Speaker 1: I miss the green.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball
Speaker 2: in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a frid Egg
Speaker 1: Friday Egg, the dreaded Friday Egg, Friday Friday Bride Egg.
Speaker 2: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the golf course.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the
Speaker 1: Frida Egg Podcast. This morning, we're joined by golf course
Speaker 1: architect Jay Blasi. Jay was an integral part in the
Speaker 1: design of Chambers Bay under Robert Trent Jones Junior Design
Speaker 1: and uh now he's out on his own, recently completed
Speaker 1: a great project at Santa Ana Country Club and is
Speaker 1: a big part of the Sharp Park movement and restoration
Speaker 1: in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: Jay, welcome on, Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Andy, I'm excited to join you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it'd be fun. Hey.
Speaker 1: The thing I always like to start out with these
Speaker 1: conversations is I'm curious about how you got into golf
Speaker 1: and then how when did you kind of decide you
Speaker 1: want to be a golf course architect.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, for me, it started really early and kind of
Speaker 3: close to your heart. My dad grew up on the
Speaker 3: South Side.
Speaker 4: Of Chicago and was a caddye at Beverly.
Speaker 3: And so that's how he fell in love with the game.
Speaker 3: And he met my mom at the University of Wisconsin
Speaker 3: and they settled in Madison. And so when I was born,
Speaker 3: he brought plastic clubs to the hospital, and when he
Speaker 3: was a teacher, and so he had summers off. On
Speaker 3: his summer's off, he worked on the Grountin's crew and
Speaker 3: he befriended the superintendent, who was an influential guy in
Speaker 3: Wisconsin from the superintendent side of things with Roe Miller,
Speaker 3: and so when they built their first house, he convinced
Speaker 3: the superintendent to come over and build a putting green
Speaker 3: in the backyard. So I was lucky enough to grow
Speaker 3: up I had a putting green in my backyard.
Speaker 4: And then we moved when I was young, and we
Speaker 4: ended up with.
Speaker 3: A putting green with two little bunkers. And then we
Speaker 3: moved again, and I then we moved out to the
Speaker 3: country and had seven acres, and then we had three
Speaker 3: putting greens in the yard or three little golf holes
Speaker 3: in the yard. So my interest in the game started,
Speaker 3: you know, literally when I was born, and all through
Speaker 3: my childhood and then my interest in architecture really started
Speaker 3: very young as well. When I was four or five,
Speaker 3: We'd go out to dinner and I'd flip the place
Speaker 3: mat over and draw golf holes and cryan. And we'd
Speaker 3: take all sorts of family vacations, always driving vacations, and
Speaker 3: I just spend the whole trip in the back seat
Speaker 3: with my face plastered to the window, looking out at
Speaker 3: the fun fields and visioning golf holes and stuff. So
Speaker 3: the interest in that started started very young. And uh,
Speaker 3: and then was very fortunate that uh uh, And thank
Speaker 3: my parents again. They were really the ones who kind
Speaker 3: of gave them the push. When it was time to
Speaker 3: go to college. I had figured out that most people
Speaker 3: in golf design had gotten a degree in open escape
Speaker 3: architecture and and and so I knew that and was
Speaker 3: passionate about designing golf courses, but for some reason didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily think of it as a viable career anything. And
Speaker 3: they were the ones who kind of kicked me in
Speaker 3: the butt and said, no, you actually have you got
Speaker 3: to go for this. If you're lucky enough to find
Speaker 3: a passion life, you got to you gotta do you
Speaker 3: go into business. You know, at any time but chase
Speaker 3: your dreams or whatever. And so I went to the
Speaker 3: University of Wisconsin, got a degree in landscape architecture, and
Speaker 3: after school ended up with our teacher YouTube nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, getting to do what you
Speaker 1: love and had a passion force into your kid is
Speaker 1: probably like the most rewarding thing ever. I mean, you work,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like work, which has got to be
Speaker 1: so refreshing for you.
Speaker 3: It is, And I think that would be one thing
Speaker 3: that I would you know, whether it's golf, architecture or
Speaker 3: anything else. I mean, I think, you know, as a
Speaker 3: as a country, as a as a society, would be
Speaker 3: far better served if we really encouraged all of our
Speaker 3: young people to find a passion and chase that. Because
Speaker 3: if you're passionate about something, you're going to be good
Speaker 3: at it, and you're going to put You're going to
Speaker 3: put in the extra time and effort, and you know,
Speaker 3: everything is better. You know, when when somebody's passionate about something,
Speaker 3: the outcomes are always are always better. So U yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel fortunate. I pinch myself every day that I
Speaker 3: get to do this, and I wish more people had
Speaker 3: the opportunity to follow their dreams and chase their dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: I imagine how long until you move out you're in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, you can't have a putting green in your
Speaker 1: back yard now, I bet, But like, how long you
Speaker 1: know when you're going to get your putting green, your
Speaker 1: own putting green.
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are no.
Speaker 3: I don't have any putting green here in the Bay Area,
Speaker 3: that's for sure. I feel very fortunate to have a
Speaker 3: roof and four walls. That the cost of living out here.
Speaker 3: But I'm lucky enough that if if I hop in
Speaker 3: the car and go twenty minutes, I get to make
Speaker 3: use of the Stanford Practice facilities. So that's a pretty
Speaker 3: good putting green backyard situation for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: So growing up, did you have to take care of
Speaker 1: the putting green? Did you learn some like agronomy from that?
Speaker 1: And like who who had to mow the green?
Speaker 3: Well? I would mow it. My dad would know it.
Speaker 3: I have a younger brother, he would mow it. I
Speaker 3: probably was not as good or in tune with the
Speaker 3: maintenance side of things as I should have been when
Speaker 3: I was little. But interestingly enough, yeah, my dad had
Speaker 3: this really old cool mower that I think he had
Speaker 3: gotten somehow on some kind of auction or something and whatnot,
Speaker 3: and we'd know it, we'd mow it and whatnot. I
Speaker 3: did get to lay out the first little court. You know,
Speaker 3: when I talk about the backyard putting green, this is
Speaker 3: nothing too fancy.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a.
Speaker 3: Small, little residential lot. But we made up a eighteen
Speaker 3: whole course. You know, the longest shot was fifteen yards,
Speaker 3: but we made up a little eighteen whole course in
Speaker 3: the backyard. So that was probably my first layout, was
Speaker 3: laying out the eighteen old course, and then we made
Speaker 3: up a little scorecard and we'd always had little competitions
Speaker 3: in the backyard. It's a good way to grow up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. My buddy.
Speaker 1: I had a really good buddy growing up that lived
Speaker 1: up the street and we both, you know.
Speaker 2: We'd play golf like all summer long together.
Speaker 1: But when we weren't at the course we were playing,
Speaker 1: we'd play front yard with football golf and like, thank God,
Speaker 1: you know, God bless our neighbors because we would we
Speaker 1: had all.
Speaker 2: These different holes.
Speaker 1: You know, the street was a water hazard, and we'd
Speaker 1: play across into people's yards and you know, the trees
Speaker 1: were the holes, and I mean it was so much fun.
Speaker 1: But you know it was you start to design kind
Speaker 1: of holes like, oh, this one's a dog like left
Speaker 1: like and you got a you know, the different tough
Speaker 1: features of it. You have to lay up sometimes if
Speaker 1: you couldn't carry the carry the street. So it was
Speaker 1: so fun when you're you know, I wish you could
Speaker 1: go back to that.
Speaker 2: Almost.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've done the same thing and it's great fun. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what's better than that? Growing up like that as a kid.
Speaker 3: I had a really fun thing happened, you know, by
Speaker 3: just by happenstance. My next door neighbor, who I a
Speaker 3: number of times as a as a six year old,
Speaker 3: was taking gibbots out of his yard, you know, And
Speaker 3: here I am, you know, twenty eight thirty years later,
Speaker 3: I'm working on Central World back up in northern Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: and it was time to kind of make a pitch
Speaker 3: to the board of directors at Centry Insurance who were
Speaker 3: going to approve the project. And in walks my former
Speaker 3: next door neighbor, who now you know, he's ahead of
Speaker 3: a now he's he became the head of an energy
Speaker 3: company and he's on the board of directors and he
Speaker 3: looks and he lights up like a candle, and I
Speaker 3: look at him and he just puts his arm around
Speaker 3: me and he looks to the rest of the board.
Speaker 4: He goes.
Speaker 3: The last time I saw Jay Pozzi, he was hitting
Speaker 3: golf balls out of my backyard. Yeah, so it comes
Speaker 3: full circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's uh, it was, you know, thank god.
Speaker 1: If any of my neighbors are listening, they got to
Speaker 1: you know, they they let me and my buddy just
Speaker 1: just hack divots out of their front yard all the time.
Speaker 2: So so, uh, yeah, I gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: I uh, I'm not a big the biggest Jones family fan. Uh,
Speaker 1: having played a lot of their courses, I I disagree
Speaker 1: with a lot of their principles. And I'm curious from
Speaker 1: you working on the inside, you know, tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what it's like to work for rt
Speaker 1: J two and and kind of how the whole design
Speaker 1: process works with a with a you know, one of
Speaker 1: the biggest architectural firms in the in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think you know, to touch on your
Speaker 3: comments first about you know, the Jones family and design philosophies.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to I recognized. You know, when
Speaker 3: you when you talk about the family, there really are
Speaker 3: kind of three different parts to that that tree, right,
Speaker 3: So you've got RTJ Senior, uh and and then you've
Speaker 3: got the two sons, Uh, Bobby, rt J two and Reeve.
Speaker 3: So I think it's important to make sure that you know,
Speaker 3: they're all kind of uh it be it's easy to
Speaker 3: kind of lump them all together, but but in reality,
Speaker 3: they're each their own entity, right. So I never had
Speaker 3: the chance to meet rtjuh Senior. I know some of
Speaker 3: the you know, many of the people in the rt
Speaker 3: J two office obviously, UH. And Bobby will be you know,
Speaker 3: tells lots of stories about his dad and and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I never had a chance to meet him. And
Speaker 3: I've really spent very little time been in the same
Speaker 3: room with Reese, but really haven't spent any time with him.
