Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by our friends over
Speaker 1: at B Dratty. We've been up in the Upper Peninsula
Speaker 1: of Michigan playing a ton of golf this week, checking
Speaker 1: out a few different courses for the website and the podcast.
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Speaker 1: this morning I wore one along with a zero restriction
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Speaker 1: This episode, it's a little bit different. We're trying something
Speaker 1: new here. Let us know what you think about it.
Speaker 1: But Garrett Morrison, our managing editor at The Frida Egg
Speaker 1: joined we just kind of talked about our trip to
Speaker 1: Prairie Dunes and Southern Hills where we odd on some
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell. So we just talked about the differences and
Speaker 1: talked extensively about the recent renovation effort at Southern Hills,
Speaker 1: which is in line to host some major championships in
Speaker 1: the near future. So we talked at length about Gil
Speaker 1: Hans's renovation there at Southern Hills, and also our experience
Speaker 1: over at Prairie Dunes and the golf course and Perry
Speaker 1: Maxwell and one of the more underappreciated architects in the world.
Speaker 1: So let us know what you think about this episode.
Speaker 1: I think we'll do more and more of these about
Speaker 1: specific courses and architects as as we go along.
Speaker 2: I miss a Green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a frid Egg
Speaker 2: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Friday, Frida egg egg,
Speaker 2: Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run
Speaker 2: off of the course.
Speaker 1: So, Garrett, how's how's life in Portland?
Speaker 2: Life in Portland is great. It's very chill up here.
Speaker 2: The golf is good, and we're really enjoying ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Oregon's awesome.
Speaker 1: That's that's good. It's uh, how do you find the
Speaker 1: golf scene there versus Pebble.
Speaker 2: It's so much different, and in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: it's so much better because the the golf scene in
Speaker 2: Monterey was all about those great courses that were sort
Speaker 2: of destination courses for people, super expensive to play. If
Speaker 2: you were a local, you weren't on them very often,
Speaker 2: and so golf was a very kind of formal thing
Speaker 2: on the Monterey Peninsula. You know, if you're a local,
Speaker 2: your your options are kind of like Pacific Grove, Monterey Pines,
Speaker 2: Poppy Hills, sometimes the Black Horse Bayet courses and even
Speaker 2: those places, like they're not the cheapest courses in the
Speaker 2: world and if you go there, you can expect a
Speaker 2: longish round And so that's kind of what golf was
Speaker 2: for me for a few years there. And now you know,
Speaker 2: now that I'm in this area, there are short courses,
Speaker 2: there are pitching potts, there are golf courses that have
Speaker 2: like mini golf facilities attached to them. It's a lot
Speaker 2: different golf is you know, there's more variety and it's
Speaker 2: a lot less formal here. So I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker 2: I know a few of the courses in the area
Speaker 2: already because my parents live up here. But my dad
Speaker 2: and I are going to try to play a different
Speaker 2: course every Friday morning and so we'll kind of explore
Speaker 2: this scene that way. But last week we were at Eastmoreland,
Speaker 2: which is a municipal course in Portland. Pretty cool, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll go someplace different tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1: Oh that it's exciting. It's a nice little tradition, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it'll be It'll be a good way to
Speaker 2: kind of take advantage of the golf season because the
Speaker 2: golf season does end here. There's there's a there's a
Speaker 2: point at which you it's it's no longer fun to
Speaker 2: play golf in Oregon, it gets a little bit too wet,
Speaker 2: so we're going to try to get it out of
Speaker 2: our systems before that happens.
Speaker 1: So we uh we took a trip a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago to down did a little Maxwell tour. This
Speaker 1: is your first exposure to Perry Maxwell. I'd seen some stuff.
Speaker 1: I'd been to Prairie dunees, so we we draw we
Speaker 1: uh went to Prairie Dunes and UH Southern Hills and
Speaker 1: figured we'd reconvene here and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell and UH. In the two courses we saw, obviously,
Speaker 1: Prary Dune's iconic place that you know, most people have
Speaker 1: heard about, and Southern Hill is a you know, championship course,
Speaker 1: but had just underwent a gil Hant's restoration renovation. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what you would call it, you know, retrovation.
Speaker 2: He well, restovation is sometimes the term people use, but
Speaker 2: he said twenty to twenty five percent renovation and seventy
Speaker 2: five to eighty percent restoration. That's the number he put
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: So what did you know about Prairie Maxwell, Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 1: I call them Prairie Maxwell, Perry Maxwell. Coming into the
Speaker 1: trip in what kind of were your key takeaways from
Speaker 1: the architect that you know most people don't know a
Speaker 1: ton about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew embarrassingly little about Perry Maxwell going into
Speaker 2: this trip. I guess I knew that he had designed
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes, and I was really excited about playing that course.
Speaker 2: I've been I've been looking forward to playing that course
Speaker 2: for many years now. But aside from that, I suppose
Speaker 2: I primarily knew him as an Alistair mackenzie associate, somebody
Speaker 2: who helped build a few of Mackenzie's courses, including Crystal Downs,
Speaker 2: and so that's primarily where I heard his name. I
Speaker 2: was aware that there were some great courses that he
Speaker 2: built in Oklahoma and in that general region, but aside
Speaker 2: from that, just didn't know much about him. I guess
Speaker 2: I had heard the term Maxwell rolls before, right, which
Speaker 2: refers to the characteristics of his greens, his his kind
Speaker 2: of rolling greens. But you know, at the same time,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of architects who are who are
Speaker 2: known for bold green contours, and so it didn't really
Speaker 2: stick in my mind as being something distinctive to Maxwell.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of what I knew before. What about you, like,
Speaker 2: so you had played Prairie Dunes before. I mean, what
Speaker 2: was your appreciation of Maxwell, like.
Speaker 1: And I'd seen Crystal Downs to which he had, you know,
Speaker 1: he was pretty you know, he's obviously Mackenzie's associate there
Speaker 1: and had you know, large role in that golf course.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think one of the things I
Speaker 1: take away from Perry Maxwell, and I think like Langford
Speaker 1: Moreau fall into this bucket too, is that we like
Speaker 1: we romanticize the Golden Age architects, and the ones that
Speaker 1: get the most love tend to be the ones that
Speaker 1: designed in the most high profile places and have had
Speaker 1: their their designs the best preserved, right where like Alisair
Speaker 1: Mackenzie is obviously one of the greatest architects of all time,
Speaker 1: but he also has the you know, he has like
Speaker 1: museum pieces that have been well preserved in very high
Speaker 1: like Cyprus Point is a perfect example of that, where
Speaker 1: it's on Monterey Peninsula, like it gets it's got huge
Speaker 1: exposure and it is perfectly preserved, right And I think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the same thing could be said about like
Speaker 1: the Rayner McDonald's out east, where they're in these high
Speaker 1: profile areas and they haven't been that messed up. And
Speaker 1: I think Maxwell and Langford Moreau are two architects where
Speaker 1: their designs are in lesser known places, lots of small towns,
Speaker 1: lots of rural areas. And they also were building golf
Speaker 1: courses at the very end of the Golden Age and
Speaker 1: had their careers kind of derailed and a lot of
Speaker 1: their work for many reasons because where they built it
Speaker 1: haven't hasn't been preserved the way you know, National Golf
Speaker 1: Links or Piping Rock or these types of golf courses
Speaker 1: have out East or tillinghas to work in New York.
Speaker 1: So I think they're I think Perry Maxwell, you know,
Speaker 1: arguably is maybe the most underrated or underappreciated architect in
Speaker 1: the country of the US architects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he might very well be. And I think also
Speaker 2: part of it is and you alluded to this by
Speaker 2: saying that length Ford and Moreau and Perry Maxwell both
Speaker 2: built a lot of courses in rural areas, in small towns.
Speaker 2: Perry Maxwell built most of his courses in the same
Speaker 2: region in Oklahoma. I'm not exactly sure how many courses
Speaker 2: he built in Oklahoma alone, but it was a lot,
Speaker 2: and so to a great extent he was a regional architect.
Speaker 2: You know. That's not to say that he didn't go elsewhere. Obviously,
Speaker 2: he built Old Town, he worked on Augusta National, He
Speaker 2: did some traveling, especially after he had gotten established as
Speaker 2: an architect, but the concentration of his work was in Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: in the area where he lived. And I think that
Speaker 2: regional architects do tend to be underappreciated compared to these
Speaker 2: globe trotting architects like Alistair mackenzie, or compared to architects
Speaker 2: who built near huge urban areas.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Thomas, Yeah, like his Thomas you could say
Speaker 1: was like a regional architect in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: but but he was building it in la and you know,
Speaker 1: build these famous championship courses.
Speaker 2: And I think the same is the same could be
Speaker 2: said of today's architects. Right. We have a set of
Speaker 2: globe trotting international architects who often will get to work
Speaker 2: on some of those courses near big urban centers. And
Speaker 2: then we also have these architects who are focusing their
Speaker 2: work in one region. Dan Hickson in Oregon, the Collagon
Speaker 2: Design Firm, Trade Camp in Texas, you know, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of good work going on in these concentrated
Speaker 2: regional places. But obviously a lot of the attention tends
Speaker 2: to go to the architects who are traveling the world,
Speaker 2: like Tom Doak or Gil Hans or David clay Kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, bring up. And then there's also these guys
Speaker 1: that now with the way architecture is today, is like
Speaker 1: they have to specialize in and they specialize in a
Speaker 1: certain thing. So like you know, Chris Spence with Ross Restorations,
Speaker 1: or Jeff Mingay has been doing tons of Avy mccannwork
Speaker 1: in Pacific Northwest, like.
