Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: This week is the US Senior Women's Open, a really
Speaker 1: exciting event being held at the historic Chicago Golf Club.
Speaker 1: Chicago Golf Club is one of the best golf courses
Speaker 1: in the country and also one of the most private,
Speaker 1: especially with coverage and different things. So really exciting to
Speaker 1: get to talk to both the historian Chicago Golf Club,
Speaker 1: John Moran and the golf course superintendent Scott Bordner. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoy this podcast. The first thirty minutes
Speaker 1: or so is with John, and then the back half
Speaker 1: of it is with Scott. If you're in the Chicago area,
Speaker 1: be sure to come out to Chicago Golf great opportunity
Speaker 1: to walk one of the best golf courses in the country,
Speaker 1: no ropes, right with the players, and see some of
Speaker 1: the greatest architecture in the world. Without further ado, here's
Speaker 1: John Moran and Scott Bordner. I miss a green, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker,
Speaker 1: I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a brid Egg Frida Egg, the dread Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: fridaggg bride egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the golf course. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion I think in the world of
Speaker 1: golf with the first. You know, Shinnacock was the first
Speaker 1: established club. I think there's a course in Charleston that
Speaker 1: says or a place in Charleston that says they had
Speaker 1: the first golf I know Saint Andrews and Yonkers claimed
Speaker 1: something Chicago Golf is the first eighteen hole club.
Speaker 3: Right correct. In fact, the first eighteen course was at
Speaker 3: the original Chicago Golf and I have contemporaneous newspaper articles
Speaker 3: about it. It was built at the Belmont Course which
Speaker 3: is now the Downers Grove Park district before we moved
Speaker 3: to Wheaton. So that, in fact was the first eighteen
Speaker 3: old course in the United States. And we have an
Speaker 3: old letter from the USGA getting testament to that.
Speaker 1: So you guys have you're the only one with proof
Speaker 1: that is the first eighteen hall course.
Speaker 3: Well, we have a letter. I'm taking that as proof
Speaker 3: whether it is or not.
Speaker 1: The founder of Chicago Golf Club, Charles Blair MacDonald, among others,
Speaker 1: was really instrumental in bringing golf from abroad and the
Speaker 1: first what sparked his interest was around a golf in
Speaker 1: Lake Forest, which is north of city. Right a field
Speaker 1: golf really kind of what today would be called pasture golf.
Speaker 3: Right He actually McDonald went to university, and university he
Speaker 3: left when he was sixteen years old, but he went
Speaker 3: to university in Saint Andrews and there he learned the
Speaker 3: game from old Tom Morris and actually competed against young
Speaker 3: time Morris. So when he came back at the Chicago
Speaker 3: fire had just happened, and you couldn't be in business
Speaker 3: in Chicago and have some past time. They would look
Speaker 3: at you like your nuts. So he went twenty years
Speaker 3: without really touching a golf club unless he went overseas
Speaker 3: on a trip. And they had the Colembian Exposition of
Speaker 3: the World's Fair in Chicago in eighteen ninety three I
Speaker 3: think it was, and the had a contingent come over
Speaker 3: from the UK and they were going to be there
Speaker 3: for two or three years and they wanted something to do.
Speaker 3: And so the organizer of it, Hbart Chattfield Taylor, heard
Speaker 3: about this and knew that McDonald knew something about golf.
Speaker 3: So Hobart Chatfield Taylor took them up to his in
Speaker 3: laws state in Lake Forest and McDonald laid out a
Speaker 3: six holl golf course for the guys from the UK
Speaker 3: to play. I think I'm not sure he'll feature later
Speaker 3: in the segment, but one of the guys was actually HJ. Wigham,
Speaker 3: who ended up being the third US Amateur Champion in
Speaker 3: the United States, second and third.
Speaker 1: So McDonald's got he's one of the most interesting characters.
Speaker 1: I think him in tilling Hast of the old, you know,
Speaker 1: beginnings of American Golf. If you were going to describe
Speaker 1: the way that you would portray McDonald's personality and in
Speaker 1: a few words, how would you kind of describe what
Speaker 1: the character through all your reading, all your research that
Speaker 1: Cebe McDonald was.
Speaker 3: Strong willed, competitive, feisty, in charge. I'm right, you're wrong.
Speaker 3: Did that? Did that capture it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so. Famously, he he protested the first
Speaker 1: Amateur Championship.
Speaker 3: Actually Andy the first two Amateur championships that he had
Speaker 3: agreed to play in, and he only protested them after
Speaker 3: he finished second, so it actually took one of the
Speaker 3: one of the reasons the USA was formed was because
Speaker 3: he had They had decided they needed a national championship
Speaker 3: and Newport and I think it was St Andrew's we're
Speaker 3: going to stage this, but they're going to stage at
Speaker 3: their own and after if he had won, I'm sure
Speaker 3: he would have recognized that as the first one. But
Speaker 3: since he lost, then then he said, oh, we have
Speaker 3: to form a proper one. And that was actually one
Speaker 3: of the beginnings of the USGA, was the move to
Speaker 3: form formalize something that could anoint an am or champion.
Speaker 1: And he couldn't protest it anymore once it was formed, right.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the pressure on him the third time
Speaker 3: because he absolutely couldn't positively couldn't protest the third time,
Speaker 3: could he?
Speaker 1: So the original course, they say, was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was built around the boundary boundary lined and McDonald famously
Speaker 1: hit a left to right shot and every single hole
Speaker 1: is a hook for out of bounds. So do you
Speaker 1: think there was any credence in him designing a golf
Speaker 1: course that would be really hard for him to hit
Speaker 1: anything out of bounds? Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean he was obviously super competitive and if
Speaker 3: you remember in those days, if it doesn't make sense
Speaker 3: to folks listening why a hook would be bad, Remember
Speaker 3: in those days they were playing in jackets and ties
Speaker 3: and no matter the weather, and so today the propensity
Speaker 3: is to slice the ball. In those days, it was
Speaker 3: hooked the ball unless you were a McDonald. And he
Speaker 3: actually sliced the ball in his bad shots. So he
Speaker 3: certainly would have thought about that, I'm sure, because he
Speaker 3: did that at Belmont too, it's my understanding, and he
Speaker 3: did it here. And the urban legend, I don't know
Speaker 3: how true it is, is that the origination of an
Speaker 3: out of bounds role was actually at Chicago Golf because
Speaker 3: all of the members at that point got tired of
Speaker 3: hitting hooking their balls into the farm fields because he
Speaker 3: had rided the golf course that way.
Speaker 1: Quite a dude. When did you become a member at
Speaker 1: Chicago Golf Club? And I think one of the most
Speaker 1: is one of the most fascinating stories, how you became
Speaker 1: a member.
Speaker 3: So it actually begins as a twelve year old caddy.
Speaker 3: So my dad worked for Sears for forty plus years
Speaker 3: and we moved around a bit, and when we moved
Speaker 3: to Wheaton and in the early seventies, we used to
Speaker 3: drive past this place and we knew it was a
Speaker 3: golf course and there was one hole, the only hole
Speaker 3: you could really see from the road. I remember my
Speaker 3: dad saying, oh my god, that hole must be six
Speaker 3: hundred year old. Long, Look how long it is? Well,
Speaker 3: it was actually our fourteenth hole, our k holes, actually
Speaker 3: the second shortest part four on the course. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I had some friends who are older than I was,
Speaker 3: who started caddying. And I was eleven and they were thirteen,
Speaker 3: and they had caddied and I couldn't caddy. And so
Speaker 3: the next year I was big enough to tell them
Speaker 3: I was thirteen, I was really twelve, And so I
Speaker 3: started caddying here and I caddied here for four years,
Speaker 3: and then I was the caddy master for three years
Speaker 3: after that. And during that time I was not part
Speaker 3: of the history, but I got to be here for
Speaker 3: some of the history. I got to be here when
Speaker 3: Ben Kreueschau shot sixty two, which we may talk about later.
Speaker 3: I got to caddy in the finals of the seventy
Speaker 3: nine US Senior Amateur for a guy named leu Emmeig,
Speaker 3: And so I was here for a long time. And
Speaker 3: interesting enough, my dad called somebody in the club and
Speaker 3: they knew me. I had been around so long, and
Speaker 3: they knew me, I knew them. I was probably the
Speaker 3: safest junior member they ever had who wasn't part of
Speaker 3: the family. And one thing another. My dad called me
Speaker 3: and said, if you want to be a member Chicago Golf,
Speaker 3: you have to call this person. And I had no
Speaker 3: inkling that this was in my future. So I was
Speaker 3: actually a junior member here when aged twenty one and
Speaker 3: have been. I milt the junior membership for a long time,
Speaker 3: but so I've in effect, with a couple of summers
Speaker 3: off for college internships. I've been here since nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 3: So there's a few people left that have been here
Speaker 3: longer than I am, but it's it's getting fewer and fewer.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to say.
