Speaker 1: One of the most important discussions in golf architecture right
Speaker 1: now relates to the footprint of a golf course. That is,
Speaker 1: how much space a course takes up physically and environmentally.
Speaker 1: Why is this so important, Well, over time, golf course
Speaker 1: footprints have gotten bigger. One reason for this is that
Speaker 1: players hit the ball farther than they once did, so
Speaker 1: a major question that the golf world faces today is
Speaker 1: whether we need golf course footprints to start getting smaller,
Speaker 1: and the next major question, of course, is how to
Speaker 1: do that. To dig into all this, I'm bringing on
Speaker 1: someone who has studied the historical evolution of golf courses
Speaker 1: as closely as anyone in the world. That person is
Speaker 1: George Waters, the manager of USGA Green Section Education, and
Speaker 1: today George is going to help me understand how golf
Speaker 1: course footprints have changed over the past one hundred years
Speaker 1: and what that means for the future of the game.
Speaker 1: I'm Garret Morrison and this is designing golf, So George,
Speaker 1: A lot of our conversation here will revolve around the
Speaker 1: findings of a study that you and the USGA Green
Speaker 1: Section did a few years ago on how golf courses
Speaker 1: have evolved through history. This study was part of the
Speaker 1: USGA's Distance Insights Project, one result of which was the
Speaker 1: suggested golf ball roll back, which which will take effect
Speaker 1: later this decade. So what was the basic motive behind
Speaker 1: analyzing how golf courses have changed over time?
Speaker 2: Oh, Garrett, First of ball, thanks so much for having
Speaker 2: me on and big fan of the podcast, so congratulations
Speaker 2: on all that you've done on here. And in terms
Speaker 2: of the research project, it emerged from the Distance Insights
Speaker 2: Project that was sort of the impetus Burt for the project.
Speaker 2: But as we kind of got into it, Okay, so
Speaker 2: what are the what are the implications of how golf
Speaker 2: courses change over time in terms of footprint, in terms
Speaker 2: of their maintainability, in terms of cost to build, and
Speaker 2: so forth. As we got into it, Yes, we looked
Speaker 2: at those ways in which distance, looked for ways that
Speaker 2: which distance might affect how golf courses change. But since
Speaker 2: we work in the green section, we're very interested in
Speaker 2: how a lot of things influence the way golf courses
Speaker 2: change and just what are those trends and what are
Speaker 2: the changes. What are some ways that we can look
Speaker 2: at where maintenance and the implications of various types of footprint,
Speaker 2: not just the entire footprint of the property, but the
Speaker 2: footprint of different pieces of that property fairway, green acreage, bunker,
Speaker 2: square footage. How have those changed over time? Where can
Speaker 2: we draw those connections to golf course maintenance. What are
Speaker 2: the implications for the future if we look at the
Speaker 2: trends going forward? So what started as a let's look
Speaker 2: at how golf courses change and think about how distance
Speaker 2: might play a role in that grew into let's look
Speaker 2: at all the different ways that the golf course has
Speaker 2: changed and really try to think about that total that
Speaker 2: total package. And thankfully the USJA was happy to let
Speaker 2: us kind of run with the study a little bit
Speaker 2: and really see what we could learn. And it was
Speaker 2: fascinating and it was fun for me, as somebody who's
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time restoring golf courses, thinking about
Speaker 2: how golf courses have evolved over time, to really get
Speaker 2: into the nuts and bolts of it and see a
Speaker 2: wider range of courses. Also, I mean, we'll get into that,
Speaker 2: but I spent most of my time in golf course
Speaker 2: architecture working on higher end courses. Alistairs, Mackenzie designs, you know,
Speaker 2: these sort of famous really highly regarded projects. We made
Speaker 2: a very concerted effort through this study to get a
Speaker 2: handle on what's happening with the average golf course, like
Speaker 2: the truly average golf course that probably doesn't get necessarily
Speaker 2: talked about as much, but that's where the majority of
Speaker 2: golf in the United States and anywhere is really played.
Speaker 1: How did you go about conducting the study. It was
Speaker 1: a complex study, So there's a lot of detail here,
Speaker 1: but you know, a basic outline. What was your methodology here?
Speaker 2: Honestly, building the sample was probably the hardest part of
Speaker 2: the whole thing. So we wanted, like I said, to
Speaker 2: develop a really good picture of the average golf course.
Speaker 2: And so we came up with an eighty course random sample,
Speaker 2: random with an asterisk there that we wanted it to
Speaker 2: be random, but with certain criteria. So we wanted an
Speaker 2: even mix of publican private. We wanted an even mix
Speaker 2: of northeast, Southeast, Central, and west, kind of a regional mix,
Speaker 2: and we wanted an even distribution of date of opening
Speaker 2: from the nineteen twenties through the twenty tens. And so
Speaker 2: you end up with ten courses in each of those buckets,
Speaker 2: divided over the different regions divided over publican private, it
Speaker 2: gets and then you need aerial imagery was kind of
Speaker 2: was the foundation of the analysis, and so we set
Speaker 2: some criteria for ourselves that we had to have aerial
Speaker 2: images of the course from when it opened, you know,
Speaker 2: within fifteen twenty years of when it opened, and then
Speaker 2: at a fifteen to twenty year cadence throughout its life.
Speaker 2: And so you end up going through a lot of
Speaker 2: permutations to build that sample, because you get courses that
Speaker 2: work that don't have the photos, and you get courses
Speaker 2: with the photos that don't fit into the buckets. But
Speaker 2: that was the eighty course sample. We also included, because
Speaker 2: we had a feeling that there would be differences, We
Speaker 2: also included a fifteen course what we called it a
Speaker 2: championship course case study for championship for lack of a
Speaker 2: better term, but courses that have hosted men's professional golf
Speaker 2: events USGA championships. Those were not random, but we did
Speaker 2: our best that we could to kind of spread those
Speaker 2: out over a decade of opening. So we have some
Speaker 2: courses from the twenties and thirties all the way up
Speaker 2: ones that had opened as late as the twenty tens.
Speaker 2: We split that up by region a little bit. We
Speaker 2: also divided that up by architect to make sure that
Speaker 2: we didn't have sort of too much of a stylistic influence.
Speaker 2: Now that smaller case study fifteen courses is more vulnerable
Speaker 2: to some variation, a little bit tougher to get sort
Speaker 2: of statistical significance on things. But so the only trends
Speaker 2: that we really reported about from that were ones that
Speaker 2: we really felt confident were, hey, this is definitely happening.
Speaker 2: We also included a couple of international case studies just
Speaker 2: to kind of throw a little context in. Those were
Speaker 2: non random that was just kind of some courses that
Speaker 2: we were able to get our hands on a good
Speaker 2: run of aerial images in Japan and Australia. Those were
Speaker 2: both really interesting, sort of just kind of pieces that
Speaker 2: went along with it, but not really something that was
Speaker 2: a big part of the analysis.
