Speaker 1: This episode of Frida Egg Stories. In fact, this season
Speaker 1: of Frida Egg Stories is brought to you by Precision
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Speaker 2: The fried egg requires a different technique.
Speaker 3: What you need to do is actually square the face
Speaker 3: so they'll dig down on underneath that bad lie and
Speaker 3: propel that.
Speaker 1: Ball right out onto the green.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing playing out of a buried lion of
Speaker 4: bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice
Speaker 4: and clean lion a greenside bunker. You need to be
Speaker 4: aggressive on any show, weather it's sitting cleanly, or it's
Speaker 4: a Friday.
Speaker 3: Eg well, we've all faithd it the dreaded Friday not
Speaker 3: to be cleared though it's actually a pretty easy shot
Speaker 3: to hit.
Speaker 5: All right, testing testing.
Speaker 1: Can hear me?
Speaker 6: My name is Jim Gandy.
Speaker 5: I'm oftentimes referred to as South Carolina's weather man, and
Speaker 5: of my forecast, probably the one that everybody remembers is
Speaker 5: my forecast of Hurricane Hugo.
Speaker 1: So tell me about tracking Hurricane Hugo in its early stages.
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen eighty nine, right, I.
Speaker 7: Mean that's right. At the time, I was the chief
Speaker 7: meteorologist at WIS Television in Columbia, South Carolina, and it
Speaker 7: was not a big concern until the weekend before before
Speaker 7: it hit, I saw a note from the Washington office
Speaker 7: of the National Weather Service which indicated that the weather
Speaker 7: pattern was such that this is a storm that might
Speaker 7: affect the southeast. So obviously that that piqued my interest.
Speaker 7: And when it hit Puerto Rico, it was a powerful storm.
Speaker 7: It had maximum sustained winds I think it was close
Speaker 7: to one.
Speaker 5: Hundred and sixty miles an hour.
Speaker 7: My biggest concern was the fact that the National Hurricane
Speaker 7: Center was forecasting a turn head towards South Florida.
Speaker 5: But everything I was looking at was telling me that
Speaker 5: it was headed more toward the Carolinas.
Speaker 3: So what do you do?
Speaker 7: And I decided right now, it's not doing what the
Speaker 7: National Hurricane Center says it's going to do.
Speaker 5: So here I am.
Speaker 7: Going on TV saying, well, I don't think it's going
Speaker 7: to hit South Florida.
Speaker 5: I think it's gonna hit South Carolina. It's a big difference.
Speaker 7: Granted, there were some things that happened with the storm
Speaker 7: that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 5: I didn't expect it to pick up speed like it did,
Speaker 5: but I did expect it to intensify, and that was
Speaker 5: a pretty cutsy call. It turned out to be pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: So give me a sense for the threat of a
Speaker 1: hurricane hitting the coast of South Carolina with winds of
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty miles per.
Speaker 5: Hour, particularly in the low country of South Carolina, There's
Speaker 5: going to be a tremendous amount of flooding. You have
Speaker 5: to get out of there long before the storm arise,
Speaker 5: because many of the escape routes get cut off by
Speaker 5: rising water. The coast itself, when you're going from from
Speaker 5: the beach out into the ocean, the slope there is
Speaker 5: very shallow, so as the water piles up, it rises quickly.
Speaker 5: The center of the storm, of course, it hit down,
Speaker 5: you know, near Charleston. Probably the best story that we
Speaker 5: covered was at the high school near mcclellanville. That was
Speaker 5: north of where the storm came in, but it was
Speaker 5: also very close to where the highest storm the storm
Speaker 5: surge was over twenty feet in Hurricane Hugo, and the
Speaker 5: high school was right there, ground zero practically. And it's
Speaker 5: the storm came in, the water was rising, and it
Speaker 5: was rising quickly. It's nighttime, it's dark, and people have
Speaker 5: huddled inside the cafeteria trying to take shelter from the storm,
Speaker 5: everybody in that area. And the water now is getting
Speaker 5: up to the windows, and the principal of the school
Speaker 5: decides to try to find a better location for everybody.
Speaker 5: So he gets his way up to the roo roof,
Speaker 5: goes out on the roof, but then the door behind
Speaker 5: him latches shut and he can't get back in, and
Speaker 5: he had to ride the hurricane out, holding onto an
Speaker 5: exhaust pipe for the duration, and he had to hang
Speaker 5: on for dear life because the winds were so strong,
Speaker 5: and of course he was just getting tilted by rain
Speaker 5: even some of the roofing material that was out there.
Speaker 5: People were really getting concerned because they were having to
Speaker 5: put people up on tables because the water that was rising.
Speaker 5: The water, if you could see out the windows, was
Speaker 5: higher on the outside of the building than it was
Speaker 5: on the inside of the building.
Speaker 1: What happened to that poor man who was stuck outside
Speaker 1: In the.
Speaker 5: End, Surprisingly he survived it, and so did the people
Speaker 5: inside the building that were scared to death. But everybody survived.
Speaker 5: At the time, it was one of the costliest storms.
Speaker 5: I think it was one of the top ten calls
Speaker 5: his storms in US history. I think in South Carolina
Speaker 5: the damage was estimated at six billion dollars and it
Speaker 5: affected the coast from Hilton Head to Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 1: And right in the center of that path of destruction
Speaker 1: was Kiyo Island, where just a couple of months before
Speaker 1: Pete Dye had begun to build a golf course. The
Speaker 1: site was destroyed obviously, the landscape was mangled beyond recognition,
Speaker 1: and in almost exactly two years, this course was supposed
Speaker 1: to host the nineteen ninety one Ryder Cup.
Speaker 8: I'm Garrett Morrison and I'm Andy Johnson.
Speaker 1: And this is Frida Egg's Stories on today's episode, the
Speaker 1: story of one of the biggest craziest challenges in the
Speaker 1: history of golf architecture, the making of the Ocean course
Speaker 1: at Kiowa Island. So here we are Friday Stories, Season two.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of new things about dispatch
Speaker 1: of episodes. For one, there's a theme, and that theme
Speaker 1: is the modern championship game. We're planning to tell stories
Speaker 1: that look at championship golf from a number of different angles,
Speaker 1: The tournaments, the personalities, should be fun. And the second
Speaker 1: new thing is that Andy's here with me. How you doing, Andy,
Speaker 1: I'm doing great.