Speaker 2: In n C. He's very much. Yeah, he's kind of
Speaker 2: on this regional model, isn't he He's he's a lot
Speaker 2: of his work is in Washington and and I guess
Speaker 2: British Columbia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting and I think it so seeing
Speaker 1: seeing too, you know, now very well preserved Maxwell courses,
Speaker 1: you know, with with the original nine, So Perry Maxwell
Speaker 1: did our original nine at Prairie Dunes for those that
Speaker 1: don't know, and it was it's widely considered kind of
Speaker 1: the last design of the Golden Age. You know, it's
Speaker 1: probably argued it's you could argue men, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's considered you know, kind of like the last great
Speaker 1: design of the Golden Age, you know, and then his
Speaker 1: son Press came in and did a subsequent nine that's
Speaker 1: apparently to the plans that Perry had laid out when
Speaker 1: when he designed Prairie Dunes in the late thirties. So
Speaker 1: he did this in the height of the depression in Hutchinson,
Speaker 1: Kansas on you know, the Sandy site, and did it
Speaker 1: with pretty much no money, which is one of the
Speaker 1: amazing things I think with Maxwell's how many courses he
Speaker 1: designed during the Great Depression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's remarkable. And he designed his best
Speaker 2: or best known courses in nineteen thirty five, nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, right, and that was a really hard
Speaker 2: time to get anything built in America, much less golf courses.
Speaker 2: But there were some I mean, we can get into
Speaker 2: this further later, maybe, but there were some unique circumstances
Speaker 2: about where he was and who he was that enabled
Speaker 2: him to do this. You know, he was, first of all,
Speaker 2: an independently wealthy person. He didn't really go broke like
Speaker 2: other Golden Age architects did, and so in some senses
Speaker 2: he was an exception and took advantage of circumstances in
Speaker 2: his area. Nonetheless, he built these courses for for very
Speaker 2: little money, uh, even even at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've read Maxwell's book. I've read some of it.
Speaker 1: Uh that The Midwest Associate that.
Speaker 2: Uh Chris Klauser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chris Klauser, And I was curious, what how did
Speaker 1: Can you give us a little background on Perry Maxwell?
Speaker 2: Sure? Absolutely, I now so I'm definitely not a Perry
Speaker 2: Maxwell X expert. I've just read this this book by
Speaker 2: Chris Klauser called The Midwest Associate. Also read a couple
Speaker 2: of kind of specific things about the Southern Hills and
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes club histories. But from what I was able
Speaker 2: to gather from cliffs Chris Klauser's book, Perry Maxwell grew
Speaker 2: up in Kentucky in a wealthy family. Eventually relocated when
Speaker 2: he was making a family of his own to Ardmore, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: where he worked as a banker for many years. And
Speaker 2: he was a very well respected and well known local person.
Speaker 2: People all over the region, in fact, knew who he
Speaker 2: was and and uh and really respected him as a
Speaker 2: as a banker and a significant member of the community.
Speaker 2: While he was still working at the Bank in Ardmore,
Speaker 2: and this happened to be actually a very wealthy little
Speaker 2: pocket in Oklahoma at the time because of the oil money.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of money running through there.
Speaker 2: There were there were a lot of kind of newly
Speaker 2: rich people, and he was he was part of that
Speaker 2: part of that cash flow. I guess you could say
Speaker 2: Perry Maxwell got interested in golf architecture. And his first
Speaker 2: course he actually built on his own land, So that
Speaker 2: was Dornic Hills and it's right there in Ardmore, on
Speaker 2: the on the Perry Maxwell estate, and that's where he
Speaker 2: kind of worked out his initial theories and methods of
Speaker 2: golf architecture. It looks like it used to be one
Speaker 2: heck of a golf course. I mean, just fascinating. There's
Speaker 2: still sketches of what the holes look like. It still
Speaker 2: exists there, but I think in very much altered form.
Speaker 2: And so that's how he got his start, and you know,
Speaker 2: from there he you know, throughout the nineteen twenties he
Speaker 2: was building courses in Oklahoma and the surrounding areas, some
Speaker 2: courses in really remote places and some really rough places,
Speaker 2: a few sand green courses, and he just eventually developed
Speaker 2: a great reputation as a golf architect. Eventually, Alistair mackenzie
Speaker 2: heard about him and used him on a couple of projects, including,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned earlier, Crystal Downs. And then when the
Speaker 2: depression hit, Perry Maxwell was one of the few golf
Speaker 2: course architects who was still really producing significant work. So
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty five he was He built Southern Hills
Speaker 2: in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that opened in nineteen thirty six, and
Speaker 2: then right after that he built the original nine at
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes, and those are probably his two best known
Speaker 2: original designs. Now, in any case, he's a he's a
Speaker 2: remarkable person. There's a lot more to his life story.
Speaker 2: But a couple of the ways in which he's distinct
Speaker 2: from other architects of the Golden Age. First of all,
Speaker 2: you know, there there were no other you know, architects
Speaker 2: that we know of now who were in his region
Speaker 2: or anywhere close. And so it's just you know, there's
Speaker 2: this genius golf architect who came out of Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: He visited Scotland too, you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right in nineteen twenty, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like that, I think that's something that where
Speaker 1: you see so many of the the Great Golden Age
Speaker 1: architects learned from Scotland. And I remember reading he got
Speaker 1: he got interested because of National golf links and he
Speaker 1: went and talked him to CB MacDonald and then went
Speaker 1: to Scotland and and that kind of It's it's amazing
Speaker 1: how many, you know, how the architects that built golf
Speaker 1: courses in America that went to Scotland and those that
Speaker 1: like I, you know, it's just a really fascinating dichotomy.
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, the most seemingly the most
Speaker 1: prolific ones came either from the UK or went on
Speaker 1: a pilgrimage to Scotland.
Speaker 2: The pilgrimage was part of the education, right, it was
Speaker 2: almost a necessary step. And I think Parry Maxwell really
Speaker 2: took the lessons that he learned in Scotland to to heart.
Speaker 2: You know, he he when whenever he spoke about golf
Speaker 2: course architecture, he wasn't as prolific in hiskind of public
Speaker 2: speaking about or writing about golf course architecture as Alistair
Speaker 2: mackenzie or C. B. McDonald were, But whenever he did
Speaker 2: speak about golf architecture, he talked about, you know, learning
Speaker 2: from Scottish courses, that nature was more interesting than anything
Speaker 2: that man could create. There's, in particular, this interview that
Speaker 2: appeared in the magazine and American Golfer in I think
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, and it's just you know, quote after quote,
Speaker 2: and this interview is just fantastic. So he says things like,
Speaker 2: it is my theory that nature must precede the architect
Speaker 2: in the laying out of links. It is futile to
Speaker 2: attempt the transformation of wholly inadequate acres into an adequate course.
Speaker 2: Invariably the result is the inauguration of an earthquake. The
Speaker 2: sight of a golf course should be there, not brought there.
Speaker 2: Later on, he says, the less of man's handy work,
Speaker 2: the better. Of course, he was really a fanatic about
Speaker 2: about naturalness. And I think that he probably you know,
Speaker 2: that conviction of his was confirmed by going to Scotland
Speaker 2: and seeing how those courses were laid out on the land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. I mean, obviously you see a lot
Speaker 1: of the way he uses land, the land at at
Speaker 1: Prairie Dunes. I mean, he did it with his tiny budget.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of the amazing stories that he did
Speaker 1: with essentially an ox and a cart. He built this
Speaker 1: golf course and and the only way you build a
Speaker 1: golf course that way is by using the natural terrain.
Speaker 1: And and I think one of the things, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the blindness. And he was kind of the last
Speaker 1: of the of the you know, the artists that before
Speaker 1: we entered this new era of golf architecture where you know,
Speaker 1: the the designs became kind of built versus you know, found,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's an interesting thing. I think one
Speaker 1: of the one of the parts of his legacy that
Speaker 1: just you know, and this is everybody favoring to talk
Speaker 1: about Alistair Mackenzie, but you know, Maxwell was so vital
Speaker 1: in the development in what today is is Augusta National.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, for example, the tenth hole got
Speaker 1: you know, is pretty much entirely Maxwell. He moved the greens,
Speaker 1: you know, ninety yards. That's why there's that Mackenzie bunker
Speaker 1: sitting there in the in the middle of the fairway.
Speaker 1: And you know, also made a ton of modifications on
Speaker 1: the greens while also being extremely involved in the building
Speaker 1: of Augusta National. I mean, he was partnered up with
Speaker 1: Mackenzie to do that project. You know, Mackenzie worked with
Speaker 1: Robert Hunter on the West Coast, and pretty much everywhere
Speaker 1: else he worked with Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, if you go through that great article that
Speaker 2: appeared in Golf Digest a couple of years back, the
Speaker 2: complete changes to Augusta National, and you just go through
Speaker 2: hole by hole and look at what Perry Maxwell did there,
Speaker 2: you begin to understand that to a significant degree, that
Speaker 2: course is the result of a kind of cross generational
Speaker 2: collaboration between a number of architects, but very high among
Speaker 2: those is is Perry Maxwell. And especially when you see
Speaker 2: that tenth green, you know that is a that is
Speaker 2: a Maxwell Green. There are some other Maxwell Greens on
Speaker 2: that courses as well, and people often forget that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about Prairie Dun't.
Speaker 1: What were your impressions of Prairie Dunes. We we spent
Speaker 1: a couple of days there played it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: played how many holes fifty four holes about?
Speaker 2: I think is because that one evening we played nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was it was a very very hot. It
Speaker 1: was you know, in the end of June, so it's
Speaker 1: like one hundred degrees every day, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: the but the I mean, I'm curious as as somebody
Speaker 1: that hadn't been there, what what would you expect and
Speaker 1: what did you come away thinking?
Speaker 2: So I was very excited about playing Prairie Dunes. I
Speaker 2: had been looking at pictures of that course and maps
Speaker 2: of that course since I was a golf architecture nut
Speaker 2: as a kid, and and and I had always thought
Speaker 2: of it as one of the courses that I really
Speaker 2: wanted to play. It just looked cool, and so I
Speaker 2: was really excited about it. My expectations were very high,
Speaker 2: and they were, you know, completely met by by my
Speaker 2: experience at the course. You know, I don't I don't
Speaker 2: see how they how they couldn't be just uh, once
Speaker 2: you drive into that region of land, right, you're sort
Speaker 2: of you know.
Speaker 1: So it's about fifty minutes from Wichita's right, Yeah, it's Hutchinson, Kansas.
Speaker 1: So you know, like the last spot in America that
Speaker 1: you'd expect a great golf course, you know, maybe not
Speaker 1: the last one of the last.
