Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 1: In a bride Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg.
Speaker 2: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about the evolution of modern golf
Speaker 1: architecture with Bruce Hepner. I've wanted to have Bruce on
Speaker 1: the podcast for a long time. He is a bit
Speaker 1: of a legend in the golf architecture business. Definitely one
Speaker 1: of the people who helped drive the restoration movement, the
Speaker 1: rediscovery of Golden Age architecture, the design build trend, really
Speaker 1: so much such of what defines this current era of
Speaker 1: golf course design. Bruce was there for all of it.
Speaker 1: He served as the vice president of Tom Doakes's Renaissance
Speaker 1: Golf Design from nineteen ninety three to twenty ten, which
Speaker 1: was the period when Renaissance kind of went from an
Speaker 1: outsider band to one of the busiest and most influential
Speaker 1: firms in the industry. Bruce worked on courses like Pacific Dunes,
Speaker 1: Old MacDonald, Rock Creek Cattle Company, the Renaissance Club, and
Speaker 1: he was the lead associate at Ballyneial, Cape Kidnappers and
Speaker 1: stream Song Blue So Pretty sturdy resume. He also handled
Speaker 1: a lot of Renaissance golf designs, consulting and restoration commissions,
Speaker 1: and when he left Renaissance thirteen years ago, he continued
Speaker 1: working with many of those courses. A few of his
Speaker 1: most significant restorations have been at Essex County Club in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: tim Iquana in Florida, Piping Rock and New York, Blue
Speaker 1: Mound and Wisconsin, and Cape Arundle in Maine. One reason
Speaker 1: I'm talking to Bruce right now is that he just
Speaker 1: fit a renovation at Percy Warner, which is a municipal
Speaker 1: nine hole course in Nashville, and that job is a
Speaker 1: great example of how much can be done at an
Speaker 1: affordable public course with a relatively low budget. You know,
Speaker 1: so much of what I've been thinking about lately when
Speaker 1: it comes to golf architecture, Bruce represents. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about affordability, sustainability, the virtues of being patient
Speaker 1: with a golf course as opposed to trying to get
Speaker 1: everything done all at once. You know, in Bruce's career
Speaker 1: he really pursued so much of that, and so I'm
Speaker 1: excited to hear his perspective on how the industry has
Speaker 1: changed since he entered it thirty five years ago, what
Speaker 1: he makes of the current state of golf architecture, and
Speaker 1: what some of his key experiences have been along the way.
Speaker 1: So all that is coming up. But before we get
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Bruce Hepner, a quick word from
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Speaker 1: with that, here is Bruce happening. All right, Bruce, I
Speaker 1: hear you like music. So do you ever listen to
Speaker 1: music when you're on a construction site?
Speaker 2: Oh, we all do. Everybody that work for Tom and
Speaker 2: I still do. We all have EarPods. We all they
Speaker 2: have the latest, greatest EarPods and we're always listening to music.
Speaker 2: Sharing music with the other guys also listen to a
Speaker 2: lot of books, which is kind of really you know,
Speaker 2: when you're sitting in an excavator building bunkers for eight
Speaker 2: to ten hours, you can burn through some books in
Speaker 2: no time. So we do a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: I've heard in the different things about whether it's really
Speaker 1: possible to listen to a book or to a podcast
Speaker 1: for that matter, while you're shaping features and things like that.
Speaker 1: Some guys say that, you know, it's too distracting to
Speaker 1: have a people talking in their ear. Are you not
Speaker 1: one of those people.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely not one of those, because you know, shaping
Speaker 2: is is being intuitive, it's it's letting it go. You know,
Speaker 2: good shapers let it just let it fly, and they
Speaker 2: let they let their instincts go. You know, you give
Speaker 2: as an architect, you give a shaper where tom and
Speaker 2: give us a few cues and then he wants to
Speaker 2: go do our best work. And I do that still
Speaker 2: now when I shape bunkers, I just kind of I
Speaker 2: don't have any kind of too many preconceived notions, so
Speaker 2: I kind of let, you know, just let the freedom go.
Speaker 2: And I don't mind if there's music and it kind
Speaker 2: of keeps It keeps my mind occupied a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I'm obviously focusing on what I do. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it definitely helps me. It gets me in a good mood.
Speaker 2: You know, happy shaper. You know, I always learned just
Speaker 2: running projects, happy shapers are great shapers. If they're they're
Speaker 2: they're irritated because their internet is down at the house
Speaker 2: or something like that. Uh, you know, they're not doing
Speaker 2: great work. So you know, my job a lot of
Speaker 2: times running project for Tom was keep the keep the
Speaker 2: happy people happy. And you wouldn't believe how much great
Speaker 2: work comes out of that.
Speaker 1: What kind of music do you like to listen to?
Speaker 2: I listened to all, you know I was. I listened
Speaker 2: a bunch of jazz, and I just got a new
Speaker 2: I have a pretty nice stereo down in the main room,
Speaker 2: so I just got a new piece of equipment. So
Speaker 2: I listened to a lot of jazz. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a rock and roll guy. I've got, you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred albums and you name it, I listened to it.
Speaker 1: You've got you've got the physical collection as opposed to
Speaker 1: just the digital collection.
Speaker 2: I'm I do because it's a leftover from when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. But and I have a turntable sitting
Speaker 2: right next to my there's my vinyl system is up here,
Speaker 2: but downstairs it's all digital. It's all streaming, high end streaming,
Speaker 2: and that's really opened up a great world of music.
Speaker 2: Where we used to, you know, go to borders or
Speaker 2: you know, when I was a kid, we went to Corvettes,
Speaker 2: which is an offshoot of kmarts, and just filter through
Speaker 2: the albums and just pick one out and get five
Speaker 2: or three for five bucks. That isn't available nowadays, so
Speaker 2: you have to get your music online, which is really hard.
Speaker 2: So streaming has really opened up a new world for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's interesting how music discovery has changed.
Speaker 1: When I was really getting into music on my own,
Speaker 1: which tends to happen when people are teenagers, I suppose
Speaker 1: burning CDs was the big thing, right, that's and if
Speaker 1: you mentioned that to a kid today, they don't know
Speaker 1: what the hell you're talking about. But that was really
Speaker 1: exciting that you could, essentially, I mean it's not good
Speaker 1: for the musicians, but you could you could just get
Speaker 1: whatever your friends had. You could you could burn the
Speaker 1: CD and and start building up a pretty big physical
Speaker 1: music collection. That way folks, and that's kind of gone away.
Speaker 1: You know, people don't curate their music collections as much
Speaker 1: anymore because it is all streaming.
Speaker 2: No, and you know what was the missing element which
Speaker 2: is kind of coming back with a new new thing
Speaker 2: called Rune. You know, I, I, me and my buddies,
Speaker 2: we're all. You know, we were in the liner notes
Speaker 2: and seeing who who played guitar on that that song
Speaker 2: or who is the drummer? And then you then you
Speaker 2: went over and picked out his albums and you know,
Speaker 2: nowadays liner notes engineering where it was recorded, all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff is gone, but it's coming back with
Speaker 2: some of the digital formats.
Speaker 1: Do you ever drop parallels between the way music is
Speaker 1: made and the way golf courses are built, just in
Speaker 1: the way that it's produced, Right, You have these different
Speaker 1: people with these different roles, and sometimes you bring in
Speaker 1: the you know, the crack guitarist.
Speaker 2: You know, Tom has his house band, you know which
Speaker 2: I always said it was the Funk Brothers from MotorCity
Speaker 2: because I'm Detroit. You know, Gil's got the the caveman.
Speaker 2: Gill's got his you know, the crew, and it is
Speaker 2: it's it's like having the wrecking crew it's it's like
Speaker 2: having you know, the Funk Brothers is having you know,
Speaker 2: the guys from Stacks, you know, and MGS as your
Speaker 2: house band, and then you bring in you know, that
Speaker 2: was you always talk about bally Neil. When I ran
Speaker 2: bally Neil, I was just rolling the rock stars through that.
Speaker 2: There was so much talent coming through, and I have
Speaker 2: him come in through a couple of weeks. Some of
Speaker 2: the court you know, Dan Proctor was there for the.
Speaker 1: Beginning, and really because because he's mainly known for working
Speaker 1: with Corn Crenshaw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I you know, we had a couple of
Speaker 2: those guys, and I was rolling the you know, the
Speaker 2: Renaissance talent, and you know, Kay Goldby and Schneider and
Speaker 2: I were there full time and Eric Iverson would come
Speaker 2: in for a whiles, Schneider, Unk would come in, Don
Speaker 2: Plasic would bring him, put him an ondozer. He was
Speaker 2: uh you know, and that that was part of orchestrating
Speaker 2: the talent. And I did the same thing as stream Song,
Speaker 2: you know, we you just kind of bring them in,
Speaker 2: give him a few cues. All right. I need you
Speaker 2: to go work on those two holes because I don't
Speaker 2: need to worry about him because I'm worried about this,
Speaker 2: and just go do it. You think it's cool, and
Speaker 2: Tom will come through and uh, you edit it. That's
Speaker 2: why Thomas the great editor and uh he just let it,
Speaker 2: let it, let us flow, give us our best, our
Speaker 2: best work without any in ambitions, and he come through
Speaker 2: and edit it, and it's it's it's it's a great
Speaker 2: It's that that has great parallels with music. I guess
Speaker 2: you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's sort of the producer, Yeah yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the I'm not I'm not sure if there's a construction
Speaker 1: site supervisor equivalent in the music industry, but that's sort
Speaker 1: of what you're describing as what your role was at
Speaker 1: least at stream Song bally Neil. I know, I think
Speaker 1: you did that work at Cape Kidnappers as well, so
Speaker 1: that's an interesting role. I have all sorts of things
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about, Bruce, but maybe
Speaker 1: we should start with one of your recent projects, which
Speaker 1: was a renovation of a nine hole municipal course in Nashville,
Speaker 1: Tennessee called Percy Warner. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony
Speaker 1: for the new course last month. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: it's sort of official public opening for play is going
Speaker 1: to be next year. Yeah, So how did you get
Speaker 1: involved in this project? You live in Traverse City. Nashville
Speaker 1: is a long way from Traverse City. What was the
Speaker 1: connection there.
Speaker 2: I've been working at Hillwood Country Club in Nashville for
Speaker 2: probably well over twenty years, and obviously with music, you know,
Speaker 2: they talked me into coming down. I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I've never been never been to Nashville.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, I was gonna say, if you're a music fan,
Speaker 1: Nashville is appealing in an obvious way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like like a second home for me.
Speaker 2: But I been working at Hillwood and I have, you know,
Speaker 2: for twenty years. I'm a member that now or honorary member,
Speaker 2: and a really dear friend of mine, Stuart Smith, who
Speaker 2: was a member there. He used to play in the tour.
