Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison.
Speaker 1: I'm here today with Andy Johnson.
Speaker 2: How you doing Andy, I'm doing swell, Garrett, I'm doing wonderful.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about Bandoned Dunes, and most importantly,
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about our sponsor for today's spot,
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Speaker 2: Bandoned Dunes, a place that nobody has seen or covered before,
Speaker 2: but you know, we're hoping to bring unique perspective and
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Speaker 2: I think we went through one day that wash I'll
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the vests are great because they do keep you
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Speaker 2: live in real winter. It's a nice piece to have
Speaker 2: to layer on those very cold winter days.
Speaker 1: Does Oregon have real winter? No, So what you saw
Speaker 1: at Bandon Dunes was just a very aggressive fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah or spring.
Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 1: In a bried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg
Speaker 1: Frida egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg.
Speaker 2: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. All right,
Speaker 2: let's talk about sheet branch.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So today's episode is the first of
Speaker 1: a few that we're gonna do on the band In
Speaker 1: Dunes courses. Each of the courses definitely deserves its own
Speaker 1: deep dive. We've decided to go in reverse chronological order
Speaker 1: in terms of construction, so start with the most recent course,
Speaker 1: but you can expect more podcasts about the individual banding
Speaker 1: courses coming Q one. But it's going to be fun
Speaker 1: to start with Sheep Ranch because obviously this is the
Speaker 1: most recent addition to the band In Dunes resort. It's
Speaker 1: a fascinating place and it's.
Speaker 2: The most popular according to the resort, which is I
Speaker 2: didn't I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably because it's the
Speaker 1: one that people haven't played yet, and so they definitely
Speaker 1: want to play it when they go to the resort.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Sheep Branches is packed all the time. And
Speaker 1: we got to go play it on a lovely day.
Speaker 1: You know, often it's really windy at Sheep Ranch. It's
Speaker 1: extremely exposed out there on that point, and it was
Speaker 1: a pretty calm day when we played it, and and
Speaker 1: so we got to see it and what's probably unusual weather.
Speaker 2: I've played it twice now. I played it very you know,
Speaker 2: during the growing process. It was not at all like
Speaker 2: a mature golf course. When I played it the first time,
Speaker 2: and that day, just like this day, was extremely calm.
Speaker 1: So did you play all eighteen holes when you did
Speaker 1: the previewing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So it was March of twenty twenty, right days before
Speaker 2: COVID hit the US, and so that was like kind
Speaker 2: of one of my lasting memories in the dultrums of
Speaker 2: COVID was played Sheep Ranch with one of my good
Speaker 2: buddies from college.
Speaker 1: All Right, so we thought we would start by giving
Speaker 1: a little bit of history of the property, and you
Speaker 1: have actually covered that with Tom Doak before. Now. Tom
Speaker 1: Doak and his team at Renaissance Golf Design laid out
Speaker 1: the original sheep Ranch, which was a very different kind
Speaker 1: of course, and he described what he did, how that
Speaker 1: course came about, and what it was like. So we're
Speaker 1: going to play a clip from that episode and just
Speaker 1: let Tom Doak describe what happened. Hey, So, in listening
Speaker 1: to this clip again, I realized that we needed a
Speaker 1: bit more setup to help you understand what Tom and
Speaker 1: Andy are talking about. So one thing is that the
Speaker 1: original sheep Ranch, in case he didn't know, was essentially
Speaker 1: a free form golf course. It consisted of thirteen greens
Speaker 1: and basically the player would get to determine his or
Speaker 1: her own routing, his or her own path around the
Speaker 1: golf course. Then, of course Bill cor and Ben Crenshaw
Speaker 1: came in a few years ago and turned it into
Speaker 1: more of a traditional eighteen hole course to be part
Speaker 1: of the Bandon Dunes resort. So that's one thing. Another
Speaker 1: thing is that when Tom refers to Mike in the
Speaker 1: clip coming up here, he is talking about Mike Kaiser,
Speaker 1: who is the founder and developer behind the Bandon Dunes resort.
Speaker 1: Mike and his friend Phil Friedman, his partner from the
Speaker 1: greeting card business, were the major forces behind the Sheep Ranch,
Speaker 1: getting it off the ground originally and continuing up to today.
Speaker 1: All right, here's Tom.
Speaker 3: Phil Friedman was Mike's college roommate and his partner in
Speaker 3: recycled paper greetings. And when Mike started looking at doing
Speaker 3: band Dunes, he asked Phil if Phil wanted to be
Speaker 3: a partner in Bandon too, and Phil said no. He
Speaker 3: thought Mike was crazy to be spending so much money
Speaker 3: out there on a golf project in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3: So when we started doing planning for Pacific Dunes and
Speaker 3: Bandon Dunes was getting ready to open a lot of
Speaker 3: the trips. Phil would come out with Mike to Bandon
Speaker 3: and Phil was just feeling like such a dope for
Speaker 3: not having been part of Bandon Dunes. He loved playing
Speaker 3: the golf courses. He was like, he played the first
Speaker 3: loop of Hall's the Preview Loop at Pacific Dunes more
Speaker 3: than anybody. I think he just loved it. And he
Speaker 3: was just like beating his head against the wall. Why
Speaker 3: didn't I participate in this? So the land for the
Speaker 3: Sheep Ranch came up for sale. I don't know if
Speaker 3: there was an intermedia. At one point, a power company
Speaker 3: had owned it, and there were some wind turbans out there,
Speaker 3: like back in the seventies or early eighties, and it
Speaker 3: was so windy, like destroy the wind turbans and they
Speaker 3: didn't work, so they took that all out. But I
Speaker 3: don't know if there'd been an intermedia owner or not. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it was for sale, and it was for a pretty
Speaker 3: good chunk of money for you know, two hundred acres
Speaker 3: on the Oregon Coast in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 3: you know it was right next to Bandon and right
Speaker 3: where you could see it, and and Mike was like, well,
Speaker 3: I got to buy it to protect the resort from
Speaker 3: somebody building a big, ugly hotel there or cashing in
Speaker 3: off what we've done and building another golf course. They're separate,
Speaker 3: but it was a chunk of money too, And you know,
Speaker 3: Phil raised his hand and said I'll go have these
Speaker 3: with you, and Mike was like, okay, that don't save
Speaker 3: me some money. So it was a separate deal from
Speaker 3: the resort, a separate ownership. So they tried to come
Speaker 3: up with a business model that wasn't like directly tied
Speaker 3: to the resort. And the first idea was, well, let's
Speaker 3: make a private you know. And you know, I thought
Speaker 3: it would have been neat as a private course to
Speaker 3: you know, like get some members, build a little clubhouse
Speaker 3: with some lodging. Sure, they go play at the resort
Speaker 3: during the day, and then they come up there at
Speaker 3: the end of the day and play till dark, basically
Speaker 3: on their own little golf course without a lot of
Speaker 3: other people around. I thought that would have worked, and
Speaker 3: it might have worked. But somewhere during the process of routing,
Speaker 3: as we were starting construction, I don't think Mike Kaiser
Speaker 3: ever anticipated at that point what a hero he was
Speaker 3: going to be in the golf world for building Bandon
Speaker 3: Dunes and it being all public. But that was that
Speaker 3: was starting to be the story about the resort and
Speaker 3: Mike all of it sudden realized that if he did
Speaker 3: this private thing right next to the resort, he would
Speaker 3: kill that and he didn't want to do that. So
Speaker 3: he got really called feet about the business model and
Speaker 3: kind of backed off and didn't really want to didn't
Speaker 3: really want to build anything, having any idea what he
Speaker 3: would do with it. But Phil, who spent half the
Speaker 3: money to build it, and you know, he really wanted
Speaker 3: to go ahead. So he asked us if we could
Speaker 3: go ahead, and you know, what could we do for
Speaker 3: a limited amount of money? And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: really the big cost of this whole deal is irrigation. Irrigation.
