Speaker 1: What are we looking for in a championship golf course
Speaker 1: these days? And why can't we seem to discuss this
Speaker 1: question without wanting to kill each other. So in this
Speaker 1: episode of our Golf Architecture one on one series, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the championship set up wars. I'm Garrett Morrison
Speaker 1: and this is designing golf. As always in Golf Architecture
Speaker 1: one on one, I am joined by my Frida Egg colleague,
Speaker 1: PJ Clark.
Speaker 2: PJ, how you doing, Garrett? I'm doing great.
Speaker 3: Rare to go less than twenty four hours away from
Speaker 3: another major championship. I'm wearing my Donald Ross pine cone shirt.
Speaker 3: I figured it was topical given a Rono MinC in
Speaker 3: a little bit sense. I'm great, just just another great
Speaker 3: week of major championship golf. You only get four of these,
Speaker 3: even if you're angry about who won. I'm not, but
Speaker 3: you got to you gotta enjoy them as they come.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, you would think that that would be a
Speaker 1: more common attitude, but it doesn't seem to me.
Speaker 3: You know. It's kind of like one of those things
Speaker 3: where yeah, it's uh, everybody always says, like late in
Speaker 3: the NFL season when there's a random like Jaguars Titans
Speaker 3: Thursday Night game. It's like, you're gonna be begging for
Speaker 3: this in July, and like, you know, when it's late
Speaker 3: August and we're talking about the three m it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you want a PGA right now, even if Aaron Rye wins,
Speaker 3: right like you' that's what you want?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not sure what gets into people's heads
Speaker 1: in major week, but they they want it all, you know,
Speaker 1: they want it to be perfect every single time, and
Speaker 1: it's it's just never perfect. So, you know, partly because
Speaker 1: of PGA Week and the discourse about it, we're talking
Speaker 1: about championship golf course design and set up in this
Speaker 1: golf architecture one on one episode, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a topic where you're probably
Speaker 1: at least at a two to oh one level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would you agree with that.
Speaker 3: Feel decent about this, you know, I feel like I've
Speaker 3: learned a lot, have been very fortunate.
Speaker 2: You've been in these streets a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, I've been very fortunate to attend, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, a handful of major championships at this point,
Speaker 3: and I've been very fortunate to use some of like
Speaker 3: one oh one teachings. I was lucky enough to play
Speaker 3: Yale a couple of weeks ago. I got a big
Speaker 3: heaping of of template holes there. I figured I at
Speaker 3: least knew kind of what I was talking about there.
Speaker 3: But this one, this topic, I feel at least okayon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so we'll try to advance the discussion
Speaker 1: a little bit. Maybe this is not a pure one
Speaker 1: o one episode, but you know, I think that most
Speaker 1: of the audience is probably there as well. You know
Speaker 1: that this is a common topic of discussion in mainstream
Speaker 1: golf podcasts, So it's not like I'm bringing out something
Speaker 1: that's that's really unique to golf architecture discourse here, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get us at a deeper
Speaker 1: level with it. And I think it's it's worth talking
Speaker 1: about it in this format because the discussion of championship
Speaker 1: golf courses, especially major championship golf courses, is one of
Speaker 1: those rare moments when everyone in golf comes together to
Speaker 1: talk about golf course design. Right, It's not just architects
Speaker 1: and architecture nerds who are participating, it's the players, it's
Speaker 1: the representatives from golf governing bodies, it's the TV personalities,
Speaker 1: it's the journalists who might not cover this topic on
Speaker 1: a week to week basis, And it's also a lot
Speaker 1: of fans and a lot of social media users who
Speaker 1: have an opinion as well. So it might even be
Speaker 1: the way that a lot of people are introduced to
Speaker 1: the notion of golf architecture for the first time, and
Speaker 1: for that reason, I think it's a potentially very fruitful topic.
Speaker 1: So my goal here is to think through championship golf
Speaker 1: course design and set up with you from basically the
Speaker 1: ground up. What's the history of championship golf course design
Speaker 1: and set up? How did we get to the spot
Speaker 1: that we are today with it? And ultimately, what do
Speaker 1: we want out of a twenty first century championship course?
Speaker 2: Do we even know what we want?
Speaker 3: I was going to say that feels like the billion
Speaker 3: dollar question right now, and I don't know that anybody.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different answers to that question.
Speaker 3: I'm curious to I think, I know, I think I
Speaker 3: might have an idea of what your answer might be,
Speaker 3: but I'm very excited to find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got like a three part I was just
Speaker 1: working this out before we jumped on, because I'd never
Speaker 1: kind of written it down. I may do an article
Speaker 1: about this eventually, but I have my own idea and
Speaker 1: I'm curious to hear, you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: this episode where you are with it as well. But first,
Speaker 1: before we get into the history of it, into these
Speaker 1: interesting questions, we should probably talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what happened last week, because I think in many ways
Speaker 1: it is representative. We're recording this, as you've alluded to
Speaker 1: on the Monday after the twenty twenty six PGA Championship
Speaker 1: at Ironomin Golf Club and throughout the week, the design
Speaker 1: and setup of Ironomink were big, big storylines. So let's
Speaker 1: start with what people were talking about before the tournament started,
Speaker 1: because that was different from what people were talking about
Speaker 1: during the tournament. What was it before the tournament? What
Speaker 1: was your recollection?
Speaker 2: Well, it was something kind of new.
Speaker 3: I mean, it hadn't been on the rota for the
Speaker 3: pros in eight years since a BMW, which is obviously
Speaker 3: a very different setup than a PGA Championship. Everybody's curious
Speaker 3: to see what Kerry Haig was going to do with this,
Speaker 3: given the recent run of PGAs that. I mean, Quel
Speaker 3: Hollow was not like a total birdie fest at the
Speaker 3: end of the day last year, but Valhalla was kind
Speaker 3: of a disaster, and I think people were probably scarred
Speaker 3: from that, and the PGA defenders would come back with, well, like,
Speaker 3: look at the leaderboards, look at the winners, like top
Speaker 3: players are separating themselves, which is in a sense a
Speaker 3: fair critique to me, even if it's not the It's
Speaker 3: kind of it's like that meme where like you did
Speaker 3: all the work wrong, but you got the right answer,
Speaker 3: so it's like, yeah, okay, I submit that the leaderboards
Speaker 3: have been generally pretty good in recent years, but everybody
Speaker 3: thought that that maybe it was not going to be
Speaker 3: long enough, that scores were going to be low, that
Speaker 3: weather would come in, and that I assume weather is
Speaker 3: going to be a big, at least kind of part
Speaker 3: of what we're talking about today, because not something you
Speaker 3: can control from an architecture standpoint, but something that plays
Speaker 3: a load bearing piece of a major championship.
Speaker 1: For sure, even more so in recent years. Right, I
Speaker 1: also heard a lot of people talking about trees on
Speaker 1: the right so much championship. I mean, the tree discourse was.
Speaker 2: The tree discourse I I have.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've lived like eight lives since the
Speaker 3: tree discourse, so I forgot about it until literally right now.
Speaker 1: I mean on Tuesday and Wednesday, this became sort of
Speaker 1: the flashpoint issue. Yeah, people were talking about all those
Speaker 1: other factors that you mentioned, as well, what is this
Speaker 1: PGA going to be? Are people going to just annihilate
Speaker 1: this golf course? It seemed like the consensus was that
Speaker 1: that would be the case, and I had my concerns
Speaker 1: about that as well, because I had watched the tournaments
Speaker 1: that had been held at this renovated ronom inc And
Speaker 1: I just didn't, you know, I didn't really trust the
Speaker 1: PGA to set this course up in a way that
Speaker 1: was significantly different from those PGA Tour events, because you know,
Speaker 1: in the past, a PGA Championship has typically been basically
Speaker 1: a PGA Tour event, which, by the way, is why
Speaker 1: the players who passed that test happened to be also
Speaker 1: dominant players on the PGA Tour. It's a similar test.