Speaker 1: If if you were coming out here spectator, never had
Speaker 1: been here before, what would be your advice to that person?
Speaker 3: You mean, like a spectator for the event, for the event.
Speaker 3: The coolest thing about the event, well, I'm sorry, not coolest.
Speaker 3: One of the cool things about the event is that
Speaker 3: there aren't going to be any fairway ropes, and there's
Speaker 3: not going to be any grand stands. They're going to
Speaker 3: let the They're gonna let the fans walk along with
Speaker 3: the players in the fairway, which if anybody had been
Speaker 3: here for a walker Cup, or has been to a
Speaker 3: walker Cup that's or en amateur too. I think that's
Speaker 3: how they do it. You're actually gonna walk the fairways
Speaker 3: with Joyan Carner and Sally Little and Julie Kster and
Speaker 3: Laura Davies, so that by itself will be super cool.
Speaker 3: If somebody asked me, gee, is there one place I
Speaker 3: could go to see a lot of action, what I
Speaker 3: would tell them is that our punch bowl green, the
Speaker 3: twelfth green has has like a hillock that runs around it,
Speaker 3: and if you stood at the top of that, you
Speaker 3: could see them play the twelfth hole. You could see
Speaker 3: them play the thirteenth hole, which is the edenhole. You
Speaker 3: could see him tee off there and really play the
Speaker 3: whole hole. You could see him putt on the eighth hole,
Speaker 3: and you could see him tee off on the ninth hole.
Speaker 3: That's probably the one central point I think for architecture nerds,
Speaker 3: who who you've turned my son into. Thank you. His
Speaker 3: grades have suffered because of the Friday podcast. But if
Speaker 3: for architecture nerds just going along and finding, Okay, where's
Speaker 3: the Redan, where's the Redan? Oh my god, that's the Redan.
Speaker 3: Look at that thing that's cool all by itself. And
Speaker 3: then even for people who wouldn't be in that of
Speaker 3: that elk, if you go along and you see you
Speaker 3: see the radean hole, you see the beer ritz hole,
Speaker 3: people get a sense that wow, that I've never seen
Speaker 3: anything like that. That's really unique, really and how do
Speaker 3: they build that in nineteen twenty three. I think that
Speaker 3: all by itself will be really cool. Of course, the
Speaker 3: real story or the players, we're just a backdrop for
Speaker 3: the story. So I don't want to overplay the golf course,
Speaker 3: but I think for people who are really into it,
Speaker 3: the combination of seeing these famous players play our golf
Speaker 3: course will be really, really amazing.
Speaker 1: I think another thing that's kind of neat about the
Speaker 1: event that you're hosting the Senior Women's Open. It's the
Speaker 1: first one, the inaugural one, which obviously carries a lot
Speaker 1: of weight. But the other aspect is the game that
Speaker 1: the senior women play versus the game that you know,
Speaker 1: a traditional say traditional US Open would play. The game
Speaker 1: is far closer to the game that this golf course
Speaker 1: was built to host. It with a you know, lower trajectory, shots,
Speaker 1: less spent, you know, a running shot more often than
Speaker 1: you know, a high spinning shot that we see. So
Speaker 1: the golf course and the architecture should actually show better
Speaker 1: and more representative of what they intended when they laid
Speaker 1: it out. Not it's not going to be perfect because
Speaker 1: I know some of some of these ladies still hit
Speaker 1: the ball, you know, pretty long distance. It should be
Speaker 1: a lot closer and we should see shots using the
Speaker 1: contours more so than than in most USGA events.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to see a few things. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to see them play. They're a dan and see if
Speaker 3: anybody's gonna kind of try to run it up around
Speaker 3: the corner of the dan. I'm excited our punch ball
Speaker 3: hole every day every day play is a part four
Speaker 3: and they're just gonna play from a back tee is
Speaker 3: a par five. And the interesting thing is that there's
Speaker 3: there are two cross bunkers that go across the fairway.
Speaker 3: And I had a qualifier from Wisconsin, Maggie leaf out
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago through a friend of a friend,
Speaker 3: and I didn't say anything to her, but when we
Speaker 3: got to the twelfth hole, I was watching everything she
Speaker 3: did because I was fascinated to see could she drive
Speaker 3: it past that. How would she take that on? And
Speaker 3: then as a part five, she wouldn't, you know, Laura
Speaker 3: Davies maybe long enough to hit it into We'll see.
Speaker 3: But from that back teep, I'm sure she will be
Speaker 3: but I knew Maggie couldn't. And but the layup area
Speaker 3: is pretty complicated because there's a there's a crossbunker in
Speaker 3: the fairway, and then there's there's a central bunker right
Speaker 3: in the middle of the fairway, so you've got to
Speaker 3: navigate that, and depending on how you navigate that, you
Speaker 3: could have a blind pitch into the punch bowl green.
Speaker 3: I'm really fascinated to watch watch the players take that
Speaker 3: on and see how they do it. I'm also really
Speaker 3: fascinated to see where the USJ puts the pins and
Speaker 3: how the women navigate the greens. From a short game
Speaker 3: perspective and from a putting perspective, it'll be really interesting.
Speaker 3: The other cool thing is it's closer not only to
Speaker 3: what Rainer did in twenty three. You know, we had
Speaker 3: the twenty eight Parker Cup, and my guess is they
Speaker 3: might be hitting the ball some of the same relative
Speaker 3: same distances that Bobby Jones and Chick Evans would, but
Speaker 3: it's also probably closer to what I play to what
Speaker 3: the normal MEMBERSHILD play and so seeing that for us
Speaker 3: I think will be really cool.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of uh, you know, famous pros that
Speaker 1: are into architecture that prefer watching the women's game because
Speaker 1: you get to see so much more of the architectural preatures.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm really excited to see is to get
Speaker 1: out here and see how they how they play the
Speaker 1: golf course and see different shots like even the first hole,
Speaker 1: which is a quasi two shot ra Dan playing into
Speaker 1: that green with a with a long iron. It will
Speaker 1: be really fun to watch. And you highlight that punch
Speaker 1: bowl is a great spot to watch from, and you
Speaker 1: could see everything from eagles too. If you don't hit
Speaker 1: a good drive all a sudden, that's a tough part,
Speaker 1: right for a part five. So when you were a
Speaker 1: kid caddying here, did you know how special this place was?
Speaker 3: No? I knew pretty much immediately I twelve years old.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have verbilized it. I knew pretty much immediately
Speaker 3: that it had taken a special place in my heart.
Speaker 3: And really the first inkling I had of how special
Speaker 3: it was when Ben Crenshaw started staying here during the
Speaker 3: Western Open, and we obviously had a cottage, so it
Speaker 3: was a convenient place to play and he could come
Speaker 3: out here and practice. But he was here my sense anyway,
Speaker 3: he was here because he wanted to be here and
Speaker 3: because this place held some some uniqueness for him, and
Speaker 3: I knew he was into history. And that's the first
Speaker 3: really inkling of I knew. The members talked about, gee,
Speaker 3: this is the beer It's hole, that's the red An Hole.
Speaker 3: But the linkage to no that actually means something, and
Speaker 3: there's way more than just Chicago golf, and there's an
Speaker 3: important historical linkage. That's the first point at which I
Speaker 3: really got a sense that, holy cow, this is something,
Speaker 3: this is something really cool. And so I probably got
Speaker 3: a sense of that in the eighties or something like that.
Speaker 3: And we had a significant agronomic upgrade and around two
Speaker 3: thousand when John Jennings came here, and at that point,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, some of the features really took
Speaker 3: on a sharper edge, I'll say, and you could really see,
Speaker 3: holy cow, that spine running through the middle of the
Speaker 3: leaven hole or leaven hole, whichever is. That's amazing. You know,
Speaker 3: I used to hit the ball up there and it
Speaker 3: would just stick. Now it bounces anyway under the sun.
