Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a.
Speaker 2: Bright egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday fridagg
Speaker 2: Bride Egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of
Speaker 2: the hump course. Welcome back to another edition of the
Speaker 2: Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I am Andy Johnson and this
Speaker 2: is another edition of the Yolk with Doak. So Tom
Speaker 2: was gracious enough to catch up with me. We have
Speaker 2: we haven't talked in a while on the podcast. I
Speaker 2: think we've both been very busy, Tom more so than me.
Speaker 2: He has a ton of new projects to chat about,
Speaker 2: and we into it just as a little programming note.
Speaker 2: We talked for about two hours. So this will be
Speaker 2: part one of the conversation and we will be releasing
Speaker 2: part two this week. With it being Thanksgiving week, I
Speaker 2: figure everybody's got a lot of travel on their hands.
Speaker 2: This will get you through that and it should be
Speaker 2: should be pretty fun conversation. A quick reminder, we have
Speaker 2: our Black Friday sale going. It starts on Tuesday of
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving week and runs till the Tuesday after Thanksgiving week.
Speaker 2: If you use the code black Friday, you'll get twenty
Speaker 2: percent off everything in the pro Shop outside of events,
Speaker 2: so that that promo code is Black Friday. Meg has
Speaker 2: done a tremendous job getting the pro Shop really stocked
Speaker 2: with a wide range of different styles, different things. It
Speaker 2: obviously is a big part of what we do here
Speaker 2: is you know, in helping us continue to put out
Speaker 2: all the content that we want to do. So thank
Speaker 2: you to everybody that has supported us through the years.
Speaker 2: And if you're in the market for some gifts for
Speaker 2: a loved one or a gift for yourself, check out
Speaker 2: our Black Friday sale at Proshop dot Dofriday dot com.
Speaker 2: Without further ado, let's get to Tom Dook and Part
Speaker 2: two of this conversation will be posted later this week.
Speaker 2: All right, Tom, we're back. It's been been a number
Speaker 2: of months. I feel like we've both been very busy,
Speaker 2: but you're definitely been more busy than me. I got
Speaker 2: to ask you, have you had any travel problems this year?
Speaker 1: Not too bad really. I've gotten stranded in the airport
Speaker 1: once or twice, but you know, that's about par for
Speaker 1: the course for me. Got a thirty twenty thirty trips
Speaker 1: and no, I mean it's been you know, it's been
Speaker 1: a little easier because mostly I'm traveling in America. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't have any thirty hour flights to deal with.
Speaker 1: That's that's a welcome changement.
Speaker 2: Pace. Yeah, I always I don't. I never complain about travel, like,
Speaker 2: you know, if I get a bad you know, something
Speaker 2: bad happens, because I really believe in like the travel gods.
Speaker 2: And this year I had like the worst thing I
Speaker 2: had happened was like I had a few flights where
Speaker 2: my my my computer didn't plug in. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: these aren't big problems. I'm not I'm not upset about this,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to you know, and it was a
Speaker 2: great year of travel for me. So it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's tons of people had trouble and I
Speaker 2: did not. Let's start. We got a ton of listener questions,
Speaker 2: which is obviously the basis of this pod going back
Speaker 2: six years or so. I want to get to them,
Speaker 2: and we'll weave in kind of all your new projects
Speaker 2: through a lot of these questions. But this is a
Speaker 2: fun one that we got from get get a Hold one.
Speaker 2: When was the last time that you played one of
Speaker 2: your golf courses with random people that didn't realize you
Speaker 2: designed the course. Has that happened?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so yeah a bunch of times, because I
Speaker 1: don't you know, if if I do meet up with
Speaker 1: some random person, I'm not the kind of person who's
Speaker 1: going to be like looking for recognition, and I know
Speaker 1: that I'm much more likely to get some real, like
Speaker 1: honest feedback if I don't tell them right away who
Speaker 1: I am. So I played with an Asian couple at
Speaker 1: Barnboogle one of the times I was there, which was
Speaker 1: great fun. They'd never been on a links course before
Speaker 1: in their lives, and like after two or three holes,
Speaker 1: I had him using the backboards, but I still didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't tell them until like we made the turn. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I know a lot about the golf course. Well.
Speaker 1: The funniest one the last time I was at common
Speaker 1: Ground was it was kind of right right after the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I was out looking at something out that way, and
Speaker 1: I just stopped in a common Ground late in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: like just in time to maybe get in eighteen holes
Speaker 1: before dark. And you know, I, you know, went in
Speaker 1: the pro shop and said hi, and just just went
Speaker 1: off by myself. But there was there was like a
Speaker 1: three ball in front of me. So after a couple
Speaker 1: you know, I hit a good shot on the second hall,
Speaker 1: right up close while they were still standing on the
Speaker 1: third tee. So they waved me up, and we're going
Speaker 1: down the third fairway and I saw that one of
Speaker 1: the guys had a bag with a bally Neal tag
Speaker 1: on it or something like that, and I mentioned that
Speaker 1: and he said, oh yeah, I'm a big Tom Doak fan,
Speaker 1: but he did not recognize me. So I let that
Speaker 1: go for at least two or three holes before I
Speaker 1: told him who I was.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. You mentioned like real feedback. Do you have
Speaker 2: anything that you remember where somebody said something that's stuck
Speaker 2: with you that didn't know who you were.
