Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bride egg
Speaker 2: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, Frida egg
Speaker 2: Egg Frida egg, bride egg Lie, I'm.
Speaker 1: About ready to run off of thelf course game.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 2: and today we are talking about how to build a
Speaker 2: golf course affordably, and maybe more important, what's preventing people
Speaker 2: from building golf courses affordably right now? This has been
Speaker 2: a big theme in my recent conversations with architects and superintendents.
Speaker 2: It's something people in the industry are talking about a lot.
Speaker 2: How much is being spent on golf course construction and renovation,
Speaker 2: some truly eye popping numbers out there, and it's a
Speaker 2: problem because those costs get passed down to you, the golfer.
Speaker 2: So I thought it was just time to have a
Speaker 2: conversation purely focused on that theme. What is the nitty
Speaker 2: gritty of how you actually build affordable golf? And this
Speaker 2: is a question that's not just relevant for industry people,
Speaker 2: for architects and superintendents. This is something that every golfer
Speaker 2: should know at least a little about, because you pay
Speaker 2: green fees, you pay member dues. Ultimately you are funding
Speaker 2: all of this in the end. And if you're empowered
Speaker 2: with some knowledge, you can start to say things like, hey,
Speaker 2: that super expensive method of green construction or bunker construction
Speaker 2: might not be necessary for my personal enjoyment of golf,
Speaker 2: and you can start to push back on some of
Speaker 2: the things that make the game more expensive right now.
Speaker 2: So my guest for this podcast is Mike Young. Mike
Speaker 2: is a golf course architect and really one of the
Speaker 2: pioneers of modern minimalism in golf course construction. He designed
Speaker 2: the Fields golf course in Georgia in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: and at that time the Fields was really different from
Speaker 2: most of the golf getting built in America. It was
Speaker 2: much more scaled down and natural, and it really predicted
Speaker 2: the direction that architects like Corn Crenshaw and Tom Doak
Speaker 2: ended up going. Mike is now the owner of the
Speaker 2: Fields and the course is still very affordable to play,
Speaker 2: so that gives him an extra special perspective on the
Speaker 2: topic of the podcast today because Not only does he
Speaker 2: know how to build affordable golf, economical golf, but he
Speaker 2: also knows the realities that owners face after a golf
Speaker 2: course gets built. So in addition to doing all of
Speaker 2: that designing the fields the fields, Mike has done design
Speaker 2: work at a number of other courses, mostly in the Southeast,
Speaker 2: but also in Central America, and currently he's working on
Speaker 2: a very exciting municipal project in Vidalia, Georgia. This course
Speaker 2: is called Warmouth Sands and the plan is for it
Speaker 2: to open this year. So we'll talk a bit about that,
Speaker 2: but mainly, I just wanted to dig into some of
Speaker 2: Mike's concerns about rising costs in the golf course industry
Speaker 2: and some of the forces that he thinks are driving
Speaker 2: those costs up beyond what they should be. I also
Speaker 2: want to talk about his vision for what should be done.
Speaker 2: How is it possible in this day and age to
Speaker 2: build everyday golf courses for everyday players, or, as he
Speaker 2: puts it, mom and pop golf courses. Really excited about
Speaker 2: this conversation. Mike is one of my favorite voices in
Speaker 2: the game, and I always get a lot out of
Speaker 2: going back and forth with him. So a word about health.
Speaker 2: And now I'm not talking about the health of the
Speaker 2: golf course industry. I'm talking about bodily personal health. Taking
Speaker 2: care of your health isn't always easy, but it should
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Speaker 2: recommended for optimal nutrient absorption. So I just fill up
Speaker 2: my shaker with cold water, one scoop of ag one,
Speaker 2: shake it up, and I'm pretty much ready to go. Now,
Speaker 2: if I'm on the road, which I often am, if
Speaker 2: I'm traveling seeing golf courses and I can't bring my
Speaker 2: full set up with me, then I'll just bring some
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Speaker 2: All right, Mike Young, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you
Speaker 2: for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: So a little bit of backstory here for people. You know,
Speaker 2: we've done a couple of episodes in the past about
Speaker 2: building affordable golf courses and you sent me an email
Speaker 2: not long ago saying that you know, there's more to
Speaker 2: discuss here. There's more meat on this bone, essentially, is
Speaker 2: what you were telling me. And you said, I would
Speaker 2: like to discuss how you actually build the ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars green or the five hundred thousand dollars irrigation system
Speaker 2: or bunkers. And I thought to myself, yes, please, let's
Speaker 2: get into that. Let's get into detail about that. So
Speaker 2: maybe we could just take this one piece at a time.
Speaker 2: Say you're building a new green on a new site.
Speaker 2: How do you do that as cheaply as possible? Can
Speaker 2: you take me through that.
Speaker 1: Let's call it not cheap, but let's call it efficient.
Speaker 1: There you go. You know, it might be that if
Speaker 1: I'm having to build a bent grass product, it might
Speaker 1: be a complete USGA green. Let me let me say
Speaker 1: one thing before I do that. Though, in this entire discussion,
Speaker 1: everything we talk about most of the time on the internet,
Speaker 1: and that's why I listened to Friday Egg and always
Speaker 1: we're talking about for practical purposes, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: top five hundred golf courses. There were five hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million rounds played last year. If you took twenty
Speaker 1: thousand rounds for those top five hundred, that's ten million rounds.
Speaker 1: They use five hundred and twenty million rounds that are
Speaker 1: played somewhere, and those are not played on courses with
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty dollars and above green face. It's
Speaker 1: a different product. In most cases, it's not a product
Speaker 1: where people are signing the back of the check with
Speaker 1: the people that run those things, or signed in the
Speaker 1: front of the check. They're not able to use GoF
Speaker 1: as a amenity for housing anything else. They're trying to
Speaker 1: run golf courses, and so they look for a way
Speaker 1: that allows them to make a profit, and most cases
Speaker 1: make a living because, in my opinion, most of God
Speaker 1: in this country is mom and pop. It's just that
Speaker 1: you don't it doesn't bring the attention and you don't
Speaker 1: hear of it like you do the top five hundred.
Speaker 1: So let's just forget those top five hundred today and
Speaker 1: let's talk about the rest of the five hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty million rounds that are played. And with that, if
Speaker 1: I'm building in Georgia, let's just say, in Georgia, if
Speaker 1: I'm building a green for tiff eagle grass.
Speaker 2: This is a Bermuda grass right tiff Eagle is.
Speaker 1: The ultra door permuda grass that is probably the number
Speaker 1: one being used now. And I'm in a smaller course
Speaker 1: that's that can't afford the luxuries. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: with twelve inches of river sand. I've learned the hard
Speaker 1: way not to in the cavity. In the low areas
Speaker 1: of the cavity, I try to open it up my
Speaker 1: feather the sand out into the chipping areas so that
Speaker 1: I don't have a capture any moisture or anything in
Speaker 1: those low ends. Number moodagrass is looking for moisture in
Speaker 1: the top two inches. So we just put the sand up,
Speaker 1: floated out the way we need it and build it.
Speaker 1: And that green is much more considerably cheaper than building
Speaker 1: a USGA green. Where I've got to build a cavity,
Speaker 1: I've got to make sure all the layers are parallel.