Speaker 3: You really get got a greater appreciation of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that green is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: I cherry picked that because I know it's your favorite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I love that green. It's a source
Speaker 1: of so many bogies, of people hitting it into and
Speaker 1: just shutting on the wrong side. It's fine. So what
Speaker 1: would you say during your time catting? What was your
Speaker 1: most memorable loop? You touched on? Crunshaw sixty two finals
Speaker 1: of the Senior Am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, certainly the sixty two. The crunch out
Speaker 3: came out after a round after a tournament round of
Speaker 3: the of the Western Open, and our pro at the time,
Speaker 3: Don Stickney, had played college golf with Nicholas and Weis Goff,
Speaker 3: and so they put on a little exhibition, the three
Speaker 3: of them and Ed Snead and I got the kart
Speaker 3: caddy for them, and it was really just me and them,
Speaker 3: and there was probably twenty members watching or something like that.
Speaker 3: And Ben finished three three three, which is eagle, birdie,
Speaker 3: birdie to shoot sixty two. Unfortunately, somebody flipped him a
Speaker 3: second ball at the first tee that he hit. We
Speaker 3: didn't play it. We played the original one, but that
Speaker 3: made it not count. But to me, that's the course
Speaker 3: record and I'm standing by it. But just watching him
Speaker 3: go in the zone. But also, you know, he is
Speaker 3: my number one golf idle Chick Evans who was another
Speaker 3: member who was also a member here would probably be
Speaker 3: number two. But to be to have that memory of
Speaker 3: my golf title and to see him like right up
Speaker 3: close and personal, that certainly is the most memorable around.
Speaker 3: I mean, I other memorable things are helping. You know,
Speaker 3: Missus Brewster had make a whole in one, you know,
Speaker 3: rest in peace, Missus Brewster, But that would certainly be
Speaker 3: the number one. He was like a rock star then,
Speaker 3: you know, he was a rock star. Well in my
Speaker 3: house he still is. My kids aren't quite sure why,
Speaker 3: but he still.
Speaker 2: Is in my house.
Speaker 1: Gentle, then you bet you so? When did you so?
Speaker 1: Now you're you serve the role as a historian at
Speaker 1: Chicago Golf.
Speaker 3: Yes, so we have a small history committee and it's
Speaker 3: not a new thing necessarily. I mean, the biggest thing
Speaker 3: that had been done is in nineteen ninety two was
Speaker 3: our centennial and one of our members had gotten Ross
Speaker 3: Goodner to write a centennial book, which is a really
Speaker 3: fabulous history book. About seven or eight years ago, our
Speaker 3: board decided to take what had been an old ladies
Speaker 3: lounge that hadn't been used in how many decades and
Speaker 3: turned it into a history room, which was a good thing.
Speaker 3: What it also did, though, it created a deadline of
Speaker 3: oh my god, we better that thing up with things
Speaker 3: that are compelling, and frankly, we've made a lot of
Speaker 3: progress with saving our history and things, but it's going
Speaker 3: to be you know, it'll keep me occupied and out
Speaker 3: of my wife's here for many years to come. But
Speaker 3: there's a lot of there's a lot of great history
Speaker 3: here that we don't know we have in the building,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure we'll touch on that and or we
Speaker 3: need to seek out a newspaper, articles and things like that,
Speaker 3: so we really understand our history. And it's part of
Speaker 3: the reason for that is sure, this is a historical club,
Speaker 3: but we want Chicago Golf to be Chicago Golf fifty
Speaker 3: years from now, one hundred years from now, and who
Speaker 3: we were in our history and the culture that we've
Speaker 3: had over all that time is an important part of
Speaker 3: keeping it that way.
Speaker 1: So You've been diving into all different types of sources
Speaker 1: of information, the stuff around the clubhouse. What's been the
Speaker 1: most rewarding aspect over the years of being in this role.
Speaker 1: Is there a moment or you know, a find.
Speaker 3: Well, Actually, the thing that's sticks out is I had
Speaker 3: a mental list of things I wanted to do for many,
Speaker 3: many years, and one of the things I wanted that
Speaker 3: was on my to do list was to create some
Speaker 3: kind of a document or some appreciation for what I
Speaker 3: think of as the architectural lineage of this place and
Speaker 3: the fact that we have the template holes, the fact
Speaker 3: that there are other instances of the templeate holes, and
Speaker 3: here are pictures of the other template holes, and someday
Speaker 3: I was going to do this when I'm retired, and
Speaker 3: this stupid blogger from downtown Chicago beat me to it.
Speaker 3: He saved me a lot of work, but he beat
Speaker 3: me to it. He took my copyrighted idea and he
Speaker 3: made it his own.
Speaker 1: It must be a smart guy.
Speaker 3: Really sorry. I actually got his autograph on the printed
Speaker 3: copy that I made from it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we gotta we gotta get back into those. So
Speaker 1: it's they've taken him backsteat recently, but we gotta I
Speaker 1: mean John cavalieric gotta get in there and a few
Speaker 1: of those. But it's they're so cool.
Speaker 3: It's interesting. You know, the members of our history committee,
Speaker 3: like in most club you know, have different interests and
Speaker 3: different available amounts of time. And one of our members,
Speaker 3: Jeff Kelly, is really into old clubs, and so we've
Speaker 3: got a lot of old clubs. My passion really is
Speaker 3: the golf course, and I think if you ask the
Speaker 3: typical Chicago golf member, the golf courses what this place
Speaker 3: is about and increasing my so I really appreciate the
Speaker 3: chance through Andy, what you've done and other people have
Speaker 3: done to better appreciate our golf course in context has
Speaker 3: been a great thing for me. And you know, not
Speaker 3: every member is into it the way I am, or
Speaker 3: that you know you are. But if I get two
Speaker 3: or three of them to appreciate it more, and I
Speaker 3: know I've got more than that, you know, through those things,
Speaker 3: that's fabulous because that you know, our biggest asset is
Speaker 3: out there I'm pointing out out the window at the
Speaker 3: golf course.
Speaker 1: I tend to believe that there's kind of a changing
Speaker 1: tide in golf with more and more people are getting
Speaker 1: interested in golf and architecture and the courses, which I
Speaker 1: think is very healthy because it's you know, that's really
Speaker 1: the root and the soul of the game is in
Speaker 1: the golf course. It's not it's not an equipment, it's
Speaker 1: not an and and uh it it brings back, it
Speaker 1: brings a different type of you know, enjoyment level. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like you've seen, especially since John Jennings came
Speaker 1: in and you know, got the golf course playing more
Speaker 1: true to its original self. Do you feel like the
Speaker 1: membership's uh, knowledge and understanding and excitement around the golf
Speaker 1: course has grown.
Speaker 3: I think so. I think they're Maybe the best way
Speaker 3: to say it is that I think the pride, the
Speaker 3: unique pride uniquely in the golf course is much higher
Speaker 3: than than when I was a kid, you know what,
Speaker 3: because I can remember the people I caddy for and
Speaker 3: they appreciated the golf course. And that's and and that's great.
Speaker 3: But I think the holy cow, did you see where
Speaker 3: they put the pin or I didn't know they could
Speaker 3: have put put a pin there? Or did you see
Speaker 3: this bound so I got off off of this mound?
Speaker 3: Or and we have not Maybe I'll get into right
Speaker 3: now it kind of what has happened to our golf course,
Speaker 3: but I'll finish this spit up. The appreciation of the
Speaker 3: golf course that way, I think is significantly higher now
Speaker 3: than when I was a kid, and I could have
Speaker 3: been an oblivious to it too, so I could be wrong.
Speaker 3: But we've had the benefit of having the golf course
Speaker 3: be pretty untouched since nineteen twenty three. So we had
Speaker 3: an original golf course that when we moved here in
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety five that McDonald built, and with you know
Speaker 3: a lot of nips and tucks here and there by
Speaker 3: among others, the Fallis Brothers. You know. It really stayed
Speaker 3: that way until until Rainer redesigned it and opened in
Speaker 3: twenty three, and from twenty three until two thousand it
Speaker 3: pretty much was the same. We had no tree planting programs, fortunately,
Speaker 3: we had no big restoration projects. The biggest thing that
Speaker 3: had happened, which which is still happening. Scott Bordner are fabulous,
Speaker 3: Superintendent fights this every day. Is is a living organism,
Speaker 3: and so trying to keep them awing lines the same,
Speaker 3: trying to keep the entrances to the bunker the same
Speaker 3: is a chore.
Speaker 1: Is a job.
