Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast
Speaker 1: and the final part of our episode with Colin she In.
Speaker 1: If you've missed either of the earlier parts, check them
Speaker 1: out in your podcast feed. Without further ado, here's the
Speaker 1: final part of our podcast with Yale golf coach Colin Sheen.
Speaker 2: The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 2: to do is actually square the face so they'll dig
Speaker 2: down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right
Speaker 2: out onto the green.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely
Speaker 1: different than playing out of a nice, clean lion of
Speaker 1: green side bunker.
Speaker 3: You need to be aggressive on any show, whether it's
Speaker 3: sitting cleanly for its Friday Egg.
Speaker 1: Well, we've all faithd it, the dreaded Frida Egg.
Speaker 2: It's not to be feared, though.
Speaker 3: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Speaker 1: You. You're one of the three founders of the Outpost club.
Speaker 1: You mentioned it just briefly about trips to the UK.
Speaker 1: You guys started in twenty ten, and the whole kind
Speaker 1: of baseline ideas. You know, a country club without a course,
Speaker 1: you know a home course.
Speaker 3: Andy, You're much too smart to call it that it's
Speaker 3: a golf society.
Speaker 1: It's a well side well you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: called otherwise known as a golf society. I'm allowing you
Speaker 1: to present it in a lovely way. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: just giving him the layman's description.
Speaker 3: It is worth a brief prehistory because it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: And in two thousand and I got I went to
Speaker 3: Yale with will Smith. He was a year behind me.
Speaker 3: We became fast friends. I used to sneak him out
Speaker 3: on the Yale golf course, you know, try to sneak pack,
Speaker 3: try to avoid the fourteen dollars you know, student rate.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 1: He told me that you would tell them that you
Speaker 1: were a potential, and that he was a potential recruit.
Speaker 3: No, I'd say, he's trying out the top put off
Speaker 3: the first t I'd be like, oh, this is go.
Speaker 3: But so we both fell in love with architecture and
Speaker 3: the golf courses undergraduates, and then we followed it. You know,
Speaker 3: he actually went to travel Leasure golf. We both agreed,
Speaker 3: we both were you know, we were both following golf pursuits.
Speaker 3: Wasn't There's no you know, they don't come to they
Speaker 3: don't recruit on campus. You know, the banks, and the
Speaker 3: banks come and recruit, and the consulting agencies and the
Speaker 3: consulting firms come to campus. But you want to sort
Speaker 3: of cut a path in golf, you're on your own.
Speaker 3: And he and I were doing that out of college.
Speaker 3: And he was out working at the Prairie Club in
Speaker 3: Valentine and Cherry County and Valentine, Nebraska in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight or nine, two thousand and eight, and they
Speaker 3: met someone who had land that was ideal for golf
Speaker 3: in the area. And it was on we had elevation undulation,
Speaker 3: it was in the sand hills, and it had this
Speaker 3: beautiful pond on it. It had a chance to be
Speaker 3: a new kind of sand hills course because it was
Speaker 3: gonna have water. It wasn't gonna come into play, but
Speaker 3: it had a sense of you weren't just lost in
Speaker 3: the dunes. It really had a special site, easily a
Speaker 3: top ten potential course in America. And we and it
Speaker 3: was like, I can't remember, it was like four hundred
Speaker 3: dollars an acre and it was seven hours from it
Speaker 3: was five hours from the Denver airport by car, and
Speaker 3: we had this ambitious idea to create the Outpost Club,
Speaker 3: and it was gonna be for twenty and thirty somethings.
Speaker 3: We're gonna build it on the cheap. We were gonna
Speaker 3: have one thousand members. We're gonna pay six thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to join. Dudes are gonna be twelve hundred dollars. Family
Speaker 3: style meals, real sort of bunk house, kind of campground, accommodations.
Speaker 3: It was gonna be this new type of club. And
Speaker 3: we spent a lot of time. We put together a
Speaker 3: beautiful deck, spent a lot of work on it, and
Speaker 3: I can't believe that we we actually thought we were
Speaker 3: going to try to go and raise like six million
Speaker 3: dollars in spring of two thousand and nine, when the
Speaker 3: credit markets were melting, the economy was in terror, there
Speaker 3: was a recession, and we were going around New York
Speaker 3: trying to pitch people on a golf course five hours
Speaker 3: from Bedford, and the more we and then when it
Speaker 3: became a parent that wasn't going to happen. But one
Speaker 3: of the ideas though, is that we were going to
Speaker 3: get members by going all around the country. Because you know,
Speaker 3: from the moment you sort of broke ground to when
Speaker 3: you put a team in the ground is like three years.
