 2: and I think Brian's talked about this. You know when
Speaker 2: you look at Sand Valley, like that's sand, that's sandy soil.
Speaker 2: Aiken's got you know, a lot of sandy soil, but
Speaker 2: it's also got play. And so they and seeing the
Speaker 2: different pieces of property, you know, we could do again,
Speaker 2: we can do soil testing and all that stuff, but
Speaker 2: you can get a pretty good sense of Okay, this
Speaker 2: is really sandy here and this part isn't so sandy,
Speaker 2: but can we work around this or like you know,
Speaker 2: so they take those things into consideration. Certainly, I think
Speaker 2: certainly the size of the parcel is really important, and
Speaker 2: so you know, I was looking at anything over four
Speaker 2: hundred yards or four hundred acres, and again that original
Speaker 2: parcel was four hundred and forty sum acres. And you know,
Speaker 2: they were pretty explicit that like this is great, get it,
Speaker 2: but also you're going to need more. And so they
Speaker 2: we were trapesing through the land that we weren't buying.
Speaker 2: You know, we were reaching out to neighbors and asking
Speaker 2: if we could just take a look. And that also
Speaker 2: is really interesting because you know, they're thinking about the
Speaker 2: eighteen holes certainly, but they're also thinking much farther down
Speaker 2: the line in terms of infrastructure, in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: we're just a part like you know, what does the
Speaker 2: entrance road look like? You know, here in Charleston, we
Speaker 2: joke around the like Yamen's Hall is a good example
Speaker 2: of this, like the longer the entrance and the smaller
Speaker 2: the sign outside, the better the club is going to be.
Speaker 2: And I'm not joking. So like the front, I don't know,
Speaker 2: one hundred acres maybe nine hundred, maybe seventy five acres
Speaker 2: of our property that front's Andrew Circle. The street that
Speaker 2: we're on is pretty flat, and they like that. They
Speaker 2: liked that you could kind of come in and then
Speaker 2: there's this big reveal so that's unrelated to the routing.
Speaker 2: That has everything to do with the infrastructure and kind
Speaker 2: of the overall property. And again I give them a
Speaker 2: ton of credit because I would definitely was not thinking
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: What was your role during the construction process?
Speaker 2: I signed checks? I mean I really, you know, early on,
Speaker 2: so Morgan Purvis, who is on our team, was the
Speaker 2: first person that I hired, and he's a jack of
Speaker 2: all trades. He's been our membership director, our partnership director.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's gone a whole bunch of things. Really
Speaker 2: in the beginning was just us and and Brian and Blink,
Speaker 2: and we had a deal with the potential, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody to take over as director of gronmy or to
Speaker 2: start as director of agron me who had a fair
Speaker 2: amount of construction experience, somebody with a great reputation, and
Speaker 2: for some reason it just didn't work out and he
Speaker 2: backed out, and you know, no hard feelings. We kind
Speaker 2: of understood that he was he was a little concerned
Speaker 2: about the risk and the fact that to you know,
Speaker 2: tweedled and tweedledumb we're running the show. But so like,
Speaker 2: really the extent of my involvement was I hired a
Speaker 2: Timber Company to clear some of the land and that
Speaker 2: didn't work out so well. So like despite giving them
Speaker 2: GPS coordinates, like they started clearing land that like is
Speaker 2: now to the right of our ninth t that like
Speaker 2: they were not supposed to clear. And so that's a
Speaker 2: good example of like why Morgan and I should not
Speaker 2: be doing these things. And so when we did, we
Speaker 2: were introduced to and I don't I still don't understand
Speaker 2: how this happened, but he's now our general manager. But
Speaker 2: John Levell was the person that we ended up hiring
Speaker 2: as our director of agronomy, and he you know, had
Speaker 2: helped I mean, he was the project manager and built Congarrie.
Speaker 2: He was the director of agronomy at Congree and a
Speaker 2: Diamond Creek where he lived. And before that he was
Speaker 2: you know, part of Tom Fazzio's team that came in
Speaker 2: a two thousand at Augusta National to Tiger Proof and
Speaker 2: he ended up staying there for six years, seven years.
Speaker 2: So this is a guy with not only great experience,
Speaker 2: but when he saw what we were doing with like
Speaker 2: the clearing, he's like, we got to call Green Tea
Speaker 2: and Augusta they're they're they're great. They can do this,
Speaker 2: They're doing half the price, you know, like all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So basically at that point it was kind of hands off,
Speaker 2: and which is the way it should have been. I
Speaker 2: mean I had to say yes or no to some
Speaker 2: of the you know, when we had to we had
Speaker 2: to line our irrigation pond, for example, and that's like
Speaker 2: a super expensive part of the process was building up
Speaker 2: you know, spy makers. It's ten to twelve feet deep,
Speaker 2: and then we built half of it and it started
Speaker 2: to leave, you know, it was the water level was,
Speaker 2: you know, going down substantially, and so we had to okay,
Speaker 2: are we going to try to find the whole orre
Speaker 2: we just going to align it and understand that that's
Speaker 2: the best investment for long term. And so to have
Speaker 2: somebody like John who had experience with those types of decisions,
Speaker 2: I felt much more comfortable saying, Okay, let's spend more
Speaker 2: money now because I really do think that it'll save
Speaker 2: us money in the long run. And sure enough, you
Speaker 2: know that's been the case. Because I haven't made I
Speaker 2: haven't played much of a role in the construction side
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 1: So you were pretty hands off when it came to
Speaker 1: the design of the golf course itself. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that owners or clients do get more involved in
Speaker 1: that side of things. Did you ever have like a
Speaker 1: moment during the project when you were like, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of understand why somebody might want to be
Speaker 1: more active here, but I'm not going.
