Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried.
Speaker 2: Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida Egg Egg,
Speaker 2: fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the.
Speaker 3: The Welcome back to another edition of the Friday eg
Speaker 3: Golf Podcast. I'm your host, Andy Johnson. Today I have
Speaker 3: a really fun interview. I talked with Mike Koprowski. Most
Speaker 3: of you probably are not going to know the name
Speaker 3: Mike Koprowski. He is an up and coming golf architect.
Speaker 3: He got into the industry.
Speaker 1: Late in life.
Speaker 3: A unique road to his life as a golf architect.
Speaker 3: He's been working with Kyle Franz. He mostly worked for
Speaker 3: Kyle Franz until this project called Broomsedge, a new golf
Speaker 3: course that's near Columbia, South Carolina, where he had the
Speaker 3: unique situation of being an owner as well as a
Speaker 3: golf course architect on it. So it is a co
Speaker 3: design between him and Kyle Franz. I would say, you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of co design, probably more of a Mike
Speaker 3: Koprowski design than a Kyle Franz Design. You know, all
Speaker 3: these projects have a little bit different share of designers.
Speaker 3: That's my personal opinion. It's subjective who could be the
Speaker 3: designer a co designer. But this was a really, really
Speaker 3: fun conversation with Mike about Broomsedge, his life, which is
Speaker 3: very unique, not a lot of golf architects, with his background,
Speaker 3: his road to being a golf architect. I think it's
Speaker 3: super relatable for people that have worked a myriad of
Speaker 3: jobs in their lives and at some point thought about
Speaker 3: being a golf course architect. So this was super fun.
Speaker 3: I hope you guys enjoy it. Before we get to Mike,
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Speaker 3: thanks to the club Champion. All Right, I SEEC fans
Speaker 3: always always refer to Columbia, South Carolina as the hottest
Speaker 3: place on earth?
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 2: Pretty toasty? Yeah, it's pretty It's pretty toasty in the summer.
Speaker 2: It's because there's no wind that just sits in like
Speaker 2: a it sits in a bowl. So uh, but winter,
Speaker 2: spring and fall a pretty.
Speaker 1: Dark nice it is. What I was there was really delightful.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was quite nice.
Speaker 3: What you know, how did you go about finding the
Speaker 3: site to build this golf course? Like, you know, you're
Speaker 3: you're out looking for land, you decide you want to
Speaker 3: you want to build a golf course. What was your
Speaker 3: process for determining where you wanted to build a golf course?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well I always felt like there was this miss link
Speaker 2: between Pinehurst and Acon. You know, you got these the
Speaker 2: Carolina sand hills that stretch from North Carolina through South
Speaker 2: Carolina down into down into Georgia. We all know about
Speaker 2: the great golf that's in Pinehurst. We all know about
Speaker 2: the great golf that's in Aiken, But like east of Columbia,
Speaker 2: Columbia area, same soils that Pinehurst is sitting on, but
Speaker 2: kind of a dearth of great golf, and so that
Speaker 2: had always been kind of in the back of my mind.
Speaker 2: So I had first honed in on that area. I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted, you know, sand hills topography where
Speaker 2: we really weren't going to have to move much earth,
Speaker 2: just kind of you know, lay the land type type design.
Speaker 2: You know, you're always looking for ease of access. So
Speaker 2: this particular piece of land that I found was four
Speaker 2: minutes off of I twenty. You're looking for access to
Speaker 2: three phase power somewhere nearby. So when you start to
Speaker 2: kind of you know, winnow down your checklist, you know,
Speaker 2: there's only a few, you know, there's only a few
Speaker 2: parcels that that really kind of stand out to you.
Speaker 2: And so I kind of had a geography set from
Speaker 2: Columbia to kind of like the North Carolina South Carolina
Speaker 2: state line. That stretch of sandhills right there kind of
Speaker 2: ends in kind of Chesterfield County ish, and so I
Speaker 2: had honed in on that, contacted a land broker, looked
Speaker 2: at stuff that was on market. Also, you know, had
Speaker 2: had the land broker put out fields to things that
Speaker 2: were off market and probably looked at, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: different parcels, and you know, at that point, once you
Speaker 2: kind of hit all the checklist pieces, at that point,
Speaker 2: it's just kind of a gut type feel when you
Speaker 2: walk the land and it just it's got to it's
Speaker 2: got to do something to you emotionally.
Speaker 4: You got to just feel it, and it was It was.
Speaker 2: Often challenging because a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 2: the parcels that I looked at were just they were timber.
Speaker 2: You coudn't see five feet in front of your face.
Speaker 2: It was just stacked with trees and jungle. And so
Speaker 2: thank goodness for modern topographic maps because that really helped
Speaker 2: kind of helped me understand what the lay of the
Speaker 2: land was, even though I couldn't, you know, quite see
Speaker 2: it with my eyes. I could feel it with my feet,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't see it with my eyes. And that
Speaker 2: was so Ultimately, the piece of land that I settled
Speaker 2: on for broom Sedge was sort of heads and tails
Speaker 2: above the other parcels, and I think that that was
Speaker 2: a key the key thing that I did right. Plenty
Speaker 2: of shit I did wrong, but one of the key
Speaker 2: things I did right was patience that you know, you're
Speaker 2: you're kind of you're eager to get this going, and
Speaker 2: you know that that first, you know, that first parcel
Speaker 2: that you look at where it checks all the boxes,
Speaker 2: you just kind of want to jump because you could
Speaker 2: see good holes everywhere, but I really want to make
Speaker 2: sure that it felt like a ten out of ten
Speaker 2: and that there was just you know, something emotional happened
Speaker 2: when I got on the land and this this one
Speaker 2: blew it out of the water, and I'm glad I waited.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it was eight or nine months
Speaker 2: into the process until I really found something that I
Speaker 2: knew without a doubt would would be it could be
Speaker 2: a great golf course.
Speaker 3: The patient's aspect of it, if you could, you know,
Speaker 3: the first piece of land that you saw that you
Speaker 3: felt like.
Speaker 1: Was really a good fit.
Speaker 3: You know, you have access to a road, access to
Speaker 3: water power. You know, you check like these are things
Speaker 3: that like a lot of people don't think about, right,
Speaker 3: so that checks the box.
Speaker 1: You see golf holes.
Speaker 3: What what what's the difference between what the site you
Speaker 3: chose where Broomsedge is now to that, Like, what's the
Speaker 3: intangibles that the site that you chose over that had
Speaker 3: and you know when you think back to if you
Speaker 3: had built on that site, like, what, how do you
Speaker 3: think they would be different?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I this land moved in different ways. It moved
Speaker 2: in weirder ways, in sort of non predictable ways. You know,
Speaker 2: the sand hills are known for sort of their rolling topography,
Speaker 2: but oftentimes you can get kind of the similar role
Speaker 2: over and over again. And yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 2: have you know, a diverse routing that moves in different directions,
Speaker 2: but you're still navigating relatively similar to rain. And so
Speaker 2: you know, I was really looking for something that just
Speaker 2: felt like it was randomly converging in weird ways, and
Speaker 2: this had it in spades. Was there were spines, there
Speaker 2: were valleys, there were ridge lines. There was a weird
Speaker 2: like half pipe chasm that we ended up routing the
Speaker 2: eighth hole through. There were some parts of it that
Speaker 2: were relatively tame and gentle, like the seventeenth hole that
Speaker 2: kind of remind you of Number two, where you can
Speaker 2: just have you know, vast exposed sand and it's not
Speaker 2: going to wash and it's nice and flat. But then
Speaker 2: there were other parts that were like you know, shore
Speaker 2: acres type stuff where you were going way down in
Speaker 2: a valley, and there were all these like different micro
Speaker 2: environments to the site as well. So it just felt
Speaker 2: like I think, if we were going to pursue this
Speaker 2: this project, it needed to feel different than than a
Speaker 2: lot of the other things that have been built in
Speaker 2: the in the sand Hills. And I think it was
Speaker 2: really down to the uniqueness of the land movement.
Speaker 3: I feel like a word you could use to describe
Speaker 3: a lot of it is like rambunctious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: And if I think like a lot of people would
Speaker 3: think like, okay, like this is you know, look at
Speaker 3: this like consistent role. But then you get a lot
Speaker 3: of holes that feel similar. But if you're if the
Speaker 3: land is, you could describe it as rambunctious. It it
Speaker 3: creates so much differentiation from hole to hole, and you
Speaker 3: don't like, I think like land people, I don't think
Speaker 3: that's necessarily something people think of when it's like, God,
Speaker 3: all the holes felt the same, and it's like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe you're just playing ridged ridge holes all day, you know.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: You have to have that differentiation in topographical interests to
Speaker 3: have like a very compelling site.
Speaker 1: And I think, what go for it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think another way to maybe put
Speaker 2: that is you don't know what the hell's coming next,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, think of like our seventh hole to
Speaker 2: our eighth hole. Like seven is a pretty gentle you know,
Speaker 2: uphill par four across pretty gentle terrain with kind of
Speaker 2: a push up number two eight type green with Falloway edges,
Speaker 2: and you stand on that green and it just has
Speaker 2: a has a certain feel to it. You don't really
Speaker 2: know what's coming next. You can't even see the eighth
Speaker 2: hole because it's through that deep chasm in the land.
Speaker 2: And then you walk over to eight and it's like,
Speaker 2: where did this come from? How did this naturally occur?
Speaker 2: Like I don't I don't understand how we just went
Speaker 2: from that to that in the course of one hole.
Speaker 2: There's not a there's not a steady progression of change
Speaker 2: in the land. You don't see it coming. It just
Speaker 2: like smacks you. And I think it keeps things interesting
Speaker 2: and fresh. And and the way that the routing goes
Speaker 2: is that it kind of goes back and forth with
Speaker 2: that rhythm is you'll get some sequence of tame and
Speaker 2: then you'll say in the world that this come from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree with that. Like it it's and
Speaker 3: it just, yeah, the way it moves through, like there
Speaker 3: are like breaks. And one of the things that stood
Speaker 3: out to me about about this site and this course
Speaker 3: versus a lot of other golf courses that have been
Speaker 3: built in the same time period, it felt like a
Speaker 3: little bit more intimate.
Speaker 1: It feel.
Speaker 3: It feels I'm not sure the exact acreage on it,
Speaker 3: but it feels way small, like a way smaller site
Speaker 3: than most modern golf courses go for. And I think
Speaker 3: like one thing I had to question about was, you
Speaker 3: know what with smaller acreage, I don't think you had
Speaker 3: four hundred acres right, what is it now?
Speaker 1: It's like what two fifty ish?
Speaker 2: Well, we expanded the two fifty, but at the original
Speaker 2: when I originally purchased it, it was only one ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Some of that was was wetlands areas that we weren't
Speaker 2: even gonna mess with. So the actual area that we
Speaker 2: had to work with was was pretty small. I think
Speaker 2: the golf course routing right now sits on like one sixty.
Speaker 3: So I think like in terms of like a lot
Speaker 3: of modern new developments, they're looking for three point fifty
Speaker 3: four hundred acres and you know, that's great. Having space
Speaker 3: is amazing, But what ends up happening is the golf
Speaker 3: always feels kind of expansive.
Speaker 1: There's like you traverse a lot of land.
Speaker 3: One of the things I loved about about your site
Speaker 3: was it was so small that it felt very old
Speaker 3: school in the sense of it was like the sequencing
Speaker 3: of the holes just like you just kind of.
Speaker 1: Fly through the routing.
Speaker 3: What challenges did that present, being such a small golfable site.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was, you know. The so.
Speaker 2: I had a routing before I even put in a
Speaker 2: purchase or before I even put in an offer on it,
Speaker 2: because I was concerned about that very thing that when
Speaker 2: you have such a small site, the routing kind of
Speaker 2: needs to work perfectly.
Speaker 4: If you run in.
Speaker 2: Any spots where you get stuck, there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of area to play with. There's no room for sprawl.
