Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a bride egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, Frida Egg, bride.
Speaker 3: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is with Josh Pettitt. Josh put together a
Speaker 3: wonderful book called The Mackenzie Reader. He's also in golf architecture.
Speaker 3: He owns Pacific Golf Design, does a lot of golf
Speaker 3: architecture work, so it was it was awesome to have
Speaker 3: him on and talk about his book, The McKenzie Reader,
Speaker 3: that he released last year. Is a beautiful, beautiful book
Speaker 3: and definitely one worth checking out. But we talk a
Speaker 3: ton about the book and then also just Alistair McKenzie
Speaker 3: in general, his favorite anecdotes. He's done a ton of
Speaker 3: Alistair McKenzie research, so this was a really fun conversation.
Speaker 3: I was planning on putting together a second conversation for this,
Speaker 3: but I am traveling. Been kind of a hectic schedule
Speaker 3: going from LACC to the East Coast has not been
Speaker 3: friendly with the with the jet lag and the new
Speaker 3: hours on the East Coast with some early mornings to shoot,
Speaker 3: but really really great seeing some new new golf courses
Speaker 3: out here.
Speaker 1: It was blown away by Hollywood the other day.
Speaker 3: We had an event out there and what a cool place,
Speaker 3: a Walter Travis design that you know, we will have
Speaker 3: a write up in the future on Club TFE. If
Speaker 3: you haven't signed up for Club tfy do so if
Speaker 3: you want to you know more from We've been writing
Speaker 3: basically daily articles Monday through Friday on there, and we
Speaker 3: do in depth course profiles where we kind of break
Speaker 3: down the architecture of different courses, a wide spectrum of them,
Speaker 3: from private to public golf courses all over the country
Speaker 3: and a.
Speaker 1: Little bit in the UK.
Speaker 3: So real quick, I wanted to do some closing thoughts
Speaker 3: from LACC and the US Open.
Speaker 1: I was out there all week. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: I don't think the atmosphere was great, the fan experience
Speaker 3: wasn't great. The you know, the whole ticket situation that
Speaker 3: everybody's talking about, the limited number of tickets for the
Speaker 3: US Open, that wasn't great. But what I can say
Speaker 3: unequivocally having attended a lot of the recent US Opens,
Speaker 3: this was the best US Open set up in a
Speaker 3: long time. I think that John Bodenhammer and his team
Speaker 3: deserve a ton of credit for the sensational set up.
Speaker 3: In presentation of Los Angeles Country Club, I thought the test,
Speaker 3: you know, everybody was talking about low scores, and I
Speaker 3: think it was kind of a silly thing to think
Speaker 3: about when you look at the When you look at
Speaker 3: the front nine, the eighth hole is a five hundred
Speaker 3: and ten yard par five. These guys were hitting five
Speaker 3: wood and and then like six iron into it. The
Speaker 3: reality of par is that the definition of par is
Speaker 3: what an expert player, how many shots it takes them
Speaker 3: to get to the green and then plus two putts
Speaker 3: the first and the eighth hole. If the players, if
Speaker 3: every player in the field hit the fairway, they were
Speaker 3: going for that green and they were going to probably
Speaker 3: reach it pretty easily. Those aren't par fives in the actuality.
Speaker 3: I think it was great leaving the first hole a
Speaker 3: par five to respect the way that George Thomas intended
Speaker 3: golf courses to start like an opener, super easible, easy,
Speaker 3: gettable hole in terms.
Speaker 1: Of par a hard par four coming up after that.
Speaker 3: Now, if we just changed the par to sixty eight
Speaker 3: like it was, that's what this golf court. It was
Speaker 3: a par sixty eight for these guys. There was a
Speaker 3: reachable par four and two reachable par five, two par
Speaker 3: fives that are really par four's on the front nine.
Speaker 3: If we change the par to sixty eight, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the low score a window. Clark wins at
Speaker 3: two under. Nobody's complaining about score to par. If he
Speaker 3: wins it two under, this is silly, you know that way.
Speaker 3: If you do it that way, two guys were under
Speaker 3: par for this tournament. Anyways, let's just talk about scoring
Speaker 3: a little bit more. Thursday, I think was the day
Speaker 3: that everybody freaked out. Xander Schaffley and Ricky Fowler shoot
Speaker 3: sixty twos. It was an ideal scoring day. Overcast, it
Speaker 3: sprits a little early in the morning, and that overcast
Speaker 3: and the in the air and on the ground just
Speaker 3: allowed it to be soft. There was no wind. Add end,
Speaker 3: the USGA is playing their first ever.
Speaker 1: US Open at LACC.
Speaker 3: One of the big concerns heading into the week was
Speaker 3: pace of play and also just you know, you want
Speaker 3: to feel your way into that setup. So yes, it
Speaker 3: was scorable, but you had to play great to score
Speaker 3: That's the thing that's kind of lost on everybody. You
Speaker 3: had to play awesome to score well. You had to
Speaker 3: hit fairways. If you weren't in the fairway. It was
Speaker 3: really hard golf course. And Ricky Fowler and Xander Schoffley
Speaker 3: shoot these sixty twos.
Speaker 1: It's not like these.
Speaker 3: Guys ran away to twenty under. They were way over
Speaker 3: par after that round. You know, if you look at
Speaker 3: the rest of their tournament, they were over par. It
Speaker 3: was a hard golf course, it was. It really did
Speaker 3: a great job of separating the players that were playing well,
Speaker 3: the players that were playing mediocre, the guys that were
Speaker 3: playing bad. I mean, like Justin Thomas shoots eighty one,
Speaker 3: Like this was a golf course that really you knew
Speaker 3: how somebody was playing based off of their scores. The
Speaker 3: other thing, the golf course got tougher and tougher every day.
Speaker 3: That's what you want from a championship setup. You want
Speaker 3: the golf course to peek on Sunday. You don't want
Speaker 3: it to peak on Thursday or Friday or even Saturday Sunday.
Speaker 3: You want that to be the toughest day. If you
Speaker 3: look at the final groups on Sunday, it was really hard.
Speaker 3: Nobody broke par in the last three groups. Now, before
Speaker 3: you say, well Tommy Fleetwood shot sixty three, had a
Speaker 3: really good look at sixty two. Look at what happened
Speaker 3: throughout the week, the low scores and everybody that knew,
Speaker 3: everybody that was there knew this. The low scores were
Speaker 3: available in the morning, That's when the course was more receptive.
Speaker 3: That's when the wind was down. You know, on Sunday
Speaker 3: the marine layer stayed in again, that moisture stayed in
Speaker 3: the air. It clears up in the after it gets
Speaker 3: brutally tough. And why this didn't matter, why it didn't
Speaker 3: matter that Tommy fleet would shot sixty three was the
Speaker 3: golf course had done its job.
Speaker 1: There weren't forty guys.
Speaker 3: Within six shots and Tommy Fleetwood sixty three could all
Speaker 3: sudden win him the tournament. Tommy Fleetwood was so far
Speaker 3: back because this golf course had identified that he was
Speaker 3: not a contender. There were four guys that could win
Speaker 3: this golf tournament on Sunday, and they were awesome players.
Speaker 3: You obviously had Wyndham Clark, Rory McElroy, Scotti, Scheffler, and
Speaker 3: Ricky Fowler. Those were the only four guys who had
Speaker 3: a chance to win on Sunday. I'm sorry if you
Speaker 3: think somebody else did.
Speaker 1: They didn't.
Speaker 3: I think everybody in the field knew they didn't have
Speaker 3: a shot. There was no way someone was coming from
Speaker 3: six back on this golf course and leapfrogging those four
Speaker 3: players in a late tea time. Sure Tommy Fleetwood could
Speaker 3: shoot sixty three and surge up the leaderboard, but he
Speaker 3: was too far back because he hadn't played well enough
Speaker 3: at a golf course that identified he hadn't played well
Speaker 3: enough early in the week. And that's the thing about
Speaker 3: this golf course that I think needs to be remembered.
Speaker 3: It gave people enough space to play and it really
Speaker 3: identified who was playing best. I you know, I think
Speaker 3: LACC has gotten a lot of flak for scoring. I
Speaker 3: think that's unfounded and wrong. You know this is this
Speaker 3: was a great tournament of really like wonderful competition from
Speaker 3: a golf standpoint, where they do deserve some grief. And
Speaker 3: the USDA shares of this probably is on the fan experience.