Speaker 1: Of course, all that turned out to be pretty inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Everybody was wrong, but trees were really a big, a
Speaker 1: big point of discussion. Now this is a common talking
Speaker 1: point among anti ball rollback people because tree lined fairways
Speaker 1: limit distance, right, they sometimes take driver out of players' hands.
Speaker 1: It's a way to roll back distance without touching the equipment,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the dream of the anti rollbacker
Speaker 1: right now. It's like, do anything anything at all, no
Speaker 1: matter how expensive it is, no matter how unreasonable, no
Speaker 1: matter how much it harms the golf course, as long
Speaker 1: as you're not going to, you know, touch the ball
Speaker 1: or touch the driver. And trees are a particularly hot
Speaker 1: button issue at Aronomic because one, many trees have been
Speaker 1: taken out over the past twenty five years at this
Speaker 1: golf course, and many trees also have died at the
Speaker 1: golf course. And two, the course itself, especially the front nine,
Speaker 1: is very short by modern Major championship standards. Yes it
Speaker 1: might be at that kind of over seven thousand yard mark,
Speaker 1: but man a lot of wedges on the front nine.
Speaker 1: And so, of course, you know, the prescription for this
Speaker 1: for some people is more trees. And we heard Rory
Speaker 1: McElroy talk about this, we heard Xander Schoffley talk about it,
Speaker 1: and what I thought was a pretty condescending but at
Speaker 1: the same time incoherent manner. So that was one factor
Speaker 1: of championship golf course design and set up that people
Speaker 1: sort of zeroed in on before the tournament began, But
Speaker 1: then once the tournament started, it became clear that the
Speaker 1: course was playing very tough, and player's complaints began to
Speaker 1: center on pin positions, or more precisely, the combination of ironomings,
Speaker 1: green designs, firmness, and pin positions, because all those things
Speaker 1: had to work together to create the dynamics we were seeing.
Speaker 2: So that was.
Speaker 1: The lead subject in the first two rounds, These pin positions,
Speaker 1: other factor of championship golf course design and setup became
Speaker 1: the primary subject. What did you make of the pin
Speaker 1: position discourse?
Speaker 3: It seemed more prevalent than it has been a lot
Speaker 3: of previous majors. I mean, at least in the two
Speaker 3: years that I've been doing this with you guys, Like,
Speaker 3: it seemed like it was the most prevalent in the
Speaker 3: discourse this week, more than any week house And the.
Speaker 1: Last time I remember it being this big of a
Speaker 1: deal pin position specifically was twenty eighteen at Shinnecock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I feel like it was really really out
Speaker 3: there in a way that you know, there was I know,
Speaker 3: there was like rough discourse and could you spray it?
Speaker 3: Could you not spray it? Like that's open for interpretation
Speaker 3: to a certain extent. But the pin position, Like immediately
Speaker 3: on Thursday, guys were coming off the course in the
Speaker 3: morning the easier wave, mind you that a lot of
Speaker 3: those guys did not cash in on and they were like,
Speaker 3: these these pins are out of control. The slope is
Speaker 3: more than we play on a week to week basis,
Speaker 3: And that is true as Andy hammered home throughout the week.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, wouldn't that theoretically be true for
Speaker 3: the majority of majors that are just not at Obviously
Speaker 3: Quail Hollow is a PGA Tour course, but any of
Speaker 3: these that are not your standard tour courses, like inherently,
Speaker 3: wouldn't they just have harder greens or more slope on
Speaker 3: the greens than the PGA Tour's rules allow.
Speaker 1: I would say so, yes. I think it's something that
Speaker 1: differentiates a major championship venue of these days, because the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour has certain standards for its golf courses. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't put pins in really slopey locations on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour. You need a certain sand in your bunkers.
Speaker 1: You know, all these things a PGA Tour course has
Speaker 1: become to an extent standardized in its presentation that doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to major championship courses, and so we get these
Speaker 1: things like you know, Southern Hills a few years ago,
Speaker 1: people were really surprised by the sand because it was different,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think that's part of what makes
Speaker 1: these courses special.
Speaker 3: Do you think, Uh, we just did like a little
Speaker 3: quick SGS Monday Monday scramble and I kind of alluded
Speaker 3: to this in a way. You're more of the expert
Speaker 3: that I am. That like, because we hadn't seen ironomynk
Speaker 3: and because it it hasn't come up in eight years,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of a way different context than
Speaker 3: where it came up last time that it is. All
Speaker 3: of this just allowed for way more latitude on the
Speaker 3: course set up discussion because it had never been seen
Speaker 3: before by a lot of these guys. So everybody who's
Speaker 3: just ripping off takes wherever whereas like you know, you
Speaker 3: know what you're getting at an Augusta or something on
Speaker 3: the US Open Rota because it comes up now and
Speaker 3: again every five years or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe so, but a lot of these guys had seen
Speaker 1: the course, a lot of these guys were at least
Speaker 1: familiar in a pass away with it. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I think that that same logic might apply to almost
Speaker 1: any major championship venue, aside from the ones that get
Speaker 1: visited very frequently, like the Old Course or Pinehurst or
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach. You know, most of the time it's ten
Speaker 1: years or something between visits to this type of course
Speaker 1: in a major championship, and so, yeah, there will be
Speaker 1: this element of a lack of familiarity. Guys are probably
Speaker 1: used to that crazy pin on the sixth hole at
Speaker 1: Augusta National to an extent, and so you know, if
Speaker 1: they had not seen Augusta National every year, would they
Speaker 1: complain about that pin position if it popped up in
Speaker 1: a random PGA Championship. I think that's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I know the answer, but certainly
Speaker 1: pin positions seem to be the thing that players are
Speaker 1: most concerned about. But then there was another set of
Speaker 1: complaints from another sector of the golf world at the
Speaker 1: same time, and this sector of the golf world was
Speaker 1: the data boys and the gamblers, and they were unhappy
Speaker 1: that Aronomick didn't seem to be rewarding what they interpret
Speaker 1: to be skill. Right, supposedly, the best ball strikers were
Speaker 1: not rising to the top, and instead the tournament was
Speaker 1: just a putting contest where anyone could win. And I
Speaker 1: will say probably the most sophisticated iteration of this complaint
Speaker 1: was that Ironomink did not differentiate slight inaccuracy off the
Speaker 1: tee from wild inaccuracy. Right Like a many tournaments, the
Speaker 1: rough just off the fairways was thicker and juicier than
Speaker 1: the rough way off the fairways, where it was often
Speaker 1: trampled down by galleries, and so slight misses were often
Speaker 1: penalized more harshly than wide misses. This is a problem
Speaker 1: also commonly noted at places like Oak Hill and Tory Pines.
Speaker 1: And this is where the tree the tree discourse comes
Speaker 1: back into play, because you know, if you have if
Speaker 1: you have rough and bunkers just off the fairway and
Speaker 1: then dense stance of dense stands of trees well off
Speaker 1: the fairways, then you have a kind of graduated penalty.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: TPC Sawgrass is of course that does this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: where there's a less severe penalty for a slight miss
Speaker 1: and a more severe penalty for a big miss and
Speaker 1: TPC sawgrass uses trees to this purpose. It uses bunkers
Speaker 1: and rough it also uses penalty hazards, and so that
Speaker 1: specific genre of this general complaint struck me. As you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to aeronomy, not totally off.
