Speaker 1: Welcome to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast and
Speaker 1: to the latest installment of the School of Golf Architecture.
Speaker 1: This episode focuses on terrain, specifically on links Land, and
Speaker 1: my guest is George Waters, the manager of Green Section
Speaker 1: Education for the USGA. So it's obviously a hectic time
Speaker 1: in the world and in our homes right now. But
Speaker 1: George made a lot of time for me and gave
Speaker 1: me a lot of help in putting together this episode,
Speaker 1: and I'm really grateful for that. So give him a
Speaker 1: follow at g Waters Golf on Twitter and check out
Speaker 1: his brilliant book Sand and Golf, How Terrain Shapes the Game.
Speaker 1: It's a good one, all right, Let's get to it.
Speaker 2: The fried Egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 2: to do is actually square the face so it'll dig
Speaker 2: down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right
Speaker 2: out onto the green.
Speaker 3: Here's it's a Playing out of a buried lion of
Speaker 3: bunker is completely different than playing out of a night
Speaker 3: and clean lion of green side balk.
Speaker 1: You need to be aggressive on any show weather it's
Speaker 1: sitting cleanly for its Friday eggs.
Speaker 4: Well, we've all faked it. The dreaded fried egg.
Speaker 1: Not to be feared, though it's actually a pretty easy
Speaker 1: shot to hit. The basic features of a golf course
Speaker 1: the varied ground, the sandy hazards, the closely cropped grass
Speaker 1: sometimes bordered by longer grasses and shrubs. These weren't theorized
Speaker 1: in the abstract agreed upon by some committee. Instead, they
Speaker 1: were invented by the terrain itself, and that terrain was Lynxland.
Speaker 1: For a long time, golf and the Lynxland were inextricable,
Speaker 1: but as the game grew more popular, it moved inland
Speaker 1: to other types of terrain. The courses built on the
Speaker 1: heathlands and parklands of England, Europe and the United States
Speaker 1: emulated the natural features of the seaside links, contours, bunkers, fairways, roughs.
Speaker 1: The Lynksland can be seen as the first and most
Speaker 1: influential golf architect In this installment of the School of
Speaker 1: Golf Architecture, we turn our attention to sandy coastal terrain
Speaker 1: and learn what we can from it. Lynxland begins with
Speaker 1: a collision between sea and rock, which creates sand. From there,
Speaker 1: the wind takes over, moving the sand and dispersing it
Speaker 1: into beaches. When grains of sand run into obstacles, they
Speaker 1: come to rest in hummocks. The longer these little landforms survive,
Speaker 1: the more vegetation they can support. Turf grasses like bent
Speaker 1: and fescue take hold, The rumpled topography becomes stronger, more
Speaker 1: fixed in place. This is how golf friendly system of
Speaker 1: sand dunes comes to be. I lifted this narrative from
Speaker 1: a book called Sand and Golf, How Terrain Shapes the Game.
Speaker 1: It's a study of sandy, windy coastal landscapes, how they
Speaker 1: gave rise to golf, and how they might continue to
Speaker 1: inspire golf court design. The book's author, George Waters, has
Speaker 1: spent years walking and examining the links katting at Royal
Speaker 1: Dornic and working on sandy sites at barn Google Dunes
Speaker 1: and Pinehurst Number Two. He's currently the Manager of Green
Speaker 1: Section Education for the USGA, and his writing can be
Speaker 1: found on USGA dot org and in the USGA Green
Speaker 1: Section Record Today. He's my teacher that our subject is
Speaker 1: the links land. You know. One of the things that
Speaker 1: really struck me in your book was how the early
Speaker 1: history of golf architecture was so connected to the types
Speaker 1: of land that golf courses were built on. Could you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, to me, the starting point is that it
Speaker 3: is kind of the golf itself is a product of
Speaker 3: that particular landscape, speaking specifically about the sort of coastal
Speaker 3: sandy dune landscape, because it was there that people found
Speaker 3: areas of closely cropped grass growing naturally. I mean, a
Speaker 3: lot of the cool season grasses that we see used,
Speaker 3: you know, around the world and temperate or cooler climates
Speaker 3: are naturally occurring. In those coastal dune landscapes of the
Speaker 3: United Kingdom and Ireland, you had the presence of naturally
Speaker 3: occurring sandy hazards. It would eventually become what we know
Speaker 3: as bunkers, but at the time, you know, a natural
Speaker 3: occurrence in coastal dune landscapes is these areas where the
Speaker 3: vegetation has been stripped away either by animal activity or
Speaker 3: by just the force of the wind, or you know,
Speaker 3: various factors. And so you have this landscape sort of
Speaker 3: of grassy areas dotted with exposed sand, dotted with sort
Speaker 3: of clumps of longer grass, and you know, little meandering
Speaker 3: streams that make their way through it. And so the
