Speaker 1: All right, we're back for the first Frida Egg podcast
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen, and we're excited to have our esteemed guests,
Speaker 1: David McLay Kid. David is one of the most sought
Speaker 1: after modern day architects and the man behind masterpieces such
Speaker 1: as Bandon Dune's Nannia Golf Club and Gamble Sands. David,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on my pleasure. So, I think with
Speaker 1: New Year's in order, I'm kind of curious, do you
Speaker 1: have any resolutions for twenty seventeen?
Speaker 2: Hi? Going, that's a good one, And I think my
Speaker 2: resolution for the last pushing ten years now has been
Speaker 2: to get golf to be fun again and not to
Speaker 2: get sucked in by a desire to chease rankings or
Speaker 2: difficulty or any other particular fad or idiosyncrasy that can
Speaker 2: be to the detriment of golf and golfers and fun,
Speaker 2: which is the reason we all do it. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep going on that one and try and
Speaker 2: build golf courses that are ridiculously good fun for everyone.
Speaker 1: You know, It's funny. I wrote a lengthy article about
Speaker 1: golf digest Rate ranking system and how like the criteria
Speaker 1: is so flawed.
Speaker 2: And I read it. I had to break through that,
Speaker 2: and I've just the second Golf Diject down with their
Speaker 2: ranking stuff, and I was just emailing Roan Whitten. So
Speaker 2: funny that you should mention.
Speaker 1: That, yeah, is the one defense to par Is. Kind
Speaker 1: of that one just gets me because like, why should
Speaker 1: a golf course get discounted, like, you know, get downgraded
Speaker 1: because it's really fun to play and not necessarily.
Speaker 3: Hard, you know, you know, I get where Golf Diject
Speaker 3: and Roman are going with the defense of a you know, I'd.
Speaker 2: Like to think of it more as the defense a birdie.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd probably argue that as a golf course designer,
Speaker 2: I should be putting up my best defenses against your
Speaker 2: best attack. And your best attack ends up with birdie.
Speaker 2: Right for most golfers, And even if you're a lousy golfer,
Speaker 2: you're getting a net birdie because you've got strokes. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to put up my best defense. If we
Speaker 2: take Gamble Sands as my best example today, I defy
Speaker 2: you to easily make birdie on every whole. I will
Speaker 2: contend that gamble Sands put up puts up a very
Speaker 2: healthy defense against birdie. You've got to thread the driver
Speaker 2: exactly in the right place. You've got to put that
Speaker 2: ball in the green so that it rolls out to
Speaker 2: a makeable putt. What would we say a makeable putt
Speaker 2: is six feet eight feet ten feet and then you've
Speaker 2: got a hole on an average part four. I've put
Speaker 2: up more than a good defense as that par. Now
Speaker 2: I'm just asking you to put it in the middle, get
Speaker 2: it somewhere around or on the green, and tupa So
Speaker 2: I'm not trying that hard to defend par. I think
Speaker 2: that a golfer's own inability to perform defends against par,
Speaker 2: and certainly when it switches to bogie and double bogie,
Speaker 2: I reverse gears completely. And now I'm trying to be
Speaker 2: your friend. I'm trying to make sure you can make
Speaker 2: those scores not end up with snowmen. So I see
Speaker 2: where Golf Digest tries to go with the defensive par,
Speaker 2: but I'd rather see it as defensive birdie. And the
Speaker 2: whole resistance to scoring. You know that again sends a
Speaker 2: message to their ranking panel that a higher score is better.
Speaker 2: And I've had my debates on Twitter with a couple
Speaker 2: of guys in the media in this. You know the
Speaker 2: message that's being sent out one way or another is
Speaker 2: that harder is better, and it's still continuing to perpetuate
Speaker 2: that harder is better. That golf digest you're talking about
Speaker 2: has Pine Valley Ranks is number one. That's a really
Speaker 2: really hard golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean it's uh got incredible architecture lineage,
Speaker 1: but it is one of the hardest golf courses in
Speaker 1: the world, you know. And I think with when it
Speaker 1: comes to, you know, kind of fun and the mass public, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a scratch player can play any golf course
Speaker 1: from any t and have fun. But it's the fifteen
Speaker 1: that gets hurt by hard golf courses continuing to get
Speaker 1: built over and over and over again, you know. And
Speaker 1: if it's not savage, yeah, and if it's not fun
Speaker 1: to play, why why would you play the sport?
Speaker 2: I think that all too often. You know. That's where
Speaker 2: golf course is full down. Is there are lots of
Speaker 2: golf courses that the average golfer is invited to, wants
Speaker 2: to play because he sees them the magazines. He goes,
Speaker 2: he plays for whatever reason, and somewhere on the front nine,
Speaker 2: when he's lost a few balls and his buddies are
Speaker 2: helping him hunt his third ball in the rough. He
Speaker 2: thinks to himself, too much for me, I'm really not
Speaker 2: having that much fun. I wish these holes would run
Speaker 2: out quicker because I feel embarrassed. And this reminds me
Speaker 2: why I don't really love this game. And so he
Speaker 2: finishes his round out and decides not to play again
Speaker 2: for a while. And I think that that happens all
Speaker 2: too often. The number of courses where that same guy
Speaker 2: goes out and he's told you're on the twelfth hole
Speaker 2: or the fourteenth hole, and he says to himself, oh, hell,
Speaker 2: the holes are running out already. I'm having so much fun.
Speaker 2: I want to do this again. That happens far left
Speaker 2: than the opposite. And my job, my peers job, is
Speaker 2: to create golf courses where that average golfer wants to
Speaker 2: go and do it again, is upset that the holes
Speaker 2: are running out. And that's what Bandon Jun's, all of
Speaker 2: the courses of Bandon Jun's do so well, is the
Speaker 2: average golfer has an absolute black and wants to play
Speaker 2: over and over and over.
Speaker 1: So you know, outside of Bandon Dunes, in your travels,
Speaker 1: what would you say are some of yours and other
Speaker 1: architects best examples of you know, that fun golf course
Speaker 1: where they want to just keep playing.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I understand outside of.
Speaker 1: What outside of outside of Bandon Dunes, you know what
Speaker 1: would be some other examples across the States and also
Speaker 1: abroad of courses that kind of fit that description.
Speaker 2: You know, weirdly enough, I want to be contrary, you know,
Speaker 2: in my my business, I would like to be as
Speaker 2: best I can be some kind of a disruptor. And
Speaker 2: so in order to be just those two things, I'll
Speaker 2: throw Oakmont at you as an example. Oakmon is the
Speaker 2: perfect a example of why I would argue that playability
Speaker 2: and challenge are not two sides of a scale of justice.
Speaker 2: They're not linked. Oakmont is incredibly difficult, but yet incredibly playable.
Speaker 2: The average golfer can go out and shoot one hundred,
Speaker 2: but you'll do it with the same golfer. The course
Speaker 2: is wide and playable. The target zones to chase burghers
Speaker 2: or even pars are very tight. The course is really long,
Speaker 2: so to a good golfer it is a hell of
Speaker 2: a stiff challenge. But to an average golfer they could
Speaker 2: still have a whole lot of fun. Pine Valley, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, which I've had the privilege of playing
Speaker 2: a number of times, really good for a good golfer.
Speaker 2: I'm a sick handicap, so reasonably good, I can have
Speaker 2: great fun. I can aim at the spots you're supposed
Speaker 2: to aim at. I can hit it to roughly where
Speaker 2: I was supposed to. One mistake on any given hole,
Speaker 2: and hear me, it can double triple snowmane. I mean,
Speaker 2: it gets ugly, really really fast. There's little chance of
Speaker 2: recovery because of the severity of the rocks. The severity
Speaker 2: right in the greens, there's there's it's very severe. The
Speaker 2: the playability is low and the challenge is very high.