Speaker 8: I'm excited to try this out. Garrett's kept me kind
Speaker 8: of blind to this whole process, so I don't know
Speaker 8: really what's going on, but I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you're basically in the same position as
Speaker 1: any other listener. I didn't tell you anything beforehand about
Speaker 1: what's going to be in this episode, and I'm just
Speaker 1: curious to get your reactions as we go along. So
Speaker 1: we have the twenty twenty one PGA Championship coming up
Speaker 1: that's at the Ocean Course at Kiowa Island, widely considered
Speaker 1: one of Pete Dye's best designs, if not his best.
Speaker 1: Would you say this is Pete Dide's best course.
Speaker 8: I think it's one of his best sights. Yeah, I
Speaker 8: think it. Ex said in his book that he would have,
Speaker 8: you know, possibly given up his wife to design this
Speaker 8: golf course. So I think it's a it's a great
Speaker 8: golf course, and he did what he was asked. He
Speaker 8: built a really hard championship golf course for sure.
Speaker 1: Also hosted the twenty twelve PGA Championship. But I think
Speaker 1: the Ocean Course will always be most associated with one tournament,
Speaker 1: and that's the nineteen ninety one Ryder Cup, the War
Speaker 1: by the Shore. So Andy for you, what comes to
Speaker 1: mind when you think about this Ryder Cup. I mean
Speaker 1: you're probably just four or five years old when it
Speaker 1: was played, so you didn't like watch it when it
Speaker 1: was happening.
Speaker 8: It's the Golf Channel documentary that they did on it. Yeah,
Speaker 8: And I just I think, like the tension between the
Speaker 8: two teams, and also obviously the disaster, the meltdowns that happened.
Speaker 8: It was it was the sight of numerous meltdowns on Sunday,
Speaker 8: And I think that's probably what I'll remember most is
Speaker 8: this golf course that invoked chaos throughout the event. Yeah, Calcovecia,
Speaker 8: Mark Calkovecchia, who is two up with you to go
Speaker 8: his opponents in the water, Are you kidding me? That
Speaker 8: might have been a stranger chef I plow I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And then there's just like the visual of the ocean
Speaker 1: course itself. It was a brand new course. It had
Speaker 1: been built for this moment, and the look of it,
Speaker 1: the ruggedness of it, the sea and the sand, obviously,
Speaker 1: as you said, the way it played, how difficult it played.
Speaker 1: All of this is a big reason why this rider
Speaker 1: cut became so iconic. Like if you had held it
Speaker 1: at another course, it wouldn't have been the same, right.
Speaker 1: So it was really striking for me to find out
Speaker 1: that as the ocean course was being built by Pete
Speaker 1: Diana's crew, a lot of people thought that it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to get finished on time, and some were expecting
Speaker 1: that the ninety one Ryder Cup was going to be
Speaker 1: an absolute fiasco. All right. Backing up a little bit,
Speaker 1: the first big question I have is why this was
Speaker 1: all happening at the last minute, Like why had the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup been given to a course that hadn't been
Speaker 1: built yet? So I called up one of the main
Speaker 1: decision makers. Hello, Hello, mister Autrey, this is Garrett Morrison
Speaker 1: calling from the Frida Egg. How are you doing good?
Speaker 1: Who is Jim?
Speaker 4: Ots named Jim And in the late nineteen eighties I
Speaker 4: became the executive Director Tournament Operations for the PGA of
Speaker 4: America and later became CEO.
Speaker 1: And Jim explains that it all started with this contract
Speaker 1: that the PGA of America had with Landmark land Company.
Speaker 1: Landmark was a big golf development firm, definitely one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful and influential of its era. It had
Speaker 1: done oak Tree, National, Mission Hills, Lakinta, many other courses.
Speaker 1: And Landmark had this deal with the PGA of a
Speaker 1: Man America to hold the Ryder Cup at one of
Speaker 1: its properties, PGA West.
Speaker 4: And the Desert at the Stadium Course, and that was
Speaker 4: set for nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: Now, when the PGA started reconsidering that venue choice. It
Speaker 1: was around nineteen eighty seven, which happened to be the
Speaker 1: first year that the Pete Dye designed stadium course had
Speaker 1: hosted the Bob Hope Classic now known as the American Express.
Speaker 1: And Andy, you've looked into this story before. What did
Speaker 1: the pros think when they played Pete Dye's PGA West
Speaker 1: for the first time.
Speaker 8: It didn't go well, They complained, they thought it was unfair.
Speaker 8: There was utter outrage among so many members. Is similar
Speaker 8: in a way to what happened after the first playing
Speaker 8: of the players at TPC Sawgrass, except you know, they
Speaker 8: went a little bit further than just saying the course
Speaker 8: needed to be tweaked here and there and the greens
Speaker 8: needed to be softened. At Sawgrass, That's what they said.
Speaker 8: At PGA West, they just they went straight for the juggular.
Speaker 8: They said, no more, we didn't have We never want
Speaker 8: to see this place again.
Speaker 1: Right. What you're referring to is they submitted a petition
Speaker 1: to the Commissioner of the PGA Tour, Dean Beeman, demanding
Speaker 1: that PGA West not be used again. They hated it.
Speaker 1: So my assumption has always been that the ninety one
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup was moved away from PGA West for that reason,
Speaker 1: you know, to placate the pros. But I asked Jim
Speaker 1: Autry if that was the case. We know that not
Speaker 1: all of the pros were in love with the course.
Speaker 4: No, I don't recall that being having anything to do
Speaker 4: with the move.
Speaker 1: Basically, he says that PGA West was problematic mainly from
Speaker 1: a fan and business perspective.