Speaker 3: golf courses, we know it, and the game kind of
Speaker 3: evolved to fit that, right, I mean, the game is
Speaker 3: a product of the existence of that landscape and the
Speaker 3: fact that that landscape was considered at the time not
Speaker 3: to be of much use for anything because it was
Speaker 3: you know, poor agricultural land and was largely just treated
Speaker 3: as common land open for grazing and archery and whatever
Speaker 3: else folks wanted to do. I think they harvested sort
Speaker 3: of the hay from the grassy areas at times. So
Speaker 3: the fact that you had this type of landscape that existed,
Speaker 3: the fact that it was available for recreational use, is
Speaker 3: what kind of gave rise to the game in those
Speaker 3: landscapes in the first place. And then you see, you
Speaker 3: have this sort of idea of closely cropped areas that
Speaker 3: you're playing through and avoiding these various naturally occurring hazards.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, as the game becomes sort of formalized,
Speaker 3: and as the idea of a golf course becomes a
Speaker 3: more formal thing, you start to see those elements, you know,
Speaker 3: refined and then manipulated to an increaseing degree to fit
Speaker 3: you know, what might be enjoyable for the game. And
Speaker 3: whether those scenarios you know, sort of evolved naturally at first,
Speaker 3: where there was a natural arrangement of things that people
Speaker 3: found desirable, and then people got to thinking, like, wow,
Speaker 3: it was cool that we had this situation with this
Speaker 3: hazard and the green behind it, you know over there,
Speaker 3: that could be something that we could replicate. But obviously
Speaker 3: their ability to replicate, you know, their ability to manipulate
Speaker 3: the landscape to any great degree, at least in the
Speaker 3: early days, was pretty limited, and so you know, they
Speaker 3: kind of had to take things as they found it.
Speaker 3: But you had those sort of fundamental elements of tightly
Speaker 3: growing vegetation, sand, some streams, and then some sort of
Speaker 3: areas of scruffier, longer rough and or shrubbery. And of
Speaker 3: course you had the wind, which is you know, sort
Speaker 3: of an inherent aspect of coastal do landscapes, because the
Speaker 3: coastal dunes wouldn't really be there if it wasn't for
Speaker 3: the wind to deposit and move that sand around in
Speaker 3: the first place. So they kind of go together, and
Speaker 3: that becomes sort of a fundamental aspect of the game.
Speaker 1: From there, where did golf move and how did architecture
Speaker 1: evolve along with it?
Speaker 3: Golf moved from the links in a variety of different directions,
Speaker 3: but I think where you really see it taking root
Speaker 3: is where people found landscapes that were reminiscent of what
Speaker 3: they could find in the coastal dunes. And at least
Speaker 3: when you're talking about the United Kingdom and Ireland, the
Speaker 3: big demonstration case that golf could move inland away from
Speaker 3: the coastal dunes and be really successful was the heathlands
Speaker 3: around London, which had much of the same vegetation as
Speaker 3: was found in the coastal dunes. Again a sandy area,
Speaker 3: and you see heather in those coastal dunes as well,
Speaker 3: but in greater quantities in the heathland areas, again an
Speaker 3: area that wasn't seen as being especially agriculturally productive or valuable.
Speaker 3: And so you know, Bernard Darwin talks about it in
Speaker 3: one of his essays is that I think he describes
Speaker 3: it as the star of sand and heather proved that
Speaker 3: that inland golf could be not just a copy of
Speaker 3: coastal links golf, but you know, the genuine article, and
Speaker 3: I think that that was a big move. Now, there
Speaker 3: were some complications that came with that, where you're starting
Speaker 3: to talk about things that sort of coastal dune, coastal
Speaker 3: links architects didn't really have to deal with. Large scale
Speaker 3: tree removal becomes something that you're contending with. You're dealing
Speaker 3: with soils that don't drain as well. I mean, you're
Speaker 3: kind of you're past that sort of wind blown sand
Speaker 3: and you're into, you know, areas that have had trees
Speaker 3: growing on them potentially for a very long time. You've
Speaker 3: got organic matter in the soil. It's a different quality.
Speaker 3: There's still well draining soils, but certainly different. But you
Speaker 3: see these old pictures of the construction of Saint George's Hill,
Speaker 3: which is a hairy colt course there outside London, and
Speaker 3: that I mean the amount of tree stumps and everything.
Speaker 3: So it's the process is certainly becoming more complicated and
Speaker 3: becoming much more like what we would think of as
Speaker 3: modern golf course architecture, where it's really got to be
Speaker 3: planned out in advance, because you're clearing, because you're doing
Speaker 3: some earth moving.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a lot more there's a lot more
Speaker 4: moving parts.
