Speaker 1: The best way I know how to describe Ben Crenshaw
Speaker 1: is simply say, look at our company name. Tell me
Speaker 1: one other major championship winner with an unknown golf course
Speaker 1: architect who would form a partnership and call it by
Speaker 1: the other guy's name first.
Speaker 2: It didn't happen. It wouldn't happen, so.
Speaker 3: He has every right to be up first.
Speaker 2: I followed Bill. I'm gladly followed Bill.
Speaker 3: With another log on the five nobody is getting tied.
Speaker 2: This is the fire Pit with Matt Chanella.
Speaker 3: The sixth episode of The fire Pit is part one
Speaker 3: of the people, places and things that had an influence
Speaker 3: on what Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw have become as architects,
Speaker 3: How and when they met, who was involved, and why
Speaker 3: it works. We start with suecoor Bill's wife.
Speaker 2: I say, Ben Crenshaw.
Speaker 4: You say, because that is my connection with Ben. But
Speaker 4: I really think of Bill and Ben as brothers. I
Speaker 4: swear they came from the same mother because they are
Speaker 4: so similar in temperament, They're so similar in graciousness they are.
Speaker 4: They don't pay attention to things together. They pay attention
Speaker 4: to things together, and I think they make each other better.
Speaker 3: Next, we hear from Julie Crenshaw, Ben's wife.
Speaker 5: I say Bill.
Speaker 3: Coore and you say genius.
Speaker 6: Reminded me a lot of Ben. Very quiet, very polite,
Speaker 6: soft spoken. I can see why they have a lot
Speaker 6: in common. They are kindred spirits.
Speaker 7: I can tell you.
Speaker 3: That in this era of golf course architecture, I believe
Speaker 3: Core and Crenshaw are the most consistent and thoughtful builders
Speaker 3: of the fun and fair adventure we seek. As avid amateurs,
Speaker 3: they move very little dirt and yet extract so much
Speaker 3: soul from the land that they leave behind. I've been
Speaker 3: fortunate enough to chronicle the development of almost half of
Speaker 3: their portfolio. I've heard them preach restraint, celebrate strategy, and
Speaker 3: I've watched them walk raw land in search of the
Speaker 3: ideal routing. Bill is always out front, while Ben tends
Speaker 3: to fall behind, stopping on occasion to ask questions and
Speaker 3: flush out the options. As they build their thirtieth course
Speaker 3: in their thirty fifth year of being partners. Their body
Speaker 3: of work includes sand Hills, Friar's Head, and Colorado Golf Club.
Speaker 3: Some of my favorites are Lost Farm, Caboc Cliffs, and
Speaker 3: Bandon Trails. Some of their restoration work on Iconic ves
Speaker 3: includes Cyprus Point Seminal and of course Pinehurst Number two,
Speaker 3: the Sheep Ranch, the sixth course at Bandon Dune's and
Speaker 3: their third for Mike Kaiser's Oregon Resort, opens on June first.
Speaker 3: Julie and Sue will be used throughout this episode, as
Speaker 3: well as Rod Whitman, a longtime associate of core In
Speaker 3: Crenshaw who has almost ten courses to his credit, one
Speaker 3: of which is Cabot Links in Nova Scotia. We also
Speaker 3: hear from Scottie Sayers, Crenshaw's childhood friend and the one
Speaker 3: who makes sure this partnership is also a business. Did
Speaker 3: you ever think you'd be getting together on Skype to
Speaker 3: have a conversation reflecting on your career and the beginning
Speaker 3: of what has become core In Crenshaw.
Speaker 6: Rat.
Speaker 5: If it weren't for Julie and my wife Sue, we
Speaker 5: wouldn't be here today.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that Julie Crenshaw confirms.
Speaker 6: They're like brothers. They how they think they both don't
Speaker 6: have emails.
Speaker 2: You know that.
Speaker 6: You can get them to call, you can't get them
Speaker 6: to text, but.
Speaker 2: They do it the old school way. Everything about them
Speaker 2: is old school.
Speaker 3: Bill Corr was an only child raised by a single
Speaker 3: mom who worked multiple jobs to support the family and
Speaker 3: any of young William's dreams and aspirations. Sue Corr shares
Speaker 3: some perspective.