Speaker 2: You can't just go out in a different direction and
Speaker 2: find better land. So it really needed to work, and
Speaker 2: that was that was one of the primary concerns when
Speaker 2: I looked at this site. Was not a lot of
Speaker 2: room to work with here, and so routed, you know,
Speaker 2: did a routing. I didn't know if it would be
Speaker 2: the routing, but did a routing felt like it would
Speaker 2: be really, really, really good, and at least I had
Speaker 2: some confidence there that, Okay, I feel like this is
Speaker 2: a this is a really good golf course right here.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it'll be the routing, but I'm
Speaker 2: confident that we can do something great on this site
Speaker 2: because the land just just moves in a certain way
Speaker 2: or it all kind of works. And then, you know,
Speaker 2: Kyle and I spent I don't know, six months doing
Speaker 2: different routings. We probably ended up like twenty two diferent
Speaker 2: routing scenarios, and then ultimately the one that we landed
Speaker 2: on was pretty close to the original one that I
Speaker 2: did just on the back of a napkin.
Speaker 4: We changed a few things.
Speaker 2: We changed like the fifth hole and the eleventh hole.
Speaker 2: We just changed in the field, So the eleventh hole
Speaker 2: isn't isn't even the same as what's on our master plan.
Speaker 2: So I think that was a key thing. I was
Speaker 2: not convinced that this would be a great site until
Speaker 2: we could do the routing. It just needed to it
Speaker 2: needed to fall into place, and that meant no sort
Speaker 2: of unworkable topography. And I think that having that having
Speaker 2: that constraint really led to a lot of kind of
Speaker 2: innovation and I think led to better holes. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's kind of the that's the counterintuitive part
Speaker 2: of this is that sometimes you actually can build a
Speaker 2: better golf course on two hundred acres than you can
Speaker 2: on four hundreds. Size is not an unequivocal good that
Speaker 2: sometimes when you have the space, you can sort of
Speaker 2: go out in search of you a certain land form,
Speaker 2: but really there's a trade off there and that you're
Speaker 2: sprawling in kind of a direction that the kind of
Speaker 2: disassociate that hole from all the others. We had a
Speaker 2: lot of constraints on this, and so I mean that
Speaker 2: there's a really we have two boundary line holes, which
Speaker 2: I think are two of the best holes on the property,
Speaker 2: just an old classic link style boundary hole on four
Speaker 2: and drivable part four on fifteen, where it's just a
Speaker 2: simple strategy. It's a linear boundary line and you know,
Speaker 2: the line of charm is you know, the closer you
Speaker 2: get to the boundary line, the better your angle is
Speaker 2: into the green. And those are like great, great holes,
Speaker 2: two of my favorites owned property. I don't know if
Speaker 2: we do that if we're on one hundred and you know,
Speaker 2: if we're on five hundred acres, I don't know that
Speaker 2: we do that. So the constraints I think actually we're
Speaker 2: a benefit.
Speaker 3: I think like a great example of a constraint, like,
Speaker 3: you know, this small property, you don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of routing.
Speaker 1: Options in certain parts. In certain parts of the property.
Speaker 3: It is like we get over here, it's a small property,
Speaker 3: we have to fit this many holes in this section.
Speaker 3: A great example for anybody that gets out there is
Speaker 3: the first four holes, yep, where you know, your first
Speaker 3: five holes sit on a very kind of like narrow,
Speaker 3: rectangular piece of ground. And I don't think anyone would
Speaker 3: set out to build a golf course and be like,
Speaker 3: you know what, we're going to go back and forth
Speaker 3: the first four holes, so you go out back, out back,
Speaker 3: and but they like at least have a really diverse
Speaker 3: set and when we talk about land rambunctious that they
Speaker 3: have an extremely diverse set of landforms in that out
Speaker 3: and back that make it work. Two holes that play
Speaker 3: in opposite directions play up on the ridges, one has
Speaker 3: a boundary line, one doesn't. And then two holes play
Speaker 3: in the valley, but one has a giant landform in
Speaker 3: the middle of it, and it works really Like from
Speaker 3: that sense, it works really well because there's diversity those holes,
Speaker 3: Like it makes for a really thrilling and like an
Speaker 3: ass kicker start. They are hard golf cours, like it
Speaker 3: makes an impression on you. But like that, if you
Speaker 3: had a sprawling site, a big site, I can't imagine
Speaker 3: that you'd ever have the first four holes playing back
Speaker 3: and forth.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: No, I mean we had a lot of feedback of well,
Speaker 2: you can't run four holes parallel.
Speaker 4: Well why not?
Speaker 2: The topography is so different. I mean, hell, you can't
Speaker 2: even see the second hole from the first hole. They're
Speaker 2: running parallel, and you don't even know the second holes
Speaker 2: there when you look across the valley, you're looking at
Speaker 2: the third hole. You can't even see the second hole
Speaker 2: because it's so low in the valley. So I mean,
Speaker 2: had the and this goes back to our rambunctious conversation,
Speaker 2: had the landforms been similar, then I do think it's
Speaker 2: a problem, you know, of routing the same stuff back
Speaker 2: and forth. But because the topography was so different, it
Speaker 2: really didn't concern us all that much. And the other
Speaker 2: thing too, is, you know, routing, it's all about trade offs.
Speaker 2: When you have, you know, a small site. So I
Speaker 2: mean in that first five holes. There's different ways to
Speaker 2: do that routing, Like you can have a hole that
Speaker 2: kind of cuts across the valley, your place diagonal to
Speaker 2: the valley. And we had plenty of routings where we
Speaker 2: we tried that. We experimented with it, like what if
Speaker 2: we only have three holes in this valley or in
Speaker 2: this in the section of property. And what we found
Speaker 2: is you pay the piper later on in the routing
Speaker 2: that if you don't get five solid holes in this
Speaker 2: section of the property, You're you're gonna have a shitty
Speaker 2: hole later in the later in the round. It's just
Speaker 2: gonna happen. And so you were kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: you were deferring the inevitable. And so we realized after
Speaker 2: all these routings that like, yeah, you need five, you
Speaker 2: need five strong holes, and we had five strong holes
Speaker 2: in that section of the property, and any other attempt
Speaker 2: to do it differently, you'd pay later on with the
Speaker 2: week hole or maybe two week holes.
Speaker 3: I think like when I when I've I've gotten a
Speaker 3: couple weeks to think about the the property, what or
Speaker 3: just the whole project, Like I think my favorite thing
Speaker 3: about the project is the small site is the like
Speaker 3: when I think about the round, it felt like I
Speaker 3: was like flying through it, which I think is something
Speaker 3: that like is rare with modern golf courses where you
Speaker 3: feel like you you are just like the rounds going quick.
Speaker 3: And I just I think I like the idea of
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of become the gospel that you
Speaker 3: need this massive property to build a golf course. It's
Speaker 3: still a big property, but you do not like we don't.
Speaker 3: It doesn't The standard doesn't have to be you need
Speaker 3: four hundred acres to build a golf course. And I
Speaker 3: think that's a bad standard for golf courses when we
Speaker 3: look at the next thirty years of golf, like, there
Speaker 3: has to be smaller, smaller site golf courses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's an expensive proposition too. If you
Speaker 2: believe that you need that, I mean, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: and even still, I mean, broomsts can stress to seventy
Speaker 2: five hundred yards. I mean we can, you know, we
Speaker 2: can test the best if you will. But the other
Speaker 2: constraint that's that's worth noting here is that I bought
Speaker 2: this land with an agricultural loan. Is just a poorschemuck.
Speaker 2: So I didn't have the money to buy four five hundred,
Speaker 2: six hundred acres. Like my My price point was like,
Speaker 2: we needed a piece of land that was, you know,
Speaker 2: just big enough for a great golf course and nothing
Speaker 2: more soaking wet. It needed to be what it needed
Speaker 2: to be because I just I couldn't take out a
Speaker 2: bigger loan than that. So another constraint that I think
Speaker 2: led to a better product in the end.
Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to get to that.
Speaker 3: I wanted to get to your winding path to being
Speaker 3: a golf course architect and golf developer. I mean, you've
Speaker 3: got two great distinctions in a matter of a couple
Speaker 3: of years.
Speaker 1: But you know your.
Speaker 3: Career, your list of academic achievements are, it's just a
Speaker 3: very very interesting story to get it to where you
Speaker 3: are today and what you're doing today. So your life,
Speaker 3: I would say, fifteen years ago, what did your life
Speaker 3: look like at that point?
Speaker 4: Fifteen? What was fifteen years ago?
Speaker 2: Say, I don't know now, so that's twenty five. So
Speaker 2: I was in the Air Force.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it was about. As far from.
Speaker 2: Actually yeah, I actually think oddly enough, fifteen years ago
Speaker 2: on this day was that was that two.
Speaker 4: Thousand and nine. Yeah, two thousand I was in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: That's where I was fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been weird, but man, it's it's been a
Speaker 2: it's been a hell of a ride.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: I'm just I don't know what I want to do
Speaker 2: when I grow up, and I hope that I still
Speaker 2: never do.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is what I tell people all the time, like younger,
Speaker 3: younger people all the time, like, you know, they get
Speaker 3: obsessed with like what I'm doing. It's like life's a
Speaker 3: winding road and every every decision will lead you to
Speaker 3: a different endpoint. And it's like, you know, I think
Speaker 3: that's the like the amazing thing I think. You know,
Speaker 3: it's so easy to when you get to middle age
Speaker 3: to think back to different moments and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's like, well, like if I had
Speaker 3: done that, like.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now.
Speaker 3: And you know, you wouldn't have Like if you had
Speaker 3: done something differently, you probably are not not being here
Speaker 3: with a.
Speaker 1: Golf course at the totaloint of your life.
Speaker 3: No, let's let's get so you you were, you played
Speaker 3: high school golf, you were a golf not where'd you
Speaker 3: grow up?
Speaker 2: Grew up in South Florida, not a lot of great
Speaker 2: golf courses. I grew up playing between the palms and
Speaker 2: the condos and the lakes. That was That was my
Speaker 2: golf experience. And then really my my first kind of
Speaker 2: eye opening event was when my dad took me up
Speaker 2: to TPC saw Grass and I'm like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: this is different than no offense to my home course.
Speaker 2: I love it, but this is different than premierk Lakes
Speaker 2: Country Club. You know, when I started asking myself, why
Speaker 2: do I like this better than that? I mean extensively,
Speaker 2: I'm hitting the same white ball into the same hole.
Speaker 2: Why do I feel so much different when I play
Speaker 2: Sawgrass as opposed to Premper Lakes? And so I got
Speaker 2: Pete Diyes what was it called? Bury me in a
Speaker 2: pop bunker? I mean, I was, I was a young
Speaker 2: kid at this stage, and I I got the bug immediately.
Speaker 2: And I was always fascinated with this question of what
Speaker 2: makes one golf course better than the other. And it
Speaker 2: was something that I mean, it was a hobby for
Speaker 2: for a long long time. I had read all the books,
Speaker 2: I had traveled extensively and thought a lot about you know,
Speaker 2: what makes one better than the other. And so this
Speaker 2: is all happening, you know, through high school and then
Speaker 2: I you know, went off to college, and then I
Speaker 2: I was in the Air Force for a while, and
Speaker 2: then I did education reform, and then I did housing reform,
Speaker 2: and then I.
Speaker 4: Was in d C.
Speaker 2: Working at a think tank, banging my head against the wall,
Speaker 2: working with Congress, and we had a We were living
Speaker 2: in d C, but there were some family circumstances that
Speaker 2: caused us to move closer to my dad, who was
Speaker 2: retired in Pinehurst. It wasn't a heart cell for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, oh, okay, we're gonna go to Pineherst.
Speaker 2: So I was I was working remotely in d C
Speaker 2: from Pinehurst, and I emailed Kyle friends and the Southern
Speaker 2: Pines project was just kicking off, and it was just
Speaker 2: kind of one of those midlife moments of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what the hell, Maybe he'll let me like ride around
Speaker 2: in a golf cart and see how this works. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it'd be cool. And so we had lunch
Speaker 2: together and I'm like, you know, can I just kind
Speaker 2: of like hang out and watch I'll go take a
Speaker 2: hole or something. If you need me to, you don't
Speaker 2: have to pay me or anything, just like kind of
Speaker 2: let me hang out. And he's and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the hell with that, Like let's get you in a machine.