Speaker 1: I'm going through. I'm probably at fifteen dollars a square
Speaker 1: foot now, and this way i might be at three
Speaker 1: dollars now. The thing about all that is the way
Speaker 1: it gets marketed is there's a cheap ass over there
Speaker 1: building this stuff that way. But the thing is my
Speaker 1: guy's making a profit, the other guy might not be.
Speaker 2: Right, and that has to be the argument, right, how
Speaker 2: can you actually make a living owning a golf course
Speaker 2: if you spend as much as people sometimes spend. So
Speaker 2: what you're describing here with the river sand in just
Speaker 2: this very it's kind of simple method of building, but
Speaker 2: time tested. This is, as I understand it, a fairly
Speaker 2: old fashioned way of building greens, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think if you look up until recently,
Speaker 1: Marion's green, Oakmont's greens, all of those were extremely old greens,
Speaker 1: and they were push up and you know, if you
Speaker 1: might have had a foot of top dressing from over
Speaker 1: the years, it's just pushed up. It's just sands pushed up.
Speaker 1: And I can read and listen to all the hype
Speaker 1: on the USGA green, and back when I was starting, man,
Speaker 1: you were a bad boy if you didn't build a
Speaker 1: USGA green. But there were several big boys that didn't
Speaker 1: build USGA greens, and there were several that would say
Speaker 1: they did. But if you went and measured it, there
Speaker 1: might be thirty inches of sand in one puck spot
Speaker 1: and ten inches in the other. But they had that
Speaker 1: gravel on the bottom, and they preached the USGA green.
Speaker 1: So if you're going strictly by the specifications, not the recommendation,
Speaker 1: but the specification, you have to have your layers parallel,
Speaker 1: and I think you're allowed a half inch of variation.
Speaker 1: So if you get outside at half inch of variation,
Speaker 1: did you really build a USGA green? I don't know.
Speaker 2: So, you know, when it comes to deciding whether to
Speaker 2: build a USGA green, for instance, or a green after
Speaker 2: a more old fashioned method, you know, a push up
Speaker 2: green basically made out of sand that's available. How do
Speaker 2: people go about making that decision, do you think? And
Speaker 2: why is it that they might go for the more
Speaker 2: expensive option.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of golf courses, especially in
Speaker 1: the nineties, people say, you know, though there was a
Speaker 1: golf boom in the nineties, there wasn't a golf boom.
Speaker 1: It was people wanted to buy junk land put a
Speaker 1: golf course on it so they could sell forty houses
Speaker 1: per hole. Now you've actually got a real golf boom,
Speaker 1: but might not be as big. But they're building the
Speaker 1: golf for golf. And when they build it for golf,
Speaker 1: they're finding land that allows you to go out there
Speaker 1: and in many cases just build a green on the
Speaker 1: land that's there. When you're in a place that shouldn't
Speaker 1: have a golf course, but some dude wants to put
Speaker 1: it there so he can have his houses. You might
Speaker 1: have to build a USGA green to make it work.
Speaker 1: If you come into a sandy site, you've got plenty
Speaker 1: of sunlight, you've got ways to move the water and
Speaker 1: get it off the green. You might can put ten
Speaker 1: twelve inches of sand down there and build a hell
Speaker 1: out of it and be and have something that works.
Speaker 1: And again it goes back to your superintendent. You're a
Speaker 1: good superintendent that's going to grow that grass on concrete,
Speaker 1: so it's Bermuda grass not vin grass. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there's a couple of factors here, right.
Speaker 2: There's the quality of the land, as you say, if
Speaker 2: you're building on a swamp, then you might need to
Speaker 2: build more expensively. But if you're building on a good
Speaker 2: piece of land, as many golf courses are now that
Speaker 2: we're more focused on core golf, then you might not
Speaker 2: need the extra bells and whistles. And then the other factor,
Speaker 2: as you say, is the superintendent and what they're able
Speaker 2: to do. And it's pretty amazing what superintendents are able
Speaker 2: to do these days right.
Speaker 1: It is by far the best golf course owners are superintendents.
Speaker 1: And I've i sold one of my golf courses. I
Speaker 1: had one of the first ones I did to a
Speaker 1: guy that had worked at Augusta Nationally became the director
Speaker 1: of golf at Rentals Plantation. He called one dancing Mike.
Speaker 1: It's they start getting rid of superintendents at fifty I
Speaker 1: got to find a course. Well, it's funny the budget
Speaker 1: he had down there and the budget he created when
Speaker 1: he got his own, I would give him hell about it.
Speaker 1: It was one tenth. He says, well, hell, I know
Speaker 1: what to do on this end. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: knowing how to do it for the right price. And
Speaker 1: he knew how to do it for the right price,
Speaker 1: ground driven reels, right applications of fertilizer, how to. And
Speaker 1: that's what's funny, the really good superintendents that know how
Speaker 1: to do it for that price. And for me, my
Speaker 1: superintendent of the year is always going to be that
Speaker 1: dude that can get that three hundred thousand dollars budget
Speaker 1: looking jam up, versus the dude that's got ten ribbons
Speaker 1: and five assistants And I don't mean anything against the
Speaker 1: dude the other dude. I'm just saying there's a hell
Speaker 1: a lot to be said for that.
Speaker 2: It takes a certain confidence to say I don't need
Speaker 2: that extra stuff to help me. I as a superintendent
Speaker 2: can deal with what I'm given here on a low budget.
Speaker 2: But you understand the perspective of the superintendents who ask
Speaker 2: for the extra stuff, who asked for the USBA spack
Speaker 2: and the precision era and all that. You understand that
Speaker 2: because their jobs depend on having good grass and all
Speaker 2: that stuff gives them a little bit more room for error.
Speaker 1: Right, That's right. And that's basically what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I can appreciate that, understand it. But if those guys
Speaker 1: have a chance to own their own golf course and
Speaker 1: they're having to pay for it, it's amazing what they
Speaker 1: can get done with their knowledge for numbers that they
Speaker 1: can't they can't do it otherwise. Like my son told him, Superintendent,
Speaker 1: that's one of the new sand based courses going, that's
Speaker 1: in going in Georgia. Now. He asked him one day,
Speaker 1: said how did you get all that poe out of
Speaker 1: that permuter grass down there? And he said, look, says
Speaker 1: you can't do what I did, said you'd be fired.
Speaker 1: And because he said, what do you mean, he said, well,
Speaker 1: I own the place. I can spray round up. You can't.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, those are the kind of things
Speaker 1: that can't. I don't blame those guys. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that's the difference. Yeah. You know.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite stories about affordable golf getting built
Speaker 2: is that Diamond Springs in Michigan. It's a course outside
Speaker 2: of Grand Rapids. The best known architect behind it was
Speaker 2: Mike Devrees, but there were two architects behind this course.
Speaker 2: The other was named k is named Chris Shoemaker, and
Speaker 2: he was a superintendent who had previously been at another
Speaker 2: golf course in Michigan, and he was also the owner,
Speaker 2: the initial owner of Diamond Springs, and so he came
Speaker 2: in and the whole place was one cut, one fairway cut.