Speaker 1: So you had this body of courses that you were
Speaker 1: looking at, this sample of golf courses mostly randomly generated.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Now you're looking at at aerial photos of these courses
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes Google Earth photos or before Google Earth,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever aerial photos are available, and you're comparing
Speaker 1: the golf courses these photos across time and seeing what
Speaker 1: changed as you're doing this. Certainly you need some sort
Speaker 1: of working definition for what a golf course footprint is
Speaker 1: so that you are comparing like to like. So what
Speaker 1: was the definition of a golf course footprint that you
Speaker 1: came up with and started working with.
Speaker 2: So we included everything of the physical space of the
Speaker 2: golf facility, and so that includes all the playing areas
Speaker 2: of the golf course itself. That includes the clubhouse, the
Speaker 2: parking lot, the entrance road, the maintenance facility, any paths
Speaker 2: that were you know, roads and paths and dump areas,
Speaker 2: things that were you know, clearly attributable to the operation
Speaker 2: of the golf course. Naturalized areas because anything that requires maintenance, right,
Speaker 2: so like even if there's big expanses between the holes
Speaker 2: and their naturalized, those areas are going to require some maintenance.
Speaker 2: And so that's included in the bucket. If a course
Speaker 2: had forest, like was sort of wrapped around forest, we
Speaker 2: included the perimeter of the woods, but not like way
Speaker 2: into the woods, so kind of like the logical maintained
Speaker 2: perimeter of it. Any large roads that went through we
Speaker 2: didn't count. Multi course. We kept everything to eighteen whole courses,
Speaker 2: so we avoided any sort of multi course complexes, but
Speaker 2: practice facilities, all of those things that are sort of
Speaker 2: like maintained elements of a golf facility. And I will
Speaker 2: give a shout out to the fact that we worked
Speaker 2: with a number of people who worked in golf course
Speaker 2: architecture were really the people who did a lot of
Speaker 2: the legwork, myself, Christine Fraser, Ryan Farrow, of folks that
Speaker 2: had a good backgrounding course design and studying golf course
Speaker 2: maps and measuring golf course maps. So there was judgment
Speaker 2: calls to be made obviously anytime that you're working with
Speaker 2: aerial photography, so it really helped to have people that
Speaker 2: had a lot of expertise in that field doing that
Speaker 2: analysis because it was definitely some pictures are easier to
Speaker 2: work with than others and shadows, and so we had
Speaker 2: some fun discussions kind of working through it all and hey,
Speaker 2: is this a ta is a spunker? It was really
Speaker 2: an enjoyable process, challenging but.
Speaker 1: Enjoyable, enjoyable for people who like doing this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, which I don't know, I do, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of go through historical areas of golf courses
Speaker 1: for fun, and I would imagine there are some people
Speaker 1: out there listening to this who are the same way.
Speaker 1: So this project is kind of a playpen for that
Speaker 1: kind of interest.
Speaker 2: I tried not to hog all the really interesting courses
Speaker 2: for myself. I tried to make sure that if we
Speaker 2: had some good ones pop up on the random list there,
Speaker 2: that that we spread them around a little bit. And
Speaker 2: one thing that you know, we'll get to this as
Speaker 2: we get further into this conversation, I'm sure, but just
Speaker 2: to kind of highlight, you know, the footprint. So I've
Speaker 2: laid out kind of the definition of a spatial footprint
Speaker 2: that we talked about for this study, the golf course
Speaker 2: and it's integral components. We mapped all the fareaway areas,
Speaker 2: greens areas, bunker areas, tea areas within that kind of
Speaker 2: along with that bigger total footprint. Within the concept of footprint,
Speaker 2: there's the spatial but then there's also kind of like
Speaker 2: the input aspect of footprint, right like what is the
Speaker 2: intensity of maintenance, what are the inputs required to maintain
Speaker 2: that space? And you know, not all footprints are not
Speaker 2: all created equal, right, Like the same area with different
Speaker 2: expectations have two really different implications. And you know, sort
Speaker 2: of a fun example of that, I think is this
Speaker 2: wasn't from the study, but just from know life recently
Speaker 2: and a seminar I did recently. Pasa Temple recently did
Speaker 2: a you know, a very thorough restoration, and we had
Speaker 2: Justin Mandon join us at the GCSAA seminar last year
Speaker 2: for my seminar about golf course renovations, and I showed
Speaker 2: a side to side photo of the thirteenth pole and
Speaker 2: you know, they look you know perfect, you know, great replication,
Speaker 2: great restoration work. And I said, justin you know, it
Speaker 2: looked exactly the same. But do you think it costs
Speaker 2: the same to maintain those bunkers today as it did
Speaker 2: back in nineteen thirty And he obviously aggressively shook his
Speaker 2: head no, that it's a lot harder to maintain them
Speaker 2: to today's standards. So that's an example of how the
Speaker 2: same footprint in very different sets of expectations has very
Speaker 2: different implications for the sustainability of the game, the inputs,
Speaker 2: the cost that we pay as golfers, and so on.
Speaker 2: So there's sort of two types of footprint there. There's
Speaker 2: the spatial and then there's the input type of footprint.
Speaker 1: As well, right, And that's an important distinction because often
Speaker 1: when people talk about their carbon footprint, like their personal
Speaker 1: carbon footprint, it's not like a spatial concept. It's it's
Speaker 1: more of an abstract concept. How much energy are you using?
Speaker 1: How many inputs go into the living of your life?
Speaker 1: And that is sort of what you need to get
Speaker 1: into when you talk about golf courses ultimately, not just
Speaker 1: the space they take up.
Speaker 2: And that's where I mean, that's where this is all going, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's a spatial conversation to then talk about the
Speaker 2: resource part of it and the cost part of it
Speaker 2: and the input's part of it. So the two were
Speaker 2: connected but also sort of slightly different concepts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, space has something to do with the abstract footprint,
Speaker 1: but it does, it's not the whole of the definition. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what were the basic findings about golf courses in
Speaker 1: this study as it relates to the evolution of footprints
Speaker 1: over time. We'll eventually get to some of the other
Speaker 1: interesting in the study about the sizes of various golf
Speaker 1: course features, but let's talk about footprint changes over time.
Speaker 2: First of all, Yeah, I mean the first kind of
Speaker 2: big broad brush. One that I'd throw at you is
Speaker 2: newer golf courses are bigger than older golf courses, and
Speaker 2: that was something that we saw in the eighty core
Speaker 2: sample and in the Championship course case study. The average size,
Speaker 2: I've got it on my screen. Here a few numbers
Speaker 2: so I can remember them. Average acreage footprint in the
Speaker 2: eighty core sample was one hundred and seventy four acres.
Speaker 2: But so that's the average courses that open in the twenties, thirties,
Speaker 2: and forties. If you average those, it's one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty two acres, so it's about twenty acres twenty five
Speaker 2: acres smaller for courses that open in those decades. When
Speaker 2: you go up to the nineteen nineties through the twenty tens,
Speaker 2: they're two hundred and sixteen acres on average, So you
Speaker 2: see big jump later on. It's almost, you know, fifty
Speaker 2: acres difference, more than fifty acres difference between the oldest
Speaker 2: ones and the newest ones. So that's a very clear trend.
