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 2: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 1: In a bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie.
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name is Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about what's next in golf course architecture.
Speaker 1: We came up with a few things each that we
Speaker 1: hope or expect to see out of golf architecture in
Speaker 1: the next I don't know, call it ten or twenty years,
Speaker 1: maybe even longer term if we really want to engage
Speaker 1: in some science fiction here. But basically we're just trying
Speaker 1: to read the tea.
Speaker 2: We're burning this topic.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're saying ten to twenty years, we
Speaker 3: can't days for ten to twenty years, so we gotta
Speaker 3: be careful, so to ye.
Speaker 1: But I like the time. The time frames for golf
Speaker 1: architecture are pretty long, like this stuff. It's not like
Speaker 1: you know, making an album. And by the way, that
Speaker 1: voice you heard is Andy Johnson. I'm Garrett Morrison. I
Speaker 1: don't think I introduced myself. I'm just all discombobulated here.
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson, how you.
Speaker 3: Doing, I'm doing great, doing great. I'm excited to talk
Speaker 3: about golf architecture and Trent. I think that this is
Speaker 3: we're at this spot right now where there's never been
Speaker 3: more work going on since pre economic collapse in the
Speaker 3: mid two thousands or late two thousands. So at this
Speaker 3: point we're at the stage of golf architecture where there's
Speaker 3: a lot happening. There's a lot of courses being planned,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of development, there's a lot of work
Speaker 3: that are being that's being done at existing courses because
Speaker 3: clubs are full and flushed with cash. Obviously, with what's
Speaker 3: going on in the Karri It'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 2: How long this lasts.
Speaker 3: But for the time being, there is a lot of
Speaker 3: work and a lot of enthusiasm for new work in
Speaker 3: golf and new development in golf. So I think this
Speaker 3: is a timely time to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: There are a lot more new course projects going on
Speaker 1: right now in North America than there have been for
Speaker 1: a long time. Now, we're nowhere near the heights of
Speaker 1: like the nineties or the sixties. Obviously, I don't think
Speaker 1: we're ever going to see something like that again unless
Speaker 1: something huge changes in the world. But we are seeing
Speaker 1: a major uptech in new development, and of course the
Speaker 1: restoration and renovation market is pretty active as well. But
Speaker 1: there's also some uncertainty when it comes to the economy,
Speaker 1: so we'll see what happens with that. Now. Another factor
Speaker 1: that I think makes this sort of a hinge moment
Speaker 1: in golf course architecture is a lot of the highest
Speaker 1: profile golf architects are getting on in years, right. Bill
Speaker 1: Corr and Ben Crenshaw are both in their seventies now.
Speaker 1: They're both really you know, they're going hard still, Like
Speaker 1: if you see Bill Corr, it's not like he's slowing
Speaker 1: down when he's walking around courses, but just you know,
Speaker 1: facts are facts. They're in their seventies. Tom Doak is
Speaker 1: sixty one, Gil Hans is fifty nine. David McLay kidd
Speaker 1: is in his early fifties. These are not old guys,
Speaker 1: but they're also not super young guys anymore. Now. You
Speaker 1: also think of Jack Nicholas, you think of Tom Fazio.
Speaker 1: I think we're at a moment when the architects who
Speaker 1: have really been the leading figures for the past even
Speaker 1: forty years are now starting to get to the tail
Speaker 1: end of their careers. And one thing that I'm looking
Speaker 1: for is who's going to emerge as the next big architects.
Speaker 1: I think that's a question on a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 1: That's not one of my things, by the way, that
Speaker 1: I'm hoping or expecting. I think that's just something that
Speaker 1: makes this moment interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: I think like besides just age, I think the influx
Speaker 3: of work has booked these architects out also, so you
Speaker 3: know the capacity issue. You know, Bill, Bill Core and
Speaker 3: Ben Crenshaw aren't going to do you know, ten courses
Speaker 3: in a year. That's just not how they operate, right,
Speaker 3: So you know they have they have they are booked
Speaker 3: out and they can't. You know, there's only so much
Speaker 3: work they can accept. Same with Tom Doak, same with
Speaker 3: Gil Hands and uh, these these people, these.
Speaker 2: Architects are busier than they've ever been.
Speaker 3: With that that means that there's more overflow and that
Speaker 3: is where young people, younger architects are going to get
Speaker 3: their chances. And that's what is very exciting about the
Speaker 3: next five, six, seven years, Like you said, the one
Speaker 3: of the things with architecture, and I think this is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's an important lesson, and I think this
Speaker 3: is not meant as a shot at David Kidd's career,
Speaker 3: but if you look at you know, the way a
Speaker 3: golf architects legacy like career works. David McClay Kidd built
Speaker 3: Banded Dunes and it was obviously deservingly so celebrated. It
Speaker 3: was a tremendous golf course, a huge golf course, and
Speaker 3: as David Kidd said, he lost his way. Then after that,
Speaker 3: for a little while he built some courses that he
Speaker 3: himself would say are not great golf courses, are not
Speaker 3: fun golf courses to play. Now, the thing about that
Speaker 3: is he was riding the high of abandoned dudes, got
Speaker 3: hired for many, many jobs and built some mediocre golf
Speaker 3: courses and by the time people realize this, he has
Speaker 3: been hired for numerous jobs. Like because of the time
Speaker 3: span of a golf course being built, right, it takes
Speaker 3: really end to end. You're talking about on the very
Speaker 3: fast end, maybe two years, on the slower end, three
Speaker 3: to five years, and these developments take a lot of time,
Speaker 3: so you could get hired for a lot of jobs
Speaker 3: in that interm mediary area where we haven't even seen
Speaker 3: somebody's second work or first work. So it's going to
Speaker 3: be I mean, that's what's so compelling to me about
Speaker 3: it is that we're going to see architects who who
Speaker 3: might build one great golf course, get an influx of
Speaker 3: work and then you know, how do they follow that up.
Speaker 3: It's just like a band, how you know, the iconic
Speaker 3: bands come up with albums flashing, the pan bands come
Speaker 3: up with an album and in building that that legacy
Speaker 3: that you know we talk of Bill Korer, Ben Crunch
Speaker 3: or Tom Doak, like where you have a effective roster
Speaker 3: of great golf courses is so difficult to do, and
Speaker 3: that it's not about the one course, it's about the
Speaker 3: collection of courses. Because you know, what I think is
Speaker 3: amazing is how some of these archet and I think
Speaker 3: Tom Doak is probably at the forefront of this, continues
Speaker 3: to push new ideas right like he seems almost restless
Speaker 3: with building a course that's anything like another golf course.