Speaker 3: The irrigation system was literally forty percent of the cost
Speaker 3: of building Pacific Dunes. So without that, you know, if
Speaker 3: you're just building greens and a few bunkers, and we
Speaker 3: didn't even we built about three bunkers because it was
Speaker 3: not sandy soil, and we figured the sand.
Speaker 1: Would all blow away.
Speaker 3: We just built a couple of bunkers to see if
Speaker 3: they would hold up at all. And Phil said, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll just build some greens and you know, we'll just
Speaker 3: we'll just see the whole place. And you know, you
Speaker 3: get enough rain there in the winter, you get a
Speaker 3: catch of grass, but it just goes, it goes super
Speaker 3: dormant the summer. They would shut it down for a
Speaker 3: while in the summers because it would just get so toasty.
Speaker 1: He didn't want it to catch fire.
Speaker 3: But it just had a loop of irrigation around the
Speaker 3: greens and nothing else. So it was really like what
Speaker 3: you'd see in New Zealand or rural Scotland or somewhere
Speaker 3: as far as the maintenance level of it. But because
Speaker 3: Mike had kind of like disavowed it, there was this
Speaker 3: always this awkward relationship between the resort and the sheep Ranch,
Speaker 3: like we've got to make sure that no staff from
Speaker 3: the resort is doing a work up there, and they're
Speaker 3: not using equipment from up there. So the sheep Branch
Speaker 3: only had a couple used motors. Basically was what they
Speaker 3: maintained the golf course with. I mean, it was basically
Speaker 3: a two man operation for years, and you know, some
Speaker 3: people didn't get it. It's like, why are the golf
Speaker 3: courses down there so perfect? And this is kind of raggedy,
Speaker 3: And some people just loved it that way because it
Speaker 3: was so different.
Speaker 2: And I think that's an important historical anecdote. That is
Speaker 2: what happens when new courses open. Magazines write about how
Speaker 2: it's the best course here, you know, no matter what,
Speaker 2: it's always that's always going to be the conversation. But
Speaker 2: it's important to remember that what you did at the
Speaker 2: Sheep Ranch was a drastically different concept and wasn't It's
Speaker 2: not like it was a failing. It was a success
Speaker 2: in a different way than what Bill and Ben just
Speaker 2: completed there is it was a commercial golf course, and
Speaker 2: yours wasn't a commercial golf course built for resort play.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a it was a concept and
Speaker 2: and in many ways, the idea of low cost construction,
Speaker 2: low cost maintenance with a golf course that made people
Speaker 2: like imaginations run wild is a smashing success and not
Speaker 2: something not an idea of golf that should be abandoned.
Speaker 3: No, and I'm meant, I mean I want to be
Speaker 3: really careful. First of all, I haven't seen that. I
Speaker 3: haven't seen Bill and Ben's course yet, but I can.
Speaker 3: I've got a pretty good idea. It's like it's spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time in the ground. You know, I've
Speaker 3: seen the routing plan. I think the routing plan is
Speaker 3: really good. They did some things that Don and I
Speaker 3: never thought of that made I mean, basically, they fit
Speaker 3: eighteen holes on about one hundred and twenty acres and
Speaker 3: made it really cool. You know, it's got to be
Speaker 3: really close together and it's got to be kind of
Speaker 3: all mode tight for that to work. But it looks
Speaker 3: really cool and I'm excited to play it. So I'm
Speaker 3: not saying what we did was better. It was completely
Speaker 3: different for a completely different concept and client and everything else.
Speaker 3: And so the sheep branch was kind of in limbo
Speaker 3: for you know, we you know, it was done in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, and it sat there for fifteen
Speaker 3: years with people occasionally playing it and not really understanding
Speaker 3: what was going on. When Mike and I started talking
Speaker 3: about Old McDonald, and really not when we started talking
Speaker 3: about it, but just when we just when we agreed
Speaker 3: that I would do Old McDonald. Right as I started
Speaker 3: to shake his hand about it, he said, you realize
Speaker 3: that if I have you do Old McDonald whenever I
Speaker 3: do something with the sheep Ranch, I'll probably have somebody
Speaker 3: else do it. And I like hesitated for about a
Speaker 3: half a second, you know, because at that time, you know,
Speaker 3: Mike and Phil we did an impasse over what to
Speaker 3: do with it. I was like, whatever's going to happen
Speaker 3: with the sheep Branch is way down the road, and
Speaker 3: you know, we could use this old.
Speaker 1: McDonald job right now.
Speaker 3: So I didn't think very hard about that, but I
Speaker 3: did it kind of with sadness too, because I really
Speaker 3: I did love the concept of the sheep Ranch, and
Speaker 3: you know, I knew it was going to go away
Speaker 3: someday and they would do something real with it. And
Speaker 3: it was kind of a bummer that we didn't get
Speaker 3: to work on it again when the time came. But
Speaker 3: by the same token, you know, I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: that would have been hard for me to do, all right.
Speaker 1: So there's a number of interesting things to say about
Speaker 1: the original Sheep Ranch. Neither of us played it, first
Speaker 1: of all, and so we can't really comment directly on
Speaker 1: what that course was. It seems really interesting in concept,
Speaker 1: but it just wasn't going to work as a public
Speaker 1: resort course. This was always going to be a private
Speaker 1: members course. That was the only way that it was
Speaker 1: really going to work.