Speaker 3: But so it's been pretty much in touched, probably really
Speaker 3: just for lack of anything as a small membership, of
Speaker 3: being too cheap to put money into it. Frankly, but
Speaker 3: that's a good I said that to somebody else recently
Speaker 3: and they said, no, no, that's your I think you're
Speaker 3: probably more onto it than you know. So the golf
Speaker 3: course is pretty much the same. Tom Doak started consulting
Speaker 3: with us in I think it was two thousand and
Speaker 3: really his consultation, and I hope if he listens to
Speaker 3: this that he that he thinks this is right. Is
Speaker 3: really around the edges of Okay, how are you maintaining it?
Speaker 3: And are their maintenance practices helping or hurting the original
Speaker 3: design construct and are there things that we've lost over
Speaker 3: time that should be restored? Really fortunately not very many things.
Speaker 3: But we certainly I know you were looking at old
Speaker 3: picture picture before we started. We certainly recaptured green space.
Speaker 3: We certainly have our greens really now go right up
Speaker 3: to the edge of the phillpad in some cases will
Speaker 3: tumble a little bit over. So we've had the fortune
Speaker 3: of not having much done to it. And but even
Speaker 3: the even the nips and Tucks have done, the membership
Speaker 3: appreciate so much better. So that was like the longest
Speaker 3: answer you could have ever imagined to your simple.
Speaker 1: Question, that's that's good, that's good. What would you say
Speaker 1: of what's your favorite like interesting fact about Chicago Golf
Speaker 1: Club if you had to just distill it down to say,
Speaker 1: we'll give you one or two or three?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So maybe what I'll do is i'll i'll
Speaker 3: I'll use as a judge what I consistently put in
Speaker 3: my rift for when I have guests here, what I
Speaker 3: have to tell them about the golf course. So my
Speaker 3: second golf hero is Chick Evans, and not be And
Speaker 3: sure he's a caddy, and I did not have the
Speaker 3: fortune of being an Evans scholar. But Chick Evans first
Speaker 3: came here in the nineteen oh three US Amateurs as
Speaker 3: a caddy, played in not everyone, but most of the
Speaker 3: event the major events that were held after the fact.
Speaker 3: But there was a period of time where, you know,
Speaker 3: Chick Evans, he was an amateur. He had to work
Speaker 3: for a living, but he also wanted to play good golf,
Speaker 3: and so he started to come out here to practice.
Speaker 3: And we used to have a lot of cottages here,
Speaker 3: and we also when this the clubhouse were sitting and
Speaker 3: opened in nineteen thirteen, there were rooms that members subscribed
Speaker 3: to that there were their rooms, and one of our
Speaker 3: members let him stay in that room. And what he
Speaker 3: used to do was he would practice in the morning
Speaker 3: and he would catch a seven or seven thirty train
Speaker 3: into the city. He would work all day at the
Speaker 3: First National Bank of Chicago. They would catch the train
Speaker 3: back out and practice at night and get up the
Speaker 3: next morning and do the same thing. And so I
Speaker 3: point out to everybody, Okay, I'm not sure which of
Speaker 3: those two windows it is, but it's one of those
Speaker 3: two windows as the room he stayed in during the
Speaker 3: period of time when he won both the US Open
Speaker 3: and the USA Amateur in nineteen sixteen. And in his
Speaker 3: autobiography that he wrote in twenty one or twenty two,
Speaker 3: he actually credited the ability to have the freedom to
Speaker 3: practice here and stay here as one of the things
Speaker 3: that was really instrumental in that. So that's one of
Speaker 3: my fun factoids that I that is always part of
Speaker 3: my riff.
Speaker 1: What would you say is the most missed to understood, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the biggest misconception about Chicago? Golf to the general
Speaker 1: public that maybe like is something that people think that
Speaker 1: isn't true about Chicago golf.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the biggest thing, the biggest in general
Speaker 3: you know conversation, is Chicago golf did not start in Wheaton.
Speaker 3: Chicago golf started in a town called Belmont, or by
Speaker 3: a train stop called Belmont, which is present day Downers Grove.
Speaker 3: And so when McDonald built the first Chicago golf club,
Speaker 3: it was at the farm of Ahado Smith. It was
Speaker 3: a Scotsman and that was actually the site of the
Speaker 3: first eighteen golf course in the United States. Pretty much
Speaker 3: the same time that they he laid out the eighteenth toll,
Speaker 3: they started looking for bigger, better property and they bought
Speaker 3: the Patrick farm here in Wheaton. But that's probably the
Speaker 3: most misunderstood thing. The other cool thing that I had
Speaker 3: known about but I hadn't really internalized or taken the
Speaker 3: time to really get to know, which is shame on me,
Speaker 3: is that that golf course still in parts exists and
Speaker 3: it's the downers Grove Golf Club. It's owned by the
Speaker 3: downers Grove Park District. And I get goosebumps. I've played
Speaker 3: it five or six times. I get goosebumps when I
Speaker 3: stand on the first tea because I know where I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I might go over there this afternoon just.
Speaker 3: Because it's a great place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fun little spot. You know. What I'm
Speaker 1: surprised about is how good the land is there? Do
Speaker 1: they wanted to move over here? Like that's a really
Speaker 1: great piece of land over there.
Speaker 3: It is, And I don't I've not found a lot
Speaker 3: of dialogue. I don't know. It was just too small
Speaker 3: or what it was. But the other thing that it
Speaker 3: did share a common characters. Stick with this is that
Speaker 3: it had easy access to rail and like a lot
Speaker 3: of the Cloak clubs, at least in Chicago, they're on
Speaker 3: rail lines. And you know, in in Chicago Golf's case,
Speaker 3: we had both a Roar and Elgin railroad line and
Speaker 3: then that is now the Illinario Prairie Path, as well
Speaker 3: as the existing train line that runs thro Wheaton.
Speaker 1: So what would be your advice, say somebody's listening that
Speaker 1: it wants to start to dig into the history of
Speaker 1: their club, Like, how would you what would you start?
Speaker 1: And I know you have a you prioritize stuff because
Speaker 1: there's so much.
Speaker 3: Oh I try and I fail It's like every time
Speaker 3: I prioritize something, I'm onto something else in two seconds
Speaker 3: and I forget what the priority was.
Speaker 1: I know you don't have that problem, Andy, Oh, I
Speaker 1: have that problem in spades. It's a huge problem of mine.
Speaker 1: So what would be your piece of advice to somebody
Speaker 1: that would say they wanted to start to dig into
Speaker 1: history at their club or course they play that's got
Speaker 1: you know, say it's a you know, an older place
Speaker 1: right right where? What would you start by doing? So?
Speaker 3: The first thing I would do is I would just
Speaker 3: rummage around. And it's an old place. Likely it's an
Speaker 3: old building, And I would rummage around the old building
Speaker 3: because you probably have things that you don't know you have.
Speaker 3: The best example i'd give you here is one of
Speaker 3: our longtime staff was working in some room I didn't
Speaker 3: even know existed, and there was a filecab, and behind
Speaker 3: the file cabin then he found this thing and he
Speaker 3: brought it to me and he said, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know what this is, but it looks significant. What
Speaker 3: it ended up being was the commendation from the USJA
Speaker 3: for holding the nineteen twenty eight Walker Cup is signed
Speaker 3: by Prescott Bush, who, of course is George Herbert Walker
Speaker 3: Bush's father. So first thing is you probably have some
Speaker 3: things that you don't know you have. The second thing,
Speaker 3: and I've come to Don Holten at Exmore is the
Speaker 3: one who's really pushed me, is figure out storylines. So
Speaker 3: I started, you know, a handful of years ago, just
Speaker 3: pulling down every I was on newspapers dot com, and
Speaker 3: I was going year by year pulling every instance of it.
Speaker 3: There's there's just too much stuff. And they used to
Speaker 3: follow a lot of newsprints, so there's really is too
Speaker 3: much stuff. But pick a subject area. So for example,
Speaker 3: we just talked about the first eighteen old course of
Speaker 3: the United States. So for me, it was worth going
Speaker 3: out and researching, finding articles contemporary articles that said, oh
Speaker 3: and McDonald's here are the scores in the eighteen the
Speaker 3: whole course, or mcdonaldly these eighteen whole court the holes
Speaker 3: around to build out a storyline about aspects of your
Speaker 3: history that you kind of know you have, but you
Speaker 3: want to make into a fuller story that people would appreciate.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like pulling the thread and the uh
Speaker 1: exactly clothing, you know, just keep pulling down stuff and
Speaker 1: you can find more and more I know, like a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine was like fascinated by the statue out
Speaker 1: in front, and he spent like three days in the
Speaker 1: USGA archives and he's convinced it's HJ. Wigham.
