Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bride egg
Speaker 2: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg egg,
Speaker 2: Frida egg, bride egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: And Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we are talking about new digital technologies and
Speaker 1: their potential influence on golf course design. This is something
Speaker 1: that's been on my mind a lot lately. The pace
Speaker 1: of technological progress seems to be just quickening and quickening.
Speaker 1: The artificial intelligence stuff that's come out in recent months
Speaker 1: and weeks has been just insane, like chat GPT. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen that I used to be in English heature.
Speaker 1: That piece of technology alone would have completely changed the
Speaker 1: way that I approached my job as an English teacher.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sort of wondering at what point is
Speaker 1: some of this new technology going to make its way
Speaker 1: into golf architecture in a big way and really restructure
Speaker 1: how that business is done. So to sort through these issues,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to Peter Florey. Peter is probably
Speaker 1: best known in the golf world as one of the
Speaker 1: driving forces behind the LEDO Recreation project in Wisconsin. It
Speaker 1: was really Peter's research that made a lot of that possible,
Speaker 1: and he used some very interesting digital methods in that process.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about that and also just
Speaker 1: about new technologies that are becoming available to golf course
Speaker 1: architects and developers, including some pretty wild AI stuff. So
Speaker 1: that's all ahead. But first, this episode is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Fat Cork. Fat Cork is all about champagne.
Speaker 1: They work exclusively with small, family run champagne producers who
Speaker 1: grow their own grapes. These are the kinds of champagne
Speaker 1: families who have passed their craft down from generation to generation.
Speaker 1: The way it works is that Fat Cork picks the
Speaker 1: champagne up directly from France and ships it in temperature
Speaker 1: controlled packaging to a cave in Seattle. This is a
Speaker 1: small operation run by a close knit team. One of
Speaker 1: the founders is a big golf nut whose grandmother is
Speaker 1: actually from Bandon, Oregon, so that's pretty cool. The heart
Speaker 1: of Fat Cork's business is it's champagne club where customers
Speaker 1: have great champagne shipped directly to their doors. There are
Speaker 1: three club tiers. You've got Weekenders, which is four bottles
Speaker 1: per shipment, You've got Frequent Fizzers, which is six bottles,
Speaker 1: and you've got Merrymakers, which is twelve bottles per shipment.
Speaker 1: I got a Weekender's shipment in early December, and I
Speaker 1: got to tell you, I was so happy to see
Speaker 1: this arrive on my doorstep. The champagne was absolutely delicious.
Speaker 1: Everybody who got to try, my family members, my wife
Speaker 1: just had the greatest things to say about it. So
Speaker 1: this stuff is really really good. Outside of the Champagne
Speaker 1: club for fat Cork, you can definitely order individual bottles
Speaker 1: from fatcork dot com. There are gift sets and tasting
Speaker 1: kits as well, including a couple that are designed specifically
Speaker 1: for Valentine's Day, which is coming up. If you use
Speaker 1: the code golf Golf, you can get free shipping, which
Speaker 1: is a big deal when it comes to champagne. You
Speaker 1: can get a handwritten gift note and if you call
Speaker 1: or email, a real live human will help. Really cool
Speaker 1: company here, fat Cork check them out, all right, let's
Speaker 1: go to Peter Floyd. All right, So I thought a
Speaker 1: good way to start this conversation that we're going to
Speaker 1: have about digital technology and its effect on golf course
Speaker 1: design would be to tell a story about how you've
Speaker 1: used some of this technology in an actual project. Right, So,
Speaker 1: you are a key part of the Lido project in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: You initially modeled that lost Ceb McDonald SETH Rayner golf course,
Speaker 1: and what you did really enabled the architects at Tom
Speaker 1: Doakes Firm to recreate the course in a completely different location. Now,
Speaker 1: you've told me previously that this was more of a
Speaker 1: research project than a technological one, but certainly technology was
Speaker 1: involved in it. So maybe you could just tell me
Speaker 1: how you created your digital version of the Lido and
Speaker 1: what technology you did use to help you in this process.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's an interesting case because most of
Speaker 2: the technology had been existing for a while before this,
Speaker 2: and it just sort of took this case to sort
Speaker 2: of push it to everyone's attention. As you're saying, most
Speaker 2: of the leader research could have been done on anything.
Speaker 2: I could have sculpted it in clay, you know, I
Speaker 2: could have used older programs, but the newer programs are
Speaker 2: very convenient, and I guess it did play a role
Speaker 2: because the research sort of compounded, so that having a
Speaker 2: three dimensional model that you could rotate and look at
Speaker 2: from different vantage points, with different focal lengths and all
Speaker 2: that really did have a compounding effect because when I
Speaker 2: got more and more photos, we could start to sort
Speaker 2: of rotate and identify unknown photos, photos that no one
Speaker 2: knew which hole. It was all of a sudden, I
Speaker 2: could see the clubhouse in the distance, and I could
Speaker 2: see a couple of telephone poles and other landmarks, and
Speaker 2: I could just sort of match the angle and then
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, that's got to be the fifteenth green.
Speaker 2: And then once you know that, you know that may
Speaker 2: be in the background of another photo, and as sort
Speaker 2: of a chain reaction of identification of photos. And I
Speaker 2: guess if I was using clay it would be harder
Speaker 2: to do that. But the technology I was using was
Speaker 2: fairly basic. There's a lot more advanced technology than that,
Speaker 2: but I'd say it was good enough to do the
Speaker 2: trick for this project. And then once I created the
Speaker 2: digital model, there were more sort of technological applications that
Speaker 2: we had to improvise. I say we, but Tom Doak
Speaker 2: and his team and Brian Zeger. They had to figure
Speaker 2: out how to extract it from the environment that I
Speaker 2: created in which it wasn't programmed to be extracted, so
Speaker 2: that was a whole tech issue. And then using sort
Speaker 2: of the save as feature by scanning what Tom Doak
Speaker 2: and Brian Schneider and those guys would put in the ground.
Speaker 2: You know, they're working in pure sand there, and they
Speaker 2: would sort of get a rough draft from the digital
Speaker 2: model with GPS dozers, and then they would refine it
Speaker 2: and sculpt it the best that they could using photos
Speaker 2: and all sorts of other things, and then before the
Speaker 2: wind would blow it away and destroy it, they could
Speaker 2: laser scan it and sort of save as and then
Speaker 2: do whatever else they needed to do and then come
Speaker 2: back and restore it to that And that's one of
Speaker 2: the interesting sort of technologies that emerged, or the usefulness
Speaker 2: of it emerged during this project. And I think Tom
Speaker 2: has talked about how he just thought of other uses
Speaker 2: for it, like you going over to New Zealand less
Speaker 2: and doing a bunch of grains at a time and
Speaker 2: sort of saving them all as. And then he could
Speaker 2: not travel there seven times, but only once or twice.
Speaker 1: Gotcha all right? I think I'd like a little more
Speaker 1: detail about your initial digital model of the lido that
Speaker 1: you created in a video game called The Golf Club.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the technology that went into that
Speaker 1: and the process that you used to create this model
Speaker 1: that you know, when you first were creating it really
Speaker 1: stunned people in its specificity and kind of led to
Speaker 1: the process that this project ended up following. So what
Speaker 1: was that initial digital version of the leado? How did
Speaker 1: you create that?
Speaker 2: So just a little bit background. I've always dabbled in
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember being in middle school and like
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholas's program came out that I thought looked photo
Speaker 2: realistic then and now it looks like Pong in comparison.