Speaker 2: To do that. Sure, I mean, I think and I'm
Speaker 2: starting to feel it now because we're you know, we're
Speaker 2: thinking about a third course or you know about the
Speaker 2: third course, and so having experience now the first one
Speaker 2: and the building, it's like, oh, it'd be fun to
Speaker 2: do that, Like, well, I really like this part of
Speaker 2: you know, the original course. But I'm not a great
Speaker 2: player and I've never been a great player. And so
Speaker 2: I think when you look at here's the Sabonic, I,
Speaker 2: the Pescuti, Piscucci or I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, Michael Pascucci, I think yes, and I think he's
Speaker 1: like an exceptional golfer.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of these owner developers are
Speaker 2: great golfers, and so they they've earned the right to
Speaker 2: think about these things in a way that I don't. Like,
Speaker 2: I really am only thinking about it in terms of
Speaker 2: a six or seven handicap, and I don't know, like
Speaker 2: I don't. I just I am very much aware that
Speaker 2: I don't know enough to have an opinion that matters.
Speaker 2: I guess, like and now maybe I do, I have
Speaker 2: more of one. I think the hardest part is that,
Speaker 2: you know, as we grew our membership, and so we
Speaker 2: had seven holes open for a time for previewpoint. We
Speaker 2: had we called it the Upper Loopers holes one through
Speaker 2: five and seventeen and eighteen, and it was just we
Speaker 2: tried to grasp a certain amount of holes so that
Speaker 2: our members could have something to play before we open
Speaker 2: the full eighteen. And you know, inevitably, and I think
Speaker 2: this is actually great. Our members are really candidate about
Speaker 2: their feedback, and you know, the overwhelming response was so positive,
Speaker 2: but there are some people that say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: this green just you know, it doesn't seem the same
Speaker 2: as the other greens. And so my struggle is as
Speaker 2: a people pleaser by nature, and also as somebody who
Speaker 2: has taken those people's money, is how do I balance
Speaker 2: their opinions with the opinions of Brian and Blake, who
Speaker 2: are the true experts and know a heck of a
Speaker 2: lot more than those members. I mean, now, even experts
Speaker 2: can be wrong, and I think like any course will
Speaker 2: make adjustments over time. But I think, you know, the
Speaker 2: limited changes that we have made since that opening seven
Speaker 2: holes have been kind of a compromise between what Brian
Speaker 2: and Blake like. They're not going to compromise on their
Speaker 2: their strategy period like water management and strategy are. You
Speaker 2: cannot mess with that in terms of their vision, or
Speaker 2: at least I'm not going to. But they hear, they listen,
Speaker 2: and so they're willing to make some minor adjustments, and
Speaker 2: you know that's I think that's a great way to
Speaker 2: listen to your quote unquote audience. But also it's not
Speaker 2: least sight of like we're hiring them for a reason,
Speaker 2: like you don't want me putting you know, telling you
Speaker 2: where to put a bunker or you know how wide
Speaker 2: that fairly should be. I just I'm not smart enough.
Speaker 2: I don't have the experience. I'm not as well traveled
Speaker 2: as you know Brian's. You know, Brian's been fifteen times
Speaker 2: more places than I'll ever be.
Speaker 1: So that's tricky though, isn't it, Because like the golf
Speaker 1: course is for the members, right, golf courses are for
Speaker 1: the players, and if they enjoy it, then they enjoy it.
Speaker 1: If they don't enjoy it, then I guess by definition,
Speaker 1: there must be something wrong with it. Right, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about old Barnwell, I'm talking about golf courses in general. Right.
Speaker 1: If the players don't like something about it, then it's
Speaker 1: almost like the customer is never wrong, except that we
Speaker 1: all know that sometimes the customer is wrong, and that
Speaker 1: often when it comes to matters of taste in golf architecture,
Speaker 1: golf architects often have the most sophisticated perspective on those things,
Speaker 1: and maybe some of those features that players don't like
Speaker 1: initially will grow on them over time and eventually become
Speaker 1: some of their favorite features. So it must be really
Speaker 1: hard to negotiate that complexity as a decision maker within
Speaker 1: a club, because on the one hand, yes, you acknowledge
Speaker 1: that the course is for the players, but on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you acknowledge that the architects probably have better
Speaker 1: ideas about golf architecture than the average player.