Speaker 1: No, not like any great architectural insights, just more their
Speaker 1: takeaway from the golf course. You know, is it you know,
Speaker 1: what's the first word out of their mouths? Is it fun?
Speaker 1: Is it difficult? Is it interesting? You know, just that
Speaker 1: kind of feedback is nice to get, and you don't
Speaker 1: really get that very much normally, you know, every you know,
Speaker 1: I talked to a bunch of writers who want to
Speaker 1: analyze things more in depth than that, and that's not
Speaker 1: really how the average golfer is going to experience it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I would agree with that, you know, all right,
Speaker 2: Joel Anderson writes, since writing Anatomy of a Golf Course
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two, what changes would you make to
Speaker 2: the book book after thirty years of experience? Would you
Speaker 2: prioritize certain topics more now than you did then?
Speaker 1: No? I mean, just like my own golf courses, I
Speaker 1: don't really want to go back and rewrite books and
Speaker 1: edit them. And you know, I don't think my philosophy
Speaker 1: has changed very much. You know, I'm a better architect
Speaker 1: because I've got more practice building things. That's the part
Speaker 1: where we keep getting better. But the ideas are still
Speaker 1: the ideas. They've kind of always been the ideas, and
Speaker 1: maybe there's pieces of it I could do better at
Speaker 1: editing and condensing a little bit. That is a pretty
Speaker 1: dense book for a beginner. I'm really surprised how many
Speaker 1: times people compliment me on it, because it does get
Speaker 1: pretty technical at times in the middle of it. But overall,
Speaker 1: I'm really happy with the book. It's still sell you know,
Speaker 1: it sells better now than it used to. I guess
Speaker 1: that's because people know me more. But I'm really happy
Speaker 1: with that book. I don't feel the need to rewrite
Speaker 1: it at all.
Speaker 2: All Right, all right, all right, with a high point.
Speaker 2: We'll go back thirty years, thirty plus years, and your
Speaker 2: back rebuilding high point. It's got eight holes from the
Speaker 2: original design, and you guys have finished shaping all of them,
Speaker 2: if I'm correct.
Speaker 1: Right, we finished shaping everything, and we actually seeded all
Speaker 1: the holes this fall, although quite a few of the
Speaker 1: newer holes were seated so late that, you know, we
Speaker 1: were hoping for a really long, nice fall like we
Speaker 1: had last year to get some growth on those. But
Speaker 1: I suspect several of those holes will have to be
Speaker 1: reseeded next spring. You know, you always take the chance
Speaker 1: and go ahead and try to seat everything and just
Speaker 1: see if it'll catch. Because, as Pete I said to me,
Speaker 1: the first time we were working on a high point,
Speaker 1: we were getting near the end of the year and
Speaker 1: we didn't have irrigation in all the holes. I actually
Speaker 1: called him for advice and said, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to have time to get all the irrigation, and
Speaker 1: should I try to see these holes or not. And
Speaker 1: Peetie and his infinite wisdom said, seed doesn't grow in
Speaker 1: the barn. What do you think we used to do
Speaker 1: before we had a lot of your big irrigation systems.
Speaker 1: Just put it out there and see if it'll to grow.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's a good one liner. What surprised you
Speaker 2: most about High Point? Part two? So like, what has
Speaker 2: surprised you about the whole project the most? And that's
Speaker 2: from Sea Pressed.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm surprised by high Point. I
Speaker 1: mean I did feel a lot more pressure to get
Speaker 1: out there and do some of the shaping myself, and
Speaker 1: it certainly interrupted my rhythm at home. You know, normally,
Speaker 1: when Brian Slannik and I are working on project, we're
Speaker 1: away working on the project and then we're home and
Speaker 1: we're home and we have time for our families. And
Speaker 1: this summer wasn't like that at all. You know, we
Speaker 1: were are we going to be home for dinner? We're
Speaker 1: not sure. You know, we might work late. That doesn't
Speaker 1: go over well. So it was that was a tough
Speaker 1: summer just for you know, getting out of our comfort
Speaker 1: zones while we're home, which we don't really it's taken
Speaker 1: a long time to get in a comfort zone as
Speaker 1: much as we travel. But you know, overall, I'm really
Speaker 1: happy with the golf course. At the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious to play these new nine holes
Speaker 1: and see if I like them as much. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy with all the holes, but would we have
Speaker 1: had more cool features if I'd had all of my
Speaker 1: crew working on that, contributing their little idea like they
Speaker 1: do on all of my other projects, instead of having
Speaker 1: to all come from me. And personally, I think it
Speaker 1: would probably be better if I'd had all that help.