Speaker 2: But you know, I would I would geek out on
Speaker 2: that after school. So I think I had some I
Speaker 2: was drawn to it a bit, and I was sort
Speaker 2: of kept up with, you know, links golf, had sort
Speaker 2: of a designer and other things, but it went dormant
Speaker 2: for a while when I got into work life, and
Speaker 2: I guess what rekindled the interest was we we built
Speaker 2: a house and I had the idea to put a
Speaker 2: simulator in the basement, and my my kids were sort
Speaker 2: of getting a little interested in golf, and the software
Speaker 2: that I use was the Golf Club for that simulator,
Speaker 2: and I figured out that I could design holes that
Speaker 2: were more fit for like a seven year old. So
Speaker 2: I just I knew it had designer component, and I
Speaker 2: would go in there and just be like, Okay, it'd
Speaker 2: be cool if they had a water carry, you know,
Speaker 2: ten yard water carry to a really easy grain with
Speaker 2: a big backstop. I just started screwing around like that
Speaker 2: and creating kids courses, and then after a while I
Speaker 2: sort of got comfortable with it, and I started to
Speaker 2: see the power of it. And again that's a very
Speaker 2: simple rendering program. It's very easy to use. Anyone could
Speaker 2: pick it up. But I'm like, it's actually pretty good,
Speaker 2: and it's you get the reward of being able to
Speaker 2: play it. And so I've always been interested in lost
Speaker 2: golf courses, and I was a member of Olympic fields
Speaker 2: that had two lost golf courses, and so that was
Speaker 2: my first entry point, is, man, maybe I could figure
Speaker 2: out what those were. And I started kind of screwing
Speaker 2: around in the program and importing the lidar and researching
Speaker 2: their history room. And then I think the second project
Speaker 2: was probably mill road farm up in Lake Forest, the
Speaker 2: famous loss course, and I rendered that one completely and
Speaker 2: then kind of moved onto Ocean Links and a few others.
Speaker 2: And I was still working during this time, but I
Speaker 2: had a big, heavy burst of work and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden kind of a lull, and I just
Speaker 2: I'm like, man, what would be the holy grail of
Speaker 2: lost golf? To see if I could do here and
Speaker 2: see if I could revive and go play in my basement?
Speaker 2: And the Leado had always been the lost city of
Speaker 2: Atlantis and the golf architecture community, and at that point
Speaker 2: I didn't really know much about it. I had seen
Speaker 2: a few pictures. I viewed it as a kind of
Speaker 2: a geometric template course, and I was more going into
Speaker 2: it skeptically, saying what was so great about this, saying
Speaker 2: let's see if I can find out. And I sort
Speaker 2: of got into it through one hole to eight pole,
Speaker 2: which had some pretty good photographic evidence, and I posted
Speaker 2: the results on golf club bat lists and then just
Speaker 2: started immediately getting feedback from fellow golf nerds, and it
Speaker 2: was actually very constructive, helpful feedback. I sort of misinterpreted
Speaker 2: the hole at first. I got some theories from a
Speaker 2: few people and refined it and put it back until
Speaker 2: we thought it was good enough. But just that exposure
Speaker 2: started to bring photos out of the woodwork, and then
Speaker 2: I started getting messages and emails, and that really cascaded
Speaker 2: into resulting enough information to do the whole course. So
Speaker 2: that took a while, and I had no end data,
Speaker 2: I had no goal. It was just to get it right.
Speaker 2: So I would do it for three hours one night,
Speaker 2: six hours another night. I'd abandoned for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and it was just sort of a fun thing to
Speaker 2: like a three or crossword puzzle, to keep going back.
Speaker 2: And and the more work I put into it, I
Speaker 2: would say, the easier it got, because the more everything
Speaker 2: sort of fit together, and the more feedback I could
Speaker 2: get from the images and comparing angles and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: so it got more and more rewarding, which I think
Speaker 2: things like this are typically the opposite. They get sort
Speaker 2: of diminishing returns, but this one sort of got more
Speaker 2: and more lifelike, like sort of sketching out a portrait
Speaker 2: and then filling in the details. And I guess the
Speaker 2: culmination was when and there was a couple of different
Speaker 2: touch points. Tom do OK contact me and was sort
Speaker 2: of feeling me out for how accurate it was. I
Speaker 2: think Andy actually introduced me to Michael Kaiser Jr. And
Speaker 2: sort of time and.
Speaker 1: This would be Andy Johnson that you're referring to Friday Founder.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think he was sort of watching what I
Speaker 2: was doing. He knew Michael Keser Junr. I really didn't,
Speaker 2: so a couple different introductions, and then when I presented
Speaker 2: it again, I didn't really know he was serious about
Speaker 2: doing it. I was just sort of showing him what
Speaker 2: it was. But by the end of that meeting he
Speaker 2: was He seemed very gong on. He's like, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: been wanting to do this for a long time, or
Speaker 2: my father has. I knew that they considered doing it
Speaker 2: at the band in Dune Side a long time ago,
Speaker 2: but I thought I thought that would have been neat,
Speaker 2: And then I thought it would have been pretty neat
Speaker 2: if they did at stream Song. I know they were,
Speaker 2: you know, that was kind of like the right environment
Speaker 2: to do it, sort of a blank slate, but I
Speaker 2: thought it was dead at this point. So I was
Speaker 2: doing it for sort of history's sake and my own
Speaker 2: sake and everyone so they could see what it was like.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, when he sort of brought up that
Speaker 2: it could be a reality, I just got very excited. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then that sort of motivated me to then be like,
Speaker 2: oh man, you know, I should really go back over
Speaker 2: this thing with a fine tooth comb and make sure
Speaker 2: it really is what I think because before that, you know,
Speaker 2: there's some details that you could sort of brush over.
Speaker 2: But when you know someone's gonna put in the ground,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the review editing phase started and
Speaker 2: that was pretty heavy.
Speaker 1: And what is it that you ended up handing over
Speaker 1: to Doake's team to guide them, to help guide them
Speaker 1: in the process of actually reproducing the golf course. Was
Speaker 1: there like a specific model or digital something that that
Speaker 1: you gave to them in the end.
Speaker 2: Well, then we sort of ran into a little dilemma.
Speaker 2: It was like, Okay, there's this nice looking rendering of
Speaker 2: it in a digital environment, but again, it wasn't meant
Speaker 2: it's not an architectural tool. It's more of a video game,
Speaker 2: and it was sort of trapped in there. And so
Speaker 2: the worst case we could have manually sort of measured
Speaker 2: every point of it and kind of created our own topo.
Speaker 2: But that's when Brian Zigger came in, and you know,
Speaker 2: he he was living up there, he was sort of
Speaker 2: I sort of think of him as like a tech ninja,
Speaker 2: and he's very into golf, and you kind of need
Speaker 2: the fusion of those two interests to be to be
Speaker 2: very useful here. And he just had ideas like, I
Speaker 2: think I know how to get this out of there,
Speaker 2: and I would say what he did is sort of
Speaker 2: I don't want to say hacked, but he he figured
Speaker 2: out that the measuring tool in the game would give
Speaker 2: a coordinate and a height and could measure a distance.
Speaker 2: So he sort of figured out that if he did
Speaker 2: a little macro, he could send this measuring tool off
Speaker 2: on a multi day journey or however long it took
Speaker 2: to run the program and it would just go every
Speaker 2: foot or every two feet and take a measurement. And
Speaker 2: he found a way to basically automate a topo system
Speaker 2: out of that. So that that was big. Tom likes
Speaker 2: to work with topo, as I think most of the
Speaker 2: big architects do. You know, some of them may sort
Speaker 2: of convert more digital going forward, but that that's how
Speaker 2: they're used to working. And you know, there was a
Speaker 2: little more to it like they needed to space out
Speaker 2: a few things for safety and do some other scaling.