Speaker 3: On the atmosphere. It lacked a lot of pop, not
Speaker 3: having any fans around the and this is hard, the
Speaker 3: hard situation. Some it was tight, but one of the
Speaker 3: reasons that it was so tight is that all the
Speaker 3: back teas they're using. You know, if they don't have
Speaker 3: to use all these back tees, there's al sudden a
Speaker 3: lot more space for grand stands, more tickets can be sold.
Speaker 3: But also, you know, the corporate aspect of this, like
Speaker 3: more than half. You can't have a tournament where more
Speaker 3: than half the tickets go to corporate like that shouldn't happen.
Speaker 3: And if you can contrast this with last year's US Open,
Speaker 3: last year's US Open was probably my favorite tournament of
Speaker 3: the year.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: The Open Championship was great too. Those were two sensational tournaments.
Speaker 3: But if I think about last year's US Open, which
Speaker 3: was a sensational tournament, that atmosphere was unbelievable. I think
Speaker 3: the competition and the way the golf course kind of
Speaker 3: selected players was better this year. And I thought the
Speaker 3: country Club was a great US Open venue, So I
Speaker 3: think if you look at it from the way the
Speaker 3: golf courses tested players, I think this year's US Open
Speaker 3: was a little bit better. But then the atmosphere of
Speaker 3: last year's US Open. It was electric on the weekend.
Speaker 3: It was awesome that one would be just so exponentially
Speaker 3: higher than LACC. I think they are both really good
Speaker 3: US Opens, and I think, you know, the I'm excited
Speaker 3: for when they go back to LACC in twenty odd years.
Speaker 3: Obviously they're all booked up. We can talk about that
Speaker 3: another time. But Riviera just got the twenty thirty one
Speaker 3: US Open. That'll be interesting, you know, in eight years.
Speaker 3: We're talking about eight years, but it'll be interesting to
Speaker 3: see how that one's set up. Given the complaints of LACC,
Speaker 3: it seems like that is an even smaller site. So
Speaker 3: let's talk about the four guys that could win the
Speaker 3: tournament on Sunday and kind of where they go from here.
Speaker 3: The champion, Wyndham Clark. I can't believe the discourse on
Speaker 3: Wyndam Clark about. I mean, this guy played great golf.
Speaker 3: Look at who he beat. He beat Rory, he beat Scottie,
Speaker 3: and he beat Ricky Fowler. He beat two players that
Speaker 3: are often considered the best player in the game right now,
Speaker 3: and Rory and Scottie, and then the other guy is
Speaker 3: one of the best modern players without a major so
Speaker 3: Wyndham Clark played great. He's on a meteoric rise. He's
Speaker 3: up to thirteenth in the OWGR. I think what's being
Speaker 3: a little bit overlooked and the disappointment that Rory didn't
Speaker 3: win is who knows what Wyndham Clark could become. He's
Speaker 3: got all the ingredients to be a very very very
Speaker 3: good player on the PGA Tour and in the world
Speaker 3: of golf. He's super long, he's got a great short game,
Speaker 3: he's a great putter, and his approach place improving, Like
Speaker 3: that's what you look for. He's a guy that can
Speaker 3: do everything. So you start to think, like, and we
Speaker 3: do this every major where we start to project out
Speaker 3: what a player might end up with, you know, famously,
Speaker 3: like after Sergio won the Masters, it was like, is
Speaker 3: this going to open the floodgates? Are we going to
Speaker 3: have these Sergio major wins? No? No, you know this.
Speaker 3: We almost always air on the two high side. But
Speaker 3: with Wyndham Clark, like, let's just say a low bar.
Speaker 3: I probably think a low bar is five wins in
Speaker 3: his career in a Ryder Cup. Just to give that
Speaker 3: some context, Gary Woodland, this is not meant to be
Speaker 3: a drive by Gary Woodland a US Open at Pebble
Speaker 3: Beach that nobody really complained about. He's got four wins
Speaker 3: in his career, so I don't think this is going
Speaker 3: to be a disastrous US Open winner.
Speaker 1: On the high end, I think a.
Speaker 3: Skill set really translates well. He could be a top
Speaker 3: twenty player for five six years maybe more. Maybe he's
Speaker 3: kind of like an older Brooks Kopka where he wins,
Speaker 3: he picks up not Brooks.
Speaker 1: I mean he's not gonna win.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's gonna win five majors, but maybe
Speaker 3: he picks off another one. His game certainly fits a
Speaker 3: lot of golf courses. So Wyndham Clark I think obviously
Speaker 3: a huge winner from the week and somebody that people
Speaker 3: should be excited about. I think he gave a really
Speaker 3: good press conference where he talked a lot about his process,
Speaker 3: what he's gone through, and I love his approach with
Speaker 3: no coach of how he's just trying to get back
Speaker 3: to neutral.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 3: Phenomenal interview where he just talked about, hey, if I'm
Speaker 3: drawing the ball, I'm trying to hit cuts to get
Speaker 3: back to neutral. If I'm cutting the ball, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to get hit draws to get back to neutral, and
Speaker 3: I've never played better.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a.
Speaker 3: Really interesting way and we need more of this in
Speaker 3: the game of golf for the younger generation to see, Hey,
Speaker 3: you don't need your swing micro analyzed after every single shot,
Speaker 3: Like you don't need that, you know, speaking of that,
Speaker 3: Like what was interesting is like, you know, Wyndham Clark,
Speaker 3: Rory didn't have a coach there, Scottie, Randy Smith wasn't there.
Speaker 3: I don't think on the weekend, you know, three of
Speaker 3: those guys and I don't think Ricky had a coach there.
Speaker 3: The four guys that had a chance to win and
Speaker 3: have coaches on the range with them this weekend, all right,
Speaker 3: the gut wrenching second place. Rory McElroy. I think this one,
Speaker 3: this one was tough. He played well enough to win.
Speaker 3: He certainly played well enough to win if he had
Speaker 3: a good putting week, he wins. I think the my
Speaker 3: criticism for Rory after the after oak Hill was that
Speaker 3: he was too sloppy. He wasn't really sloppy, you know.
Speaker 3: I think that when you watch Rory McElroy play Major
Speaker 3: championship golf, You often get frustrated with the week bogies
Speaker 3: the week, you know, just the giveaways, and seemingly there
Speaker 3: is always one or two.
Speaker 1: In every round. This week was a lot different.
Speaker 3: I think there were really three giveaways, and I think
Speaker 3: one of them is tough to point out as a giveaway.
Speaker 3: He had two three putts. The one on eight on
Speaker 3: Sunday was really bad. That needs to be a birdie,
Speaker 3: right there's in the playoff. I think the the fourteenth,
Speaker 3: the web shot on Sunday that everybody's going to focus on.
Speaker 1: That was that was not great.
Speaker 3: I mean he was, he was a yard from it
Speaker 3: being really great, really great shot, but he was you know,
Speaker 3: also had five yards of space beyond the flag where
Speaker 3: that has to be the miss. Miss has to be
Speaker 3: past the flag, you have to have a twenty footer,
Speaker 3: and I think he gave.
Speaker 1: Himself a lot of those types of looks on a very.
Speaker 3: Hard golf course and in the nobody wants to hear this,
Speaker 3: but the simple fact of that tournament was Rory didn't
Speaker 3: make anything on the weekend.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 3: He made no putts, and sometimes that that's what golf
Speaker 3: comes down to. One guy makes putts, the other guy
Speaker 3: didn't and Rory didn't make putts. I think the the
Speaker 3: one other place that you can look at and say, man,
Speaker 3: that was a missed opportunity was Saturday. He three putts
Speaker 3: on thirteen. That hole just kind of was a bugaboo.
Speaker 3: I think for him in general, he bogeated two of
Speaker 3: the four days. But you know, where does he go
Speaker 3: from here? I think he's got to come away from
Speaker 3: this feeling great about his game and future major championships.
Speaker 1: I think he is.
Speaker 3: I think he's cleaned up a lot of the things
Speaker 3: that kind of made him struggle early in the year,
Speaker 3: especially with majors. He's driving the ball great. I think
Speaker 3: what I would like to see from him is a
Speaker 3: real dedication to the wedge play. It's obviously been kind
Speaker 3: of a thorn inside. We saw it running into the
Speaker 3: tournament where the wedge play has been a struggle, and
Speaker 3: we saw it pop up on fourteen. I think he
Speaker 3: was pretty solid outside of that. Major championships are about
Speaker 3: opportunities and being there, and I think like this is
Speaker 3: going to parlay into Scotti, But Rory's now at the
Speaker 3: point where he knows how hard these things are to win.
Speaker 3: It makes it a little bit tougher, but he's getting himself.