Speaker 2: Well, you just don't expect that land to all of
Speaker 2: a sudden appear out of the prairie. Right. You're going
Speaker 2: around you fly into Wichita and you're kind of driving
Speaker 2: around there and it's perfectly lovely and everything, but you
Speaker 2: just don't see it yet. But then you know, about
Speaker 2: thirty miles twenty thirty miles away from Prairie Dunes, you
Speaker 2: start to see the land rumple a little bit and
Speaker 2: you start to see these sand dunes and these kind
Speaker 2: of exposed sandy blowouts, and there you are in the
Speaker 2: middle of the country and you see this kind of
Speaker 2: ocean shaped stuff. And so that's the first thing that
Speaker 2: strikes you is just how completely ideal the land is.
Speaker 2: And when you drive into Prairie Dunes, you know, the
Speaker 2: first thing you see is not necessarily the golf course.
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily notice that, hey, there's the golf course.
Speaker 2: It's more like, you see this incredible land, these huge
Speaker 2: sand dunes, these really interesting landforms, and then you start
Speaker 2: to notice, okay, there are some fairways and greens that
Speaker 2: are that are draped across these landforms. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: that was my first impression, just driving down that driveway
Speaker 2: and seeing the incredible undulation of that piece of property.
Speaker 2: And it's a it's a really unique looking place because
Speaker 2: while it's sand dunes, right, and and so it's familiar
Speaker 2: in the sense that you've seen these kinds of undulations
Speaker 2: on links courses before. But the flora, the trees and
Speaker 2: the grasses is very much prairie stuff. And so it's
Speaker 2: a perfectly named golf course, right, it's prairie dunes. It's
Speaker 2: not your you know, I don't I don't know if
Speaker 2: there's a typical sand dune, but it's not your typical
Speaker 2: kind of seaside sand dune looks yeah, yeah, like you
Speaker 2: or you see in Bandon or something. It is its
Speaker 2: own completely unique ecosystem there. I've never seen anything quite
Speaker 2: like it. These cottonwood trees and the guns and you know,
Speaker 2: all this stuff, it just looks it's not just pure
Speaker 2: seaside stuff. It's it's something different. It's a hybrid of
Speaker 2: of landscapes, and it's really really striking and really beautiful.
Speaker 2: And obviously Perry Maxwell was smart enough in building the
Speaker 2: original mind and and you know, to his credit, Press
Speaker 2: Maxwell allowed this to happen too, that they didn't violate
Speaker 2: these this terrain. They just kind of put the golf
Speaker 2: course on top of it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's the neat thing.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you see it with Golden Age architecture
Speaker 1: so much is is where you know, with the lack
Speaker 1: of earth moving equipment they had they had, they had
Speaker 1: no choice but to use the land. And then you know,
Speaker 1: you can tell with Prairie dunes, like the effort was
Speaker 1: so focused on on the green complexes where they were
Speaker 1: gonna you know, generate interest at the green and through
Speaker 1: the land the natural topography. You see those micro contours
Speaker 1: of uh where you know you're rarely hitting from even lies.
Speaker 1: At prairie dunes, you know a lot of side hill lies,
Speaker 1: uphill downhills if you're you know, especially on you know,
Speaker 1: some select holes where you know the eighth today, eighth
Speaker 1: and ninth holes you know have this unbelievable you know
Speaker 1: kind of rolling small like eight foot contours to them
Speaker 1: which create you know, all types of different lies and
Speaker 1: you just you know, you hit it and you pray
Speaker 1: that you get a good one versus and it's it's
Speaker 1: much more. You know, it's a it's a very Links feel.
Speaker 1: I would say it's an American Links golf course without
Speaker 1: a doubt. And and the greens and I think I think,
Speaker 1: like you know, I had always heard Maxwell rolls and
Speaker 1: until I really had bend to Prairie Dunes I didn't
Speaker 1: really understand what that was. But the way he built
Speaker 1: these roles is it's so much different and more unique
Speaker 1: than the shelf that use shelves you see at you know,
Speaker 1: like your traditional say course down the street, where you'll
Speaker 1: have like a you know, an undulation going up and
Speaker 1: then it's a flat tier. Right, the way Maxwell built
Speaker 1: them was there you're sloping up and then it hits
Speaker 1: the peak and then there's a slope on the back.
Speaker 1: So that what makes these greens so unique is when
Speaker 1: you're on the wrong side of a Maxwell roll, you
Speaker 1: have to hit a putt up over a hill and
Speaker 1: then that it's going to run back down a hill
Speaker 1: in a way, so it just requires so much more
Speaker 1: of a deft touch to navigate then your kind of
Speaker 1: uphill flat putt that you see at so many golf courses.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and when you are on the greens, you're not
Speaker 2: thinking to yourself very often, oh, this is an absolutely
Speaker 2: crazy green, or you know what an insane green this is.
Speaker 2: There's a subtlety to them, but the movement is constant
Speaker 2: on them. Every part of those greens is moving in
Speaker 2: some way or another, and you start kind of reaching
Speaker 2: for these metaphors. Are they like potato chips? Are they scalloped?
Speaker 2: Are they? You know, like, uh, there's just a kind
Speaker 2: of a wonderful unity to all those green complexes, and
Speaker 2: they're just a lot of fun to play around because
Speaker 2: each of them you haven't really seen them before, you know,
Speaker 2: how you most greens you go to, you can kind
Speaker 2: of compare them to something else. Each of those greens,
Speaker 2: especially on the original nine at Prairie Dunes, is pretty
Speaker 2: unique and really fun to play.
Speaker 1: It's interesting comparing because you know at Prairie Dune, so
Speaker 1: that the second nine was built by Press and you
Speaker 1: know they're kind of mixed in between in between, so
Speaker 1: you play you know one, two, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, seventeen,
Speaker 1: eighteen is the original nine, but all the other holes
Speaker 1: are press is nine And I think like what you
Speaker 1: see is that you see there's a distinct difference in
Speaker 1: the greens in the press holes are exceptional golf holes,
Speaker 1: but you can see that the difference in the Press
Speaker 1: maxwell greens and like, and you can just see the difference,
Speaker 1: you know, really like you know, you don't want to,
Speaker 1: but like the skill of parry versus press is so
Speaker 1: evident in those greens, because when you're twenty feet away
Speaker 1: on a press green, you're going to have a very
Speaker 1: makeable putt, But on a pary green twenty feet away,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have you're gonna have to hit an unbelievable
Speaker 1: putt to make it.
Speaker 2: Yes, the press greens are just a little bit less complex.
Speaker 2: Now there are exceptions to this, right The third green,
Speaker 2: which is a press maxwell green, is pretty cool, you know,
Speaker 2: and has some of those characteristics that the Perry greens have,
Speaker 2: But in general they aren't they aren't quite as bold.
Speaker 2: But you know, whenever you compare the Perry and the
Speaker 2: press holes, which is something that is you know, you
Speaker 2: can't resist doing it. You always have to keep in mind.
Speaker 2: I think that the press holes, as you and you
Speaker 2: alluded to this, are still really, really, really good. It's
Speaker 2: just that that original nine is just about the greatest
Speaker 2: golf course that I've ever played, you know, that original
Speaker 2: nine hole course. Every single hole is absolutely brilliant, And
Speaker 2: so you can't help but make the comparison. But I
Speaker 2: was wondering, so what are some of your what are
Speaker 2: some of your favorite holes at the on the course,
Speaker 2: whether they're Perry holes or press holes. What are someones
Speaker 2: that you would want to highlight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like the sixth hole is maybe my
Speaker 1: favorite hole hole on the golf course. And obviously I think,
Speaker 1: like I have to say, like, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things it's a terrific course. Like one of the
Speaker 1: things that's crazy about Prairie Dunes is this one of
Speaker 1: my favorite courses that I've played. And the simple fact
Speaker 1: is that you know, it might be the best course
Speaker 1: that I've ever played that still can get like twenty
Speaker 1: thirty percent better just with presentation, because like the six
Speaker 1: is a perfect example where like the mo lions are
Speaker 1: just it seems like since they when they hosted the
Speaker 1: US Senior Open that they never seem to get their
Speaker 1: mo lines back out, and just by widening out the fairway,
Speaker 1: they'd restore so many of the features that are there.
Speaker 1: And the six is a perfect example where you know
Speaker 1: the fairway has you know, essentially shrunk to where you
Speaker 1: know what used to be a central bunker is now
Speaker 1: in the left roff, and you know then there's another
Speaker 1: bunker that's you know, twenty yards in the right ruff.
Speaker 1: You know the rough out there isn't isn't crazy thick,
Speaker 1: The gunch is horrible stuff. But I think I think
Speaker 1: the six is really neat. It's one of the neatest
Speaker 1: drive and you know drive wedge par fours that I've
Speaker 1: played with the just the green and anything. And then
Speaker 1: obviously the eighth hole is tremendous. I mean the terrain.
Speaker 1: We talked about that a little bit and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a long par four with I think one
Speaker 1: of the things out at Prairie Dunes is the amazing
Speaker 1: thing is you always get wind out there. We played
Speaker 1: it on like very calm days, but even you know,
Speaker 1: one of the days, having like a eight mile an
Speaker 1: hour wind out there is much stronger than your typical
Speaker 1: eight mile hour wind. And I've played it on days
Speaker 1: where there's it's blown twenty five and it's like you're
Speaker 1: just praying for dear life. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the unique things with the with what Maxwell did
Speaker 1: was he he was you know, afforded the great land,
Speaker 1: he built great greens, and then the wind takes care
Speaker 1: of it. Like when the wind blows out there, it's
Speaker 1: hard of a golf course as you could possibly play.
Speaker 2: Yes, especially with the gunch the way it is, and
Speaker 2: maybe we could talk about that more later. But the
Speaker 2: the high grass beyond what's main maintained regularly at Prairie
Speaker 2: News is stuff where you're often not going to find
Speaker 2: your ball, and if you do find your ball, you're
Speaker 2: probably not going to be playing it out of it.
