Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 3: A bride egg Frida egg, the gridded Frida egg, Frida egg,
Speaker 3: Frida egg, Frida egg, bride egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: And welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we're doing a golf architecture mail bag. We
Speaker 1: put out a call for questions on Twitter and you
Speaker 1: came through with some really interesting questions that Andy Johnson
Speaker 1: and I are going to answer right now. So Andy
Speaker 1: is here with me.
Speaker 3: How's it going, Garrett, I'm doing great. Just ready to
Speaker 3: talk golf architecture. That's a fun, fun thing to do
Speaker 3: every once in a while.
Speaker 1: All golf architecture in this pod. And we're going to
Speaker 1: dig into the questions in a minute. But first we
Speaker 1: have got a sponsor for this episode. This episode is
Speaker 1: in part brought to you by Fat Cork. So this
Speaker 1: is this is a provocative name here, What is this
Speaker 1: company all about?
Speaker 3: It's a new sponsor and I think people that are
Speaker 3: into golf architecture will appreciate this. This is the owner
Speaker 3: of Fat Cork is a golf nut. What they do
Speaker 3: is they do champagne delivery, so they deliver champagne to
Speaker 3: your door. And one of the neat things that I've
Speaker 3: learned with getting to know Brian at Fat Cork is
Speaker 3: that you know, the champagne industry is super complex. But
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Speaker 3: seen my wife and mother in law so happy with
Speaker 3: the champagne they were drinking. It is really delicious stuff.
Speaker 3: It's super unique. It's stuff that you cannot get in stores.
Speaker 3: So they have a couple things. You can buy individual bottles,
Speaker 3: which is a great way to test it out. They
Speaker 3: also have a club. They have three different tiers of
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Speaker 3: And that might not sound like a great deal, but
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Speaker 3: write handwritten gift notes if you want a gift note
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Speaker 3: Champagne because they are going to be getting a shipment
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Speaker 1: So that's fat cork. Check them out, really cool company. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get into the podcast. Are you ready, Andy?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, so we got a lot of questions here. We're
Speaker 1: not going to get to every single one of them, obviously,
Speaker 1: but I've kind of tried to organize them a little bit.
Speaker 1: The first category of questions I have is what I've
Speaker 1: called hot topics, so stuff that you know, people debate
Speaker 1: about in the golf world, Questions that kind of touch
Speaker 1: on those issues, right. So the first one from Chad Mum,
Speaker 1: who is currently has to be pretty busy right now
Speaker 1: getting ready for the premiere of Full Swing, the Netflix documentary.
Speaker 1: But Chad Mum asks this, if Slash Win the ball
Speaker 1: gets rolled back for Championship play, what will be the
Speaker 1: biggest change architecturally for new courses that want to host
Speaker 1: tour events slash majors. So any takes on this, Andy,
Speaker 1: do you think that a rollback would result in certain
Speaker 1: architectural changes in the courses that we see on TV
Speaker 1: in pro tournaments?
Speaker 2: I think yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the one big thing is flexibility, malleability. I
Speaker 3: think that will be important having a wide range of teas.
Speaker 2: Obviously.
Speaker 3: The one course that jumps to mind that I think
Speaker 3: about a lot is Augustin National and one of the
Speaker 3: reasons I think about that golf course in particular is
Speaker 3: that they have two sets to teas, and like they're
Speaker 3: very you know, we have two sets of teas. We
Speaker 3: have a back tee and a member's tea, right, and
Speaker 3: it looks really great because there aren't tea boxes all
Speaker 3: over the place. But at the same time, when distance changes,
Speaker 3: as we've seen, they've had to build out teas further
Speaker 3: and further back. But say we get a ten percent reduction,
Speaker 3: I think this is just hypothetical, which it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like that's going to be the case. It seems like
Speaker 3: it's going to be kind of stop where we are.
Speaker 3: Maybe drivers are a little harder to hit and they go
Speaker 3: they're just you know, but if it got reduct or reduced,
Speaker 3: they would need to move teas up. Now my question
Speaker 3: is like, are you then just gonna eventually have to
Speaker 3: build them back out, because what we know is that
Speaker 3: players are going to keep getting longer, Swings are going
Speaker 3: to get faster, So whatever the regulations that are implemented
Speaker 3: are at that, when they get implemented, it'll probably be
Speaker 3: the shortest this era of golfers ever is, and then
Speaker 3: they will begin to get longer again. This is just
Speaker 3: the natural progression. So I think in terms of what
Speaker 3: new courses will need is that you want to build
Speaker 3: golf courses with that malleability.
Speaker 2: You want to be able to do you know.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that we can take
Speaker 3: away from the Golden Age is that golf courses are
Speaker 3: going to get built around generally. You know, you're so
Speaker 3: you need to leave some space in case you need
Speaker 3: back to say the ball gets reduced ten percent, right,
Speaker 3: then these golf courses, the distance constraints are going to
Speaker 3: be different. The important thing, though, I think is that
Speaker 3: infrastructure is only going to increase for big time tournament golf,
Speaker 3: so you're never you're always going to need that same space.
Speaker 3: Like space requirements are going to be the same. It's
Speaker 3: not like all of a sudden the ball gets rolled back.
Speaker 2: Woo. We can host anywhere we want.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, we're going to Cyprus. Point. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Theynament golf needs more so than anything is space to
Speaker 3: put grand stands. I mean, I'll never forget talking to
Speaker 3: the tournament director at the PGA Championship at Kiwa and
Speaker 3: where I was just talking to him. I was like, man,
Speaker 3: this place is so cool for a Ryder Cup, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, you talk about the most historic Ryder Cup
Speaker 3: in the history of golf was there and it was
Speaker 3: an awesome Ryder Cup venue.
Speaker 2: It is an awesome writer. It was an awesome match
Speaker 2: play golf course.
Speaker 3: Like big swings, great shots, you know, get really rewarded.
Speaker 3: You can make birdies out there. But there's also disasters
Speaker 3: all over the place. And there's enough space. It's solidly
Speaker 3: golf national thing, right, but it's not big enough. It
Speaker 3: could host a major, but it doesn't have enough space
Speaker 3: for a Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: Think about that, yes, absolutely, yeah, Well, I mean the
Speaker 1: requirements for a Ryder Cup are just outrageous and obviously
Speaker 1: have increased so much since the War on the shore.
Speaker 3: But we think that that's outrageous. But the Ryder Cup
Speaker 3: is probably the direct action that infrastructure needs are going
Speaker 3: to for a major championship, right, they might be on
Speaker 3: the on the you know what was ostentatious for this
Speaker 3: Rider Cup? Am I using that word right?