Speaker 2: And then you have the greens. There's single row irrigation,
Speaker 2: very simple bunkers, very simple green construction. And you look
Speaker 2: at that and say, well, if more golf courses were
Speaker 2: built like that, more golf courses would be affordable. And
Speaker 2: so you're absolutely right that superintendents know what they can
Speaker 2: do to make a place affordable. It just you know,
Speaker 2: if they're in the position of owning the course, that's
Speaker 2: when they're really going to act on that knowledge, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see some really good affordable golf courses
Speaker 1: owned by superintendents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean to an extent including you know,
Speaker 2: your ownership of the fields. You're not a superintendent exactly,
Speaker 2: but you have been in the in the industry of
Speaker 2: constructing and growing grass for years.
Speaker 1: And my son, my son does all the agronomy and
Speaker 1: he basically his degrees in finance, and he basically got
Speaker 1: on the internet and read everything he could and talked
Speaker 1: to superintendents and he loves doing it. Right.
Speaker 2: All right, let's let's talk about bunkers. Let's go on
Speaker 2: to the next component here. How do you build bunkers
Speaker 2: to use your term with economic efficiency.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a bunker. It's like it's not a green
Speaker 1: And I can appreciate the technology and the the inventive
Speaker 1: ways that have come I'm about but I think if
Speaker 1: you throw the sand pro away and don't put a
Speaker 1: sandpro in a bunker, and put six inches of sand
Speaker 1: in a bunker, that'll drain and it won't let water
Speaker 1: come into it except verticant, except from the air, not
Speaker 1: from the edges. And you rake that bunker two or
Speaker 1: three times a week, it'll last long enough to take
Speaker 1: that sand out and put new sand in it in
Speaker 1: a few years. You might hose out your drain from
Speaker 1: the other end to make sure there's not a gopher
Speaker 1: or something in it every two or three years. But
Speaker 1: I do that. And the coolest thing I've been I've
Speaker 1: been doing it late lately, and I'm doing it in
Speaker 1: warm Mouth, is I'm side an entire bunker. I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that, And it might be we're going to see,
Speaker 1: but so far I've had no issues. I like that,
Speaker 1: But I just think that it's it's the other thing
Speaker 1: is if you try to make your golf course indigenous
Speaker 1: to the location, you you don't have the freely age,
Speaker 1: you don't have the bunker you would find in sand
Speaker 1: hills in Georgia where are clay based. In most cases
Speaker 1: were clay, and that that bunker's artificial at best, and
Speaker 1: so you're throwing sand in the cavity, So you just
Speaker 1: got to make sure nothing else goes in it, and
Speaker 1: you don't need to use that many bunkers on golf
Speaker 1: courses that you're that are affordable golf courses I'm trying
Speaker 1: to keep the budget.
Speaker 2: Then well, okay, so there are two sides of this
Speaker 2: issue that I'm curious about with bunkers. One is this
Speaker 2: technology that you talked about, the different ways of kind
Speaker 2: of building the bottom of the bunker, I suppose or
Speaker 2: they're like the structure of the bunker. You mentioned that
Speaker 2: you're using SOD right now at Warmouth Sands, and that's
Speaker 2: that's one way that maybe isn't as common anymore. The
Speaker 2: other the other aspect that I'm interested in is style,
Speaker 2: and we can address that later. But right now, you
Speaker 2: know a lot of what's available for structuring a bunker,
Speaker 2: for making sure it drains. That that has changed.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We've got these liners now that are new and that
Speaker 2: a lot of older courses are starting to put in,
Speaker 2: and these are supposedly going to just make the bunkers
Speaker 2: better over time. So you know, what do you make
Speaker 2: and they're expensive, right, There's there's a cost that comes
Speaker 2: with putting these liners in bunkers. What do you say
Speaker 2: about that method of structuring a bunker and does it
Speaker 2: provide more assurance that the bunker is going to keep
Speaker 2: its shape or you know, be better quality over the
Speaker 2: long term. Or do you think that that's for the
Speaker 2: most part in unnecessary expenditure.
Speaker 1: I think for guys that can afford that luxury and
Speaker 1: they want to do it, I think the main two
Speaker 1: methods better billy bunker and the capillary concrete, then it's
Speaker 1: okay to do it. I think that from what I've seen,
Speaker 1: not being an expert on those two methods, but I've used.
Speaker 1: I've used the capillary concrete a few times. I don't
Speaker 1: have any problem with it. I can't afford it on
Speaker 1: my golf course and on courses where guys are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what can we do. I'm gonna go with the grass
Speaker 1: because we can afford that. But the number one thing
Speaker 1: I think to keep a bunker working is keep enough
Speaker 1: sand in it. Every problem I've seen with these bunkers
Speaker 1: is where the sand gets so shallow. If it's capillary concrete,
Speaker 1: if it's better billy, if it's no liner, it's where
Speaker 1: some dude kept raking it in a circle with a
Speaker 1: sand pro And finally you just get down to where
Speaker 1: there's nothing but a liner and you grab the liner.
Speaker 1: One day, or you hit the gravel, or you do whatever.
Speaker 1: But if you've got a guy where he probes that
Speaker 1: sand and keeps that sand consistently at five or six inches,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of your problems go away, no
Speaker 1: matter what you've got in it. Now me as a
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a seventy one year old, grumpy, old
Speaker 1: white dude. And so much of our golf today is subsidized.
Speaker 1: And by that, I mean you'll have a guy that
Speaker 1: has the money to build a golf course that's forty
Speaker 1: million dollars golf course, and I think that's great. I
Speaker 1: think more power to it. He doesn't have to make
Speaker 1: that money back when he's just playing with it, so
Speaker 1: he can afford to do that. And if he's charging
Speaker 1: you fifteen hundred dollars a day to play golf or
Speaker 1: something like that, that's fine. He's still subsidizing you. You're
Speaker 1: not making a profit for him at that. And so
Speaker 1: much of this golf we see at those levels. You
Speaker 1: ask yourself what happens if he gets tired of it
Speaker 1: and the next guy comes along. What if somebody had
Speaker 1: to make a profit, how do they do it? And
Speaker 1: that's my whole thing, is you know, Kayser's really the
Speaker 1: only ones that have really figured this thing out as
Speaker 1: far as building this thing and making a numbers work.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of this these hotels and all. Often
Speaker 1: it's just to sell rooms and they're they're there. You
Speaker 1: build a golf course for them, and they don't know
Speaker 1: about the golf. They just want to it's an amenity
Speaker 1: to sell rooms, right.
Speaker 2: It's a lot a lost leader as they as they
Speaker 2: put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think when you get down to, you know,
Speaker 1: a superintendent, and this is going to sound like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's here's the seventy one year old grumpio white dude
Speaker 1: bitching at superintendent's guy comes in, tells his owner, Man,
Speaker 1: I need capillary concrete or I need this. I can
Speaker 1: save this. I can save you this many dollars over
Speaker 1: the next five years. Well, okay, maybe you can, but
Speaker 1: but you're starting off putting three hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: the bunkers. And for example, of course I did in
Speaker 1: a town on the coast in Georgia. I find out
Speaker 1: they're putting capillary concrete in the bunkers. They went to
Speaker 1: the show, saw the capillary concrete, and the parks and
Speaker 1: rec directions, Oh, let's do this. Didn't ask anything about it.