Speaker 3: So uh. In terms of my experience at r t
Speaker 3: J too, it was it was a great experience. And
Speaker 3: that you know, I was a kid right out of
Speaker 3: you know, right out of college, and you get the
Speaker 3: opportunity to work at, like you say, one of the bigger,
Speaker 3: more well known design firms in the world, and you
Speaker 3: just get exposed to so much. I mean, there were
Speaker 3: projects all over the world. They came in all sorts
Speaker 3: of different shapes and sizes, So you were exposed to,
Speaker 3: you know, a municipal project that were required a RFP
Speaker 3: and an RFQ, So you got exposed to that kind
Speaker 3: of process and what goes into trying to win a
Speaker 3: job that way. And at the same time, then another
Speaker 3: project was going to be a private club that was
Speaker 3: privately owned by a billionaire, right, So you're getting to
Speaker 3: see different ends of the spectrum from that side of things.
Speaker 3: The sites that came across, I mean, there would be
Speaker 3: sites that were really special and others that were not
Speaker 3: special at all. You'd see, you know, uh, whether it
Speaker 3: was something in Asia that was a dead flat, you know,
Speaker 3: the rice paddy, and then uh, something else in Asia
Speaker 3: that was you know, the side of a mountain.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then and then you'd see all you know, so
Speaker 3: you got to see uh and got exposed to everything.
Speaker 3: And then uh, you know, even in the golf design world,
Speaker 3: even the big firms, you know what you call the
Speaker 3: big firms, every day we only had a half a
Speaker 3: dozen people, you know. Uh, So then you get to
Speaker 3: learn about each of those people and and they each
Speaker 3: have a different background and story, and they kind of
Speaker 3: have their own little design philosophy or or things that
Speaker 3: tendencies that they like to do on the projects that
Speaker 3: they work on. So, you know, even if you don't
Speaker 3: agree one hundred percent with with each of with past
Speaker 3: work or each of the design philosophies, it was a
Speaker 3: wonderful uh opportunity and ex experience and great exposure to
Speaker 3: a wide variety of things. Part of the golf business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine the big firm allows you so many
Speaker 1: opportunities to whether it's not even working on but getting
Speaker 1: to just see great you know, some of the best
Speaker 1: courses you know, and as well as you know getting
Speaker 1: you know, the volume of work and the volume of
Speaker 1: projects is so high that you get inundated so much
Speaker 1: quickly as a young kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think coming right out of school, it was,
Speaker 3: like I said, it was a great experience. You know,
Speaker 3: my first couple of years there, I didn't you know,
Speaker 3: I was assisting other people, so I wasn't playing a
Speaker 3: real creative role in any any project. But you know,
Speaker 3: when when you see when when the you know, whether
Speaker 3: it was Bobby or somebody who was doing business development,
Speaker 3: went out, they took a trip to Europe, and they
Speaker 3: come back and they say, hey, I met with this guy,
Speaker 3: and here's here's the topo map for this site, you know,
Speaker 3: and and then somebody in the office puts together put
Speaker 3: together a preliminary routing just to see what could fit
Speaker 3: on the site, or a preliminary grading plan. And then
Speaker 3: you know, if my job then those first couple of
Speaker 3: years was to uh, you know, trace that or draw
Speaker 3: it up pretty or or enter it into the computer
Speaker 3: or whatever. You know, that's just that's an opportunity. You know,
Speaker 3: how many uh, twenty two year olds get the opportunity
Speaker 3: to spend six hours looking at the topo map and
Speaker 3: routing and trying to understand. And so what I would
Speaker 3: do is I would I would do whatever I was
Speaker 3: supposed to be doing, which is, you know, drawing up
Speaker 3: somebody else's idea. And then I'd take that same topo
Speaker 3: map and take it home at night and my own
Speaker 3: force and do my own thing. And then I'd bring
Speaker 3: it in and share it with whoever I was working
Speaker 3: with and say, hey, you know, give me some feedback
Speaker 3: on this, you know, So again just kind of great
Speaker 3: exposure all the way around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, what would you say you learned most over
Speaker 1: during your time there.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I again, I think it was you know,
Speaker 3: it was probably not any one lesson, but that there
Speaker 3: were just exposure to different things, like, you know, exposure
Speaker 3: to the RFP process for public projects and meeting with
Speaker 3: clients from all around the world and different cultures and
Speaker 3: different backgrounds. And one thing that Bobby pointed out one
Speaker 3: day we were on site that there's something that I
Speaker 3: take with me and still think about a lot. As
Speaker 3: we were out there talking about, you know, a certain
Speaker 3: golf hole, and you know, he was asking me to
Speaker 3: walk in through my thoughts on something and and and
Speaker 3: then he said, well, you know, it's important to remember
Speaker 3: that people see things differently. Just because you and I
Speaker 3: are standing next to each other looking at the same
Speaker 3: thing doesn't mean that we see it the same way.
Speaker 3: And so it's really important to be really good with
Speaker 3: communication and make sure that you're you're verbalizing and you're talking,
Speaker 3: and you're working with whoever you're you're working with on
Speaker 3: the project, whether it's the owner or another designer or
Speaker 3: the contractor or whoever, to make sure that you really
Speaker 3: communicate well and understand what they're seeing. Don't just assume
Speaker 3: that because you're standing next to each other looking at
Speaker 3: the same thing, that you see the same thing. So
Speaker 3: that's something that that I took away and I use
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that's like when when people get
Speaker 1: to walk with an architects and I see it. You know,
Speaker 1: when I've I've played with I've gotten the opportunity to
Speaker 1: play with some architects, is like, you know, they just
Speaker 1: see they see things in such a different way. And
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I'm pretty well read and
Speaker 1: I see things in certain ways, but you know, they
Speaker 1: they and being able to communicate that to someone is
Speaker 1: so tough because a lot of times, like the person
Speaker 1: you're dealing with on a on a project from whether
Speaker 1: it be a club side or an owner's side, isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily as well read and don't understand you know, the
Speaker 1: principles behind architecture.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that that is so true, and you see that
Speaker 3: on it. You know, I see that on every project
Speaker 3: I work on, and it just becomes more and more
Speaker 3: clear over time, and it makes sense. You know, if
Speaker 3: somebody we're trying to explain to me, you know the
Speaker 3: details of the you know, the wiring in the house.
Speaker 3: You know, I wouldn't understand what they're talking about, and
Speaker 3: they could be eloquent and and walk walk me through
Speaker 3: at a basic level, and I may or may not
Speaker 3: get it right. But you know, as a golf architect, yeah,
Speaker 3: I go out and I, you know, look at an
Speaker 3: existing golf hole and I can immediately right in my
Speaker 3: mind see what I might want it to be, or
Speaker 3: or see an alternative. Or if you're looking at vacant land,
Speaker 3: you know, you can go out there and you can
Speaker 3: see right away how how you might want certain things
Speaker 3: to unfold. But the ability to try to communicate that
Speaker 3: and walk people through that is it's an important skill
Speaker 3: and it's a it's a challenging exercise. I think when
Speaker 3: we were working on Santa Ana over the last few years,
Speaker 3: we would, uh, you know, I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time with the members kind of walking through what the
Speaker 3: what the vision is, what the plans were, and then
Speaker 3: we'd have like a construction walk through, you know. So
Speaker 3: we would be in the middle of construction and Friday afternoon,
Speaker 3: we'd invite the members out. We'd go walk around and
Speaker 3: I'd walk them through, Okay, here we are, We're on
Speaker 3: the first hole. We're on the left hand side. We're
Speaker 3: starting to shape a bunker over there. The green's going
Speaker 3: to be up ahead, and this is what we're trying
Speaker 3: to set up. And you'd walk people through that and
Speaker 3: then say are there any questions? And somebody would say
Speaker 3: is there going to be a bunker, and I'd say, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: actually I just told you we're actually standing in the
Speaker 3: bunker right here. Oh I couldn't see that. You know,
Speaker 3: looking looking at dirt is really really hard hard for people.
Speaker 3: And as soon as the grass goes down, now all
Speaker 3: of a sudden kind of the aha moment comes, Oh,
Speaker 3: now I understand what you were telling me. But sometimes
Speaker 3: it's it's really tough along the way to uh, you know,
Speaker 3: for people who don't do this all day every day
Speaker 3: to kind of see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the course I play at in Chicago. When I
Speaker 1: say I play at, I've played there like three times
Speaker 1: this year. But to old Donald Ross and all of
Speaker 1: our greens are like so small compared to what their
Speaker 1: original design was. And there they're to small ovals and
Speaker 1: circles because of irrigation and maintenance things, and you know,
Speaker 1: it just happened over time. But you know, and then
Speaker 1: they put in these sprinklers and you see sprinklers on
Speaker 1: where the green should be and even trees on it
Speaker 1: where and I, you know, I texted my buddies, I
Speaker 1: took some aerial shots with my drone and then you know,
Speaker 1: photoshopped over them like where the green should be. And they,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody really knows what you're you know, they
Speaker 1: look at and they're like, oh, this guy's just crazy.
Speaker 2: But then when you play with them and you walk
Speaker 2: and you show them, it's like, look at this where
Speaker 2: this green should go.
Speaker 1: And then look imagine this pin, Like imagine how this
Speaker 1: pin completely changes the whole and how when you get
Speaker 1: these greens over close to the bunkers, how much more
Speaker 1: of a challenge it is. And it's not necessarily even
Speaker 1: just the pinnable surface. It's the stuff that's not pinnable
Speaker 1: that makes the ball roll off the green ten yards.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure that they would be uh that
Speaker 3: you could talk to them for months and months and months,
Speaker 3: But if you snuck out in the middle of the
Speaker 3: night and mow down the area in question to something
Speaker 3: close to green height, they'd probably see it a lot,
Speaker 3: a lot easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, hoping they'd do something that at this fall.
Speaker 1: But so you know, on the subject, you know, what
Speaker 1: do you think went wrong with golf course architecture?
Speaker 2: And not to say.
