Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today I am joined by Brian Schneider. Brian has been
Speaker 1: a longtime associate for Renaissance Golf Tom Doaks Design Firm.
Speaker 1: He's worked on a number of high profile projects there
Speaker 1: as well as consulted with many of the country's best clubs.
Speaker 1: He has also done some individual design work. He and
Speaker 1: some other Renaissance associates which we talk about, designed Stoton
Speaker 1: Bray and recently he's done a redesign of the front
Speaker 1: nine at Lanark Country Club in Philadelphia. One quick note
Speaker 1: before we get into the podcast. We have a collection
Speaker 1: of photos up on the website of Banded Dunes. There's
Speaker 1: Banded Dunes, Pacific Dunes, a Pacific Trails, and the New
Speaker 1: Sheep Ranch. All the proceeds from those photos sales go
Speaker 1: to the Bandon Caddy Relief Fund, So that is going
Speaker 1: to a good cause helping the newyear. Three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty caddies that have been out of work for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks now a handful of week so obviously
Speaker 1: a good cause in keeping them on their feet during
Speaker 1: this tough time that everybody's going through. I hope everybody
Speaker 1: is safe and well and hopefully better times are coming.
Speaker 1: And without further ado, here is Brian Schneider.
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida
Speaker 2: egg Frida egg egg egg Frida egg bride egg lie,
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run.
Speaker 1: Off the gump stuff looks cool at North Jersey.
Speaker 3: It's a neat place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really neat place, and they've got i
Speaker 2: think seven original greens left.
Speaker 3: Which are all gorgeous, pretty wild, you know.
Speaker 2: The other eleven have been rebuilt at various times and
Speaker 2: aren't so interesting. But the club has been looking to
Speaker 2: put that stuff back, so there's a lot of work
Speaker 2: to do there eventually.
Speaker 3: But we just got into a little bit of bunker work,
Speaker 3: which was fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't have any It only had like twenty
Speaker 2: bunkers to begin with. It's a rocky, hilly piece of
Speaker 2: ground and didn't need much, so he didn't build any
Speaker 2: bunkers there. So they've got like fifty five now. Most
Speaker 2: of what we'll do with the bunkers just taking stuff out.
Speaker 1: Is it hard to convince people to take bunkers out?
Speaker 3: It hasn't been there, you know. But I'm not exposed
Speaker 3: to the membership in a hole.
Speaker 2: I mean, there may be a bunch of people behind
Speaker 2: the scenes saying he's going to make it too easy,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be boring, But the people I'm dealing
Speaker 2: with are really excited, and you know, the superintendent is
Speaker 2: obviously excited that he's going to have fewer bunkers to
Speaker 2: take care of. It just doesn't need them, you know.
Speaker 2: A lot of the stuff is just clutter at this
Speaker 2: point there. They're really unnecessary to the bunkers that were
Speaker 2: put in originally or plenty, and some of those.
Speaker 3: Might even be necessary, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like that where it's rocky and you've got
Speaker 2: good topo, it really doesn't need bunkers, you know. And
Speaker 2: we've added some short grass around the probably more difficult
Speaker 2: for better players than if they missed in a bunker.
Speaker 2: So it's a great set of the originals are great greens,
Speaker 2: and it's it's got enough topography to be interesting.
Speaker 3: It doesn't need a whole lot of bunkering.
Speaker 1: Do they have a lot of photos old photos of
Speaker 1: the non original greens.
Speaker 2: Not really, No, that's the hard part. I've been digging.
Speaker 2: My green chairman Ken Feren, has been doing a lot
Speaker 2: of digging and he's come up with some great old picks.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, you know, they didn't host any USGA events
Speaker 2: or any important events back in the day, which seems
Speaker 2: to be the key to having a bunch of ground
Speaker 2: level pictures taken. So we're struggling to find old stuff.
Speaker 2: And the golf course evolved a lot early on, so
Speaker 2: pinning down a period we want to go back to
Speaker 2: a little tricky too. We've got a couple of decent
Speaker 2: ground level pictures of what the bunkers looked like to
Speaker 2: go from, and we've got vague ideas and recollections of
Speaker 2: a few of the greens. But I think when we
Speaker 2: get around to it, we'll just have to build something
Speaker 2: that looks and feels like Travis maybe still an ideas
Speaker 2: from its other golf courses.
Speaker 1: Is that is that basically what you do when you
Speaker 1: don't have you look at the courses you visited and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I love the screen from here, let's do
Speaker 1: something similar to that.
Speaker 3: I think, so, you know, I haven't been in that
Speaker 3: situation all that much.
Speaker 2: You know, most of my consulting clients still have a
Speaker 2: lot of their original greens, so North Jersey's unusual and
Speaker 2: that they've lost more than half of them. But that's
Speaker 2: my approach there, you know, I first just try to
Speaker 2: find out everything we can about what was there, including
Speaker 2: talking to members that might remember how they used to
Speaker 2: play and that sort of thing. Yeah, I'm just trying
Speaker 2: to find out as much as I can about the
Speaker 2: old greens that used to be there, and then match
Speaker 2: that up with something I might have seen that one
Speaker 2: of his other golf courses and use that as inspiration.
Speaker 1: What, uh you I know, Hollywood was a big influence
Speaker 1: in your love of Travis. What are some of your
Speaker 1: other favorite, uh, Walter Travis courses that obviously a garden
Speaker 1: city and Hollywood you've worked on, but that you've seen
Speaker 1: in recent years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hollywood was was the one that really opened my eyes.
Speaker 2: That in the country Club at Scranton. You know, I
Speaker 2: saw that probably ten years ago for the first time.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you've been up there, but
Speaker 2: they've got fifteen original greens that are as good as
Speaker 2: any set of greens in the country, and they are phenomenal,
Speaker 2: you know, from pretty subtle rippolice stuff on the ground
Speaker 2: to really wild severe you know, some fallaway stuff. But
Speaker 2: it's a beautiful set of greens and the routing is
Speaker 2: pretty well intact. They we did the bunkers a few
Speaker 2: years back, which they didn't try to restore anything in
Speaker 2: that process, but the greens there are amazing.
Speaker 3: So between that in Hollywood, those are the places that
Speaker 3: really lit the fire. You know.
Speaker 2: Cape Rundle's an amazing place. Chruce Hepner has done a
Speaker 2: great job of helping them restore and preserve that golf course.
Speaker 2: You know they've got you know, that one's really well
Speaker 2: intact as well as any I would.
Speaker 1: Say, that's what everybody can go see, which is you
Speaker 1: know it is.
Speaker 2: It's such a cool place, you know, it's it's packed
Speaker 2: into a really tidy grage. I don't even know what
Speaker 2: power is, but it's a tiny golf course, but there's
Speaker 2: plenty of golf there for anyone.
Speaker 3: You know, that's that's America's North Barrack.
Speaker 2: It's just funky and quirky and fun, you know, and
Speaker 2: such a cool vibe. And you're right, anybody can go
Speaker 2: play there and run into a president.
Speaker 3: Maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I come up with like a list of five
Speaker 1: courses I want to see every year, and that one's
Speaker 1: been on it for three years. It's just like I
Speaker 1: just have to get up there. And now, you know,
Speaker 1: with what's going on in the world, this is uh,
Speaker 1: this year might get washed out of it too. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, that one, I guess is high on my
Speaker 1: list of places to see. I'm curious about. You know, everybody, Oh,
Speaker 1: this great set of greens, great set of greens. What
Speaker 1: when you're trying to still down what makes a great
Speaker 1: set of greens into like, you know why?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 1: The key features or principles of what makes in your
Speaker 1: mind a great set of greens at a golf.
Speaker 3: Course a couple of things. You know.
Speaker 2: The first thing that pops into my mind is, you know,
Speaker 2: just the shots around the green when you miss agree,
Speaker 2: you know, the shots into the greens. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of people talk about strategy and how the green
Speaker 2: sets up. You know, if the pins back here, you
Speaker 2: want to drive it right so you can get at
Speaker 2: that whole location and that sort of thing, and that's great,
Speaker 2: you know, having a variety of whole locations within a
Speaker 2: green that dictate or suggests different strategies from day to
Speaker 2: day is a great thing, especially at a members club, But
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't hit greens very often, you know,
Speaker 2: And and if it's boring when you miss agree, and
Speaker 2: even if the strategy is interesting off the tee and
Speaker 2: setting up the approach shot, you know, if there's not
Speaker 2: something interesting to do once you miss agree, then it
Speaker 2: doesn't really hold your attention long term, especially again at
Speaker 2: a members club where you're playing every day. So I
Speaker 2: think you know the variety of shots around the green,
Speaker 2: so that missing right is different than missing left is
Speaker 2: different than missing short, is missing long, you know, and
Speaker 2: where you want to miss the green changes from day
Speaker 2: to day as well.
Speaker 3: I think that's important to me.
Speaker 2: One of the big things is variety throughout the set
Speaker 2: of greens, so you know, it's not eighteen of a
Speaker 2: type from beginning to end, that you come across a
Speaker 2: little bit of everything. And when you walk off the
Speaker 2: eighteenth green and are driving home afterwards, you can remember
Speaker 2: a lot of the greens individually that they don't just
Speaker 2: blend together as a set.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think.