Speaker 2: He was an All American at University of Tennessee. Great guy,
Speaker 2: just a dear friend. And I was shaping bunkers. I
Speaker 2: think it was twenty eighteen. He goes, hey, you bored.
Speaker 2: I'm like yeah, I go yeah, I could use a break.
Speaker 2: He goes, let's go over and I want to show
Speaker 2: you the golf course I grew up playing as a kid,
Speaker 2: and we went over this little nine holders just down
Speaker 2: the road from Bellmead Country Club. It's in bell Mead
Speaker 2: and Percy Warner Park, so nine to ole. He was
Speaker 2: really beat up. They had winter in summer greens, you know,
Speaker 2: two sets of greens went for the winter one of
Speaker 2: the summer, hardly any grass on the place. Just built
Speaker 2: a new clubhouse and it's like within the confines of
Speaker 2: a beautiful park, just this man. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how many thousand acre park this is. And he
Speaker 2: was We started walking and I'm like, I'm walking and
Speaker 2: I'm walking. I'm like, the routing is really good, the
Speaker 2: green sites are really good. I go, man, this has
Speaker 2: a lot of potential and it had fallen on the
Speaker 2: wayside because, you know, in the Nashville park system that
Speaker 2: was owned by the Metro Parks, they had kind of
Speaker 2: lost their way in maintaining they you know, they didn't
Speaker 2: think off was that important at the time that you
Speaker 2: know now they're they're starting to realize it. So they
Speaker 2: didn't really sink a lot of resources into these golf
Speaker 2: courses and they're they're playing the hell out of these
Speaker 2: golf courses. You know that I always I always tell
Speaker 2: the stories, like when we were there, I'm on the
Speaker 2: first tee and there was two kids with their hats
Speaker 2: on backwards and their shirts untucked, one guy with a
Speaker 2: bud Light t shirt and an old guy with Cyprus
Speaker 2: point shirt and was it pulling a trolley? And that's
Speaker 2: the clientele they have, and it's very diverse, and it
Speaker 2: was just a cool facility. And he goes, well, they've
Speaker 2: they'd been trying to rebuild this for years, but you know,
Speaker 2: the money, you know, the wrong people got involved, and
Speaker 2: the price tag was up to five million to rebuild it,
Speaker 2: and it just died. And it was like his vision.
Speaker 2: It was prior guized to him, but he was the
Speaker 2: impetus behind it, and he's a trustee on the Tennessee
Speaker 2: Golf Foundation. I go, I could see this. It was
Speaker 2: like I always tell people, I saw it in slow motion.
Speaker 2: How cool this place could be. It's a hub for
Speaker 2: all these walkers, you know, they park in the parking
Speaker 2: lot and go up and hike in the mountains there.
Speaker 2: The Mountain Biking group is out of that parking lot
Speaker 2: in clubhouse too, and then there's this cute little nine
Speaker 2: hole golf course. I think it was part thirty four,
Speaker 2: and I could just see it. You know, I grew
Speaker 2: up playing public nine hole, public golf courses in Detroit,
Speaker 2: okadd eat and all that stuff, so I could see
Speaker 2: how this could be. The more people I talked to
Speaker 2: that was the first golf ball they had ever hit
Speaker 2: was on that place, especially all the people there in
Speaker 2: Belle Meat, which is a pretty steep neighborhood. So I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is doable. Let me do a drawing while I'm here.
Speaker 2: So on the side, you know, on the side at night,
Speaker 2: I was doing little design plans for it, and that
Speaker 2: kind of got the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: How did the funding end up coming together? What was
Speaker 1: your budget and what ended up being the scope of
Speaker 1: the project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they said the only way we're going to
Speaker 2: do this. You know, there was always a group called
Speaker 2: the Friends of Warner Park that Jenny Hannon ran that,
Speaker 2: and she they heard a mechanism to raise funds for
Speaker 2: Warner Park and they were putting millions and dollars into
Speaker 2: the park doing these great allays and masonry work. So
Speaker 2: the mechanisms in there, and then the Tennessee Golf Foundation
Speaker 2: got involved, you know, through Stuart, So we had turned
Speaker 2: by the president of that and then Jim Seaberry, two
Speaker 2: very powerful guys in the uh you know, Tennessee Golf
Speaker 2: got involved and we and I think Stuart what he
Speaker 2: did is he played golf. He heard the Mayor Cooper
Speaker 2: was a golfer. It was like a like a closet golfer.
Speaker 2: After a long day, he'd been seen on Harborth Hills,
Speaker 2: which is around the corner, playing golf at six o'clock
Speaker 2: at night, pulling his own you know, carrying his own bag.
Speaker 2: And Stuart goes, we need to get a hold of
Speaker 2: that guy. Stewart invited him to some kind of an
Speaker 2: outing and befriended him and said, hey, listen, you know
Speaker 2: this would be pretty cool. You know, the park system
Speaker 2: is not really funding these you know, these golf courses
Speaker 2: as well. Prissy Warner had two guys maintaining that golf course.
Speaker 2: That's all it was. So we got into the Mayor
Speaker 2: Cooper John Cooper's ear, and that kind of got the
Speaker 2: ball rolling. So then between Mayor Cooper, the Tennessee Golf
Speaker 2: Foundation and the friends at Warner Park, they put it
Speaker 2: all together and we started having fund raising events so
Speaker 2: they'd fly me in and we'd have a cocktail party
Speaker 2: at somebody pretty famous as a house, you know, and
Speaker 2: just bringing people in and started raising fun We wanted
Speaker 2: to raise two and a half million dollars and so
Speaker 2: it was it was a grassroots movement and all I
Speaker 2: would go to these meetings and you know, Sarah, Sarah Ingram,
Speaker 2: like kirs Cut captain, you know, she was at these meetings,
Speaker 2: you know, and she was all on board. So we
Speaker 2: had people like that in the month. Once the money,
Speaker 2: once we got raised over a million bucks, we knew
Speaker 2: we could pull this off. So they pulled me in officially.
Speaker 2: I brought in Mcurret Golf out of Florida because I
Speaker 2: have such a good relationship with them. The contractor, I said,
Speaker 2: we're just going to come in as a package deal.
Speaker 2: I think the budget my budget was one point seven
Speaker 2: million dollars, twelve new greens, you know, nine new greens,
Speaker 2: and then I built a big short game practice facility
Speaker 2: for the PJ junior program, a big putting course. So
Speaker 2: we had twelve new greens, twelve brand new bunkers, used
Speaker 2: bunker solutions, you know, the latest technology, all new tea's
Speaker 2: in a brand new single row irrigation system. So what
Speaker 2: we did was, I knew this still had to be maintainable,
Speaker 2: sustainable and playable. So you know, we didn't go hogwhile
Speaker 2: like some of these projects, whether it's and and you
Speaker 2: know one point there are two point five million dollars
Speaker 2: is a lot easier to raise than twenty million.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and so.
Speaker 2: It it it. The ball kept rolling. I'm like, I
Speaker 2: look at Stewart, I'm like, I think we're gonna actually
Speaker 2: do this, you know, and we actually pulled it off
Speaker 2: and started last year, and that you know, there was
Speaker 2: there was some hesitation from the city. You know, they
Speaker 2: were kind of setting their ways and like now we're
Speaker 2: we're just gonna do this. We're going to hand it
Speaker 2: to you, but we're also we all also need to
Speaker 2: know that you guys are on board and gonna maintain this.
Speaker 2: So we squeezed the bureaucracy and you know, between us
Speaker 2: and Mayor Cooper on the top, we squeezed down into
Speaker 2: him and they started believing it and it was just
Speaker 2: a project of passion for everybody. Jim Nance got involved
Speaker 2: because Jim lives seven doors down the road, and so
Speaker 2: he'd come out and walk the golf course with me
Speaker 2: and uh, you know a lot of people involved, so
Speaker 2: it was, you know, a great pleasure for all of us.
Speaker 2: It's turned out really good. We got a little bit
Speaker 2: of a late start, you know, hooking up a water
Speaker 2: line to the city water line. Didn't didn't realize how
Speaker 2: much red tape that would be. We thought we'd just
Speaker 2: tap into the waterline, would be good. But you know,
Speaker 2: you got to go through all kinds of agencies. But
Speaker 2: we so we had a little late starting grass and
Speaker 2: the greens. So that's why we had the formal ribbon
Speaker 2: cutting last month with you know, Jim and I were
Speaker 2: Jim nance was there to speak and I gave a
Speaker 2: speech too, and all the donors got to be there
Speaker 2: and hand out all these cool hats and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And we're going to open up sometime early summer when
Speaker 2: it's it's perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of municipal courses would love to
Speaker 1: have a couple million dollars, but that is such a
Speaker 1: small budget compare to most golf construction projects these days.
Speaker 1: Even if you're talking about a little renovation, like a
Speaker 1: little tweak here and there, the millions start adding up
Speaker 1: really quickly. How do you do a project like this
Speaker 1: on that kind of budget, or I guess that the
Speaker 1: real question is how do you produce good golf course design?
Speaker 1: Because you made some fairly dramatic changes out there, How
Speaker 1: do you make good golf course design happen on a
Speaker 1: budget that small? What do you kind of extract from
Speaker 1: the usual process. What do you say, Okay, we don't
Speaker 1: need that, and then what do you focus on?
Speaker 2: I didn't pay much back, you know. The one thing
Speaker 2: was building the greens is Bermuda greens. You know, you
Speaker 2: don't need the USGA greens. We just we just build
Speaker 2: them on the top so and spread some sand on
Speaker 2: top and put some drainage and called it good. So
Speaker 2: that's a million dollar thing right there, lop off of
Speaker 2: somebody else's budget. I only had twelve bunkers, you know.
Speaker 2: Tom Tom was always like bunkers overrated, you know, gust
Speaker 2: only as thirty. You know, it's all about ground features,
Speaker 2: and that's what I did. I concentrated on building really
Speaker 2: cool greens that were accessible. So there, you know, say
Speaker 2: the first first hall, we have a bunker on the
Speaker 2: left hand side that you could tuck the pin behind,
Speaker 2: but have open approach and fair way all the way around,
Speaker 2: even to the backside of the green, so it's chipping,
Speaker 2: chipping all the way around, and that's sustainable because the
Speaker 2: mainans crew, you know, we're hoping to have four people
Speaker 2: maintain this golf course when we open up. We've asked
Speaker 2: for that, and he just takes the fairwaym over and
Speaker 2: rams it, you know, goes right around the green and
Speaker 2: the backside. So building all these cool short grass areas,
Speaker 2: which I love in the first place, are easier to
Speaker 2: maintain for them. So we rolled that short grass right
Speaker 2: into the second te so you're just constantly walking on
Speaker 2: short grass. So it's it is sustainable and it's maintainable
Speaker 2: and it's very playable. You know, I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 2: pull any punches on the greens. They're cool greens. There's
Speaker 2: some contour them, but they're accessible because at least half
Speaker 2: of the approach is open, so you know, high handiciffers
Speaker 2: can run the ball in. And there's always you know
Speaker 2: a couple of really tasty hull locations for for really
Speaker 2: good players. You know, we plan and have some cool events,
Speaker 2: amateur events there just because the places you know, place rocks.
