Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of The Yoke with Dok.
Speaker 1: This episode is a three part podcast. In Part one,
Speaker 1: we discuss the background of some of Renaissance Golf's associates
Speaker 1: and how the golf course design business works.
Speaker 2: In Parse two and three, we.
Speaker 1: Dive into George Thomas, bel Air Country Club and much more.
Speaker 2: These podcasts will.
Speaker 1: Be available later this week. As a reminder, if you
Speaker 1: enjoy these talks on architecture with Tom, be sure to
Speaker 1: check out his books. I highly recommend The Confidential Guides
Speaker 1: and The Little Red Book of Golf Course Architecture. Both
Speaker 1: are available on Renaissance website www dot Renaissance goolf dot com.
Speaker 1: One final announcement, fried Egg hats are available on our
Speaker 1: pro shop. Check them out on the website fried egg
Speaker 1: dot com. Without further ado, here's the latest edition of
Speaker 1: The Yoke with Doke.
Speaker 3: Tom Doak is back and as usual, he's not holding back.
Speaker 3: But don't toss the yolk and the famously candied Doak
Speaker 3: doesn't pull any punches. How do I make natural looking contour?
Speaker 3: Hire the biggest pool in the village and told him
Speaker 3: to make it flat?
Speaker 1: First?
Speaker 3: Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated, over the years.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to another edition of the
Speaker 1: Yoke with Doak Tom.
Speaker 3: How's it going, Hi, Andy, we're bel Air Hills of
Speaker 3: Los Angeles today. I'm glad to be back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Today we have a couple special guests here up in
Speaker 1: the hills of bel Air overlooking the city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Who's with us? I've got my construction crew for the
Speaker 3: renovation we're doing at bel Air right now. Eric Iverson,
Speaker 3: one of my senior associates who's the lead associate on
Speaker 3: this job. Brian Schneider one of my other senior associates
Speaker 3: who's done some shaping here and is headed to Australia
Speaker 3: with me in a couple of days for the project
Speaker 3: we're doing down there. Kai Golby, who's doesn't work for
Speaker 3: my company but has built ten or twelve golf courses
Speaker 3: with us over the last twenty years. And Blake Conant,
Speaker 3: who's been doing the same thing for us, but for
Speaker 3: only about five or six years now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know today you're going to get a
Speaker 1: behind the scenes look at how Renaissance works and some
Speaker 1: of the names behind some of the work and the
Speaker 1: shaping and the building of the greens, the construction aspect
Speaker 1: of golf course design. So, Eric, why don't you start
Speaker 1: us off and give us a little bit about yourself,
Speaker 1: how you got into golf course construction and where you
Speaker 1: grew up golfing.
Speaker 4: I grew up in just north of Denver, the suburbs
Speaker 4: of Denver, and started playing golf at a really early
Speaker 4: age at arguably the worst course in the metro area,
Speaker 4: Lake Arbor Golf Course. But it was a great environment,
Speaker 4: great place to kind of grow up and hang out
Speaker 4: as a kid and learn a lot about just being
Speaker 4: around golf. And I knew I loved it. And you know,
Speaker 4: at some point you kind of make the realization that
Speaker 4: you know, maybe playing golf is not for me, but
Speaker 4: how else might I get into it? And the timing
Speaker 4: was really good, and it just kind of found me,
Speaker 4: really and it was a great thing, and I thought,
Speaker 4: this is really first project I was working on was
Speaker 4: where I first saw Tom doing his thing, Riverdale Dunes,
Speaker 4: and the oldest guy on that project was twenty six
Speaker 4: years old. So my first impression of a golf course
Speaker 4: architect was that it was unattainable. Some sort of image
Speaker 4: of Desmond muirhead in a plaid jacket smoking a pipe
Speaker 4: was what I thought it was all about. And it's like,
Speaker 4: this is just a bunch of knuckleheads. You were a
Speaker 4: little older than me, you know, so maybe this is
Speaker 4: something that could turn into something someday.
Speaker 5: So just kind of ended up.
Speaker 4: Joining the traveling circus and now I'm hanging out in
Speaker 4: this house above bel Air.
Speaker 2: All right, Brian.
Speaker 6: I grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and we were really
Speaker 6: lucky in that town. Not because we had a bunch
Speaker 6: of great golf, but we had immuni course that when
Speaker 6: I was a kid, my buddies and I could go
Speaker 6: there and show up before nine o'clock and we could
Speaker 6: play all day for three bucks.
Speaker 5: And that's how we spend our summers. You know. We'd
Speaker 5: throw our clubs.
Speaker 6: On our bag on our back and jump on our
Speaker 6: bikes and head out early and we'd be on the
Speaker 6: golf course all day. And it was just a great
Speaker 6: place to learn, and you know, got to meet a
Speaker 6: bunch of local characters there. And the golf wasn't great,
Speaker 6: but we had a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I've played since I was little.
Speaker 6: My grandfather was a good player and he would take
Speaker 6: me out when I was three or four years old.
Speaker 6: His brother owned a par three course in a driving range,
Speaker 6: so I got to spend much of time with my
Speaker 6: grandpa there when I was just a little kid. Then
Speaker 6: as I got to play more, you know, I lived
Speaker 6: about a forty five minute trive from Lasnia, so my
Speaker 6: you know, my family would make that a special trip.
Speaker 6: Occasionally we go over there and see that. And to me,
Speaker 6: that was a place that felt really different than anywhere
Speaker 6: else i'd played around town. And that's probably where I
Speaker 6: first noticed that architecture could be a thing that, you know,
Speaker 6: there could be more deliberate efforts to build something unique
Speaker 6: and fun, and it was just unlike anything I'd seen
Speaker 6: up to that point. So it had an influence on me,
Speaker 6: just the realization that architecture was a thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I heard the course. Did you grow up
Speaker 1: playing Lakeside? It's been in the news Late Lake.
Speaker 6: Shore, Yeah, it's it's it's a shame. A good friend
Speaker 6: of mine has been the golf pro there for years
Speaker 6: and he's looking for a job now because the city's
Speaker 6: made the decision to sell that land off to a
Speaker 6: pretty prominent local corporation.
Speaker 5: But the golf course will be no more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if if anybody wants to hear more, I think
Speaker 1: golf dot com did a whole podcast about it. It's
Speaker 1: a it's an interesting situation, but probably pretty sad to
Speaker 1: see local local And it was an old course too,
Speaker 1: like over what over one hundred years old?
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, there was a lot of conversation in the
Speaker 6: newspaper and a lot of locals against it, but you know,
Speaker 6: economically it makes sense for the town, I.
Speaker 1: Think, so yeah, so Kai, how about you.
Speaker 7: I grew up in Belleville, Illinois, which is just across
Speaker 7: the river from Saint Louis, Missouri, And when I grew up,
Speaker 7: I probably lived about two blocks from a private golf club.
Speaker 7: Everybody else is growing up on public and it was
Speaker 7: a private club, but it was a very blue collar,
Speaker 7: small town, blue collar private club, and so I was
Speaker 7: playing at that course probably from the time I was
Speaker 7: six years old. It would ride our bikes over and just
Speaker 7: hang out at the golf club basically all summer long,
Speaker 7: and a lot of times during the school year as well.
Speaker 7: My cousin who lived up the street from me, was
Speaker 7: also a good player, so we basically played golf together
Speaker 7: all the time, and that was kind of how I
Speaker 7: got started. Now, I did get started because my dad
Speaker 7: was kind of okay at golf. He played the tour
Speaker 7: for many years and won the Masters in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 7: So growing up I did see some pretty good golfers.