Speaker 3: And some might quibble with, hey, this golf course isn't
Speaker 3: my cup of tea, but it's always different. And I
Speaker 3: think that's the thing, is that building lots of great
Speaker 3: courses is way way more difficult than building one course.
Speaker 3: And we're just hoping to see some of these young
Speaker 3: guys get a chance to build one great golf course.
Speaker 3: But then it's building off that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as you say, it takes a while right
Speaker 1: for the shape of an architect's career to become clear.
Speaker 1: You really only see it in retrospect, and by that
Speaker 1: point the architect is already pretty deep into his or
Speaker 1: her career. So you know, think about how Corn Crenshaw emerged. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Bill Korrer had been working in the golf architecture industry
Speaker 1: since the seventies, right the late seventies, at least with.
Speaker 2: With Pete Dye Dolphins era, was there you go to
Speaker 2: start with Pete's good.
Speaker 1: That's a good reference point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he that's how he met Pete Die. You know,
Speaker 3: Pete Die came into his hotel room to watch the dolphin.
Speaker 1: To just watch the dolphins. Wait, was that a Tom
Speaker 1: Doak story or is that a Bill Cory story, a
Speaker 1: Bill co story? Okay, that's yeah, that's that's a really
Speaker 1: good one.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: The pee Die was like mainly interested in saying the
Speaker 1: Dolphins game, you know. That's that's the main thing that
Speaker 1: he was doing there. He's like getting away from somewhere
Speaker 1: so that he could go like just sit and watch
Speaker 1: the Dolphins game for a while. That's that's hilarious. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So Corr was grinding away for years and then finally
Speaker 1: broke out with Kapalua Sand Hills and other projects in
Speaker 1: the mid to late nineties. Tom Doak, I think you
Speaker 1: see much the same trajectory. And so these architects who
Speaker 1: have just sort of come on our radar within the
Speaker 1: past ten years, it might take a little while longer
Speaker 1: for us to understand who they are and what they're
Speaker 1: going to contribute to the discipline, to the art form.
Speaker 1: And so I'm really looking forward to seeing some some
Speaker 1: course openings within the next few years by architects who
Speaker 1: haven't gotten big new build jobs before. That's going to
Speaker 1: be exciting to me to see what what new is
Speaker 1: going to be contributed. But that said, we're trying to
Speaker 1: read the tea leaves a bit here, spot some trends
Speaker 1: and talk about some things that we hope or expect
Speaker 1: to see in the near future. So what's the first
Speaker 1: thing that you came up with. Why don't we start there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I think one of the things that I'm
Speaker 3: craving is developers and developments that might inhabit less spectacular sites.
Speaker 3: I think the dominant trend in golf architecture has been
Speaker 3: these far away lands of swaths of sand and and
Speaker 3: this is great. I'm not saying I'm not advocating for
Speaker 3: less of these. What I'm advocating for is more balance
Speaker 3: where we do have some less spectacular sites. Not every
Speaker 3: site has to be crazy in order for you to
Speaker 3: have a really good golf course. And one of the
Speaker 3: things with that is that less spectacular sites are usually
Speaker 3: closer to large centers of population. So you know, to me,
Speaker 3: one of the things that I got thinking about a
Speaker 3: lot at Frisco at PGA Frisco was how nice it
Speaker 3: was that a development was actually like near a city.
Speaker 3: And obviously that was a unique case, and there are
Speaker 3: going to be lots of unique cases. But the idea
Speaker 3: that the golf course can only be built on sand
Speaker 3: and in a spectacular place it has to be this remote,
Speaker 3: far off destination golf course is a bit silly to
Speaker 3: me because if you go through the you know, the
Speaker 3: best course in the world, A lot of the best architecture,
Speaker 3: a lot of the architecture that you really want to
Speaker 3: talk about, you know, is on less spectacular sites. It
Speaker 3: allows architects to do a little bit more with their
Speaker 3: greens and create a little bit more big features and such.
Speaker 3: So I would love to start to see, you know,
Speaker 3: a trend of like not everything has to be built
Speaker 3: on huge, massive piece of swaths of sand. Like we
Speaker 3: can build a golf course and it can be a
Speaker 3: very very good golf course on a less interesting piece
Speaker 3: of land because we have you know, I believe that
Speaker 3: this era architects could build more interesting stuff, the most
Speaker 3: interesting stuff ever. You know, it seems like they have
Speaker 3: the education levels. What it requires. One of the things
Speaker 3: that would require is developers to allow them to do that.
Speaker 3: And I think actually to push architecture more forward. Less
Speaker 3: interesting land could do it because we get funkier architecture.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I was just gonna ask, what kind of
Speaker 1: architecture do you think we would see on poor sites?
Speaker 1: Would there be a move toward something different than what
Speaker 1: we have seen on ideally suited sites for the past
Speaker 1: twenty years or so those have been the highest profile courses,
Speaker 1: courses that are subtly created on great sites for golf.
Speaker 1: What do you think architects need to change about the
Speaker 1: way they think about how they do their work if
Speaker 1: they're building on sites that are not well suited to golf.
Speaker 3: I think one thing we've talked about on this podcast
Speaker 3: is like above ground features ramping, like where you have
Speaker 3: like just quirky stuff, you know, you can get a
Speaker 3: little bit more aggressive with greens. I think, like you know,
Speaker 3: and I think there's some pushback with greens and people, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not fair, like if they hit a green and
Speaker 3: it's really hard to put that's not fair. But really,
Speaker 3: I think like from a day to day playability standpoint,
Speaker 3: you want greens that have a lot of different spot
Speaker 3: different pockets, and that drive strategy back When it's just
Speaker 3: a simple flat tilting green, you know, it kind of
Speaker 3: plays the same every day and you have to be
Speaker 3: precise in everything, but you know, the more dependent you
Speaker 3: are on natural features such as topography and things to
Speaker 3: take over. I think the other thing about it is
Speaker 3: everybody is like obsessed with these big dramatic sites, right,
Speaker 3: more subtle sites lend itself to being more walkable, more
Speaker 3: easier to get around, like just they don't sap as
Speaker 3: much energy from you.
Speaker 2: You can play quicker, you can play more golf potentially.
Speaker 3: And the one of the big things I noticed is
Speaker 3: a lot of the greatest courses in the world really
Speaker 3: are centered around like one or two key geographic features.