Speaker 3: And now this is two days, two years in a
Speaker 3: row with Saint Andrews in here where he is on
Speaker 3: the back nine and he just he needs a couple
Speaker 3: putts to drop, and he just didn't have a couple
Speaker 3: putts drop. And I think we can overanalyze everything, but
Speaker 3: that's the really the basics.
Speaker 1: Of this for him. Scotty Scheffler, what a player.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is extraordinary what he's doing this season
Speaker 3: in terms of consistency. He hasn't finished outside the top
Speaker 3: twenty in forever. It's amazing to watch a guy. I
Speaker 3: watched Scotty his entire round on Thursday, and then I
Speaker 3: watched his entire round on Sunday, and I caught obviously
Speaker 3: him intermittently throughout the rest of the tournament. A lot
Speaker 3: of nights I was watching the telecast after the golf
Speaker 3: was over. Scotty contended in this major when he didn't
Speaker 3: really have it. He was really slow out of the
Speaker 3: gates on Thursday. Sunday, he missed the bunch of short
Speaker 3: putts and you start to add up the totals and
Speaker 3: you're like, wow, he missed two or three short puts
Speaker 3: on Sunday, and he finished three shots out of the lead,
Speaker 3: out of being in a playoff factor in he opened
Speaker 3: the tournament on the most ideal scoring conditions ever, he
Speaker 3: was shot two over on the front nine. He has
Speaker 3: to feel a little bit like, man, this is crazy
Speaker 3: that I'm not winning, given how many how well I'm playing.
Speaker 1: As a whole body of work.
Speaker 3: He obviously won the Masters in twenty twenty one in
Speaker 3: record setting fashion, not record setting, but like he was dominant.
Speaker 3: It was a dominant, dominant win. He's been in contention
Speaker 3: basically in every single major since. He wasn't really in
Speaker 3: the open at St. Andrews, but really like he's been
Speaker 3: a factor at all these majors and leading into that
Speaker 3: Masters when he was a fact during a ton of
Speaker 3: major championships. Like this guy is built for major championships.
Speaker 3: That being said, what we just talked about with Rory,
Speaker 3: the one worry I have about Scotty is like, is
Speaker 3: he starting to learn how hard it is to win
Speaker 3: these majors? You kind of and I think, like Colin
Speaker 3: Morikawa is in this state right now, and I think
Speaker 3: it's that's the tough thing. Like you want these young
Speaker 3: players to keep picking them off, Brooks just dealt with
Speaker 3: this where he had the injuries and everything, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden it went from making majors look easy
Speaker 3: to they're really really hard and you get like kind
Speaker 3: of a mental block. And I think with the putter,
Speaker 3: that's that reappeared on Sunday. He was pretty solid throughout
Speaker 3: the week. The putter'spent a problem, but winning major championships
Speaker 3: is really hard, and when you know it's really hard,
Speaker 3: it just makes it tougher. I think there's a naive
Speaker 3: nature that some these young players now have to winning
Speaker 3: majors and winning golf tournaments, and it's it's hard when
Speaker 3: you lose that mindset. And Scotty I expect him to
Speaker 3: contend at the Open, and I think he's probably by
Speaker 3: far the best player in the world right now, just
Speaker 3: based off everybody's looking to be consistent. He's the most
Speaker 3: consistent player. Hopefully he's not developing any of the scar tissue,
Speaker 3: because that's that's I think the one thing that could
Speaker 3: slow him down in major championships.
Speaker 1: All right. Ricky Fowler, he he had a great week.
Speaker 3: I think he was obviously the story of the week
Speaker 3: until Sunday, and uh, it was it was amazing to
Speaker 3: feel the energy. You know, there wasn't a ton of
Speaker 3: energy out at LACC, but where there was a lot
Speaker 3: of energy was with Ricky Fowler. I followed him on
Speaker 3: Saturday extensively, and you know, you could just feel the
Speaker 3: graciousness of or Friday afternoon, the greciousness of the crowd.
Speaker 3: You know, they just you could sense that everybody was
Speaker 3: pulling for Rick. He's had an awesome year. If you
Speaker 3: go back and look after last year's playoffs, he was
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty seventh in the world rankings. Right
Speaker 3: now he's thirty fifth. He's on a meteoric rise. He
Speaker 3: is playing some of the best golf we've seen him play.
Speaker 3: I mean the best golf we've seen him play in
Speaker 3: effectively five years.
Speaker 1: I think the question about.
Speaker 3: Rick coming out of this is is he going to
Speaker 3: have another shot at the Major? Was this his best shot?
Speaker 3: I think he's got chances at the Open. I think
Speaker 3: that's going to be his best chance moving forward. I
Speaker 3: don't think the US Open is his best chance. I
Speaker 3: don't think the Masters is his best chance. I think
Speaker 3: the Open Championships moving forward a place where.
Speaker 1: Distance isn't the end.
Speaker 3: All be all at Open Championships experience I think matters
Speaker 3: a lot. You have to hit shots in the wind,
Speaker 3: and you know, I think that's where we're gonna see
Speaker 3: Ricky potentially have chances to win majors. But this was
Speaker 3: an awesome performance. I feel for the guy. I mean,
Speaker 3: you could tell he just didn't have it on Sunday,
Speaker 3: but this was a great tournament, and I you know,
Speaker 3: it's amazing to have him back in the game. I
Speaker 3: always like one of my favorite things about golf is
Speaker 3: watching guys come out of the gutter. And I think
Speaker 3: Ricky Fowler one of the most popular players, one of
Speaker 3: the players of like the twenty tens. I think you'd
Speaker 3: have him on the short list of the most memorable,
Speaker 3: impactful players in a decade.
Speaker 1: He got it going again. It was awesome to be
Speaker 1: there and awesome to see it.
Speaker 3: And I hope we get a little bit more Ricky.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how much more, but it looks like
Speaker 3: the game is getting into a really, really good spot.
Speaker 3: So without further ado, I just wanted to wrap up
Speaker 3: the US Open. It was an awesome tournament. I you know,
Speaker 3: it just makes it with everything going on in golf.
Speaker 3: It just one of the things that's sad is when
Speaker 3: major championship season it's coming to end, and we're getting
Speaker 3: close to that with the Open next month. This was
Speaker 3: a really fun tournament and it was great to have
Speaker 3: the focus of the week beyond the golf and not
Speaker 3: everything else that's going on in professional golf. Now for
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Speaker 3: All right, tell me about your recent trip to Colorado.
Speaker 2: Well, I unearthed a few interesting artifacts that were given
Speaker 2: to me from the closest thing to a living heir
Speaker 2: to doctor Alistair Mackenzie. It's from a woman named Joan Haddock,
Speaker 2: who's the She's the widow of Mackenzie's step grandson, Ray Haddock,
Speaker 2: and they were the ones that found the manuscript for
Speaker 2: the Spirit of Saint Andrews in nineteen ninety two and
Speaker 2: then it was published in I think ninety four ninety five.
Speaker 2: She gave me Alistair Mackenzie's hickory clubs that their family
Speaker 2: had kept all these years from Pasa Tiempa when he
Speaker 2: passed away, and it's a pretty good story. Those clubs
Speaker 2: have actually traveled all around the country in a caravan
Speaker 2: in the late thirties and up until about nineteen forty,
Speaker 2: their family basically we're living out of a motor home
Speaker 2: and traveling a lot, homeschooled their kids and kept all
Speaker 2: that stuff with them in this little like what would
Speaker 2: have been the equivalent of Winnebago in those days, and
Speaker 2: then eventually it made it out to the Denver area
Speaker 2: in Colorado, where it's been all their stuff for about yeah,
Speaker 2: forty years or so, no, maybe longer, like since about
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy. So, yeah, I've got three sets of clubs,
Speaker 2: two golf bags, and it's pretty pretty cool, very special.
Speaker 3: Some cool the clubs that were in famous pictures. And
Speaker 3: then another one that was the putter.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a photo of Mackenzie standing on the fifteenth
Speaker 2: Green at Cyper's Point, pointing out out with this putter
Speaker 2: to the Pacific Ocean, and that putter is one of
Speaker 2: the putters.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I have a high resolution version of that photo. I
Speaker 2: could zoom weighing on the putter head and it's very
Speaker 2: obvious that that's the same putter that was in one
Speaker 2: of the bags. And then there's another putter that the
Speaker 2: story is that Bobby Jones gave him probably nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: one or thirty two when they were working on Augusta.
Speaker 2: That's a Calamity Jane replica that was made by Spaulding
Speaker 2: and he gave out a bunch of those to friends
Speaker 2: of his. So m Kenzie got one, and that's part
Speaker 2: of the set.