Speaker 3: Base, no, I mean when you have guys outwardly getting
Speaker 3: caught on a hot mic Justin Thomas hitting a horrendous
Speaker 3: drive and just yelling, oh, give me a good lie
Speaker 3: as it lands in a group of people, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: probably not not great. But again that's not a unique
Speaker 3: circumstance to ironomicc as you said, So, I do think
Speaker 3: it's fair, but like at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: kind of what are you gonna do about it? This
Speaker 3: comes up more more often than not, so I do
Speaker 3: think though, I know, like you got into a little
Speaker 3: bit of discourse about this recently on Twitter, Brian Schneider
Speaker 3: was tweeting about fairway speeds. Do you think maybe that
Speaker 3: is different at Aronomic that they were cut so fine
Speaker 3: that it was hard to hold a lot of these fairways.
Speaker 3: Also at Oakmont last year a good example, it was
Speaker 3: hard to hold a lot of the fairways that you
Speaker 3: would end up right in that first kind of cut,
Speaker 3: not a first cut, but in that first grouping of
Speaker 3: rough where if you hit the fairway, when if you
Speaker 3: were just blasting it all over the place, Cameron Smith,
Speaker 3: you could make par from anywhere because it didn't really matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think the fairways were cut too short,
Speaker 1: but that's that's Ernomic and everywhere else, you know, except
Speaker 1: for maybe a couple of places, like even Augusta National,
Speaker 1: where they could cut it shorter, but they don't because
Speaker 1: they want balls to hang up on uneven lies. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen the fairway grass
Speaker 1: kept longer, and I'd love that at in fact, most
Speaker 1: tournament venues that we see. But yeah, I mean all
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're talking about, the uh you know,
Speaker 1: penalizing certain kinds of shots at a graduated level. I
Speaker 1: hear it, I get it. I appreciate courses like TPC Sawgrass,
Speaker 1: where you know, the design of the course was meant
Speaker 1: from the beginning to enforce that kind of graduated penalty.
Speaker 1: But I think when we bring that complaint to a
Speaker 1: particular course like Aronomy, we're very much at risk of
Speaker 1: saying every championship course or should basically be the same yeah,
Speaker 1: and we might as well just kind of play the
Speaker 1: majors on a grid that doesn't yield any numbers that
Speaker 1: might offend people.
Speaker 3: Isn't that just like I mean it was when we
Speaker 3: were when we did the Fairness episode of this, It's like,
Speaker 3: this is an outdoor sport, guys, Like this is just
Speaker 3: this is the game, this is how it happens, and
Speaker 3: and you're not going to get the best break all
Speaker 3: the time, Like is it the most properly constructed thing
Speaker 3: in the world, Like maybe not, but at some point
Speaker 3: over the course of four rounds, you just play the
Speaker 3: hands you dealt. And I don't think a lot of
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of people on Twitter. I
Speaker 3: don't think a lot of the discourse really acknowledged that
Speaker 3: or got that or accepted that. And I don't know
Speaker 3: that a lot of the players Necessarsari really did either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know what, we often hear this phrase a
Speaker 1: proper test, Yeah, and that the courses like Ironomke where
Speaker 1: we're driving inaccuracy is not particularly punished or not a
Speaker 1: proper test or a well balanced test. And I just
Speaker 1: think that's an oversimplification. I think it's okay for a
Speaker 1: course not to be a proper test. You know, it's
Speaker 1: okay for different courses to highlight different skill sets and
Speaker 1: to forgive certain weaknesses. It's okay for different courses to
Speaker 1: be different in these respects.
Speaker 3: This is, this is how, this is how not baseball
Speaker 3: is the only other comp really because it's not like
Speaker 3: you're building a football field in a different way. But
Speaker 3: you can play based on weather, or you could build
Speaker 3: a dome in a football field depending on the style
Speaker 3: of team you have, where you could build your offense around,
Speaker 3: whether you play outdoors in.
Speaker 2: January or not. Like this is.
Speaker 3: You know, some ballparks are bigger than others, like that
Speaker 3: is the way to go. Like TPC River Highlands is
Speaker 3: not going to give you the same leaderboard as a
Speaker 3: ginormous ballpark out there somewhere else, like you, Brian Harmon
Speaker 3: has a chance at TPC River Highlands where he wouldn't
Speaker 3: other places. Like that happens, and that's the sport. And
Speaker 3: again when it happens on a weekly basis, I don't
Speaker 3: understand how these that criticism comes up so frequently here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, major championships are big deals and people
Speaker 1: invest a lot in the results of major championships. They
Speaker 1: want to see the best players win and they want
Speaker 1: there to be something memorable about it. They you know,
Speaker 1: maybe think back to their childhoods when when Tiger was winning,
Speaker 1: you know, every major, or Jack Nichols was winning every major,
Speaker 1: and they and they want that feeling to come back.
Speaker 1: But you know what, that's not going to be every major.
Speaker 1: It has never been every major. If you were actually
Speaker 1: living through the seventies when Nicholas was so dominant, or
Speaker 1: the early two thousands when when Tiger was doing his thing,
Speaker 1: you would know that there were some random major winners
Speaker 1: during those stretches as well, you know. And Aaron Rai
Speaker 1: went out and earned it. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: his back nine, it was immaculate. He hit all the
Speaker 1: shots that everybody else wasn't hitting, and they're very, very
Speaker 1: difficult shots. He is the one who hit them. And
Speaker 1: the challenge at aeronom Ink this past week was basically
Speaker 1: the greens and getting your approaches in these little sections
Speaker 1: where you could actually make some putts and then making
Speaker 1: those puts on very slopey, tricky greens. And Aaron Rye
Speaker 1: did that, and he was also in the fairway most
Speaker 1: of the time. But you know, maybe maybe not to
Speaker 1: everybody's satisfaction over four rounds, but the chorus was posing.
Speaker 1: I thought a very interesting set of questions throughout the week,
Speaker 1: including on Sunday to the whole field and to Aaron Rye,
Speaker 1: and he had the answers in those last few holes.
Speaker 3: Well that's like, you know, you can step me straight here,
Speaker 3: please do if I'm wildly off base.
Speaker 2: I don't understand the putting contest.
Speaker 3: I understand it more in a place like Amex John Rahm,
Speaker 3: you know, Piece of s putting contest, the famous video,
Speaker 3: Like I get into a place like that where everybody
Speaker 3: is hitting the fairway, everybody is hitting the green, and like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you gotta when everybody is kind of on an equal
Speaker 3: playing field there to a certain extent, like yes, everybody
Speaker 3: has to make every putt because the final score is
Speaker 3: going to be twenty four under or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: and you have to make every put available to you.
Speaker 3: But in a major especially but really any week, like
Speaker 3: you have to make putts to win at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, Like is it everything kind of a
Speaker 3: putting contest? Like yes, you can get away with putting
Speaker 3: poorly if you're putting from you know, eight feet compared
Speaker 3: to twenty feet in proximity to.
Speaker 2: The whole on average or whatever.
Speaker 3: But to win anything, Winning is incredibly hard on any
Speaker 3: level of professional golf, especially when you're playing every week.
Speaker 3: You have to make putts to win every week. Every
Speaker 3: week is inherently a putting contest to some extent. So
Speaker 3: I don't understand how that is like a criticism that
Speaker 3: comes up all the time, because like, it's common sense
Speaker 3: you have to bike putts to win. I don't like,
Speaker 3: you're not going to win a major putting poorly.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. That never has made any sense to me.