Speaker 3: And almost every plot of land has those types of features, right,
Speaker 3: Like Chicago golf is a good piece of land, is
Speaker 3: not a sublime piece of land, but it really just
Speaker 3: you know, if you drive around that area, you see
Speaker 3: that type of land in prairies all over the place,
Speaker 3: and it's like there's a central knoll that a lot
Speaker 3: of the holes play through, there's another ridge that you
Speaker 3: play off of, and that's really it. And then it
Speaker 3: leans more on golf architecture, and I think there's a
Speaker 3: huge talent in routing a golf course on a dramatic,
Speaker 3: spectacular site and getting the most out of spectacular site.
Speaker 3: That's one facet of architecture. There's another facet and skill
Speaker 3: of architecture to be able to, you know, ring out
Speaker 3: every ounce of interesting architecture from a less spectacular site.
Speaker 3: And like these sites are usually a little bit more
Speaker 3: available closer to population centers, which I that's my big
Speaker 3: thing that I would like to see. Destination golf's great,
Speaker 3: but can we get stuff that's like within an hour
Speaker 3: of places?
Speaker 1: So this is something that you hope to see but
Speaker 1: maybe don't necessarily expect. Yeah, because I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: see that trend emerging right now. I would love for
Speaker 1: that to happen. My concern is that a lot of
Speaker 1: golf development right now is targeted at the very high
Speaker 1: end of the market. We have these small clubs and
Speaker 1: these premium resorts. That's where a lot of action is
Speaker 1: happening right now. To my mind, I'm not seeing enough
Speaker 1: activity at the local level city courses, you know, even
Speaker 1: middle class kind of public courses. I would love to
Speaker 1: see more being done in those areas, but that portion
Speaker 1: of the market right now seems to be a little
Speaker 1: bit quiet. Would you agree with that or do I
Speaker 1: have the wrong impression?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: I think there's there's stuff that could be coming that
Speaker 3: might be a little bit closer, but almost everything's always
Speaker 3: driven around private model unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I mean, this is the world we
Speaker 1: live in where you know, income inequality is ramping up
Speaker 1: right that money is being more and more concentrated in
Speaker 1: the hands of a few people. And so I don't
Speaker 1: want to be labor that point because it's not that
Speaker 1: kind of podcast. But I think what we're seeing in
Speaker 1: golf is reflective of what's happening more broadly in the world. Now.
Speaker 1: This sort of my first thing. This is both something
Speaker 1: that I hope for and something that I sort of
Speaker 1: expect to see happen within, you know, in this next
Speaker 1: wave of golf architecture, and it kind of aligns with
Speaker 1: what you're talking about building courses on more subtle sites.
Speaker 1: What I'd like to see is more experimentation with what
Speaker 1: I've heard you call in the past Golden Age maximalism.
Speaker 1: And what you mean by Golden Age maximalism is basically
Speaker 1: a lot of aggressive shaping around certain features on the course,
Speaker 1: mostly the greens, but also you know, some bunkers in
Speaker 1: the fairways here and there, where the architects really go
Speaker 1: to work and build something bold, build something that is
Speaker 1: sculpted and that doesn't necessarily blend into the natural environment.
Speaker 1: But then the move elsewhere is to keep things natural right,
Speaker 1: to maintain the natural terrain aside from those concentrated spots
Speaker 1: where you do a lot of artistic work. I would
Speaker 1: like to see more of that, because I think that
Speaker 1: the trend recently has been toward making everything blend, making
Speaker 1: the greens blend, making the bunkers blend, making it all
Speaker 1: seem like it belongs. Now, some architects are better at
Speaker 1: that than others. Core and Crenshaw are the gold standard.
Speaker 1: Not all architects are as good as they are at
Speaker 1: making everything look like it belongs. But I would like
Speaker 1: to see more architects, and I expect to see more
Speaker 1: architects start to do some more aggressive shaping around greens
Speaker 1: and un bunkers. Build these vertical features that you were
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, whether they're little kind of berms
Speaker 1: or you know, edges to the bunkers or built up
Speaker 1: edges of the greens like we see it Walter Travis courses.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff is really cool. But I think
Speaker 1: that the way to make it really work, and to
Speaker 1: make it different from the overshaped stuff that we saw
Speaker 1: come out of big firms in the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: is to leave the rest of the landscape undisturbed. Okay,
Speaker 1: and this is what you know, you've called this golden
Speaker 1: age maximalism before. This is essentially what Langford and Moreau
Speaker 1: did it a lot of their courses, right, the fair
Speaker 1: ways were often very natural, sat naturally on the land,
Speaker 1: but the greens and bunkers were super boldly shaped. This
Speaker 1: is what Seth Rayner did it a lot of his courses.
Speaker 1: This is what Walter Travis did at the courses that
Speaker 1: we saw on the East Coast when we were last there.
Speaker 1: I would like to see more, you know, work inspired
Speaker 1: by that, and I see some architects moving in that direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that this is kind of a best of
Speaker 3: both world situation in a way. I think I love
Speaker 3: natural golf design where it's really you know, everything ties in.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying, but different forms of the art of
Speaker 3: golf architecture are essential for things to push forward. And
Speaker 3: I think why this works so well is because when
Speaker 3: you're being very natural with the land, that's going to
Speaker 3: require and I think where a lot of maximalist projects
Speaker 3: fall short is the routings end up being very clunky.
Speaker 2: They don't work with.
Speaker 3: The land right, and they're they're moving earth to fix
Speaker 3: problems rather than solving the problems with the routing.
Speaker 1: And they grade too much. They flatten too much out
Speaker 1: in the fair ways. Everything is shaped. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: just shaping in particular places and leaving a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff alone. My problem with the course is that the
Speaker 1: maximus truly maximalst courses you're talking about, is that once
Speaker 1: you're in a completely created environment, then you really start
Speaker 1: to feel alienated from the land.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing is that the routing. There's
Speaker 3: no routing exercise because you can build whatever you want
Speaker 3: and the idea of finding the best golf holes doesn't
Speaker 3: exist because it's we can go create the best golf holes.
Speaker 3: And what happens is that that disrupts the way that
Speaker 3: you go on, Like I think the walk and the
Speaker 3: journey of a golf course is the most important part
Speaker 3: of it. And when you're not even concerned with that,
Speaker 3: because you can just bulldoze your way too a routing
Speaker 3: that you like, rather than hey, you know, I'd like
Speaker 3: to go over here, but it's kind of like I
Speaker 3: don't know how we're going to get out of there.
Speaker 3: And it's that work and that effort that goes into
Speaker 3: figuring out how to get in and out of places.