Speaker 2: Let's let's see what you can do. So I started
Speaker 2: like probing the greens to see where Ross had the
Speaker 2: original perimeters. And I'm out there with a stake, like
Speaker 2: probing through the ground seeing if I could feel gravel,
Speaker 2: and then I'm drawing it up and we're talking about
Speaker 2: kind of green concepts. And I felt like I always
Speaker 2: had a you know, I had a good design IQ,
Speaker 2: but I didn't really know the mechanics with how you
Speaker 2: do all this stuff. So just Yees started doing all that,
Speaker 2: and Kyle was you know, I mean, Kyle, to his
Speaker 2: great credit, was not like, I mean, he welcome to
Speaker 2: with open arms. He's like, you're an interesting guy. Let's
Speaker 2: come on in and see what see what you got.
Speaker 2: And I would go late afternoons after all the shapers
Speaker 2: would leave. If I'd get an excavator and I'd walk
Speaker 2: it over into the into the woods and I would
Speaker 2: dig a hole and try to build a bunker and
Speaker 2: just like learn how the machine worked and then i'd
Speaker 2: I'd fill it back in and I'd try again the
Speaker 2: next day until I could build something that looked somewhat
Speaker 2: like a bunker. And then I shaped the bunker on
Speaker 2: seven and.
Speaker 4: It looked pretty good.
Speaker 2: And then I kept going and I did one on
Speaker 2: six and then you know, by the end of the project,
Speaker 2: I was you know, I was, I was shaping, and
Speaker 2: then that led to uh what that least? So then
Speaker 2: it was eastward ho with Kyle, and then did some
Speaker 2: work on the practice facility at Raleigh Country Club and
Speaker 2: then Luling and then Cabot Citrus Farms, and in that
Speaker 2: in those couple of years, uh, you know, with Kyle,
Speaker 2: uh did a lot of evaluating raw land for prospective
Speaker 2: clients as well. Like a client would would reach out
Speaker 2: and say, hey, what about this piece of land, and
Speaker 2: so kind of learned what, you know, what to look
Speaker 2: for in a particular site. I had a lot of
Speaker 2: topographic background as an intel officer in the Air Force.
Speaker 2: I was really good with a topographic map, so that helped.
Speaker 2: So I kind of got dangerous.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you just you know, you breathed through
Speaker 3: a very interesting backstory here. So let's I want to
Speaker 3: dig in a little bit too, before you got into
Speaker 3: the golf course industry.
Speaker 1: Just exactly what you were doing.
Speaker 3: So you you play high school golf, you go to college,
Speaker 3: you join the ROTC, and then eventually you joined the
Speaker 3: Air Force.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: I would you say at this point, you're you're kind
Speaker 3: of completely disconnected from the game of golfer?
Speaker 1: Were you still playing decretty much?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: I didn't play much.
Speaker 2: I would watch the Four Majors on TV, maybe play
Speaker 2: once or twice a year, and would read like one
Speaker 2: golf architecture book, you know, every every six months. And
Speaker 2: that was like that was the extent of it. But
Speaker 2: I wasn't playing that much. It was just it was
Speaker 2: really busy. This was the time when Iraq and Afghanistan
Speaker 2: we're you know, in the a Circle of Hell, and
Speaker 2: it was just a really really busy time. So I
Speaker 2: kind of will and then I just wasn't involved in
Speaker 2: the game all that much.
Speaker 1: And what were you doing for the Air Force?
Speaker 2: I was an intel officer, So I was attached to
Speaker 2: an F fifteen fighter squadron.
Speaker 4: I was there. I was their intel officer.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, I mean, and then and then we
Speaker 2: went to Afghanistan with that with that squadron and in
Speaker 2: late two thousand and nine, and that basically meant a
Speaker 2: range of stuff where like mission planning and target analysis
Speaker 2: and all that, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's focus on the pod. What was the best
Speaker 3: part about being in Afghanistan?
Speaker 2: Beautiful topography? I mean, oh, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I mean
Speaker 2: I remember when it got uh you know, you'd have
Speaker 2: like the snow capped mountains, and it was just we
Speaker 2: were in kind of northern Afghanistan, near to Kabul and and.
Speaker 4: It was just a gorgeous, gorgeous.
Speaker 2: I mean you it was like, man, this would be
Speaker 2: a great tourist spot if you know the tali Van
Speaker 2: weren't you know here, And it was just it was beautiful, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: small if.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. It was just a.
Speaker 2: Gorgeous, gorgeous country. And the other thing that really stuck
Speaker 2: with me with the Daffhan people. You know, they they
Speaker 2: worked on on site, they were mechanics, they worked on
Speaker 2: buses and you got to meet some of them, and
Speaker 2: they were they wanted the same thing you and I want.
Speaker 2: You know, they wanted their kid to be able to
Speaker 2: go to go to school and safely, and they wanted
Speaker 2: the opportunity, and it was. They were very gracious, very
Speaker 2: gracious people, and they most people we worked. They didn't
Speaker 2: want the Taliban there anymore than we did. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I just it was it was a good experience. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's one of those experiences where it's like I would
Speaker 2: never want to go back because it's it's war and
Speaker 2: it sucks. But it was an experience that I would,
Speaker 2: you know, all always cherished.
Speaker 1: You know, I've I've had a few.
Speaker 3: Things tossed by way of potential sites for golf in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, and there's some like crazy like sand
Speaker 3: dunes on the ocean in the Middle East, like it
Speaker 3: is not inconceivable that there is that there is great
Speaker 3: golf there at some point, and you know.
Speaker 4: Totally yeah.
Speaker 2: I would look outside the base gates and you know,
Speaker 2: I think you get a little little shelf green in there.
Speaker 2: I want, it's about one hundred and thirty yards, get
Speaker 2: a little shelf green in there. And Kabool, I think,
Speaker 2: at least at the time, had a nine hole course
Speaker 2: that was you know, was dirt. But I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's still there. But yeah, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I never played it.
Speaker 3: That reminds me of I had said Laton on the podcast,
Speaker 3: who worked for Arnold Palmer designed. Yeah, yeah, his first
Speaker 3: project he went off to I think it was Kazakhs
Speaker 3: down really like gets hired by Arnold Palmers Design.
Speaker 1: They're like all right, yeah, you're going to.
Speaker 3: And he gets off the plane and there's like soldiers
Speaker 3: with oozy's and it's just like uh a K four sevens.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, I just have this image of you
Speaker 3: at a in a in an army base with your
Speaker 3: with your golf architecture book and the golf.
Speaker 1: Looking out at the expanse. What would you say you
Speaker 1: like a life full of experiences?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Like what what was it about that job that that
Speaker 3: has helped you the most doing what you're doing now.
Speaker 2: On a very technical level, like g I S topographic
Speaker 2: type type work that came and that was very very
Speaker 2: handy to be able to look at a topographic map
Speaker 2: and know what the land is doing.
Speaker 3: Can you can you explain like how you were like
Speaker 3: in from the from the Air Force sense, you know,
Speaker 3: with with your role there using topographics and like how
Speaker 3: were you using that? Like what were you doing that
Speaker 3: that and made it really easy to look at it
Speaker 3: like I think, like for a layman who's like somebody
Speaker 3: sends somebody a topographic map and it's just like lines everywhere,
Speaker 3: It's like, what's going on? So like what were you
Speaker 3: doing with that? In the Air force? That then made
Speaker 3: made it kind of a breeze for golf architecture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially mission planning. So if there was a you know,
Speaker 2: if there was a target we were we were looking at.
Speaker 2: You know, you'd look at a topographic map and you'd
Speaker 2: have to see, oh, okay, well, if if the bomb
Speaker 2: comes in at this angle, it's actually going to hit
Speaker 2: the mountain before it hits the bad guy because there's
Speaker 2: a freaking mountain in the way. So we got to
Speaker 2: comm in from the other direction.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the re to see it until this
Speaker 3: point right right. That type of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even even on like collateral collateral damage type stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, we went to great lengths to try to
Speaker 2: avoid civilian casualties. And you know, topography plays a role
Speaker 2: there of Hey, if you know, if there's a blast
Speaker 2: that happens in X spot, what's the topography doing between
Speaker 2: X spot and you know that village over there? You know,
Speaker 2: is that village sitting downhill from where the you know,
Speaker 2: where the explosion is going to happen. If so that's problem,
Speaker 2: maybe there's a topographic feature in the way that will
Speaker 2: protect it. So it's all like I mean, it's being
Speaker 2: able to read a topo map and being able to
Speaker 2: understand land contours is you know, it's it's life and
Speaker 2: best stuff over there.
Speaker 3: So now instead of worrying about where, how to how
Speaker 3: a bomb might function in the land, you worry about
Speaker 3: how water might move and right exactly whether a slope's
Speaker 3: too severe for for a golf hole exactly.
Speaker 2: I worry if a foe iron will stay on this
Speaker 2: hillside or if it'll ejected over the green. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: little bit lower stakes, but a little bit more fun
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 3: So so after after the Air Force, you you you
Speaker 3: kind of breezed over this. You got into you you
Speaker 3: went back to school. You got degrees from Duke and Harvard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and yep.
Speaker 1: And what were they in and you got into government work?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 2: Duke was for international relations and Harvard was education policy.
Speaker 1: And what was the thought at this point, what am
Speaker 1: I going to What am I going to do?
Speaker 2: What was I still had the GI Bill, and I
Speaker 2: was just basically trying to postpone real life, just stay
Speaker 2: in school. So I got the smartest board of different things.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to go into education reform. I had
Speaker 2: started the Duke degree. I had started while I was
Speaker 2: in the Air Force, International relations, obvious connection there. When
Speaker 2: I got out of the Air Force, I had my
Speaker 2: eye toward toward education policy. Education is important, it's our
Speaker 2: children's future, blah blah blah ah.
Speaker 4: That stuff. I believe it.
Speaker 2: And so so after Harvard, I went to Tennessee and
Speaker 2: worked on education reform there, and then went to Dallas
Speaker 2: and and worked on education reform there. Really my work
Speaker 2: in Dallas was on desegregation, trying to integrate schools. You know,
Speaker 2: here we are, you know, many many decades after Brown
Speaker 2: versus Board, and our schools are essentially as segregated as
Speaker 2: they were when Brown was decided. Our schools are still,
Speaker 2: you know, incredibly segregated by race and class, and it's
Speaker 2: largely a function of housing patterns. There's no explicit laws
Speaker 2: anymore that say this is a white school and there
Speaker 2: is a black school. But in Dallas, that's how it
Speaker 2: plays out because our neighborhoods are segregated, so work a
Speaker 2: lot on policies that would try to, you know, get
Speaker 2: kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds into the same classroom together.
Speaker 2: There's a whole bevy of research that shows that all
Speaker 2: kids perform better in school when they're learning in a
Speaker 2: diverse environment.
Speaker 4: So that's what I worked on in Dowa.
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
Speaker 3: You also become like a more well rounded individual, you know,
Speaker 3: like you think about like I mean, as we're talking, like,
Speaker 3: you know, the more diverse your background and skills and
Speaker 3: expertise are, the more likely you're going to come at
Speaker 3: any kind of solution, any kind of situation with a
Speaker 3: with a different mindset, which is beneficial in the world.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's I mean, it's an essential skill set.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could argue that many of the many
Speaker 2: of the ills we're dealing with today are because people
Speaker 2: don't fundamentally understand each other and never have really had
Speaker 2: a meaningful interaction with somebody that's different from them. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of the villainization we see in particularly
Speaker 2: in politics today, is a root cause of that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's essential for our civic health to get
Speaker 2: you know, to get kids learning together, I mean third,
Speaker 2: and Marshall said once that, he said, how can our
Speaker 2: children ever learn to live together if they don't learn together?
Speaker 2: And yeah, I spent spent many years of my life
Speaker 2: trying trying to solve that problem.
Speaker 1: At this point, has golf re entered your life?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, so golf seriously re ent heard my life. When
Speaker 2: I was in Tennessee, I was working at the Tennessee
Speaker 2: Department of Education and I had just left Harvard, I
Speaker 2: caddied at the country club at Brookline for a few
Speaker 2: loops just so I could play the course. And then
Speaker 2: they they told me I needed to shave, and so
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't caddy anymore.
