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Speaker 1: Tom Dok. Today's episode is the latest edition of The
Speaker 1: Yoke with Dok. Tom is back from a month long
Speaker 1: road trip. He went all over the United States. We
Speaker 1: just got set up with remote recording equipment so we
Speaker 1: can do these a little bit more seamlessly and safely.
Speaker 1: And Tom, we didn't get the the We didn't get
Speaker 1: the mic dialed in for this episode, so it'll be
Speaker 1: like a normal interview audio, but the next episode will
Speaker 1: be that crisp like in person audio. But Tom talks
Speaker 1: on this episode primarily about his experience at the Houston
Speaker 1: opening Memorial Park, which debuted on the PGA tour, his
Speaker 1: uh redesign of Memorial Park in Houston. We talk a
Speaker 1: lot about that, and without further ado, here is Tom Dope.
Speaker 3: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 3: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball in a egg Frida
Speaker 3: egg and Frida egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm
Speaker 3: about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Jaeger Kovich has pestered me about this one for for
Speaker 1: months now, and he even has his wife asked on
Speaker 1: on the life's call for questions.
Speaker 3: I didn't give any invitation or anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, she she asked. She wants to hear a travel story.
Speaker 1: She wants to know about traveling, leaving the country without
Speaker 1: a passport, forgetting your wallet on different occasions. She wants
Speaker 1: to hote these travel stories, these alleged travel stories.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I should be saving these for a future book,
Speaker 3: but I don't really have any inclination to write that
Speaker 3: book right now. I have never left the country without
Speaker 3: a passport. That would be a really bad idea, however,
Speaker 3: you know, and in fact, I always keep my passport
Speaker 3: in either my briefcase or now it's a backpack that
Speaker 3: I always travel with. So that's the one thing I
Speaker 3: know that I'm going to have if I forget ship
Speaker 3: when I leave the house. But sure enough, one time
Speaker 3: I was going on a trip where I was going
Speaker 3: to China and then to Spain. This was like two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, two thousand and seven, when we were
Speaker 3: looking at a project in Spain. So I was going
Speaker 3: to China, then to Spain and maybe somewhere else in
Speaker 3: Europe and then home. And I went out the door
Speaker 3: without my wallet or any credit cards or any money
Speaker 3: or any any form of payment at all, and you know,
Speaker 3: and I was like, you know, it was one of
Speaker 3: those six thirty am flights. So I get to the
Speaker 3: airport at five point forty five in the morning or
Speaker 3: something and realize I don't have that stuff and it's
Speaker 3: too late for my wife to run it to me.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I never need any money or anything
Speaker 3: in China. You know, the client always just picks me
Speaker 3: up and like takes me everywhere, and you know, so,
Speaker 3: so I don't really need any of that stuff in China.
Speaker 3: I'll just need it when I get to Spain and
Speaker 3: Brian Schneider is going to meet me in Spain. So
Speaker 3: instead of trying to ship it to China, which I
Speaker 3: figured it was pretty sure it would get lost, I
Speaker 3: just told my wife just send that stuff to Brian
Speaker 3: Schneider and I'll meet him when I get to Madrid.
Speaker 3: So I did travel from home to China to Madrid
Speaker 3: without any money or any form of payment at all,
Speaker 3: and it worked. But you know, you would only do
Speaker 3: that once you have the confidence of your of travel
Speaker 3: behind you. But mostly too, you know, I'm privileged now.
Speaker 3: When I'm traveling somewhere, there's somebody on the other end
Speaker 3: to take care of me and pick me up from
Speaker 3: the airport when I'm in a strange place and doing
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. So I really had, you know,
Speaker 3: I've traveled a lot of pretty you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of places where I couldn't get around on my own,
Speaker 3: especially for the confidential guide going to the Philippines or
Speaker 3: Sri Lanka and India and those places. If I was
Speaker 3: trying to make those trips on my own without any help,
Speaker 3: I'd be I'd never get out the door here because
Speaker 3: it's so hard to make all the arrangements. But the
Speaker 3: great thing about it at this point is like even
Speaker 3: those places, you know, there's somebody in golf that will
Speaker 3: help me, you know, and it's sort of you know,
Speaker 3: they get to spend three or four days telling stories
Speaker 3: back and forth with me while we go around and
Speaker 3: see places, and I've got the security of knowing that, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can get here and this won't be a disaster
Speaker 3: and it'll work out. And you know, like India was
Speaker 3: a great example of that. So when I when I
Speaker 3: said I wanted to travel there, a couple of different
Speaker 3: people reached out to me with somebody they knew in India.
Speaker 3: But the one, the one who I connected with was
Speaker 3: an architect there, a golf course architect there in vidget Nandra,
Speaker 3: a jog. He's a he's a great player, and you know,
Speaker 3: that's how people get in the golf architecture business and
Speaker 3: countries that don't have a thriving business. A good player,
Speaker 3: you know, whose opinion is respected. But he's actually taken
Speaker 3: time to learn about construction and he's got a little
Speaker 3: crew of guys that help him build stuff. He doesn't
Speaker 3: get much new work at all. Most of it's consulting
Speaker 3: at older golf courses and they're doing you know, they're
Speaker 3: doing it without a hell of a lot of resources,
Speaker 3: and they certainly don't spend the kind of money that
Speaker 3: we spend in the States building stuff. But you know,
Speaker 3: I said him a really complicated thing. You know, I
Speaker 3: wanted to see like eight or nine golf courses in
Speaker 3: all different parts of India, you know, the most. It
Speaker 3: couldn't have been more complicated. And we managed to do it.
Speaker 3: And you know, he went along for some of the
Speaker 3: stops and then you know, found a driver for me
Speaker 3: to take me to some of the other places. When
Speaker 3: he had commitments and couldn't go. And the only the
Speaker 3: only hard part was I went to Sri Lanka for
Speaker 3: four days too, and he had no contacts there at all.