Speaker 1: He just had somebody to come in put the concrete
Speaker 1: in there. It's it's not a good, very good product,
Speaker 1: but not everybody can afford those things. And that's alid,
Speaker 1: isn't I don't know that I make my money back
Speaker 1: on any of that. I want to be cash flowing
Speaker 1: each year. I don't want to be dreaming about how
Speaker 1: much I'm going to save over the next five years.
Speaker 1: Cash flows the game, it's a mom and golf in
Speaker 1: the United States is mom and pop for five hundred
Speaker 1: million rounds, and mom and pop know how to do.
Speaker 2: It, and you know, a lot of this it seems
Speaker 2: to me comes down to anxiety about the future. I
Speaker 2: guess because if you're if you're an affordable municipal course,
Speaker 2: you don't have capillary concrete or better billy, and somebody
Speaker 2: comes to you and says your bunkers are under threat
Speaker 2: because they don't have this product. It takes a little
Speaker 2: bit of knowledge and a little bit of guts to say,
Speaker 2: you know what, actually, I think I think our bunkers
Speaker 2: are fine. Is that just the point that people have
Speaker 2: to get to where they say I'm confident that I
Speaker 2: can keep these bunkers hanging together with the construction that
Speaker 2: they have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a personality deal. I think
Speaker 1: it's ay, we can be x rated for a second,
Speaker 1: right sure. Like it's like it's sometimes it's a wiener
Speaker 1: measuring contests and and the you know, the course down
Speaker 1: the street. It just got better, billy or whatever. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. And it's it's not when
Speaker 1: you the old method. If if a guy gives you
Speaker 1: a budget and you don't spend all the budget, then
Speaker 1: then next year all you're going to get is what
Speaker 1: you spent this year. I think that's very true with
Speaker 1: a lot of places, and superintendents know that. So for
Speaker 1: a lot of superintendents, in order to in order to
Speaker 1: progress and move forward and get better jobs and all
Speaker 1: the object is to get the best budget and give
Speaker 1: it the best product you can give it. I have
Speaker 1: no problem with that, no problem with anybody doing that.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to making a profit, when it
Speaker 1: comes to working for mom and pop, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of superintendents that can make pretty good money on an
Speaker 1: incentive basis working for these small families. Knowing when to
Speaker 1: call bullshit, and that's does that. I hope that doesn't
Speaker 1: offend anybody, but it's I appreciate the guy at the
Speaker 1: two and a half million dollar budget course and the
Speaker 1: same guy to quarter million dollar budget course.
Speaker 2: I don't think it offends anybody. I think everybody can
Speaker 2: relate with this where they hear about some new, great
Speaker 2: product and they think, wait a minute, do I need that?
Speaker 2: Is that actually going to save me money in the
Speaker 2: long run? And at some point you just got to
Speaker 2: have the confidence of saying, this is an expenditure that
Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily going to make it back. It's going
Speaker 2: to cost me a lot right now, and I don't
Speaker 2: think it's going to save me that much in the
Speaker 2: long run. So that's an interesting issue. And I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously this is also site specific. I'm sure that some
Speaker 2: sites are are you know, demand more of this kind
Speaker 2: of technology.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's very, very very site specific. It it's very
Speaker 1: siche specific specific.
Speaker 2: Let's get into irrigation systems, all right. So we've talked
Speaker 2: about greens, We've talked about bunkers. Irrigation systems are a
Speaker 2: big issue right now when it comes to the costs
Speaker 2: of golf construction. I think a big factor is that
Speaker 2: a lot of the irrigation contractors are booked out to
Speaker 2: you know, twenty forty five or whatever, and so supply
Speaker 2: and demand is all out of whack and a whack,
Speaker 2: and it just it just causes the situation where the
Speaker 2: irrigation contractors can kind of charge what they want to charge.
Speaker 2: So would you say it's even possible at this moment
Speaker 2: to do irrigation on a budget.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's possible, but you need to know how to
Speaker 1: do that. I mean today I went to buy some
Speaker 1: six inch PBC putt. It was twelve dollars and twenty
Speaker 1: five cents of foot. That's two hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 1: for a twenty foot piece of pipe. PVC is now
Speaker 1: higher than HDPE, and the HDPE product is a really
Speaker 1: good product for putting in irrigation.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me what these things are, Give me
Speaker 2: some context for what you're talking about here.
Speaker 1: PVC is polyvil chloride pipe that we've always used, has
Speaker 1: a bell housing on it. You slip it together in
Speaker 1: twenty foot links put the system together. The HDPE is
Speaker 1: a thick walled, high density poly ethylene pipe. You can
Speaker 1: pull it in the ground with a vibratory plow. Some
Speaker 1: of them pull in the four inch and the six
Speaker 1: inch so you can weld it all together. You don't
Speaker 1: have to slip it together and put it in a
Speaker 1: ditch like that. You can weld it all together, pull
Speaker 1: it down a fairway. You can pop a saddle on
Speaker 1: wherever you need it, put the swing joints in, put
Speaker 1: the heads in. But it doesn't have a free style
Speaker 1: cycle like PVC. You don't have to have a frost
Speaker 1: line on it. It can bend, you don't have to
Speaker 1: drain it, it can expand there's so much you can
Speaker 1: do with it, and so but it's always been more
Speaker 1: expensive up until recently, and now PBC's gotten where it's
Speaker 1: more expensive than that pipe. But irrigation is a very
Speaker 1: frustrating thing for those of us that have that. Try
Speaker 1: to build a four and a half to six million
Speaker 1: dollar golf course, and mean, I mean new right now,
Speaker 1: and you know that you can still easily do that,
Speaker 1: but there's things like this past year, pump stations were
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty two hundred thousand dollars. I was
Speaker 1: looking for one. I couldn't wait a year. I called
Speaker 1: them pump station. I got an irrigation guy up in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: I said, man, I need to find a good pump
Speaker 1: station that's out there. And he said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Blue Mound just got a new one. I've got one
Speaker 1: that's seven years old or something. Said, I think you
Speaker 1: can get it for ten thousand dollars. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: take the ten thousand dollars station, we put thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars into it, and it's a it's a very good
Speaker 1: pump station. Those kind of things are out there. There's
Speaker 1: there's several goth superintendents that have gotten innovative. There's one
Speaker 1: guy in Florida who Jeff Cooors his name. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can give him that, I guess, and Jeff will
Speaker 1: go out to Arizona or wherever, and some of these
Speaker 1: places that have the jack will be changing heads and
Speaker 1: all every few years, and he'll take all that and
Speaker 1: buy that stuff. And I can call Jeff and buy
Speaker 1: a controller that's rebuilt for maybe a thousand bucks where
Speaker 1: it might be eight or nine thousand dollars new. I
Speaker 1: can say, hey, I need some heads that are this
Speaker 1: type of Toro head or this type of hunter head
Speaker 1: or this kind of Yeah, I've got those. I just
Speaker 1: I've just rebuilt these and put new soloonoids in them,
Speaker 1: and I'll buy them for one third of what they
Speaker 1: cost me. And so somebody in one of those meanies
Speaker 1: right now saying that son of a bitch is on
Speaker 1: the air saying about you stuff. Well, for most of
Speaker 1: us does. Five hundred and twenty million rounds are played
Speaker 1: on courses that cannot afford to buy what's being offered
Speaker 1: to them in the market today. That's no different than
Speaker 1: if nobody was offering a camera or a Honda or
Speaker 1: a Nissan, whatever you call the comparable cars in those lenses,
Speaker 1: and everybody was having to drive a Mercedes. You so
Speaker 1: many of these courses have to find another product and
Speaker 1: they can't buy that. They can't make it work. And
Speaker 1: that's what you're saying. That irrigation system. You just have
Speaker 1: to say, Hey, you know what, I'm fine with center
Speaker 1: line irrigation. I'm fine with in and out heads. I mean,
Speaker 1: just heads that are in or full circle heads on
Speaker 1: my greens. Those I can live with that. You figure
Speaker 1: those things out and you make it work. I mean
Speaker 1: at the fields, everybody likes our firm and fast conditions.