Speaker 3: We were going to have events all around the country
Speaker 3: and all the major markets and have member have outings
Speaker 3: and try to recruit members, and sort of the more
Speaker 3: we talked about that, sort of the advice we were
Speaker 3: getting in sort of where it was becoming obvious is
Speaker 3: why not take advantage of the fact that we're on
Speaker 3: the tail end of a thirty year build cycle with
Speaker 3: all the supply, and that participation is way down, and
Speaker 3: that it had everything had been sort of masked by
Speaker 3: a housing bubble, and that there's all this inventory everywhere rotting,
Speaker 3: and that America was ready for sort of the first
Speaker 3: of its kind of an influence, a British influence of
Speaker 3: having unaccompanied visitor play an American golf needed it. It
Speaker 3: wasn't ready for it because clubs still have a hang
Speaker 3: up about who's actually coming. And we sort of pivoted
Speaker 3: in this idea of like we were going to take it.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a golf society with events and
Speaker 3: access to all these great architecturally significant courses that would
Speaker 3: be willing to have visitors come and play their course
Speaker 3: at at times when tea was available and play quickly
Speaker 3: and there was just nothing wrong with golfers coming and
Speaker 3: enjoying a course and playing, walking, taking caddies and being
Speaker 3: grateful for the opportunity. And that's kind of where it
Speaker 3: kind of turned around and we will I had already
Speaker 3: started the punch Bowl in two thousand and seven. It
Speaker 3: was this alternate shot event at Yale. It was supposed
Speaker 3: to be a thirty six hole event and it was
Speaker 3: to celebrate the end of the year. That was celebration
Speaker 3: of the end of the season, to play with friends,
Speaker 3: to play alternate shots. Stapleford did big carvery lunch, you know,
Speaker 3: real throwback kind of British event. The trophy is the
Speaker 3: punch Bowl. It's a nice prosecco and some orange and
Speaker 3: cranberry juices and real stylish thing and mostly to also
Speaker 3: show off showcase Yale at that perfect week of the
Speaker 3: year in late October when the turf is just absolutely
Speaker 3: flying and every little nuanced break and the greens is
Speaker 3: coming out, and you know, it was this We had
Speaker 3: success with it. It was fourteen people, and then twenty six,
Speaker 3: and then thirty and thirty two, and this past year
Speaker 3: it was one hundred and I think we discovered that
Speaker 3: having having events and and having sort of an unaccompanied
Speaker 3: sort of guest policy and a lot of private clubs
Speaker 3: for people that shared a love of the game was
Speaker 3: a really it was a really good sort of you know,
Speaker 3: you know, evolution of American golf. And so that's that's
Speaker 3: how we felt about it. We always felt like we're
Speaker 3: just you know, encouraging people to treat themselves this real
Speaker 3: special occasion golf and really functioned like a like an
Speaker 3: American version of of a of a British golfing success
Speaker 3: of society with a captain and and a real sort
Speaker 3: of respect for the history and traditions of the game.
Speaker 3: We're I mean, we're just a bunch of daft golfers
Speaker 3: and we have our own tart and tweet and it's
Speaker 3: a really cool thing. It's there's a real sort of
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of members support for the
Speaker 3: for this endeavor, and people feel really good about it,
Speaker 3: really proud to be part of it with Will and
Speaker 3: Quinton and we have. Honestly, it's the most ambitious event
Speaker 3: calendar in the five hundred year history of the game.
Speaker 3: We put on like seventy five events a year, fifteen internationals,
Speaker 3: like insane trips like to be a member of the
Speaker 3: Oppos Club is to get an invitation every day to
Speaker 3: an event you can't go to.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's I think what
Speaker 1: you've tapped into is people like spending time with other
Speaker 1: people that share the same passion, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: all golf junkies that are you know, just wanting to
Speaker 1: experience playing some of the best course in the world together.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. It's a community, it's you know, all society.
Speaker 3: It's like there's a thousand of them in the UK.
Speaker 3: There should be there should be three thousand in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 1: It's what do you think about American golf and and
Speaker 1: it compared to say golf in the UK.
Speaker 3: It's obvious we're the most We're so indulgent. If our
Speaker 3: golf is a metaphor for our behavior, then we are.
Speaker 3: We were guilty over maintain turf too fast one, you know,
Speaker 3: David Faye said on the air at Fox they didn't
Speaker 3: get any press agreed that the turf is too tight.
Speaker 3: We've our standards of expectations for greens are just unrealistic.
Speaker 3: It's insane. We're asking for perfection all the time. It's
Speaker 3: it's it's at a cost. It's enough. The fairways don't
Speaker 3: have to be so tight. Shots don't have what are
Speaker 3: we doing? The cost per cost per square yard meter
Speaker 3: can get out of hand. One other thing that no
Speaker 3: one has ever proposed. I wish in America we were
Speaker 3: capable of getting beyond the con able to adopt the
Speaker 3: British concept of the artisan club, where people pitch in
Speaker 3: like for their time and get sort of discounted golf,
Speaker 3: and they were on the courses and they see places
Speaker 3: you can I have like a volunteer sort of aspect
Speaker 3: to a lot of courses.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about that one time. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if if twenty members just went out and
Speaker 1: did some work, they could probably make a lot of
Speaker 1: places a lot better.