Speaker 1: This is partly the nature of golf where we're putting
Speaker 1: is has such an outsize importance and score.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, man, that's how you get the ball
Speaker 2: in the hole, like it exist right.
Speaker 1: If the hole were much bigger, then we would see
Speaker 1: less importance on putting. But it is very difficult to
Speaker 1: make a putt outside of five feet, so inevitably those
Speaker 1: strokes that you take on the green, you know, making
Speaker 1: those putts that that other people aren't making, has has
Speaker 1: a huge effect on the score. And that's any week.
Speaker 1: I think what people are saying when they say it's
Speaker 1: a stupid putting contest is that it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: you do from tee to green, it's everybody ends up
Speaker 1: in the same place on the green and from there
Speaker 1: it's a quote unquote putting contest. That's not really what
Speaker 1: I saw this week. Uh, you know, I get I
Speaker 1: get it that guys are missing fair ways and over
Speaker 1: the course of four rounds weren't being penalized to the
Speaker 1: exact number that we prefer. But I thought I thought
Speaker 1: interesting shots were being hit from tee to green, and
Speaker 1: then interesting shots were being hit on the greens. And
Speaker 1: so sure, putting may have been very important this week,
Speaker 1: but I think we have to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: that watching the tournament is really critical and and for me,
Speaker 1: watching those golf shots at AERONOMYK was super, super compelling,
Speaker 1: And that's that's a lot of what I want out
Speaker 1: of a championship golf course.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, sounds like we more or less agree
Speaker 1: on this. I didn't really have to convince you of anything.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to convince me of anything. But it
Speaker 1: would be interested to hear from from listeners about what
Speaker 1: they think on this subject. So that's that's what we
Speaker 1: got last week. But there is a whole history to
Speaker 1: championship design and set up that I think we need
Speaker 1: to be familiar with in order to fully understand what
Speaker 1: happened in aeronom ink, and also just to recognize that
Speaker 1: people have been having these discussions for one hundred years
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Speaker 1: That's code fried Egg at mobjack dot com. All right, so, PJ,
Speaker 1: this debate about championship golf courses goes back a long way.
Speaker 1: How far back is an open question. There are probably
Speaker 1: those who would take it all the way back to
Speaker 1: you know, the French and Indian War maybe, but no.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, the Americans had like a real advantage
Speaker 3: in the Revolutionary War. They they kind of knew the
Speaker 3: terrain way better. I mean, that's championship management at the
Speaker 3: end of the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say the Glorious Revolution was really
Speaker 1: the main turning point here. But you know, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about championship set up specifically, a lot of people
Speaker 1: might might point out the nineteen oh five Open Championship
Speaker 1: when a bunch of bunkers were added to the old
Speaker 1: course in response to the Haskell ball. It's a very
Speaker 1: interesting story. But for me, the modern notion of a
Speaker 1: major championship venue, especially a US Open or PGA championship venue,
Speaker 1: really began to form in the nineteen thirties when the
Speaker 1: USGA became concerned about low scoring at the US Open.
Speaker 1: So until nineteen thirty six, the US Open scoring record
Speaker 1: was two eighty six. But at the nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: US Open, Tony Manero shot to eighty two at Baltasral
Speaker 1: Then the next year at Oakland Hills, which was thought
Speaker 1: to be a very difficult golf course, Ralph Goldall shot
Speaker 1: to eighty one. And by the way, I'm not totally
Speaker 1: sure how to pronounce Ralph Gildall, Ralph Goodall, Ralph Gouldal.
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time with his name. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna admit it. He was a great player. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like the best player in the world in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 3: People are familiar that I can't pronounce anything, so I
Speaker 3: don't blame you.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a company characteristic at this point.
Speaker 1: By the way, the US Open scoring record is now
Speaker 1: two sixty eight. Rory shot at Congressional in two twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen I believe, so we're way out of the two
Speaker 1: eighties at this point. But man, were they concerned about
Speaker 1: about these scores in the nineteen thirties. This created a
Speaker 1: lot of consternation within those clubs, Baltisterrawl in Oakland Hills
Speaker 1: and the USGA. The USGA at the time had a
Speaker 1: new young executive director named Joe Dye who was inclined
Speaker 1: to do something like, you know, encourage these clubs to
Speaker 1: toughen up their courses. He wanted the US Open to
Speaker 1: remain the toughest test in golf, which meant that scoring
Speaker 1: needed to be higher. Around the same time, there was
Speaker 1: an ambitious, up and coming golf architect named Robert Trent
Speaker 1: Jones who saw an opportunity in all this. Jones started
Speaker 1: to show up at US Opens and compile data on
Speaker 1: t shots. He'd go out and find a relatively flat
Speaker 1: hole and draw a series of chalk lines through the
Speaker 1: fairway at different distances. Imagine this.
Speaker 2: This is what he.
Speaker 1: During the Open. There's a different vibe. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: Pj's was much more casual.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know.
Speaker 1: RTJ could just go out there and draw on the fairways.
Speaker 1: Then he'd recruit a couple of young caddies and have
Speaker 1: them mark where each ball landed and rolled out to
Speaker 1: so he was getting carried distance and total distance, and
Speaker 1: Jones would write down those numbers on a clipboard. So
Speaker 1: this was basically like a primitive version of shot Link.
Speaker 2: The original data boy.
Speaker 1: Robert Trent Jones an amazing story. This is a story
Speaker 1: that was told to me by Jim Hansen, who wrote
Speaker 1: the Robert Trent Jones' biography, A difficult part which everybody
Speaker 1: should read.
Speaker 2: It's full of fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: But what Jones found out, of course, was that players
Speaker 1: were hitting the ball much farther than they used to,
Speaker 1: and much farther than anybody thought they had been. And
Speaker 1: a big reason for that was that in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: steel shafts have basically replaced hickory shafts, and this made
Speaker 1: ball striking much more consistent and allowed players to swing
Speaker 1: harder and harder. Basically, players got these steel shafts in
Speaker 1: their clubs and they gradually realized, oh, I can go
Speaker 1: at this like I can really swing hard here and
Speaker 1: it's not going to break down because hickory shafts had
Speaker 1: it was all about tempo, right, it was all about
Speaker 1: the timing of the whip. But steel shafts were a
Speaker 1: much different deal.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, the manufacturing standards for balls were
Speaker 1: getting better and better and more consistent. Titleist was founded
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, so the game was changing in
Speaker 1: a number of respects. Players are getting longer, and all
Speaker 1: this set a really important precedent. Technology was leading to
Speaker 1: distance gains and lower scoring and this put the governing
Speaker 1: bodies and golf architects on the back foot and forced
Speaker 1: them to react. So by the end of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Joe Dye, the executive director of the USGA, and Robert
Speaker 1: Trent Jones had gotten to know each other pretty well
Speaker 1: and they agreed that something had to be done, but
Speaker 1: because of World War Two, they couldn't do anything for
Speaker 1: a while. So that brings us to the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one US Open at Oakland Hills. Now, remember this is
Speaker 1: where Ralph Goldaal shot two eighty one seven under Imagine
Speaker 1: that being freaked out about seven under. In nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: the USGA and Oakland Hills decided that this wasn't going
Speaker 1: to happen again, so they brought in Robert Trent Jones
Speaker 1: to renovate the golf course, and this renovation ended up
Speaker 1: setting the mold for championship golf course design and set
Speaker 1: up for the rest of the century. Essentially, he actually
Speaker 1: didn't lengthen the course that much. He would do that
Speaker 1: at other courses, but Oakland Hills was already pretty long
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. But he did make the fairways
Speaker 1: nearwor He added bunkers on both sides of the landing
Speaker 1: zones for drives, so that each fairway had a kind
Speaker 1: of bottleneck. He added bunkers around the greens to penalize
Speaker 1: wayward approach shots. He advised the club to grow up
Speaker 1: the rough very very high. And finally, and this was
Speaker 1: very clever, he reduced the par from seventy two to seventy.