Speaker 2: So we have members that are members that marry in
Speaker 2: and Augusta National and Chicago Golf, and they expect, maybe
Speaker 2: not the finer things, So I think they're all down
Speaker 2: to earth. They're great members, but they experience. It's something
Speaker 2: that is truly remarkable in their home clubs, right, And
Speaker 2: so I think what was really important for us in
Speaker 2: the early stages is to set the right expectations about
Speaker 2: what we were here to do. And I think that
Speaker 2: you know, the benevolent dictator, you know, the ability as
Speaker 2: a sole owner to make decisions and not have to
Speaker 2: go through committee is hugely beneficial and something like this.
Speaker 2: But also I think we benefit from the fact that,
Speaker 2: again we are not cheat, but we are well below
Speaker 2: what we could charge and as a result, we kind
Speaker 2: of you know, it's like, listen, if you're not happy, like,
Speaker 2: we'd be happy to sell that membership to somebody else
Speaker 2: who's going to be more impactful for the mission, and
Speaker 2: we can charge more than we charge view you know.
Speaker 2: So I think that that it's not certainly the way
Speaker 2: that we would behave, but it's it's in the back
Speaker 2: of our minds. If people aren't happy with it, you know,
Speaker 2: that's okay, that's we understand. It's not for everybody. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, particularly with Brian and Blake, you know,
Speaker 2: my again with zero direction from my perspective other than
Speaker 2: to build something that they thought would be you know,
Speaker 2: something they wanted to build, Like, of course I knew
Speaker 2: that it's not going to be for everybody, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be I mean, like I don't really care
Speaker 2: where people, you know, what side of the tobacco road,
Speaker 2: you know, controversy argument you're on, like is it great?
Speaker 2: Is it not great? I don't really care because to me,
Speaker 2: what that course does is it makes you think and
Speaker 2: it you know, I love that there are people that
Speaker 2: do or don't like it because they're actually talking about
Speaker 2: architecture in a way that they would never talk about
Speaker 2: architecture if they're just playing your ho home course down
Speaker 2: the street. And so to me, I think that by
Speaker 2: setting those expectations, we've appealed to a membership that was
Speaker 2: totally open to a unique set of greens or some
Speaker 2: features that might be too severe for you know, a
Speaker 2: regular country club. I don't know, I think. And again,
Speaker 2: we're still so early in this process that there will
Speaker 2: continue to be complaints from members and some of them
Speaker 2: will be well founded, like there's a green that maybe
Speaker 2: could use a little softing, or I mean, the same
Speaker 2: is gonna be true with our clubhouse in our lives,
Speaker 2: Like it's never going to be perfect, but we can
Speaker 2: always try to make it perfect or make sure our
Speaker 2: members understand that, hey, this is this is here for
Speaker 2: a reason.
Speaker 1: What are the plans right now for old Barnwell's buildings, clubhouse, lodging,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So that's another thing when you talk about like the
Speaker 2: nuts and bolt of a club. Early on in this process,
Speaker 2: I went to two really nice guys that live here
Speaker 2: in Charleston, Chris Randolph and Jordan Phillips, who are part
Speaker 2: of South Street Partners, and so they own keywa Island Club.
Speaker 2: They own Palmetto Brought Bluff that you know, the Crossroads,
Speaker 2: which you guys recently featured something they developed. And I
Speaker 2: went to them with like numbers very early in this process,
Speaker 2: and they almost laughed me out of the room, very politely,
Speaker 2: but they're like, you need to double what your numbers are.
Speaker 2: And they were correct in a lot of ways. In
Speaker 2: some ways they were incorrect or they didn't understand what
Speaker 2: we were trying to do. But one of the biggest
Speaker 2: differences that we had versus what they had is because
Speaker 2: they're in this this different categor glory of clubs, you know,
Speaker 2: they need the twenty thousand square foot twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: square foot clubhouse. I think ours is the footprint is
Speaker 2: like nine thousand. We've got a small upstairs area that's
Speaker 2: going to be for staff, So like overall, I think
Speaker 2: it's like eleven thousand square feet, which to me is
Speaker 2: still big, but it's very intimate by comparison, and I
Speaker 2: think that's okay. I like, the only place I've ever
Speaker 2: been a member before Old Barnwall is to Chesa Creek,
Speaker 2: which again, I know you read about to Death.
Speaker 1: Place, Love yeah place, and it's such a cool club
Speaker 1: and collection of buildings that fit exactly with the golf course.
Speaker 2: So you took the words on them. I'm so understated. No, no,
Speaker 2: you said up better than I coulde. It's just very
Speaker 2: understated and it serves its purpose and it's not stark,
Speaker 2: but there's not a whole lot of frills. And so
Speaker 2: the clubhouse, you know, we're working with a great and
Speaker 2: tior design group. We're working at the same building architects
Speaker 2: that designed every building on Sand Valley's property, so they
Speaker 2: have great experience and we're very excited about it. But
Speaker 2: it's not ostentatious. It is we want it to be
Speaker 2: a you know again, it's of the land, and the
Speaker 2: same is true with our lodge is one story, very
Speaker 2: much like the chest. They've got the twelve single rooms
Speaker 2: and kind of a low slung connected to the clubhouse building,
Speaker 2: and so ours is like an L shape. I'm sure
Speaker 2: they wouldn't love me saying this, but it's like a motel.
