Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 1: Ball in a bride egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida
Speaker 1: Egg Friday fridaggg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 1: to run off of the course.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Andy Johnson, and today I am
Speaker 2: joined by Bob Crosby. Bob is the chairman of the
Speaker 2: USGA Museum Committee, which encompasses museums at Liberty Corner and
Speaker 2: Pinehurst and it's archive in Library. Bob is also one
Speaker 2: of my favorite golf course architect extra minds to have
Speaker 2: a discussion with, so it's it's super fun anytime you
Speaker 2: get to talk to Bob. I'm so happy you joined.
Speaker 2: He kind of comes at golf architecture a little bit
Speaker 2: different ways than I do. He's very history based and
Speaker 2: it's super It was super fun to have a chat
Speaker 2: with him. Before we get to that, I got to
Speaker 2: say thank you to everybody listening. We today is Monday
Speaker 2: the ninth, when I'm recording this, we turned nine, so
Speaker 2: nine years of Friday Golf today. It's been quite the journey.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, we turned an idea into a
Speaker 2: full fledged company at this point with staff and everything,
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't be able to do this without all
Speaker 2: of your support. It's been an incredible ride. Every every December,
Speaker 2: I start to think like I never can remember the
Speaker 2: exact date that we sent our first newsletter out, and
Speaker 2: I always end up searching, but I always think about,
Speaker 2: you know, nine years ago before I was in golf
Speaker 2: and you know, life then, and I'm living out a
Speaker 2: dream and and I want to thank everybody that listens
Speaker 2: and has supported this podcast and the newsletter and our
Speaker 2: membership through the years. It's it's what's allowed us to
Speaker 2: continue to grow, continue to I hope, provide better and
Speaker 2: better content over the years. And I'm really thankful for
Speaker 2: all of your support and making this this little idea
Speaker 2: that was crazy. And I was so naive when I
Speaker 2: when I started the company, I no clue what I
Speaker 2: was really getting into. And the only reason it worked
Speaker 2: is because people read and people listened, and and a
Speaker 2: lot of people helped. I mean a ton of people
Speaker 2: helped along the way. It would have been impossible to
Speaker 2: do this without the help of a lot of talented
Speaker 2: people through the years, and and help from just a conversation,
Speaker 2: help from a note saying that they like their stuff,
Speaker 2: they liked reading the website when not a lot of
Speaker 2: people were reading. All all that stuff is what's allowed
Speaker 2: this thing to keep going. And I'm super excited about
Speaker 2: about the future and where we're going to continue to
Speaker 2: push this thing. So I really really appreciate all of
Speaker 2: your help. And this time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
Speaker 2: I always find myself thinking about all the people that
Speaker 2: have helped me along the way. It's it's a huge
Speaker 2: long list, and and you know, I want to thank
Speaker 2: everybody that listens. So let's get to Bob and our conversation.
Speaker 2: But first let's talk about Club Champion. They are our
Speaker 2: club fitting partner, and I've been working with Club Champions
Speaker 2: since like high school. I was one of their first
Speaker 2: customers when it was an operation out of a garage.
Speaker 2: Now they have grown into i would say the world's
Speaker 2: premiere club fitting operation. They have studios all over the country,
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty nationwide. When you go into Club Champion,
Speaker 2: I think my favorite thing about it is that you
Speaker 2: know you're going to get the best club and shaft
Speaker 2: combination for you. They have basically every type of shaft,
Speaker 2: every type of club that you could you know, new
Speaker 2: club that you could hit, and they're going to put
Speaker 2: together the best club for you. This is not just
Speaker 2: a brand play. Go in there and say I want
Speaker 2: to find the best club for me, and they're going
Speaker 2: to do that. They have highly trained master fitters that
Speaker 2: guide you along the way, and they use top technology
Speaker 2: like track Man. So if you are interested in getting
Speaker 2: a Club Champion fitting, go to club Champion dot com,
Speaker 2: use the promo code Frida Egg and that will get
Speaker 2: you a one hundred dollars full bag fitting or fifty
Speaker 2: dollars for or any other fitting type with the club purchase.
Speaker 2: That's promo code Frida Egg. All right, thanks, let's get
Speaker 2: to Bob Crosby. All Right, Bob, I am I'm really excited.
Speaker 2: You usually talk with Garrett, but I told I stole
Speaker 2: you for this episode. You're one of the people that
Speaker 2: I enjoy talking golf with very very much, so I'm
Speaker 2: excited to talk a little bit about golf architecture, what's
Speaker 2: happening now, and also how it fits in the larger
Speaker 2: context of the history of golf architecture. So I give
Speaker 2: you an assignment here to come up with some three
Speaker 2: points of interest and one point of maybe I don't
Speaker 2: really love where this is going. And I did the
Speaker 2: same on my end. So I'd love to hear you know,
Speaker 2: with golf course architecture, where we're at today, what's the
Speaker 2: what's the one, what's one of the things that you're
Speaker 2: thinking about.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just begin with the disclaimer. I don't pretend,
Speaker 1: and in fact I have not seen as many of
Speaker 1: the newer courses as you have, so I am pleased
Speaker 1: to defer to you on a lot of that. I
Speaker 1: do come to this as a historian. While you're doing
Speaker 1: fancy tours of golf courses in your long black limousines,
Speaker 1: staying at fancy four star hotels, I'm plugging away in
Speaker 1: old issues of golf illustrated in the bowels of golf libraries.
Speaker 2: So so you got that exactly right. That's that's how
Speaker 2: I move around the world.
Speaker 1: If it sounds if I sound resentfuless because I am.
Speaker 1: But but I come at the more modern stuff from
Speaker 1: that sort of historian's perspective, and I think Andy, we
Speaker 1: are at a major turning point in golf architecture right now,
Speaker 1: and I think that major turning point can be described
Speaker 1: as what comes next after minimalism. Coor Crenshaw Doak have dominated,
Speaker 1: I think the field for the last twenty five thirty years.
Speaker 1: Their calling card has been a minimalist approach to golf architecture.
Speaker 1: I love it, you love it, we all love it.