Speaker 2: So you know, I didn't, I didn't. I would say
Speaker 2: I didn't dumb me down the design. I just figured
Speaker 2: out how to maintain it with least amount of money.
Speaker 2: And the tea's are just top soil tees, you know,
Speaker 2: it's fine. Single row irrigation was huge.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask about that.
Speaker 2: That's old school, that's oht school. And that's all you
Speaker 2: did when the when the fairways are thirty five yards wide,
Speaker 2: because we have tree lines, that's all you need. And
Speaker 2: it's bermuda, you know that. And we and we didn't
Speaker 2: regrass the fairways. We only regrassed around the greens around
Speaker 2: the tees. And these fairways, you know, Darrowin had kicked
Speaker 2: in for many years. It's the you know, the survival
Speaker 2: of the fittest. These great fairways were pure. You know,
Speaker 2: last winter most of the country clubs had winter kill
Speaker 2: in their bermuda, and we had no winter kill, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's just old school, unrrigated. You know, the irrigation
Speaker 2: system they had before we got there were quick couplers.
Speaker 2: You know, that's that's somebody walking around night watering and
Speaker 2: they hadn't done it a long time. So but the grass,
Speaker 2: so the grass knew how to grow without all the nutrients.
Speaker 2: All the high profile stuff, so it was laying there,
Speaker 2: and to me, it's just, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: going back to you know, all the great courses that
Speaker 2: I've studied, and you know, we all studied as kids,
Speaker 2: and everything built before nineteen twenty was just like I
Speaker 2: built now. So you know, that's how you do it.
Speaker 2: You just build old school and just be fine. You know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to have the greens thirteen on the
Speaker 2: stint meter. You know, we're going to mower a tease
Speaker 2: at a half inch as the same as the airways
Speaker 2: because you're using the tea, and we're gonna mow the greens,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously an eighth inch or lower. But you
Speaker 2: know they all surface drained, we have good soils under them,
Speaker 2: and we have you know, we did do ins and
Speaker 2: out irrigation heads around the greens so we can control
Speaker 2: the water and the greens versus the outside. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't that hard. It was just kind of going back
Speaker 2: to your roots and going you know a lot of this,
Speaker 2: these fifteen million dollars renovations. I just pulled my hair out.
Speaker 2: I'm like, where are you is spending the money I'm
Speaker 2: used to If you look at my projects. You know,
Speaker 2: I just just came from Weathersfield Country Club in Hartford.
Speaker 2: They used to have the Sammy Davis, the g h
Speaker 2: O was there before they moved over the and we
Speaker 2: we rebuilt all the bunkers and I regrassed, you know,
Speaker 2: all the short gas around the greens, expanded the fairways, built,
Speaker 2: built a handful of tea's for well under a million dollars.
Speaker 2: And that's just as that's just as good as anybody else's, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the fifteen million dollars. So I don't know
Speaker 2: where the extra zero is going. Hopefully it's in their pockets,
Speaker 2: somebody's podcasts. But I think, you know, some of the
Speaker 2: some of the modern construction is a bit excessive, and
Speaker 2: so that's how we did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's important to, you know, say it
Speaker 1: louder for the people in the back. Like that's even
Speaker 1: in an environment of rising costs, it's possible to find
Speaker 1: ways to do these things without spending enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 1: And that's really important for these municipal facilities especially. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of municipal courses that I see spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on bunkers are frustrated with their bunkers.
Speaker 1: Their bunkers are sort of money pits, so to speak. Right,
Speaker 1: and and and you know, some end up getting rid
Speaker 1: of them or not maintaining them very well, or you know,
Speaker 1: finding solutions that are maybe not ideal for the quality
Speaker 1: of the golf course. You built a new set of
Speaker 1: bunkers at Percy Warner. There aren't many of them, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, you don't need many. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to shaping a bunker for a facility like this, what
Speaker 1: does an easily maintainable bunker look like?
Speaker 2: You know, there's simple forms. You know, I'm still an artist,
Speaker 2: so I you know I snuck in some cool stuff
Speaker 2: into them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you don't. I Bruce Heppner doesn't just
Speaker 1: want to go and build ovals, right, you want to
Speaker 1: You want to do something else? So how do you
Speaker 1: do that while also making them easily maintainable.
Speaker 2: Here's what we did is you know, obviously, you know
Speaker 2: the two guys that maintain the golf gross oh my god,
Speaker 2: you know, get rid of the bunkers. We can't, you know,
Speaker 2: I go first of all, get rid of that Sampro.
Speaker 2: I go there, sanm Proo is not getting in my bunkers.
Speaker 2: Second of all, we're going to hand rate these bunkers
Speaker 2: only when they need them. If somebody was not in
Speaker 2: that bunker head yesterday, why are we raking it today?
Speaker 2: And third I took that right off their their plate
Speaker 2: because Kevin Ford, who's the golf pro over it over
Speaker 2: this in Harbeth Hills, he has one of the great
Speaker 2: a great PGI junior program, you know, Jim Nantz's kids
Speaker 2: in it. He has a hundred and some odd kids
Speaker 2: in his programs. So I built that facility for him.
Speaker 2: The first lesson of the program is go learn how
Speaker 2: to fix ballmarks and go to learn how to rake bunkers.
Speaker 2: So the kids are going to rake the Bunkers's how
Speaker 2: I did that. And they're gonna fix ball marks first
Speaker 2: before they ever hit a ball. So I took that
Speaker 2: off them. But to build them, you know, they're not
Speaker 2: high flashes, but we use bunker solutions, which is that
Speaker 2: kind of carpeting you put on the floors. So if
Speaker 2: I did flare and he sand I flared to stand up,
Speaker 2: it'll it'll it'll stay up in the face to keep it,
Speaker 2: you know, keep the bunkers from being contaminated and the
Speaker 2: rule is, and I do this at all my courses.
Speaker 2: What I've realized is bunker maintenance wears up bunkers, not golfers,
Speaker 2: you know. And the only reason we have to maintain
Speaker 2: bunkers because golfers do a crap be job breaking their
Speaker 2: own bunkers. So my motto is, you know, hand rake,
Speaker 2: but only spot rake. Only rake the area where that
Speaker 2: it was disturbed, where somebody did a bad job of
Speaker 2: raking yesterday, or if nobody was in it, stay out
Speaker 2: of it and keep those sandpros out of there. You know,
Speaker 2: they're the ones that chew things up. They think it's
Speaker 2: easy to do, and they just destroy bunkers. And they're small,
Speaker 2: they're thousand square foot bunkers or less. They're not huge,
Speaker 2: and they're perfectly located, and uh, you know, I also
Speaker 2: build them, you know, properly build bunkers, don't allow water
Speaker 2: to run into them from the outside. So you know,
Speaker 2: I know how to build bunkers. So you'll see that
Speaker 2: there's some art to them, but they're very maintainable.
Speaker 1: So I understand there's more work for you on the
Speaker 1: docket at Nashville's municipal courses. What what can you tell
Speaker 1: me about that. What more is going to happen?
Speaker 2: Luckily, Mayor Cooper is not the may anymore. He was
Speaker 2: that was his last term, but he was so excited
Speaker 2: and so happy of the product we did at Percy
Speaker 2: Warner just before he left office. That you know, they know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what a budget of a Nashville city,
Speaker 2: but it's probably close to a billion dollars, you know,
Speaker 2: in of a budget. He gifted us are granted us
Speaker 2: the Tennessee Golf Foundation two million dollars out of the
Speaker 2: city funds to go over and take on Shelby Golf
Speaker 2: Club golf course, which is over in East Nashville, which
Speaker 2: is kind of the hipster area. A lot of people
Speaker 2: are moving there. You know, a lot of guys walking
Speaker 2: around jeans rolled up and work boots and.
Speaker 1: You know, beards, and they didn't just come from a
Speaker 1: construction site to a bar now.
Speaker 2: But it's a nineteen twenty three Ross course. You know,
Speaker 2: Ross never built it, but he did drawings for it
Speaker 2: and it's his routing, so they have it is the
Speaker 2: least played golf course in the Nashville circuit. Nashville owned
Speaker 2: seven golf courses. Brent Seneker grew up playing there. Lou
Speaker 2: Graham grew up playing there. So we've got them involved.
Speaker 2: So basically, you know what I can do for two
Speaker 2: million bucks. I did a plan and we just said
Speaker 2: we're capping at two million bucks. So we're going to
Speaker 2: rebuild all the greens because they have the winter and
Speaker 2: summer greens. They are also push them together, build like
Speaker 2: five to six thousand square foot greens, same kind of
Speaker 2: technology we OpEd up Percy re irrigate the green sites.
Speaker 2: They have a relatively new irrigation system throughout the whole place.
Speaker 2: And then move some cart pass. You know, they've never
Speaker 2: had an architect working in natural public golf course. Hey
Speaker 2: we need a car pass. So they send some guy
Speaker 2: out there and need paints them and half of them
Speaker 2: like down the middle of a fairway.
Speaker 1: You see this a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get out of it. You know. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god. And the tree luckily they had they
Speaker 2: had a tornado come by, which is good and bad,
Speaker 2: but tornado came by and wiped out all the really
Speaker 2: bad trees that were poorly planted. And so we're going
Speaker 2: to rebuild all the bunkers, do a little bit of drainage,
Speaker 2: and any money we have left over from the project,
Speaker 2: we'll build some tees and then just down the hill
Speaker 2: from that there is a place called the Vinnie Lynks
Speaker 2: and Vince Gill was involved in that. So it's a
Speaker 2: little nine hole part three course for kids and anybody.
Speaker 2: Very cool facility run by the Tennessee Golf Foundation. Just
Speaker 2: these cool little short holes. You go over there and
Speaker 2: you take two clubs with the endplay. There's a great
Speaker 2: kids program there too. But they when they built them,
Speaker 2: the greens are great. They're going to have like four
Speaker 2: bunkers and they're starting to maintain those well. But the
Speaker 2: teas are small. They have a little strip of AstroTurf
Speaker 2: and the tea's are like a thousand square feet. So
Speaker 2: I did a plan to triple the size of the
Speaker 2: t so you can off of grass all year round,
Speaker 2: and we're hoping to raise some private money to do
Speaker 2: that while we're in town, and I m Cure Golf
Speaker 2: is still going to be the contractor. They love them,
Speaker 2: I do. I've worked with all them Cure for years,
Speaker 2: and they get how cool of a project these are.