Speaker 4: First thing I noticed was the Ryder Cup being played
Speaker 4: in the desert in September. And upon reflection, thinking it's
Speaker 4: one hundred and ten degrees in the desert, there's no
Speaker 4: one there in September, and they have an overseer of
Speaker 4: the golf courses, I didn't see how that was going
Speaker 4: to be very successful.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's going to be deathly hot, everyone's
Speaker 1: going to be out of town, and the golf course
Speaker 1: is probably going to be brown. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: there was pressure. There's a lot of pressure to make
Speaker 1: this particular Ryder Cup work. You have to keep in
Speaker 1: mind that in the eighties the Ryder Cup wasn't nearly
Speaker 1: as big of a deal as it is now. It
Speaker 1: didn't make that much money. It just wasn't a massively
Speaker 1: valuable media property like it is today, but it had
Speaker 1: at least become competitive. Nineteen eighty five, Team Europe won
Speaker 1: for the first time since Team Europe was created. Eighty seven,
Speaker 1: they won again, so there was some juice behind the competition,
Speaker 1: and the hope was that nineteen ninety one would take
Speaker 1: it to the next level. Because nineteen ninety one would
Speaker 1: be the first year that NBC would televise the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: This was the first time there would be truly extensive
Speaker 1: live coverage of the event on a major network in
Speaker 1: the US. It's sort of surprising to think about this now.
Speaker 1: The Ryder Cup wasn't very well covered before this. You know,
Speaker 1: It's kind of on at weird times. It was tape delayed,
Speaker 1: it was on USA, you know, it wasn't on the
Speaker 1: major networks live. So Jim Autry and the PGA of
Speaker 1: America were looking at this and thinking, ninety one could
Speaker 1: be our year. It'll be a competitive match, it'll be
Speaker 1: on everyone's TV. But for some reason, we're giving them
Speaker 1: the Coachella Valley in late September. It just like was
Speaker 1: an ideal. So they decided to try to move the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup away from PGA West. The problem was this
Speaker 1: this contract the PGA of America had with Landmark Land
Speaker 1: Company to hold it there. Unfortunately for Jim Autry, he
Speaker 1: actually had really close connections with Landmark.
Speaker 4: I had grown up in My first job out of
Speaker 4: college was with Joe Walser, who was one of the
Speaker 4: principal developers of Landmark, and I had lived with him
Speaker 4: run out of college, and he was just like a
Speaker 4: second father. So I remember go going to Joe and
Speaker 4: I said, Joe, I don't think the desert is the
Speaker 4: place to be playing the Ryder Cup. In September, he said, well, Jim,
Speaker 4: what do you want to do. And I said, well, Joe,
Speaker 4: I think i'd like to see if you'd let us
Speaker 4: out of the agreement. And Joe looked at me. It's
Speaker 4: typical and said, Barger, I don't think we can do that.
Speaker 4: After we talked a little bit reflection, he said I
Speaker 4: got an idea. He said, we're getting ready to build
Speaker 4: a golf course and build a development on the east
Speaker 4: coast in Iowa Island, and he said, I think that'd
Speaker 4: be a great place for the Ryder Cups.
Speaker 1: This was the Kiowa Island Resort already had three golf courses,
Speaker 1: and when Landmark Land Company bought those courses in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, it also received land for a fourth course
Speaker 1: on the southeastern tip of the island. This was what
Speaker 1: would become the Ocean Course now. Joe Wallser passed away
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, but I was able to get a
Speaker 1: sense of Landmark's perspective from Chris Cole, and.
Speaker 9: I was the project director of all the recreational assets
Speaker 9: on ko Island plus the land where the ocean course
Speaker 9: is going to be built.
Speaker 1: What Chris says is basically the main thing Landmark liked
Speaker 1: about moving away from PGA West to Kiowa was the
Speaker 1: time zone difference.
Speaker 9: I think it was the understand the commercial ability of
Speaker 9: if you have it on the West coast versus having
Speaker 9: it on the East coast in Europe. Do you understand
Speaker 9: those three hour changes? The people can come home in
Speaker 9: Europe and watch the ridici now.
Speaker 1: In other words, if it's at PGA West in the
Speaker 1: Pacific time zone, most of Europe is asleep during the matches,
Speaker 1: especially the afternoon matches, whereas if it's at Kiowa in
Speaker 1: the Eastern time zone, a lot of it's in primetime.
Speaker 1: More European eyes on the Ryder Cup, more international publicity
Speaker 1: for a Landmark property, more value for the company. But
Speaker 1: now Landmark had to convince the PGA that the Ocean
Speaker 1: course was going to actually get built.
Speaker 3: And be good.
Speaker 9: The PGA, not just Jim Audrey, but certainly Jim Audrey,
Speaker 9: all the officers are. They went, wow, what if we
Speaker 9: did it? But the can we trust? And they said,
Speaker 9: we're going to have Pete out a building first, come
Speaker 9: look at the cut.
Speaker 4: So I met Pete. He put me in his truck
Speaker 4: and we drove out there on the foon line and
Speaker 4: Pete had me out walking through the weeds and the
Speaker 4: bushes that like Pete, only Pete would do. And he
Speaker 4: would have me stand up on a mound and he
Speaker 4: would say, see, Jim, this is a dog leg right
Speaker 4: far for and it turns right off that mound. And
Speaker 4: I'm looking out there and I see nothing but crust.
Speaker 4: So I said, Pete, I can't see it. He said,
Speaker 4: move over here a little bit, Jim. He said, right there,
Speaker 4: can't you see if dog legs right off that mound?
Speaker 4: I said, Pete, I'm sorry, I cannot see it.
Speaker 9: Come at two miles Ocean's on property. You'd think he's
Speaker 9: not gonna build a great gulp course.
Speaker 4: That was how we started. And when I saw the
Speaker 4: dude saw the ocean, he described the course because he
Speaker 4: could see all this and it is. He said, this
Speaker 4: is going to be a great buck And.
Speaker 9: They said, yeah, but you got two years. We said,
Speaker 9: we have no problems. You'd got to trust Pete and us.
Speaker 9: We're gonna get her done.
Speaker 4: So we agreed to move the Ryder Cup to Iawa
Speaker 4: Island on a course that hadn't been built, and we
Speaker 4: announced that we we're going to vote.
Speaker 1: So that announcement was made in May nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: and the tournament was scheduled for September nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those situations where you
Speaker 1: make a series of what seemed like logical decisions and
Speaker 1: somehow at the end of it you find yourself in
Speaker 1: this crazy predicament.
Speaker 8: I mean, what a risk.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 8: And of all the architects too to do it with,
Speaker 8: I would be just the worst one in the world
Speaker 8: to work with.