Speaker 1: How does the next generation distinguish itself? Doak has talked
Speaker 1: about how early in his career that was very important
Speaker 1: to him. He decided at high point in some of
Speaker 1: his other earlier courses to completely reject the idea of
Speaker 1: building mounds the way Reese and his father had done
Speaker 1: in so many courses. He rejected a lot of Pete
Speaker 1: di'es pots and his sleepers for a different approach to
Speaker 1: golf architecture, all in the name I think of him
Speaker 1: trying to distinguish him self from his predecessors. That's I
Speaker 1: think the struggle right now that a lot that the
Speaker 1: next generation is is dealing with the Brian Schneiders, the
Speaker 1: Blake Conant's, the David Zenkin's, the the Rob Collins. I'm
Speaker 1: leaving many out, I'm sure, but but they are trying
Speaker 1: to distinguish themselves from what has been an incredibly successful
Speaker 1: run of golf architecture, perhaps even a timeless one. But
Speaker 1: so there isn't there is a natural instinct for them
Speaker 1: to say, hey, look at this, Look what I just did.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that book of famous last lines of here,
Speaker 1: hold my beer, watch this, there's there's there's that aspect
Speaker 1: to some of their newer courses. Uh, and I and
Speaker 1: I take it that some of that is just an
Speaker 1: attempt to find their own feet in the discipline. I
Speaker 1: think some of it is over the top. I think
Speaker 1: some of it is absolutely wonderful, but it is. It
Speaker 1: is they're trying to strike out in a new direction.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody is trying or anybody that
Speaker 1: we respect is trying to out minimalize or minimize the
Speaker 1: Doaks and the core Crenshaws. They're trying to find a
Speaker 1: different path, and I think that's very exciting. I think
Speaker 1: they're going to be some successes, they're going to be
Speaker 1: some failures, but I think it's an exciting moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think obviously this moment, I think I don't
Speaker 2: think we expected to have this many new golf courses
Speaker 2: being built on an annual basis. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: start to think about like where we were five years ago,
Speaker 2: six years ago, it was a handful you know, you
Speaker 2: could count them on two hands new golf courses being
Speaker 2: built per year. And I think, like we're at this
Speaker 2: as you kind of illustrate, and this is you know,
Speaker 2: one of my this fits into kind of one of
Speaker 2: my larger points is that we are now getting the
Speaker 2: opportunity to see fresh blood in golf architecture. There was
Speaker 2: a I think like a lot of people that are
Speaker 2: very into golf course architecture new golf courses were asking
Speaker 2: for this six years ago, but the reality was there
Speaker 2: just aren't enough new builds for that to be the case.
Speaker 2: Because if there's only eight golf courses being built, a
Speaker 2: couple are going to go to Fassio, But then for
Speaker 2: the other ones, it's like, why wouldn't I hire Tom Doak,
Speaker 2: Bill Corn or Gill Hands Right, Like, I'm I'm not
Speaker 2: going to take the risk on the twenty million dollar
Speaker 2: investment and hire somebody new. But now we're seeing those guys,
Speaker 2: the big names, and I think like one of the
Speaker 2: things that I think is interesting is I think that
Speaker 2: the first people called are now Tom Doak, Bill Kor
Speaker 2: and Ben Crenshaw and Gil Hands. I think that is
Speaker 2: a seismic shift in golf architecture. They are the clear
Speaker 2: kind of across the board people the bona fide number
Speaker 2: one golf architects, and I don't think that was the
Speaker 2: case ten years ago. But now because of the influx
Speaker 2: of builds, there is this huge opportunity. There's a huge
Speaker 2: opportunity to identify, to begin for architects to begin to
Speaker 2: showcase what they can do and maybe where golf architecture
Speaker 2: is going. And I think that is a very interesting
Speaker 2: topic because you see different things like I think Brian
Speaker 2: Schneider is a really interesting example of this, where he
Speaker 2: has introduced some he is not He's building golf courses
Speaker 2: in a minimal fashion from the sense of you know
Speaker 2: there he's attempting to use the land. He's not just
Speaker 2: blowing up, you know, a piece of property and re
Speaker 2: engineering everything about it. He's attempting to use the land.
Speaker 2: But he is creating a lot of very clearly man
Speaker 2: made features, mounding you know, greens that are pushed up.
Speaker 2: They do not look like they were just sitting there
Speaker 2: as it, but they do you know that that is
Speaker 2: a different style, right. You obviously have Rob Collins and
Speaker 2: Tad King, who I think have made a name for
Speaker 2: themselves for blowing up properties, moving earth, and I think
Speaker 2: like one of the things that they probably would push
Speaker 2: back on is we've never been afforded a site that's
Speaker 2: good enough to not blow up and push dirt around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's there's also just the the the
Speaker 1: theoretical problem that the younger generation faced, which is you
Speaker 1: can't out minimalize a minimalist.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't get that. I think you could. I
Speaker 2: think I think we haven't seen somebody go like completely like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 1: Well, well, but that becomes a driving range, you know,
Speaker 1: at some point it just becomes a place where you
Speaker 1: hit balls into an open space. And that's a very
Speaker 1: hard road to hoe for the for the younger generation.
Speaker 1: I mean. But the other thing that I think, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you entirely, the go to guys are
Speaker 1: the sort of the three key guys who all come
Speaker 1: out of the quote minimalist school. They may debate that,
Speaker 1: but I think they buy and large do the issue
Speaker 1: facing the golf industry, and it is huge right now
Speaker 1: is that that group of golfers with gills maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit younger, but Core is pushing eighty Doak is
Speaker 1: already talking about slowing down in his early sixties. I've
Speaker 1: always thought Hanson's a bit of a hybrid, but he's young,
Speaker 1: a bit younger. But they are truly aging out at
Speaker 1: this point, and whether they like it or not, in
Speaker 1: the next ten years, maybe five years, they're going to
Speaker 1: be doing a lot less work. And it's because they
Speaker 1: want to do less work. But and that's where the
Speaker 1: new generation slides in because there's the demand I think
Speaker 1: is going to be there and they're the ones that
Speaker 1: are going to have to fill it.
Speaker 2: So I think, yeah, and I think this ties in
Speaker 2: to one of my other topics that I had here
Speaker 2: and I kind of wrote down some names. This is
Speaker 2: me some fresh blood in golf architecture with less than
Speaker 2: five original designs to their name that are kind of
Speaker 2: popping up. You've got Ogilvie, Cocking and Me the Australian firm.
Speaker 2: They're They're big opening this year was the Medina three renovation.
Speaker 2: They have some new builds on the way. They have
Speaker 2: the ones at fall Line thirty six holes, near you,
Speaker 2: as well as some other ones coming on board online
Speaker 2: in the near future. You have Kyle Franz, who did
Speaker 2: the redesign at Cabot, also was part of co designer Broomsedge.
Speaker 2: You've got the Love Sherman combination, which I think is
Speaker 2: like a diametrically different kind of firm. Then you're than
Speaker 2: some of these other ones where they come. It's the
Speaker 2: PGA tour Player and then kind of out of a
Speaker 2: big design firm partnership that we saw very much, you know,
Speaker 2: prolific in the nineties and eighties, not as popular in
Speaker 2: this era, but I think they probably they're They're a
Speaker 2: lot different than the Nicholas companies, you know, or Arnold
Speaker 2: Palmer Design. You've got Rob Collins, uh and Tad King.
Speaker 2: You've got Brian Schneider. Tyler Ray is starting to get
Speaker 2: some new design work. He's been doing restoration work for
Speaker 2: a number of years now, and Uh it's certainly in
Speaker 2: that young, up and coming bucket. Ky Goldby is building
Speaker 2: a new course and obviously was heavily involved with Tree Farm.