Speaker 1: Over you mean like overboard?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: For this Ryder Cup is in fifteen years, is probably
Speaker 3: going to be a normal PGA set up.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Okay? Infrastructure, Well, yeah, I mean this is a
Speaker 1: really good point about which venues are being selected for
Speaker 1: major championships. You can't just go to the best golf courses.
Speaker 1: You have to go to the golf courses that fit
Speaker 1: certain requirements. And furthermore, this is part of the reason
Speaker 1: why the USGA, for instance, is booking these venues so
Speaker 1: out far out in advance, because these courses need to
Speaker 1: know what they need to do in order to have
Speaker 1: the kind of infrastructure that's necessary to host a tournament
Speaker 1: like this. But getting back to the question, so ball
Speaker 1: gets rolled back for championship play, I would say if
Speaker 1: you see anything at courses architecturally that will happen because
Speaker 1: of this, it will mainly just be there won't be
Speaker 1: as much of a need to change in the future.
Speaker 1: We hope right that the pace of change is going
Speaker 1: to slow down a little bit and courses will be
Speaker 1: less required to continually length and continually move bunkers, continually
Speaker 1: make adjustments to accommodate the length of the game. That's
Speaker 1: the hope. I don't know if that's actually going to
Speaker 1: materialize as a result of the rollback that is likely
Speaker 1: to happen, which is likely to be pretty modest, is
Speaker 1: likely to be not quite as much as you or
Speaker 1: I would want it to be. But the hope would
Speaker 1: be that courses wouldn't have to spend so much money
Speaker 1: just finding new teeing areas, planting new trees and places
Speaker 1: to defend against the length that players are hitting the ball,
Speaker 1: moving bunkers, doing all this stuff that they've had to
Speaker 1: do over and over for the past couple of decades
Speaker 1: because distance has gotten so out of control. The hope
Speaker 1: would be just that that process would slow down a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the other big hope is that on the
Speaker 3: forgiveness front. You know, there's been a lot of talk
Speaker 3: about about reducing the sweet spot in professional golf and
Speaker 3: just leading to a little bit more variability. And when
Speaker 3: I miss it off the toe, it doesn't go just
Speaker 3: five yards shorter. It might go twenty yards shorter. Like
Speaker 3: you know, if you play with older equipment, it does
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I you know, the reality if you
Speaker 3: think about equipment and regulation in the past, is when
Speaker 3: regulation happens, what happens then is it gives the engineers
Speaker 3: something new to innovate around.
Speaker 2: So listen, like, there's going.
Speaker 3: To be a role if there's a rollback and it happens,
Speaker 3: it's just going to start the new innovation trend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like, yeah, it's just been the reality.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's been the story from the beginning, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's happened over and over for the past one
Speaker 1: hundred years. That's not going to change. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see how much of an effect a rollback, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of rollback happens, is actually going to have on
Speaker 1: the game. Likelihood is it's not going to be as
Speaker 1: extremes as people think it might be. All right, next questions.
Speaker 1: This is from j J jat X jjat X, jjat X. Oh,
Speaker 1: there you go, jjat X, there you go. Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. What will we look back on in the
Speaker 1: future and think was wrong with this era of golf
Speaker 1: course architecture. I think this is a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: I love this question. I have a couple of ideas.
Speaker 1: Curious as to what you think, Andy.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 3: I'd hope this doesn't offend anyone. And this is not
Speaker 3: a shot across the bow at anyone. When I think
Speaker 3: about where golf is going in the next twenty to
Speaker 3: thirty years, and I think about golf architecture, new construction
Speaker 3: obviously constraints on resources that are at its highest ever.
Speaker 3: You know, water is becoming an issue more and more
Speaker 3: places than just California. Labor is an issue everywhere in
Speaker 3: terms especially labor in terms of golf course maintenance. So
Speaker 3: you know, at a time where the inputs of golf
Speaker 3: are being you know, looked at, you know that this
Speaker 3: is one of the things that golf when when you
Speaker 3: look at golf from a lenses, there's a lot of positives. Right,
Speaker 3: there's exercise, outdoor time, all these things. There's a lot
Speaker 3: that goes into a golf course, whether it's water, maintenance,
Speaker 3: inputs into the turf to grow grass, all these things.
Speaker 3: And I think about all that and I see renderings
Speaker 3: for new courses. I see new golf courses being built,
Speaker 3: and I think, okay, so we're trying to make golf
Speaker 3: more sustainable and make it a game that lasts what
Speaker 3: could be a time where it could be tough on
Speaker 3: golf given land use and different things. And you see
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that's getting built and you're wondering,
Speaker 3: what what's sustainable about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what does the what does the maintenance crew
Speaker 1: look like? What does the maintenance budget look like? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I wonder that a lot time. And you see some
Speaker 1: of these ideas.
Speaker 2: What's the maintenance time look like?
Speaker 1: What? You know?
Speaker 2: And I do not mean to pick out anything.
Speaker 3: There was a recent podcast a friend of mine, Rob Collins, like,
Speaker 3: I look at his one of his greens at Landman,
Speaker 3: some of his greens at Landman, and I wonder, how
Speaker 3: long are you going to be able to maintain that?
Speaker 2: You know, could you.
Speaker 3: As a thirty thousand square foot green really practical in
Speaker 3: twenty years if we you know, And obviously there could
Speaker 3: be autonomous mowing, there could be all these advancements. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, like when I think about which
Speaker 3: direction golf course architecture needs to go, is like if
Speaker 3: I wanted to be on the cutting edge, and I
Speaker 3: was just talking about this with another architect, if I
Speaker 3: was personally going to be on the cutting edge of
Speaker 3: golf architecture, I would be lending. I would be aiming
Speaker 3: to build the most sustainable, lowest input great golf possible.
Speaker 3: And the renderings for Cabot or the Citrus.
Speaker 1: Farm one Cabot.
Speaker 3: Barons that doesn't look sustainable at all to me. That
Speaker 3: looks like a shitload of maintenance time.
Speaker 1: And it's just a rendering. It's just a rendering, right,
Speaker 1: we don't know what the final product is going to
Speaker 1: look like. But the rendering makes it look like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really intricate bunkering.
Speaker 3: And part of what I wonder about is designed pushing
Speaker 3: what will take the best picture for social media and listen,
Speaker 3: like I take pictures. I know when I take a
Speaker 3: picure sure like of a certain feature, that it will
Speaker 3: pop on social media, right, And I think that golf
Speaker 3: architects know that also if I build this feature like this,
Speaker 3: it's going to photograph really well. And people are I
Speaker 3: mean photograp photography and golf courses have been intertwined forever,
Speaker 3: you know, like you go back to like, you know,
Speaker 3: photos are what sell people to go visit a golf course.
Speaker 3: So I guess, like my thing here is that golf
Speaker 3: architecture should be very very aware of sustainability and be
Speaker 3: building golf courses that are more sustainable. And I look
Speaker 3: at some of the new stuff that's getting built, and
Speaker 3: I think it's the complete opposite.