Speaker 4: I think that he had the most amazing mama on
Speaker 4: the planet. She just encouraged him to be the best
Speaker 4: at whatever whatever he wanted. He came home and said
Speaker 4: he wanted to be an astronaut, she'd support that be
Speaker 4: the best that you could be whatever he wanted to be.
Speaker 4: I'm just sorry that I never met her, because she
Speaker 4: raised an incredible man.
Speaker 3: As for designing backyard golf holes, if his mom was home,
Speaker 3: he told me the routing tended to go around the house.
Speaker 3: If she wasn't home, he often went over the house.
Speaker 2: Well, at you're right.
Speaker 5: I grew up out in rural North Carolina and my
Speaker 5: next door neighbor played golf and he introduced me to it,
Speaker 5: and there he was really the only close neighbors. So
Speaker 5: we would play around through the our backyard to his.
Speaker 8: Backyard, to the mailbox, and out across the dirt road
Speaker 8: where we lived, and even in through the corn fields
Speaker 8: when they were cloud under, so we'd make up our
Speaker 8: own holes and things but I would caddy for him
Speaker 8: and on some very special occasion he would go to Pinehurst.
Speaker 5: So he is the one who introduced me to Pinehurst.
Speaker 5: And then later when I was in high school and
Speaker 5: then of.
Speaker 9: Course in college, I'd go there a far more regular basis,
Speaker 9: But at they were fun times and there were, you know,
Speaker 9: the cornerstone of what I my introduction to golf and
Speaker 9: my introduction to what interesting golf architecture was all about.
Speaker 3: Sue Corp shares some perspective.
Speaker 4: Bill wasn't raised with a father, and his parents were
Speaker 4: divorced when Bill was quite young, and there were lots
Speaker 4: of men who took over that position and really cared
Speaker 4: for Bill and really nurtured Bill. And his mother was
Speaker 4: smart enough and confidence enough to encourage all of that.
Speaker 3: As for Ben Crenshaw, he grew up at Austin, Texas,
Speaker 3: navigating Lyons Municipal and the old Austin Country Club, which
Speaker 3: was a Perry Maxwell design.
Speaker 7: The places where I was playing started me on kind
Speaker 7: of thinking about golf courses. One of my first sort
Speaker 7: of road trips was Brackenridge Park in San Antonio to
Speaker 7: play in the Texas State Junior. It's an old tillinghas
Speaker 7: course very tight. I mean there were a couple of
Speaker 7: holes there you had to thread the needle big on trees.
Speaker 7: But it started me thinking about different golf holes. And
Speaker 7: then when I started traveling, I said, yeah, I've been
Speaker 7: treated to some wonderful examples. So I just always I
Speaker 7: was always kind of fascinated about golf courses and how
Speaker 7: they were laid out. And then when I went to
Speaker 7: Boston when I was sixteen to play in the National
Speaker 7: Junior at the country Club, it.
Speaker 2: Just blew my mind.
Speaker 7: I wanted to know who built the courses, who was
Speaker 7: and you know, the organization's history of the game, the players.
Speaker 7: I just from then on, I just started studying everything
Speaker 7: I could find.
Speaker 3: Although Bill Core was intrigued by the concept of golf
Speaker 3: course designed, it was Pete Due who inspired more digging.
Speaker 5: I knew I like certain courses and certain yeah things,
Speaker 5: and I tried to figure out why, but I really
Speaker 5: wasn't that much into it. And when I saw what
Speaker 5: Pete was doing, a little public course called O Call
Speaker 5: in high Point, I just said, gee, this is different.
Speaker 5: I wonder how you do this? And I was I
Speaker 5: was about to get out of the army. I was single.
Speaker 5: I didn't need any more money. Fortunately, working for Pete,
Speaker 5: you weren't going to make much.
Speaker 9: But whatever it took to you know, I took myself alive,
Speaker 9: and so yeah, that's how you get to that that.
Speaker 5: I began to basically just badger Pete. I thought I'd
Speaker 5: like to see how this is done. And in the
Speaker 5: beginning it was with the intention I'd just like to
Speaker 5: see how you actually create one of these things. And
Speaker 5: I was always thinking after that, I'll go back to
Speaker 5: graduate school.