Speaker 2: H Andrew Green got his first new build. He's been
Speaker 2: obviously a huge, huge force in the renovation restoration world
Speaker 2: and then uh. And then I've got Jackson Kahn on here,
Speaker 2: which is like kind of like the next iteration to
Speaker 2: me of the Fasio school. And I you know, I've
Speaker 2: played their Scottsdale National. It's completely it is so diametrically
Speaker 2: different than minimalism, like as far away from minimalism as
Speaker 2: you could get. But I thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the direction most of these guys
Speaker 1: are going to go in to distinguish them They have
Speaker 1: to distinguish themselves or their careers are going to be
Speaker 1: very short lived. And let let's recall this is the
Speaker 1: historian my speaking that at the at the outset of
Speaker 1: the strategic golf architecture, early on, say, pre World War One, McKenzie,
Speaker 1: cold and many of it and Simpson were designing wild,
Speaker 1: radical features on golf courses. The examples, you know, the
Speaker 1: Well Park greens, the famous pictures of those greens that
Speaker 1: mackenzie did, McKenzie's Uh, some of his designs for Cyprus
Speaker 1: Point are crazy heading the Headingly greens that the Colt
Speaker 1: did were wild. I mean these, all of these, the
Speaker 1: fangs have been taken out of almost all of them
Speaker 1: since the Saint George's Hill, the famous eighth Green, the
Speaker 1: par three Saint George's Hill that Colt designed. These were crazy,
Speaker 1: crazy greens, and I think that was in part trying
Speaker 1: to find their feet in a new kind of discipline.
Speaker 1: They were pushing the envelope to distinguish themselves at the time,
Speaker 1: I think, largely from Victorian golf architecture. There's a whole
Speaker 1: different ballgame now, but there is that temptation, and I
Speaker 1: think some of the newer guys are doing some of
Speaker 1: that more bold Dare I say radical sorts of features
Speaker 1: for that reason, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I've got a couple thoughts on this, and I
Speaker 2: think that your general inclination when you're a young architect
Speaker 2: is to build bold because it is a opportunity you've
Speaker 2: you've worked like and young architect is interesting because young
Speaker 2: architect in golf is forty year old, right, right, So
Speaker 2: you're talking about you're talking about a professional career where
Speaker 2: you have worked for other people for at a minimum,
Speaker 2: usually fifteen years without being able to express your ideas.
Speaker 2: So when you get these early opportunities, it is the natural.
Speaker 2: It was like, let me show you what I've been
Speaker 2: thinking about. Hey, watch this fifteen twenty years. Like, I
Speaker 2: don't think there are many professions like that where your ideas,
Speaker 2: you know, like, sure you have some like individual ability
Speaker 2: to do things on a right Sure you might be
Speaker 2: the lead associate on a project, but at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, you are not putting everything out there.
Speaker 2: On a recent yoke with Doke, Tom talked about like a
Speaker 2: A really told a really great story about Riverdale Dunes
Speaker 2: of course in Denver, that he worked on with Perry
Speaker 2: Die and he said Perry had a coinciding project that
Speaker 2: paid more money in Denver, so he had two projects
Speaker 2: in Denver, and he said to Tom, just go built
Speaker 2: cool stuff at Riverdale Dunes, like go crazy out there.
Speaker 2: And he said that Perry came out the first visit
Speaker 2: he came out, he was he was like, this is it,
Speaker 2: Like I told you to go crazy, right, And like
Speaker 2: Tom was like, yeah, I was like a little worried
Speaker 2: about like what I was doing because like at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, your name's not on it, so
Speaker 2: like you're gonna hold back, right, And then from there
Speaker 2: he went nuts, you know, and he built some really
Speaker 2: wild stuff. And so I think like when you your
Speaker 2: natural inclination, when you're a young golf architect is you're
Speaker 2: going to say, look at me, but like part of
Speaker 2: what I always think about and like this is like
Speaker 2: so true at a place like Brambles, for example, where
Speaker 2: they went I mean, super minimal, some pretty wild greens.
Speaker 2: But there are some occasions where you you know, you
Speaker 2: look at some of these holes and you're like, God, like,
Speaker 2: how did he know? How did bild know that this
Speaker 2: was going to be enough? Like to me, it's way
Speaker 2: harder to know when you have just enough that it's
Speaker 2: not going to be dull and boring, but you have
Speaker 2: just enough features in a hole that it's really a
Speaker 2: wonderful gentle pull the play.
Speaker 1: The supreme talent in golf architecture, and only very very
Speaker 1: few people have it is how to play the restraint card. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's hard to do because it takes extraordinary amounts of
Speaker 1: courage not to build a bunker there, or not to
Speaker 1: build a mound over there, just leave it alone. That's hard.
Speaker 1: That takes guts. It's like silent parts of Mozart symphonies.
Speaker 1: It takes guts just to have nothing going on for
Speaker 1: a moment, and it's yeah, I agree, Tyling.
Speaker 2: My other thought on what you said about the wildness
Speaker 2: is I think one of the things and this was
Speaker 2: probably the case. You could tell me if I bright
Speaker 2: or wrong in the twenties or you know, I think
Speaker 2: roughly that's the period of time you're talking about here,
Speaker 2: nineteen tens, nineteen twenties. But I think like one of
Speaker 2: the things that's not talked about enough is how modern
Speaker 2: agronomy practices have limited the amount of ability for architects
Speaker 2: to innovate, to do things differently because the playing surfaces
Speaker 2: are just so fast now that the slopes that you
Speaker 2: can use in the fairway and on the greens and
Speaker 2: around the greens are just less. You don't have as
Speaker 2: much room to play with because of how fast our
Speaker 2: playing surfaces and how well maintained our playing surfaces are now.
Speaker 2: Like I'll never forget the old course at the Open,
Speaker 2: the last Open they held. Yeah, the fairways were amazing,
Speaker 2: they were fast and firm. But I looked at it
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, every hole, every ball goes to
Speaker 2: the bottom of these really amazing contours, They go to
Speaker 2: the low spots, so the contours aren't even working the
Speaker 2: way they should.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There there there are a couple of I agree
Speaker 1: with that there there are a couple of along the
Speaker 1: same lines. Uh. I guess my response to that is that, well,
Speaker 1: you can always just let not cut the grass so low,
Speaker 1: but I do.
Speaker 2: But that's but that's not what the consumers demanding. The
Speaker 2: consumers demand, although that's what they think they're demanding.
Speaker 1: Although at some point cutting off greens starts to become tiresome.
Speaker 1: But but for some people, yeah, well for me in particular, but.
Speaker 2: I think both of us think that way. But then
Speaker 2: I hear people are they'll tell me it is awesome.
Speaker 2: I put it off four greens. I'm like, wait, what,
Speaker 2: what's awesome about that?
Speaker 1: But let me let me, let me, let me talk
Speaker 1: because I was thinking about this last time. Let me
Speaker 1: talk about two lost threads that that I think the
Speaker 1: younger generation, whether they know it or not or are
Speaker 1: sort of picking up on. And one is the original
Speaker 1: Augusta National from nineteen thirty four, Mackenzie's original course. I
Speaker 1: have always thought, and I've had this off the wall
Speaker 1: theory that Augusta in nineteen thirty four was strategic golf
Speaker 1: architecture on Acid on LSD. It was crazy shit. It
Speaker 1: had relatively few bunkers, lots of contouring and just wild greens.
Speaker 1: I think Mackenzie had hoped, and this is towards the
Speaker 1: end of his career, that he would take strategic golf
Speaker 1: architecture in a new direction, one that would have boomerang greens,
Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy stuff. It turned out that the
Speaker 1: Great Depression in World War II interceded. Nobody had any
Speaker 1: money for new golf courses until almost nineteen sixty or so.