Speaker 3: So that's really the only place I've gone where I
Speaker 3: just found a driver like online, and you know, so
Speaker 3: I get to the airport. I was kind of one
Speaker 3: with a friend, David Lee. We get to the airport
Speaker 3: in Colombo and there's no driver waiting for us with
Speaker 3: a sign and I'm like, uh, we don't have a
Speaker 3: backup play in here. And then like forty five you know,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to email somebody to sort it out. Like
Speaker 3: forty five minutes later, these two guys show up and
Speaker 3: they're like, sorry, we're late. And then you know, we
Speaker 3: get in the car and start out and you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know much about Sri Lanka, but I've seen
Speaker 3: a map of where we're going, and you know, we're
Speaker 3: our first stop is east into the center of the country,
Speaker 3: and we start out north and I'm like, oh, what
Speaker 3: are we doing here? And the guys are like, oh,
Speaker 3: the traffic going east is just terrible. We have to go,
Speaker 3: you know. So we went like fully an hour and
Speaker 3: a half, like out of the way to the north
Speaker 3: to avoid the traffic coming from the east, which I
Speaker 3: saw two days later. I'm like, okay, that made sense,
Speaker 3: but it sure was scary at the time, just getting
Speaker 3: in a car with two guys you don't know taking
Speaker 3: you to some place they've never been and hoping that
Speaker 3: you get there in one piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, your time talking about the guy being a
Speaker 1: good player. And that's how I got a golf course
Speaker 1: architecture that sounds a lot like the way America was
Speaker 1: early on.
Speaker 3: That's the way everything, that's the way it's always been.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I am I'm one of the
Speaker 3: few guys that didn't get into it that way. That's
Speaker 3: how he Died got into it. He was just the
Speaker 3: best amateur player around. And you know people. You know,
Speaker 3: a friend of his asked him to find an architect
Speaker 3: for the golf course, and he couldn't get Robert tren
Speaker 3: Jones to do it, and he couldn't get Dick Wilson
Speaker 3: to even look at it. And he finally, you know,
Speaker 3: he went back to the guy and said, I struck
Speaker 3: out with those guys, and the clients said, why do
Speaker 3: you do it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So your road trip is you were all over
Speaker 1: the place. Anybody that follows you on Instagram knows that
Speaker 1: you you cover some serious ground. The latest place that
Speaker 1: you were was Baroreial Park, which was hosting the Houston Open,
Speaker 1: which you redesigned the golf course. Every got to see it,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, from general public opinion was positive
Speaker 1: about it. It sounded like the players really liked it. But
Speaker 1: Jason Long would love to know what your thoughts were,
Speaker 1: And a number of people asked about this, but what
Speaker 1: your thoughts were on how Memorial Park played and you know,
Speaker 1: what you would like to see be done differently for
Speaker 1: years to come, or you know what they did well
Speaker 1: and if you're surprised at anything. Lots of questions, but
Speaker 1: you know, just general Memorial Park thoughts.
Speaker 3: That was a really fun week. You know, when we're
Speaker 3: building a golf course, the one thing that we can't
Speaker 3: do is test it. You know, we spend Brian Slonik,
Speaker 3: you know, shapes greens for me and shapes other things.
Speaker 3: He always talks about you. You're imagining what the ball
Speaker 3: is going to do when out lands. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: if I went back to Memorial Park on my own
Speaker 3: and played golf for a week and watched the public
Speaker 3: play the golf course. I might go a whole week
Speaker 3: sitting by the fifteenth green waiting for somebody to land
Speaker 3: a ball right where I don't want to see what
Speaker 3: happens to it and never see it. You know, that's
Speaker 3: we're not that accurate. The best players in the world
Speaker 3: are that accurate. So spending a week kind of inside
Speaker 3: the ropes getting to see where the ball's landing and
Speaker 3: what happens to it is perfect. I mean, I wish
Speaker 3: I could do that with all of my golf courses.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't I don't care if they're shooting
Speaker 3: sixty four or seventy four. That doesn't really happen, you know,
Speaker 3: I just want to see does this work the way
Speaker 3: I wanted it to work. And there is no better
Speaker 3: way to do that than watch the PGAH or play there.
Speaker 3: Even though I understand as well as anybody not everybody's
Speaker 3: like that, but you know, I can visualize how it's
Speaker 3: going to work for myself, you know, to see how
Speaker 3: it works for them, and you know, there's when we
Speaker 3: started that project, I sort of said to some friends, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to take on Mission impossible, that
Speaker 3: that cliche about design and a golf course that will
Speaker 3: that can host to be a public course for sixty
Speaker 3: thousand people a year and host the PGA Tour event.
Speaker 3: Those are the two, like furthest the part things that
Speaker 3: you can do. And everybody always says that's what they're
Speaker 3: trying to do, is is will fill both ends of
Speaker 3: the spectrum. But it's it's you know, I kind of
Speaker 3: went into it thinking, well, it's almost impossible to do that.
Speaker 3: You know, We're just we're gonna do it by not
Speaker 3: worrying about what the winning score is for the tournament.
Speaker 3: But as it turned out, most of the players thought
Speaker 3: it was a pretty hard golf course, and that has
Speaker 3: everything to do with Bermuda grass rough. You know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be really long. I think they had
Speaker 3: the rough mode at like somewhere between an inch and
Speaker 3: a half and two inches. They let it grow all summer,
Speaker 3: and I'd heard, you know, in the build up to
Speaker 3: the event, like six weeks before the event, the feedback was, oh,
Speaker 3: the rough is brutal and they're having a hard time
Speaker 3: finding balls, And I was like, cut it, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't need guys losing balls the tour event. That'll
Speaker 3: just be a freaking disaster, just.
Speaker 2: Quick way to get on their side.