Speaker 2: Of places like that, you know, Indian Wood, the old
Speaker 2: course of Indian Wood in Michigan. I remember going walking
Speaker 2: around there years ago. You know, you get to the
Speaker 2: first green, Wow, this is really cool green. The second green, Man,
Speaker 2: this is a really cool green. By the time you're
Speaker 2: halfway through, I sensed a pattern, but this is a
Speaker 2: really neat green. It's so cool that they did it
Speaker 2: seventeen times. Then eighteen is totally different there. But there
Speaker 2: are some greens like that where you know, you always
Speaker 2: have to miss short or you know, they all slope
Speaker 2: back to front, even if they have cool conjour. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of courses like that where the
Speaker 2: greens individually are great, but as a set, you're not
Speaker 2: running into something different from hole to hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're talking about maybe a set of greens
Speaker 1: that they're all, you know, severely sloped back to front,
Speaker 1: and you know they and I think obviously certain construction
Speaker 1: methods would lend themselves to certain types of slopes, like
Speaker 1: the you know, the the push up, the kind of
Speaker 1: the big bold features of a Langford Barreau green. The
Speaker 1: big edges make it tough to have fallaway greens. Yep,
Speaker 1: And that might be a criticism of of of theirs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, wing foot's another example that pops into
Speaker 2: my head the West Course. It's you know, that's a
Speaker 2: great set of greens really, but you know, if you
Speaker 2: miss short eighteen times there, you've done pretty well. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't be missing right or left at wing foot
Speaker 2: all day long and you're in for a long day.
Speaker 2: Seminoles kind of the same way. Yeah, And to your
Speaker 2: point Langford Moreau, you know Banks rainer to a certain degree.
Speaker 2: You know, missing right and left is trouble and long
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases, you know that the miss
Speaker 2: is all the smartness is almost always short.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the best sets.
Speaker 2: Of greens have more right in that and where you
Speaker 2: want to miss, including long. Garden City has a handful
Speaker 2: of greens we're missing along is the good miss and
Speaker 2: that you don't see very often.
Speaker 3: But that's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that is cool about that is
Speaker 1: it's that idea of counterintuitiveness and also tricking like it
Speaker 1: where it doesn't reveal itself upon the first play. A
Speaker 1: lot of times you learn after you've played it at
Speaker 1: least once, maybe a handful of times, where the best
Speaker 1: place to miss, like you know, certain greens is missing short.
Speaker 1: Something that jumps to mind is like the Stonewall North
Speaker 1: the first green is if you miss short there. I
Speaker 1: played there a few years ago in the midam, and
Speaker 1: I remember I hit a bad drive and I had
Speaker 1: a chip and I had this thirty yard pitch to
Speaker 1: the and it was downwind, and I'm just like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is the worst place I could be,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's just rocketing away. But the only
Speaker 1: way you know that is if you've played it a
Speaker 1: handful of times. And that's something I picked up on
Speaker 1: my practice round, because you're just going through it and
Speaker 1: you're you know, you hit it in there, and you
Speaker 1: know if you didn't hit it short, you don't really know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes, yeah, the majority of amateurs miss short unintentionally. You
Speaker 3: know that they rarely get past the hole. You know
Speaker 3: that applies to prose to but to a much lesser degree.
Speaker 3: But most amateurs never get past the hole.
Speaker 2: So making past the hole the place to miss is,
Speaker 2: to your point, really the counterintuitive and probably uncomfortable for
Speaker 2: a lot of people, which is why people may have
Speaker 2: an aversion to fall away.
Speaker 3: Greens or one of the reasons.
Speaker 2: But you know that the original Dan at North Barrack,
Speaker 2: anytime I play that hole I'm taking an extra club
Speaker 2: and trying.
Speaker 3: To pull it long left.
Speaker 2: If I don't hit the green, I've got a reasonable
Speaker 2: chance of getting up and down from back there.
Speaker 3: You miss anywhere else in your debt.
Speaker 1: I think, But I think that's interesting and a lot
Speaker 1: of times I feel like people will label greens unfair
Speaker 1: that are ones that require thought and sometimes multiple players
Speaker 1: to understand how to play them. Do you do you
Speaker 1: feel that as an architect?
Speaker 2: Sometimes yeah, I think you're right, and you hit on
Speaker 2: the problem is that a lot of people, especially nowadays,
Speaker 2: a lot of people when they're traveling to play golf,
Speaker 2: they're traveling somewhere once and then going somewhere else the
Speaker 2: next time, and somewhere else the next time, and apart
Speaker 2: from the place you play most often, you know, you're
Speaker 2: not getting a chance to learn the nuances of a
Speaker 2: lot of the places you play when you're just balancing
Speaker 2: around from one to another.
Speaker 3: And you know, a place like St. Andrew's takes dozens
Speaker 3: or hundreds of rounds to really reveal itself and to be.
Speaker 2: To allow you to get the most out of the
Speaker 2: playing experience. You know, I feel bad for people that
Speaker 2: go to St. Andrews once and their caddy points at
Speaker 2: something in the distance top every tee and tells him
Speaker 2: where to hit the shots, because it's such a complex
Speaker 2: place that only gets more interesting and more fun the
Speaker 2: more you get to know it. But that's not the
Speaker 2: way a lot of people play golf these days. But
Speaker 2: you're right, the subtlety takes time to understand, and it
Speaker 2: takes more than one round to appreciate your question about unfair.
Speaker 3: People.
Speaker 2: Demon Green's unfair made me think of a around. I
Speaker 2: played at Hollywood a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: Have you been there? I don't know if you've bet
Speaker 3: I haven't.
Speaker 1: Also one of my one of my courses on my list.
Speaker 3: Good good, hope you got a big list?
Speaker 1: Well, I do five. I set up five because I
Speaker 1: feel like that's a reasonable number that I could actually
Speaker 1: achieve in a year. And then, you know, five means
Speaker 1: there's a bunch around the five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the five you finally said thirty more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's like five, but then it's the surrounding
Speaker 1: area included.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I played Hollywood a couple years ago with with a
Speaker 2: great amateur player too really but a great mid am
Speaker 2: and a great junior player, and we got to the
Speaker 2: seventh hole, which is a really good mid length Part five,
Speaker 2: which those guys played essentially is a mid length Part four.
Speaker 3: You know, both hit long drives, both had mid irons
Speaker 3: in if I remember right. But the green is really.
Speaker 2: Kind of deep and narrow and angles from front right
Speaker 2: uphill to the back left and it's like four tiers.
Speaker 2: The back tier is really tiny, and they'd put the
Speaker 2: pin in the back that day and it probably falls
Speaker 2: I don't know, six or seven feet from back to front,
Speaker 2: like if you missed long.
Speaker 3: You're dead.
Speaker 2: And of course the mid am kind of blocked his
Speaker 2: t shot out to the right. It did a really
Speaker 2: good shot from over there and ended up in the
Speaker 2: rough past the hole and was debt, you know, had nothing,
Speaker 2: and proceeded his next shot kind of loosely trickled off
Speaker 2: the front of the green and was pitching back up
Speaker 2: the hill with his fourth and walked off just shaking
Speaker 2: his head, like, you know, what a stupid green. You know,
Speaker 2: I really liked the golf course so far, but that
Speaker 2: great is stupid.
Speaker 3: That whole sucks.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like number one, it's apart five you
Speaker 2: just hit six or a seven iron into and number
Speaker 2: two you missed in the one play place you couldn't
Speaker 2: miss and if you ever played it again, you would know,
Speaker 2: can't be.
Speaker 3: Above the hole on that on that hole. But you
Speaker 3: know his.
Speaker 2: Judgment was that green stupid. They should blow that up.
Speaker 2: I hate this course because of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You know, it wasn't his fault at all. It was
Speaker 2: the Gulfs. But it is interesting how people find something
Speaker 2: else to blame as opposed to thinking about it for
Speaker 2: a second and realizing they couldn't missed anywhere else.
Speaker 1: It's I think it partially stems from, you know, the
Speaker 1: how America the main format of the game's stroke play
Speaker 1: versus match play.
Speaker 2: I agree, Yeah, I think that I don't keep scoring ever,
Speaker 2: But I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I think you know, if you would have just.
Speaker 2: Lost the hole there and it woul a you know,
Speaker 2: it was a casual match and was competing for anything.
Speaker 2: But yeah, if you're in a match with somebody and
Speaker 2: you have to take a seven when you're hoping to
Speaker 2: make a four, it's a little harder to swallow than
Speaker 2: if you just lose one hold of the move on to.
Speaker 3: The next one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like in that situation.
Speaker 3: Different in America than in the UK certainly that situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if he makes a six and is the guy's
Speaker 1: playing makes a four and he realized that, you know,
Speaker 1: it was going to be really hard to get up
Speaker 1: and down either way from back there for four, and
Speaker 1: it's a completely different feeling walking off the green. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, one of the things that I always say, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a great match play course, it would be a
Speaker 1: terrible stroke play course, Like what does that even mean?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm curious about that too.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a I haven't been to a Hoopie yet,
Speaker 2: but you know it's certainly marketed as a match play
Speaker 2: club in a match play golf course, and I can't
Speaker 2: put the life and me understand really what that means
Speaker 2: or what an architect would do differently if it was
Speaker 2: if it was a stroke play club, for instance.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2: I think designing for magic play in general makes is
Speaker 2: a worthy goal that we shouldn't be designing for stroke
Speaker 2: play to begin with. So I'm curious what he did
Speaker 2: differently there that he wouldn't have done if it hadn't
Speaker 2: been labeled to match play course.