Speaker 1: So what did you get to play though?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: shave till Kingdom come to play it. But after I
Speaker 2: played it a couple of times and move on, and
Speaker 2: I was I was skipping too much class, and I
Speaker 2: just you know, because the only time they'd let us
Speaker 2: play was a Monday, and I had class, and so
Speaker 2: I was skipping too much class to play the country club.
Speaker 4: So I had to kind of feel like.
Speaker 3: One of the Harvard would be a hard place to
Speaker 3: skip classes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was an ideal. It was an ideal,
Speaker 2: but it got it got that bug going again of
Speaker 2: like man, this is this is really good.
Speaker 4: This is really good.
Speaker 1: So that's your favorite thing about that course?
Speaker 2: The country club? Oh just again the topography, I mean,
Speaker 2: like the the.
Speaker 1: Property.
Speaker 2: It's just it's incredible. Just that lamb moves in unpredictable ways.
Speaker 2: That's that's what I loved about it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's like when you when I think about that course
Speaker 3: has got like probably like five of the most unique
Speaker 3: holes that I've ever seen. You know, you think about
Speaker 3: like three, you think about uh really like four is
Speaker 3: epical five's and epical ten is insane. You know, like
Speaker 3: there are there are a lot of like the par
Speaker 3: five I get mixed up with the routing of fourteen
Speaker 3: on the championship routing.
Speaker 1: That's up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you aim at the pole in the background.
Speaker 3: I hate the pole. They got to get rid of
Speaker 3: the pole. They got to be a reform. You know,
Speaker 3: you worked on education reform. Maybe now you could join
Speaker 3: me on like big flagstick reform. Yeah, Like I think
Speaker 3: we needed to remove big flagsticks from from.
Speaker 4: Golfne to line. I like that'll be the next it'll
Speaker 4: be the next task.
Speaker 1: But it's it's just as important as educated Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just as important as desegregation. I mean these things are
Speaker 2: coequal pillars of a healthy civic life.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I mean it's a I mean it's an
Speaker 4: awesome special spot.
Speaker 3: So looping at at the country clubs kind of like
Speaker 3: what got you back into it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just got me the bug of Wow, this
Speaker 4: is this is special. I like being here.
Speaker 2: I didn't look for very long, but it was just,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a special it was a special vibe.
Speaker 2: And then the program at Harvard was only it was
Speaker 2: a quick like accelerated masters.
Speaker 4: It was like a year.
Speaker 2: So before I knew it, I was in Tennessee. And
Speaker 2: here this is when I really started to lose my
Speaker 2: mind around golf, was I. So I was in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: I worked in downtown Nashville, but I bought a house
Speaker 2: up in Goodlettsville, which was kind of twenty five minutes north,
Speaker 2: and I bought a house on like five acres.
Speaker 1: And so I married at the time, are you.
Speaker 2: I had just I had just started dating my now
Speaker 2: wife at this time, and she actually helped me do
Speaker 2: what I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 3: Which every story of going golf instane starts with a
Speaker 3: very willing partner.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Absolutely she helped me do what I'm about to say,
Speaker 2: which is that because I had, you know, acreage in
Speaker 2: my front yard, well why not build a part three?
Speaker 2: And so I rented a back up. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know shit.
Speaker 1: How much did it cost to rent the back up?
Speaker 2: It wasn't that much. It was just it was like
Speaker 2: a week and I think I probably took off work
Speaker 2: and I just like worked all day long on it.
Speaker 2: But I didn't know what I was doing, so part
Speaker 2: of it was just like trying to learn how to
Speaker 2: not tip it over.
Speaker 1: Did you have to get a permit?
Speaker 4: I don't know, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I think I had to call the septic because we
Speaker 2: were on septic out there, and I think I had
Speaker 2: to call to make sure I wasn't going to hit
Speaker 2: a septic system, yeah, because yeah, yeah, what were you
Speaker 2: doing out there? I mean we had people pull off
Speaker 2: it was Lichton Pike was the road. They'd pull off
Speaker 2: Lichten Pike and they'd say, uh, you know, what what
Speaker 2: are you doing here? Is this like a future lake
Speaker 2: or like what are you?
Speaker 4: What are you doing? I'm building a golf course.
Speaker 2: I had to take out a few trees, and I
Speaker 2: didn't know what I was doing, so like I built
Speaker 2: the bunker with like sand bags, Like I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to shape things, so I just I dug a
Speaker 2: hole and then just built up the lip with like
Speaker 2: sand bags and I covered it with sod and my
Speaker 2: my wife at the time, his girlfriend was was helping
Speaker 2: me do this, and I mean, what more of a
Speaker 2: keeper can you possibly find on planet Earth than that?
Speaker 2: So I knew instantly she was the one. And it
Speaker 2: actually ended up looking pretty cool. I'll have to send
Speaker 2: you a picture, but it kind of looked it kind
Speaker 2: of the bunkering a little bit looked like the country
Speaker 2: club with kind of like the folded edges. The sandbags
Speaker 2: actually gave it a cool kind of folded sunken in look.
Speaker 1: I bet it would get like a nice shadow to
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like that's how gil Gil builds the small
Speaker 3: like mini vetted faith right on his bunkers, and then
Speaker 3: he has the grass come over it.
Speaker 1: You get that shading look.
Speaker 3: The sandbag would do probably like a similar thing, talk
Speaker 3: about totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be a new bunker construction it could be.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it held up pretty well now the
Speaker 2: so I think it was featured who has that art?
Speaker 2: I think Golf Eye just has the best backyard golf
Speaker 2: holes in America. And I think I'm I think I'm
Speaker 2: on there alongside you know, Tiger and VJ and John Smoltz.
Speaker 4: And it's the only time I'll be listed in the
Speaker 4: same sentence as those guys. But it made it.
Speaker 2: There's a pretty good holes, like a really kind of small,
Speaker 2: small green one hundred and thirty yards and h we
Speaker 2: uh yeah we did you see it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a oh, I remember, I'm now down
Speaker 3: to this rabbit hole of where it's where I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the old carousels of of of you know, the
Speaker 3: Internet of yesteryear.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, this was a while ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where it's not an article, it's just a carousel images.
Speaker 4: Yes exactly.
Speaker 3: It's just like what wait, why did this? Why was
Speaker 3: this the Internet for a period of time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I see it.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It's actually amazing when you look scroll through
Speaker 3: this carousel. I'll post this in the in the show notes.
Speaker 3: You scroll through the carousel and every hole is like
Speaker 3: kind of like fake looking, Yeah, and yours like it's
Speaker 3: kind of it's kind of like it looks like a
Speaker 3: real golf hole.
Speaker 4: It's plausible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the cream is tiny, what is it?
Speaker 1: Two thousand square feet fifteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, if that.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a very big so I had to
Speaker 2: keep it small. The maintenance budget was pretty freaking limited. Andy,
Speaker 2: you know, I had to keep keep the features small.
Speaker 2: But uh, I mean, we've played this thing. We played
Speaker 2: it closest to the pen at this thing during my
Speaker 2: during my wedding rehearsal, one of my buddies knifed one
Speaker 2: into the actual house because the house is not you
Speaker 2: can't see it in the picture, but the house is
Speaker 2: not that far away, Like the screen is only thirty
Speaker 2: yards from the house, and you're sort of aiming right
Speaker 2: at the house.
Speaker 4: But the sad the sad thing is when we when
Speaker 4: we moved, we had to we had to, we had
Speaker 4: to bulldoze it because.
Speaker 2: Apparently what no buyer, our realtor kept saying, like nobody
Speaker 2: wants this ship, like they don't want to have to
Speaker 2: maintain a golf hole in their front yard, Like you
Speaker 2: just gotta you gotta get rid of it, or we
Speaker 2: can't sell the house.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you had to bulldoze it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not there anymore. Like if you look
Speaker 2: at Google.
Speaker 1: Or do you have to light our data? We have
Speaker 1: you recreate it somewhere.
Speaker 4: We didn't have the budget for light art. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's the next big restoration project. It's the next
Speaker 2: lead though, really.
Speaker 3: I mean, do you have you got to have like
Speaker 3: an acre that you could put it at broom sedge
Speaker 3: in the corner.
Speaker 4: That's true, that's true. I got a lot of photos
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Maybe, I mean we self we have to build a
Speaker 2: practice facility. Maybe that's one of the greens.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like a functional practice green though. It's
Speaker 1: pretty small, pretty small, yeah, pretty small.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And it wasn't even put up.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like whatever whatever the Bermuda grass
Speaker 2: was from Low's on depot.
Speaker 4: It was. I didn't have ultra dwarfrom this green.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I got like a low mower and I scalped the
Speaker 2: ship out of it and you can sort of you
Speaker 2: could sort of put on it, but uh.
Speaker 1: The green, the green had to be insane.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it was rolling at a bumpyfore. It
Speaker 2: was not the best.
Speaker 3: I Oh, when I lived in Chicago, I always had
Speaker 3: this dream of building a putting green in my front yard,
Speaker 3: like very much in the front yard, yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then just putting putters out there and like having
Speaker 3: it be like a neighborhood putting green. Yeah, like where
Speaker 3: like if you're walking by, you could just hit some putts.
Speaker 1: I don't know why these don't exist, is like shilling.
Speaker 3: I like, frankly wonder about I always think about this too.
Speaker 3: When I drive down the road and I see like
Speaker 3: a tiny little acre, like an acre of land that's
Speaker 3: for sale. It's like, clearly nobody's gonna is, Like why
Speaker 3: isn't anyone like trying to figure out a business to
Speaker 3: just build a single golf hole and it's like you
Speaker 3: can pay four dollars to come play.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just a it's a drive up.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean drive up, play one golf hole
Speaker 1: and you're done. Like I'd be into that.
Speaker 3: I would be, like I was thinking, I've got like
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks I'm playing the next time I
Speaker 3: know I'm playing golf, it's in November, and I've thought
Speaker 3: about maybe going to the range or like in mid November, right,
Speaker 3: and I've thought about maybe like I want to go
Speaker 3: to the range.
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know, I kind of I want
Speaker 1: to play.
Speaker 3: Decent and it's like but like I just I really
Speaker 3: just want to like take like two swings.
Speaker 1: That's all I want. But I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to Like if I could.
Speaker 3: Just drive by, stop and hit a shot, hit three putts,
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm staying sharp.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah, fifteen minutes and you're out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the thing that once you put a pin in
Speaker 2: the ground, people know what it is, and that was
Speaker 2: nobody knew what the hell I was doing. But once
Speaker 2: I put a pin in the green, people would come
Speaker 2: up to your door and say, hey, can I like
Speaker 2: this is this looks pretty cool?
Speaker 4: Can I hit a shot? And I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: go for it.
Speaker 1: You know, people stop by.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, people would stop by because the tea box
Speaker 2: was right by the road.
Speaker 1: So you love this.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was uh, it was pretty fun, but it was
Speaker 2: you know, unfortunately it was short lived.
Speaker 3: But I think that's like just the difference between Scotland
Speaker 3: and in America, right, Like if you think about like
Speaker 3: the Kids' Court or like the Putting Green in downtown
Speaker 3: North Barrack.
Speaker 1: It's just like a total it's just there.
Speaker 3: Like I don't understand why they can't be parts of parks, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely there was. There was one in Dallas
Speaker 2: that I remember at the Clyde Warren Park. They had
Speaker 2: as an asteroidsurf putting green, but it was just there.
Speaker 2: It just putter's land on the ground and some balls
Speaker 2: and it was always in use. It's a great thing.
Speaker 2: Should be more of it.
Speaker 3: What, like, how did you get do you have like
Speaker 3: a moment where you like you decided I'm building this
Speaker 3: golf hole, because I assume this is the moment that
Speaker 3: that led to you just dropping my drop.
Speaker 1: My political career eventually.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the this has got to be
Speaker 3: the moment, right when you decided to build this golf
Speaker 3: hole that you just put your foot in the ground.
Speaker 3: You know, screw out my education, right, I mean, I
Speaker 3: do something completely different with my life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, do you
Speaker 4: know when you're going crazy? I don't know. It just happens.
