Speaker 1: Pete Dye had one of the most unusual and fruitful
Speaker 1: careers in the history of golf architecture, and in this
Speaker 1: episode we're digging into it. My guest is Scott Sherman,
Speaker 1: the lead designer at Love Golf Design. Last year, Scott
Speaker 1: and Love Golf Design carried out a major restoration of
Speaker 1: Pete Dye's Harbor Town golf Links, and they're also in
Speaker 1: the midst of a multi year series of renovation projects
Speaker 1: at TPC Sawgrass, another pivotal Die Design. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about all of it. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this
Speaker 1: is Designing Golf, all right. Today's big question why do
Speaker 1: golf architecture nerds love Pete Dye. If you spend any
Speaker 1: time looking at what enthusiasts say about golf course design,
Speaker 1: and since you're listening to this podcast, I assume that
Speaker 1: you do, you might have noticed a contradiction. The same
Speaker 1: people who criticize golf courses for disregarding the natural terrain
Speaker 1: or being too difficult for the average player, or having
Speaker 1: too many trees, or being too narrow to accommodate strategic angles,
Speaker 1: or relying too much on water hazards, those same people
Speaker 1: will often tell you that Pete Dye was a great
Speaker 1: golf architect, which is strange because Pete Dye's courses did
Speaker 1: all of those things that I just mentioned. They usually
Speaker 1: feature a lot of water, some of them are pretty
Speaker 1: narrow and have a lot of trees. Most of them
Speaker 1: are very difficult for an average golfer to play. And obviously,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a Pete Die course, you know
Speaker 1: that he wasn't all that interested in naturalism. So what's
Speaker 1: going on here? Why is Die so beloved by people
Speaker 1: who would otherwise seem inclined to criticize them. I think
Speaker 1: there are three main reasons for that. One, Pete Dye
Speaker 1: was genuinely original and innovative. He was constantly trying to
Speaker 1: find new ways of doing things. So, for example, in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties, Die and his wife Alice made
Speaker 1: a trip to Scotland to study the Classic Links courses.
Speaker 1: And I should point out here that this itself was
Speaker 1: unusual for a golf architect at the time. So when
Speaker 1: Dye came back from Scotland, he had this foundation of
Speaker 1: knowledge that not a lot of American golf architects shared,
Speaker 1: and he processed that knowledge in a really interesting and
Speaker 1: original way. He didn't just go about trying to replicate
Speaker 1: Scottish links golf. Instead, he came up with his own
Speaker 1: versions of certain features that he had seen. Famously, he
Speaker 1: started building pop bunkers and shoring up hazards with wooden bulkheads,
Speaker 1: often made out of railroad ties, but he also experimented
Speaker 1: with contour. He captured the eccentricity and irregularity of links
Speaker 1: undulations without just reproducing links undulations. He created a variety
Speaker 1: of rugged textures at his golf courses. A lot of
Speaker 1: these have faded over time, but initially he used many
Speaker 1: different kinds of grasses, different kinds of bunker sand. Even
Speaker 1: basically after his trip to Scotland, Dye reintroduced some wildness
Speaker 1: to American golf course design, and the results were completely
Speaker 1: different from anything else being built at the time. This
Speaker 1: is a fact that he was very conscious of. Pete
Speaker 1: Dye was a contrarian. He wanted to be different. I
Speaker 1: often think about the famous story behind the inspiration for
Speaker 1: Dye's design at Harbortown Golf Links on Hilton Head Island.
Speaker 1: At the same time he was designing Harbortown, A Robert
Speaker 1: Trent Jones golf course was under construction on Hilton Head
Speaker 1: as well. This course was called Palmetto Dunes. Robert Trent Jones,
Speaker 1: of course, was the dominant golf architect of the era.
Speaker 1: Everyone was trying to catch up to him by imitating
Speaker 1: what he was doing. But Die, instead of just imitating
Speaker 1: what he saw at Palmetto Dunes, thought to himself, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do the opposite of that. Here's how he
Speaker 1: describes it in his book, Bury Me in a pop bunker,
Speaker 1: which I would highly recommend to anybody. He writes, as
Speaker 1: I watched the big machinery carve out long teas, huge bunkers,
Speaker 1: and large greens, I wondered how I could design something
Speaker 1: that would separate my identity from his. Somehow, the concept
Speaker 1: of designing small greens and a low profile course crept
Speaker 1: into my brain. Instead of long teas, flowing fairways, and
Speaker 1: elevated large greens, I deliberately chose to design multiple tea positions,
Speaker 1: small to medium size, shot demanding greens, undulating fairways, long
Speaker 1: waist areas, and abrupt, steep pop bunkers. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: Di was intentionally zagging on the Harbor Town project. He
Speaker 1: was thinking like an artist rather than a business person
Speaker 1: or a member of a resort development team, and that's
Speaker 1: something that golf architecture nerds really appreciate. Now. It is
Speaker 1: true that I could occasionally go a little too far
Speaker 1: in his effort to be novel. A quick example would
Speaker 1: be the so called volcano bunkers that he built at
Speaker 1: French Lick in Indiana, which are unique and memorable and
Speaker 1: I would imagine have their fans, but I consider them
Speaker 1: pretty silly, and I can't imagine that they're easy or
Speaker 1: cheap to maintain. Even in cases like that, Though I
Speaker 1: like that Di went for it, his missteps came from
Speaker 1: the same source as his best work, which was a
Speaker 1: genuine willingness to push an experiment, and in a field
Speaker 1: full of people who play it safe, that quality stands out.
Speaker 1: Another reason design enthusiasts love Pete Dye is that he
Speaker 1: knew how to make difficult courses interesting. Anyone can design
Speaker 1: a golf course that produces high scores, but it takes
Speaker 1: real ingenuity and skill to design one that's enjoyable and
Speaker 1: engaging while it's dishing out punishment. And that's what Pete
Speaker 1: Dye was able to do over and over the stadium
Speaker 1: course at TPC Sagrass is maybe the best example of this.
Speaker 1: When Die designed it, his brief was to build the
Speaker 1: most difficult golf course in the world. Usually that kind
Speaker 1: of brief does not result in interesting golf courses, but
Speaker 1: the stadium courses stood the test of time, and a
Speaker 1: big reason for that is that the holes don't just
Speaker 1: punish poor shots, they also test decision making. They test
Speaker 1: risk tolerance. So consider the eighteenth hole, by any standard,
Speaker 1: a very difficult finishing par four. At last year's Players Championship,
Speaker 1: it was the second hardest hole on the course. But
Speaker 1: it's not just straightforwardly sadistic. It's actually a very nuanced hole.
Speaker 1: Off the tee, what you're looking at is a fairway
Speaker 1: running on a right to left diagonal, with a lake
Speaker 1: hard against the left side and trees on the right.
Speaker 1: The fairway is at its widest point about two hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty yards from the back tee, But if you
Speaker 1: play to that relatively safe spot, you'll have a two
Speaker 1: hundred yard approach into a green that tilts toward the
Speaker 1: water and is also guarded by mounting in a pot
Speaker 1: bunker front right. That's a really tough shot. So most
Speaker 1: players try to push up a little more. But the
Speaker 1: problem is the more you push up, the more left
Speaker 1: you have to go, because that's where the fairway is moving.
Speaker 1: So this means you either start your ball over the
Speaker 1: water or carve a right to left t shot into
Speaker 1: the fairway, both of which are very uncomfortable plays, especially
Speaker 1: for right handed pros who are used to hitting a fade.
Speaker 1: So a lot of players end up in the trees
Speaker 1: on the right, which is obviously better than the water
Speaker 1: on the left, but still a very tough spot to
Speaker 1: be you're making par or bogie from there pretty much certainly,
Speaker 1: so every year we see a surprising number of players
Speaker 1: flirting with the water. And I think that's because if
Speaker 1: you pull off that te shot, a three is there
Speaker 1: for the taking its base a short iron or even
Speaker 1: a wedge into a decently receptive green from that angle,
Speaker 1: and on the final whole of the day, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to make the cut, or win the tournament, or
Speaker 1: just make up ground on the field, that is a
Speaker 1: very tempting proposition. So, yes, a difficult golf hole, but
Speaker 1: fascinating to play and watch. All Right, we've talked about
Speaker 1: Dye's originality, and his way of achieving difficulty and interest simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Another big reason he's so beloved by golf architecture nerds
Speaker 1: is that he reintroduced design build methodology to the game. Now,
Speaker 1: this topic deserves a podcast of its own, so I
Speaker 1: won't go as in depth here as I want to,
Speaker 1: But the short of it is that when Dye started
Speaker 1: his career, Robert Trent Jones was turning golf architecture into
Speaker 1: an office job. His approach was to draw up a
Speaker 1: set of plans and then hand them off to a
Speaker 1: construction company, usually a construction company that he himself owned.