Speaker 1: By then all the Golden Age grades were gone. Certainly,
Speaker 1: Mackenzie dies I think in thirty four, so golf architecture
Speaker 1: really at that point sort of started over with Robert
Speaker 1: Trenchones Junior and that sort of thing. But Mackenzie was suggesting,
Speaker 1: I think at Augusta something that because he did it
Speaker 1: Augusta he had an owner, Bob Jones, who understood him.
Speaker 1: I think he was trying to push architecture to a
Speaker 1: place that hadn't been before, and it turned out, because
Speaker 1: of other historical events, it never happened. I think the
Speaker 1: younger generation is sort of going down that same road.
Speaker 1: Let's take things to a different place, and I hope
Speaker 1: they do. I hope, but I'll stop in a second.
Speaker 1: The other lost thread that nobody has picked up, or
Speaker 1: at least well, I take that back. I'll give you
Speaker 1: a caveat in a minute. The other lost thread is
Speaker 1: Pinehurst US opened twenty fourteen, single line of irrigation. They
Speaker 1: let instead of growing rough they just let the natural
Speaker 1: vegetation grow. Much of it is sandy the idea and
Speaker 1: God bless Mike what's his name, the usg head, Mike Davis.
Speaker 1: Mike Davis, who wanted that to be a model for
Speaker 1: how golf courses were going to be built in the
Speaker 1: future because they are easier to build and hell of
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper to maintain. It didn't happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: domestic every day golfers didn't like under maintained golf courses
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: You know who didn't like it? Donald Trump didn't like it, absolutely,
Speaker 2: he tweeted about it.
Speaker 1: Although doakes Pinehurst number ten has got some of that.
Speaker 1: The roughs are not really rough so much as just
Speaker 1: unmaintained areas. Yeah, but that's another lost thread that I think,
Speaker 1: knowingly or not, the younger generation is sort of picking
Speaker 1: up on, and that may be that may give us
Speaker 1: a hint of where things end up going. But both
Speaker 1: Mackenzie and Macgusta in nineteen thirty four a lost opportunity,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, and the Open twenty fourteen at Pinehurst,
Speaker 1: we're all suggesting there are different there's a different way
Speaker 1: to do stuff, and maybe somebody ought to pick up
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of directions to go on your two
Speaker 2: comments here, and I think like one of the things
Speaker 2: that I dislike the most about the golf industry right
Speaker 2: now is the chase that is currently happening on the
Speaker 2: agronomy side. And I think like what you hit on
Speaker 2: with with pine HER's number two is a great example,
Speaker 2: you know, the chase for perfect on the agronomy side,
Speaker 2: right I don't think anybody if you, if you, if
Speaker 2: you said there's a scale of you know, one of
Speaker 2: your potential on the agronomy side, I think like a
Speaker 2: lot of people are chasing that one hundred percent because
Speaker 2: the amount of the amount of money that it costs
Speaker 2: to get to seventy five percent is let's just call
Speaker 2: it a million bucks depending on your property, the amount
Speaker 2: of money to go from seventy five to ninety let's
Speaker 2: just call it is seven hundred thousand. So you're you're
Speaker 2: all sudden and These are just rough numbers. I'm not
Speaker 2: an agronomist. Every property is different, everybody's systems are different.
Speaker 2: So you're talking about, okay, it's a million dollar to
Speaker 2: gip me to seventy five, and is seven hundred thousand
Speaker 2: for fifteen percent. To go from ninety to ninety five
Speaker 2: is like another million dollars, right, and then you know
Speaker 2: to go the next five percent depending on your property
Speaker 2: and how crazy your membership is, how crazy your greens
Speaker 2: German is is like another million or two million dollars, right,
Speaker 2: And you see these maintenance budgets just pushing up, and
Speaker 2: it's like, what are we No golfer knows the difference
Speaker 2: between ninety and one hundred. Very few golfers care about
Speaker 2: the difference between seventy five and ninety. And at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, all these costs get pushed back
Speaker 2: to the to the game and the individuals that play
Speaker 2: the game, and like you know what, like you can say, oh,
Speaker 2: like uh, like it's my club. This is the way
Speaker 2: we do things like who wants who wants two thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a month? Dudes? Does anybody? Does anybody want that?
Speaker 2: But that's that's where we're going that's where the where like,
Speaker 2: you know, why why are neighborhood clubs like that that
Speaker 2: are like just they're dokee fives? Why why are the
Speaker 2: dues on these clubs over a thousand dollars? Like it?
Speaker 2: It's crazy to me where this is going and where
Speaker 2: it reflects. Also is like there are clubs now with
Speaker 2: guest fees. Like if I'm a member and I spend
Speaker 2: you know, a couple hundred thousand on my initiation, I'm
Speaker 2: spending thousands of dollars every month when I want to
Speaker 2: bring a guest out, which is like part of like
Speaker 2: being a member, like sharing your course is Oh, it's
Speaker 2: it's four hundred dollars to bring a guest out plus caddies.
Speaker 1: You're not slunch.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh what like And obviously, like a lot
Speaker 2: of people in this case like maybe this isn't a
Speaker 2: consequential sum of money, but to me, that's just the
Speaker 2: wrong direction for the game of golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I think absolutely. And having been a
Speaker 1: green chairman at a large Atlanta metro area golf course,
Speaker 1: they have unlimited capital resources.
Speaker 2: Yes they don't care.
Speaker 1: They just don't care. You know. You see it at
Speaker 1: every level in terms of the toro machines they buy,
Speaker 1: in terms of the money poured into agronomy, including the
Speaker 1: number of staff they have to maintain the golf course.
Speaker 1: It's just they don't really it's just whatever you need.
Speaker 1: It's just whatever you need. It's it's it's an amazing
Speaker 1: business privates, particularly large successful ones. It's an amazing business.
Speaker 1: But let me, let me, let me there's another There's
Speaker 1: an underbelly to that which I think is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: And this gets back to my new generation thesis, which
Speaker 1: is that there are a lot of people your age
Speaker 1: who travel in these in normal packs to play these good,
Speaker 1: solid public courses to hang out. They aren't you know,
Speaker 1: they aren't maintained to the nth degree, but they enjoy
Speaker 1: being with each other. They enjoy the golf courses, and
Speaker 1: and and and that ranges from at the high end
Speaker 1: the Bandon Dunes types to Mike Young's the field and.
Speaker 2: Well abandoned dunes. The greens are maybe tens. That's what
Speaker 2: I don't understand. Everybody goes to abandoned dunes. Everybody goes
Speaker 2: to Scotland, Everybody goes to Ireland and is like, oh,
Speaker 2: these are the golf there is just so amazing. It's
Speaker 2: the best golf, it's the best golf all those places
Speaker 2: for the most part, outside of like a deer, outside
Speaker 2: of the tourist traps, and in the UK, their their
Speaker 2: maintenance budgets are fractions right of the American country Club
Speaker 2: and these That's what I don't get. I don't understand
Speaker 2: how there's no corollary here, right, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't either, other than you can do it, so
Speaker 1: do it. That's that's that, you know, if if you
Speaker 1: can stamp your greens at twelve or thirteen on a
Speaker 1: daily basis.
Speaker 2: Do it.