Speaker 1: So what he said to me was that he felt
Speaker 1: he could he had a little bit more freedom on
Speaker 1: the greens, which is kind of exactly what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: where he felt like he could he could build a
Speaker 1: little bit more boldly, with a little bit more severe contours,
Speaker 1: because nobody's gonna play ping pong and write and aid
Speaker 1: on the card.
Speaker 3: All right, I'll buy that.
Speaker 1: That's that's what That's what he said.
Speaker 3: At least. Okay, so that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know, you brought up the Old Course earlier, and
Speaker 1: I was I was curious to say, you were with
Speaker 1: somebody that knew nothing about golf ark attacture, beginning golfer,
Speaker 1: and you you were gonna you had the budget, you
Speaker 1: could go to five courses to show them, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of introduce them to the game of golf and
Speaker 1: golf architecture. Where would you go?
Speaker 3: The Old Course is certainly number one.
Speaker 2: For a million reasons, but mostly because I think it's
Speaker 2: still the most fun and interesting place in the world
Speaker 2: to play, which to me is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3: You know, there aren't many things in.
Speaker 1: This world.
Speaker 2: That you can point to the first example and stay,
Speaker 2: you know, six hundred years later, that's still the best
Speaker 2: of its type. That absolutely nailed it. The first time around,
Speaker 2: and I feel that way about the old course. I
Speaker 2: think it's magical that way, and it's it's such a
Speaker 2: different style of golf that even six hundred years later,
Speaker 2: no one else has quite been able to match the
Speaker 2: style of golf do you find in Saint Andrews and
Speaker 2: it you know, it's a million so called rules of
Speaker 2: modern architecture in the process. And I think that's important
Speaker 2: for someone to understand when learning about architecture, is that
Speaker 2: there there really aren't and shouldn't be many rules to
Speaker 2: what you can do. And for that reason, I think
Speaker 2: North Bear can probably be another place I would take
Speaker 2: someone while you're there, you know, for all the odd, quirky,
Speaker 2: weird things that you see there and don't see anywhere
Speaker 2: else that make that golf course as fun as any
Speaker 2: place you could ever hope to play. And it's beautiful,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a beautiful spot. You're never more than
Speaker 2: a par five from the ocean when you're playing there.
Speaker 2: The wind is always blowing. People play quickly. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of lessons to be learned in North Barrick too.
Speaker 3: Now it's a little tough, you know.
Speaker 2: The National obviously is probably my favorite golf course in
Speaker 2: America and another place where you know. I wrote years
Speaker 2: ago that you can learn more in the first six
Speaker 2: holes of the National that you can learn on any
Speaker 2: golf course except for Saint Andrews, and I think that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you go through the first six holes there,
Speaker 2: you've got really a little bit of everything, and a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff most golfers had never seen before, and
Speaker 2: all works beautifully. It's so much fun to play, you know,
Speaker 2: just the scale of the scale of the golf there,
Speaker 2: the wild contouring of those greens. You know, the shortest
Speaker 2: hole the golf course has. I don't think it's the
Speaker 2: biggest green, but it's right up there, you know, the
Speaker 2: sixth hole.
Speaker 1: This is the scariest green.
Speaker 3: It is, it's not. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2: Each little target is really tiny, and the penalty for
Speaker 2: missing where you want to be is can be pretty severe,
Speaker 2: especially on the green in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: That's that's an example of the green many people within
Speaker 1: is unfair.
Speaker 3: You're probably right, you're probably right. But it's so much fun. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's so much fun.
Speaker 2: And I can get your buddy when he's on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the wrong side of the green. You
Speaker 2: know if he's on the right side and the holes
Speaker 2: cut left. Just watching him try and get it anywhere close,
Speaker 2: it's a.
Speaker 3: Lot of fun.
Speaker 1: The last time I played it, I uh, the pin
Speaker 1: was right right in front of that bunker and I
Speaker 1: came up like two yards short and it spins it
Speaker 1: down and I'm in the front and I had this.
Speaker 1: I looked at it. I looked at the putt and
Speaker 1: I'm looking and I'm like, if I try and make this,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't go in, it's going into the bunker.
Speaker 1: And I ended up. I was like so happy. I
Speaker 1: was like, I have to lay up, and I like
Speaker 1: laid up to twelve feet and made the twelve foot
Speaker 1: but I it was I was so I had so
Speaker 1: much fun doing that. But so many people would say
Speaker 1: this is dumb, you know, and I felt such a
Speaker 1: like it felt like a birdie going to the next hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to make the best score doesn't always mean
Speaker 2: trying to make the next shot.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, where can I leave this to give myself
Speaker 2: the best of making a good score as opposed to
Speaker 2: a terrible score. And on that whole you know, who
Speaker 2: knows where your your opponent was. But odds are good.
Speaker 2: They were in a tricky situation too, and and there
Speaker 2: aren't any easy up and downs on that hole or
Speaker 2: easy two putts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a great green it is.
Speaker 3: It's such a great place.
Speaker 2: And that's another one that you just have to play
Speaker 2: your walk over and over and over and over to
Speaker 2: try and pick it up.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the first time walking it.
Speaker 2: Just trying to take everything in in one trip around
Speaker 2: is absolutely impossible.
Speaker 1: You know, the first time I played it was US
Speaker 1: Open week a few years ago, when it was that
Speaker 1: shinnakak and I played it, and you know, my buddy,
Speaker 1: a couple of my buddies were like, what did you think.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, honestly, like I don't even know
Speaker 1: what to think. There's so much going on. And I
Speaker 1: was supposed to leave town on Friday morning and I
Speaker 1: got invited back out for Friday and I originally turned
Speaker 1: it down. This is like a thing I do. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I have to fly out. A couple
Speaker 1: of my buddies got andy, if you don't change your flight,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be speaking to you for a
Speaker 1: couple of miles. But I'm so happy I moved by flight.
Speaker 1: It was actually one of the few times I've ever
Speaker 1: bought a refundable flight. And you know, just the second
Speaker 1: time around, you pick up so much, and you know,
Speaker 1: I got lucky to play a third time, and I
Speaker 1: played that time with a Hickory driver and Ballota ball
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I was playing the member
Speaker 1: tees and hitting from where you know, twelve to fifteen
Speaker 1: handicaps hit from, and it was all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm wearing out long irons and I was like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: this is a completely different golf course.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I'm sure you know what's brilliant.
Speaker 2: One of the brilliant things about the National that a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't talk about is the way he
Speaker 2: used the ground contours in affecting your t shots. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of you know, sixteen is the obvious example.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of potential blindness if you drive in
Speaker 2: the wrong spot. The ground contracts are just us so
Speaker 2: beautifully there and so smartly that, yeah, I would I
Speaker 2: would guess that with your twenty seventeen driver, you're hitting
Speaker 2: it well past a lot of those things that really
Speaker 2: mattered off the tee with your Hickory Club.
Speaker 1: Well, that was the thing is I'd always heard about seven,
Speaker 1: you know, like everybody, oh, seventeen's greatest hole, and for
Speaker 1: the modern golf like pro or high level amateur, it's
Speaker 1: it's not the greatest hole because the t shot, you
Speaker 1: just hit it as hard as you can up the left,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I have this Hickory. I
Speaker 1: saw bunkers that I hadn't seen the first two times
Speaker 1: I played, Like, all of a sudden, I'm looking. I'm like, holy, Like,
Speaker 1: this is like a really hard decision. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, you know, And it brought back so
Speaker 1: much of the thought off the tee.
Speaker 2: I felt like, that's cool that you did that, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just such a fascinating place. Regardless of hop aar
Speaker 2: you hit it, there's there was just a lot going
Speaker 2: on there.
Speaker 1: And that well, and that's kind of the thing I
Speaker 1: think when you look at the what's going on in
Speaker 1: golf is with with all the distance gains and and everything,
Speaker 1: the best way to defend against an assault of wedges
Speaker 1: is with greens with some slope in them. And it
Speaker 1: seems like we're our society is kind of pushing away
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ironic even well, especially at the elite level.
Speaker 2: Do We had a chance to work with the tour
Speaker 2: down in Houston last year and and they're very strict
Speaker 2: about how much slope they'll accept in their pinnable parts
Speaker 2: of the green.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: They they're reluctant to go above two percent slope, which
Speaker 2: you know, to us isn't steep at all. But the
Speaker 2: best players are rarely playing whole locations that are located
Speaker 2: in the spot where if you miss the green to
Speaker 2: one side or the other, the green's racing away from
Speaker 2: you faster than you'd like it to be and to
Speaker 2: make it difficult to stop a ball, you know. And
Speaker 2: and when you put whole locations in flat positions where
Speaker 2: you miss, matters a lot less. And it's ironic that
Speaker 2: that those setting up courses for the best players in
Speaker 2: the world are protecting them from that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's something that a lot of golfers have to
Speaker 2: deal with every day at their clubs or at the
Speaker 2: courses they play often.
Speaker 3: But the best.
Speaker 2: Players in the world, apart from you know, Augusta and
Speaker 2: you know, if the US Open is at Shinnacock or
Speaker 2: Oakmont or a handful of places.
Speaker 3: Or the Open Championship. You know, the best.
Speaker 2: Players in the world are rarely encountering whole locations and
Speaker 2: steep spots where you can't miss the wrong side, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's a shame. It'd be the game's a lot
Speaker 2: more interesting when missing to the right of the green
Speaker 2: and the green, you know, the green sloping away from
Speaker 2: you over there means something and those guys don't run
Speaker 2: into that that often, and they've got they've got the
Speaker 2: game to deal with that, you know, and it would
Speaker 2: be fun to watch him deal with those circumstances and
Speaker 2: deal with a different set of challenges than they're they're
Speaker 2: typically faced with.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the most amazing things watching
Speaker 1: UH Royal Melbourne. It was like evident from the very
Speaker 1: first t shot of the first day that this was
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit different. When when the
Speaker 1: guys drove it up near the first screen on the
Speaker 1: composite course, Yeah.