Speaker 2: Where Oakland the playability is pretty high and the challenge
Speaker 2: is also pretty high.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting. I was just writing a review today
Speaker 1: about a course here in Chicago that I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to make bogies at, but making pars
Speaker 1: and birdies is really difficult. Similar to the way you
Speaker 1: describe Oakmont, which is, you know, you know, it might
Speaker 1: be the only person that's ever described Oakmont as being
Speaker 1: very playable, but it makes complete sense.
Speaker 2: I didn't play it before all the trees came out,
Speaker 2: so with the with it covered in trees, it may
Speaker 2: have been a completely different story. But I played it
Speaker 2: post the tree removal and thought to myself, this is great.
Speaker 2: I want to play again, you know, I think I
Speaker 2: can do better. And of course next time I went
Speaker 2: out to see if I could do better, I did worse.
Speaker 2: But I had great fun. And I don't think I
Speaker 2: lost the ball because you can't it's open.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So with that, you know you touched on with
Speaker 1: as one of the reasons Oakman is playable. What are
Speaker 1: some other strategies that you employ and use that kind
Speaker 1: of create that playability while still challenging the scoring and
Speaker 1: the birdies.
Speaker 2: Well, here's a stat for you. The average player misses
Speaker 2: the green more than half the time, right, They just
Speaker 2: don't hit the putting surface with their approach shots. And
Speaker 2: yet golf course designers rarely spend as much time thinking
Speaker 2: about the surrounds to the green as they do with
Speaker 2: the green itself. And yet more than half the shots
Speaker 2: are played from around the greens. So as a golf
Speaker 2: course designer, it behooves us to make sure that those
Speaker 2: golfers that miss the green, which is every golfer, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just a question of percentages. Doesn't get put in
Speaker 2: jail because they missed the green by a few yards
Speaker 2: and our you know, the kind of rule of thumb
Speaker 2: that I come up with now is if you're doing
Speaker 2: an irrogated golf course, those heads are space sixty feet apart,
Speaker 2: and anything inside that you're actually spending more money to irrigate.
Speaker 2: So if you have the space on the site, you
Speaker 2: may as well leave. You know, somewhere you're in the
Speaker 2: up to sixty feet around the green for someone to recover.
Speaker 2: So take that step further. When they're recovering, are they
Speaker 2: recovering to make Birdie? No, no, of course not. Are
Speaker 2: they recovering to make par well? They'd like to. So
Speaker 2: I'll go back to my argument that defense of birdie
Speaker 2: is what I'm about, not defense of par. If I
Speaker 2: can let someone miss the green, not put them in jail,
Speaker 2: and give them a you know, maybe a fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty chance so they could still get up and down,
Speaker 2: is that not going to lead to more fun? You
Speaker 2: missed the green take Plain Valley. You miss the green
Speaker 2: at Plain Valley? How many times would you actually lose
Speaker 2: the ball if you missed the green at Plaine Valley
Speaker 2: a bunch mm hmm. I mean you could actually lose
Speaker 2: the ball. Yeah, you'd lose stroke and distance. Now you're
Speaker 2: scrabbling for double.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's the places that are overly penal around the greens,
Speaker 1: and I think that's where the good players are infinitely
Speaker 1: better than the average and the bad players is around
Speaker 1: the greens with their recovery capabilities and shots. So the
Speaker 1: tougher it is around the greens, the wider the separation
Speaker 1: you would get.
Speaker 2: Correct, that would be a reasonable analysis to make. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: To change gears a little bit, I think I think
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear about how you got into golf
Speaker 1: course architecture in the first place. So was it growing
Speaker 1: up or you know what, guy you into?
Speaker 2: Okay, growing up? My father was a greenkeeper in Scotland.
Speaker 2: So my father as a young man worked at ran
Speaker 2: Furley Castle Golf Club on the west side of Glasgow
Speaker 2: and then from there went to Glasgow Golf Club, which
Speaker 2: is the sixth or seventh, maybe the fifth that somewhere
Speaker 2: in there, oldest golf course in the world seventeen to
Speaker 2: ninety odd and he was the hey greenkeeper there for
Speaker 2: twelve years, so that was most of my young childhood
Speaker 2: through elementary school that's where he was the head greenkeeper.
Speaker 2: And then in the early eighties he went to glen
Speaker 2: Eagles which had just been sold by the railway company
Speaker 2: who had kind of run it into the ground, and
Speaker 2: a new private equity company bought it and they wanted
Speaker 2: to bring it back to its former glory in the
Speaker 2: twenties and thirties, and so my father was instrumental and
Speaker 2: renovating the James Braid courses at Gleneagle's back to their
Speaker 2: former glories, and then working with Nicholas to build the
Speaker 2: PGA course which hosted the Ryder Cup the last time
Speaker 2: it was in Europe. So that was my background, my
Speaker 2: childhood in and around golf, the son of one of
Speaker 2: the most influential golf course superintendents, certainly in Scotland, possibly
Speaker 2: in Europe, and if I could be so bold, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe across the world. He did a lot for his peers.
Speaker 2: He brought a professionalism to it that didn't exist in
Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies, and you know, I was raised
Speaker 2: with that as a model. I loved everything about golf
Speaker 2: courses and when I got to decide my own path.
Speaker 2: I worked for a golf construction company and came to
Speaker 2: really love the creative part of golf, the creation of
Speaker 2: new golf courses and the adjustment of existing golf courses.
Speaker 2: So I took another step on from what my father
Speaker 2: had done at Glen Eagles with the Braid courses and
Speaker 2: the new Nicholas course, and I've been doing that ever since.
Speaker 2: That's a very quick pricie on how my career has
Speaker 2: moved from early childhood to today.
Speaker 1: So you got the Bandon Dunes project at was it
Speaker 1: age twenty eight? Correct?
Speaker 2: Twenty six? I think I was nineteen ninety four was
Speaker 2: when I first saw the site and met Mike, and
Speaker 2: then ninety seven we started building it. In ninety nine
Speaker 2: it opened, So I was thirty just over thirty when
Speaker 2: we finished it.
Speaker 1: Huh. So it was it was your first solo design, correct, not.
Speaker 2: Quite close close enough so it was not to matter.
Speaker 1: So did you have kind of a feeling of you know,
Speaker 1: what you were onto there, like you know where you
Speaker 1: were kind of where the first course to revolutionize what
Speaker 1: now is becoming what resort golf is all about and
Speaker 1: destination golf is about, and you know kind of did
Speaker 1: you feel that magnitude when you were you know, in
Speaker 1: those early stages, No, no, at all.
Speaker 2: It didn't have a name, you know, no one knew
Speaker 2: what it was going to be called. For a while.
Speaker 2: I tried to convince Mike call it McKenzie National or
Speaker 2: Whiskey Run or something else, a few other names that
Speaker 2: we kicked around. Mike KUIs there was you know, some
Speaker 2: you know, relatively successful businessman from Chicago with no pedigree
Speaker 2: in golf. It's not like Mike's a ex pro golfer
Speaker 2: or a developer of notes. You know, he did recycled
Speaker 2: paper for his entire career and made some money at it,
Speaker 2: and he enjoyed playing golf as an average golfer. So
Speaker 2: and he's hiring a young Scottish guy who's got exactly
Speaker 2: zero pedigree. Well that's not quite true. I had the
Speaker 2: pedigree of my father and that's really what Mike was hiring.