Speaker 1: This allowed Jones to scale up his business and to
Speaker 1: design a tremendous number of golf courses across the world.
Speaker 1: Die didn't work this way. He was famously averse to
Speaker 1: formal plans and he much preferred to work things out
Speaker 1: in the ground with a shovel and a bulldozer. He
Speaker 1: was intensely collaborative. His wife, Alice, his most trusted design advisor,
Speaker 1: made critical contributions to every project that Dyes company was
Speaker 1: involved in. So the courses evolved as they were being built,
Speaker 1: and the effect of this is that die'es courses have
Speaker 1: a handmade quality to them. Yes, they are clearly manufactured,
Speaker 1: but they're interesting to look at because they're shaped with
Speaker 1: such care and individual attention. You don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of cookie cutter stuff at Die's best courses. His features
Speaker 1: are really varied and irregular. His mounding, for instance, is
Speaker 1: chaotic and unpredictable, very different from the tidy containment mounding
Speaker 1: that was typical on courses built during his period. There's
Speaker 1: just an appealing strangeness to Dye's shaping that I think
Speaker 1: comes from his devotion to the on site boots on
Speaker 1: the ground craft of golf architecture. And this approach turned
Speaker 1: out to be very influential because Die passed it on.
Speaker 1: He was like an NFL coach who produces a lot
Speaker 1: of other really good NFL coaches. Pete Dye trained Bill Corr,
Speaker 1: He trained Tom Doak. He trained Rod Whitman and Jim
Speaker 1: Orbina and Tim Liddy and Bobby Weed and many others
Speaker 1: who in turn a huge number of the up and
Speaker 1: coming designers who will define the next era of golf architecture.
Speaker 1: Often their courses look nothing like Dies, but his methods
Speaker 1: are in their DNA. So that's your answer to the
Speaker 1: apparent contradiction that I started with. Certainly, Pete Dye did
Speaker 1: a lot of things that current enthusiasts claim to dislike,
Speaker 1: but he did it with such originality and such a
Speaker 1: contrarian spirit and such a sense for the nuances of
Speaker 1: strategy and psychology that people who are passionately into golf
Speaker 1: architecture just can't help but love his courses. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, he introduced a design build workflow that
Speaker 1: has produced most of the greatest golf courses of the
Speaker 1: past thirty years. That's why golf architecture nerds appreciate and
Speaker 1: respect Pete Dies so much, even if his work doesn't
Speaker 1: really resemble what we usually like. All Right, I'd like
Speaker 1: to dive deeper into a couple of specific Pete Die
Speaker 1: golf courses. For that, I'll bring on Scott Sherman, who
Speaker 1: is the lead designer at Love Golf Design alongside Davis
Speaker 1: Love the third and Mark Love. Scott has developed a
Speaker 1: kind of specialty in Pete Die renovation and restoration. He
Speaker 1: helped to prepare the Ocean course at Kiawa Island for
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty one PGA Championship, and he restored an
Speaker 1: excellent early Die Design called Delray Dunes in Florida. Most recently,
Speaker 1: and most relevantly to this episode, he and Love Golf
Speaker 1: Design carried out a restoration of Harbortown Golf Links last year.
Speaker 1: This is the host of the annual Heritage Tournament on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, and they are also heading up an
Speaker 1: ongoing renovation plan at the stadium course at TPC Sawgrass,
Speaker 1: the annual site of the Players Championship. Basically, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on in Scott's world related to Pete Dye,
Speaker 1: so I thought this would be a good time to
Speaker 1: bring them on and talk specifically about what's happening at
Speaker 1: Harbortown and Sawgrass. Let's get to it all, right, Scott Sherman,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Garrett. How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty well. How about you?
Speaker 2: So keeping busy but as I said, better than I deserve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you you have certainly been very busy lately, and
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about a little bit of
Speaker 1: what you've been doing lately. But first of all, I
Speaker 1: want to I want to chat a bit about your
Speaker 1: your history with Pete Dye. The subject of this episode
Speaker 1: here is Die his design style, some of his courses.
Speaker 1: You began your career, as I understand it, working with
Speaker 1: Pete and Alice Dye at Kiwa Island.
Speaker 2: That's where I met them. Actually, like a lot of us,
Speaker 2: I was captivated as a teenager by the first watching
Speaker 2: TPC Sawgrass on television, not knowing that I would want
Speaker 2: to be a golf designer one day. Fast forward many
Speaker 2: years in the first time I really thought about being
Speaker 2: in the business was in college. And the first time
Speaker 2: I had ever set foot on Harbortown, ironically, was in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. That was called the Nabisco Championship back
Speaker 2: in those days, the forerunner of the Tour Championship walked
Speaker 2: that golf course after the fourteenth hole, I thought to myself,
Speaker 2: I need to go find Pete and Alice. So made
Speaker 2: my way to Kiowa while it was under construction, and
Speaker 2: that's really where I connected with some of their staff.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, some of the guys out
Speaker 2: in the field, but Pete and Alice had moved there
Speaker 2: to do that project at Kiowa. So I wrote them
Speaker 2: a letter and got a response from Alice, a letter
Speaker 2: I have to this day kept in my file. So
Speaker 2: that would have been you know, late eighty nine, early
Speaker 2: ninety and lo and behold, they connected me with Perry
Speaker 2: Dye who was working on some projects with them, and
Speaker 2: I first, you know, went to work with the Die
Speaker 2: family out in Denver, Colorado as part of their bigger staff,
Speaker 2: and got together with Pete and Alice out there actually,
Speaker 2: and then was sent to Hawaii to build my first
Speaker 2: golf course, which was not bad duty, but it was
Speaker 2: a very difficult project. So that's how that sort of happened.
Speaker 2: And ironically having been at Harbor Town and now all
Speaker 2: these years later helping them with their work there and
Speaker 2: the ocean course at Kiowa and as you mentioned, TPC
Speaker 2: Sawgrass as we're working right now. So it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: What are some of the initial experiences you had in
Speaker 1: the kind of Die family system that taught you things
Speaker 1: about golf course architecture and construction.
Speaker 2: Well, so my first memory of anything at all would
Speaker 2: have been walking on the ocean course, which was just
Speaker 2: it looked like the moon, you know, just a big
Speaker 2: old moonscape out there of sand and movement and whatnot.
Speaker 2: So I didn't have a clue what I was looking at.
Speaker 2: And when I got to Denver, it was hired properly
Speaker 2: Perry their son, their older son, said hey, look, you
Speaker 2: need to understand what we do in our style. And
Speaker 2: I had a feel for it. But he was gracious
Speaker 2: enough to send me to some of their golf courses
Speaker 2: that were well known and had been built years before,
Speaker 2: and he immersed me in photography that was sort of
Speaker 2: archived at their office in Denver. Their their photographer, Kenny May,
Speaker 2: their family photographer, availed me of any any golf course
Speaker 2: that they had ever built all over the world, and
Speaker 2: so I immersed myself in photography, which many years later,
Speaker 2: ironically has has come back. So that's where it sort
Speaker 2: of started. Get a feel for what we do, and
Speaker 2: then they started teaching me about the strategy. Here's how
Speaker 2: we think about golf holes. Pete always mentioned building in
Speaker 2: a third dimension, you know, as you know, there's there's
Speaker 2: lots of features that cast shadows and look more intimidating
Speaker 2: than they really are. So my earliest memories are of
Speaker 2: really studying their golf courses over a pretty short period
Speaker 2: of time. And then off I was sent to Hawaii
Speaker 2: to build this golf course in the middle of the
Speaker 2: Monowilly Valleys as they call it, and that's where it's
Speaker 2: or started.
Speaker 1: Do any stories come to mind from these early years about,
Speaker 1: you know, how construction was done on a Pete Dye
Speaker 1: golf course. I mean, clearly, this firm, this family had
Speaker 1: an approach to golf course construction that was different from
Speaker 1: that of other golf architecture firms. You may not have
Speaker 1: been aware of that because this was your you know,
Speaker 1: this was these were some of your first experiences in
Speaker 1: building golf But what was distinctive about the way that
Speaker 1: construction was done in the kind of die method?