Speaker 2: I think that's a big mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on the same wavelength as you. My response
Speaker 1: to this question of what we might look back on
Speaker 1: in this era of golf course architecture and regret is
Speaker 1: building to what I would consider overly perfectionistic maintenance standards, right,
Speaker 1: And this is me be more of an agronomy take
Speaker 1: than an architecture take. But a lot of courses are
Speaker 1: kind of built to be maintained in a way that is,
Speaker 1: as you say, highly intensive, and also you know, just
Speaker 1: built in an expensive way that's maybe not necessary for
Speaker 1: good golf. So I'm thinking of these kind of fancy
Speaker 1: subsurface systems under greens that are going in all over
Speaker 1: the place, these new kinds of bunker linings, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I just wonder about maximum economy and efficiency of maintenance
Speaker 1: and whether architects are really building to that or whether
Speaker 1: they're kind of giving in to this race to get
Speaker 1: more and more perfect turf, which golf really doesn't need
Speaker 1: and maybe isn't reasonable to expect golf to have going forward.
Speaker 1: In certain areas of the country. It's going to be
Speaker 1: awfully hard to have grass in like ten twenty years potentially,
Speaker 1: And so you know, we're we're building towards this ideal
Speaker 1: of the you know, perfectly smooth, green, velvety golf course
Speaker 1: that's just not going to be a reality in some places.
Speaker 1: And I would love to see a push away from
Speaker 1: that and toward more kind of rough and ready maintenance
Speaker 1: things that you know, a small crew can do on
Speaker 1: a low budget. It's possible to have that kind of golf.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're building to it right now, And
Speaker 1: we may look back in a few decades and say
Speaker 1: what we called minimalism in the first couple of decades
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century really was not minimalism in
Speaker 1: the most important sense of the word, which is minimal
Speaker 1: impact on the land and kind of minimal requirements for
Speaker 1: keeping the course up. You know, it's pretty ironic that
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've been building in this so called
Speaker 1: minimalist era, a lot of it truly is not minimalism
Speaker 1: in that sense of the term that I've just slaid out.
Speaker 1: And so I think that that's something that we may
Speaker 1: look back on and cringe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I mean, everybody likes to wax poetic about
Speaker 3: Scotland and how they want to build golf like Scotland
Speaker 3: and that so few projects that are doing that right Like,
Speaker 3: I absolutely I can think of one that like it
Speaker 3: has a very conscious effort towards like being sustainable, and
Speaker 3: this one being built in central slash Northern California, you
Speaker 3: know where, yeah, Brambles where it's extremely you know, the
Speaker 3: building a golf course there is, you know, just getting
Speaker 3: to build one there is, you know, is difficult, and
Speaker 3: you know, so I just think that's the thing that
Speaker 3: I that kind of keeps me up at night, is
Speaker 3: the idea of, you know, where where the world and
Speaker 3: the worldview on golf is going, and seemingly the lead
Speaker 3: opposite direction golf architecture is going.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go on to a new question. This
Speaker 1: one is one that I think you may sort of
Speaker 1: throw to me ultimately because I might have a little
Speaker 1: more context for it. But Amol Yazhnik asks thoughts on
Speaker 1: RTJ two in Golf Magazine, saying that architecture has gone
Speaker 1: too far in the direction of easy par hard bogie.
Speaker 1: Did you read this article? See this? Okay?
Speaker 2: It was just it was posted.
Speaker 1: Online like a few days ago. It was magazine only
Speaker 1: for you know, a couple of weeks, I think, And
Speaker 1: basically it was an interview with Robert tran Jones Junior
Speaker 1: in which he, uh, you know, lays out some criticisms
Speaker 1: of modern golf course architecture and defends the legacy of
Speaker 1: his father and his brother and uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: offers a different perspective on golf course architecture as it's
Speaker 1: currently practiced then we're used to seeing. So it was
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting article. I'm not sure that the article
Speaker 1: really explained what rt J two meant when he said
Speaker 1: we've gone in the direction of easy par hard bogie.
Speaker 1: I could certainly dig into that concept more, and you
Speaker 1: know say that, well, I find it pretty easy to
Speaker 1: make bogie's at like Pacific Dunes and stream Song black.
Speaker 1: But there are some courses that have been built in
Speaker 1: the modern era that you know, maybe have gone too
Speaker 1: far in the direction of user friendliness. That's a separate discussion,
Speaker 1: but I think that what rt J two is saying
Speaker 1: in this article generally is worth listening to. I've interviewed
Speaker 1: him before. Andy, You know that that that Bobby and
Speaker 1: I get along.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, both both big fans of the literary world.
Speaker 1: Were both both want to be poets, except I don't
Speaker 1: really write poetry and he's more he's he's actually a poet.
Speaker 1: But I find him to be a delightful, fascinating person.
Speaker 1: I really do. I have some criticisms of his golf
Speaker 1: course architecture, but you know, I really have fun talking
Speaker 1: to him and I think that he's definitely worth listening to.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't reject what he's saying out of hand. So
Speaker 1: a couple of things that he's right about. People do
Speaker 1: tend to oversimplify his father's legacy. That legacy is multifaceted,
Speaker 1: and RTJ did the kind of work that memberships and
Speaker 1: green committees at that time wanted him to do. Right,
Speaker 1: it would have been weird if he had done anything
Speaker 1: other than what he did at courses like Oakland Hills
Speaker 1: and Olympic Club. You know, he was being asked to
Speaker 1: build these championship courses, and he did it in a
Speaker 1: certain way. And you know, we can criticize that now,
Speaker 1: but in the context of its time, it made sense.
Speaker 1: RTJ two, I think is also right that certain aspects
Speaker 1: of the in vogue restoration slash renovation program are a
Speaker 1: little bit repetitive sometimes right, And I've heard him criticize Subairre.
Speaker 1: I echo those criticisms for sure. He also, I think
Speaker 1: deserves some credit for a varied and sometimes excellent body
Speaker 1: of work, sometimes excellent. I wouldn't say that everything that
Speaker 1: has come out of his firm has been truly excellent, Okay,
Speaker 1: but in the end, he kind of paints it with
Speaker 1: too broad of a brush. He goes after the tree
Speaker 1: removal issue, right, makes it an environmental issue, says that
Speaker 1: removing trees is an environmental disgrace. This is it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than that, right, I mean, sometimes removing trees is
Speaker 1: the best thing that you can do for a golf
Speaker 1: course habitat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it makes it easier to grow grass, cheaper
Speaker 3: to grow grass.
Speaker 1: And if it's done right, it helps the trees that
Speaker 1: remain be healthy. Right, And a lot of cases trees
Speaker 1: aren't able to thrive because they're surrounded by other trees.