Speaker 3: It's no kidding, but you know an inch and a
Speaker 3: half or two inches, you're not going to lose the ball,
Speaker 3: but it sits down and you can't spin it, and
Speaker 3: that's all you have. That's the only penalty those guys need.
Speaker 1: It's super unpredictable too. You don't know when it's gonna
Speaker 1: nose dive, you don't know when it's gonna fly.
Speaker 2: It comes out.
Speaker 1: Berma rough is the just the most difficult rough to
Speaker 1: play out of it and it is short. It doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a lot, but you never have any clue
Speaker 1: how the ball. You're almost guessing how it's going to
Speaker 1: come out right.
Speaker 3: I actually, I mean those guys make it look pretty easy.
Speaker 3: And I went I went out one night during the tournament.
Speaker 3: You know, they were playing early in the day on
Speaker 3: the weekend to like avoid compete with football and TV time,
Speaker 3: so late in the afternoon on Saturday, I went out
Speaker 3: and hit some shots and I just threw three or
Speaker 3: four balls in the rough and tried to hit the shots,
Speaker 3: and I was just hitting them all over the place,
Speaker 3: like you know, it wouldn't come out straight at all.
Speaker 3: They have shanked a couple of them, and you know,
Speaker 3: I had no appreciation for just how squirrely the ball
Speaker 3: does come out of that kind of rough from watching
Speaker 3: those guys. I had to hit a couple of shots
Speaker 3: to realize how hard it is. But you know, I
Speaker 3: didn't grow up in Bermuda grass, so I don't really
Speaker 3: have that experience. That's one of the first things when,
Speaker 3: you know, when I got together with Brooks Kopka to
Speaker 3: talk about the golf course, that was one of the
Speaker 3: first things that he said, actually that you know, the
Speaker 3: hardest shots on a Bermuda grass golf course or shots
Speaker 3: out of the rough from not a perfect flat stance.
Speaker 3: He's like, you just don't know where it's going to go.
Speaker 3: You know, you know you going to have trouble stop
Speaker 3: in it. So you start you start thinking about, you know,
Speaker 3: where do I want to miss around the green? And
Speaker 3: you know, where is there a backstop that I can
Speaker 3: aim at so this won't get away from you completely?
Speaker 3: And sure enough, you know, I had dinner one night
Speaker 3: during the tournament with a couple of young players, including
Speaker 3: Victor Oland, who's a great young golfer, and he said
Speaker 3: the same thing. He said, you know, when I walk
Speaker 3: up to the ball and it's two yards in the
Speaker 3: rough instead of in the fairway, I just totally think differently.
Speaker 3: And you know, now I've got to think about where
Speaker 3: can I get around the green. I'm not thinking about
Speaker 3: any close to the hole at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. So what anything else stand out
Speaker 1: to you? I think everybody loved, you know, that closing stretch,
Speaker 1: the short part four. That was a fun hole to
Speaker 1: watch where we saw some players playing ping pong.
Speaker 3: I needed. I didn't actually witness anybody play ping pong
Speaker 3: on that hole. You know. Thursday morning, I woke up
Speaker 3: and there was like a hole in one on the
Speaker 3: second hole at the front pin blazement, like the first
Speaker 3: hour of the tournament, and you know, they were afraid
Speaker 3: there were going to be a half a dozen of them,
Speaker 3: but that didn't happen. And then like while they were
Speaker 3: worried about that, twenty minutes later, somebody made ten at
Speaker 3: thirteen going back and forth across the green and I
Speaker 3: was like, ooh, you don't see you don't see either
Speaker 3: one or ten on tour that often. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: the finishing stretch held up really well. You know, we
Speaker 3: thought of it as well. I mean, one of the
Speaker 3: reasons the scoring wasn't lower is they took two holes
Speaker 3: that are normally part five for the tournament and turn
Speaker 3: them into part fours. Yeah, the first hole, which we
Speaker 3: thought they would do it that way, but also the
Speaker 3: fourteenth hole, which we thought they would still call a
Speaker 3: part five, you know, And if they called fourteen a
Speaker 3: part five, then I guarantee you that, you know, with
Speaker 3: thirteen being a short four and fifteen being a short
Speaker 3: part three and sixteen being a reachable par five, that
Speaker 3: you know, the guy in the club house wouldn't stand
Speaker 3: a chance against the guys still out of the golf course.
Speaker 3: But just change in par on fourteen from five to
Speaker 3: four kind of balances that out more and also takes
Speaker 3: four shots off the winning score, you know, when you're
Speaker 3: thinking of it in terms of under par. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, Dustin Johnson was twenty under part of the Masters,
Speaker 3: Carlos Artiz was thirteen under winning at Memorial Park. But
Speaker 3: they shot almost exactly the same score. It's just to
Speaker 3: call par different. You could easily do the same thing
Speaker 3: for Augusta and call two of those parts five is
Speaker 3: part fours, because they're you know, most of them are
Speaker 3: going for the green most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could easily say that two and thirteen are
Speaker 1: part fours with the way these guys hit it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they hit good drives on either of those holes,
Speaker 1: most guys have irons in their hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know they're I mean, those greens of
Speaker 3: Augusta are a little tougher, you know, calling those part
Speaker 3: those would be really hard Part four horse, but but
Speaker 3: they are, you know they you know, the pros have
Speaker 3: an expectation on pretty much every part five. I mean
Speaker 3: the one long hold of Memorial Park number eight. You know,
Speaker 3: we one of the things I changed in the routing
Speaker 3: was the the ninth hole. The original ninth holeup Memorial
Speaker 3: Park was like kind of a layoup par four to
Speaker 3: the end of the fairway and then a shot across
Speaker 3: that little canal to the green. And I just hated
Speaker 3: the key shot. And you know, it was possible that
Speaker 3: somebody would try to go for the green, but we
Speaker 3: couldn't clear the trees in the creek, so they'd be
Speaker 3: going for a kind of blind and dangerous to agree
Speaker 3: with a lot of people around it. So that was out.