Speaker 2: Well, and of course I knew nothing different other than
Speaker 2: when I got to my first project. So I was
Speaker 2: partly a design associate and partly construction manager as it were,
Speaker 2: and I was put in a ditch right from the
Speaker 2: beginning and told you need to learn how to build
Speaker 2: these golf courses from the ground up, which has served
Speaker 2: us well to this day. So I really didn't know
Speaker 2: any other way than to really build a golf course
Speaker 2: and designed it. At the same time, I think Pete
Speaker 2: would have even said he was a golf course builder
Speaker 2: much more than a golf course designer, and certainly didn't
Speaker 2: use the term too much golf architect. But we learned
Speaker 2: to build golf courses, and that's how we still do it. Yes,
Speaker 2: we have to deal with AutoCAD and plans and permitting
Speaker 2: and all that sort of thing, but that only gets
Speaker 2: you about eighty percent of the way. And we build
Speaker 2: a golf course and the features sort of reveal themselves
Speaker 2: as we impose our will here and there and work
Speaker 2: with sites, you know, somewhat minimalistically sometimes, but sometimes we
Speaker 2: have to impose our will. But we're really, we're really
Speaker 2: at the heart of it, golf course builders. And that's
Speaker 2: just how I learned, and of course is I got
Speaker 2: to know other people in the business and other people
Speaker 2: that work for the Die family. That's exactly how they
Speaker 2: learned to bill golf courses, folks like Bill Coohr and
Speaker 2: Tom Doak, and you go on and on. I'm really
Speaker 2: sort of the third generation, you know, Pete and Alice
Speaker 2: being the first generation, and folks like Bill Cooorr being
Speaker 2: you know, the second generation. I'm a younger generation, and
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't work on as many golf courses as
Speaker 2: lots of other guys did and gals, but certainly was
Speaker 2: very very influenced by the building process, much more so
Speaker 2: than the design process, and to this day it's a
Speaker 2: necessary evil to get things on paper and be able
Speaker 2: to permit and land plan and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But I guess the instinctive part of what we do
Speaker 2: is the building part, the part that's fun, the part
Speaker 2: where you just feel, I feel comfortable standing on the
Speaker 2: ground and making it happen. You know, with all the
Speaker 2: fellows that we deal with the golf course builders at
Speaker 2: this point one.
Speaker 1: Were you building greens at this point?
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely, you know, how did.
Speaker 1: That process go?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 1: I mean, because different architects have different approaches to building greens,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty interesting. I mean, Bill Corer and Tom
Speaker 1: Doak approach building greens differently. Tom Doak kind of has
Speaker 1: his associates go out and mess around with it and
Speaker 1: come up with these ideas, and then Tom comes in
Speaker 1: and edits. You know, these are very broad strokes here.
Speaker 1: Bill is more like, you know, he'll he'll figure out
Speaker 1: the concept of the green and have a pretty specific
Speaker 1: idea of what he wants done, and then they go
Speaker 1: out and execute that. What was the nature of that
Speaker 1: process for you in the die system.
Speaker 2: Well, at the beginning, so interestingly enough, I was sent
Speaker 2: to Hawaii, and the crew that built the ocean course
Speaker 2: at Kiowa for the ninety one Ryder Cup left Kiowa,
Speaker 2: picked me up in Denver, and we went to Hawaii
Speaker 2: to build this golf course. So that crew of folks,
Speaker 2: Steve Mann, Keith Sparkman, lots of guys that were at
Speaker 2: Kiawa taught me here's how you do it, and they
Speaker 2: would hand me bundles of flags and put my rear
Speaker 2: end on a sand pro or a tractor. I tried
Speaker 2: to do some work on a bulldozer' maybe too a
Speaker 2: d D and too impatient to sit on a bulldozer
Speaker 2: all day. I've got to be roaming the site. But
Speaker 2: I did learn to run some small equipment and do
Speaker 2: that a little bit less now these days, but still
Speaker 2: enjoy doing that. But we would literally you have a
Speaker 2: green site that was roughed in, and the guys would
Speaker 2: flag it out or I would flag it out, and
Speaker 2: we would just start playing with the dirt. As I say,
Speaker 2: the construction part of it have kind of a concept.
Speaker 2: I guess I have personally moved on to doing some
Speaker 2: green sketches, which helps us sort of anchor where we
Speaker 2: start and move the dirt around back in those days
Speaker 2: build in USGA green, we would build the core of
Speaker 2: the green, in other words, sixteen inches down in the
Speaker 2: in the dirt. And I always struggle with that. I
Speaker 2: like to like to build the whole green complex with
Speaker 2: all of the features as they would be finished, and
Speaker 2: then core it out and build, you know, ourselves a green.
Speaker 2: But so you know, it's always very different how we
Speaker 2: do these things. But that's that's the way. I started,
Speaker 2: just out in the field flagging out greens and figuring
Speaker 2: out the best way it fits in there strategically, and
Speaker 2: then we would mess with the contours physically with the
Speaker 2: sand pro, with the box blade and the tractor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard I've heard versions of that from various
Speaker 1: people who have worked with Pete Dye and with Perry
Speaker 1: Dye and others associated with the family, that that is
Speaker 1: kind of the problem. You really go out and play
Speaker 1: with it for a while and see what works, and
Speaker 1: then and then you come in kind of with the
Speaker 1: critical mind and shape it from there, which is a
Speaker 1: very interesting process, and it's it's got to be one
Speaker 1: that's that's tough for clients to deal with sometimes because
Speaker 1: you don't know what you.
Speaker 3: Have no idea yes, they're scared to death, but you know,
Speaker 3: at this point in our career we have a history,
Speaker 3: uh that that sort of shows them that that we
Speaker 3: kind of know what we're doing.
Speaker 2: But yes, it can scare them to death because and
Speaker 2: I learned some freedom from Pete by watching him answer
Speaker 2: questions of clients who would say, well, what are you
Speaker 2: going to do here? And what are you going to
Speaker 2: do there? And why did you do this or why
Speaker 2: did you do that? And he would just say, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Just felt right, I don't know, Okay, I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a creative process, you know. It's it's you're
Speaker 2: not building a four wall structure that walls have to
Speaker 2: be in a certain spot. So it just gave us
Speaker 2: some some freedom. And I guess to carry that on
Speaker 2: a little further. And I didn't see Pete do this much.
Speaker 2: He did it a little bit and taught us how
Speaker 2: to float greens. Originally, we would take a sand pro
Speaker 2: in a three by eight by about ten feet long
Speaker 2: board that was drug around with the sand pro that
Speaker 2: he stood on. It was like he was water skiing,
Speaker 2: and we would call it skiing the green and he
Speaker 2: would float contours with his feet and again I didn't
Speaker 2: see him do it much, but the guys that came
Speaker 2: from Kiowa taught me a little bit about how to
Speaker 2: do that, which is a very tiring process actually, And
Speaker 2: so Pete would make changes in the green, sometimes substantial.
Speaker 2: You know, you're supposed to only have twelve inches or
Speaker 2: so of greens mix in the profile of a green,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it would be a little less or sometimes
Speaker 2: a little bit more. But that was again part of
Speaker 2: the creative process contouring. You know, Bill Koorr calls it
Speaker 2: grading the green. So just right from the beginning, I
Speaker 2: was so fortunate to dive right into everything that was
Speaker 2: under the ground building this guy course in Hawaii, all
Speaker 2: the way to the finished contours. And then we were
Speaker 2: in charge of the whole construction process, so grassing and
Speaker 2: irrigating and the whole deal. So it was it was
Speaker 2: quite the education. I got my master's for sure, building
Speaker 2: two golf courses in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: All right, So we've got the Players Championship coming up
Speaker 1: soon here, so let's talk a little bit about TPC sawgrass,
Speaker 1: all right, And I love golf designs work. There you
Speaker 1: are in the early phases of what I understand to
Speaker 1: be a very long renovation timeline. So could you give
Speaker 1: me an idea of what the overall vision for the
Speaker 1: stadium course is and the changes that will be made
Speaker 1: in the coming years. Is this a restoration, is it
Speaker 1: a modernization? What is it?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, yes to both, that's right, and so we
Speaker 2: we're engaged in the process. Gosh, it's been almost three
Speaker 2: years ago now, so we have done some summer work
Speaker 2: for the last two years. We were all just there
Speaker 2: yesterday preparing for the summer work that's coming up this year.