Speaker 1: Here's the money, by the way. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's nuts, it's it's totally nuts. But but
Speaker 1: but the other phenomenon, and I think you know this
Speaker 1: is the younger general. Is it a There is a
Speaker 1: cohort of younger girl golfers, people in their late thirties,
Speaker 1: early forties maybe who are just not buying the private
Speaker 1: club model, who would rather get in a car or
Speaker 1: an airplane and travel to play these golf courses that
Speaker 1: are not so impeccably maintained in part because of the camaraderie.
Speaker 1: But I think in part because of the golf courses themselves.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that isn't an early warning shot
Speaker 1: at the private club model, that that leading the sort
Speaker 1: of the thought leaders of your generation. I don't know
Speaker 1: how old you are, but I'm guessing around forty the
Speaker 1: thought leaders of that generation are heading in a different direction.
Speaker 1: That's I find that encouraging.
Speaker 2: I think that this was absolutely playing out, and this
Speaker 2: was playing out in the late twenty tens, and then
Speaker 2: COVID completely completely changed this movement. To me, one of
Speaker 2: my long standing beliefs is that no private club realized this,
Speaker 2: but the Kaisers completely through a wrench in their business model.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The Kaisers were, you know, unbeknownst to private clubs. The
Speaker 2: Kaisers effectively were killing the local private club. Because people
Speaker 2: of my age pre COVID, we're looking at like, you know,
Speaker 2: the role of the modern parent has completely changed. I
Speaker 2: am a modern parent. I if I you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure some some listeners will say, well, like you're you're
Speaker 2: you're just soft. But if I look at my wife
Speaker 2: on a weekend and say I'm gonna go play golf
Speaker 2: at eleven am or ten am or nine am, she
Speaker 2: looks at me like you're gonna work all week and
Speaker 2: then you're just gonna not be here with your kid,
Speaker 2: you know, like like it it's like it's easier for
Speaker 2: me to play golf on a on a Tuesday morning
Speaker 2: than it is to play on a Saturday morning at
Speaker 2: this point, and this is the This is not me alone.
Speaker 2: This is the modern household with kids. So the way
Speaker 2: the reason that country clubs work, and like this is
Speaker 2: where it's completely flipped if you listen to old episodes
Speaker 2: of this podcast versus now. The only way I'm going
Speaker 2: to play golf is if there's a pool right involved,
Speaker 2: and it can be like bring the kid at the pool,
Speaker 2: to the pool at eleven, and I will be there
Speaker 2: at noon and I will just play with the kid
Speaker 2: all afternoon and you can just sit at the pool
Speaker 2: right like that, That is how it works. But the
Speaker 2: Kaisers people were looking at it, and you know, there
Speaker 2: was this People were staying in the city longer, so
Speaker 2: there were more young, younger adults staying in the city longer,
Speaker 2: apartments in the city and in modern buildings in the city.
Speaker 2: There are more pool options in the city than ever.
Speaker 2: Less people wanted to travel out to the suburbs. That
Speaker 2: and what happened. COVID hit, and everybody's like, oh, I
Speaker 2: like green space, I like having my own space, and
Speaker 2: this completely reversed this. But people were looking at the Kaisers,
Speaker 2: at the bally Nels, at the Prairie dunes, at the
Speaker 2: It's like I could spend one thousand dollars a month
Speaker 2: and have a big initiation fee and join here, or
Speaker 2: I could do two or three of these these cool
Speaker 2: trips a year, play a few rounds of public golf,
Speaker 2: and that satisized my golfitch, even if I'm a diehard golfer.
Speaker 1: Right and Sweeten's cobes exhibit A one.
Speaker 2: For that exactly. And I think that was the trend
Speaker 2: that really, like you know, if you're a historian, seismic
Speaker 2: events completely changed the direction of things that are happening.
Speaker 2: And I think the local the local club model was
Speaker 2: at like was on the verge of being in like
Speaker 2: a very very very bad spot until COVID hit, and
Speaker 2: that completely changed the whole way society viewed the suburbs
Speaker 2: and the whole way the younger generation thought of the
Speaker 2: local club and it completely has changed the golf world.
Speaker 1: In golf business, well, I think, I think, I think
Speaker 1: it will. I'm still in touch with my club here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and they still have a weight list and they're.
Speaker 2: Still Did they have a weight list in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I'll tell you where they didn't have a
Speaker 1: weight list. And maybe you don't remember this, but the
Speaker 1: real estate Wall Street crash in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and nine wiped out everybody's weightlist. In fact, we were
Speaker 1: a lot of members resigned or were bootered out for
Speaker 1: failure to pay dues. By twenty eighteen that had recovered,
Speaker 1: and there was a weight list back then, and COVID,
Speaker 1: it thinks, just accelerated. To everybody's surprise, things accelerated during COVID.
Speaker 1: I mean, you wanted to get out in the golf course,
Speaker 1: but but you know getting back real quick to abandon
Speaker 1: and I don't want to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: on this. I think Kaiser's genius, and I mean the
Speaker 1: word genius in its full sense of the word, was
Speaker 1: to develop golf courses that appeal to everybody, the golf architecture,
Speaker 1: nutcases like you and me, but also to wives who
Speaker 1: wanted to come out and play golf. It's extraordinary to
Speaker 1: put together a set of golf courses that appeals to
Speaker 1: both and I've done it. My wife loved it. I
Speaker 1: loved it. It's just and dok has mentioned in the
Speaker 1: past that Kaiser has a knack for walking that tightrope
Speaker 1: and it's not easy.
Speaker 2: I think this goes to one of the topics that
Speaker 2: I probably harp on as much as possible. But I
Speaker 2: think the Kaiser's the other genius they and obviously they
Speaker 2: have some leverage. They're building golf courses for cheaper than
Speaker 2: everybody else, and they're proving that great golf architecture does
Speaker 2: not cost more than shitty golf architecture. In fact, over time,
Speaker 2: great golf architecture costs way less than shitty golf.
Speaker 1: Arc and they're also but they're also proving something that
Speaker 1: the I hate to sound condescending, but that the sort
Speaker 1: of the the everyday golfer has never really quite understood
Speaker 1: until maybe recently, and that is that a really great
Speaker 1: golf course doesn't have to be a hard golf course. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and Augusta National is a great exhibit example of that.
Speaker 1: But but also Bandon, I mean Bandon won't beat you
Speaker 1: up if you don't let it. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: have to play that well to to enjoy Bandon. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a classic course of where you if you want
Speaker 1: to play for score aggressively, it might beat you up.
Speaker 1: But if you want to just play your game, it's fine.
Speaker 1: And I he you know, Kaiser understands that.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a quick break from Bob and
Speaker 2: let's talk about our partner, launch Box by True Golf.
Speaker 2: If you're into golf architecture, True launch Box is a
Speaker 2: great product because you can play some of the best
Speaker 2: golf courses in the world virtually. Launch Box is a
Speaker 2: portable launch monitor and golf simulator, and it has a
Speaker 2: simple setup, instant shot registration, has a lot of measured data,
Speaker 2: and an easy Wi Fi connection. Now it's winter, it's cold.
Speaker 2: A lot of places I saw there are a lot
Speaker 2: of places turned up the weather turn bad. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: for those places. But you could use launch Box indoors
Speaker 2: and set up a great indoor golf setup for yourself.