Speaker 3: So you know, I turned that hole into a part three,
Speaker 3: and then lengthened the previous hall from a really short
Speaker 3: par five to a really long one. It's six ten
Speaker 3: from the back or something like that. And even so,
Speaker 3: you know, if guys hit it in the fairway, they're
Speaker 3: ripping driver off the deck or three wood to get
Speaker 3: it up there close to the green, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them are getting close to the green or on
Speaker 3: the green. It's kind of insane to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you build it longer, they're
Speaker 1: just going to hit it further. That's there farther.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That's like the kind of addage of the tour at
Speaker 1: this point. With with regards to Kopka, Allen Mazroll wanted
Speaker 1: to ask if there were any interesting differences between his
Speaker 1: thoughts in twenty nine team and Nicholas Is at Sabonic
Speaker 1: when you guys were designing that golf course together. He's
Speaker 1: essentially looking for comparing players perspectives from different errors.
Speaker 3: You know, Well, the relationship with Jack was entirely different.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, he had done so many golf
Speaker 3: courses and you know, you know, we're sort of trying
Speaker 3: to be equals, even though it's hard to be at
Speaker 3: the same cable with Jack Nicholas would be considered an equal.
Speaker 3: But but you know, Jack didn't spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time telling me how he thought about design. He assumed.
Speaker 3: I knew most of that from having seen a lot
Speaker 3: of his golf courses. You know, the one the one
Speaker 3: thing that I remember the most that Jack talked about
Speaker 3: from a playing perspective. You know, it was funny because
Speaker 3: it didn't happen until like the opening of the tournament.
Speaker 3: When we were playing on opening day, he hit a
Speaker 3: shot on well, he looked at hitting a shot going
Speaker 3: for the green on the thirteenth hold with his second shot,
Speaker 3: and then he laid up instead to the left and
Speaker 3: hit a little pitch in and he said, as we
Speaker 3: were walking up, he said, you know, that was about
Speaker 3: an eighty percent shot. And I said, what do you
Speaker 3: mean And he said, he said, well, you know, I
Speaker 3: figured if I tried, I could maybe get to the
Speaker 3: green about eighty percent of the time. And I said,
Speaker 3: when you were playing on tour, what percentage did you
Speaker 3: did it have to be for you to go for it?
Speaker 3: And he looked at me like I had rocks in
Speaker 3: my head and said one hundred percent. You know, he
Speaker 3: he was like, you know, I'm not going to hit
Speaker 3: the shot one hundred percent of the time. But if
Speaker 3: I'm not one hundred percent sure I can hit it,
Speaker 3: if I hit a good shot, I'm not. I was
Speaker 3: never trying. And that's certainly a different approach to what
Speaker 3: these guys do today. It's just like we were talking
Speaker 3: about on the longer part five. You know, they're just
Speaker 3: if they can't make it, they're happy getting up there
Speaker 3: as close as they can. They're not thinking about, you know,
Speaker 3: what's the most strategic place to lay up to. They
Speaker 3: don't really lay up hardly at all, you know the
Speaker 3: I mean on the aphole at Memorial Park. The only
Speaker 3: time you'd see guys laying up is if they hit
Speaker 3: it in the rough. And even then they were trying
Speaker 3: to get it down there pretty far. But they were
Speaker 3: trying to make sure they got it out of the
Speaker 3: rough and got it back in the fairway. You know,
Speaker 3: whatever was the most club they could hit and be
Speaker 3: pretty sure they were going to do that. That's what
Speaker 3: they did.
Speaker 2: That's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So that obviously Kepka was was he was always saying,
Speaker 1: just he gets it as close to the green as
Speaker 1: it can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he didn't say that directly, but I, you know,
Speaker 3: I've seen these guys play enough. I understood that's the
Speaker 3: perspective now. And he certainly would say that, you know
Speaker 3: he's he's you know he, you know he. So the
Speaker 3: first two rounds, you know, the tour likes like all
Speaker 3: these driveable par fours, and each of ale part five,
Speaker 3: the tour likes to have a tee further back. That
Speaker 3: takes that out of play for most of the field.
Speaker 3: So on Thursday and Friday, when they've got a full
Speaker 3: field and they're trying to get the round finished in daylight,
Speaker 3: the players aren't waiting for the previous group to drive
Speaker 3: the green or something. And so on sixteen Brooks suggest,
Speaker 3: you know, we had the whole bill, and Brooks suggested
Speaker 3: a tee another twenty yards back and slightly left in
Speaker 3: a different angle a to give him a different angle
Speaker 3: to hit the t shot. He wished we could do
Speaker 3: that on more holes, and I would have liked to,
Speaker 3: but with all the trees that were there, there wasn't
Speaker 3: too much scope for that. But that extra twenty yards,
Speaker 3: you know, it took the hale from like five fifty
Speaker 3: to five seventy and that stopped a lot of players
Speaker 3: from going for that green and two over water Brooks
Speaker 3: still did it on Friday, but you know, most guys
Speaker 3: were were just playing conservatively on that hole at least
Speaker 3: till the weekend. And if you drove it out of
Speaker 3: the fairway, you kind of had to lay up. You know,
Speaker 3: nobody was going for that green out of rough from to.
Speaker 2: Twenty outside of the rough?
Speaker 1: Was there anything, any hole or any shot that you
Speaker 1: saw that you know might have given them more trouble
Speaker 1: than you expected?
Speaker 3: You know, the fourth, the long part four is one
Speaker 3: of my favorite holes there and I and I did expect.
Speaker 3: You know, that green kind of sits down and it's
Speaker 3: one of the only greens we moved to a different locate.