Speaker 3: I think that truly makes you know the great courses
Speaker 3: greater than you know it.
Speaker 2: There are little corners.
Speaker 3: That they get into, a nook that they get into,
Speaker 3: and you wonder, how am I going to get out
Speaker 3: of there?
Speaker 2: And it's the.
Speaker 3: Creativity and ingenuity to get out of there. When you
Speaker 3: just bulldoze your way around there, you lose that journey
Speaker 3: a little bit because every thing, as you said, is
Speaker 3: kind of a made believe environment. And I think that
Speaker 3: is a that's a essential thing. That's why I like
Speaker 3: about it is go crazy everywhere else, but build the
Speaker 3: golf course. Let the land be the land, because that's
Speaker 3: what makes the place special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that architects can free themselves from
Speaker 1: the notion that they have to tie everything in. Right,
Speaker 1: Do you have to tie every green in or tie
Speaker 1: every bunker in make it look like it flows into
Speaker 1: the natural landscape. No, I don't think so. Like I
Speaker 1: think that sometimes you can do something that is really
Speaker 1: audacious and sculptural with a golf course design, but there
Speaker 1: needs to be enough of the natural landscape left intact
Speaker 1: so that you allow the golfer to connect with the
Speaker 1: natural terrain. I think, in my opinion, now your point
Speaker 1: about routing makes me think of you know something that
Speaker 1: I I often like to say about Golden Age architects,
Speaker 1: and that's that, you know, why is it that so
Speaker 1: many Golden Age architects from the tens, twenties, and thirties
Speaker 1: were so good at routing. It wasn't because they're smarter
Speaker 1: than today's architects. It wasn't because they're smarter than Tom
Speaker 1: Fazio or Jack Nicholas. It was because they had to
Speaker 1: be good at routing right to make the courses work
Speaker 1: at all. They couldn't move stuff around that much, so
Speaker 1: they had to figure out how to make their courses
Speaker 1: linked together, and in order to do that, they had
Speaker 1: to be really good at routing, had to work a
Speaker 1: lot on the routing. I think that the ability to
Speaker 1: move a lot of earth kind of made that art
Speaker 1: a little bit lost. And that's why we see Maximal's
Speaker 1: courses that sometimes have these clunky routings. If you can
Speaker 1: build everything, if you're just creating everything, sometimes you just
Speaker 1: get a little bit lazy with the routing of the course.
Speaker 1: And also golf carts have had an impact here. Obviously.
Speaker 2: All right, my next one renovations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew we'd talk about it.
Speaker 2: This is absolutely going to happen.
Speaker 1: This is an expectation.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is what i'd like to see one before
Speaker 3: about less spectacular sites. Renovations are absolutely going to happen,
Speaker 3: and I think that this is extraordinarily compelling the just
Speaker 3: to give people an idea that don't know. Like, the
Speaker 3: life cycle of an irrigation system is about thirty years,
Speaker 3: So if you think about that, that's the best time
Speaker 3: when you have to redo irrigation. That's the best time
Speaker 3: to renovate your course because you're already going to be
Speaker 3: doing a lot of disturbance, right, So that's when you
Speaker 3: if you think about like it's like, oh, we're going
Speaker 3: to do the bathroom and it's connected to the living room,
Speaker 3: but we want to do the living room. We're going
Speaker 3: to save money by doing them both at the same
Speaker 3: time because we aren't going to just you know, we're
Speaker 3: going to disturb the house either way, and we i
Speaker 3: as well do them both at the same time.
Speaker 2: They're already there. We're saving money, right.
Speaker 3: So this is how renovation will work, you know, so irrigation,
Speaker 3: So if you think about it, thirty years roughly, right,
Speaker 3: some lasts longer, some some goat could put earlier, but
Speaker 3: you're looking at like late eighties, nineties early nineties golf
Speaker 3: architecture that needs to get work on, and really like,
Speaker 3: that's not good architecture. I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of housing, lots of mass production of golf courses,
Speaker 3: lots of housing golf courses where like the purpose of
Speaker 3: the golf course was to sell houses along it, on
Speaker 3: both sides of it, And who's going to be doing
Speaker 3: this work is a one question I have, But be like,
Speaker 3: who's going to be doing really cool? Like what do
Speaker 3: you do with a golf course that's got like a
Speaker 3: forty yard wide fare of corridor and houses on both sides?
Speaker 3: How do you retrofit these and make them more in
Speaker 3: interesting and better golf courses? Or do they cease to
Speaker 3: be golf courses? Do they become less than eighteen holes
Speaker 3: because the ball goes further and more offline and more
Speaker 3: balls are in houses, or like there's also another aspect
Speaker 3: of this, you have, like the bad courses. What happens
Speaker 3: with like the really like kind of the purpose of
Speaker 3: the golf course was to sell homes and the golf
Speaker 3: course was an afterthought, and you have this kind of
Speaker 3: a disaster, right but then you also have golf courses
Speaker 3: on great pieces of land that are just kind of mediocre.
Speaker 3: If you took that golf course and you renovate it,
Speaker 3: and you go like, hey, we're gonna start over. We
Speaker 3: have the infrastructure of the clubhouse, but we're gonna reroute, rebuild,
Speaker 3: Like we could have some courses that go from being
Speaker 3: kind of afterthoughts to really good golf courses because they're
Speaker 3: on good piece of land. And some of these like
Speaker 3: like there are existing sites that are very good for
Speaker 3: golf in population centers that have a very mediocre golf
Speaker 3: course on it where if you take over and you
Speaker 3: pour five ten million dollars into it, you could then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden have the talk of the town. Right,
Speaker 3: this is this is going to be a thing. And
Speaker 3: figuring out like one of the hard things with doing
Speaker 3: big renovation work. And I kind of picked this up
Speaker 3: at when I visited Pinehurst four years ago when when
Speaker 3: Gill's crew was Gill Hans's crew was was renovating it.
Speaker 3: They put so much effort into undoing the bad work.
Speaker 3: Like you says, somebody bulldozes and ruins a great landform
Speaker 3: with with really bad shaping, right, you have to spend
Speaker 3: so much time just putting back the natural landform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you don't even know what the natural landform was,
Speaker 1: which is really really tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know this is not this is not
Speaker 3: this is a different skill restoration. This is a different
Speaker 3: skill than new construction. It's almost like you put things
Speaker 3: back and then you start building.
Speaker 2: Another idea.
Speaker 3: I kind of have always thought about when I go
Speaker 3: to golf course that's got containment mounding and all these
Speaker 3: artificial mounding, how much better the golf course would be
Speaker 3: if you played over those mounds instead of in between them.