Speaker 3: You know, sure pitch marks, it just go seed stuff,
Speaker 3: like just pick the stuff that needs to get done. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's a fascinating concept. I know we're not the classes society,
Speaker 3: but I wish there was a way that we could
Speaker 3: have more junior golfers maybe doing a little bit of
Speaker 3: a of a you know, it's a works project. You
Speaker 3: go out and you work on the course and you
Speaker 3: rake the traps and then get you get some money
Speaker 3: and you play the course. And I'm really one of
Speaker 3: the saddest trends in American golf is is that for
Speaker 3: one hundred years there was a first team. There were
Speaker 3: first team programs everywhere. They were called caddy yards. I
Speaker 3: personally benefited from them, from having caddied at the country
Speaker 3: of a fairfield nineteen like eighty nine, eyeing to ninety
Speaker 3: six or something, and it was fascinating. I can't for
Speaker 3: all those virtues of first the first t you know,
Speaker 3: some of those are pretty offensive campaigns. There was a
Speaker 3: sort of patronizing streak to some of the first tea,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of presentations. And what's more important than
Speaker 3: maybe some kids playing not an unsustainable introduction of golf,
Speaker 3: how about them experiencing a workforce opportunity, internship opportunity of
Speaker 3: cattying and carrying following golf and interacting with adults. And
Speaker 3: that benefit is incredible for teenagers, middle school kids to
Speaker 3: show up and be on time and take pride and
Speaker 3: get and learn and get good at their craft and
Speaker 3: be incentivized. And that to me, I wish there was
Speaker 3: a way we could tomorrow five hundred courses could have
Speaker 3: a middle school high school caddy program. I'm like everything
Speaker 3: that only good things happen in those in those programs
Speaker 3: for kids, only like opportunities open up. Like I'm convinced
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I I grew up caddy in too,
Speaker 1: which uh you know, I grew up caddy in a
Speaker 1: good country club in Chicago, And like, I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason I like golf architecture so much, too,
Speaker 1: is because I started. I grew up walking around a
Speaker 1: golf course that didn't stink, you know, I just grew
Speaker 1: up carrying bags for members. Like it helped me learn
Speaker 1: how to conversate with different types of people and read
Speaker 1: people and understand them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When I when I got out of out of college,
Speaker 1: I started doing sales jobs, I understood how to talk
Speaker 1: to people and what people want out of you. You know,
Speaker 1: That's like the biggest thing I think, like the greatest
Speaker 1: caddies are able to do in one hole, know, like
Speaker 1: without asking the guy they're carding for, Like is this
Speaker 1: a guy that I should read their putt for him
Speaker 1: or not? You know, It's like the human skills that
Speaker 1: you develop as a caddy is just understanding people.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable, the opportunity. Like you're outdoors, you're walking, you're
Speaker 3: watching the game. It's the most sustainable introduction of golf
Speaker 3: is caddying. So while you're sort of watching how to
Speaker 3: do it, you're getting paid, You're watching people gambling, you're
Speaker 3: learning how how the different clubs are used. You're watching
Speaker 3: everything you could possibly learn. You're watching it in the
Speaker 3: course of ten twenty rounds. You're making money.
Speaker 1: You're getting exercise, you're.
Speaker 3: Learning the yeah, and I have so many by the
Speaker 3: way I caddied. I caddied at the Country Cup of
Speaker 3: Fairfield mostly Seth Rayner about as good as, of course,
Speaker 3: can get butchered. It got butchered, and it was still
Speaker 3: some because it's seaside and it still works. It's fabulous.
Speaker 3: I spent years of my life at that place. It
Speaker 3: was so charming par seventy seven sixty three hundred yards.
Speaker 3: I saw Rainer kind of at this. I was first
Speaker 3: introduced to Rayner as an eighth grader caddying at Fairfield,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't believe the fact that they would let
Speaker 3: you if you caddied on the weekend and made money,
Speaker 3: that they let you play the course all day Monday.
Speaker 3: It was like it was this. I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 3: believe that we could then play like thirty six holes
Speaker 3: on Monday afternoon. It was as great a trade as
Speaker 3: I've ever made, you know, I couldn't believe how pretty
Speaker 3: Fairfield was. Like it had a it's not really a Lynx,
Speaker 3: but it's but it's got a It's got this beautiful
Speaker 3: ridge line from these mansions on the Sasco Hill and
Speaker 3: then it goes down to the Pequot Yacht Club and
Speaker 3: harbor and sensational homes, and then it swings around past
Speaker 3: their beach club to the to the Sasco Beach and
Speaker 3: then Long Island Sound. It's incredible. He to fall in
Speaker 3: love with the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, it's the same way I did.
Speaker 1: It's like that that it's I don't know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I hear people talk about how you should get rid
Speaker 1: of caddy programs altogether because they don't want to pay
Speaker 1: for it. But it's like, God, you know, how much
Speaker 1: worse of the game, worse the game would be without caddies,
Speaker 1: especially like kid caddies. Like that's the best best summer job.
Speaker 1: I remember going back to college, like I caddied, and
Speaker 1: while I was in college too, I'd go back to
Speaker 1: college with just like a big stack of cash, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I'd be and then I'd run. I'd of
Speaker 1: course spend it, be completely irresponsible with it and spend
Speaker 1: it all. But you know that that that getting paid
Speaker 1: cash was something that's so awesome about a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: caddy and it's like you.
Speaker 3: Cash on the barrel, and it was fun to be
Speaker 3: a good caddy. It was fun to help your man,
Speaker 3: like what it was fun to be in the conversation
Speaker 3: for the shot, you know, the club when they took
Speaker 3: your I got good enough quickly enough that they would
Speaker 3: they be like, what do you think I'd be like
Speaker 3: you need to fight the six. You know. It's like
Speaker 3: kind of that's awesome. It's just interacting with adults, like
Speaker 3: looking people in the eye, like, you know, being able
Speaker 3: to sort of absolutely like we cannot underestimate the value
Speaker 3: of communication and personal interaction job interviews. This just type
Speaker 3: of being able to being able to sort of turn
Speaker 3: back and return a conversation that's important.
Speaker 1: Having gotten to know you, it seems like one of
Speaker 1: your other your obviously biggest passions is the golf development
Speaker 1: and project side of the business. What else do you get?
Speaker 1: What else do you have coming up in the future,
Speaker 1: What are you working on?
Speaker 3: I was thinking of this fictional essay about the dirt
Speaker 3: poor golf developer as like just metaphor, and I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm the other dirt poor golf developer. God nothing.
Speaker 3: I think, if you're going to have, like we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna have an opportunity being maybe a do
Speaker 3: a couple of projects, maybe only do a few, but
Speaker 3: but have them be really wonderful. And that's how I
Speaker 3: felt about my relationship with the first project that I
Speaker 3: was ever involved with, and it was Bayone. I'm an apologist.
Speaker 3: I think along with Yale Bayone is I'm a member
Speaker 3: of two of the most criminally underrated courses in North America.
Speaker 3: Will does I think? I think Bayone is so sensational.
Speaker 3: It's yelled by the sea. It is got loaded with
Speaker 3: blind shots, quirk, like I challenge you, like I put
Speaker 3: it head to head. It has so many head to
Speaker 3: head wins against courses Bayone does.