Speaker 3: You know, we moved it like fifty yards right and
Speaker 3: further back than it was before. It's almost on the
Speaker 3: what was the te for number five and and it's
Speaker 3: you know, so it sits on the ground. They didn't
Speaker 3: put any fill there, and it kind of falls away,
Speaker 3: you know, it falls into the green and then it
Speaker 3: falls away to the right and left and back. So
Speaker 3: you know, that's a scary hole for them to approach.
Speaker 3: They kind of have to land the ball short and
Speaker 3: make sure they don't go through because they'll get into
Speaker 3: trouble through the green. And that it was tough for
Speaker 3: that was really tough for especially if they got in
Speaker 3: the rough at all. They just they had to you know,
Speaker 3: they had to land the ball like thirty yards short
Speaker 3: of the green to make sure it didn't run through.
Speaker 3: And they're not that comfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're so scared of of hazard. That's that's the thing,
Speaker 1: is the how cautious tour players are. I feel like
Speaker 1: gets people don't realize that they're like among the most
Speaker 1: cautious players in the game.
Speaker 3: You know. I knew that from from listening to Pete
Speaker 3: Die forty years ago. I mean, he just drilled that
Speaker 3: into me. How they you know, how conservative the players were.
Speaker 3: And you know one of the reasons he set up
Speaker 3: all his water hazards on that that really shallow angle.
Speaker 3: You know, if you set up something on a forty
Speaker 3: five degree angle, he said, you know, they know how
Speaker 3: they know where that point is that they can carry
Speaker 3: the water comfortably, and they'll always play a certain degree
Speaker 3: safe of that like further left if the if they
Speaker 3: things left to right, and you know, if the angle
Speaker 3: is if there's too much angle there. The carry is
Speaker 3: so much less when they play safe that they just
Speaker 3: they're never ever going to go in the water at all.
Speaker 3: You know. It's only when you're playing almost parallel with
Speaker 3: the hazard but not quite that they're likely to ever
Speaker 3: miss in the water. And of course now they don't
Speaker 3: even think about that because they're they're thinking where I'm
Speaker 3: carrying it to an aim and so far, you know,
Speaker 3: they don't care where the left side of the fairway
Speaker 3: is on that whole. They're just getting aim to the
Speaker 3: safe spot, even if it's in the rough, to make
Speaker 3: sure they never hit in the walk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was what Tiger did so well as he
Speaker 2: just you know, he took out the big myths.
Speaker 1: He would just hit it as far if if there's
Speaker 1: Obie left too, he's always gonna miss, right, you know,
Speaker 1: he did that.
Speaker 3: But the you know, the other thing that Tiger really
Speaker 3: had an advantage on, I think is, you know, so
Speaker 3: these guys are kind of not that many of them
Speaker 3: are like math majors, but but they are kind of
Speaker 3: plotting their way around golf course like like somebody that
Speaker 3: knows trigonometry a little bit. They've got you know, they
Speaker 3: know what their circle is they can drive a ball
Speaker 3: into and they're making sure that circle stays away from
Speaker 3: penalty shot. And the same on the approach to the green.
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, I can you know, I can hit
Speaker 3: it on a dime, or I can hit it in
Speaker 3: a circle that's fifteen feet around. So I'm going to
Speaker 3: make sure I take that bunker out apply or at Augusta.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to aim that much below the
Speaker 3: hole so I don't hit the ball above the hole.
Speaker 3: But then I can't because there's a creek on the
Speaker 3: other side. So I've got to, like, you know, I've
Speaker 3: got to split the difference, and sometimes I'm going to
Speaker 3: be above the hole, but that's better than being in
Speaker 3: the creek.
Speaker 1: That's the advantage of having sloping greens, yes, is that
Speaker 1: it's and that's I think I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the issues with the speeds of greens get keeping increasing.
Speaker 1: You know, the pursuit of speedy greens is, you know,
Speaker 1: sloping greens is one of the best ways to protect
Speaker 1: par against really great players because they don't want to
Speaker 1: be pin high or pass pin high. Nobody wants a
Speaker 1: ten foot or the breaks eight feet.
Speaker 3: You know, right. Yeah, you know, Ben Crenshaw said said,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, before Brooks, I spent way more
Speaker 3: time talking to BEG. Crenshaw than any other pro about
Speaker 3: design and stuff. And he said once that on a
Speaker 3: you know, when you had greens with slope, it was
Speaker 3: it wasn't just important to stay above the hull. It
Speaker 3: was important to hit a straight approach shot because being
Speaker 3: p and high twenty feet right with six feet a
Speaker 3: break was a brutal shot and if you could get
Speaker 3: it below the whole put straight up hill, it was
Speaker 3: a huge advantage. And I had never thought about that
Speaker 3: part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because then especially then you get those twenty
Speaker 1: footers with all that break, and especially when they're hooking putts,
Speaker 1: like then you're so worried about it running six feet
Speaker 1: by on that putt, you know, where you get that
Speaker 1: putt running.
Speaker 2: Away from you.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so sloping greens is so important to
Speaker 1: especially for the for this modern you know, the modern
Speaker 1: player where you know, a lot of challenges have been
Speaker 1: removed from the game with equipment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was one of my big lessons from
Speaker 3: Memorial Park because we didn't you know, we knew the
Speaker 3: we knew the tour would not be okay with us
Speaker 3: putting too much slope in the greens. They told me
Speaker 3: at the start, Look, you can do whatever you want,
Speaker 3: but if you if you have areas of the green
Speaker 3: that are more than two percent, we're not putting the hole.