Speaker 2: Partly we go there during tournament set up so that
Speaker 2: we can see how I mean, obviously it's built for
Speaker 2: tournament golf, so see how what we are about to
Speaker 2: do would affect circulation and the fan experience and obviously
Speaker 2: the architecture of the golf course. So this was a
Speaker 2: tough thing to start because and I have to be
Speaker 2: very careful how I say this. I don't want to
Speaker 2: be critical, but I just want to be factual about
Speaker 2: what's happened over the years, over these thirty some years
Speaker 2: to the golf course. I think the tour recognized that
Speaker 2: they were they have taken everyone's input over these thirty years, players,
Speaker 2: rules officials and administrators, fans, TV folks, media folks. They
Speaker 2: have slowly but surely over the years taken input from
Speaker 2: lots of folks, and one little thing at a time.
Speaker 2: The golf course changed and changed and changed. And the
Speaker 2: thing that we've noticed the most is and of course
Speaker 2: I know a little bit too much to be dangerous
Speaker 2: when it comes to the greens, but the greens in
Speaker 2: particular have become softer. The slopes are less pronounced, the
Speaker 2: transitions are less pronounced, the greens are generally bigger than
Speaker 2: they were originally. And as you know, I know, you've
Speaker 2: traveled all over the place and you have seen everything
Speaker 2: in this day and age. To challenge the best players
Speaker 2: in the world, it's all about the greens. We can
Speaker 2: keep moving teas back as far as we want. But
Speaker 2: the great golf courses that host majors, that do a
Speaker 2: great job of trying to challenge the player but yet
Speaker 2: still be enjoy for the member are the ones that
Speaker 2: have some really interesting, maybe severe greens. You think of
Speaker 2: the oak monts in the wing foots of the world, well,
Speaker 2: tpc sawgrasses. Greens really have become soft, slope wise, whole
Speaker 2: location wise. They're just not as difficult as they were,
Speaker 2: so we sort of start there and eventually in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight, as we understand it, we will focus on
Speaker 2: the greens and the green complexes. But leading up to that,
Speaker 2: there have been so many changes. For example, originally the
Speaker 2: golf course was very rough, you know, and how far
Speaker 2: back in the roughness do we go? And we have
Speaker 2: lots of documentation from day one really during construction. We
Speaker 2: have lots of documentation of the golf course plans to
Speaker 2: the extent that those are helpful, lots of photographs, lots
Speaker 2: of tournament video and so forth. We have lots of
Speaker 2: influence that you know, it's sort of like when Marion
Speaker 2: had to decide what era were they going to go
Speaker 2: back to, and we have sort of settled on about
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine as far as features go. And so
Speaker 2: for example, you know, there was lots of quote, waste areas,
Speaker 2: areas where you could ground your club, that were sandy shelley,
Speaker 2: areas that were strategic and a little you know, gave
Speaker 2: you a little uncertainty when you hit a shot out
Speaker 2: of those areas. And of course you fast forward to
Speaker 2: today and there's none of that. Every bit of sand,
Speaker 2: there is a bunker a bunker proper. So we're going
Speaker 2: through the process of deciding what if any of those
Speaker 2: areas do we restore as native through the green shell
Speaker 2: sand screening areas. And then you look at the architecture
Speaker 2: around all of that, and so much has changed, partly
Speaker 2: because it needed to. Some of it was too severe
Speaker 2: for you know, fan use, spectator use, some of it
Speaker 2: was too severe to maintain and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So we walk around constantly, and I have a computer
Speaker 2: full of photographs and photographs and miss Alis sent us
Speaker 2: their family photographer, Kenny May, who's photographed the place for
Speaker 2: years the tour, and we look, you know, really, square
Speaker 2: foot by square foot, what were those features like and
Speaker 2: how different are they today? And why can't we put
Speaker 2: this back? So it's really it really is more of
Speaker 2: a restoration. But again to keep up with the modern
Speaker 2: tour player who is six foot six or taller and looks,
Speaker 2: as Davis says, looks like a linebacker when he goes
Speaker 2: to the locker room, they all look like linebackers standing
Speaker 2: in the you know, golf locker room. So these guys
Speaker 2: are physically, and I would even say women are physically
Speaker 2: very fit and capable of hitting the ball a long way.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of certainty about their game, and
Speaker 2: so you know, as far as a restoration goes, the
Speaker 2: architecture is restorative. But again we have to think about
Speaker 2: it in the modern context, not only playing the golf course,
Speaker 2: but also maintaining the golf course. We are not going
Speaker 2: back to nineteen eighty three. You've probably seen pictures and
Speaker 2: how really really rough that place was. It was rougher
Speaker 2: than Pine Valley ever thought about being, to be honest.
Speaker 2: So there's a happy medium there. But there are so
Speaker 2: many neat features that we are picking up here and
Speaker 2: there that we will restore throughout the golf course. And honestly,
Speaker 2: there's some golf holes from nineteen eighty nine in a
Speaker 2: little bit earlier we don't even recognize. The second hole
Speaker 2: is completely different than it was originally, the sixth hall.
Speaker 2: I could just go on and on, and so it
Speaker 2: is really a massive download of information that we have.
Speaker 2: Aesthetics that Pete created, funkiness, strangeness, coolness, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: funky good stuff that we're trying to slowly but surely
Speaker 2: put back into the golf course and will really more
Speaker 2: effectively be able to do it when we close in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight. That's a very long answer to say
Speaker 2: that we are locking arms with the tour and their
Speaker 2: agronomy staff and their rule staff and their competition staff,
Speaker 2: and walking down every golf hole with them leading the
Speaker 2: process and really relying on you know, Pete's the golf
Speaker 2: architect here. He was the builder. He and Alice designed
Speaker 2: and built this place, and we're just being totally influenced
Speaker 2: by what was there and trying to make sure that
Speaker 2: we can be respectful of that and make it work
Speaker 2: because it was, you know, for its day and even
Speaker 2: for this day, it was crazy. We want to go
Speaker 2: back a little bit more to the crazy and a
Speaker 2: little less to the perfect. And if you're a keen
Speaker 2: observer of that tournament and that golf course, you're slowly
Speaker 2: but surely seeing that, partly due to the agronomic staff
Speaker 2: who is taking a lot of the ornament ornamental material out,
Speaker 2: bringing more native landscape material in and trying to keep
Speaker 2: with that more native look of the golf course.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of interesting stuff in there in that answer. Okay,
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Speaker 1: Check it out. I'll pick out one idea at a
Speaker 1: time here. I think maybe we should start with the
Speaker 1: the former ruggedness of Tpcsawgrass. Right, as you mentioned, the
Speaker 1: course originally had a pretty wild look.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to Jerry Pate about it one time
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, you were you were almost
Speaker 1: thinking that wild animals were going to come out of
Speaker 1: the jumble attack.
Speaker 2: And we've seen pictures that really look like that.
Speaker 1: It's just oh yeah, I mean it's a it's a
Speaker 1: Florida swamp. It felt like a Florida swamp initially with
Speaker 1: some I mean, there was something pinehursty about it maybe
Speaker 1: towards the beginning as well. Yes, and so it was
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, it was pretty raw at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and it gained some refinement over the course of the eighties,
Speaker 1: But even even by nineteen eighty nine, which is the
Speaker 1: year you've pointed out, the course was much more rugged
Speaker 1: looking than it is now now. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Augusta National, Florida. In a lot of ways. You can
Speaker 1: see the influence of Augusta National's maintenance practices on what
Speaker 1: the stadium course has become. So how do you find
Speaker 1: that happy medium? What are the features or what are
Speaker 1: the presentation practices that allow you to reintroduce some of
Speaker 1: that initial wildness without pushing it to the point where
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour says, hey, hey, we don't want our
Speaker 1: home of golf looking like it's downtrodden or dilapidated. Right,
Speaker 1: because clearly the PGA Tour has an interest in presenting
Speaker 1: the courses as as very shiny looking. And so what
Speaker 1: do you what do you do there? What are the
Speaker 1: places where you can can bring back some of that
Speaker 1: original look, and what are the what are the things
Speaker 1: that you just can't do?