Speaker 2: So we're going there. And then at the last at
Speaker 2: the ribbon cutting, Jim Nance talked about The next golf
Speaker 2: course we'd like to do is Ted Rhoads. Ted Rhads
Speaker 2: obviously the famous you know African American golfer, you know,
Speaker 2: teacher and Tiger mentioned him when he won Augusta. It
Speaker 2: was one of his heroes. And so Jim Nance kind
Speaker 2: of looked at the new the new mayor of Freddie
Speaker 2: O'Connell and looked at him and said, after we do Shelby,
Speaker 2: I want to be involved, and we want to go
Speaker 2: to Ted Rhods. He goes, I want to be part
Speaker 2: of that. So mister mayor, hold on your hats, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm I've already done a plan for that place too.
Speaker 2: It's it's actually not bad shape. We just have to
Speaker 2: do a few things and potentially build a range. So
Speaker 2: that's down the road, and then all our eyes are
Speaker 2: on Harbor Hills, which is the golf course on the
Speaker 2: other side of the park from Percy Warrener, which is
Speaker 2: the great golf course of Nashville. It's just unfortunate it's
Speaker 2: run by the city, but it's uh. They always have
Speaker 2: the open qualifiers there and it's I've told people, if
Speaker 2: you let you let me get my mits on that
Speaker 2: it could be the best course in Tennessee. It's that
Speaker 2: if the greens are great, the routing is great. I
Speaker 2: just have to get the car pass out of the way,
Speaker 2: got a bunch of trees down, and then you know,
Speaker 2: rebuild it, you know, reconfigure the bunkers so be a
Speaker 2: little more interesting strategic. So we have three or four
Speaker 2: more years of working in Nashville, which is.
Speaker 1: Great for me and making your way through the municipal
Speaker 1: golf system of Nashville. I love it.
Speaker 2: I stay right downtown, and you know, my wife's not
Speaker 2: always happy because I always come back with a couple
Speaker 2: of more guitars and go see live music every pretty
Speaker 2: much every night. So it's it's a it's a great,
Speaker 2: great city, great vibes. You know, it's a cool place,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to talk a bit about your career
Speaker 1: more broadly, and I think something that's interesting about your
Speaker 1: career is that it really spans this current era of
Speaker 1: architecture that we find ourselves in. You were there toward
Speaker 1: the beginning of the restoration movement, toward the beginning of
Speaker 1: the minimalist movement or the Second Golden Age, or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, and you were helping to
Speaker 1: shape the direction of all of this. Right, you were
Speaker 1: working for a firm that was right at the center
Speaker 1: of it, even though you know it sort of started
Speaker 1: as this kind of outsider band. Now it's the very
Speaker 1: center of what's happening in golf course construction, I think.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to get your perspective on how that's
Speaker 1: all unfolded. So if we go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of your career in golf architecture about thirty five years
Speaker 1: ago or so, as I understand it, it was somewhat
Speaker 1: unusual at this time to be interested in restoring golf courses.
Speaker 1: It's true, it wasn't obvious to many people or to
Speaker 1: many clubs that restoration as opposed to redesign or modernization,
Speaker 1: was the way to go. So what got you interested
Speaker 1: in golf course restoration?
Speaker 2: When I was in college, I went to I have
Speaker 2: an Internet Injury from Michigan State on Michigan Tech. And
Speaker 2: luckily the president of the club or of the college
Speaker 2: was a golfer, and in the library had they had
Speaker 2: ron went and spoke the golf course. It was only
Speaker 2: him and me to ever check it out.
Speaker 1: So you know that's wild, say you know, people this book,
Speaker 1: its book is incredible. Butever I ask anybody, how did
Speaker 1: this all start? So many people mentioned this book by
Speaker 1: Ron Whitten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was his first version, and man, that was
Speaker 2: I you can only check it out for two weeks
Speaker 2: at a time, and I'd put it back in the
Speaker 2: school library and all of a sudden he'd check it
Speaker 2: out and I'd be mad. So finally one day I
Speaker 2: went here. They had like open, open visitation chats with
Speaker 2: the president and I walked in and it was usually people,
Speaker 2: you know, students bitching about something, you know, some political
Speaker 2: thing or something. And I walked in. I'm like, how
Speaker 2: come you're always checking out the how come here you
Speaker 2: stealing my book? And he looked at me and we
Speaker 2: became fast friends. He ended up being the green chairman
Speaker 2: of vent Tanna Canyon out and when he retired out
Speaker 2: in Tucson, but we sat He's like I was a
Speaker 2: breath of fresh air. But you know, I studied that book,
Speaker 2: forward him back and then you know, sent out three
Speaker 2: hundred resumes. You know, that was the boom period right
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety golf. That's when National Golf Foundation was proclaiming
Speaker 2: we had to build a golf course for every day
Speaker 2: of the year, you know, to keep up to the man.
Speaker 2: So I saw these resumes out and had a bunch
Speaker 2: of job offers and Mike, luckily Mike Kurdson, had sent
Speaker 2: my resume to Ron Force, who had just started a
Speaker 2: year before that, like maybe six months in the business.
Speaker 2: And I thought that, you know, I was thirty at
Speaker 2: the time. I was an older student and I was
Speaker 2: I was a golf I was an auto designer before that.
Speaker 2: So I was late coming in the into the business
Speaker 2: and my age wise, and Ron gave me the best
Speaker 2: opportunity to start jump in right away. And Ron was
Speaker 2: Ron was a big reason, you know. He was into
Speaker 2: the old architecture and h Granted we were struggling just
Speaker 2: trying to get any job. We could rebuild a green
Speaker 2: here there. But the first course we worked, I was
Speaker 2: Lancaster Country Club in in Lancaster, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Nine holes of Ross, Pennsylvania. Yeah, Jack, Jack Killman, I
Speaker 2: think Mike Kurtzon and Kittle, I think it was Jack
Speaker 2: Kileman and did nine holes there. And when we we
Speaker 2: we got the job and we started seeing these old
Speaker 2: drawings and how cool the Ross course was different from
Speaker 2: Jack's course that got us into that, and so Ron
Speaker 2: and I, Tom and Gill. You know, Tom was I
Speaker 2: think working at Piping Rock via via Pe at the time,
Speaker 2: so they were doing it. And Brian Silla, you know,
Speaker 2: because he wrote that the one article about Ross. We
Speaker 2: were the only ones doing this kind of stuff actually
Speaker 2: going around, you know, and you know, part of Ron's
Speaker 2: in my studies were going to see as many courses
Speaker 2: we could, you know, we go consult somewhere and then
Speaker 2: go see ten Gough courses. So the more we went around,
Speaker 2: we realized, I think the collective group of us, Tom
Speaker 2: and Gill and Ron and I and Brian that you know,
Speaker 2: most of these courses have been modernized, you know, in
Speaker 2: the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. You know, modern architects
Speaker 2: were better than the old masters. Nobody knew these guys,
Speaker 2: you know, until Frank Hannagin wrote that. Hannagin wrote that
Speaker 2: wrote that article about Albert, telling us nobody knew who
Speaker 2: he was. So we were going around and I was
Speaker 2: co calling all these clubs and going wow, you know,
Speaker 2: and just kind of peeling through the layers and seeing
Speaker 2: these old drawings that maybe these original architects were pretty
Speaker 2: good and then they were onto something originally, and so
Speaker 2: that's kind of how we started getting work. And you know,
Speaker 2: so Ron and I we built a few a handful
Speaker 2: of golf courses. But that was you know, that sparked
Speaker 2: my fire. This was fascinating the history, doing the archaeology
Speaker 2: and kind of how easy it was to see how
Speaker 2: things had changed. And I remember my courage and told Ron,
Speaker 2: he goes the best way to learn, you know, asked
Speaker 2: about me, like, the best way he can learn is
Speaker 2: to go remodel or consultant clubs and learn how people,
Speaker 2: learn from people's mistakes and learn from people's successes, how
Speaker 2: to be against consultants. So I earned my chops with Ron.
Speaker 2: And then three years later I was I was kind
Speaker 2: of getting either homesick. I wanted to get back to Michigan.
Speaker 2: You know, Uniontown, Pennsylvania wasn't where it was happening for
Speaker 2: me and my wife. So I had a few architects
Speaker 2: interested in bringing me on because I started to make
Speaker 2: a reputation for myself. And then Gil had left Tom
Speaker 2: at the time, and I'd call Tom like once a
Speaker 2: month and asked him some stupid questions. It was like,
Speaker 2: Chris Farley, you know, hey, man, it was really cool
Speaker 2: you did that.
Speaker 1: And uh so you remember when yeah, remember when you
Speaker 1: built high Point.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. And I called Bill Core and he called me.
Speaker 2: You know, I called all those guys and I was
Speaker 2: just bugging everybody because I was I have a thirst
Speaker 2: for it. It was a passion for this. And when
Speaker 2: Gil left, Tom heard that I might be I had
Speaker 2: a job offer from Jerry Matthews. It was kind of
Speaker 2: a regional architect in Michigan and Tom didn't like him
Speaker 2: at all. They didn't like each other. And because you're
Speaker 2: not gonna go work for Jerry, you have to come
Speaker 2: work for me, I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: Good, Oh that's classics. So Tom was prompted to hire
Speaker 1: you because Jerry Matthews was gonna hire you.
Speaker 2: You didn't want me to make him good. So yeah.
Speaker 2: So then you know, early on with Tom, we didn't
Speaker 2: have a whole lot of work. But my deal with
Speaker 2: Tom is I got to keep doing consulting, and that
Speaker 2: was I've done that for thirty years now, you know,
Speaker 2: and I probably did while I was there for seventeen years.
Speaker 2: I probably did eighty eighty percent of the consulting work
Speaker 2: from Renaissance, all on my own, my own jobs, and
Speaker 2: Tom was fine with that as long as it didn't
Speaker 2: interfere with new projects. So when I was running bally
Speaker 2: Neil or stream Song or something like that, when the
Speaker 2: Shapers would go home for two weeks, I would go
Speaker 2: build bunkers somewhere else, and I built in. I had
Speaker 2: a built in business when I left Tom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So early days at Renaissance Golf Design
Speaker 1: with Tom Doak, I assume it was more or less you, Tom,
Speaker 1: Jim Orbina. It was in the mid nineties, That's pretty much.
Speaker 1: What were those early days like in that firm?