Speaker 2: You can use it also outdoors off a mat. So
Speaker 2: if you're interested in getting a launch monitor that's great
Speaker 2: that has great golf course play, launch Box might be
Speaker 2: for you. Go to True golf dot com. That's t
Speaker 2: R u g o lf dot com slash egg and
Speaker 2: you can learn that's true goolf dot com slash egg.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to Bob Crosby, going back
Speaker 2: to your augusta national topic and the idea of Mackenzie
Speaker 2: that kind of getting into the mid thirties where golf
Speaker 2: architecture was going. I think you could probably put it
Speaker 2: in the bucket of like the start of the thirties
Speaker 2: where golf architecture was going that was halted by two
Speaker 2: massive events, the Depression and World War Two. You know,
Speaker 2: you talk about a an art form, a practice, a
Speaker 2: a really a new industry that was evolving and new
Speaker 2: ideas were being shared and it was getting more sophisticated
Speaker 2: and more you know, more professional. You know, if you
Speaker 2: think about like the whole practice, like there weren't professional
Speaker 2: golf architects until like basically the nineteen tenths, and it was.
Speaker 1: A whole new it was a whole new profession exactly.
Speaker 2: You So you have twenty years of a profession and
Speaker 2: then it gets wiped out for effectively twenty five twenty
Speaker 2: five years because of a couple massive world events, and
Speaker 2: that that exchange of ideas, the natural evolution of it
Speaker 2: is halted and everything starts fresh with a whole new
Speaker 2: set of technology for doing the job. I think like
Speaker 2: there were other schools emerging at this point. Also beyond
Speaker 2: the Mackenzie Augusta National, there was also like one of
Speaker 2: Mackenzie's associates, Perry Maxwell, wrote very harshly about the use
Speaker 2: of steam shovels, and I think this this was directly
Speaker 2: shot a shot at Charles Banks and Langford Moreau, who
Speaker 2: came from a different school than Mackenzie. It was kind
Speaker 2: of more the Rainer McDonald mole of building golf courses.
Speaker 2: But they were evolving. They were building bigger and bigger things.
Speaker 2: They you know, there was still that they weren't altering landscapes,
Speaker 2: but they were constructing large features. And that is another
Speaker 2: with heavy machinery, and it was rudimentary heavy machinery to
Speaker 2: what came out of like nineteen sixty when the bulldozer
Speaker 2: technology got to a point where it's like we can
Speaker 2: literally just flat in a fair way if we want,
Speaker 2: we can make this flat.
Speaker 1: Well, we can road grade the whole place.
Speaker 2: And that's where golf architectural lost its way. But that
Speaker 2: other school of not minimal not minimalism where like you know,
Speaker 2: the greens were wild at Augustin National but the general
Speaker 2: thought with the bunkers and allowing the land to really
Speaker 2: be the star was this idea of of minimalism. But
Speaker 2: on the other end of the coin you had this
Speaker 2: Golden Age maximalism movement that was also evolving and changing,
Speaker 2: and then that was halted. And I wonder, right now,
Speaker 2: are we at a similar point in golf architecture where
Speaker 2: we have You know, if you look at it, you
Speaker 2: have like disciples with Jackson Kahn of the Fazio. You know,
Speaker 2: we can move the world, you know, and we can
Speaker 2: create any landscape that you want. You also have the
Speaker 2: disciples of the Dope Core Crunchhaw gil Hand's movement of minimalism,
Speaker 2: where you have their younger associates that might push it,
Speaker 2: push a direct different directions and offshoots from that school.
Speaker 1: I think I think you're right. I think we're at
Speaker 1: a pivot point. I don't think any of it sitting
Speaker 1: here today know where that pivot is going to go.
Speaker 1: I think there's some hints, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: the route has been set out, and there's we can
Speaker 1: with any sort of reliability predict where things are going
Speaker 1: to go. But it is absolutely a pivot point and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of looking for I hope I live long
Speaker 1: enough to see where it ends up. One of the
Speaker 1: things I hope this younger generation of architects pick up on,
Speaker 1: and I see very little evidence for it, is there's
Speaker 1: just a rich treasure trobe of ideas in the history
Speaker 1: of golf architecture. If they want to go back and
Speaker 1: dig through it, and I hope they do. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean overturning fundamental principles, but there's just an awful lot
Speaker 1: of ideas out there that are lying on the ground
Speaker 1: for somebody to pick up. Which which can Which leads
Speaker 1: me to another topic I wanted to touch on real quickly.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I am disappointed in, and
Speaker 1: this is I guess we put this in the disappointed
Speaker 1: bucket is compared to the teens in nineteen twenties, writing
Speaker 1: about golf architecture is impoverished, particularly by architects themselves. And
Speaker 1: Tom Doak is a clear exception to that. He was
Speaker 1: a brilliant writer and would stand, you know, on an
Speaker 1: equal footing with some of the best writers of the
Speaker 1: teens in nineteen twenties. But he's the only one. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is no other buddy, There is no other architect,
Speaker 1: and relatively few other people writing about golf architecture. And
Speaker 1: by that I mean not just about the esthetics of
Speaker 1: the course, the look of the bunkers, how nice the
Speaker 1: clubhouse is, how smooth the turf is, but you actually
Speaker 1: writing about structure, about the architectural structure of a whole.
Speaker 1: I mean, why is this bunker here and not there?
Speaker 1: But why is this bunker here at all? Those are
Speaker 1: the kinds of questions people argued about an agonized over
Speaker 1: page after page, and I love it. In the nineteen twenties, Simpson,
Speaker 1: you know, Cole low John Lowe, all these guys were
Speaker 1: battling back and forth about the rationale for putting a
Speaker 1: bunker here and not there. That sort of discussion doesn't
Speaker 1: take place, And I think one of the reasons is
Speaker 1: because the whole golf course rankings ratings thing has just
Speaker 1: swallowed it up. It has taken so much oxygen out
Speaker 1: of the room that there's almost no place left to
Speaker 1: talk about anything else other than whether Old Barnlow should
Speaker 1: be fifty first in the ranking or fifty third I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, should it be I'm silly, should it be
Speaker 1: ahead of Highampton or below high You know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I think, I think, and you know, God blessed. Oh
Speaker 1: he says, it's all subjective anyway, so what the hell?
Speaker 1: But it is the focus on whereby course ranks is
Speaker 1: a topic that everybody's eager to argue about, rather than
Speaker 1: the inherent features of the course and do they work,
Speaker 1: do they not work? Why if they do work, why
Speaker 1: do they work? There is so little writing about that,
Speaker 1: and that was the main fair of writing on golf
Speaker 1: architecture in the nineteen twenties, and it just doesn't exist
Speaker 1: right now. And I blame part of that on the
Speaker 1: main magazines beginning and say the eighties and nineties, where
Speaker 1: they did a lot of rankings, and their golf architecture
Speaker 1: writers like Ron Witten and others really fairly quickly on
Speaker 1: began talking about basically in terms of rankings and not
Speaker 1: so much any direct discussions of golf architecture itself.