Speaker 2: Just one day I woke up and it felt like
Speaker 2: the right thing to do. There wasn't I don't remember,
Speaker 2: like an aha, it was just like I was kind
Speaker 2: of I think I was a first time homeowner and
Speaker 2: I'm just like, wow, all this land I have, Well,
Speaker 2: what do you do with lots of land? Well, obviously
Speaker 2: you build golf, And that just kind of went went
Speaker 2: from there. I don't know, I felt like I could
Speaker 2: build a cool hole, you know, I had.
Speaker 3: Did you have a lot of concepts? Like what was
Speaker 3: the ideation around? Did you just or did you just
Speaker 3: start digging stuff?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be about one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty yard par three because that's kind of what
Speaker 2: I what I had to work with from the corner
Speaker 2: of the road to where this location would be. So
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be a part three.
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be relatively short, and
Speaker 2: beyond that, I was really at the time, I was
Speaker 2: kind of thinking of sixteen at the country club. Just
Speaker 2: something basically like a you know, kind of an intimidating
Speaker 2: fronting bunker and nothing too complicated and see what happened.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of what was in my head
Speaker 4: when I was when I.
Speaker 2: Was doing because I was fresh off my my, my,
Speaker 2: oh so many loops at the country club. So I
Speaker 2: was just kind of thinking like a sixteen at the
Speaker 2: country club would be kind of cool's let's do that.
Speaker 1: Did you ever make a hole one on it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: No, I never, So I never made a hole on
Speaker 2: one in my entire life until a few weeks ago
Speaker 2: at the opening round at.
Speaker 1: Broomsedge, first round ever played there.
Speaker 4: First round ever at Broomsedge, and luckily we were a.
Speaker 1: Guy that bought the land, built the course. You make
Speaker 1: a whole one your first round, pretty.
Speaker 2: Freak, and luckily we were in a sixth sum so
Speaker 2: there was There's many that can attest to the veracity
Speaker 2: of this story, and the truth is I didn't hit
Speaker 2: it very good. I mean it was a skanky nine
Speaker 2: iron that had I hit a flush, it would have
Speaker 2: airmailed the green. But I hit it just skanky enough
Speaker 2: to where it kind of like had no spin when
Speaker 2: it hit the green and it just trickled right and all.
Speaker 4: It was pretty wild. And that was my first hole
Speaker 4: one ever.
Speaker 3: I think that maybe the same day or the next day,
Speaker 3: I was playing golf at Old Barnwell and this is
Speaker 3: how stupid hole ones are. I was the guy I
Speaker 3: was playing with a friend of mine. He hit like
Speaker 3: an incredible shot. I mean the second he hit it,
Speaker 3: I was like going the hole going the like that,
Speaker 3: that's an amazing And it ended up like I swear
Speaker 3: I've never seen a ball hang more over a lip
Speaker 3: and not go in. Like we got up to the
Speaker 3: ball and it's like, are you kidding me? So then
Speaker 3: we go and play the kids course at Old Barnwell,
Speaker 3: first hole. So this is the next part three. He
Speaker 3: plays after like just getting robbed of a hole one.
Speaker 4: So it was on seventeen at Old Vern.
Speaker 3: Seventeen at Old Barne Okay. Next, so we go to
Speaker 3: the kids course, first hole. He literally like hits like
Speaker 3: a half shank and it catches the slope, kicks left,
Speaker 3: and I go, I think that went in. We can't
Speaker 3: see it, and we get up there it's in the hole.
Speaker 3: It's just like, this is why hole ones are dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the whole whole outs are better than whole ones, like
Speaker 3: whole out, whole out Eagles Albatross's because it requires two
Speaker 3: good shots.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, you have to be in that position in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a sheepish feeling like I.
Speaker 4: Didn't but it was. It was pretty damn good story.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be. That's a moment that was
Speaker 1: meant to be.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 3: It was, so let's let's go to like you move
Speaker 3: back to you keep doing the politics, uh career. I
Speaker 3: guess that's that's safe to say. Politics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good catch all for it, sure catch all.
Speaker 3: And you go, you're in Southern Pines. You're doing that remotely? Yeah,
Speaker 3: why did you pick Kyle to reach out to?
Speaker 1: What? What made you pick him?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So it was the Southern Pines project was was just starting,
Speaker 2: like literally they were days away from, uh from from
Speaker 2: putting dirt in the ground. And I wasn't gonna like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was still working full time, kids in school, Like,
Speaker 2: it's not like I was going to go travel to
Speaker 2: some far off place to do this. So it was like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, this is happening in my backyard. I mean,
Speaker 2: I I had loved what what Kyle had done at
Speaker 2: Mid Pines and Pine Needles and even some of the
Speaker 2: work on Number three. I love Number three, best kept
Speaker 2: secret in town. Like, I love some of the work there.
Speaker 2: So I was already, like, you know, I was already
Speaker 2: a fan of what Kyle had done in the neighborhood,
Speaker 2: and so I just I reached out, and I.
Speaker 4: Guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, Kyle was still you know, Kyle didn't have
Speaker 2: any new builds at the time. He was still you know, locally,
Speaker 2: he was pretty well known, but didn't quite have the
Speaker 2: profile that he that he has now. And so maybe
Speaker 2: that was a benefit to me. Like I often think,
Speaker 2: like what if I had I mean, I just stone
Speaker 2: cold emailed him, and I was not thinking I'd get
Speaker 2: a response back. And then I got a response saying
Speaker 2: let's have lunch. But had I done that to a bigger,
Speaker 2: more established firm, I mean, I probably don't get an
Speaker 2: email back. So yeah, stars aligned, Kyle and I head
Speaker 2: it off. I mean we're still, you know, really good friends,
Speaker 2: and we just hit it off. We you know, we
Speaker 2: share a lot of things of common interest together, not
Speaker 2: just golf.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I didn't know that Kyle. You know, I
Speaker 3: know Kyle pretty well. I didn't know there was common
Speaker 3: interest besides golf of Kyle.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, golf. He's a golf maniac.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know he's also perhaps an even greater
Speaker 2: maniac about college football.
Speaker 4: And he's a Notre dame no way, yo. Oh he's
Speaker 4: he's he can tell you. Yeah, he can tell you that.
Speaker 2: He could tell you the statistics from a Notre Dame
Speaker 2: game in nineteen fifty four. I mean, he's just he's
Speaker 2: a savant.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 4: I yeah, yea, yeah, so he was.
Speaker 2: I think that he jokes, and I don't know that
Speaker 2: he's actually joking, but he says at the time, like,
Speaker 2: because I went to undergrad at Notre Dame, that's probably
Speaker 2: why he emailed me, right, he needed somebody to talk
Speaker 2: about Notre Dame football. Well, but he's a huge Notre
Speaker 2: Dame guy.
Speaker 3: That's the Bill Court. You've heard the Bill cor Pete
Speaker 3: Die story, have you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He thinks that he.
Speaker 3: Came to meet him just to watch the Dolphins game
Speaker 3: to get out of the house.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: And he came to his hotel room or wherever Bill
Speaker 1: was staying, and he turned on the Dolphins game and
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, you can work for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's weird. Life is weird. It's weird stuff. It's weird stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember that first lunch of Kyle. I
Speaker 2: mean we talked a little bit about golf, but it
Speaker 2: was it was a lot of noted in football.
Speaker 3: All right, what when you look at that Southern Pines project.
Speaker 3: What would be your biggest takeaway about golf architecture from
Speaker 3: thinking about it building a backyard hole too, like I
Speaker 3: am on a full scale project here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the teamwork nature of it. Just I mean,
Speaker 2: number one, how how welcoming people were to a schmuck
Speaker 2: like me, Like just I mean, like the shapers like
Speaker 2: you know, Am and Sullivan and Matt Smallwood. I mean
Speaker 2: like they were cool with me popping in their machine
Speaker 2: and trying something out, like they were welcoming about it,
Speaker 2: and they taught me stuff, and so it was a
Speaker 2: very welcoming, team oriented environment. And I realized just how
Speaker 2: much that it really is a team. I think when
Speaker 2: you're when you're not in it, you sort of think like,
Speaker 2: you know, the architect is the guy doing it all,
Speaker 2: but there's so much happening at the shaper and laborer
Speaker 2: level that's making that place what it is, and it
Speaker 2: really it's a you know, it's a thirty piece band
Speaker 2: and everybody's got to be going and sync. So I
Speaker 2: just never really realized you sort of have this idea
Speaker 2: in your head of like the architects savant, that's that's
Speaker 2: orchestrating everything, and you know it's true to some extent,
Speaker 2: but often it's just you know, the architects saying, you know,
Speaker 2: here's here's two concepts, go make it happen. And so
Speaker 2: that was the you know, that was the That was
Speaker 2: a big takeaway. The other big takeaway was I did
Speaker 2: not realize how much water plays a role in everything
Speaker 2: that is done. It's all like, Okay, where's the water gone,
Speaker 2: where's the water going, where's the water going. I never
Speaker 2: had really thought about where water moves and how it
Speaker 2: moves and how you get it to move in different directions.
Speaker 2: I never realized how which water management was a key
Speaker 2: piece of architecture. I sort of thought like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: it's artsy fartsy stuff, and you know, the lip line
Speaker 2: of a bunker and maybe we do a finger, maybe
Speaker 2: we do a tongue, and there is an element to that.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of function to it as well
Speaker 2: that I never really appreciated. And just I mean, like
Speaker 2: the transformation of Southern pints just makes you realize that,
Speaker 2: you know, if you've got good bones in the land,
Speaker 2: you can you can do magic.
Speaker 3: I feel like water is one of those things that
Speaker 3: like you don't you don't think is cool and this
Speaker 3: is like, you know, very nitty gritty. But then once
Speaker 3: you get like really into it, it's like one of
Speaker 3: the most fascinating aspects of it is like moving water around.
Speaker 3: How like really talented people hide how they're moving water,
Speaker 3: Like I mean, like that's like to me, the most
Speaker 3: amazing thing is when you walk off of green and
Speaker 3: you see a cut like forty yards up a hill
Speaker 3: that like you would never and it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: like how they they're draining this, keeping the water off
Speaker 3: this this green in area, so you don't have any
Speaker 3: basins around here, you know, right, It's like.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and just like how much how much reaction
Speaker 2: there is to water movement even after the ship, Like
Speaker 2: I remember the eleventh Hole at Southern Pines, that kind
Speaker 2: of epic, you know, driverable par four now, the kind
Speaker 2: of capes around the around the water there. And I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, we were in the middle of summer and
Speaker 2: I think I had just shaped a couple of bunkers
Speaker 2: on the left side and the right side, and we
Speaker 2: had a really big rainstorm and it like demolished. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, because you're talking about sandy soils, this stuff washes.
Speaker 2: You know, you could build a water bar on a
Speaker 2: on a bunker, but you know, sometimes if the rain
Speaker 2: comes down hard enough, if fast enough, bunker goes by
Speaker 2: by until it's stabilized with you know, with with vegetation.
Speaker 2: And like I remember going in the next day and
Speaker 2: I was just like devastated, like oh my, like look
Speaker 2: at the wash, like this is biblical.
Speaker 4: The whole project's room.
Speaker 2: And and what I learned from the pros was, now, man,
Speaker 2: this is a good thing. It's it's good to learn this.
Speaker 2: Now we're seeing where the water's going. Look at the rivulets,
Speaker 2: look at how the water's moving. All we need to
Speaker 2: do is build the water bar further up to hill.
Speaker 2: Like we obviously the water bar can't be down here
Speaker 2: because it's too late in the game. The water's already
Speaker 2: gained enough speed and it's going to obliterate this this uh,
Speaker 2: this bunker edge. But if we catch it thirty yards
Speaker 2: up the hill and build the waterway in the woods
Speaker 2: that nobody's going to see, we can redirect it this
Speaker 2: way and it goes out just follow the rivulets. And
Speaker 2: it was it was fascinating and it but yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean so much of it was was water management, but
Speaker 2: also like a fair amount of reactionary water management based
Speaker 2: on the latest storm and seeing what it does because
Speaker 2: you can't you know, you don't always know exactly what
Speaker 2: the water is going to do in a fire storm,
Speaker 2: and it's it's helpful to see it. I mean, we
Speaker 2: like our our drainage system at Broomsedge. We that's how
Speaker 2: we built it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: We would we would shape the hole and then it
Speaker 2: would it would rain like cats and dogs, and we'd
Speaker 2: go and look at the rivulets and see where the
Speaker 2: water was moving, and we mapped our drainage Accordingly. We
Speaker 2: didn't really have like a going in drainage plan. We
Speaker 2: just we shaped it, We saw where the water was moving,
Speaker 2: and we based our drainage plan around that.