Speaker 1: You know, people always assume all the ideas are mine,
Speaker 1: and that's not really the way we work, and and
Speaker 1: I hope this course doesn't show that in a bad light.
Speaker 2: It's uh yeah, I mean, I would hate for anybody
Speaker 2: to read my writing without Garrett from our team or
Speaker 2: Brendan from our team editing it. It would be it
Speaker 2: would be revealing. I guess people from wayback might remember that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like the same type of thing with writing,
Speaker 2: right It's like if you don't have your editor or
Speaker 2: you know, team of editors. I like that's and it
Speaker 2: makes sense. I think it makes sense completely, because if
Speaker 2: you think about the Great Golden Age courses, so many
Speaker 2: of them were built through collaboration, and architects weren't as
Speaker 2: competitive then. And in a way, your associates act as
Speaker 2: as the you know, you know obviously the historic story
Speaker 2: of like the Philly School acted where they all shared
Speaker 2: ideas they would come visit their site. In a way,
Speaker 2: your your associates are kind of like that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're They're a huge part of what I do
Speaker 1: and they always have been, and you know, and we
Speaker 1: like having all these young guys around to getting their
Speaker 1: first taste of it because they they they bring such
Speaker 1: enthusiasm to the project. It's like it's never just another
Speaker 1: project to them. And you know, they may not give
Speaker 1: me a great idea of how to shape the ninth Green,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't really expect to do that at this point
Speaker 1: in their lives, but just being out there every day
Speaker 1: and being another set of eyes on the thing to say,
Speaker 1: you know that the right that back right corner doesn't
Speaker 1: really look cry. You know, most of my jobs, I've
Speaker 1: got half a dozen people with real talent out there
Speaker 1: looking at everything we're doing every day. And that's why
Speaker 1: they turn out.
Speaker 2: That well, speaking of that, I noticed this at the
Speaker 2: at your Renaissance Cup about a month ago, where you had,
Speaker 2: you know, you had everybody that was really involved with
Speaker 2: the with Alito project there. I couldn't help but notice
Speaker 2: the youth wave on your staff. What's it been like
Speaker 2: having so many new young people involved and have you
Speaker 2: noticed anything different about the way they think about golf
Speaker 2: architecture or talk about it.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I don't get to spend as much time with
Speaker 1: them as i'd like, you know, I try to make
Speaker 1: room for at least to have every one of them
Speaker 1: like shadow me for a day at some point when
Speaker 1: I'm there during the process. But there has been a
Speaker 1: youth movement. We've kind have done it in waves over
Speaker 1: the years. You know, I've always had this internship program,
Speaker 1: but you can't really have too many interns unless you've
Speaker 1: got a design project coming up in the summer, a
Speaker 1: construction project coming up in the summer, so you'll have
Speaker 1: something for them to do. You know, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to have them all sit around my office looking
Speaker 1: at each other trying to draw routing for something. So,
Speaker 1: you know, coming out of the pandemic and getting started
Speaker 1: on Lido, we've trained up a lot of people to
Speaker 1: the point that you know, ten years ago those people
Speaker 1: helping us were Blake Konan and Cly Johnson and Angela
Speaker 1: Moser and now they're running projects and we you know,
Speaker 1: we need another generation of people who are kind of
Speaker 1: starting at the bottom and we don't have to pay
Speaker 1: them a fortune and you know, let them be out
Speaker 1: there and contribute a little bit. So so we had
Speaker 1: five interns for the lido and two or three of
Speaker 1: them that came back for the second year, and you know,
Speaker 1: Brian Schneiders had a couple of them under here wings
Speaker 1: since then working on Old Barnwell and some of the
Speaker 1: renovation things that he's doing. So we had to get
Speaker 1: a couple more to help with Sedge Valley and there's
Speaker 1: some real talent there, like there always is, and it's
Speaker 1: exciting to see him starting to learn how to actually
Speaker 1: build things and and be helpful instead of just having
Speaker 1: an opinion.
Speaker 2: I love that they're helpful instead of just having an opinion.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I mean. You know, I meet so
Speaker 1: many people that are interested in golf course design and
Speaker 1: want to work for me, and that you know, their
Speaker 1: idea of working for me is that they're going to
Speaker 1: walk around behind me all day and help me think
Speaker 1: through everything. It's like everybody would like to have that.
Speaker 2: Job, especially right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Sure, and I don't know what I expected the day
Speaker 1: I went down to start working for Pete Dye at
Speaker 1: Long Cove, But it did not take me more than
Speaker 1: half a day to figure out, Okay, he doesn't really
Speaker 1: need that much help thinking through how to design this thing.
Speaker 1: He needs help building it. That's what everybody's out there for,
Speaker 1: and that is the most important part of it. You
Speaker 1: can't It doesn't matter how many great ideas you've got
Speaker 1: if you can't build that. And that building process takes
Speaker 1: so long and takes so many people that that gives
Speaker 1: everybody else a chance to contribute and make it better,
Speaker 1: which you're not going to do sitting in the office.