Speaker 2: Well, the rankings have become you know, this gets back
Speaker 2: to the club business. The rankings have become big business
Speaker 2: for all clubs. The rankings are rankings are huge business
Speaker 2: for the clubs in Great Britain and Ireland. You know,
Speaker 2: they are huge. It's huge business for clubs in America.
Speaker 2: I visited, you know, I think like Interlocking and Madina,
Speaker 2: they both had different reasons why they did their you know,
Speaker 2: twenty million dollar renovations this year. But I think without
Speaker 2: a doubt one of the reasons was they saw their
Speaker 2: course falling in rankings and they know that that that
Speaker 2: leads to more members, maybe higher initiation, maybe more guests
Speaker 2: wanting to play their more Monday outings more like you know,
Speaker 2: you go down the line of all the things that
Speaker 2: a higher ranking does and it's big business now. And
Speaker 2: I agree completely like the it's an overall end of
Speaker 2: like there's less nuance than ever with with the way
Speaker 2: people discuss things online online has it's almost making it
Speaker 2: a race to the bottom. It's commoditized the ability to
Speaker 2: publish written word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the I agree that one of the
Speaker 1: problems is the A s g C A prohibits its
Speaker 1: members from criticizing other members. So God bless Tom Doak
Speaker 1: for not joining the A s g C A because
Speaker 1: he he'll he'll criticize other members, other architects.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think that's that's become the general practice
Speaker 2: is like young architects, they don't think they should say anything.
Speaker 2: But if you look at Tom, I think, like what's
Speaker 2: interesting is like I think like every architect that, for
Speaker 2: the most part, the developer that hires them is going
Speaker 2: to be a it's like a personality match almost like
Speaker 2: right like the there are pro there're clients that profile
Speaker 2: for a Gill, there are clients that profile for Tom,
Speaker 2: there are clients that profile for Bill, and they're like
Speaker 2: all across the spectrum. They have different personalities and they
Speaker 2: kind of like fit into those buckets, right like, But
Speaker 2: like a Tom Doak, somebody the highers Tom Doak, I
Speaker 2: think for the most part, and this is this is
Speaker 2: not speaking, this is speaking in generalities. There's always exceptions
Speaker 2: to this. Somebody that hires Tom Doak is going to
Speaker 2: be a complete golf nut, like golf tragic to the
Speaker 2: nth degree. They're going to have listened to all the
Speaker 2: podcasts that he's been on, They're going to read his writing.
Speaker 2: They're going to be and they are going to be
Speaker 2: so in the golf bucket because that is like, that
Speaker 2: is what is like you can tell the guy just
Speaker 2: loves golf all He thinks about golf all the time.
Speaker 2: And that's that shows in like how much time he
Speaker 2: devotes to writing about the about golf beyond what he's doing,
Speaker 2: Like that's what occupies.
Speaker 1: His brain, right, And and anybody that hires Tom will
Speaker 1: have to have We'll have to know enough about golf
Speaker 1: architecture not to be intimidated by Tom. Yes, and because
Speaker 1: Tom could be intimidating, yeah, and but I agree it's
Speaker 1: sort of self selecting. But but I you know, I
Speaker 1: think the price for the emphasis on rankings, ratings, whatever
Speaker 1: the word is, the price for that is the absence
Speaker 1: of good writing on golf architecture. It just it really
Speaker 1: has taken over commentary on the game, or at least
Speaker 1: architecture of the game.
Speaker 2: And well it's kind of you know, we've got our
Speaker 2: membership that we write extensively about golf architecture, right, And
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that we wanted to
Speaker 2: avoid was the idea of rating golf courses in a
Speaker 2: one through one hundred fashion, because, as you said, it's
Speaker 2: so silly, like is is sand Hill's number six or
Speaker 2: number ten or number four? It's like, well, what day
Speaker 2: of the week, is that I could could change my
Speaker 2: mind about whether it's something's three or four, one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty two, or it gets even sillier when you
Speaker 2: get to like one hundred and twenty two or one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five. Like you're talking about like literal,
Speaker 2: and with the way the ratings go is like literal,
Speaker 2: Like individuals who might have shot their worst score ever,
Speaker 2: their best score ever at a golf course will change
Speaker 2: whether it's one ten or one oh six.
Speaker 1: Is it is beyond absurd. And I actually did a
Speaker 1: history of ranking golf courses that goes back to eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, well nineteen oh one, but anyway, kind of
Speaker 1: but we're running out of time and I wanted to
Speaker 1: touch on one other subject. All right, yeah, if I could,
Speaker 1: and this gets back. I'm trying to drive home as
Speaker 1: the new generation theme, and I'm going to my last
Speaker 1: shot at it. We talked a minute ago about how
Speaker 1: many of this younger generation is working on restorations of
Speaker 1: existing golf courses, and I think that's wonderful. It's a
Speaker 1: source of income, It gives them a great deal of experience,
Speaker 1: but an experience only in one aspect of golf. Architecture,
Speaker 1: and that is an experience of doing everything but a routing.
Speaker 1: And if there's a critical part of being a talented
Speaker 1: golf architect, it's being a great router. And if you
Speaker 1: can combine that with a sense of esthetics, with sort
Speaker 1: of skill of landscaping, you've got the whole ball of wax.
Speaker 1: And there aren't many people who have all of those
Speaker 1: component parts. And the guyser of work for clubs are
Speaker 1: all coming up and their centenaries at this point, they
Speaker 1: all want to spruce up their golf courses.
Speaker 2: They all they're all getting in line to spend fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty five.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable, but and they're sucking up the time of
Speaker 1: all this younger generation of architects. But none of that,
Speaker 1: or very very little of that requires routing.
Speaker 2: Skills, which is, as you illuminated, I think probably the
Speaker 2: most important aspect being building a golf course and probably
Speaker 2: the one that requires the most practice bingo.
Speaker 1: And it involves not just an esthetic sense of I
Speaker 1: can lay out a pretty whole, It involves some engineering.
Speaker 1: You've got an issue, you've got issues with the you know, drainage,
Speaker 1: road route and locating clubhouse, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: It's problem solving at the highest degree in the profession.
Speaker 1: It's the high and it requires an ability to read topos,
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of skills that you don't normally
Speaker 1: associate with the look of a golf course. But it's
Speaker 1: it's at the bone. It is the bones of a
Speaker 1: golf course. I mean, if you want to criticize somebody's routing,
Speaker 1: it's like criticizing William Faulkner novel and saying, I wish
Speaker 1: you'd written a different book. It's it's you know, routing
Speaker 1: is is so deeply embedded in any golf course it's
Speaker 1: almost it's hard to discern what it was, you know,
Speaker 1: what the decisions were at the outset, and so it it.