Speaker 3: I think this also ties back to what you talked
Speaker 3: about at the beginning, where you talked about sixty sites
Speaker 3: finding the best site.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like some things that help with drainage and water management
Speaker 3: is vegetation.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: The less you have to move on a site, the
Speaker 3: more native vegetation you keep, yes, and the better you
Speaker 3: suited you're going to be for for withstanding big rain
Speaker 3: events because you're moving less earth so you're disturbing less
Speaker 3: land in the way that a site's drained for thousands
Speaker 3: of years is intact yep.
Speaker 2: If you don't have to mess with it, don't mess
Speaker 2: with it, leave it alone, keep it stable, because the
Speaker 2: minu you disturb soil, that's when it that's when it washes.
Speaker 2: And it was a pretty challenging thing too, because it
Speaker 2: was there were trees everywhere. So when the timber folks
Speaker 2: come in, I mean they make a mess of the place.
Speaker 2: I mean there's timber slash everywhere, and so sometimes you
Speaker 2: would find, you know, timber slash among like really you know,
Speaker 2: beautiful vegetation that you really don't want to disturb, but
Speaker 2: you also just kind of want to for sake of efficiency.
Speaker 2: You kind of just want to go in there with
Speaker 2: a root rake and a bulldozer and get that crap
Speaker 2: out of there. But at the same time, you're going
Speaker 2: to disturb the soil. So it's a it's a very
Speaker 2: delicate balance. Erosion control is so critical to a project,
Speaker 2: not only in terms of like the outcome of the
Speaker 2: golf course itself, but in terms of cost. I mean
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of golf courses go away.
Speaker 2: The hell over budget because they can't get erosion under control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's like a it's a a killer that
Speaker 3: nobody ever thinks about when you start to start a project.
Speaker 3: Is just like okay, because like you know, it's a time.
Speaker 3: Earth moving is the most expensive thing, and to control
Speaker 3: water usually requires earth moving.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: Let's so you hit on this earlier.
Speaker 3: You were not a billionaire or you know, even a
Speaker 3: I don't know your financial situation, a multi millionaire.
Speaker 1: You are a you're a normal person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I worked for a nonprofit who built who.
Speaker 3: Who bought a piece of land and built a golf course?
Speaker 3: Can we just look how? I like, this is everybody's dream?
Speaker 3: How did you actually do it?
Speaker 4: So? I took out an agricultural loan, and.
Speaker 3: So we searched. As you said earlier, you search soured
Speaker 3: this area.
Speaker 2: Found the side I wanted, and then I found the
Speaker 2: side I want, And then it's like, okay, I could
Speaker 2: try to get investors on board right now, but that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's hurting cats. This land is going to
Speaker 2: be gone by that stage. So you know what I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do, take a leap of faith. I'm going to
Speaker 2: buy this thing with the loan and I'll figure the
Speaker 2: rest out later. But the central ingredient here is the land.
Speaker 2: I can nail that down now. I have tremendous faith
Speaker 2: in this thing. And then the other thing was, what's
Speaker 2: the risk. It's a land. God's not making any more
Speaker 2: of it. If I can't figure this thing out in
Speaker 2: a couple of years, if I can't get any investors,
Speaker 2: if people are like, who the hell are you, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about, then I'll just sell it. And
Speaker 2: maybe it's a wash. I mean, it's not like an
Speaker 2: existential risk because it's land. So so then I just
Speaker 2: you know, got the land and then started to started
Speaker 2: to find partners. You know, the original guys Andrew Dennenburgh
Speaker 2: and David McFarlane and Aaron Oberman were kind of the
Speaker 2: original amigos here, and we scraped together some angel funds
Speaker 2: to do you know, permitting and wetlands delineations and the
Speaker 2: routing and all that sort of stuff to at least
Speaker 2: have a plan that we could that we could execute.
Speaker 2: And then once we had the plan ready to go,
Speaker 2: then I mean we needed construction funds. And we had
Speaker 2: talked to you know a lot of different investors and
Speaker 2: made sure we shared a similar vision, and I was
Speaker 2: very clear that I wanted to maintain control of the
Speaker 2: of the golf And so you talk to a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of potential investors where just we weren't
Speaker 2: lined up.
Speaker 1: I imagine it's hard to find.
Speaker 3: Like that's got to be one of the toughest aspects
Speaker 3: of a golf course.
Speaker 1: Is like.
Speaker 3: In trying, like when you don't have the money to
Speaker 3: fund it, when you're looking for people to fund it,
Speaker 3: they want it to be their golf course.
Speaker 4: Totally yeah, and they don't. I mean, I want to.
Speaker 2: One guy said to me, well, you know you're no
Speaker 2: Tom Doak. Well, no shit, I know that, you.
Speaker 4: Know, like, thanks, thanks for me, thanks tips, you know.
Speaker 4: So there was a lot of that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was a girl, you know, Bob Dylan
Speaker 2: has I'm a big, big dealing fan, and he said
Speaker 2: something once in like a sixty minutes interview that always
Speaker 2: stuck with me. He said, you know, there's sometimes you
Speaker 2: just have this feeling about yourself that nobody else knows,
Speaker 2: and you just have your yeah, this picture in your
Speaker 2: mind of of what you're capable of, and you don't
Speaker 2: tell anybody because if you tell somebody they're going to
Speaker 2: kill it. Everybody's good at killing ideas, and so I
Speaker 2: just kind of had this this faith that I could
Speaker 2: you know, do something really cool here. And it was
Speaker 2: about finding the right the right investor who shared that faith.
Speaker 2: And then you know, Cody Sunburg came along and uh
Speaker 2: and believed in it and you know, didn't want to
Speaker 2: meddle in the golf stuff and you know, let me
Speaker 2: be in charge of the construction and funded it and
Speaker 2: you know, and the rest is history. I mean, but
Speaker 2: but we had, you know, we had explored, you know,
Speaker 2: conversations with a lot of investors where it just didn't
Speaker 2: work for whatever reason or the other. But uh, you know, finally, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, your Cinderella comes along.
Speaker 3: Was there was there a moment when you didn't believe
Speaker 3: it was going to happen. Yeah, for what was like
Speaker 3: what was like the most dire uh moment of of
Speaker 3: lacking self belief.
Speaker 2: So it was it was a struggle to find to
Speaker 2: find some investors. And so we had made the decision
Speaker 2: and me and Andrew and David and Aaron and Bran Coffin,
Speaker 2: you know, the original guys of well, you know what,
Speaker 2: let's just go out and start shaping shit. It's maybe
Speaker 2: it'll be like a self fulfilling prophecy. We have, you know,
Speaker 2: four hundred dollars in the bank, you know, that covers
Speaker 2: an excavator, a mini excavator for a week. Let's go,
Speaker 2: I'll go rough shape the sixth Green and I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe momentum creates more momentum and we'll just start
Speaker 2: doing it that way. And then so we're out there
Speaker 2: and I duped my dad in to help, like picking
Speaker 2: up stumps and trees, and David McFarland duped his dad
Speaker 2: to come out and like, so we're out there, like
Speaker 2: I mean, a bunch of total schmucks out there.
Speaker 4: It's July.
Speaker 3: I've always believed in this, this idea. There used to
Speaker 3: be canal shores, just got redone in Chicago. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I used to take part in this, Like I believe
Speaker 3: this is the way you can do this with like
Speaker 3: total golf tragics like ourselves. Oh yeah, you can just
Speaker 3: get people to come do like Missline.
Speaker 4: Absolutely on a golf course crazy and be.
Speaker 3: Like, hey, do you want to Like I dug a
Speaker 3: bunker at this golf course with a shovel.
Speaker 1: It was awful. It was like I remember, I got like,
Speaker 1: I was like, why did I just do this? Like what?
Speaker 3: That was an awful morning of work. I was exhausted
Speaker 3: for like the next two days.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: But like you can do people into doing anything when
Speaker 3: it's golf related.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. My wife makes that point a lot.
Speaker 2: You can go build a fence for the boundary line
Speaker 2: on fifteen at Broomsedge, but you can't you know, you
Speaker 2: can't mow the freaking lawn.
Speaker 4: I mean, come on. And my answer is, well, it's
Speaker 4: not golf related. I mean I don't want to do it.
Speaker 1: Uh, you had to have a golf hole in your
Speaker 1: backyard exactly.
Speaker 2: I mowed that thing regularly. We just need more golf
Speaker 2: features in the yard. But that was I remember that
Speaker 2: being a oblique moment because that it was July in Colombia.
Speaker 2: We're just, you know, I'm shaping this and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is going to be overgrown in a couple of months.
Speaker 4: Nobody's going to see this. What am I doing.
Speaker 2: I'm just hoping we can get a nice picture out
Speaker 2: of it and then maybe somebody will have belief.
Speaker 4: And then the.
Speaker 2: Ac broke in the excavator and those things are like
Speaker 2: they're like greenhouses.
Speaker 4: When the ac goes out.
Speaker 2: And I'm just I'm soaked, I'm dirty. It was just
Speaker 2: like what the hell, Like this isn't going to work.
Speaker 4: This is stupid.
Speaker 2: But you know, then you get done with it. You
Speaker 2: take a picture and you're like, yeah, I could see this,
Speaker 2: this could be a cool green all right, I kind
Speaker 2: of see it, and you just keep going. But you
Speaker 2: need a few screws loops to do this.
Speaker 3: I think you have to be a crazy person to
Speaker 3: do anything anything of this nature.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah's like to go out and try and do something
Speaker 3: completely unrelated to your your previous existence on earth is
Speaker 3: or you know, yeah, that you.
Speaker 1: Have to be a completely complete lunatic.
Speaker 3: Like I think, like the w I think back to
Speaker 3: like my personal journey with this business. For example, when
Speaker 3: I think back now, I think about like just how
Speaker 3: naive I was, and like nive, being naive is actually
Speaker 3: like a superpower.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, if you have.
Speaker 3: No clue how hard it's going to be, it's like
Speaker 3: a great thing because you you still have You're still positive.
Speaker 3: You're positive, like and like you know, some people can
Speaker 3: say I'm like negative and stuff. And I was talking
Speaker 3: to someone one day and they're like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: you're like the most positive person I know. And I
Speaker 3: was like what, They're like, you can't you can't not
Speaker 3: be positive and be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: And that's effectively what this journey is.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, you have to like you can't ever
Speaker 3: look at like it would have failed, it would have crumbled,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have like you wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 3: get up to have the thirtieth investor call that told
Speaker 3: you know, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, there's a there's a benefit among the
Speaker 2: constraints that this is true even on the design side
Speaker 2: of things as well. If there's a benefit to having
Speaker 2: some naivete on your team to say.
Speaker 4: Can we do this?
Speaker 2: And and you know, maybe it's a horrendous idea because
Speaker 2: of erosion or something, but maybe it's something that nobody
Speaker 2: had previously thought of and it's because their constraints, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of told them that that's not a thing you do.
Speaker 2: So it can be you know, it could be a risk,
Speaker 2: but it can also be a real benefit.
Speaker 3: Well that's I mean, that's the thing with any industry, right,
Speaker 3: like most of the most of the fresh new ideas,
Speaker 3: like the guy that came up with Uber was not
Speaker 3: a taxi cab drive right, and did not manage a
Speaker 3: taxi company. Right.
Speaker 1: The person that that started at Airbnb, I believe, was
Speaker 1: not in the hotel industry, right.
Speaker 3: They did not like this is this is how it works, right,
Speaker 3: someone that is completely Underlike, the vast majority of great
Speaker 3: ideas do not come from people that are entrenched in
Speaker 3: the industry. Of course, there are visionaries within industries. They
Speaker 3: become you know, titans of the industry. But like I
Speaker 3: think a lot of time, the best ideas come from
Speaker 3: outside people that come into an industry, which is like
Speaker 3: I think, like what I what I'm fascinated about with
Speaker 3: Like your background is like you know, like the the
Speaker 3: topographical maps from the Air Force.