Speaker 1: There weren't any good projects, but with this dearth of
Speaker 1: projects that you know, end up now being just you know,
Speaker 1: kind of sores on the golf community.
Speaker 2: From like nineteen sixty to two thousand.
Speaker 3: And five, well, I think a couple of things. So
Speaker 3: first I would I might have a little bit different
Speaker 3: time frame because I think that probably in the mid
Speaker 3: nineties there at least started to be a lot a
Speaker 3: lot of better stuff that started to come about. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if you'd got you know, from ninety
Speaker 3: five to two thousand and five, sure, there were dozens
Speaker 3: of golf courtre maybe even hundreds of golf courses, but
Speaker 3: people spent a lot of time and money and that
Speaker 3: aren't very special. But there also were some that are
Speaker 3: pretty special. So I'm not sure you want to totally
Speaker 3: lump them all together, but I think to me, there's
Speaker 3: probably three things. The first thing to keep in mind
Speaker 3: was that that kind of coincided with technology advances in
Speaker 3: terms of earth moving, in terms of agronomy, so all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, whereas in the early nineteen hundreds, a
Speaker 3: golf course was pretty much built where a golf course
Speaker 3: should be built, right, A group of people would get
Speaker 3: together and they'd say, hey, we're interested in forming a
Speaker 3: golf club, and they'd go out and they'd find the
Speaker 3: appropriate land because they didn't have the ability to create
Speaker 3: their own environment, right, so they had to find an
Speaker 3: environment that was suitable for golf, and so the land
Speaker 3: was better. You know, there weren't golf carts, you know,
Speaker 3: So now you're laying out a golf course that's walkable,
Speaker 3: and you're trying to lay one out that doesn't require
Speaker 3: earth moving. So now fast forward to the sixties, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, we're building golf courses proally where
Speaker 3: they don't belong. We're building them in swamps and deserts
Speaker 3: and mountain sides, and all of a sudden, we've got
Speaker 3: golf carts and we've got big bulldozers. So now if
Speaker 3: the environment doesn't work for us, we'll create our own.
Speaker 3: And if the parcel doesn't work, well, we can piecemeal
Speaker 3: a couple of them together and play a hole and
Speaker 3: drive two hundred yards and play another hole. So those
Speaker 3: are some of the things that probably went awry. The
Speaker 3: other thing is that the reason for building a golf
Speaker 3: course probably changed. You know, back in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: people got together and they built a golf course because
Speaker 3: they wanted to play off. The vast majority of courses
Speaker 3: probably from nineteen sixty one, we're probably built for a
Speaker 3: reason other than golf, whether that was to sell real
Speaker 3: estate or fill hotel rooms and be an amenity for
Speaker 3: some kind of a resort. So with those things in mind,
Speaker 3: the reasoning for having a golf course was different. That
Speaker 3: led to, in my opinion, what is very troubling, and
Speaker 3: that's just a ton of artificial features. Right, So all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, we're using the bulldozer to craft a
Speaker 3: new landscape, and we're building a bunch of artificial lakes,
Speaker 3: and we're plant and flowers and planting trees everywhere. And
Speaker 3: now we've got golf carts, so we start putting in
Speaker 3: seven miles of concrete ribbons all over the place. So
Speaker 3: all the stuff that takes away from from great golf
Speaker 3: and all the stuff that we love about the golf
Speaker 3: from the early ninety teen hundreds, you know, we're kind
Speaker 3: of kind of did the opposite for a big period
Speaker 3: of time there, and now we're kind of at a
Speaker 3: very interesting time in golf architecture that we've got a
Speaker 3: lot of wonderful projects that really are are you know,
Speaker 3: kind of recapturing the essence of the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 3: where somebody's building a golf course for to build a
Speaker 3: special golf course because people want to play golf. And
Speaker 3: at the same time, then there's still also a number.
Speaker 4: Of projects where people are building a golf course to.
Speaker 3: Full hotel rooms and to sell real estate. So you've
Speaker 3: kind of got this interesting dichotomy that's going on.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, what do you you say?
Speaker 1: You know, I think one of the things I think
Speaker 1: about a lot is all these golf courses that were
Speaker 1: you know, they aren't you know, they aren't the best
Speaker 1: golf courses, But what happens to them in the future,
Speaker 1: Like how can we you know, are they can they
Speaker 1: be fixed? And can they be made into something that's
Speaker 1: good for the game and a good golf course for
Speaker 1: people to play every day?
Speaker 2: And how do you go about doing that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think it's an interesting question. And like
Speaker 3: everything with golf, it's site specific, right, So the right
Speaker 3: solution on site A is not the right solution at
Speaker 3: site B, and the right solution in city A might
Speaker 3: not be the right solution in city B. But we're
Speaker 3: definitely at a time in golf where, you know, we
Speaker 3: have a lot more courses closing than opening. And what's
Speaker 3: interesting to me is the ones that are closing aren't
Speaker 3: always the worst golf courses, right, which is tragic, But
Speaker 3: it seems one thing that I've certainly noticed is that
Speaker 3: there's so many, like you said, usually golf courses that
Speaker 3: were built from nineteen sixty on or renovated from nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty on. That just leaves so much to be desired,
Speaker 3: and that's really a shame. And so I'm cautiously optimistic
Speaker 3: that over the next twenty years, many of those golf
Speaker 3: courses that you know, one of my favorite things to
Speaker 3: do is to go look on Google Earth, right, you
Speaker 3: could just go around and go check out different golf
Speaker 3: courses all over the world or all over the country,
Speaker 3: and there are so many golf courses that might be
Speaker 3: in a good location, in a good city, in a
Speaker 3: good area, and then you go look at the golf
Speaker 3: course and every single hole, you know, the green is
Speaker 3: the same size oval. There's a bunker short left, there's
Speaker 3: a bunker short right. You know, there's usually one fairway
Speaker 3: bunker out there. Everything's been planted with trees over the
Speaker 3: last forty years, so you know, you know that you're
Speaker 3: just hitting the same shot over and over again. You
Speaker 3: get up on every tee and keep it between the trees,
Speaker 3: and you hit into every green and it's you.
Speaker 4: Know, avoid the hazards right.
Speaker 3: And left and get it out of the green and
Speaker 3: stay below the whole. But those are golf courses that
Speaker 3: might be in a good area where, you know, if
Speaker 3: and when the time comes to replace the infrastructure, the
Speaker 3: irrigation system and the drainage and stuff, rather than investing
Speaker 3: in all of that infrastructure and keeping things the way
Speaker 3: they are, when it's time to invest in the infrastructure,
Speaker 3: that's the time to make some changes and make sure that, hey,
Speaker 3: we can take this property that's already permitted as a
Speaker 3: golf course and already zoned as a golf course and
Speaker 3: has a good market and get rid of this mediocre
Speaker 3: thing and make something special and give people the stuff
Speaker 3: that we all kind of yearned for, the stuff from
Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds where people had options and angles,
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of variety and strategy and
Speaker 3: thought to thought to the round of golf.
Speaker 1: It's interesting I hosted a lot of people on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I've noticed over time that almost everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: not almost, I would say the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: that I host on this podcast that are involved with
Speaker 1: golf today grew up playing at a municipal or a
Speaker 1: public golf course. And I think to myself, Okay, the
Speaker 1: majority of those experiences probably weren't the best golf course experiences.
Speaker 1: And imagine if those courses were really fun to play
Speaker 1: and had really sound architectural principles, not to mention the
Speaker 1: sustainability aspect of you know, if you don't have too
Speaker 1: many hazards, how much cheaper it is to maintain, and
Speaker 1: how these different little things like how many more great
Speaker 1: people would we have, you know, involved with the game
Speaker 1: still if they grew up at a place that was
Speaker 1: really goo great play.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I certainly agree that municipal golf is
Speaker 3: important and it's where many people got their start. I
Speaker 3: certainly got my start in Madison playing on municipal golf
Speaker 3: courses and loved it, and I wholeheartedly agree that it
Speaker 3: would be awesome. It doesn't cost any more money to
Speaker 3: build an architecturally interesting golf course than it does architecturally
Speaker 3: uninteresting golf course, right, and if you're smart about it,
Speaker 3: you can craft one that's maybe easier to maintain as well.
Speaker 3: At the same time, to your point, I guess where
Speaker 3: I made different a little bit is that, you know,
Speaker 3: at that age, you know, as much as I was
Speaker 3: interested in golf as a eight year old or a
Speaker 3: twelve year old, I probably wasn't at a point where
Speaker 3: I was really at least consciously understanding the different it's
Speaker 3: of great architecture at that At that point, I think
Speaker 3: I was excited to have a go play a safe
Speaker 3: place to go play golf and have have fun with
Speaker 3: my friend, you know. And I think it's important that
Speaker 3: we certainly preserve and do everything that we can to
Speaker 3: to make sure that municipal golf does stick around, because
Speaker 3: in today's climate, uh, with with city budgets and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, that's a tough task. I mean, if people
Speaker 3: have a choice between uh, you know, the fire department
Speaker 3: and the golf course, the fire department is going to win,
Speaker 3: and it probably should. Yeah, And yet and yet the
Speaker 3: golf course does have a very important place in a community.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a great community gathering spot. It's a
Speaker 3: place where people can have a healthy activity, but particularly
Speaker 3: if people walk, uh you know, playing golf, you know,
Speaker 3: and golf courses uh you know, Bobby always you talk
Speaker 3: about the golf courses are kind of the green lungs
Speaker 3: of a city. You know, if you fly across America
Speaker 3: and look down, most of the green spaces in America's
Speaker 3: cities are golf courses. So you know, it's a great
Speaker 3: place to be outdoors and with and walk and get
Speaker 3: a good experience that way, and it's a great place
Speaker 3: to bring a community together.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think if you if you just focus on like
Speaker 1: city owned golf courses for like major metropolitan areas and
Speaker 1: and really made those like really fun, cool places to play,
Speaker 1: it would it would make such a difference. I think
Speaker 1: about my home to the city Chicago. We have a
Speaker 1: nine hole course called Sydney Maravitz.
Speaker 2: It used to be called.
Speaker 1: Waveland up on the north side of the city and
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's right on the lake, I mean
Speaker 1: the most in it's right in the heart of the city.