Speaker 1: They don't understand is I hadn't we had water fairways
Speaker 1: in six years, so it's like we let we let
Speaker 1: terrain do it. So you know, we water at greens
Speaker 1: and teas and if we had the water fairways, I
Speaker 1: don't know that all the heads work. So it's it's
Speaker 1: not that we're giving them an inferior product. It's just
Speaker 1: that that's what we do for our price range and
Speaker 1: it works, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's a few different domains of cost.
Speaker 2: I guess when it comes to irrigation. There's the equipment,
Speaker 2: which you're talking about, where there is kind of this
Speaker 2: maybe secondhand market, black market or whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it. You have to know people in order to
Speaker 2: in order to find stuff. So there's the equipment side
Speaker 2: of it. Then there's the then there's labor. The labor
Speaker 2: side of it. Right there are irrigation contractors out there
Speaker 2: right now. They can charge a lot because they're very busy.
Speaker 2: What does it take for a mom and pop golf
Speaker 2: course to be able to kind of handle its irrigation
Speaker 2: little bit more in house? What kind of skill set
Speaker 2: do you need in order to do that?
Speaker 1: Well? If a guy's got a good Mini X and
Speaker 1: got a superintendent that's been around for a while you can.
Speaker 1: You can keep an irrigation system up and running, and
Speaker 1: mainly you're just trying to put water on your greens
Speaker 1: and your teas, and you fairways when you need it,
Speaker 1: and you've got to have some basic skill sets. But
Speaker 1: it's just it's nothing that the average superintendent doesn't have.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just whether or not you have to
Speaker 1: do it or not you take I say all the time,
Speaker 1: if a guy a million dollar cost, whether it's irrigation
Speaker 1: or whatnot at a club with five hundred members, is
Speaker 1: really a two thousand dollars cost because they divide that
Speaker 1: by five hundred. If it's one owner, that's a million
Speaker 1: dollar cost. And that's that's what people don't see sometimes,
Speaker 1: so they think they're playing golf for their dews or whatnot.
Speaker 1: But they just got tossess two million dollars. They just
Speaker 1: got assess a couple thousand bucks igation system. All of
Speaker 1: those things are either divided out by a membership or
Speaker 1: they paid for by an owner who has to turn
Speaker 1: around make a profit. And I think that the average golfer,
Speaker 1: if it's green and he likes it and the grains
Speaker 1: are good, he doesn't know what kind of irrigation system
Speaker 1: you have, and it's it's to get a little scientific
Speaker 1: on you. So many people now they like the window
Speaker 1: the water window, and a water window is basically this.
Speaker 1: It's where if a superintendent says I can water my
Speaker 1: entire golf course in four hours, and I say, well,
Speaker 1: it takes me nine hours. Well, here's the deal. Let's
Speaker 1: say you have five hundred heads, and let's say those
Speaker 1: heads use fifty gallons a minute, and you want a
Speaker 1: water in ten minute cycle. So you say, okay, I've
Speaker 1: got a pump station over here. That's a thousand gallon
Speaker 1: pump station, and I run that at eighty percent, so
Speaker 1: I can throw out eight hundred gallons a minute. So
Speaker 1: I divide that fifty and eight hundred, and I get
Speaker 1: what sixteen heads that I can water at one time.
Speaker 1: So I divide that sixteen in ten minute cycles. That's
Speaker 1: gonna give me six cycles every hour. So that's ninety
Speaker 1: six heads an hour. Right, So at ninety six heads
Speaker 1: an hour, if I had five hundred heads in five
Speaker 1: and a half hours, I could water the golf course.
Speaker 1: I've got a thousand heads that take me eleven hours. Well,
Speaker 1: for most of us, it doesn't matter but if you
Speaker 1: get into some of these bigger places that you don't
Speaker 1: want the irrigation going while they're playing golf or something
Speaker 1: like that, they've got to have a bigger pump station.
Speaker 1: They've got to have the capacity to throw this thing
Speaker 1: out in four hours. We don't, and I think most
Speaker 1: mom and pumps. You look at these new pump stations.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys out there just got one pump
Speaker 1: coming up out of the ground and they're watering the
Speaker 1: golf course. And you can go over here and go
Speaker 1: to the superintendent show and get a pumps is big time.
Speaker 1: That's a quarter million bucks somebody had buying them, But
Speaker 1: it's not the five hundred and twenty million rounds. All right.
Speaker 2: Hey, I wanted to take a quick break here to
Speaker 2: talk about Club TFE. CLUBTF is Frida Egg Golf's membership.
Speaker 2: Just go to the Frida Egg dot com slash membership
Speaker 2: and you can see everything that we're offering through CLUBTFE.
Speaker 2: So a couple of things that we've been up to
Speaker 2: lately in CLUBTF As far as our exclusive content goes,
Speaker 2: there's a recent edition of our weekly Featured Design Notebook
Speaker 2: where I have an in depth interview with a superintendent
Speaker 2: and a GM at Grable, which is planning to open
Speaker 2: up later this year. So the big thing that happened
Speaker 2: to Grabil recently is that they almost got absolutely nailed
Speaker 2: by a wildfire. Wildfires are pretty common in the Nebraska
Speaker 2: sand hills where Gray Bowl is located, and it was
Speaker 2: a scary situation that the fire was approaching. It was
Speaker 2: basically on the property, and the people there, including Superintendent
Speaker 2: Michael Sheeley and a couple of his employees, decided to
Speaker 2: just make a stand, decided to try to fight the fire,
Speaker 2: and it is really an amazing story. Thankfully, nobody was hurt,
Speaker 2: so we can talk about it as a happy story,
Speaker 2: but the account of it that I got from Michael
Speaker 2: Sheeley as well as the GM of the facility, Tyler Hadden,
Speaker 2: was just super compelling and that is a big part
Speaker 2: of the most recent edition of Design Notebooks. So that's
Speaker 2: just an example of the kind of content you get
Speaker 2: in Club TFE. Club TF is so important to Friday Golf.