Speaker 1: But then like one of the things that's like.
Speaker 3: A huge pain in the ass for most people to
Speaker 3: navigate with building a golf course and is like the
Speaker 3: permitting aspect. But you have a huge experience working in
Speaker 3: the public sector like that. Yeah probably, I mean that's
Speaker 3: that's like busy work, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was that was a relative easy part
Speaker 2: going before the county council and getting the zoning. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was not a golf there there wasn't a golf
Speaker 2: course in the.
Speaker 1: County, and so there was the entire county.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not in the county.
Speaker 2: There used to be at a close so they didn't
Speaker 2: have like a zoning category for a golf course. So
Speaker 2: they had to create a new zoning category. And that
Speaker 2: stuff didn't really it didn't FaZe me because again, I
Speaker 2: just that was that was part of the course.
Speaker 4: That was that was normal work. But yeah, it certainly
Speaker 4: came in handy.
Speaker 3: There is uh is South Carolina going to become your
Speaker 3: second favorite team to Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not gonna run very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's an added benefit is that we don't
Speaker 2: run up against them too much. But I think so
Speaker 2: we've uh, you know, the folks at the University of
Speaker 2: South Carolina have been real friendly to us. They want
Speaker 2: to come out and play. You know, we've talked about
Speaker 2: hosting tournaments and whatnot. So they've been awesome to us.
Speaker 2: A couple of them are are members, and so it's
Speaker 2: it's great. They've they've been a great neighbor. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess I root for uh. I root for South
Speaker 2: Carolina until they play Notre game.
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a quick break to talk about
Speaker 3: our partner, Stripe. Just like Club Champions, Stripe is a
Speaker 3: product that we've used for a really long time. Stripe
Speaker 3: helped me build this business, this podcast business, this this
Speaker 3: online business by making it super easy for somebody with
Speaker 3: a lot on their plate that doesn't really have technical expertise.
Speaker 3: So Stripe makes our payments go round. They work with
Speaker 3: a ton of businesses, so they serve over two million
Speaker 3: businesses of all sizes, so businesses like ours, but also
Speaker 3: huge companies like Alaska Airlines, Hurts and the PGA. They
Speaker 3: power one percent of the total global GDP. That's insane,
Speaker 3: but they do this because they have a wide range
Speaker 3: of products. One of the coolest products that they have
Speaker 3: is their billing product. There they help more than three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand businesses, which is more than anybody else, and
Speaker 3: they have advanced billing software that can handle complex billing models,
Speaker 3: whether it's usage base, a flat rate monthly subscription, an
Speaker 3: annual subscription like club TFE the way we use it. Basically,
Speaker 3: eighty percent of SaaS companies either already charged or plan
Speaker 3: to charge based on usage. And you know this, the
Speaker 3: subscription world keeps growing and evolving in Stripe, billing will
Speaker 3: help you keep pace. So if you're interested in learning
Speaker 3: more about Stripe, go to stripe dot com. Thanks to Stripe,
Speaker 3: and now back to Mike Koprowski.
Speaker 1: So I, I, you know, I don't want to.
Speaker 3: You've worked with Kyle on pretty much all of your
Speaker 3: golf architecture projects.
Speaker 1: He was a part of this project. I think, like
Speaker 1: I think a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people will will say this is a Kyle Frans
Speaker 3: golf course. I think that that's kind of miss It's
Speaker 3: very much your golf course with Kyle, right from an
Speaker 3: ar text our standpoint, like it is a it is
Speaker 3: a co design, But like I think what generally happens
Speaker 3: is with co designs is like the name people no
Speaker 3: more are Usually they're going to say it's a Kyle
Speaker 3: Franz to die. Is it safe to say? Is it
Speaker 3: right to say that this is a true co design?
Speaker 3: If not more You're design than Kyle's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a true code design for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean it's It was kind of strange, right because
Speaker 2: I was sort of wearing owner hat on this one,
Speaker 2: so it was like apprentice kind of calling the shots. Now,
Speaker 2: there was never any like you know, drop down arguments
Speaker 2: about stuff. I mean, we see things pretty pretty similarly.
Speaker 2: But and Kyle was deferential to that. I mean, he
Speaker 2: knew the risk that I that I took here. And
Speaker 2: you know, so you know, we're both classicalists. We both
Speaker 2: love the old stuff. But you know, even under the
Speaker 2: classical umbrella, there's a spectrum, and Kyle and I are
Speaker 2: different enough to where there is a back and forth
Speaker 2: of ideas that that happened to.
Speaker 3: Strike me knowing both of you is really like pretty
Speaker 3: opposite personalities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the way that I describe it to people
Speaker 2: is okay, so you have under the classical umbrella, let's
Speaker 2: say you have you have Shinnacock on one end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum and National on the other end of the spectrum.
Speaker 4: Both great, greatly, both great golf courses.
Speaker 2: Shinny is like the straightforward, stern old lady frank presentation,
Speaker 2: demanding questions, and National is the wily fun uncle capricious
Speaker 2: and humps and hollows and cork. You know, I guess
Speaker 2: the Scottish and Healgy would be Merefield in the old course.
Speaker 2: And so I mean, both Kyle and I consider on
Speaker 2: a table and talk about what we love about those
Speaker 2: golf courses all day long. But I bet if you
Speaker 2: put a gun to both of our heads, my initial
Speaker 2: design instincts are probably a little bit closer on the
Speaker 2: Shinnecock side of the spectrum, and Kyle's are probably a
Speaker 2: little bit closer to the National side. And so at
Speaker 2: room it was fun to like marry those two things.
Speaker 2: And I think people will see, I mean this is
Speaker 2: it's a very different golf course than cat Citrus Farms,
Speaker 2: for instance, which is very.
Speaker 4: High on the on the Wyley scale.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a reflection of the fact that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it was a true co design and you know, ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, as the as the owner and the you know,
Speaker 2: the final decision maker. I mean it is a weird
Speaker 2: sort of George Crump impersonation of owner and and you
Speaker 2: know architect. But I mean, ultimately, you know, it came
Speaker 2: down to, you know, if there was a particular disagreement
Speaker 2: or particular thing, I mean, ultimately was my call as owner.
Speaker 4: So but it was fundament it was fundamental design instincts basically. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean it never felt I mean, it
Speaker 2: never felt like that because we're we've worked together for
Speaker 2: so long and we're friends and we see like the
Speaker 2: number of differences that we have is relatively small.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it was. It was a unique It was
Speaker 4: a unique sort of environment.
Speaker 1: So what's what what is next for your career?
Speaker 3: And and what's next for would you say for group said,
Speaker 3: where where is it at and in the and the
Speaker 3: whole process of its evolution? And where are you at
Speaker 3: with with your career? This was a kind of I
Speaker 3: would say, a half step towards solo design. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe a half a large stuff towards golf developer, Like yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, like what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think about, like through this whole experience,
Speaker 2: I think about, Okay, what did I like most? And
Speaker 2: it was certainly on the design side. The development side
Speaker 2: was was fun and I do it again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2: But the real like what got me up in the
Speaker 2: morning was like we canna put that bunker in on seven?
Speaker 4: You know? Are we are?
Speaker 2: We what we can do about the six screen? Like
Speaker 2: that's the stuff that I found most fun, And that's
Speaker 2: the stuff that at its core is what got me
Speaker 2: into this was a love of golf course design. So
Speaker 2: I think that that's a that's a bug that I
Speaker 2: have and I'll keep I'll keep riding that horse until
Speaker 2: she kicks me off. I don't know what exactly comes next.
Speaker 2: I haven't really had time to think about it. We
Speaker 2: just opened a couple of days ago, so I've just
Speaker 2: been go, go go. But you know, I hope there's
Speaker 2: I hope there's more that that we can do with
Speaker 2: broom Sedge. I hope that there's more outside of Broomsedge.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, I got the bug, and now I
Speaker 2: got to figure out what what comes next. In terms
Speaker 2: of what's next for broom Sedge is you know, we'll
Speaker 2: keep filling out the membership roles. We got about ninety
Speaker 2: members right now, and we'll keep keep recruiting. I think
Speaker 2: the more that people see the golf course, the more
Speaker 2: buzz there is out there. And certainly our our inboxes
Speaker 2: has ticked up a lot in terms of member interest.
Speaker 2: We've gotten a lot of really really good feedback about
Speaker 2: the golf course. And then moving on to you know,
Speaker 2: just the vertical construction, and you know, it's a it's
Speaker 2: a largely national and regional membership, so making sure people
Speaker 2: have places to stay and getting the clubhouse going and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. So I think, you know,
Speaker 2: there's you know, everybody involved with this had a had
Speaker 2: a really good time doing it, and you know, if
Speaker 2: there's more opportunities to keep going with it, we'll probably
Speaker 2: keep going with it because it was pretty fun.
Speaker 4: So why I stop now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's what's what's you know, you've been open for
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks, small, you know, small amount of
Speaker 3: groups going out every day.
Speaker 1: What's been your favorite piece of feedback.
Speaker 4: That you received? Yeah, I mean our most.
Speaker 1: Memorable moment of outside your home one.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I just the people that come back and they say.
Speaker 2: What appeared to be hyperbolic things of like this is
Speaker 2: one of the greatest golf courses I've ever.
Speaker 4: Played, And I'm like, well, you know, yes, I'm the architect.
Speaker 2: Nobody's going to come up to me and say I
Speaker 2: hated this piece of shit, Like I know that that's
Speaker 2: not going to happen. But the feedback has actually been
Speaker 2: fairly overwhelming that people have been really really positive about it,
Speaker 2: particularly the green complexes, and people are like, these are
Speaker 2: this is a world class set of greens. They're eighteen
Speaker 2: one act plays. They toe that balance between interesting and
Speaker 2: never going over the top, and people have you know,
Speaker 2: I love that. I love when people are really specific
Speaker 2: about the golf course, like when they come back and
Speaker 2: they say, you know, the tea play, I played the
Speaker 2: white teast today and the tea placement on fourteen. I
Speaker 2: can't quit kick it over that, so maybe next time,
Speaker 2: move it back, move it up. I like that level
Speaker 2: of specificity, and people are coming with that stuff. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: you know that, I like the better hear this pin
Speaker 2: placement I think work better than that pin placement. Or
Speaker 2: we should play the right green on six more than
Speaker 2: the left green on six, or something like that.
Speaker 4: Love.
Speaker 2: I love that stuff, and that's that's what it's all about,
Speaker 2: you know, is when people experience the thing that you
Speaker 2: built and they come back and they share their thoughts
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: The I agree.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite I was out there one of
Speaker 3: the days early on. One of my favorite things was
Speaker 3: seeing it was it was your opening day and seeing.
Speaker 1: A husband and wife member.
Speaker 3: They teed off early on, and then my favorite thing
Speaker 3: is that we got done playing and I see them
Speaker 3: going out to play more golf like that.
Speaker 1: That's a great side. Yeah, Like Husband of Life play
Speaker 1: eighteen wasn't enough.
Speaker 3: They're going to get more, like perfect side like to me,
Speaker 3: Like it's as simple as that. Like I got done
Speaker 3: with the golf course, I wanted to play more golf
Speaker 3: Like that, that's the best sign you can have. And
Speaker 3: I completely echo the greens, like I think like one
Speaker 3: of the things that I was I was most impressed by,
Speaker 3: Like I had heard a lot of things about the land,
Speaker 3: heard it was a great piece of land from a
Speaker 3: lot of people that.
Speaker 1: Had seen it.
Speaker 3: But what I really liked the most was was the greens.
Speaker 3: They were none of them felt uninteresting and none of
Speaker 3: them felt over the top. And I loved the idea,
Speaker 3: the simplicity of a lot of them where there was
Speaker 3: generally like kind of a central feature that was varied
Speaker 3: different and in different locations that influenced the entire green Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we tried really hard on that.