Speaker 2: So there was no expectation. We thought that the tiny
Speaker 2: little group that was part of it, we thought that
Speaker 2: we could build something really really cool, something off the hook.
Speaker 2: But lots of people think that everyone you know, there's
Speaker 2: I don't know anyone in that in my business that
Speaker 2: doesn't think that what they're currently building isn't going to
Speaker 2: be great, just the same way any musician or our
Speaker 2: film director doesn't think what they're working on isn't going
Speaker 2: to be the next Uscar winner. So I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that we really truly believed in our hearts that it
Speaker 2: was going to be what it ended up being. No
Speaker 2: one did. I mean, we thought we're going to build
Speaker 2: something cool on the Oregon coast that a few people
Speaker 2: might see and think was cool as well. But we
Speaker 2: lived in a time where golf courses were lush, green lakes,
Speaker 2: car paths, perfect service. You know, Ben and June's back
Speaker 2: in the mid to late nineties when it was conceived
Speaker 2: and created, was the polar opposite to what golf was.
Speaker 2: Everyone watched Augusta and everybody was pushing towards that economy
Speaker 2: was bringing. And this unheard of guy from Chicago hiring
Speaker 2: an unheard of Scotsman is going to build a golf
Speaker 2: course and an unheard of place in America. Where do
Speaker 2: you see your recipe for success in that description?
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting. You know a lot of people in
Speaker 1: tech say that the greatest ideas are the ones that
Speaker 1: people think are the craziest. I mean, take Uber for example.
Speaker 1: Who would have thought ten years ago we'd be getting
Speaker 1: in random people's cars, you know, and not taxicabs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll give you another one that you know.
Speaker 2: Mike's genius is his ruthless simplicity. He is ruthlessly simple.
Speaker 2: If you come up with an idea to Mike Kaiser
Speaker 2: I'm talking about that is the best idea on planet Earth,
Speaker 2: and you can absolutely prove it to be true, but
Speaker 2: it has came moving parts. I don't think he'd be
Speaker 2: interested you come up with an idea that's got no
Speaker 2: moving parts, He's going to pick that One's uh an analogy,
Speaker 2: of course. But simplicity is what he's good at. And
Speaker 2: I've had the pleasure of working for Mike twenty years
Speaker 2: ago and today and in the twenty years proof that
Speaker 2: in between. I've worked for so many incredibly smart people
Speaker 2: around the world, some of the richest, some of the smartest,
Speaker 2: some of the most celebrated, and none of them have
Speaker 2: the raw simplicity of thought that Mike has. And that's
Speaker 2: where I think his true genius is. It is just
Speaker 2: really really he simplifies everything, and the simplicity of that
Speaker 2: he how do I want to say, he forcibly. He
Speaker 2: enforces it on those that work with them and for them,
Speaker 2: and he brings out the very best in those people
Speaker 2: because he forces them to come up with the easiest,
Speaker 2: simplest solutions to every problem.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. So you're currently working
Speaker 1: on another Mike Kaiser project, sand Valley up in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: A you know, another kind of crazy unknown site. Sand
Speaker 1: hills abound over this great piece of land in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, Wisconsin. Why don't you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what we can expect when the David
Speaker 1: Kid course opens up there.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing is, you know, I said a
Speaker 2: few times now that an Engines was the edge of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and now Mike found the middle of nowhere in Rome, Wisconsin. Uh.
Speaker 2: And it is shocking for those that visit for the
Speaker 2: first time. You're driving through rural Wisconsin with flat dairy
Speaker 2: lands on both sides and then maybe some timber and
Speaker 2: in the middle of the state there's a few thousand
Speaker 2: acres all san juans and they're not even elbows, they're
Speaker 2: they're dunes. They're steep, they're sharp on one side, they're
Speaker 2: soft on the other. Side. They look likely to be
Speaker 2: on the Irish coast. That it's very, very surreal. And
Speaker 2: the sand that's on them is white sugar sand. It's
Speaker 2: the most unusual thing. It's not the same sand that
Speaker 2: exists through the sand Velvet Nebraska that's very fine, gray
Speaker 2: brown sand. This is white sugar sand. And then the
Speaker 2: vegetation that grows there these think whispy sedge grasses and
Speaker 2: prairie oaks and pines. I mean, it's it's amazing that
Speaker 2: this exists at all, and I'm amazing yet that no
Speaker 2: one built a doll course on it. As a student
Speaker 2: of golf and golf course development over the last one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years, we all look at the Augusta
Speaker 2: Nationals or the Pine and we think, oh, wouldn't it
Speaker 2: be great to find a site like that, But of
Speaker 2: course they don't exist because these were all built on
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago. That's why they don't exist. They're
Speaker 2: aren't built on. And yet here we are, one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty years later about Mike Kayder stumbles right into
Speaker 2: a few thousand acres in the middle of Wisconsin that
Speaker 2: could have been built by Crump one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: So that course is going to be open for preview
Speaker 1: play next year.
Speaker 2: We have six holes on our course that are grafted,
Speaker 2: the first and the second, and then the fifteenth, sixteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen to eighteenth, So the very beginning and the very
Speaker 2: end of the golf course is completely done grassed. People
Speaker 2: were hitting golf balls around them at the end of
Speaker 2: last year, and by this coming summer the Kaiders intend
Speaker 2: to open those six holes for preview play the same
Speaker 2: as they did with the cre Crenshaw course, and incrementally
Speaker 2: through the summer six holes will lightly turn into nine
Speaker 2: and name twelve, and by the end of the summer
Speaker 2: maybe a few people mic and a few frames might
Speaker 2: get to hit a ball around all eighteen, although it
Speaker 2: will be extremely young at that point. The final fudels,
Speaker 2: which are likely to be around pan eleven, twelve that
Speaker 2: sort of area, and then twenty eighteen the start of
Speaker 2: that season, the course WILLI open up to everyone.
Speaker 1: So with a site like with a site like or
Speaker 1: with a site like banded dunes or sand valley where
Speaker 1: you have kind of an expansive landscape, what are the
Speaker 1: challenges with a big, you know, land site versus where
Speaker 1: you're kind of constricted and you may might have to
Speaker 1: route around housing developments. How do those two different types
Speaker 1: of projects like, what are some of the tough things
Speaker 1: about each of those?
Speaker 2: You know, Funnily enough, when you're giving no constraint, it
Speaker 2: can have its own struggles. When when you're giving a
Speaker 2: piece of land that's got no boundaries. You know, Michael Kaiser,
Speaker 2: Mike's sun is the one that we that my team
Speaker 2: deal with on a day to day basis, and and
Speaker 2: he's really been the driving force of this project on
Speaker 2: the ground, him and his brother Chris. You know, they
Speaker 2: told us right from the beginning, you know, well, pick
Speaker 2: any piece of land you want. You know, it's somewhere
Speaker 2: proximate to the core crunch of course, any side you want, Well,
Speaker 2: where are the boundaries? Well, we've got kind of a
Speaker 2: deal with the existing landowner that you know, we can
Speaker 2: buy up whatever we want. We've got options on it,
Speaker 2: so that with no limitations. It becomes a real struggle
Speaker 2: because you're spoilt with choices, You're you're not quite sure
Speaker 2: where to go. And believe it or not, that can
Speaker 2: you can end up like a deer in headlights where
Speaker 2: you just don't know where to go. So what we
Speaker 2: did is we knuckled down and we used a little
Speaker 2: bit of technology to help us. Because the land mass
Speaker 2: was so large, we looked at it on a much
Speaker 2: larger scale, much larger than you could ever do on
Speaker 2: the ground with your feet, and we looked at Google
Speaker 2: Earth and aerial mapping, and we figured out where the
Speaker 2: major landforms were. And we saw from the satellite photography
Speaker 2: that there was a giant ridge slightly to the northeast
Speaker 2: of the core Crenshaw Course. And this ridge V shaped
Speaker 2: ridge that points effectively due east with the open end
Speaker 2: of the due west, was pretty big. Each part of
Speaker 2: the V about a mile long, ranging up to about
Speaker 2: eighty feet high. You couldn't see it walking the ground.