Speaker 2: Well obviously that didn't happen either, but.
Speaker 9: It's for my whole My whole career has been a
Speaker 9: very circuitous, almost in so many ways, unplanned journey.
Speaker 3: As for meetings, Jack Nicholas at the nineteen seventy one
Speaker 3: US Open and Marion ben Crenshaw had what you'd call
Speaker 3: a spontaneous plant.
Speaker 7: I was changing my shoes in the locker room and
Speaker 7: somehow Jack walked in by himself, and I said, oh
Speaker 7: my god, here's my chance.
Speaker 2: I've got to go got to go meet.
Speaker 7: Himself, following him upstairs, and it was a restroom up there,
Speaker 7: so I said, oh god, I got him there. So
Speaker 7: I went to the rest so I stuck out my hand,
Speaker 7: I said, Jack, and John he said, well, I'll I'll
Speaker 7: leave with him just.
Speaker 2: So. But that was my first meeting with Jack.
Speaker 7: I admired the way he played everything else, but I
Speaker 7: knew at that point he was just starting to get
Speaker 7: into golf course architecture. So I thought, well, that's that's
Speaker 7: pretty neat right there. And he ironically, you know, he
Speaker 7: worked with Pete Died at Harbortown, although minimally there. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and then he sort of knew that he was he
Speaker 7: could do both jobs as a obviously world class golfer
Speaker 7: and then obviously pursue architecture too, and he had a
Speaker 7: true love and passion for it. But Jack was you know,
Speaker 7: that's a lot to take on in a career business
Speaker 7: wise and playing. But they seemed to juggle it, like
Speaker 7: Arnold Palmer did too.
Speaker 3: After chasing down Pete Die a few times in the
Speaker 3: early seventies, Bill was watching the local news which reported
Speaker 3: Die was going to be building the Cardinal in Greensboro,
Speaker 3: North Carolina, not far from where Bill lived.
Speaker 5: They were talking about that Pete Die was going to
Speaker 5: be in town. They were going to start this golf course.
Speaker 5: Still I'm thinking he didn't even call me, you.
Speaker 10: Know, tell me anyway, drive out there and he's with
Speaker 10: a guy named John Gray who was Pete's construction form
Speaker 10: in there and associate and he just finally time sun
Speaker 10: for this guy to do.
Speaker 2: He just wanted to get rid of me and Matt.
Speaker 5: I started with a pair of hip waiters and a chainsaw.
Speaker 3: Well, Ben Crenshaw was having success on the course. Core
Speaker 3: was going course to course with Pete and Roy died,
Speaker 3: which is how he ended up in Huntsville, Texas. Is
Speaker 3: water would the course that Pete kind of left you
Speaker 3: at and said, you know you'd be the superintendent here?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Matt, that's a very kind way of putting it.
Speaker 7: He got rid of you.
Speaker 5: Peache sent me to work with his brother Roy, supposedly
Speaker 5: to help Gary grand Staff, who was the golf course superintendent,
Speaker 5: and work for Roy to help Gary.
Speaker 2: Uh Spanish water with National Well.
Speaker 3: In Huntsville, Bill met Ron Whitman, who was a Canadian
Speaker 3: going to school at sam Houston State. Bill quickly became
Speaker 3: a mentor and a friend.
Speaker 11: Well, I didn't have any money, so Bill always bought
Speaker 11: the pizza and uh, I mean we played golf. I
Speaker 11: just got to hanging out with him on the weekends
Speaker 11: at Waterwood, and you know, Bill was out there seven
Speaker 11: days a week, and uh, you know, over time we
Speaker 11: just got to play a little golf together and then
Speaker 11: and hang out and and I just loved being around him,
Speaker 11: and he would talk about golf course design, and you know,
Speaker 11: I was just trying to play golf at that time.
Speaker 11: I had no aspirations to become an architect, but the
Speaker 11: subject fascinated me, and he was very passionate about it.
Speaker 11: So that's uh. He has some old books that I
Speaker 11: could start to read and some notes that he'd made
Speaker 11: when he worked for Pete, and uh, I became fascinated
Speaker 11: with the subject. And then certainly just talking with Bill,
Speaker 11: it was, uh, it was inspired, daring to think about
Speaker 11: the old courses and golf course design in general, which
Speaker 11: I had never you know, paid much attention to.