Speaker 3: But certainly, I think as time went on, you know,
Speaker 3: as our ability to manipulate the landscape increased, continually, you know,
Speaker 3: our ability to do so affordably increased. You saw a
Speaker 3: sort of less regard for site stuitability for a time period,
Speaker 3: I would say, and more of a more of a
Speaker 3: focus on we want the golf course here, because we're
Speaker 3: doing a development.
Speaker 4: We can fix whatever.
Speaker 3: There's no landscape that we can't fix and turn it
Speaker 3: into a golf course, regardless of you know, what's naturally there,
Speaker 3: whether it's a swamp, whether it's rock, whether it's super hilly.
Speaker 3: And I think when you as we've seen down the road,
Speaker 3: while there are examples of really exceptional courses that have
Speaker 3: been built on really difficult sites and challenging sites, there
Speaker 3: are some limits to that, and certainly the sk of
Speaker 3: the architect is going to be a big, a big
Speaker 3: factor in that. But there are some things that are
Speaker 3: just really really difficult to overcome. And there's sort of
Speaker 3: only so much that you the possibility exists to manufacture
Speaker 3: a golf course from just about anything. But you know,
Speaker 3: there's only so many possibilities that are within a person's
Speaker 3: own mind for what you can manufacture versus what's suggested
Speaker 3: to you by the natural landscape. Well, if the natural
Speaker 3: landscape is unsuitable for what you're trying to do. Those
Speaker 3: suggestions and those cues from the landscape aren't going to
Speaker 3: be there, and so you often get, you know, I
Speaker 3: think a formulaic result where it's just Okay, we're just
Speaker 3: going to we're doing this again, regardless of what's there.
Speaker 1: That's well put. And it links back to the conversation
Speaker 1: that I had for the first part of the School
Speaker 1: of Golf Architecture series with Blake Conan, where one of
Speaker 1: the ideas that we settled on was that taking your
Speaker 1: cues from the place of the golf course tends to
Speaker 1: lead to a lot more uniqueness in the end than
Speaker 1: trying to impose your own vision on a piece of land,
Speaker 1: simply because mother nature tends to be more creative and
Speaker 1: more resourceful in its creativity than man does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just more accidental. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 3: think it's just that that was something that struck me
Speaker 3: about studying, you know, spending a lot of time studying
Speaker 3: links golf courses, is that there was an awful lot
Speaker 3: of features out there that are just there because they're there,
Speaker 3: and there's not really you know, there's not really a
Speaker 3: rhyme or reason or necessarily like a structure to it,
Speaker 3: but that that sort of element of randomness and the
Speaker 3: willingness slash inability to modify that, but the willingness to
Speaker 3: embrace it and the inability to wipe it away, I
Speaker 3: think really created this sort of you've heard the term
Speaker 3: infinite variety, Well, those courses have it because there's just
Speaker 3: so much going on in terms of topography, in terms
Speaker 3: of hazard location, the nature of the hazards, especially in
Speaker 3: the older days, when you see what some of those
Speaker 3: hazards look like, you know, when they'd have little sections
Speaker 3: revetted trying to support a bunker that had been eroding,
Speaker 3: but the rest of it was kind of wild. You
Speaker 3: had that full range of variety in almost every shot,
Speaker 3: and so stance and lie and everything were always going
Speaker 3: to be different every time that you played a hole,
Speaker 3: which you know was going to be a factor and
Speaker 3: really kind of kept those designs fresh. And when you
Speaker 3: play those courses again and again and again. And I've
Speaker 3: been fortunate to spend a lot of time on a
Speaker 3: few really great lengths courses and play them a lot
Speaker 3: in a lot of different conditions, and part of what
Speaker 3: keeps them so interesting is that the ground is so
Speaker 3: irregular that even if you hit the ball the same
Speaker 3: all the time, which I definitely don't, you're still never
Speaker 3: going to end up in exactly.
Speaker 4: The same spot.
Speaker 3: In an uphill lie versus a downhill lie is going
Speaker 3: to change how you're going to be able to play
Speaker 3: the hole, and it's going to bring different things into play,
Speaker 3: and so it really is always different, and that element
Speaker 3: of randomness is just really hard to build. And Mother
Speaker 3: nature is just really good at leaving these sort of
Speaker 3: I think Bob Ross call them these happy little accidents.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's kind of the features that you find
Speaker 3: in nature that you can kind of work from that
Speaker 3: just are really hard to pull out of your own
Speaker 3: mind and just create.
Speaker 1: I love that we've gotten Bob ross mantra in here.