Speaker 2: I mean, the land did so much work from from
Speaker 2: tee to green, so we spent the vast majority of
Speaker 2: our time just focused on green concepts. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I think the greens are are you know, they're
Speaker 2: they're fascinating, but in in often subtle ways, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's that's what I really like. I love greens
Speaker 2: that rely on you know, slope and tilt more so
Speaker 2: than like big in your face undulations. And I just
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of what I wanted out of this.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love all types of different styles, but
Speaker 2: that was sort of like that. That's kind of my
Speaker 2: go to. That's what I love the most. I love
Speaker 2: when I mean, I play number two as much as
Speaker 2: I can because of that very reason where I don't.
Speaker 2: I never miss a putt by like six feet because
Speaker 2: it hit one side of a buried elephant's ass and
Speaker 2: it went the other way like I miss putts at
Speaker 2: number two by two inches right or two inches left,
Speaker 2: and I just don't understand, and supposed to break through
Speaker 2: the board. It's maddening and I love it, and it's
Speaker 2: endlessly fascinating. And I think that I'm a big believer
Speaker 2: in what Keith Richards said about music. So you know,
Speaker 2: the most interesting music.
Speaker 3: The music we're going to have you come back for music,
Speaker 3: golfs to extravaganza.
Speaker 2: It's there's so many parallels. But he said the most
Speaker 2: interesting thing about a song is what notes you don't play.
Speaker 2: You know, your your canvas is silence, and you don't
Speaker 2: have to fill it with everything.
Speaker 4: And I just I'm not like that.
Speaker 2: That's not my style where you know, like we've all
Speaker 2: been to those golf courses where they it's just it
Speaker 2: feels like they bang the drums as loud as they
Speaker 2: possibly could for eighteen holes and that's fun. But it's
Speaker 2: just not it's not really my style, and it's not
Speaker 2: the stuff that I want to play day in and
Speaker 2: day out. I love the subtleties that reveal themselves over time.
Speaker 2: It's not the stuff that smash in the face and
Speaker 2: reveals itself on the first go round. I love the
Speaker 2: stuff that just endlessly, you know, endlessly fascinates you.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: I so this is I think like early on my
Speaker 3: journey looking at golf courses, I used to think, man,
Speaker 3: look at how bold that that took stones to build that,
Speaker 3: and that's a crazy green.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now I would say, like, now what I look at
Speaker 3: is like this happens a lot at like Bill Corps
Speaker 3: golf courses, where I'll see this just like beautiful, understated
Speaker 3: yeah hole that like a lot of people might be like,
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't really know what's going on, but
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, there's just this little bump in the
Speaker 3: green and it's like a very fun hole to play,
Speaker 3: and this bump just like just rex like it. It
Speaker 3: influences everything else on the hole. And there's one bunker
Speaker 3: on the left side and it's modestly flat ground and
Speaker 3: you're just like, you walk off the green and you're
Speaker 3: just like, man, what a nice gentle golfle.
Speaker 1: And I think, like, it takes so so.
Speaker 3: Much confidence to build something that simple, like and be
Speaker 3: confident that it's going to have enough interest that people
Speaker 3: aren't just like that is a nothing burger, right right, ye,
Speaker 3: Like that takes more confidence in my mind than building
Speaker 3: something wild.
Speaker 4: I totally agree.
Speaker 2: And you know, I got to give a shout out
Speaker 2: to Joe Hancock, who is our lead shaper and really
Speaker 2: a key thinker and all this. And Joe was like,
Speaker 2: Joe's a seasoned old cat. I mean, he's been doing
Speaker 2: this for a long time. And Joe was a really
Speaker 2: great voice to have on the project. And Joe was,
Speaker 2: you know, a voice of saying that's enough, like we
Speaker 2: there is intrigue in that. You know, the ball's going
Speaker 2: to do what you wanted to do. You don't need
Speaker 2: to make it bigger. And Joe was just like, you know,
Speaker 2: Joe was the stately the elder statesman of the project
Speaker 2: that just was like the steady hand through it all
Speaker 2: and was oftentimes very reassuring of like we've done enough here,
Speaker 2: let's let's move on. This is going to work. And
Speaker 2: Joe was Joe was out there on opening day walking.
Speaker 1: I love this. I was good. This is exactly what
Speaker 1: I was going to say. I loved I like, you.
Speaker 3: Know this, there's this guy walking around with his wife. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm I don't know, I've never met Joe Hancock
Speaker 3: like I've known of and I'm just like, hey, how's
Speaker 3: it going. He's like, oh, I just just he was
Speaker 3: just out watching people play the golf course that he
Speaker 3: that he helped build.
Speaker 1: Like that's like that tells you everything you need to
Speaker 1: know about like what what he's interested in. He probably
Speaker 1: thought about, how's this hole going to work? How Like
Speaker 1: he saw I was.
Speaker 3: In the in the bunker on the on the boundary
Speaker 3: hole fourteen or fifteen fifteen fifteen, the boundary hole driveable
Speaker 3: par for Obi Wright. I hit it in the left
Speaker 3: bunker and He's like, Oh, that's gonna be a really hard.
Speaker 1: Shot, you know.
Speaker 3: Like he was just like he was so excited to
Speaker 3: see the shot that he'd probably thought about a million times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah, play out.
Speaker 4: Joe.
Speaker 2: He's he's a true believer. I mean he loves he
Speaker 2: loves this stuff. And I mean we went we went
Speaker 2: out to lunch. A couple couple of days after that,
Speaker 2: he was still kind of hanging around and he still
Speaker 2: had thoughts about the golf course. Oh you know that
Speaker 2: cross has around seventeen. I think the broom said just
Speaker 2: a little too high there, go and go and trim
Speaker 2: that down. Like he's still one hundred percent invested in
Speaker 2: the golf course, loves it, and was just like, you know,
Speaker 2: really the glue, the on site glue that that made
Speaker 2: you know a lot of what we did possible and
Speaker 2: a lot of the ideas that.
Speaker 4: We have out there. That that's Joe Hancock.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know the way that the way that
Speaker 2: Joe and I worked was it was like, all right,
Speaker 2: you know, here's here's two or three concepts. Here's kind
Speaker 2: of what I want to see out of this green
Speaker 2: and they were you know, go to town and sometimes
Speaker 2: it was a walk off, you know, like fifteen green
Speaker 2: was like we got that one next, and then other
Speaker 2: times we struggled a little bit more with it, like
Speaker 2: eight Green you know where we you know, I felt
Speaker 2: like I alway need to do something else at it.
Speaker 2: But that's that's kind of how works. So so much
Speaker 2: of what's cool out there is you know, Joe Hancock
Speaker 2: behind the behind the steering wheel. So he was a
Speaker 2: massive asset to this.
Speaker 3: All right, let's close this out with a couple a
Speaker 3: couple of music questions. See what's your favorite music to
Speaker 3: shape to?
Speaker 2: Uh? Man, it depends on what I'm shaping. If it's
Speaker 2: like an aggressive type feature, then it's like Hell's Bells
Speaker 2: a CVC. If it's a tamer thing, then it's like
Speaker 2: Springsteen Tunnel of Love.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like that's so it depends on what I'm shaping.
Speaker 2: I sort of go into something.
Speaker 1: And the music matches what you're what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And sometimes I'm totally wrong.
Speaker 3: It's like the baby you say, Hell's Bells, It just
Speaker 3: like rins through your head.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And sometimes you're wrong.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's like, Oh, I might have gone too far
Speaker 2: on that bunker. What the hell was I thinking? I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have put on Hell's Bells, I should have put
Speaker 2: on Tunnel a Love but yeah, it's sort of what
Speaker 2: I'm about to shape.
Speaker 4: It dictates the song and then.
Speaker 1: Favorite song.
Speaker 3: Golf course comp like where like this golf course feels
Speaker 3: like this song.
Speaker 1: If you have one, hmmm, I can give you one
Speaker 1: of mine. Yeah, I mean I wrote.
Speaker 3: This article once and Garrett was like, it is way
Speaker 3: too n niche for nobody's going.
Speaker 1: To care about this. Yeah, I wrote, I wrote this out.
Speaker 3: I remember, I was so excited about it, and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't think we should publish.
Speaker 1: So of course nobody's played.
Speaker 3: East Hampton, I've always said, is like Band on the
Speaker 3: Run because they have farmland, Like there's a farm section,
Speaker 3: there's like this in between section, and then you go
Speaker 3: into like a pine like a like a mature sand
Speaker 3: dune forest for nine holes, and it's like the three
Speaker 3: stages of Band on the Run.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good complimation, Like none.
Speaker 3: Of them really feel the coldest, but at the end
Speaker 3: you're like, you know what that worked? That worked for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A day in the life, I mean with the Beatles,
Speaker 2: that's another kind of three. Pamir is a good one
Speaker 2: for that, Like Pamier is another place where you have
Speaker 2: like parkland, and then it goes to Heathland and then
Speaker 2: it goes to links Dunelands.
Speaker 4: So yeah, oh man, this is this is tough.
Speaker 2: I mean, I I I guess another one I have
Speaker 2: is like Posita Tiempo.
Speaker 3: You could do like Hotel California, because it's just like
Speaker 3: the song, like you're it's really pleasant and then it
Speaker 3: just like ends just wailing out. Yes, like like the
Speaker 3: last half of the song, you're like, holy shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe I guess for Broom, maybe it's like uh uh,
Speaker 2: you know, born to Run or something I don't know,
Speaker 2: or like smells like teen.
Speaker 1: Spirit because yeah it starts it starts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it starts hot or like I mean it
Speaker 2: smells like Teen Spirit was the first song on the
Speaker 2: you know, on the album there. So it comes out,
Speaker 2: it comes out swinging.
Speaker 1: Like I never know if it should be.
Speaker 3: You compare it like album or song, right, yeah, like
Speaker 3: because you could do. You could get like if you
Speaker 3: got really into it like you do the album. It's
Speaker 3: just like you're narrowing the audience.
Speaker 4: Yeah we've lost everybody already. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Like I mean, there's like Nebraska. I'm a big
Speaker 2: Springsteen guy, so like huge, Oh yeah, I got a
Speaker 2: Springsty shirt on right now. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: can see it, but I'm always I'm always sporting.
Speaker 1: Spring I'll hold back my boss.
Speaker 4: I know, I know I'm in the minority there.
Speaker 1: Just I'm a boss. This overrated guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Cody is. Cody is too. Cody gives me sh
Speaker 4: about the Boston.
Speaker 1: Cody is a big music guy.
Speaker 2: He is, he is, but he's not He's not a
Speaker 2: Springsteen guy for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know like some of the more like
Speaker 2: the you know, the low key places I always think about,
Speaker 2: like Nebraska, just really austere and really basic, I mean
Speaker 2: recorded on a you know, a shitty recorder, and you know,
Speaker 2: I just think of like some of the some of
Speaker 2: the kind of the you know, the Scottish, the Scottish
Speaker 2: places like a Pamer or something where.
Speaker 4: It's really austere and just really really solid.
Speaker 2: But nothing nothing in your face, nothing big, It's just
Speaker 2: it's just in its ross elements. So I'll have to
Speaker 2: think more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you got time.
Speaker 3: The good news is, you know, I know I've got
Speaker 3: We've gotten very narrow here.
Speaker 1: Anybody that's listening.
Speaker 3: At an hour and twenty six, yeah, is in the bucket.
Speaker 3: So Mike, thank you for joining us chatting. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to see both your career and UH and Broom Savage evolve.
Speaker 3: And congratulations on UH on getting getting your dream built.
Speaker 1: It's amazing accomplishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks man, appreciate it, Appreciate you having me on
Speaker 2: and hopefully we did it again.
Speaker 4: This was fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, that does it for another edition of
Speaker 3: the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to PJ Clark for
Speaker 3: editing and producing this podcast while he was on the
Speaker 3: road in UH in Phoenix for the Champions Tour event.
Speaker 3: If you want to learn more about that, check out
Speaker 3: a shotgun started the latest episode there. We will be
Speaker 3: back later this week with another episode. I'm probably going
Speaker 3: to do something a little different for that one. We
Speaker 3: are we have our company off site this week, so
Speaker 3: we have everybody in our company in one spot. I
Speaker 3: might do a little question question session with some of
Speaker 3: our team members. So big thanks, and we'll be back
Speaker 3: Thursday with another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.