Speaker 2: It's like an L shaped motel with a lounge that
Speaker 2: connects the rooms and then two suites family suites on
Speaker 2: the end with an interior courtyard, you know. So the
Speaker 2: buildings to me, you know, they should be putting upsiding
Speaker 2: in the next week, which is really exciting, and I
Speaker 2: think it's going to be exciting for our members to
Speaker 2: see the progress. But it's taken a while for me
Speaker 2: to transition from focus on the golf to focus on
Speaker 2: the actual infrastructure. And luckily we've got people that have
Speaker 2: been focusing on that for a lot longer. So I
Speaker 2: think it's going to be far more important to the
Speaker 2: development of the club than I initially anticipated, and so
Speaker 2: I'm glad that we're working with people who really know
Speaker 2: what they're.
Speaker 1: Going Are there any costs that you incurred during the
Speaker 1: construction of the course or some of the initial infrastructure
Speaker 1: that really surprised you where you were like, this is
Speaker 1: this is higher than I expected?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Short answer is yeah, I mean I was looking
Speaker 2: at the numbers earlier. So the irrigation pond, for example,
Speaker 2: you know, originally so we're not on city water. What's
Speaker 2: great is we have our own water supply underneath the land.
Speaker 2: We have the water rights. But to build an irrigation pond,
Speaker 2: we thought, well, do we want to do two acres
Speaker 2: or do we want to do five? Do we want
Speaker 2: to do ten? Do we want to make it four
Speaker 2: feet or twelve feet deep? And what became pretty clear,
Speaker 2: again working with somebody like John Level, is that the
Speaker 2: upfront costs, you're not going to regret that upfront cost
Speaker 2: if you do it the right way the first time.
Speaker 2: And so that was way more expensive than anticipated. I
Speaker 2: joke around that early on in the process. I you know,
Speaker 2: asked Brian and Blake like, hey, you know, you hear this.
Speaker 2: You know it's a million dollars of golf hole, Like
Speaker 2: is that true? And if not, like, what are the
Speaker 2: things that you can do to keep costs lower and
Speaker 2: still create something that's really fantastic. And so they said, no,
Speaker 2: that's not true it depends on the land and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. But they said, but you know, to keep
Speaker 2: cost low. Really it's simple. You know, small greens and
Speaker 2: very few bunkers. And if you've been to old barn
Speaker 2: and walls, you have the greens are not small, and
Speaker 2: they're over one hundred bunkers. So clearly you know they
Speaker 2: didn't they didn't get their own memo in that, and
Speaker 2: I couldn't be happier. Frankly, I think that again, the
Speaker 2: best thing we could have done is hire people like
Speaker 2: Brian and Blake and then trust them to do what
Speaker 2: they do best, and that's that is a great investment.
Speaker 2: Another thing I mean, I think drainage is something we didn't.
Speaker 2: We did not spare an expense on drainage. That's way
Speaker 2: more expensive than I anticipated. Irrigation, even since we put
Speaker 2: in our earsgation system inflation, and like it's absurd to
Speaker 2: me having grown up on a place that didn't have
Speaker 2: any irrigation. You know, they watered the handwater the greens
Speaker 2: and that was it. Like it just bottles my mind
Speaker 2: how expensive a good irrigation system is. But I was
Speaker 2: warned about that, so it wasn't too much of a surprise.
Speaker 2: I think that there are a lot of surprises along
Speaker 2: the way for somebody with zero experience like me. But again,
Speaker 2: having talked to a lot of people in the industry,
Speaker 2: I was at least given a fair sense of course.
Speaker 2: So in clearing land, Clearing land is expensive, particularly when
Speaker 2: you can't sell the timber. Those are the things I
Speaker 2: would say that come to mind. Is more expensive than
Speaker 2: I anticipated.
Speaker 1: The things that nobody thinks about when they think about
Speaker 1: building a golf course, clearing the land, drainage and irrigation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and if we wanted city water, I remember talking
Speaker 2: to the Mamorancy Water department. So this is before we
Speaker 2: had John Leavell. So I'm reaching out to the county
Speaker 2: and I'm asking the dumbest questions And if we wanted
Speaker 2: to connect to city water, we would have had to
Speaker 2: build literally paid for them to build like two and
Speaker 2: a half or three miles of pipe. And they're like, well,
Speaker 2: are you building houses, because if you're building houses, maybe
Speaker 2: we can like it won't cost as much because we'll
Speaker 2: be you know, there'll be more customers that are paying
Speaker 2: us for water. And I was like, wait, are you
Speaker 2: telling me that, like we can use our own water
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, totally. It's like, okay, well we'll just
Speaker 2: stick with our own water. I think that sounds like
Speaker 2: a better idea. So there are so many things that
Speaker 2: we didn't have to experience that I'm sure every other
Speaker 2: golf developer has to go through. So we were really
Speaker 2: fortunate in a lot of ways too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people are curious about the Kid's course that
Speaker 1: you've mentioned a couple of times and which is currently
Speaker 1: under construction, as well as the third course that I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how far along in the process you are
Speaker 1: with designing or constructing this one, But what can you
Speaker 1: tell me about these two future courses at Old Barnwell?