Speaker 2: An interesting kind of corollary to that trend is that
Speaker 2: the primary playing areas, you know, what we would consider
Speaker 2: sort of tease greens, fairways, bunkers get smaller over that time,
Speaker 2: and so you've got fairway acreages that are consistently in
Speaker 2: the forty acre range on those older courses. Newer courses
Speaker 2: that are developed through the seventies, eighties, nineties, you're in
Speaker 2: kind of a mid mid twenties type range of a
Speaker 2: fairway acreage. You've got smaller greens, you've got less square
Speaker 2: footage devoted to bunkers, and so you're getting bigger footprints
Speaker 2: and you're getting kind of smaller playing primary playing surfaces
Speaker 2: through time. There which is an interesting offse that you
Speaker 2: also see within the courses once they're built. So that's
Speaker 2: when they're built, Okay, you get a parallel phenomenon or
Speaker 2: sort of concurrent phenomenon. Once a course is built, its
Speaker 2: footprint of those primary playing services also tends to shrink,
Speaker 2: and so courses that are built in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: thirties and forties that had forty acres of fairway, they're
Speaker 2: constantly shrinking down their green size fairway acreage button bunker
Speaker 2: square footage. New courses being built are following that trend,
Speaker 2: except that they're being newly built, so there isn't as
Speaker 2: much time for that to happen over time. We saw
Speaker 2: a little bit of a turnaround on some of that
Speaker 2: in the absolute most recent ones built in the twenty
Speaker 2: tens were the last ones built in our study where
Speaker 2: we started to see fairway acreages creep back up again.
Speaker 2: But they had been declining up until that point, and
Speaker 2: then you start to see a little bit of an increase,
Speaker 2: which we can get to after that, So that's sort
Speaker 2: of that's kind of one of the key findings is
Speaker 2: that older courses smaller than newer courses in terms of footprint.
Speaker 2: Another key finding is that longer courses have a larger footprint,
Speaker 2: and so there's an interrelationship there between older courses tending
Speaker 2: to be shorter at the time of construction versus more
Speaker 2: modern courses that tend to be built longer initially in
Speaker 2: the first place and built with a larger footprint. So
Speaker 2: you get that phenomena. If I look at my chart here,
Speaker 2: courses that were in the seven thousand to seventy five
Speaker 2: hundred range for back te yardage had an average footprint
Speaker 2: of two hundred and ten acres sixty five hundred to
Speaker 2: seven thousand, one hundred and sixty seven one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty eight acres of total footprint, so we're talking fifty
Speaker 2: acres difference on you know, a range of probably about
Speaker 2: five hundred yards of back te difference, and that goes
Speaker 2: all the way down courses that are six thousand to
Speaker 2: sixty five hundred or one hundred and thirty four acres
Speaker 2: of average footprint in our eighty course sample, so back
Speaker 2: to yardage and total footprint connected new courses bigger than
Speaker 2: older courses. Part of that. Another thing that we saw
Speaker 2: is a growth in practice facility acreage square footage. So
Speaker 2: that's the range, but that's also sort of related practice facilities. Right.
Speaker 2: You see short game areas crop up. You see you
Speaker 2: know a range tea on both ends of the range,
Speaker 2: and the range get expanded. You see basically a growing
Speaker 2: interest in practice materializes in these aerial photos over time,
Speaker 2: where a bunch of the sort of earlier courses some
Speaker 2: didn't have a practice facility at all or any kind
Speaker 2: of evident range. You see those get added. You see
Speaker 2: ones that were there get developed to become larger. Part
Speaker 2: of that has a distance component to it, obviously, part
Speaker 2: of it. It just reflects a growing interest in practice too, right,
Speaker 2: I mean we see that everywhere that there's just a
Speaker 2: more emphasis placed on it than I think there was
Speaker 2: in the past. And certainly when you go overseas and
Speaker 2: you look at any of those courses, any ranges that
Speaker 2: they have have been retro fit in, you know, two
Speaker 2: hundred years after the course opened, right, I mean, it
Speaker 2: just wasn't really a thing back in the day, and
Speaker 2: then it kind of became one, and golf courses have
Speaker 2: had to react. That has a footprint implication to it.
Speaker 1: To boil down some of the main historical trends here,
Speaker 1: what this study found was golf courses have gotten both
Speaker 1: bigger and smaller, a bigger in footprint and smaller in
Speaker 1: fair way and green size. How did you go about
Speaker 1: determining why it was that golf courses in general expanded
Speaker 1: their footprints? How did you think that issue through in
Speaker 1: terms of causes?
Speaker 2: You know, I mean number one, I don't believe that
Speaker 2: we can answer it definitively. You can look for you
Speaker 2: can look for connections, you can look for correlations, but
Speaker 2: it's it's something that we left sort of in the
Speaker 2: hands of the reader. I think a little bit is
Speaker 2: to say, hey, here's some reasons why, but it's hard
Speaker 2: to answer definitively. So a few factors to consider. You've
Speaker 2: got the distance factor is longer courses correlated to being
Speaker 2: larger courses, So that's that's a part of that overall
Speaker 2: footprint equation for sure. In addition, you've got something like
Speaker 2: the growing interest in practice, right, that's a that's a
Speaker 2: cultural change of how golf facilities are being used, how
Speaker 2: people what people expect from a golf facility. So that's
Speaker 2: but that's an element of footprint, right. I mean, we
Speaker 2: had a number of courses that didn't have practice facilities
Speaker 2: that added them. That was correlated actually with when we
Speaker 2: saw the biggest changes in courses. So not very many
Speaker 2: courses added a practice facility when they didn't have one,
Speaker 2: usually because they didn't have the space. They didn't have it,
Speaker 2: they weren't going to be able to find the space.
Speaker 2: But when we saw really big changes in footprint, it
Speaker 2: often connected with the addition of a practice facility, the
Speaker 2: addition of a driving range that wasn't there. So that's
Speaker 2: a cultural change in footprint. That sort of cultural change
Speaker 2: from what you expect from a facility, how a facility
Speaker 2: gets used, goes to parking lots, clubhouses, maintenance facilities growing.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you look at some of the old
Speaker 2: old maintenance facilities versus what's you know, kind of considered
Speaker 2: normal today, that's a big change. Access, access to the
Speaker 2: maintenance facilities, store bridge for materials, all these different things.