Speaker 1: It's the easiest course to get to. But the golf
Speaker 1: course is just so bland and and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of trees. It's tight, and you get a ton of
Speaker 1: beginners out there, and I always think, like, why not
Speaker 1: just take all the trees out, make it fairway grass
Speaker 1: all around, and you've got these beautiful lake views. And
Speaker 1: instead of it taking four hours to play nine holes,
Speaker 1: it probably would take you know, three hours or two
Speaker 1: and a half and to be just much more interesting
Speaker 1: golf course.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I just need to. I got to get in with
Speaker 2: big politics in Chicago.
Speaker 3: I guess, well, that's an easy thing to navigate. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure that. I'm sure that you know, one meeting
Speaker 3: and share your vision and they'll be ready to go
Speaker 3: and make it happen.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, no money, you know, just go in there.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty much bankruptcity. Just go in
Speaker 1: there and say, hey, we need a we need a
Speaker 1: couple of million for this. But so I'm curious just
Speaker 1: with you know, being a younger architect and having seen
Speaker 1: you you probably remember hitting a lot of golf balls.
Speaker 2: I remember it. We're close to the same age.
Speaker 1: And having lived through this change in technology and especially
Speaker 1: the golf ball. What do you see as like the
Speaker 1: future of golf course architecture, because what we're seeing from
Speaker 1: the high level player is that the really the skills
Speaker 1: that you need now are being able to hit the
Speaker 1: driver long and straight and be a good short iron
Speaker 1: wedge player and make putts and this whole long iron
Speaker 1: and working the golf ball has kind of died with
Speaker 1: the advancements of the ball in the last ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years.
Speaker 4: No doubt about it.
Speaker 3: And the truth is that you know, when you combine
Speaker 3: the technology advances and how that impacts them, you know,
Speaker 3: really the one percent the very top players of the
Speaker 3: game golf is not sustainable at that I mean in
Speaker 3: order to you know, if we're going to keep technology
Speaker 3: the way that it is, or keep allowing advancements in
Speaker 3: technology with you know, the two players and the college kids,
Speaker 3: I mean, you've got to build an eighty five hundred
Speaker 3: or nine thousand yard golf course to challenge those guys,
Speaker 3: and that means more land, and then that means more
Speaker 3: water and more resources, and it's it's just not sustainable.
Speaker 1: So not to mention the course that that course is
Speaker 1: only played by one percent of the population.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing is that you know, so much
Speaker 3: of the focus in the golf world and the attention
Speaker 3: and the media relates to a game that the other
Speaker 3: ninety percent aren't. Right. So, but the sad thing is
Speaker 3: what people see on TV is what they then, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of expect or demand at their facility. So, you know,
Speaker 3: Augusta National and the Masters. I mean, everybody in golf
Speaker 3: loves the Masters, and you know, all golf architects appreciate
Speaker 3: Augusta National, right, I mean, there's nothing really bad to
Speaker 3: say about it, except for the fact that you could
Speaker 3: make the case that the televising of the Masters and
Speaker 3: Augusta National every spring, everybody who ever plays golf watches
Speaker 3: the Masters, and then they go and they expect or
Speaker 3: want those types of conditions of their golf course. And
Speaker 3: what they don't understand is that, you know, the golf
Speaker 3: course Augusta is prepped all year for that event, and
Speaker 3: that they've got an unlimited budget, and that that doesn't
Speaker 3: that is not the case at your local union in Chicago.
Speaker 3: And so now there's this, you know, there's everybody's pushing
Speaker 3: to make their golf course, you know green, and I
Speaker 3: don't mean environmentally friendly green, I mean artificial green, and
Speaker 3: let's put white sand in the bunkers and do all
Speaker 3: these different things. So those are the things that aren't
Speaker 3: really sustainable. And kind of to your point earlier about
Speaker 3: this pool golf and stuff, we I think we'd be
Speaker 3: well served to take a look at the Scots or
Speaker 3: take a look at Australia and see kind of how
Speaker 3: they do it and and and if we want golf
Speaker 3: to thrive over the long haul, that's that's probably a
Speaker 3: better model to look to mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: In terms of a project that you've been working on
Speaker 1: for now nearly a decade, the Sharp Park Park project,
Speaker 1: and it's the old Alisair Mackenzie course in the city
Speaker 1: of San Francisco owns it, and you know, it's a
Speaker 1: great seaside location that over the years has been you
Speaker 1: know a little bit altered for environmental reasons, but just
Speaker 1: basically a neglected.
Speaker 2: Course that could be one.
Speaker 1: Of the finest public golf courses in the world, designed
Speaker 1: by arguably the greatest architect of all time. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about Sharp Park and you know the
Speaker 1: journey of that course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because it
Speaker 3: is such a special place. It's actually in the city
Speaker 3: of Pacifica, which is about fifteen minutes kind of south
Speaker 3: of San Francisco, but you gret the city does own
Speaker 3: the golf course. And so the reason that it's like
Speaker 3: you say, Kenzie golf course from the thirties, and it's
Speaker 3: been in the news and I've been involved, like you said,
Speaker 3: nearly a decade because there was a threat that we
Speaker 3: were actually going to lose the golf course. There were
Speaker 3: federal lawsuits over habitat for frogs and snakes, and two
Speaker 3: local golfers and lawyers got together, Richard Harris and Bowl Linx.
Speaker 3: And these guys are true heroes in the golf world.
Speaker 3: So if people haven't heard of them, they should google
Speaker 3: them and look them up. Them a thank you note.
Speaker 3: But they they basically got together and said, Hey, this
Speaker 3: this national treasure, this this museum, this monument is about
Speaker 3: to be uh stolen from us, and and we're golfers
Speaker 3: and we're environmentalists and this just doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: the case. And and so uh, they they kind of
Speaker 3: rallied the troops and engaged you know, the right uh
Speaker 3: legal team as well as the community, the golf community,
Speaker 3: the local golf community and have rallied and saved the
Speaker 3: golf course. So over the last you know, almost a decade,
Speaker 3: the course has been involved in legal battles and thankfully,
Speaker 3: due to their great work, we've we've kind of we
Speaker 3: keep winning each of those legal battles to preserve to
Speaker 3: save the golf course. And then you know, our dream
Speaker 3: is to to be able to restore that and we're
Speaker 3: actively working towards that, and I think we'll we'll get there.
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a long process. Like like you
Speaker 3: talked about, you know, governments aren't easy. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a site that does have challenges in terms of you know,
Speaker 3: there's a number of different government agencies that have some
Speaker 3: kind of kind of jurisdiction on the property. So navigating
Speaker 3: those those challenges or constraints are are difficult. But I
Speaker 3: think there's a great chance that in the near future
Speaker 3: we'll get to put some of that McKenzie back or
Speaker 3: unpolish some of the mackenzie that's been defted over over
Speaker 3: the years, and I think that will be something that
Speaker 3: hopefully the golf world will embrace. I know they already
Speaker 3: have to save the golf course. But hopefully they'll get
Speaker 3: a chance to come out and see something special in
Speaker 3: the years to come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something that I've been paying attention to. And
Speaker 1: you always, you always want to see these courses. I
Speaker 1: have one in Chicago is Downers Grove Golf Club, which
Speaker 1: is nine hole course. But it's the original site of
Speaker 1: Chicago Golf Club and over the years, the Park District,
Speaker 1: you know, since they took ownership of it, they've altered
Speaker 1: the course. They built a driving range and and now
Speaker 1: there's like there's four original holes. But I always think about, like, man,
Speaker 1: how cool would this thing to be be to get
Speaker 1: back to what it was and have a nine hole
Speaker 1: you know Cebe McDonald course. That was his first design
Speaker 1: ever in America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's crazy, very Yeah, you know, I think it
Speaker 5: sounds like a worthy cause to me. I mean it,
Speaker 5: you know, it's unfortunately we're at a stage where where
Speaker 5: stuff gets in the way, and so it is a challenge.
Speaker 5: And so that's why people like Richard Bow and I'm
Speaker 5: sure there are others in Chicago and across the rest
Speaker 5: of the country that need to kind of step up
Speaker 5: and fight and save the day.
Speaker 3: And because this stuff is worth fighting for. It is
Speaker 3: worth saving, you know, Shark Park as much as we're
Speaker 3: all interested in it. From the the golf course standpoint
Speaker 3: and the McKenny standpoint, it represents all that you would
Speaker 3: want about what a golf course should be to a community.
Speaker 3: You go out there today and you'll see people, you know, ages,
Speaker 3: you know, five to ninety, You'll see you know, twenty
Speaker 3: different ethnicities out there, and they're all you know, most
Speaker 3: of the people are out there walking. It just represents
Speaker 3: what the game is all about. And so those places
Speaker 3: are certainly worth we're fighting for and doing everything in
Speaker 3: our power to save and when we have a chance
Speaker 3: to restore them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the the same same thing out there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a pact shot sheet and that's part
Speaker 1: part of the reason they they haven't done anything is that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a nine hole course that the community
Speaker 1: makes money on. So if it's not if it's not
Speaker 1: broken from a monetary standpoint, in their eyes, why do anything.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think you know, it's kind of the bleeding,
Speaker 3: the slow down.
Speaker 4: Right, if you've got.
Speaker 3: A major open wound in the middle of your forehead, then.
Speaker 4: You get to go to the emergency room. But if
Speaker 4: you've got a.
Speaker 3: Internal bleeding that you can't see, sometimes you don't see
Speaker 3: it until it's too late.
Speaker 2: That's a great and great analogy. I might have to
Speaker 2: use that.
Speaker 1: I've been talking about going to park district meetings and
Speaker 1: just you know, just trolling the park district for for
Speaker 1: a while. Now I might have to start doing that
Speaker 1: in the winter.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: So I want to you uh talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, we've gotten on the subject of Golden Age
Speaker 1: architecture and I know your your kind of design principles
Speaker 1: are you know, throw back to the Golden Age. Who
Speaker 1: would you say are your biggest influences from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of architects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. You know, I think again that you know,
Speaker 3: obviously mackenzie jumps to mind in terms of this exposure
Speaker 3: is over time, I'm learning to appreciate more and more
Speaker 3: loss from a routing standpoint, appreciate some of those routings.