Speaker 7: And my cousin that lived up the street was Jay Haas,
Speaker 7: so we had, you know, some pretty quality golfers. And
Speaker 7: so the golf course that we grew up on everyone
Speaker 7: that grew up on that same course. My dad actually
Speaker 7: caddied there as a kid, and I didn't know it
Speaker 7: at the time, and I don't think anyone did. But
Speaker 7: as I grew older and became more interested in architecture,
Speaker 7: I started kind of looking into the golf course because really,
Speaker 7: God some cool stuff. And then I played a William
Speaker 7: Langford course Donald Seitherdone was like, wow, that's really similar
Speaker 7: to what I grew up on, and I kind of
Speaker 7: started researching it. Found out it was a William Langford
Speaker 7: golf course that we had been playing on, and no
Speaker 7: one had any idea who William Langford was. So that
Speaker 7: was a little bit how the architecture bug got in
Speaker 7: my head. I think it was almost through osmosis. You
Speaker 7: just were playing this course every day, and there was
Speaker 7: a lot of cool shots to play and interesting greens,
Speaker 7: and so I think it wasn't some of these guys
Speaker 7: I think had a little more interest in architecture early age,
Speaker 7: knowing they wanted to be golf architects. I wasn't really
Speaker 7: thinking though. I just liked to play and wanted to
Speaker 7: kind of compete, and the architecture thing just kind of
Speaker 7: got into me at a later stage. And how that
Speaker 7: actually occurred. I played golf in college, and by the
Speaker 7: senior year of college I was just sick of golf.
Speaker 7: I wasn't as good as guys in our team and
Speaker 7: just got tired of playing. Went to Boston after college
Speaker 7: to work in the financial business. Did that for a
Speaker 7: few years and was not really enjoying myself in the offices.
Speaker 7: Kept looking outside. I was like, man, I'd rather be
Speaker 7: outside and had an opportunity. Actually, my dad got an
Speaker 7: opportunity in our hometown to do a golf course, and
Speaker 7: so I quit the financial business and went back to
Speaker 7: Belle Illinois to help him build a golf course. Got
Speaker 7: into that and it was like, hey, this is kind
Speaker 7: of fun, and just kept at it and eventually he
Speaker 7: got in touch with Tom a few years later, and
Speaker 7: just like Eric, here we.
Speaker 1: Are all right, that's a pretty cool story with the
Speaker 1: family lineage is quite strong.
Speaker 2: I'm the black sheep, so blake, what about you.
Speaker 8: I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska picking golf balls from
Speaker 8: a driving range called Schmidley's for three twenty five an hour,
Speaker 8: but I would get all the free golf balls that
Speaker 8: I could hit, so I would do that after or
Speaker 8: before baseball games where the Keystone ball fields were just
Speaker 8: across the street. So that's sort of how I started
Speaker 8: playing and honing my swing. And then my stepdad was
Speaker 8: a member at a club in Omaha called Ironwood, which
Speaker 8: was formerly Highland Country Club, which was an old Langford
Speaker 8: that I think had been butchered in the fifties or sixties,
Speaker 8: but the routing was still intact for the most part.
Speaker 8: So a lot of just like Twilight nine whole rounds there.
Speaker 8: And got into golf. And then I went to school
Speaker 8: for a painting degree up in Montana. So I graduated
Speaker 8: in two thousand and nine with an art degree, which
Speaker 8: led to zero jobs, in which case I started asking
Speaker 8: myself what do I really want to do? And I
Speaker 8: liked golf. I was pretty good at math and still
Speaker 8: wanted to be in some type of creative field. And
Speaker 8: I really blamed my mom because she's an enabler who
Speaker 8: would just say, yeah, man, go for it, you know,
Speaker 8: go to art school in Montana, or yeah, go try
Speaker 8: to get into golf architecture.
Speaker 5: You can do it.
Speaker 8: And so that's what I did. I went to a
Speaker 8: master's landscape program down in Georgia and got in contact
Speaker 8: with Tom, who then immediately pawned me off on Don Placic,
Speaker 8: who I can communicated with for a year and a
Speaker 8: half before getting an internship in Dismal River. Then hooked
Speaker 8: up with these guys and nobody's fired me yet, so
Speaker 8: I'm still hanging around.
Speaker 1: It's always interesting with the people that come on the podcast.
Speaker 1: So many people, with the exception of Kai, you know,
Speaker 1: grew up playing public golf. But for this conversation, Tom,
Speaker 1: I think it would be great if you could walk
Speaker 1: us through kind of what happens from renaissance side. After
Speaker 1: you guys went a bit and you get awarded a project,
Speaker 1: you know, what are kind of the first steps and
Speaker 1: how do you determine who's going out to that project.
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing I should say is our process
Speaker 3: is pretty different from the status quo of the golf business,
Speaker 3: or at least the status quo of golf business ten
Speaker 3: or twenty years ago. I mean I learned from Pete Dye,
Speaker 3: who is very hands on construction based person, so I
Speaker 3: am too. But a lot of architects doing a renovation
Speaker 3: rely on golf course contractors to do all the work.
Speaker 3: And they don't have guys like this that they bring
Speaker 3: into a job. They just they do plans, they go
Speaker 3: and inspect it as it's happening from time to time
Speaker 3: like I do. But they rely on a contractor to
Speaker 3: come up with shapers and people to run the equipment
Speaker 3: and build stuff. And that's the whole key of doing
Speaker 3: renovation worker, especially restoration work. I mean, if you think
Speaker 3: about it, you know, clubs get all interested in master
Speaker 3: plans and you know this whole big process of how
Speaker 3: do we you know, how do we do a master
Speaker 3: plan and sell it to the membership. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're restoring bell Air to George Thomas's design, every single
Speaker 3: architects master plan should be the same. It's all about
Speaker 3: execution and being able to build that and make it
Speaker 3: look right. And unfortunately, when you do that with a
Speaker 3: contractor they're not as engaged as these guys are, so
Speaker 3: you know they're there to do a pretty good job
Speaker 3: and make money. And that means that, you know, you'll
Speaker 3: get guys that don't really know anything about George Thomas
Speaker 3: or what he was about, and it's very hit or miss.
Speaker 3: And you know, as an architect, I don't know how
Speaker 3: I would get a bunch of guys that don't care
Speaker 3: about George Thomas to build something that looks like George
Speaker 3: Thomas's work. So I bring golf rats in, guys that
Speaker 3: are really interested in golf and think this is a
Speaker 3: cool project to work on. And they see an old
Speaker 3: picture of the twelfth hole at bel Air with this
Speaker 3: big mound in front of the green and go, okay,
Speaker 3: we got to get that to look just like this picture.
Speaker 3: How are we going to do that? And keep working
Speaker 3: on it. I mean, Kai was did the most work
Speaker 3: work on that whole, and we what like three or
Speaker 3: four times. We you know, we we we thought we
Speaker 3: had a close and then we get there and we're
Speaker 3: looking at the picture it's like, Nope, need a lot
Speaker 3: more full still, Just back to the drawing board, get
Speaker 3: some more fill. In there until this thing really looks right.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of what it takes to do a
Speaker 3: restoration and get it right. So I don't you know,
Speaker 3: there is another approach, but I just I don't have
Speaker 3: any idea how that would work for me anyway.
Speaker 1: It's most people that listen to this podcast are in
Speaker 1: the business world, and I think everybody would agree that
Speaker 1: when you get a third party involved it, it kind
Speaker 1: of muddies things up and makes things more difficult. That's
Speaker 1: from my experience. Obviously, there are some third parties that
Speaker 1: do good, good work and stuff, but from the for
Speaker 1: the most part, having a club, a contractor, and a designer,
Speaker 1: I think would make communication more difficult and more difficult
Speaker 1: to align everybody on the same mission.
Speaker 3: Yes, and let me not misrepresent either. There is a
Speaker 3: golf course contractor involved in this. This is like an
Speaker 3: eight or nine million dollar project. It's a huge project,
Speaker 3: and these four guys can't do all that work. So
Speaker 3: there's a big golf course contractor involved, and there's an
Speaker 3: irrigation contractor putting in irrigation, and there's there's all kinds
Speaker 3: of laborers and guys cutting down trees and all kinds
Speaker 3: of subcontractors working out here. But for us, the key
Speaker 3: thing is you know, shaping bunkers, shaping greens, getting those
Speaker 3: details to look just like they're supposed to look. And
Speaker 3: that's the part that I don't want to sub out
Speaker 3: to somebody else.