Speaker 2: Well. It's an interesting aspect of golf and whether it's
Speaker 2: a club like I think clubs struggle with this. They
Speaker 2: build these really neat short courses. One that comes to
Speaker 2: mind is what the course that OCM built at Shady Oaks,
Speaker 2: the nine hole short course called the Little Nine I think.
Speaker 2: But when I got out there, I was looking at
Speaker 2: I was like, God, you could play this, you know,
Speaker 2: seventy five times and talking to the superintendent do you
Speaker 2: ever do this or seventy five different ways? And they're like, no,
Speaker 2: this is how we set it up every day. There's
Speaker 2: this reluctance for golfers in concept. If you know, if
Speaker 2: a golfer is in the right mindset, it's like al
Speaker 2: and it's a really cool place to go, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think this probably has a lot to do
Speaker 2: with people's personalities. If you're not like a type a planner,
Speaker 2: this is a concept that you find very appealing, Like
Speaker 2: I can I don't know where I'm going next, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to go somewhere and I can play there.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily there's no handicaps, there's no you know,
Speaker 2: this is not a place I'm entering my score. But
Speaker 2: for somebody that's type A, this is this is an
Speaker 2: utter disaster. The idea of not knowing where you're going,
Speaker 2: not being a formal scorecard, not being able to track
Speaker 2: my scores, not being able to enter a handicap like
Speaker 2: these are things that just kind of would cripple a
Speaker 2: type A person where, you know, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to cast too many generalizations, but that I think, like
Speaker 2: you know, for some people, for certain types of people,
Speaker 2: this concept is is unbelievable. But for others it's it's
Speaker 2: just like, no, this isn't golf, this is not my
Speaker 2: structured golf.
Speaker 1: And I think specifically people who are going to band
Speaker 1: It Dunes, if they encounter a free form course, their
Speaker 1: first question is probably going to be, well, which one's
Speaker 1: the best routing, which one's like the top one hundred
Speaker 1: course here? I want to play that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's the question you encounter when the
Speaker 2: second you step on foot, is that everybody wants it out.
Speaker 2: What's the best course? And you know, with the sheep
Speaker 2: branch you could come up with sixty different courses in
Speaker 2: its original you know, construction, which I find quite appealing.
Speaker 2: I you know, ironically, I think this course and the
Speaker 2: Loop are two examples of Tom. I think one of
Speaker 2: the things that Tom does that not a lot of
Speaker 2: architects do is they push the boundaries of and they push,
Speaker 2: you know, where they're comfortable going. Like, you know, they
Speaker 2: don't stick to what has worked for twenty He doesn't
Speaker 2: stick to what has worked for twenty years. He wants
Speaker 2: to design new concepts. And I think when you look
Speaker 2: back on his career, that's the thing that you know
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most admirable things about about
Speaker 2: him is that he pushes the limits. And you know,
Speaker 2: this course and the Loop, to me are two courses
Speaker 2: that were built at resorts that are would be far
Speaker 2: superior golf courses for municipalities or clubs because of the
Speaker 2: versatility of them. You know the loop is going to
Speaker 2: work because you know that that resorts really embraced it.
Speaker 2: But I always think about that golf course, how unbelievable
Speaker 2: it would be to play it every single day, because
Speaker 2: that's where the more and more time you spend on it,
Speaker 2: the more and more you appreciate all the little intricacies
Speaker 2: that went into that design and just the day to
Speaker 2: day variety of playing a completely new golf course every day.
Speaker 1: And you know, in some ways the Sheep Ranch concept
Speaker 1: might have been a little bit ahead of its time.
Speaker 2: It seems like a perfect state course.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And it ended up kind of being that, right.
Speaker 1: It ended up being sort of a private playground for
Speaker 1: Phil Friedman and his family for a while, and they
Speaker 1: finally decided to you know, formalize the routing, make it
Speaker 1: an eighteen whole course that was more part of the
Speaker 1: Bandon Dune's resort when Freeman's kids had grown up and
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't going out there as much. But
Speaker 1: for a while it kind of functioned in that way.
Speaker 1: But you know when I say it was a little
Speaker 1: bit ahead of its time, Now we have places like
Speaker 1: Hoopy Match Club and the Loop, which the reversible course
Speaker 1: that Tom Dokes Firm designed at Forrest Dunes. There are
Speaker 1: these alternative concepts starting to pop up. We're starting to
Speaker 1: see how they work, and maybe it would have been
Speaker 1: more possible for Sheep Ranch to happen if that were
Speaker 1: the case. But at the time, Mike Kaiser was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've gotten a lot of positive press for
Speaker 1: opening up these public courses. There's going to be a
Speaker 1: little bit of blowback here if we establish an ultra
Speaker 1: private course, which which this would kind of have to
Speaker 1: be in order to function.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and who could complaint with the results as it's
Speaker 2: the busiest eighteen hull course at you know, maybe the
Speaker 2: busiest golf resort in the world. And you know, people
Speaker 2: seem to love the golf course. So you know, hiring
Speaker 2: it worked out, Bill Koor Ben Crenshaw obviously you're going
Speaker 2: to usually get a pretty solid product. I think this
Speaker 2: golf course is very distinct from all the others because
Speaker 2: it's in a complete it's off site. You leave the resort,
Speaker 2: you know, you leave the central theme of the property.
Speaker 2: You know, the dune ridge that extends across every single
Speaker 2: golf course at Bandon is not present here, and you know,
Speaker 2: it is a It is probably the smallest site of
Speaker 2: all the golf courses.
Speaker 1: The smallest site and very different from the land at
Speaker 1: the other golf courses. Now, just to backtrack a couple
Speaker 1: of steps for those who don't know, Corn Crenshaw came
Speaker 1: in a few years ago, did a new routing, eighteen
Speaker 1: whole routing, and that's what we have today at the
Speaker 1: Sheep Ranch, which has been open for what a year
Speaker 1: and a half now.
Speaker 2: Be twenty twenty, so almost two getting close to two years,
Speaker 2: but a year and.
Speaker 1: A half now. Tom Doak and Don Plasik is at
Speaker 1: Renaissance Golf Design had done an eighteen hole routing. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think multiple eighteen hole routings on the Sheep Ranch
Speaker 1: property before, and Tom has one of them in his
Speaker 1: book Getting to eighteen. That's really interesting to look at
Speaker 1: now because it is pretty different. As you mentioned, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty small site, and so fitting eighteen holes on there,
Speaker 1: eighteen regulation holes was always going to be a challenge.