Speaker 3: But again it's it's it's tough to say, you know,
Speaker 3: I love all the kind of McDonald and Rayner stuff.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to see particularly where they would go out
Speaker 3: of their way to you know, if they had an
Speaker 3: idea they if they had to move a bunch of
Speaker 3: dirt to make it happen, they'd go for it type
Speaker 3: of thing. So that that that's always interesting. I think
Speaker 3: again it's just site specific, right, So those principles that
Speaker 3: in California get exposed lots of George Thomas. So they're
Speaker 3: they're all unique and interesting and great and have different
Speaker 3: backgrounds to them. And and but you know, the overriding
Speaker 3: thing that I've kind of taken away from all of
Speaker 3: them was, you know, I personally love the idea of
Speaker 3: having golf courses be fun. I love the idea of
Speaker 3: golf courses being natural. I love the idea of strategy
Speaker 3: and the and the golf ball on the ground and
Speaker 3: what happens when the ball's on the ground. So I'm
Speaker 3: a huge fan of ground contours having strategic value. And
Speaker 3: so I don't, you know, hard hard to say, you
Speaker 3: know how each one impacts those those overarching themes, but
Speaker 3: they all certainly contribute to it.
Speaker 1: So outside of say Mackenzie, if you could bring if
Speaker 1: you could bring one Golden Age architect back and have
Speaker 1: like kind of dinner with them and have them consult on,
Speaker 1: say your your next project, you do which one would
Speaker 1: you bring.
Speaker 3: Back a great question the cop out answer, but as
Speaker 3: actually probably accurate would be it would depend on what
Speaker 3: the project was. Yeah, there's probably a different answer depending
Speaker 3: on what the site was and what the who the
Speaker 3: client was, So it probably depends. And then you got
Speaker 3: to get into the question of if it's if it's
Speaker 3: just a dinner are you are you picking somebody based
Speaker 3: on on personality and the stories that you're gonna be told,
Speaker 3: so you know, if you didn't have to pick up
Speaker 3: the bill, it might be killing half. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: going to say, that's.
Speaker 1: A known, a known socialite, you know, interesting guy and
Speaker 1: uh a great architect. It's amazing to me with the
Speaker 1: us am at Riviera, how the I think the Philly
Speaker 1: the Philly Golf School and architecture, you know, for those
Speaker 1: that aren't aren't familiar with it, I have an article
Speaker 1: on my site, but this whole affiliate golf school is incredible.
Speaker 2: With George Thomas, A. W.
Speaker 1: Tilling, Hast, William Flynn, you know, then you have Hugh Wilson,
Speaker 1: Crump and all these guys. You look at their work
Speaker 1: and they've they've they've started because of you know, them
Speaker 1: getting their ass whooped in championship golf and championship amateur golf.
Speaker 1: And now you look back and they arguably have the
Speaker 1: majority of the timeless classic championship golf sites all came
Speaker 1: from that those three guys, there are five guys.
Speaker 3: Pretty awesome, Yeah, pretty awesome, no doubt about it. And
Speaker 3: and and to think back, you know, you know, talking
Speaker 3: to you know, spending a night talking to Walter Travis
Speaker 3: and and talking golf architecture and then talking about playing
Speaker 3: playing career. You know, so those those would be uh
Speaker 3: interesting conversations to have. Yeah, you know, all sorts of
Speaker 3: all sorts of great day. It would be awfully fun
Speaker 3: to go back in time and have a have a
Speaker 3: roundtable or like you say, have a good dinner.
Speaker 1: It's something I wondered because, like those guys like openly collaborated,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of it. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that's changed is that it wasn't as
Speaker 1: a business then as it is now. But that open collaboration,
Speaker 1: free flow of ideas led to such great work.
Speaker 2: And I ever wonder if that will happen again.
Speaker 1: I think it might be you know a little bit
Speaker 1: with you know how Core and Crenshaw with their all
Speaker 1: their associates, you know, spawning out and dope with his
Speaker 1: intern program.
Speaker 2: But I always wonder, you.
Speaker 1: Know, do you do you ever have peers that you
Speaker 1: go to with, you know, asking.
Speaker 2: Him questions and bouncing ideas off of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's a great point that you bring out.
Speaker 3: And I think to me, that's one of the exciting
Speaker 3: things about this time and history. You know, and we
Speaker 3: touched on earlier that we have a little bit of
Speaker 3: a dichotomy going on, and that there's a number of
Speaker 3: projects that you know, might be done for a housing
Speaker 3: development or fill hotel rooms and architecturally may not be
Speaker 3: very interesting, but then you've got a number of other
Speaker 3: projects that are very interesting and are on unique sites
Speaker 3: and sometimes very special pieces of land. And and you know,
Speaker 3: when you think about the architecture world, yeah, you've got
Speaker 3: an interesting range of people in the industry, different ages
Speaker 3: and different backgrounds and coming from different family trees, if
Speaker 3: you will, of architecture. And so yeah, I've been very
Speaker 3: fortunate to meet a number of different architects, old and young,
Speaker 3: and try to keep in touch and bounce ideas and
Speaker 3: have chatted with different people about collaborating and doing different things.
Speaker 3: And I think those are things that hopefully, I think
Speaker 3: there's been a little bit of that, and you touched
Speaker 3: on kind of the you know, whereas the collaboration in
Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds might have been the way we
Speaker 3: read about it now, you know, might.
Speaker 4: Have been these guys.
Speaker 3: But for anybody listening who hasn't been involved in a
Speaker 3: golf project, there is an endless amount of collaboration, you know,
Speaker 3: on every project, whether it's the guy whose name you
Speaker 3: read in the magazine, but there are people, you know,
Speaker 3: the people who are shaping the golf course are involved,
Speaker 3: and there's regular on site debates and conversations, and you know,
Speaker 3: a good idea can come from anywhere, whether it's the
Speaker 3: client or the guy digging the trench. You know, a
Speaker 3: good idea can come from everywhere anywhere. There is a
Speaker 3: lot of collaboration on every project. But I think you
Speaker 3: will probably see more, you know, they'll probably be one
Speaker 3: off projects, but you'll see more collaboration between people in
Speaker 3: the industry. And that's something that I'm uh, I like
Speaker 3: the idea of myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a it would be interesting to
Speaker 1: see if you did a modern day Pine Valley type
Speaker 1: project where you get five guys and you collaborate. Obviously
Speaker 1: there has to be one person that's the boss. But
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, you can't, you can't, and there has
Speaker 1: to be a unified vision. But like you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of like Pine Valley where like there, you know,
Speaker 1: the Hell's half Acre Hole, for example, is is like
Speaker 1: notoriously a tilling Hals golf hole. And you know, you
Speaker 1: see different things in the same thing with Marion where
Speaker 1: there's so much flint in it that it could be
Speaker 1: considered a Flynn golf course. That you know, these these
Speaker 1: these golf courses became you know, they're the greatest golf
Speaker 1: courses in the world, but you know they were collaborated
Speaker 1: on and the spread of ideas. So I think we've
Speaker 1: we've talked about this pipe dream idea.
Speaker 2: I have enough.
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk a little bit about Chambers Bay,
Speaker 1: kind of your big project and you did it. You
Speaker 1: were the project architect on it during your time at
Speaker 1: rt J two, And it had the US Open, It's
Speaker 1: had the US AM. Most recently it had the Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast AM. I you know, from all accounts, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a beloved golf course by people that play it,
Speaker 1: and also the the players.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll rave about it.
Speaker 1: How you know, like and the only complaint always comes
Speaker 1: back to be, you know, the greens and the putting surfaces.
Speaker 1: How frustrating is it to have a course that is
Speaker 1: universally loved. But like the two things that you know,
Speaker 1: the US Open complained about was spectating and the green surfaces,
Speaker 1: which are really out of the architect's control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots two on there. I'll start by saying, just
Speaker 3: talk about kind of being universally loved, and I think
Speaker 3: that to be to be fair, I guess I would
Speaker 3: I would say that it's probably not universally loved. I
Speaker 3: know a number of the players who competed in the
Speaker 3: Amateur in the Open either didn't like it or hated it,
Speaker 3: and that was okay. If you look back in history,
Speaker 3: I would imagine that most special golf courses are somewhat polarizing,
Speaker 3: particularly early on, And so that's okay.
Speaker 2: Well it's different.
Speaker 1: Also, you know, people always have like a reaction to.
Speaker 2: It being different.
Speaker 1: You know, there's with there's so much about angles and
Speaker 1: different ways you can play the course, so you know, naturally,
Speaker 1: like these guys play the same style golf course almost
Speaker 1: week out, narrow fairways, high rough, you know, is what
Speaker 1: I call robot golf, and Chambers definitely wasn't that style
Speaker 1: of golf.