Speaker 1: So is it is it a team effort with trying
Speaker 1: to find the old aerials, the old pictures or when
Speaker 1: when does the team kind of get picked?
Speaker 3: Well, the hard thing when you sign up you don't
Speaker 3: know exactly when the construction is going to happen, so
Speaker 3: you can't pick the team. Yeah, you know you can't.
Speaker 3: I can't ask Kai to you know, block off some
Speaker 3: time for me at some point down the road, but
Speaker 3: I don't know when yet.
Speaker 2: If it was for Bill Air, i'd say okay.
Speaker 3: But so in the beginning, it's just me and Eric,
Speaker 3: you know, doing the master plan and trying to get
Speaker 3: a budget together and figure out how much work this
Speaker 3: is going to be, so we can you know, go
Speaker 3: through all the political stuff at the club and get
Speaker 3: them to say okay, once we get past that point,
Speaker 3: then we can start thinking about, Okay, here's a realistic
Speaker 3: construction schedule for when this is going to happen and
Speaker 3: how long it's going to take and how much work
Speaker 3: have we got to do and how much help do
Speaker 3: we need to do it? And we start putting the
Speaker 3: team together, and you know, we've got probably eight to
Speaker 3: twelve people that we've worked with in the past on
Speaker 3: other projects that we can call up and see if
Speaker 3: they're interested or you know, are you busy over this
Speaker 3: winner are you are you working for somebody else? Or
Speaker 3: what are you doing? You know, I've got three of
Speaker 3: the guys would be on my payroll, and generally one
Speaker 3: of them is going to run a job and be
Speaker 3: the lead associate, and depending on how busy we are,
Speaker 3: the other guys might be able to chip in and
Speaker 3: help a bunch. And sometimes there are in three different places,
Speaker 3: and you know, like Brian Slanik, the third guy is
Speaker 3: in Australia right now running a big renovation project there,
Speaker 3: so he can't really help out it all here, so
Speaker 3: he's running that, Eric's running bel Air, Brian Schneider with
Speaker 3: me is jumping back and forth in between them helping out.
Speaker 3: And then you know, we'll pull in two or three
Speaker 3: other people as we need to get the work done
Speaker 3: in a timely manner and kind of the key for
Speaker 3: me is you know a lot of people ask like
Speaker 3: but they ask more about new courses than renovations, like, well,
Speaker 3: don't you go back and want to change stuff after
Speaker 3: you get all done, because certainly you can't just be
Speaker 3: perfect and get it all right the first time. And
Speaker 3: I say, well, no, I don't get it all right.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't get it all right the first time. Except
Speaker 3: it's not just me. You know, there's four really talented
Speaker 3: guys who spend a lot more time out here than
Speaker 3: I am. You know, they get it right. They get
Speaker 3: it mostly right before I show up. You know, we
Speaker 3: kind of walked through what what the goals are, and
Speaker 3: we've got a bunch of pictures to work with. They
Speaker 3: get it mostly right before I show up, and then
Speaker 3: I can deal with the really fine details and the
Speaker 3: stuff that's more about the playability of the whole instead
Speaker 3: of at bunkers in the wrong place or it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like they've already got that, and they're you know,
Speaker 3: they're really working with each other. It's very collaborative. You know,
Speaker 3: it's more fun on a new project because you're you know,
Speaker 3: it's creative and you're getting creative input from other guys.
Speaker 3: But on a renovation. It's you know, how are you
Speaker 3: going to make a mistake because three other guys are
Speaker 3: going to point right at it and say that's not
Speaker 3: right yet.
Speaker 1: So Eric, in terms of you're the day to day
Speaker 1: lead on a project, what's that look like?
Speaker 5: It's a good question. Excuse me.
Speaker 4: The main thing is to just spend a little bit
Speaker 4: more time during your day looking ahead. You know, you've
Speaker 4: you've got to just work with the golf course superintendent
Speaker 4: and the contractor just kind of forecasting what's coming down
Speaker 4: the pike to make sure that you're you're kind of
Speaker 4: tackling each whole, each portion of the whole. Each there's
Speaker 4: materials coming for Green's construction at the end of the week,
Speaker 4: so you need to have this done by this day
Speaker 4: and that done by the next day. That type of
Speaker 4: coordination of our work is it's really the primary responsibility
Speaker 4: of doing that, and it's really not that but you know,
Speaker 4: it's not that much fun relative to the project as
Speaker 4: a whole what you're doing, but it's an important part
Speaker 4: of it. And that's kind of the day to day
Speaker 4: and nuts in Bolt's part, and then the larger aspect
Speaker 4: for me and what's what's a lot more fun is
Speaker 4: just the collaborative part that Tom mentioned, where you know,
Speaker 4: you're kind of going around and looking as a group,
Speaker 4: you know who's going to work on what next, kind
Speaker 4: of leap frogging around. And I think we all have
Speaker 4: worked together a lot over the years, and and you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things I think everybody appreciates when we're
Speaker 4: working together is that we we try pretty hard to
Speaker 4: not pigeonhole anybody into one role and kind of stuck
Speaker 4: doing all of the teas or all of the bunkers
Speaker 4: or just greens that type of thing, and and kind
Speaker 4: of let everybody have a chance to do some of
Speaker 4: the really fun stuff, like whether it's you know, putting
Speaker 4: back the May West Mound. That's a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 4: Tom took three or more goes to really feel like
Speaker 4: we had it right, and Kai and Tom had it
Speaker 4: absolutely right about three weeks ago, and then just random
Speaker 4: somebody trying to be helpful with the box blade was
Speaker 4: on top of it, took the top of it down
Speaker 4: towards the bottom got to cleaning it up. So it's
Speaker 4: actually been through its fourth and fifth iteration and it
Speaker 4: has sod on it now and we feel like we
Speaker 4: got it back right, But it makes the These types
Speaker 4: of projects are always set up to be done and
Speaker 4: not quite enough time so that, you know, because people
Speaker 4: don't want to give up their golf course, and it
Speaker 4: can be a bit of a high pressure situation that
Speaker 4: all of Tom's new courses turn out best because or
Speaker 4: they turn out well because we have a good time
Speaker 4: building them. So keeping the keeping the fun part of
Speaker 4: doing this work as a big part of it is important,
Speaker 4: and I think that stems directly from everybody having a
Speaker 4: chance to chime in on everything. It's like no piece
Speaker 4: of work goes without everybody having a chance, whether solicited
Speaker 4: or unsolicited, to say looks like crap. I don't know
Speaker 4: what you're thinking there. Are you sure that goes all
Speaker 4: the way over there? I don't think it does. You
Speaker 4: know one thing I'll leave with this is one of
Speaker 4: the things I've noticed most about about this project, And
Speaker 4: everybody is every bit as guilty as anybody is. When
Speaker 4: you're interpreting these old photos. I've been you know my
Speaker 4: go to phrases. Everybody sees what they want to see,
Speaker 4: so you have a sense for how something might have
Speaker 4: been and you're looking into these grainy, old black and
Speaker 4: white photos that are a little bit fuzzy, and you
Speaker 4: know there's a third dimension missing and and what you
Speaker 4: feel a lot to be there. You can kind of
Speaker 4: make a case for it in the photo. And eventually
Speaker 4: we kind of we kind of hashed that out amongst
Speaker 4: ourselves and then Tom comes back and says, no, you're
Speaker 4: all for wrong. See it should be over here. But
Speaker 4: that's just kind of a a part of the of
Speaker 4: this particular process doing a restoration that's just been a
Speaker 4: lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I should say too. I mean when I was
Speaker 3: when I was in college and going around and seeing
Speaker 3: all the best golf courses in the world. One of
Speaker 3: the ideas for the way we work came from the
Speaker 3: guy who was superintendent at Pine Valley back in the day.