Speaker 6: You know what.
Speaker 8: He drew plans for townships. He would give them plans
Speaker 8: from other golf courses. You know, he would just you know,
Speaker 8: if somebody, it would make him angry and he would
Speaker 8: not want to work with somebody anymore. And now all
Speaker 8: of a sudden, you've got not only Landmark on his schedule,
Speaker 8: but you got the PGA of America and NBC all worried.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean Pete Dye made a habit of
Speaker 1: driving corporations crazy, and now here he's working with several
Speaker 1: massive corporations and they have a really difficult project that
Speaker 1: they're about to do, you know, because it wasn't just
Speaker 1: about getting the golf course built. It was about creating
Speaker 1: a course that could immediately host the Ryder Cup, and
Speaker 1: not just any Ryder Cup, but the first one to
Speaker 1: be broadcast live on NBC, the Ryder Cup that was
Speaker 1: supposed to re establish the reputation of the entire event.
Speaker 1: And so the worse, as Chris Cole put it.
Speaker 9: To me, actually born in miss America.
Speaker 1: No awkward adolescence. It has to be born miss America.
Speaker 8: And I think this is the thing, like all resources
Speaker 8: obviously want to get you to see their courses right
Speaker 8: off the bat, you know, opening day, but in reality,
Speaker 8: if you're if you're a wise consumer, you want to
Speaker 8: wait two three years. Let that course mature over time,
Speaker 8: and none of these courses are very few, very rarely
Speaker 8: do they open in mint condition. And that hosting a
Speaker 8: major golf event is you need a whole different level.
Speaker 8: I mean, you talk to superintendent's superintendent's focus for two
Speaker 8: years on their golf course to get it ready for
Speaker 8: the championship, when it's already like a mature golf course.
Speaker 8: This one, you had two years to get a golf
Speaker 8: course that didn't exist ready for a big tournament agonomically right.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, and if Ladmark is using this
Speaker 1: as an advertisement for the newly relaunched Kiowa Resort, what
Speaker 1: if the golf course looks terrible, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: big risk. They just have to sort of roll with
Speaker 1: what they had at the end of the process. So
Speaker 1: that was the challenge, and right away Pete Dye started
Speaker 1: doing what I think maybe Pete Dy did best, and
Speaker 1: that was assembling a team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my name is Scott cool I worked for Pete
Speaker 2: for ten years and during the Kioa project, I was
Speaker 2: brought in with a lot of the different people to
Speaker 2: help build the golf course. I was there primarily as
Speaker 2: a shaper.
Speaker 3: Jason McCoy and I was project manager for the ocean
Speaker 3: course at Kiola for Pete.
Speaker 1: So what was the first you heard about the Kiwa project.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first time you heard that it
Speaker 1: was like a possibility.
Speaker 2: I was I was doing the cooler courses.
Speaker 3: I was working in Richmond Hill, Georgia, down the Ford
Speaker 3: Plantation where Pete was doing the redesign of it.
Speaker 2: When we got done and cooler, we'd be headed down there.
Speaker 2: He wanted me to go down take a look at it.
Speaker 6: Jason, let's go.
Speaker 3: We're going to get in the car and go take
Speaker 3: a look at Keel, which was obviously a short ride
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I've seen a lot of good property
Speaker 2: that Pete would get, but this is by far. You know,
Speaker 2: when you put a golf course on an ocean, when
Speaker 2: you have that much ocean front, you couldn't ask for
Speaker 2: a better sight.
Speaker 6: It was pretty spectacular.
Speaker 3: I had really probably never seen anything like it other
Speaker 3: than on television.
Speaker 1: But as beautiful as the site was, it wasn't exactly easy.
Speaker 1: And this is where it starts to seem truly insane
Speaker 1: that the PGA Landmark and Pete Dye took this on
Speaker 1: as a two year project. What you had was a
Speaker 1: property way at the end of Kiowa Island, just this
Speaker 1: narrow strip of land between marshes on one side and
Speaker 1: dunes on the other. It was hard to get equipment
Speaker 1: out there. You had a lot of environmentally restricted areas.
Speaker 1: You had drainage issues. You had water that could come
Speaker 1: onto the golf course from just about any direction from
Speaker 1: the marshes from the ocean, and he needed a way
Speaker 1: to get that water off. Those are the main difficulties.
Speaker 1: It was nothing Pete Dye couldn't handle, like he had
Speaker 1: built a lot of courses in the South on swamps,
Speaker 1: on marshes, but the ocean course was different. Because of
Speaker 1: the deadline and because of the pressure to be great
Speaker 1: right away. So July nineteen eighty nine, construction started. By
Speaker 1: September things were coming along well. Jason McCoy says, they
Speaker 1: have the site cleared and four or five holes roughly shaped.
Speaker 1: And at that time September nineteen eighty nine, the PGA
Speaker 1: people and many of the Landmark people, including Jim Autry
Speaker 1: and Chris Cole were not in South Carolina.
Speaker 9: Well. Actually, yeared I was in England.
Speaker 1: At the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 9: I was at the Rider Cip we're at the.
Speaker 4: Ryder Cup at the Belfry in England.
Speaker 9: I took the layer and a bunch of the involved
Speaker 9: people and stuff. We went to the Rider Cup in
Speaker 9: England to understand how big of the of this is
Speaker 9: going to be.
Speaker 4: And I walked into the bar area, and of course
Speaker 4: the Mayor of Charleston was there, and people from all
Speaker 4: over America were there for the Rider cap and I
Speaker 4: walked in. They were all around the TV and the
Speaker 4: bar and they said, what's going on? They said, well,
Speaker 4: major hurricane is getting ready to hit ki Island.
Speaker 9: And as we're watching the deal, they said, it's a
Speaker 9: dead eye for Charleston. We said, oh lord, well this
Speaker 9: ain't gonna work, so let's get out of here.
Speaker 4: And for Joe and all the Landmark people were getting
Speaker 4: ready to leave. The Mayor of Charleston was there. They
Speaker 4: were getting ready to leave.
Speaker 9: You shouldn't fly into Charleston, you had to fly into Atlanta.