Speaker 1: That's perfect. So let's get really basic here. What are
Speaker 1: the fundamental advantages of designing golf courses on Link's land.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the first big one is drainage
Speaker 3: and the fact that you know, in most cases, the
Speaker 3: soils drain really really well. And that's not to say
Speaker 3: that every Link site doesn't have its wet spots that
Speaker 3: they don't need drainage installed. They do certainly in sort
Speaker 3: of the modern context where people are looking for pretty
Speaker 3: consistent performance. But you know, drainage allows you to be
Speaker 3: a lot more free with what the landscape offers because
Speaker 3: you don't need to worry about draining every little wrinkle
Speaker 3: and pocket or the other side of that is grading
Speaker 3: everything out so that everything surface flows smoothly from across
Speaker 3: a hole into a basin whatever it might be, which
Speaker 3: very quickly kind of gives a landscape a pretty, you know,
Speaker 3: a manipulated look to it. When you need to start
Speaker 3: doing all that kind of grating, it's hard to make
Speaker 3: it look like you never did anything.
Speaker 4: So being able to kind of take.
Speaker 3: The site as it is because of that drainage is
Speaker 3: really beneficial. The fact that the sites just tend to
Speaker 3: be you know, wrinkled and more imperfect. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just the nature of sandy soils and how they're deposited
Speaker 3: is that they aren't typically just smooth.
Speaker 4: It's they're going.
Speaker 3: To have arrived where they are, either by wind action
Speaker 3: or by flooding, or by glacial deposition, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: They tend to just kind of arrive in an inconsistent fashion,
Speaker 3: which gives you that sort of unique you know, like
Speaker 3: we talked about those unique irregular features that you just
Speaker 3: don't often find in a lot of other places, and
Speaker 3: you can leave them alone because you don't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Need to worry about the drainage at every little.
Speaker 3: Hollow kind of becoming a bird bath like you might
Speaker 3: on heavier soil, where you're going to have the grass
Speaker 3: isn't going to.
Speaker 4: Perform well in every little low spot, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: Then obviously, the benefit of drainage beyond the type of
Speaker 3: shapes that you're able to create and leave alone. Another
Speaker 3: big benefit is just you know, firmer, bouncier better golf
Speaker 3: conditions during more of the year as a result, and
Speaker 3: then the options that opens up in terms of you know, well,
Speaker 3: now running shots are more practical. I mean, if you
Speaker 3: have really soft conditions, even if you have open approaches
Speaker 3: and all of these opportunities for different types of shots,
Speaker 3: if the conditions don't support it, then the shots don't
Speaker 3: make sense and people don't play them, I mean unless
Speaker 3: they're just.
Speaker 4: Trying to have fun with it.
Speaker 3: But I mean that's the beauty of sort of the
Speaker 3: firmness that you find on links, courses and so forth,
Speaker 3: is that you know you're not playing bump and run
Speaker 3: shots just as some sort of a you know, an
Speaker 3: aesthetic desire to play golf like the olden days, like
Speaker 3: it is actually necessary and a more effective way of
Speaker 3: getting close to the hole because the ground is firm,
Speaker 3: because the hole is playing down wind, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: they become a necessary aspect of the game as opposed
Speaker 3: to sort of a novelty, and really, firmness is what
Speaker 3: makes that happen. Firmness and wind is what really makes
Speaker 3: that happen.
Speaker 1: And let's dig into that a little bit. The mixture
Speaker 1: of contour, firmness and wind seems to be so central
Speaker 1: in your mind to compelling golf. You know, your buck
Speaker 1: sand and golf keeps returning to those ideas contour, firmness
Speaker 1: and wind, and so aside from making bump and run
Speaker 1: shots more available, or perhaps as a result of making
Speaker 1: bump and run shots more available, what do the factors
Speaker 1: of contour, firmness and wind bring to golf architecture? How
Speaker 1: do they make the golf courses different and in your
Speaker 1: mind more interesting, more fun to play?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that that variety is kind of
Speaker 3: the underpinning answer to that question. There's just more ways
Speaker 3: to play the shots and more reasons to play the
Speaker 3: same basic shot differently. I mean, like we talked about earlier,
Speaker 3: even from the same basic location in a Links fairway,
Speaker 3: you can have very different lies. And if you've got
Speaker 3: the combination of an uphill lie into the wind, that's
Speaker 3: really going to change the thought process behind that shot
Speaker 3: versus a flat lie with the wind behind or a
Speaker 3: flat lie with no wind. They're going to be very
Speaker 3: different kind of shots and just they get your thinking differently, which,
Speaker 3: as you know, the more that you're thinking in golf,
Speaker 3: the tougher the game becomes. So you have that changeability
Speaker 3: of you know, the wind is not always going to
Speaker 3: be the same intensity, the wind is not always going
Speaker 3: to come from the same direction.
Speaker 4: When you get enough.