Speaker 2: What a great hole to start with. You know, it
Speaker 2: might be my favorite hole in golf course, one of
Speaker 2: my favorites in the world. It's such a brilliant little
Speaker 2: hole and where you landed matter, I mean, Richard forsythe
Speaker 2: is an amazing greenkeeper, and you know, he does a
Speaker 2: brilliant job with that golf course from day to day,
Speaker 2: and the way it was set up for the tournament
Speaker 2: was just perfect. But it seemed to take the Americans
Speaker 2: a couple of days to figure out where they needed
Speaker 2: to miss and that that placing your ball actually matters
Speaker 2: there because the ground is so firm, the rings are fast,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of slope in them. They took
Speaker 2: them a few days to get the hang of it,
Speaker 2: I think, and that was reflected by the results.
Speaker 1: It totally. It was you could see it happening as
Speaker 1: like day by day the America, like you know, the
Speaker 1: first day Internationals really took it to them, and just
Speaker 1: day by day it seemed like the Americans were just
Speaker 1: figuring it out a little bit more each day.
Speaker 3: It sure felt that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if it was coincidence or if
Speaker 2: that was reality, but there was one American that had
Speaker 2: to figure it out from the get go, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's the best player in the last four decades. And
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing. As a golf viewer, which
Speaker 2: I frankly I don't watch the tour.
Speaker 3: Much these days anymore.
Speaker 2: But that's the kind of thing that we're losing out
Speaker 2: on the spectators, you know, watching great players face challenges
Speaker 2: like that where they have to think and they have
Speaker 2: to position their ball, and they have to work their
Speaker 2: way around the golf course and think the way around
Speaker 2: the golf course as opposed to just smashing as far
Speaker 2: as they can and hitting short irons.
Speaker 3: In you know, the I miss.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been watching a bunch of the old
Speaker 2: Shells Wonderful World of Golf matches that have been put
Speaker 2: up on YouTube somewhat recently, and you can't watch one
Speaker 2: of those matches without somebody hitting a long iron or
Speaker 2: fairwy wood into part fours. You know, when's the last
Speaker 2: time you saw that on TV in America? It just
Speaker 2: doesn't happen anymore. And it was such a different skill
Speaker 2: set that the players needed to have with them and
Speaker 2: that we got to watch as spectators. And it's unfortunate that,
Speaker 2: you know, Brooks, Koepka and Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and
Speaker 2: it can hit amazing golf shots.
Speaker 3: They're just not asked to do it that often, and
Speaker 3: that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things is one of the
Speaker 1: most memorable shots that I can think of in the
Speaker 1: last decade was at Bellery. Brooks Kopka hit you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a two hundred was it sixteen or seventeen?
Speaker 1: The part three, it's like two thirty forty. He had
Speaker 1: a four irons, just flagged it and it was just
Speaker 1: it's amazing. And that was the difference in the championship,
Speaker 1: you know, is this long iron play and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody else hit as great of a shot as Brooks did,
Speaker 1: and it was like, yeah, this is the guy that
Speaker 1: should win.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It was that Donald Ross book. Golf has never failed me.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget reading the quotes. You know, long irons
Speaker 1: is the true like separator of good and great players.
Speaker 1: And I think that obviously over the years, You've worked
Speaker 1: on a ton of great courses from you know, and
Speaker 1: you've built a lot of new golf courses with Tom
Speaker 1: and also on your own. How I'm curious how your
Speaker 1: thoughts and beliefs in golf architecture have evolved since you know,
Speaker 1: you're young, and.
Speaker 3: I think they're always evolving.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hard to think back and put myself
Speaker 2: back in my own head twenty years ago. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think when you're starting out, when you're exposed to architecture,
Speaker 2: you're attracted to the books you read. You know, you
Speaker 2: look at Thomas's book and they're all the cool diagrams
Speaker 2: of alternate root holes, and you get a pretty quick
Speaker 2: feel for two dimensional strategy. And those things look really
Speaker 2: neat on paper, and you know, it's a little harder
Speaker 2: to execute in the field. You know, the alternate roots
Speaker 2: don't always work as well as they do in drawings,
Speaker 2: and and what separates one root from another doesn't really
Speaker 2: work as well in drawings. And I think the thing
Speaker 2: I've really learned over the years, certainly with the help
Speaker 2: of Tom and my co workers, is that just building
Speaker 2: interesting contour creates good golf. You know, you don't necessarily
Speaker 2: have to build strategy into a golf hole. You don't
Speaker 2: have to define a way for players to play it.
Speaker 2: Risk reward isn't always the most interesting sort of golf. Typically,
Speaker 2: if you just build cool contour, especially around the greens,
Speaker 2: then you've got good golf. And it can be that simple.
Speaker 1: Hey, we didn't get through the five.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I don't know how many I got to.
Speaker 1: Well we'll go back. But keep talking about contour. It
Speaker 1: just jump popped into my mind.
Speaker 2: Well, the one place I'm gonna cheat on this one,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna use a time machine and keep talking about contour,
Speaker 2: but also including another golf course. I'm gonna go back
Speaker 2: to nineteen thirty four to Augusta National and was first built.
Speaker 2: You know, there were twentyunkers or so somewhere around there,
Speaker 2: twenty two bunkers, nothing but short grass, you know, two
Speaker 2: heights of cut probably, and it was all about contour
Speaker 2: and short grass.
Speaker 3: You know. The greens were.
Speaker 2: Really wild and severe and had a bunch of interesting
Speaker 2: whole locations, and the way you played the whole varied
Speaker 2: from day to day, and the way you played the
Speaker 2: whole very dramatically if you missed where you wanted to
Speaker 2: hit your t shot like the old course. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was very much inspired by the old course. And
Speaker 2: a lot of the holes even are almost templates of
Speaker 2: holes from Saint Andrews and other places. But you know,
Speaker 2: that was one of the best examples of how contour
Speaker 2: is the most important and interesting part of the game.
Speaker 2: And it didn't need many bunkers whatsoever to make it interesting.
Speaker 2: It didn't need rough It was miles wide. But you know,
Speaker 2: the contour around the greens matter, and the contrary and
Speaker 2: the fairways matter. You know, if you if your ball
Speaker 2: got off line, it would take a slope in the
Speaker 2: fairway and just keep running into worse trouble. And you
Speaker 2: know what they've done now, and what a lot of
Speaker 2: courses do by narrowing things up is you keep players
Speaker 2: closer to the center of the hole and don't let
Speaker 2: balls run into trouble.
Speaker 3: Marian's a great example of that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of side slope in Marion
Speaker 2: and especially across the road, and when they narrow the
Speaker 2: fairways up for the US Open, that just kept more
Speaker 2: players closer to the center of the hole.
Speaker 3: And if you mowed that entire.
Speaker 2: Golf course short from wall to wall, I think it
Speaker 2: would be a harder golf course because balls would roll
Speaker 2: into places that you don't want to be. But the
Speaker 2: rough keeps you closer to work, keeps you closer to
Speaker 2: the ideal lining into those greens.
Speaker 3: And Augusta was very much that way too before they
Speaker 3: added the rough.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like there's any examples as Augusta exists today,
Speaker 1: really good examples of contour that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: You know, I touched on that with the National. National
Speaker 2: also has three hundred bunkers, whatever they have. There are places,
Speaker 2: and there aren't many places that have twenty or fewer
Speaker 2: bunkers these days, and a Memorial Park is one of those.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't nearly have the fair way contraur that
Speaker 2: Augusta has.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of something off the top of
Speaker 3: my head.
Speaker 2: That's that level of simplicity.
Speaker 1: Old Town would jump to my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and I haven't seen that, even though
Speaker 2: it's a couple hours from me, and that's been a quarantine.
Speaker 2: Goal of mind is to try and get up there
Speaker 2: and see it at some point. Yeah, I'm sure that's
Speaker 2: a good example. That looks like a piece of property
Speaker 2: similar to Augusta. Yeah, I mean Augusta's hilly. You know,
Speaker 2: it's hilly, which obviously a lot of people have talked
Speaker 2: about know about them. It's hard to think of another
Speaker 2: great golf course of that much elevation change, and by
Speaker 2: all accounts, old Town fits that bill.
Speaker 1: What makes building a great golf course with that type
Speaker 1: of elevation difficult?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, you know, just attacking attacking the
Speaker 2: side slopes in a variety of ways, I think, so
Speaker 2: that you're not just going straight up and straight down
Speaker 2: the hill. Downhill holes are fun, uphill holes not so much.
Speaker 2: And avoiding holes like eighteen in Augusta, or you just
Speaker 2: climbing straight up the hill to get back to the clubhouse.