Speaker 2: You'd see a hill, but you wouldn't understand that this
Speaker 2: was actually part of this giant landform. So we decided
Speaker 2: that we would take this giant, imposing landform and see
Speaker 2: if we could figure out how to root an eighteen
Speaker 2: hole golf course around it. And that's when we got
Speaker 2: out on the ground and we really started to hike,
Speaker 2: and over a few weeks we hiked and hiked and
Speaker 2: hiked and figured out how to get a golf course
Speaker 2: around it and threw it and over it, and we
Speaker 2: had the clubhouse at the head of the V, the
Speaker 2: eastern end at the sharp point if you like, looking
Speaker 2: back out the wide end of the V. And when
Speaker 2: all was said and done and we won the bakeoff
Speaker 2: that Mike ran between ourselves and Tom Doak and a
Speaker 2: couple of others, he said, yeah, I like the plan.
Speaker 2: I love all the holes. It's all great. That could
Speaker 2: you flip the clubhouse to the other end of the
Speaker 2: site and keep all the holes just the way they are?
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that Mike will do.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He changed the fundamental pore of our design by flipping
Speaker 2: the clubhouse and then said, I don't want you to
Speaker 2: redesign it. Figure out how to make it work. That
Speaker 2: is no easy challenge.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I really like the car you designed. I really like
Speaker 2: only to have three wheels. I want everything you gave me.
Speaker 2: I want the sixteenth steering wheel on the same spot
Speaker 2: everything you've given me. I'll just rather it only had
Speaker 2: three wheels. That level of difficulty. But you know what,
Speaker 2: he figures that we're smart people and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: Sure enough, we figured it out. The holes are all
Speaker 2: pretty much exactly where they were on the original plan.
Speaker 2: The only thing that we really changed were the numbers.
Speaker 1: So now and it's current routing. It goes out up
Speaker 1: the landform, down the landform and back kind of that's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now the clubhouse, which will actually be the main
Speaker 2: clubhouse for the whole development, is on the western end
Speaker 2: of this giant V, at the open end of the V,
Speaker 2: basically at the I haven't thought of this before, but
Speaker 2: the clubhouse is really at the the stock end of
Speaker 2: the arrow and you're looking down the arrow.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So that's that's I mean, it's got to
Speaker 1: be kind of a crazy thing to have all that
Speaker 1: land and just have to figure it out, do you
Speaker 1: So when you found that landform, is it? Then? Do
Speaker 1: you work from the greens back? Or how did you know?
Speaker 1: I've I've read, you know, different architects route holes and
Speaker 1: courses different ways. How how did you kind of go
Speaker 1: about laying out the holes?
Speaker 2: You know? For me, it's more about laying out the circulation.
Speaker 2: The rooting, if you will. You know, people think about
Speaker 2: rooting and they immediately think about par three, Par four,
Speaker 2: Part five. I would prefer to think about rooting as
Speaker 2: just a thrade, a pathway, if you will, through a landscape.
Speaker 2: You know, how are we going to circulate our way
Speaker 2: around this in a pleasing fashion? And we know that
Speaker 2: along the route of this wonderful walk there are some
Speaker 2: very obvious green and tea sites. But the first thing
Speaker 2: to do is to get this flowing path, if you like,
Speaker 2: around the piece of land. And because without that we
Speaker 2: might fall in love with half a dozen green sites
Speaker 2: but not be able to connect them together. So you
Speaker 2: really need to be able to come up with a
Speaker 2: thread through the site. And then from there, you know, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I know I've got that green or this
Speaker 2: set sees that I really want to get included. That's
Speaker 2: why the thread goes the way it does. But is
Speaker 2: that green site apart three or a part five? You know,
Speaker 2: that's going to figure itself out as you start to
Speaker 2: add flesh onto that skeleton other routing, and so that's
Speaker 2: what we end up doing. And to be honest, working
Speaker 2: with Mike, he's so in tune with that process that
Speaker 2: even now after having built six holes in shaped another six,
Speaker 2: there are individual holes on that thread of a layout
Speaker 2: that we still don't fully know are going to be
Speaker 2: what we initially thought there are par fours that might
Speaker 2: might end up with par five and vice versa, because
Speaker 2: we still haven't quite decided what the best sequence will
Speaker 2: be where we're still making those little adjustments. And I
Speaker 2: can I know for a fact that that's exactly the
Speaker 2: way that core cren Shall work, and I'm sure Tom
Speaker 2: don't work the same way, and a few others that
Speaker 2: they're constantly looking for improvement in their design all the
Speaker 2: way until the design is truly built. They're willing to
Speaker 2: change things right up to the last minute. And I
Speaker 2: guess that's where the core crux of change comes. When
Speaker 2: you're working on projects that are more defined, when you're
Speaker 2: doing mass engineering projects and housing developments, you know that
Speaker 2: your ability to work on the fly gets reduced and reduced.
Speaker 2: I mean, we try hard to maintain as much flexibility
Speaker 2: as we can, but as the projects get more complex,
Speaker 2: engineering wise, cost wise, your ability to do things on
Speaker 2: the fly reduces.
Speaker 1: So with the design process, what are some of your
Speaker 1: favorite and least favorite aspects of it?
Speaker 2: The most fun part of it is the shaping. You know,
Speaker 2: when you're taking the bones of whatever drawings were done
Speaker 2: and you're actually putting them down in the dirt for
Speaker 2: the first time in their rawest form, there's no drainage irrigation,
Speaker 2: and yet there's all you've really done is clearance and
Speaker 2: you're roughing it in with big dozers. That's probably the
Speaker 2: most fun because it's highly creative and there's no such
Speaker 2: thing as as as wrong. There's there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things that you might want to do differently, or things
Speaker 2: that you might want to add in that are challenging,
Speaker 2: but there's nothing wrong at that point. Where when it
Speaker 2: gets down to draine and irrigation and graph and things
Speaker 2: that you know becomes more technical and again you're less
Speaker 2: able to change at those points. The mass shaping operation
Speaker 2: is where the most creativity and the most changes can happen.
Speaker 1: That that shaping area is kind of where you know
Speaker 1: this you can make it look natural with that with
Speaker 1: it being man made or correct with the right kind
Speaker 1: of ter All right, yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Can, and you can. You can do all. There are
Speaker 2: so many tricks to that that are very difficult that
Speaker 2: that's where the real skill lays is that a relationship
Speaker 2: between the design guys, the shaping guys, even down into
Speaker 2: the maintenance guys to make that shaping speak to the player,
Speaker 2: so that they feel something, so that they get that
Speaker 2: sense of whatever it is you're after, excitement, trepidation, thrill,
Speaker 2: hopefully all of it, memorability. It all comes at that.
Speaker 2: That's the core stage right there, that nothing else before
Speaker 2: or after can make such a massive difference.
Speaker 1: So, and what's the aspect of your job that you'd
Speaker 1: be happy if you never had to do again? Not
Speaker 1: saying you dislike it, but.
Speaker 2: That's challenging. I love all of it? Which part do
Speaker 2: I like the least? The administration part is not that
Speaker 2: much fun. I try and have people really really good
Speaker 2: at doing that stuff so I don't have to do
Speaker 2: a whole lot of it because that stuff is challenging.