Speaker 1: The way that Doak and Plasic dealt with it was
Speaker 1: by having a couple of holes cross over each other
Speaker 1: kind of, and then you have a couple of holes
Speaker 1: kind of climbing up into the northern inland corner of
Speaker 1: the site where the driving range currently is. Bill Corr
Speaker 1: solved these problems in a very different way, and Doak
Speaker 1: talks about it in his book. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: Bill found some solutions that I didn't see. You know
Speaker 1: what Bill did was he has that first hole kind
Speaker 1: of running along the northern boundary of the site great
Speaker 1: first hole indisputably the best first hole on the resort,
Speaker 1: and that was not a hole that Tom saw, and
Speaker 1: so Bill kind of found that one. He also found
Speaker 1: the green site for number nine, which is kind of
Speaker 1: out on a peninsula, and you know, that was sort
Speaker 1: of in a part of the property that the original
Speaker 1: Sheep Ranch didn't use, and so Bill kind of found
Speaker 1: that stuff and made it work together. As part of
Speaker 1: the routing, Bill also has holes playing along the cliffs
Speaker 1: in different directions, and he does that by having holes
Speaker 1: play out to the cliffs and then kind of go
Speaker 1: off in one direction and then the course wraps back around,
Speaker 1: plays out to the cliff again and goes in another direction.
Speaker 1: And so it's really cool the solutions that Bill Corr
Speaker 1: found on this site. And he talked to you in
Speaker 1: fact about the pieces of pizza.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is one of my favorite moments of the
Speaker 2: podcast history is he's describing how he figured this out
Speaker 2: and he talks about how they're like pieces of pizza,
Speaker 2: and that's a good way to visualize it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: the a hole when you tee off, you know, you
Speaker 2: play out to like that's where your shot, you know
Speaker 2: it Fans out like a piece of pizza, right, and
Speaker 2: then when you play into greens, that's like playing to
Speaker 2: a point of a piece of pizza, right, everything narrows down.
Speaker 2: So it became about matching up, you know, the insides
Speaker 2: of the piece of pizza in these gathering points. And
Speaker 2: you see it right off the bat with the first hole,
Speaker 2: the eighteenth tee, the seventeenth green, and the second tee
Speaker 2: on this one little area and then they're all the
Speaker 2: corners the front parts of a triangle piece of pizza.
Speaker 2: And then everything comes in or goes out from there
Speaker 2: like a you know, fans out. So that's how he
Speaker 2: kind of did that. And he has these different gathering
Speaker 2: points throughout the throughout the property where it's it's it's
Speaker 2: very easy to see once you visualize it that way.
Speaker 2: And we did a video that kind of highlights this.
Speaker 2: You know, it makes the route it like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's already small plot of land, but you keep you
Speaker 2: go to these places and you return to them. And
Speaker 2: another thing from you know, Bill talking on the pod
Speaker 2: that I'll never forget is how much he admires the
Speaker 2: routing of Cyprus Point and he always talks about how
Speaker 2: it goes to areas and returns to areas. And that's
Speaker 2: something that you start to notice with Bill when you
Speaker 2: when you think about how, you know, the places that
Speaker 2: he's really enamored with seem to have similar characteristics with routing,
Speaker 2: and then you start to play his courses. And this
Speaker 2: is very similar to Bandon trails, which I don't want
Speaker 2: to get into, but there are these points that you
Speaker 2: go past and then you return back to and the
Speaker 2: same thing happens with the sheep branch, and it's you
Speaker 2: know that that northern point that you go to the
Speaker 2: first hole, you don't return back that are until the
Speaker 2: seventeenth at the very end, you know, and sometimes it
Speaker 2: are long gaps between them. Sometimes it's very short, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So just to explain the pizza metaphor a little bit more,
Speaker 1: you can also imagine just like a triangle. And the
Speaker 1: problem that he's solving with this in the routing is
Speaker 1: that this is a pretty small site, so it needs
Speaker 1: to be a tight intimate routing with holes pretty close together.
Speaker 1: There aren't things to separate the holes from each other.
Speaker 1: There aren't these huge dunes the Pacific Dunes and Bandon
Speaker 1: Dunes have. There aren't trees. It's just it's pretty open,
Speaker 1: and so if you have holes tight together on a
Speaker 1: fairly small property that's really open, then you have safety problems.
Speaker 1: And so what he worked out is getting different tea
Speaker 1: complexes close together and then having the holes play away
Speaker 1: from those tees in different directions. And so you can
Speaker 1: get a lot of width in the driving zones because
Speaker 1: you're playing kind of from the same place, but you're
Speaker 1: playing in a different direction, and so it's a super
Speaker 1: wide course, but at the same time, the holes all fit.
Speaker 1: And the way he makes that work is by designing
Speaker 1: these triangles or pieces of pizza so that people aren't
Speaker 1: hitting into each other basically, and it really works beautifully, Yeah, more.
Speaker 2: So than anything any other course. It's it's very like
Speaker 2: jigsaw puzzly in the sense like there's no dunes that
Speaker 2: like are are there right that pieces fit into or
Speaker 2: up into or over like everything's there and everything just
Speaker 2: kind of fits together. And I think, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: one of the things with this golf course, it's never
Speaker 2: going to be mistaken as a championship course, like they're
Speaker 2: they're never going to bring one of the USGA championships
Speaker 2: to the Sheep Branch. The Sheep ranch is a you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a fun golf course and obviously one of
Speaker 2: the most distinct features there are the bunkers. So the bunkers,
Speaker 2: they made the decision not to put sand in them.
Speaker 2: I think that's a maintenance issue that they deal with
Speaker 2: at at Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes and Old Mac
Speaker 2: is sand blowing out of bunkers. This is the most
Speaker 2: exposed site, the site that gets the windiest, Like, if
Speaker 2: you're going to play it on a windy day, luck,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be the windiest place on on the property.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things they did was
Speaker 2: not put sand in bunkers, which I think is something
Speaker 2: that more golf courses should look into.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. How did you like how they played?
Speaker 2: I haven't ever been in one, but I've watched people
Speaker 2: play all right, Well, I was in a couple. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they're impactful. I think like what happens is
Speaker 2: you get a lot more unpredictability out of it. I
Speaker 2: think you see good players struggle out of them. You
Speaker 2: know is the thing is you get really gnarly unpredictable lies.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you get great lies and you can hit a shot,
Speaker 2: you know, say it's a part five. You can try
Speaker 2: and go for the green out of them, but you
Speaker 2: can also get really bad lies that you wouldn't see
Speaker 2: unless your ball plugged in a bunker, you know. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing that I like about it
Speaker 2: is that it does provide a little bit of a
Speaker 2: leveling of skill between a scratch player and a fifteen handicap,
Speaker 2: where the fifteens generally struggle it from years ago catting.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not type casting it, but just in general,
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen handicaps compared to scratches, that that skill
Speaker 2: level separates even further out of bunkers. And I think
Speaker 2: this is a really you know, a it's cheaper to
Speaker 2: maintain and b it effectively like brings skill levels together,
Speaker 2: which I think is a very very clever design feature
Speaker 2: that we should look at more in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, through the history of golf, we've developed
Speaker 1: this idea that bunkers need to have sand in them.