Speaker 2: Okay? Well, So in defense of the tour as our client,
Speaker 2: you know, I would compare TPC sawgrass Uh currently in
Speaker 2: a modern context in a similar way, I would think
Speaker 2: about what we see at Oakmont. You know, I remember
Speaker 2: one time hearing John Zimmer's I think, say to Paul
Speaker 2: Latshaw or someone, you go out to that golf course
Speaker 2: the Monday of the US Open a few years ago.
Speaker 2: You go try and find something that's imperfect about Oakmont,
Speaker 2: You're not gonna find it. I mean, we we are
Speaker 2: so good, I'd say we the agronomic staff everywhere in
Speaker 2: the world, especially at these high level of facilities hosting
Speaker 2: big tournaments, are so good at creating perfect that that's
Speaker 2: a standard that that's going to stay, you know, the perfection.
Speaker 2: You go to Pinehurst number two. Although it's rugged, there
Speaker 2: are times when teas, fairways, greens are you know, they
Speaker 2: may be a little off color, but the conditions are
Speaker 2: great and then it sort of fades to its you know,
Speaker 2: native look. So in defense of the tour, they're going
Speaker 2: to create conditions that are fabulous for the tournament. For sure,
Speaker 2: because it's in March, it will be overseated as long
Speaker 2: as it stays in March. I'm sure that's the case.
Speaker 2: So having said that, you know, again, we can't go
Speaker 2: back to nineteen eighty three, just can't. It's it's you know,
Speaker 2: there was massive areas of the golf course that you know,
Speaker 2: spectators couldn't get around in. Really it was a coadd
Speaker 2: It was really a kind of a mess, honestly, and
Speaker 2: when you're hosting, I don't know, three hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: at an event, You've got to be careful about that.
Speaker 2: But having said that, slowly but surely, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: first off, there was a landscape palette that sort of
Speaker 2: crept in that was more ornamental, honestly, literally knockout roses
Speaker 2: and tea plants and things that were, you know, too
Speaker 2: much color for this native of a sight. So that's
Speaker 2: slowly but surely going away, maybe not completely, but as
Speaker 2: we think about how we fade into the native Florida swamp,
Speaker 2: you know, we are replacing a lot of that vegetation
Speaker 2: with things that were there before, wire grass and mully
Speaker 2: grass and things that are native to the area. We're
Speaker 2: certainly moving big trees. You may be aware of some
Speaker 2: big trees that we've moved there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that in a second, okay,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And preserving the oaks, the palms, and the pines that
Speaker 2: are indicative of that site. And then as we get
Speaker 2: closer to the golf holes, as we get closer to
Speaker 2: the center line of the fairway, that's where we're in
Speaker 2: sort of a discussion about as I said, these native
Speaker 2: quote waste areas that once were that at least give
Speaker 2: the golf course a little bit different contrast. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't want to be critical, but if you were to
Speaker 2: view the golf course maybe two years ago, it was
Speaker 2: so perfect and so contrasting between green and white. It
Speaker 2: was just as you say, Augusta National is wonderful, it's marvelous.
Speaker 2: I have no bad things to say about their esthetic.
Speaker 2: But TPC Sawgrass was not that, and it just seemed
Speaker 2: a little sterile to us. So as we started the
Speaker 2: conversation and we had a very receptive audience who said, yes,
Speaker 2: we look at these old pictures, we see what this
Speaker 2: used to look like, and so let's try to use that.
Speaker 2: But there's going to be a limit, you know, there's
Speaker 2: going to be a place or two where we just
Speaker 2: can only go so far with that. And the tournament
Speaker 2: is growing. I think that's always going to be the case.
Speaker 2: There will be more and more interesting to some extent,
Speaker 2: and maybe they will allow more more fans. So again,
Speaker 2: you know, Pete had the idea of sort of unique
Speaker 2: to him, these big long waist areas. One of our
Speaker 2: discussions yesterday is back in twenty sixteen, the waste areas
Speaker 2: were removed and the ones that were waste areas stopped
Speaker 2: and then the bunker, for a rules standpoint, picked up.
Speaker 2: So there was always a separation between the waste area
Speaker 2: and the bunker, and those don't exist anymore. So we're
Speaker 2: trying to understand what we would be allowed to do
Speaker 2: to bring back the waste areas and separate them from
Speaker 2: the bunkers aesthetically, rules wise, and again that's very restorative.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're working on the fourth hole right now
Speaker 2: thinking about all those details. So again as a as
Speaker 2: a place to start as an anchor, you know, Pete
Speaker 2: and Alice gave us an anchor from nineteen eighty two
Speaker 2: or three, and we will navigate that whole by whole,
Speaker 2: area by area to get that look and that strategy
Speaker 2: into the golf course, which is already there. You can
Speaker 2: see it, but it just looks. It looks a little
Speaker 2: bit more perfect than maybe it should.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can. You can even see that contrast between
Speaker 1: what are intended to be waste areas and what are
Speaker 1: intended to be bunkers in the design of the course
Speaker 1: where you have these huge, long bunkers often along the fairways,
Speaker 1: and those are now maintained as bunkers and every inch
Speaker 1: of them is has become perfect over time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's a difference between those and the smaller
Speaker 1: bunkers that are off in green Side, and so that's
Speaker 1: that's an interesting contrast to TPC sagrass. And it would
Speaker 1: it would seem to stand a reason that you would
Speaker 1: present those two different types of hazards differently. So that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I'm looking forward to to seeing that
Speaker 1: change for sure. Now. The most talked about change at
Speaker 1: TPC Sawgrass last year was, as you alluded to, the
Speaker 1: replanting of this massive oak tree next to the sixth
Speaker 1: te so that players were forced to hit a kind
Speaker 1: of relatively low trajectory t shot from a certain tea position.
Speaker 1: It wasn't all tea positions that were affected, as I
Speaker 1: understand it, but but yeah, so but you know, if
Speaker 1: you put the tea in a certain place, then then
Speaker 1: players kind of they couldn't just blast away with their
Speaker 1: towering you know, hit up on it driver. They would
Speaker 1: have to to carve a different type of shot under
Speaker 1: the tree limbs and add onto the fairway. This was
Speaker 1: a restorative project. This wasn't just a you know, a
Speaker 1: funny idea that that you and and love Golf Design had.
Speaker 1: This was there originally, and the and the tree was
Speaker 1: it was I think it had disease or something.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the previous one was leaning and leaning, and
Speaker 2: they cabled it so it wouldn't lean too much. And
Speaker 2: then I forget whether a storm or just decay took
Speaker 2: it out and it was gone for several tournaments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so how do you feel that that change
Speaker 1: worked out? What were some of the impressions that you
Speaker 1: got from the tournament about the effects of that replanting.
Speaker 2: Well, so I'll let the statistics speak for themselves, but
Speaker 2: before I say that, you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: I learned, and I didn't know that I was learning
Speaker 2: this until well into my career, as I would build
Speaker 2: golf holes and take direction from the Dye family and
Speaker 2: my future design partner Bobby Weed. You know, sometimes all
Speaker 2: you have to do is get into a player's head,
Speaker 2: and especially when you're talking about the highest level, they
Speaker 2: have so much certainty about their game, especially today, that
Speaker 2: the mental part is what you're Realllian challenging. So whether
Speaker 2: this was intended on the sixty by Pete or not,
Speaker 2: it was there visually and you know, shot tracker back
Speaker 2: in the day would have been really great to you know,
Speaker 2: tell us how much did it affect the flight of
Speaker 2: the golf ball. Well, now we know from last year's tournament.
Speaker 2: You know, prior to the tree being moved and replanted,
Speaker 2: I believe that hole played during previous tournament or the
Speaker 2: previous year. I believe that hole played thirty under par
Speaker 2: for the field. And then last year with the tree
Speaker 2: in place, and only one player actually hit the tree
Speaker 2: all week, that hole played twenty over par. There's a
Speaker 2: fifty shot difference. And all we did was create a visual.
Speaker 2: We didn't build a bunker, we didn't put a wall,
Speaker 2: there's no railway sheds or anything. But it's just the visual.
Speaker 2: And now that we do have shot tracer and shot tracker,
Speaker 2: we could kind of predict how it might affect their ballflight.
Speaker 2: And everybody hit everything. There were players that hit driver.