Speaker 2: Golf courses, golf facilities are used differently than they were
Speaker 2: in the past, and so that's certainly a driving factor
Speaker 2: to it. Another one that's an interesting one, and again
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's hard to place any of the
Speaker 2: weight on any one thing, and the factors kind of
Speaker 2: relate to one another. The more modern courses in general
Speaker 2: tend to be built farther out of town, and we've
Speaker 2: seen that, you know throughout these past however, many you know,
Speaker 2: decades of recent golf course development, and once you get
Speaker 2: farther out of town, there's probably a little less incentive
Speaker 2: to be that concerned about space, right, I mean, you're
Speaker 2: out at Sand Valley or wherever you're at, you're not
Speaker 2: going to be quite as concerned about what your footprint
Speaker 2: is when the land, you know, the land acreage, isn't
Speaker 2: it as the same premium When you don't have, you know,
Speaker 2: an entire neighborhood of dense populated New Jersey surrounding your property,
Speaker 2: you're kind of out farther out, You've got more room
Speaker 2: to you know, spread out a little bit more, and
Speaker 2: so that's definitely a driving factor. There's also probably sort
Speaker 2: of a fashion element to it as well. And I
Speaker 2: don't say fashion disparagingly, but I say, you know, there's
Speaker 2: been an emphasis on with in recent years, which I
Speaker 2: think is a great one, which I think is a
Speaker 2: super positive trend that has implications in terms of golf
Speaker 2: course footprint. For example, there's an emphasis on you know,
Speaker 2: vouting to really optimize the land. Right well, if you've
Speaker 2: got this big site and you've got all of these
Speaker 2: kind of this huge area at your disposal, that may
Speaker 2: lend itself to you know, fanning out a little bit
Speaker 2: more and going to look for the you know, what
Speaker 2: are the best nooks and crannies of that site. When
Speaker 2: you've got your sort of sand Hills constellation map in
Speaker 2: front of you and you're kind of thinking through that,
Speaker 2: if space isn't a super a super pinch point, then yeah,
Speaker 2: you've got some more room to spread out and go
Speaker 2: find the best ground that's out there. So I think
Speaker 2: those are probably some of the key trends that have
Speaker 2: led to a little bit of a growing footprint overtime.
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Speaker 1: All right, so let's go from talking about footprint to
Speaker 1: talking about the evolution of golf course features, which which
Speaker 1: you've touched on a bit here. What factors do you
Speaker 1: think drove the changes in the kind of shrinking of fairways,
Speaker 1: shrinking of greens over time.
Speaker 2: Maintainability, uh is going to be you know, I think
Speaker 2: number one, and changing maintenance technology. So we look back
Speaker 2: at old photos of these places and we see kind
Speaker 2: of the you know, the gang mode ultra wide fairways
Speaker 2: that were probably mode with a you know, pulled behind
Speaker 2: wide tractor unit. The evolution of lighter weight fairway mowing
Speaker 2: equipment that could mow lower starts to be you know,
Speaker 2: but is it quite as wide and isn't doing quite
Speaker 2: the same swath. That's a factor. The introduction of irrigation systems,
Speaker 2: and irrigation systems that start to cost a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: The more square footage, you know, and that are also
Speaker 2: limited in wanting head to head coverage, right, Like, there's
Speaker 2: a spatial component to that of how much they can
Speaker 2: cover efficiently. So if you add two rows, those only
Speaker 2: cover so much before you're kind of outside of that
Speaker 2: irrigated envelope. And so your fairway wants to kind of
Speaker 2: come in, Your greens kind of want to come in.
Speaker 2: Expectations going up. So these are all the maintenance factors, right,
Speaker 2: changing equipment, changing the irrigation systems, higher expectations. I mean,
Speaker 2: going back to that Pasa Tampo example, those nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: pictures of Pasa Tampo looks sweet. Would they pass muster
Speaker 2: today if the golf course was suddenly maintained like that, Like,
Speaker 2: probably not. There's a much higher standard, a much higher
Speaker 2: expectation for how those bunkers are going to be presented,
Speaker 2: how often they're going to be raked, how tidy those
Speaker 2: edges are going to be kept. All of those things
Speaker 2: are completely different than they were in that time. So
Speaker 2: all of those elements kind of put a shrinking pressure
Speaker 2: on all those features. Bunkers themselves. We didn't tend to
Speaker 2: see the number of bunkers necessarily decrease that much, but
Speaker 2: the sand square footage, for sure wanted to decrease over time.
Speaker 2: That again is a maintainability concern for sure, and that's
Speaker 2: something that I spent a lot of time sort of undoing.
Speaker 2: That trend working in golf course restorations was recapturing bunker
Speaker 2: square footage that had been lost, putting bunkers back in
Speaker 2: that had been taken out, restoring the complexity the bunkers
Speaker 2: that had been taken out. I mean they didn't and
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes that's just kind of wear and tear
Speaker 2: over time. A lot of it is, you know, we
Speaker 2: don't you know, you come to a certain point in
Speaker 2: time where the economics are tough, or hiring's tough, or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you just don't want to maintain all
Speaker 2: these fancy nooks and crannies anymore. And you can understand
Speaker 2: why somebody's like, hey, I'm just trying to keep this
Speaker 2: golf course open right now. We got to simplify this
Speaker 2: a little bit, and that, you know, that's kind of
Speaker 2: a driving factor behind a bunch of those kind of changes.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how a lot of this stuff happens gradually
Speaker 1: and without necessarily anybody making a decision about it. You know,
Speaker 1: golf course installs a new irrigation system sometime in the
Speaker 1: middle of the twentieth century, and maybe it's even a
Speaker 1: single row irrigation system. There's going down the center line
Speaker 1: of each hole. Those irrigation heads only throw out so
Speaker 1: much water, and all of a sudden, the extent of
Speaker 1: the irrigation starts to define the width of the corridor.
Speaker 1: And that's what golfer see. And then you know what's
Speaker 1: the next common sense move, Well, start to plant some
Speaker 1: trees where there's not green grass anymore, and and that
Speaker 1: becomes the new corridor. Similar things happen with bunkers, where
Speaker 1: you know, they just kind of where over time, and
Speaker 1: you know, maintenance workers start thinking, I just want to
Speaker 1: maintain this much of the bunker, and eventually everything just
Speaker 1: kind of grows in and shrinks. So that's something certainly
Speaker 1: that the golf course restoration specialists see see all the
Speaker 1: time and explain some of that evolution that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the tree growth one is a good one
Speaker 2: to point out that gets to be a little bit
Speaker 2: I mean the example you gave as a good sort
Speaker 2: of chicken or the egg type situation. I mean, sometimes
Speaker 2: the trees go in to adapt, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: frame the new corridor. Sometimes the trees just get planted
Speaker 2: and they create the new corridor. Because you you planted
Speaker 2: the trees, but didn't necessarily know you had your open
Speaker 2: farm field that you went and build this golf course
Speaker 2: on planted some trees out there at what seemed like
Speaker 2: a reasonable spacing when it was empty. Well, they grow,
Speaker 2: they get bigger, and all of a sudden like things
Speaker 2: have to shrink to fit where the trees got put.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, trees are a great example of how
Speaker 2: just sort of these very slow changes can happen, Like
Speaker 2: you said, a lot of times people may not even
Speaker 2: necessarily notice, but when you look at it in twenty
Speaker 2: year increments on an aerial photo, you see how those
Speaker 2: changes kind of how that time lapse really changes the
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 1: Well, this discussion here of why the dimensions of golf
Speaker 1: features like fairways and bunkers and greens shrink, why that
Speaker 1: happens partly explains what the impact of a larger golf
Speaker 1: course footprint might be in terms of environment, in terms
Speaker 1: of cost. Right, so as you expand the area you're maintaining.