Speaker 3: He shared. Peter has shared that with me and and
Speaker 3: we I think we've come to the agreement that since
Speaker 3: nobody else has a better story, and by the way,
Speaker 3: the statue and he's referring to as the foreign sure
Speaker 3: golfer in our logo, that since there's no other story
Speaker 3: that we're going with, Peter's story is the official urban legend.
Speaker 1: All right, well, John, thanks for coming on. We're excited
Speaker 1: to watch the coverage this week. We'll see we'll be
Speaker 1: out here and fans can come out.
Speaker 3: We encourage them to remember that I think it's eighteen
Speaker 3: and under is free. Yeah, so it's a fabulous place
Speaker 3: to come and we hope you come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get to walk right down the fairways. So definitely
Speaker 1: worth coming out if you're in the area or even
Speaker 1: a couple hours away and you want to come see it.
Speaker 1: So thanks for coming on and look forward to watching
Speaker 1: this week. Great.
Speaker 3: Thanks Andy.
Speaker 1: Now for part two of our podcast with golf course
Speaker 1: Superintendent Scott Bordner. What do you do when you're not
Speaker 1: at Chicago Golf Club.
Speaker 2: I have two little boys, six and eight, are energetic
Speaker 2: as can be, so they keep me busy fishing tennis,
Speaker 2: watching their baseball games, and try to sneak some golf
Speaker 2: in here and there.
Speaker 1: I imagine that it's actually a pretty good gig for
Speaker 1: like you're getting off right when your kids get off
Speaker 1: school right. Not so much.
Speaker 2: No, it's usually a five to five shift.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on your guys' schedule this today
Speaker 1: it's I couldn't couldn't handle it. This morning. I was
Speaker 1: sitting at home during lunch and I was like, I
Speaker 1: need a nap.
Speaker 2: This is easy. Tournament time is next week and the
Speaker 2: first shift starts at four am, so we got to
Speaker 2: be here by three point thirty.
Speaker 1: That's a how's it set up? You know? For an
Speaker 1: event like this? Change? You know your year? It has
Speaker 1: everything been geared towards this.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, normally we make our calendar more based on weather.
Speaker 2: This we have to implement. We almost have to start
Speaker 2: at the tournament and work backwards with some of your
Speaker 2: spray schedule and some of your timing of things, and
Speaker 2: also pay attention to weather at the same time.
Speaker 1: So did you do like erification earlier?
Speaker 2: Just pencil tiny greens, letting them breathe at the right times,
Speaker 2: like this morning, even though we've had a little bit
Speaker 2: of rainfall, you know, having to do a application that
Speaker 2: we water in just to make sure it's in the
Speaker 2: soil leading up to the event.
Speaker 1: How many other big events have you put on as
Speaker 1: either assistant or a head super.
Speaker 2: I was part of the two thousand and five US
Speaker 2: Amateur at Marion and then ran the East Course under
Speaker 2: a Director of Golf in two thousand and nine for
Speaker 2: the Walker Cup.
Speaker 1: That's you like working with you? Jay? Good people?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good time. They're actually they're they're a lot
Speaker 2: more careful. Everybody's fearful of making a mess or what
Speaker 2: are they going to do to the golf course. They
Speaker 2: just take over and and that's completely the opposite. I mean,
Speaker 2: the team that's been on site here has we only
Speaker 2: have one set of ruts out there, and it was
Speaker 2: for me trying to drive a lift out to fix
Speaker 2: the flagpole. So I did more damage than they did
Speaker 2: in two weeks just by operating one piece of machinery.
Speaker 1: I imagine that this event is kind of like the
Speaker 1: ideal for like low impact on a golf course. Because
Speaker 1: there's not a ton of grandstand you know, people are
Speaker 1: going to be able to walk pretty close to players.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, versus like a US Open or
Speaker 1: even I mean a US am you get decent foot traffic.
Speaker 1: I imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we hope for a little bit drier weather.
Speaker 2: Anytime you're slashing around in wet soil, it could make
Speaker 2: a little bit of a mess. But the fact that
Speaker 2: the fans get to come out and walk down the
Speaker 2: fairways with the players, it takes the traffic from one
Speaker 2: concentrated area and spreads it out. They have the little
Speaker 2: mobility scooters that they ride around, and they asked me
Speaker 2: what the restrictions were leading up to the event. Spread
Speaker 2: it out. Just don't drive on the greens please.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you touched on the fans so they
Speaker 1: get to walk down the fairways. Awesome experience opportunity for people.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of the hardest golf courses ever
Speaker 1: to get to see. If you were a fan coming
Speaker 1: to Chicago Golf Club for the first time, what would
Speaker 1: be your advice to that fan?
Speaker 2: I would wander around to the corners. I mean, the biggest, uh,
Speaker 2: the most exciting holes out here are some of the
Speaker 2: part threes which are tucked away in the corners, and
Speaker 2: you could hit the punch bowl on your way by
Speaker 2: on number twelve. It's there's not a lot of elevation
Speaker 2: change on the property, so it's a pretty easy walk,
Speaker 2: but there's a variety of elevation as you're playing, so
Speaker 2: walking is it's a pretty easy walk, but there's still
Speaker 2: some interesting topography.
Speaker 1: It is interesting is of all the top you know,
Speaker 1: there's a top tier of golf courses, you know, say
Speaker 1: it's fifteen to twenty courses. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: the one that's got the least desirable land, but it's
Speaker 1: also the one that's arguably got the most incredible greens.
Speaker 1: And then the way it's routed where how they use
Speaker 1: the land is absolutely I mean, you don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're in Chicago when you're out here being a Chicago
Speaker 1: and that's played pretty much everywhere everywhere, so flat and
Speaker 1: even with the modest elevation, they just use it so
Speaker 1: well out here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't they didn't move a tremendous amount of soil,
Speaker 2: like you said, and It's interesting how they just carved
Speaker 2: the template holes into what they had to work with.
Speaker 2: And fortunately they didn't move a lot of soil because
Speaker 2: there's really good top soil right on the top couple feet.
Speaker 1: For me, the rainer was an engineer, and I've noticed
Speaker 1: with a lot of his courses they seemed to drain.
Speaker 1: Does it drain really well here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're still trying to figure out how they
Speaker 2: installed six point seven miles of claytile pipe in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three when he did the redesign, and some of
Speaker 2: it's as deep as twenty eight feet today with high
Speaker 2: powered equipment, we have a hard time doing that same work,
Speaker 2: and they had steam powered equipment at best. So that's
Speaker 2: one of the biggest things I would have loved to see,
Speaker 2: like pictures of how they installed all the old drainage.
Speaker 1: I mean that's and is still that drainage. A lot
Speaker 1: of it's still being used today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We went in and did a directional bore for the mainline.
Speaker 2: So we did an eighteen hundred foot directional bore, which
Speaker 2: was pretty cool to see how they could pull a
Speaker 2: pipe across there. And we're slowly working our way around
Speaker 2: the golf course to any areas that the clay Toyle
Speaker 2: pipe has failed, but a lot of it's still in
Speaker 2: pretty good shape when we dig it up.
Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy because you hear about like courses nowadays,
Speaker 1: like ten years they have to get their drainage reworked.
Speaker 1: And then it's amazing some of the older stuff how
Speaker 1: well it holds up. You know, whether it be buildings
Speaker 1: and different you know, all over the place, but you know,
Speaker 1: for drainage to be that's sophisticated in nineteen twenty three
Speaker 1: is it's unbelievable. With the USGA and the Women's Senior Open.
Speaker 1: So it's the first one ever, do you and it's
Speaker 1: the first time they've hosted event here. Do you think
Speaker 1: you'll have input in daily setup with the USGA agronomy team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they've already had questions on these greens
Speaker 2: are severely slope and if the wind starts to blow,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of trees out here to stop
Speaker 2: that movement. So there was a green chairman who made
Speaker 2: a map and it has under different wind conditions where
Speaker 2: you should not put pins, and I didn't follow it
Speaker 2: a few times and balls would roll into bunkers. So
Speaker 2: I made sure to give that to the people in charge.
Speaker 1: The circle depends that you've you've had your own personal
Speaker 1: disasters with if.
Speaker 2: If you don't learn from your own mistakes, you're doing
Speaker 2: something wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes I you know some clubs you've put
Speaker 1: off the green all the time, and it's like, you
Speaker 1: know a Crystal Downs that's a place that I think
Speaker 1: every member out there sputted off the greens once or twice.