Speaker 2: And so if the wind blows and you're not completely
Speaker 2: in control of your golf ball, you're going to lose
Speaker 2: a few out there. And the course gets really hard
Speaker 2: really quickly. And I think the course, even without a
Speaker 2: lot of wind, is very very difficult for somebody who
Speaker 2: is struggling to hit it straight off the tee. Like
Speaker 2: it's just going to be a non starter from the beginning,
Speaker 2: I know. I you know, for especially the first couple
Speaker 2: of rounds there, I didn't have great control over my
Speaker 2: golf ball and and things just start moving very very
Speaker 2: very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I think. I mean, obviously the gunch is
Speaker 1: some and they work so hard on fixing there, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's one of the native areas or
Speaker 1: some of the toughest things to maintain, and it's it's
Speaker 1: so much better than the last time I was there.
Speaker 1: But the you know, i'd love to see that return,
Speaker 1: like you can see with some old photos they have
Speaker 1: like this like kind of chunk sandy with like a
Speaker 1: native in it, and they're more exposed sand, and that
Speaker 1: would be that'd be cool to see with the sand
Speaker 1: dunes getting a little bit more exposed, uh and thinning
Speaker 1: that stuff out. But the it's I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: an amazing place, and I think you know that it
Speaker 1: kind of sets a it sets a tone well for
Speaker 1: you know, understanding Maxwell. You get a really good feel there.
Speaker 1: And then I was I was actually the course that
Speaker 1: really kind of blew me away was was Southern Hills.
Speaker 1: I had ever been, but i'd you know, watched the
Speaker 1: PGA and the US Open there or back in the
Speaker 1: day when when Tiger won and then the one that
Speaker 1: Goosen won and I uh, you know, like showing on
Speaker 1: TV the way it did with the bunkers and the trees,
Speaker 1: it just it did not look like an interesting course.
Speaker 1: And getting out there, I was like, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of where a light bulb went on for me with
Speaker 1: with Maxwell and how good he was. Now for a
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Speaker 1: I PC. Now back to our talk about Southern Hills
Speaker 1: and Prairie Dunes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah, and Prairie Dunes you
Speaker 2: expect to be great, you know, it could hardly help
Speaker 2: being great with that land. Obviously, the the Maxwell's used
Speaker 2: the land brilliantly and turned that into an unbelievable golf course.
Speaker 2: But when you go to Southern Hills again, it's a
Speaker 2: great piece of land, but you but it's not obviously
Speaker 2: as as sublime as the sand Dunes up in Kansas,
Speaker 2: And so walking around that course and seeing how it's
Speaker 2: put together really brings Maxwell's brilliance into relief. I think,
Speaker 2: all right, so what are what were your first impressions
Speaker 2: of Southern Hills. Now we got there in the in
Speaker 2: the evening and we kind of walked with the superintendent
Speaker 2: down onto the grounds. What were some of your first
Speaker 2: impressions as we as we went in there, because it
Speaker 2: really does make a first impression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, it's TV is historic. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody talks about it. It flattens everything and I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe how bland and generic TV. And you know, I
Speaker 1: guess kind of the the way the golf course was
Speaker 1: presented then had made it look because you walked out
Speaker 1: there and like you're standing on the first tee, which
Speaker 1: you know, the clubhouse is on this high hill, and
Speaker 1: then everything kind of unfolds from there. The first tea
Speaker 1: and the tenth t go from this high hill, and
Speaker 1: the front nine goes out and kind of spirals around
Speaker 1: and comes back up the hill, and then the back
Speaker 1: nine goes off the hill and spirals around and comes
Speaker 1: back up the hill. And I think, like the thing
Speaker 1: that your first impression is like, holy cow, this this
Speaker 1: is like a grand property like that. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the word that I always always get fixated on
Speaker 1: when I'm describing Southern Hills is it's just like a
Speaker 1: grand place, Like it is a true championship course. It's
Speaker 1: got space, it's it's bowl, it's big, and it's brawny
Speaker 1: and in the land. That land in a way reminded
Speaker 1: me in parts of Augusta National because it's got this
Speaker 1: they have this creek that runs through the property and
Speaker 1: everything around that creek it is is just it's got
Speaker 1: this really nice movement to it and these big broad
Speaker 1: slopes that you know bank you know, fairways off of
Speaker 1: just like you'd see at Augusta with like the thirteenth.
Speaker 1: The twelfth at Southern Hills really reminds me of that
Speaker 1: where it's banking hard on right to left, just kind
Speaker 1: of like the thirteenth at Augusta. And I just I
Speaker 1: was blown away with the property and I think that
Speaker 1: it's a course I can't wait to see, you know,
Speaker 1: major championship golf played at it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You just want to see a crowd on that course.
Speaker 2: And it's going to be a really really fun place
Speaker 2: to go see a big championship, I think, because and
Speaker 2: it probably was, you know, in the two thousand and
Speaker 2: one US Open, in the two seven PGA Championship, but
Speaker 2: even more now after the restoration, because you can see
Speaker 2: across that property so well now, I mean there are
Speaker 2: still trees, but there are gaps between them and When
Speaker 2: you walk down into the valley from the hill where
Speaker 2: the clubhouse sits, you can just see in every direction.
Speaker 2: You can see to the edges of the course and
Speaker 2: it's just a playground out there, and a lot like Augusta.
Speaker 2: You know, there are these huge scale slopes and everything
Speaker 2: generally moves away from the clubhouse and it's bigger than
Speaker 2: it looks on TV. So those are some similarities with Augusta.
Speaker 2: But the underrated thing is that the routing creates these
Speaker 2: little areas of activity. Augusta does that as well, and
Speaker 2: so if you're watching a golf tournament there, you can
Speaker 2: camp out in certain places on that course and see
Speaker 2: action on multiple different greens at once. If you go
Speaker 2: down by the first green, you'll be able to see
Speaker 2: what's going on obviously on the second T, but also
Speaker 2: on the third green and the fourth T and the
Speaker 2: eighth green, the ninth T and the seventeenth green, and
Speaker 2: the seventh green is just across the second hole. There.
Speaker 2: That's just a hub of activity, and even without anybody there,
Speaker 2: it's an exciting place to be. You just feel like
Speaker 2: golf is happening around you. And then there are these
Speaker 2: great kind of greens all clustered around each other, and
Speaker 2: I saw. I think that the course creates excitement in
Speaker 2: that way, it creates a concentration of energy. And so
Speaker 2: for that reason, it's just going to be a really
Speaker 2: really fun way, fun way fun place to see a
Speaker 2: golf tournament. And I think if it's covered correctly, I
Speaker 2: think it is shot correctly on TV, that that will
Speaker 2: really be brought out because now you can see across
Speaker 2: the property a little bit better.
Speaker 1: What do you think of Gil's work there in terms
Speaker 1: of the there were a couple things that he changed
Speaker 1: to modify for championship golf. You he wrote a great
Speaker 1: article kind of going in depth about the whole renovation
Speaker 1: restoration done there, and I'm curious. So there were a
Speaker 1: couple modernizations, there's some new te'es. It's not like put
Speaker 1: fully back, but you know, this is a golf course
Speaker 1: that wants to host champ major championship golf, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was the theme of my article that I
Speaker 2: eventually settled on, was how Gil Hans on the one hand,
Speaker 2: obviously is committed to restoring golf courses, right he's inspired
Speaker 2: by Golden Age golf architecture. Southern Hills is certainly an
Speaker 2: instance of Golden Age architecture, and so I don't think
Speaker 2: he would have gone there and not tried to restore
Speaker 2: as much as possible, and he did in a couple
Speaker 2: of ways that we can talk about. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, he was very aware that Southern Hills wants
Speaker 2: to host major championships in the fewure. The PGA Championship
Speaker 2: is going to go to Southern Hills sometime in the
Speaker 2: next decade, probably twenty thirty, maybe twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Five, hopefully sooner than later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty thirty seems like a long way away, but
Speaker 2: there are some other championships that are going to be
Speaker 2: held there in the meantime. I believe that. Is it
Speaker 2: the Senior Open that's coming up fairly soon? Yep, it's
Speaker 2: it's yeah. But in any case, he in doing his
Speaker 2: work there. He was obviously aware that he couldn't completely
Speaker 2: put the course back to its nineteen thirty sixth form,
Speaker 2: because if he did that then it wouldn't really be
Speaker 2: a twenty first century championship golf course. So there would
Speaker 2: have to be certain changes he'd have to make, and
Speaker 2: it was beyond just establishing some of those back teams.
Speaker 2: Now that shouldn't be underrated. Obviously, when you when you
Speaker 2: put a t back from the original ones, you have
Speaker 2: to kind of put it on the right angles, and
Speaker 2: there's a whole art to that. But there were other
Speaker 2: things that he did there to accommodate future championships, one
Speaker 2: of which was to you know, probably the most noticeable
Speaker 2: change on any given hole was at the seventh hole,
Speaker 2: which had already been changed right. Maxwell's original hole at
Speaker 2: the seventh hole was a dog leg, a fairly short
Speaker 2: dog leg par four that veered up a hill to
Speaker 2: the left with a green that's right on a boundary.
Speaker 2: Later on, by the nineteen sixties, the club had moved
Speaker 2: that green back down the hill, making the hole more
Speaker 2: or less straight away. It no longer veered left. It
Speaker 2: kind of ended at this green that was in the
Speaker 2: middle of what used to be the kind of crook
Speaker 2: of the dog leg going up and turned it into
Speaker 2: sort of a somewhat featureless hole. I guess the drive
Speaker 2: was still pretty cool because you're kind of trying to
Speaker 2: carve something into that big left to right slope.
Speaker 1: And it was kind of like semi blind, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: Maxwell like blind t shots is one thing definitely picked
Speaker 1: up on.
Speaker 2: That's one. I think it's probably one way in which
Speaker 2: he opened up sight lines going into greens, right, because
Speaker 2: he didn't move much land, and so if you're going
Speaker 2: to have any places where there are blind shots, it's
Speaker 2: going to be on a drive because generally his sight
Speaker 2: lines are pretty open going into greens, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really open. I can't think of any blind.
Speaker 2: I don't think from what I can gather, it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like he really believed in in blind or even
Speaker 2: very much semi semi blind approaches. I guess that there
Speaker 2: are some greens that you're on.
Speaker 1: The wrong well, if you're on the wrong side, and
Speaker 1: like you wonder where, like I always wonder where like
Speaker 1: the first fair way of prairie dunes should be, you know,
Speaker 1: because if you went up the left there, you could
Speaker 1: be blind over that dune.