Speaker 1: And so each site needs to be treated differently this
Speaker 1: tree removal subject. We need to approach it with a
Speaker 1: little more nuance than we traditionally have. So I would
Speaker 1: I would say that. And then finally, easy par Hard Bogie, Andy,
Speaker 1: what do you make of that? Do you think that
Speaker 1: modern architecture is too easy for players?
Speaker 3: One of the things I see as a trend is
Speaker 3: the removal of consequence, and I think that's important to design.
Speaker 3: Is the idea of if I don't pull the shot off,
Speaker 3: I could be in a really bad spot. And I
Speaker 3: think there's some truth to what he said, I don't
Speaker 3: think that it is.
Speaker 2: It is one hundred percent true.
Speaker 3: Again, like I think with a lot of things, and
Speaker 3: it's very easy when you're doing a magazine piece to
Speaker 3: have quotes that get kind of that are very broad,
Speaker 3: that don't have a ton of context to them, right,
Speaker 3: Like I think that I think having space off the t,
Speaker 3: if you're going to have a golf course that has
Speaker 3: space off the t, it has to be married with
Speaker 3: a course that that has If you're not going to
Speaker 3: challenge people off the tee, it has to challenge them somewhere, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: So you know this is the whole yin and yang, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that's what the best architects do so well,
Speaker 3: is that there's balance, right. You know if you I
Speaker 3: saw there was a question about you know what makes
Speaker 3: else Mackenzie great, and it's like, well, it is that simple.
Speaker 3: Like I think the greatest architects always know the right
Speaker 3: like they have the right buttons to push. They know
Speaker 3: when they need to like kick it up and notch
Speaker 3: at the green, or they know when the green can
Speaker 3: be really quiet, because what you had to endure to
Speaker 3: get to the green was it was it was a
Speaker 3: big labor and then sometimes like everything's nuts and that's okay,
Speaker 3: but not every hole is that right, And I think
Speaker 3: some of what architecture, there are some golf courses that
Speaker 3: are getting built that like you don't have to think
Speaker 3: about anything. You just hit the ball and you go
Speaker 3: hit your next shot. And I don't think that's necessarily
Speaker 3: there like the right direction for it.
Speaker 2: But hey, variety is great to.
Speaker 3: Have in golf architecture, and the fact that we're actually
Speaker 3: you know, getting to a point where there's so many
Speaker 3: there's enough golf courses being built that there.
Speaker 2: Can be variety.
Speaker 3: I think this is one exciting thing is that you know,
Speaker 3: not everybody has to build the same golf course. And
Speaker 3: so I would say that I think that there's some
Speaker 3: truth to what he said, but I don't think that
Speaker 3: it is a thing that you could brush with like
Speaker 3: all of architecture. I don't think anybody could go play
Speaker 3: like a course designed by Tom Doak and feel like
Speaker 3: they like got off easy, like the he.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's like a big criticism of Tom Doak sometimes,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, that his courses are too hard. And
Speaker 1: so there is a lot of variety in modern architecture.
Speaker 1: But that also think that. You know, A point that
Speaker 1: you're implicitly making in there is that we have a
Speaker 1: lot of courses from the middle of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: around still we have a lot of penal golf courses
Speaker 1: out there with bunkers kind of front right, front left
Speaker 1: on the greens and bunkers to the right and left
Speaker 1: of the fairway. We have courses with a lot of
Speaker 1: rough There are plenty of those courses out there. We're
Speaker 1: not lacking for supply on courses in the RTJ mode.
Speaker 1: Now we have some more courses that are wide where
Speaker 1: angles are kind of the place of emphasis. What I
Speaker 1: want every course in the world to be like that, No,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, but we're just kind of right now there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a restoration of balance happening in golf
Speaker 1: course architecture where we're getting some more variety of courses,
Speaker 1: and that that is a good thing.
Speaker 3: I think that's the thing variety, Right, You don't want
Speaker 3: every golf course to be the same, and not every
Speaker 3: golf course should be, you know, built with the same
Speaker 3: goal even you know, I think that's the thing is like,
Speaker 3: you know, I think good golf architecture and I think
Speaker 3: this can get really misconstrued, but like it should start
Speaker 3: with a goal, like what's the purpose of this project,
Speaker 3: and then everything should be based off of that. And
Speaker 3: I think a little bit too much of what's going
Speaker 3: on now is maybe like we need to build a
Speaker 3: course like this instead of being like what should our
Speaker 3: course be and going from there.
Speaker 1: So a healthy golf architecture has a variety of courses,
Speaker 1: a healthy gut might have something to do. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to even attempt to complete that segue because it's
Speaker 1: so bad. I need to Brendan Poraphne's to give me
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Speaker 1: on to some questions that have to do with public golf.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of questions about public and affordable
Speaker 1: golf that I thought were pretty interesting. It's been a
Speaker 1: hot topic in CLUBTFE lately clubtf our membership program. Whenever
Speaker 1: we post about private courses, there is you know, there
Speaker 1: are some comments like, hey, you know, I wish this
Speaker 1: course weren't private, right, or I wish there were more
Speaker 1: great architecture that we could appreciate on the public side. Now,
Speaker 1: there is plenty of that architecture that we also post about,
Speaker 1: but this is an ongoing issue, especially in American golf.
Speaker 1: So the first of these questions from b Deniso on Twitter,
Speaker 1: why has the COVID golf boom not translated into more
Speaker 1: interesting uni architecture and non resort affordable public golf. So
Speaker 1: we had this this this is a great question. We
Speaker 1: had this this COVID boom. Right golf was on the rise,
Speaker 1: there was some hope that public golf courses would make
Speaker 1: a comeback, that we would see more good architecture happening,
Speaker 1: maybe there would be some more money for renovations. So
Speaker 1: far that hasn't really happened. That's not to say that
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen in the future, but so
Speaker 1: far we've seen that be pretty quiet. Things be pretty
Speaker 1: quiet on that front, whereas like there's some private golf
Speaker 1: course development happening for sure. So any thoughts about this question,
Speaker 1: you know, the COVID boom, why didn't translate to an
Speaker 1: immediate public golf architecture boom.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before on the POD, but it's
Speaker 3: really hard for public golf courses to do big projects.
Speaker 2: It's extremely hard.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: A good example would be last year LAWSNIA did an
Speaker 3: entire bunker renovation and they try they did it without
Speaker 3: shutting down holes. The problem with public golf like if
Speaker 3: I'm a member at a club and my club decides
Speaker 3: to do a renovation, They're still collecting my dues month
Speaker 3: and month out right, they aren't losing revenue. You know,
Speaker 3: they might be losing anecdotal revenue of guest play and
Speaker 3: you know, concessions and things that are bought on the
Speaker 3: golf course, but you know they're still collecting that month
Speaker 3: and month out do dues revenue. If a public course
Speaker 3: shuts down to do a big renovation, they lose all
Speaker 3: that revenue. And golf's never been more popular these courses
Speaker 3: are they don't have tea times to spare, so like okay,
Speaker 3: like we don't have any demand, we don't have any supply,
Speaker 3: and we're just gonna shut down and turn off our
Speaker 3: golf course at the time where it's never been more popular.