Speaker 1: But that's that also goes to the stem speed. Do
Speaker 1: you with all the history here and you know they
Speaker 1: have a great library, do you do they have records
Speaker 1: on what green speeds used to be versus what they
Speaker 1: are today?
Speaker 2: Not that I've found. And one of the people from
Speaker 2: Golf Week actually sent me an old article on what
Speaker 2: the stimp used to be at all these different clubs,
Speaker 2: and I guess Chicago Golf decided not to take part
Speaker 2: in that survey, but then he had what it was.
Speaker 2: I forget the timing twenty five years ago versus what
Speaker 2: it is now. Pretty interesting data.
Speaker 1: So Chicago Golf's one of the one of the places
Speaker 1: that you know, it's a more closed off place and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know a ton about it.
Speaker 1: What would you, you know, being somebody that knows everything
Speaker 1: about it was the most common misconception that people have
Speaker 1: about this place.
Speaker 2: When you think of a high profile club, you think,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of money they spend in unlimited
Speaker 2: budget and you know, snooty members and all that, and
Speaker 2: it couldn't be any more opposite here. Uh, It's it's
Speaker 2: a group of members who appreciate the history of the
Speaker 2: game and what it is and what this place means
Speaker 2: to them, and they understand that they're here to keep
Speaker 2: it intact and have the same experience for the next
Speaker 2: generation of membership. It's it's pretty refreshing, but it's not
Speaker 2: about the frills and ah. You walk into the clubhouse
Speaker 2: and it's the old metal lockers and old older carpet,
Speaker 2: and you go out to the you go out to
Speaker 2: the first team and you just look across and it
Speaker 2: it reminds you of Links Golf the way it should be.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know that much about Chicago golf until
Speaker 1: I started doing this, And it's you know, I came
Speaker 1: out here last year and I had been out at
Speaker 1: the Walker Cup, but I hadn't been back in a
Speaker 1: long time. And you know, you looked at it completely
Speaker 1: different Lenes and you know, come back when you're older.
Speaker 1: And I came back and I like, I was like, God,
Speaker 1: you know this place gets it because it seems like
Speaker 1: there's just no you know, expense that's like an unnecessary
Speaker 1: expense like doled out. There's nothing like ritzy about it.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's what you need to be a
Speaker 1: really good spot to go golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you start to understand, like when you meet
Speaker 2: with the memberships, when you when you meet with the
Speaker 2: different members so you go into a green committee meeting
Speaker 2: and they understand that that is probably the most important
Speaker 2: committee at the club, and they understand, you know, they're
Speaker 2: not trying to put in a bunker here because they
Speaker 2: want it there, or build a new tea box because
Speaker 2: they want it there, and leave their stamp. It's more
Speaker 2: of let's do the right thing and keep it preserved
Speaker 2: like somebody else did before us.
Speaker 1: I imagine. I you know, Tom Doak on one of
Speaker 1: our pods said that there is a one point there
Speaker 1: was a plan drawn up that had houses on the
Speaker 1: inside of the property, like they had a housing plan.
Speaker 1: But thankfully that never happened. And for the most part,
Speaker 1: there's never been like a drastic change here. What was
Speaker 1: you know, what were the biggest changes that you kind
Speaker 1: of made that were made since you've been a superintendent.
Speaker 2: The greens had shrunk over time, but John Jennings had
Speaker 2: done a lot of that work to bring the greens
Speaker 2: out back to the pads without moving soil, to get
Speaker 2: them back to where they originally were. Changes that we've made.
Speaker 2: We've fixed a few bunkers that had bad drainage and found,
Speaker 2: you know, some old cinders in the bottom that these
Speaker 2: these bunkers are the original since nineteen twenty three. So
Speaker 2: you know a lot of clubs are replacing sand and
Speaker 2: fixing their bunkers every ten to fifteen years twenty five Max,
Speaker 2: And you go out there and start digging around, and
Speaker 2: there's still the original cinder that they trucked in on
Speaker 2: a railroad car for the bass layer. So it's we're currently,
Speaker 2: you know, looking into redoing bunkers and to be able
Speaker 2: to take them back because you have all the cinders
Speaker 2: at the base, it'd be kind of a fun little
Speaker 2: archaeological dig to see what was originally there.
Speaker 1: I find some crazy stuff. I was down in Richmond
Speaker 1: last fall. I was walking around this place called Belmont,
Speaker 1: which is like an old tilling ass ross was there
Speaker 1: and they have like just these horrible bunkers. I mean
Speaker 1: they've decayed over time, and I mean it's the biggest
Speaker 1: complaint at this it's a municipal course. They're going to
Speaker 1: do this bunker project. And it's funny because you'd walk
Speaker 1: around and you look at the wach bunkers were really bad,
Speaker 1: and it was all the bunkers that were built after
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and all the original bunkers were actually the
Speaker 1: bunker in their best shape, so like they're nineteen you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen bunkers were the best bunkers they had there, and
Speaker 1: anything that was built modern, you know, with what we
Speaker 1: would call modern equipment, was actually the worst bunker. So
Speaker 1: it's amazing how you guys have bunkers that are you know,
Speaker 1: still i mean extremely playable, still in really good shape,
Speaker 1: and they're as old as they get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting to also listen to golfers' perspectives.
Speaker 2: Any time you're at a golf course, you can ask somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, what the biggest complaint they hear, and it's
Speaker 2: usually bunkers.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of members that have already said
Speaker 2: to me, why do we need to fix them? They're
Speaker 2: supposed to be a hazard. And it's a good point,
Speaker 2: like as Superintendent's we spend so much time and labor
Speaker 2: on fixing something that was originally intended to be a hazard.
Speaker 2: Fortunately to the members here understand that, and we've been
Speaker 2: able to cut back a lot of the labor in
Speaker 2: the bunkers and they still end up playing just fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, It's one of the things that like bugs
Speaker 1: me with what's happened with golf is like how I mean,
Speaker 1: bunkers for a lot of pros now are much easier,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of times I'd rather be in a
Speaker 1: bunker than be in a you know, in a bad
Speaker 1: lie and the rough. You know, like if it's going
Speaker 1: to be in the rough or the bunker, you usually
Speaker 1: rather prefer the bunker because, like, especially with that new
Speaker 1: like really bright white sand, the ball just like pops
Speaker 1: right out of it and you can get spin on it,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's like not the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. And you saw it at Shinnacock, Like you know,
Speaker 1: if people be short sighted and you know, they hit
Speaker 1: in the worst spot, they could possibly hit it in
Speaker 1: and then people were so upset that they couldn't get
Speaker 1: up and down from that spot. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're in a horrible place. Like if that was water,
Speaker 1: you'd be taken a drop and hitting for versus. And
Speaker 1: I think, like, I think that's something that golf. It
Speaker 1: would be so much better if bunkers became more penal again.
Speaker 1: And it would also save a ton of money, I imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there there was an old CB McDonald's quote
Speaker 2: that said I would rather run a herd of elephants
Speaker 2: through the bunkers each morning than rake them every day.
Speaker 2: And it's in Scotland's gift book. And and here we
Speaker 2: are to the point where there's a lot of clubs
Speaker 2: out there that if you don't rake bunkers every day,
Speaker 2: you know, it's well, I didn't get a good lie.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: CB was was a real hoot with some of the
Speaker 1: stuff he would say, is what's the kind of funniest
Speaker 1: thing that you've are the best historical thing you've come
Speaker 1: across at Chicago Golf Club that since you've been here.
Speaker 2: I mean probably digging into the drainage system and seeing
Speaker 2: what they actually did in nineteen twenty three. Historically, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think of anything else going up in the
Speaker 2: clock tower and seeing the old it's one of the oldest,
Speaker 2: if not the oldest, operating mechanical clocks in the United
Speaker 2: States or in the state of Illinois. Sorry, but going
Speaker 2: up there, and the chef would go up there and
Speaker 2: set the weights properly so people wouldn't tee off too early.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be one of the super intendent's biggest s.
Speaker 1: Gripe is like the guy that teas off before he's
Speaker 1: supposed to tee off at a country club, be like,
Speaker 1: you know, they run around, and that's never the guy
Speaker 1: that's considerate of like the maintenance guys. You know, they're
Speaker 1: just trying to get their hour fifty.
Speaker 2: In the Golfers play fast out here, but fortunately if
Speaker 2: somebody's planning that fast, usually there's a gap behind them.
Speaker 2: With a small membership not quite as much play.
Speaker 1: What's the toughest aspect of managing this place.