Speaker 9: By then, Charleston and especially Kio Island Kila Allen was
Speaker 9: under National Guard.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 6: Chris actually blew out with Joe. They flew out.
Speaker 2: He blew out, and.
Speaker 6: Then we met Chris and Joe at the airport.
Speaker 9: We drove to Charleston, Jason and all of us. We
Speaker 9: went from Atlanta and stopped from there. We didn't got
Speaker 9: all supplies flashlights and batteries, food, and drove to Charleston fire.
Speaker 3: Air and we followed the Guard, the National Guard into
Speaker 3: the island. And it was the most eerie thing that
Speaker 3: I've ever been around.
Speaker 9: It was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 9: Not pretty.
Speaker 6: It was like a bomb went off.
Speaker 9: You know, pine trees snap. You couldn't already drive down
Speaker 9: the road.
Speaker 3: We were going and you got turned around. You had
Speaker 3: to get the machines to clear your way to get
Speaker 3: us through. We had a flat tire, typical. They put
Speaker 3: me as a driver for what reason I do not know.
Speaker 1: Once Jason, Chris, Joe Wallzer, and Pete Dye reached the
Speaker 1: golf course site, what they saw was an unfamiliar piece
Speaker 1: of land.
Speaker 3: The storm basically took out three quarters of the live
Speaker 3: oaks and really just massacred the main doone line.
Speaker 10: It was gone.
Speaker 3: So we've got a total bit of intrusion of saltwater
Speaker 3: all over the golf course.
Speaker 9: So, yeah, you were scared to disk. You were scared
Speaker 9: of this that now we only got a year and
Speaker 9: a half.
Speaker 3: You know, all of us and listening to our voices
Speaker 3: or like, you know, this thing's probably never going to
Speaker 3: happen now.
Speaker 1: But by the time Pete I talked to Jim Atry again,
Speaker 1: it was a different story.
Speaker 4: And Pete, only Pete Dye would do. He said, Jim,
Speaker 4: I'll have this built back, and I'll build it back
Speaker 4: and we'll have it ready.
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Speaker 1: right after Hurricane Hugo, Pete Dye was making his way
Speaker 1: around the site in a little rowboat with an electric motor.
Speaker 1: And what I think you figured out pretty early on
Speaker 1: was that Hugo might have been a blessing in disguise
Speaker 1: for the Ocean course project, not for anything else. It
Speaker 1: was a devastating storm, but for the ocean course project.
Speaker 1: So one of the main problems facing Die and Landmark
Speaker 1: initially was how restricted the landscape was. It was highly
Speaker 1: environmentally sensitive the wetlands, certain habitats, certain kinds of vegetation.
Speaker 1: A lot was protected, and you had government agencies and
Speaker 1: environmental groups keeping a close eye on things. And there
Speaker 1: was even a real possibility that this project would get
Speaker 1: completely bogged down in permitting issues. Well after the storm,
Speaker 1: a lot of that changed, And I think there are
Speaker 1: a couple of ways to look at what happened. The
Speaker 1: positive take is that the ocean course became an environmental
Speaker 1: reclamation project. Diane Landmark actually got permission from the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers to reconstruct the dune ridge along the beach.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you noticed that that the
Speaker 1: dune ridge along the beach there is artificial like that
Speaker 1: was made. Yeah, and and it looks great.
Speaker 8: It looks yeah, it looks different than other places on
Speaker 8: the island.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they renourished the dunes with native plants, seayoats.
Speaker 1: They also installed weirs on the waterways to protect the
Speaker 1: marshes from being overwhelmed by storm water, big tides. I mean,
Speaker 1: they essentially stabilized that piece of land after the hurricane
Speaker 1: had wrecked it. The slightly less charitable take is that
Speaker 1: the hurricane fallout distracted all the oversight groups enough so
Speaker 1: that Pete and his crew had way more freedom to
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted. And there is some truth to that.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of interviews for this story, not
Speaker 1: just the ones featured in this episode, and I heard
Speaker 1: from more than one person that the crew would get
Speaker 1: heavy equipment to the site by driving it directly down
Speaker 1: the beach at low tide, which would normally be a
Speaker 1: big no no.
Speaker 6: And we did things that you just weren't allowed to do.
Speaker 1: So in a way, did the hurricane loosen up some
Speaker 1: of the environmental restrictions that might have been there, no question.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it necessarily loosened them up in
Speaker 3: their eyes. I think it loosened them up more and
Speaker 3: our eyes.
Speaker 1: So that's Jason McCoy, and he went on to tell
Speaker 1: me a story that I think illustrates the kind of
Speaker 1: liberties that Die and his crew took at times. This
Speaker 1: was later on in the construction and Alice Dye had
Speaker 1: come up with the idea of raising the fairways so
Speaker 1: players would have better views of the ocean. But in
Speaker 1: order to do that, they needed to get a lot
Speaker 1: of dirt from somewhere. Usually you'd find this kind of
Speaker 1: dirt at the bottom of a body of water.
Speaker 3: So a couple of foggy mornings, Pete would call me
Speaker 3: and he said, Jason, the FOG's heavy.
Speaker 6: He said, get every piece of machinery. We have dozers, trackos, loaders, whatever.
Speaker 9: It may be.
Speaker 10: I need them all over here in this littlelarry. And
Speaker 10: this little area was a wetland. Well, this wetland became
Speaker 10: a pond, and we did it under the cover of
Speaker 10: a fog every morning for about five hours, and then
Speaker 10: we'd get out. All the machines would leave and go
Speaker 10: back to doing what we were doing on the dolphins.
Speaker 10: So we did this process for about three weeks, and
Speaker 10: we got a whole heck of a lot of dirt
Speaker 10: out of that particular wetland to be able to creat
Speaker 10: some of the features that raised all the fairways up.
Speaker 10: But I mean, it would just not be something that
Speaker 10: you would ever be able to do again.
Speaker 1: No question, that wetland would be kind off limits. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, you can't go.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, you know, you'd go to jail kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I actually hunt the environmentalist now bird hunt with him,
Speaker 3: and I was actually with him last week. Duncan Newkirk
Speaker 3: environmental and he's like, you guys broke every law you
Speaker 3: could possibly break, And I'm like, duck, and that's not true.