Speaker 3: Now in the early eighties, still in Huntsville, Bill gets
Speaker 3: a call from Pete Die He needed a guy in
Speaker 3: Austin and he needed him.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 11: We were out doing some work, I think on the
Speaker 11: Ninth Green and he got a call from from Pete.
Speaker 11: Pete wanted somebody to go to Austin. And you know,
Speaker 11: as he said later, dump trucks, you know, was to
Speaker 11: watch the dump trucks dump and tell him where to
Speaker 11: dump and that sort of thing. He took the phone call,
Speaker 11: came back out and asked me if I wanted to
Speaker 11: go to work with Pete. And I just was the
Speaker 11: damn nervous. I could hardly talk. And after a little
Speaker 11: bit I certainly agreed to it, and he made the arrangements,
Speaker 11: had to rent me a car, and I and I
Speaker 11: you know, drove out to Austin that day. It will
Speaker 11: all happened very fast.
Speaker 3: So Rod is now working for Pete Dye. Bill had
Speaker 3: worked for Pete Dye, and Ben was keeping an eye
Speaker 3: on Pete Die.
Speaker 11: You know, when I was saying in Austin at the
Speaker 11: Austin Country Club, Pete would come to town and then
Speaker 11: you know, he would have visitors. I mean, Tom Kite
Speaker 11: would come out there and Ben Crenshaw would come out there,
Speaker 11: and you know, they'd walk around and try to hang
Speaker 11: out with Pete a little bit and just watch him work.
Speaker 11: And so when he did come out there, I mean,
Speaker 11: obviously I got a chance to meet him because I
Speaker 11: was part of that entourage. And you know, Pete told me,
Speaker 11: he says, you know Ben's coming out here. He says,
Speaker 11: just just listen to him and do whatever he wants.
Speaker 11: He said, So it was sort of an interesting time.
Speaker 7: I was told by Rod Whitman was Pete De's foreman,
Speaker 7: and I'd gotten to meet Rod, and I'm really interested
Speaker 7: in what he was doing. I saw Pete many times.
Speaker 7: They both made and he said, you know what, you
Speaker 7: need to meet Bill Kourr. You need you need to
Speaker 7: meet Bill Kurr. I really think that you'd like him.
Speaker 11: I would go back and forth to Huntsville every now
Speaker 11: and then and talk with Bill, and I told him
Speaker 11: that I'd met Ben, and I thought, man, this guy
Speaker 11: is just a really nice guy. He's really cool guy.
Speaker 11: He's interested in designing, and uh, you know, I just
Speaker 11: I just know that talking to Bill that I mentioned that,
Speaker 11: you know, it would be nice if he if he
Speaker 11: met him.
Speaker 3: The seeds had been planted, but before they met. A
Speaker 3: man named Dave Kerry helps get Bill his big break
Speaker 3: down on the Gulf Coast of Texas, four hours south
Speaker 3: of Huntsville.
Speaker 5: He said, look, we've known each other now for a
Speaker 5: two years. He said, I know you're the superintendent here,
Speaker 5: by I know, really what you'd like to do is
Speaker 5: be in the golf course design business. He said, this
Speaker 5: may be the chance, and he took me down Rockport
Speaker 5: Hendry Club, mentioning enough was it in the middle of
Speaker 5: building their first nine holes, and for some reason, I've
Speaker 5: never known what happened, but there were some as they
Speaker 5: say in Texas, are falling out between the owners and
Speaker 5: the golf course architect. And so they just dismissed him
Speaker 5: on the spot. But here they are, they're digging lakes,
Speaker 5: they're doing they're working in this nine holes and they've
Speaker 5: got no one in charge of their design. I guess
Speaker 5: Dave Carriacter water with you this. He takes me down there,
Speaker 5: introduces me, and so they're on the spot. They say, well,
Speaker 5: you're supposed to know something about this.
Speaker 2: We need somebody.
Speaker 5: This is the maximum you can spend and if you
Speaker 5: want the job, you got to and figure it out.
Speaker 2: And it's yours.
Speaker 9: I guess I was so naive, and so, as they say,
Speaker 9: walked into the deep end of the pool paddle around again.