Speaker 1: If that is bigger, then the cost of maintaining that
Speaker 1: is bigger. So what are some of the some of
Speaker 1: the biggest effects of having a larger golf course footprint.
Speaker 2: First one I would point to is just the higher
Speaker 2: cost of building and maintaining the golf course, which and
Speaker 2: I'm sure golfers won't be happy to hear this, it
Speaker 2: eventually translates to you paying more to play that golf course.
Speaker 2: And I will say that it does seem like sometimes
Speaker 2: that golfers don't necessarily realize that the things that they're
Speaker 2: asking for. I don't think it necessarily the dots always
Speaker 2: connect that like, at some point everything that happens on
Speaker 2: a golf course is going to be paid for by
Speaker 2: the golfer or is going to lead to the you know,
Speaker 2: financial misfortunes of the facility, because like, somebody's going to
Speaker 2: pay for all of these things eventually, and I feel
Speaker 2: like people don't necessarily realize it when they're asking for it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, those higher expectations, that bigger footprint, that higher
Speaker 2: construction costs, I mean that all really needs to be
Speaker 2: recouped at some point in order for the place to
Speaker 2: make sense, and so those costs are going to get
Speaker 2: passed on to golfers, and that's going to be a
Speaker 2: higher cost to play the game, right. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: just sort of a factor of it. I Mean. Another
Speaker 2: one that I'd add there is as golf courses spread out,
Speaker 2: and this is not necessarily the case, but it certainly
Speaker 2: there are examples of it. As they spread out, as
Speaker 2: they tend to kind of occupy more square footage, they
Speaker 2: get harder to walk, they get harder to get around.
Speaker 2: It can be slower to play. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: reason why links courses, there's a reason why Marion and
Speaker 2: Kingston Heath in these places. I mean, there's a reason
Speaker 2: why they built them with the green here and the
Speaker 2: next tea right over here. Is because it was a
Speaker 2: walking game. You envisioned that people were going to be
Speaker 2: walking to play. You envisioned the pace of play probably
Speaker 2: not to be five and a half hours or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't envision these these the way the
Speaker 2: modern game. You didn't envision golf carts in these things.
Speaker 2: So they were built compact because they were meant to
Speaker 2: be walkable. When you become sort of untethered from that,
Speaker 2: you end up with some Yeah, I mean it becomes
Speaker 2: a self fulfilling prophecy, right of like we're gonna spread
Speaker 2: out because everybody takes carts, and it's like, well, we
Speaker 2: just spread out, and now everybody's got to take carts,
Speaker 2: and so that, you know, becomes a potential implication of it.
Speaker 2: It's not always the case like their courses like sand
Speaker 2: hills that I mentioned that are eminently walkable. There's plenty
Speaker 2: of courses that occupy a large footprint that are very walkable,
Speaker 2: but the door is open to more walkability challenges. I
Speaker 2: think the bigger that a facility gets, uh and pace
Speaker 2: of play implications associated with it. I think that they
Speaker 2: you know, you get the inevitable, so cost more to maintain,
Speaker 2: cost more to play, cost more build. There's also that
Speaker 2: sort of you know, the input element of that is
Speaker 2: that they cost more to maintain. They require more resources.
Speaker 2: So the cost and the resources to maintain are linked.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they require more resources, and that's not like
Speaker 2: necessarily a negative thing. I mean, I don't I don't
Speaker 2: think that it's you know, I don't I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: view that as like environmental impact, right, because like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of environmental positives that come with golf courses,
Speaker 2: certainly in comparison to other forms of development. So it's
Speaker 2: not like an environmental impact statement, but to me, it
Speaker 2: becomes harder to you know, it just it requires more
Speaker 2: inputs to deliver. You know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: what is the same core function, which is a round
Speaker 2: of golf. To go and play a round of golf,
Speaker 2: it now requires more inputs than it would have at
Speaker 2: the same standards on a small footprint. And so to me,
Speaker 2: ideally you want to be you know, requiring, as you know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to use more resources than necessary to
Speaker 2: deliver the expected experience, and footprint plays a role in
Speaker 2: that regardless of what your standards are, So you know,
Speaker 2: totally recognize and respect the fact that different facilities have
Speaker 2: different standards for how they want their golf courses maintained,
Speaker 2: regardless of where you're at on that spectrum. The footprint,
Speaker 2: you know, a larger footprint is going to mean more.
Speaker 2: It's going to mean more inputs, it's going to be
Speaker 2: more fuel, it's going to mean more water. All these
Speaker 2: different things are going to have to be more and
Speaker 2: then that becomes that translates into more cost that eventually
Speaker 2: goes on to higher green fees, higher membership dues, whatever
Speaker 2: it might be. So, I mean those are kind of
Speaker 2: the the big implications I would say of that foot
Speaker 2: print getting larger. I'd also say another one, actually, is
Speaker 2: that issue that I raised of being farther out of town.
Speaker 2: If footprints are you know, if the core golf course,
Speaker 2: if the modern golf course requires a larger and larger footprint,
Speaker 2: that inevitably means that the new golf development has to
Speaker 2: happen farther away from where most people live. That's not
Speaker 2: necessarily a negative, right, I mean, like a lot of
Speaker 2: awesome golf has happened because it was built farther away
Speaker 2: from where people live, on these incredible properties that just
Speaker 2: don't exist near town. However, there is an accessibility component
Speaker 2: to that, and I mean just you know, by accessibility
Speaker 2: there I mean just the ability of more people to
Speaker 2: access newer and more golf options. That decreases as as
Speaker 2: footprints get larger and larger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it has it has further footprint implications in
Speaker 1: terms of the the cost and and the perhaps environmental
Speaker 1: impact even of getting golfers there. Right, If you if
Speaker 1: you can just walk out in your neighborhood and go
Speaker 1: to a golf course that's right there. That is a
Speaker 1: very low impact way of going to play golf, whereas
Speaker 1: driving out to wherever the suburbs or or farther out
Speaker 1: would would involve more. So this this all gets at
Speaker 1: what I think is a really interesting paradox in this study,
Speaker 1: or or uh, maybe not paradox so much as two different,
Speaker 1: two different imperatives that that seem to be maybe working
Speaker 1: against each other. And and that is this that you
Speaker 1: and I and most golf architects least want golf courses
Speaker 1: to be restored to their original dimensions in terms of
Speaker 1: fairway with and green size and bunker size, and regain
Speaker 1: those dimensions that were so great to begin with. At
Speaker 1: the same time, we do want golf course footprints to shrink.
Speaker 1: And it would seem that those two, those two movements
Speaker 1: would be opposed to each other. You want the fairways
Speaker 1: to be wider, you want the greens to be bigger,
Speaker 1: but you also want the golf course footprint to be smaller.
Speaker 1: How do you think through that contradiction? Is there a
Speaker 1: potential hypocrisy there?