Speaker 3: Contour happening at a place like you find on a
Speaker 3: Links course, that's going to change every time that you're
Speaker 3: experiencing it. And then firmness is what, you know, really
Speaker 3: what drives that. And then the sort of inevitable movement
Speaker 3: of your ball, either through the air or after impact
Speaker 3: as a result of the wind or as a result
Speaker 3: of the contour is going to be very very different,
Speaker 3: a very different thought process to kind of analyze than
Speaker 3: the kind of yardage golf that you find to be
Speaker 3: much more common, certainly in most of the United States
Speaker 3: and in most inland sites. Once you have to really
Speaker 3: start to think about the rollout of the ball after
Speaker 3: it lands, then you find yourself really studying a lot
Speaker 3: more of the contours because they're relevant if you're hitting
Speaker 3: to a yardage.
Speaker 4: In the middle of the green or wherever it might be,
Speaker 4: the contouring that's in the approach and around the green
Speaker 4: and so forth.
Speaker 3: I mean, you might be aware of it from a
Speaker 3: visual standpoint, or something might look cool or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: but if it's not really a factor in the shot,
Speaker 3: it's not going to weigh into your mind so much.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of window dressing as you're hitting
Speaker 3: over it, you know, at least in your mind's eye.
Speaker 3: As far as the plan shot, I mean, whether you
Speaker 3: end up, you know, executing the shot that you plan
Speaker 3: is obviously a different story. But it's not a part
Speaker 3: of the thought process in the same way that it
Speaker 3: is on links courses, on heathling courses, on these sort
Speaker 3: of sandy windy firm sites. And that's not to say
Speaker 3: that you know, links courses can place soft I mean,
Speaker 3: people shouldn't have the illusion that links courses or heathling
Speaker 3: courses are always toasty firm. I mean, if it rains
Speaker 3: and rains and rains, those courses play soft. But even
Speaker 3: that is sort of on the continuum of it's interesting
Speaker 3: to play, you know, one of those.
Speaker 4: Courses when you can actually hit and hold shots on
Speaker 4: the greens.
Speaker 3: I mean, you wouldn't want to do it all the time,
Speaker 3: but in the context of playing a course that's often firm,
Speaker 3: to play it soft once in a while, it's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting to see, like, wow, this is really these
Speaker 3: shots are all really really different than what I'm used to.
Speaker 1: So, given these playing dynamics, what kinds of golf course
Speaker 1: designs became native to the Link's land. So we've already
Speaker 1: talked about like the infinite variety of natural courses on
Speaker 1: suitable sites, right, but what kinds of strategic traits did
Speaker 1: the holes take on as they evolved out of this
Speaker 1: sandy coastal terrain.
Speaker 4: And there's a.
Speaker 3: Couple of things that I think are sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: while not absolutely uniform, that I think are consistent among
Speaker 3: the sort of best examples of links golf. And I
Speaker 3: think obviously you know, the one that jumps out to
Speaker 3: a lot of people's wit, and I think that was
Speaker 3: very much, you know, a direct consequence of the environment
Speaker 3: in which they're playing. You're talking about very variable winds
Speaker 3: in terms of strength and in terms of direction. Anybody
Speaker 3: that spent a lot of time over there knows that
Speaker 3: the wind seems to come from, you know, whatever they
Speaker 3: call for. It changes with regularity, and so you need
Speaker 3: to have that flexibility built into that just to accommodate
Speaker 3: that kind of constantly changing and pretty impactful dynamic. On
Speaker 3: most links courses. The other aspect is that firm ground factor.
Speaker 3: I mean, the ball runs out a lot more on
Speaker 3: those courses, and so shots that are offline are going
Speaker 3: to travel further offline, and that can be desirable, but
Speaker 3: at the same time, you know, you don't want everything
Speaker 3: running off into some sort of a heavy rough type situation.
Speaker 3: So I think you see the width kind of built
Speaker 3: into things on account of those factors. Another thing that
Speaker 3: you'll see is open approaches to a lot of the greens.
Speaker 3: You're not going to see a ton of you know,
Speaker 3: totally closed off green surrounds that really require the aerial shot.
Speaker 3: Number one, because the courses would have been pretty firm
Speaker 3: at the time. The opportunity to hold those shots is limited,
Speaker 3: and especially with the equipment that they were probably using
Speaker 3: at the time. In addition, with the wind again, when
Speaker 3: you're playing.
Speaker 4: Down wind, hard downwind.
Speaker 3: Those sort of totally you know, putting green completely encircled
Speaker 3: with bunker type situations are really really tough. So you
Speaker 3: see a lot of open approaches that give you the
Speaker 3: opportunity to skip the ball up, mostly out of necessity.