Speaker 1: I gotta go see it.
Speaker 3: Oh, It's unbelievable. I'm going a total apologize. I'm in
Speaker 3: the tank and I love it. I love I absolutely
Speaker 3: love that course, and I love taking friends there. And
Speaker 3: it's seaside and it's views are sensational, and it's on
Speaker 3: like next to like oil, you know, refinery tank, you know, containers,
Speaker 3: and like it's unbelievable. It's it's so, it's so there's
Speaker 3: moments that are so genuinely lenksy that it's just it's
Speaker 3: better than so much in the Northeast. And and then
Speaker 3: after Bayonne, I was at Castle Stewart, I lived in Scotland.
Speaker 3: I'd followed up with Mark Carson and and I really
Speaker 3: had a chance to witness one of the great another
Speaker 3: great course being made like full complicated muckshift like Gil
Speaker 3: and you know Mark and collaborating and and Jim Wagner's
Speaker 3: shaping and doing this amazing stuff and the and the incredible,
Speaker 3: credible like location of the property and the vision was
Speaker 3: it was. It was such an such an incredible like
Speaker 3: project to witness, you know, I can't get over it.
Speaker 3: And so after that, I don't know. I one place
Speaker 3: I fell in love with Andy I was was the
Speaker 3: Hooper golf course in the Watkins Tavern. I failed to
Speaker 3: raise the money. I would, but but I'm telling you, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm telling you I spend I just spent enough time.
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't help myself. I can't resist. I
Speaker 3: have my love of historic preservation. That that golf course
Speaker 3: which Dope made it in his Gourmet Choice, but a
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty seven Wayne Styles golf course virtually untouched, still
Speaker 3: like Parth, like seven three thousand and thirty three yards
Speaker 3: like Parth thirty five like. Its clubhouse was the Alexander
Speaker 3: Watkins House from seventeen eighty eight that became the Watkins
Speaker 3: Tavern in seventeen ninety five. It literally the clubhouse was
Speaker 3: a tavern during George Washington's second term. It's incredible, and
Speaker 3: it's as close to the first team in the Ninth
Speaker 3: Green as Marion. It's literally joined at the hip. The
Speaker 3: most beautiful like first tea in America might be the
Speaker 3: first tea at Hooper of a rival reachable for sixty
Speaker 3: seven par five downhill to the left from in front
Speaker 3: of a historic eight teenth century tavern. It's unbelievable. It's
Speaker 3: so I still would love. I think it still could
Speaker 3: use a little rescue. They're they're sort of working it out,
Speaker 3: but it was. It was. It has the chance to
Speaker 3: be one of the most exquisite golf properties anywhere. It
Speaker 3: was as if like the Myopia Hunt Club or where
Speaker 3: the Country Club had like a satellite nine hole location
Speaker 3: up there in the woods of New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: That's not everybody could go play Hooper too. It's like
Speaker 1: twenty bucks. I think it's on my list of twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen steps.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It has it's greens have so much tilt
Speaker 3: to them. They're flying, and they're and it's and it's
Speaker 3: a there's, it's a it's a course that you could
Speaker 3: play between the ages of eight and a hundred. It
Speaker 3: is amazing. Hooper is amazing.
Speaker 1: I think nine hole courses are so underrated. I think
Speaker 1: it's the right amount of golf.
Speaker 3: I grew up on one South Pine Creek Parth Public
Speaker 3: otherwise ow it was the par three designed by like
Speaker 3: Jeff Cornish in the sixties. It was like a I'm
Speaker 3: not that old, I'm only forty three, but I have
Speaker 3: like I have one of those stories when things were
Speaker 3: cheap and when you had a town resident card in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, when you were eleven. I think to
Speaker 3: play during the week. Might have been a dollar thirty five,
Speaker 3: might have been like nine holes.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, my local course. It was just it
Speaker 1: was an eighteen hole kind of nothing golf course, completely boring.
Speaker 1: But the junior the junior card like for the whole summer,
Speaker 1: Like I could play as much golf as I wanted
Speaker 1: for four hundred dollars. Yeah, Like I could go there
Speaker 1: every single day and play golf for four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a year. You know, like that's that's a great deal.
Speaker 1: I could play as much as I wanted to.
Speaker 3: This course. This course is fascinating. It had uh it
Speaker 3: had a mix of difficult and the backups were always
Speaker 3: on the long holes, the fourth and fifth holes. I
Speaker 3: spent years of my life just waiting on teas at
Speaker 3: the nine hole par three course, just with friends in
Speaker 3: the shade at the bushes. There was a lot of
Speaker 3: seashells and seagulls and and a lot of marshy hole.
Speaker 3: It was in like the surrounded by fragmighty and stuff
Speaker 3: and the Nike site where you know, in high school
Speaker 3: the kids went to, you know, drink beers in the
Speaker 3: parking lot. But it was it was seaside and it was,
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of downtime when it wasn't
Speaker 3: when it wasn't us whoer busy, But it was also
Speaker 3: it was a really good thing for ten year olds
Speaker 3: to play golf with people septagenarians and octagenarians. It's really
Speaker 3: good for a ten year old kid to play with
Speaker 3: a seventy five year old person. It was you don't
Speaker 3: act like a jackass. Yeah, you talk to them. It's
Speaker 3: like it was beautiful. It was beautiful. And we'd go
Speaker 3: there in the winter. We played in the winter when
Speaker 3: it was just covered in just goose shit and and
Speaker 3: it there would be no pins and there would there
Speaker 3: wouldn't even be cups, but they'd run us off the
Speaker 3: place I played so much seaside. We had a micro
Speaker 3: climate on the coast in Fairfield in Southport. It's not
Speaker 3: like I didn't have miserable winners and get snow, but
Speaker 3: like you'd have these temperate days in the winter. We
Speaker 3: would go out and suddenly be there'd be like some
Speaker 3: NFL playoffs, and earlier in the day we've been like
Speaker 3: hitting balls at the at the par three, or like
Speaker 3: up at the Fairchild Wheeler, the public course that's on
Speaker 3: the border with Fairfield and Bridgeport. Love with sneaking on
Speaker 3: winter golf is.