Speaker 2: There are many great holes in the world to do that,
Speaker 2: So I guess clubhouse location is important part too. If
Speaker 2: you put the clubhouse on top of the hill, you're
Speaker 2: already stacking the deck against you a little bit. Olympic
Speaker 2: Club is a pretty good example. You know, I can't
Speaker 2: say I love that golf course, but I really admire
Speaker 2: the way the golf course works around that hill. And
Speaker 2: it's a steep slope mostly in one direction, especially on
Speaker 2: the front nine. There's a lot of slope there. And
Speaker 2: you know, he found a way to route along the
Speaker 2: side slopes and in a way that really favors somebody
Speaker 2: who can turn the ball into the slope, you know,
Speaker 2: and then that's become a lost art certainly. You know,
Speaker 2: the way good players hit the ball now they hit
Speaker 2: it high enough for a role is less of an
Speaker 2: issue than it used to be. But you know, when
Speaker 2: I played it twenty years ago. You know, if you
Speaker 2: hit a fade on one of the holes that was
Speaker 2: sloping left or right and turning left or right, then
Speaker 2: you are going to find yourself with a really long
Speaker 2: second shot in and holes that tilt from side to
Speaker 2: side then going straight up for straight down are really
Speaker 2: interesting now.
Speaker 3: But it's hard to know.
Speaker 2: Every property is different. It's hard to generalize about those things.
Speaker 2: But I think the more variety you can get in
Speaker 2: holes to play along and across the slope is supposed
Speaker 2: to up and down.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds what you're talking about. Reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of what you guys did at Stoton
Speaker 1: Bray with that knob on the back nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might be right, because he plays incorporate that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trying to incorporate that.
Speaker 2: That feels as much like what Mackenzie did at Cypress
Speaker 2: Point or the Valley Club, where there's a few prominent
Speaker 2: features in the property and he jammed as many greens
Speaker 2: and t's on him and as he could, you know,
Speaker 2: and Royal Melbourne's got a bit of that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Cypress is a great example that that kind of large
Speaker 2: central dune in the middle of the property that three
Speaker 2: plays up against you know, four ties are there, six
Speaker 2: comes back to it, seven plays off it, eight plays
Speaker 2: around it, nine plays onto it, you know, ten plays
Speaker 2: off at eleven back to it, twelve plays off it.
Speaker 2: He cramps so much golf into that one central feature
Speaker 2: and he did the same thing he did too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's brilliant. It's brilliant. I don't think we were channeling
Speaker 2: mackenzie in any way, but but when you've got a
Speaker 2: property with a big feature like that, you try to
Speaker 2: bring it in play as much as you can.
Speaker 3: And that was one of our goals at Stone Bray.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before we get to number five on your list,
Speaker 1: talk about Stoton Bray and the experience. You know, you
Speaker 1: have been a long type associate at Renaissance Golf and
Speaker 1: and this was a project where you and and Brian
Speaker 1: uh Slanik, Eric Iverson, Don Plaisk and and also Blake
Speaker 1: helped out. Blake Conan helped out designed that golf course.
Speaker 1: How was it like? What was it like? Was it
Speaker 1: drastically a different experience than what it is like on
Speaker 1: a on a Tom Doak designer or was it you know,
Speaker 1: was it did it feel pretty similar? Except you guys
Speaker 1: were making the final call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big accept.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Stulton Bray is a really special place to me, and
Speaker 2: particularly right now, you know, when we're working for Tom.
Speaker 2: You know, Tom's always a parachute in a certain way
Speaker 2: that that when you've got a great editor coming behind you,
Speaker 2: you can push things a little further, and you can
Speaker 2: you can do dare to do something different and do
Speaker 2: something wild, do something severe, knowing that if you pushed
Speaker 2: it too far, you've got a brilliant editor coming to
Speaker 2: make it right.
Speaker 3: And and Tom gives us.
Speaker 2: So much freedom to be creative, which makes it a
Speaker 2: real pleasure to work for him. But it's also really
Speaker 2: comforting knowing that if you do something stupid, he's going
Speaker 2: to fix it.
Speaker 3: And at Stulton.
Speaker 2: Bray, you know I had Eric and Blake and see
Speaker 2: Brian and Don as well. We all hit each other
Speaker 2: to be that sounding boy, which was really important. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you're accept.
Speaker 3: It is a big deal.
Speaker 2: And having to make the final call feels a lot
Speaker 2: different than than just building freely and pushing pushing your
Speaker 2: boundaries and trusting that Tom is going to make the
Speaker 2: appropriate edits and and you know, and and which isn't
Speaker 2: to say that Tom is merely an editor.
Speaker 3: That's not the case at all.
Speaker 2: But the way Tom allows us to work gives us
Speaker 2: a lot of freedom to to experiment and mess around
Speaker 2: and and eventually get it a really good final product.
Speaker 2: So Stonebury was cool in that regard, and you know
Speaker 2: it really had to learn to trust myself and my instincts,
Speaker 2: and you know, I caught myself thinking a lot, boy,
Speaker 2: what would Tom have to say about this? And that
Speaker 2: you know, I've got enough experience with him now that
Speaker 2: I can have some idea of how he might feel
Speaker 2: about some of the things I build. But I certainly
Speaker 2: lean down Eric quite a bit throughout that process and Blake,
Speaker 2: both of which runs on site a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: Brian is pretty well tied up at the Loop up
Speaker 2: north and Don was pretty busy as well, but they've
Speaker 2: both spent time there. But yeah, I definitely leaned on
Speaker 2: on those guys a lot the things I was building
Speaker 2: and had to sign off on, which we do with
Speaker 2: Tom too. I mean, we're always on site a lot
Speaker 2: together and we're constantly talking about what each other's building
Speaker 2: and looking at everything that's being built. So it's it's
Speaker 2: always been part of the process but when Tom's not
Speaker 2: there as the final editor, it definitely has a different
Speaker 2: way to it.
Speaker 1: Talk about the collaborative aspect of that project is something
Speaker 1: I'm kind of fascinated with thinking about, is how, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't see that. It almost was like a throwback
Speaker 1: project where you guys, you know, you don't see as much.
Speaker 1: There's so much solo design ever since it became a profession.
Speaker 1: It's solo design, and this is an example of really
Speaker 1: a group of designers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that part for us isn't any different than
Speaker 2: what we typically do. You know, there there are four
Speaker 2: names on the listed after designer for that golf course.
Speaker 2: But but everything we do is a collaboration to a
Speaker 2: certain degree, you know, certainly on Tom's projects, he is
Speaker 2: at the top of the at the top of the
Speaker 2: heap and making all the important decisions, and he's got
Speaker 2: the you know, he handles the routing, you know, ninety
Speaker 2: eight percent of the routing which we added to a
Speaker 2: certain degree on the ground with him.
Speaker 3: But he's responsible for a lot of that.
Speaker 2: And in the case of Stoton Bray, it was a
Speaker 2: collaboration between Brian, Eric Don and I and the routing
Speaker 2: process we all had the maps, and we all messed
Speaker 2: around with them and then shared them with one another
Speaker 2: and and picked the bits and pieces of everyone that
Speaker 2: worked best, and we kind of cobbled that together and
Speaker 2: what we came up with at the end. So that
Speaker 2: was the biggest difference, you know, that it was a
Speaker 2: collaborative routing process, which is not really the same as
Speaker 2: our projects at the top where he's responsible for most
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: How drastically different were where everybody's routing.
Speaker 2: All over the map, all of the map, And I'm
Speaker 2: sure we all came up with a handful of routings
Speaker 2: we liked, but frankly, you know, the.
Speaker 1: Key to.
Speaker 2: Coming up with the routing we did was squeezing as
Speaker 2: many holes into that portion of property you talked about
Speaker 2: the far end where the big hill is. Squeezing as
Speaker 2: many holes as we could down there, number one, finding
Speaker 2: interesting holes that take advantage of that cootal topography down there,
Speaker 2: and then creating as much space as we could in
Speaker 2: the flattered round to give those holes a little bit
Speaker 2: of roomy that. You know, if we had to squeeze
Speaker 2: one or two more holes up in the flats, things
Speaker 2: would have felt pretty cramped.
Speaker 3: So you know, I think it was Brian's loonic that.
Speaker 2: Came up with the idea of running the twelfth hole
Speaker 2: across the far end of the property, which was a
Speaker 2: really big ridge before we started, and that took a
Speaker 2: lot of earthwork to create that hole, but that allowed
Speaker 2: us to get one, if not two, more holes in
Speaker 2: that end of the property than most of the routings had,
Speaker 2: thus freeing up more space to let the other holes
Speaker 2: in the flatter part of the property breathe a little
Speaker 2: bit more than otherwise. So that was the trick to
Speaker 2: making it work. It was getting as many holes as
Speaker 2: we could down with that in the property.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool, cool golf core. It's really neat
Speaker 1: greens and I love that back section of the property.
Speaker 1: But the first few holes are great too. You get those.
Speaker 1: You got a great mixture of greens out there. What
Speaker 1: we were talking about with green contour applies definitely there
Speaker 1: where there's a wide variety of greens and you know,
Speaker 1: different slopes and different questions each of them.
Speaker 3: Ask. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had fun building them, and I think we
Speaker 2: all contributed ideas to that part of the process, and
Speaker 2: John Scott did too.
Speaker 3: You know, John was out there a lot.
Speaker 2: With us, and great guy, really smart. He was very
Speaker 2: involved in the process and even encouraged us to dial
Speaker 2: things up a little bit to make the greens more interesting,
Speaker 2: more exciting. So it was a real pleasure working with
Speaker 2: John and his family and being a part of what
Speaker 2: they've created up there. It's a really special place.
Speaker 1: So let's get to number five.
Speaker 2: Number five, Okay, Yeah, I mentioned Garden City already. That
Speaker 2: would be a place I would take people almost for
Speaker 2: the opposite reasons of you know, it's kind of the
Speaker 2: opposite of the National in some ways, in the opposite
Speaker 2: of Augusta, and that there's very little ground contour there.