Speaker 2: But that was basically the delivery on the tech side
Speaker 2: from my standpoint, was giving the model to Brian and
Speaker 2: letting him try to extract it. And then from a
Speaker 2: just a practical work perspective, I created like a like
Speaker 2: a field level cheat sheet for them where I just
Speaker 2: basically took everything I knew about each hole, everything that I
Speaker 2: thought was useful, and sort of typed it up in
Speaker 2: a document that I don't remember, probably came out to
Speaker 2: a hundred pages or something like that, and every useful
Speaker 2: image I copy and pasted in there. And they I
Speaker 2: think they reproduced that book. The Brian Schneider and the
Speaker 2: guys in the field could sort of constantly refer to
Speaker 2: it and not have to rely on memory or sort
Speaker 2: of keep coming back to me. So I think that
Speaker 2: that was good. And then at one point to even
Speaker 2: set up like a visual hut out there on site
Speaker 2: that had a bunch of computer monitors and was nice
Speaker 2: and dark and they could they really needed to look
Speaker 2: at the finer details they could go in there.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, now you were talking about something earlier that
Speaker 1: the builders were using in the field at the Lido
Speaker 1: something where they could kind of say that as could
Speaker 1: you tell me a bit more about that. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I completely understood that process or what the technology
Speaker 1: was that they were using. Was it GPS.
Speaker 2: It's basically, I guess the way to state it. It
Speaker 2: really matters on the green contours because you have to
Speaker 2: be you know, you don't want the wind to change
Speaker 2: it by a few inches here and there. I would
Speaker 2: say the fairway contours matter less. But the basic concept
Speaker 2: is they could first first they could do a rough
Speaker 2: draft from the digital model, and they could use GPS
Speaker 2: dozers to to actually sculpt the land, so they you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't there during this, but they piled the stand
Speaker 2: up and essentially the machine will keep subtracting from it
Speaker 2: and comparing it to the GPS, and from my understanding,
Speaker 2: some pretty big machines could get pretty good level of
Speaker 2: detail from that, Like they could even sort of cover
Speaker 2: their own tracks with the scraper or you know however
Speaker 2: it works. But once they do that, then I'd say,
Speaker 2: then that's where my model ended and where Tom and
Speaker 2: Brian Schneider and their artistry comes in. You know, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of looking at photographs trying to get
Speaker 2: micro contours. You know, there's some of the greens I
Speaker 2: had a lot of information, so I didn't have much
Speaker 2: or I had information, but it was from sort of
Speaker 2: strangely the things in the middle of the course. I
Speaker 2: had less information because we had obliques from the perimeter,
Speaker 2: so the center of the course was kind of the
Speaker 2: furthest away And for a few of those we had
Speaker 2: ground level photos and great info, and a couple were
Speaker 2: a little murky. And Tom and Brian's interpretation, you know,
Speaker 2: from having studied the National Golf Links and other courses
Speaker 2: and the knowledge drainage, you know, they were much better
Speaker 2: looking at the photos and interpreting what was happening. So
Speaker 2: there are a lot of cases where whatever I put
Speaker 2: in the digital model, especially in the middle of the course,
Speaker 2: they may have overruled with better evidence, or they may
Speaker 2: have just gone to a finer level of detail and said,
Speaker 2: you know, we can see more detail than what was
Speaker 2: in your model, and so, you know, say they do
Speaker 2: call it the finish work, and then it's it's a sandy,
Speaker 2: windy environment out there, and the save ass feature would
Speaker 2: be then taking a local GPS station with basically a
Speaker 2: laser device like a local lid oer device. I think,
Speaker 2: similar to what the strac aligne guys use for their
Speaker 2: green maps and all that, and you basically, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it takes fifteen twenty minutes or so. You
Speaker 2: can laser an entire green complex and then you have
Speaker 2: it to you know, saying the eighth of an inch
Speaker 2: of accuracy digitally, so then if if you leave and
Speaker 2: the wind kind of rearranges it, you can always put
Speaker 2: it right back. And that's that's what I'm calling abas future.
Speaker 2: I don't they probably don't refer to it that way.
Speaker 1: And it's probably similar to what architects do. Restoration architects
Speaker 1: do when they want to like preserve green contours before
Speaker 1: they kind of take the greens down to the base
Speaker 1: and rebuild them. Right, if they want to save what
Speaker 1: the original contours are, they might do use some of
Speaker 1: this laser scan technology to save that digitally so that
Speaker 1: they know when they rebuild it, they're rebuilding something that
Speaker 1: looks more or less like the original functions like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that was the first use of this technology,
Speaker 2: and people have been doing that for a while. So yeah,
Speaker 2: if you had. If you had to take out the
Speaker 2: thatch layer of a green, you would, you know, and
Speaker 2: you wanted to preserve the dynamics, you could scan it first,
Speaker 2: kind of put it under the knife and then make
Speaker 2: sure that you could put it back if you ever
Speaker 2: wanted to, or put it back and lower it, or
Speaker 2: you could do things like, you know, reduce the slopes
Speaker 2: by two percent. You could do all sorts of things
Speaker 2: digitally once you have it scanned.
Speaker 1: Were there any particular surprises in the transition from digital
Speaker 1: to physical, like some holes that just turned out differently
Speaker 1: than you thought, or had to be altered in the
Speaker 1: field by the intervention of Brian Schneider and Tom Doak,
Speaker 1: or holes that were just much better than you imagined.
Speaker 1: Anything that was just like, hey, this is not quite
Speaker 1: what I thought it would be now that I'm seeing
Speaker 1: it in the ground.
Speaker 2: Well, there were. First of all, there's there's a million
Speaker 2: little technicalities like there's you know, I mean, I learned
Speaker 2: a lot going through this process. Like aerials. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't you think of them as being straight down,
Speaker 2: but they're not. They're you know, if you really wanted
Speaker 2: to to and we skipped a little bit of things
Speaker 2: we had something called the Anaglyph, which was overlapping survey
Speaker 2: flight images that we combined during during my modeling phase.
Speaker 2: A guy named Craig Disher, who's a golf historian but
Speaker 2: also a military photo historian, found these back to back
Speaker 2: aerials pretty high definition. I would say some of the
Speaker 2: highest definition I've seen for an old course. And he
Speaker 2: overlapped them and color coded them so I could put
Speaker 2: on three D glasses and I could look and zoom
Speaker 2: in and I could see the contours of the course
Speaker 2: to a pretty high degree. Without that, it was very
Speaker 2: hard to tell if things were coming up up or down.
Speaker 2: You had to really think about the shading a lot.
Speaker 2: And there was one case on the seventh pole in particular,
Speaker 2: where there was an entire ledge that I thought went downward,
Speaker 2: and then once I got that three D image, it
Speaker 2: was obvious it went upward. And so that was part
Speaker 2: of that editing process. I got that, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of midway through is go and make sure every contour
Speaker 2: that I sculpted was going the correct direction. But then
Speaker 2: once I had that, I could I could see that,
Speaker 2: you know, this screen was about twice as high as
Speaker 2: the screen, and you could start really sort of comparing scales,
Speaker 2: but even that had a little skew in it because
Speaker 2: it wasn't they weren't taken directly over the course. They
Speaker 2: were taken out an angle, and there was no way
Speaker 2: to really figure out where exactly in the sky they were.
Speaker 2: And we went through a lot of effort with sort
Speaker 2: of photogrammetry guys to see if we could refine that
Speaker 2: more and take out the skew, but it was just
Speaker 2: too difficult without knowing exactly where in the sky those
Speaker 2: were taken. So then once Brian started exporting the model
Speaker 2: for Tom Doak's usage, there were other little errors and
Speaker 2: SKUs like fish eye lens type skws, all kinds of things,
Speaker 2: and I would say that an underrated part of what
Speaker 2: Brian did was sort of recheck everything, you know, make
Speaker 2: sure that those SKUs didn't make it to the final version.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of things that those guys
Speaker 2: did that I wasn't a part of that I'm sure
Speaker 2: were very helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and just so different from the
Speaker 1: normal golf course building process, right what you're describing here,
Speaker 1: kind of comparing aerials and making sure that the the
Speaker 1: whatever bias exists in the aerial doesn't make it into
Speaker 1: the ground. Is maybe not something that golf architects have
Speaker 1: really considered before unless they're doing like a really ambitious
Speaker 1: restoration project where a lot has been lost and you know,
Speaker 1: needs to be put back on the golf courls. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure like not to this extent.