Speaker 2: Oh they're fun, you know, Okay, we had so much fun.
Speaker 2: We didn't have a whole lot of work. So, you know,
Speaker 2: Jim Tom and hired Jim just before Gil left and
Speaker 2: Jim was running Charlotte Golf Club. And so I moved
Speaker 2: to Travors City, which was great for us, my wife
Speaker 2: and I because we love Trevor City. And so the
Speaker 2: first year, you know, I just govered Tom's house for
Speaker 2: an hour. We'd play with some drawings and get on
Speaker 2: the phone and try and we didn't even have an office.
Speaker 2: Try and you know, drum up some work and luckily
Speaker 2: my consulting business so as his was doing fine, paying
Speaker 2: the bills but not much. And then I think the
Speaker 2: first job we got was either Evansville coil crossing, I
Speaker 2: think of that, and that's where I didn't necessarily want
Speaker 2: to run. I wanted to learn how to shape. You know,
Speaker 2: Jim was a good shaper coming from the die and
Speaker 2: Tom was an adequate shaper too, and so I wanted
Speaker 2: to That's what I wanted to learn how to do.
Speaker 2: And so those early days where it was all hands
Speaker 2: on deck, we brought Tom Meat on board. He was
Speaker 2: an ex superintendent. So it's kind of the four of us.
Speaker 2: And you know those early jobs in h if Jim
Speaker 2: would run a job, I'd help shape or vice versa.
Speaker 2: And then we started bringing on young talent. You know,
Speaker 2: when we were building Beach Tree in Baltimore, that was
Speaker 2: my first job to run on my own, and so
Speaker 2: Jim was shaping, I was doing some shaping. Tom Mead
Speaker 2: would come into a little shaping. And then we had
Speaker 2: Brian Slank was my intern from Michigan State and he
Speaker 2: lived with me, and uh, you know that that that
Speaker 2: I've told people that was a game changer bringing him
Speaker 2: on board because he was all about the finish work
Speaker 2: and uh, but we'd all be on site work all day,
Speaker 2: set up to sundown, just having a ball and then
Speaker 2: going out at night, going to the bars a night drinking,
Speaker 2: hanging out. Just the camaraderie is insane. And then you know,
Speaker 2: he kept building. Don Placer got on board, you know,
Speaker 2: we got brought in. He started running the office that
Speaker 2: so that got me out completely out in the field
Speaker 2: of shape and run projects. Then Eric Iverson came on,
Speaker 2: then Brian Schneider and I remember when we were building,
Speaker 2: uh we finished Cape Cape Kidnappers, we had the Renaissance
Speaker 2: Cup and I was in the cart with John Ashworth.
Speaker 2: Here's a dear friend of all of ours who runs
Speaker 2: lank Saul. Now he goes, man, you guys are like
Speaker 2: you guys are like the Stones because you guys having
Speaker 2: so much fun. You guys are rock stars and like, no,
Speaker 2: not really, but we do have fun. But you know,
Speaker 2: those early days were just you know, having that much
Speaker 2: talent on one job and just doing that, having fun,
Speaker 2: building great golf courses that we knew we were building
Speaker 2: great stuff. You know, we were working for Tom. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, the the energy was huge.
Speaker 1: And that team kind of came together over the course
Speaker 1: of the of the late nineties. It seems like right
Speaker 1: because he started as a very small firm and eventually
Speaker 1: assembled this uh this all star now all star cast
Speaker 1: around you. You know. Some one thing that happened in
Speaker 1: those early days at Renaissance Golf Design was that sand
Speaker 1: Hills come online. I wonder what your memories are of
Speaker 1: the impact of that project or what impressed you about
Speaker 1: what they were doing, what was new anything like that.
Speaker 1: How did sand Hills affect you back then?
Speaker 2: No, it's huge, you know. It was a game changer.
Speaker 2: It was basically, if you build it, they will cal
Speaker 2: him kind of deal and you could build it anywhere.
Speaker 2: All you had do was find great land. I remember
Speaker 2: talking to Bill one of my dumb phone calls to Bill,
Speaker 2: you know, bugging him. He was talking about sand Hills.
Speaker 2: You know, it was still just in its infancy. He
Speaker 2: had just got back, He and Ben had just got
Speaker 2: back from there. They were traveling around in a helicopter
Speaker 2: with Ron Witten, Doug Peterson, and Dick Young's cap looking
Speaker 2: at sites. And he was telling me, he goes, Bruce,
Speaker 2: you know you know, Bill, he's so humble. He goes, Bruce,
Speaker 2: you're not going to understand how great this land is.
Speaker 2: You know, it's in the middle of nowhere, so we
Speaker 2: don't know how this is going to work. And we
Speaker 2: had all we'd all heard the stories, you know, Dave
Speaker 2: Excellent and Dan were the great Finnish guys, and we
Speaker 2: always heard these stories about them handwraking the entire golf
Speaker 2: course or whatever. It was all about finish work in
Speaker 2: the details, and that's what you know, got Brian Slok
Speaker 2: and all of us like really interested in that, you know,
Speaker 2: sand pro work, handwork, hand edging bunkers not bulldozers, and
Speaker 2: you know, and that kind of turned us on where like,
Speaker 2: that's what we all want to do. That sounds cool.
Speaker 2: And I did. I saw it just at you know should.
Speaker 2: I spent five days there playing golf with these guys
Speaker 2: you know there, and it was just mind boggling, like
Speaker 2: this is this is what should be done. And luckily
Speaker 2: Mike Kaiser became a member so that could be done.
Speaker 2: And then Mike started searching the world for great Land
Speaker 2: and ended up in Oregon, and you know, we got
Speaker 2: involved in that, but that it it was the game changer.
Speaker 2: You know. We had a we had an architectural event
Speaker 2: that you know Thomas so self, he wanted to get
Speaker 2: all these architects together, you know, and not dictate the future,
Speaker 2: but talk about the future. So we had this event
Speaker 2: gathering architects and we came called it Archipelaza for a
Speaker 2: stupid name, and that's what we called it. The first
Speaker 2: one was we invited everybody in the business to come
Speaker 2: and let's get all this architect get architects together somewhere
Speaker 2: very cool and hash things out. Where's the future of architecture?
Speaker 2: Where are we going? And that's how cool Tom is.
Speaker 2: He's forward thinking. So we had it at the sand Hills.
Speaker 2: We figured, if only the places, this is the future
Speaker 2: of golf. None of the main architects showed up. They
Speaker 2: sent all their associates, which are all dear friends of
Speaker 2: mine now and they're all good architects now. They didn't
Speaker 2: want to come because they put their nose up to Tom.
Speaker 2: They didn't known them like Tom at the time. So
Speaker 2: Bill Courr's there, and Ron Forrest, you know, Ian Andrews.
Speaker 2: There a lot of people, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: cool All the cool people in the business showed up.
Speaker 2: To that thing, and we played golf, and at night
Speaker 2: we sat here and talked to about things, and we
Speaker 2: all introduce each other. And I got up in front
Speaker 2: of everybody a little nervous, and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: what you saw today is the benchmark we will all
Speaker 2: be judged at from this point on. This is how
Speaker 2: epic this place is. And some people are like rolling
Speaker 2: their eyes, but I knew that that was that would
Speaker 2: be the most important modern course for the next hundred
Speaker 2: years because it sets the tone of minimalism, finding great land,
Speaker 2: finding golf on the land, and obviously having Bill and
Speaker 2: Ben do at the same time. It's pretty cool. And
Speaker 2: it's true that was the benchmark, and we're always going
Speaker 2: to be judged on that. Granted, you know, I think
Speaker 2: bally Neils could go toe to toe Pacific Students has
Speaker 2: an ocean, but you'll never It's like Muhammad Ali, it's
Speaker 2: give me the raining champion forever. You're never going to
Speaker 2: knock them out, so don't try. But you're going to
Speaker 2: be real close seconds, you know. So I you know,
Speaker 2: working for Tom all those years, that was our stride.
Speaker 2: We were, you know, bally Neil. I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time at sand Hills, learning from it, mistakes, good things,
Speaker 2: bad things, whatever, wherever we could peel from that to
Speaker 2: make Bally Meal different. I didn't want to make Saniels
Speaker 2: two point zero, so I wanted to be completely different,
Speaker 2: and we did. You know, we on the mowing lines,
Speaker 2: the native edges, the positioning of the bunkers, things like that.
Speaker 2: I learned a ton from that golf course.
Speaker 1: Reminds me of the Beach Boys and the Beatles going
Speaker 1: back and forth in the sixties, m with you know,
Speaker 1: pet sounds, revolver, Sergeant Pepper's, you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: raising the game, and certainly Pacific Dunes. My impression is
Speaker 1: that it was a It was a new level for
Speaker 1: Tom Duk and for renaissance golf design. What do you
Speaker 1: think allowed that to happen? Was the inspiration of sand
Speaker 1: Hills part of it? What were some of the what
Speaker 1: was the mixture that allowed that course to be so good?
Speaker 2: It was Tom? You know, Tom was a great leader.
Speaker 2: Tom was always comfortable his own skin. You know, he's
Speaker 2: always understated of the elegant. He never Tom had never
Speaker 2: overcooked the soup, so he knew it was appropriate and
Speaker 2: we just followed his lead and we all knew going in,
Speaker 2: you know, this is our big this is our big deal,
Speaker 2: this is our sand Hills, and so we all took
Speaker 2: it seriously. Jim, you know, Jim obviously ran it. I
Speaker 2: was out there sit almost one hundred and fifty days.
Speaker 2: Don Plask was there, Brian Slog came into his own
Speaker 2: and we banded dudes existed, So we knew that, but
Speaker 2: we didn't want to build that. That was more you know,
Speaker 2: it was David Kidd's first project was more of a
Speaker 2: modern golf course on an epic site. But we knew
Speaker 2: ours was going to be that good because the routing
Speaker 2: was brilliant, the landforms were there, and we just we
Speaker 2: all had I'll never forget the first day we were there,
Speaker 2: the hair and I Becker next. It's still up right
Speaker 2: now thinking about it, walking that site and look at
Speaker 2: each other. It's just porn rain. We're all walking on
Speaker 2: trudging around this property, and uh, you know, and Tom
Speaker 2: and I visited the site probably two years before that,
Speaker 2: just before David was building. Bandon Bill she and one
Speaker 2: of Tom's great friends from Chicago told it, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of hooked up Tom with Mike Kaiser. Mike says, well,
Speaker 2: come out and look at it. You know, David's my guy.