Speaker 3: The benefit of that is, you know, for good players,
Speaker 3: it gives them options during these kind of tough conditions,
Speaker 3: and for the average golfer, for the beginning golfer, for
Speaker 3: you know, anybody with a slower swing speed, you have
Speaker 3: an opportunity to play these great courses pretty effectively without
Speaker 3: needing to really hit these high, soft landing shots that
Speaker 3: can be so difficult for most people, you know, just
Speaker 3: really aren't in most people's repertoire. And so I think
Speaker 3: that's one of the really positive offshoots of that. Now,
Speaker 3: the other side of that coin a little bit is
Speaker 3: that you know, there's some really great moments in links
Speaker 3: golf where you do get that green that forces you
Speaker 3: to put the ball into the air, you know, Postage Stamp.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's plenty of these sort of famous examples
Speaker 3: of these holes that really force you to hit the
Speaker 3: ball up into the air, put it at the mercy
Speaker 3: of the wind, try to land it on a small
Speaker 3: target and the tight you know, tight hazards, and those
Speaker 3: provide some great moments. But it's the fact that they're
Speaker 3: special and unique in the context of having been able
Speaker 3: to play a lot of open approaches that makes them
Speaker 3: really interesting. If you had links courses that were eighteen
Speaker 3: approach shots like the Postage Stamp, it's not going to
Speaker 3: be very enjoyable for just about anybody.
Speaker 4: So you see the.
Speaker 3: Open approaches, I think you also see a lot of
Speaker 3: hazards placed in approaches. You know, rather than being kind
Speaker 3: of right up against the front of the green, they're
Speaker 3: going to be twenty yards short, they're going to be
Speaker 3: forty yards short. And you know, if you look at
Speaker 3: those on an aerial or something, or you know, look
Speaker 3: at them on Google Earth, you think, to somebody that
Speaker 3: isn't totally familiar with playing golf in those kind of courses,
Speaker 3: they seem like they're out of play. Why is there
Speaker 3: a bunker thirty yards the green forty yards sort of
Speaker 3: the green or why there's so many of them like that,
Speaker 3: And the reason again is because it becomes a real
Speaker 3: issue for playing those running approach shots where you need
Speaker 3: to kind of just hurdle the approach hazard and have
Speaker 3: it kind of run out and reach the green, and
Speaker 3: so it kind of becomes, you know, a very interesting
Speaker 3: challenge of trying to gauge that enough.
Speaker 4: To cover but not fly it too far that it
Speaker 4: goes through.
Speaker 3: And it also just because of the nature of the
Speaker 3: landscape there, approach hazards work really well on a lot
Speaker 3: of those courses because the links aren't super hilly. In
Speaker 3: a lot of I mean plenty of the more famous
Speaker 3: Irish courses, yeah you see more in the way of
Speaker 3: roll to the ground, but a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: Eastern Scotland, England, even a bunch of the West of
Speaker 3: Scotland links don't.
Speaker 4: Have a ton of roll to the ground.
Speaker 3: It's more wrinkle and so something that appears in the
Speaker 3: approach can be a really interesting visual challenge because you
Speaker 3: don't often see very well the ground beyond it. It
Speaker 3: becomes really a touch and feel kind of thing, and
Speaker 3: it becomes an experience kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Where you need to kind of learn.
Speaker 3: The shot and play the whole bunch of times in
Speaker 3: a lot of different conditions to cope with those hazards,
Speaker 3: which is a really neat aspect of things. And I
Speaker 3: think that visual, you know, that sort of visual deception
Speaker 3: factor is another kind of characteristic of the landscape itself,
Speaker 3: where because of the flatishness and the kind of all
Speaker 3: the sea of wrinkles can become kind of tough to decipher,
Speaker 3: you know, even for people that have played the courses
Speaker 3: a lot. And so the best Links architects used that
Speaker 3: to their benefit, where they'd hide a little swale short
Speaker 3: of the green that you know, actually allows the green
Speaker 3: to seem closer than it really is the absence of
Speaker 3: a backdrop, so it gets to be really tough to
Speaker 3: kind of gauge, you know, exactly how far away something is.
Speaker 3: All those tricks work really well on a kind of flatish, open,
Speaker 3: wrinkled plane, and I think that those are some of
Speaker 3: the characteristics that were really central to Links design.
Speaker 1: And it's like you can't just analyze these courses or
Speaker 1: know what they are by looking at Google Earth and
Speaker 1: charting out the angles or where you think the shots
Speaker 1: are going. To go, because you really have to be
Speaker 1: on the ground and see how the shots play along
Speaker 1: the ground in order to determine what the hazards mean in.