Speaker 3: There was a law that was put in place for Hugo,
Speaker 3: and it was that you could go in your marsh
Speaker 3: and you could retrieve your boat.
Speaker 6: The Coastal Council of South Carolina came up with that.
Speaker 3: So I just told him, I said, we had a
Speaker 3: heck of a lot of boats in the marsh, so
Speaker 3: that's why we were in there and getting them out.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure you could have a vigorous debate about
Speaker 1: all this, you know, whether suspending the normal environmental procedures
Speaker 1: is justified in light of hurricane recovery. But the general
Speaker 1: point is that Hugo, while clearly a setback in many
Speaker 1: ways for the Ocean course project, ended up creating a
Speaker 1: kind of chaos that Pete Dye absolutely thrived on. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was an architect who made plans but didn't like
Speaker 1: to be held to them, liked to make changes without
Speaker 1: asking permission, liked for his crew to feel that they
Speaker 1: could experiment and not get in trouble. And after Hugo,
Speaker 1: that was more or less exactly what I had at Kiowa.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean I think every artist watched people to
Speaker 8: get out of the way, and obviously the hurricane made
Speaker 8: it really hard for people to get in and out
Speaker 8: of the property.
Speaker 1: Right, So when I asked people like Jason McCoy and
Speaker 1: Scott Poole about what it was like to work on
Speaker 1: the ocean course, they do talk about long hours in
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency, but mainly they remember the fun
Speaker 1: times and the sort of wild parts of it. But
Speaker 1: were you carrying around a shotgun on the construction site?
Speaker 6: I carried a piss. I carried a pistol.
Speaker 1: So there's told me about too much. He enjoyed basically
Speaker 1: making Pete Dye fear for his life.
Speaker 6: He would walk anywhere he was spearless. He just didn't.
Speaker 6: He wasn't thinking about it.
Speaker 3: He was thinking about that golf hole and thinking about
Speaker 3: what he was going to do. And and I mean
Speaker 3: there was a rattler three foot from him, and I
Speaker 3: shot it and just scared to live and hell because
Speaker 3: I didn't tell him.
Speaker 6: Obviously there was a snake.
Speaker 3: I didn't, you know, don't jump, you know, that's always
Speaker 3: so I just shot it. And I mean he had
Speaker 3: a heart attack, not only you know, it wasn't.
Speaker 6: About the snake. It was about me too, you know,
Speaker 6: and he's.
Speaker 3: Like some I'm a bitch, you know, you kill me,
Speaker 3: you know, like Pete, there was a snake, So I
Speaker 3: killed the snake and we had the snake, and we
Speaker 3: had the picture of it, you know, holding a snake,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: So it was great.
Speaker 1: And Scott Poole described almost like a Neverland type of atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Well, we found a shipwreck one time. There was a
Speaker 2: sailboat that apparently washed up on the beach, but over
Speaker 2: time the beach had grown and covered it up. And
Speaker 2: as we were digging a lake, sure enough we could
Speaker 2: see there was there was wood coming up and we
Speaker 2: could see there was a boat. And one evening we
Speaker 2: decided to have a few beers and go up and
Speaker 2: try to you know, look for treasure. We were looking
Speaker 2: for the prop, you know, so we kind of worked
Speaker 2: into the lake and we dug up the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and somebody had already salvaged the prop.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 1: But when they weren't screwing around, they were doing some
Speaker 1: really strong innovative work. You know. Jason came up with
Speaker 1: some ingenious ways of revegetating the site and combining drainage
Speaker 1: and irrigation system so that stuff didn't run off into
Speaker 1: the marshes. And then Scott was the lead shaper. And
Speaker 1: you look at the ocean course now and it's got
Speaker 1: to be one of Pete Diye's best shaped golf courses.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you say?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's it's not necessarily natural, but it
Speaker 8: feels like it fits. You know, the shapes are eccentric,
Speaker 8: but they have a very artistic quality to them.
Speaker 1: They're exciting shapes, right, they're not. They don't look cliched.
Speaker 1: There's kind of a weirdness to them and a fun
Speaker 1: to them that really works. So they were doing great work.
Speaker 1: They were doing it quickly, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: credit for that has to go to this freewheeling culture
Speaker 1: that Die encouraged after the hurricane.
Speaker 3: It's it's amazing to me what he surrounded himself with.
Speaker 3: He surrounded him with young guys that had no fear.
Speaker 2: You know, he liked it when you make a big mistake,
Speaker 2: because that'd give him an idea. You know, he told me,
Speaker 2: had whatever you do, don't build a golfl you've seen before,
Speaker 2: show me something. He says, I don't care how bad
Speaker 2: it is. I'll take the heat and fix it if
Speaker 2: I have to, or maybe i'll like it.
Speaker 3: He made us feel like we could conquer the world.
Speaker 3: And you were fearless because you knew he had your back.
Speaker 2: I became fearless real fast to what I was doing
Speaker 2: on the golf course because I just tell well, you know,
Speaker 2: Pete told me to do it, and he always backed
Speaker 2: me up.
Speaker 3: He made us think there was nothing we couldn't do.
Speaker 3: We were too naive to know better, and that's what
Speaker 3: he liked.
Speaker 1: So this sense of fearlessness that the course builders are
Speaker 1: describing was not shared by others involved in the project.
Speaker 1: Whenever people visited the site, they usually went away thinking
Speaker 1: that the golf course would never be finished on time.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to nineteen ninety one year out
Speaker 1: from the Ryder Cup and the PGA Cup kind of
Speaker 1: the club professional version of the Rider Cup.
Speaker 8: Arguably the most underrated event in golf.
Speaker 1: Is it even televised PGA Cup?
Speaker 8: Sometimes it's kind of like the walker, I've got PGA Cup.
Speaker 1: Hat did you go to the PGA Cup on time?
Speaker 8: No? Okay, PGA just knows how much how big of
Speaker 8: a supporter I am of the PGA Cup.
Speaker 1: PGA Cup was held at Turtle Point nineteen ninety. Turtle
Speaker 1: Point is also part of the Kiowa Resort. Jim Autry
Speaker 1: was there and British PGA officials were there and they
Speaker 1: visited the ocean course site.