Speaker 2: But if he fails, you're on deck and then maybe
Speaker 2: you can maybe, you know, look at the second course. So, uh,
Speaker 2: Tom and I went out there before we went to
Speaker 2: San Francisco Turf Show. Spent a few days walking with
Speaker 2: Shorty down Now they're just opening Shorty's the nineteen hole
Speaker 2: golf course. But Shorty that was the caretaker and that
Speaker 2: was a great day. We you know, we were walking
Speaker 2: on our walking around what we thought would have been
Speaker 2: our property, and we peeked over the hill and looked
Speaker 2: at this and oh my, you know, David, go ahead
Speaker 2: and go ahead and build that golf course. We want
Speaker 2: to build that. And Mike hadn't known the property yet,
Speaker 2: but Tom told him, if you ever have a chance,
Speaker 2: open that, you know, by that land north of abandoned dunes.
Speaker 2: And it came up for sale a couple of years
Speaker 2: later and got Tom involved, and and you know, Tom
Speaker 2: and Jim worked on it hard on the routings, and
Speaker 2: we all came out and but it was just the
Speaker 2: vibe we all and for some reason, you know, don
Speaker 2: if you go in the maintenance building, Ken Nice, the
Speaker 2: superintendent was hitting his stride. But if you go in
Speaker 2: the maintenance building, there's still a drawing the Don Placic
Speaker 2: Don Placic. You know, he's a brilliant artist. And he
Speaker 2: did it on a whiteboard with a black pan, drew
Speaker 2: all the planets in line like this. All the plants
Speaker 2: were up in a row. And that's what we all said,
Speaker 2: the plants are in a row. Movie built Pacific Dunes,
Speaker 2: And it's true.
Speaker 1: Who is the best shaper that you've ever worked with?
Speaker 1: Eric Iverson and he came on board, he was part
Speaker 1: of that late nineties. Yeah, this is.
Speaker 2: The most all he basically taught. You know, Jim was
Speaker 2: a good shaper, but Jim and Jim had always leave
Speaker 2: a mess, and he kind of taught us all to
Speaker 2: run bulldozers. But when Eric came on board, Eric's the
Speaker 2: most elegant shaper. You know, every pass has a purpose,
Speaker 2: and he kind of mentored both Brian's and they're fantastic
Speaker 2: shapers now they're equals to him. But he kind of
Speaker 2: taught us all, you know, and I'm kind of self
Speaker 2: taught in an excavator. You know, we had so much
Speaker 2: good talent on bulldozers and bulldoze beat that beat the
Speaker 2: crap audio. You know, I was, I was the older guy,
Speaker 2: and like, you know, I'd be okay getting out of
Speaker 2: one of those things. And that's when we started using excavators,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I think I'm gonna getting get in
Speaker 2: one of those because you're just sitting there and the
Speaker 2: only thing you can get is Carple Tunnel Center basically.
Speaker 2: And so I got really good in that. Well, everybody else,
Speaker 2: you know, the rock Stars are still the great great
Speaker 2: Shapers are still bulldozer operators who can jump into excavators too,
Speaker 2: but they're still They built the landforms, they built the greens,
Speaker 2: and I got really good at excavator because then I
Speaker 2: could be I like on the bunkers. But Eric is
Speaker 2: is still He's brilliant, brilliantly elegant. You know, I call
Speaker 2: him the Binkie. When Tom, Tom needs the go to guy,
Speaker 2: brings in Eric, you know, and both other Brian's and
Speaker 2: kais a great Shaper he'd brings. He'd bring Schneider in
Speaker 2: when he wanted something wild hair, you know, some crazy
Speaker 2: has grain he'd bring him. And same with with Kai,
Speaker 2: he know, something really crazy, bringing Kai and then Brian
Speaker 2: Sloank somewhere in between. You know, I spent the summer
Speaker 2: on the weekends, I was shaping over at high Point
Speaker 2: building bunkers, and Brian Slank is basically building the whole
Speaker 2: damn thing himself, you know, And God's he good. He is.
Speaker 2: Just he's going so far beyond me. It's scary. You know.
Speaker 2: He's my intern. He lapped me the year or two.
Speaker 2: That guy. He's a smart dude, and ah got such
Speaker 2: a great eye. He's a musician too, so that's kind
Speaker 2: of cool. But he's got such a great eye and
Speaker 2: a great, great shaper. Now, I was pretty fun. I
Speaker 2: hadn't worked with him in ten twelve years. To hang
Speaker 2: out a high Point this summer and watch him and
Speaker 2: Tom work together, I just, you know, I'm usually the
Speaker 2: guy walking with Tom, so I just was in the background,
Speaker 2: just prouds can be. Like, man, these cats still got it.
Speaker 1: When it comes to elegance and shaping or that little
Speaker 1: layer of finish work that just makes a golf course
Speaker 1: something better. Yep, what do you look for? Is there
Speaker 1: a way even to describe that. I have a hard
Speaker 1: time with this As somebody who writes a lot about
Speaker 1: golf architecture, I really have a hard time describing to
Speaker 1: people in words, why this bit of shaping is just
Speaker 1: a little bit better than this other bit of shaping
Speaker 1: that is similar, maybe inspired by some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you and the team did at Renaissance Golf design
Speaker 1: or that Corn Crunshaw did you know, But it's but
Speaker 1: it's not there, it's not fully there. How do you
Speaker 1: identify that or describe that extra bit of excellence in shaping?
Speaker 2: What it is is knowing how soon to get off it?
Speaker 2: Build something running over with a dozer and a sampro
Speaker 2: and get off it. That's what nature is. Nature is
Speaker 2: get You know, natural can't. Landforms are beat up, beat
Speaker 2: up by wind, by erosion, by things of nature. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not pretty. And I always tell people
Speaker 2: human nature is to make things pretty to their eye.
Speaker 2: And I see a lot of golf, a lot of shaping,
Speaker 2: and a lot of golf courses polish too much. It's
Speaker 2: I always say, it's like when you're polishing a nice
Speaker 2: fine piece of furniture, when do you stop? There's no point,
Speaker 2: you know, you just keep buffing and buffing and buffing.
Speaker 2: We know when to stop buffing. You stop buffing right
Speaker 2: really soon you don't. We don't want them to be pretty.
Speaker 2: We don't have to be natural. So you know, we're
Speaker 2: building Pacific Dunes. Jim Wild go away for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, and then I'm remember vividly working on the
Speaker 2: ninth Ferry with Brian, Brian Slanik and I we had
Speaker 2: two weeks just we call it f and up that fairway,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know it's like go with a
Speaker 2: you know, D four and gouge some you know, just
Speaker 2: randomly gouge and then come in with a samprone run
Speaker 2: them over and just it's random contours. It's it's it's
Speaker 2: fighting your human nature to make something perfect. That's how
Speaker 2: you do it. And you know, when you get off it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh yeah, that's good, move on. You know,
Speaker 2: if I spend too much more time on that, it's
Speaker 2: going to look like a human built it. So that's
Speaker 2: to me, that's the key. I I remember teaching guys
Speaker 2: how to build mounds or moguls. You know, we hate mounds,
Speaker 2: you know, modern mounds. It's like Tom goes, when you start,
Speaker 2: when you build a when do you stop? You have
Speaker 2: to keep building them just to time in all of
Speaker 2: each other. You know these faux links golf courses that
Speaker 2: have mounds on them that look just got awful. They
Speaker 2: don't look natural. So Pete Diovis, you say change the
Speaker 2: rate of change. That was a great I always thought
Speaker 2: that was a great thought. If you have a mound,
Speaker 2: you know, you say you have four or five mounds
Speaker 2: sitting there, five mounds because you want them odd. You
Speaker 2: want them all to be different. You want them to
Speaker 2: look like wind blown. So wind blown dunes have a
Speaker 2: leeward side where it's long and then drops off at
Speaker 2: the end. You know, some are pointed mounds, some are
Speaker 2: flat tops, some are round, some are awkward. You're just
Speaker 2: trying to make them awkward. That's nature. And also look around,
Speaker 2: you know, the biggest key for me is like nature's everywhere.
Speaker 2: Just go look at the woods and look at the
Speaker 2: contours in the woods and just replicate those there. You
Speaker 2: just got your eyes open. It's it's not that hard.
Speaker 2: It's just you have to fight your human instinct to
Speaker 2: make something pleasing to your eyes, even though natural is
Speaker 2: more pleasing. You just your brain doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of how I always tell shapers, Hey,
Speaker 2: just go make a mess. We'll clean it up, and
Speaker 2: it might look really cool, and usually go.
Speaker 1: Make a mess, start cleaning it up, and stop before
Speaker 1: you get all the way all the way to win it.
Speaker 2: You know, you know Slanak and Schneider and Eric, they're
Speaker 2: just brilliant at building those fairway contours, and so as
Speaker 2: you know Angela, you know all the young things that
Speaker 2: we've trained over the years, they're all good at it too.
Speaker 2: It's just going on quirky. You got to make sure
Speaker 2: it drains. You don't understand drainage, but just understand how
Speaker 2: natural dunes work and how the wind blows one side
Speaker 2: and the other side steep or back and forth. Just
Speaker 2: don't know over I always say, I always give Tom
Speaker 2: credit for teaching us restraint. And Tom is the best
Speaker 2: at it. He does know his go not his guy.
Speaker 2: Golf courses are over eye candied. He thinks, you know,
Speaker 2: eye candy is just unnecessary nuisance to get pictures taken
Speaker 2: of their golf course. Tom is all about ground features
Speaker 2: and greens and bunkers are bunkers are important, But the
Speaker 2: frilliness of the bunkers he couldn't care less about. He
Speaker 2: was like, and he gets it. Bill. You know, I
Speaker 2: always tell people Bill and Tom are the great architects
Speaker 2: because they think about golf all the time, and we
Speaker 2: were building golf courses. For Tom, he was about golf,
Speaker 2: and he gave us a little bit of time to
Speaker 2: make it look cool because we wanted to look cool.
Speaker 2: You know, it's all the chunkying and all that frilly bunkers.
Speaker 2: He only gave us so much time as like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: move on to the next hall. So we snuck in
Speaker 2: the artwork where I think modern golf courses now are
Speaker 2: all about artwork, not a lot about golf. And those
Speaker 2: two guys are still you know, Thomas Thomas back to
Speaker 2: number one right now. That work he's putting out is
Speaker 2: insane and so different than anybody else. You know, when
Speaker 2: everybody's zigging, he's zagging because he's not smarter than everybody.
Speaker 2: And the golf courses he's cranking out in this short
Speaker 2: period right now are so diverse and so good and
Speaker 2: so understated. You know, not a lot of freely bunkers.