Speaker 2: I would say there's a lot of people, and I
Speaker 2: completely understand it. If it was my one chance to
Speaker 2: play Augusta National, I wouldn't care if it was raining
Speaker 2: and lightning and I had to keep going in every
Speaker 2: three holes, it wouldn't bother me. But that's the biggest
Speaker 2: difference between here and a lot of places is the
Speaker 2: weather doesn't matter as much when you have a member
Speaker 2: bringing three guests out because they could be they might
Speaker 2: be in town from far away and this might be
Speaker 2: their one chance to play it. So that's the hardest
Speaker 2: part is even during rainstorms or something else, you still
Speaker 2: have to try to get it in the best shape
Speaker 2: because somebody's bringing guests out and you want them to
Speaker 2: be proud of their golf course and keep it as
Speaker 2: playable as you can, even in some pretty bad conditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean every time I've seen this place, I
Speaker 1: feel I was out here in February walking around and
Speaker 1: I thought, I was like, I, you probably could play today.
Speaker 2: We try, We try. The guys work hard, get a
Speaker 2: great staff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How big is your staff here compared to and
Speaker 1: you know, for the listeners that wouldn't know how big
Speaker 1: that staff is it, how is it compared to you know,
Speaker 1: other staffs around the area.
Speaker 2: It's it's hard to compare because I have a really
Speaker 2: unique layout of staff. We don't really need maintenance Mondays
Speaker 2: as much as most clubs. Because of the low rounds,
Speaker 2: we try to do things more based on weather. We
Speaker 2: don't need to top dress or do some other things
Speaker 2: on Mondays because we can probably get it done in
Speaker 2: between groups on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday if there's rain coming.
Speaker 2: So I have a staff of thirty four this year,
Speaker 2: which we hired a couple extra just with the tournament
Speaker 2: coming case a couple guys didn't make it through the summer,
Speaker 2: and they only work Tuesday through Sunday morning, and then
Speaker 2: they can play golf on Mondays, and we find that
Speaker 2: we get people who actually appreciate the golf course more
Speaker 2: when they're playing on Mondays, and it never really dips
Speaker 2: into overtime. And we have a pretty full staff on
Speaker 2: the weekend. So it's the full time equivalent is probably
Speaker 2: twenty four to twenty five guys.
Speaker 1: How many rounds do you get a year?
Speaker 2: Last year, I believe we're just a little bit above
Speaker 2: eighty five hundred rounds, So it's a it's pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: What do you do with all the when people aren't around?
Speaker 1: Do you ever go out and play?
Speaker 2: Trying not too too much in the middle of the day,
Speaker 2: I can kind of sneak out here at night and
Speaker 2: play a few holes, and I like to at least
Speaker 2: understand the conditions that we're putting out. So I like
Speaker 2: to play ten to twelve times a year just to
Speaker 2: make sure I fully understand. Okay, this is where we're at,
Speaker 2: not just from a superintendent's eye, but from a golfer's eye.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite, say, three four whole stretch out here?
Speaker 2: Three to four hole stretch. I'm a guy who likes
Speaker 2: when people are challenged, so I'd have to say one
Speaker 2: through four. I like to make sure everybody that plays
Speaker 2: out here, they're handicaps travel well.
Speaker 1: So it's about as hard of a first three hole.
Speaker 1: You know, four you can you can go score on,
Speaker 1: but you can it. Also, you could be chipping from
Speaker 1: the front of that green all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if it's me playing thirteen through sixteen is
Speaker 2: a pretty good stretch where I feel like very playable
Speaker 2: holes for you know, ten to twelve handicap like myself.
Speaker 1: I love that cape hole the fourteenth. That's one of
Speaker 1: the coolest greens. That little little triangle corner he.
Speaker 2: Got out there on the front and nobody can ever
Speaker 2: read that green, and it's probably the most consistently pitched
Speaker 2: out of all the greens. But nobody ever thinks it's
Speaker 2: going to break as much as it does, so.
Speaker 1: It breaks more if have players listening.
Speaker 2: And I don't give away too many hints right before
Speaker 2: a tournament.
Speaker 1: So we talked about what the toughest part about managing
Speaker 1: here is, what do you think in overall look at
Speaker 1: the turf industry, what's the biggest struggle out there for
Speaker 1: superintendents and people in the industry.
Speaker 2: Right now? I mean, we're all pulling from the same pool, landscapers,
Speaker 2: farmers trying to get workers. You know. I wish there
Speaker 2: was more high school kids that knew that this was
Speaker 2: an industry, and there's a lot of superintendents out there
Speaker 2: talking to high schools and letting them know, hey, we're here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was fortunate enough to just trip across
Speaker 2: this industry at the age of sixteen. And you know,
Speaker 2: once you start working outside and get to watch the
Speaker 2: sun come up, especially at a place like this, it
Speaker 2: really gets in your blood and it's it's I can't
Speaker 2: imagine doing anything else.
Speaker 1: Where'd you grow up and did at sixteen? Did you
Speaker 1: start working out? Of course?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would. My brother, my older brother was
Speaker 2: working at the golf course, and when I was sixteen,
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I want to do that too,
Speaker 2: So we would work at Park Hills Golf Course, thirty
Speaker 2: six whole public golf course out in Freeport, Illinois. And
Speaker 2: we came from a town of five hundred people. So
Speaker 2: the fact that we didn't have a golf team and
Speaker 2: two of us ended up in the industry is pretty comical.
Speaker 2: And my dad's probably played ten rounds of golf his
Speaker 2: whole life. So my brother was good at golf, so
Speaker 2: he is now a golf pro at Irondequoit Country Club
Speaker 2: in Rochester. I wasn't good at golf and kind of
Speaker 2: fell into the maintenance side of things and really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: And now I get an office like this.
Speaker 1: And you hang out at one of the one of
Speaker 1: the places that most golfers would just kill to get
Speaker 1: a hangout at all the time.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, and it's it's hard because you're at work,
Speaker 2: so you're constantly focused on things that most people wouldn't see.
Speaker 2: And it's nice too. We get a bunch of interns
Speaker 2: and assistants that come into town and aren't used to
Speaker 2: seeing this, and it's kind of refreshing when you get
Speaker 2: new people out here, where you see guests come out
Speaker 2: here and they're just flabbergasted by what this place is
Speaker 2: when you're normally just thinking about it as oh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to work today. So it's kind of it kind
Speaker 2: of keeps you in check. Like you'll see a fog
Speaker 2: roll over and start to look at things out on
Speaker 2: the golf course and you're like, wow, look at that.
Speaker 1: I was talking to one of your guys who's from
Speaker 1: South Carolina. He's a summer intern, and he was telling me.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, man, I it's crazy. I got out
Speaker 1: here and I was so used to dog legs and
Speaker 1: water and cart pass and then I got out here
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, this is this is completely different.
Speaker 1: This isn't anything like what I'm used to at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tommy Rayner hasn't touched this place yet.
Speaker 1: Tommy probably would love to go his hands on this place.
Speaker 2: He could do some amazing things with her cart paths.
Speaker 1: I feel like he'd have fun with the water. The
Speaker 1: water has are out here. You'd get some fountains in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have bubblers to help with the algae. No
Speaker 2: fountains yet though.
Speaker 1: That's it for the Alco blooms. Right. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: an environmental science major, so a little bit I know
Speaker 1: about it. So if you say, say you hadn't gotten
Speaker 1: into turf, what would you be doing?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I don't know. It's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: get it out of your system. Now, dream world, dream world.
Speaker 2: Uh still turf related, but uh, taking care of Wrigley Field.
Speaker 2: I'm a diehard Cubs fan. Just give me any job
Speaker 2: at Wrigley Field.
Speaker 1: Pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be a cool job.
Speaker 1: You probably get that job now.
Speaker 2: Nah, Justin does a great job down there.
Speaker 1: How old you see?
Speaker 2: He's pretty young. He's a Cardinals fan though, So.
Speaker 1: That's how you got planned. You gotta get him out
Speaker 1: of there. You know. I'm actually, you know, as a
Speaker 1: Cubs fan, I'm a little upset that he's a Cardinals fan.
Speaker 2: Well he's not anymore.
Speaker 1: He might be mowing the grass different when the Cardinals
Speaker 1: come to town.
Speaker 2: He grew up, he grew up a Cardinals fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Superintendents are known to be some of the
Speaker 1: most resourceful people in the golf industry. What would you say,
Speaker 1: is the thing since you came here that you've kind
Speaker 1: of figured out that saves you either the most time
Speaker 1: or the most money or most resources.