Speaker 3: The greens are pretty.
Speaker 2: Subtle, the hazards are totally different, but really unique in
Speaker 2: American golf. And you know, Garden City reminds me a
Speaker 2: lot of Walton Heath, which is one of my favorite
Speaker 2: places in the UK.
Speaker 3: And Woodhull SPA where we've.
Speaker 2: Been really lucky to work. There's a simplicity about all
Speaker 2: of those places. You know, the property of Woodhall Spot
Speaker 2: is really quiet, very similar to Garden City, but there's
Speaker 2: great texture there.
Speaker 3: Walton Heath is similar.
Speaker 2: You know that most of that property runs to the
Speaker 2: road that separates the clubhouse from the golf course, and
Speaker 2: the greens there are largely just laying on the ground.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of contour in them. But so
Speaker 2: many of those greens tilt subtly towards that road, and
Speaker 2: that's rarely back to front when you're playing. The golf
Speaker 2: holes and garden seats are the same way. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of golf holes, you know, the property of
Speaker 2: Garden City is pretty quiet, and a lot of the greens,
Speaker 2: like the tenth and the fifteenth are just laying on
Speaker 2: the ground, but the ground is falling it three four
Speaker 2: or five percent to the side and to the back.
Speaker 3: In some cases, that's a shot you don't see very often.
Speaker 2: There's just a beautiful simplicity to approaching the hole on
Speaker 2: you know, the tenth is one of my favorite holes.
Speaker 2: You know, the green falls away left to right, front
Speaker 2: to back, and you really have to think about where
Speaker 2: you want to miss again, and and that's another hole
Speaker 2: we're missing along. It's better than missing short. But that's
Speaker 2: a really hard thing to get yourself to do, especially
Speaker 2: when you can't quite see what's going on up there,
Speaker 2: you know, and you're not quite sure what's behind the green,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's it's just a lot of fun to
Speaker 2: play golf that way.
Speaker 1: And there's that deception aspect of it, and until you
Speaker 1: know the hole, you don't know that the ball is
Speaker 1: going to take a bigger bounce forward than you're used
Speaker 1: to because it doesn't look like it.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, And you've got you know, and a whole
Speaker 3: like that too.
Speaker 2: And there's Superintendent Mike McLevy does a fantastic job and
Speaker 2: he's he has really firmed that place up and it's
Speaker 2: playing better and better every year that he's there. You know,
Speaker 2: as much as any golf course in America, the thirty
Speaker 2: yards in front of some of those greens matters a
Speaker 2: lot because that's where you need to land your ball
Speaker 2: in some days. And he's done a beautiful job of
Speaker 2: tightening that up and firming it up. And you really
Speaker 2: do have to think about the contour in front of
Speaker 2: the greens, not just the putting surfaces themselves, but you've
Speaker 2: got to think about what's going on short of the greens,
Speaker 2: which is something you have.
Speaker 3: To do in the UK all the time.
Speaker 2: When it's windy and the ground is firm, and if
Speaker 2: the winds at your back. You know, you can't fly
Speaker 2: ball out of the green and expect it to stop.
Speaker 2: So you've got to consider the contour in front of
Speaker 2: the green and oftentimes hit a shot that takes advantage
Speaker 2: of that contour and negotiates it somehow. And golf's a
Speaker 2: lot more fun when when the balls on the ground
Speaker 2: and rolling and you've got to you've got to think
Speaker 2: through the contours over a much broader area than just
Speaker 2: what's on the green itself.
Speaker 1: Something that makes me that I love most about Garden
Speaker 1: City is that in a way, you know, the Augustus
Speaker 1: topography is just astounding and and same with National where
Speaker 1: you have this this amazing site. Is the thing that
Speaker 1: Garden City kind of screams to me is that, you know,
Speaker 1: great architecture is attainable almost anywhere.
Speaker 3: It is, Yeah, it is. There are a handful of
Speaker 3: places like that.
Speaker 2: Chicago melfb is another one for me that you know,
Speaker 2: people call that a flat site.
Speaker 3: It's not. It's not a bad site at all, but
Speaker 3: it you know.
Speaker 2: There is simplicity about it that most of the holes there,
Speaker 2: well maybe all the holes there, and none of them
Speaker 2: are great because of the topography, you know, and you
Speaker 2: could say it's the same about Garden City. It's just
Speaker 2: the architectures are really shines at places like that, and
Speaker 2: the architecture is really simple at Garden City, and it's
Speaker 2: a little more manufactured at Chicago. But nonetheless, you know,
Speaker 2: the things that are built in Chicago are built almost
Speaker 2: entirely for golf reasons as opposed to aesthetics or anything else.
Speaker 2: They just built cool features for golf and didn't mess
Speaker 2: with the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another perfect example, and I think Stote
Speaker 1: and Bray in a similar veins example of that, where
Speaker 1: you know, you can have really good architecture on you know,
Speaker 1: not the best piece of land doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: sandy and dramatic.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, You're right, and we you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know that we would have moved a lot more
Speaker 2: earth if we'd had a bigger budget, but the budget
Speaker 2: was limited and we really had to focus on spending
Speaker 2: money wisely, and that included bunkers.
Speaker 3: I mean, there aren't many bunkers.
Speaker 2: Of Sto'te Bray either, and frankly I don't I can't
Speaker 2: think of anywhere where i'd add more, and probably a
Speaker 2: few I would take out at this point if anything,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it had to be Yeah, it had to
Speaker 2: be designed with budget in mind, both from construction and maintenance.
Speaker 2: And I think that that gave us a really good product.
Speaker 1: Uh and a project that has really kept my attention
Speaker 1: through the Chicago Winner and now through this virus that
Speaker 1: i've I constantly find myself seeking out photos of is uh.
Speaker 1: I hope I pronouncing it correct. I've seen the name
Speaker 1: so many times, larnek, Nope.
Speaker 3: You're close.
Speaker 2: I've heard a lot of different different attempts. Lanark Atlantic
Speaker 2: It's it's a Welsh word. Most people don't get it
Speaker 2: right the first time around, but it's Lanark.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny. Something the other Greeks can be emailed
Speaker 1: me years ago about it, and it's just amazing to
Speaker 1: see how it's coming. And something I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about is you know, the first thing that you
Speaker 1: notice is the striking style that you even Blake went
Speaker 1: with there, and I wanted to ask if that was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of an intentional move to you. It's
Speaker 1: very different from the in vogue, you know, rugged exposed
Speaker 1: look that we see all over the place in most
Speaker 1: new projects.
Speaker 2: It's a different look, certainly and it was intentional. You know,
Speaker 2: it evolved a little bit, and you know every project
Speaker 2: we do kind of goes that way.
Speaker 3: You take a few holes to sort out what the
Speaker 3: style is going to be.
Speaker 2: And but yeah, it was it was my intention to
Speaker 2: build some above ground features as opposed to building a
Speaker 2: bunch of bunkers. You know, it's fifteen Lantark is fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes from Maryon and surrounded by a ton of great golf.
Speaker 2: You know, Philadelphia is just loaded with great golf courses
Speaker 2: and a lot of the best stuff was done by
Speaker 2: Flynn and you know, you think about Marry and you
Speaker 2: think about the Flynn courses, and you think about the
Speaker 2: flash sand bunkers and the similar aesthetic and the club
Speaker 2: was has every step of the way put an extraordinary
Speaker 2: amount of trust in me and encouraged me to do
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do and thought was best. They've
Speaker 2: been fantastic and we're one hundred percent behind trying something
Speaker 2: different that wouldn't feel like anything else in Philadelphia, and
Speaker 2: that was one of my goals, just to create, you know,
Speaker 2: to give it a different identity in a place that's
Speaker 2: choc a block with great golf. And we ran with that,
Speaker 2: and they've given us a lot of latitude to do
Speaker 2: some different stuff there, and I'm sure they scratched their
Speaker 2: heads a little bit when they would come out and
Speaker 2: see some of the things we built. We've experimented quite
Speaker 2: a bit there and built a lot of crap that
Speaker 2: the members saw overnight and freaked out and we wiped
Speaker 2: out the next day. But we're just trying a bunch
Speaker 2: of different things and stumbling on some things that we
Speaker 2: think are really cool, and hopefully a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: that people haven't seen before in that area.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love that that idea because I feel
Speaker 1: like most a lot of times what happens is in
Speaker 1: that situation as well, this is what the clubs around
Speaker 1: here do, so we should probably do that too, And
Speaker 1: it becomes almost a group think versus the idea of
Speaker 1: creating your own unique identity as a golf course.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think you're right. Atlantic is
Speaker 2: a really different project for me. You know, all of
Speaker 2: my other consulting clients are you know, have clubs of
Speaker 2: courses that were built by Travis or Ross or Banks,
Speaker 2: great architects, and they're really really good golf courses, and
Speaker 2: there are important examples of that architect's work, and I
Speaker 2: feel like restoring them is the best and only option.
Speaker 3: And I really really strict about that. You know. I
Speaker 3: don't like taking liberties if I say I'm restoring something.
Speaker 2: And I don't tend to take work unless the club
Speaker 2: is behind a pure restoration.
Speaker 3: So most of the work I've.
Speaker 2: Done in places like Hollywood or Round Hill or the
Speaker 2: places i'm working now, our strict restoration. I want to
Speaker 2: put back with what the old guys did. But Landark
Speaker 2: is a different thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time researching the design history
Speaker 2: of the place, and that golf course evolved a lot
Speaker 2: over the years from the very beginning at various times.