Speaker 2: Well, it's what you just said about high Point, and
Speaker 2: like what you are worried about is that you didn't
Speaker 2: have as many people helping you, and you worry about
Speaker 2: like the cool stuff that you might have missed out
Speaker 2: on by not having everybody there right and.
Speaker 1: Right, Which is not to say I didn't have any help.
Speaker 1: I mean, Brian Slanik was there from start to finish
Speaker 1: and kind of polishing up everything I did and make
Speaker 1: it better. We aren't just going straight off my last
Speaker 1: bulldozer push to a finished green for the couple of
Speaker 1: greens that I did, just say, now, we're just going
Speaker 1: to keep these contours that are right here. Let's just
Speaker 1: map that and put it back together. And then I
Speaker 1: had Matt Hunter, who was an intern for US at
Speaker 1: stream Song years ago and worked on several construction projects
Speaker 1: for US, but eventually got out of the business and
Speaker 1: moved back to Traverse City and you know, got married
Speaker 1: and has a little family. Now he's been working here
Speaker 1: in Traverse City for the last ten years. But he
Speaker 1: always said to me, if high Point ever comes back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quit my job and work on high Point.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, as soon as they started talking about
Speaker 1: putting it back, he was like, yeah, I'm serious, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do. So he was on the
Speaker 1: crew all summer and you know, good enough on a
Speaker 1: bulldozer that he was the one with actually with the
Speaker 1: daughter of the engineer for the project who put the
Speaker 1: greens back together and put the mix in and got
Speaker 1: them floated out again with the GPS unit. So they
Speaker 1: were right, which saved both me and Brian a ton
Speaker 1: of time. And you know, they did a great job.
Speaker 1: So it's not like I didn't have any help, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. You know, most of the famous courses I've
Speaker 1: worked on in the last twenty years, Bally Neil or
Speaker 1: Terry Edy or wherever. You know, you've got at least
Speaker 1: four or five greens on those golf courses that that
Speaker 1: was really Brian Schneider's idea or Eric's idea or Kai
Speaker 1: Goldy's idea, you know, with me editing them a little.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, it's different when all the ideas
Speaker 1: have to come straight out of me. That's the part
Speaker 1: that I'm worried about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah. My point was the where
Speaker 2: people can help is in the field. That's where they
Speaker 2: get to put their ideas right, imprinted their ideas, and
Speaker 2: you know, very little comes from just walking behind you. Right.
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Speaker 2: One of the unique things about your some of your
Speaker 2: new holes, and you posted this on Instagram at high
Speaker 2: point is the choose your own adventure routing between three
Speaker 2: and four and Ryan Book asked, how far do you
Speaker 2: think this concept could go? I think explaining how it
Speaker 2: works would be great. How far do you think this
Speaker 2: concept could go? Do you think a course could have
Speaker 2: a few similar situations like could you do this multiple
Speaker 2: times of course? Or could an entire course be where
Speaker 2: you that your next tee is determined by the green
Speaker 2: you choose.
Speaker 1: Well for starters, you know, I came up with that
Speaker 1: idea very late in the process of building the golf course.
Speaker 1: We were down to building the shape in the last
Speaker 1: three or four holes, and we had all the all
Speaker 1: the other part of three is were kind of medium length,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to decide whether to make number
Speaker 1: three really short or really long, and I asked Rod
Speaker 1: Trump his opinion, and he said, I kind of like short,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, so do I. But the hard
Speaker 1: thing about doing a really short part three is you
Speaker 1: want to build a really small green. And the superintendent
Speaker 1: doesn't want us to build a thirty five hundred square
Speaker 1: foot green. You know, he's going to say that's going
Speaker 1: to be hard to keep in perfect shape every day
Speaker 1: if we're doing fifteen thousand rounds down the road. So
Speaker 1: you know, Tom Fazio used to do it quite a
Speaker 1: bit on his golf courses back in like around two thousand.
Speaker 1: Shadow Creek had one and Pelican Hill had one where
Speaker 1: they built two greens on a hole so they could
Speaker 1: build a small green for one of those two greens.
Speaker 1: That was the whole idea, and you know, so that
Speaker 1: was the start of this, was like, okay, well we'll
Speaker 1: build the small green for the really short hole, but
Speaker 1: then we'll build a know, we'll build another green on
Speaker 1: the par three that's a much longer haul and have
Speaker 1: a decent sized green for it too, and then there'll
Speaker 1: be plenty of green space, even though both the greens
Speaker 1: are barely smalle if they were the only one and
Speaker 1: that longer green pushed against the t's for the next hole,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to play the short t the
Speaker 1: short green for the par three and then the long
Speaker 1: tee for the par five. You could obviously walk forward
Speaker 1: and you could stand. You could stand on the back
Speaker 1: tee for the par five while people were playing the
Speaker 1: long part three and not get hit. But it does
Speaker 1: make more sense for flow to just combine them. When
Speaker 1: you play the short part three, play the long par five.