Speaker 1: Do overrated, underrated. So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some
Speaker 1: topics at you.
Speaker 3: There might be I'm just gonna if there's if there's
Speaker 3: a course that I just I can't be honest with you.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna tell.
Speaker 1: You that that's fine. We're gonna start. We're gonna start
Speaker 1: with a We're gonna lab one at you. Alternate shot?
Speaker 3: Oh come on, how there isn't? Like every club in
Speaker 3: America has at least three alternate shot events. The year
Speaker 3: is crime. It's the most tea, it's the most team.
Speaker 3: I spend so much time overseas asking people to articulate
Speaker 3: why they play alternate shot. I'm like, why are you
Speaker 3: doing this? Like miss you know you old Buffty at
Speaker 3: like yet another club that just does this, like I
Speaker 3: love it? Like could be anywhere pen Pen You're yeah,
Speaker 3: pressed Wick, Like could any all of those places in England?
Speaker 3: And I got so many different answers. I got a
Speaker 3: million different answers why they loved alternate shots so much?
Speaker 3: And but Archie Baartt gave one good one. He said,
Speaker 3: every you know, every shot comes with double the consequences,
Speaker 3: double the joy, or double double the stakes, double the joy,
Speaker 3: double the agony. You know, I love I love the
Speaker 3: dynamic of alternate shot where player A, you know, hits
Speaker 3: a shot out of play and player B does the
Speaker 3: best to kind of advance it, and then player AS
Speaker 3: a chance to avenge it with a great wedge, and
Speaker 3: then it's like player B converts the putt, closes it out.
Speaker 3: It's like such a team for that is like such
Speaker 3: a sensational four. And then and then at the pace
Speaker 3: of play aspect of it, and that's just the practicality
Speaker 3: of it. We're we're like, we only have time for nine.
Speaker 3: How about we only have time for alternate shot eighteen.
Speaker 3: Let's do that, Like, let's go and play, Like, let's
Speaker 3: have events where the round is two and a half hours,
Speaker 3: which is nine with a hot dog, or you played eighteen,
Speaker 3: play an alternate shot with people? Like how we don't
Speaker 3: have courses where we're just like until noon on weekday mornings,
Speaker 3: it's two balls only. That would be another revolution in America.
Speaker 3: Two ball only. Be like, that's the deal till either
Speaker 3: you and your friend could play, or you get four
Speaker 3: of you and you could fly and get get out
Speaker 3: of here. Go. I don't have to work.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the biggest problems. Like hey, like
Speaker 1: I hate how you have to commit so much time
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 3: No one's got time for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, that's.
Speaker 3: Something that There was an era when Don Draper played
Speaker 3: his golf. He got he worked all week and then
Speaker 3: he came home and he was gone before he even
Speaker 3: got up on Saturday, and he played in the morning,
Speaker 3: and then he had three cocktails and played cards. He
Speaker 3: came back and racked out on the sofa while the
Speaker 3: golf was on TV, and it showered and got dressed
Speaker 3: up for drinks and dinner, and you know, that ship
Speaker 3: has sailed. It is. I don't know anybody who plays
Speaker 3: golf on the weekend. Nobody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's uh. What about uh? What about driving ranges? Overrated? Underrated?
Speaker 3: What kind like by the highway with netting or like
Speaker 3: you know some beautiful like you know field with just
Speaker 3: like you know, just some rope and some like scoops,
Speaker 3: you know, like wagons with full of balls that you
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Me any any kind of driving range.
Speaker 3: Listen, I played so much golf in the UK and
Speaker 3: you never need him, never used him and never and
Speaker 3: it never hurt the round. You don't, you know, forget
Speaker 3: a range somewhere on the course you can practice. Totally overrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, way overrated.
Speaker 3: Although, although although we were trying to raise a lot
Speaker 3: of money to build a fabulous range at the Yel course,
Speaker 3: we're going to reroute the road as you come in
Speaker 3: so that we can expand it and build a you know,
Speaker 3: four car garage of hitting days. So in that regard,
Speaker 3: it's very underrated.
Speaker 1: It might be underrated. A good range is probably underrated
Speaker 1: for a college program. Yeah, we're trying to build the
Speaker 1: the build the college golf program. Yeah, I think drive
Speaker 1: range is important.
Speaker 3: I don't think the people that make a big deal
Speaker 3: about their range. I say, have you ever been to
Speaker 3: Cyprus Point. It's it's like you're allowed to hit like
Speaker 3: four seven irons into the right rough that's the rage,
Speaker 3: And yet it's like it's a you know, it continues
Speaker 3: to be a religious experience. So all first time and
Speaker 3: every time visitors.
Speaker 1: It's uh yeah, I mean like that's a lot of
Speaker 1: the great golf courses don't have the worst ranges.
Speaker 3: You know, quaker Ridge, wing foot.
Speaker 1: Short acres, Yeah, horrible range. Yeah, Chicago golfs is on
Speaker 1: where what used to be the polo field.
Speaker 3: That's not bad though, is it.
Speaker 1: No, it's pretty good. It's a pretty good, pretty good range.
Speaker 1: Last overrated, underrated, We'll go with the eighteenth eighteenth hole.