Speaker 3: A lot of different conditions too. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 3: I joke that when I first got to Dorna, you know,
Speaker 3: I bought a yardage guide, figured well, this is going
Speaker 3: to be this will be an invaluable resource out here.
Speaker 3: And what I learned pretty quickly was that studying the
Speaker 3: course kind of in plan view, I mean, aside from
Speaker 3: getting to know sort of the basic locations of the hazards,
Speaker 3: it wasn't really very useful. And knowing the yardages from
Speaker 3: different points was, you know, again not terribly useful because
Speaker 3: because the wind was so different all the time, because
Speaker 3: the firmness of the ground, you know, was variable. There
Speaker 3: were days when it would be really firm, kind of
Speaker 3: firm it had just rained, and it was playing softer.
Speaker 4: A lot of that plan view information on links courses.
Speaker 3: Is really of limited use and it really just becomes
Speaker 3: kind of a study of the landscape and a study
Speaker 3: of the contours and a learning process of how do
Speaker 3: shots react off of different features? And that's all going
Speaker 3: to change based on the conditions, it's going to change
Speaker 3: based on how you're playing that day. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: even though they've got range finders and yardages on every
Speaker 3: sprinkler on these courses now, it's still very much a
Speaker 3: game of touch and feel.
Speaker 4: Even today.
Speaker 3: You know, you can see these courses that have just
Speaker 3: sort of one hundred and fifty yard post out there,
Speaker 3: and that's all the.
Speaker 4: Information that you get.
Speaker 3: It's really all the information that you need because there's
Speaker 3: so much everything else is so variable that for the
Speaker 3: vast majority of golfers, I mean, unless you're really dialed in.
Speaker 4: On how well you're hitting the ball and how.
Speaker 3: What your distances are, it gets to be pretty touch
Speaker 3: and feel within ten twenty yard increments for sure, and
Speaker 3: depending on the conditions, it can be you know, even
Speaker 3: wider increments than that. So it really becomes a study
Speaker 3: of the landscape much more so than a study of
Speaker 3: the sort of plan view layout.
Speaker 1: Right now, Are there some drawbacks to building and maintaining
Speaker 1: golf on sandy terrain?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I you know, depending on the nature
Speaker 3: of the sand. I mean, there are certainly stands that
Speaker 3: are difficult to maintain turf on because they drained so quickly.
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's like a totally common problem,
Speaker 3: but I've certainly heard of some well known places that
Speaker 3: have struggled in the early going just to kind of
Speaker 3: get a turf going and get a little bit of
Speaker 3: receptivity in it. From a construction standpoint, you know, I
Speaker 3: think one of the challenges that you know, certainly we
Speaker 3: encountered at barm Google that that has kind of shaped
Speaker 3: the way that they approach to building abandoned is the
Speaker 3: fact that stuff can literally blow away between the time
Speaker 3: that you build it and the time that you grasp it.
Speaker 3: I mean that malleability can be a little bit of
Speaker 3: a double edged sword. I mean, the good thing is
Speaker 3: that it's easy to kind of put things back together
Speaker 3: in most cases, but you know, it's not something anybody
Speaker 3: wants to see where you just, you know, have this
Speaker 3: whole perfect and ready to go and then it's just
Speaker 3: scoured away by the wind. That would be the certainly
Speaker 3: one of the complexities from construction side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there seems to be a danger that when
Speaker 1: you install a golf course on a piece of sandy
Speaker 1: ground that the stability that the construction lends to the
Speaker 1: site will completely change the character of the site, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you'll get all sorts of things growing in the
Speaker 1: ground that might not normally have grown in the ground.
Speaker 3: There's a few different ways to look at that, I'd say,
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at that from the standpoint
Speaker 3: of of what a links course might have looked like
Speaker 3: in the eighteen hundreds versus today, you'll see a lot
Speaker 3: more stability in the landscape as a product of the
Speaker 3: golf course and the fact that either one just having
Speaker 3: the turf and having the maintained turf there does something
Speaker 3: to stabilize the landscape and kind of take some of
Speaker 3: that moving sand out of play, which changes the character
Speaker 3: of the landscape and kind of lends itself towards some
Speaker 3: succession of shrubs and trees and so forth. And number two,
Speaker 3: the golf course is there. People are invested in having
Speaker 3: it there, and so you get things like these videos
Speaker 3: these days on social media of these kind of wind
Speaker 3: and sandstorms that you get at Vally on Onion in
Speaker 3: these places where it's just you know, sand covering fairways
Speaker 3: and on and on that's not seen as desirable. So
Speaker 3: certainly they're cleaning up after those kind of events. They're
Speaker 3: building coastal defenses to kind of keep the courses put,
Speaker 3: which is very sensible. But the cost of that, or that,
Speaker 3: you know, the impact of that, is that you do
Speaker 3: disconnect that link's landscape a little bit from the sea
Speaker 3: through those efforts, because a dynamic landscape and a fixed
Speaker 3: element like a golf course don't you know, necessarily go
Speaker 3: perfectly hand in hand, especially when that dynamism is is
Speaker 3: just you know, right there on the margins of the
Speaker 3: two things. And so the other side of that coin, though,
Speaker 3: is that, you know, you get places where invasive vegetation
Speaker 3: has already populated an area.