Speaker 2: My point. Here's the thing. If you criticize someone's routing,
Speaker 2: they say you didn't understand all the constraints, that's an
Speaker 2: immediate comeback. I know always, I know, oh you don't
Speaker 2: understand all the constraints, but I completely agree like a
Speaker 2: really well thought out routing, like I think like one
Speaker 2: of the coolest things that I saw, and I think
Speaker 2: like a golf course that if that I almost brought
Speaker 2: up in the in when you were talking about nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four Augusta National. I think the Tree Farm is
Speaker 2: a great example of a golf course that's pushing in
Speaker 2: a very different direction than its neighbor, Old Barnwell. Right
Speaker 2: like it is it is restraint, it is it is
Speaker 2: a beacon of restraint. Let's let the the golf the
Speaker 2: golf ground. And I think it's like, that is a
Speaker 2: fantastic golf course. And there are a couple and people
Speaker 2: are gonna show me a picture of one hole and
Speaker 2: say this isn't restraint. But for the most part the
Speaker 2: golf course is really a study in restraint and allowing
Speaker 2: the land to be really the natural hazard throughout. But
Speaker 2: it was fascinating. I'm friends with Zach. I saw countless
Speaker 2: routings on that property. From Zach. He hired Tom Doke
Speaker 2: to do the routing. Tom came in and the biggest
Speaker 2: difference in the routing was Zach was consistently going over hills.
Speaker 2: It would have been an exhausting, exhausting golf course to play.
Speaker 2: It would have been dramatic, it would have been you know,
Speaker 2: there would have been shots and holes that you would
Speaker 2: never forget. But one of the things this something, and
Speaker 2: this is Zach would, I think, be very very open
Speaker 2: about this. One of the things he said is like listen,
Speaker 2: like I didn't think about how to like use side
Speaker 2: hills and how to navigate a property along the edges
Speaker 2: and use the hills and kind of traverse them on
Speaker 2: the side. I was just going over all of them.
Speaker 2: And this is like the perfect example of someone who's routed,
Speaker 2: you know, when you think about like projects that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: He's probably routed seventy golf courses, eighty golf courses, more
Speaker 2: more than one hundred and twenty, Yeah, versus somebody that
Speaker 2: was trying to rout a golf course for the first time, right,
Speaker 2: And that that's like the thing about the profession, and
Speaker 2: I think you hit the nail on the head. That's
Speaker 2: so hard is like how do you get good at
Speaker 2: routing without any opportunity to route?
Speaker 1: Right right now? There is, to my mind a trade
Speaker 1: off between routing and landscaping. The better the routing, the
Speaker 1: less need for landscaping. And I think the tree farm
Speaker 1: maybe an example of that. I think Zach probably was
Speaker 1: paying deference to Tom and his routing by keeping by his restraint.
Speaker 1: That's that's a secret vote of confidence to Tom's routing.
Speaker 1: I think if you in too many cases sort of
Speaker 1: a B minus routing requires an A plus landscaping job
Speaker 1: or vice versa.
Speaker 2: And yeah, well, I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: you're hitting on too, is a great routing on an
Speaker 2: above average property or better you know, above average or better. Right,
Speaker 2: if you have a great routing there, you have very
Speaker 2: minimal disturbance to the land the greater mature landscape because
Speaker 2: this land'smen sitting there, there's mature plant flora and fauna.
Speaker 2: You have less of a disturbance to that mature landscape
Speaker 2: because you don't have to do mass earthwork and mass
Speaker 2: earthwork when you want to regrade a fairway that extends
Speaker 2: for you know, fifty yards into out of play areas
Speaker 2: because you have to tie it in, and when you
Speaker 2: do that, you remove all the vegetation. So that's why
Speaker 2: new courses often look really new, right, And I think
Speaker 2: that's like something that I was so amazed by Sedge Valley.
Speaker 2: At Sand Valley was like, how beautiful the golf course
Speaker 2: is in the first year because there was very little
Speaker 2: disturbance to the native vegetation.
Speaker 1: That's the main claim of minimalism it is. I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave micro contours, natural vegetation to the extent I
Speaker 1: possibly can, so when the course opens, it looks like
Speaker 1: it's been there for three or four decades.
Speaker 2: Last point here before we get you out of here.
Speaker 2: And this ties with this, and I think one of
Speaker 2: the things that I love the most about what's going
Speaker 2: on in golf architecture, I don't my big issue with
Speaker 2: golf architecture is the cost that we're chasing and what
Speaker 2: it does to eliminate business models of affordable limit the
Speaker 2: amount of golf courses that could get built, opportunities a route.
Speaker 2: I think the thing I love the most about what's
Speaker 2: going on right now, I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 2: better site selection for golf courses. Never in the history
Speaker 2: of golf have we understood what is a good property
Speaker 2: for golf. And that is leading to like, if you
Speaker 2: start with a great site, the bar is really low,
Speaker 2: and it's led to maybe the greatest run of really
Speaker 2: good golf courses being built ever.
Speaker 1: And a final point, and it really supports that, is
Speaker 1: that there's also a willingness today, unlike maybe twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: to travel to those sites.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's easier to travel to them than ever before also,
Speaker 2: which which allows for more remote, remote golf courses in everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't have to be located anymore near city centers.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. So that's one of my favorite. Obviously Google
Speaker 2: Earth is a huge proponent of that. But like and
Speaker 2: and then also just knowledge of what makes a great
Speaker 2: golf site. I don't think there's ever been as much
Speaker 2: information out there about what makes great golf, like the
Speaker 2: understanding of sand being important, the understanding of total fall
Speaker 2: on a site, what type of contours you're looking for.
Speaker 2: There's never been an it's never been easier to find
Speaker 2: great sites for golf. Right, So, Bob, I will let
Speaker 2: you go. You've got a very important USGA History Committee meeting,
Speaker 2: so I don't want to get in the way of that.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get in the way of of that.
Speaker 2: But thank you so much for coming on uh and
Speaker 2: people can find you. You're on you're on Twitter, you're
Speaker 2: on Golf Club at list, You're all over the place.
Speaker 1: I'm all over the place. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me, Thank you for listening to another edition of the
Speaker 2: Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ. Clark for editing
Speaker 2: and producing this episode. We've been on a pod ben
Speaker 2: Vender between the Shotguns start Year in review and the
Speaker 2: end of the year. With this podcast, me and him
Speaker 2: have been logging a lot hours together. Thank you to PJ.
Speaker 2: Congrats on your one Soto Mets signing. That's that's big
Speaker 2: for you. I know it's going to carry you through
Speaker 2: this this pod binge of editing. A great gift for
Speaker 2: the holidays is Club TFE. It is our membership. We
Speaker 2: have events going live tomorrow. I think the mid Ocean
Speaker 2: event is live tomorrow. As a Club TF you member,
Speaker 2: you get early access to these events. So if you
Speaker 2: want to play in that sign up and you you
Speaker 2: get twenty four hour jump on everybody. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it'll be sold out by the time that twenty
Speaker 2: four hours is over, but that's an awesome event that
Speaker 2: you could get access to. We have a lot of
Speaker 2: other really great events that are coming down. Not to mention,
Speaker 2: we have a ton of content in there. I just
Speaker 2: wrote a such Valley profile. I think we have another
Speaker 2: Dope course going up this week, and I think I'll
Speaker 2: have Mammoth Dunes up the next week. I believe, so
Speaker 2: lots of content in there. We put a ton of
Speaker 2: time in that. If you're interested in that, go to
Speaker 2: the Frida egg dot com slash membership. We'll be back
Speaker 2: later this week with a couple interviews. In an episode,
Speaker 2: we've got Todd Dempsey and Chris Millard, so Little Persimmon
Speaker 2: golf in a little Pebble Beach history chatter on the
Speaker 2: pod for Thursday. Thanks four