Speaker 3: You know, that's an underrated the Summerlan model kind of
Speaker 3: just it.
Speaker 2: It really might be the way to go. It might
Speaker 2: be the way to fix everything.
Speaker 1: Just I mean it just like it solves all your problems.
Speaker 1: It might not have been ourtj who recommended this. It
Speaker 1: might have been the USGA that kind of was and
Speaker 1: Joe Die who are really behind this. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is this is so much of the story here,
Speaker 1: just like turn a couple of par fives into par
Speaker 1: fours and and we're good.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you know that's two shots right there, right
Speaker 3: there in front of you. Three shots, Yeah, two shots
Speaker 3: over four rounds.
Speaker 2: You want to be seven under, psych.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is amazing, I mean, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden instead of instead of seven under, it would have
Speaker 1: been won over. Yeah in nineteen thirty seven, right, maybe.
Speaker 2: There's your seven shots right there, congrrect exactly.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the nineteen fifty one US Open plays out,
Speaker 1: Ben Hogan wins with a score of seven over with
Speaker 1: this new par so it really wasn't that. I mean,
Speaker 1: players were a lot better by then. Ben Hogan was
Speaker 1: an amazing I mean in the early fifties, like he
Speaker 1: was incredible, and so, yeah, the course was harder. In
Speaker 1: the locker room afterwards, he said something to the effect
Speaker 1: of I'm glad I brought this course, this monster to
Speaker 1: its knees, famous line, And this was just like catnip
Speaker 1: for the pus. Oh yeah, they love this. I mean
Speaker 1: it just adored, you know, this idea of the monster.
Speaker 3: Some could say that this is the original Augusta nashnal
Speaker 3: is a par sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really set the mold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bryceon and Ben Hogan just it. They're forever linked
Speaker 3: in every way, shape and form.
Speaker 1: I really wish Bryson kept wearing the the Hogan cap.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have given in on that, like that was
Speaker 1: that was his idea, you.
Speaker 3: Know there when you were when you're trying to be,
Speaker 3: when you're trying to be you know, net positive with
Speaker 3: the crushers, you got to think about can we sell
Speaker 3: those versus can we just sell a normal hat.
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of what it does. He needs
Speaker 2: he needs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need the the a bit, a bit whatever
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to try.
Speaker 1: That's the good stars. So yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it stands for. It's not my role at Frida Egg No,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we just talked County CLIs. Yeah, don't look at me.
Speaker 1: So the membership was very proud. This was a big
Speaker 1: success for them, and suddenly every other US open course
Speaker 1: wanted Robert Tramp Jones to come in and do the
Speaker 1: same thing, right, So he went to basically all the
Speaker 1: other US Open courses in the fifties and sixties and
Speaker 1: and did this, and that's how he became known as
Speaker 1: the Open Doctor. The problem with this style of renovation, though,
Speaker 1: is that it's pretty vulnerable to advances in technology. If
Speaker 1: players get a little bit longer and are able to
Speaker 1: carry those bottlenecks in the fair way, if they're able
Speaker 1: to hit the ball higher and land the ball softer
Speaker 1: on the greens, then the course kind of loses its
Speaker 1: teeth and you have to bring in the architect again
Speaker 1: to move the teas back, or move the bunkers farther
Speaker 1: down range, or make the fairways even narrower, and you
Speaker 1: put yourself in a position where you have to keep chasing.
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of championship courses ended up doing,
Speaker 1: including Oakland Hills. A lot of championship courses did this
Speaker 1: through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties continued to pursue
Speaker 1: this style of golf course. They would call up Robert
Speaker 1: Trent Jones and either he would come back or he'd say, actually,
Speaker 1: why don't you get in touch with my son Reese,
Speaker 1: he can do it. So then from the late nineties forward,
Speaker 1: a couple of things happen. Things were primed to change.
Speaker 1: Right at, clubs were sort of dissatisfied after four decades
Speaker 1: of this at what was happening? Right, We're spending all
Speaker 1: this money and the course doesn't seem to be getting better,
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be getting harder. It seems to be
Speaker 1: getting worse.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to interrupt this train of thought,
Speaker 3: go for it. But when when you're in Oakland Hills
Speaker 3: or any of these places and you're bringing in you know,
Speaker 3: we want to make the.
Speaker 2: US open, the Pro game.
Speaker 3: Be at or as close to par as possible, and
Speaker 3: that's you know, you know, ten days once every eight years.
Speaker 3: What are these members thinking when this course gets added,
Speaker 3: bunkering added, rough whatever, and the people that have to
Speaker 3: play this for the other fifty weeks out of the
Speaker 3: seven other years without a major.
Speaker 1: There, Well, I think at first they were thinking, great,
Speaker 1: my course is the big bully. You know, it's I
Speaker 1: play at a course that that made Ben Hogan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: call it a monster. And there's a kind of pride
Speaker 1: in that we're we're the we're the big boys in town.
Speaker 1: But then after after four decades, it starts to get
Speaker 1: a little bit old.
Speaker 2: How is that fun?
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I, you know, this kicked Ben Hogan's ass,
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna just go out there and spin around.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, at some point I would get
Speaker 3: sick of it too. I guess it would take me
Speaker 3: a lot quicker than forty years.
Speaker 2: You would think.
Speaker 1: But you know, these uh, you know, these buses take
Speaker 1: a while to turn around. And also, you know, toward
Speaker 1: the end of the twentieth century, dynamics within clubs like
Speaker 1: these are changing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There are more women playing, there are more families playing,
Speaker 1: and uh, and just the general ideology around golf is
Speaker 1: becoming less kind of macho, I think, and uh, and
Speaker 1: taste in architecture are changing. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's happening in the late nineties, right. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the first big thing that happens in the late nineties
Speaker 1: is that the earthing covered solid core golf ball in
Speaker 1: the titanium three hundred and sixty cc driver started to
Speaker 1: be developed, and the governing bodies basically decided not to
Speaker 1: do anything about it, and players started to hit the
Speaker 1: ball so far and so high and so accurately that
Speaker 1: the open doctor style of renovation was no longer cutting
Speaker 1: it at all. The other thing that happened was that
Speaker 1: Golden age golf architecture came back into fashion, and all
Speaker 1: these clubs that regularly hosted majors became interested in restoring
Speaker 1: their courses, or at least they recognized that if they
Speaker 1: didn't do restoration work, they might fall in the rankings
Speaker 1: right or they might feel like they're behind the other
Speaker 1: clubs that were doing this work. So this is when
Speaker 1: clubs began to remove trees and widen fairways and in
Speaker 1: large greens and basically reverse all the work that the
Speaker 1: Jones family had done over the past fifty to sixty years.
Speaker 1: So the question became, how do these courses now defend themselves?
Speaker 1: If they're wider, if the greens are bigger, if there
Speaker 1: aren't as many trees anymore, how do you produce a
Speaker 1: championship that feels like a major. Yes, you can build
Speaker 1: new bactees. You can grow up the rough four championship week.