Speaker 2: That's one of those mowing lines from the the Senior tournament,
Speaker 2: but has been It's really obvious when you when you
Speaker 2: got there and look at it. It's just this straight
Speaker 2: mowing line going right up the middle of what should
Speaker 2: be the fairway. Yeah, but yeah, no, you're right. It's
Speaker 2: so he used concealed or open sight lines to reward
Speaker 2: precise tee shots and stuff like that. But in general,
Speaker 2: you know, his routings are really clever. Right, he took
Speaker 2: the land, he didn't move much of it, but he
Speaker 2: made the routing work. In any case, that hole at
Speaker 2: Southern Hills had been changed. It was now three hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty yard part four. There wasn't a whole lot
Speaker 2: of difficulty there, right, most pros, most modern pros, were
Speaker 2: able to hit a hybrid and then still have a
Speaker 2: short iron into the green. And so Gil instead of
Speaker 2: restoring Maxwell's hole, decided to push the green back and
Speaker 2: put it up against the creek on the right. And
Speaker 2: what he created there is a really interesting strategic par
Speaker 2: four and it can stretch to about four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty yards. It'll be a challenging hole. That approach is
Speaker 2: not comfortable, and there are some angles in play there,
Speaker 2: and it's a very very good and interesting hole in
Speaker 2: a tough hole. But it's not a Maxwell restoration. That
Speaker 2: is a gill Hands hole at this point. And I
Speaker 2: don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But if
Speaker 2: you're a pure restorationist, if you're a hardliner about about
Speaker 2: Golden Age architecture and about the necessity for bringing it back,
Speaker 2: then that hole might be a site of objection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that hole is really compelling just because
Speaker 1: of the way the land moves and you know, you
Speaker 1: you're in a drive and the further left you go,
Speaker 1: which is you know a little bit more aggressive. There's trees,
Speaker 1: you get a flatter lie, you get rewarded with a
Speaker 1: flatter lie and a more approach. The way the angle
Speaker 1: of the green is, if you're over on the right,
Speaker 1: you've got this left to right lie ball below your feet,
Speaker 1: which you know promotes that right miss, and the creek
Speaker 1: is pushed right up against the right edge of the
Speaker 1: green from there, so like you your miss is right
Speaker 1: into that creek, and that's that's a hole where you
Speaker 1: really you have to just commit and hit a really
Speaker 1: good shot into that green, which I think is really
Speaker 1: good for championship golf. And it's going to be a
Speaker 1: hard hole for members regardless, but like a member who's
Speaker 1: you know, you can just hit it up there short
Speaker 1: and chip on and putt like it's it's a really
Speaker 1: it's one of the ogle v always Jeff Ogilvie always
Speaker 1: talks about like, you know, hard to make birdie, you know,
Speaker 1: easy par bogie holes like at Augusta, and that that's
Speaker 1: like a quintessential hole. I feel like at Augusta, worry you,
Speaker 1: if you want to make a birdie, you really have
Speaker 1: to have to hit a great shot, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be that hard to hit into the middle of the
Speaker 1: green and to put to and make par for a
Speaker 1: pro you know. Granted you made bertie.
Speaker 2: You know, I had an unusual hole there, that was
Speaker 2: an uncharacteristically well played hole on my part. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's playable. I hit a good drive and
Speaker 2: that was really what set me up right. I had
Speaker 2: a much easier approach than than you did. But in
Speaker 2: any case, that's that's one sort of big change. But
Speaker 2: I think we both agree that we like that hole.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a cool golf hole. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what the old one would look like now, but certainly
Speaker 2: what gil Hans contends is that having that green that
Speaker 2: near the boundary now wouldn't really be workable, especially because
Speaker 2: you know, the urban Tulsa has grown up around the
Speaker 2: course since it was built out in the country, you know,
Speaker 2: back in nineteen thirty five, and now it is surrounded
Speaker 2: by by dense development, and so you can't really have
Speaker 2: greens as hard against the boundaries. And he did move
Speaker 2: a couple of other greens away from boundaries, or at
Speaker 2: least one other the par three fourteenth hole, And so
Speaker 2: those are some of the accommodations you have to make
Speaker 2: for what happens.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things it does is it
Speaker 1: gives it better cadence on the front night, like because
Speaker 1: right the way that the front night flows, and it
Speaker 1: adds a little variety. Actually, if you know, if they
Speaker 1: restored it back, it was you know, the fourth hole,
Speaker 1: the fifth hole is, so there's a par three long
Speaker 1: par three six before then the fifth hole is a
Speaker 1: par five, and the fourth hole is a short par four,
Speaker 1: and the the third hole is a medium length part
Speaker 1: four nothing, you know, it's it's a it's a.
Speaker 2: Short for the pros. Yeah, I'd still be hitting short
Speaker 2: irons into that green for sure.
Speaker 1: So having a medium to longer par four in that
Speaker 1: in that spot fits well because the ninth hole is
Speaker 1: a short part four all like a shortish par four,
Speaker 1: and the tenth hole isn't really isn't a very long
Speaker 1: hole either, so like having that in there, it gives
Speaker 1: it a little bit more variety. So I think it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a I really like that change, to
Speaker 1: be honest.
Speaker 2: I agree, And I think it's going to be a
Speaker 2: fun hole to watch. It's a nervy shot, you know,
Speaker 2: and and you'll you'll be able to see on TV
Speaker 2: where they are in the fair way and kind of
Speaker 2: lie they're facing. Yeah, I think it'll be cool if
Speaker 2: they were if they were playing the old hole, it
Speaker 2: would be a pitch up the hill and no doubt
Speaker 2: it would be cool, but a completely completely different kind
Speaker 2: of golf hole. So another big change that was made,
Speaker 2: and another thing that I kind of focused on in
Speaker 2: the article was the first hole, which is a long
Speaker 2: ish more medium length par four going down from the
Speaker 2: clubhouse spectacular tee site right in front of the clubhouse,
Speaker 2: basically directly outside the clubhouse door. And it goes down
Speaker 2: the hole and moves to the left along with the
Speaker 2: kind of right to left sloping land to a really
Speaker 2: cool green that has edges that kick away and the
Speaker 2: green generally sort of moves away from, uh, the line
Speaker 2: of play, and.
Speaker 1: It opens from the left side.
Speaker 2: It opens from the left side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, being on that left side is a big,
Speaker 1: big advantage.
Speaker 2: And that was the strategic principle that gil Hans had
Speaker 2: in mind when he moved the bunkers on that hole.
Speaker 2: So that hole used to have bunkers on the outside
Speaker 2: of the dog leg on the right. Robert Trent Jones
Speaker 2: put those bunkers. In the run up to the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty eight US Open. He added bunkers in various parts
Speaker 2: of the course, not many bunkers, but he did add
Speaker 2: some fairway bunkers and a few green side bunkers. Those
Speaker 2: were among the bunkers he added. He put them on
Speaker 2: the outside of the dog leg on the right, And
Speaker 2: as you alluded to, you don't want to be on
Speaker 2: the right on that hole because that becomes a really
Speaker 2: hard approach where the green is running away from you.
Speaker 2: You're hitting over a bunker and you're also hitting toward
Speaker 2: a back bunker. You're directly in line with those two bunkers,
Speaker 2: and it's hard to hold the green from there. Really.
Speaker 2: You also have the ball above your feet up there,
Speaker 2: and it's just it's just not the kind of shot
Speaker 2: that you want. You don't want to be hitting a
Speaker 2: hard draw for right hand and or down that green
Speaker 2: right at those bunkers. So you want to be on
Speaker 2: the on the left side, and that left side of
Speaker 2: the fairway just had trees on it. It was that
Speaker 2: that was its defense. It has been widened, trees have
Speaker 2: been removed along that hole, and in doing the renovations,
Speaker 2: Gil Hants could have just taken the bunkers out if
Speaker 2: he wanted to do a pure restoration, but he decided
Speaker 2: to put the bunkers on the left side. Now the
Speaker 2: bunkers are exactly where you want where you want to
Speaker 2: be on that hole, and so they serve a kind
Speaker 2: of classic strategic purpose. But it is not a pure restoration. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: I can't argue with that change. You know. It's it's
Speaker 2: a really really good golf hole and those those bunkers
Speaker 2: are you know, if you're going to put fairway bunkers
Speaker 2: on that hole, that's exactly the right place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in the short crass, that's you know.
Speaker 1: I talked to Jeff Ogilvie a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: off the kind of before I think it was after
Speaker 1: we finished recording our last podcast, and I asked him
Speaker 1: about it, and he was like, you know, just the presentation,
Speaker 1: like if they just had more short grass there, it
Speaker 1: would have been so awesome. In seven, he's like, it's
Speaker 1: a great, great golf course and it's like now they
Speaker 1: have the short grass, and it's so refreshing to see
Speaker 1: because you know these greens. It just accentuates these Maxwell greens.
Speaker 1: And we talked about Maxwell greens and the rolls with
Speaker 1: with prairie dunes at Southern Hills, you just see all
Speaker 1: the greens fall off, you know, in all these directions,
Speaker 1: and then it's just short grass that further repels them away.
Speaker 1: And that's going to be a really compelling thing to
Speaker 1: watch when the Senior PGAs there in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: and when they have the PGA. Is that we've seen
Speaker 1: this recipe work so well for championship golf is short
Speaker 1: grass with great land and topography. You know, you think
Speaker 1: about your Shinnecock Hills where you've got short grass, lots
Speaker 1: of fair away, but then short grass around greens with
Speaker 1: repelling edges, which is what you see at Southern Hills.
Speaker 1: And then you think like Augusta National, you got short
Speaker 1: grass everywhere in a really great set of greens, many
Speaker 1: of which are Maxwell greens. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: the what it gets to be most excited about Southern
Speaker 1: Hills is that you're going to see a championship course
Speaker 1: that has many of the shares, many of the characteristics
Speaker 1: of our favorite championship golf courses that we get to see,
Speaker 1: and you know, a certain extent, port Rush was that
Speaker 1: way a couple of weeks ago for the Open Championship
Speaker 1: as well, where you had repelling green edges and really
Speaker 1: nice topography that yielded a lot of uneven.