Speaker 3: Said I said, well, how do you break up who
Speaker 3: does what? And he says, well, I got like six
Speaker 3: key guys and they're each responsible for three holes and
Speaker 3: are totally responsible for him. It's like you've got your
Speaker 3: little crew to help you, but those are your three holes,
Speaker 3: so take good care of them. And you've got to
Speaker 3: do that. You've got to give them some ownership of it.
Speaker 3: And at the same time you've got to let the
Speaker 3: other guys have some input too, because it's it's not
Speaker 3: like you don't get the final say on this, but
Speaker 3: you know, you get the first crack at it and
Speaker 3: do a good job.
Speaker 1: Brian, you've been with Renaissance for a long time. What
Speaker 1: project was the most obscure kind of accommodations because you
Speaker 1: guys are moving places for months at a time.
Speaker 5: That's a great question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we haven't stayed in many places like this, or
Speaker 6: you know, six hundred feet above the golf course looking
Speaker 6: down to Los Angeles and just saw beautiful rainbow in
Speaker 6: the canyon below us as it's raining in Los Angeles today.
Speaker 5: That's a great question.
Speaker 6: You know, we've stayed in some fantastic places around the world,
Speaker 6: and we've stayed in some places that are Yeah, traveling
Speaker 6: as much as we do, and we all have families,
Speaker 6: significant others that that would enjoy the opportunity to travel
Speaker 6: with us to some of the places we're going, And yeah,
Speaker 6: Bella would be a great place to take your family.
Speaker 6: New Zealand is a fantastic place to take your family.
Speaker 6: Mull in Colorado is a little more challenging. I'm sorry, Holyoak,
Speaker 6: Holyoak or Mulla Nebraska or Deer Lodge, Montana. You know,
Speaker 6: they offer less too for non work activities, So I
Speaker 6: mentioned Deer Lodge. One of my favorite things about staying there.
Speaker 6: We stayed in kind of a ranch house that we
Speaker 6: shared with some of the working ranch staff, and out
Speaker 6: the back window in the mornings and the evenings there
Speaker 6: were horses penned up right outside and you see the
Speaker 6: horses running around and doing their thing. It was fantastic
Speaker 6: in the mountains in the background with the snow on top.
Speaker 6: We've been lucky to work in some really wonderful places
Speaker 6: and I appreciate all those experiences. Sometimes it's a relief
Speaker 6: when they're over. But looking back in retrospect, yeah, we've
Speaker 6: We've had a lot of great, great times wherever we worked.
Speaker 1: So Kai, Yeah, you're out there doing the construction, and
Speaker 1: what's your favorite thing to get out there? And you
Speaker 1: wake up that morning you know you're doing X job.
Speaker 1: What's the job that really guess you're going?
Speaker 2: Honestly, there's not one like on this job.
Speaker 7: Just this week, we've I've been involved in starting a green,
Speaker 7: building a green with the bulldozer. I've been digging a
Speaker 7: bunker from scratch. I've worked on a bunker that we've
Speaker 7: already done, kind of edit it. I also was on
Speaker 7: a rake. Eric and I were raking out greens that
Speaker 7: we have we're getting ready to first see and saw
Speaker 7: it around him when we were raking so and running
Speaker 7: a trap break. So it's there's all kinds of different
Speaker 7: jobs you're doing, and honestly, they're all great. That's probably
Speaker 7: why I'm still out here doing this because I still
Speaker 7: think it's great doing all these jobs. And that's one
Speaker 7: of the cool things about working as Tom said, that
Speaker 7: you get the opportunity to do a lot of different
Speaker 7: things to bring the golf course from, you know, the
Speaker 7: early stages to the final stages. And an interesting element
Speaker 7: too when Tom was talking earlier about how the six
Speaker 7: six guys in three holes. I've done some work with
Speaker 7: a lot of other people through the years. Working with
Speaker 7: Tom is the best part of that, but the other
Speaker 7: guys I've worked with, it's interesting that Tom and his
Speaker 7: company give you more input, you know. And Tom's if
Speaker 7: you had people rank, who's where the architecture rank of
Speaker 7: guys working today, I think he'd be up near the top.
Speaker 7: But yet he seems to give us a little more
Speaker 7: freedom and involvement and not being worried about, oh, that's
Speaker 7: not my idea, and allows us to almost participate more
Speaker 7: than the guys some of the other guys do, and
Speaker 7: I find that very interesting, and it's also makes it
Speaker 7: more interesting for me to work on the projects, and
Speaker 7: I think probably for Blake as well and everyone just
Speaker 7: having that you're very engaged and you have ownership of
Speaker 7: what's happening. So I might have gotten off the.
Speaker 3: Track there, but but dude, that's why I'm near the
Speaker 3: top is because I get to borrow all your good
Speaker 3: ideas and all the rest of you. You know, I
Speaker 3: get the credit.
Speaker 1: They always say, hire great people and let them do
Speaker 1: what they do. Is you know the most successful companies
Speaker 1: micromanagers are, you know, they they constrain ideas and for
Speaker 1: something that you guys do allowing free flow of ideas,
Speaker 1: it's got to be so important.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And one of the things, I mean, the part
Speaker 3: of this that I didn't talk about my role is
Speaker 3: I'll be here for a few days at a time
Speaker 3: and we'll work on however many holes, trying to get
Speaker 3: them finished, and then before I leave, Eric and I'll
Speaker 3: walk through what the holes are that he's going to
Speaker 3: be working on while I'm away, and you know, and
Speaker 3: then Eric or Kai or somebody else is going to
Speaker 3: take a shot at roughening those greens before I get back.
Speaker 3: And the one thing that I really had to learn
Speaker 3: didn't take too long because I you know, I tried
Speaker 3: to do it for Pete Dye, was not to give
Speaker 3: them too many instructions out any particular green you could
Speaker 3: you could tell them it was you wanted to tell
Speaker 3: them two or three key things. But if I but
Speaker 3: if I gave them like seven, inevitably I would tell
Speaker 3: them two things that kind of conflicted with each other.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd tell them to keep the green at
Speaker 3: this elevation right here, keep the back of the green
Speaker 3: at this elevation right here, and then don't have too
Speaker 3: much tilt in it, and then something but I don't,
Speaker 3: and then I don't want to see that sprinkler box
Speaker 3: way back there on another hole. And you couldn't do
Speaker 3: all those things at the same time. It wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: So you know, I had to learn to keep it
Speaker 3: down to like the two or three things that I
Speaker 3: thought were really important. Let them take a crack at
Speaker 3: sorting out how everything else would work together and then
Speaker 3: come back and deal with the sprinkler box if that
Speaker 3: was a problem, but it was better, you know. But
Speaker 3: they'll see the sprinkler box too and try to work
Speaker 3: around it. But you know, if I just gave them
Speaker 3: two any points to fit in, he couldn't make everything
Speaker 3: work in between, you know, So you have to give
Speaker 3: him enough space to operate it.
Speaker 5: Tom.
Speaker 7: One thing I just thrown in what you're saying is
Speaker 7: and Andy's listeners and what he was talking about before.
Speaker 7: But everybody here being a golfer, from my experience with
Speaker 7: you also, you will sometimes just explain how the golf
Speaker 7: shot coming in. You don't even have to say anything
Speaker 7: about the dirt, and just say this is I want
Speaker 7: this shot to receive from here, but I don't want
Speaker 7: you to be able to recover from over there. And
Speaker 7: if you don't understand golf, like you were talking about
Speaker 7: the contractors, like guys don't even play golf, No, you
Speaker 7: can't have that conversation with them.