Speaker 3: And I'd be like, I think about this all the times, like,
Speaker 3: could you take a golf course that's got like stricken
Speaker 3: with containment mounting? So what that means is big mounds
Speaker 3: on either side of the hole that kind of off yeah,
Speaker 3: the wall off the hole, right, and like you're kind
Speaker 3: of playing in this environment.
Speaker 2: Now, what if we took that and built the golf over.
Speaker 3: Those mounds, and then those mounds would all sudden kind
Speaker 3: of be really neat golf whole features. You could put
Speaker 3: greens on top of them, You could put greens over them,
Speaker 3: you could you know, you could have fairways that go
Speaker 3: have these big undulations through them if you're playing over
Speaker 3: them and not in between them. So I am this
Speaker 3: is the thing that I would say that I'm most
Speaker 3: interested in with golf design is finding the golf courses
Speaker 3: that are are pretty mediocre that inhabit really wonderful golf
Speaker 3: golf sites, and exploring what those golf courses could become
Speaker 3: with the right combination of architect and redesign effort.
Speaker 1: I like that. I wonder where the money is going
Speaker 1: to come from to do these renovations, And if it's
Speaker 1: only a little bit of money, then what does a
Speaker 1: renovation that costs I don't know, three to four million
Speaker 1: dollars look.
Speaker 3: Like not that much now because the rise and costs,
Speaker 3: it's like the irrigations like double what it used to be.
Speaker 3: So I think that's like one of the things, right,
Speaker 3: is like cost are higher than ever and that's the
Speaker 3: tricky thing, and that is probably what's going to constrict
Speaker 3: doing a lot of these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I wonder, I wonder what the floor
Speaker 1: is now for a renovation budget that could do something great,
Speaker 1: because I'm always impressed by how little money they spent
Speaker 1: on the work at Common Ground and how much they
Speaker 1: were able to do and how little money they spent
Speaker 1: on the work at Seoul Park when guilded that years
Speaker 1: ago after a flood absolutely destroyed the course and they
Speaker 1: had to spend most of the money just recovering the
Speaker 1: golf course and doing you know, some basic things to
Speaker 1: get the place functional again, rebuilding bridges and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they completely transformed the golf course in the process, and
Speaker 1: they did it on a fairly tight budget. I feel
Speaker 1: like these things are possible, but they have become harder
Speaker 1: recently because of inflation and rising costs, so that that
Speaker 1: is kind of a red flag there for the possibilities
Speaker 1: around the world renovation of courses that are more recent.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I kind of wonder at some point whether
Speaker 1: there's going to be a craze for restoring Tom Fasio courses,
Speaker 1: right Like, are we going to deify those architects at
Speaker 1: some point. I don't really see that as a as
Speaker 1: a great possibility right now. I don't. I don't see
Speaker 1: any building momentum towards that. But you know, once golf
Speaker 1: courses get old enough, then they're going to start to
Speaker 1: be considered classic to a degree, And so I wonder
Speaker 1: if we're going to stick to our guns as a
Speaker 1: kind of golf architecture nerd community and say that you
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 3: We've got to restore that catch base and back left
Speaker 3: of the grid right exactly.
Speaker 1: There used to be a lovely catch basin over there.
Speaker 1: Let's put that back in.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, the houses around the course get bulldozed, we have
Speaker 1: to we have to do something to recreate the feel
Speaker 1: of the houses being there. Yeah, I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: like ridiculous stuff that you could think of, But I
Speaker 1: just wonder like where the where the fashions are going
Speaker 1: to go with which archex are deified in, which aren't.
Speaker 3: What the good news I think from my taste is
Speaker 3: that what's the phrase of like the time away makes
Speaker 3: the heart grow fonder?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think.
Speaker 3: We've at least got a period a decade or two
Speaker 3: of time away, you know, before before the heart grows fonder.
Speaker 2: And at that point, I'll be, you know, i'll be
Speaker 2: pretty old.
Speaker 1: Well we'll both be pretty old. We'll we'll be we'll
Speaker 1: be phasing out anyway. So maybe maybe that's fine, all right.
Speaker 3: We could be the we could be the one saying
Speaker 3: what are we doing at that point again, it could
Speaker 3: be a full circle.
Speaker 1: All right. My next thing, this is another one that
Speaker 1: is both kind of a hope and an expectation, sort
Speaker 1: of links up with these ideas about low cost renovations
Speaker 1: of courses that are you know, not necessary. They don't
Speaker 1: necessarily belong to private clubs, but we're built you know,
Speaker 1: say thirty years ago, and that are going to kind
Speaker 1: of cycle aroun because the irrigation system needs to be improved,
Speaker 1: or the bunkers need to be rebuilt or something like that.
Speaker 1: So this is about those courses, that crop of courses
Speaker 1: that needs to be worked on. There's another factor here
Speaker 1: that's going to change the nature of the work that's
Speaker 1: done on those courses, and it's going to change the
Speaker 1: nature of golf architecture in general, and that is climate change.
Speaker 1: It's going to get hotter, it's going to get drier,
Speaker 1: water is going to get more expensive. Now, these are
Speaker 1: big questions for agronomy right now. These are big questions
Speaker 1: for superintendents. So that's kind of another subject. But where
Speaker 1: I think it becomes a question for an architect is
Speaker 1: just the fact that it's going to be more expensive
Speaker 1: in many places to run a golf course. In the
Speaker 1: future than it is now because of the cost of
Speaker 1: water and other things. And so a huge question that
Speaker 1: architects need to ask themselves when they're building golf courses
Speaker 1: now are renovating golf courses, is how expensive is the
Speaker 1: work I'm doing and how expensive is it going to
Speaker 1: be to maintain? And so I think when an architect
Speaker 1: designs a bunker now or designs a green, that the
Speaker 1: first question question one A should be is this interesting golf?
Speaker 1: But question one B should be how much is this
Speaker 1: going to cost to maintain into the future? And how
Speaker 1: hardy can I make this feature, this bunker or this
Speaker 1: green while still making it interesting for golf. So I
Speaker 1: would like to see more and more economical forms of
Speaker 1: golf course design. And I think that the nature of
Speaker 1: running a golf course in the future is going to
Speaker 1: necessitate that owners are asking architects how cheap can we
Speaker 1: make this? And let's try not to lose the quality
Speaker 1: in the process. I don't think we have to lose
Speaker 1: the quality, but I think that architects need to have
Speaker 1: in their minds more how much it's going to cost
Speaker 1: to maintain a certain feature that they're building. And for
Speaker 1: public courses, in particular, I hope that they start asking
Speaker 1: themselves and I expect that they'll need to reckon with this.