Speaker 4: Which is very common.
Speaker 3: I mean, you see places like Oregon where gorse was
Speaker 3: introduced to try to stabilize those dunes, you know, back
Speaker 3: in the day, because the blowing sand was seen as
Speaker 3: a nuisance, not as a as a cool aspect of
Speaker 3: coastal dune environments. And so you know, in the process
Speaker 3: of building band and dunes, you're removing a lot of
Speaker 3: that invasive vegetation, you're keeping it out, You're taking steps
Speaker 3: to preserve and kind of maintain some of these more
Speaker 3: natural environments. And I think you see more and more
Speaker 3: of that now on a lot of links courses in
Speaker 3: the UK and Ireland and over here where they're making
Speaker 3: more of an effort to remove some of the symptoms
Speaker 3: of that stability, get some more moving sand in the
Speaker 3: landscape in places where they can afford to have it,
Speaker 3: increase some of the ecological value, bring back some of
Speaker 3: the elements of the courses that would have been there.
Speaker 4: You know, in a more dynamic time.
Speaker 3: So I think as we look at it going forward,
Speaker 3: I think with the greater awareness of ecology and the
Speaker 3: places that these courses have, you know, in the greater
Speaker 3: ecosystem and the specialness of the landscapes that they occupy,
Speaker 3: you're going to see more of the golf course being
Speaker 3: there actually helping to restore and at times preserve some
Speaker 3: of what it would have been lost otherwise.
Speaker 1: The subtile of George's book is how terrain shapes the game.
Speaker 1: In talking with him, I think I came to understand
Speaker 1: better what that phrase means. The Lynxland wasn't just a
Speaker 1: first arena for our stick and ball pastime. It defined golf.
Speaker 1: It gave the sport its original ethos, not only golfer
Speaker 1: versus golfer, but also both of them versus nature. An
Speaker 1: ethos of local pride rooted in unique landscapes of Musselborough
Speaker 1: versus Saint Andrews, an ethos of the varied, the unpredictable,
Speaker 1: the creative, the individualistic, the adventurous. Here's how George himself
Speaker 1: puts it in the epilogue of Sand and Golf. Sandy
Speaker 1: terrain allows golfers of all ages and abilities to enjoy
Speaker 1: the game in their own way, making it much easier
Speaker 1: for the game to grow and play a lasting role
Speaker 1: in people's lives. Golf on sandy terrain can be extremely challenging,
Speaker 1: but mostly it is about fun, creativity, studying the landscape,
Speaker 1: coping with bad bounces, and relishing the good ones. It
Speaker 1: is about enjoying a golf course as part of nature,
Speaker 1: complete with irregularities and imperfections, rather than detracting from the experience.
Speaker 1: Those imperfections make the game more interesting and somehow more real.
Speaker 1: As golf migrated away from the links land, golfers tended
Speaker 1: to forget these pains and pleasures, along with the temperament
Speaker 1: needed to receive both. Again, terrain shapes the game, and
Speaker 1: when the terrain is softer, more manufactured, and more predictable,
Speaker 1: our ideas about the sport we play on it shift accordingly.
Speaker 1: We expect help from the ground and from those who
Speaker 1: shape and maintain it. We ask for a fair test
Speaker 1: of mechanical skill. There are those who enjoy this version
Speaker 1: of golf, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there
Speaker 1: are others who find the links land and its ethos irresistible.
Speaker 1: The problem is not many of us live by the sea,
Speaker 1: or by inland, sandhill, or anywhere near a course that
Speaker 1: uses sandy terrain to full advantage. So I leave you
Speaker 1: with this question, if we so desire, what can we
Speaker 1: do and what can our local courses do to recapture
Speaker 1: some of the character and spirit of links golf. Now
Speaker 1: I actually posed this question, at least the agronomic side
Speaker 1: of it to George. His answer ended up on the
Speaker 1: cutting room floor, but I will include it in the
Speaker 1: post I make for this episode on the Frida egg
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, if you have your own thoughts about
Speaker 1: this subject, reach out to us on Twitter. You'll find
Speaker 1: the fried egg at the Friday Egg with underscores between
Speaker 1: each word. Me Garrett Morrison at g Ford Golf and
Speaker 1: George Waters at g Waters Golf. Let's keep the discussion
Speaker 1: going