Speaker 1: When you play the long part three, play the short
Speaker 1: part five. And because one of the things that somebody's
Speaker 1: going to ask me at some point is, well, how
Speaker 1: do they get a good course rating and a slope
Speaker 1: If you've got these two different options, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to rate it separately from all the t's. But I
Speaker 1: think you know this kind of balances that out. If
Speaker 1: they use it the way I'm describing, you're playing two
Speaker 1: holes that add up to seven hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: or whatever. That's gonna come out pretty much the same
Speaker 1: in the slope system no matter which way you rate it.
Speaker 1: I think so I'm hoping that discussion goes away because
Speaker 1: the last thing we need is like multiple sets of
Speaker 1: combo tes plus different greens.
Speaker 2: So it'll be fascinating to see after like a year
Speaker 2: of play, what like the averages if they track it,
Speaker 2: what the average is of going short long so short
Speaker 2: part three, long part five versus long part three short
Speaker 2: part five, Like, it's gonna be fascinating. Does it change
Speaker 2: year by year? And then you know, is there are
Speaker 2: there certain types of players, like you know, if this
Speaker 2: level of I think this is it's a really interesting concept.
Speaker 2: The idea of allowing people to choose, Like effectively, what
Speaker 2: you're doing is allowing like human decision into something which
Speaker 2: always makes things more interesting, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right at the same time, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: golf designer. Usually my job is to choose the best combination.
Speaker 1: That's that is the job. That's what we do. Try
Speaker 1: to figure out which of those holes is better, which
Speaker 1: of those two combinations is better. In this case, because
Speaker 1: of wanting to do the really small green, I opted
Speaker 1: to do it this way. But you know, I've done
Speaker 1: something like this a couple times before, you know, like
Speaker 1: Pacific Dunes has the alternate greens for nine and the
Speaker 1: alternate teas for number ten, and they kind of work together.
Speaker 1: You don't really have to keep the combination the same,
Speaker 1: but I like that way of you those The loop
Speaker 1: obviously has all kinds of different combinations and permutations to it.
Speaker 1: I've seen it in other places, like Tom Watson's design
Speaker 1: for that of course it kesiki or whatever it is
Speaker 1: it I don't know how I pronounced that. In South
Speaker 1: Carolina has a couple of versions of this were two
Speaker 1: or three holes played different from one version to the next.
Speaker 1: Do I see myself doing it a lot? No, because again,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, it's my job
Speaker 1: to figure out I like this way better than that way.
Speaker 1: But do I like playing around with new things, and
Speaker 1: especially when I can't decide which one I like better? Sure?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 2: So if you did this for an entire course, you
Speaker 2: would need to have effectively two greens or two whole
Speaker 2: locations you could I guess you could do it with
Speaker 2: bigger greens and have all that side.
Speaker 1: What I forgot to mention was that weird renegade Courus,
Speaker 1: a desert mountain they built thirty years ago, which had
Speaker 1: every hole either had two small greens, or one giant
Speaker 1: green with two flags on it that you could choose
Speaker 1: your own adventure, and that was interesting. But again, you know,
Speaker 1: my takeaway from that was like, clearly some holes were
Speaker 1: more interesting if you played the shorter tea and the
Speaker 1: harder pin, and some of those holes were too hard.
Speaker 1: The harder pin was just too hard for ninety percent
Speaker 1: of people, and you had to play the easier pin.
Speaker 1: And you know, why didn't they just decide to do
Speaker 1: that instead of having the two options on every single hole.
Speaker 2: I think the other thing that it would do is
Speaker 2: it reduces over like if you did it over and
Speaker 2: over again, it would reduce the importance of like the
Speaker 2: T shot in positioning, because you could hit your T
Speaker 2: shot and then kind of decide, right, yes you could,
Speaker 2: It's like, well I hit it over here, so I'm
Speaker 2: going over here, right.
Speaker 1: Or the approach shot if there's two flags on the green.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, exactly, you can hit a really bad you
Speaker 2: could hit such a bad approach shot that it was good, right.
Speaker 2: So I think that's where it kind of falls apart
Speaker 2: for like a lot, But I do like the idea
Speaker 2: of one time. It's like everything like in small doses, right,
Speaker 2: I think it would be hard to do for eighteen holes,
Speaker 2: is my thoughts though on just in general, it.