Speaker 3: You know, you got to give us enough places that
Speaker 3: are relatively flat. And unfortunately that two percent at twelve
Speaker 3: or thirteen tournament speeds means that it doesn't mean, you know,
Speaker 3: they're not afraid of being above the hole at two
Speaker 3: percent and twelve on a stemmeter, you know, like on
Speaker 3: the wrang and tier of the green. Yeah, but when
Speaker 3: you're right around the hole, being six feet past is
Speaker 3: not so much worse than being six feet short. So
Speaker 3: it's really you know, so it's you know, when the
Speaker 3: tour sticks to that standard. It's really only the major
Speaker 3: championship courses where you have that where it really matters
Speaker 3: about keeping the ball below the hole. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you watch PGA Tour golf a lot, it's so
Speaker 1: rare to see a putt rip across the hole. The
Speaker 1: only times you see it is that really old school
Speaker 1: places like I think like Sedgefield in North Carolina, you
Speaker 1: see balls rip across the hole as well. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: play there and it's like they just don't. There aren't
Speaker 1: any spots on the green that are two percent, you know,
Speaker 1: or if there's if there's maybe one or two, but
Speaker 1: they can't use it for four days, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that used to be like you know, that
Speaker 3: was wing foot back in the day. You know, now
Speaker 3: they've flatten out some of those pinplatesments so you could
Speaker 3: use them more. So it's not it's not as severe,
Speaker 3: but but that was the thing up Memorial. I mean,
Speaker 3: when we're having dinner at victor Ovland, I was sitting
Speaker 3: next to Jim Crane, who was the client who funded
Speaker 3: the renovation of Memorial Park, and I said to Victor,
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, this is what they've done this
Speaker 3: week for the tournament. Is like how you used to
Speaker 3: prepare for a tournament. You just let the rough grow
Speaker 3: and take the greens from nine on the stip meter
Speaker 3: to eleven or twelve, and that was enough more difficult
Speaker 3: that you didn't really have to do much else to
Speaker 3: the golf course. I said. The problem is, you know,
Speaker 3: if I built this as a private course for mister
Speaker 3: Crane instead of a public course, that they don't want
Speaker 3: to maintain the greens very fast. You know, I would
Speaker 3: have had to build the greens for twelve every day,
Speaker 3: and then they'd have to be really flat. You know,
Speaker 3: either it'd be way too hard for him, even though
Speaker 3: Jim's a really good player, or way too easy for
Speaker 3: you guys. You know, it's that difference in speed that
Speaker 3: that used to make so much difference for a tournament
Speaker 3: golf course, and now the expectation that you're going to
Speaker 3: maintain all courses to tournament standard every day has taken
Speaker 3: that away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes sense, especially, yeah, especially when you get
Speaker 1: to the club scene, like you know, Public goth Is.
Speaker 1: It works at Public goth because you know they have
Speaker 1: to maintain them at nine to get everybody around. But
Speaker 1: when you get the clubs, it's you know, they and
Speaker 1: they're always they always end up being faster than you
Speaker 1: expect them to be.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, well they you know, I was I
Speaker 3: got to see that first to just how how much
Speaker 3: they test the greens for firmness and speed and everything,
Speaker 3: you know, morning afternoon and evening every day leading up
Speaker 3: to the tournament. During the tournament, They've got a really
Speaker 3: good handle on that. You know, we were really lucky
Speaker 3: this year that they didn't deal with weather at all.
Speaker 3: You know, it was just it was just really nice,
Speaker 3: warm weather, not too much wind. They could water the
Speaker 3: golf course exactly as much as they wanted to water
Speaker 3: the golf course instead of dealing with a bunch of
Speaker 3: rain that they had no control over. So they had
Speaker 3: the you know, they had it playing just the way
Speaker 3: they wanted it to, really dialed in where you know,
Speaker 3: out of the fairway, a good shot held the green,
Speaker 3: but it was hard to spin it back and an
Speaker 3: average you know, out of the rough, it was really
Speaker 3: hard to hold the green. Even the best shots tended
Speaker 3: to land and release twenty or thirty feet.
Speaker 1: How much input did you have in the setup process?
Speaker 1: Did they consult you a fair about any none?
Speaker 3: You know, was it? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, how how did that hold the academy work
Speaker 1: with a new golf course in the In the tour
Speaker 1: set up staff.
Speaker 3: When we were building the golf course. Uh, there are
Speaker 3: there are two or three guys that take turns doing
Speaker 3: the setup for tour events that you know, they each
Speaker 3: have a certain number of events they do and then
Speaker 3: they take and then they're home the rest of the
Speaker 3: time and and Robbie Ware who lives in Texas, was
Speaker 3: was in charge of Houston. So he came out a
Speaker 3: couple of times while we were building the golf course
Speaker 3: to talk about some of the holes and you know
Speaker 3: how I saw them being played, and what they might
Speaker 3: do for options on setting it up and you know
Speaker 3: which holes they might use an alternate tea one or
Speaker 3: two of the days. Uh So he was involved during
Speaker 3: the construction of the golf course and then he was
Speaker 3: the guy to set it up the week of the tournament.
Speaker 3: And you know, once you get to the tournament itself,
Speaker 3: you know, those guys are the professionals, and you know,
Speaker 3: they were nice enough to walk around with me some
Speaker 3: and talk about things and why they were doing things
Speaker 3: certain ways. But I wasn't going to try to second
Speaker 3: guess them at that point. They had it figured out
Speaker 3: and you know, that's that's their province. You know. The
Speaker 3: only thing that they did that you know, I thought
Speaker 3: they did a great job. You know, the tournament turned
Speaker 3: out great, and the only thing they did or didn't do.
Speaker 3: You know, we built seventeen with the idea that they
Speaker 3: could move the tea up on the weekend and have
Speaker 3: guys try to drive the green and they didn't do that.
Speaker 3: And you know, they early in the week, Robbie told
Speaker 3: me all the holes where they were gonna put a
Speaker 3: tea up for a day or two, and he just
Speaker 3: omitted that one entirely. You know, it wasn't like it
Speaker 3: wasn't like you told me they weren't gonna do it.