Speaker 1: Do we need sand bunkers or is there another possibility
Speaker 1: for hazards that we can have throughout our golf course,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I just look at the cost of
Speaker 1: maintaining bunkers. It just sinks public courses right now.
Speaker 3: The flip side is expectation changes with golfers. Which one
Speaker 3: which one is the more difficult?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I think one of the things that should be
Speaker 3: included with this is like, to me, one of the
Speaker 3: things that doesn't make sense is we judge best new
Speaker 3: course like the day it opens. And to me, that
Speaker 3: lets two people off the hook. It let's the architect
Speaker 3: and the owner off the hook. Absolutely, the golf course
Speaker 3: should be built so that it ages well.
Speaker 2: And this wouldn't be much fun.
Speaker 3: And I contend that this would make this would steal
Speaker 3: a lot of the fun of a new course opening away.
Speaker 2: Right, But like the.
Speaker 3: Golf course should be you know, I want to know
Speaker 3: how it is five years in because does the architect,
Speaker 3: does the design work, does the construction work hold up?
Speaker 3: Like has there been so many washouts in a bunker
Speaker 3: that they decided to get rid of the bunker. Has
Speaker 3: you know, did a green not work so that they
Speaker 3: just decided to stop, you know, cutting one of the
Speaker 3: corners of the green and that's that really cool green
Speaker 3: doesn't exist in the full capacity anymore?
Speaker 2: Does you know?
Speaker 3: Does the owner not want to put into the time
Speaker 3: to maintain the golf the brilliant golf design that was
Speaker 3: put there, You know, that owner shouldn't benefit from getting
Speaker 3: the bump of like, hey, we're the best new course
Speaker 3: ten years ago and still market off that if they
Speaker 3: aren't holding up there under the bar. And I think
Speaker 3: that's like something with it, Like it's it's the idea
Speaker 3: of responsible ownership and responsible architecture, right building something that
Speaker 3: you know might take a couple hours to mow if
Speaker 3: what if like what if they decide they don't want
Speaker 3: to spend that time mowing And it's like, uh that
Speaker 3: you know that costs us X amount of dollars over
Speaker 3: the course of the year, Like it's effectively.
Speaker 2: One person's job for a year.
Speaker 3: Like and obviously we have rising labor there's besides the water,
Speaker 3: there's rising labor costs obviously, like autonomous mowing and stuff.
Speaker 3: Is going to come, but there's still a cost with
Speaker 3: that as well, Like they're you know, all these things,
Speaker 3: everything that goes in and I think like one of
Speaker 3: the things is like scale is great, and I think
Speaker 3: that like big scale, but like some of the best
Speaker 3: courses also have small scale, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, I mean, And so this is a restriction
Speaker 1: on an architect's art, and it may not be welcome
Speaker 1: because of that, but as we know, restrictions often produce
Speaker 1: really good art. And so what happens when architects are
Speaker 1: asked to build stuff really economically, I think that sometimes
Speaker 1: they could come up with interesting stuff. So I think
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity there, but it is definitely a looming
Speaker 1: problem that owners are going to have to deal with. Now,
Speaker 1: just one more point related to your idea about how
Speaker 1: you know, owners and architects should be accountable for how
Speaker 1: their courses age. That's absolutely true, and it's something that's
Speaker 1: so not emphasized enough. But just think of the most
Speaker 1: successful restorations that we've seen, or the most genuine, authentic
Speaker 1: golf course restorations we've seen. Generally, they've been restorations where
Speaker 1: the architect has stayed connected to the club for a
Speaker 1: number of years and where there's a superintendent who's given
Speaker 1: some authority, some freedom to do the restoration work as well,
Speaker 1: and really is there to be accountable for it and
Speaker 1: the architect is there to be accountable for it? And
Speaker 1: so that's a big deal and it's something that should
Speaker 1: be talked about more. And so, yeah, something to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on. This episode of The fried Egg Podcast
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Speaker 1: Let's go to your this is your third thing now, right,
Speaker 1: final thing? There you go? Okay?
Speaker 2: Is shorter courses not short courses? All right.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I don't like short courses. I don't
Speaker 3: want to see short courses. I want to see shorter
Speaker 3: courses just in general.
Speaker 1: And you're talking like how long.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't really care. Like I just think
Speaker 3: that like sixty two hundred yards is fine. I think
Speaker 3: fifty four hundred yards is fine. I think forty eight
Speaker 3: hundred yards is fine. Like, I just like the idea
Speaker 3: of shorter courses. I'm interest. You know, Sedge Valley will
Speaker 3: be a very compelling course to watch.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 3: Obviously, that's one of the new courses at San Valley.
Speaker 3: It's Tom Doaks. There's it's like a lot of short
Speaker 3: par four's, long par three's, par sixty eight. You know,
Speaker 3: kind of the idea this it touches on this idea.
Speaker 3: I'd like to see more golf courses that aren't like
Speaker 3: seven thousand, like the Champion. I mean, who's building a championship?
Speaker 3: What does even a championship golf course mean anymore? Who
Speaker 3: what's the point when the USGA has booked out all
Speaker 3: of their tournaments and the PGA is booked out all
Speaker 3: what's even the point of building a championship golf course.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that's the unintended benefit maybe of all
Speaker 1: of these majors being booked out years and years in advance.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's ridiculous, But also it might kind of
Speaker 1: free up golf course developers to say, well, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna get one of those tournaments, so we might as
Speaker 1: well make something fun.
Speaker 3: I would love to see somebody that's building a destination club,
Speaker 3: for example, say you know what, we're gonna build a
Speaker 3: fifty six hundred yard course and we're gonna do it,
Speaker 3: so you hit every single club in your bag. And
Speaker 3: guess what, it's gonna be so fun because you could
Speaker 3: come here and play fifty four holes or thirty six.
Speaker 3: You're gonna play thirty six holes and feel great. You
Speaker 3: come play fifty four holes and feel and still it'll
Speaker 3: feel like you played thirty six because you know, we're
Speaker 3: not taking up a ton of land. Our resources are
Speaker 3: gonna be limited that go into it, and we're gonna
Speaker 3: build just like a thrilling, fun, different golf course that
Speaker 3: still tests you the way a seventy two hundred yard
Speaker 3: course does. Because we can do this in different ways.