Speaker 2: It's been twenty seven holes, you know it started. You know,
Speaker 2: it's divided by a road, and you know, the chunks
Speaker 2: of property the club owned were developed at different times,
Speaker 2: and what they owned now is different what they owned
Speaker 2: when they began. So it's evolved a lot over the years,
Speaker 2: and the more I studied it, I didn't really feel
Speaker 2: like there was much Number one that we could put back,
Speaker 2: you know what, There wasn't anything left from the original
Speaker 2: Alex Finlay course that we could restore because it's been
Speaker 2: changed so much and the property itself had changed, But
Speaker 2: there also wasn't a whole lot when I looked at
Speaker 2: the old area, old and the old photos, you know,
Speaker 2: the all right number of old fotes in the place.
Speaker 2: They hosted the PGA Championship, the first PGA Championship that
Speaker 2: was played at stroke Play.
Speaker 3: It was Atlantic in the fifties.
Speaker 2: So we've got a bunch of bold photos, but I
Speaker 2: just you know, there was nothing there that screen. Boy,
Speaker 2: we really need to put that back. That was really cool,
Speaker 2: and the club was okay with that, you know. So
Speaker 2: this was really the first opportunity I've had to do
Speaker 2: something drastically different, really kind of change the character of
Speaker 2: a golf course without going back to something that was there.
Speaker 3: One hundred years ago. And that's been really fun. You know.
Speaker 2: Restoring is great for a wide variety of reasons, but
Speaker 2: having the freedom to do something totally different Atlantic has
Speaker 2: been a lot of fun for us.
Speaker 3: And Blake's been great too.
Speaker 2: I mean that he's such a creative guy, and we've
Speaker 2: just had a lot of fun doing wacky stuff out
Speaker 2: there and trying to trying to make one another say wow,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's It's been a really fun process.
Speaker 2: And Brendan Burn is the superintendent as well as a
Speaker 2: general manager, and he's been a fantastic client, as has
Speaker 2: the club, so we've had a great time there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I highly recommend people going checking out his photos
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He posts them all the time and it's
Speaker 1: like I'm glued to him. Speaking of the above ground features,
Speaker 1: how does that gets you know, most golfers are accustomed
Speaker 1: to the below ground the idea of bunkers, you know,
Speaker 1: where features go down, what type different things does the
Speaker 1: above ground feature impact in terms of architecture, the play
Speaker 1: and just you know, on a broader scale, your your
Speaker 1: scale that when you're working with the above ground features.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think the you know, going back
Speaker 2: to what we talked about earlier with Brooks and Memorial Park,
Speaker 2: bunkers different players differently, obviously, and the best players at
Speaker 2: Land or the most clubs don't really struggle with a
Speaker 2: typical green side bunker shot, whereas a lot of the
Speaker 2: handicapped players, beginners, older players, that's a really hard shot
Speaker 2: for them. And I think building a burm or a
Speaker 2: mound or something above ground tends to have a less
Speaker 2: severe penalty for handicapped players. And we don't have a
Speaker 2: ton of green side bunkers Atlantic right now, and the ones.
Speaker 3: We built are pretty severe. There are a few that
Speaker 3: you should definitely avoid at all costs.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of room to play around those, but
Speaker 2: you don't want to miss right of the first green,
Speaker 2: for example, or long.
Speaker 3: On the eighth.
Speaker 2: But I think those are going to be really difficult
Speaker 2: shots for everybody, not just handicapped players. But we put
Speaker 2: a lot more short short grass around some of the greens,
Speaker 2: but just rough around a lot of the greens with
Speaker 2: some funky, interesting contours can get a weird lie. And
Speaker 2: in the fairways too. We built some mounding and some
Speaker 2: other things instead of bunkers that will offer a different
Speaker 2: type of recovery and a different degree of penalty.
Speaker 3: Without beating up the handicap player too much. I hope.
Speaker 1: I'd agree with I think they could. Uneven lies for
Speaker 1: a good player from rough are going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult than a very predictable bunker shot yep.
Speaker 1: And they are easier for the regular golfer from Yeah,
Speaker 1: my experience cattying it was always easier when somebody was
Speaker 1: in the rough chipping, you know.
Speaker 2: I agree, And you know, when we started at Landward,
Speaker 2: I think I think there were like fifteen of the
Speaker 2: greens fourteen fifteen, sixteen, and the greens were kind of
Speaker 2: bunker front right front left almost every hole.
Speaker 3: So you know, again the.
Speaker 2: Average player never misses past the hole they're going to
Speaker 2: miss right or left, and nine times out of ten
Speaker 2: you had been recovering from a bunker, and we tried
Speaker 2: to undo that completely. You know, there are holes where
Speaker 2: you there's a bunker left or a bunker right or neither.
Speaker 2: But I don't know that we have any holes left
Speaker 2: where there's bunker's right and left.
Speaker 1: Is it? You know, for the last few years I
Speaker 1: noticed things with just Instagram, and I feel like the
Speaker 1: fascination with people for it, with Seth Rayner, you know, Langford, Moreau,
Speaker 1: the and then you know that that more trench style
Speaker 1: bunker and more geometric design features. It's at like a
Speaker 1: fever pitch, but it's I've always it's been interesting because
Speaker 1: from a new design and you know, renovation standpoint. Until
Speaker 1: you guys were doing this, I hadn't really seen any
Speaker 1: of it in America. Despite like I can tell from
Speaker 1: just a photo standpoint that that's a popular people. It's
Speaker 1: it appeals to people's eye. Do you think that it
Speaker 1: could become kind of a new trend in design going
Speaker 1: that more that way from the exposed sand.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe?
Speaker 2: You know, I can't say that we were channeling the
Speaker 2: Rain or Langford at Landard necessarily, you know, I was
Speaker 2: thinking more of places like.
Speaker 3: Hunter Combe and Myopia and Brookline. But yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I think there may be a bit of fatigue from
Speaker 2: jagged edge, flashy bunkers. You know, it's ironic that, you know,
Speaker 2: the reason we're working at Lantic right now is because
Speaker 2: Brendan at Lanark loved our work at Hollywood, where they
Speaker 2: have one hundred and eighty bunkers of every every shape
Speaker 2: and size, and and at Lant we're doing almost the opposite.
Speaker 2: But I do think that there's there's a growing reaction
Speaker 2: to a lot of what's been built over the past
Speaker 2: decade or two.
Speaker 3: And and you know.
Speaker 2: The blowout style bunker is beautiful, especially in a place
Speaker 2: where it fits naturally. You know, the sand Hills probably
Speaker 2: started that trend. And you know, if you look around
Speaker 2: the golf course at the sand Hills, you see blowouts
Speaker 2: out in the distance on land that's been grazed for
Speaker 2: hundreds of years, and nobody's ever stuck a shovel in
Speaker 2: the ground to build them.
Speaker 3: In places like Pacific Dues in barn Google, and.
Speaker 2: You know, anywhere somebody's working near the ocean and sand,
Speaker 2: you're going to have blowout bunkers, and.
Speaker 3: And it fits those locations.
Speaker 2: But importing that onto a bunch of inland sites in Illinois,
Speaker 2: Wisconsin or every state in the Union at this point
Speaker 2: it probably gets little anonymous, and people might be able
Speaker 2: the idea of something that looks a little bit different
Speaker 2: that the new south Course at Arkadia Bluffs is certainly
Speaker 2: a rest of that of that theory of yours. And
Speaker 2: I played that last time. I really enjoyed.
Speaker 3: It, not necessarily because of the aesthetic. You know.
Speaker 2: That's the funny thing to me about, you know, the
Speaker 2: kind of the current infatuation with Rayner and McDonald is
Speaker 2: that everyone's focused on the look of their work and
Speaker 2: the templates as opposed to just the really cool, interesting
Speaker 2: gulf that they created.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's much more than an aesthetic. And
Speaker 3: and I think people, you know, I think that's.
Speaker 2: The current bunker craze or the kind of the phase
Speaker 2: removement of the jagged edge blowouts. You know, when minimalism
Speaker 2: became a really popular thing, it quickly became identified with
Speaker 2: an esthetic and and people associated that bunker look with minimalism,
Speaker 2: so that, oh, if we build jagged, natural looking bunkers,
Speaker 2: we're minimalist too, And you know, completely missing the greater
Speaker 2: point that minimalism is as a philosophy or an approach
Speaker 2: to construction and design.
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with aesthetics.
Speaker 2: And you know, some of the places where minimalism was
Speaker 2: first and most notably practiced happened to have that aesthetic.
Speaker 2: But the aesthetic doesn't make the doesn't make something minimalist.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a philosophy of design and construction more
Speaker 2: than anything.
Speaker 1: The ironic thing, too, is from a maintenance standpoint, those
Speaker 1: above ground features that you're building at atlant Eric are
Speaker 1: more minimal in terms of maintenance than a bunker.
Speaker 3: We'll see.
Speaker 2: I look forward to hearing Brennan's thoughts on that, but
Speaker 2: I think I think they should be. There's certainly a
Speaker 2: lot cheaper to build.
Speaker 3: You know. Part of what.
Speaker 2: Initiated the work we did there, or the style of
Speaker 2: work we did there, was the fact that you know,
Speaker 2: construction always generates a lot of stuff you need to
Speaker 2: get rid of, whether it's old greensmans or drain tile
Speaker 2: or sod. You know, there's a lot of sod that
Speaker 2: get stripped when you're doing work, and you got to
Speaker 2: put that somewhere. And they don't have a lot of space.