Speaker 3: He just left it out like, yeah, we're not gonna
Speaker 3: do that. But I don't really want to talk about it,
Speaker 3: so I do. That's the one thing that I'm gonna
Speaker 3: you know, I was like, okay, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say anything about that because their mind's made up. But
Speaker 3: after watching that, you know, pretty much everybody laid up
Speaker 3: with five iron and then hit nine iron or wedge
Speaker 3: to the green and that was pretty dull. And so
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to him now and say,
Speaker 3: why didn't you want to do that? So I understand,
Speaker 3: and so I can maybe try to figure out some
Speaker 3: way to make that hole more interesting, because it's you know,
Speaker 3: you don't have too many holes on tour where everybody's
Speaker 3: laying up with a five iron off the tee and
Speaker 3: that's not the exciting finish. That's you know, in the
Speaker 3: midst of a really exciting finish, that hole is kind
Speaker 3: of a letdown. So I'd like to explore what else
Speaker 3: we can do, you know. The one The one thing is,
Speaker 3: you know, I think they really would have liked it
Speaker 3: a lot better if it was just your standard Pete
Speaker 3: diye hole with the lake line. You know, if you
Speaker 3: couldn't drive the green, you could be twenty yards short
Speaker 3: of the green and just left and that would be okay.
Speaker 3: And we could really do that with with the shape
Speaker 3: of the lake and what we were working with. And
Speaker 3: I didn't really want to do something exactly like that.
Speaker 3: I wanted that green to sit out on the point
Speaker 3: and be scary. But you know, I'd like to figure
Speaker 3: out something that works for them so they can set
Speaker 3: it up a little differently next year or the year after,
Speaker 3: and we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just gave me.
Speaker 1: You gave me shades of my experience watching the twenty
Speaker 1: twelve Ryder Cup at Madina when I sat on the
Speaker 1: what was it the fifteenth hole, that short part four,
Speaker 1: I watched them hit six iron wedge for eight straight hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that either nobody went for that.
Speaker 1: Me and my buddy sat there for a whole day
Speaker 1: and watched sixth iri wedge for a full day.
Speaker 2: It was it was busy.
Speaker 3: I guess you don't. I guess you don't have Sevy
Speaker 3: playing anymore to like set the stand. You know, when
Speaker 3: when they started playing the Ryder Cup of the Belfry,
Speaker 3: everybody was like, you know, the Americans were like, Okay,
Speaker 3: We're all going to lay up on this whole one
Speaker 3: it hits seven iron wed and then you know, Seve
Speaker 3: yanks out the driver on day one, it fires it
Speaker 3: on the green and it's like, are we really going
Speaker 3: to hit seven iron wedge all week and lose to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's see the Darren the sev was not short on
Speaker 1: any daring, you know in his game. One last question
Speaker 1: on Memorial Park. This is from a mole Yannick.
Speaker 2: He wanted to know.
Speaker 1: He said, we know what the pro said about Memorial Park,
Speaker 1: but what has the feedback been about from the daily
Speaker 1: feed players?
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't got that much direct feedback. I
Speaker 3: know a couple of people that live in Houston that
Speaker 3: have played it a little bit and really liked it,
Speaker 3: but they were biased in favor of you to start,
Speaker 3: you know, and the pro shop in general has said,
Speaker 3: like ninety percent of people really like it. Some of
Speaker 3: the old timers just loved what was there before, and
Speaker 3: they were, you know, they were never going to really
Speaker 3: like that we changed it, which is sort of inevitable.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean, the easiest thing to say
Speaker 3: is the t sheet is full all the time, but
Speaker 3: it was full all the time before, so that's kind
Speaker 3: of a cop out, you know. But I've not heard
Speaker 3: I've not heard a lot of like complaints that we
Speaker 3: made it too hard or that people are bored. You know.
Speaker 3: I thought when we you know, when we decided to
Speaker 3: to you know, we went from like eighty bunkers to nineteen,
Speaker 3: and I wondered if people would think we were cheating
Speaker 3: them in some way by doing that. But I've not
Speaker 3: really heard any negative feedback about that either, which is
Speaker 3: a good thing because I you know, I mean, I
Speaker 3: really am thinking thinking about doing less and less bunkers
Speaker 3: on future golf courses. So I'm glad that you know
Speaker 3: that that was a thing that attracted almost zero attention.
Speaker 3: During the tournament, players talked a lot about how the
Speaker 3: ball got away from the greens and the tricky shots
Speaker 3: around the greens. But now one of them stopped to think, well,
Speaker 3: that's because there's no bunker there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Something that jogged my memory. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about what somebody once said to me about
Speaker 1: trees on a golf course, and like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you could go around a golf course and just say
Speaker 1: to somebody that had maybe too many trees on a
Speaker 1: golf course, what are the eighteen to twenty five that
Speaker 1: you absolutely have to keep? And bunkers in a way,
Speaker 1: may have gotten to that point where it's you know,
Speaker 1: which one if you only could keep eighteen of these bunkers,
Speaker 1: which would they be? And you'd probably end up with
Speaker 1: you know, you no course would be over bunkered that way, right.
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean different projects we've done in
Speaker 3: the past that I said to my associates. You know,
Speaker 3: the quota for bunkers is down to like forty here
Speaker 3: instead of however many we built on the last place.
Speaker 3: You know, just just you know, usually on clay sites
Speaker 3: and smaller budgets where bunkers are expensive and it's hard
Speaker 3: to maintain them very well, they get contaminated, and you know,
Speaker 3: so let's just keep it down. But but I almost
Speaker 3: need to give them a number not to exceed, to
Speaker 3: keep it down because you know, there's always every little
Speaker 3: place there's like a feature in the ground. You think, oh,
Speaker 3: i'd be cool if I put a bunker there, but
Speaker 3: the feature of the ground does the same work. You
Speaker 3: don't really need the bunker there.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, you know, writers have writing like things
Speaker 1: they fall back onto all the time, and they use
Speaker 1: words or speaking you know, cues where you use words.