Speaker 3: How did you get so enamored with Alistair McKenzie.
Speaker 2: Well, it was sort of a gradual process. I suppose
Speaker 2: started in two thousand and three, twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I was hired.
Speaker 2: As a young lad on the construction crew at the
Speaker 2: Metal Club and they were in the process of doing
Speaker 2: a restoration project with Mike Debris and I, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a grundone on the crew, you know,
Speaker 2: swinging a shovel and a pick and pushing a rake
Speaker 2: and uh, but I loved it. Nineteen I just turned nineteen, So,
Speaker 2: I mean I had started working at courses when I
Speaker 2: was fifteen in high school and worked at several courses
Speaker 2: at that point, but had never really been that engaged
Speaker 2: in golf architecture in any in any way. I had
Speaker 2: done some maintenance at a different course, but this was
Speaker 2: just such a unique process that we were sort of
Speaker 2: trying to unearth. There was sort of an archaeological component
Speaker 2: to it, you know, unearthed this Mackenzie course that had
Speaker 2: been sitting there and all those all those decades, and
Speaker 2: so under the supervision of Mike, just learned a lot
Speaker 2: about the process of trying to reclaim these old greens
Speaker 2: and these bunkers and you know, reclaiming the width and
Speaker 2: the fairways to you know, get back to the old
Speaker 2: strategy and providing the different shot and angles. So that
Speaker 2: that just, I don't know, that really fascinated me, and
Speaker 2: that that led me toward a couple of years later
Speaker 2: working at the Valley Club in Montecito where they were
Speaker 2: getting ready to do a restoration project and they basically
Speaker 2: let me spearhead the historical research component to that, and
Speaker 2: so started That's when I really started digging deep into
Speaker 2: research and really fell in love with that process, which
Speaker 2: is sort of different, quite a bit different than when
Speaker 2: I was doing a metal club. But you know, just
Speaker 2: in my spare time I was working on the crew there,
Speaker 2: but in the afternoons and evenings, I was just full
Speaker 2: time doing research and collecting stuff and digging through the
Speaker 2: art archives in the basement of the Valley Club and
Speaker 2: this process of researching and curating this horse historical content
Speaker 2: was it was kind of thrilling to me, and I
Speaker 2: sort of fell in love with that. And so then
Speaker 2: we did a restoration project at the Valley Club in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven with Tom Doak, and but I
Speaker 2: had developed this love for research and just continued doing
Speaker 2: that in my spare time, you know, anytime I could
Speaker 2: go into libraries, going to archives. I started gradually building
Speaker 2: a network of historians and archivists and researchers all around
Speaker 2: the world that we'd sort of help each other find
Speaker 2: different things. And so I've been doing it ever since,
Speaker 2: and you know, just kind of fell in love with that.
Speaker 3: I imagine it's kind of like pulling a thread. It's
Speaker 3: like a mystery rite where you're trying to solve for something,
Speaker 3: and in this case, if you're considering like McKenzie, it's
Speaker 3: just trying to find I mean, there's so much stuff
Speaker 3: that isn't around.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's exactly right. So it actually really started,
Speaker 2: you know, the impetus was this routing plan that I
Speaker 2: found that was in the original perspectus for the Valley Club.
Speaker 2: And it's different than the routing plan that you often
Speaker 2: see with the Valley Club. This was an earlier one
Speaker 2: from nineteen twenty eight, and that routing plan had a
Speaker 2: lot more detail and was just super interesting and there
Speaker 2: was a guy's name on it who drew it, and
Speaker 2: that was I started out by trying to find that
Speaker 2: guy and find any other material because in order to
Speaker 2: draw that map, he would have had, you know, my
Speaker 2: theory of the case is he would have had a
Speaker 2: lot of material from mackenzie and Hunter to be able
Speaker 2: to draw all that. You know, he was a draftsman,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, and so you know, really what
Speaker 2: I was after we're green sketches, notes, correspondence, photographs, anything
Speaker 2: like that from mckenzien, Hunter and so that that was
Speaker 2: sort of the impetus. And then you know, collecting that
Speaker 2: got me into collecting photos, you know, trying to identify
Speaker 2: features that have been lost. But yeah, it was like,
Speaker 2: like you said, you pull it a thread and then
Speaker 2: you know, it's like you go down that rabbit hole
Speaker 2: and you just never stop.
Speaker 3: When you think back to that Metal club, is there
Speaker 3: a moment you obviously you know you're working, you're nineteen,
Speaker 3: You're like.
Speaker 1: This is cool.
Speaker 3: Is there like a specific moment of that project that
Speaker 3: you remember most vividly of like I love this.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a few moments, but one that comes
Speaker 2: to mind, I guess. We were working on the fourteenth Green,
Speaker 2: which is a part three and that was sort of
Speaker 2: McKenzie's take on a Verdan and we were floating the green.
Speaker 2: I was pushing like the you know, with a rake,
Speaker 2: basically floating out the finished grade. And I just remember,
Speaker 2: you know, Mike was sort of supervising and showing me,
Speaker 2: you know, how to float this green out by hand,
Speaker 2: and just the detailed nature of finishing that was was
Speaker 2: so intricate, and for some reason, I just I realized then,
Speaker 2: like wow, I love this. This is this is such
Speaker 2: a cool process, Like, you know, the the detail required
Speaker 2: to do it just right and the craftsmanship was just
Speaker 2: something I really enjoyed. And that was that was just
Speaker 2: one moment that sticks out and and Mike, Mike said
Speaker 2: something to me at the time like wow, I've never
Speaker 2: seen anybody rake so precisely as you're raking right now,
Speaker 2: something like that, and I was like, wow, this is
Speaker 2: that's pretty cool man.
Speaker 3: So you got fascinated and the research and the life
Speaker 3: of Alice Firm McKenzie. And at what point do you
Speaker 3: decide that you want to put together a new book
Speaker 3: on McKenzie.
Speaker 2: Well, that started initially. I got the idea in I
Speaker 2: think it was two thousand and sixteen or seventeen, you know.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, the La Times did a big feature
Speaker 2: on Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, celebrating his one hundred
Speaker 2: and fiftieth birthday. Franklood Wright was a contemporary of mackenzie,
Speaker 2: you know, was born in eighteen sixty seven, and the
Speaker 2: Frankloyd Right Foundation and some other people put together a
Speaker 2: big exhibition, and I thought, Wow, it'd be really cool
Speaker 2: to do something like that for Alistir McKenzie, And I
Speaker 2: was thinking toward the future. Mackenzie was born in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 2: so twenty twenty was McKenzie one hundred and fiftieth, and
Speaker 2: so I had a number of ideas floating around, where
Speaker 2: like how how I could sort of commend rate that.
Speaker 2: And even prior to that, I had been thinking about
Speaker 2: different concepts for a book just as a way of
Speaker 2: kind of showcasing all this material that I've collected over
Speaker 2: the years. I wanted to do something with it, you know,
Speaker 2: get down into the public. And so that was a
Speaker 2: process in and of itself, trying to figure out the
Speaker 2: right concept for the book. But that all kind of
Speaker 2: came together in this yeah, twenty seventeen ish, and then
Speaker 2: started working on it then, and you know, it took
Speaker 2: a three year project.
Speaker 1: With the book. I mean, I think, like the.
Speaker 3: I think there's something magical now about books, especially well
Speaker 3: put together books, because there they become like kind of
Speaker 3: like it becomes a piece of your house. Really when
Speaker 3: there's a certain in with your book, McKenzie reader, I
Speaker 3: feel like there it was a very very intentional style
Speaker 3: in which the book was created, from the typeface to
Speaker 3: the way the pages feel, to the cover. Can you
Speaker 3: walk us through just the little details of how you
Speaker 3: wanted this book to look and feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very insightful. You're right, yeah, you know, all
Speaker 2: the details I thought had to be just right. And
Speaker 2: so the thinking was, I wanted to try to create
Speaker 2: a book that Mackenzie himself would be proud of or
Speaker 2: or put another way, if he were alive today and
Speaker 2: he was putting together a book, what might it look like?