Speaker 3: No. You know, one of the best instructed one of
Speaker 3: the first projects I worked down with Eric I just
Speaker 3: when we were doing Riverfront. I remember saying on the
Speaker 3: fifth pole, you know, just the only thing I want
Speaker 3: you to do on this green is you know, go
Speaker 3: over it. You know, there's when you stake out a
Speaker 3: new golf course, you put a post where the landing
Speaker 3: area is, you know, presumably where everybody's going to drive
Speaker 3: it off the tee. But I've not everybody drives it
Speaker 3: right in the middle of the fairway two hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty yards or wherever the post is. So they're all
Speaker 3: over the place. And but there's always the post there,
Speaker 3: and a lot of architects go stand at the post
Speaker 3: and look at the hole like everybody's going to be there.
Speaker 3: And I know from you know, because I I'm a golfer.
Speaker 3: You don't drive it to where the post is. You're
Speaker 3: all over the hole. So you know, I told Eric
Speaker 3: on at Riverfront, So you know, okay, walk twenty yards
Speaker 3: right of the post and look at the green from there,
Speaker 3: and then walk twenty yards left of the post and
Speaker 3: look at the green from there, and try to make
Speaker 3: the look as different as you possibly can. And and
Speaker 3: after I after I said, I was like, that's a
Speaker 3: pretty good general rule, you know, because if you can
Speaker 3: make the shot from the right look really different than
Speaker 3: the shot from the left, now you've got strategy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, angles and options, that's my my thing. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think actually, but so Blake, tell me the
Speaker 1: first time that you got on a dozer and like
Speaker 1: built a green or attempted to like, was that like
Speaker 1: learning how to do that.
Speaker 8: Stuff rattling because you inevitably create these waves when you're
Speaker 8: first getting on a dozer. The blade will dig down
Speaker 8: and then you try to overcompensate by lifting up. And
Speaker 8: so I think actually the first time I was on
Speaker 8: a dozer was Dismal River doing this huge push on
Speaker 8: two Fairway, and Brian Schneider would have to spend the
Speaker 8: first twenty minutes of his morning every morning cleaning up
Speaker 8: our mess that we had made the night before. But
Speaker 8: as you sort of get out of that, which is
Speaker 8: for some people it's twenty hours on a doser seat,
Speaker 8: it could be two hundred hours on a doser seat,
Speaker 8: and you're lucky to get that time if you get it.
Speaker 6: To Blake's credit, we had I think eight interns on
Speaker 6: the Dismal project, and that that project on the second
Speaker 6: hole was probably a six or seven day project all told,
Speaker 6: and I'd work on it during the day among other
Speaker 6: things I was doing, and in the evening when it
Speaker 6: was time to shut the dozers off and was getting
Speaker 6: dark and we all wanted to eat, there was the
Speaker 6: opportunity for somebody to jump in the bulldozer, and those
Speaker 6: eight guys all had a chance, and Blake made himself
Speaker 6: a built every night to jump in that machine and
Speaker 6: get that experience because it's hard to do. It's hard
Speaker 6: to do, but he took advantage of that, and he
Speaker 6: was a really quick study. You know, he took to
Speaker 6: it quickly, and he was eager to take advantage of
Speaker 6: that opportunity. And that's a big reason why he's sitting
Speaker 6: here right now.
Speaker 1: Has there ever been somebody that made like a horrible
Speaker 1: mistake that actually ended up being like a brilliant mistake.
Speaker 8: Have you seen that the second fair way? It does more.
Speaker 8: We'll have to put a picture.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it used to be dead flat. It happens every day.
Speaker 4: You know, I.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't call the mistakes, but you know, part of being
Speaker 6: on site every day is number one, capitalizing on opportunities
Speaker 6: when they present themselves, but also just being in a
Speaker 6: machine and messing around until you stumble on something that
Speaker 6: works and looks cool. So they're they're kind of intentional mistakes.
Speaker 6: But you know, you don't always have in your head
Speaker 6: the perfect picture of what you're intending to build.
Speaker 3: In the get go change. You change your mind as
Speaker 3: you're going. The best. The best example I know of
Speaker 3: of a mistake I when I I was at Costa
Speaker 3: Compo once. Then mister Dye has given me a tour
Speaker 3: of Teeth of the Dog and there's a green there.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember what a hole it is. It's
Speaker 3: the only part of three that's not on the sea.
Speaker 3: I think it's the teem, and it's a really odd
Speaker 3: it's an odd looking green. It's like sits down, sits
Speaker 3: down a little bit unnaturally, and then there's like a
Speaker 3: big I think what they built it. It was like a donut,
Speaker 3: like there was sand all around it, and then just
Speaker 3: a little green sitting up in the middle of the donut.
Speaker 3: And Pete told me that he had like given these
Speaker 3: guys some instructions to build something completely different than that,
Speaker 3: and gone away for like three months and they had
Speaker 3: like almost no heavy equipment to build anything there in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy, so it was all hand labor. And he
Speaker 3: got back and it was just totally not what he
Speaker 3: decided what he was wanting at all, and he was like,
Speaker 3: this is like three months in the end labor. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna have to work with it. So he worked
Speaker 3: with it, and you know, it's a lot of people
Speaker 3: think it's a pretty cool hole, but it was like
Speaker 3: nothing at all like what he had in mind.
Speaker 1: I make mistakes sometimes and they turn out like working
Speaker 1: a well like Eric. So you've got a somewhat obscure job.
Speaker 1: Some people would say it's an obscure job. And when
Speaker 1: you talk to somebody, when you talk to like Joe,
Speaker 1: regular member at a country club, what do you wish
Speaker 1: they understood better about what you do?
Speaker 7: Hmm.
Speaker 4: That's a tough one, really, I've got I tend to
Speaker 4: be pretty obscure about trying to describe it in the
Speaker 4: first place. So I think if you know people, you
Speaker 4: can tell right away if someone has a sense of
Speaker 4: what it is, just based on the follow up question,
Speaker 4: if they're at all even concerned about architecture or how
Speaker 4: things get built. You know, like a lot of the
Speaker 4: people that listen to your podcast at least are interested
Speaker 4: and kind of have an idea, And usually you can
Speaker 4: tell by either the question or the reaction to the
Speaker 4: answer whether or not they have any idea, and I
Speaker 4: don't really you know.
Speaker 5: If if there's nothing there, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't really try to elaborate any I think the
Speaker 4: biggest thing is is that the assumption is is that
Speaker 4: everything is drawn and that if you're in any part,
Speaker 4: like I usually describe it as designed and build golf courses,
Speaker 4: and they get the design part, but they will what
Speaker 4: do you mean by the build part?
Speaker 5: And it's like, well, we we go.
Speaker 2: Out and shape.
Speaker 3: They don't. They don't get that it's all one process.
Speaker 3: They think of it as two separate things. You know,
Speaker 3: there's the there's the guy that's designing it and they
Speaker 3: think that's me, and there's the guys that are building it,
Speaker 3: and they think that's these guys. They don't see how
Speaker 3: much input the you're still designing it while you're building it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're you're sculpting, you don't you know. They
Speaker 3: think you've got it all figured out exactly in three
Speaker 3: D in your mind, in advance, and there's no way
Speaker 3: that anybody does that that well, that way you know
Speaker 3: you've got and you know, when you're asking me for
Speaker 3: an answer right now of how exactly how that's going
Speaker 3: to be. You know, I can, I can try to
Speaker 3: describe what I want it to be like, but but
Speaker 3: in the end, somebody's going to have to make it,
Speaker 3: and they're going to spend hours and hours and hours
Speaker 3: making it and sort it through all this detail and
Speaker 3: usually it gets better from that process. But you know,
Speaker 3: the members just think it's well, it's all figured out,
Speaker 3: or in this case, George Thomas figured it all out,
Speaker 3: and yeah he did, but he still had to go
Speaker 3: through that process. And sometimes we we have to go
Speaker 3: through that process again to get back to there.
Speaker 1: So Kai, yesterday, I, you know, showed up and I
Speaker 1: you were digging a bunker and shaping a bunker and
Speaker 1: you came across some like electrical wire. What's the most
Speaker 1: obscure thing that you have come across while digging up?