Speaker 2: Before, and usually those the courses sitting there so you
Speaker 2: don't worry about the green shift fore feet because of
Speaker 2: a fish eye lens effect, you can sort of.
Speaker 1: Tell or is the slope going up or down? Like
Speaker 1: you pretty much know, like even if the course has
Speaker 1: changed a lot. Yeah, like you're not going to have
Speaker 1: a problem with that.
Speaker 2: Now, I think for I mean, I went through a
Speaker 2: lot of excruciating stuff in the modeling, but they also
Speaker 2: did after I turned it over, you know, things that
Speaker 2: I wasn't a part of. I don't think. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: probably wasn't the most fun project to do for artists
Speaker 2: like Tom and Brian and all the other guys, because
Speaker 2: you know, you're you're really just trying to match what
Speaker 2: was there, and you know that it was a good
Speaker 2: enough course that you can't sort of gloss over it
Speaker 2: and kind of approximate, So you know, everyone is trying
Speaker 2: to do the best they could to make it perfect
Speaker 2: within reason, and that's just not a very fun thing
Speaker 2: for creative people to do. But I think, you know,
Speaker 2: Tom likes to challenge and he just viewed it as
Speaker 2: a challenge I'll show I'll show everyone that I can
Speaker 2: do it. But to answer your prior question, you know,
Speaker 2: surprising things sort of when it went out there, I
Speaker 2: would just say that I've been to sites before where
Speaker 2: I've done renderings and I've had the feeling when I
Speaker 2: got there that, you know, like I've done a rendering
Speaker 2: completely for an architect or something on the restoration or renovation,
Speaker 2: and then I've traveled there and I'm like, I really
Speaker 2: want to see the site because I know it so
Speaker 2: well digitally and I've had the feeling when I did that.
Speaker 2: Then it wasn't really even worthwhile doing because it felt
Speaker 2: so familiar to me and there were really no surprises,
Speaker 2: which was weird. But the leado, I would say it
Speaker 2: was different, and that something about the no trees out
Speaker 2: there and the scale of it and the sand blown
Speaker 2: around it just felt definitely epic when I stepped on
Speaker 2: the actual construction site versus being familiar with it on
Speaker 2: the model, it just felt bigger, you know, seeing the
Speaker 2: long view, seeing all eighteen pins. It was a very
Speaker 2: weird feeling when you're out there. And I would say
Speaker 2: the one hole that really struck me it was the
Speaker 2: fourth hole, the famous channel hole.
Speaker 1: The channel hole, yeah, with the alternate fair way essentially
Speaker 1: in the middle of a lagoon kind of or you
Speaker 1: can take the longer route around the lagoon.
Speaker 2: Right and in the day, it may have been the
Speaker 2: most famous hole in the world, or one of them,
Speaker 2: and at least in America. And because of the optional
Speaker 2: routes and the design being from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: I was a little worried that this hole would lose
Speaker 2: its charm and would feel sort of small and easy.
Speaker 2: And I guess that was the one very pleasant surprise
Speaker 2: when I stepped out there, is when I stood on
Speaker 2: that tee, just felt like all the whole you could
Speaker 2: possibly want in the world right now. And then the
Speaker 2: first time I played it, I'm like, yeah, this thing
Speaker 2: lives up to the hype. It still still has the dynamics.
Speaker 2: You still have to think very carefully whether you want
Speaker 2: to go right or play it safe. The approach out
Speaker 2: is still daunting. I played it with Hickory maybe the
Speaker 2: first I don't know, ten rounds out there, and it
Speaker 2: is a monster. But even with modern clubs, it I
Speaker 2: think still retains its dynamics.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about some of these old courses is
Speaker 1: that with Hickory's they are especially monsters. Right, the scale
Speaker 1: of some of these old courses becomes really clear, like
Speaker 1: the Yale golf course, right, becomes really clear when you
Speaker 1: start thinking about the how Hickory shots travel. They're really
Speaker 1: really adventurous. So the Leado, the Wisconsin Ledo, opens this summer, right,
Speaker 1: that's the debut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it opened for a member event in the fall
Speaker 2: for two days. So before that members were so playing
Speaker 2: a nine hole preview round where they would have to
Speaker 2: do some skipping around. They weren't playing the holes in order.
Speaker 2: So everyone is very excited in the fall to play
Speaker 2: it in the correct order, which the routing I think
Speaker 2: is for me, it's very comforting. You know, you take
Speaker 2: one big counterclockwise loop around the property, and so you
Speaker 2: always know where you are in your round, and every
Speaker 2: hole you can look left and you can preview the
Speaker 2: back nine. That was sort of one pleasant surprise from
Speaker 2: playing it. In order is you have to look over
Speaker 2: on the alps and see where the pin is, and
Speaker 2: you're constantly paying attention to what's coming, you know, an
Speaker 2: hour and a half or two hours in the future,
Speaker 2: while you're still trying to concentrate your game. And it's
Speaker 2: and the way that it's sort of the big rectangle
Speaker 2: because you keep going around in circles, the wind swaps
Speaker 2: every few holes, and so it's it's just a really
Speaker 2: interesting good routing. And I think that the members when
Speaker 2: they played it in the routing, I think, really start
Speaker 2: to appreciate that. So it'll open for member play I
Speaker 2: believe in May, and then resort play I think maybe
Speaker 2: mid to late June.
Speaker 1: Gotcha cool. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Club Champion. Club Champion helps golfers
Speaker 1: of any skill level play better golf through custom fitted
Speaker 1: and custom built equipment. Their extensively trained master fitters provide
Speaker 1: an in depth, data driven, tour level fitting process and
Speaker 1: have access to fifty thousand hittable head and shaft combos
Speaker 1: as well as sixty plus brands. They also use industry
Speaker 1: leading technology like track Man and sam Putt Lab, and
Speaker 1: they build to the tightest tolerances in the industry. Club
Speaker 1: Champions fittings produce real results for every level of player,
Speaker 1: including an average of twenty two yard increases off the
Speaker 1: tee and an average of ten yard improvements in dispersion.
Speaker 1: I've gone through Club Champion fittings myself, and you know,
Speaker 1: aside from just getting clubs that are well suited to
Speaker 1: my game and that actually worked for me, the big
Speaker 1: thing that I appreciated about the process was how much
Speaker 1: I learned about my own swing dynamics and the way
Speaker 1: I hit the ball. Just talking through it with my fitter,
Speaker 1: Chris was really really helpful in a way that went
Speaker 1: beyond just equipment. You know, it gave me knowledge for
Speaker 1: my game in general. So, for Fridagg listeners, the deal
Speaker 1: that Club Champion is offering is that you can use
Speaker 1: the code Frida Egg to get twenty percent off the
Speaker 1: cost of your Club Champion fitting with the purchase of
Speaker 1: a club that's code Frida egg. All one word, all
Speaker 1: right back to the episode. Are there other lost golf
Speaker 1: courses that you would like to see recreated in this way?
Speaker 2: Uh? I don't think so. I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: there are some that are still in place that are
Speaker 2: fallow that would be would be interesting. But yeah, there's
Speaker 2: one el Bo corone that I know. Mike davrees Is
Speaker 2: you know, has studied a lot. I think he should
Speaker 2: be the architect for that one.
Speaker 1: But that is is that in Michigan since it's Devrees
Speaker 1: Is it in Michigan.
Speaker 2: No, it's it was going to be in South America
Speaker 2: and it never got built. So yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: golf course there. Alistair mackenzie traveled down there design and
Speaker 2: it was going to be like a in a state course.