Speaker 2: And in the world we live in there's lots of bureaucracy, yes,
Speaker 2: twip requirements, USHA requirements, contractor licensed requirements, insurance requirements, on
Speaker 2: and on and on and on.
Speaker 1: So with you being kind of of the minimalist school
Speaker 1: of design and natural you know design, how do you
Speaker 1: view a place like Shadow Creek in Nevada, where everything
Speaker 1: is manufactured and you know it gets a claim for
Speaker 1: how much earth they moved, and the incredibleness of how
Speaker 1: lush it is, how do you view courses like that
Speaker 1: when you compare them to say, Bandon Dunes, I.
Speaker 2: There are two different things, you know, they're different. Genres No.
Speaker 2: When you say minimalist, you know, I think sometimes that
Speaker 2: does at service to what we're really doing. I mean,
Speaker 2: how much minimalism is there. Sometimes there's probably less than
Speaker 2: you think. But when we're done those that you would
Speaker 2: put in that camp, you would think that we did
Speaker 2: almost nothing. Where it's very difficult for Tom Fazio to
Speaker 2: try and make you think he did very little. When
Speaker 2: you drive in the gates at Shadow Creek and you're
Speaker 2: out in the flat Navada desert and then you find
Speaker 2: yourselves in yourself in the foothill put over the rockies.
Speaker 2: I've played Shadow Creek and I thought it was absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, an absolutely incredible example of the skill set
Speaker 2: that exists in the golf business. I mean, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: You can get into all sorts of debates about whether
Speaker 2: that whether someone likes it or not, or whether it's
Speaker 2: sustainable or not. But I don't think any golfer would
Speaker 2: ever play Shadow Creek and say, well, I just thought
Speaker 2: that was crap, you know, I thought it was terrible.
Speaker 2: I think they don't play it and say that was
Speaker 2: that's incredible. It's not for me. I want to play
Speaker 2: something that's real like that. But I played it and
Speaker 2: thought it was wonderful, and I'd play again tomorrow, especially
Speaker 2: it's snowing here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, in terms of your influences, who
Speaker 1: are some architects of you know, the Golden Age and
Speaker 1: past and even present that you really look to kind
Speaker 1: of as some of your influences.
Speaker 4: Well, I get tired of reading how my peers are
Speaker 4: influenced by the Golden Age architects, because the Golden Age
Speaker 4: architects were.
Speaker 2: The guys that came after the architects that influenced me.
Speaker 2: Because none of those guys, or very few of them,
Speaker 2: ever worked in the United Kingdom. So my childhood was
Speaker 2: spent around courses done by old Tom Morris and James
Speaker 2: Braid and Colt Varden and Taylor and you know all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. You know, it wasn't McKenzie or McDonald.
Speaker 2: So those courses have obviously influenced me in my early
Speaker 2: or middle career if you like, now that I live
Speaker 2: in the US, But my early influences were not those
Speaker 2: They were you know, mostly Old Tom Morris and James Braid.
Speaker 2: Those were the courses I hung out on on Eagles
Speaker 2: and the old Macrahanish course on the west coast of
Speaker 2: Scotland turn Braid Braid again, those are the courses I
Speaker 2: hung out on, and they fit in the model of
Speaker 2: what came after very well. They didn't move much dirt,
Speaker 2: they worked on great sites and they put a premium
Speaker 2: on golf course architecture strategy.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because you know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: great you know, the Mackenzie's and the you know, Donald
Speaker 1: Ross's and the cb McDonald's, learned from old Tom Morris.
Speaker 1: So you growing up and playing brave courses and old
Speaker 1: Tom Morris is kind of like going through the same
Speaker 1: education they did back in their day.
Speaker 2: I would like to think. So that would be good. So,
Speaker 2: and currently we live in an absolutely fantastic time. I
Speaker 2: wonder if you know, the past generation of designers could
Speaker 2: truly have said the same thing in the eighties and
Speaker 2: nineties compared to what we live in today. You know,
Speaker 2: since the mid nineties, you know, we live in a
Speaker 2: time where golf courses have become golf courses again, a
Speaker 2: premium on walkability, naturalism, shop making strategy, raw beauty, simplicity
Speaker 2: in the grassing, sustainability. You know, these things all exist today.
Speaker 2: It didn't exist in the late eighties, early nineties. They
Speaker 2: were trumped up gardens. You know, it was all waterfalls
Speaker 2: and bluegrass and you know, there were things that looked
Speaker 2: pretty on a plan to sail real estate by the billions. Now,
Speaker 2: so many golf courses have been built for golf's sake,
Speaker 2: and that's a great thing. You know that my peers,
Speaker 2: my competitors today are the strongest group, I would argue
Speaker 2: since the Golden Age.
Speaker 1: So if you were building a course and you couldn't
Speaker 1: pick yourself to do the project, who would you pick?
Speaker 1: And then who? And then also name one you know,
Speaker 1: kind of up and coming young architect that nobody, you know,
Speaker 1: we may never have heard of.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a tough one. If I couldn't pick me,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is. You know, you'd
Speaker 2: have to see the reaction of that particular designer. You know,
Speaker 2: you'd bring them out to your site and you'd see
Speaker 2: how they reacted, you know, and that's going to be
Speaker 2: a product of their experience and their current position in
Speaker 2: the world, in their career. You know, if they're super
Speaker 2: hot and super busy and there is a site that
Speaker 2: they like but don't love, that that vibe is going
Speaker 2: to come off. And yet the opposite would be true.
Speaker 2: You know, they're full of passion and not that busy
Speaker 2: and desperate to pour every ounce of their heart and
Speaker 2: soul into something. You know that ViBe's going to come off.
Speaker 2: Who would I pick if I couldn't pick me, Well,
Speaker 2: I hate to be further biased. I'd pick one of
Speaker 2: the two guys that has been working with me for
Speaker 2: the last ten years, because one day they will be
Speaker 2: the guys out there doing it and I'll be sitting
Speaker 2: in my armchair and at fifty later this year, that
Speaker 2: might not be you know, that's not forever. That's ten
Speaker 2: years away, twenty years away, and that probably exists for
Speaker 2: a few of those guys. You know, whether it's Tom
Speaker 2: Doak's collaborators over the last twenty years or Bill Kurr's collaborators.
Speaker 2: The next crop of enthusiastic young designers is right there.
Speaker 2: You just don't know their names yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, one of your guys, Casey has been helping
Speaker 1: us out with our ass that ask an architect series
Speaker 1: and just seems like a really bright guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, Nick Sean, who's also been with me for
Speaker 2: ten years, he did he and I did all the
Speaker 2: rooting work at Sand Valley, And it was Nick and
Speaker 2: I that were the two guys that did all the
Speaker 2: work to get to that bake off that Mike ran,
Speaker 2: and then once we got to instruction, Casey has been
Speaker 2: the guy on the ground taking that initial vision and
Speaker 2: making it a reality. So it's a team effort. Although
Speaker 2: I get to play the band leader, I'm certainly not
Speaker 2: playing all the instruments on my own.