Speaker 2: And that was kind of the driving force for what
Speaker 2: this book should look like. And so right off the bat,
Speaker 2: I made the decision. You know, I didn't want this
Speaker 2: to be a coffee table book. I wanted to be
Speaker 2: something that looked and felt like something that would have
Speaker 2: maybe been produced one hundred years ago. And at the
Speaker 2: same time, I wanted it to be in interactive because
Speaker 2: there's so much rich content in the book, photographs and sketches,
Speaker 2: routing plans, and I wanted that to be sort of
Speaker 2: like an interactive experience that the reader could enjoy. So
Speaker 2: trying to fit all that into a small, portable book
Speaker 2: that you could bring onto an airplane or carry around
Speaker 2: that took a lot of figuring out how to do that,
Speaker 2: and that's what that's what led me to doing this
Speaker 2: thing where there's these what are called gatefolds, you know,
Speaker 2: these big pages that fold out from the book that
Speaker 2: really showcase those those maps. But yeah, the the look
Speaker 2: and the feel is just was really important that all
Speaker 2: the details were correct and people in the printing world,
Speaker 2: you know, reflect back on twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: really the last three years the paper industry has been
Speaker 2: just was really hit bad by COVID and supply chain issues,
Speaker 2: and so getting paper is an absolute nightmare when I
Speaker 2: was doing this book. It's gotten a little better in
Speaker 2: the last year or so, but the struggle that I
Speaker 2: went through just to source the paper itself was it
Speaker 2: was quite a story, but I was just adamant that
Speaker 2: it was the story. Well, basically I worked with at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, it was five different printers,
Speaker 2: and you know, three of them essentially said we can't
Speaker 2: do this because we can't get paper, and so I
Speaker 2: sort of said, well, I'm going to get the paper
Speaker 2: myself from a paper company. So I learned how the
Speaker 2: paper industry operates, which is pretty interesting. It's all done
Speaker 2: on monthly quotas. So essentially there was paper that was
Speaker 2: actually identify that was sitting in a warehouse in LA
Speaker 2: that they couldn't sell me because they didn't have the
Speaker 2: allocation in their monthly budget to be able to allocate
Speaker 2: that paper for me, even though no one else is
Speaker 2: buying it. So what I ended up doing was going
Speaker 2: to like some executives at this paper company and saying, like,
Speaker 2: you've got six cartons of this paper that I need
Speaker 2: that's sitting in this warehouse, no one else is buying it,
Speaker 2: and I need you to increase your allocation so that
Speaker 2: my local paper distributor is allowed to sell it to me,
Speaker 2: and so that that whole process took several months, and
Speaker 2: I actually had to do it twice because we did
Speaker 2: a second printing.
Speaker 3: It's it's got that paper I I you know, I've
Speaker 3: really enjoyed the book. It's like, yeah, there's like a
Speaker 3: texture to it where you you know, it's not it's
Speaker 3: just like it's you feel there's it's weird to say this,
Speaker 3: and I don't want people to think I'm like a
Speaker 3: weird human being, but like there's a satisfaction to turning
Speaker 3: a page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you say that because friends of mine
Speaker 2: have known for a long time before I ever did
Speaker 2: a book that I've had this weird paper fetish for
Speaker 2: a long time. I love really cool crafty paper. A
Speaker 2: lot of it is like European, French, Italian style papers.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just have this kind of fascination
Speaker 2: with it. So that paper that you're talking about is
Speaker 2: referred to that there's all these different textures in paper
Speaker 2: lingo that's referred to as a vellum finish. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I wanted, you know. It's like, that's if
Speaker 2: you had a book one hundred years ago. That's the
Speaker 2: kind of paper they were using. There wasn't this. They
Speaker 2: had some, but it was pretty rare, like the glossy,
Speaker 2: shiny kind of smooth paper. And so but then there's
Speaker 2: all these other components too, like the technology now that
Speaker 2: because this was a short run of books, it was
Speaker 2: printed on a digital press as opposed to an offset press,
Speaker 2: and so with a digital press you have to use
Speaker 2: a certain type of paper, so the inkdhres. So it's
Speaker 2: not like you can just use any paper, whereas with
Speaker 2: an offset press you could use any paper you want.
Speaker 2: So there's like this whole process of just narrowing down
Speaker 2: my options, finding it, getting the paper and then sort
Speaker 2: and then delivering it myself to a printer that could
Speaker 2: then take it and print the books for me. So
Speaker 2: I had to like facilitate all of that.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a fun process, but I think the
Speaker 3: final the final product shows.
Speaker 1: How much time and effort was into it.
Speaker 3: You know, I think anybody that picks up the book,
Speaker 3: what's in the book, how did you go about creating
Speaker 3: the concept. Obviously there's been much written about Alistair McKenzie.
Speaker 3: Alisair McKenzie wrote a bunch himself. How did you want
Speaker 3: to go about creating your own unique little space? And
Speaker 3: the Alistair McKenzie what you called discography of books? I
Speaker 3: guess what would portfolio of books?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I purposally didn't want to do a biography.
Speaker 2: You know, that's that's been done, you know, Ray Haddock
Speaker 2: and Tom Doak, and they put together a biography that's
Speaker 2: a really nice book, and I didn't want to just
Speaker 2: kind of rehash that same concept. So I spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time thinking about the best way to curate
Speaker 2: all this material that I had and present it and
Speaker 2: what was the driving concept? And I got a great
Speaker 2: idea from a book. I was in a used bookstore
Speaker 2: in Pacific Grove and this must have been twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: or seventeen, and I picked up this book for like
Speaker 2: a dollar that was called The Lincoln Reader, and it
Speaker 2: was all about Abraham Lincoln. And it was like an
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln historian had curated all this material that were
Speaker 2: like speeches and writings that Lincoln had written. And then
Speaker 2: also he had contemporary people, other historians. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a whole network of Abraham Lincoln historians write their own
Speaker 2: little bits and he you know, he collated all that
Speaker 2: together into this book called The Lincoln Reader, and that
Speaker 2: was like an AHA moment for me, like, wow, this
Speaker 2: is a pretty cool concept. I could do something similar
Speaker 2: with all this McKenzie material that I've collected, and it
Speaker 2: worked so well because I had had dozens literally dozens
Speaker 2: I've probably got it's not they're not all in the book,
Speaker 2: but I've got probably at least forty articles that mackenzie
Speaker 2: had written in all these different publications like Golf.
Speaker 3: Dumb and yeah exactly American Golfer, different magazine.
Speaker 2: Illustrated and write all these and so I'd collected all
Speaker 2: these articles that were a lot of his writings, and
Speaker 2: some of those writings are sort of rehashed and kind
Speaker 2: of there's sort of reworked for parts of his book,
Speaker 2: you know, Spirit of Saint Andrews. And then there's some
Speaker 2: of it that's sort of kind of a little bit
Speaker 2: in his first book called Golf Architecture, So there's some
Speaker 2: redundancy to the writing, but but they are different articles.
Speaker 2: And so just collecting all this stuff, I thought, wow,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of this stuff that you know,
Speaker 2: people that are interested in Mackenzie that have written the
Speaker 2: you know, they've they've read those two books, The Spirit
Speaker 2: of Saint Andrews in Golf Architecture. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot more to it that he wrote that's not in
Speaker 2: those two books. And so the thinking was, okay, let's
Speaker 2: curate all these articles into a book. And you know,
Speaker 2: and with those articles, oftentimes we're a lot of these
Speaker 2: really cool photos. So most of those photos in the
Speaker 2: book are are sequenced pretty much as they were in
Speaker 2: the articles when they were published in those different publications.
Speaker 2: And then there's some other stuff I added in. But
Speaker 2: and then I also took this idea from the Lincoln
Speaker 2: Reader of having some other contemporary historians do a little
Speaker 2: short piece on, in this case, Mackenzie. And so that's
Speaker 2: why the back of the book there's a little section
Speaker 2: called some Thoughts on Mackenzie. And I had several people,
Speaker 2: you know, Jeff Shackelford and Mike Debrees and Mike Clayton,
Speaker 2: and you know Pedro Costio down in Argentina. All these guys,
Speaker 2: I asked them to contribute short little pieces, you know,
Speaker 2: from from their perspective as being kind of McKenzie historians
Speaker 2: in their own right. And and that was a way
Speaker 2: of showcasing a bunch of other content that didn't fit.
Speaker 2: And what's the majority of the book that are all
Speaker 2: those different articles?
Speaker 1: With those little articles?
Speaker 3: Do you have do you have a favorite uh in
Speaker 3: there of the little articles that McKenzie wrote.