Speaker 2: I played with a tour player prior to opening the
Speaker 2: golf course and he hit driver, no problem, just a
Speaker 2: little bit lower. But they just had to think about
Speaker 2: it so visually, so then mentally, this is where I
Speaker 2: guess Pete taught us how to maybe affect a player's
Speaker 2: game and the way they think about playing the golf o.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the psychological dimension of design was something that Pete
Speaker 1: Die thought about a lot and implemented at his courses
Speaker 1: better than probably anyone who has ever designed courses for
Speaker 1: elite players.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Right. He knew exactly how to bother top level players,
Speaker 1: and that's right. I think that's part of what makes
Speaker 1: his courses stand the test of time.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. And you know I learned early on
Speaker 2: to try to get certainly the best players to think
Speaker 2: about shots. You want to make them move the ball
Speaker 2: back and forth with every shot. That's where sort of
Speaker 2: the idea of an S shaped golf hole came from.
Speaker 2: You want to make the player work the ball in
Speaker 2: one direction off the tee and another direction into the green.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like to call them switchback holes.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of these par fives at Pete
Speaker 1: Die courses that kind of move one direction off the
Speaker 1: tee and then come back the other direction like a switch,
Speaker 1: like a you know, switchbacking road going up a mountain,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: And you can go all the way back to a
Speaker 2: place like a teeth of the dog in the Dominican
Speaker 2: and you can see that all over the golf course.
Speaker 2: Even if you want to really study par threes, you
Speaker 2: know there are it's always great to have different hole
Speaker 2: locations on a par three. So very often he would
Speaker 2: build a par three that sort of had an S
Speaker 2: shape to it. And at TPC sawgrasp between Dean Beamon
Speaker 2: and Pete and miss Alice and Bobby Weed. I learned
Speaker 2: originally his thinking about how to set up greens. You know,
Speaker 2: originally when the greens were built, they were a bit smaller,
Speaker 2: and he had in his mind four whole locations for Thursday, Friday,
Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday. And he was trying to make you
Speaker 2: realize that it was best to attack a whole location
Speaker 2: with a proper shot shape. And if you didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: come into that whole location with the correct shape, it
Speaker 2: might repel the ball. If you use the right shape,
Speaker 2: it might hold the ball in place. And so some
Speaker 2: of that has been lost. We're trying to understand how
Speaker 2: what kind of whole location cupping slopes we can create.
Speaker 2: You know, you go to Wingfoot, I don't know if
Speaker 2: there's a two point four percent slope on any green
Speaker 2: at Wingfoot. And we've always i say always for a
Speaker 2: long time we've been concerned about not putting whole locations
Speaker 2: at TPC on anything greater than a two point four
Speaker 2: percent slope. Well, I think we have some freedom to
Speaker 2: exceed that now, regardless of the speed. These players are
Speaker 2: so good that's the place to really challenge them at
Speaker 2: the greens. And so we're studying and we have maps,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, from nineteen eighty three with shots
Speaker 2: of every green meaning great shots of every green and
Speaker 2: the shapes and the sizes. So that's where we're really
Speaker 2: starting to focus on. How do we recapture these compartments
Speaker 2: that Pete had originally, but yet still keep these greens fair.
Speaker 1: So will there be anything new at this year's players,
Speaker 1: any changes that have been made since last year?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, we've been tinkering a little bit this year.
Speaker 2: So the twelfth hole is an interesting hole out there,
Speaker 2: and Pete himself changed that booger over and over.
Speaker 1: And just to give people some background here, the twelfth
Speaker 1: hole used to be kind of a drive and pitch
Speaker 1: part for with some kind of semi blind elements. It
Speaker 1: was not a particularly popular hole. I would say some
Speaker 1: had some affection for it. I'm probably one of those people.
Speaker 1: I kind of I kind of, I kind of liked it,
Speaker 1: and but it you know, with distance gains it it
Speaker 1: it lost a little bit of its strategy, probably it
Speaker 1: and it just kind of became a drive and pitch
Speaker 1: exercise for the pros. A number of years ago, several
Speaker 1: years ago at this point, it was turned into a
Speaker 1: driveable par four with water along the left side, and
Speaker 1: the idea was that that we would create some excitement here.
Speaker 1: So that's the context. But but yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 1: ask about the twelfth hole. Is that what? What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts about it?
Speaker 2: Well, so the like on the left at the green
Speaker 2: has now been extended all the way back towards the tea,
Speaker 2: so it's much more visible from the tea up the
Speaker 2: right side. We built a much larger bunker that sort
Speaker 2: of as you talk about angles there, there's now a
Speaker 2: bunker in the ridge on the right side. That gives
Speaker 2: you sort of some decision points. Again, you know, I
Speaker 2: always talk about the five decisions on a drivable par four.
Speaker 2: Do you go whatever the hazard might be, do you
Speaker 2: go left of the hazard, right of the hazard, short
Speaker 2: of the hazard, over the hazard, or do you go
Speaker 2: for the green and so this is introducing some more decisions.
Speaker 2: So it's a fairly large bunker along the right side
Speaker 2: that is at an angle from the tee, and it's
Speaker 2: reminiscent of a bunker on the sixth hole. And we're
Speaker 2: sort of testing here a little bit, to be honest,
Speaker 2: because we're going to have another shot at this entire
Speaker 2: golf hole in twenty twenty eight. So you'll notice that
Speaker 2: the water is much more visible. The bunkers on the
Speaker 2: right did not exist before. And you know, all in
Speaker 2: the context of and I know this for a fact,
Speaker 2: sitting with Pete and talking about drivable par fours, he
Speaker 2: would say, well, then it's a par three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what This is what Alice said after
Speaker 1: this version of the whole was initially built. She said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Pete didn't didn't really believe in drivable par fource.
Speaker 1: He thought that was just the long part three.
Speaker 2: Well, and and so you know I I in my youth, uh,
Speaker 2: and probably improperly said to him, well, then, Pete, how
Speaker 2: about the sixteenth hole at TPC Sawgrass. It's a reachable
Speaker 2: par five, So do we call it a par four?
Speaker 2: And he scowled at me, And you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a risk reward. It's sort of the same good.
Speaker 1: Point though, it's a good point. Why why why that
Speaker 1: double standard?
Speaker 2: Exactly? And and so he just sort of scowled at me.
Speaker 2: And so we never really dove into that any further.
Speaker 2: Uh So, suffice it to say, there's a lot to
Speaker 2: study there. You know. Again, there's a lot of constituents
Speaker 2: that that brought that into the into the golf course.
Speaker 2: I think there's some minor things that we will probably
Speaker 2: do once the green is rebuilt, to maybe make it
Speaker 2: feel like it fits in with the golf course a
Speaker 2: little bit better. It's not it's not a complete outlier
Speaker 2: for sure. It's certainly not the golf hole that he
Speaker 2: built originally. And and to give your your listeners a
Speaker 2: little bit of context, that golf hole was somewhat repeated
Speaker 2: multiple times. The original twelfth. You know, there's the fifth
Speaker 2: at Long Cove. It was similar to the original twelfth
Speaker 2: at TPC. I believe it's the fifth at Old Barsh
Speaker 2: was recreated. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Old Marsh is like an alpshole almost, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've seen you know, now, we've worked on
Speaker 2: so many of Pete and Allie's golf courses. We've seen
Speaker 2: some of their I'll put in quotes templates, you know,
Speaker 2: they they did take a general idea, you know, a theme,
Speaker 2: and did variations on that theme and a few few
Speaker 2: different designs. You know, island green. I put in quotes
Speaker 2: that were surrounded by sand or surrounded by water. This
Speaker 2: alpsehole he created, you know, various places. Sixteen at TPC Sawgrass,
Speaker 2: he created various places. So you know, they had a
Speaker 2: theme and a strategy that they would vary everywhere. So
Speaker 2: the twelfth hole is not what it was. But we
Speaker 2: we hear what the tour is saying. We understand what
Speaker 2: the fans like to see. As far as excitement and
Speaker 2: going for the green. I love, I personally love a
Speaker 2: drivable par four. I have been chuckling for a week
Speaker 2: now about this whole discussion of ten at Riviera. You know,
Speaker 2: it has been so revered for so long, and you know,
Speaker 2: our modern tour player is so intent on certainty, you know,
Speaker 2: knowing that if they hit the three hundred and ten
Speaker 2: yard tee shot with you know, only three yards of
Speaker 2: cut or fate, that I'm going to be rewarded with
Speaker 2: a golf shot that goes exactly where I wanted to go. Well,
Speaker 2: the tenth at Rivier is none of that. It might
Speaker 2: repel a perfect golf shot. Okay, that's golf. So that's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why I love the dragable part
Speaker 2: four because a bad player like me, you know, somebody
Speaker 2: that's a handicapped player, and a tour pro, we kind
Speaker 2: of come together when it comes to that kind of
Speaker 2: golf hole because length is not the determining fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it'll be it'll be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: the twelfth hole can be manufactured into into something that
Speaker 1: creates that that kind of tension that the tenth hole
Speaker 1: it at Riviera has. It has been tinkered with a
Speaker 1: lot over the past several years. But but I I
Speaker 1: trust that it'll get it'll get figured out in the
Speaker 1: in the next few years. So looking forward to seeing
Speaker 1: those small changes work out this year and then twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, I guess we'll probably see a larger kind
Speaker 1: of transformation of the of the of the entire course,
Speaker 1: not just the twelfth hole.