Speaker 2: Lies, repelling green edges and sometimes collecting green edges right
Speaker 2: if you're coming in from the right angles. Sometimes sometimes
Speaker 2: that short grass can help funnel your ball to where
Speaker 2: you want it to go. And that's part of what
Speaker 2: we saw port Rush as well. That was so fun
Speaker 2: to watch. But it should be said that Hants restored
Speaker 2: the focused on restoring the edges of the greens at
Speaker 2: Southern Hills. A lot of the interior contours of the
Speaker 2: greens had previously been put back, so Hans was able
Speaker 2: to kind of focus on the edges and a lot
Speaker 2: of work had been done on those edges, and generally
Speaker 2: what you see are contours that kick away and that
Speaker 2: and the and the kicking away effect is enhanced by
Speaker 2: the amount of short grass that is around the greens now,
Speaker 2: and there are these expanses of short grass. You look
Speaker 2: at that first green, everything in every direction is short grass,
Speaker 2: and so that's going to be extremely uncomfortable because if
Speaker 2: you miss, your ball is going to kick away and
Speaker 2: it's going to keep rolling. And we've we've seen that
Speaker 2: be a very uncomfortable proposition for for good players. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's going to be a really, really
Speaker 2: fun one to watch. I guess the big question here,
Speaker 2: and you know, I didn't really dive into this too
Speaker 2: deeply in the article because maybe I don't really know
Speaker 2: the answer, But do you think that Southern Hills would
Speaker 2: be a better golf course if there were not the
Speaker 2: imperative to prepare it for championship golf, if it just
Speaker 2: didn't if it didn't want to host major championships, if
Speaker 2: there weren't that pressure on it, and and that wasn't
Speaker 2: part of the thought process in restoring slash renovating it,
Speaker 2: do you think it would be better?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. Like I think the seventh hole
Speaker 1: is really good, and that's like a you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things, and I think the first hole, like
Speaker 1: you alluded to, it makes way more sense with those
Speaker 1: bunkers on the left, Like if it was bunkerless, it
Speaker 1: would be more playable. I guess the question would be, like,
Speaker 1: do you think there'd be more even more short grass
Speaker 1: and more trees removed if there if it if it
Speaker 1: was not had no qualms about hosting major championship.
Speaker 2: Golf, maybe there'd be more trees removed. I mean, the
Speaker 2: tree removal is not radical there. It's definitely there's definitely
Speaker 2: been tree removal. There's a lot been enough, like a
Speaker 2: lot of tree removal because that that place used to
Speaker 2: be very heavily treed. There are still trees in play
Speaker 2: on the whole. That's that's part of the penalty for
Speaker 2: missing the fairway, and there is there's a significant amount
Speaker 2: of rough. The fairways aren't endlessly wide. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know if these things would necessarily make the
Speaker 2: golf course better, But if there weren't the pressure to
Speaker 2: host championships, maybe it would be different.
Speaker 1: Something that gets me with this discussion, it's it's so
Speaker 1: such an interesting discussion, and when you think about golf courses,
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that stood out to me
Speaker 1: with Southern Hills is usually when I go to play
Speaker 1: a championship golf course, like I know, I'm in for
Speaker 1: like a day of just getting beat up, you know,
Speaker 1: like where and I have like a lot of fun
Speaker 1: at Southern Hills where like it's just because of the
Speaker 1: short expanded short grass and and there's enough with out
Speaker 1: there that I didn't feel like it was as exacting.
Speaker 1: It was still extraordinarily difficult, but like it wasn't that
Speaker 1: that not fun difficult where you're like, okay, I have
Speaker 1: to hit this drive absolutely perfect and you felt like
Speaker 1: you had opportunities to get the course and you know,
Speaker 1: take this with a great but like it was actually
Speaker 1: like the champion like in terms if you put championship
Speaker 1: golf courses in a bucket, it was as fun as
Speaker 1: I've had anywhere, like up with like Shinnacock's one another
Speaker 1: example of this where Shinnakocky is so hard but you
Speaker 1: feel like you can score out there, like you know,
Speaker 1: nothing is unfair, nothing like it's not overly hard, but
Speaker 1: it's just really hard. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think it depends on where the difficulty
Speaker 2: comes from. Right now, the difficulty at Southern Hills is
Speaker 2: going to come significantly around the greens right and around
Speaker 2: the awkwardness of some of the approaches, the way that
Speaker 2: the slopes and the undulations work to give you some
Speaker 2: stances that just aren't going to be what you want
Speaker 2: them to be. They're not what you're going to see
Speaker 2: on driving ranges and into greens that are that are
Speaker 2: kind of oriented against or away from from those from
Speaker 2: those lies, that's where the challenge really comes from, and
Speaker 2: that is kind of a fun sort of challenge. Like personally,
Speaker 2: I don't mind getting beat up around the greens. I
Speaker 2: don't mind seeing my ball kind of go off line
Speaker 2: because I've had an interesting lie. What really beats you
Speaker 2: down is looking for your ball, right, losing balls, you know,
Speaker 2: getting getting stuck deep and rough and just not being
Speaker 2: able to get out, hacking out all day. That that
Speaker 2: kind of difficulty really wears down on the amateur. And
Speaker 2: I don't think there is a whole lot of that
Speaker 2: at Southern Hills. You know, the rough is significant, right,
Speaker 2: you have to it settles down in that, in that
Speaker 2: kind of wooly rough out. Yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 2: you know, like it's not easy rough by any by
Speaker 2: any stretch of the imagination, but you find your ball
Speaker 2: and you have, you usually have a chance to play
Speaker 2: out because there are gaps between the trees, and so
Speaker 2: you always have a shot, even if even if you
Speaker 2: really shouldn't maybe take the risk, you always feel like
Speaker 2: you have a shot at it. And that little bit
Speaker 2: of hope that the course gives you is pretty key
Speaker 2: to enjoyment, right because if there's just if you're just
Speaker 2: hacking out, and if you're in a forest, there's no hope,
Speaker 2: there's no fun in that. And uh, and so I
Speaker 2: think that's what that's what Southern Hills, what Southern Hills offers,
Speaker 2: and why it is fun even for even for somebody
Speaker 2: like me.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think it would be better if
Speaker 1: it wasn't in a championship course, if they had no qualms.
Speaker 2: On It's a that's an unsettled question to me right now.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it necessarily would be a lot better.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to imagine a counterfactual restoration that doesn't even
Speaker 2: taken into account the championship status of the course. If
Speaker 2: the course were put exactly back to what it was
Speaker 2: in Maxwell's time, then there would be probably fewer trees
Speaker 2: out there, The rough would probably be maintained differently. The
Speaker 2: creek would be different right in appearance. But you know,
Speaker 2: speaking of the creek, right, there are places where that
Speaker 2: creek looks pretty polished, right, There's a there's a kind
Speaker 2: of modern look to it. There are a few waterfalls
Speaker 2: here and there, you know, things like that that used
Speaker 2: to be a rugged, mostly dry creek, and I think
Speaker 2: that that would be cooler, right It would be to
Speaker 2: have a baranca restoration like they did at Los Angeles
Speaker 2: Country Club would definitely be I don't know, would fit
Speaker 2: my eye a little bit better, would fit my preferences
Speaker 2: a little bit better, but wouldn't necessarily fit everybody's preferences.
Speaker 2: And so there are a few things out there that
Speaker 2: you know, I kind of raised an eyebrow at but
Speaker 2: eventually came to understand. You know that the creek, for instance, right,
Speaker 2: it's there's just going to be more water in it
Speaker 2: now because there's more water in that general area. Yeah,
Speaker 2: development all kinds of pavement and concrete around the course.
Speaker 2: That used to just be a land that would absorb moisture.
Speaker 2: Now there's a lot of water that moves through that
Speaker 2: creek system, and of course they use more water to
Speaker 2: maintain the golf course now than they did in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, and so, yeah, I mean what I want
Speaker 2: to play the nineteen thirty six version of the course, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I mean that would be awesome course. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: what place is that not true of? And so I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it's necessarily possible to imagine a pure restoration
Speaker 2: of that golf course. That said, you know, we've both
Speaker 2: seen Gil Hans's work Hans golf course designs work at
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Country Club, and that that restoration is pretty
Speaker 2: historically faithful. Obviously, there were a few changes made to
Speaker 2: accommodate the modern game. The golf course is quite a
Speaker 2: bit longer, et cetera. But uh, that those that bunker
Speaker 2: restoration was was more rugged. And of course I'd referred
Speaker 2: to the Baranka before, and so you know, uh, Southern
Speaker 2: Hills has more of a polished look, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: if it if it weren't hosting championships, maybe there wouldn't
Speaker 2: be so much pressure to make the course look kind
Speaker 2: of augustified. That said, it looks awesome like it. You
Speaker 2: know that this feels nitpicky, But.
Speaker 1: Something I really thought was interesting, like if you talk
Speaker 1: to people and ask them about Southern Hills. Most of
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people like we live in
Speaker 1: this culture with like Instagram and where par threes are
Speaker 1: like the glorified and like the cats biow, you know,
Speaker 1: like everybody because it's like the the only yeah, seventh hole,
Speaker 1: it's like the only hole you can take a picture
Speaker 1: of and you can see the whole hole right, you know,
Speaker 1: easily and discern it easily. So like par three's, I
Speaker 1: feel like have become like the darling of like how
Speaker 1: you judge a course and and and a lot of
Speaker 1: people would I would say that the par threes are
Speaker 1: are the weakness at Southern Hills. People will say, oh,
Speaker 1: they're bland, But part of me thinks the par threes
Speaker 1: at Southern Hills all connected the other golf course, so
Speaker 1: they were the holes that kind of navigated are on
Speaker 1: edges of the property like where Maxwell got into corners.
Speaker 1: Either get them out of the corners or you know,
Speaker 1: we see with the eleventh which is a tremendous short part three.