Speaker 2: It really allows us to do the kind of in
Speaker 2: depth content that we love to do that we think
Speaker 2: our audience likes from us, and that's why we have
Speaker 2: this subscription there's a lot of other things that go
Speaker 2: with Club TFE. You have access to exclusive Club TFE
Speaker 2: member events, you have early access to registration for all
Speaker 2: Frida Egg golf events and things like that, ongoing discounting,
Speaker 2: the pro shop, yearly member gift, all sorts of perks
Speaker 2: like that. So if you're interested, go to the Frida
Speaker 2: egg dot com slash membership and join us in the club.
Speaker 2: All right, So we have talked about greens, We've talked
Speaker 2: about bunkers, touched on irrigation. Are there any other big
Speaker 2: cost factors we haven't discussed yet that you think we
Speaker 2: should we should get into.
Speaker 1: You know, well, the grassing right now is a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. It's always said in the South and been
Speaker 1: said for years that people maintain bent grass, but they
Speaker 1: grow bermuda grass because in the summertime you can't grow it.
Speaker 1: You have to maintain it. And a lot of good
Speaker 1: superintendents go crazy trying to do that down there. And
Speaker 1: so in the fairways, we've gotten to where people they're
Speaker 1: putting down tiff grand this year, they're putting down to
Speaker 1: home of thirty one or something. The next year, they're
Speaker 1: putting down tiff tough. This year at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if I go to Scotland or somewhere to
Speaker 1: play golf, they don't know what a mono stand is.
Speaker 1: And basically a monostand is one grass. Everything else sprayed out.
Speaker 1: Americans love that monostan stuff. Well, give me like a
Speaker 1: four to nineteen permuta grass in the south and let
Speaker 1: me cut it down to a half inch. And when
Speaker 1: I cut it, I'm gonna kill half the I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cut kill most of the weeds. You'll never know the difference.
Speaker 1: And there could be three different grasses in there, and
Speaker 1: most people are gonna go play golf and not know
Speaker 1: the difference. But we have gotten so complicated with some
Speaker 1: of this stuff that we are spending so much money
Speaker 1: on some of these grasses. And it's when I first started.
Speaker 1: We spread everything except for around the greens and the
Speaker 1: bunker faces. Now they sot an entire golf course. You know,
Speaker 1: I was looking at sod on a project today and
Speaker 1: it was dollars and ten cents a foot installed and
Speaker 1: buy carpet for that, I mean, I buy cheap carpet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it has become sort of a radical idea,
Speaker 2: even to to sprig a golf course, it's not really
Speaker 2: something that people do anymore because, as I understand it, it
Speaker 2: just takes a little bit longer, right, and it's a
Speaker 2: little bit less reliable. You know, when you're when you
Speaker 2: saw the whole thing, you know when it's going to
Speaker 2: be ready a little bit better you.
Speaker 1: Do, and you might not have the you know, that's
Speaker 1: where they say, you all, you're going to save this
Speaker 1: much on erosion and all this odd You might, but
Speaker 1: what if you don't have the money to do it?
Speaker 1: It just I mean, how long did it take the
Speaker 1: old old dead guys. Some of the courses took two years,
Speaker 1: three years to get ready to play, right, and.
Speaker 2: And they sometimes weren't very good when they were supposed
Speaker 2: to or they or they weren't completely grassed when they
Speaker 2: were supposed to open. Sometimes it took like a decade
Speaker 2: for those courses to come together.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it's it's I know a prominent superintendent
Speaker 1: in Atlanta that a few years ago, I remember a
Speaker 1: guy telling me and I put down some of the
Speaker 1: first tiff eagle on a golf course in Natchez, Mississippi
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight or ninety seven, and the guy
Speaker 1: with the USGA told me. He said, Mike said, this
Speaker 1: is one of the first products that's going to go
Speaker 1: from the bottom up. And I said, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about. He said, well, most products in golf, they
Speaker 1: start out at the elite clubs, and people find out
Speaker 1: about them and bring them back to their clubs, and
Speaker 1: they work their way down through the business, you know,
Speaker 1: and get down to the bottom of the clubs. He said,
Speaker 1: but these new Ultra Dwarf permuter grasses, you can lay
Speaker 1: these things on a green without doing anything. Spray them out,
Speaker 1: femigate them, put the grass no till method. You just
Speaker 1: lay it on the green that's there, and eight weeks
Speaker 1: later you've got a new surface and you're playing. And
Speaker 1: he said that's people think that's cheap and they would
Speaker 1: never do it at their elite club. But he said,
Speaker 1: that's the way it's going to go. It's starting down here.
Speaker 1: And that turned out to be true, and it's where
Speaker 1: so many clubs in Atlanta now are Ultra Dwarf. And
Speaker 1: one of the guys that is a very good bent
Speaker 1: Grass superintendent converted to Ultra Dwarf and he told his
Speaker 1: members said, okay, I'm only going to be now in
Speaker 1: five or six weeks, and they said, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: He said, well, I'm going to put the grass on
Speaker 1: the greens. He said, when I open them back up
Speaker 1: in five or six weeks, you're not going to hurt anything.
Speaker 1: But you're going to be putting on grass it's a
Speaker 1: quarter inch high, he said, So you can go play golf.
Speaker 1: The greens aren't perfect, but it hasn't it hasn't hurt you,
Speaker 1: and in ten weeks they'll be ready. But but you're
Speaker 1: only going to have to quit playing for four or
Speaker 1: five weeks. And so there's just how you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's just everybody's different with that stuff.
Speaker 2: So, as I understand it, your concern with a lot
Speaker 2: of this stuff is not necessarcessarily the high end courses
Speaker 2: are doing what they're doing. You're saying, go ahead, do
Speaker 2: your high end stuff. It's more that it's become harder
Speaker 2: to build affordable courses and to run mom and pop
Speaker 2: golf courses. So what do you think are some of
Speaker 2: the main forces in the golf industry right now that
Speaker 2: are preventing people from building golf courses affordably and maintaining
Speaker 2: them economically.
Speaker 1: First off, I think really all these guys that are
Speaker 1: jacking it up are really good for mom and pop
Speaker 1: courses because we've got an excuse. And if you can
Speaker 1: buy a mom and pop course, right, it's a lot
Speaker 1: better deal for most people than going out and building one.
Speaker 1: The problem is people that just want to get in
Speaker 1: golf don't know what they're doing, and they hire a
Speaker 1: lot of people that want to jack it around and
Speaker 1: tell them they've got to have this and this and this,
Speaker 1: and they borrow the money and then they got a problem.
Speaker 1: I respect most of all the architects. There's only a
Speaker 1: couple of knuckleheads, and I have the utmost respect for
Speaker 1: those that determine to decide their career is going to
Speaker 1: be building the elite courses. That's a you have to
Speaker 1: admire those guys. That's a hard road. You're gone, you
Speaker 1: have to commit to it at early age. You have
Speaker 1: to get out there. You can't do with your family,
Speaker 1: you can't do any of that. So we're power to them.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like, you know, you ever get
Speaker 1: on a magazine and see who the top ten plastic
Speaker 1: surgeons in the world are. When you open up page
Speaker 1: and it says, here's the top ten plastic surgeons. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes we get to where the goth architecture worlds
Speaker 1: that way. I think there's all over the country. I
Speaker 1: think there's some pretty good architects that people don't know about.