Speaker 1: And the reason bunkers originally had sand in them is
Speaker 1: that that was just what the soil was. On the
Speaker 1: oldest courses, you dug down and there was sand that
Speaker 1: was what was naturally there, and that's true also of
Speaker 1: the other courses. At the band In Dunes Resort, if
Speaker 1: you dig down into Pacific Dunes' soil, you'll find sand,
Speaker 1: and so sand in the bunkers is pretty natural. There
Speaker 1: At Sheep Ranch, you're not dealing with sandy soil really,
Speaker 1: and so they sand capped it though they yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not dealing with a naturally sandy site. I mean that
Speaker 1: that was a big reason why they didn't put sand
Speaker 1: in the bunkers, right, because if it blows out, then
Speaker 1: you you don't have much to replace it with. And
Speaker 1: so you know, what's at the bottom of these bunkers
Speaker 1: is pretty natural, and I think that a big thing
Speaker 1: that makes it work is that it's not intensively maintained rough.
Speaker 1: That's what you usually see in grass bunkers. When courses
Speaker 1: have grass bunkers.
Speaker 2: They're collection area. They're like water collection areas. A lot
Speaker 2: of times there's catch basins and do they serve as
Speaker 2: drainage functions. And what you get is like the thickest,
Speaker 2: gnarliest rough there. This is very sparse, It's like it's
Speaker 2: kind of patchy and gnarly. And what it does is
Speaker 2: it creates like really good lies like you can have
Speaker 2: that ball sit up and it's like it's on a
Speaker 2: tee or you could get you know, you're in between
Speaker 2: tufts of grass and you're you're looking at it and
Speaker 2: it's like, I don't know if I can even hit
Speaker 2: this ball ten yards and.
Speaker 1: You've got to play a variety of shots out of there.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to tell how long your backswing can be.
Speaker 1: Because if you're a pretty good player and you're in sand,
Speaker 1: then you can kind of go after it. You have
Speaker 1: a little bit of freedom to swing hard at it.
Speaker 1: But when you're playing out of one of these sometimes
Speaker 1: you don't know how the ball is going to come out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to be really delicate, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's what courses that don't want to do traditional
Speaker 1: bunkers should really strive for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it elicits imagination too, because you get in a
Speaker 2: lot of predicaments that you're not used to it. It's
Speaker 2: the idea of like the departure from driving range or
Speaker 2: short game area golf, Like you get in spots where
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't really know what I should do here,
Speaker 2: but this seems like the right shot, and then you
Speaker 2: couple it with some of the green concepts out there,
Speaker 2: and it makes for a lot of really fun shots
Speaker 2: and the ability to really you know, engage your creativity
Speaker 2: around the greens.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite holes?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think if I had to pick one,
Speaker 2: you know, interestingly here, like everybody, everybody's very aware of
Speaker 2: the ocean holes. And what I think about this golf
Speaker 2: course is actually the best holes are inland, the most
Speaker 2: jaw dropping topography. Now, like there's nothing like playing on
Speaker 2: the ocean, right and you're staring at the ocean, but
Speaker 2: when you're talking about playing a golf course, and the
Speaker 2: way I like to think about golf courses isn't necessarily
Speaker 2: the first time I play them, but like the more
Speaker 2: times I play them, what what grows and the holes
Speaker 2: that really stick with me are are inland. There. The
Speaker 2: eighth hole is one that I think is just absolutely tremendous.
Speaker 2: It's got one of we talked about this on the
Speaker 2: podcast on the Dream eighteen. It's got arguably maybe the
Speaker 2: best green on the property. It's a green that you know,
Speaker 2: Cameron heard us who were we out there with, made
Speaker 2: a comparison to an Augustin National Green, like the fifth
Speaker 2: Green in Augustina National and anybody that's seen that just
Speaker 2: a massive false front. But it also has like some
Speaker 2: avenues of play that you can get at with with
Speaker 2: different angles into the green, the you know obviously the
Speaker 2: ocean holes. The ninth hole is one of my favorites,
Speaker 2: just hitting into that green and having it run away
Speaker 2: the way it runs away is a is a tremendous hole.
Speaker 2: But then you know, going inland again, the fourteenth hole
Speaker 2: and the eleventh hole. Eleventh hole is a par five
Speaker 2: that plays up this hill, up a huge ridge. It's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to really describe it. It almost
Speaker 2: feels like you're playing out of a quarry up to
Speaker 2: the top of you know, and it's where the clubhouse sits.
Speaker 2: That hole is stunning, it's a it's it's probably one
Speaker 2: of the sternest par fives on property. You have to
Speaker 2: hit two really great shots to get there, and it's blind,
Speaker 2: you know. On If you don't get there, you're probably
Speaker 2: gonna have a blind third. And it's got one of
Speaker 2: the whi it's got a really wild green. It's you know,
Speaker 2: that's the thing I think, I I you know, the
Speaker 2: the land inland is really really good. It's got you know,
Speaker 2: kind of more dramatics than the land on the coast,
Speaker 2: but it also has the most dramatic greens. Is you
Speaker 2: can tell that there is an effort to make those
Speaker 2: holes really spectacular, because you know, otherwise they'd fall short
Speaker 2: of the ocean holes.
Speaker 1: Now, so the eleventh hole, the par five that you
Speaker 1: were talking about, the green literally is in a quarry,
Speaker 1: in an old quarry. This is something that I just
Speaker 1: found out where you know, it was basically a sand
Speaker 1: quarry that Doakes team used to get sand for some
Speaker 1: of the things that they were building on the Old
Speaker 1: Sheep Ranch. And to make the eleventh hole what's now
Speaker 1: the eleventh hole, Corps team knocked down one wall of
Speaker 1: the quarry essentially and they have the whole play into it,
Speaker 1: and the green kind of sits in that cavity and
Speaker 1: it's just really cool, really spectacular, an inventive use of
Speaker 1: not a natural feature necessarily, but a found feature. I
Speaker 1: think fifteen is a fantastic hole too.
Speaker 2: It's a great like hard par four gettable part four.
Speaker 1: It will say more about that, what's the how is
Speaker 1: it both hard and gettable?