Speaker 3: That it's just not a smart business decision now, Like
Speaker 3: are these courses Like courses need work, they need to
Speaker 3: get like more play results and more were they're gonna
Speaker 3: need more of this stuff. So I think the struggle
Speaker 3: is that a architects are extremely busy. That's the other
Speaker 3: thing is that there's not a huge capacity, Like if
Speaker 3: you're buying doing work right now is not a good time.
Speaker 3: Like construction costs are through the roof, architects are hard
Speaker 3: to find. So in a way, like I actually think
Speaker 3: like the smartest thing a public course can do is
Speaker 3: in a way just sit keep collecting revenue and hopefully
Speaker 3: they can save it and put it in a smart
Speaker 3: spot and then capitalize when the market's a little bit
Speaker 3: of a better situation. This would be like, you know,
Speaker 3: I've got a big savings account and the market's going crazy,
Speaker 3: it's at never seen before highs, and I've I've I'm
Speaker 3: collecting this, you know, I'm I've got all this money
Speaker 3: and I'm just gonna keep buying.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna buy all this stuff at all time highs.
Speaker 3: Right, it wouldn't be necessarily the smartest investig I'm not listen.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm not a financial advisor.
Speaker 3: But like most success stories start from buying at low's
Speaker 3: and so right now is not like it's a really
Speaker 3: bad time for public golf to get to to do
Speaker 3: projects because A there's a huge demand for them, and
Speaker 3: B there's a there's not a lot of people out
Speaker 3: there to do work, and it's expensive to do work.
Speaker 3: So I think the other point inside of this coin
Speaker 3: is why haven't we seen an explosion in public new
Speaker 3: public golf development.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a complicated question. That's a good
Speaker 1: set of points that I hadn't thought about before. How
Speaker 1: you know, just the nature of the market right now
Speaker 1: sort of would would push public courses to wait and
Speaker 1: see right in order to do work. I think that
Speaker 1: would be probably the smart move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like why why try and getting an
Speaker 3: arms race with with private clubs that you can't compete with.
Speaker 3: I think like the big miss of public golf, the
Speaker 3: huge miss was that more courses weren't during doing work
Speaker 3: ahead of.
Speaker 1: This right time during the downturn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well when there were when they could it, when
Speaker 3: a public course could conceivably hire like a great example
Speaker 3: Memorial Park, the renovation of Memorial Park. Who hire Tom
Speaker 3: Doak to do the renovation there?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 3: If they tried to hire Tom Doak, they're competing with
Speaker 3: like ocean front sites, Sandy Sites.
Speaker 1: Or common Town is a good example too, And the
Speaker 1: common Ground project happened in kind of a similar time
Speaker 1: period where there was a downturn in golf architecture. It
Speaker 1: was an interesting enough project to catch Tom Doak's attention
Speaker 1: and that's where they went with it. Well, I want
Speaker 1: to get to your question of why they aren't building
Speaker 1: new public courses.
Speaker 3: Though, I just I do want to talk real quick
Speaker 3: about like the best affordable public golf courses new courses
Speaker 3: in the country and when they were built and who
Speaker 3: they were built by. Right, Yeah, So if you think
Speaker 3: about it, it's like either at downturns with very popular architects,
Speaker 3: like established architects, but then you have like your rustic canyon.
Speaker 2: You know what they did.
Speaker 3: They hired a young, relatively unproven golf architect that built
Speaker 3: that golf course, Wild Horse. They hired two guys that
Speaker 3: people that a common golfer wouldn't know, but it had
Speaker 3: built some of the best courses.
Speaker 2: In the world for Core and Crenshaw Winter Park.
Speaker 3: Similar they hired Keith reb and Riley Johns, two guys
Speaker 3: that had worked for coren Crenshaw. Like if you think
Speaker 3: about the really successful affordable golf courses in America they
Speaker 3: in the modern age, not you know, old courses. They
Speaker 3: have a common thread of hiring young, relatively unproven golf
Speaker 3: architects because they're they're buying out a low you know.
Speaker 3: And the same thing could be said for Soul Park
Speaker 3: when they hired Gil.
Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely, Gil was not nearly as busy when he
Speaker 1: built Soul Park, even less so when he built Rustic Canyon.
Speaker 1: And so public golf courses really, if you're looking to
Speaker 1: build an affordable public course or renovate one, then those
Speaker 1: are really the businesses that should be looking for the
Speaker 1: next up and coming architect. Right people are calling for
Speaker 1: these up and coming architects to get new opportunities. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at history, some great opportunities for up
Speaker 1: and coming architects have come at these kinds of projects,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, fifteen twenty years later,
Speaker 1: people realize, oh my goodness, you know, Gil Hants built
Speaker 1: Rusticanan He's the biggest golf architect in the world right now,
Speaker 1: and there's a public course that I can play for
Speaker 1: an affordable rate that he built. And so that's the
Speaker 1: cool thing that you can get if you're making that
Speaker 1: long term play. Now, why have there not been more
Speaker 1: new public course projects? You've laid out a rationale for
Speaker 1: why there haven't been many renovations, and I think that
Speaker 1: one reason for this, one reason that there's a lack
Speaker 1: of public new course builds right now, is that, remember,
Speaker 1: we way over built in the US in the eighties,
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousands, built way too many golf courses,
Speaker 1: and the market is still correcting itself, right that market
Speaker 1: correction has slowed down a little bit. The COVID boom
Speaker 1: certainly made that dynamic slowed down. There have been fewer
Speaker 1: course closures, but we're still losing public golf courses. Public
Speaker 1: golf courses are still closing, and that's because we just
Speaker 1: had an oversupply and we still haven't gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where we need more. You know, I just don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not really a huge market need for
Speaker 1: new public courses. And then besides that, given the current
Speaker 1: conditions of the labor market, of the materials market, it's
Speaker 1: just so hard to expect somebody to build an affordable
Speaker 1: public golf course right now, the cost of land. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it would be a crazy thing to do.
Speaker 1: It would be a great thing to do. I'd love
Speaker 1: for somebody to do it just out of kind of
Speaker 1: principles to give back to the game. And there are
Speaker 1: some organizations and people who have done that. The West
Speaker 1: Palm Beach Project, I think, is an example of that.