Speaker 2: I think it's sixty acres on a pitch that was
Speaker 2: ahead about one hundred feet in elevate, reversible, basically nine
Speaker 2: holes that could be played, green complexes that could accept
Speaker 2: shots from both ways. It was just a wild, cool
Speaker 2: design that was lost and they found it I think
Speaker 2: behind the mirror or something of the house that was
Speaker 2: the clubhouse on that course that never got repaved with
Speaker 2: that course. So that's the closest thing I can think
Speaker 2: to the Leado in terms of something that from the
Speaker 2: past that you need to find a site to create it,
Speaker 2: and it would take a lot of study to kind
Speaker 2: of figure out how to do it accurately because that
Speaker 2: one was just a plan. There's things like Ocean Links,
Speaker 2: you know in Rhode Island, that there's three of the
Speaker 2: holes that are still sitting there in the ground in
Speaker 2: a state park that I've kind of had fantasies that
Speaker 2: maybe maybe the state park would agree to make it
Speaker 2: a kid's course or something, and it's right next to
Speaker 2: Newport Country Club and maybe they could leverage their greens
Speaker 2: keeping staff to take care of it. But you know, realistically,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that would ever happen. But I
Speaker 2: can see the latter and I've reproduced it and it's
Speaker 2: all just I can see the green contours, it's all
Speaker 2: just sitting there.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, And that's one that Daniel Wexler, who is
Speaker 1: a historian who has written about a lot of lost
Speaker 1: golf courses, has written about, right. Ocean Links features in
Speaker 1: Daniel Wexler. Daniel Wexler's books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I you know, I read his books a
Speaker 2: million times, and yeah, I could just I could spend
Speaker 2: the rest of my life just trying to digitally recreate
Speaker 2: those and be totally happy, if you know, if I'm retired.
Speaker 2: But it's so time consuming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it sounds like it with the lido. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's it sort of sounds unlikely
Speaker 1: that a project like this Lido project will happen again.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was like sort of a combination of
Speaker 1: the perfect project to do in this way, right, recover
Speaker 1: the lido, the perfect owner in Michael Kaiser, the Kaiser family,
Speaker 1: and an architect who really wanted a challenge, wanted to
Speaker 1: do something different, wanted to prove something new, and so
Speaker 1: you know, it's a confluence of factors that's pretty unique.
Speaker 1: But I can see parts of the process that you've
Speaker 1: described being applied elsewhere, and they probably already are. But
Speaker 1: you know, using GPS dozers, using some of this digital
Speaker 1: modeling technology to be more precise about what you're doing
Speaker 1: in the ground, and a lot of it's really intriguing.
Speaker 1: A lot of it raises neat possibilities about what can
Speaker 1: be done with the art of architecture, but also might
Speaker 1: raise some concerns about how this technology could be applied
Speaker 1: and whether there will be a temptation on the part
Speaker 1: of some owners, some golf course developers to take some
Speaker 1: of the creativity, the human element out of the golf
Speaker 1: course design process and replace some of it with this
Speaker 1: you know, kind of automated building, automated modeling, maybe requesting
Speaker 1: more and more that golf architects reproduce things that exist
Speaker 1: elsewhere instead of coming up with their own ideas, and
Speaker 1: that could kind of set back potentially the art form
Speaker 1: of golf course architecture, make it less creative, uh, create
Speaker 1: less room for originality. Have you thought about these issues
Speaker 1: and are you concerned about them?
Speaker 2: I guess I've definitely thought about them. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't I don't get too worried about people copying courses.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they could have already done that,
Speaker 2: and they have. You know, there's been those like tribute
Speaker 2: courses and things like that, and they're they kind of
Speaker 2: have like a bad reputation because they're a lot of
Speaker 2: times they're not done very well, they're in a different environment,
Speaker 2: the they're sort of they jump around stylistically, so they're
Speaker 2: they kind of come off as gimmicks. You know. There
Speaker 2: there are a lot of applications that I can think
Speaker 2: of for these technologies that would be constructive and sort
Speaker 2: of I would I would say ethical, Like some of
Speaker 2: the things I've been thinking about, where you know, if
Speaker 2: you had a ross corse and two of the greens
Speaker 2: were lost because you know, they built a practice center
Speaker 2: or something. You know, there's all kinds of cases like that,
Speaker 2: and you know they build two new holes or two
Speaker 2: new holes were put in since then, and they have
Speaker 2: greens that don't match. You know, is there a way
Speaker 2: that you could you could sample the closest ross green
Speaker 2: out there that you can find what those originals were
Speaker 2: and then maybe go from there. You know, like you
Speaker 2: think this one was had a little less false front.
Speaker 2: You could maybe do some things like that, you know,
Speaker 2: where you're you're sort of copying the artists, but you're
Speaker 2: copying the same artists whose work was destroyed. I think
Speaker 2: that's sort of an interesting concept. Yeah, there's cases where
Speaker 2: an architect did eighteen holes and nine were lost and
Speaker 2: a new architect came in, you know, maybe in the
Speaker 2: fifties or sixties, and put the other nine in and
Speaker 2: they just don't it doesn't match in the other nine's inferior.
Speaker 2: And so what would happen if architect came in, say
Speaker 2: Langford Moreau, and tried to copy their style for the
Speaker 2: missing nine? You know, is that ethical or not? You know,
Speaker 2: there's cases I think that you may have talked to
Speaker 2: with Tom Doak about you know, if you're trying to
Speaker 2: make a Lynxlan in America, do you would it be
Speaker 2: ethical to go sample some Rumpley Field in Scotland and
Speaker 2: instead of trying to man make an environment that looks
Speaker 2: like the wind blew the dunes around, sort of start
Speaker 2: with that and three D printed on the ground essentially
Speaker 2: and then go from there. So that's more of the
Speaker 2: stuff that interests me. I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: of course, someone could take the letter from the Old Course,
Speaker 2: then they could build it in Dubai or something like that,
Speaker 2: and you know, it would be pretty exact except for
Speaker 2: the grass types. And you know, but the question is
Speaker 2: would that be popular? Would would it damage the original?
Speaker 2: I don't think the original would feel a loss of
Speaker 2: business or anything like that. So mainly the clubs that
Speaker 2: the Frankenstein sort of fears that people have. It's like
Speaker 2: the Old Course, Augusta National things like that, you know,
Speaker 2: either things that are the old course flat and sort
Speaker 2: of reproducible on any sandy site theoretically, or things that
Speaker 2: are so inaccessible that people kind of have a desire
Speaker 2: to play because they never will get to play in
Speaker 2: real life. But but Augusta would be impossible.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, Augusta is like a bad example because
Speaker 1: you can't recreate that topography. It would be such a
Speaker 1: massive earth moving project that it would basically be impossible.
Speaker 1: But the old course is a better example because it's
Speaker 1: you know, the grade of that site is pretty much flat.
Speaker 1: But then you have a lot of really interesting human
Speaker 1: sized contour, as Gil Hans wants to put it on
Speaker 1: our podcast, that could potentially be recreated. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're right that if you recreate that in Dubai, it's
Speaker 1: just not going to be the same. I guess my
Speaker 1: fear isn't so much about the copying of courses, And
Speaker 1: I actually don't know if I'm afraid about any of this.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to come up with potential criticisms or
Speaker 1: fears that could be had about this. I guess that
Speaker 1: I could be worried about the slow creep of giving
Speaker 1: over more and more tasks to technology and taking things
Speaker 1: off of the plate of humans in the golf course
Speaker 1: design and especially the building process.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the moves that has happened recently in golf
Speaker 1: course architecture is that architectural minds have really returned to
Speaker 1: the field and been out there and created things on
Speaker 1: their own, you know, and that's brought a lot of
Speaker 1: craft back to the art form and it's been it's
Speaker 1: had a great impact. And so I guess the concern
Speaker 1: could be, if we automate more forms of that, are
Speaker 1: we taking some of the humanity out of the process,
Speaker 1: And would that be a bad thing, because it would
Speaker 1: clearly be more efficient at some point maybe to have
Speaker 1: just like you know, not pay for the labor right
Speaker 1: just to have kind of machines shape the golf course.