Speaker 2: Sure, so the Kid's course is under construction now. I
Speaker 2: think there are eight greens that are already roughed in,
Speaker 2: so we've set aside twenty five acres. You know, if
Speaker 2: you'd asked me a month ago, I thought it was
Speaker 2: twelve holes, but brianon Blake have since added three more,
Speaker 2: and the idea I know, it's it's they're sneaky, Well
Speaker 2: they're sneaky, but also I kind of love it. Like
Speaker 2: one of my favorite holes on the first course is
Speaker 2: the thirteenth, and that was originally going to be a
Speaker 2: par three, and when they were you know, building, they realized,
Speaker 2: you know, this is going to be better as a
Speaker 2: part four. So we're part seventy three and I think
Speaker 2: we're all the better for it because they just took
Speaker 2: what the land gave them there. So I think the
Speaker 2: same so with the kids course. The I can't possibly
Speaker 2: describe how much soil you dig up when you build
Speaker 2: a five acre pond that is ten feet deep. We
Speaker 2: had two mountains and one was kind of sandy ish
Speaker 2: and one was play ish, and basically we sold or
Speaker 2: we gave the play away to a partner. But over
Speaker 2: the last like five months, our agronomy team has moved
Speaker 2: all that dirt to where the kids courses and then
Speaker 2: dug out more things to provide more dirt, to create
Speaker 2: a grading plan that Brian like, a very loose grading
Speaker 2: plan that Brian and Blake wanted to work with. And
Speaker 2: so now there's going to be fifty holes. I think
Speaker 2: mostly Part three's, but a couple of short part fours.
Speaker 2: When I say short, Part four is like three hundred
Speaker 2: or less, and I think we haven't figured out all
Speaker 2: the logistics of it, but I think, like if you're
Speaker 2: an adult, like you can only bring your irons, like,
Speaker 2: don't bring a driver, A three would. But the goal
Speaker 2: is that on the weekends you can't play there until
Speaker 2: three o'clock unless you're with a kid, and that's a
Speaker 2: pretty easy thing to stick to. Originally, we thought, well,
Speaker 2: it should, that should always be the case, but what
Speaker 2: we realized is that we have a really we have
Speaker 2: a large group of beginning golfers, whether it's spouses or kids,
Speaker 2: that we want to do programming during the week We
Speaker 2: also want to partner with like youth on course and
Speaker 2: provide access via that realm. So basically on the weekends
Speaker 2: it's going to be kid focused. And then I think
Speaker 2: that what they are going for you should talk to
Speaker 2: Brian and Blake because I've seen these greens, but I
Speaker 2: still haven't seen a routing. I think it's going to
Speaker 2: be a lot of fun. We had a contest, a
Speaker 2: design contest where kids could submit their designed for a
Speaker 2: whole and some of the ideas were hilarious and fun,
Speaker 2: including one that had a waffle house on the eighteenth green,
Speaker 2: which are on the green site, which was I mean,
Speaker 2: that'd be pretty great. I don't think we can pull
Speaker 2: that off, but one, the one that won had ramps
Speaker 2: because in his description he said, you know, it's nice
Speaker 2: to see if you hit a bad shot, it's still
Speaker 2: nice to see it going the year. So they're going
Speaker 2: to be features like that. It's not going to be
Speaker 2: like a miniatured off course, but I think that they
Speaker 2: are going to be features so that kids can really
Speaker 2: enjoy it. A couple months ago, Blake texted me a
Speaker 2: Craigslist listing for a like an eighteen foot grain silo
Speaker 2: and it was for sale down the road. It was
Speaker 2: one thousand bucks and he's like, hey, can you can
Speaker 2: you get this? And I said, well, what Ford? He said,
Speaker 2: don't worry about it. Can you can you get it?
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not, I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: so we didn't get it. So I don't really know
Speaker 2: what his idea was there, but I do think that
Speaker 2: they're trying to create something that is it's not a
Speaker 2: part three course. It is something different, and I'm again
Speaker 2: I'm as clueless about it as I think the rest
Speaker 2: of our members are. Although that the the greens look
Speaker 2: great so far, and then the third course we've got
Speaker 2: we've got a preliminary routing, and I think, what they
Speaker 2: want to do there is basically create two distinct nine
Speaker 2: hole courses in essence that you can rate and slope
Speaker 2: as one to eighteen holes. But their perspective is, you know,
Speaker 2: you've got to use what the land gives you. And
Speaker 2: so there's some really subtle features and then there's some
Speaker 2: really severe. That valley that is on the first course
Speaker 2: extends all the way into that backside of the property.