Speaker 1: And organizations like the USGA, the PGA of America, like
Speaker 1: local or regional golf associations can make big moves on
Speaker 1: this front because their motive is not necessarily to make
Speaker 1: a ton of money. Their motive is to give back
Speaker 1: to the game. But that's really the attitude that you
Speaker 1: would have to have in order to build a public
Speaker 1: golf course and affordable public golf course nowadays, you would
Speaker 1: have to have the motive of giving back to the
Speaker 1: game because you're not going to make much money on it.
Speaker 1: It's really expensive and you're not going to get much
Speaker 1: in return. And that's why we see more private courses
Speaker 1: being built because there's a better business model for those
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we want to talk about the business model,
Speaker 3: right if I go about, like let's just say I
Speaker 3: want to build a new golf course, the outlay for
Speaker 3: a new golf course, you're looking at like twenty five
Speaker 3: million dollars. Okay, So if it's a private club, I
Speaker 3: can immediately start selling memberships against that and recouping my money. Right,
Speaker 3: If I want to build a public golf course, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't make a dime on that investment until the
Speaker 3: day you open and start making green spees, and then
Speaker 3: your green s fees are going against your operating costs.
Speaker 3: So your time on re on getting your investment back
Speaker 3: is decades. I mean you're talking about like a very
Speaker 3: long time. Because say I put twenty five million dollars
Speaker 3: into a new public golf course with all the facilities
Speaker 3: are twenty million right the the market. Then you know
Speaker 3: you're talking about let's just say we have a really
Speaker 3: good facility that turns a million dollar profit every year.
Speaker 3: So after I've put my twenty million in, it's going
Speaker 3: to take twenty years to recoup that twenty million dollars, right,
Speaker 3: And that's like a great case scenario. Right, So in
Speaker 3: terms of like it's just like nobody is putting out
Speaker 3: that money with that type of like return rate.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So if I sell a private if I do a
Speaker 3: private club and I sell a full membership, I've recouped
Speaker 3: my upfront cost. If that makes sense. So I think
Speaker 3: like where people need to focus on is like listen, like,
Speaker 3: there isn't gonna be this rash run of new public
Speaker 3: golf courses being built. It's not gonna happen like the
Speaker 3: resorts happen because they buy at the in remote areas
Speaker 3: where lands really really cheap and good and they can
Speaker 3: build golf courses for cheap and then they charge very
Speaker 3: high rates. Right, So that's the resort model. It's way different, right,
Speaker 3: you know you're talking about like buying really cheap land,
Speaker 3: not you know, you can't build an affordable golf course
Speaker 3: in the sticks, you know, with you're not how are
Speaker 3: you gonna get people there?
Speaker 2: Right? It's gone.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean you know, if you build it, they
Speaker 1: will come. Concept but not alls can do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so where this needs to focus on, and and
Speaker 3: this goes back to the first part of the question,
Speaker 3: is like identifying the really great facilities that are underutilized
Speaker 3: right now or that aren't what they should be, and
Speaker 3: focusing the mental and an energy towards like why hasn't
Speaker 3: this been renovated? This could be an awesome golf course
Speaker 3: because the reality is like there isn't affordable cheap land
Speaker 3: close to cities. What there is, though, is there are
Speaker 3: golf facilities that exist that could be renovated or restored
Speaker 3: or whatever it may be, that are turned from mediocre
Speaker 3: or poor facilities into very good facilities for less money.
Speaker 3: And that is where business models start to make sense. So,
Speaker 3: you know, that's where I think. The other thing is like,
Speaker 3: hopefully golf continues to push more towards the UK model,
Speaker 3: and I think, like, right now that's probably unrealistic given
Speaker 3: the sense of how busy private and public golf courses are.
Speaker 3: But maybe eventually that that changes and there's there's more
Speaker 3: more ability for private clubs to open their doors at
Speaker 3: the public.
Speaker 1: There would have to be a cultural change in America
Speaker 1: and American golf for that to happen, but I am
Speaker 1: one hundred percent on board with it happening. And ifybody
Speaker 1: has suggestions for how that could be encouraged among private
Speaker 1: clubs more kind of public access, then I'm all ears,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear those ideas. You know. Another reality
Speaker 1: that is kind of sitting behind all of this is
Speaker 1: that COVID, as far as I understand, I'm not an economist,
Speaker 1: exacerbated income inequality, meaning there may be more people now
Speaker 1: able to pay for high end private club memberships, and
Speaker 1: there may be fewer people who are active in the
Speaker 1: public golf market. And if you look at when the
Speaker 1: public golf market has been at its most active, you
Speaker 1: look at the post World War two era, when the
Speaker 1: middle class in America was really emerging and strengthening, there
Speaker 1: were quite a few public courses being built. Were they
Speaker 1: all great? Were they architect master works? Know? But that
Speaker 1: was when the public golf market in America really emerged,
Speaker 1: when there was a strong kind of middle class to
Speaker 1: support it. And right now that's kind of not the
Speaker 1: direction of society as far as I understand it. Again,
Speaker 1: this is kind of these issues are above my pay grade.
Speaker 1: But that's another dynamic to track on this subject is
Speaker 1: you know, how many people are there who can really
Speaker 1: pay for private club memberships? Well, there are more and
Speaker 1: more seemingly, And how many people are there who can
Speaker 1: consistently support a local public golf course. I hope there
Speaker 1: are more in the future, and I hope there are
Speaker 1: more in the post COVID era, but that's not where
Speaker 1: things seem to be moving. So a corollary to this
Speaker 1: question is something that Ryan Barrath asked, with so much
Speaker 1: new construction and renovation focused on country clubs and high
Speaker 1: end resorts, do you think great architecture is becoming elitist
Speaker 1: or un affordable to the biggest group of regular golfers.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think that there's I think
Speaker 3: all the there's a lot of great affordable public facilities
Speaker 3: that are being highlighted more so now than ever before.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, if you go through it, there's
Speaker 3: there's a really great affordable public facility in every region
Speaker 3: of the country at this point. And to me, to me,
Speaker 3: the awareness was always the issue of of where to
Speaker 3: play golf, and I think that's becoming less and less
Speaker 3: of an issue, you know, like the the country has
Speaker 3: always been out of balance in terms of where the
Speaker 3: great golf courses are.
Speaker 2: I would just you know.
Speaker 3: Is it is it? Is it worse now than it
Speaker 3: was five years ago? I don't know, because the awareness
Speaker 3: of facilityes some facilities is so much higher, right Like
Speaker 3: think about Sweeten's Cove when it opened in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: nobody knew what it was, you know, where it.
Speaker 2: Was, right or I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think in a way that the discovery the country.