Speaker 1: Like the everybody, I feel like everybody complains about eighteen
Speaker 1: hole eighteenth holes all the way, all the time, like
Speaker 1: our eighteenth holes overrated or underrated.
Speaker 3: I'm going to begin this answer with the fact I
Speaker 3: want to talk about Yale's eighteenth hole, which is one
Speaker 3: of the more controversial holes ever, which I happen to
Speaker 3: think is one of the greatest holes on the course,
Speaker 3: might be the best, one of the great holes in America.
Speaker 3: And it's a it's a it's a litmus test. It's
Speaker 3: an acid test for whether someone has an idea for
Speaker 3: golf is being adventurous and thrilling and strategic, but also
Speaker 3: you know, wild versus people that want, you know, they
Speaker 3: want to be catered to. And I think that that hole,
Speaker 3: if you played one hundred, I am on record of
Speaker 3: defending it. I actually constantly arguing back to people that
Speaker 3: want to hate on it, like those Ivy League coaches
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, and I think the whole is as
Speaker 3: dynamics are strategically of any hole in America. I'm serious,
Speaker 3: because it is there, it's got If you play it
Speaker 3: five hundred times, you don't ever play it the same
Speaker 3: way twice. It's and and yet there's still plenty of
Speaker 3: options and roots to the green and ways to make five.
Speaker 3: And but it's it's People really can't stand a par
Speaker 3: five that is both not a birdie hole and more
Speaker 3: likely more likely bogie than birdie. And as the eighteenth
Speaker 3: hole when a par five gives you basically it's a
Speaker 3: bogie par five to finish. Golfers hate it, so I
Speaker 3: get that. But I'm telling you, if you, if you
Speaker 3: were to ever do a real deal sort of dive
Speaker 3: on a hole, one of your holes I should be
Speaker 3: on your list would be eighteen eight yell, because it
Speaker 3: is fair and it is playable. There is a way
Speaker 3: to hit two reasonable shots and have the ball chase
Speaker 3: all the way down to one hundred yards in the flat.
Speaker 1: You know that that article exists on the fried Egg.
Speaker 1: It's been written.
Speaker 3: I didn't I think I saw that once.
Speaker 1: You're right, Yeah, Now I'm going to make it better
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna add a video to it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: people are gonna be able to really see it. But
Speaker 1: that's what answer.
Speaker 3: But to answer your question about over eighteenth holes, I
Speaker 3: do agree that a golf course has to be in
Speaker 3: some ways. I like those analogies to music and how
Speaker 3: it has to have a finish like it isn't it
Speaker 3: doesn't over it doesn't maybe way more than two other holes.
Speaker 3: But the idea it shouldn't less for sure. It shouldn't
Speaker 3: be a cliche either and be four seventy five and
Speaker 3: and like a like a hole that you know everyone bogies,
Speaker 3: but it can as long as it works. But I
Speaker 3: I think I actually we talked about eighteen holes and
Speaker 3: they matter. There's they want what matters more? One or
Speaker 3: eighteen or one?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I uh oh, eight, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I think one matter is more.
Speaker 3: It's interesting concept. I understand what you're getting at. That's true.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of one. I think want to
Speaker 3: Yale when it's properly restored. By the way. What I
Speaker 3: like about first holes I'm on record is that I
Speaker 3: like them when they state the theme quickly. Yeah, an overture.
Speaker 3: I want it to be like, Okay, here you go.
Speaker 3: You ready for this? This is a course with the
Speaker 3: following expectations, you.
Speaker 1: Know, see eighteen. To me, it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that's tough with eighteen is like a lot of times
Speaker 1: just having to come back to a clubhouse and no song.
Speaker 1: If we want to talk about the songs, like, there
Speaker 1: are very few songs that end like absolutely going wild,
Speaker 1: like I mean, the best part of songs is never
Speaker 1: the end. The best part of the song is in
Speaker 1: the middle of it. That's where I want all the
Speaker 1: crazy ass stuff happened and around.
Speaker 3: I guess you're right, yeah, but what if it's already
Speaker 3: happened and then it just turns around and just which
Speaker 3: is like a turned up to eleven?
Speaker 1: Well that's some songs are like that. That's okay, but
Speaker 1: for the most part they aren't like that. So like eighteen,
Speaker 1: I don't I think technology has such a problem with
Speaker 1: this too, because like so I played with the that
Speaker 1: Hickory and ballata, and all of a sudden, par fives
Speaker 1: were like insanely hard like and usually when I play
Speaker 1: I expect to like be chipping or putting for eagles
Speaker 1: on par fives, and all of a sudden, I was like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, I got to hit really good shots in
Speaker 1: order to make a par on a par five. And
Speaker 1: that's like the thing with with golf is like it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was talking to my buddy Zach Blair and he
Speaker 1: was like, when you play eighteenth at Cyprus with a hickory,
Speaker 1: it all of a sudden makes way more sense. And
Speaker 1: that's like the most dogged eighteenth hole in the world.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's a great hole. It's probably overgrown a little
Speaker 3: bit that yeah that I'm like that hole as a gem.
Speaker 3: It's not onlikes Olympic. It's a little tricky hole. You've
Speaker 3: got what are you gonna do? That's where the hill is.
Speaker 3: That's where it comes back to the hill. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: how it goes.
Speaker 1: You got to get back.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 1: You couldn't finish on the ocean. You gotta get back
Speaker 1: to the clubhouse. It's fine, Yeah, it's fine. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Eighteenth holes overrated. That's my my, my, my pick though.
Speaker 3: So I'm talking.
Speaker 1: You're not a man of social media. Nobody can find
Speaker 1: you there.