Speaker 3: We can make more long par threes. We can have
Speaker 3: one par five, we can have you know, a bunch
Speaker 3: of short fours, we can have some long force like
Speaker 3: par really doesn't matter. We're just gonna go build fun
Speaker 3: golf that's varied, and you can do that at any yardage.
Speaker 3: It doesn't like, you don't need seventy two hundred yards
Speaker 3: to build a varied test, right.
Speaker 2: I think you know.
Speaker 3: I was talking to Andrew Greed recently. He talked about
Speaker 3: how he's building like two hundred and eighty yard par
Speaker 3: threes on every golf course that he says it's the
Speaker 3: only time I can actually put a long iron in
Speaker 3: a good player's hands now and have consequence, because the
Speaker 3: only other time you're hitting long irons is off the
Speaker 3: tee on a four, and it's like, okay, I can
Speaker 3: make up if I don't hit it perfect. Or I'm
Speaker 3: hitting into forty thirty yard white fairway, like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna hit that bad of a shot. Or
Speaker 3: you're hitting a second shot into a par five with
Speaker 3: a long iron and it's fine if you miss the green,
Speaker 3: but on a long par three you feel the pressure.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, I have to hit a perfect shot here.
Speaker 3: And I think that is the thing, is that actually
Speaker 3: shorter golf courses will lead to more consequence, like if
Speaker 3: you were playing with retro equipment at a regulation sized
Speaker 3: course where you feel the pres Like I've spent the
Speaker 3: entire year basically playing a retro bag of clubs, and
Speaker 3: what I've noticed is, man, I have to really really
Speaker 3: golf my ball to play well because I'm constantly hitting
Speaker 3: mid irons and long irons in holes. Well, you can
Speaker 3: do that in different ways. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: you know, take the driver out of people's hands more
Speaker 3: often and you know, you're gonna get round faster, You're
Speaker 3: probably gonna end up hitting more drivers in a day
Speaker 3: of golf this way, because you're gonna be able to
Speaker 3: play more golf, and you're gonna be able to pack
Speaker 3: more golf in. And this doesn't have to be a club,
Speaker 3: this doesn't, but this can be closer to population centers.
Speaker 3: There is more You can get less land and build
Speaker 3: golf on it, more golf on it, you know, with
Speaker 3: shorter courses.
Speaker 1: I think one of the keys to what you're saying
Speaker 1: is take driver out of people's hands more often during
Speaker 1: a round of golf. Because we've somehow gotten to a
Speaker 1: place in the history of golf somewhere we went wrong
Speaker 1: where we have massively over emphasized the driver and that
Speaker 1: courses have to accommodate good players or strong players hitting
Speaker 1: driver on basically every hole except for the par threes.
Speaker 1: And I don't see why that has to be the case.
Speaker 1: You know, we could really shrink courses and have people
Speaker 1: hit driver on some holes, but there would be other
Speaker 1: holes where you're not hitting driver. I mean, what's the
Speaker 1: big deal with that? Why are we emphasizing driver friendly
Speaker 1: holes so often? And what it creates. Is this expectation
Speaker 1: of a par seventy two course of seven thousand yards
Speaker 1: and you know, just think if you andy were playing
Speaker 1: modern equipment. You know, you hit a driver up around
Speaker 1: three hundred yards, you're playing a seven thousand par seventy
Speaker 1: two course. I think that at a lot of those
Speaker 1: courses all day you're hitting driver eight iron. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just hitting driver eight iron over and over again. You
Speaker 1: could play a fifty five hundred yard course where you
Speaker 1: would hit a massive more variety of clubs, where you
Speaker 1: would hit some drivers, you'd hit some long irons. It
Speaker 1: just depends on the variety of holes that you have.
Speaker 1: You can have a two hundred and fifty yard par
Speaker 1: three on a fifty five hundred yard course. You can
Speaker 1: have a four hundred and eighty yard par four on
Speaker 1: that course, but you would have to have some shorter
Speaker 1: holes as well. Well.
Speaker 3: Seven par threes. Why can't there be seven par threes
Speaker 3: on a course?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yeah, that's the big thing. There need to be
Speaker 1: more par threes on courses like this.
Speaker 3: And it's if you have seven par threes all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, then you could have such variety. They could
Speaker 3: all play a little bit different direction. They could all
Speaker 3: have different yardages, like you could configure courses. So like,
Speaker 3: just let go of the idea of the championship golf course.
Speaker 3: It's like you could arguably make the more fun of
Speaker 3: a golf course doing this, because you'd have more variety
Speaker 3: in the shots you're hitting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this might be hugely oversimplified, but a big part
Speaker 1: of the blame for why we arrived at this firm
Speaker 1: notion that a championship golf course has to be eighteen
Speaker 1: holes and you know par seventy two ish is the
Speaker 1: old course at Saint Andrew's. Because yeah, I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: we all love the old course, but if you go
Speaker 1: back to like the eighteen thirties, the old course was
Speaker 1: like the longest course in Christendom. You know, like all
Speaker 1: these other courses had like, you know, thirteen holes, seven holes,
Speaker 1: you know, half of which were par threes. You know,
Speaker 1: like there were all sorts of different kinds and but
Speaker 1: you know, eventually people just decided to settle on this
Speaker 1: idea that Saint Andrews was the gold standard. I don't
Speaker 1: blame him, because clearly Saint Andrews was better than these
Speaker 1: other courses. But you know, we've we've gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where we're just building the same thing over over again,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how we get out of it.
Speaker 1: I would love I would love to see that happen.
Speaker 1: And maybe part of it is this, you know, developers
Speaker 1: just losing hope that they're going to get major championships.
Speaker 1: I think that could actually have a beneficial impact in
Speaker 1: some sense because they can just let go of that
Speaker 1: that's not the reason that they're building their golf course.
Speaker 2: So with like Aaron Hills is a good example.
Speaker 3: Like that's a golf course that went out of its
Speaker 3: way to host championship golf, and you know, it had
Speaker 3: a big piece of land and you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure exactly the total acreage, but I've heard numerous times
Speaker 3: they've had different architects out to see if they could
Speaker 3: add golf to it. And because the golf was so
Speaker 3: spaced out and they were seeking to host major championship
Speaker 3: after major championship, that like the golf was spaced out
Speaker 3: to fit infrastructure, to have space for grand stands, to
Speaker 3: have big golf, a big golf course, a long golf course,
Speaker 3: and now like you look at Aaron Hill and there
Speaker 3: aren't many championships coming back to it, and you look
Speaker 3: at the land. It's a tremendous piece of land. It's
Speaker 3: a piece of land that could easily house thirty six
Speaker 3: holes of really great golf, and right now they kind
Speaker 3: of have like a good golf course that occupies this
Speaker 3: huge piece of land that doesn't allow for more golf.