Speaker 2: Even I don't think that there is necessarily a contradiction
Speaker 2: in that, And I would say, if golf courses out
Speaker 2: there don't feel like they've got an issue with maintaining
Speaker 2: the footprint that they have, you know, then I think
Speaker 2: that that's sort of their prerogative. So I mean that's
Speaker 2: sort of like step one is dow facilities. You know,
Speaker 2: are they interested in where their footprint is heading? I
Speaker 2: would say that the you know, whatever a particular course
Speaker 2: might say, I would say that when you look at
Speaker 2: that average course sample, you see the pressure of maintenance
Speaker 2: cost over time and the implications that they are changing
Speaker 2: the course based on that, And so I think that's
Speaker 2: a reality, right. My preference is to see I think
Speaker 2: there's sort of two ways to go about it. You
Speaker 2: can look at shrinking footprint physical space. How do you
Speaker 2: reaaloicate that space? Is it a smaller space? Is it
Speaker 2: how you break up the space within it? Is it
Speaker 2: more naturalized areas, more fair away, less rough? For example?
Speaker 2: Is this a calculation where you could try to take
Speaker 2: some resources away from one thing move it to another
Speaker 2: apart from adjusting the the size of the space or
Speaker 2: the composition of the space. Is the intensity like I
Speaker 2: talked about, is the intensity and the expectations for what
Speaker 2: that space, how that space is going to be maintained,
Speaker 2: And to me, I think it's really sad to think
Speaker 2: that we're going to shrink bunker square footage, we're going
Speaker 2: to eliminate bunkers rather than you know, if maintenance costs
Speaker 2: is the driving force maintenance and construction costs is the
Speaker 2: driving force behind that, I'd love to see that the
Speaker 2: expectation on the maintenance come down and the bunker square
Speaker 2: footage stay the same, right, Like I mean, if if
Speaker 2: back in you know, whatever time period and you're looking
Speaker 2: at a set of Mackenzie bunkers and you're trying to
Speaker 2: decide what to do because they're expensive, I'd sure rather
Speaker 2: see them presented like they were in Positiampo photos in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty than gotten rid of. So I think there's
Speaker 2: a couple different ways to get at it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think that there's a contradiction there. I think
Speaker 2: it's it's about efficient use of space. And that's another
Speaker 2: thing is that we should look at golf courses. I
Speaker 2: think always with an open mind towards is there a
Speaker 2: better use of this space than what it's currently at.
Speaker 2: And that's not I would not necessarily be you know,
Speaker 2: people will jump to you know, be judgmental about original
Speaker 2: designs and past architecture, and you know, certainly we hear
Speaker 2: plenty of those conversations. It's you know, I think that
Speaker 2: you take what it is, okay. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: factors that go into why a golf course is the
Speaker 2: way that it is, from an owner, from a you know,
Speaker 2: development priorities, all these factors. Right, Like, I think it's
Speaker 2: unfair to always go and blame the you know, an
Speaker 2: architect for every element of something. And it's like, look,
Speaker 2: there's constraints on these things, and these people get jobs
Speaker 2: to deliver a certain result. And also, you know, fashions
Speaker 2: do change over time. And certainly I believe that there
Speaker 2: are some things that are that are timeless, that are
Speaker 2: you know, that are just good always in golf course architecture,
Speaker 2: room to play, playability for lots of different groups, all
Speaker 2: those things. But there are fashions that come and go
Speaker 2: in the game that change how courses are laid out,
Speaker 2: how the space is allocated. So I don't think we
Speaker 2: should be shy about, you know, taking a look at
Speaker 2: golf courses and trying to see, hey is there a
Speaker 2: better use of this space. Now. That can be a
Speaker 2: really big change, like totally re routing a golf course,
Speaker 2: or it can be sort of smaller changes along the
Speaker 2: lines of even within this layout, does this need to
Speaker 2: be fair way? Does this need to be irrigated terf?
Speaker 2: Has nobody gone in this bunker forever and it doesn't
Speaker 2: really serve any esthetic purpose? Do we need it? So
Speaker 2: we've got a lot of tools now that can help
Speaker 2: us analyze those things, that can help us kind of
Speaker 2: look into those spaces and figure out the best use
Speaker 2: for them. I mean a neat one that I just
Speaker 2: heard about. Actually we're working on an article for the
Speaker 2: Green Section Record, and I know that you're sort of
Speaker 2: familiar with this work is Ja Blozi's renovations at Poppy
Speaker 2: Hills there, And like I had to look at the
Speaker 2: email Ja to get confirmation on some of the things
Speaker 2: in the media guide there because they had sort of
Speaker 2: significantly reduced the irrigated turf. They reduced the irrigated turf
Speaker 2: acreage by like twenty acres, but also expanded the fairway
Speaker 2: acreage by twenty acres and expanded the fairway with and
Speaker 2: the one that really kind of like knocked me over
Speaker 2: was that they did managed to reroute the golf course
Speaker 2: so that from the sixty five hundred yard tees it
Speaker 2: was two thousand yards shorter of a walk now than
Speaker 2: it was at the time. Now it is originally built,
Speaker 2: it planned for carts. I mean, all the you know,
Speaker 2: pressure for water in California totally differently. It's just a
Speaker 2: different situation. But times change, and certainly going back and
Speaker 2: looking at a course, yeah, you can make some really
Speaker 2: meaningful changes to footprint within the same you know, sort
Speaker 2: of footprint if you will.
Speaker 1: And so in that example, you're talking about Poppy Ridge, right,
Speaker 1: not not Poppy Hills. And no, it's okay, there there
Speaker 1: are two. They're they're both actually n C g A
Speaker 1: facilities and so yeah, sorry, their names are quite similar.
Speaker 1: But well, just to put a finer point on it,
Speaker 1: if somebody's calling for wider fairways and bigger greens at
Speaker 1: the same time that they're calling for lower costs and
Speaker 1: lower environmental impact.
Speaker 2: Is that is that?
Speaker 1: Is that a reasonable ask? And I think what you're
Speaker 1: describing right now is that there are architectural moves that
Speaker 1: can be made and maintenance moves that can be made
Speaker 1: that bring about both of those results.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we saw it in I mean, this is
Speaker 2: where something like the Australian course case study that we
Speaker 2: did as part of this project was an interesting contrast.
Speaker 2: I mean, the footprint of those courses was substantially smaller.
Speaker 2: I mean there were about one hundred and thirty acres
Speaker 2: on average, and that included that sample Kingston Heath included Victoria.
Speaker 2: It was a bunch of courses sort of in the
Speaker 2: state of Victoria and mostly in and around Melbourne, substantially
Speaker 2: smaller footprints. And I've been to Kingston Heath and certainly,
Speaker 2: while it's a compact property, it has that seem kind
Speaker 2: of feel like a Marian has and actually kind of
Speaker 2: a similar sort of footprint really of yeah, it's compact,
Speaker 2: but it never feels cramped at all. And so with
Speaker 2: the right site and with the right sort of you know,
Speaker 2: thoughts about efficiency, I believe that you can have you know,
Speaker 2: ample playing corridors, fair ways that are plenty wide enough,
Speaker 2: greens that offer plenty of interest, and you know, room
Speaker 2: to move flag around and all these things. I do
Speaker 2: think that it's possible to do both. I will say
Speaker 2: that a bunch of what we've seen recently doesn't lead
Speaker 2: me to believe that there's necessarily a desire to shrink
Speaker 2: footprint in some of the more modern developments. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, the width is desired, and the properties are
Speaker 2: grand and kind of weave through these, you know, great
Speaker 2: big expanses, and it's wonderful. I mean, I absolutely love
Speaker 2: that kind of golf. It doesn't feel like that type
Speaker 2: of a development has gone out with the goal of
Speaker 2: keeping footprint under control.