Speaker 1: But we like having humans shape the golf course, I think, right,
Speaker 1: We we like that part of the process, and so
Speaker 1: I guess that could be the concern with us.
Speaker 2: I guess. I guess one question would be if the
Speaker 2: machine could reproduce exactly what a human shaped digitally, does
Speaker 2: that satisfy your human touch sort of requirement? Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think one way I think I see
Speaker 2: technology being positive in the golf design industry is on
Speaker 2: the rendering technology side. I think, you know, I've been
Speaker 2: near enough to the golf industry to sort of see
Speaker 2: the dynamics of what's happening, and there's a huge barrier
Speaker 2: to entry for architects who haven't made it yet. And
Speaker 2: I've seen sort of ten wrungs down in the digital
Speaker 2: golf world. You know, there's these amateur architects who are
Speaker 2: pumping out, you know, ten courses a month that are terrible.
Speaker 2: But then there's guys who look like they could be
Speaker 2: real golf architects, you know, just in this video game space,
Speaker 2: and they're doing courses that if you saw it, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't know if they just copied the real world course
Speaker 2: or if they made it up. And these guys will
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time doing that. But I'm just
Speaker 2: thinking of the big dynamic. You know, these these projects
Speaker 2: are a lot of money. The the developers are taking
Speaker 2: a risk on their architect and it makes sense in
Speaker 2: the grand scheme of things that they go with proven commodities.
Speaker 2: And the question I have is if if rendering tech
Speaker 2: got a lot better and a lot cheaper and more efficient,
Speaker 2: maybe even partially AI enhanced to make it to make
Speaker 2: it easier to do, and we can talk about that
Speaker 2: in a minute, does that lower the barrier of entry
Speaker 2: to an emerging architect And say a design competition, you know,
Speaker 2: if they're submitting their plan. Can they instead of saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: you've never heard of me, here's what it looks like
Speaker 2: in two D. You know, I really need a chance.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try really hard. Instead of saying that,
Speaker 2: they could say, here's the flyover and it looks photorealistic.
Speaker 2: If you like what you see, this is what you're
Speaker 2: going to get. So I think eventually that would be
Speaker 2: sort of the utopia is that it levels the playing
Speaker 2: field and that every architect, no matter if they've made
Speaker 2: it or not, can show their vision and can win
Speaker 2: sort of based on their vision or not.
Speaker 1: Okay, So basically what you're saying is that technology, new
Speaker 1: technology could make rendering easier, right make you know, producing
Speaker 1: effective renderings could become less costly and easier. And right now,
Speaker 1: established architects kind of have a big advantage in that
Speaker 1: realm because what they can They can hire people to
Speaker 1: make these great renderings for them, right they have they
Speaker 1: have the capital to do that. And if we level
Speaker 1: the playing field a bit with the rendering process, the
Speaker 1: new architects could have the advantage that established architects have
Speaker 1: in presenting their vision for what a golf course could be.
Speaker 1: Is that the basic argument.
Speaker 2: There, I guess. The one nuance is that I would
Speaker 2: say the established architects not only have the ability to
Speaker 2: do the expensive renderings, but they also have the reputation.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you're hiring Gill Hands, you kind
Speaker 2: of know what he's all about, and you don't have
Speaker 2: right And.
Speaker 1: They have the golf courses. They have like golf courses
Speaker 1: that you could visit and see, this is a Gill hansk.
Speaker 2: Of course, right've proven themselves. If it's a new guy,
Speaker 2: you're like, you know, I don't know like his I
Speaker 2: don't know what his design is going to be, and
Speaker 2: there's there's a big mystery. And ultimately, if you're right
Speaker 2: in the thirty million dollar check or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: you just don't want to take that gamble. But maybe
Speaker 2: if you could see it, and I guess I'm I've
Speaker 2: always watched the music industry. I was a musician growing up,
Speaker 2: and I would say the analogy there is it used
Speaker 2: to be dominated by big studio production and the record
Speaker 2: labels would have to make a massive investment, and you know,
Speaker 2: Metallica or whoever would go into the studio and it
Speaker 2: would cost what millions of dollars, And as time has
Speaker 2: gone on, it's flattened, and the home recording technology or
Speaker 2: the indie studio technology has gotten so good that for
Speaker 2: a lower budget you can still produce an album that's indistinguishable.
Speaker 2: And I think that ultimately allowed more entrance into the
Speaker 2: field who could get by on talent and not have
Speaker 2: to sort of get their big random break.
Speaker 1: Well, do you think the music industry has become or
Speaker 1: that music, let's say music as an art form has
Speaker 1: become better because of that?
Speaker 2: I think so, I think it's less. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you are a musical connoiseur, you can go down
Speaker 2: any genre or rabbit hole right now and it's so deep.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a lot of it.
Speaker 2: I think it is, And you know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: more low quality, but there's also more high quality. I
Speaker 2: think there's just more in general, And so for the
Speaker 2: artists themselves, there's not as big of a barrier to
Speaker 2: get there. But once you're there, you don't make as
Speaker 2: much as you used to. You know, it used to
Speaker 2: be almost like a union. It's hard to get into,
Speaker 2: but once you're there, you're paid well. And now it's
Speaker 2: like you can produce an album for nothing. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: for five thousand dollars. You can get your music out there,
Speaker 2: and then you might not do very well. You might
Speaker 2: you know, you liver or eye on that, but at
Speaker 2: least you had the chance and at least people can
Speaker 2: hear your album, whereas in the past you just wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been able to produce it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also what we want is we want more
Speaker 1: kinds of people to be able to enter music or
Speaker 1: golf architecture. We don't want, you know, just people who
Speaker 1: have had all the advantages in the world to be
Speaker 1: able to become part of these professions, because you know,
Speaker 1: a healthy art form is one that many people can access.
Speaker 1: And I think we can probably both agree that the
Speaker 1: barrier for entry to golf architecture is high, not only
Speaker 1: for you know, people who have gone to landscape design
Speaker 1: school or whatever, but for just like everybody. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine trying to become a golf architect. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people try, but very few people really
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to do so. So I suppose any
Speaker 1: leveling of the playing field would have to be greeted
Speaker 1: as something positive. But you're talking about renderings. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a rendering here that you put out on your
Speaker 1: Twitter account, which is n l E Golf no Longer
Speaker 1: Extant Golf. Is that that what it stands for, no
Speaker 1: Longer existing extent. Yeah, n l E underscore Golf really
Speaker 1: good follows, so I'd recommend it. But I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a tweet that you sent out a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and let me describe the picture that you've attached this tweet.
Speaker 1: All right, So it looks like a you know, a
Speaker 1: kind of an Eastern United States setting, you know, meadow
Speaker 1: type setting with with some trees around it, but but
Speaker 1: more or less open, a nice little you know, rugged
Speaker 1: rustic fence in the foreground, and a whole sort of
Speaker 1: unfolding in front of you that just looks beautiful, you know,
Speaker 1: really naturalistic bunkering, but like in a true way, like
Speaker 1: truly naturalistic bunkering. Maybe not even sand in these bunkers.
Speaker 1: They're kind of it's more sort of grassy and varied.
Speaker 1: Looks to be like a center line bunker. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can play out to the left or you can
Speaker 1: play out to the right, and those are different strategies.
Speaker 1: And then you've got a beautiful looking green site again,
Speaker 1: you know, presented in a very kind of hugging the land,
Speaker 1: natural way and a beautiful looking golf wel just the
Speaker 1: kind of golf course that I'd like to play, you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of lay of the land and truly minimalistic.