Speaker 2: You know, they're just pure golf. So that's kind of
Speaker 2: how we look at it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Bruce, we haven't talked yet about restoration, and that's
Speaker 1: been a lot of your work, especially since you left
Speaker 1: Renassance Golf Design about thirteen years ago. I think around
Speaker 1: right after you built stream Song Blue you ran that construction.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's like Tom came to me just we were
Speaker 2: just starting, you know, Jim and just been let go
Speaker 2: a year before that by Tom, and he came to
Speaker 2: me and said, we're just about to start stream Song
Speaker 2: and I wanted to do that, and he goes everything
Speaker 2: about going on your own, and he goes, I'm signing
Speaker 2: all these contracts of all your projects. Go yeah, I
Speaker 2: can see the writing on the walls. Twenty ten, you know,
Speaker 2: stock market just crashed and he was trying to cut
Speaker 2: cut salaries. Yeah, that nice timing. But he said he
Speaker 2: can take all your clients with you, they'd be fine,
Speaker 2: And so I ran stream Song Is under Hepner Golf
Speaker 2: Design and then I had I had thirty clients right
Speaker 2: out of the box. So I've been going pretty strong
Speaker 2: since a.
Speaker 1: Lot of those are long term clients, clients that you've
Speaker 1: you know, you started with under Renaissance Golf Design and
Speaker 1: have continued to work with even to the present day.
Speaker 1: You know, this might be a hard question to answer,
Speaker 1: like picking your favorite kid or something but what is
Speaker 1: the most satisfying restoration that you've been part of?
Speaker 2: They're all good, you know. The cool part is probably
Speaker 2: once once I went on my own, a lot of
Speaker 2: them start the rest. You know, all my restorations are
Speaker 2: slow burns. You know, I have thirty three clients. I
Speaker 2: had to did a list. I have thirty three current clients.
Speaker 2: Fifteen of them are twenty five years or older I've
Speaker 2: had as a client, and so a lot of them
Speaker 2: are slow burns. We're not doing these fifteen million dollar jobs.
Speaker 2: We've been doing slow burns over the years and restoring
Speaker 2: these places, and it takes you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: these early on, they weren't nobody was in. It wasn't
Speaker 2: in vogue like it is today to drop fifteen million
Speaker 2: bucks on a classic golf course. They didn't even know
Speaker 2: they had a classic golf course when it first started. It,
Speaker 2: so we would, you know, pick pick away at the
Speaker 2: golf courses. So about about twenty ten, a lot of
Speaker 2: them started to really come together. Like Blue Mount. It
Speaker 2: took a long time to get Blue Mount where it is,
Speaker 2: and we still got some ways to go. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: rebuild all the bunkers next year.
Speaker 1: And this is a Seth Rainer design in Wisconsin. Just yeah,
Speaker 1: really classic Seth Rainer stuff now, but it didn't look
Speaker 1: like that about twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Full of pine tree, you know, spruce trees. So you
Speaker 2: know a lot of them are starting to come together
Speaker 2: and like wow, you know, I could see it. You know,
Speaker 2: I can see the force from the true on these
Speaker 2: old designs, So it's pretty obvious to me. It's just
Speaker 2: not obviously everybody else, especially the members. So I don't think,
Speaker 2: you know, I just like my body of work, it's all.
Speaker 2: I always tell people I work at the coolest clubs
Speaker 2: in the country. You know, they're not. There's a handful
Speaker 2: of Top hundred courses there and I've worked at a
Speaker 2: bunch of them and built a few, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them are like just like the second hundred, like
Speaker 2: below the radar, you know, obviously Cape Rundell and places
Speaker 2: like that. A hundred go up a fairfield. A lot
Speaker 2: of those just small ones that they've allowed me to
Speaker 2: do my job. And that's my sens right now. That's
Speaker 2: that's all I you know, I'm getting not close to retiring,
Speaker 2: but I'm slowing things down a bit, and I just
Speaker 2: want to help. I want clubs that want to be
Speaker 2: helped and let me help them. And I have a
Speaker 2: whole stable full of them. So there's you know, it's
Speaker 2: hard to pick. I got thirty three of them. There's
Speaker 2: some cool ones and nobody's heard of North Shore Golf
Speaker 2: Club up and Wisconsin on North Lakewood and Bago. That's
Speaker 2: unbelievably cool. You know, there's a lot of Belvedere obviously
Speaker 2: up here is getting a lot of ink. Tim Acquana
Speaker 2: down Jacksonville starting to get a marine because he just
Speaker 2: you know, Jim Firkez event. I couldn't be more proud
Speaker 2: of that. That's that could be some of my best
Speaker 2: work there.
Speaker 1: At tim Aquana in Florida.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it turned out really good. I'm I'm luckily
Speaker 2: I'm a member there now, so I plan on. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm retired there. I spent a lot
Speaker 2: more time there because it's just a golf course, so walkable,
Speaker 2: so playable, so much fun, challenging. I just love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks great. I haven't been there myself, but
Speaker 1: I'd really like to go sometime. You know. Essex County
Speaker 1: Club is one that you've worked on for a long time.
Speaker 1: And that's one of my very favorite courses. And the
Speaker 1: superintendent there, Eric Richardson, is one of the best of
Speaker 1: the business. My impression is that he could work at
Speaker 1: just about any club he wanted to, but he wants
Speaker 1: to work there.
Speaker 2: I just did a big two. I was like said,
Speaker 2: I was on the East Coast before I drove back home.
Speaker 2: I was there Cape Rundle, there and Booth Bay Harbor,
Speaker 2: all in three different days. And Eric is just the best.
Speaker 2: You know. They they came hard at him, really hard
Speaker 2: for Brookline before they put it up. They came twice
Speaker 2: hard at him, and he is he could be the
Speaker 2: best by far. And we're going to rebuild all those
Speaker 2: bunkers over the next five years. He's got two excavators.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna, you know, jet In build ten bunkers.
Speaker 2: He's going to put him back together. That's a slow
Speaker 2: burn too, And and it's a lot of it has
Speaker 2: to do one is a lot has to do with superintendent,
Speaker 2: but it also has to do with the comfortable how
Speaker 2: comfortable the membership is in their skin. Essex County is
Speaker 2: just the greatest membership. They're just so chilled and they
Speaker 2: don't care about anybody else, Brookline and all you know,
Speaker 2: Charles River and all those other ones. They just do
Speaker 2: their own thing, and that's those are great clubs. I
Speaker 2: love working at those places.
Speaker 1: That's such an important point. There's a lot of monkey see,
Speaker 1: monkey do among American private clubs right now.
Speaker 2: It's the worst.
Speaker 1: Everybody's doing the same stuff. Yeah, yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's better stuff than was done in the open
Speaker 1: doctor era, I think. But you have to appreciate a
Speaker 1: place like Essex County or a place like cap Arundle,
Speaker 1: which I also absolutely love, because you've worked there with
Speaker 1: the superintendent's hand in hand and with the membership over decades.
Speaker 1: It's been so patient. And something that I think is
Speaker 1: really important about that process is that it allows the
Speaker 1: golf courses to continue to feel like themselves, to continue
Speaker 1: to feel old.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This has been a big hobby horse of mine lately.
Speaker 1: People who have read some of my recent writing might
Speaker 1: be bored of me talking about it again. But I
Speaker 1: love when a course feels as old as Essex County does.
Speaker 1: Even though you're there, Eric is there dialing things in,
Speaker 1: making things better, still feels like nineteen seventeen out there.
Speaker 2: That's the key in these these new projects. My wife
Speaker 2: made her really get my wife, deb it's a beautiful woman.
Speaker 2: Yesterday we were talking about this and she goes, our
Speaker 2: current generation and this this has to do with the
Speaker 2: projects being built, these fifteen to twenty million dollars renovations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that happened all at once, right, yeah, one one
Speaker 1: off season, all of a sudden boom.
Speaker 2: And what what she and I call it? Clickbake architetract architecture.
Speaker 2: It's Instagram architecture, and it's built for the photograph. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like boom and they are you know, you look
Speaker 2: at you know, all these open courses being built or
Speaker 2: BGA courses being built, and they are stunning, but they
Speaker 2: don't look old. And my wife said yesterday, she goes,
Speaker 2: we have five senses in this. A lot of people
Speaker 2: are only using one on their eyes and the feel
Speaker 2: of golf. And that's why you go to Cape Arundel.
Speaker 2: You taste it, you smell it, you hear it the
Speaker 2: wind blowing, you feel it in your feet, you feel
Speaker 2: it in your hands as well as your eyes. But
Speaker 2: you're using all your senses when you play a great
Speaker 2: old golf course. And these rebuilt wonders are mono stands
Speaker 2: of perfect grass, perfect you know, crush quartz sand which
Speaker 2: isn't even natural, Billy bunkers under them, which is not natural.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Our systems USGA spec all that, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the air system precision air underneath just absurd.
Speaker 2: And that's how you get to twenty million dollars. And
Speaker 2: I've looked at them all and they don't feel old.
Speaker 2: They just feel like, you know, it feels like a
Speaker 2: resto mod you know, I'm in the cars too, so
Speaker 2: it feels like a You watch Meekham and you see
Speaker 2: this great Mustang come by and it's got a brand
Speaker 2: new engine and it's got big jig spinner wheels on it.
Speaker 2: You're just like yuck, you know, And that's what some
Speaker 2: of these feel like. You know, they're they're done really well,
Speaker 2: they're they're spectacular, but do they feel old? Do they
Speaker 2: play old? No, they don't. They don't have the modeled grass.
Speaker 2: They have that that one hundred years of fairway turf
Speaker 2: that we have at Cape Runnell play so beautifully and
Speaker 2: the greens, you know, just insane obviously. But yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's what I have a little issue with, and that's
Speaker 2: why I like working at my old clubs. You know,
Speaker 2: I got projects one to two million dollar projects. I'm
Speaker 2: fixing a golf course and it's just as good as
Speaker 2: the fifteen million dollar one next door. It might even
Speaker 2: be better because it feels it still has that smell,
Speaker 2: taste feel of an old golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's why you work at so many of
Speaker 1: these kind of blue blood New England clubs, because that's
Speaker 1: sort of the vibe.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, they're they're you know, but they're they're changed
Speaker 2: into they're all you know, it's the new blood coming in,
Speaker 2: you know, the young. You know, I'm used to working
Speaker 2: you know my I always worked with the elders and
Speaker 2: there you know, when i was thirty, they were all fifty.
Speaker 2: Now I'm close to I'm sixty, they're all eighty. You know,
Speaker 2: they're all getting pushed out the boardroom.
Speaker 1: They're getting overwhelmed on the green committee.
Speaker 2: It's happening. It's pretty systemic in my business, so it's
Speaker 2: kind of it's it's disheartening. I've had to let go
Speaker 2: a few clubs because they're going in the wrong direction
Speaker 2: and kind of breaking my heart. But but that's it's happening.