Speaker 1: You can pass off a couple of par five's as
Speaker 1: par four's. You can try some of those ploys that
Speaker 1: Joe Die and Robert Sheen Jones used, But really the
Speaker 1: primary defense had to be the greens. They had to
Speaker 1: be firm and fast, and the pin positions needed to
Speaker 1: be very difficult, and on top of that you had
Speaker 1: to hope for the right weather. Wind and firmness are
Speaker 1: really the only things that bother modern pro golfers playing
Speaker 1: the equipment that they do. And this approach does work
Speaker 1: for controlling scoring, but one, it's hard to pull off.
Speaker 1: You need a lot of things to go right. And two,
Speaker 1: it puts a golf course on the edge. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: the greens get a little bit too firm, if the
Speaker 1: pins are a little too close to.
Speaker 2: Say it line, then you might lose the golf course. Yeah,
Speaker 2: come on, there it is.
Speaker 1: And uh and we've seen that maybe happen a couple
Speaker 1: of times. You know, Shinnecock Hills is the place. And
Speaker 1: I listen, I loved those championships, but a lot of
Speaker 1: key people didn't. We got a little bit of a
Speaker 1: taste of it at aernomic.
Speaker 2: But this is this is what.
Speaker 1: You're playing with in modern championship golf course setup. You
Speaker 1: can't defend these courses in any other way. And so
Speaker 1: basically it's a big balancing act. You have to consider
Speaker 1: the club's desire for a highly rated, historically faithful course,
Speaker 1: but you also have to respond to these massive leaps
Speaker 1: and technology and player skill level, and you have to
Speaker 1: satisfy the public's desire for a tough test and a
Speaker 1: winning score in single digits. Meanwhile, you have people like
Speaker 1: Brandal Shambly screaming for a return essentially to the Robert
Speaker 1: Trent Jones style of championship golf course design and setup,
Speaker 1: which would be, in my opinion, totally fruitless. But he
Speaker 1: thinks that it's the panacea. And then you have people
Speaker 1: like me and some of our colleagues at Frida egg
Speaker 1: saying the real problem is the equipment. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: there's no way for people to be happy.
Speaker 2: So is this a.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean contextually right. I feel like
Speaker 3: every major has its own the Master's notwithstanding, because it's
Speaker 3: at the same course every year, so it's a completely
Speaker 3: different fiece.
Speaker 2: The other three all have their.
Speaker 3: Own viewpoint, right, Like the US Open is supposed to
Speaker 3: punch you in the face.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be as close to par as possible
Speaker 2: the Open, which.
Speaker 1: Makes which makes the US Open super tough to set
Speaker 1: up now because their identity is also great American golf courses,
Speaker 1: which means they're going to these primarily restored Golden Age
Speaker 1: golf courses. But you also need to to cling to
Speaker 1: this tournament around even par like talk about a balancing
Speaker 1: act that's really hard to pull off in a satisfying way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have that, then the Open you have
Speaker 3: conditions and these historical venues and I feel like.
Speaker 2: Like the Open has the easiest almost I was gonna
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 3: I feel like you just roll the ball out there
Speaker 3: and it's like, hey, this course hasn't been touched since
Speaker 3: eighteen whatever.
Speaker 2: Here you go, like.
Speaker 1: Except by Mackenzie and Ebert. Yeah, they've done some things,
Speaker 1: but the extent of the work on these courses and
Speaker 1: the effect that that work has on actual play is
Speaker 1: much lower because because like, really it's about the land
Speaker 1: and the location and the elements, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: that's what defines the Open. And it's okay with the
Speaker 1: RNA if the winning scorer is around twenty under, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really bother people because sometimes that's what you get,
Speaker 1: and so it really does. Yeah, it allows the where
Speaker 1: the Open, the Open road allows the Open to have
Speaker 1: such a clear identity, and yeah, as you're arguing, the
Speaker 1: US Open has a clear identity as well, even if
Speaker 1: it's very hard to maintain that identity.
Speaker 2: So then like it do you think.
Speaker 3: Is a lot of the are a lot of these
Speaker 3: issues with however, whatever side of the setup debate, if
Speaker 3: you want like the Brandle side or the rollback side
Speaker 3: or the third middle avenue of you just want a
Speaker 3: fair test or whatever it is, Like, I feel like
Speaker 3: a lot of that has to do within the context
Speaker 3: of the championship, right because the PGA, the identity list
Speaker 3: PGA another big conversation of the last ten days, Like
Speaker 3: some years it's in the twenties or the upper teams
Speaker 3: like hand Up, I expected it to be probably above
Speaker 3: fifteen given content clues, and then you know this year
Speaker 3: was nine. Quell Hollow I think was nine or eight.
Speaker 3: It was under ten. It was in single digits. So
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 2: Is it is it better.
Speaker 3: Or worse to just not have the identity that you
Speaker 3: could essentially kind of do anything because you're not trying
Speaker 3: to protect par and you're not trying to protect the
Speaker 3: weather or whatever the Open is going to get from
Speaker 3: that luck of the draw aspect.
Speaker 1: There is a certain freedom in that, isn't there.
Speaker 3: Just like I don't know if it's good or bad,
Speaker 3: because not having identity, I would say is objectively bad.
Speaker 1: But yeah, from the perspective of the fan, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree with you that the PGA Championship doesn't really
Speaker 1: know what it is. But the fact that the PGA
Speaker 1: Championship is not wetted to a particular identity means that
Speaker 1: Carrie Haig, the setups are at the PGA of America,
Speaker 1: can be a little bit flexible in his setups, Like
Speaker 1: he's really just looking to set up what he thinks
Speaker 1: is going to be a good championship, and he's pretty
Speaker 1: good at that, you know, Like even if he gets
Speaker 1: some stinkers of courses, in general, it doesn't turn out
Speaker 1: too badly. This was the first PGA Championship that I
Speaker 1: can remember where so many people objected to the setup,
Speaker 1: and that's partly because it started to become started to
Speaker 1: feel like a US open to some degree. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the PGA Championship is unique among the majors
Speaker 1: in the sense that we don't really know what it is,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to know what we really want out
Speaker 1: of the setup.
Speaker 3: So is this I don't want to say this whole
Speaker 3: episode or this whole argument or whatever, but a lot
Speaker 3: of this, you would say the course set up discourse.
Speaker 3: And I would say, in my limited experience dealing with
Speaker 3: the course set up discourse, I feel like the majority
Speaker 3: of it is on the US Open because it is
Speaker 3: the hardest one to set up.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, That's when this is the hottest, you know, because
Speaker 1: the master is the masters. They always seem to set
Speaker 1: up the course perfectly. You know, they do it quietly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and you know it's a great golf course,
Speaker 1: and they have the they have the ability to basically
Speaker 1: redesign their golf course every year, so that helps as well.
Speaker 1: The Open is the Open, as as we talked about,
Speaker 1: and conditions and uh, the seaside elements are really what
Speaker 1: define that championship. The US Open is really the one
Speaker 1: that people bring the most baggage to because the US
Speaker 1: Open is is means something to people, Right, There're people
Speaker 1: who remember the US Open being this big, badass championship
Speaker 1: and maybe there's something of you know, America is a
Speaker 1: fallen empire feeling about it.
Speaker 2: You know, we used to be a country. You know,
Speaker 2: we used to be a proper country, yere. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've heard that before.
Speaker 1: In any case, there's a lot of pressure on US
Speaker 1: Open setups and you can expect that to be to
Speaker 1: be a big topic of discussion at Shinnecock. But you know,
Speaker 1: Shinnecock is a is a good one for the USGA.
Speaker 1: It takes a little bit of pressure off of them
Speaker 1: because again, like a like an Open championship, the elements,
Speaker 1: the land, you know that that's the There's.