Speaker 1: So we talked with Keith reb who does a lot
Speaker 1: of shaping for Core and Crenshaw, and he he said that,
Speaker 1: you know, those guys have a pretty hands off approach
Speaker 1: when it comes to their associates, where you know, if
Speaker 1: he sees something at the site and he's on the
Speaker 1: dozer shaping it, they let him kind of just rip
Speaker 1: and say, you know, have your freedoms. Are you kind
Speaker 1: of that same way with a little bit of hands
Speaker 1: off and you know, trusting your people.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think we're more hands on.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that from a shaping perspective, we
Speaker 2: certainly want shapers that are willing to collaborate with us
Speaker 2: and be involved in the process. But I don't think
Speaker 2: very often we're saying to our shaping guys, just go
Speaker 2: ahead and give me something, where that's not usually how
Speaker 2: it's working. We're usually giving them some kind of speer
Speaker 2: on where to start, and then we're manipulating that process
Speaker 2: all the way through to the end. You know, A
Speaker 2: big difference would be when Bill and Ben, you know,
Speaker 2: their shapers are really a key core part of their
Speaker 2: design staff. They effectively have their design staff driving the dosers.
Speaker 2: Slightly differently, our design staff are in the field managing
Speaker 2: those dozers, and those shapers are I don't want to
Speaker 2: downplay that they're into it. It's huge, but we're not
Speaker 2: that saying Okay, you know, go ahead and build me
Speaker 2: something you think is cool and I'll be back next week.
Speaker 2: We're usually saying, you know, cut that down and push
Speaker 2: that over there. I'll be back in an hour or two.
Speaker 1: So something I'm curious about with the architecture industry is,
Speaker 1: you know, so I think you probably can speak to
Speaker 1: this as you're young and you're hungry and you finally
Speaker 1: get that first job and say yours was, you know,
Speaker 1: your big job was banned in dunes, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're, you know, the hottest name in
Speaker 1: architecture and you've got more jobs flying at you than
Speaker 1: you can handle it. Like, how tough is that to
Speaker 1: adjust to?
Speaker 2: Very very tough, very tough. I look back at, you know,
Speaker 2: my early thirties and realize, you know, how tough that
Speaker 2: really was, although I didn't see it at the time.
Speaker 2: You know, in any other industry, I would have had
Speaker 2: a support network to help work through that, to make
Speaker 2: the best choices, to be surrounded by the best, most
Speaker 2: supportive people. But because it's not really an industry, because
Speaker 2: it's you know, like a hobby gone mad. When that happens,
Speaker 2: you know, you're kind of on your own. At least
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I was an immigrant into the
Speaker 2: US with no you know, support group, and suddenly, you know,
Speaker 2: I have this success on my hands and I'm being
Speaker 2: offered projects and you you don't. Really it was a
Speaker 2: difficult thing to looking back at. It was one of
Speaker 2: those certainly a first world problem, but you know, what
Speaker 2: to do? What would be the best choices be? Who
Speaker 2: am I talking to? Are these people good or bad?
Speaker 2: You know, and I don't think I'd changed much, but
Speaker 2: I've changed a few things.
Speaker 1: What it would be a couple of things that you've
Speaker 1: changed would have changed.
Speaker 2: I you know, the the quantity of work is regularly
Speaker 2: related to the quality. And when you're when you're too busy,
Speaker 2: you know, you spread yourself too thin, and that has
Speaker 2: its obvious drawbacks. And at times, through my twenty years
Speaker 2: since bending GM's, you know, there are times when you're
Speaker 2: just too thin on the ground. And in hindsight, it
Speaker 2: would have been it would be easy to say, well,
Speaker 2: I'll do this and this and not that that. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm hopeful that with twenty years of experience,
Speaker 2: hopefully at the very highest level, I can give that
Speaker 2: experience to my small crew and past that experience and
Speaker 2: knowledge on so that they're vector equipped as they move
Speaker 2: forward in their careers.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting. I think a lot of what you
Speaker 1: said goes to like writing. I see, where when I'm
Speaker 1: trying to write a ton of content, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't get as good. You know, if I take my
Speaker 1: time and really put you know, a lot of time
Speaker 1: I'm into a piece, it's always going to turn out
Speaker 1: better than when I'm trying to write three things at once.
Speaker 1: And I think it's true with almost anything in life.
Speaker 2: It is, and the only way you can deal with
Speaker 2: it is some sort of self limiting mechanisms. And if
Speaker 2: you can put some self limiting mechanisms in, then things
Speaker 2: get easier better. You know. I at one point I
Speaker 2: had two offices, one in the US and one in
Speaker 2: the UP. That was not a self limiting mechanism. That
Speaker 2: just made for more and you know, I deemed success
Speaker 2: as quantity, not quality, and so I did that for
Speaker 2: a few years and then closed the office that we
Speaker 2: had in London, and that made life a lot easier.
Speaker 2: And when I was doing less, spending more time on things.
Speaker 2: I have a daughter, and I when she was young,
Speaker 2: I made a commitment to to be home as much
Speaker 2: as I could, certainly on a sort of every other
Speaker 2: week end basis, at least I would be at all.
Speaker 2: So that sort of limited my ability to go chase
Speaker 2: jobs in China or you know, far flung places in
Speaker 2: the world. So that became a self limiting mechanism. So
Speaker 2: by putting a few of these in my own way,
Speaker 2: they started to hone down the number of things that
Speaker 2: I could take on and so by doing so, the
Speaker 2: quality increases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what would you say, is you know, I'm curious
Speaker 1: that is the ideal number of projects that you'd have
Speaker 1: in a given year.
Speaker 2: Well, my answer to that question is always the same,
Speaker 2: that you need at least one, otherwise it gets really hungry.
Speaker 2: So you need one. I would say probably three. You know,
Speaker 2: if you've got three projects all at the same time,
Speaker 2: chances are one of them is just starting, one of
Speaker 2: them's midway through, one of them is coming to an end,
Speaker 2: and you've got your eyeball on the next one to
Speaker 2: add to the chain. So I would say of three
Speaker 2: is the maximum capacity that at least my firm could
Speaker 2: cope with that are active in construction at any one time.
Speaker 2: We could be working on a dozen that are on
Speaker 2: the drawing boards because half of them will never happen anyway.
Speaker 2: But actually in construction, I would say three is the
Speaker 2: is the perfect number that you could get to, you
Speaker 2: could work on, and you could deal with. Right now,
Speaker 2: we have two major projects in construction at the same
Speaker 2: time and a third that only opened last September. So
Speaker 2: for most of twenty sixteen we had three projects in
Speaker 2: construction all at the same time, and for me to
Speaker 2: spend significant time on all three. You can imagine you're
Speaker 2: not home as much as you'd like to be. You're
Speaker 2: on the road a lot, and so you add another
Speaker 2: one in you're never at home at another one on
Speaker 2: top of that, now you're never at the fourth job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine if you took some international ones,
Speaker 1: then you god the travel problems too. I mean that's
Speaker 1: almost like a job and a half in itself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So you know that that is those other and
Speaker 2: maybe that's an answer to an earlier question that you had.
Speaker 2: You know, what's the thing that you like the least,
Speaker 2: and I said administration. You know, maybe it's the travel.
Speaker 2: The travel is a is a bear that can be
Speaker 2: really really hard. You're away from your family and the
Speaker 2: ones you love, and you're you're on the road. You know,
Speaker 2: I when I have done a lot of international travel,
Speaker 2: you know, my friends in town and say yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's okay for you. You know, you're crying, you know,
Speaker 2: business class on a flatbed. And I'll remind them that
Speaker 2: the very next night when I'm climbing into United to
Speaker 2: see you know three a next to a stranger on
Speaker 2: a hard bed that's eighteen inches wide. They'll be getting
Speaker 2: into their super king with their fluffy down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very, very true. So you touched on one
Speaker 1: of your other projects, Rolling Hills in LA, which just
Speaker 1: got some big news with USC announcing they're going to
Speaker 1: host the PAC twelve Championships there next year. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit about that project. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty unknown course when you're talking big names
Speaker 1: in LA and and kind of what you saw with
Speaker 1: that project.