Speaker 1: The tweet that you sent out with it says gentle
Speaker 1: handshake opening part four shabby sheet conditioning from the two
Speaker 1: man grounds crew, my ideal first hole. There was a
Speaker 1: response to this tweet that was simply where, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: golf course is this? And your response was nowhere just
Speaker 1: AI rendering with photoshop, trying to experiment with styles. So
Speaker 1: you produce this with the help of an AI engine,
Speaker 1: and you've got to tell like, how the hell did
Speaker 1: you do this? Like, cause it's freaking me out. It
Speaker 1: looks obviously for somebody on the on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's maybe not that hard to fool people on the internet,
Speaker 1: But looking at this, this looks like a like a
Speaker 1: human made golf hole to me. And so how did
Speaker 1: you make this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I I mean there's there's sort of an explosion
Speaker 2: of AIS out there right now. The Chad GPT and
Speaker 2: all these things are sort of making the news and
Speaker 2: and in the in the visual world, there's stable diffusion
Speaker 2: there's mid Journey, there's Dolly two. You know, they keep
Speaker 2: coming out with upgrades. And the genre I used for
Speaker 2: this is prompt to image, So you basically give it
Speaker 2: a prompt any You can tell it anything, and it'll
Speaker 2: produce in a series of images. Usually it'll produce like
Speaker 2: for images, and then you can sort of refine it
Speaker 2: from there. And I just started experimenting with it and
Speaker 2: got a little fascin with it. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I tweeted a lot of golf holes and I went
Speaker 2: through kind of got obsessed with it for a few days.
Speaker 2: And it's weird. It's almost like you're training a dog
Speaker 2: when you're using it. You could say, show me a
Speaker 2: picture of a you just say golf course, bunkers, you know,
Speaker 2: and it'll show the most boring, robotic sort of golf
Speaker 2: image and you sort of I guess it's training you too,
Speaker 2: because you just sort of keep refining your prompts. And
Speaker 2: I wish I had the prompt for the one you're
Speaker 2: talking about pulled up. But it may have been something like,
Speaker 2: you know, World War One battlefield, fallow Barboy or fence
Speaker 2: abandoned golf. Yeah, it may have been like a paragraph
Speaker 2: long description of things that I would just keep adding
Speaker 2: to my descriptions and seeing what it came up with.
Speaker 2: And I kind of knew in my mind what I
Speaker 2: wanted to see. I just kind of had to keep
Speaker 2: keep sort of tweaking it and tugging and pulling in
Speaker 2: different directions until it started to produce the kind of
Speaker 2: thing I wanted to see. So the interesting thing about
Speaker 2: that is what is it? What's the end result? And
Speaker 2: is it something out of my imagination or is it
Speaker 2: bits and pieces from actual images that the AI was
Speaker 2: trained on. And it's really weird. I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 2: could theoretically design, especially in a flat site, you could
Speaker 2: design a course kind of using AI images like this
Speaker 2: to sort of ignite your imagination and you wouldn't have
Speaker 2: to follow exactly what it tells you, but you could
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, you could come up with a
Speaker 2: style that's maybe a little bit different than anyone else's
Speaker 2: by doing that. And you know, in the music industry
Speaker 2: there's there's some AI things like this too. You know,
Speaker 2: it might produce a baseline or a drum beat and
Speaker 2: you can tweak it, and I'd say the power of
Speaker 2: it is sort of a tool for the human imagination.
Speaker 2: I don't think it ever takes over or it could
Speaker 2: design a whole course. But I think in the right hands,
Speaker 2: an architect could sort of use things like this to
Speaker 2: kind of peak their creativity and make them do things
Speaker 2: they maybe otherwise wouldn't have done.
Speaker 1: What makes you think that this technology couldn't design an
Speaker 1: entire golf course because what it's done already in this
Speaker 1: one image that you tweeted out is pretty impressive. And
Speaker 1: you said it started with the most generic stuff, but
Speaker 1: you were able to train it to produce something that
Speaker 1: looks like a human did it? I mean, for all
Speaker 1: the world, that looks to me like a very nice,
Speaker 1: sort of artsy presentation of a cool art architectural vision.
Speaker 1: And so what makes you think that the technology won't
Speaker 1: advance to the point where one of these engines could
Speaker 1: just kind of churn out golf courses with the right prompts.
Speaker 2: Well, so I think it could. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: it's very realistical. I could. The question would be is
Speaker 2: that better than what a human could do? And I
Speaker 2: think that's where I don't. I think we're a long
Speaker 2: way away. I think one interesting thing about golf courses
Speaker 2: is an AI a lot of times. There's like a
Speaker 2: I guess you could call it like a fitness function,
Speaker 2: you know, like neural networks and genetic algorithms and all
Speaker 2: these things. I'm simplifying to a great degree. But they'll
Speaker 2: they'll kind of evolve and they'll try everything and they
Speaker 2: switch the waitings, and it's a it's a constant cycle
Speaker 2: of mutating and then getting tested against like a measurement
Speaker 2: and simplified ways, at least in genetic algorithms, it sort
Speaker 2: of acts like evolution. Like the ones that are most
Speaker 2: successful you then mutate and you run them through again,
Speaker 2: and you keep you know, you do this millions of
Speaker 2: times or however many, and it produces something that's pretty
Speaker 2: good at what it does. But for golf course, the
Speaker 2: question is, it's not like a measure able outcome, so
Speaker 2: you can't like, you can't say, okay, this algorithm just
Speaker 2: is ten percent better at producing a golf course on
Speaker 2: that one. You know, it produced the golf course that
Speaker 2: met all the constraints that you programmed in and it's
Speaker 2: satisfied them all, but it might be terrible. And when
Speaker 2: I started thinking about this before our conversation here, I
Speaker 2: was thinking about all the constraints that are involved in
Speaker 2: a golf course, and it's I could go on and on.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, where do you want to start?
Speaker 2: Do you want returning nines? What's the soil type? You know,
Speaker 2: how hard do you want it to play? For a
Speaker 2: range of handicaps, the walks between the tea's, you got
Speaker 2: where the sun is in the morning, in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: you got the prevailing winds. You know. I just started
Speaker 2: listening those. I'm like, I could list hundreds of constraints
Speaker 2: that I keep using Tom Oak just because I know
Speaker 2: you guys talk to him a lot, but these things.
Speaker 2: You know, the human brain is still miles ahead of
Speaker 2: a supercomputer in terms of being able to synthesize all
Speaker 2: this information and be creative. And you know, and Tom
Speaker 2: Doak and other architect's brains are like a supercomputer, but
Speaker 2: they've also had the experience, and they have the ability
Speaker 2: to communicate with the developer. And it's too wide ranging.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think if AI ever does can do
Speaker 2: a golf course, it's more satisfactory to human than what
Speaker 2: a human can do. I think it means that we've
Speaker 2: reached the point where computers have kind of taken over they.
Speaker 2: I don't know, if you're familiar with the concept of
Speaker 2: the singularity, it's like, what you know, that's like the
Speaker 2: tipping point when there's no going back, when AI is
Speaker 2: sort of surpassed. I think that's the point we need
Speaker 2: to get to, when when uh an AI is the
Speaker 2: best golf course designer. I think until then, it's it's tools,
Speaker 2: it's prompts. It's like, hey, you know, it's mashing up
Speaker 2: like with my prompt it's mash up a World War
Speaker 2: One battlefield with golf courses and its training database. And
Speaker 2: AIS are very good at mashing things up in copying styles.