Speaker 1: You know that tenth hole navigates this like really severe
Speaker 1: land and from where the eleventh tea is that that
Speaker 1: land's almost too severe to even put a hole that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a par three. And it's like the par
Speaker 1: three's out there are the holes which make the fives
Speaker 1: and the fours. And I think that's really the strength
Speaker 1: of Southern Hills is they have great par fives and
Speaker 1: great par fours, and those are the holes that make
Speaker 1: those holes so great because they got maxwell to the
Speaker 1: spots he needed to be to get the par fours
Speaker 1: playing the way he wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd agree with that. The par threes do seem
Speaker 2: to serve a kind of connecting function, and they occupy
Speaker 2: some kind of awkward corners of the property. They're all
Speaker 2: at the edges of the property, and two of them
Speaker 2: are right at corners of the property. Specifically, the eleventh
Speaker 2: hole is probably the most natural par three in there
Speaker 2: as in the land, and seems most naturally suited to
Speaker 2: a par three. Right. Par three's are good places to
Speaker 2: put to put holes on really severe land, right, And
Speaker 2: that's the case of the eleventh hole. You wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to put another kind of hole on that land,
Speaker 2: I don't think without moving a lot of it. Some
Speaker 2: of the other par three's are kind of on flatish
Speaker 2: pieces of land. I guess the eighth hole is on
Speaker 2: this you know, more or less nondescript tract of land
Speaker 2: that connects the seventh hole to the ninth hole the
Speaker 2: fourteenth hole. The par three runs along the boundary of
Speaker 2: the property. It goes downhill a little bit. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, if you were walking this land before the
Speaker 2: golf course was built, you wouldn't necessarily go to that
Speaker 2: piece of the property and say, oh, that's obviously a
Speaker 2: par three, right. Yeah. I think you put the rest
Speaker 2: of the routing together and then you realize that you
Speaker 2: have space for a part three in a certain place,
Speaker 2: and that is Yeah. I mean, I think in order
Speaker 2: to make the routing work the way he wanted to,
Speaker 2: and in order to have some of those great longer holes,
Speaker 2: in order to get the greens. Returning to that that
Speaker 2: gully that runs through the center of the property, there's
Speaker 2: a there's you know, a collection of really interesting contours
Speaker 2: that runs through the center of the property. And he
Speaker 2: put a bunch of greens and teas on.
Speaker 1: There and fairways and fays. Yeah. That's what I thought,
Speaker 1: is it's interesting because like that's what you see they have.
Speaker 1: It's this narrow property and the way he used that
Speaker 1: the interesting topography in different ways, and like the way
Speaker 1: he was able to there was it seems like it
Speaker 1: was a pretty abrupt shelf that would go like there
Speaker 1: was like this almost like you have the creek where
Speaker 1: the creek is in a flat, but then there's a shelf.
Speaker 1: And how many ways he used that shelf in landing
Speaker 1: areas is really amazing. You know, like the seventeenth uses it,
Speaker 1: the eighteenth uses it, the tenth uses it, the twelfth
Speaker 1: uses it by the green, but then like the the
Speaker 1: thirteenth and sixteenth use that that she like it's right
Speaker 1: in the middle of the drive landing area and it
Speaker 1: makes it makes for just really odd lies like you know,
Speaker 1: like you're having like on a par five, having to
Speaker 1: hit into a green from an upslope to you know,
Speaker 1: you've got two thirty and you're hitting from an upslope
Speaker 1: into green with water short of it. That's a really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable shot to hit, yeah, or a downslope.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, sixteen, Yeah, the long par four you have the
Speaker 2: same situation or the landing area. And it's not just
Speaker 2: that it's a straight guali right. Obviously there used to
Speaker 2: be water that ran through there and that carved the
Speaker 2: land but what happened does the water move through there
Speaker 2: over the centuries, is that it created not just a
Speaker 2: straight water course, but all of these super interesting contours,
Speaker 2: these billowing landforms around itself, right yeah, And so that's
Speaker 2: what you get on those two landing areas that you're
Speaker 2: talking about. It's not just a straight scoop. It is
Speaker 2: these you know, wavy undulations suddenly in the middle of
Speaker 2: what's generally a pretty smooth piece of land. It's a
Speaker 2: sloping piece of land, but the contours are generally long.
Speaker 2: When you get to that part of the property that
Speaker 2: we're talking about where there used to be that water course,
Speaker 2: it becomes there's a lot more micro contour. You see
Speaker 2: those going into the seventeenth hole as well, right where
Speaker 2: again there are these wavy contours that have been carved
Speaker 2: by water over time. And it's yeah, he used that
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. And to return to
Speaker 2: the point earlier, I think that in order to use
Speaker 2: it in the way he did on those long holes,
Speaker 2: he couldn't have par threes in the middle of the property.
Speaker 2: He needed to have those longer holes in the middle
Speaker 2: of the property, and the par three is needed to
Speaker 2: be pushed to the edges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we've talked about this, I've started to like
Speaker 1: think about it's like Prairie Dunes has that wavy, that
Speaker 1: contour where it's really unpredictable. You could have a you
Speaker 1: could have the ball could be below your feet or
Speaker 1: above your feet, depending on what side. It has that
Speaker 1: unpredictable nature that you see in the areas where the
Speaker 1: water used to run through at Southern Hills what were
Speaker 1: you were just talking alluding to, And then Augusta, Nashville
Speaker 1: has that just like that general like it, you know,
Speaker 1: the land moves one way right and it's just this
Speaker 1: big broad slope that that the holes are carved around it.
Speaker 1: And Southern Hills is kind of like a mixture of
Speaker 1: the two between Augusta and Prairie Dunes, where there are
Speaker 1: these pockets of really you know, flowy micro contours that
Speaker 1: you know have you don't know what when you hit
Speaker 1: the ball in there, you have no clue whether you're
Speaker 1: gonna have be on an upslope of down slope, which
Speaker 1: side slope you'll have. And that's like that's like Prairie Dunes.
Speaker 1: But then for the most part, the property is more
Speaker 1: like Augusta nashvill with these big broad slopes that leave
Speaker 1: you with these severe sloping lies.
Speaker 2: You really see the big broad slopes on that sequence
Speaker 2: of holes that goes out to the par three eleventh right,
Speaker 2: the tenth eleventh and then the returning twelfth hole where
Speaker 2: you can just clearly see when you're standing below it
Speaker 2: that that was a lovely river valley, right, just beautiful
Speaker 2: sweep of land and you just he just laid out
Speaker 2: three lovely golf holes on it. But those are broad,
Speaker 2: smooth slopes. And yeah, in the in other parts of
Speaker 2: the property there's it's crazier and it's amazing how many times,
Speaker 2: how many different ways he used those those fun landforms
Speaker 2: in the middle of the property. Yeah, you just go
Speaker 2: back to it a lot.
Speaker 1: It's like the exterior of the kind of the property
Speaker 1: has the big broad slopes and then the interior had
Speaker 1: the the like the randomness because like you think about
Speaker 1: the par five to fifth has that slope from left
Speaker 1: to right, you know, and you're hitting into a green
Speaker 1: that you know with the creek right, and then seven
Speaker 1: is the same way, you know, with it hard left
Speaker 1: to right. In that sonic on an edge of the property,
Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting to think about in terms of
Speaker 1: how how that property laid out. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: stunning property. I'm that place. I was not expecting to
Speaker 1: be as enamored as I was with Southern Hills when
Speaker 1: when we decided to go there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. It's a yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a great golf course. It's a stunning golf course.
Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, I hope that now
Speaker 2: that it's open up a little bit, that there's more
Speaker 2: short grass that you can see across the golf course,
Speaker 2: better see multiple holes at once, that it'll become more apparent.
Speaker 1: I think the bunker, the ascetics of the bunkers are
Speaker 1: going to make a huge difference for the television product too,
Speaker 1: as much as like, you know, I hate that, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, like the old bunkers just looked like bunkers
Speaker 1: you'd see at your fifteen DOLLARSMUNI, you know, like perfectly circular, yeah, saucers,
Speaker 1: and like now they have.
Speaker 2: These raised lips and yeah.
Speaker 1: And now they have at least a little bit of character.
Speaker 1: To me, that's what that that the work done, is
Speaker 1: it brought it kind of like brought to life so
Speaker 1: much of the greatness of the property and the character
Speaker 1: of the golf course.
Speaker 2: Right and before with those saucer shapes and the way
Speaker 2: that they were all kind of tilted up toward the
Speaker 2: line of play, your eye immediately went to them. Right.
Speaker 2: That's all you saw is this really white sand in
Speaker 2: these scoops out of the course, and they drew the eye,
Speaker 2: and because they were fairly bland in their shape, that
Speaker 2: was just your impression of the course, right, these these
Speaker 2: little scoops. Part of the restoration was bringing down the
Speaker 2: edges of the bunkers a little bit. There had been
Speaker 2: a lot of build up over the years, and so
Speaker 2: the edges of the bunkers, the lips of the bunkers,
Speaker 2: i should say, are not as high, and so as
Speaker 2: a result, they're not the highest points on holes. Now
Speaker 2: often the greens are the highest points on holes. And
Speaker 2: I think that makes a big visual difference, because instead
Speaker 2: of just fixating on these circular or oval bunker shapes
Speaker 2: with the white sand in them, and having that be
Speaker 2: your impression of the golf course, your eye can be
Speaker 2: drawn to a number of different features. The bunkers, the
Speaker 2: green edges. You know, there are things, there are other
Speaker 2: things that attract your attention. The creek. Yeah, the creek, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, which has been exposed a lot lot more.
Speaker 2: And the creek has been extended across a couple of holes, right,
Speaker 2: I'd like, it wasn't running across the seventeenth hole before,
Speaker 2: it wasn't running across the tenth hole before. Now you
Speaker 2: know that that creek has an influence on play on
Speaker 2: those holes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, up the fourth the right side of the fourth
Speaker 1: fairway too, So it just to give a little bit
Speaker 1: more thought off the tee on those holes. I think
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole is one of my That green's really
Speaker 1: really nasty, and it's just got that great land or
Speaker 1: you just banking left or right, you like want to
Speaker 1: get it up way up left. I mean that's what
Speaker 1: probably to me, maybe the most compelling hole out there
Speaker 1: is the seventeenth. And it's cool to have that short
Speaker 1: par four coming down the stretch of a major right
Speaker 1: before just a ballbuster of a par four up the hill.