Speaker 2: We have about one hundred and eighty five acres, and
Speaker 2: so I think what they really are focused on is
Speaker 2: creating variety for members. And so you know, those two
Speaker 2: distinct nine hole routing things will allow for you to
Speaker 2: play three different, four different I mean golf courses in
Speaker 2: essence when you come to o'barmel. So honestly, I don't
Speaker 2: know how many years you know, we're away from building
Speaker 2: that course. I would say that we've been really fortunate
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, so it's probably sooner than
Speaker 2: be an anticipated. But who knows what their routing will
Speaker 2: do over time. It could change, it may have already
Speaker 2: changed since I last book.
Speaker 1: So zooming out a bit and looking at the kind
Speaker 1: of golf course construction surge that Old Barnwell is part
Speaker 1: of there are a lot of new courses going up,
Speaker 1: not only in the Aiken area, but really across South
Speaker 1: Carolina and in many places in Florida, some places in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Really the southeast is experiencing a kind of many or
Speaker 1: regionalized boom in golf construction. And so as somebody who's
Speaker 1: within that, who's part of that, Why do you think
Speaker 1: this is happening? Why are there so many golf courses
Speaker 1: being built in this area right now, and specifically so
Speaker 1: many kind of private clubs, often destination private clubs going
Speaker 1: up in this one region at the moment.
Speaker 2: So I think there are a few main reasons, the
Speaker 2: first of which kind of hits on you know, you
Speaker 2: just said a destination golf course. This is still a
Speaker 2: relatively new business model of like the National Private Club
Speaker 2: and so CICHESI, I think is one great example. When
Speaker 2: it started, it didn't do so well, and so it's
Speaker 2: the second owner who's done really well with it as
Speaker 2: they lowered does lowered the entrance fee and made it
Speaker 2: more kind of they've expanded it to now I think
Speaker 2: they have. I'm making this up, but I think it's
Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty or eight hundred members, and so
Speaker 2: this is still a relatively new model that I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people are looking at and ships saying,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like as Andy would describe, like the
Speaker 2: craft culture, you know, the craft beer culture, golf course
Speaker 2: architecture through the work that you guys do and others. Like,
Speaker 2: it's so much more prevalent I think within the golfing
Speaker 2: community that people are willing to pay a premium for
Speaker 2: a really interesting or new golf course by Bill Hants
Speaker 2: or Tom Doak, and you know, the the business model
Speaker 2: is pretty strong for the first owner in that case
Speaker 2: in a way that it hasn't been in the past.
Speaker 2: You can get into like the next component of it is,
Speaker 2: of course you've got this whatever you know, like the
Speaker 2: one percent or whatever that can afford the five hundred
Speaker 2: grand that some people are charging or you know, again
Speaker 2: that makes your like like you know, you get basically
Speaker 2: you get ten members of that place, and you've filled
Speaker 2: up our coffers that we've gotten an old barn wall
Speaker 2: for our initiation fees, and so the you know, the
Speaker 2: numbers work out really well in that case, and right
Speaker 2: now today they can sell those memberships tomorrow who knows,
Speaker 2: But The third thing I would say is that, as
Speaker 2: you know, pre COVID even but since COVID, everybody's moving
Speaker 2: to the southeast. And so you know, I've been in
Speaker 2: Charleston for nine years, but I'm from Chicago originally, and
Speaker 2: our neighbors here in Charleston almost all of them are
Speaker 2: from the Midwest. And so what I would say is
Speaker 2: that just like here in Charleston, the same is true
Speaker 2: in Atlanta and Charlotte. There are only so many great
Speaker 2: golf courses or good golf courses. So for people that
Speaker 2: are looking for the private golf experience, they're sol like
Speaker 2: they can't get on a wait list, and so they're
Speaker 2: willing to drive two hours to Ache to play. They're
Speaker 2: willing to drive to whatever the mountains of North Carolina
Speaker 2: and willing to pay a premium. And so I think
Speaker 2: that again right now, that business model is sound. I
Speaker 2: don't know how sustainable it is. I am not an
Speaker 2: expert on this stuff. The National Golf Foundation and you know,
Speaker 2: the Golf Course Owners Association would have a much better
Speaker 2: take on this than I do. But I am skeptical
Speaker 2: of like, if we were doing this to make money,
Speaker 2: if we were really like focused on profitability, we'd be
Speaker 2: doing things very differently. Ironically, I think that's what's going
Speaker 2: to allow us to have longer term sustainability. But I
Speaker 2: don't know. I didn't have a good answer for what
Speaker 2: the future holds. I mean, there's part of me the
Speaker 2: things that like. And we kind of saw this a
Speaker 2: little bit during COVID. You know, the economy may go
Speaker 2: down a little bit, but the people who seem to
Speaker 2: be least affected sometimes are the ones who can afford
Speaker 2: a five hundred thousand dollars initiation fee. So maybe maybe
Speaker 2: this isn't you know, maybe this is what kind of
Speaker 2: keeps happening. I think I'll shout out booms Edge in Rembert,
Speaker 2: South Carolina as a really unique opportunity for private golf
Speaker 2: to be affordable and accessible to the public. I do
Speaker 2: think that there's a model there, but nobody's figured it out.