Speaker 3: Absolutely and that was by design for me personally. When
Speaker 3: you think about championship golf. And again now we're just
Speaker 3: talking about the one percent, not everybody else, but but
Speaker 3: to me, championship golf is way way too much about
Speaker 3: execution and not enough about thought and strategy and uh
Speaker 3: and creativity. And so to your point, you know, weekend
Speaker 3: week out on the PGA Tour, it's you know, very
Speaker 3: little thinking is required. Right hit between the trees, hit
Speaker 3: it between the bunkers, you know, avoid the pond, and
Speaker 3: just not a lot of thinking. And so Chambers, Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously at the municipal course, it's open to everybody,
Speaker 3: but there always was the desire and intention to to
Speaker 3: attract and host major championships. And one of the one
Speaker 3: of my great hopes for the project would be that
Speaker 3: the golf course would actually require golfers to think. And
Speaker 3: you know, to your point earlier about technology and how
Speaker 3: it's changed a little bit of the game in terms
Speaker 3: of shot making, you know, the goal at the Chambers
Speaker 3: was you know, through the ground countours to ask players
Speaker 3: to hit the ball high and hit it low, and
Speaker 3: you know, move the ball left to right, and move
Speaker 3: it right to left, and so, you know, the greatest
Speaker 3: joy I took out of both of those championships was
Speaker 3: to watch the best players in the game stand in
Speaker 3: the middle of the fairway and talk to their caddy
Speaker 3: and try to figure out how best to get the
Speaker 3: ball close to the hole, knowing that they had four
Speaker 3: or five different ways to do it, but if they
Speaker 3: were smart enough, they could actually figure out that one
Speaker 3: was would serve them far better than the others. So
Speaker 3: for me, you know, in twenty ten, watching Peter Euline
Speaker 3: stand in the fairway and talk to those caddy about, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm two hundred yards out, but do I want to
Speaker 3: fly at one eighty with a draw into that slope
Speaker 3: and let it release, or do I want to fly
Speaker 3: a one ninety and hit it high and landed at
Speaker 3: the toe of that slope with with a faide to
Speaker 3: try and hold it. Those were the things that made me,
Speaker 3: uh most excited. So from that standpoint, yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 3: think you know, I was thrilled to death with how
Speaker 3: the amateur and the Open unfolded, you know, the the
Speaker 3: unfortunate thing about the Open in particular, and you know,
Speaker 3: the first year of Fox and their coverage and and
Speaker 3: unfortunately one of the storylines became the dreams and obviously
Speaker 3: the the issues with some of the poland that had
Speaker 3: popped up, and and and it was it was very
Speaker 3: sad because you know, the people who pour their heart
Speaker 3: and soul into maintaining the golf course are friends of
Speaker 3: mine and very very talented people, and and and they
Speaker 3: know what they're doing. And there was just kind of
Speaker 3: a big confluence of whether it was weather or championship
Speaker 3: prep or all these different things kind of kind of
Speaker 3: led to something and then it became a big storyline
Speaker 3: that took away from so many of the other great
Speaker 3: things about the event, so that that was really the
Speaker 3: only negative. But I think over the long haul, those
Speaker 3: things will get worked out and everything will everything will
Speaker 3: will be fine in the future. And when we first
Speaker 3: built the project, we were first getting started building it. You know,
Speaker 3: John Landenberg, who was the county executive and the project
Speaker 3: vision area, he made it clear in the very first
Speaker 3: meeting that you know, this is one hundred year project.
Speaker 3: We're creating something here that's going to be here for
Speaker 3: multiple generations, and our goal is to get it right
Speaker 3: for them and to take the long view and to
Speaker 3: do everything in our power to make sure that you know,
Speaker 3: future generation have a place to enjoy. And you know,
Speaker 3: that's you know, from a non championship golf standpoint, that's
Speaker 3: what makes Chambers Base so special is that every day
Speaker 3: there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that go
Speaker 3: walk that public trail that is above and weeds through
Speaker 3: the golf course. There's you know, golfers that are our locals,
Speaker 3: and it's attracted golfers from all over the country and
Speaker 3: all over the world, but have a different you know,
Speaker 3: had never heard of Pierce County, Washington before, and now
Speaker 3: all of a sudden they come, and when they come,
Speaker 3: they stay and they spend money and support local businesses
Speaker 3: and things like that. So a lot to be excited
Speaker 3: about there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's something that always gets lost, is
Speaker 1: like Chambers Bay is so young and its life is
Speaker 1: a golf course. And do you think about like especially
Speaker 1: like Marion. I mean, Marion continued to undergo iterations and
Speaker 1: changes from their first USM they hosted through all the way.
Speaker 1: I think it was nineteen sixteen they had their first
Speaker 1: US Am and then you know, the golf course really
Speaker 1: wasn't complete until nineteen thirty four, and in the meantime
Speaker 1: they'd hosted six or seven championships during that time, So
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of like, you know, a small
Speaker 1: change here and there. I mean, the golf course yielded
Speaker 1: probably the most exciting US Open in the last decade,
Speaker 1: and I think it gets lost especially with the US
Speaker 1: Open mentality of the necessity of thick rough and seeing
Speaker 1: guys hack it out. Like the most interesting golf is
Speaker 1: exactly what you hit on with Peter Eulin talking about
Speaker 1: it is when you can put doubt and you can
Speaker 1: put you know, you have to for you're forcing the
Speaker 1: greatest players in the world to think about the type
Speaker 1: of shot they're playing in. There is just the best
Speaker 1: kind of golf where you start to see the shot
Speaker 1: making come to the forefront and you see the best
Speaker 1: players in the world having to hit different styles of
Speaker 1: golf shots that you don't see week in week out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to my point, those were the things we're excited about.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many great takeaways. I mean, you
Speaker 3: think about it, you know, from a from a support standpoint,
Speaker 3: when when the Open was at Chambers, well, when the
Speaker 3: Amateur was at Chambers, my understanding everything I've been told
Speaker 3: is that they had you know, some of the best
Speaker 3: crowds ever and some of the best volunteer sign up
Speaker 3: ever for an amateur. For the Open, the volunteer you
Speaker 3: know sign up was their quickest ever fill up. They
Speaker 3: sold more merchandise than they'd ever sold before or in
Speaker 3: in you know, many a decade or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: it did well on TV. And then from a pure
Speaker 3: playing standpoint, you think about the amateur, you had the
Speaker 3: number one amter in the world beat the number two
Speaker 3: ameter in the world at the time for your finale.
Speaker 3: When you think about the Open, the number one, you know,
Speaker 3: the best player in the world at the time. One championship.
Speaker 3: The leader board, if you look look back, was probably
Speaker 3: the best leader board you've had in twenty five years.
Speaker 3: And certainly the back nine and the Sunday had you know,
Speaker 3: probably the best leader boards of anything in the lands
Speaker 3: twenty five years. So there's a lot of things to
Speaker 3: be excited about and positive takeaways, and clearly there were
Speaker 3: things that you'd like to refine and do over you know,
Speaker 3: I think from a spectator standpoint, I was there all week,
Speaker 3: and you know, the USGA did a great job leading
Speaker 3: up to the event about sharing with the public that
Speaker 3: this was a little bit different of the US Open
Speaker 3: and that the venue was such that you'd be far
Speaker 3: better served to go to a grand stand and watch
Speaker 3: two or three home from a grand stand as opposed
Speaker 3: to trying to follow a group, you know, for all
Speaker 3: eighteen holes. And that was that was the good part.
Speaker 3: The bad part was the public listened to them, and
Speaker 3: the public went to the grand stands, and by nine
Speaker 3: o'clock all the grand stands were full. So then you
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden you had a bunch of
Speaker 3: traffic challenges with people walking around. But that's something that
Speaker 3: you can learn from. You can you can modify a
Speaker 3: roping plan. You can add more grand stands, you know,
Speaker 3: those are those are things that could be worked around. So,
Speaker 3: you know, it was it certainly was for me, you know,
Speaker 3: as a young guy, you know who who loves links golf,
Speaker 3: who loves municipal golf, who loves championship golf, whose dream
Speaker 3: in high school was to design a US Open golf
Speaker 3: course to be able to be part of that, and
Speaker 3: watch it from the first first day on site, interviewing,
Speaker 3: trying to get the job, and to go all the
Speaker 3: way through building the golf course and then having an
Speaker 3: open announcement. Then watch it go all the way through.
Speaker 3: It's been a pretty interesting journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's got to be really cool.
Speaker 1: I I envy the ability for you guys to just
Speaker 1: kind of watch your pro you know, have your name
Speaker 1: on something and watch it and watch people's reactions and
Speaker 1: then you know, to get to see the whole world reacted.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's got to be pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to We've got a lot of reader
Speaker 1: and our listener questions from Twitter, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: get to.
Speaker 2: Some of those.
Speaker 1: Just I'm not sure if you've ever listened to a pod,
Speaker 1: but we have an overrated underrated segment. So they'll be
Speaker 1: peppered in there and you just you know, you can
Speaker 1: feel free to expand.
Speaker 2: But you know, the general.
Speaker 1: Consist it just say, you know, overrated or underrated on
Speaker 1: different topics, so those will be sprinkled in here. We'll
Speaker 1: start out with a overrated underrated from Barry Elevated Greens
Speaker 1: in False.
Speaker 3: Fronts, Uh, are those two separate things. Yeah, underrated? I
Speaker 3: like I like a good false front, particularly on an
Speaker 3: uphill hole.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Elevated greens, I'll go overrated. You know, I love golf
Speaker 3: where the ground game is an option, and so if
Speaker 3: you've got a green that's more at grade, the aerial
Speaker 3: option is still always there, but but the ground game
Speaker 3: is something that I just I just love. So elevated
Speaker 3: greens have their place, but I'm balanced, I have to say, uh.
Speaker 2: Overrated, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's an easy way to make a
Speaker 1: lot of golf courses more playable is just to lessen
Speaker 1: the grade of that front of the green that because
Speaker 1: then you know, more people can run the ball into them.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so again, go look at most golf courses between
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty and ninety five, and almost all of them
Speaker 3: the green is two to three feet above the elevations
Speaker 3: the fruway. It just it just makes life so difficult
Speaker 3: for mid to high handicappers who golf is difficult enough
Speaker 3: for that group, takes so much fun and strategy out
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: It has zero effect on the one percent or the
Speaker 1: ten percent we always we've been talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, in some respects it actually makes it easier for
Speaker 3: him because I know they're just grabbing whatever club is
Speaker 3: going to fly to the middle of the green. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but for me, if I
Speaker 3: see an open entrance green, I start thinking about running
Speaker 3: it in, even if I'm in a you know, if
Speaker 3: I'm back in the Midwest and the conditions aren't firm
Speaker 3: and fast, if it's playing soft, even if it's playing
Speaker 3: soft and there's an open entrance, just my eye and
Speaker 3: my tendency to like ball on the ground gets me
Speaker 3: thinking about going on the ground, even if it's not
Speaker 3: the right play due to conditions. So uh, in some respects,
Speaker 3: the little alvy of green might make life easier for
Speaker 3: the low handed gapper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially I think also especially around the green, because
Speaker 1: you know, you the lob wedge has become such a
Speaker 1: weapon for shots around the green. And when it's when
Speaker 1: it's perched up, you don't even think about You just
Speaker 1: grab the lob weedge and you hit the shot. But
Speaker 1: when it's when it's flat, you all of a sudden
Speaker 1: your mind starts to race and you start thinking about
Speaker 1: different things.