Speaker 2: I can't answer that question.
Speaker 3: That was on one of my projects, and no, he can't.
Speaker 2: Can you give us a hint? No, there was a
Speaker 2: building of some sort.
Speaker 3: We did when I worked in when I worked for
Speaker 3: the dies, the irrigation guys trenched through human bones and
Speaker 3: they had to you know, they they had to like
Speaker 3: bring the police out to the site to investigate it.
Speaker 3: As a murder investigation until they figured it was at
Speaker 3: least one hundred years old, and so they it wasn't
Speaker 3: an active murder investigation and they could let it go,
Speaker 3: but it was going to shut the whole job down
Speaker 3: at the time, so it was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 7: It's crazy, and it's not as interesting as skeletons in
Speaker 7: the golf course. But when you came out yesterday, the
Speaker 7: wires that actually hit were irrigation wires, old irrigation wires.
Speaker 7: That's why that tape was there. But just the guys
Speaker 7: that are listening might find it interesting because you were
Speaker 7: standing there.
Speaker 2: I was digging where we kind of knew the.
Speaker 7: Bunker was from the old aerial, and so as I
Speaker 7: get down three four feet, I can actually find the
Speaker 7: old bunker sand from the George Thomas golf courses there,
Speaker 7: and I'm actually able to just start the dirt kind
Speaker 7: of just pulls right off of it. It's kind of
Speaker 7: in a layer, so that sand is all under there.
Speaker 7: So I'm actually just chasing the sand from the old bunker,
Speaker 7: knowing the shape of it basically by the aerial, and
Speaker 7: can find the floor of that old bunker sitting right
Speaker 7: buried under four feet of dirt. So it's kind of
Speaker 7: an interesting process in that.
Speaker 1: Regard, very interesting. We'll get more into the bel Air
Speaker 1: things and in part two this podcast, but Blake, let's
Speaker 1: I guess some random questions that I think would be
Speaker 1: good to ask. In this segment from listeners, Kip Johnson
Speaker 1: wants to know what was the best way to evangelize
Speaker 1: to other golfers or clients about golf course architecture.
Speaker 8: That I think that's a huge question for everybody, for
Speaker 8: every golf course, particularly that's going through a restoration. You know,
Speaker 8: to use bel Air as an example, it's like the
Speaker 8: less cart traffic, you can have the better just because
Speaker 8: of the nature of the property. But to do that
Speaker 8: you need to have a paradigm shift in the way
Speaker 8: that this and that a culture has thought for you know,
Speaker 8: twenty years or fifty years or whatever it is. So
Speaker 8: educating people on let's use that as an example is
Speaker 8: a huge component, and I don't know, I imagine Tom
Speaker 8: still is figuring that out to this day, of how
Speaker 8: to educate people what the best way is because different
Speaker 8: you know, people in California may react differently to being
Speaker 8: educated than somebody in a different part of the Country, So.
Speaker 3: I would have said that the you know, these projects
Speaker 3: are kind of contagious, a little bit like I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the reasons we're redoing bel Air is because
Speaker 3: they did a great renovation of La Country Club a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, and all the members at bell
Speaker 3: Air and out look at that and go, why can't.
Speaker 5: We do that?
Speaker 3: And you know, we worked in a lot of cities
Speaker 3: that that's that's the case. And once once certain clubs
Speaker 3: start going in the right direction fixing things and everybody
Speaker 3: else sees it, everybody, oh, let's do that too. Let's
Speaker 3: let's bring somebody in to look at our course, and
Speaker 3: then I won't mention it. But there's one club I'm
Speaker 3: consulting with right now that's in a small town and
Speaker 3: they're isolated from that entirely. They're like two hours away
Speaker 3: from anything else. And it's been the hardest client that
Speaker 3: I've dealt with in years, because they're so scared of
Speaker 3: shutting down the golf course for any length of time.
Speaker 3: All the members will quit and they can't see the
Speaker 3: you know, they can't visualize what the transformation will be
Speaker 3: because they haven't seen another club do it, and how
Speaker 3: much better it is and how much more excited the
Speaker 3: membership is to get done. So that's the main thing
Speaker 3: is go see something else that somebody else is done.
Speaker 3: That's what's going to get people excited about it more
Speaker 3: than just talking about the history of it.
Speaker 1: So you talk about, you know, a city undergoing one
Speaker 1: club and then you know, it becomes a keeping up
Speaker 1: with the Joneses type thing. And this question is for
Speaker 1: anybody here, what city would you like to see undergo
Speaker 1: like a golf course transformation where it's a big restoration
Speaker 1: trend or a big renovation trend.
Speaker 4: Selfishly Denver because I live there, but yeah, I think
Speaker 4: there's a there's some places there with a lot of
Speaker 4: potential that you know, not not world beater golf courses necessarily,
Speaker 4: but just just kind of getting the fundamentals right would
Speaker 4: help a lot of places immensely. And I think that
Speaker 4: goes for you know, most golf courses that even have
Speaker 4: a modest amount of topographical interest and a good routing
Speaker 4: and some a decent set of greens. You know, it's
Speaker 4: it's really it can be pretty minimal. You know, just
Speaker 4: getting rid of some trees and getting some mowing right
Speaker 4: is a big part of it. Really, I mean bel
Speaker 4: air was interesting just how much better it looked regardless
Speaker 4: of how it had been remodeled over the years. Just
Speaker 4: getting all the trees that had been added off of
Speaker 4: it made a world of difference.
Speaker 1: Something I liked that I saw today was the tree
Speaker 1: behind the fourth t that got turned into a bench.
Speaker 2: Good use of the tree. So we got this.
Speaker 1: Question from Christopher McCann and it's for Tom. But Brian,
Speaker 1: I think you've worked with Tom for a long time,
Speaker 1: how do you think he's evolved as an architect over
Speaker 1: the years.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna think about that.
Speaker 6: I don't I'm not sure i'd use the word evolved.
Speaker 6: One of the things I admire about Tom and the
Speaker 6: way he works is that in regards to our new projects,
Speaker 6: he's always trying to do something different on the next
Speaker 6: one than did in the last one. And it's not
Speaker 6: necessarily an active stylistic goal. Necessarily, it's just a constant
Speaker 6: willingness to ensure that the finished product reflects the unique
Speaker 6: nature of that particular site. And I think a lot
Speaker 6: of architects have a signature look or a signature style.
Speaker 6: You know, the bunkering they do on this course will
Speaker 6: look a lot like what they've done the past sort
Speaker 6: of thing. And I think we as a company try
Speaker 6: really hard to to do something different than we've done
Speaker 6: before on each of our projects and finding something about
Speaker 6: every site that that we can work from as a
Speaker 6: starting point stylistically. And I think Tom's great at that,
Speaker 6: and to me, he's the best in the business at that.
Speaker 6: You know, something that struck me as we're talking about
Speaker 6: the way we've worked. You know Tom's got do. When
Speaker 6: you read about Tom, the word ego comes up a lot.
Speaker 6: Tom's definitely confident, Tom's very knowledgeable.
Speaker 5: Tom's great at what he does. But I hope you
Speaker 5: know this discussion about how we.
Speaker 6: Work reflects his willingness to let others participate in the
Speaker 6: entire process. And I don't think there's anyone in the
Speaker 6: business who's more respectful and shows greater public appreciation and
Speaker 6: the people that help him do what he does. And
Speaker 6: there are a lot of people that would do that
Speaker 6: for him willingly, but he goes out of his way
Speaker 6: to give credit to the people that help him do
Speaker 6: his job.
Speaker 5: And you know, it drives me nuts to see.
Speaker 6: That word ego attached to him so often by people
Speaker 6: that don't you know that haven't worked for him for
Speaker 6: fifteen or twenty.
Speaker 5: Years like we have.
Speaker 1: We've got another one here from actually one of your
Speaker 1: guys's colleagues, Clyde Johnson.