Speaker 1: Would be pretty hard to do. Oh. Another example of
Speaker 1: it in Japan to you know all those old courses
Speaker 1: they built two greens on every hole for agronomy reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the combinations don't work there very well. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of holes that just they look
Speaker 1: the same because it's like a two headed monster. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to come up with eighteen optional greens that
Speaker 1: look different from each other. It's easy to do it
Speaker 1: once or twice on a golf course, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to do on multiple times. It's also much easier on
Speaker 1: par three's than it is on par fours. You know,
Speaker 1: when you get to a par four or part five
Speaker 1: with alternate greens, you know it does it looks like
Speaker 1: a two headed monster because you've got you got to
Speaker 1: have fairway going into both with a par three, you
Speaker 1: really don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your your turf budget too, would go through the roof,
Speaker 2: right right, All right, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: the Sand Valley golf courses. Obviously you were part of
Speaker 2: recreating the Lido, and then you have now eighteen holes
Speaker 2: of sedge valley completed grass, it's been playable. What were
Speaker 2: your big takeaways you had your Renaissance Cup out there
Speaker 2: from just watching people play Lido.
Speaker 1: Well, I should ask what were yours? Because you played
Speaker 1: for me. The biggest takeaway was, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: really think much about the strategy of some of those
Speaker 1: holes while we were building the golf course because that
Speaker 1: wasn't my job. You know, we were trying to recreate
Speaker 1: it exactly as it was, so we were following a model,
Speaker 1: and you know, I wasn't thinking about the playability or
Speaker 1: you know. Plus, most of the halls are template holes,
Speaker 1: which you think you know pretty well. You know, you've
Speaker 1: seen lots of versions of them. But going out there
Speaker 1: and watching the matches in the Renaissance Cup or playing
Speaker 1: with some of the better players on the second day,
Speaker 1: you know, just informally, after I lost early in the competition,
Speaker 1: I was really amazed how many contracs there were in
Speaker 1: the fairways to like steer balls into certain spots or
Speaker 1: or make it tougher. You know, if you drove it
Speaker 1: over here, you're in a rumpy little area, or the
Speaker 1: ball just steered away from the good line of attack
Speaker 1: to the green and you know, it finally dawned on me.
Speaker 1: McDonald spent a lot a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: all those little ridges in the fairways. They're not random.
Speaker 1: They look kind of random, but they're all thought out
Speaker 1: for like getting a golf shot into position. And the
Speaker 1: one that impressed me the most. You know, Mike mccarton
Speaker 1: worked for us for years, good player and his brother
Speaker 1: played college golf at Duke, so they were they were
Speaker 1: I thought they'd be a really formidable team. But they
Speaker 1: lost in like the second round of the match.
Speaker 2: So I went, there are a lot of good There
Speaker 2: are a lot of good players out there.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of good players, and so I lost.
Speaker 2: To the second round and we played well, we just
Speaker 2: got beat.
Speaker 1: So Eric and I played nine holes with the two
Speaker 1: of them and a couple other people in the afternoon
Speaker 1: after we were eliminated. And you know, Mike's brother hits
Speaker 1: it really far, like all college players do, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to hit it over the bunkers on fifteen,
Speaker 1: but also way left to get the angle into the green.
Speaker 2: With that right with that right pen right, yeah, those
Speaker 2: are the yeah right.
Speaker 1: So he didn't do it. He hit it in the bunker,
Speaker 1: but as I was watching. After hitting my second shot,
Speaker 1: I went over to watch him and I noticed on
Speaker 1: the far side of all those bunkers, there's a contour
Speaker 1: in the fairway that if you can keep it close
Speaker 1: to that left bunker, you can kind of steer it
Speaker 1: way to the left instead of having to carry all
Speaker 1: of that last bunker. And I thought, holy hell, I
Speaker 1: mean he put that in deliberately in nineteen eighteen for
Speaker 1: a guy who is going to carry it three hundred yards,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was for somebody's second shot, but whatever
Speaker 1: it was, it's like, that's that's not just the accident.
Speaker 1: That's there for a reason. And I could tell you
Speaker 1: I've built a lot of golf courses. I've never thought
Speaker 1: that much about putting little extra contures into the fairways.
Speaker 1: And Nita did McDonald you know, every other court. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of cool stuff there and he just
Speaker 1: used it the same way we always do. But when
Speaker 1: he had nothing to start from, he spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about those details and embarrassing. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of humbled by it. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not spending enough time on this project or that project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I I think my takeaways. I had
Speaker 2: played it once before the event, and then I think
Speaker 2: I played it four times or three three or four
Speaker 2: times during the event. And the first time you play it,
Speaker 2: you're you're very disoriented. And I think this is like
Speaker 2: just an interesting topic in general about golf design and
Speaker 2: how a lot of people will only play a golf
Speaker 2: course like at a resort one time, right, and the
Speaker 2: first time you play Lido, you're kind of like what's
Speaker 2: going on? You don't see a lot of stuff because
Speaker 2: there's significant blindness and you're you hit into these spots
Speaker 2: and you don't know where the right places and the
Speaker 2: wrong places.
Speaker 1: You know, with it is like the old course at
Speaker 1: Saint Andrews in that you need it caddy to tell
Speaker 1: you what to aim at. Yeah, you can't really tell
Speaker 1: from the team.