Speaker 4: Oh, I remembered very well. I had a meeting with
Speaker 4: the officials. They were very concerned and they said, we're
Speaker 4: going to go back home and tell people not to
Speaker 4: come because it's not going to be ready. Wow, We're
Speaker 4: going to recommend they don't come. And I didn't take
Speaker 4: to that very well. Probably the most upset. And I've
Speaker 4: had some people tell me that the matterside maybe ben
Speaker 4: which I don't normally do, but that was their reaction
Speaker 4: during the Cup matches at Turtle.
Speaker 1: And the next year, early in nineteen ninety one, more
Speaker 1: and more people were starting to drop by.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Hi, this is Dave Stockton. I was the captain
Speaker 11: of the nineteen ninety one Ryder Cup team that took
Speaker 11: place against the Europeans at Key Island in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 11: I was shocked to arrive there in January, eight months
Speaker 11: before we're going to play, and literally there was no.
Speaker 6: Grass, and I got.
Speaker 4: Called from Dave Staunton after Augusta and he said, Jim,
Speaker 4: I'm going to take the team that's available and I
Speaker 4: want to take him to Kida when we will play
Speaker 4: the Gospel. And I said, Dave, you can't do that.
Speaker 4: He said, warn out. I said, the greens aren't credible,
Speaker 4: and I said, we don't want them looking at the
Speaker 4: golf course it's not finished yet, thinking we're going to
Speaker 4: be playing in six months. And he said, well, I'm
Speaker 4: doing it. And to show you how bad at what,
Speaker 4: Tom Kite took a mastered Cadillac rove in and where
Speaker 4: the clubhouse is now. He buried the Cadillac up to
Speaker 4: the brane and sant.
Speaker 9: I didn't know about that.
Speaker 1: You did, never heard about it?
Speaker 9: You could. I mean if you got in the wrong.
Speaker 11: Spot, That's what I said. It was still extremely soft.
Speaker 11: It hadn't just hadn't turned up.
Speaker 4: Heck, get a dozer to pull it out. Now the
Speaker 4: players are there, they got some beer, and they're in
Speaker 4: their short and they just have a bleass. They played
Speaker 4: the golf cook and no media were there. Nobody knew
Speaker 4: about it. You can imagine what would have happened if
Speaker 4: the media has been following them around on the golf court.
Speaker 4: That's not FeNiS yet.
Speaker 11: Six months before the rider could, I wasn't too sure
Speaker 11: about the prospects of having a golf course at that point.
Speaker 4: Honestly, you couldn't afford to spend much time thinking about
Speaker 4: the worst case because the worst case was would be
Speaker 4: an absolute disaster, you know. So yes, it was frightening,
Speaker 4: but once you made the commitment, I think that's what
Speaker 4: the Landmark people would tell you. Once you made the commitment,
Speaker 4: you had so much to get done, you never had
Speaker 4: time to think about it.
Speaker 8: I think it's kind of in a way like if
Speaker 8: you're playing an event as a player, you know, you're
Speaker 8: obviously nervous and you know, but you're in the moment,
Speaker 8: you're doing job like and you have so much going
Speaker 8: on that the nerves go away outside of usually just
Speaker 8: like the first tier or maybe trying to get it
Speaker 8: done at the end. But if you're caddying in an event,
Speaker 8: you're so nervous the whole time and you're like you're
Speaker 8: the you're the onlooker that everything's out of your control.
Speaker 8: But when you're in control, you're so much less nervous,
Speaker 8: and that is probably how those guys felt. And they
Speaker 8: were so busy, like there's so much to do, there
Speaker 8: wasn't enough time to be nervous.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's maybe about perspective too, when you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of something like that, you don't have the
Speaker 1: outside perspective of like this is kind of insane, you know,
Speaker 1: this is like consider what Chris Cole was doing at
Speaker 1: the time. He was project director for Landmark at Q West,
Speaker 1: so he was handling a lot of the infrastructure and
Speaker 1: the logistics.
Speaker 9: How do you get to the end of a ten
Speaker 9: mile You're gonna have twenty fi thousand people, You got
Speaker 9: to build a long city. Prior to the rider, we
Speaker 9: guaranteed every hotel in Charleston booked all the ruins. We
Speaker 9: went to Kew Island, which we had like three hundred
Speaker 9: and something rental units that you know people on that
Speaker 9: they rent them out, balked them all out, people wanted
Speaker 9: to come in with a family or whatever. We even
Speaker 9: went to the next island, Seabrook, and said we will
Speaker 9: rent all year units and filled every one of them.
Speaker 9: Then we had one parking place. It was a tomato field,
Speaker 9: and everybody parked there and everybody was bussed to the
Speaker 9: ocean course. Throughout the island we had bus stops and
Speaker 9: you get busted to the court. No traffic. Everybody used
Speaker 9: to be bussed and let out right at the ocean course.
Speaker 9: I mean, it was such an amazing event that, like
Speaker 9: I said, you staged the city four or five days
Speaker 9: and then tore down to figure out you're going to
Speaker 9: do that down in my eye, and then watch it happen.
Speaker 9: Then all of it happened was as exciting as the
Speaker 9: tournament almost for me. I mean to watch it and say.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm curious, how if you can put yourself back
Speaker 1: in your shoes at the nineteen ninety one Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: And then you know the event's about to start and
Speaker 1: you see the golf course, are there feelings of relief?
Speaker 4: Oh? Absolutely. We got there and we saw everything was
Speaker 4: done and all the bust compound and everything was set up,
Speaker 4: concords flying in. You just had a feeling then okay,
Speaker 4: it's it's it's okay.
Speaker 1: So there are plenty of accounts of what happened next.
Speaker 1: The sick Ryder Cup a dogfight all the way to
Speaker 1: the eighteenth hole of the final match, where Bernhard longer
Speaker 1: missed that six footer and the US reclaimed.
Speaker 8: Then it slipped by the edge.
Speaker 4: It slipped by the edge, and now things change.
Speaker 8: Now things change, And.
Speaker 1: The amazing thing about it is that the event really
Speaker 1: did do everything it was meant to do magnificent.
Speaker 4: In ninety one, we launched some modern Ryder Cup to
Speaker 4: one of the best events in the world. And then
Speaker 4: you look at the background behind Kio Island and it
Speaker 4: almost reads like a fantasy store.