Speaker 2: Only so much you can do down there.
Speaker 3: Ye win's winds coming in, whatever's going to happen, it's
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 2: Try heat.
Speaker 1: Even as I say that, you know, obviously twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: which was such a disaster for the USGA, they felt
Speaker 1: that they had to completely change their change their approach.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's this is not the not the place
Speaker 1: to talk about it.
Speaker 2: But I think they there there will be time.
Speaker 3: There will be time for that within the next month.
Speaker 3: I'm quite sure.
Speaker 1: God. Yeah, I mean we're just starting to to, you know,
Speaker 1: enter the run up to our US Open content and
Speaker 1: there is there's a lot to do, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to discuss, but I yeah, at some point we need
Speaker 1: to have a discussion of how twenty eighteen changed US
Speaker 1: Open setup, because they have I have really dialed it
Speaker 1: back since then.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just.
Speaker 1: Hope they let Shinnecock be Shinnecock. In any case, you.
Speaker 3: Know another thing, another thing in professional golf that has
Speaker 3: been permanently altered by Phil Nicholson.
Speaker 2: How about it? I mean, the list is pretty long.
Speaker 1: So was phill right? Was Phil right all along chasing
Speaker 1: after that putt?
Speaker 2: Was he right? You know?
Speaker 3: I wasn't there on Saturday, but I was there on
Speaker 3: Sunday and I followed Phil's Sunday round and then he
Speaker 3: signed my twenty eighteen US Open hat. So I have
Speaker 3: the perfect momento from from Scarbrooks.
Speaker 2: It was the Philly US Open. So Cherry, you just
Speaker 2: said Brooks. I thought Brooks was your guy.
Speaker 3: I love Brooks, But you know, when I don't think,
Speaker 3: I think people remember Phil hitting that ball more than
Speaker 3: maybe Brooks winning at the end of.
Speaker 1: The day, there's no doubt about that, And they remember
Speaker 1: Zach Johnson's well could not the things that enter the
Speaker 1: cultural firmament, you know, never expect what it is. So okay,
Speaker 1: we're basically up to date here. Let's wrap this up
Speaker 1: by talking about what we really want to see out
Speaker 1: of a championship golf course design and set up.
Speaker 2: What is that for you? I think.
Speaker 3: The more I've been paying attention to course set up
Speaker 3: and kind of you know, learning through osmosis and being
Speaker 3: more attentive and understanding what I'm watching more than maybe
Speaker 3: when I was just casually watching majors as a big
Speaker 3: fan or whatever, I think it's cooler to me when
Speaker 3: guys have to hit a variety of shots. I just
Speaker 3: think that's much better. When you have to I feel
Speaker 3: like you just earn it more. And honestly, Aaron Rai
Speaker 3: earned it. He was shaping shots left and right. And
Speaker 3: that's why, like for whatever he is as as a
Speaker 3: person or a marketable asset, like I've appreciated Patrick Reed
Speaker 3: because Patrick Reed is a shot shaper and goes out
Speaker 3: there and can do those types of things. And that's
Speaker 3: the type of golf that I really enjoy watching.
Speaker 2: So I think.
Speaker 3: A a pinehursty type area with short grass that you
Speaker 3: can put, you can chip, You're into the grain. You
Speaker 3: it's not just ah, you know, I missed the green
Speaker 3: and now I'm in a pile of rough. But I
Speaker 3: just got to hack this onto the green and whatever
Speaker 3: happens happens. I think, like at Oakmont last year, that
Speaker 3: introduces a level of variability and randomness, and you know,
Speaker 3: is my ball sitting up? Is it sitting down where?
Speaker 3: You know, in this pile of rough? Not that there's
Speaker 3: not variability or randomness at a Pinehurst or a Shinnacock,
Speaker 3: Like you could be in the fescue, you could be
Speaker 3: in the sand, you could be the chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like, but that is that.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's more room for creativity in a
Speaker 3: setup like that versus an Oakmont where it or beth
Speaker 3: Page even where it's just like, ah, you're in the
Speaker 3: rough now. And I I'm just more entertained by that.
Speaker 3: I don't really like what I prefer if major championships
Speaker 3: were not twenty under Like yeah, and I understand like
Speaker 3: the old course is a kind of unique beast, but
Speaker 3: was that I vividly remember being like kind of upset
Speaker 3: by just seeing it bludgeoned and having it be twenty
Speaker 3: two or whatever.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, this is out of control
Speaker 3: and that's an equipment thing and that is a weather thing,
Speaker 3: and like it does I am like offended by the
Speaker 3: number of twenty in a major, like totally hand up.
Speaker 2: I am. It just feels not right and I don't
Speaker 2: want anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: But I'm not like, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 3: Pebbler tories get like Pebble next year for the US Open,
Speaker 3: like so that could be close to par probably not.
Speaker 3: But if the US Open is like five six under
Speaker 3: at Pebble, I'm not gonna be like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: this is the worst thing that ever happened. Like, I
Speaker 3: know a lot of people are gonna be either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that makes you different from a lot of
Speaker 1: people who sort of demand much higher scores. But I
Speaker 1: don't think you're alone. And you know, seeing twenty and
Speaker 1: and kind of.
Speaker 2: Feeling the number, the number twenty deeply offends me.
Speaker 1: It just savors of the PGA Tour, right. I think
Speaker 1: it reminds us of every week on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: And the big thing is that we want majors to
Speaker 1: be special, and that's most of what I'm hearing for you.
Speaker 1: You want players to be challenged in ways that they're
Speaker 1: not normally challenged week in and week out on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour, and that means hitting different kinds of shots,
Speaker 1: having different kinds of demands put on them, answering questions
Speaker 1: that they normally don't have to answer a PGA tour courses.
Speaker 1: So it's really about the shots primarily, but also, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes out in the score and h you know,
Speaker 1: and so there needs to be an element of scoring
Speaker 1: control as well, and I don't think anybody would deny that.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let me.
Speaker 1: Give you my three part test for a major championship setup.
Speaker 1: The first big thing I'm looking for is that each
Speaker 1: course's unique identity is highlighted, that the course and its
Speaker 1: history and its design matter to the person or the
Speaker 1: organization that's setting it up. And this is why I
Speaker 1: object so much to the Brandle argument about rough and
Speaker 1: trees everywhere. It's like he wants every championship course to
Speaker 1: be the same, and I would just find that terribly,
Speaker 1: terribly boring. It was a mistake when urtj did it
Speaker 1: to the US Open venues in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: and it would be a mistake now. All right, So
Speaker 1: that's my first big criterion. You know, each course has
Speaker 1: a unique identity. I want the setup to highlight that.
Speaker 1: I don't want the setup to muffle that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I mean that makes sense, I think doubly so
Speaker 3: for rotating venues. Right when you go for the US
Speaker 3: Open or even the Open, when you go to these
Speaker 3: like iconic places, lean into it, make it different. Like
Speaker 3: I feel like that's kind of a no brainer I
Speaker 3: would agree with.
Speaker 1: And that's why I didn't. I wasn't offended by the
Speaker 1: Oakmont setup last year, even though it had really heavy rough,
Speaker 1: which I don't normally like, well, that's Oakmond, you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what Oakmont's been forever. Yeah, the fairways
Speaker 1: used to be wider, but you know, the founders and
Speaker 1: original designers of the club had a penal idea about
Speaker 1: what should be just off the fairways, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it was having that rough the way it was kind
Speaker 1: of highlighted the course's history and identity. The same rough
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as suitable at other courses, and so the
Speaker 1: setup needs to take into account what the courses. Okay,
Speaker 1: second big thing I'm looking for the ball does cool
Speaker 1: stuff on the ground. Yeah, and this is what this
Speaker 1: relates to your point about about short grass, and you know,
Speaker 1: I want majors to feel different than normal PGA Tour events.