Speaker 1: Or keeping costs under control under control necessarily that that
Speaker 1: kind of that kind of golf is maybe inevitably going
Speaker 1: to be expensive for the golfer to experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's another thing to think about also,
Speaker 2: you know, from this study, but just sort of in general,
Speaker 2: is that in the grand scheme of things, new course
Speaker 2: development is a relatively small subset of the total stock
Speaker 2: of golf courses, right. I mean, like, we we're in
Speaker 2: a time right now by the most new course development
Speaker 2: that I've seen since I worked in the golf course industry.
Speaker 2: But it's still not like a crazy amount of new courses,
Speaker 2: Like it feels crazy compared to what it was twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. But the vast majority of golf courses are are.
Speaker 3: In the space that they occupy, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: where they're going to be, And so it gets to
Speaker 3: the question really becomes, how do those courses optimize where they're.
Speaker 2: At to kind of meet their goals? And that becomes
Speaker 2: less of a these kind of big picture changes. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've seen a ton of renovation lately, but total redesign
Speaker 2: is not necessarily something that's the vast majority of courses
Speaker 2: are ever going to get a chance to do, or
Speaker 2: they might get to do it once in a generation.
Speaker 2: What are some of the ways that we can help
Speaker 2: them optimize their footprint relatively affordably within the space that
Speaker 2: they have and within the maintenance resources that they've got
Speaker 2: to devote to it.
Speaker 1: So, in relation to the historical evolution of golf course
Speaker 1: footprints and features, these questions that we've been talking about
Speaker 1: so far, what are some things that you're you're curious
Speaker 1: about and that you want to research further? Basically, where
Speaker 1: is this all going next for you? In terms of
Speaker 1: your kind of intellectual exploration of the evolution of golf courses.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've become it's been golf course footprint has
Speaker 2: been something that I've thought a lot about I guess
Speaker 2: kind of more informally through my design career, and then
Speaker 2: have been kind of forced to think about more in
Speaker 2: greater detail and more objectively after coming to the USJ
Speaker 2: and that started with distance insights and having the opportunity
Speaker 2: to work on this project through distance insights, and then
Speaker 2: we've started a water initiative of how to help courses
Speaker 2: save water. Those things get into like the okay, like
Speaker 2: really get into the nuts and bolts and the numbers
Speaker 2: and the details of golf course footprints. Like my next
Speaker 2: curiosities really are what type of like golf courses as
Speaker 2: they exist today, how can they optimize that space? And
Speaker 2: one of my actually one of my biggest frustrations I
Speaker 2: I would say, is when you look at golf courses
Speaker 2: and you think, oh, you know, one of the first
Speaker 2: things I would do to reduce the amount of kind
Speaker 2: of input footprint is converting irrigated turf maintained turf to
Speaker 2: naturalized areas. Right, Like, let's just let's shut the water off,
Speaker 2: let's quit moe in these areas, let's stop putting fertilizer
Speaker 2: out there. One of my tremendous frustrations is that those
Speaker 2: areas end up in many cases taking more attention than
Speaker 2: mon Rough does because the expectations for a naturalized area
Speaker 2: are in some ways harder to meet than that of
Speaker 2: Moan Rough. And so that's one area that I'm just
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated to try to look for, you know that
Speaker 2: I'd love to see the golf world look for better
Speaker 2: answers in is hey on the education side of things,
Speaker 2: like can we get these back into perspective? Because to me,
Speaker 2: I feel like a naturalized area should be like the
Speaker 2: lowest input option possible, Like if we're that's what it's
Speaker 2: meant to be, barring like the you know, the Shinnecock
Speaker 2: Hills situation, where this is like an integral part of
Speaker 2: the environment in which the course is in and Okay,
Speaker 2: we're maintaining this ecosystem out here. That's not most courses,
Speaker 2: and so most courses are looking for Hey, these are
Speaker 2: out of play. We don't really need this space to
Speaker 2: be maintained at the intensity that we have been. What
Speaker 2: can we do, whether that's trying to save water, whether
Speaker 2: that's trying to reduce staff time, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: And then you hear just kind of constantly that like
Speaker 2: from Superintendent's like that this is worse, like, this is
Speaker 2: a this is harder for me to deal with. This
Speaker 2: takes more staff time to deal with than what I
Speaker 2: was used to. So I mean, I think a big
Speaker 2: part of that is starting to look into alternative plant
Speaker 2: compositions for these areas and what do they really need
Speaker 2: to be and probably getting away from the sort of
Speaker 2: fine fescue wispy I mean, that's just not natural to
Speaker 2: every area, and trying to go that route everywhere has
Speaker 2: this esthetic in people's minds that just doesn't it's really
Speaker 2: hard to achieve, that's difficult to maintain, that wants to
Speaker 2: kind of fall apart and get all weedy in a mess,
Speaker 2: like are there other plants? Are there? Other options? Are
Speaker 2: there are different ways to present these kind of out
Speaker 2: of play areas that are as inexpensive as possible and
Speaker 2: as playable as possible. So that and obviously it's going
Speaker 2: to be site specific, right, so that's going to vary everywhere.
Speaker 2: But can we get into that a little bit better
Speaker 2: so that that's not a stumbling block to a more
Speaker 2: efficient golf course footprint. I mean, I can remember I
Speaker 2: worked with a course in sort of the Los Angeles
Speaker 2: area that went through a big restoration, and later on
Speaker 2: sort of took advantage of some turf reduction programs that
Speaker 2: they had incentivized out in California. There reduced huge areas
Speaker 2: of maintained turf, saving tons of water and so on.
Speaker 2: The labor is really expensive in California too, and so
Speaker 2: superintendent at the time told me he's like, yeah, he's like,
Speaker 2: these areas have really been a nightmare. The members were
Speaker 2: asking him to sweep up dry leaves in between the
Speaker 2: small plants, and these like what were meant to be
Speaker 2: like air kind of sparse vegetation, desert type areas, and
Speaker 2: there were raking leaves in between the little bushes, and
Speaker 2: it's like that kind of thing. I think we really
Speaker 2: need to get a better handle on the expectations management side,
Speaker 2: but also on what are the options, what are some
Speaker 2: ways to really do this effectively, because that is an
Speaker 2: obstacle to golf courses being more efficient with how they
Speaker 2: use their space. Another one I think, and this is
Speaker 2: I'm probably pretty big on expectations management, and I almost
Speaker 2: feel bad, you know, it almost feels un American to
Speaker 2: be like, you know, maybe things just don't really need
Speaker 2: to get better in every single spot like maybe some
Speaker 2: of these areas could be less well cared forman's you know,
Speaker 2: if you're having a a true there's these courses that
Speaker 2: that have essentially an unlimited maintenance budget, or at least
Speaker 2: a very high maintenance budget, and they've got a standard
Speaker 2: that they want kept. This is how they want to
Speaker 2: spend their money. I think that that's great. I think
Speaker 2: that that's every course's prerogative to do. I think it's
Speaker 2: wonderful when courses want to invest in their property and
Speaker 2: their maintenance and all these different things. I think it's great.