Speaker 1: But the average country club member only knows what he's
Speaker 1: been fed. And so he walks in and he says,
Speaker 1: I got to have this or I got to have that.
Speaker 1: He's not even going to consider talking to anyone that's
Speaker 1: not here. And when he does that, it's not a
Speaker 1: question of can the other guy build that or something.
Speaker 1: It's a question of, here's what my budget's going to be.
Speaker 1: I remember not that long ago when guys like Nicholas
Speaker 1: and Fasia were like, well, look I don't build anything
Speaker 1: for less than this, I need this much budget. That's fine,
Speaker 1: they can get that, but it doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: can't build a product that works. And so it's a
Speaker 1: totally different outlook from people when they're dealing with the
Speaker 1: average architect in America versus the ten guys that everybody
Speaker 1: knows about, or the five guys everybody knows about. It
Speaker 1: is that if one of the grains has got too
Speaker 1: much slope on it they can't put then you're no
Speaker 1: good and they never want to use you again. If
Speaker 1: I'm one of the top dudes, then it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: will you come back and fix this? And it's two
Speaker 1: different things, so you got to be careful in those ways.
Speaker 1: The problem is so many people just don't want to
Speaker 1: build the affordable course. They don't know. It's not the
Speaker 1: architects that don't want to build it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's that these clubs and all are
Speaker 1: being bsd into spending money that just doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be spent. And you see it every day. And I've
Speaker 1: had to learn the hard way just to get it
Speaker 1: out of my mind and let don't let it worry me.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to go play golf or something.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to worry about it anymorening. But it's
Speaker 1: you see it and you say, how did you come
Speaker 1: up with that? And it's and and then you realize, hey,
Speaker 1: I got sold. And that's that's what's happening, is is
Speaker 1: the industry ends up it it knows where it can
Speaker 1: sell itself.
Speaker 2: Well, So where do you think the movement will come
Speaker 2: from to push back against this jacking up of the
Speaker 2: costs at golf courses? And the jacking up of green
Speaker 2: fees that happens as a result. Who needs to push
Speaker 2: back primarily? And what do they what do they need
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 1: Well? I think I don't know your age exactly, but
Speaker 1: I think your age group. When I see the little
Speaker 1: millennial dude coming through my place with his leather bag
Speaker 1: and his dog and those true golf shoes on, you know,
Speaker 1: he he's uh, he's fine, He's gonna push it back.
Speaker 1: He's not into having the widescreen TV over the urinal
Speaker 1: or anything, and he can. I just think that generation
Speaker 1: might do it. They're not into the what I call
Speaker 1: the edges. They want to go so many clubs, the
Speaker 1: money they spend on the edges, you know, fairway and
Speaker 1: flower beds, all that stuff. And these younger guys they
Speaker 1: understand that and they get it and they would rather
Speaker 1: go out. They're not after perfect conditions. And that's a
Speaker 1: battle that nobody's gonna win, because we're gonna continue, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna continue, and we're gonna take it, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna roll the ball back, and some clown's gonna come
Speaker 1: along and cut his fairways down to three sixteenth of
Speaker 1: then and everything they roll back is going to roll
Speaker 1: right back out there. So I think I think it's
Speaker 1: an age thing. I think that group appreciates golf in
Speaker 1: a different way than my age appreciated GoF For so
Speaker 1: many of my buddies, it was a had to be
Speaker 1: at the club thing, wanted to They married these Stepford
Speaker 1: wife type ladies that want to be at the club.
Speaker 1: It was wan it was a social thing. These guys,
Speaker 1: it's social, but they actually like playing golf. I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of the guys my age played really
Speaker 1: loved the sport that much. You had some, but you
Speaker 1: had a lot of them that felt they needed to
Speaker 1: do it for business. Your group doesn't seem to care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's funny like and it's it's understandable.
Speaker 2: I don't want to put a value judgment on how
Speaker 2: different generations approach golf at all, or say that say
Speaker 2: that the way that you know, millennials or my generation
Speaker 2: approaches that is better necessarily, but it's just different. I
Speaker 2: think that it's not as important for business or social
Speaker 2: life life anymore. No, it used to be. It used
Speaker 2: to be the center of a certain social class's social life,
Speaker 2: and it used to be extremely important for certain kinds
Speaker 2: of businesses. I don't think it's that way anymore. And
Speaker 2: so the people who get into golf are into it
Speaker 2: because they want to play golf. They're they're into the game.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The thing that is, the thing that I find weird
Speaker 2: about this whole deal is that it does seem like
Speaker 2: there's a market for affordable core golf experiences where the
Speaker 2: edges are roughed up a little bit, the course blends
Speaker 2: into its environment nicely. Things don't have to be perfect,
Speaker 2: you don't need a lot of amenities at the facility.
Speaker 2: I think there's a market for that, an audience for that,
Speaker 2: but it seems like the it seems like the supply
Speaker 2: of those places is low. And so I know that,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't possibly have the definitive answer to
Speaker 2: this question, since it's an unanswerable question, But how do
Speaker 2: we get to a place where the golf course industry
Speaker 2: is supplying more of those experiences for the people who
Speaker 2: seem to want them.
Speaker 1: I've thought about that. I think that you if everybody
Speaker 1: that goes into my business, the architecture business, is looking
Speaker 1: for the glamour and wants to get one of the
Speaker 1: top one hundred, that's a hard road, but there's plenty
Speaker 1: of money to be made if they will just be
Speaker 1: like the top builder in your town, I don't know
Speaker 1: his name. For houses, you don't know the name of
Speaker 1: the top builder in my town. The same thing goes
Speaker 1: for golf courses in certain regions. You don't know who
Speaker 1: they are, but just go build them and don't You've
Speaker 1: got to have a personality where when the dude comes
Speaker 1: in and tells everybody you don't know what you're doing
Speaker 1: because you didn't do it this way or that way.
Speaker 1: You've got to just be able to roll with it.
Speaker 1: Because if your owners are happy and they understand why
Speaker 1: you did things a certain way, and they're they're making money,
Speaker 1: then you're fine. And I think a lot of young
Speaker 1: guys haven't gotten to that point. You know, they haven't
Speaker 1: figured that out yet, but I think they will. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got to be able to call bullshit. It's almost
Speaker 1: like an underground market. I mean, the mom and pop
Speaker 1: golf course just doesn't tell everybody how they do it.
Speaker 1: Once you get in that market, you can do okay
Speaker 1: in that market. And uh, those guys are they can
Speaker 1: they know how to call bullshit and and your age
Speaker 1: group is figuring that out well.
Speaker 2: As as tricky as it is to build affordable golf,
Speaker 2: to run affordable golf, you were, you are doing it
Speaker 2: right now. You have a new project that I'm very
Speaker 2: interested in in Vidalia, Georgia, of sweet Onion fame. So
Speaker 2: there's a municipal golf course going in in this in
Speaker 2: this town, and you are the architect behind it. Could
Speaker 2: you just give me the baby six of what this
Speaker 2: project is all about.