Speaker 3: We might have to cut this question.
Speaker 1: We'll give this one to you, Tom, because so, how
Speaker 1: do you think your career opportunities style approach would have
Speaker 1: differed if you'd started out under a different architect than
Speaker 1: Pete Die.
Speaker 3: Oh I can't even imagine. I mean, you know when
Speaker 3: I when I got when I started in college seriously
Speaker 3: trying to pursue this, and I didn't know anything in
Speaker 3: the golf business, So I just wrote letters to people
Speaker 3: in the golf business, give me advice. What should I do?
Speaker 3: Who should I work for? This is so this is
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty. Every single person in a golf business set
Speaker 3: work for Pete Dye. I mean there wasn't any Oh
Speaker 3: you should work for Trent Jones. Oh you should work
Speaker 3: for Mike Hurtzon, Oh you should work for whoever. Every
Speaker 3: single person you gotta go work for this guy, partly
Speaker 3: because he was so hands on and partly because he
Speaker 3: was so passionate about what he did. But so I
Speaker 3: can't even you know, like, after I got back from
Speaker 3: my scholarship to spend a year in the UK. I
Speaker 3: mister Jones, Trent Jones Senior, who'd gone to Cornell at
Speaker 3: thirty sixty fifty years before I did, gotten too. He
Speaker 3: had been up at Cornell and they told him they
Speaker 3: had this student overseas, and he was like, I'll have
Speaker 3: him get in touch with me when he gets back.
Speaker 3: And he would have offered me a job to go
Speaker 3: work in his office in Europe. And fortunately I had
Speaker 3: already worked for mister Dye for one summer of construction,
Speaker 3: and I was hooked on the idea that it was
Speaker 3: about construction and it wasn't about drawing plans, so you know,
Speaker 3: so I so that didn't appeal to me. And if
Speaker 3: I hadn't had that one summer of construction experience, it
Speaker 3: might have been different. Even though you know, just like
Speaker 3: these guys have talked about, one of the most appealing
Speaker 3: things to me about this business and about golf in general,
Speaker 3: is spending your time outdoors. You know, sitting in an
Speaker 3: office drawing plans of this stuff does not interest me
Speaker 3: at all. I want to be out there doing it.
Speaker 3: I think it the work benefits from that. So you know,
Speaker 3: if i'd work for anybody else. At the time. I
Speaker 3: mean at the time, Pete die was the only guy
Speaker 3: who was out there building stuff himself and hiring young
Speaker 3: guys that were interested in golf to help him build stuff.
Speaker 3: Now there's a lot because we all learned from Pete
Speaker 3: or you know, Bill Kore and I learned from Pete,
Speaker 3: and then a lot of other guys have learned from us.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of people taking this approach now.
Speaker 3: But it was really rare then. I can't imagine doing
Speaker 3: it any other way.
Speaker 1: So as a follow up to you guys, what would
Speaker 1: be your advice for somebody that might be looking to
Speaker 1: get started in the industry who's crazy enough to live
Speaker 1: as a nomad.
Speaker 7: I would say, you better be really passionate about it
Speaker 7: because it's not going to be about the money for
Speaker 7: a long time, and you just better really enjoy being
Speaker 7: out out in the field building a golf course, because
Speaker 7: you know it's not going to be as you're a
Speaker 7: young guy, it's not going to be real glamorous. But
Speaker 7: you can also hang out with some fun people maybe
Speaker 7: on a site, but it's not going to be oh,
Speaker 7: I'm going to be out you know, putting stakes in the.
Speaker 2: Ground and laying out golf holes. You're going to be
Speaker 2: have to do.
Speaker 8: Hard work, having a good attitude and a willingness to
Speaker 8: appreciate that you may not conform to a nine to
Speaker 8: five schedule Monday through Friday. If you realize that about
Speaker 8: yourself and that you're just you can work for twenty
Speaker 8: days straight and then you can take two months off
Speaker 8: and you're happy with that. But you come to work
Speaker 8: with a good attitude every day and are happy to
Speaker 8: be there. That's a hell of a start.
Speaker 4: I think another thing that I learned really quickly just
Speaker 4: about myself was that and anybody else who you know
Speaker 4: has had any staying power once they joined the circus,
Speaker 4: is you have to love golf courses. I always knew
Speaker 4: I loved golf, but you have to really love golf
Speaker 4: courses because you don't play a lot of golf. You know,
Speaker 4: we play some dirt golf from time to time, and
Speaker 4: daylight today it was a little wet.
Speaker 5: Otherwise we might.
Speaker 4: Have snuck over someplace great in the city and played some.
Speaker 4: And we're all getting a little long in the tooth now,
Speaker 4: so we're playing a little bit more and more as
Speaker 4: we make more time to get away. But you really
Speaker 4: just have to love golf courses and whether they have
Speaker 4: grass on them or not, because by the time they
Speaker 4: have grass on them, you're off to the next pile
Speaker 4: of dirt. So you know, you've just got to appreciate
Speaker 4: being out on golf holes and being a part of
Speaker 4: making golf holes come to life, and not hung up
Speaker 4: too much on getting to play a lot.
Speaker 6: To that point, we didn't spend our day off today
Speaker 6: playing golf one of the great courses in town. We
Speaker 6: spent the day walking around in the rain at LACC
Speaker 6: to see how the water moves through the arroyos.
Speaker 1: So since you guys all love golf courses and we're
Speaker 1: in La a golf course I love. I live next
Speaker 1: to it for about a year was Rancho Park, and
Speaker 1: it's like a course I always talk about, like, man,
Speaker 1: if I could just go play, I wanted this to
Speaker 1: be a scruffy course that a lot of people wouldn't appreciate,
Speaker 1: but like, I love that place. I go there and
Speaker 1: you hit a good drive and you get this little
Speaker 1: hanging line and you got to hit a wedge into
Speaker 1: you know, in the topography and everything there is really
Speaker 1: a neat place, but it might have it's a little
Speaker 1: worse for the wear. Where is your guys's Rancho Park?
Speaker 3: We don't get to hang out at one place for
Speaker 3: that long. I mean, it's it's sad, you know. Somebody
Speaker 3: asked me a question a couple of years ago, well,
Speaker 3: how many courses have you played more than ten times?
Speaker 3: You know, because it was about rankings and like like,
Speaker 3: how can you rank a golf course when you've only
Speaker 3: played it once? And I'm like, well could how could
Speaker 3: I have seen fifteen hundred golf courses if I had
Speaker 3: to go back to them all ten times, you'd be
Speaker 3: stuck on a much lower number, and you wouldn't you
Speaker 3: wouldn't see nearly as much variety. And then they were like, well,
Speaker 3: how many courses do you get to play ten times?
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, okay, the Sterling Farms, the municipal course
Speaker 3: at Stanford where I grew up, and Cornell University course
Speaker 3: and Crystal Downs where I'm a member now, and probably
Speaker 3: half of my own courses I've played more than ten times,
Speaker 3: and probably close to half of them I still have
Speaker 3: not played ten times yet. And then after that it
Speaker 3: was like all the best you know, Saint Andrews in
Speaker 3: Pine Valley and Marion because I keep National Golfings, because
Speaker 3: I you know, I've gone back to those places over
Speaker 3: and over again until I wear out my welcome and
Speaker 3: they won't let me come back anymore. But you know, no,
Speaker 3: you know, not too many places like Rancho Park. I mean,
Speaker 3: because I'm always moving and you know, we never get
Speaker 3: to hang out in the same place for too long.