Speaker 2: And where to aim is different based off of how
Speaker 2: far you hit it. Right, if you're hitting in two twenty.
Speaker 1: Picks up your game after a couple holes and tells
Speaker 1: you where it usuing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like a hit it here for everyone
Speaker 2: type situation. What I thought was really fascinating, and I
Speaker 2: talked to Peter Florey about this is I believe that
Speaker 2: the golf course everybody thinks it's very, very hard, and
Speaker 2: I do think for a player that can hit good shots,
Speaker 2: once you understand the course, it actually becomes fairly easy
Speaker 2: because you can get yourself there's enough space out there
Speaker 2: that you can get yourself into positions where you're hitting
Speaker 2: shots into greens where like all the contours help you.
Speaker 2: And it's just this giant chess match. And I talk
Speaker 2: to another person who's a member, who's a really good
Speaker 2: player about this, and he's like, yeah, every time I
Speaker 2: play it, it becomes like a little bit easier because
Speaker 2: of like I know, I need to get over here
Speaker 2: for this pin. It's like a perfect example what you're
Speaker 2: talking about with fifteen getting the ball, Like you get
Speaker 2: the pins on there. This is it's like a shorter,
Speaker 2: it's like a medium like Part four, and there's the
Speaker 2: right side of the greens protected by a really deep bunker.
Speaker 2: And if you hit a driver and you have like
Speaker 2: a sixty yard wedge, you have no chance from the right.
Speaker 2: You have to get over to the left. You're not
Speaker 2: going to hit it close from the right side, so
Speaker 2: you have to get it over left, and you just
Speaker 2: know and then you see when the pin's on the
Speaker 2: left side. You're like, okay, I can just blast us
Speaker 2: up the right and then I have a little bit
Speaker 2: of help. So I think, like, what's interesting about the
Speaker 2: golf course is is how a golf course can go
Speaker 2: from like the first time you play it, you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's really intense, really hard, to more and more you
Speaker 2: play it, the more and more achievable and impossible it seems.
Speaker 2: Does that make.
Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, I'd add that. You know, there's two things
Speaker 1: about it that really help make it like that and
Speaker 1: make it a little more complicated still than you're saying.
Speaker 1: One is, you know, the surface is really firm and fast,
Speaker 1: and the bunkers are really deep. And that's why I'm fifteen.
Speaker 1: You know, on a normal American course, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're hitting over the bunker into a big green.
Speaker 1: You just hit seven iron over the bunker and it
Speaker 1: plops down on the green, it stops, and nobody would
Speaker 1: be afraid of that at all. But the conditions on
Speaker 1: that golf course, at least for an hour and hopefully
Speaker 1: they can keep them that way, you cannot afford to
Speaker 1: do that. The bunkers are too deep. You really don't
Speaker 1: want to miss in them or play it too close
Speaker 1: to the edge of getting over and then even though
Speaker 1: the green's big as hard as a rock and trying
Speaker 1: to get it to stay on the green, flying it
Speaker 1: over a bunker at an angle is not any guarantee
Speaker 1: unless you're a damn good player, So you kind of
Speaker 1: have to find the angles and give yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: some approach in front of the green instead of flying
Speaker 1: it over a green side bunker. But then the other
Speaker 1: thing is it's windy and the wind comes out of
Speaker 1: different directions there, so you can figure it out for
Speaker 1: yourself on a calm day, but then when the wind's
Speaker 1: blowing twenty miles an hour, it's like, oh, all right, today,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. I got to think about going
Speaker 1: back to this instead. So I don't think it'll get boring.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll you'll definitely figure out more, but you'll
Speaker 1: still have decisions to make because you're not going to
Speaker 1: see it under the same conditions three days in a row.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's what the fascinating thing about it
Speaker 2: is is when you know where you need to go
Speaker 2: and it see you know, it's very wide, but then
Speaker 2: it becomes very narrow, right like you are trying to
Speaker 2: push it into these little spots, because you know, you
Speaker 2: get such a big advantage if you can get it there.
Speaker 2: And every one of those little spots you have to
Speaker 2: take on something you don't want to take on, and
Speaker 2: you know where you can bail, and then you hit
Speaker 2: these shots and you bail and you're like, oh no,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm here. Next time I play it,
Speaker 2: I really want to play it with like, pick up
Speaker 2: a set of the Hickorys from the clubhouse and play
Speaker 2: it with that. That's like kind of my next next
Speaker 2: time around there, I'm gonna play hickoryes and just see
Speaker 2: how great I mean. That's the thing, is like the
Speaker 2: idea of that golf course existing in nineteen eighteen is
Speaker 2: absolutely like. I just don't know how people got around it.
Speaker 1: Or you could be like me and get old and
Speaker 1: just play like you're playing with hickory is with really
Speaker 1: good modern equipment.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that anytime soon. Matt Schoolfield
Speaker 2: had a question that I thought was press it with Lido.