Speaker 2: I think if we were, if we took a long
Speaker 2: view and could and I know this is some like
Speaker 2: a drum that you guys beat all the time, if
Speaker 2: you could change golfers expectations around maintenance and course conditions,
Speaker 2: I think you could create a really great golf club
Speaker 2: at an affordable price and still provide some public access.
Speaker 2: But I think it's important to note I'll say this
Speaker 2: and then I'll shut up, but exclusivity that people pay
Speaker 2: for with private clubs, like that word has such a
Speaker 2: negative connotation, But I also understand why people want or
Speaker 2: need that exclusivity for their golf experience, right. I mean again,
Speaker 2: like I think about it, I don't want to go
Speaker 2: to Wild Dunes here in Charleston and pay two hundred
Speaker 2: bucks to play a six hour round. It's certainly cheaper
Speaker 2: than joining a club in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, you know, we all kind of
Speaker 2: pay for different conveniences, and so I think the real
Speaker 2: challenge is how can we make these courses provide that
Speaker 2: exclusive environment. When I say exclusive, I mean access for
Speaker 2: those members so that they can play when they want
Speaker 2: and they can have the experience that they want, but
Speaker 2: also leave it open to public place. And so there
Speaker 2: are just a lot of creative ways, and I think
Speaker 2: we found that a lot of our members not only
Speaker 2: don't they don't care that we're providing public play access,
Speaker 2: they're encouraging it. They really like it and they want
Speaker 2: to support it because they want to show off the
Speaker 2: place that they've grown to like, you know, or love
Speaker 2: in some cases. So I think that unfortunately, I would
Speaker 2: guess that at some point in the next five to
Speaker 2: ten years there's going to be some sort of reckoning
Speaker 2: with these really expensive private clubs. But I also think
Speaker 2: that there might be a solution to it. I'm not
Speaker 2: smart enough to say whether or not that's going to come.
Speaker 1: The past well, you're probably better positioned to make predictions
Speaker 1: in this realm than a lot of people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You mentioned the National Golf Foundation and
Speaker 1: the Course Owners Association earlier, and while both of those
Speaker 1: bodies do really good research that I often avail myself of,
Speaker 1: they've also been wrong in the past. Right, it's really
Speaker 1: hard two to identify the signs of a bubble. We've
Speaker 1: seen this in so many different ways over the past
Speaker 1: few decades in different sectors of the economy. You know,
Speaker 1: it's almost part of the definition of a bubble that
Speaker 1: you don't know that you're in it. But there are
Speaker 1: definitely some people who are looking at this development surge
Speaker 1: and saying, how can this possibly be sustainable? And and
Speaker 1: so you know, from from your position as the developer,
Speaker 1: the founder, the owner of one of these clubs. What
Speaker 1: do you what do you think are the characteristics that
Speaker 1: can make a club durable through these oscillations in the
Speaker 1: economy that that we know are eventually coming.
Speaker 2: So for us, I think, you know, like lodging, I
Speaker 2: think lodging is one for these national clubs where that
Speaker 2: is an experience that people are willing to pay for.
Speaker 2: And in our case, we are looking at kind of
Speaker 2: the market comp and trying to be twenty to twenty
Speaker 2: five percent cheaper than that. We will still make a
Speaker 2: healthy profit our lodging at that rate. And so I
Speaker 2: think that there is that that's something that those clubs
Speaker 2: that all clubs can kind of lean back on for
Speaker 2: the national model. I think that food and beverage maybe
Speaker 2: plays an underrated component in this too. And this is
Speaker 2: somebody who I who will say that I've been a
Speaker 2: waiter and a dishwasher and all that stuff and worked
Speaker 2: in service before, but I think that that's an underrated
Speaker 2: component around community. And so you know, I had the
Speaker 2: chance to go to wade Hampton a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago because the father in law and one of our
Speaker 2: members hosted us. And that's as nice as nice gets
Speaker 2: in terms of the experience and I have no idea
Speaker 2: what an initiation fee costs there. But one thing that
Speaker 2: I'll say that they did exceptionally well. One they have
Speaker 2: great staff, but they have like these community events that
Speaker 2: are all based around dinner or lunch or whatever, and
Speaker 2: so like it becomes part of that fabric for the
Speaker 2: people that live in that area. And to me, the
Speaker 2: more you can do that, the more you can create
Speaker 2: that kind of programming. I think that's really healthy, not
Speaker 2: just for the golf club's economics, but also for it
Speaker 2: creates that stickiness. I come from software, so like, I'm
Speaker 2: constantly thinking about retention rates, like how do we make
Speaker 2: sure that we keep people in. I also think that,
Speaker 2: you know, when push comes to shove, a really great
Speaker 2: golf experience at a reasonable price is going to be
Speaker 2: the last membership you drop. I could very well be
Speaker 2: wrong on that, and I think everybody's motivation is different,
Speaker 2: but I feel pretty good that at the price point
Speaker 2: that we're at, it'd be I'm not going to say foolish,
Speaker 2: but like if you had to choose between one that is,
Speaker 2: you know, equally far away or tough to get to
Speaker 2: and costs five times as much and the golf course
Speaker 2: is as good as you know, why why wouldn't you
Speaker 2: keep the one that's a little bit more affordable and
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit more family friendly or you know,
Speaker 2: again that's my inherent bias, but those are the thoughts
Speaker 2: that come to mind. I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's there's something about the older model
Speaker 1: of the American private club, the local club, that maybe
Speaker 1: has been lost a little bit, perhaps because a lot
Speaker 1: of these clubs struggled during the recession or even before that.