Speaker 3: I don't have I haven't sent a tweet. I gotta
Speaker 3: get better. I'm gonna have one of the freshmen run
Speaker 3: the Twitter. I'm not on Instagram. I need to do this.
Speaker 3: I'm not on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You're better off for it. People can find you by
Speaker 1: emailing you. You know that's a great concept.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like you know, I envy.
Speaker 1: Your life without people being able to instantly access to you.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking about this idea though. So I'm into Vinyl,
Speaker 3: as you know. I love to play music, and I
Speaker 3: love I love every I really love every kind of category.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get all the other dads in my
Speaker 3: neighborhood we want to do a public arts project. We
Speaker 3: want to I want to. I want to get them
Speaker 3: to raise I want to build like a Jamaican sound
Speaker 3: system with like wood, you know, wood speaker cabinets and
Speaker 3: just and and have it be able to just quickly
Speaker 3: load up into a van or out of a van
Speaker 3: and just play music around like the East Rock like
Speaker 3: New Hallville, like Westville neighborhoods and all around New Haven
Speaker 3: and just come and and play events of any kind,
Speaker 3: like play music of any kind, and and and be
Speaker 3: available for for sort of for free or for for hire.
Speaker 3: And just oh that would be.
Speaker 1: A you'd have to get on social media.
Speaker 3: I'd have to get on social media to do that.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that there needs to be I talked
Speaker 1: with Shane Bacon about this on a pod. There needs
Speaker 1: to be a music festival. Golf outing be great, Like
Speaker 1: find a golf course that routes really well where you
Speaker 1: could have like one or two stages and when you're
Speaker 1: on different parts of the course you hear different different music.
Speaker 3: Well I have I have always said I tried to.
Speaker 3: I raised money from the new from the Study hotel developer.
Speaker 3: We were going to I think the third the Bowl,
Speaker 3: the natural Bowl that is the downslope of the fairway
Speaker 3: and right off the clubhouse. It's the perfect amphitheater for
Speaker 3: a music venue for an evening for like a for
Speaker 3: like a brass quintet or an orchestra or or a
Speaker 3: you know, a sound system or whatever it could be.
Speaker 3: It's I'm telling you right there, you play at Twilight
Speaker 3: Round at Yale and then you come in and then
Speaker 3: they have a concert right there in the fairway where
Speaker 3: you you know, like with blankets and stuff and hear
Speaker 3: music as the as the sunsets. How good is that?
Speaker 1: It would be awesome?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, I have on the record for saying I
Speaker 1: want to move so I can play Yale every day.
Speaker 3: Nice we do and have a summer twilight concert series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this would be a cool event. What uh what
Speaker 1: is speaking of it? What's your what's your favorite stretch
Speaker 1: of holes at Yale? Like if you if you were
Speaker 1: going to just pick out like one eight, it's it's
Speaker 1: the best part.
Speaker 3: There's a tree that needs to be removed. And I
Speaker 3: regret having to say this, but you know, we've the
Speaker 3: grill has to The best thing for the eighth and
Speaker 3: ninth holes is to remove the grill and relocate it
Speaker 3: somewhere between the the ten tea and the range, just
Speaker 3: kind of in that area. Service that kind of while
Speaker 3: people are kindind of like in that section. And the
Speaker 3: eighth Green and Yelle is eighty yards long, and I
Speaker 3: think it's for the first forty yards it's a redan
Speaker 3: and for the next forty yards it's a reverse ver Dad.
Speaker 3: It's actually when they when we eventually mow out the
Speaker 3: final high left corner and the back right and the
Speaker 3: front left, and there's going to be it's it's gonna
Speaker 3: almost there's gonna be a big high left and a
Speaker 3: big back left, a big high back left and a
Speaker 3: big low back right, and it's I don't know if
Speaker 3: they've ever built a double like a reversible double reversal
Speaker 3: overdad or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that green is absolutely nutty.
Speaker 3: Two of the craziest bunkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then then need to have a beast Berretz
Speaker 1: And then you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's a shame that I you know, we we
Speaker 3: have the pin. The majority of the time is in
Speaker 3: the first half of it. It's pace of play. It's
Speaker 3: just getting people through and the back is pretty steep
Speaker 3: and it's just hard and everyone hits it. They hitting
Speaker 3: some horrendous places, and so the majority of the time
Speaker 3: it's in the front half. But like it's robbing the
Speaker 3: average visitor to Yale, like a really critical like three
Speaker 3: wood brass seat two wood, three wood, four wood like
Speaker 3: hybrid sort of shot that a lot of that doesn't
Speaker 3: know that that is already pretty rare on the golf
Speaker 3: course these days. And it's a shame because we really
Speaker 3: need to get all that turf improved, because the dimensions
Speaker 3: of the full back of the ninth Green are amazing
Speaker 3: and there'll be there will be flatter pins in the
Speaker 3: back left, and it's it should be there. It should
Speaker 3: be there way more than it currently is. And because
Speaker 3: it's it's once, it's the wholes especial, especially once the
Speaker 3: wholes restored. That's one of the most incredible landland shots
Speaker 3: in golf. It's it's right there with five at Pine Valley.
Speaker 3: It's what name another Andy Utube? Tell me your short
Speaker 3: list of of great inland par threes in America, and
Speaker 3: within the first three you're probably naming five Pine Valley
Speaker 3: at nine.
Speaker 1: At Yale, Yeah, sand Hills, Uh, seventeen, that's.
Speaker 3: Come on, that's just a good hole. That's your average
Speaker 3: guard variety, just really good hole.
Speaker 1: That that one that's a one hundred and thirty or
Speaker 1: part three. I played it like four or five times,
Speaker 1: and I ended up in the same place every time,
Speaker 1: even I hit some just great shots. That's just allowing
Speaker 1: natural elements to just kill people.