Speaker 3: So when you know, and at the same time, like
Speaker 3: they have a women's open coming, that's great, I'm excited
Speaker 3: for that, but there aren't any men's opened coming, which
Speaker 3: was the whole impetus to build this gigantic, gargantuan golf
Speaker 3: course and use all this land. Now, like, long term,
Speaker 3: would the business of Aaron Hills be better suited to
Speaker 3: have a couple really great golf courses that are a
Speaker 3: little bit smaller, a little bit more in the vein
Speaker 3: of something that maybe Mike Kaiser would build and that
Speaker 3: occupy a smaller footprint, but they allow for thirty six
Speaker 3: holes over more over, and I guess similar, like you
Speaker 3: know a situation where people want to play more golf,
Speaker 3: you know that that's one of those courses that just
Speaker 3: sticks out. It's like if if championship golf wasn't considered,
Speaker 3: what would Aaron Hills look like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to have the championships. So my last thing,
Speaker 1: this is something I expect to see in the near future,
Speaker 1: a transformation that I think that golf course architecture is undergoing,
Speaker 1: and it's this is a slightly different topic than what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. I'm talking about the structure of
Speaker 1: the golf architecture business, how architects do their business. I
Speaker 1: see in the future that there are going to be
Speaker 1: fewer and fewer megafirms that employ a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have a physical office and that do a bunch
Speaker 1: of different projects and kind of have a top down
Speaker 1: structure where you have the lead architect and then you
Speaker 1: have people working under that architect, You have office people,
Speaker 1: you have a division of labor. I think that what
Speaker 1: we're going to see more and more of is these
Speaker 1: kind of free floating alliances between artisans. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not going to be all of the jobs that are
Speaker 1: done in golf architecture. This might be a little too
Speaker 1: romantic for to absolutely take over the industry. But architects
Speaker 1: who have worked as shapers can do their own work
Speaker 1: on equipment, and I see them sort of teaming up
Speaker 1: with each other to do kind of design build projects
Speaker 1: that they're able to do pretty cheaply and without a
Speaker 1: lot of the overhead costs that big architecture firms have.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking of architects like Brian Schneider, right, how
Speaker 1: many Brian Schneider has worked has been on the podcast
Speaker 1: a couple of times, I believe, and has worked for
Speaker 1: Renaissance golf design. Tom Doak's outfit he has. The way
Speaker 1: that he's doing work is pretty interesting, right, where he
Speaker 1: kind of teams up with other architects like Blake pent
Speaker 1: or Kai Golby and he does these different jobs with
Speaker 1: these different alliances. And so I think that we're going
Speaker 1: to see more and more of that, where these architects
Speaker 1: are able to do kind of design build work and
Speaker 1: they have these kind of temporary partnerships collaborations with other
Speaker 1: shapers artisans who are in the same mold, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's how they can get jobs. They offer something at
Speaker 1: a lower cost and they do a lot of it themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's a different model than the megafirm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a collaboration. You get like collaboration. It's
Speaker 3: almost like how breweries and different things do do work, right,
Speaker 3: like this craft artist in culture, it drives collaboration. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree with this, And you know, maybe and we
Speaker 3: saw it a little bit at like stream Song where
Speaker 3: that golf course is kind of collaborative between Tom Doak
Speaker 3: and Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw. Those they created a
Speaker 3: effectively like plan for that golf course and they work together,
Speaker 3: right I. It'd be interesting to see if we ever
Speaker 3: get to the point where we have like a big collaboration,
Speaker 3: right do Like, you know, four architects get together and
Speaker 3: you build a golf course, like it would be hard
Speaker 3: to imagine seeing more than like two or three get together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, especially if you're talking about architects like
Speaker 1: Corn Crenshaw or Tom Doak or Gil Hants, Right, I
Speaker 1: think that those are for all intents and purposes megafirms.
Speaker 1: You know, they're different from the Jack Nicholas megafirm. They're
Speaker 1: different from the Tom Fazio megafirm. They aren't taking on
Speaker 1: nearly as much work. They pay a lot more attention
Speaker 1: to individual projects. But they are pretty big. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm talking more about just like these sort of roving
Speaker 1: architects who don't really employ anybody, just sort of employ
Speaker 1: themselves sometimes you know, Brian Schneider is going to be
Speaker 1: the lead lead architect and Blake Conan is going to
Speaker 1: shape for him. And sometimes Blake Conan is going to
Speaker 1: be the lead architect and maybe Schneider will come out
Speaker 1: and help, or maybe Kyle Franz will come out and help.
Speaker 1: And then on the next project it's Kyle Franz the
Speaker 1: lead architect and Riley Johnson is going to come out
Speaker 1: to I mean, I don't know, you know, it's that
Speaker 1: kind of structure to the business, which I think is
Speaker 1: very different from what Robert Trent Jones established in the
Speaker 1: post war period as to how you do golf architecture,
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, it produces more interesting work and
Speaker 1: more a greater variety of work. So I'm optimistic about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's how you get that blend of ideas,
Speaker 3: the collaboration. Really it's more is a throwback more to
Speaker 3: the Golden Age where a lot of guys weren't professionals,
Speaker 3: but they work together on things because they were just
Speaker 3: trying to build the best golf courses they could build.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that has to happen is like
Speaker 3: the money has to work, and that's really. I think
Speaker 3: when you see people the silos start to happen and
Speaker 3: the firms start to happen, was when golf architecture really
Speaker 3: got professionalized.
Speaker 2: And in a way, we're kind.
Speaker 3: Of moving to where everybody's a little bit more of
Speaker 3: an independent contractor.
Speaker 1: It's it's just really interesting how this business is structured.
Speaker 1: It's such a weird little industry, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty small, but there's a lot of money associated
Speaker 1: with it, and so it's it's both small and big
Speaker 1: and there are so many different ways of doing it
Speaker 1: and uh, and just the way it's kind of changed
Speaker 1: over time. It's gone through these kind of extreme transformations
Speaker 1: and how the work is done. And I think we're
Speaker 1: in the in the midst of one of those again
Speaker 1: right now, so we'll see what happens with it. But cool,
Speaker 1: I think we covered a lot of territory there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and anything else to add or you want to wrap
Speaker 1: up there, wrap up there. This episode of the Frida
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