Speaker 1: But local clubs in a lot of places are or
Speaker 1: used to be general local institutions. It's where you'd go
Speaker 1: to get married, It's where you'd go to have a
Speaker 1: nice meal, it's where you'd go for a bridge night
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, there would be all
Speaker 1: sorts of events happening at the local club. It was
Speaker 1: the local club. That's what you went and did that,
Speaker 1: and there were members who would play golf and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But it was generally fairly open to the community.
Speaker 1: And it seems like some of that has been lost
Speaker 1: in the past few decades and would seem to be recoverable,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I would think so. I think that, and I know
Speaker 2: that the park has its own they raise, however much
Speaker 2: money in two months to get the park going.
Speaker 1: But right in that's West West Palm Beach, the municipal
Speaker 1: facility there, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that could be a central hub. And the
Speaker 2: same thing is true at at Winter Park. So I
Speaker 2: think that there are places that do it really well.
Speaker 2: And I know that Chessi, for example, they are very
Speaker 2: profitable in terms of food and beverage because they do
Speaker 2: it right. It's nothing fancy, it's just really good food
Speaker 2: done right. It's not uber expensive. And so it's a
Speaker 2: place that you want to go to. And so like
Speaker 2: I live two hours away, I'd rarely stay overnight, but
Speaker 2: like I kind of want to, you know, like I'd
Speaker 2: prefer to stay overnight because it's such a great experience,
Speaker 2: you know. So I'll say that one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've seen in this environment. So there are a
Speaker 2: couple of clubs in South Carolina. So like Orangeburg Country
Speaker 2: Club is about an hour and ten minutes from downtown Charleston.
Speaker 2: It's probably an hour and a half from Charlotte. It
Speaker 2: is a great older course, you know, a little rough
Speaker 2: around the edges, but totally affordable. It is a community club.
Speaker 2: They're seeing enough to in members coming that are from Charleston,
Speaker 2: that can't get off a wait list, that are willing
Speaker 2: to drive an hour fifteen minutes. Camden is a great course,
Speaker 2: same thing. And so I think that the many, kind
Speaker 2: of the whack a mole of all this development and
Speaker 2: exclusivity may benefit some of those community clubs in a
Speaker 2: way that is kind of, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: unintended consequences. My concern is more about, you know, the
Speaker 2: clubs on the North short of Chicago where I grew up,
Speaker 2: caddying a lot of those clubs. Before COVID couldn't pay
Speaker 2: younger members to join. There just wasn't and I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was generational, but and then COVID hit
Speaker 2: and then everybody wants to join, and they start, they
Speaker 2: raise their rates, they pay down their debt, and then
Speaker 2: they immediately go back into debt just now investing in
Speaker 2: these new you know whatever, it's new and shiny, and
Speaker 2: that is a recipe for disaster. I think I say
Speaker 2: that with such you know, lack of knowledge about you know,
Speaker 2: their vision. And I'm sure we'll get to that point too,
Speaker 2: where we make stupid mistakes about what we spend money on.
Speaker 2: But like we have a like a treehouse. We spent
Speaker 2: a lot of money on building a treehouse, and I
Speaker 2: remember talking to my father about that and he's like,
Speaker 2: you are insane, Like that is the dumbest money you
Speaker 2: could have spent. And I will say that, at least
Speaker 2: as it relates to our mission. I actually feel like
Speaker 2: the return on investment with that will be pretty easy
Speaker 2: to kind of measure because my son, Henry, who's six,
Speaker 2: really not in the golf yet. This is going to
Speaker 2: be the most miserable thing ever if my kids don't
Speaker 2: like golf. But when that treehouse was built, he was like,
Speaker 2: let's go to o'barnall, and so we went there. We
Speaker 2: spent an hour and a half on it, and then
Speaker 2: at the end of it he's like, can we go
Speaker 2: hit balls? I was like, we don't have the driving
Speaker 2: range yet, but yeah, we can hit into the dirt
Speaker 2: like great, Like it got him to play a little
Speaker 2: bit of golf. So maybe there are things that clubs,
Speaker 2: like we stumbled upon that idea, but like, maybe there
Speaker 2: are things that clubs can do where you know, the
Speaker 2: grand scheme of things, it's golf adjacent, the golf related
Speaker 2: and it's not a huge investment, but it will bring
Speaker 2: again that's stickiness to their membership.
Speaker 1: All right, Nick, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Really enjoyed this conversation and best of luck
Speaker 1: with Ald Barnwell.
Speaker 2: Thank you thanks for putting up with my app and
Speaker 2: Goo Ahead.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. If you'd like to do
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