Speaker 2: Once that he wrote or ones of other people. I
Speaker 2: really liked the one, Yeah, there's a couple, but I
Speaker 2: really liked the one about Augusta called Plans for the
Speaker 2: Ideal Goal, of course, because conceptually it's it's pretty deep
Speaker 2: and really fascinating to me. And and he talks about,
Speaker 2: you know, hole by hole, what was the motivation, the
Speaker 2: motivating concept where they where they got the concepts for
Speaker 2: those holes? He and Bobby Jones a lot of them
Speaker 2: were from Saint Andrew's and other links courses that they
Speaker 2: that they really admired, and so and he talks about
Speaker 2: how they weren't replicating those holes and how it would
Speaker 2: be a you know, it would be a fool's errand
Speaker 2: to try to copy any holes. But they were taking
Speaker 2: the concept of those holes and applying them to the
Speaker 2: landscape that they had in Augusta and doing their own
Speaker 2: rendition on them. And then he and he thought that
Speaker 2: he and Bobby Jones. They were really really proud of
Speaker 2: what they had come up with the collection of holes,
Speaker 2: and so much so that he talks about how he
Speaker 2: had hoped that one day somebody would look at all
Speaker 2: these holes at Augusta as not not templates, but as
Speaker 2: concepts in their own right, that people would then be
Speaker 2: inspired to sort of pay homage to a different golf courses.
Speaker 2: So that's just like sort of this lineage of golf design,
Speaker 2: of these different concepts that started in the British Isles
Speaker 2: and were you know, applied to this landscape in Augusta,
Speaker 2: and then Mackenzie hoped that other people would be inspired
Speaker 2: by those and apply them to other developments in the
Speaker 2: States and around the world. And so I just love
Speaker 2: that that article plans for the ideal golf course and
Speaker 2: it just features just the beautiful watercolor routing map.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really enjoyed that section and it'll probably be
Speaker 3: something that I revisit every year before the Masters. I
Speaker 3: think one of the things, like one of the things
Speaker 3: similar that I really liked and got me thinking about
Speaker 3: architecture was like his deal short hole discussion. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it was I mean, I feel like he was taking
Speaker 3: some shots too like, you know, like this idea of
Speaker 3: like a short hole that's just surrounded by a bunker,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, versus a short hole that provides different
Speaker 3: routes of play. And if you think about McKenzie, And
Speaker 3: then I started to think about mackenzie short holes and
Speaker 3: how often so many of them have the ability to
Speaker 3: have a ball run up, and absolutely and you know
Speaker 3: he was, I mean, it was fascinating how obsessed he
Speaker 3: was with the and and with good reason, with the
Speaker 3: idea of alternate routes and the you know he you
Speaker 3: I feel like you can't read his writing without him
Speaker 3: mentioning the old course at least once in an article,
Speaker 3: and like the idea of like and it makes it
Speaker 3: like a short hole is so hard for a lower
Speaker 3: trajectory player, you know, if it's just surrounded by sand
Speaker 3: and there's no option for running it up. And one
Speaker 3: of the Holsey references was the sixth out Augusta.
Speaker 2: Especially in those days too, the equipment and you know,
Speaker 2: yeah it was it was much much more of a
Speaker 2: ground game still in those days.
Speaker 3: So it was I really enjoyed that. And then do
Speaker 3: you have a favorite guest Essay, I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: want to put you on the spot, but just maybe
Speaker 3: a favorite topic.
Speaker 2: Sure, no, no, I I could. I'd love to answer that.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because of the guest essays,
Speaker 2: the other contributors. They were mostly contemporary people, but there
Speaker 2: was a few in there that weren't. You know, there's IRB. Graphis,
Speaker 2: who was a longtime editor of different golf publications.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: My favorite though of those was written by his sister,
Speaker 2: Marion Maryon Mackenzie, who was also a doctor, and I
Speaker 2: loved it so much. It's called a Sister's Tribute, and
Speaker 2: she wrote it as a response to an obituary that
Speaker 2: was published in the Yorkshire Evening Post right after he died,
Speaker 2: you know, January sixth of nineteen thirty four, and it
Speaker 2: was just a way, it was her way of saying,
Speaker 2: you know, you guys all know about Mackenzie because of
Speaker 2: his career in golf course architecture, but I want to
Speaker 2: give you a little bit more insight into him as
Speaker 2: a person and his other interests and from his sister's perspective.
Speaker 2: And so originally I had that in the back of
Speaker 2: the book with all the other guest essays, but I
Speaker 2: liked it so much that I moved to the front
Speaker 2: of the book, and it's kind of like a like
Speaker 2: a second forward. You know. Ben Crenshaw was nice enough
Speaker 2: to write the forward for the book, but I had
Speaker 2: to put that in there as well because I thought
Speaker 2: it just sets up the book so well. So that's
Speaker 2: my favorite of the Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: A great whole piece of writing. You know, one thing
Speaker 3: that people bring up all the time is is is
Speaker 3: Mackenzie's camouflage. Can you speak to how influential that idea
Speaker 3: has been in golf architecture.
Speaker 2: How influential it's been in golf architecture more or for
Speaker 2: him more broadly.
Speaker 3: Like from him to where you know what what that
Speaker 3: idea brought and you know the influence on him it had.
Speaker 3: But then more importantly, you know whereas take I feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, it is a forefront idea in golf architecture.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, it was. You know, people often talk about,
Speaker 2: you know, Mackenzie he was had this, you know, these
Speaker 2: experiences in the military. You know, he was in the
Speaker 2: Boer War and that's where he first started observing the
Speaker 2: Boers and their use of camouflage and really admired it.
Speaker 2: And that's when he you know, so he's in you know,
Speaker 2: he's in he's in the Border War. He was a surgeon,
Speaker 2: and he's looking at this and he's thinking, Wow, these
Speaker 2: concepts could be applied to building golf courses. That's when
Speaker 2: he started thinking about that. And then again in World
Speaker 2: War One, he you know, he did a lot. You
Speaker 2: know what people don't know is that, yeah, he wrote
Speaker 2: a little bit about camouflage. There's a couple of articles
Speaker 2: in my book that he wrote about camouflage. But his
Speaker 2: wealth of writings on the subject of camouflage actually is
Speaker 2: probably broader than his writings on golf. The stuff that
Speaker 2: I have, which I will be releasing at some point,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out I'm probably actually going to
Speaker 2: do a whole second book that's just about camouflage because
Speaker 2: he wrote so much about camouflage. There's enough material for
Speaker 2: a full book, and that was really really influential to
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, to his philosophies when he started building
Speaker 2: these courses. I think I think the impetus was this
Speaker 2: idea that you know, the novel idea for him was
Speaker 2: I want to try to build really good link style
Speaker 2: golf on inland terrain that's not really conducive to golf,
Speaker 2: especially in those days. So in those days, all the
Speaker 2: best links, you know, were seaside courses built in the
Speaker 2: sand dunes and British Isles for the most part, and
Speaker 2: he thought, well, how can I take those ideas and
Speaker 2: build them on sort of flat, boring, heavy soils, you know,
Speaker 2: inland terrain. And you know, he started doing that at
Speaker 2: all would Lead in nineteen oh seven and then and
Speaker 2: then more Town right after it, and so his thinking
Speaker 2: was like, well, I've got to develop some interest and
Speaker 2: on these sort of what are sort of relatively boring
Speaker 2: pieces of land. And I think that's when he started
Speaker 2: testing his ideas of how can I build some of
Speaker 2: these landforms and you know, manipulate the landscape to provide
Speaker 2: strategic value and to There's another component too that he
Speaker 2: was trying to He was trying to subconsciously affect golfers.
Speaker 2: So you know, he was trying to make holes visually
Speaker 2: appear more difficult than they actually play. And so that
Speaker 2: was one of his like I think big tricks was
Speaker 2: like how do I trick the eye? How do I
Speaker 2: make this bunker complex that's maybe seventy eighty yards short
Speaker 2: of the green look like it's surrounding the green, so
Speaker 2: that when you're hitting an approach shot in from one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty yards out, it feels way more daunting
Speaker 2: than it actually is.
Speaker 3: And I mean this is all over the place that
Speaker 3: some of this course is. Like one that jumps to
Speaker 3: mind is like the fourth hole at Pasta Tiempo. There's
Speaker 3: a bunker in the fairway on the left side that
Speaker 3: looks like it's pressed up against the green, but it's
Speaker 3: actually like eighty yards short.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. Yeah. Two at Metal Club is another good
Speaker 2: example of that. He did that all over the place.
Speaker 2: And because yeah, you know, he wasn't I think most
Speaker 2: people know he wasn't a great golfer. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: some of these other guys in those days were actually
Speaker 2: really really good golfer. Donald Russ was a great golfer.
Speaker 1: My Tilling hasse.
Speaker 3: There's a great player, like you know most of them.
Speaker 3: I mean McDon old was competing for you know, national championships.