Speaker 2: It's my sleeper that Rolling Hills Country Club was first
Speaker 2: created in the the sixties, I believe, and it was
Speaker 2: a small parcel of land that they built like a
Speaker 2: nine hole pitching put on, and then the local members
Speaker 2: built another piece of land and another piece, and over
Speaker 2: the course of thirty or forty years, they took a
Speaker 2: very small site, less than one hundred acres, and they
Speaker 2: inked eighteen holes out of it, but only just narrow fairways,
Speaker 2: peep terrain, no real design to speak of, you know,
Speaker 2: cobalt together over thirty years and a very affluent and
Speaker 2: enthusiastic membership in pallasburd He's one of the wealthiest parts
Speaker 2: of LA. But they really didn't have they had a
Speaker 2: golf club, but not a golf course, if you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. What happened was some of the land
Speaker 2: that they had acquired, they really had leased, was from
Speaker 2: a bounding sand quarry to their north, the Chandler Sandpit,
Speaker 2: and the Chandler Sandpit is known throughout la as one
Speaker 2: of the best sources of sand to build golf greens.
Speaker 2: So they mined out the Chandler sand Quarry for eighty
Speaker 2: odd years, and they filled it up with rubble, and
Speaker 2: then they crushed the concrete and sold that, and then
Speaker 2: he dug some more sand, and this went on for
Speaker 2: eighty odd years until they excavated all of the commercially
Speaker 2: viable sand out of it, and the Chandler's family were
Speaker 2: left scratching their heads wondering what to do with this
Speaker 2: big hole in the ground in Palacebury's. And over the
Speaker 2: last twenty years, believe it or not, they've collaborated with
Speaker 2: the club and they came to an agreement where the
Speaker 2: club would put in all the land they owned, the
Speaker 2: quarry would put in all the land they owned, and
Speaker 2: a developer would be sought to develop the combined land parcel,
Speaker 2: which is three hundred and fifty odd acres, and so
Speaker 2: to pay for the development of a new golf course,
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten home sites were ear marked within
Speaker 2: that three hundred and fifty acres in one core, pretty
Speaker 2: much in one big block. And the new golf course
Speaker 2: pretty well starts within the old quarry and wanders out
Speaker 2: through where the original golf course was and then finishes
Speaker 2: back into where the quarry is today. And the quarry
Speaker 2: is still a sand pit, so all of the sand
Speaker 2: that was remnants of the boring operation we harvested and
Speaker 2: used to build a golf course. So many of the
Speaker 2: holes are sitting on top of sand anyway, because they're
Speaker 2: in the quarry and the rest of the golf course.
Speaker 2: We dug out hundreds of thousands of tons of sand
Speaker 2: and we cake the whole place in sand before we
Speaker 2: finish the shaping. So by Hooker by Crook we have
Speaker 2: a sand golf course with acres of open sand areas
Speaker 2: and dried arroyos and our barancas as they would be
Speaker 2: down there, all with bermuda grass fairways and giant grass
Speaker 2: greens and green complexes that are all in band graphs.
Speaker 2: So the courses acres and acres of grass very wide
Speaker 2: hopefully very strategic, not overly long. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: we're going to be north of seven thousand, but not
Speaker 2: by much, but a lot of green light holes that
Speaker 2: these young buck college players can go bowman after knowing
Speaker 2: that they can make birdies and eagles all day long,
Speaker 2: or maybe they'll make they'll trip themselves up. We'll see
Speaker 2: what I can leave in their path.
Speaker 1: So with that, you know, how is it with dealing
Speaker 1: with the kind of changing game and the ball that
Speaker 1: keeps going further? I mean I play competitively, and these
Speaker 1: college kids hit it just I mean seemingly forever. I
Speaker 1: played with a fourteen year old that hit it over
Speaker 1: three hundred yards the other day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ball is certainly the limiting factor at the
Speaker 2: at that elite level. The ball is an issue for
Speaker 2: the average golfer, not really an issue. And when I
Speaker 2: have these conversations with people in the golf media and
Speaker 2: they're going about the golf ball and the equipment's making
Speaker 2: the game too easy, you know, you have to kind
Speaker 2: of remind them that the average golfer isn't any better
Speaker 2: than the average golfer was ten years or twenty years
Speaker 2: or thirty years ago. And so anything we can do
Speaker 2: to make the average golfer have more fun through equipment
Speaker 2: or ball, I'm all for as far as the average
Speaker 2: golfer is concerned. I'm all about what they did in
Speaker 2: tennis or what they did for skiing, Whether you can
Speaker 2: do so that the average golfer has more fun playing
Speaker 2: the sport we all love, I'm totally for it. That's
Speaker 2: a totally different question to what do you do at
Speaker 2: the other end of the scale with the professional golfers
Speaker 2: and elite college golfers, where they can hit the ball
Speaker 2: so far that the strategy strategy of the golf course
Speaker 2: is nullified. I mean, surely that is completely contrary to
Speaker 2: what the game's about. If the college player can hit
Speaker 2: it that far and now the golf course has no
Speaker 2: natural defense, you know, if there's nothing left and he's
Speaker 2: putting it to eighty yards on every hole and gap
Speaker 2: wedging it in. But what was the point Now it
Speaker 2: truly is just a plucking contest.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. I mean, I go
Speaker 1: both ways, because there's still you know, as inn say
Speaker 1: you're an amateur, a high level amateur player, but not
Speaker 1: a professional. It's just there's just a it's a It's
Speaker 1: a very difficult topic because you know, at what point
Speaker 1: do you start playing with the professional ball? At what
Speaker 1: point do you play with the regular ball? You know,
Speaker 1: that's the tricky part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's tricky, but there's lots of tricky things.
Speaker 2: What do you do? I mean, how do you handle it? Eventually?
Speaker 2: You have to do something? Yeah, so doing nothing, I
Speaker 2: don't think if we can agree that doing nothing is
Speaker 2: not an option. Now you just have to figure out
Speaker 2: the something, however tricky it might be. There has to
Speaker 2: be a something.
Speaker 1: I agree with that something needs I don't.
Speaker 2: Know what the something is. You know. My thought has
Speaker 2: always been that Augusta would be a This would be
Speaker 2: a wonderful leading point by the Committee of Augusta National
Speaker 2: That the Arnie and the USGA don't have the money
Speaker 2: to defend themselves against a ruling against the ball. But
Speaker 2: Augusta don't have to answer to anyone invitation only tournament.
Speaker 2: If you want to come and play, this is the
Speaker 2: ball we'll be playing. If you don't want to come
Speaker 2: and play, or highly welcome to turn down the invite,
Speaker 2: don't expect again next year.
Speaker 1: That's that would be one organization that can do it
Speaker 1: and definitely would enforce it and people I think would
Speaker 1: fall in line for with us. Butting up here close
Speaker 1: to an hour, I wanted to get to some of
Speaker 1: our Twitter questions. Our first one comes from Simon and
Speaker 1: he would like to know what you'd do differently if
Speaker 1: you had your time again at the Castle Course in
Speaker 1: St Andrews.
Speaker 2: You know, I would came for douting the putting surfaces.
Speaker 2: You know, the putting surfaces were just too reject to
Speaker 2: have too many slopes on the greens that pushed a
Speaker 2: ball away rather than allowed it to stay or even gathered.
Speaker 2: So certainly dialing back the greens you know by twenty
Speaker 2: five percent, wouldn't have hurt my feelings. And then the
Speaker 2: area around the greens, the ability to miss with your
Speaker 2: approach shot pin high and still have a recovery shot
Speaker 2: was something that wasn't as in the forefront of my
Speaker 2: mind as it is today. Those two things alone would
Speaker 2: in r because the greens are being mellowed, make a
Speaker 2: huge difference. What I think is lost is that there
Speaker 2: were so many things that I think my team and
Speaker 2: I got right. I mean, that site was a potato field.