Speaker 2: You could do.
Speaker 1: Do I land this, you know five feet short, and
Speaker 1: you know kind of hit a little checker. You know,
Speaker 1: they are all kinds of things. It's just more options
Speaker 1: are good. I think people just are tired of hearing
Speaker 1: me say that. But Barry also had another question that is,
Speaker 1: I think a really good one. He's a he's a
Speaker 1: Hawaii guy, so he's he's very interested in wind and
Speaker 1: how it plays a factor in design. You know, the
Speaker 1: prevailing trade winds affects all courses in Hawaii. But then uh,
Speaker 1: linksy options aren't always provided for the most part. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of frustrate elevated greens that are tough
Speaker 1: to access.
Speaker 2: With only one shot option. How do you approach prevailing winds?
Speaker 3: So that's that's a great question. And uh and wind
Speaker 3: really is It's one of the wonderful elements of the game.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's very hard to paint with a
Speaker 3: broad brush. Again, when it comes to golf and golf courses,
Speaker 3: everything is site specific. So you know, for example, if
Speaker 3: you're in Hawaii or in a windy place and you're
Speaker 3: building a new golf course and you have a lot
Speaker 3: of room, then the then the prevailing wind can impact
Speaker 3: your actual routing of the golf course and how you
Speaker 3: lay out the holes. Oftentimes that's not the case. You
Speaker 3: might have a parcel that's not as big, and where
Speaker 3: you route the holes is more a byproduct of the
Speaker 3: amount of space that you have, right, and you need
Speaker 3: to you need to fit them in, uh, fit the
Speaker 3: puzzle pieces in. But then you start to think about
Speaker 3: the wind on a on the individual design of the hole,
Speaker 3: if you will, uh, right, and and maybe where hazards
Speaker 3: are placed. Or to our discussion earlier, whether or not
Speaker 3: the green is open entrance in at grade or or
Speaker 3: elevated or not so. Uh, it's all very very site specific.
Speaker 3: If you do, if you're fortunate enough to have an
Speaker 3: open site in a windy area and and uh you know,
Speaker 3: if you have the triple whammy of having a sandy soil, uh,
Speaker 3: then the then the prevailing wind can can play an
Speaker 3: even bigger role. And and actually laying out the course otherwise,
Speaker 3: if you don't have all those luxuries are probably is
Speaker 3: a bigger impact on the detailed design of the wholes
Speaker 3: and the features.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a great answer.
Speaker 1: Here's some with you being a Wisconsin native, We've got
Speaker 1: some uh, you know, questions about the Badger state.
Speaker 3: Two weeks, two weeks from the day, two years from
Speaker 3: to day two weeks.
Speaker 1: So with the Brent Wagner wants to know what course
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin would you most want to restore or redesign.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, yeah, that's a great question. So in terms
Speaker 3: of redesign, that's probably not politically correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll save restore.
Speaker 4: We'll say restore.
Speaker 3: So there's there's some there's some neat ones out there,
Speaker 3: you know. Uh, there's probably a couple in Milwaukee that
Speaker 3: probably a couple of private clubs in Milwaukee that probably
Speaker 3: would uh fit that bill. There's there's some underrated uh
Speaker 3: kind of hidden gym golf courses uh uh that that
Speaker 3: are kind of neat. I our family spend a little
Speaker 3: bit of time up north. There's a nine hole club,
Speaker 3: Ryan Lander Country Club that's pretty neat. Uh. I think
Speaker 3: I haven't played there in forever. But there's a course
Speaker 3: in the southeast that's uh, I think kind of more
Speaker 3: of a mompo operation. Spring Valley that's oh yeah, got
Speaker 3: got some pretty cool stuff going on that would be
Speaker 3: great to peel back the layers and expose some of
Speaker 3: that stuff. There's yeah, yeah, and uh, you know, so
Speaker 3: it's a great time of golf in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's becoming
Speaker 3: a hotbed for golf. So I'd love the opportunity to
Speaker 3: to get back and do some stuff there. I was
Speaker 3: fortunate enough we did a Readers of Century World that
Speaker 3: was very, very satisfying and great client and very proud
Speaker 3: of what we've done up there. But yeah, I love
Speaker 3: the opportunity to get back and uh and work in
Speaker 3: the Bedro state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to. I think there's an Ozaki Country
Speaker 1: Club could be so so, so good if they they
Speaker 1: got rid of some trees, and I mean that place
Speaker 1: has some some really cool features.
Speaker 3: Absolutely and at it.
Speaker 2: Have you have you ever played Eagle Springs.
Speaker 3: Eagle Springs, I don't know that I have.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you got to get Well, it's the oldest
Speaker 1: course in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: And where where exactly it's in?
Speaker 1: I want to say it's relatively close to two.
Speaker 2: I played it years ago. Let me see where it is.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's in but it's got some just unbelievable green
Speaker 1: complexes and it's you know, it's the oldest course in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: It's in Eagle, Wisconsin. So in let's see what is it.
Speaker 4: It's in.
Speaker 2: Waukesha, I think county.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, so it's Milwaukee suburbs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but nine whole course. And I mean, just
Speaker 1: if they've got this great volcano green and just some
Speaker 1: unbelievable dream complexes, It's like that place could be really
Speaker 1: really good and you know, you could go play there
Speaker 1: for I think it's like fifteen bucks in Walk let's see,
Speaker 1: and it's a great little course. It's yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: summer weekend rate is walking is eighteen seventy five, So
Speaker 1: very nice, pretty good.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean Wisconsin's Wisconsin's getting a lot of
Speaker 3: puk for all the big, fancy, fancy places, but yeah,
Speaker 3: restoring some of the smaller gems would be a good
Speaker 3: thing too.
Speaker 2: I like this question.
Speaker 1: H HPS asked it for every pod.
Speaker 2: We don't get to it on every Architecture pod.
Speaker 1: But if you're playing, if you could play one place
Speaker 1: on a Sunday afternoon with a Sunday bag, what what
Speaker 1: course are you going to play?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a that's a tough one. There's there's so
Speaker 3: many to choose from.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I've been lucky enough to go out to Prairie Dunes
Speaker 3: a few times, and that's a that's a place. I
Speaker 3: would love to be out there with a Sunday bag
Speaker 3: on a Sunday afternoon. That's pretty that's a pretty special place.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean, uh the uh yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: just I'll stick with prairie dunes. But just know that
Speaker 3: there's a dozen enough of them. That's Are you know
Speaker 3: anything that's a good a good easy walk that has
Speaker 3: excitement and strategy and interest on a happy camper.
Speaker 1: Mm yeah, there's that's a tough question. I mean there,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a wrong answer if you I
Speaker 1: mean anywhere. It's pretty nice to do that, especially if
Speaker 1: there's nobody around.
Speaker 3: You can play well if there's nobody around. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're like me, if you're out there by yourself,
Speaker 3: ill you know you're playing. I'll hit a shot, you know,
Speaker 3: you'll hit your approach shut into a green if you
Speaker 3: don't like how you hit the first one, and you
Speaker 3: drop another one and hit another one, and then you
Speaker 3: get up to the green. And once you get up
Speaker 3: to the green, then you may or may not, you know,
Speaker 3: putt the ball you originally hit. But you must just
Speaker 3: start seeing different shots to get hit and drop five
Speaker 3: or six balls around the green. If you're going to
Speaker 3: do that, then I'll then I'll stick with play dunes
Speaker 3: is a fun place to tip and putt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's one of my favorite things to do when
Speaker 1: I play by myself is I just throw five balls
Speaker 1: into different spots around the green and try and get
Speaker 1: all five up and down.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a fun way. I recommend it. It's
Speaker 2: great practice too, all right.
Speaker 1: So Katie w wants to know what's the best way
Speaker 1: for an individual to begin getting into architecture.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I'm sure you've probably touched on this in
Speaker 3: the past. I think there's you know, lots of different
Speaker 3: routes again, tiny industry and uh and small one to
Speaker 3: get into it. But there's a number of good books
Speaker 3: to read. Uh. And then if you're if you're really
Speaker 3: serious about making it a career, I would encourage people
Speaker 3: to get involved in golf construction and golf course maintenance.
Speaker 3: I think both of those things are critical elements to
Speaker 3: have an understanding of and and the exposure of those
Speaker 3: opportunities will be invaluable. So, uh, you know, getting involved
Speaker 3: in golf course maintenance, getting involved in golf construction, and
Speaker 3: then you know there's there's a number of great books
Speaker 3: on the subject that I'm sure that you probably have
Speaker 3: a listed on your website somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's funny, I did a books article over the winter
Speaker 1: and I put a ton in there.
Speaker 2: But it's the most asked question I get.
Speaker 1: I get a couple of emails a week and I
Speaker 1: need to just write them down into a post because
Speaker 1: what I end up doing is I end up applying
Speaker 1: the same way to all these questions, and it's like, God,
Speaker 1: why don't I just have like a post on the
Speaker 1: site that's like linked right by where somebody the contact
Speaker 1: us page.
Speaker 2: So there's something I need to do, you know.
Speaker 3: I think that the thing for people, you know, there's
Speaker 3: you know, every year anytime, you know, I'm on a
Speaker 3: plane and somebody asked me what you do, and you know,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's the coolest job in the world.