Speaker 2: Right, and he was always like a you know, a
Speaker 2: double digit handicap up until the last couple of years
Speaker 2: of his life. He was you know, maybe got down
Speaker 2: to like a seven or eight nine handicap at the best,
Speaker 2: but he was never a great golfer, and so I
Speaker 2: think that's actually one of the things that benefited him
Speaker 2: the most was, you know, is this idea that I
Speaker 2: want to build golf courses that are super fun and
Speaker 2: enjoyable and inspirational for me to play and for people
Speaker 2: that are like you know, not not great golfers, and
Speaker 2: for beginners, but then also at the same time try
Speaker 2: to make it as difficult as possible for like your
Speaker 2: scratch player. And that's what going back to your comment
Speaker 2: about having all these different alternate routes, you know, he
Speaker 2: wanted to have as many routes as possible to the whole.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the great drawings that exemplifies
Speaker 2: that is the sketch he did for the Lido hole,
Speaker 2: you know, which is now now been recreated out and
Speaker 2: you know, Wisconsin. So yeah, the camera going back to
Speaker 2: the camouflage that was I think that was by far
Speaker 2: the most influential concept that that motivated his work that
Speaker 2: he did. And you see it and everywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: like from bunkers. From one angle, they're either in your
Speaker 2: face and then you go past them, you look backwards
Speaker 2: and you can't even see him they just blend in.
Speaker 2: And that's that's one of the tests with like if
Speaker 2: you're actually restoring some of these courses. And I often
Speaker 2: tell people, you know, the tie ins are so extremely
Speaker 2: important because if you go past the bunker and then
Speaker 2: you look backwards and you could still see the landform
Speaker 2: and it sticks out, well, then you didn't build it.
Speaker 1: Right with UH.
Speaker 3: With Mackenzie, I think something that always gets brought up
Speaker 3: is his associates. In America, it was Robert Hunter and
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell, and UH in Australia is more comb Well,
Speaker 3: how did he go about cultivating the Alex Russell Alex
Speaker 3: Russell too, and then Marion Hollins too in the States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and guys like Wendell Miller and Luther Koontz who
Speaker 2: was Wendell Miller's guy that he brought down to Argentina
Speaker 2: and built all the stuff and Luther ended up staying
Speaker 2: down there and lived there for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: That this is an excellent point. This is like one
Speaker 2: of the knacks that Mackenzie had. I think that I
Speaker 2: can't explain how he did it, but he definitely had
Speaker 2: a knack for identifying like minded people that were talented
Speaker 2: that he could convey his concepts to what he was
Speaker 2: trying to build and then entrust them to build it
Speaker 2: and then also put their own flair on it too.
Speaker 2: He wasn't you know. He enjoyed having the input of
Speaker 2: these other guys like Robert Hunter, like Alex Russell, like
Speaker 2: Pray Maxwell, which is why you can identify, you know,
Speaker 2: stylistic differences of these different courses. You know, he liked
Speaker 2: that collaboration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like the style of Crystal Downs is drastically different
Speaker 3: from the style of passive tempo.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, and and then you go to like Royal
Speaker 2: Melbourne and it's a very very different style. And so
Speaker 2: he I think he really enjoyed that. He but he
Speaker 2: had this knack of finding really talented people that were
Speaker 2: like minded when it came to golf strategy, golf design,
Speaker 2: and we're talented and he entrusted them and that that's
Speaker 2: a skill set because you know, it's like you're only
Speaker 2: as good as the people you found yourself with. And
Speaker 2: he understood that really well. And and he was traveling
Speaker 2: a lot. You know, It's it's amazing if you look
Speaker 2: at a calendar, you look at the timeline of how
Speaker 2: he was traveling around the world. He was traveling a lot,
Speaker 2: and so some of these properties never got back to
Speaker 2: and he entrusted these guys to execute his vision. And
Speaker 2: in all cases he just had stellar talented people who
Speaker 2: could all be architects on their own right. And some
Speaker 2: of them, you know a lot of them did do
Speaker 2: stuff on their own, like Perry Maxwell obviously and uh
Speaker 2: and so that was that was a very important skill
Speaker 2: that he had, was being able to identify those people.
Speaker 3: What would you say the influence of Harry Colt was
Speaker 3: on on Alistair McKenzie. Obviously, when he started his career,
Speaker 3: he was partnered with Harry Colet and and Alison at
Speaker 3: that time. What was what would you say would was
Speaker 3: Colt's roll in McKenzie's life.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't claim to be like that much
Speaker 2: of an expert on Colt, but what I do know
Speaker 2: is that when he was trying to build Awardly, the
Speaker 2: founding members, they wanted Colts sort of they wanted Colt
Speaker 2: to sign off on what mackenzie was doing. And so
Speaker 2: there was definitely a collabor of effort between him and
Speaker 2: Colt on Awwoodley and on more Town, and then they
Speaker 2: established a partnership, Like you said, after that, I think
Speaker 2: Mackenzie recognized that in those days in Europe, Colt was
Speaker 2: the only one who was building the type of golf
Speaker 2: that Mackenzie wanted to on these inland sites, on these
Speaker 2: heavy clay, these these heavy soil sites. And you know,
Speaker 2: I just look back when I'm looking at material that
Speaker 2: I'm researching, when I find old photos of Harry Colt,
Speaker 2: stuff from you know, from England or from mainland Europe,
Speaker 2: a lot of it is like I have to do
Speaker 2: a double take and oftentimes think, wow, is that what
Speaker 2: Mackenzie built, you know, And so it's it's just clear
Speaker 2: that stylistically they were on the same page, and and
Speaker 2: so they were, you know, naturally collaborated well together. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there had to be some influence
Speaker 2: for sure, and I think it was just my sense
Speaker 2: it was mostly just affirming. You know, Colt was kind
Speaker 2: of affirming a lot of McKenzie's ideas, Like Mackenzie kind
Speaker 2: of had these off the wall ideas that people thought
Speaker 2: were pretty crazy actually in those days, and I think
Speaker 2: Harry Colt was the guy that sort of affirmed them, like, no,
Speaker 2: you're onto something here, and this this can.
Speaker 3: Work, Yeah, with with the McKenzie designs, what do you
Speaker 3: have you Are there any designs that you're dying to
Speaker 3: see that you haven't seen? And and what of the
Speaker 3: lost designs do you most wish you could see?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the two I want to see the most that
Speaker 2: I haven't are one Augusta and two Royal Milbourne. So those,
Speaker 2: you know, those are definitely the top two in my
Speaker 2: list of the lost courses. There's there's a few. There's
Speaker 2: a few buckets. So okay, in one bucket, you got
Speaker 2: courses that he designed that I have plans for. Some
Speaker 2: of them are in this book that were never actually built,
Speaker 2: or they weren't the plan wasn't followed in some cases.
Speaker 2: And so to see those built or see those come
Speaker 2: to life, that would be a dream. That's something that
Speaker 2: I've I've been actively working on with different people.
Speaker 1: What would be an example of that.
Speaker 2: Well, a guy I don't know if you know, David
Speaker 2: y Dell Yes is h he's the guy that found
Speaker 2: the elbook Roun Plan in Argentina, and so he's been
Speaker 2: trying to build that. You know, I just met with
Speaker 2: him a couple of weeks ago out in Colorado. But
Speaker 2: he's been trying to build that book Roun course.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Initially he had a site north of Austin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remembered it being in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that fell through. But that that's like right
Speaker 2: up there. And then there's another course that to me,
Speaker 2: the most incredible course that McKenzie ever designed, maybe the
Speaker 2: most incredible course ever designed that never got built, was
Speaker 2: a course called El Nadiko Sandy's he drou and would
Speaker 2: have been in Argentina, and the plan for that in
Speaker 2: this book. And that was an interesting project because that
Speaker 2: was McKenzie's. That was his opportunity to go full out,
Speaker 2: like if I have a blank canvas and can create
Speaker 2: all this from scratch, what would I do?
Speaker 3: It was right at the same time that right after
Speaker 3: the Leedo had been built, correct.