Speaker 3: Social media has made golf smaller, if that makes sense,
Speaker 3: the world of golf smaller, Like people know where the
Speaker 3: better place where great places go play golf are and
Speaker 3: it's easier to get to them when you know where
Speaker 3: they are, right. It's not like I'm going to go
Speaker 3: try this golf course. I'm picking this golf course because
Speaker 3: it's the most expensive one in town. I think that's
Speaker 3: the big thing is that there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: highlighting of facilities that were great. Like I think back
Speaker 3: to you know, when I lived in LA before I
Speaker 3: did this. I I've found like two guys I played
Speaker 3: golf with and they were locals, Like I got randomly
Speaker 3: paired with them and I went and played more with them.
Speaker 3: The one guys I'll never forget it is from New Zealand.
Speaker 3: His name was Tony Parr. Get a good golf name,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, I play. I played a bunch
Speaker 3: of courses in the area with them, and then we
Speaker 3: played Rustic Canyon. And this was before it was really
Speaker 3: like you know, internet famous and uh, and I remember
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to go back there and
Speaker 3: play again. You know, this is the course I want
Speaker 3: to play more and I played like five more rounds there,
Speaker 3: you know, uh, in my time there. And and that's
Speaker 3: what I would say is like I didn't know though
Speaker 3: that Rustic Canyon was my favorite course of the area.
Speaker 3: I had to go play a bunch of other courses
Speaker 3: to figure out that that was my favorite course. So
Speaker 3: in that way, the golf world has gotten smaller because,
Speaker 3: like listen, you can go out and try and find gems.
Speaker 3: But there's also like been a lot of content created
Speaker 3: by a lot of different companies that has uncovered really worthwhile,
Speaker 3: affordable golf.
Speaker 1: I also think that it's true that it is very
Speaker 1: possible to appreciate, to enjoy good architecture at a very
Speaker 1: wide range of courses. You don't have to just look
Speaker 1: at the great courses to experience good architecture. Sometimes if
Speaker 1: you play your local public course, you can recognize that
Speaker 1: it has a few really great holes and you can
Speaker 1: dig into those, or you can just find what you
Speaker 1: think is the best design course in your area and
Speaker 1: you can enjoy that. You don't have to necessarily go
Speaker 1: for these big white whales of golf travel private courses
Speaker 1: to you know, pursue your interest in golf architecture. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, right, I think that there's a big potential
Speaker 1: to just enjoy good architecture as opposed to necessarily insisting
Speaker 1: on great architecture all the time, because the reality is
Speaker 1: that I spend most of my time, you know, I
Speaker 1: get to play some awesome places when I go on
Speaker 1: these trips with you and in the company, right, we
Speaker 1: get to go play some incredible places, and that's not
Speaker 1: a privilege that everybody has. I'm really grateful for it.
Speaker 1: But when I'm home, when I'm out here in the
Speaker 1: suburbs of Portland, I play my regular golf rounds at
Speaker 1: normal public courses, the more affordable the better. Not all
Speaker 1: of them are great, but there are a couple where
Speaker 1: I can really enjoy some good golf architecture, and that
Speaker 1: gives me a lot of pleasure because I'm not paying
Speaker 1: that much for it. It's just my kind of local course,
Speaker 1: but I'm able to see something in it that gives
Speaker 1: me a lot of satisfaction, that makes the game interesting,
Speaker 1: that kind of fills the tank in that way. So
Speaker 1: I don't need to go play, you know, national golf
Speaker 1: links all the time, even though it's an incredible privilege
Speaker 1: to get to go play a place as great as that.
Speaker 1: I can go appreciate architecture at Forest Hill's golf course.
Speaker 1: And I don't know is that a good response to
Speaker 1: that question, because I think when people focus on great architecture,
Speaker 1: they just assume that it's the that it. Great architecture
Speaker 1: is the province of a few courses out there. But
Speaker 1: I'm saying that you can find great and good architecture
Speaker 1: in a lot of different places, including courses that maybe
Speaker 1: aren't that great overall but just have some cool things
Speaker 1: about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the thing is that, like I always feel really
Speaker 3: good if I go see somewhere and there's like at
Speaker 3: least one or two things that I'm like, wow, that
Speaker 3: was really cool. Yes, And like a recent round I played,
Speaker 3: there's a course by me called Bill Valley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh that's a fun place. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: good piece of land.
Speaker 2: I mean, like an it's super funky. I mean it
Speaker 2: doesn't there's there's trees everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's maybe not a good piece of land, but it's
Speaker 1: like a memorable kind of kind of golf course. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Half the teas are like artificial, you know, you're hitting
Speaker 3: off like like little like practice mats, like rocket mats
Speaker 3: and uh but there's like a world class golf hol
Speaker 3: out there where I like I saw it.
Speaker 2: It's the fourth hole.
Speaker 3: Is this great part four that kind of like it's
Speaker 3: got like a reverse camera and dog legs around a tree.
Speaker 3: And then the green sites. It's an incredible green site
Speaker 3: that's partially blind.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just a really cool golf hole. And I saw
Speaker 2: it from like the third hole. I was like, what's
Speaker 2: that hole?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And then you go, you see it, you play it.
Speaker 3: It's like that's really cool. Like I walked away from
Speaker 3: that route. I mean, there's a couple of really great
Speaker 3: views and and it's like, is this golf course anything
Speaker 3: super special? No, but there is a golf hole out
Speaker 3: there that is really truly like world class and and
Speaker 3: and that's the thing is that, you know, I even
Speaker 3: think back to like some of the one of the
Speaker 3: course I grew up playing, uh my Muty and my
Speaker 3: Muny golf at, like where I grew up.
Speaker 1: This is Lake Bluff, right, Lake Bluff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's something the greens just had this
Speaker 3: like steady tilt. It was almost like you know that
Speaker 3: where it really reinforced just like you had to be
Speaker 3: in the right spots because otherwise you'd get these like
Speaker 3: ten foot breaking putts. And it taught me from a
Speaker 3: like a yog like how to where to miss shots,
Speaker 3: like because if you were in the wrong spots, you
Speaker 3: just weren't getting up and down and these This is
Speaker 3: like the most rudimentary golf architecture. You know, this golf
Speaker 3: course has nothing like really special about it, but just
Speaker 3: the tilt, Like it had severe tilt in the greens,
Speaker 3: and that was the thing that like, you know, you
Speaker 3: had to be in the right spots. And like to
Speaker 3: this day, I can go around that golf course like
Speaker 3: with my eyes closed and play good because I know
Speaker 3: where to miss the ball.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the golf course I grew up on was
Speaker 1: a Santa Barbara Municipal golf course, Santa Barbara Meini And uh,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the stuff out there is
Speaker 1: not great, but there's some incredible land on some holes
Speaker 1: on that course and some holes that use the land
Speaker 1: in a super unique, like unreplicable way, and you know
Speaker 1: that are like no other golf holes that I've played
Speaker 1: in all of my travels. And that's the first eighteen
Speaker 1: hole golf course that I played it's the municipal golf
Speaker 1: course in the town where I grew up. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying it's great that a lot
Speaker 1: of great golf course architecture is not accessible to the public.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I love that state of affairs, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that people need to accept that just
Speaker 1: because you know, you can appreciate good golf architecture everywhere.