Speaker 3: I want to do that, you know, And then you
Speaker 3: get others to say, you know, I think the key
Speaker 3: thing for people is to really for young people who
Speaker 3: are interested in golf architecture and want to make a
Speaker 3: career out of it, is to really think long and
Speaker 3: hard to yourself about what do you want out of
Speaker 3: that career? Are you looking for fame and fortune and
Speaker 3: to be you know, do you read magazines and see
Speaker 3: magazine interviews or people on TV and you want to
Speaker 3: be that person? Or do you want to be a
Speaker 3: part of a team that builds golf courses? Right, because
Speaker 3: there's a number of opportunities for people who want to
Speaker 3: be a part of a team to build and maintain
Speaker 3: golf courses. But you may never you know, be on
Speaker 3: a magazine cover or on TV. And what you think
Speaker 3: you might want when you're eighteen might be drastically different
Speaker 3: than what you realize you wanted when you're forty. But
Speaker 3: you know, it's certainly you know, like I said earlier,
Speaker 3: I pinch myself every day that I get to peak,
Speaker 3: get to be part of it, and get to be
Speaker 3: involved in this. And I think there's anybody who's ever
Speaker 3: been involved in building a golf course, I think would
Speaker 3: say that it's it's a magical process and and and
Speaker 3: one that's very rewarding.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I think it's a lot less glamorous than
Speaker 1: people think, especially at the start of your career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think, uh again, if you're if
Speaker 3: you're looking for fame and fortunate, uh, probably not. You know,
Speaker 3: probably better off to go get that business degree and
Speaker 3: go go make your money somewhere else. But uh, if
Speaker 3: if you want to wake up every day and know
Speaker 3: that you're going to get to interact with interesting, passionate people,
Speaker 3: and you get to be a part of uh being
Speaker 3: doing something creative, and you're going to get to build
Speaker 3: something that's going to last for decades and decades where uh,
Speaker 3: where generations of people are going to go make memories
Speaker 3: with their family and friends. Uh, then then uh, then
Speaker 3: it certainly worthy pursuit.
Speaker 1: Mm So what GA Golf Architecture Texas wants to know
Speaker 1: least favorite trend in modern golf course architecture.
Speaker 3: Long listed? Choose from. I don't know the trends. I'll
Speaker 3: just say the the overarching umbrella for me is artificial elements,
Speaker 3: whether it's a man made lake or artificial mounding, or
Speaker 3: concrete cart paths, or flower beds or planted trees, all
Speaker 3: of these things. You know, again we talked earlier about
Speaker 3: kind of making golf unsustainable. All of these things, in
Speaker 3: my mind tracked from golf rather than add to it.
Speaker 2: I would agree with almost all that I think.
Speaker 3: I hate Roff. I'm on a mission, personal mission to
Speaker 3: eliminate rough from the game ago. I'd be happy to
Speaker 3: eliminate par te blocks. We get rid of t blocks
Speaker 3: while we're at it, all sorts of stuff to give rid.
Speaker 2: Of around the greens. Rough.
Speaker 1: All it does is it diminishes skill and brings you know,
Speaker 1: the great short games closer to the bad short games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. Take You know, when I spent the last
Speaker 3: few years working on a project in southern California at
Speaker 3: Santa Ana Country Club. And so the golf course that
Speaker 3: was there before we did our big project was essentially
Speaker 3: at seventies or eighties golf course and every single green
Speaker 3: complex you know, bunker, short, left, short, right, The green
Speaker 3: was all the same size and shape and surrounded by rough,
Speaker 3: and all the greens were elevated three feet right. And
Speaker 3: so you know, in going through the process and talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, what could be, we were trying to do
Speaker 3: some member education on the courses there. And you know,
Speaker 3: most members of a club, you play your course, and
Speaker 3: you play there with your friends. It's what you know
Speaker 3: and you love, right, But when you really start to
Speaker 3: study golf courses, you can get a feel for a boy,
Speaker 3: I'm hitting the same shot over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: And you know everything, if you went twenty yards around
Speaker 3: every single green at that golf course and probably the
Speaker 3: vast majority of other golf courses from that time period,
Speaker 3: everything within twenty yards is the same shot. It's a sandwich,
Speaker 3: and it's either a lob shot out of rough or
Speaker 3: a lob shot out of a bucker. And there's you know,
Speaker 3: that's a very hard shot for a mid to high
Speaker 3: handicapper to execute, and it's not terribly tough for a
Speaker 3: low handicap to execute. And when you introduced the ground plane,
Speaker 3: and now you've got tighter ground and different undulations and
Speaker 3: things are maintain firm and fast. Now you can play
Speaker 3: the ball on the ground or in the air. You
Speaker 3: can Uh, those those undulations, whether they're convex or concave,
Speaker 3: can be can be used. They can become a hazard
Speaker 3: or a helper. Uh and uh. It just brings out
Speaker 3: so much more in terms of strategy and creativity. And
Speaker 3: and the nice thing is for for a higher handicapper,
Speaker 3: the the options available to them. You know, if you're
Speaker 3: not able to hit that lob shot with a sandwich,
Speaker 3: you can put it and uh and and so I
Speaker 3: just find that to be something that's that's critically uh important,
Speaker 3: and we hope we see a lot more of There
Speaker 3: has been, uh there's been a trend towards that, at
Speaker 3: least in some circles, and that's something I'd like to
Speaker 3: see more and more of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, So last question, then we'll do a
Speaker 2: couple over and underags then taken up more.
Speaker 1: Than enough of your time, Johnny begsos if we've rolled
Speaker 1: the golf ball back to the original pro v one
Speaker 1: with that save OLED courses.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know that it's a one. You know,
Speaker 3: certainly addressing the golf ball and possibly addressing clubs together,
Speaker 3: I think is critical. And again this really relates to
Speaker 3: championship golf. I mean, as much as the advances in
Speaker 3: technology have helped you know, lesser players, you know, lesser
Speaker 3: players don't hit the ball for three hundred yards. It's
Speaker 3: these top one presenters that are flying at three twenty
Speaker 3: and that's the that's the real Crux four Championship golf.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if it's going back to the
Speaker 3: pro V one, I don't know the exact right place
Speaker 3: to go back to, but I know we have to
Speaker 3: have to go back and and and have to have
Speaker 3: to get get it under control, and it needed to
Speaker 3: be done a long time ago, and and we're long
Speaker 3: overdue and and when that happens, will be will be
Speaker 3: better served.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I think it's it's something has to happen,
Speaker 1: at least at least on the professional level. I think
Speaker 1: it's good for the like the regular play, but it's
Speaker 1: I don't I have less fun on the golf course
Speaker 1: now because of the ball.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm somebody who loves to try different shots, and
Speaker 3: and uh, even though I've maybe executed the shot previously
Speaker 3: in my life, I'm not good enough to execute it
Speaker 3: on demand. But if I see a shot that that
Speaker 3: demands a faide, I want to try and hit a fade. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know. And I love working the ball, you know,
Speaker 3: right the left, left to right high low. Even if
Speaker 3: I'm not good enough to pull it off, it just
Speaker 3: makes golf that much more fun. But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: so getting back to some of those days would be
Speaker 3: a good thing. I'll be very curious to see how
Speaker 3: the Masters and Augusta National fits into that equation. I
Speaker 3: think they have a golden opportunity. You know, there isn't
Speaker 3: a player on earth that's going to turn down an
Speaker 3: invitation to the Masters. And if they said, oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, in twenty eighteen, we're going to be playing
Speaker 3: with the tournament ball. You know, every pro is still
Speaker 3: going to show up and they're going to be excited
Speaker 3: about it. So they hold I'll be curious to see
Speaker 3: their role and everything, because I think they've got the
Speaker 3: easiest opportunity to make something happen there.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, buying that land might be a bad you know,
Speaker 1: they might be adding length.
Speaker 3: You know, sad well that adding length and planting trees
Speaker 3: seems to have been the model over the last thirty years.
Speaker 3: Hopefully they'll be uh the next thirty years might be
Speaker 3: a little different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll get the final overrated underrateds here, I'm
Speaker 1: going to say green speeds and stimp readings overrated, underrated, overrated.
Speaker 3: Certainly, I'm a big fan of greens with I like
Speaker 3: greens of contour or speeds that match the contour. Let's
Speaker 3: just put that way. A different speed for a different
Speaker 3: set of greens is probably the right answer. But this
Speaker 3: love affair with thirteen on the STEMP meter just makes
Speaker 3: means that greens need to get flatter and flatter and
Speaker 3: more boring and more boring. Or if you've got greens
Speaker 3: of contour and you maintain them at thirteen, then they're
Speaker 3: unplayable and they'll fund and people get upset and want
Speaker 3: to change the green.
Speaker 2: So it's like that, was it.
Speaker 1: Nairn in Scotland has a sign that says, you know,
Speaker 1: we're on the windiest property on earth or green speeds
Speaker 1: are five to six, so just deal with it, you know.
Speaker 2: It's just there's a lot of factors that go into it.
Speaker 1: And then last one would be, uh, the great hazard
Speaker 1: as it.
Speaker 2: Under, Yeah, so good, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean golf is supposed to be fun,
Speaker 3: and what's more fun than a great hazard?
Speaker 1: Right? Oh yeah, I get I get a lot of
Speaker 1: ship because I love it so much, but.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 3: Good story, good great stories come from the great hazard. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So the more the more great hazards, the more great stories.
Speaker 1: It's such a it's a it's a fun design like it.
Speaker 1: You know, it is a forced carry for the higher handicap,
Speaker 1: but like one or two of those in a round
Speaker 1: is so good because it's so thrilling for them.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you did touch on a good point
Speaker 3: there that it could be overdone. We don't we don't
Speaker 3: need we don't need it on eighteen holes. But uh uh,
Speaker 3: but the idea of it at a point or two
Speaker 3: in the round certainly certainly makes for great fun and
Speaker 3: great interest in my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, hey, thanks for coming on. Look forward to
Speaker 2: meeting next week at the Renaissance Cup. And uh, who.
Speaker 1: Knows, there might be it might be a late night
Speaker 1: podcast done there.
Speaker 2: You got to figure that out.
Speaker 3: That that could be interesting. Yeah, interesting, Andy, Thank you.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate the opportunity I tune in, tune in
Speaker 3: regularly and appreciate all that your tongue, and I know
Speaker 3: all the listeners to too, So keep it up, keep
Speaker 3: it up, keep up the good work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, follow Jay on Twitter? What what is it is it?
Speaker 3: At j uh at j blobby all.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm I don't even know my own Twitter handle,
Speaker 1: so don't be offended. All right, have a good one
Speaker 1: and we'll see you in a couple.
Speaker 2: Of days named in storms as may at some days