Speaker 2: It was, It was a little it was a little
Speaker 2: after that. So this was nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 3: Because he referenced that this is something like this had
Speaker 3: happened right right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, because the whole course would have been built by
Speaker 2: dredgings and so it had been a completely manufactured course
Speaker 2: like the Lido was originally, which would have been you know, really,
Speaker 2: especially in those days, a really impressive engineering feat. But
Speaker 2: that was mackenzie just saying like, if I have a
Speaker 2: blank canvas and I can literally manufacture an entire site
Speaker 2: from scratch, what would I do? And it's just an
Speaker 2: if you look at that routing plan, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just a phenomenal course, and you know, it's a dream
Speaker 2: of mine to build that somewhere someday. Likewise, the Augusta
Speaker 2: National Part three course that McKenzie designed, what he called
Speaker 2: the Approach and Putt course that never got built, That
Speaker 2: never got built. You know, it was designed on the
Speaker 2: same piece of land where their current Part three courses
Speaker 2: twenty acre site, and well they just redid it, and
Speaker 2: they just redid it. Yeah, exactly when when I saw
Speaker 2: that they had, you know, one of those aerials that
Speaker 2: someone posted on Twitter of that site, it looked like
Speaker 2: they just dropped a bomb on it. I just thought,
Speaker 2: for a second, wait a minute, now, there's no way
Speaker 2: they're going to actually build the McKenzie. You know, I
Speaker 2: sent those guys, you know, I sent Augusta that that
Speaker 2: plan several years ago, and so they have it and
Speaker 2: they're aware of it, but that that would be a
Speaker 2: dream to build that somewhere someday, and and I've looked into.
Speaker 3: Maybe they could build it at the patch the public
Speaker 3: course that they're renovating.
Speaker 2: That'd be sweet. But then so those are courses that
Speaker 2: that he designed that never were built, so they've never
Speaker 2: come to fruition. And then of courses that he did
Speaker 2: build that are gone, there's one to me that's really
Speaker 2: really important and that I I actually worked with the
Speaker 2: developer a few years ago. We had a site in
Speaker 2: Florida where we were actually gonna build it. By the way,
Speaker 2: this was before the Kaiser family announced they were doing
Speaker 2: the Lido project, so this was not like trying to
Speaker 2: rip off that concept. But this plan was for a
Speaker 2: course called Bayside, which was on Long Island in New York.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of really really interesting things about that.
Speaker 3: You wrote about that one a lot. Ye seemingly he
Speaker 3: reference in the greens right right.
Speaker 2: Well, he was building that, you know, at the same
Speaker 2: time he was building Augusta. And in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: this was nineteen thirty one, you know, so this is
Speaker 2: like the depression is full on at this point, and
Speaker 2: Mackenzie was thinking really a lot in this, you know,
Speaker 2: this idea of economization economization of design, economization of construction,
Speaker 2: and economization of maintenance, and so how can you do
Speaker 2: more with less essentially, And you see that at Augusta
Speaker 2: where Augusta when it was originally built, only had twenty
Speaker 2: two bunkers. And so it was just this idea of
Speaker 2: you know, economy and bunkering, which was in those days
Speaker 2: a very novel idea. And it was like, well, how
Speaker 2: do we create all the strategy with mostly landforms and
Speaker 2: other features but not bunkers because bunkers are expensive to build,
Speaker 2: they're expensive to maintain. And so he took that even
Speaker 2: further at Bayside. Bayside originally only had eighteen or maybe
Speaker 2: nineteen bunkers on it, and it was just a flat
Speaker 2: This is like one of the things that's interesting to
Speaker 2: me about this site. It was just a flat piece
Speaker 2: of land, no inherent interest. The site was just a
Speaker 2: rectangle and so it was basically like a blank canvas
Speaker 2: and and there was like old stone walls that zigzagged
Speaker 2: through the property that they had to bury. So it's
Speaker 2: like they buried these stone walls, created right milt mounds
Speaker 2: over them, and so it's like they they either got
Speaker 2: filled material or they cut, probably a combination of both.
Speaker 2: They definitely cut material in certain areas and filled and
Speaker 2: so he did this you know, cut and fill process
Speaker 2: to create all of these artificial landforms that didn't exist,
Speaker 2: and it was all it was just a very simplistic concept.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a good routing, not like the greatest golf
Speaker 2: course you're ever gonna play, But it was always from
Speaker 2: the get go it was always a public fee course.
Speaker 2: It was never a private course. And so the idea
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 1: Was affordable book golf.
Speaker 2: Was the exactly exactly, how do we build something that's economical,
Speaker 2: to build something is economical, to maintain something that will
Speaker 2: be you know, affordable public access golf. And so to me,
Speaker 2: that's a really really inspiring project and it's just a
Speaker 2: shame that that was. You know, that property was sold
Speaker 2: to a housing developer in the fifties and now it's
Speaker 2: just covered with houses. But that would be.
Speaker 3: Any of those if there are any green remnants or
Speaker 3: anything in in people's backyards.
Speaker 2: Probably from looking at that, I have not been actually
Speaker 2: to that site, but from looking I've studied at you know,
Speaker 2: I studied a lot and I haven't mapped out in
Speaker 2: cad I don't think so. I think it was just
Speaker 2: absolutely leveled. I mean it's just yeah, I'd be really
Speaker 2: surprised if that's the case. But I think they just
Speaker 2: wedged in a bunch of little lots and they probably
Speaker 2: just nuke the whole site.
Speaker 3: And what what's been what's been your favorite mackenzie uh,
Speaker 3: course that you've you've seen?
Speaker 2: And why my favorite McKenzie gorees that I've seen? I
Speaker 2: have to say Cyprus Point. You know, it's hard not to.
Speaker 2: I mean I've got other favorites for for different reasons,
Speaker 2: you know, sentimental reasons. Uh, Northwood Is is very near
Speaker 2: and dear to my heart. I just love that property
Speaker 2: and say something if it's got so much potential, I mean,
Speaker 2: as great as it is, but it's got Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: got an enormous amount of potential and you know, hopefully
Speaker 2: one day we could we could do something there. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's hard not to say Cyprus. I mean, Cyprus is
Speaker 2: just is it's really awe inspiring that that site is
Speaker 2: just world class and you know, it's a world class
Speaker 2: routing and a world class set of greens on you know,
Speaker 2: just the most interesting geography looking out at the Pacific ocean.
Speaker 2: So it's just it's phenomenal.
Speaker 3: I feel like Mackenzie was was not one too like
Speaker 3: put that his work was you know, so so great,
Speaker 3: Like you know, he always held the Old Course in
Speaker 3: such high esteem. But that the writing that you have
Speaker 3: in your book about after he built Cyprus, where he
Speaker 3: was like, you know, I'm not I.
Speaker 1: Don't want to say, but this might be better than
Speaker 1: the Old Course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an incredible article.
Speaker 3: Like and you could tell like he you know, he
Speaker 3: held his work in high regard, but he wasn't ever
Speaker 3: like one to be like this is the great you know,
Speaker 3: like some architects, this is the greatest land I've ever like.
Speaker 3: Cyprus was the one where he was like, you know what,
Speaker 3: this one might be better than the old course.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, he had great, great admiration and just a
Speaker 2: true love for the Old Course. Yeah, and and so
Speaker 2: nothing could surpass that. And so and I think that
Speaker 2: was one of the big things that he and Bobby
Speaker 2: Jones bonded over so much, is they both had such
Speaker 2: mutual admiration and love for the Old Course. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're right, you know, he would never you know, just
Speaker 2: come out and say, oh, you know, this is better
Speaker 2: than the old course. But he was very very careful
Speaker 2: in that article to say why he thought it was
Speaker 2: as good or maybe better. But you know, I thought
Speaker 2: he he paid deference.
Speaker 1: Well and all right, well I appreciate the time. Ever,
Speaker 1: how can people purchase your book?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in the middle having another printing. The third
Speaker 2: printing is in production and we'll be ready in a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks and you can go to the website's
Speaker 2: alistairmackenzie dot org is the Alistair McKenzie Institute and you
Speaker 2: can order it from the website there.
Speaker 1: Awesome. I recommend it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess when we released this, it'll be
Speaker 3: after Father's Day. But uh, you know it's a good
Speaker 3: it's a good gift for yourself.
Speaker 1: So thanks Josh. How can people find you? You're you're
Speaker 1: on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Instagram is Mackenzie Institute. Twitter is doctor McKenzie spelled
Speaker 2: out D O C, T O R McKenzie.
Speaker 1: And then you've got your design business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then and then on Twitter, we should probably
Speaker 2: be more active. But on Twitter, I'm pack golf design.
Speaker 1: And that's it.
Speaker 2: Just Twitter.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we'll we'll talk architecture more but I wanted to
Speaker 3: just kind of profile McKenzie and and you're in the
Speaker 3: great book that you produce. So future podcasts to come.
Speaker 3: But thanks Josh so much.
Speaker 1: For the time.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 3: Thanks Andy, thank you for listening to another edition of
Speaker 3: the Friday Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Matt Rushes.
Speaker 1: Thank you Matt.
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