Speaker 3: Even with his raw talent and ambition for architecture, Bill
Speaker 3: cor couldn't go it alone. He called upon Jerry Clark
Speaker 3: aka Screwed, who had been helping him with coursework at Waterwood.
Speaker 5: And so when Rockport came along, I said, Screage, you
Speaker 5: want you want to go?
Speaker 2: You want to go? Let me and try it, see
Speaker 2: if we can make some of this. Yeah, but I'll
Speaker 2: go with you. And so we the two of us.
Speaker 5: Go down there and and we we start working on it.
Speaker 2: Said basically, just two of us start with.
Speaker 5: And then another guy who lived there named Mike McKay
Speaker 5: who ended up working with Ben and May for years,
Speaker 5: and it actually became the nucleus or the cornerstone now
Speaker 5: of you the guys that we have today because Jerry
Speaker 5: Clark and Mike McKay trained like jimbo right and and
Speaker 5: Dave Accent and these guys who have now gone on
Speaker 5: to train all these other guys. So you can trace
Speaker 5: it right back to that. But yeah, we we finished
Speaker 5: the nine holes in Rockport. It turned out, you know,
Speaker 5: they thought it was good. We actually did a second
Speaker 5: nine holes there immediately after.
Speaker 2: So it was eighteen.
Speaker 5: The guys and I were kind of tiptoeing along, but
Speaker 5: we were I guess, I guess you could say we
Speaker 5: were officially in the golf course design builds.
Speaker 3: I asked Rod Whitman for his thoughts on Rockport, the
Speaker 3: first original Billcorp design.
Speaker 11: I loved Rockport. It was a great little setting in
Speaker 11: a small town. And yeah, every day you get up,
Speaker 11: you just want to play golf and it was a
Speaker 11: lot of fun. I could see where anybody looking at it,
Speaker 11: knowing that it was new, to say, man, that's pretty classic.
Speaker 3: Rockport was good enough to get that team some attention,
Speaker 3: but according to several potential clients, they were missing something.
Speaker 5: One most memorable story, at least to me, happened in Houston,
Speaker 5: Texas with the man who was a very successful real
Speaker 5: estate golfers had a nice, beautiful office and I guess
Speaker 5: what at the time was the tallest building in Houston.
Speaker 5: He goes Bill. He said, I've seen your golf course
Speaker 5: in Rockport. It's really good. He said, it's really good.
Speaker 5: He said, but nobody's ever heard of you. Nobody knows
Speaker 5: who you are. This business is about selling real estate.
Speaker 2: This is not so much about golf.
Speaker 5: If you walk in here tomorrow with Lay Trevenue on
Speaker 5: your arm, or Tom Watson or you know somebody like that,
Speaker 5: he said, I'll hire you until then, and he walked
Speaker 5: me over to the window of his high rise office.
Speaker 2: We looked down on the street.
Speaker 5: He said, until then, until I can walk down there
Speaker 5: on that street and call out your name and people
Speaker 5: stop to look around to see where you are, you
Speaker 5: don't get hired.
Speaker 2: So well, I don't do that.
Speaker 5: And I said, I just haven't really felt like I said, job,
Speaker 5: we got another job.
Speaker 2: We hopefully we'll get another one. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just it's just not.
Speaker 5: Something i'd really given much thought to. He said, well,
Speaker 5: if you did, who would it be?
Speaker 2: You just referred to it Matt.
Speaker 5: Ben had just won the Masters nineteen eighty four, and
Speaker 5: this probably was happening maybe the month.
Speaker 2: After that. But I didn't know Ben.
Speaker 5: But I just I'd read the articles in the magazines
Speaker 5: where Ben's talking about golf and golf architecture. I just said, well,
Speaker 5: I guess I guess there were gonna be anybody be
Speaker 5: Ben Crunchaw. The guy looked at me and he just goes, God,
Speaker 5: a mighty bill, he said, I know Ben.
Speaker 9: He said, he was a romantic and naive as you are.
Speaker 9: A few guys together would be his master.