Speaker 2: So like well, like fourteen is like a just a
Speaker 2: stern par four and then fifteen is a hole that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, depending on your skill level, if you're you know,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to score out there, you feel like
Speaker 2: that's a hole where you should get a birdie because
Speaker 2: you can, you know, it's a short part four. But
Speaker 2: then you get up by the green. The green is
Speaker 2: just absolutely jaw dropping where the location of it right
Speaker 2: on the coastline, and then also the undulations it's got,
Speaker 2: you know, a spine that runs through the you know,
Speaker 2: the green kind of is oriented on a diagonal. So
Speaker 2: the further left you play off the tee, the better
Speaker 2: angle you're going to have into the green, which I
Speaker 2: think is a little counterintuitive. It is away from the
Speaker 2: straight line at the hole, and it's a driveable hole
Speaker 2: if you get the right wind, and I think most
Speaker 2: people end up trying to drive it, end up right
Speaker 2: and end up in a really bad spot to approach
Speaker 2: the green. But if you hit it left, which you
Speaker 2: know is a little counterintuitive on a short part four,
Speaker 2: you know, it provides you the right of the angle
Speaker 2: to really get at every pin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's counterintuitive there off the tee is how far
Speaker 1: left you can aim and be in a great position
Speaker 1: going into the green. Because you just feel like you
Speaker 1: should be cutting off more. But you can really aim
Speaker 1: away from the green and you'll be in a good spot.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of like a hard thing to do
Speaker 2: because that the way the green in the coast is,
Speaker 2: it kind of cuts on a diagonal and like you know,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of stuff in the way, so
Speaker 2: your depth perception is a little off. But you don't
Speaker 2: know how far left you can go because of the coast.
Speaker 2: If you're a long hitter, you're kind of like thinking,
Speaker 2: I might run out of real estate over there, even
Speaker 2: though it's really far.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, And you don't know how crazy the
Speaker 1: green is until you get up on it, but it
Speaker 1: is truly crazy and very very fun. You know. There's
Speaker 1: this spine running through the lower portion of the green
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, kind of right through the middle, and
Speaker 1: it really is a spine. It's a hump, you know,
Speaker 1: putting over it is difficult. And then there's a tier
Speaker 1: at the back of the green that goes way up
Speaker 1: kind of you know, flows from the spine and creates
Speaker 1: a shelf at the back right portion of the green,
Speaker 1: and you can definitely three put that green a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean and you can make bogie from
Speaker 2: just off the green if you drive it up by
Speaker 2: the green really easily because you get in the wrong spot.
Speaker 2: Those those backpins are really really difficult. Whether it's into
Speaker 2: the wind, you know, you're trying to gauge your distance
Speaker 2: control right you know, and your spin you know with
Speaker 2: the backpin, and then if it's downwind, you're trying to
Speaker 2: run it up with the right touch, and it's a
Speaker 2: that's a that's a hole. I'd love to just sit
Speaker 2: around and hit pitch shots at all day to different pins,
Speaker 2: but like I think we'd be remiss, like the obvious,
Speaker 2: like contenders for favor holes, like sixteen as one. I
Speaker 2: think sixteen is super cool short part three and when
Speaker 2: you combine it with the third green they have, they
Speaker 2: share a green, and the way they kind of create
Speaker 2: those massive undulations that divide the green, I thought it
Speaker 2: was really clever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Bill Core credits that green, which is the
Speaker 1: one that everybody's seen. If you've seen pictures of Sheep Ranch,
Speaker 1: then you've seen a picture of this green. It's out
Speaker 1: on five mile point. What you don't see in those
Speaker 1: kind of high above pictures is how extremely undulated this
Speaker 1: green is it is. Really it has a lot of
Speaker 1: movement in it, you know, like ten feet bottom to
Speaker 1: top or maybe more. And billcre credits most of that
Speaker 1: green to Jim Orbina. Basically, what Core says is that
Speaker 1: we rebuilt the green, but essentially what was there before
Speaker 1: is there now and it is super cool. It functions
Speaker 1: beautifully as a double green because the sections are cut
Speaker 1: off from each other, and when you're playing to it
Speaker 1: from the sixteenth tee, the sixteenth hole is just so
Speaker 1: fun because there's this narrow walkway between the edge of
Speaker 1: the cliff and a big dune and you're basically playing
Speaker 1: along that and if you hit it over the dune,
Speaker 1: then you have a really good chance at feeding the
Speaker 1: ball to the hole out on the point. But it's
Speaker 1: not immediately clear what you have to do. You know,
Speaker 1: there's that feeder slope there, but you don't really see it, and.
Speaker 2: Nobody that's like a scratch player is really thinking about
Speaker 2: that because you have a wedge in your hand and
Speaker 2: you're thinking like, I can hit this close, I can
Speaker 2: fly it close. But you know, if you want to
Speaker 2: bail out, there's a way to bail out and have
Speaker 2: it run right by. It's a little bit less predictable
Speaker 2: than your wedge, which is why a scratch player would
Speaker 2: never do that. But you know, it provides relief and
Speaker 2: it's a very I mean, it's a t shot that
Speaker 2: you stand over and you're kind of you're, no matter
Speaker 2: what kind of player, you're a little nervous because you
Speaker 2: know you're exposed to the elements you're hitting out out
Speaker 2: of this point and like it's a big target, but
Speaker 2: you know that that cliff is unforgiving on the left.
Speaker 1: So here's a general question about Sheep Ranch. I think
Speaker 1: that one of the things that we all hoped that
Speaker 1: the new Sheep Ranch would do was that it would
Speaker 1: retain some of the feel of the old Sheep Ranch
Speaker 1: because you know, that was a unique place in golf
Speaker 1: what Doc and his team designed there. Obviously, it couldn't
Speaker 1: survive when the Sheep Ranch was incorporated into the larger resorts.
Speaker 1: Something else had to be built there. But do you
Speaker 1: think there's still something of that spirit in the new
Speaker 1: course there? This is something I've been thinking about.
Speaker 2: I you know, I think in the sense that it's
Speaker 2: kind of a quirky, yer place than than the rest
Speaker 2: of the golf courses. I would say, you know, it's
Speaker 2: got it's it's a charming place. I do think it
Speaker 2: was a little resortified in the in the nature of
Speaker 2: like the par three's are kind of what grinds my
Speaker 2: gears at Sheep Ranch, and they're they're different from each other,
Speaker 2: but the three of them in the first three in
Speaker 2: the golf course are very similar to each other. And that,
Speaker 2: you know, I think there could have been some decisions
Speaker 2: and you know, obviously I'm not I'm not an architect,
Speaker 2: but I think if you were not designing a resort course,
Speaker 2: you might have made some decisions that were different and
Speaker 2: not have three you know, part threes that play in
Speaker 2: the first seven holes that play kind of in the
Speaker 2: same direction, similar lengths to similar green sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would say that out of those part threes,
Speaker 1: which are three, five, and seven, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem, they're they're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're very close, and you're just like, wait,
Speaker 2: this is like a really similar shot. It's a similar
Speaker 2: wind because they play in similar directions they do. And
Speaker 2: and then like the green sites, like they're I've been there,
Speaker 2: you know twice. Now it's like kind of hard to distinguish,
Speaker 2: like I know seven runs away, and you know, I
Speaker 2: remember holes like in three, you know you have some
Speaker 2: helping Three kind of runs away a little bit, but
Speaker 2: then five you've got some helping contours up. But like
Speaker 2: they're kind of they're very very just you know, there's
Speaker 2: not a lot of it, and I think like not
Speaker 2: having bunkers probably plays a role in this, but they
Speaker 2: just feel really similar.