Speaker 1: But for Landmark it ended up being a bit more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. Obviously, the ocean course was very successful,
Speaker 1: instantly popular, but by nineteen ninety one, Landmark was in big,
Speaker 1: big trouble. Now there's a complicated backstory here, but Landmark
Speaker 1: structured its finances in a certain way in the eighties
Speaker 1: that suddenly, because of a new law, became illegal, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the government seized Landmark's assets and auctioned off the
Speaker 1: resort properties, including Kiwa. Landmark did reform, started over, kept going,
Speaker 1: still exists today. But nineteen ninety one was this moment
Speaker 1: when the company's initial run of dominance stopped. And so symbolically,
Speaker 1: I think this gives the ninety one Ryder Cup the
Speaker 1: kind of double valance, because on the one hand it
Speaker 1: was the beginning of the new Ryder Cup, the beginning
Speaker 1: of the new PGA of America. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it was the end of an era as well for
Speaker 1: a landmark land company. And it makes me think of
Speaker 1: something Jim Autrey said a few different times in my
Speaker 1: interview with him.
Speaker 4: It couldn't happen in modern time, you would move it.
Speaker 1: None of this would have happened today, But.
Speaker 4: In those days it seemed like a legitimate option.
Speaker 1: And what he means is that the Ryder Cup is
Speaker 1: a much bigger deal now and the PGA wouldn't risk
Speaker 1: it on a project like the Ocean Course. But another
Speaker 1: thing that wouldn't happen today, I think is the Ocean
Speaker 1: Course itself, Like, we're just not doing stuff like this anymore,
Speaker 1: at least in the US. Spending millions and millions of
Speaker 1: dollars to build the hardest held golf course on a
Speaker 1: sensitive piece of land to debut at a big tournament
Speaker 1: for the purpose of making a resort and real estate play.
Speaker 1: It's crazy and it's representative of that era I think
Speaker 1: in the golf industry. And I guess the question is,
Speaker 1: are we glad that era is over.
Speaker 8: It's interesting because it's kind of a divergence where the
Speaker 8: event became way more commercialized. And that's why it would
Speaker 8: never happen this way, Right, you have to have at
Speaker 8: least two years of leading all about the course. They
Speaker 8: need to have the content for commercials and social media
Speaker 8: and everything of the golf course. And then on the
Speaker 8: flip side, golf courses and trends of golf course development
Speaker 8: of the last ten years are sands commercialization. We're going
Speaker 8: to build golf for golf's sake, like it's going to
Speaker 8: be just about golf. So I think that's the thing.
Speaker 8: You know what he says, it would never happen today.
Speaker 8: He's so spot on because just the landscape of both
Speaker 8: industries has shifted so much in the polar opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I still do, like, occasionally, against my better judgment,
Speaker 1: occasionally I get a little nostalgic for that time in
Speaker 1: American golf course construction the eighties and nineties, not necessarily
Speaker 1: for the courses themselves or for the financial model they represented,
Speaker 1: but I do sort of admire the ambition of them.
Speaker 1: You know, these courses, they weren't the Pyramids or anything.
Speaker 1: But some of these courses, like Shadow Creek, for instance,
Speaker 1: were massive achievements of art and science and industry together.
Speaker 1: And when a project like the Ocean Course somehow got done,
Speaker 1: you just had to tip your hat and say, wow,
Speaker 1: you know you did that. This episode of Fridagg Stories
Speaker 1: was produced by me Garrett Morrison and co hosted by
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson.
Speaker 8: It was mixed and engineered by Jay Virik, with transcript
Speaker 8: help from meg Act.
Speaker 1: And big thanks to Jim Gandy, Jim Autrey, Chris Cole,
Speaker 1: Jason McCoy, Scott Poole, Dave Stockton, and Troy Miller. Troy
Speaker 1: Miller is a Charleston based golf architect. You've heard him
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and he actually connected me with a
Speaker 1: lot of the people I interviewed, and I had a
Speaker 1: whole conversation with him that didn't end up fitting anywhere
Speaker 1: in this episode, So sorry, Troy, but we did use
Speaker 1: excerpts from that interview in a video we made about
Speaker 1: the Ocean course. And Andy tell the people where they
Speaker 1: can find that video.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you can find that on our YouTube page. If
Speaker 8: you haven't been there, just go onto YouTube and search
Speaker 8: the Frida Egg. You know, outside you might learn how
Speaker 8: to cook the Frida Egg differently if you click on
Speaker 8: some of the videos, But there is an account the
Speaker 8: Frida Egg and click subscribe there and the video should
Speaker 8: be up there, maybe most recent, depending on when you
Speaker 8: listen to this, it'll be the most recent video and
Speaker 8: you should be able to watch it. It's about, you know,
Speaker 8: just about ten minutes long, and it is accompanied by
Speaker 8: beautiful visuals. So everything we talked about here about the
Speaker 8: site you'll be able to see.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: I recommend watching it on your TV through YouTube, either
Speaker 8: stream it on your TV or airplay it up there,
Speaker 8: depending on what your setup is.
Speaker 1: Are we going to have four K?
Speaker 8: It is four K?
Speaker 1: Yeah. The four K on the TV is just out
Speaker 1: of this world. So we'd love to know what you
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Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter or Instagram or maybe leave a
Speaker 1: review on iTunes, just an idea. Thanks for listening. You
Speaker 1: know what made me realize this was doing those doing
Speaker 1: the videos with you and like realizing that instead of
Speaker 1: scripting on we just needed to talk and extract the
Speaker 1: parts that we're getting.
Speaker 8: I did that. Remember that boomerang video I did for
Speaker 8: registration a few years ago where I was sitting in
Speaker 8: the room.
Speaker 1: Boomerang yeah yes, like yeah, yeah, yes yes.
Speaker 8: So that video we did like twenty takes where I
Speaker 8: was trying to read from a script and I finally
Speaker 8: and Ka Kaylee was striving me nuts about it, you know,
Speaker 8: like she's like, you know, why can't you, and I
Speaker 8: just said I finally was like I'm just gonna wing it,
Speaker 8: and I the first take, I wung it and it
Speaker 8: was perfect.