Speaker 2: That's that's right, and we've done a few other things
Speaker 2: that are you know, less noticeable. Of course, for last
Speaker 2: year's tournament, we restored the right side of fourteen it
Speaker 2: was very gnarly and it had become less gnarly. And
Speaker 2: this year we've done some work at the fifteenth tee
Speaker 2: to get us ready for some work we're going to
Speaker 2: do this summer down by the fifteenth green and starting
Speaker 2: to prepare for hopefully reinstituting some of these waste areas.
Speaker 2: So nothing big like the tree deal on number six,
Speaker 2: you know, previous previously, but this year that's probably the
Speaker 2: biggest change that you will see is at twelve and
Speaker 2: again we're testing a little bit. The twelfth hole is
Speaker 2: sort of the one that's really given us the most
Speaker 2: to think about from the tea to the fairway to
Speaker 2: the green, So we're testing a little bit right now.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens. I guess really two years from now.
Speaker 1: Hey, I wanted to jump in here to talk about
Speaker 1: a new partner that we're very excited to be working with,
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Speaker 1: is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary, and it will continue
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Speaker 1: Rounds for Research, where you can bid on more than
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Speaker 1: bidding on rounds during the online auction. If you would
Speaker 1: like to support GCSAA through Rounds for Research, we'll have
Speaker 1: more information on the program in April. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: go check out GCSAA dot org. It's a great organization
Speaker 1: that does a lot for the game. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get back to the episode. Okay, let's chat a little
Speaker 1: bit at the end here about Harbortown. Now you have
Speaker 1: completed Love Golf Design has completed a big project at Harbortown,
Speaker 1: you know, whereas the changes at TPC Sawgrass recently have
Speaker 1: been have been relatively subtle, just targeting certain things, doing
Speaker 1: making adjustments here and there, preparing for a large project
Speaker 1: down the line. Harbortown happened all at once, basically last year.
Speaker 1: This was a major project at a course that the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour goes to annually. Now, this was characterized as
Speaker 1: a restoration of the golf course. So you know, going
Speaker 1: into this project, what kind of research did you do
Speaker 1: and what archival resources were especially helpful, Which era of
Speaker 1: the course was was especially inspirational, you know, given that
Speaker 1: this was restorative work.
Speaker 2: Right well, so there's lots of questions there. We had
Speaker 2: a lot of archives. One of the main archives we
Speaker 2: had was a Sports Illustrated article that was done in
Speaker 2: the early seventies that documented photographically the golf course as
Speaker 2: it pretty much was when it opened. And it was
Speaker 2: quite different, quite different, needless to say. Maintenance and all
Speaker 2: of that was one of those things. But it was
Speaker 2: a bit more wild than it is today for sure,
Speaker 2: And as we studied that for years actually, as you
Speaker 2: can imagine, you know, except for the superintendent, John Wright,
Speaker 2: who's been there for a long time, and folks like
Speaker 2: Kerrie Corbett who ran Sea Pines for a long time
Speaker 2: for the owner and John Ferrell. Those folks know that
Speaker 2: golf course intimately and have known it for forty plus
Speaker 2: years intimately. But when it comes to golf designed, folks
Speaker 2: that Mark Love, Davis Love, and Scott Sherman have probably
Speaker 2: spent more time on that golf course than any golf
Speaker 2: design people period, including the mecurate golf construction guys that
Speaker 2: they have worked at Harbortown a long time and they're
Speaker 2: longtime friends of ours and colleagues of ours. So having
Speaker 2: said that, we had a lot of information that we
Speaker 2: already knew. Like I said, I was inspired to reach
Speaker 2: out to Pete Alice the first time when I left
Speaker 2: the fourteenth Green and saw that pop bunker with the
Speaker 2: steps down into it, the latter that was straight down
Speaker 2: into that bunker, I was like, I got to call
Speaker 2: Pete or find out how do you do that? Where
Speaker 2: do I find them? So anyway, we were influenced a
Speaker 2: lot by the original golf course, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2: So for one, there were stack sawd bunkers everywhere, not
Speaker 2: just pop bunkers. There were edges sixteen that the big,
Speaker 2: the original waist bunker of all waist bunkers was the
Speaker 2: bunker on sixteen. Pete named it that for a funny reason.
Speaker 2: He had a pipe break and fill that thing with
Speaker 2: waste and that's where the.
Speaker 1: Name came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, during construction, I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: a sewer line or a dredge line or whatever, but
Speaker 2: a pipe broke and filled that thing with a bunch
Speaker 2: of waste material, and so he coined the phrase waste bunkers.
Speaker 2: So that's where that name came from. And you know,
Speaker 2: it was a waste bunker for a long long time.
Speaker 2: But the edges there, certainly on the left were stack
Speaker 2: soad edge, and he back in the day used you know,
Speaker 2: real sod, meaning probably centipede and behavio grass and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And because it was natural sod in
Speaker 2: the South, it didn't last very long. So slowly, but surely,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the pop bunker, all of the
Speaker 2: pop bunkers, all of the stack side was removed completely,
Speaker 2: and for years they have been thinking about how do
Speaker 2: we bring that back but make it lasting. So we
Speaker 2: identified several bunkers, mostly what I would say are pop bunkers,
Speaker 2: to do a modern version of sod stacking. The industry
Speaker 2: has gotten much better at creating artificial revetting that looks
Speaker 2: pretty natural. It's off colored. We allow it to sort
Speaker 2: of age and you know, get some plant material in
Speaker 2: it or whatever's happening. And what's interesting is at Harbortown
Speaker 2: this is sort of a side thing, but these two
Speaker 2: all bunkers that we did sid stacking on are such
Speaker 2: a contrast between the oversea during the tournament, you know,
Speaker 2: we really we were really trying to think is that
Speaker 2: a good thing? Is that a bad thing? You can
Speaker 2: see them, you don't. You can't miss these things, the
Speaker 2: ones that are visible from the fairway, you can't miss them.
Speaker 2: And if you look at the old photographs, same thing.
Speaker 2: You just couldn't miss those stack side bunkers that lasted
Speaker 2: for a few years in the original Harbor Town. So
Speaker 2: that was a restorative aspect, believe it or not. We
Speaker 2: moved a tree at Harbortown as well, on the fifth hole.
Speaker 2: That's a funny story. Apparently Pete originally built the green
Speaker 2: too close to the property line, and once a house
Speaker 2: was built there years after the green was built, it
Speaker 2: became a problem. So several several years ago he and
Speaker 2: mccurate Golf moved that fifth green to the left, still five,
Speaker 2: but the trees were really not in play like they
Speaker 2: were on other holes. If you think about the second
Speaker 2: hole there, your second shot to number two green, there's
Speaker 2: a big old tree, you know, that kind of hangs
Speaker 2: over and you've got to work your ball around that tree.
Speaker 2: So we moved I guess a fifty foot oak tree
Speaker 2: about thirty or forty feet towards towards the green so
Speaker 2: that it's more intervening and again creating more of that
Speaker 2: s hole or that switchback hole as you call it.
Speaker 2: So we took cues from the old golf course from
Speaker 2: We didn't really settle on a particular era, but we
Speaker 2: stacked up and added up the old and the mid
Speaker 2: life of things that we liked and restored it to
Speaker 2: that degree. As we rebuilt greens, we sped up some contours,
Speaker 2: which is very typical. Those are very small greens, as
Speaker 2: you know, so you have to be very careful about that.
Speaker 2: But by and large, to create some more challenge, we
Speaker 2: actually enlarged some greens. Those greens were small anyway, so
Speaker 2: we needed to get a little bit more space. So gosh,
Speaker 2: except for I would say, well, pretty much every hole
Speaker 2: was touched in one way or another beyond just the reconstruction.