Speaker 1: Well the first time you play them, they definitely blend
Speaker 1: together a little bit. I think that three and five
Speaker 1: out of those are probably the weaker holes. Seven is
Speaker 1: a terrific hole. I think, you know, it plays out
Speaker 1: to a peninsula and green, as you mentioned, runs away
Speaker 1: a little bit and so you really need to land
Speaker 1: it short. And there's a really interesting green complex there
Speaker 1: that is just kind of fun to play around. But five,
Speaker 1: I would say, is not a particularly strong hole overall.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit longer than the others. I guess
Speaker 1: you're playing a longer club, but there's not much there
Speaker 1: that jumps out at me. Is like that's a distinct
Speaker 1: feature on this hole. It's more like it was kind
Speaker 1: of put there in order to have another hole playing
Speaker 1: at the ocean. And I would say that three is
Speaker 1: you know it's fine, but it's more just functional than
Speaker 1: it is a great.
Speaker 2: They're just kind of there as holes. I feel like
Speaker 2: now they point right to the ocean and that it's stunning. Yes,
Speaker 2: but you know, when you look at the merits of
Speaker 2: the golf hole, they I think fall short of Like,
Speaker 2: you know, they're a couple of the weakest holes on
Speaker 2: the entire property, you know, across all the courses. I've
Speaker 2: something that I've kind of thought about and mold about.
Speaker 2: This is my biggest complaint about the golf course is
Speaker 2: like could there have been decision that changed it a
Speaker 2: little bit? And what I've kind of thought about is
Speaker 2: if the sixth hole, which is a great cliff side hole,
Speaker 2: different than seventeen but similar in the t shots they
Speaker 2: kind of mirror each other. Obviously seventeen t varies directly
Speaker 2: a ton based off where you play it from. But
Speaker 2: you know, they these are two great epic cliff side
Speaker 2: par fours, right, And if you turned six into a
Speaker 2: par five that played to seven Green, which is a
Speaker 2: fantastic green site, like probably is of the three my
Speaker 2: favorite green site, you would remove some of that you know, monotony,
Speaker 2: and you'd get that par five and then to make
Speaker 2: up for it. You know, one of the holes that
Speaker 2: I like, don't want to hit a good drive on
Speaker 2: so I get to hit the third shot is the
Speaker 2: eleventh hole up into the quarry. So one of my
Speaker 2: thoughts was like, if you created a par four that
Speaker 2: played down to the bottom of the quarry and then
Speaker 2: you had an uphill par three up there, it would
Speaker 2: add so much variety to the par three's and I
Speaker 2: I don't know if it would be a better course,
Speaker 2: but from a par three standpoint, it would be significantly
Speaker 2: more memorable in my opinion. Better.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Now that sixth hole that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is now a long par four and you could
Speaker 1: turn into a par five that would be spectacular. It
Speaker 1: would take up a lot of coastline. And I think
Speaker 1: that that would probably be the concern that you're you're
Speaker 1: sucking up, that.
Speaker 2: You're trading too. You're trading too Like here's the resort
Speaker 2: aspect of it, right, Like Banded Dude's one of the
Speaker 2: you know, and I think Mike Kaiser's been pretty direct
Speaker 2: about this, Like the postcard pictures. There's a big thing
Speaker 2: the magazine pictures. Like when when they started of the
Speaker 2: ocean is a big thing, a big part of their success.
Speaker 2: Like you're talking about replacing two coast holes, making it
Speaker 2: one and then having two inland holes instead. That's where
Speaker 2: the resort aspect of this, you know, kind of prohibits
Speaker 2: that idea, which it's kind of disappointing, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, that's just my two cents though.
Speaker 1: Right Well, so in the transformation from the free form
Speaker 1: course with thirteen greens to the eighteen hole resort course,
Speaker 1: I think one thing that they've gotten right so far
Speaker 1: is just the feeling of being out there and playing
Speaker 1: in an open piece of land. Yeah, because the holes
Speaker 1: are not very distinctly defined from each other in a
Speaker 1: good way. You know, there's just this kind of these
Speaker 1: open expanses that you play across. There are some longer grasses,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of gorse out there, but mostly
Speaker 1: what you have is enormously wide fairways. And so I
Speaker 1: think there's still that feeling of going to a tee
Speaker 1: looking out at a green in the distance and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've just got to get from here to there, and
Speaker 1: there are a number of possible routes there. I've got
Speaker 1: this big field to play over and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to figure it out. And I think that there's still
Speaker 1: something of that spirit still in the course just because
Speaker 1: of how open it is. It is by far the
Speaker 1: most barren looking property at the resort. Now. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that that's going to last necessarily, but I like
Speaker 1: it right now. I like that feeling of the openness.
Speaker 2: I think it it promotes like a feel of camaraderie
Speaker 2: in a way, like you're on a journey. You're out
Speaker 2: there with other golfers. You see that everybody all over
Speaker 2: the place, and it promotes almost like a community feel
Speaker 2: where there isn't as many walled off areas. It's like
Speaker 2: you're you're playing golf on this beautiful like it's almost
Speaker 2: like being at a party that's like on this epic
Speaker 2: you know, ocean frontage and it's just this big room
Speaker 2: that everybody's in and you're going and you're just working
Speaker 2: the room. You're working around it, right, and like everywhere
Speaker 2: you turn there's a great view and I mean epic
Speaker 2: holes like I think, you know, granted, I've played it
Speaker 2: in little light winds, but it's some of the most
Speaker 2: fun golf that I've played. Abandoned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is really really fun. Now, as
Speaker 1: you say, it's really different when there's a heavy wind
Speaker 1: out there, I'm sure that the course feels completely different.
Speaker 1: But when there is a lighter wind, it really does
Speaker 1: feel like a sporty golf course, you know, as compared
Speaker 1: to a championship course, which you might find elsewhere at
Speaker 1: the resort. You know, Abandon Dunes is you know these
Speaker 1: days it feels like a championship course. It literally is.