Speaker 3: That's going back to your earlier question. That's the toughest
Speaker 3: part of the business, and that you know, some of
Speaker 3: them my best work, of some of these guys best
Speaker 3: work is in Australia and New Zealand. We're getting on
Speaker 3: a plane Friday to go fourteen hours to Australia. And
Speaker 3: I've had nothing but good, great times in Australia and
Speaker 3: New Zealand, building four spectacular projects. But it sucks that
Speaker 3: they're so far away. And even when I do, we'll
Speaker 3: be in Sydney for a week. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: get back to Barnboogle and play. I'm not gonna you know,
Speaker 3: I am going to stop through Terry Edy for a
Speaker 3: day because I know it's the only time this year
Speaker 3: I'm going to get to you know, That's why I
Speaker 3: don't mind at all being kind of a homebody and
Speaker 3: trying to grab any little project close to home, even
Speaker 3: if it's not going to be spectacular, because hey, I
Speaker 3: might at least get to hang out there a little
Speaker 3: bit and enjoy it after.
Speaker 1: So maybe we shift this question and say, you know,
Speaker 1: which of the projects that you've worked on would you
Speaker 1: like to just kind of sit and play over and
Speaker 1: over again for a month?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 4: One of the courses we did.
Speaker 1: This is Eric by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of.
Speaker 4: The courses we did in Australia just completely fit my
Speaker 4: psyche and just everything about it felt great to me.
Speaker 4: And that's Saint Andrew's Beach and you know it it
Speaker 4: it It's had a tough road, I understand. It's you know,
Speaker 4: pretty pretty pretty reasonable Nick. Right now, it's you know,
Speaker 4: doing okay, and they you know, people seem to be
Speaker 4: enjoying the golf course, but you know, it's not quite
Speaker 4: on the sea, but it's it's close in the Cups
Speaker 4: region and the ground is just something about the scale
Speaker 4: of the movement there and the heat and the flies.
Speaker 3: I love it all.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I mean I just I just really felt
Speaker 4: just so like every day I was there working on it,
Speaker 4: I was just kind of there and support. Brian Salonic
Speaker 4: was the was the guy that really spent the time
Speaker 4: there and did a lot or you know, ran the
Speaker 4: job and Brian and I helped with it. But every
Speaker 4: day I was there, I loved it. And then we
Speaker 4: went back after we had a Renaissance Cup and played
Speaker 4: a couple of rounds there, and then I even went
Speaker 4: on a impromptu family vacation and drugged my in laws
Speaker 4: down there for a game in the heat and the flies,
Speaker 4: and I was the only one who appreciated the flies,
Speaker 4: But but they really liked the golf course too. It's
Speaker 4: just that's just one play. And yeah, it's true I
Speaker 4: hate bugs, So how ironic is that? But but yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that's one that of his courses that don't get
Speaker 4: back to enough, that's the first one that pops into
Speaker 4: my mind.
Speaker 8: I may be stealing this one from Brian Schneider, but
Speaker 8: Hollywood Golf Club where Brian ran the job, which is
Speaker 8: an old Walter Travis course that Brian and Tom restored
Speaker 8: and I was lucky enough to work on, and it's
Speaker 8: just it's on a flat piece of ground and it's
Speaker 8: one of the quirkiest places you'll ever see with I
Speaker 8: think it originally had two hundred and forty bunkers ranging
Speaker 8: from ten square feet to twelve thousand square feet and
Speaker 8: some of the coolest greens in the met area. And
Speaker 8: it's just yeah, walk it every day, play thirty six
Speaker 8: sols a day. It'd be fantastic.
Speaker 7: Really, almost every course we've worked on. I'd love to
Speaker 7: have a chance to go back and hang out for
Speaker 7: a month. But where Tom's going to Tara Edie would
Speaker 7: be a marvelous place to go hang out for probably
Speaker 7: the rest of your life. But if I honestly could
Speaker 7: pick one, I'd probably go to the Renaissance Club over
Speaker 7: in Scotland. And nothing against Tom, but probably not so
Speaker 7: I could play his court. So I could hang out
Speaker 7: and play North Barrick every day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 4: For me.
Speaker 6: It's probably the places I haven't been back to in
Speaker 6: a long time. And Rock Creek and Montana Stone Eagle
Speaker 6: out in Palm Desert, there are places I loved when
Speaker 6: I saw them. It's been too long since I've been
Speaker 6: able to get back, and there are a lot of those.
Speaker 6: Like Tom said, you know, we've done work all over
Speaker 6: the world now, and it's just it's tough to cover
Speaker 6: all those bases regularly. And it's great to have an
Speaker 6: excuse to head back to Melbourne for new work and
Speaker 6: get to swing by Saint Andrew's Beach or run down
Speaker 6: to bar and Google, but it often takes a work
Speaker 6: excuse to get back to some of those more remote places.
Speaker 1: Down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think my answer is kind of like Brian,
Speaker 3: It's like, well, where haven't you got to be very much?
Speaker 3: You know, it's been been twenty years since I went
Speaker 3: back to Riverfront, and almost that long since I went
Speaker 3: back to Quell Crossing. I sent Tom Mead down there
Speaker 3: recently to see the greens shrunk in by twenty feet
Speaker 3: in places, and some of them dirt. It's the city
Speaker 3: just bought that from an operator to turn it into
Speaker 3: a municipal golf course. But I don't think they realized
Speaker 3: how much work they're going to have to do to
Speaker 3: get it back in shape.
Speaker 1: You know, an interesting little factoid about that. The operator,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my readers told me, was the
Speaker 1: owner of Warrior Golf, famed infomercials on the Golf Channel.
Speaker 3: Okay, they didn't do a good job taking care of
Speaker 3: my golf course from all reports. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: for me, it's the ones that I haven't had much
Speaker 3: chance to hang around yet. Sant Emilian and France. We'll
Speaker 3: go back to the Renaissance Cup this summer, but I
Speaker 3: played in the grand opening. That's the last time I've
Speaker 3: seen it. Saint Andrew's Beach, as Eric mentioned, is that's
Speaker 3: always been on my list. You know, it took quite
Speaker 3: a while to get that project together. I looked at
Speaker 3: the land for a different client, like probably five years
Speaker 3: before we actually wound up getting to build it. And
Speaker 3: then and then the guys that we built it for
Speaker 3: went bankrupt almost right right out of the box as
Speaker 3: soon as it was done, and it was just shut
Speaker 3: down for a while, and you know, they were just
Speaker 3: barely maintaining it so the value wouldn't go away. And
Speaker 3: eventually the guys that were maintaining the golf course said,
Speaker 3: you know, we could operate this and make money on it,
Speaker 3: and so they got it back in and it's not
Speaker 3: quite so uncelebrated now. I just got my Golf Digest
Speaker 3: like day before yesterday, and it made their list of
Speaker 3: the top hundred courses outside outside of the United States.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The funny thing about that course my first time in
Speaker 8: Tom's office, that's the topographic map that he uses as
Speaker 8: a routing exercise, or at least he used with me,
Speaker 8: see how many holes you can fit in this section
Speaker 8: of land? And I think I fit three? And then
Speaker 8: Tom's no wrong, you can fit seven holes in there,
Speaker 8: and he.
Speaker 3: Puts the St. Andrew's Beach. Well, let me let me
Speaker 3: let me tell you why why I use that. You know,
Speaker 3: it's this. It's basically most of the front nine of
Speaker 3: the golf course. Now is this is in this one
Speaker 3: little tight stretch of ground, and I guess there are three, four,
Speaker 3: five is not part of it, but all the rest
Speaker 3: of the front nine is is this one little stretch
Speaker 3: of ground. And I only use that as an exercise
Speaker 3: because you know, it depends on what you're looking for.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you you know, are you just going
Speaker 3: to look for one great hole, you know, the best
Speaker 3: possible hale, regardless of how anything else, whether that destroys
Speaker 3: your chance of doing anything else, or are you gonna
Speaker 3: look for how things fit together? Because you know, I
Speaker 3: was told that one of the Australian architects had had
Speaker 3: done a routing for that same piece of ground and
Speaker 3: where those so we're seven eight nine, all the zigzag
Speaker 3: back and forth through that topography. He just had one
Speaker 3: par five hole going down the valley, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a good example of how different
Speaker 3: people would just look at this entirely differently.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 1: We do the digging for you.