Speaker 2: There was something restorative about every golf hole there and
Speaker 2: some things that we sort of updated. The ninth Green
Speaker 2: was elevated slightly slightly more. Pete elevated it years ago
Speaker 2: in one of his renovations, and we elevated it a
Speaker 2: little bit more, really trying to create a situation where
Speaker 2: the guys stand on the tee and don't just waiale
Speaker 2: away and think that they might hop up there. So
Speaker 2: things like that. But it was all over the golf course.
Speaker 1: So it's a really interesting project and not uncommon in
Speaker 1: this era of golf course restoration that we're seeing. In fact,
Speaker 1: actually Gil Hans's recent work at Oakmont was kind of
Speaker 1: took this greatest Hits right where you know, you have
Speaker 1: this sort of thirty to forty year period at Oakmont
Speaker 1: where the classic course took form but was altered many
Speaker 1: times over that period. So you know, do you choose
Speaker 1: one year or do you kind of look at a
Speaker 1: range of years and choose what you think are the
Speaker 1: coolest features and add up to the best golf course.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you did a little bit of that at Harbortown,
Speaker 1: but with the stack sad bunkers specifically. There was some
Speaker 1: chatter online about this when the when the course reopened.
Speaker 1: I guess some people were surprised to see this style
Speaker 1: of bunker on a Pete Die golf course because he
Speaker 1: didn't often do this later in his career. Though he
Speaker 1: attempted to do it a few times early in his career,
Speaker 1: it just didn't seem to work out practically. You know,
Speaker 1: using some artificial material, you're able to make those bunkers
Speaker 1: more durable, and I suppose that's that's part of why
Speaker 1: you can do it now. But you know, when you're
Speaker 1: making decision to bring back those stacked sad bunkers, you
Speaker 1: are saying, basically, the first few years of the course
Speaker 1: that these existed is what we're looking at here. That's
Speaker 1: the source of inspiration.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: We're not going to be considering the changes that were
Speaker 1: made later on. And you have to make a lot
Speaker 1: of judgment calls like this at a Pete Die course.
Speaker 1: Because he was a tinkerer, he made a lot of
Speaker 1: changes at his golf courses. And so when you're making
Speaker 1: a decision like that one, how do you differentiate between
Speaker 1: the early version of the course and the later version
Speaker 1: of the course that often die himself oversaw. How do
Speaker 1: you give more credit to one of those than the
Speaker 1: other when making specific decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, to be deferential to Pete, Alice, I
Speaker 2: can just tell you site visit after site visit after
Speaker 2: site visit, John Fair, Gerrel, John Wright, Davis Love, Scott Sherman,
Speaker 2: Alan mccurric, Tom Webber. Those are the folks that made
Speaker 2: it happen. We stood there together and you know, we
Speaker 2: leaned on each other and just had discussions about how
Speaker 2: you know, we were afraid to make any missteps. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, the best way to finish a
Speaker 2: project is to start it. So we had to make decisions,
Speaker 2: and we had so much information that we very much collaboratively.
Speaker 2: And I would say the same is true at TPC Sawgrass.
Speaker 2: As you said, the best of versions of Harbortown and Sawgrass.
Speaker 2: We very much thought in those terms and tried to
Speaker 2: as best we could. You can't think like Pete. He
Speaker 2: was original. He thought of things out of the box.
Speaker 2: So we tried to grab things that he himself did
Speaker 2: and institute them, reinstitute them where they were and to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, we had a as always, we
Speaker 2: had about an eighty percent idea of what we were
Speaker 2: going to do hole by hole. But as we stand
Speaker 2: there and as we take it all in, as we
Speaker 2: walk the ground, as we look at this documentation, as
Speaker 2: we talk about our experiences with Pete and Alice on
Speaker 2: that property, decisions came. Sometimes we would build something in
Speaker 2: the dirt and we thought we had a good decision,
Speaker 2: and we'd all get back together and look at it
Speaker 2: and say, Nope, that's not right. That does not look right.
Speaker 2: Everybody will look at each other and say, that's right,
Speaker 2: that doesn't look right. Let's tinker with that. Let's get Victor,
Speaker 2: our shaper, and let's tinker with that. Let's get Tom
Speaker 2: Weber over here, let's tinker with that. So it was
Speaker 2: very collaborative, which in a lot of respects when I
Speaker 2: lead a project on my own, I can make decisions,
Speaker 2: keep moving, throw flags, request things to be done, move on,
Speaker 2: move on, move on. But in this circumstance, there's so
Speaker 2: much we need to consider, and we are committed to
Speaker 2: considering that. It's actually kind of difficult to be honest
Speaker 2: with you. Is there a right answer? No, But there's
Speaker 2: also not a wrong answer. In the confines of what
Speaker 2: we have from Pete's history there and the documentation, we
Speaker 2: have something to choose from, as you say, the best
Speaker 2: of we have something to choose from that we're going
Speaker 2: to use to go back to he's the architect of
Speaker 2: the golf course. And in that context, that's where we
Speaker 2: were able to choose those tools. We didn't run off
Speaker 2: and do something crazy. We didn't go off the script.
Speaker 2: If it were if it was not there in the
Speaker 2: last sixty years, it really didn't get reinstituted into the
Speaker 2: golf course. Now, having said that, we did need to
Speaker 2: deal with some length. We didn't need to get a
Speaker 2: little bit creative. For example, the second t is now
Speaker 2: and has been for a couple of years left of
Speaker 2: number one green, so you hit across the street. The
Speaker 2: part five, you hit across the street now under a
Speaker 2: leaning tree, which was not original, but hey, in the
Speaker 2: context of the fifth hole at Harbor Town and the
Speaker 2: sixth hole at TPC, we were like, that's that's going
Speaker 2: to get into these guys heads. So it adds an
Speaker 2: added difficulty to the golf course. So anyway, again, even
Speaker 2: that decision was we're going to move this back. Pete
Speaker 2: would have added length, and he likes the fact that
Speaker 2: there's something to look at and something to think about
Speaker 2: off the team.
Speaker 1: Another constituent in this renovation you talked about all the
Speaker 1: voices that were in the room and the trickiness of that.
Speaker 1: Another constituent is the tour players. The tyre players love Harbortown, right.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they like the course so much?
Speaker 2: You know? Gosh, I wish I was of that ability
Speaker 2: to kind of understand it. But having said that, I've
Speaker 2: done this long enough and been around enough good players
Speaker 2: and worked for enough tournament venues, I think Harbortown is
Speaker 2: one of those where almost anybody can win if you're
Speaker 2: playing well. If you know, it doesn't cater to the
Speaker 2: long player, it doesn't cater to one shot shape, you know.
Speaker 2: There we we often say there is a there is
Speaker 2: an intangible vibe there, regardless of what the golf holes do.
Speaker 2: There's an intangible vibe on that property that is just wonderful,
Speaker 2: no matter what the golf hole looks like. Over the
Speaker 2: years they have they have curated that play so well.
Speaker 2: And of course Pete set the stage. Pete and Alice
Speaker 2: set the stage and Jack Nicholas set the stage. Charles
Speaker 2: Fraser set the stage for a very natural setting. So
Speaker 2: the setting is is fabulous. But I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: you've got Davis who won five times, very long player,
Speaker 2: but you know also his shot shape tended to be straight,
Speaker 2: so if he was in control of his ball, he
Speaker 2: knew where it was going. And if you're if you're not,
Speaker 2: that's not your week. And again, you know, the greens
Speaker 2: are tricky in that they're small and there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of contour, there's a lot of slow So as
Speaker 2: long as you're in control of your your putting stroke,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't have a lot of crazy double
Speaker 2: breakers and that sort of thing. So I would say
Speaker 2: if you look at both Harbortown and the modern version
Speaker 2: of Harbortown to some degree is TPC sawgrass, lots of
Speaker 2: different types of players can win there. If you're on
Speaker 2: your game, you don't necessarily have to be long, You
Speaker 2: just have to be in control of your golf ball
Speaker 2: in the air and on the ground.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing this renewed version of
Speaker 1: Harbortown at the Heritage this year. Congratulations on that project,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: It was really fun to chat with you guys.
Speaker 2: Oh, glad to you. Guys are so prolific and go
Speaker 2: so many places. I'm honored to be included in your
Speaker 2: in your discussions, and I've enjoyed watching where you been.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's very kind of you to say thank you.
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
Speaker 1: Thank you Will. If you've been enjoying Designing Golf, then
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