Speaker 2: That'll be fun to watch the seventeenth. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: short part four and if they put teas in a
Speaker 2: certain place, players will be able to drive it up
Speaker 2: by the green a little bit. But they'll be probably
Speaker 2: aiming left of the green. And if you're left of
Speaker 2: the green up there, that's a really really, really really
Speaker 2: hard shot. You know, you might not hit the green
Speaker 2: from fifteen feet away from it over there. But equally,
Speaker 2: if you're on the wrong little micro contour in that
Speaker 2: fairway and you have a nasty lie with the ball
Speaker 2: below your feet in your right hand or and you're
Speaker 2: trying to hit a feely little pitch into that green
Speaker 2: off of the fairway grass, that's an incredibly intimidating shot too.
Speaker 2: And the green is kind of oriented, you know, diagonally
Speaker 2: away from you, kind of like a ten o'clock facing
Speaker 2: green with a bunker in front of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's and it repels off on all the edges. It's
Speaker 2: just it. I had a mental breakdown in that fairway,
Speaker 2: like I couldn't I couldn't hit I couldn't hit the
Speaker 2: ball cleanly on my pitch. And yeah, it's just intimidating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a cool hole. He I, it's I'm excited.
Speaker 1: I uh, I just uh, you know, the trip, it
Speaker 1: was such a I always enjoy going and seeing courses
Speaker 1: based like going on trips where you see a lot
Speaker 1: of one architect and and I'm really excited to go
Speaker 1: do see more Maxwell, like I you know, it's like
Speaker 1: Oklahoma is like actually like on my travel radar for
Speaker 1: like I need to go see six courses there, you know,
Speaker 1: all Maxwell like and and that's that's the unique thing
Speaker 1: is like starting to understand this guy more. You see
Speaker 1: see him at Augusta, you see him at you know,
Speaker 1: the Crystal Downs has a heavy Maxwell influence. But then
Speaker 1: you know, Prairie Dunes in Southern Hills are both really
Speaker 1: good representations of his work. I mean, how would how
Speaker 1: would you split ten rounds between those two courses. I'm
Speaker 1: putting you in the uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Tough question because my my impulse would be to say
Speaker 2: six or seven Prairie Dunes and three or four Southern Hills.
Speaker 2: And that's no slam on Southern Hills because Prairie Dunes
Speaker 2: is just I mean, it's it's unbelievably sublime out there,
Speaker 2: and uh and just a completely unique place. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing, because at because the mowing lines are currently
Speaker 2: what they are at Prairie Dunes. And we touched on
Speaker 2: this a little bit, but you know there are some
Speaker 2: places where there seems to be some fairway expansion in order,
Speaker 2: and the gunches is really really hard to play out of.
Speaker 2: I do think that playing a lot of rounds at
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes does tire you out a little bit, or
Speaker 2: tire me out a little bit, because you know, you.
Speaker 1: Have to drive the ball so well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to be really you have to be
Speaker 2: really precise off the tee, and if you're not, it
Speaker 2: becomes a very very long round there. And that's a
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, it's kind of a weird
Speaker 2: complaint to Lodge because it's such an unbelievable golf course.
Speaker 2: But I think if you're playing a lot of rounds someplace,
Speaker 2: that you don't want to be losing a ton of
Speaker 2: golf balls, right, and that it would kind of beat
Speaker 2: you down after a while. So I'd say in their
Speaker 2: current form, Southern Hills and Prairie Dunes, I think, I
Speaker 2: know this sounds like a cop out. I think i'd
Speaker 2: split the rounds evenly. You know, it's it's an enjoyable
Speaker 2: round of golf at Southern Hills and that course is
Speaker 2: closer to maximizing its potential. I think that Prairie Dunes
Speaker 2: is right now yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like the thing that Hey, I'm a dreamer,
Speaker 1: so I always think about this stuff, like, you know,
Speaker 1: in what courses could be, and I think Prairie Dunes
Speaker 1: could be so insanely good, Like you know where you
Speaker 1: talk about it with like the biggest names in golf
Speaker 1: if they in the top five, right, if I mean
Speaker 1: like legitimately, like you know, you could run down the rattle,
Speaker 1: you know, the best courses in the country, and in
Speaker 1: Prairie Dunes is like belonging of like if it gets
Speaker 1: if it maximized what it could be with the fair
Speaker 1: and the thing about Prairie Dunes is like it's the
Speaker 1: easiest work. It's the lowest hanging fruit. Like you just
Speaker 1: have to go out there and like be like, okay,
Speaker 1: you just have to mow.
Speaker 2: This, you know the kind of there right, you know,
Speaker 2: like if you look at the seventeenth hole right now,
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes, unbelievable golf hole. If you just move mow
Speaker 2: the fairway out to the gunch, then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you have basically what you need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wouldn't make the golf course any easier, oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Like that's the thing is like it would
Speaker 1: just make it way more interesting. You've probably seen more
Speaker 1: people hitting it in the gunch because they knew they could,
Speaker 1: they could hit it over to a certain side, and
Speaker 1: it would just creates so many so much more you know,
Speaker 1: so many more options. I hate saying options, but like
Speaker 1: the holes would become so much more compelling, and there
Speaker 1: are already extraordinarily compelling holes. Like I drive the ball
Speaker 1: usually really well, so I would probably play like six,
Speaker 1: six or seven rounds four or three. And I love
Speaker 1: I love Southern Hills. I just that that Prairie Dunes.
Speaker 1: Prairie Dunes, it's just a place that's I think with
Speaker 1: the way the course changes and how it plays, and
Speaker 1: you didn't get to see it in a different, different
Speaker 1: wind like the trip I made the time before. We
Speaker 1: had a warm, warm, couple of days and then we
Speaker 1: had the north wind come and it was just a
Speaker 1: completely different golf course. So the weather aspect of Prairie
Speaker 1: Dunes is amazing because the golf course gets variety day
Speaker 1: to day just by the way the way the wind's playing.
Speaker 1: It's a completely different golf course. Like you know, like
Speaker 1: the seventh holes, this par five that when it's warm,
Speaker 1: it plays dead down wind and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you hit the you hit it long. It's like
Speaker 1: a driver like short iron into this par five. But
Speaker 1: then when the wind flips around all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's like that's a very that's a three shot hole
Speaker 1: and it's very, very hard. The drive is terrifying, the
Speaker 1: layups terrifying, and that's that's a hole that could use
Speaker 1: a lot of width on the layup because like most days,
Speaker 1: no good players ever laying up in the layup. There
Speaker 1: is one of the hardest shots on the golf course,
Speaker 1: and it's it's reserved for you know, the the ten
Speaker 1: handicap ten plus handicaps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's a it's a good point that day
Speaker 2: to day variety at Prairie Dunes would be would be
Speaker 2: tough to beat. And uh yeah, that that golf course
Speaker 2: is is is so good. It is on a different
Speaker 2: level than Southern Hills just because of the land really,
Speaker 2: and we should also also mention that the club that
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes is a lot of fun and pretty distinctive
Speaker 2: because it's not you know, Southern Hills is a great
Speaker 2: club as well, but you use the word grand, it
Speaker 2: has a grand club clubhouse a and it is a
Speaker 2: grand membership. Prairie Dunes is very different, right, It's a
Speaker 2: it's a lot more unassuming and it is just kind
Speaker 2: of the local Hutchinson club. While we were there, it
Speaker 2: was very hot and the local kids were all gathered
Speaker 2: around the pool. Yeah right, they were all there just playing.
Speaker 2: This was their country club. This is this is just
Speaker 2: where they go, This is where the activity is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: there happens to be a world class golf course here too.
Speaker 2: And I really liked that feel of the club. I
Speaker 2: like that it was woven into the local community and
Speaker 2: that the dues for for the members there, the local
Speaker 2: members there, are affordable enough so that people can belong
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: I think that's a it's a difference also, just like
Speaker 1: you know, if Prairie Dunes was in Tulsa, it would
Speaker 1: be it would be just the way Southern Hills is.
Speaker 1: Like Southern Hills is the big club for the for
Speaker 1: the city, you know, and anytime you go into any city,
Speaker 1: you know, Southern Hills is similar to your you know,
Speaker 1: your ritzy club at at any city, and Prairie Dunes
Speaker 1: is like a small small town club and that's it's Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got a charm and it's got it's got character
Speaker 1: that very few great golf courses have because most great, great,
Speaker 1: great golf courses, like we talked about at the outset,
Speaker 1: are located in big cities, and those great golf courses
Speaker 1: become you know, have a similar feel to them across
Speaker 1: them where it's you know, and and that's where Prairie
Speaker 1: Dunes is so unique. It's a good great point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fun place to be and uh and
Speaker 2: you know, if you have ten rounds and you get
Speaker 2: to spend them at Prairie Dunes and and Southern Hills,
Speaker 2: you can't really go wrong no matter what you do.
Speaker 1: What if we threw cottonwood in there? The Naldo course
Speaker 1: down the street.
Speaker 2: I was wondering whether you would bring it up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a Nick Faldo course near near Prairie
Speaker 2: Dunes in really really really great land like sort of
Speaker 2: Prairie Dunes style land. And you know, Nick Faldo was
Speaker 2: out there on a bulldozer obviously and probably not, but
Speaker 2: in any case, we we drove in there and took
Speaker 2: a look around, and yeah, Cottwood Nationally, there were some
Speaker 2: tournament bunding going on there were there were the unbelievable
Speaker 2: natural dunes and then also also containment.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was, but yeah, this we'll probably do more
Speaker 1: of these. We'll just talk about golf courses. But let
Speaker 1: let us know what you think about it. This is
Speaker 1: uh and uh, you know, Garrett'll be back on pretty
Speaker 1: regularly and uh. Yeah. So that was that was our
Speaker 1: trip to maxwell Land. I'm eager to get back maybe
Speaker 1: maybe to New maxwell Land later uh later this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. There are a lot of places to go.
Speaker 1: But one of the great things about Maxwell's tons of
Speaker 1: places are public. Yeah, tons of public Maxwell's.
Speaker 2: If you go deep in a certain region in if
Speaker 2: you go deep in Oklahoma or North Carolina, yeah, or
Speaker 2: North Carolina, you'll you'll find yeah places to play for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So all right, we'll we'll reconvene and uh, good
Speaker 1: talking to you.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks Andy,