Speaker 1: At normal PGA Tour events, the ball rarely does anything
Speaker 1: interesting on the ground. You know, approach shots don't run out,
Speaker 1: putts under ten feet don't break significantly. At majors, I
Speaker 1: want to see players have to reckon with the ground,
Speaker 1: and that means having firm conditions, interesting topography, significant tilt
Speaker 1: and contour in the greens in many cases, lots of
Speaker 1: short grass and pins that are not just in the
Speaker 1: flat areas. So I want to see the ball being
Speaker 1: dynamic on the ground because that's one of the most
Speaker 1: entertaining things to watch in golf. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most challenging things for players to confront and it's something
Speaker 1: we just don't get to.
Speaker 2: See on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: Absolutely third big thing I'm looking for and final big thing.
Speaker 1: Hitting a shot that gains an advantage on the field
Speaker 1: should be very difficult and scary. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they're impossible. Yeah, doesn't mean that you're making bogie everywhere.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even make It doesn't even mean that you're
Speaker 1: you know that making par is that hard on every
Speaker 1: single hole. It just means that if you want to
Speaker 1: make an eagle on a hole where everybody else is
Speaker 1: making birdie or make a par on a hole where
Speaker 1: everybody else is making bogie or whatever that whole spectrum
Speaker 1: happens to be. Hitting the shot that gains the significant
Speaker 1: advantage on the field should be a tough task and
Speaker 1: something that comes with risk. So this basically means that
Speaker 1: I don't want great shots to feel easy or routine.
Speaker 1: I want them to feel like real accomplishments at major championships. Now,
Speaker 1: at aeronom Inc. Maybe it was just a bit too
Speaker 1: hard art to hit a shot that gained an advantage
Speaker 1: on the field, and this led to a very bunched
Speaker 1: leader board and a tournament stagnated a couple of times.
Speaker 1: But then at the end, Aaron Rye hit a series
Speaker 1: of shots that no one else was hitting on Sunday
Speaker 1: and that was amazing to watch and it made for
Speaker 1: a very satisfying end to the championship. So I would
Speaker 1: say that Aronomic, you know, met this criteria. Hitting a
Speaker 1: great shot was possible, but it was very difficult and scary,
Speaker 1: and nobody did it except for Aaron Rye. Now would
Speaker 1: I have preferred if maybe two or three other people
Speaker 1: had also done it. From that, you know, final group
Speaker 1: of players who were within five shots of the lead.
Speaker 1: Would I prefer if there had been a couple other
Speaker 1: players in the mix who were hitting those shots. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But that's just a little tiny turn of the dial
Speaker 1: in one direction. I think that in general, what we
Speaker 1: saw was a course where it was very, very difficult
Speaker 1: to hit a shot that got you an advantage, and
Speaker 1: that in general is a good thing. And then at
Speaker 1: the end of the tournament we reaped the rewards of
Speaker 1: that because there was one guy who was ready to
Speaker 1: hit those shots, yep. And it really feels like he
Speaker 1: deserved to win, and I enjoyed that a great deal.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think he took chances that other people didn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, specifically, I'm thirteen, like he tried to fly
Speaker 3: it up to the hole and everybody else was kind
Speaker 3: of just chunking it out of the bunker and letting
Speaker 3: it go. And I think that you need to, like
Speaker 3: Aaron Rai, elevated his game and took some shots and
Speaker 3: made strategic decisions. I think that is maybe like when
Speaker 3: I'm I'm just on the fly thinking of what I
Speaker 3: would want a major to be. I think the opportunity
Speaker 3: to make strategic decisions, whether they be mistakes or were
Speaker 3: work out correctly. You have to you have to force.
Speaker 3: I would want to force people into making a choice
Speaker 3: and giving them the option of making the bad one
Speaker 3: just as much as giving them the option to make
Speaker 3: a good one. Like you're saying, be rewarded with an
Speaker 3: exceptional shot, but if you fail to pull off the
Speaker 3: exceptional shot, I would watch you to be penalized just
Speaker 3: just as much. Like I want a real risk reward
Speaker 3: aspect to this. And I feel like Aaron Rai took
Speaker 3: a lot of those opportunities presented to them on the
Speaker 3: back round.
Speaker 1: He was playing close to slopes on those greens that
Speaker 1: nobody else wanted to take on. Yeah, and he executed
Speaker 1: the shots and succeeded. And look, I didn't see Rom
Speaker 1: doing that, and I didn't see Rory doing that. They
Speaker 1: played great, I mean, they had great tournaments, and I
Speaker 1: would have loved to have seen them hit the shots
Speaker 1: that Aaron Ry did down the stretch and end up
Speaker 1: in a playoff with him, but they didn't. You know,
Speaker 1: Aaron Ry was the guy, and so in that sense,
Speaker 1: I thought the course was very successful and it represented
Speaker 1: a lot of what I want to see in a
Speaker 1: major championship where you know, hitting that shot that gains
Speaker 1: you the advantage is pretty rare, is more rare than
Speaker 1: it is at normal tournaments, and normal tournaments, you know,
Speaker 1: we get the sense that these guys are gods and that,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of playing golf, like they kind
Speaker 1: of are. They're they're hitting incredible shots at courses that
Speaker 1: you and I would find extremely challenging. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: to see it at a major championship where the demand,
Speaker 1: the baseline demand for that really successful shot, the shot
Speaker 1: that leads to the birdier, that leads to the to
Speaker 1: the one up advantage on the field, must be truly exceptional.
Speaker 2: It can't just be good for these guys. It has
Speaker 2: to be really good for these guys. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: That's just like you said before, I don't want to
Speaker 3: be like such a simpleton, but I guess I kind
Speaker 3: of am. Like I just want it to be special,
Speaker 3: Like I just want the feeling of like somebody went.
Speaker 2: Out and earned it.
Speaker 3: And I feel like in a tournament where you know,
Speaker 3: this winning score is twenty under and it's bunched up,
Speaker 3: like I don't know that that you're earning it the
Speaker 3: same way as grinding it out and separating late, like
Speaker 3: Aaron Ryan did. I feel like you need to give
Speaker 3: guys a chance to do something incredible that will be
Speaker 3: talked about for ten, twenty thirty years. And I think
Speaker 3: some majors have done a good job of that and
Speaker 3: some majors haven't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2: PJ.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to end. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining me on Championship Setup Ors.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 3: I feel like I had more, more, takes more to
Speaker 3: contribute here, so I'm happy to be moving up in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: This was, as I said at the beginning, less a
Speaker 1: one on one session and more of a kind of uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would call it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not really even a tutorial, but it's one of the
Speaker 1: It's like what you do at Oxford and Cambridge where
Speaker 1: you're with like a graduate student or something and you're
Speaker 1: learning together.
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean graduate student. That's a big step for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if well I'm saying I'm the graduate student,
Speaker 1: you might be the undergraduate and like we might we
Speaker 1: might I might be descending, you might be ascending.
Speaker 2: So you know, like a, yeah, we're both moving. Yeah,
Speaker 2: don't just stop making majors twenty under. It's fine. That's
Speaker 2: all I care about, all right.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, PJ, thanks for having me. This
Speaker 1: episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsom. Thank
Speaker 1: you Will. If you've been enjoying Designing Golf, I can
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