Speaker 2: I think where it really kind of stumbling blocked for me,
Speaker 2: and I think this is way more places than are well,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's way more places than are in
Speaker 2: the category of unlimited resources. And that's why we do
Speaker 2: these things are the ones that are one in, two
Speaker 2: and three steps down that don't have those unlimited budgets.
Speaker 2: But still how these kind of like sky high expectations.
Speaker 2: And I look back at sort of our experience through
Speaker 2: that whole COVID pandemic, where at least where I was
Speaker 2: living at the time in New Jersey, they weren't raking bunkers.
Speaker 2: All these kind of things had been kind of shut
Speaker 2: off or scaled way back. They were raking them once
Speaker 2: in a while. There were no more rakes and bunkers,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. Golf was still fun. People played
Speaker 2: more and Okay, yeah it was a I mean there's
Speaker 2: a unique set of circumstances, but people kept playing more.
Speaker 2: And I don't believe that golf was inherently way less
Speaker 2: fun because maintenance had been scaled back a little bit
Speaker 2: or kind of refocused and like, okay, hey we're doing greens,
Speaker 2: teas and fairways right now, and the bunkers are just
Speaker 2: going to be a little rougher than they were. I
Speaker 2: think that was fine, and I really think that most
Speaker 2: people seem to be enjoying it, and so I think
Speaker 2: that there's room for expectations to change. And I don't
Speaker 2: think that that's something that the golf world should steer
Speaker 2: away from and think that hey, it's just always got
Speaker 2: to be more and better, and I just, yeah, progress
Speaker 2: is important, but I do also think that there are
Speaker 2: opportunities to reset expectations. You know, I let we work
Speaker 2: across the street from a really great example of that,
Speaker 2: Piner's Number two, I mean the usja's Piner's office were
Speaker 2: on base literally across the road from it. I was
Speaker 2: fortunate to work on that restoration project where you saw
Speaker 2: the irrigated acreage dropped by forty acres and you saw
Speaker 2: winter overseating that was considered obligatory, like, well, we've got
Speaker 2: overset every winter. That's the only way we've moved away
Speaker 2: from that there now because the business demands changed, because
Speaker 2: people wanted better conditions throughout the years, all these different reasons.
Speaker 2: They didn't just do it for the sake of saving resources.
Speaker 2: But it just goes to show that there are opportunities
Speaker 2: to fundamentally change expectations in ways that make sense from
Speaker 2: a business standpoint, from a maintenance standpoint, from player demand standpoint,
Speaker 2: and kind of this whole footprint inputs standpoint as well. Sorry,
Speaker 2: that was a long answer to that question.
Speaker 1: No, well, it's a complex question, and that is the
Speaker 1: big nut to crack is golfer expectations because going back
Speaker 1: to those old photos that you're looking at for these studies,
Speaker 1: what's the single biggest difference, aside from width and feature
Speaker 1: sizes and all of that kind of thing, It is
Speaker 1: the condition of the fairways, the condition of the greens,
Speaker 1: the condition of the bunkers, and just the extent to
Speaker 1: which the huge amount of inputs that we're used to
Speaker 1: now we're simply not necessary to meet golfer expectations back then,
Speaker 1: and so trying to trying to reset golfer expectations. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll leave that up to smarter people than than me,
Speaker 1: because it's a it's a massive project, but that is
Speaker 1: the big factor here. If we want to reduce golf
Speaker 1: course footprints, we've got to reset expectations.
Speaker 2: The challenge is that, you know, none of these none
Speaker 2: of these things are bad, right, Like it's not like, yeah,
Speaker 2: big practice facilities awesome, Like it's it's a great thing
Speaker 2: to have. A short game areas is outstanding to have,
Speaker 2: and better like all of these things are not negative,
Speaker 2: Like they're not making anything worse. They're they're you know,
Speaker 2: in many ways there are improvements. But that kind of
Speaker 2: tension between better and necessary, I think is one that
Speaker 2: that I'm kind of continually fascinated by. UH And it's
Speaker 2: hard to it's hard to come to a good spot
Speaker 2: with it sometimes, But I do think that there there
Speaker 2: are opportunities to I don't think that people should underestimate
Speaker 2: golfer's ability to adapt their expectations and to and to
Speaker 2: be open to new things. And you know, I realized
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of people that are going to
Speaker 2: roll their eyes at that and be like, well, tell
Speaker 2: that to the golfers at my course. But you know,
Speaker 2: but we've seen some pretty big changes in golf just
Speaker 2: you know, in the in the time that I've been
Speaker 2: working in this industry in terms of you know, these
Speaker 2: remote courses people going to like the would have been
Speaker 2: ridiculous to and I people would have thought that that
Speaker 2: was crazy before it started, and then you look back
Speaker 2: on it and they're like, yeah, oh yeah, well we'll go
Speaker 2: play links golf in the middle of nowhere, like absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, Pinder's Number two will have a fraction of
Speaker 2: the of the turf acridge that it once had, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll play the US Open there. I mean, it's there's
Speaker 2: a lot of change that has happened, and meaningful change
Speaker 2: is possible. I think you have to believe that. And
Speaker 2: I don't think that we should ever get stuck in
Speaker 2: the idea that hey, it's just going to be more
Speaker 2: expensive and it's just going to take more resources and
Speaker 2: that's just going to go on forever. Number one, I
Speaker 2: think that that's, you know, by definition unsustainable. Number two,
Speaker 2: I think certainly in parts of the country that's going
Speaker 2: to come to a forcible end, you know, by way
Speaker 2: of resource availability, by restrictions. That's not everywhere, but certainly
Speaker 2: some places are going to deal with really acute challenges
Speaker 2: are going to have to make some changes. But I
Speaker 2: just think that there's a lot of positives to using
Speaker 2: less and not using more than you need to, and
Speaker 2: so I hope that we can take on those difficult
Speaker 2: questions and I hope that we can make a persuasive
Speaker 2: case for why it can be smaller footprint and can
Speaker 2: still be awesome.
Speaker 1: All right, George, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Always fun to talk to you, and good luck with
Speaker 1: the future studies done by the USGA Green Section. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff happening there.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Garrett.
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
Speaker 1: Thank you Will. If you enjoyed this discussion with George Waters,
Speaker 1: this kind of exploration of the history and evolution of
Speaker 1: golf courses and golf course footprints, I can just about
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Speaker 1: See you then,