Speaker 3: So then along comes Charlie Belair, another wealthy Texas businessman
Speaker 3: who had some land on the Gulf Coast. He wanted
Speaker 3: to have Bill cor And again a well known player,
Speaker 3: take a look, and although he still didn't know him,
Speaker 3: Bill floated the idea of Ben Crenshaw again. But Bill's
Speaker 3: first visit to that land was by himself. As for
Speaker 3: his first impressions of the potential project.
Speaker 9: Mad it wasn't gonna happen. It's just one of the
Speaker 9: worst sites you'd ever see.
Speaker 5: It went underwater, salt water, so, I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 5: gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Bill had seen enough and he left town.
Speaker 5: Charlie calls me back and he says, Bill, can you
Speaker 5: come down here. Ben Crenshaw is going to come down here.
Speaker 5: I want you guys to look at this. He was
Speaker 5: still hopeful. I knew I got down the golf coast.
Speaker 5: Ben comes over. Ben looked at the site in a
Speaker 5: nano second. You know, Robin Williams would say, no, we're
Speaker 5: not building the golf course. But that man did, at
Speaker 5: least from my side of the equation. He's the one,
Speaker 5: uh who who got us together that day. Uh we
Speaker 5: you know, we met for the first time. We ended
Speaker 5: up that afternoon going over to Rockport. It was really
Speaker 5: close and then I walked the host in the Rockport.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm walking with Ben Crunch, the Master Champion,
Speaker 5: and I'm not thinking this is just well, I hope
Speaker 5: you work the courses.
Speaker 7: And I looked at that golf course and there was
Speaker 7: there was something totally different about what I saw. It
Speaker 7: was interesting, it was natural. It looked like it sprang
Speaker 7: right out of the ground, and it had at It
Speaker 7: had a particular appeal to me, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 7: this is this guy has a really sense of feel
Speaker 7: of the atmosphere of where he's working.
Speaker 3: About this time, Crenshaw had just left IMG and had
Speaker 3: hired his childhood friend and business partner, Scotty Sayers as
Speaker 3: his manager. Sayers recalls seeing Ben when he got back
Speaker 3: to Austin.
Speaker 12: He walked into the library at his house after spending
Speaker 12: the day with Bill and Julie was in there, and
Speaker 12: I've seen him excited, but this was one of the
Speaker 12: most exciting times for him, just because he really didn't
Speaker 12: have a partner or didn't have a plan on how
Speaker 12: to get into the business.
Speaker 3: They had met, there was interest, and in Ben's mind
Speaker 3: it was a done deal.
Speaker 7: It was just unbelievable how this happened. Nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 7: Nineteen eighty five is when we decided to make a
Speaker 7: go at this, and that was the year I married Julie.
Speaker 7: So I made two really good decisions. Remember Julie when
Speaker 7: I came back and you know, I was god I
Speaker 7: was playing. I'm still going to play tournaments, I said, Julie.
Speaker 7: I made a decision. I said, I'm going to Bill
Speaker 7: Kohor and I am in a former partnership, and she said,
Speaker 7: why in the world are you doing That's a you're
Speaker 7: a player.
Speaker 2: And I said, you're going to have to trust me on.
Speaker 6: This, Julie, and I was thinking, Wow, what are you kidding?
Speaker 6: And I was like, are you sure you want to
Speaker 6: do this? You know, because he was struggling with his health,
Speaker 6: struggling with this game. We just got married. We weren't
Speaker 6: even certain he was ever going to play competitive golf again.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty five, Ben Crenshaw missed the cut in
Speaker 3: thirteen of his first nineteen tournaments. He was eventually diagnosed
Speaker 3: with what's called Graves disease, an overactive thyroid.
Speaker 6: He could not break eighty, could not putt, could not chip,
Speaker 6: could not just played terrible golf. Blamed it on stressed,
Speaker 6: lost like thirty pounds instead of Sports Illustrated putting him
Speaker 6: on the cover for when in the Masters, they were
Speaker 6: like chasing him on the golf course because he was
Speaker 6: shooting eighty and missing cuts.
Speaker 2: And it was horrible, horrible, poor.
Speaker 6: It was sad and horrible, and I mean really we
Speaker 6: had no idea if.
Speaker 2: He was going to ever compete.
Speaker 6: And so when we got married, remember they did a
Speaker 6: blood test on him and checked us. They were like,
Speaker 6: your thigh is huge. Well it was off the charts.