Speaker 2: But ultimately it's still derivative to some extent. It's not
Speaker 2: coming up with like an original idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that prompt World War one battlefield to me,
Speaker 1: it looks like a Civil war battlefield, but World War
Speaker 1: one battlefield. I guess you're maybe thinking of trenches and
Speaker 1: things like that. But that in itself is a kind
Speaker 1: of creative inspiration, right to put a golf course together
Speaker 1: with that kind of environment. And so clearly there is
Speaker 1: a human impulse of creativity that enabled the AI engine
Speaker 1: to produce something that wasn't generic, that didn't feel like
Speaker 1: it had been done a million times before because you
Speaker 1: decided to put two things together that you wouldn't think
Speaker 1: would belong together World War one battlefield and golf course.
Speaker 1: And that is like the thing that maes have a
Speaker 1: really hard time imitating about humans is the ability to
Speaker 1: put things like that together to create something new. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that at some point the AI
Speaker 1: will get to a point where it's doing a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff really well. I mean, like one thing
Speaker 1: that I thought of that an AI probably could do.
Speaker 1: I don't know of any particular product that does anything
Speaker 1: like this, but I would just imagine that it could
Speaker 1: do this. What if you could like feed a topo
Speaker 1: map into an AI and it could produce for you
Speaker 1: a bunch of different versions of a routing of an
Speaker 1: eighteen hole golf course or a nine hole golf course,
Speaker 1: and essentially you would kind of choose from among those routings.
Speaker 1: But it would take out that part of the process
Speaker 1: where the architect kind of has to figure out what's reasonable,
Speaker 1: what fits, you know, where the golf course can go,
Speaker 1: and eliminate a bunch of possibilities in order to get
Speaker 1: something closer to what the actual routing will be. I
Speaker 1: would imagine that an AI could do that more efficiently
Speaker 1: than a human if you found the right constraints for it,
Speaker 1: that an AI could probably do that pretty well.
Speaker 2: So the in the golf club program which is now
Speaker 2: two K twenty three PGA tour, it can do that.
Speaker 2: So it can produce a randomized landform, and you can
Speaker 2: set how extreme you want the hills and how much
Speaker 2: water and all kinds of other things, and it'll produce
Speaker 2: an eighteen hole routing for you if you want it.
Speaker 2: You know, most people use that the first couple of
Speaker 2: times use a product and then they do their own.
Speaker 2: So it can do it. And you know, when you
Speaker 2: think about the programming necessary to make it do that,
Speaker 2: or if you had to do your own program to
Speaker 2: do that, there are still a lot of constraints, you know,
Speaker 2: like we're talking about how far is the maximum except
Speaker 2: the bowl walk between green and tea. What's the maximum
Speaker 2: slope of golfers should be expected to go up and down?
Speaker 2: What's fun? Like I said, the sun, the wind, all that,
Speaker 2: Where are the wetlands, where are the no go areas?
Speaker 2: You got safety concerns with how close you want the
Speaker 2: fairways and I think when I was thinking about this before,
Speaker 2: I call my ultimate conclusion is that the the routing
Speaker 2: is not really the bottleneck in the golf design industry.
Speaker 2: Like it's true that you could make a machine ultimately
Speaker 2: to do it more efficient, but that may only save
Speaker 2: a very good architect a couple of days and then
Speaker 2: they may always be questioning it. And then one other
Speaker 2: thing I was thinking about is there's been some discussions
Speaker 2: I think on your podcast. I've been listening to you
Speaker 2: guys a lot as I've had to do a lot
Speaker 2: of driving recently, so it can you give me a
Speaker 2: lot of.
Speaker 1: That, But we're good for that. We're good for long drives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now I realize it makes drives go by
Speaker 2: a lot quicker. But there's I guess there's been an
Speaker 2: interesting conversation to me between fairness in golf and a
Speaker 2: golfer's ability to accept something that's maybe unfair. If it
Speaker 2: was a natural part of the landscape, like on a
Speaker 2: links course, rather than a man made feature, it could
Speaker 2: be the same exact feature. And if you know it
Speaker 2: was natural and that old Tom Morris had to route
Speaker 2: right over it, it's for some reason you deal with
Speaker 2: it more than if you know that, you know the
Speaker 2: architect stuck it in there to screw you over.
Speaker 1: It feels like a gimmick. If it's human made, it
Speaker 1: feels like it feels like a gimmick, right, And you
Speaker 1: can assign it to a person who just screwed you over,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just saying, hey, that's nature, human versus nature.
Speaker 1: My understanding of that is that sometimes nature wins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're blaming God or you know whatever in one
Speaker 2: and the other you're blaming the architect. And I think
Speaker 2: the next wrong down is if it's an ai knob
Speaker 2: stuck right in front of the green, I think that
Speaker 2: would just infuriate people. So I think I think that's
Speaker 2: the human element too, is that people? I think I
Speaker 2: think people when they're playing golf course, Yeah, they either
Speaker 2: want it to be natural or they want it to
Speaker 2: be an artist that has done it. I think beyond that,
Speaker 2: it starts to get in people's head a bit. And
Speaker 2: you know, there is a little bit of golf. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about what a what a golf course is,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's functional art obviously, but some
Speaker 2: people viewed more as a racetrack. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: how they were or an obstacle course, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of how they were getting very standardized courses in the
Speaker 2: Victorian age. And there's another extreme that's more like fashion,
Speaker 2: you know. It's like you see bunker styles come and
Speaker 2: go and and things like that. It's not and this
Speaker 2: is what I was talking about with the fitness function.
Speaker 2: There's no right answer for a golf course. So I
Speaker 2: think people do you want there to be an artist
Speaker 2: behind it? Ultimately? I think they want to view it
Speaker 2: as a human art form.
Speaker 1: I would hope. So I think that the personality of
Speaker 1: a golf architect comes out in the courses, at least
Speaker 1: in really good courses, and that there is a human
Speaker 1: dimension there that is inextricable from the pleasure that you
Speaker 1: might take in a golf course. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: an artist plus nature, and in the best golf courses
Speaker 1: you can really see that interaction, that collaboration between human
Speaker 1: and nature, and that just strikes me as essential. So
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. You've talked me
Speaker 1: off the ledge, so thank you. I no longer feel
Speaker 1: like we're at that Battlestar Galactica moment where the cylons
Speaker 1: are about to you know, take everything down and the
Speaker 1: golf course design is never going to be the same.
Speaker 1: But it does sound like these tools digital AI are
Speaker 1: having an effect on golf course design that they're going
Speaker 1: to start changing things very soon, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be a really interesting story to track. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: you coming on the podcast, Peter. This was really really interesting.
Speaker 1: People should follow you at Nlee Underscore Golf, on Twitter
Speaker 1: anywhere else people can kind of follow your thoughts about
Speaker 1: golf course design.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not much of an instagrammer, so that's about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither. I don't. I don't. It seems like,
Speaker 1: actually you're you. You would be kind of suited to
Speaker 1: Instagram even you know, and kind of the visuals that
Speaker 1: you do. But I just I don't get that platform.
Speaker 1: I think I'm too old. I think that's what it
Speaker 1: what it is.
Speaker 2: I don't like. Uh. I know there's a way to
Speaker 2: do it from your computer, but yeah, I don't like
Speaker 2: posting for my phone. So that's when it comes up.
Speaker 1: Very true. Okay, all right, well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: All right, take care of.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Matt Rusius.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Matt new addition to our team, and he's
Speaker 1: been doing a really great job. Has made a big
Speaker 1: contribution already. So if you have been enjoying the Fridaygg
Speaker 1: podcast or Frida Egg content in general, the best way
Speaker 1: to support our company right now is to join Club
Speaker 1: tf It's an extensive offering, including content and deals in
Speaker 1: the pro shop and early access to events. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff that you get with it. It's one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty dollars per year and you can find
Speaker 1: more information about it at the fridaygg dot com slash
Speaker 1: membership CLUBTFE. We've got a blog going in the member
Speaker 1: site right now and that's been really fun. There's a
Speaker 1: comment section where members have been engaging with us and
Speaker 1: each other, and we would really love for more people
Speaker 1: to join us in there. All right, thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you again next week