Speaker 1: I've built i think four municipal courses in Georgia and
Speaker 1: a few others around the southeast. And the mayor called
Speaker 1: one day. The guy had me come in there and
Speaker 1: look at his course that he was closing. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what to do with it. And mayor called
Speaker 1: and he said, what do you think we could do
Speaker 1: with that course? And we looked at it and played
Speaker 1: with it for a month or two, and I said, Mayor,
Speaker 1: I said, look, by the time you get through with
Speaker 1: all this, you'd be much better off to go over
Speaker 1: to the airport where you've got six hundred acres of
Speaker 1: basically sandland and build your own golf course. He said,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to hear. That's what I want
Speaker 1: to do. And then he came to tell me that
Speaker 1: they had been watching o'hoopie and that their fuel at
Speaker 1: the airport had just jumped because all the G four's
Speaker 1: and the Challenger six fiftieses everything that were coming in there.
Speaker 1: And you know, you go over to the airport afternoon,
Speaker 1: you got kid rock any logging sitting there, Eli and Peyton,
Speaker 1: all these guys sitting there waiting on their planes.
Speaker 2: So this is this is, by the way, a Hoopie
Speaker 2: match club, private destination golf club that is about twenty
Speaker 2: minutes from Vidalia, or.
Speaker 1: So fifteen twenty minutes, it's right. But all the planes
Speaker 1: land there.
Speaker 2: Did all the planes go into Videlia. And that's and
Speaker 2: this membership is high flying kind of kind of folks.
Speaker 2: That's that's what this golf club is like.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot of young guys that have made
Speaker 1: their money early. It's it's you know, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of guys that I don't know how the membership works there,
Speaker 1: but I know the guys that come to play are
Speaker 1: guys that you just see so many guys coming in there.
Speaker 1: So the Mayor's like, you know what, this is an
Speaker 1: economic engine, and he says I want to build this
Speaker 1: golf course as an economic engine from this area because
Speaker 1: I never understood what the sand could do to golf
Speaker 1: or what sand was to golf, and I had explained
Speaker 1: that to it and the demand that sold the land
Speaker 1: for a hoop. He had sold all of his onion
Speaker 1: farms to Bill Gates family farms. Bill Gates wanted the water.
Speaker 1: He wanted to aquifer this down under there, and he
Speaker 1: was big and Vadia and they had helped him out.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they were raised all the money and we
Speaker 1: started building a golf course. And we started to clear
Speaker 1: over a year ago. And then the highway US Highway
Speaker 1: won was being built to Miami and there was a
Speaker 1: bypass and some of the land that was being donated
Speaker 1: for the course was on the highway and on and
Speaker 1: the highway bid didn't didn't let when they think it
Speaker 1: thought it would, so everything got postponed. We had to
Speaker 1: adjust some of the holes out and go to the
Speaker 1: wetland committee, go to so we went through everything and
Speaker 1: then we cleared and grub it. Grubbed it last month
Speaker 1: and we started shaping a month ago. So we're we're
Speaker 1: building it again now and it's a it'll be. It
Speaker 1: won't be a long CA course. It'll be probably sixty
Speaker 1: seven sixty six sixty seven hundred. I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: less than fifteen bunkers on it, and it'll be a
Speaker 1: good municipal golf course. It's you know, the new thing
Speaker 1: is to get into the simulators on the range and
Speaker 1: get more of a fire pit hang out place where
Speaker 1: people can come out and do the top golf experience
Speaker 1: in the evenings, that kind of stuff. So we're doing
Speaker 1: that at the clubhouse. They've they've got a lot of
Speaker 1: that going. But it's it's it's interesting what what one
Speaker 1: guy coming in and building a course that nobody would
Speaker 1: ever expect to be built there could do as far
Speaker 1: as growing golf in that area and how people have
Speaker 1: picked up on it and are behind it, and that
Speaker 1: town now said, you know, they understand they've got sand
Speaker 1: there and so that that's what that's what we've got
Speaker 1: and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it sounds and looks like a really
Speaker 2: fun project. What are some of the ways that you're
Speaker 2: keeping costs under control there? Like, you know, when you're
Speaker 2: thinking this through as an architect approaching building an affordable
Speaker 2: golf course, I already heard you mentioned the number of bunkers,
Speaker 2: which is low for you know, an eighteen hole golf course,
Speaker 2: and that's perhaps one way that you do it. How
Speaker 2: do you think through building affordably from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: The city about the irrigation system, and then we'll bid
Speaker 1: it out to irrigation contractors and negotiate a price on
Speaker 1: having that done. We've got to have some cart path.
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not a big cart path fan, and
Speaker 1: I don't think most people are, so our cart path
Speaker 1: is going to be mainly teasing greens. I don't want
Speaker 1: to use concrete or asphalts. You know some of the guys, Oh,
Speaker 1: you've got to use concrete and asphalt, like if we
Speaker 1: can find a crusher of a shell or something that works.
Speaker 1: So we're still playing with that. The committee is very
Speaker 1: open to that. It's it's a state of the art
Speaker 1: irrigation system that we've got at the right price. We
Speaker 1: bit it out and got everything at the right price,
Speaker 1: and it'll it'll be it'll be me and bucks, and
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty good. Today. We're gonna mow it at
Speaker 1: one height to cut. We'll mow it with the gang
Speaker 1: Wars it's it's interesting to interview superintendents and and you
Speaker 1: know you've got one that gets it when he's been
Speaker 1: at a prominent club and you're like, okay, dude, what
Speaker 1: the hell are you doing here? And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I grew up twenty miles from here, I've been there,
Speaker 1: I've seen that I know how to do what you're
Speaker 1: talking about doing. I'm like, you know what you're giving up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're on the climb. Do you want
Speaker 1: to come back and do this? And those are the
Speaker 1: kind of guys. You find your guy like that that
Speaker 1: can actually be the superintendent and run the place, be
Speaker 1: over the golf pro and the whole deal, and you
Speaker 1: you're on your way. And so I hope we've found
Speaker 1: on one but just a country public golf course that
Speaker 1: the numbers will be watched and it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of people behind it.
Speaker 2: And then what are the plans for opening right now?
Speaker 2: I know things shifted around because of the highway and
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, but when when do you plan
Speaker 2: to be open?
Speaker 1: I'm hoping we can open in October, but if we do,
Speaker 1: it won't be ultimate conditions, but it would be where
Speaker 1: we could get it open greens would be fine, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that the fairways at all be the
Speaker 1: way I want them, So probably late in May, early June.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it. I think I
Speaker 2: think it does sound like a really cool project.
Speaker 1: And you got to come to the fields. You got
Speaker 1: to come down eat a pig at the fields.
Speaker 2: I do need to. I'm going to be out in
Speaker 2: the Southeast fairly soon, like a lot of like a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the golf media industry.
Speaker 1: If you're down that way, I'll get mister Bob Crosby,
Speaker 1: who wants to meet you, and we'll do something. You know.
Speaker 2: It's funny. Bob and I have never met in person,
Speaker 2: but we are pretty good for ends because of all
Speaker 2: of our conversations over the years on the podcast and off.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite people in golf. So as are you, Mike.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really
Speaker 2: enjoy always talking to you and we'll have to have
Speaker 2: you back again soon.
Speaker 1: Well that was fun.
Speaker 2: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by
Speaker 2: Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. A quick thing that you
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