Speaker 1: That's where they're holding USGA championships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like Pacific Dunes is like a place that like,
Speaker 2: you know, like there are multiple points in that round
Speaker 2: where you know you just have to hit a perfect shot,
Speaker 2: you know. And at Sheep Branch you feel and I
Speaker 2: think part of it is that expanse. You feel the
Speaker 2: ability that you can kind of be a little bit
Speaker 2: looser and you can, and I think that plays to
Speaker 2: that sportiness that you talked about, Like you feel like
Speaker 2: you can experiment and you can hit different shots. And
Speaker 2: because it does, you know, you don't have these deep
Speaker 2: blowout bunkers that are staring you right back in the face.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It just it enhances your ability to see shots because
Speaker 2: you don't aren't as scared of repercussions. You could still
Speaker 2: get in terrible spots, but it's not as visually intimidating.
Speaker 1: And maybe part of that is that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ground game out there.
Speaker 2: It seems like that and Old Mac are the two
Speaker 2: that embrace the ground game the most, and I think
Speaker 2: like it, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about conditioning.
Speaker 2: They're the two newest, they're they're the two with you know,
Speaker 2: basically fescue everywhere, and they play they promote the ground
Speaker 2: games as as the most of any golf courses because
Speaker 2: of the way they play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Sheep Branch is gonna evolve, you know, yuh
Speaker 1: Like it's it's gonna change because of the wind and
Speaker 1: because of the type of terrain that's there. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not particularly sandy, it's it's much heavier soil.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the grass is gonna change. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: going to be different things happening in the areas between
Speaker 1: the holes. There might be gorse reintroduced, or if there's
Speaker 1: not gorse reintroduced, I'm sure that the grasses are gonna
Speaker 1: gonna shift and evolve, and I'll be curious, particularly to
Speaker 1: see how Sheep Ranch changes in the future because it
Speaker 1: is very new and it's on a site that probably
Speaker 1: is going to be very malleable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that. I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: things you always have to keep in mind with new
Speaker 2: courses is and it's something that sometimes can be frustrating
Speaker 2: with when you think about how courses are judged, and
Speaker 2: it's they're judged when they're growing in when they aren't
Speaker 2: even fully matured, and you know, we always slap the
Speaker 2: you know, the Sheep Ranch obviously was like slap that
Speaker 2: that might be the best course abandoned when it when
Speaker 2: it was opened, because that's what magazines do. But you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things I always think about is like
Speaker 2: golf courses should be judged like five to ten years
Speaker 2: into their lifespan because so much of it is about,
Speaker 2: you know, how architects build golf courses and how they
Speaker 2: hold up with like quality construction. Just like a house,
Speaker 2: if you buy a shitty house, it's gonna fall apart.
Speaker 2: Like you know, if you build a shitty golf course
Speaker 2: from an infrastructure standpoint, it's gonna you know, it's not
Speaker 2: going to age well and then it also holds the
Speaker 2: ownership accountable to maintaining and keep taking care of a
Speaker 2: golf course in the right way. So that's something I
Speaker 2: think about a lot, and I think, obviously like the
Speaker 2: Kaisers do a wonderful job with both those aspects. But
Speaker 2: Sheep Ranch is one like before we make these lots
Speaker 2: like that is a golf course that's gonna evolve more
Speaker 2: so than almost probably any in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see. So you mentioned the magazines that were
Speaker 1: eager to say that Sheep Ranch is the best core
Speaker 1: said Bandon Dunes. I don't think people were necessarily saying
Speaker 1: this is definitely the best course at Bandon Dunes, but
Speaker 1: there was the kind of strong suggestion this might be it.
Speaker 1: But I think when people say that Sheep Ranch might
Speaker 1: be the best course at Bandon Dunes, that they're forgetting
Speaker 1: how good some of the other courses are and it's
Speaker 1: just not quite on that level. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it's necessarily trying to be. I think it's trying to
Speaker 1: be its own thing. But if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: course that's as good as Pacific Dunes or Abandoned Trails,
Speaker 1: I just don't think that was ever what this was
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 2: Be this is the ranking of banded courses is always
Speaker 2: an inevitable rabbit hole. And the way I would phrase
Speaker 2: Sheep Ranch and you can phrase this with a lot
Speaker 2: of them, And I think this would fall into the
Speaker 2: two courses I'd probably want to play the most if
Speaker 2: I played there, Like if that was where I played
Speaker 2: golf was banded all the time. The two courses, and
Speaker 2: this is not a realistic thing for really anybody, but
Speaker 2: the two courses I'd want to play the most are
Speaker 2: probably Sheep Branch and Old Mac, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think they have kind of the most variability with the
Speaker 2: you know, with the design, and they they also I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Old Mac is hard, It's very hard, but
Speaker 2: it has the most shot options, and Sheep Branch is
Speaker 2: a place where you feel like you can go get stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, Pac Dunes is absolutely jaw dropping place.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's some shots out there that I
Speaker 2: don't want to see and hit all the time, but
Speaker 2: I really enjoy hitting them occasionally but not all the time.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where, you know, I think I
Speaker 2: put it in that bucket of like and Trails is
Speaker 2: a little bit bigger of a walk, so that would
Speaker 2: be kind of the detriment on that is like Sheep
Speaker 2: Branch is a place you could go play like fifty
Speaker 2: four holes in a day, no problem, like you know, walking,
Speaker 2: And I think the same with Old Mac is, like
Speaker 2: you know, the the climbs, like it's it's not as
Speaker 2: taxing of a golf course. Now, obviously the wind plays
Speaker 2: a huge factor on that, but the golf courses are
Speaker 2: easy to get around and fun and they offer a
Speaker 2: ton of variety day to day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd agree with that, And so it depends on
Speaker 1: what you're prioritizing. That's why it's tough to rank stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always struggle with this because it's like I
Speaker 2: think there are golf courses that are better than other
Speaker 2: golf courses, but the other golf course I might want
Speaker 2: to play more often than necessarily the better course. And
Speaker 2: it's something I always grapple with. And this is one
Speaker 2: that was score really high on the like I want
Speaker 2: to play there a lot list, but I think there
Speaker 2: are some issues with it that hold it back from
Speaker 2: being like a truly, truly great, great golf course, like
Speaker 2: in the breadth of like the very best golf courses
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I think we've done Sheep Ranch. I
Speaker 1: think we've covered it. Anything else you wanted to say
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing, I think the second hole it'll never
Speaker 2: get any love, but I'd love that hole. It's a clever,
Speaker 2: little short par for nothing land that, just like the
Speaker 2: green conto, are delightful and I love like the dry
Speaker 2: dish that runs through it. It's like the least trud
Speaker 2: like you're never gonna see somebody take a picture and
Speaker 2: be like, you don't believe what I play today? And
Speaker 2: that's the picture.
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