Speaker 2: I would say taking walk mowers off of approaches and
Speaker 2: sometimes even greens. I mean, the technology is so good
Speaker 2: now that you can triplex screens and not really tell
Speaker 2: that much of a difference. Golfers can't really tell where
Speaker 2: before you somebody said you triplex screens and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're going to be slow because you couldn't get to
Speaker 2: the same heights. But the major manufacturers have done a
Speaker 2: fantastic job at getting us to the same point with
Speaker 2: a walker versus a triplex.
Speaker 1: I've heard that the you know, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of squared off greens here, and I've heard like always like,
Speaker 1: you know, maintenance, maintenance is so hard with you know,
Speaker 1: the squared off edges. Is that a myth or is
Speaker 1: that true?
Speaker 2: It has its challenges. We constantly my assistance and other
Speaker 2: guys are really diligent about marking where the collars are
Speaker 2: and then we have really good operators who can get
Speaker 2: to those points, so you can't really tell. But it's yeah,
Speaker 2: they're not they're not easy to maintain, but it's it's
Speaker 2: not bad.
Speaker 1: Is that is it? Are green edges like one of
Speaker 1: the toughest things to maintain throughout a year or throughout
Speaker 1: a number of years.
Speaker 2: Collars are more one of the first things to decline.
Speaker 2: But I'm also saying this with eighty seven hundred rounds
Speaker 2: of golf, so you can take if you have a
Speaker 2: lot of traffic, Well, if you have a lot of
Speaker 2: traffic trampling those edges, walk offs, walk ons, we just
Speaker 2: don't have that here as much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was out at a course last week and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how much, Like I droned late at
Speaker 1: night and I couldn't believe how much car traffic I
Speaker 1: could tell. And then also like off greens, how much
Speaker 1: walking traffic. Like you know, it's just stuff like as
Speaker 1: I talk to more people, and you know, my golfer
Speaker 1: IQ goes up, Like I just start to notice more
Speaker 1: and more things, and like those are two things I
Speaker 1: don't think the regular golfer would ever notice. But I
Speaker 1: mean there, it's incredible. Once you see it, you can't
Speaker 1: unsee it.
Speaker 2: Where That's where a lot of UH technology is starting
Speaker 2: to help us out. I was looking at a computer
Speaker 2: program a couple months ago, and they actually are coming
Speaker 2: out with little bits that go on each mower, and
Speaker 2: you can tell exactly where your guys are driving, and
Speaker 2: you can start to sync that up with wear patterns,
Speaker 2: and you know, we're getting to the point where you
Speaker 2: can really just make guys drive where the golfers aren't.
Speaker 2: Because even at a golf course with a lot of
Speaker 2: cart traffic, I'd say twenty percent of the cart traffic
Speaker 2: is still from the maintenance department. So if we can
Speaker 2: start to get our staff going in different directions than
Speaker 2: the other golf carts, I think I think that'll help
Speaker 2: the overall cause.
Speaker 1: It's something like the traffic. And then something that's crazy
Speaker 1: to me that I had never really thought about until
Speaker 1: I started noticing, like how Mackenzie and a lot of
Speaker 1: the Golden Age architects would always have these clusters of greens.
Speaker 1: And I was talking to Sean Tully and he's like, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: part of that's maintenance. You know it would be it
Speaker 1: would be so much more efficient. And then you start
Speaker 1: to think about like what happened in the seventies or
Speaker 1: the eighties where all these holes are like siloed off
Speaker 1: into like far reaches. Is like the gas bill difference
Speaker 1: between like a very compact like this is really compact
Speaker 1: property where the holes are all pretty close to each other,
Speaker 1: and it's gotta be pretty easy to get around. But
Speaker 1: if if it's stretched out and you know you're having
Speaker 1: to drive a long ways, I mean, the gas over
Speaker 1: the course of a year has got to be pretty significant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the hardest part is you get out to
Speaker 2: that farthest point. Oh, I forgot one of the five
Speaker 2: tools that I needed. You gotta drive all the way
Speaker 2: back to the shop.
Speaker 1: It's brutal.
Speaker 2: It's a good excuse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you could kill a lot of time.
Speaker 1: You got a bad hangover, Yeah, just be driving around
Speaker 1: all the day. That's when I when I grew up
Speaker 1: working at a country club, I would go. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go pick the range and go go take
Speaker 1: a nap.
Speaker 2: That's that's where those little bits come in handy too,
Speaker 2: that they're gonna put on golf carts. You can see
Speaker 2: a golf cart that hasn't been moving for five minutes, busted.
Speaker 1: Ran out of battery. So let's do some overrated underrated
Speaker 1: Oh all right, everybody's favorite subject at say the doors.
Speaker 2: Ah, not a big music guy, you mean, like like
Speaker 2: screen doors music. No, not big music. Nah, I'll go
Speaker 2: neutral on that one. You got, you got to pick one,
Speaker 2: all right? Overrated? Sure, I don't like music. I don't
Speaker 2: like movies.
Speaker 1: You don't like music or movies? Now, how do you
Speaker 1: not like music or movies? Just don't.
Speaker 2: I don't have the patience to sit there in a movie.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of agree, since I've gotten really busy,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't sit through movies.
Speaker 2: So I was I was getting I was getting engaged.
Speaker 2: And I was shopping for wedding rings after work at Marion,
Speaker 2: which we'd work till dark every night, and I was
Speaker 2: so tired because I was going out, trying to shop
Speaker 2: quick before the stores would close, and I fell asleep
Speaker 2: in the middle of a movie. And my wife doesn't
Speaker 2: get mad at me very often, but she was like,
Speaker 2: not angry, but you could tell it was just like, seriously,
Speaker 2: we don't get to spend that much time together. And
Speaker 2: then she found out that I was actually out shopping
Speaker 2: for rings and she felt bad. So it got some
Speaker 2: brownie points back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good one. She figured it out, but
Speaker 1: hopefully she didn't figure it out before you ask. Now,
Speaker 1: that's uh overrated. Underrated. Downer's Grove Golf Club.
Speaker 2: Oh underrated. If you go there and see the land,
Speaker 2: I hope they go back and do a renovation or
Speaker 2: restoration to take it back to what it was. I
Speaker 2: mean there's some holes that you can't get back now
Speaker 2: because the road's through there, but the land is all
Speaker 2: still there.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. It's a yeah, that's that site. I mean,
Speaker 1: you think about this site and that site. That's that
Speaker 1: Site's one of the best pieces of land in Chicago
Speaker 1: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: And I mean as overall golfing experience. I went over
Speaker 2: there and played, and we got me and a sales
Speaker 2: rep from the area got paired with a guy in
Speaker 2: jeans and a white Sox jersey. So I knew it
Speaker 2: was gonna be a great experience if the guy's going
Speaker 2: to play golf in a White Sox jersey.
Speaker 1: It's for people that don't know Downers grow this original
Speaker 1: site of Chicago Golf Club, and they got a couple
Speaker 1: of the original holes. But yeah, you walk up there
Speaker 1: and nobody knows any like, nobody knows anything about the
Speaker 1: play Like you know, I asked some people at the front.
Speaker 1: It's it's uh, but it's actually a pretty cool little
Speaker 1: place to go play. It's a nine hole or you
Speaker 1: can get around quick if you go there.
Speaker 2: Only it's fantastic. The greens were really good. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: just if they could take the pads back to what
Speaker 2: they were and make the Greens bigger. I mean, the
Speaker 2: template is still there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, it could be really cool. I hope
Speaker 1: they do something one of these days. But I have
Speaker 1: I hear otherwise.
Speaker 2: When you said overrated, undergraded downers Grove, I thought you
Speaker 2: meant the town.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think about the What do you
Speaker 1: think about the town?
Speaker 2: I love the town. Underrated town, Yeah, underrated for sure.
Speaker 1: What's the most overrated Chicago suburb?
Speaker 2: The most overrated Chicago suburb? Wow, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people listening. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you mine. After you say most.
Speaker 2: I'll go most underrated Warrenville got big Al's Pizza.
Speaker 1: See, I'm going to say overrated Hensdale. Just my my
Speaker 1: wife's from there. I think I think it's overrated. So
Speaker 1: that's my two cents. She doesn't listen to the pod, though,
Speaker 1: so I don't have to worry about any backlash. Perfect,
Speaker 1: all right, Scott, thanks for coming on. Excited to see
Speaker 1: the golf course this week on TV. All your hard
Speaker 1: work and uh and uh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: The staff's done great. We're ready to go, so come
Speaker 2: out and see it.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 3: We do the digging for you.