Speaker 2: Even in some of the old blue blood courses. So
Speaker 2: it's it's I don't don't. I don't want to sound
Speaker 2: like a grumpy old guy, but it's it's definitely changing,
Speaker 2: and the money's the moneys are being spent or just outrageous,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if these things are if it's sustainable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think Derek, you Derek Duncan when you're I think
Speaker 2: it's a great guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was one of our one of our colleagues
Speaker 1: in the podcasting in the Architecture space.
Speaker 2: Interviewing Don Plask a couple of months ago last month,
Speaker 2: and he kept going, I think we're going in the
Speaker 2: wrong direction. You know, didn't we learn from the eighties
Speaker 2: in the early nineties of our spending, you know, the
Speaker 2: Nicholas Fazio eras, which they did great jobs, but they
Speaker 2: were spending twenty million dollars building golf courses. Now everybody
Speaker 2: spending forty million. But did we learn our lessons from
Speaker 2: maybe that that the greatest courses that were built in
Speaker 2: the last twenty five years were by Tom Doak and
Speaker 2: Bill Kohr, and they were like three million dollars. You know,
Speaker 2: Pacific Dunes might have been three ballian, you know, I
Speaker 2: think you get safe to say that ballly Neil Pacific
Speaker 2: Dunes in Barnbogle were built less than ten million dollars combined,
Speaker 2: and now we're now we're spending more than ten million
Speaker 2: dollars restoring a golf course. It just doesn't make sense
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of striking. I mean, it's always interesting
Speaker 1: to see which lessons we learn from history, because we
Speaker 1: definitely learn something. I'm not of the of the mind
Speaker 1: that we learn nothing. And specifically, I think that we've
Speaker 1: learned about the virtues of tree removal and wider corridors
Speaker 1: and features that look you know, have the shape of
Speaker 1: being restored or vintage, looking at old photographs and trying
Speaker 1: to replicate that stuff. But there might be a more
Speaker 1: important underlying lesson or series of lessons that we haven't
Speaker 1: learned about maintainability, sustainability, financial frugality, and just about being
Speaker 1: yourself and not just doing what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 1: It seems like those lessons have been more difficult for
Speaker 1: some reason than the others.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, my big saying everywhere I where I
Speaker 2: work now, could trying to be the Joneses be the Joneses,
Speaker 2: you know, let's lead. Let's be the be comfortable in
Speaker 2: your own skin in the neighborhood. People are going to
Speaker 2: start looking at you instead of you like, well, they
Speaker 2: just spend seventeen million. You know, I have a lot
Speaker 2: of clubs like, well, they spend seventeen million rebuilding their
Speaker 2: golf course. How come are I doing that? I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: you're kind of good. You're probably better than them. Why
Speaker 2: would you Well, it's envy, you know, it's and it's
Speaker 2: a lot of has to do with, you know, the
Speaker 2: kind of group of people taking power now. They're they
Speaker 2: want to be someone who they're not. I want to
Speaker 2: be them. Like, man, you're luckily most of my clubs
Speaker 2: and you know, I think I've been the right guy
Speaker 2: for them. Is like, no, we're pretty cool. We're good.
Speaker 2: We're comfortable in our own skin. This golf course is fine.
Speaker 2: We don't need to have pure grass everywhere. We don't
Speaker 2: have to have the the expensive bunkers. They're just fine.
Speaker 2: Used the cheap sand, You're just it's just sand, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's as long as a place. Well, why
Speaker 2: would we spending two hundred bucks a ton to bring
Speaker 2: it in from Ohio or somewhere. So it's just where
Speaker 2: we're going in the business with a little disheartening. I
Speaker 2: got just I've become really good friends with Doddie Pepper
Speaker 2: and David Memorial, you know, and David's he is a
Speaker 2: true soul. He's a deep rooted in the history of
Speaker 2: the game. And I was at their house a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago, spent the night and David just got
Speaker 2: back from playing like the dinner matches at Urfield or
Speaker 2: something like that, just flew.
Speaker 1: Back just cool things that David normal does.
Speaker 2: It's like unbelievable the clubs he's a memorat. But there's
Speaker 2: nobody I know in golf that's more steeped in the history.
Speaker 2: And we were we were, you know, he and Donnie
Speaker 2: and I were sitting having dinner and talking about where
Speaker 2: golf is going, and it was just right after the
Speaker 2: Ryder Cup, and just the taste of that was just awful,
Speaker 2: and then the live and the money situation with the
Speaker 2: players and and where a lot of architectures going. And
Speaker 2: he goes, I think we're losing the soul of the game,
Speaker 2: you know, And for him, someone like that just say,
Speaker 2: it really struck me, and I agree it's like in
Speaker 2: my business, I think we're losing some of the soul
Speaker 2: of the game too. And there's plenty of architects out
Speaker 2: they're more unhappy to spend the twenty million bucks you know.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, yeah, I'll find
Speaker 2: a way. I'll give you my version of you know,
Speaker 2: I think I think Tom said this recently. He goes, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of restorers of restorers going on right now.
Speaker 2: You know, all these courses have been restored to getting
Speaker 2: restored again.
Speaker 1: I know there's courses where where it's we're restoring and
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, yeah, did you just do that.
Speaker 2: There's a handful of mine that are you know that
Speaker 2: I've left, and like, I think I left it in
Speaker 2: pretty good shape and I only spent like a million
Speaker 2: bucks restoring that. And the next the young guys coming
Speaker 2: in going yeah, we're gonna let's drop rebuild everything, and
Speaker 2: the younger members will be like yeah, because they did
Speaker 2: it over there, so it's happening. But I thought David
Speaker 2: was very poignant. You know, we're the game of golf
Speaker 2: is not very fun to watch on TV anymore, you know.
Speaker 2: Jim Nansen talked to him about it. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just it's not a very good product. You know,
Speaker 2: they're they're they're struggling. You know, the fields are you know,
Speaker 2: with live coming in and we all know what that.
Speaker 2: You know, we all have our opinions about that. That's
Speaker 2: just pure money. And then you know the west of
Speaker 2: the products is watered down. You know, you're going to
Speaker 2: watch them. We're going to watch the Open, We're going
Speaker 2: to watch Augusta and maybe a couple other events. But
Speaker 2: the other stuff is almost unwatchable unless it's a great
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there's a reason I opened this podcast by
Speaker 1: talking to you for twenty minutes about Percy Warner, because
Speaker 1: I think that if we're searching for hope somewhere, that
Speaker 1: it's got to be in projects like that. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's something, right.
Speaker 2: Those great hope. You know, every major city, you know,
Speaker 2: I grew up in all the public courses of Detroit,
Speaker 2: the city, Detroit city courses, Rackham, ro Gal or all
Speaker 2: Donald Rossers. I grew up pointing them.
Speaker 1: Those are cool, Yeah, Rackham is yeah, very I.
Speaker 2: Grew up playing. I worked there, you know, I tried
Speaker 2: to fix the whole that were changed by the when
Speaker 2: the highway got put in. So I worked there for
Speaker 2: a while. When I was early working from Iran, I
Speaker 2: got the original Ross plan. You know, Joe Louiy used
Speaker 2: to play as he used to have the black PG
Speaker 2: events there. Right every major city, you know, they're great
Speaker 2: cities right now. Memphis has a great city program. They've
Speaker 2: sunk a lot of money into it. San Antonio, San
Speaker 2: Antonio has an insane public sister.
Speaker 1: Is it Brett Brackenridge Park?
Speaker 2: Telling us, yeah, telling us. So we're modeling what we're
Speaker 2: doing in Nashville. You know, Luckily, what we have some
Speaker 2: smart people Stewart with and Jim, you know, from the
Speaker 2: Tennessee Golf Foundation. They've actually put together a committee to
Speaker 2: work with the city and their motto is golf people
Speaker 2: run golf, and golf money stays in golf. And if
Speaker 2: we do that in Nashville, we're going to you know,
Speaker 2: Nashville has the bones. They have seven great, you know,
Speaker 2: really good golf courses that just needs some minor work
Speaker 2: and all of them, I'm just fixing what needs to
Speaker 2: get fixed. I'm not blowing any of them up. And
Speaker 2: that's how we're keeping the budget to two million less.
Speaker 2: And that's how it's sustainable, because you know, once it
Speaker 2: gets north of two three million bucks, people are like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? You know, people get disinterested. You
Speaker 2: can't raise the money that way. The two million dollars
Speaker 2: is kind of easy to raise. And and if you
Speaker 2: have someone like me that's only going to go there,
Speaker 2: fix it what needs it to get fixed, and everything
Speaker 2: else is fine, you know, it's amuni. Just fix the
Speaker 2: things that are important to make the golf sustainable more interesting,
Speaker 2: which is the greens and and move on. Let let's
Speaker 2: let's let them play golf. You know, eighteen bucks a
Speaker 2: buck a hole, I'll play all day long, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's I think that is the future. You know.
Speaker 2: Luckily the Links Trust, you know, Will and Mike mccarton
Speaker 2: who all worked for us, they're running that and that's
Speaker 2: got some good momentum, you know, Cops Creek if they
Speaker 2: ever get that thing going. You know they've been talking
Speaker 2: about it's a lot of talk. Yeah, what I'm proud
Speaker 2: of Stuart Smith, who is you know, my dear friend
Speaker 2: in Nashville. He goes, they're all talking. We did it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: right on, brother, So we're gonna keep doing it, But
Speaker 2: I think you're right. That's here's here's the interesting about Nashville.
Speaker 2: There are no seats at the table. All these Nashvill's
Speaker 2: are booming, booming town. They think maybe another million people
Speaker 2: moving there in the next ten years. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 2: no golf spots. Every country club has a three hundred
Speaker 2: person waiting list initiate. Initiation fees at Hillwood are going
Speaker 2: up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Wow, it's
Speaker 2: like what you know. So there's just no room. There's
Speaker 2: no place to play. And these high end guys making
Speaker 2: good money working for Pinnacle and Amazon moving to town,
Speaker 2: they want a place to play. They have to they
Speaker 2: have to play the public golf courses, and they're forced
Speaker 2: to play courses that are under maintain and under man
Speaker 2: We have thirty seven employees maintaining seven golf courses in
Speaker 2: Nashville in their packed So all we're trying to do
Speaker 2: is increase the budget of each golf course to make
Speaker 2: it decent golf, and then fix all the little things
Speaker 2: at each golf course that we have to make it.
Speaker 2: You know, where it's good golf, it's sustainable, it's playable,
Speaker 2: it's fun. And we're hoping that we get Nashville to
Speaker 2: be the best system in the country.
Speaker 1: Bruce, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. Good
Speaker 1: luck with all of your projects, and hope to talk
Speaker 1: to you again soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. If you've been enjoying what
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