Speaker 2: There was devoid of any interest whatsoever other than the
Speaker 2: fact that it had a cool view back into Saint Andrew's.
Speaker 2: And I think that over time, the you know, I
Speaker 2: pushed the edge of the envelope to the edge and
Speaker 2: beyond with the Castle course, knowing that history would allow
Speaker 2: the course to be adjusted over generations to achieve its
Speaker 2: final potential. Whereas if I built something that was mundane,
Speaker 2: mediocrity could never be increased. Nobody would ever take mediocrity
Speaker 2: and improve it. Where they could take something that I
Speaker 2: made where the volume was too high and they could
Speaker 2: dial it back, they couldn't dial it up. So you know,
Speaker 2: I've spent many many hours musing that very question, and
Speaker 2: I'll say that I'll go to bed, my final resting place,
Speaker 2: happy knowing that I pushed harder than I might have done,
Speaker 2: but the end result, long after my passing, will be
Speaker 2: the better for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. When you look at
Speaker 1: a lot of the great designs of you know, the
Speaker 1: Golden Age, they were the boldest courses of that era.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at when McDonald started to use
Speaker 1: the Britz design they called it, you know, his folly.
Speaker 1: You look at Mackenzie's design of Cyprus, he was scared
Speaker 1: that it was going to be too difficult, too bold,
Speaker 1: but the natural beauty is what saved it.
Speaker 2: I don't think that I you know, yeah, I agree
Speaker 2: with you. You know, the boldest of designs, over time
Speaker 2: have won out and nobody's going to be talking about mediocrity.
Speaker 2: And I knew going into Scenandrews that you know, you're
Speaker 2: you're going into you know, the Lion's Day, and everyone
Speaker 2: has an opinion. It didn't matter what I did. If
Speaker 2: I did something that appeased to most people, they'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, such a waste of a great site. It
Speaker 2: could have been so much more. And if I pushed
Speaker 2: too hard, i'd get what I get now. You know, well,
Speaker 2: you know you just used every toy in the box,
Speaker 2: and you know, push too hard and build something it's
Speaker 2: just too much. I'd rather history painted it that way
Speaker 2: than the opposite. I hate, hate, hate to be called
Speaker 2: media over Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody's in your business too. Everybody's a second
Speaker 1: guessing critic, like none of them were out there and
Speaker 1: you know, spending the hours on site. So I completely
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. And I think bold designs, you know,
Speaker 1: over time, will you know prove to be better than
Speaker 1: what they originally were thought of. So let's move on.
Speaker 1: Robbie wants to know when when you're building a course,
Speaker 1: what's the hardest part of the course to manufacture and
Speaker 1: have look natural, whether it's bunkers or mounds.
Speaker 2: That's easy. Pease, tease peace. Who wants to hit off
Speaker 2: a sport?
Speaker 1: It's not flat, that's true.
Speaker 2: So how do I build something that's very minimalist and natural?
Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, it has to be flat. So,
Speaker 2: by far the ease the hardest thing to shape and
Speaker 2: make look good on any golf course or the tees.
Speaker 2: It's a good question and an easy answer. Bring more
Speaker 2: of those on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, comparison of experience at Bandon versus Sand Valley, that's.
Speaker 2: Another good one. Another question that I've thought about myself.
Speaker 2: When I did band It in my twenties, I knew
Speaker 2: what I knew through instinct. I didn't know why I
Speaker 2: knew it. I just knew that golf courses needed to
Speaker 2: be white because it's windy. I knew that bunkers needed
Speaker 2: to be deep because the wind blows the sand out
Speaker 2: of them. This was all born out of our childhood
Speaker 2: in Scotland that I just took what I knew and
Speaker 2: replicated it on a different site. But I didn't really
Speaker 2: know why I was doing it. I didn't. I couldn't
Speaker 2: intellectualize it. I couldn't deconstruct it and explain it to you.
Speaker 2: It was all raw instinct and feel. You fast forward
Speaker 2: twenty years, with twenty years of doing this and to
Speaker 2: some extent experimenting and trying out different things. Now at
Speaker 2: San Valley, I think I know I'm twice the age
Speaker 2: I was when I was building band, and now I
Speaker 2: have a good idea of why things have to be
Speaker 2: the way they are. What you know leads to a
Speaker 2: good end result of what doesn't. So there's I guess
Speaker 2: experience is the final answer, but the explanations more long winded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so one question before we let you get out
Speaker 1: of here. We don't want to take up too much
Speaker 1: of your time. If you were going to play five
Speaker 1: courses the rest of your life, what five courses would
Speaker 1: they be?
Speaker 2: And none of them, mind, because that'll make it easier. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: the old course at S and Andrews does have to
Speaker 2: be right up there, because that's just a great course
Speaker 2: to play. And if I could play with a different
Speaker 2: group every single day. That would make it even better
Speaker 2: because the whole world comes to the Old Course at
Speaker 2: some point, so I would get to meet the entire
Speaker 2: world and play on a great golf course if I
Speaker 2: only ever played the Old Course for the rest of
Speaker 2: the time. But that would be one of my five.
Speaker 2: I guess Macrahannish where I spent my childhood with my
Speaker 2: father and my grandfather, and I'm still a member and
Speaker 2: my family have been members there for seventy odd years,
Speaker 2: so half its history. So I'd definitely take the Old
Speaker 2: Course at Macrahannish and put it on my list. So
Speaker 2: that would be two. If I jumped down to England,
Speaker 2: it'd probably have to be sun and Dale Old or
Speaker 2: Saint George's Hit Which one of those two would have pick.
Speaker 2: That's tricky, you know. I might even pick Some George's
Speaker 2: Hill over Sunningdale, just because it's even quirkier than Sunningdale.
Speaker 2: And then if I jump across to the East coast
Speaker 2: to the US, I'd have to be National because that's
Speaker 2: another quirky one that's full of whimsy and probably everybody
Speaker 2: gets to it eventually. It might take a little longer
Speaker 2: than the old Course, but whoever I missed it, the
Speaker 2: old course would be playing at the National, so I'd
Speaker 2: go there, and then coming to the West Coast, well,
Speaker 2: i'd have to be Cyprus Points. It's easy. That's that
Speaker 2: would be my five get me tea times at all,
Speaker 2: five of those for twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and get mine first, and then i'll
Speaker 1: let you know. I can bring us second.
Speaker 2: I could get you. I could get you on about
Speaker 2: half of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I think those are high on every golfer's
Speaker 1: bucket list, so you know, and then then it's the
Speaker 1: means of getting.
Speaker 2: There, yeah, and getting on.
Speaker 1: So hey, David, I really appreciate you coming on and
Speaker 1: spending over an hour with us, and we're my pleasure
Speaker 1: excited to you know, keep tabs on the progress of
Speaker 1: your new projects, and I'm excited to get out and
Speaker 1: see some of your existing ones this summer.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll see you at Sand Valley sometime this summer,
Speaker 2: and you better make it to the West Coast and
Speaker 2: see band engines and gamble sands at some point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're all on my radar, So let me
Speaker 1: know when you're up at Sand Valley. You know it's
Speaker 1: four hours from me, so it's not that bad of
Speaker 1: a drive. Would love to meet sometime.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing this summer the chances are there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, all right, well, thanks so much David, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate it again.
Speaker 2: No problem, to see you later. Go back bine.