Speaker 1: But I think if there's anything, any one thing that
Speaker 1: we just try to do over and over and over
Speaker 1: in our work on this podcast and what we write,
Speaker 1: is to help people notice things in the everyday golf
Speaker 1: courses that they play that they can enjoy beyond just
Speaker 1: playing golf, which is fun in itself, but this adds
Speaker 1: another layer where you can see good architecture anywhere, and
Speaker 1: the hope is that you can do that at the
Speaker 1: courses in the in the place where you live. So
Speaker 1: that's that's a response there, maybe a little too optimistic
Speaker 1: for what Ryan was asking, but I think that's how
Speaker 1: we feel, all right. That pretty much covers the question
Speaker 1: that I definitely wanted to cover. Are there any that
Speaker 1: you want to throw in here at the end? Were
Speaker 1: there ones that we didn't cover that you thought, were
Speaker 1: you know, we need to get to Garrett.
Speaker 2: How about from Craig Mosier.
Speaker 3: Any designers out there that you haven't played that you've
Speaker 3: been meaning to?
Speaker 1: This is this is a cool question. I put this
Speaker 1: one down to the first name that came to mind
Speaker 1: was Wayne Styles.
Speaker 2: A couple of those courses.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, maybe not all of
Speaker 1: them are super well preserved, but that's an architect, you know,
Speaker 1: a Golden Age era architect. I believe that I don't
Speaker 1: know a whole lot about, but there are a ton
Speaker 1: of Wayne Styles courses in New England, up in Maine,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, kind of that that was his area,
Speaker 1: and I haven't played any of those courses, and I'd
Speaker 1: really like to get to them. You know, another a
Speaker 1: big one, a big architect that I have not played
Speaker 1: any of his work as Stanley Thompson. And so I
Speaker 1: need to get up to cann Uh or at least
Speaker 1: get over to Sleepy Hollow in Cleveland and and see
Speaker 1: some of his stuff. But for sure getting up to
Speaker 1: British Columbia and seeing Capilano I believe his out's pronounced.
Speaker 1: Maybe going up and seeing BAMF. Just seeing a few
Speaker 1: more Stanley Thompson courses from from what I've heard, just
Speaker 1: the sensational architect and uh, somebody that I need to
Speaker 1: learn more about.
Speaker 2: What about you I've seen, I've seen a little just
Speaker 2: one course. I've only seen Old Elm.
Speaker 3: But Harry Colt is a big one on my list
Speaker 3: in terms of just diving deeper into I'd like to
Speaker 3: see that. Another one that has international implications, I'd like
Speaker 3: to see Alec Alec Russell's or yeah, yeah, gotta go
Speaker 3: to oz yeah, or New Zealand Para there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Harry cold Is is probably the biggest hole
Speaker 1: that you and I both have, right, maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: golf architect of all time. And uh, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: his courses are mostly in the UK, so that's why
Speaker 1: we haven't seen many. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another one would be Devau Emmett.
Speaker 3: I've seen Garden City, but I haven't seen a lot
Speaker 3: of his other work and I'd like to like to
Speaker 3: get there, you know. But these are all like I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of Tilling hass that I want to see.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is a tough thing, is there's
Speaker 3: there's only so much time. But you know, I think
Speaker 3: seeing multiple efforts from from architects is really important because
Speaker 3: this goes to that question that somebody asked about Mackenzie,
Speaker 3: Like you can't understand it architects seeing one of their
Speaker 3: courses for the most part, because like the really great
Speaker 3: architects are so different between the courses, right, you know,
Speaker 3: there's different you know, features and and and you know
Speaker 3: natural features that they had to work with and different
Speaker 3: you know, you know, they changed too. Like that's the
Speaker 3: cool thing about some of these architects is the evolution
Speaker 3: of their style. You know, I don't think like their
Speaker 3: core principles change like I think their core you know,
Speaker 3: fundamental design principles stayed the same and beliefs, but their
Speaker 3: some of their styles and you know, aesthetics would change.
Speaker 2: So seeing a good batch of stuff and that is hard.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the hard thing.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that I got a
Speaker 3: question on earlier, you know, on Twitter at some point,
Speaker 3: was like it's impossible to see Like for the most part,
Speaker 3: all the great architects that worked in America for a
Speaker 3: long time have like one good public option that everybody
Speaker 3: can go see, which is nice. But you know, the
Speaker 3: seeing their bodies of work and seeing a couple really formulate,
Speaker 3: and then I'm excited for some of these young architects,
Speaker 3: Like I'm excited to go see Rob Collins's second, third,
Speaker 3: fourth courses as they come online, just to see what
Speaker 3: they're because I don't think you can have like an
Speaker 3: accurate idea of what their work's going to look like
Speaker 3: from just from just nine Holes in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And that that Muni course in Memphis. Yeah, the King
Speaker 1: Collins built. The name is escaping me right now. But
Speaker 1: that's one that I'd.
Speaker 2: Really like to see, God killing me all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, you know recommendation. I believe will Bardwell
Speaker 1: of Lying For has has written about it. So if
Speaker 1: you want to find out more about that course, go there.
Speaker 1: But I think that that's going to be I mean,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing from King Colin far Overton, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. What we're seeing so far from King Collins
Speaker 1: is interesting and how varied it has been, right because
Speaker 1: we got Sweeten's Cove course build on a floodplain. Basically
Speaker 1: we got landman course built on land that could barely
Speaker 1: be golfable, right that they had had to make some
Speaker 1: major interventions in order to make it golfable. And then
Speaker 1: Overton where you know they're building a local kind of
Speaker 1: city course as far as I understand it. And so
Speaker 1: we've got some good variety already coming up there. We'll
Speaker 1: see some nice work from Kyle Franz coming up, some
Speaker 1: work from Brian Schneider and Blake Conant. So new architects
Speaker 1: are coming online, and I think we're both really looking
Speaker 1: forward to seeing what some of these next generation architects
Speaker 1: are interested in doing. All right, any other questions or
Speaker 1: do you want to wrap up there?
Speaker 2: I think that's a good spot to wrap up.
Speaker 1: All right. To everybody whose questions did not get answered,
Speaker 1: my apologies, but I will dive in and answer some
Speaker 1: more on Twitter, I think, because there are some ones
Speaker 1: that can be answered fairly briefly, and so happy to
Speaker 1: do that. But thank you so much Andy talking against her.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was edited by
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