Speaker 6: So they gave him radioactive iodine to kill it, and
Speaker 6: they said, six weeks later, you should feel better. Six
Speaker 6: weeks to the day, he finished tied for six at
Speaker 6: the US Open at Chinnakok, and we skipped around that
Speaker 6: place like he had one the tournament. I remember Raymond
Speaker 6: winning and we were like, well.
Speaker 11: We won, you're back, you are back.
Speaker 6: Four weeks later he won the muic Open, and then
Speaker 6: he was off.
Speaker 4: So he took you know, took a gamble on getting
Speaker 4: married to me, took a gamble on Bill, and you.
Speaker 6: Know, didn't know if he was going to get better,
Speaker 6: but it all worked out and he did get better,
Speaker 6: thank goodness.
Speaker 3: So who and what gets credit for this chance encounter
Speaker 3: p Die, of course, but they couldn't have done it
Speaker 3: without Rockport Country Club.
Speaker 12: I mean, there's no question that the routing there very
Speaker 12: traditional and not much distance between the going.
Speaker 2: From the grain to the tea.
Speaker 12: Easily walkable course, very interesting, good bunker work, and it
Speaker 12: was it was early Bill.
Speaker 2: Coore, but you could sure see what was.
Speaker 12: Going to be in his mind in the future as
Speaker 12: he designed courses. And sure that's where Ben really really
Speaker 12: was hooked on Bill Kover.
Speaker 3: And they probably wouldn't have met without Rod Whitman.
Speaker 11: They just seem like they would become pretty good friends.
Speaker 11: You know, they're they're both at the same sort of
Speaker 11: age and mental stability, if I can call it that.
Speaker 11: You know, they just they just I thought that they'd
Speaker 11: get along very well and uh, you know, could talk
Speaker 11: architecture on a level that that made some sense and
Speaker 11: just had a feeling.
Speaker 3: And apparently this doesn't happen without some perseverance by Ben Crenshaw.
Speaker 7: And I'll confess I was the one who pursued Bill
Speaker 7: in the elite. Bill was not interested in partnering with anyone,
Speaker 7: and I think I don't know a month, maybe three,
Speaker 7: and went by and it got to what I may
Speaker 7: have tried to talk him into it, and it wasn't
Speaker 7: really interested. You know, I can't.
Speaker 2: I kind of you know, I can understand that.
Speaker 7: And when it finally he came around and I said,
Speaker 7: you know, maybe maybe maybe we could give this a go.
Speaker 2: It's beginning to sound like a fairy tale. You know.
Speaker 5: We met in eighty four, and then over a period
Speaker 5: of over a year, I mean significantly over a year,
Speaker 5: we would just occasionally get together or we'd have phone
Speaker 5: conversations about golf architecture.
Speaker 2: Ben would call sometimes have you ever seen this or that?
Speaker 11: You know?
Speaker 5: Of course, and thinks, but there was never really this
Speaker 5: great game plan to make this happen, and it's been
Speaker 5: has been said, he he he.
Speaker 2: He likes to take the blame, I guess for us
Speaker 2: being together. I think he pursued it. It was.
Speaker 5: To say that I don't It was just such a
Speaker 5: natural evolution. But at some point in time, man, and
Speaker 5: I can sincerely say, there wasn't this great dinner, there
Speaker 5: wasn't this great whatever, there wasn't too many beers out someplace,
Speaker 5: and then said let's do it. It just evolved and
Speaker 5: we said let's try some of this together.
Speaker 7: Fate. In retrospect, I look back on it, and Fate
Speaker 7: had a fickle hand in all this. I've had some
Speaker 7: nice things happened to me in my career. This is
Speaker 7: one of them.
Speaker 3: In Part two, which will go live in a week,
Speaker 3: we're taking this partnership all the way to send Hills
Speaker 3: in the Brea, the sand based trampoline that vaulted these
Speaker 3: guys into another atmosphere of architecture. Are you looking for
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Speaker 3: Whenever you go to linksoul dot com, just use promo
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Speaker 3: G twenty five. Thank you for listening to the fire Pit.
Speaker 3: It's produced by Alex Upeggi. It's edited by Rex Lint.
Speaker 3: The theme song is by Joe Horowitz. Please rate and
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