Speaker 2: What are some of your personal contrasts between the work
Speaker 2: at Old Mac and the Lido in creating a cb
Speaker 2: McDonald homage like you did at old mac. Where do
Speaker 2: you see your own influence versus trying to channel McDonald?
Speaker 2: And did you try and restrain your own influence in
Speaker 2: one areas of the lido that were up to interpretation.
Speaker 1: We very much tried to restrain our own influence at
Speaker 1: the Lido. I was just trying to build the golf
Speaker 1: course as best I could. You know, it's like a restoration,
Speaker 1: but a restoration where we had to start from scratch,
Speaker 1: so it's way more complicated. You know, you don't there's
Speaker 1: nothing that you just leave alone. Although the computer model
Speaker 1: did produce some things that it was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that looks exactly right, that looks like all these pictures.
Speaker 1: We don't need to tinker with that at all. But
Speaker 1: there were there were The main thing was there were
Speaker 1: some other greens. Some of the greens were flatter looking
Speaker 1: than my impression of most of mc donald's golf courses.
Speaker 1: And so I asked Peter Floory right away, you know,
Speaker 1: how how sure are you about the contours? You know,
Speaker 1: how strongly do you feel that you got them right?
Speaker 1: And he said, honestly, that's probably the weakest part of
Speaker 1: the model. It's very hard to tell from a bunch
Speaker 1: of photos how you know if that contra three inches
Speaker 1: high or six inches high, because you don't see it
Speaker 1: except under extreme shadows or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: he really encouraged us just to wing it. But by
Speaker 1: the same token, you have the client who prefers greens
Speaker 1: that are kind of big and with big, flatter areas
Speaker 1: in them. So there was there was some tension there,
Speaker 1: but we you know, we tried to be just as
Speaker 1: faithful as we could do what we thought the McDonald
Speaker 1: greens would have looked like. And you know, I did
Speaker 1: assume that Peter doing it for kind of a video
Speaker 1: game version the first time. You know, the video game
Speaker 1: is set up so the greens were all really fast,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna make the greens kind of flat to
Speaker 1: deal with that. And obviously the Lido built in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen was not built for greens that run at eleven
Speaker 1: or twelve or whatever a computer game version of it
Speaker 1: would run at. So that would just mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the contents were a little more amped up, probably just
Speaker 1: to have the same kind of breaks on pots that
Speaker 1: you wanted it to be. You know, for all McDonald
Speaker 1: completely different philosophy there. You know, what we were doing
Speaker 1: was just approaching the design the way Charles Blair McDonald would, Okay,
Speaker 1: where's the best place to put a road hole? And
Speaker 1: we want to get the essential features of the road
Speaker 1: hall right, and what other little features do we have
Speaker 1: out here to make this one give this kind of
Speaker 1: a character of its own. The other thing that school
Speaker 1: about old McDonald, you know, other than the Lido, which
Speaker 1: I never thought would come back, McDonald never built anything
Speaker 1: that was remotely like a Lynx course. All the all,
Speaker 1: nearly all the templates were from Lynx halls overseas, nearly
Speaker 1: all of which I've seen. So instead of thinking about
Speaker 1: the Seth Rayner version of the road hole or the
Speaker 1: Red Daan or whatever, you know, we thought a lot
Speaker 1: more about the real because we were really familiar with them,
Speaker 1: and so was Charles bro McDonald's. So it really looks different,
Speaker 1: you know, the bunkering looks more linksy, even though we
Speaker 1: didn't do any like prevetted faces. But it's not, you know,
Speaker 1: the flashy bunkering that we do a lot. It's not
Speaker 1: just the the straight banks like the Lido has and
Speaker 1: like your typical McDonald course has. But if you look
Speaker 1: at early pictures the National they had a bunch of
Speaker 1: different looking bunkers. They even had some things that had
Speaker 1: like sleeper faces originally on a couple of the holes.
Speaker 1: So we did that at Old McDonald too. Those Jim
Speaker 1: Orbina put those and those are some of the coolest
Speaker 1: bunkers out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff. I you know,
Speaker 2: I was, I've been thinking through in my head what
Speaker 2: what alpshole is? Is I prefer whether it's Liedo or
Speaker 2: or Old McDonald. Just one little thing. We did a
Speaker 2: dream eighteen recently on sand Valley on this podcast, and
Speaker 2: H and I was just talking through alpsholes and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, Liedo's, you know, probably one of the
Speaker 2: best ones, along with like National Golf links and and
Speaker 2: then somebody commented about about forgetting Old McDonald and I
Speaker 2: was like, uh, that's that's a great alps hal Yep.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday
Speaker 2: Golf Podcast, and big thanks to Matt Rushes for editing
Speaker 2: and producing this podcast. A quick reminder, if you you
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Speaker 2: just kind of like covers you know, stuff that we've
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Speaker 2: golf course architecture. This week I compared Old Barnwell and
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Speaker 2: week with another edition of the Yoke with Doak and
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