Speaker 1: I have a million of them, and listeners of this
Speaker 1: pod probably know all of them. But you have things
Speaker 1: that you fall back on when you're uncomfortable. In golf architecture,
Speaker 1: it might be like when you're uncomfortable you're not sure
Speaker 1: what to do put a bunker in.
Speaker 3: Well. I mean when you have a lot of guys
Speaker 3: working on the project that are really great at building
Speaker 3: cool little bunkers, you know, it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like the guy with a hammer and nails. It's just like, yes,
Speaker 3: that's what I should do there, that's the solution, and
Speaker 3: it's yeah, yeah, I mean we you know, we just
Speaker 3: either we have to understaff projects going ahead, or we
Speaker 3: just have to clamp down and say, okay, you personally
Speaker 3: only get to build eleven bunkers here you figure out
Speaker 3: where they should go. But that's that's all I went.
Speaker 1: And you build one last question from Brett Hoxtein on
Speaker 1: this subject, and it's it's kind of goes into a
Speaker 1: bigger subject.
Speaker 2: So it's a transition question here.
Speaker 1: Memorial Park was awesome, but is there any hope for
Speaker 1: the rest of municipal golf What would have to happen
Speaker 1: to get a significant number see even just fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty percent of municipalities to realize the value of their
Speaker 1: golfing assets and architecturally improve them.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, good question, big question that goes to the
Speaker 3: economics of how things are done. I mean so so
Speaker 3: not everybody. You know, I don't know if they talked
Speaker 3: at all. You know, I didn't see the telecast at
Speaker 3: all because I was out there all week, So I
Speaker 3: don't know if they talked it all in the telecast
Speaker 3: about the fact that Jim Crane, the owner of the Astros,
Speaker 3: raised ten to fifteen million dollars to rebuild that golf
Speaker 3: course and gear it up for a tour event which
Speaker 3: included you know, it was it was expensive as that
Speaker 3: because we sand capped the whole thing. You know, we
Speaker 3: reconjured it for drainage. We reconted it to capture runoff
Speaker 3: and put it back into the irrigation system so we
Speaker 3: wouldn't use city water. You know, we obviously reshaped every
Speaker 3: square inch of it, put in all new irrigations sand
Speaker 3: cap so I hit poored rain in the week of
Speaker 3: the tournament. They could still play. And then, you know,
Speaker 3: because even giving money to the city is a political thing.
Speaker 3: You know, they had to like spend money to move
Speaker 3: the tennis courts so they could make the driving rings
Speaker 3: big enough. You know, a couple million dollars for something
Speaker 3: like that. It's just like that's where you tear your
Speaker 3: hair out. But you know, most cities obviously are not
Speaker 3: going to have a benefactor come in and raise that
Speaker 3: kind of money to make the unique golf course better
Speaker 3: for the people that play it. You know, it'd be
Speaker 3: nice to try. It'd be nice to go, you know,
Speaker 3: to have somebody, you know, corporate guy in a big
Speaker 3: city that wants to do something for golf. Instead of
Speaker 3: building the next Shadow Creek, just go raise the money
Speaker 3: to make the munique again. You know, I think what
Speaker 3: holds them back is fear that the city isn't going
Speaker 3: to take care of it if they do that, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been to a decent number of municipal
Speaker 3: golf courses, and a lot of them are very poorly
Speaker 3: cared for, you know. I you know, I'm much more
Speaker 3: my politics are a little different than a lot of
Speaker 3: my clients. I'd like to believe that government does good things.
Speaker 3: And you know, the worst example I can think of
Speaker 3: is how governments take care of municipal golf courses. They
Speaker 3: do a crap job. You know. That's that's why people
Speaker 3: don't want to pay taxes for fear they're going to
Speaker 3: get that as the standard. And I totally understand that.
Speaker 3: You know, if I was a donor, I wouldn't want
Speaker 3: to throw money into something like that either. So that's
Speaker 3: the hard part, is like, you know, because really a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, it's not really an architectural problem.
Speaker 3: In a lot of cases, yes, you know, it's taken
Speaker 3: care of what's there. But that's harder to do because
Speaker 3: you know, you have to maintain the commitment to it.
Speaker 3: You can't just come in and write a check and
Speaker 3: solve that problem.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's because they just don't have you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, someone that really understands why stuff
Speaker 1: was built that way, whether it be in the parks
Speaker 1: department or whether it be on the on the turf
Speaker 1: staff or pro shop you know staff.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I don't know if it's fair to
Speaker 3: blame the staff at most of these places. They're dealing
Speaker 3: they you know, they're underfunded, they're you know, they're packed
Speaker 3: with golfers. It's hard to do work on the golf
Speaker 3: course when it's so busy. You know, that's what you get,
Speaker 3: you know, that's the good side and the downside of
Speaker 3: a twenty dollars golf course. It's like, the conditions are crappy,
Speaker 3: but you've got a lot of people out there enjoying it.
Speaker 3: So why would you know, why would you shut it
Speaker 3: down to fix the crappy conditions if everybody's happy with it,
Speaker 3: and you know, you know, you could have a forty
Speaker 3: dollars golf course with better conditions, but you know that
Speaker 3: might not be the better solution for the public.
Speaker 1: Yeah, A lot of my favorite places are those twenty
Speaker 1: dollars golf courses that aren't busy.
Speaker 2: It seems they seem to be the best golf courses.
Speaker 3: Well, I had somebody I had somebody say that to
Speaker 3: me about East Potomac Park when we volunteered to get
Speaker 3: involved with that project. It's like, what's to fix. There's
Speaker 3: a ton of people out here playing golf right now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, you know, if it wasn't for if
Speaker 3: it wasn't for Travis's design being so out of the
Speaker 3: box and that just being completely lost, now I might
Speaker 3: agree with you, but you know, there was something really
Speaker 3: cool there and it's not even close to there anything,
Speaker 3: And the tire room