Speaker 3: That hole is beauty of great your guard. That's a
Speaker 3: that's a you're great, that's a great like kind of
Speaker 3: lynxy par three hole that there's one hundred of those.
Speaker 1: And scar it is it is a you're saying maybe
Speaker 1: unique is uh you could associate with that I would say, Uh,
Speaker 1: I got to think that you're putting me on the
Speaker 1: spot here. Yeah, well start, Yeah, I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: asking the questions. You know.
Speaker 3: Did ever tell you about the time my first time
Speaker 3: I ever interviewed a pro in my life. I was
Speaker 3: twenty two years old working for the Golfer magazine and
Speaker 3: I got to I was assigned to go interview a
Speaker 3: forty three year old Bernard Langer at the Rye Hilton
Speaker 3: while he was there for the Westchester Classic.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm living at home in Southport, and I had you know,
Speaker 3: I left early for traffic on the Merit And even
Speaker 3: in spite of leaving an extra sort of thirty forty minutes,
Speaker 3: I was late. And I'm ready to meet Bernard Langer
Speaker 3: patiently waiting for me in the lobby of the Rye Hilton.
Speaker 3: I can't believe it. I'm late to an interview with
Speaker 3: a German Bernie. He's gracious, anyway, he's cool. We sit down,
Speaker 3: I start the tape. I'm using one of those old
Speaker 3: fashioned micro cassettes on a little little tape recorder. Just
Speaker 3: and the interview begins, and I'm very interesting. Did in
Speaker 3: his sort of early days of the European Tour. I
Speaker 3: wanted to hear about when it was just sort of
Speaker 3: like the panhandle air of the late seventies and the
Speaker 3: early eighties, when they'd go out and measure courses themselves
Speaker 3: with like the rolling wheel. Imagine that a tour player
Speaker 3: like marking the yardage of a course that he's playing
Speaker 3: in some European Tour event, and it's going great, and
Speaker 3: then it's going well enough that I was like, I
Speaker 3: was debating whether to ask him if I was about
Speaker 3: about his history of the Yips, and I felt like
Speaker 3: it reached a point where we should And he starts
Speaker 3: to answer, really and he gives this fabulously just smart
Speaker 3: and concise, you know, or smart answer, But and he
Speaker 3: goes through, he spells the whole thing out and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: my first bout to the Yips was in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: And he lays out and I'm like, I'm realizing, like
Speaker 3: right around that time, like this has been about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: And I looked down on the cassette had stopped, and
Speaker 3: I had to stop Bernard Langer two thirds of the
Speaker 3: way through his history of the Yips to flip the
Speaker 3: tape and started so he could begin the ant, he
Speaker 3: could give me the whole answer again. He did it.
Speaker 3: And then what was really cool about about you know?
Speaker 3: I was nineteen years later, so he was tremendously. I
Speaker 3: was grateful he was. He was tremendously. He was very
Speaker 3: gracious to me that day. Of course he could have
Speaker 3: he could have I was, he could have let me
Speaker 3: have it. Nineteen years later he came, I'm his son.
Speaker 3: Is is a sort of recruit eventually goes to Penn
Speaker 3: but he the son, comes on a visit with and
Speaker 3: he brings his family, brings his mom, dad, and his
Speaker 3: brother and sister, and dad is Gerrard Langer. It was
Speaker 3: really cool. We spent a couple of hours walking around
Speaker 3: campus and I was able to thank him for the
Speaker 3: kindness he tended to me nineteen almost nineteen years earlier.
Speaker 3: It was really cool.
Speaker 1: Full circle. So, uh, well, uh we're gonna wrap this up.
Speaker 1: Uh it might be might be a three part podcast.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I might have to just extend it out.
Speaker 3: So give the people what they want.
Speaker 1: I know, just that's the beauty, and then we'll have
Speaker 1: to do it. We'll do another one when the when
Speaker 1: the time's right and just talk about something else. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll do one all about a project or something
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 3: To do a I want to I want to make
Speaker 3: some lifestyle contributions to your website. It's just it's it's
Speaker 3: it's so one dimensional lead or two dimensionally uh PGA
Speaker 3: tour and just sort of nerdy architecture. You need some
Speaker 3: other keep killing you. You're killing me. I can't, I can't,
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't go through your website. I got to.
Speaker 3: You gotta have some more things about just aspects of
Speaker 3: style out there that are happening. You give it, give
Speaker 3: give those people some love.
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, yeah, we're a well, we're a small
Speaker 1: team here at the Friday Egg. You know't gotta do
Speaker 1: what you do well, right. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: on going to areas that, you know, wade into different
Speaker 1: areas until you're read.
Speaker 3: How this is? This is? This is how sad a
Speaker 3: commentary it is on on the value of sort of
Speaker 3: golf editorial. Is that in nineteen nineteen ninety eight, when
Speaker 3: I began at the Golfer working for a you know,
Speaker 3: a crook, I was getting paid three hundred dollars a week,
Speaker 3: I would. I would, I would, I would consider that.
Speaker 3: I'd be great. I'd be grateful for that from the
Speaker 3: Friday for you to be your as a weekly, uh
Speaker 3: your style editor at this twenty nearly twenty years later, so.
Speaker 1: You be getting paid the big box around here with that.
Speaker 1: So all right, well, uh yeah, you can follow along
Speaker 1: with the with the Yale golf team and uh Colin.
Speaker 1: Colin will maybe get on Twitter or Instagram or something
Speaker 1: at some point, he's got to get one of his
Speaker 1: players on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, I'll be on it soon enough. I'll capitulate.
Speaker 1: You've been listening.
Speaker 3: To the Fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 1: We do the digging for you.