Speaker 2: It's a really compact property. They don't have space to
Speaker 2: store any of that stuff. They don't have a big
Speaker 2: dump to lose it in, and they certainly didn't want
Speaker 2: to pay to haul it all off property, so we
Speaker 2: had to lose it somewhere. But you don't want to
Speaker 2: bury much bold sod and moulins and let that stuff
Speaker 2: decompose and see what it turns into. So we dug
Speaker 2: berry pits around the property and buried all the sod
Speaker 2: in there. But that generated a lot of material that
Speaker 2: we had to.
Speaker 3: Do something with.
Speaker 2: And if we were going to dig bunkers, we were
Speaker 2: just going to generate more material and we'd have to lose.
Speaker 2: So instead of building more bunkers, we turned all the
Speaker 2: material into the above ground stuff that we created.
Speaker 3: So there was definitely an economy of construction building those things.
Speaker 2: We were losing material that we had to lose somewhere
Speaker 2: and we got to bury a bunch of stuff, so
Speaker 2: particularly that you know, would have cost a lot of
Speaker 2: money to haul off site.
Speaker 1: In a way, it has been a hale. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as the animalist construction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And you know there's no associated cost for
Speaker 2: bunker liners and bunker sand and the things that go
Speaker 2: with building modern bunkers now, which is getting you know,
Speaker 2: that is getting extraordinarily expensive, especially in that part of
Speaker 2: the country. You know, things are really expensive in the Northeast.
Speaker 2: Shipping costs, materials costs, bunkers are getting really expensive, and
Speaker 2: the labor to maintain them is really expensive. But the
Speaker 2: construction costs, I'm sure what we did was a lot
Speaker 2: less expensive than building a bunch of bunkers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the way the old guys did you know.
Speaker 3: That's that's one.
Speaker 2: Of the things that we're building some we're restoring some
Speaker 2: mounting in North Jersey now too. And again the construction process.
Speaker 2: And they built that calf course. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: rocky place and they generated rocks for years there. For
Speaker 2: the first five years or so of the golf course's existence,
Speaker 2: members carried a little bag with them as they played golf,
Speaker 2: and they would pick up rocks in the fairways as
Speaker 2: they played and dump them in piles adjacent to the fairways.
Speaker 2: That went on for years, So you know, the rocks
Speaker 2: that were generated in the construction process and the rocks
Speaker 2: that the members were picking up turned into features on
Speaker 2: the golf course and instead of building a bunch of
Speaker 2: bunkers and rock Travis hues mallins instead.
Speaker 1: How neat is that?
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool? That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean in evolving, you know, like the more the
Speaker 1: more years up, and the more mounds and more rock
Speaker 1: mounds and more. Yeah, it's just kind of a neat
Speaker 1: little thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tells me how crazy golfers were back in the day,
Speaker 2: how badly they wanted a golf course and they were
Speaker 2: willing to pick up rocks for years.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure many people would go for that today.
Speaker 1: It's almost more more adventurous, right, absolutely. So the thing
Speaker 1: you said about Rayner, you play out of James Hall,
Speaker 1: and that strikes me as a perfect example where people
Speaker 1: are fascinated with the templates and everything. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you the most the kind of crescendo of that
Speaker 1: golf course where it hits the great Land is filled
Speaker 1: with very few templates. You know, on that eleven through
Speaker 1: fifteen stretch of holes, you know, you start to hit
Speaker 1: the you know, you kind of are getting to the
Speaker 1: meat of the guitar solo if you want to, compared
Speaker 1: to like a great rock song, and you're hitting these
Speaker 1: holes and very few of them are are status quo templates.
Speaker 1: Obviously you have the Knoll, but and the Eden Hole
Speaker 1: in there, but it you know, the ground is more
Speaker 1: of the star.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2: I mean eleven is the Maiden and that you mentioned
Speaker 2: fourteen is the knoll, but you know the fourteenth and ya,
Speaker 2: this doesn't look much like the knoll at Piping Rock
Speaker 2: or Scott's Craig. You know, it just it's just they
Speaker 2: tacked that label on because the green is jacked up
Speaker 2: in the air. But you know, from t to green,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really resemble many other Knowle holes. And you
Speaker 2: could say the same for the Maiden hole, which is
Speaker 2: a great hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that was Rainer's to me, that.
Speaker 2: Was his most amable quality was that dude could route
Speaker 2: of golf course. You know, he found the places for
Speaker 2: his templates, and which is a totally different routing process,
Speaker 2: I think than just trying to find the best golf
Speaker 2: holes on a property. When you're looking for fifteen or
Speaker 2: eighteen or twenty two template holes on a property, it's
Speaker 2: a different mindset than just laying something out with no
Speaker 2: preconceived ideas.
Speaker 3: But he did it really really well.
Speaker 2: You know, he found his golf goals on his properties
Speaker 2: in a way that they just lay beautifully.
Speaker 3: On the ground.
Speaker 2: And obviously he did a bunch of construction work around
Speaker 2: his green side, but Tea de Green his courses worked
Speaker 2: really well and he didn't have to do a lot
Speaker 2: to build that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh so, you know, given the circumstances, and
Speaker 1: you're the first architect on that I've talked to since
Speaker 1: this you know, virus and pandemic has kind of broken
Speaker 1: out in America, and I'm curious, how has your business
Speaker 1: yet or is it to be determined, been impacted by
Speaker 1: and by the coronavirus.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, that's.
Speaker 2: Way above my pay grade to try and analyze. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it'll be impacted.
Speaker 3: You know. Right now, we've got a lot of things
Speaker 3: that are temporarily temporarily on.
Speaker 1: Hold from a you know, all things standpoint. Have you
Speaker 1: seen anything with clubs.
Speaker 2: Everyone's just leary right now. You know, there's so much
Speaker 2: uncertainty that I think everyone is. Everyone is is hesitant
Speaker 2: to move forward before we know where we are, number one,
Speaker 2: and know where we're going. And you know, I feel
Speaker 2: the same way personally. It's you know, travel is a
Speaker 2: big part of our job, and I don't see myself
Speaker 2: getting on an airplane anytime soon. I love a road trip.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to drive anywhere in the country for work,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I'm getting on an airplane. And
Speaker 2: I suspect a lot of golfers probably feel the same way.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that impacts places like band in
Speaker 2: or cabin cliffs or streams song, but I think, you know,
Speaker 2: there's certainly a massive loss of revenue in the short
Speaker 2: term that impacts the way golf courses are being maintained
Speaker 2: right now and are likely to be maintained for the
Speaker 2: foreseeable future.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Maybe we can stop wasting money on a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that really aren't employ and the golf course
Speaker 2: maintenance and focus on the things that are and and
Speaker 2: maybe that'll lead to more affordable maintenance. Therefore more affordable golf.
Speaker 2: You know, the standard of maintenance has gotten so high
Speaker 2: in this country to its own detriment. Really, I mean,
Speaker 2: there is certainly a point of diminishing returns, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of clubs went beyond that years ago.
Speaker 2: And you know that affects construction design too. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the things are being built into golf
Speaker 2: courses now are number one, really expensive to install and
Speaker 2: number two really expensive to maintain. And the more things
Speaker 2: you put underneath a USGA green, the more things there
Speaker 2: are that can break. And you know that just means
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to dig those greens out more often
Speaker 2: going forward until you stop putting stuff under the greens.
Speaker 3: That can break. So I hope there's a.
Speaker 2: Little bit of a a little bit of an effect
Speaker 2: and raining in some of the excesses if we've taken
Speaker 2: to accept as now standard equipment, standard procedure.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think people in general, not just golfers, tend to
Speaker 2: forget quickly, and I think as soon as golfers will
Speaker 2: get back on their golf courses, they'll they'll quickly start
Speaker 2: looking at the things that superintendent has been doing for
Speaker 2: the past three months.
Speaker 3: As opposed to just being happy they're back outside again.
Speaker 3: But hopefully that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping for like a no rake movement from this.
Speaker 3: That would be great. That would be great.
Speaker 2: And yeah, if you could trust every golfer just to
Speaker 2: smooth out their tracks with their foot and leave about
Speaker 2: the left, that would be great.
Speaker 1: Good talking about that possibly being a PGA tour thing,
Speaker 1: no rakes, I like it. How would you compare the
Speaker 1: feel of this with the eight financial crash from like
Speaker 1: just a purely a business side of things, like the
Speaker 1: way you feel with you know, golf courses on a
Speaker 1: business front. Oh, sorry, this is a question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beyond my pay grade. Again, you know, I
Speaker 2: have a hard time comparing.
Speaker 3: I mean this.
Speaker 2: That was that was scary to me in a certain way,
Speaker 2: that revolved almost entirely round finances, you know, and this
Speaker 2: is something completely different. You know, this is something completely different,
Speaker 2: and it has massive financial impacts obviously, but first and
Speaker 2: foremost it's about people's health and and.
Speaker 3: I like to think that golf can be an important
Speaker 3: part of.
Speaker 2: Getting people back outdoors, getting people back socializing safely. I
Speaker 2: think golf has always had done a poor job of
Speaker 2: emphasizing the health benefits of getting outside and taking a
Speaker 2: walk for four hours.
Speaker 3: And you know, I've seen a.
Speaker 2: Few clubs that have reopened lately that are apologizing for
Speaker 2: the lack of carts and and I wish they would
Speaker 2: take a different stance and celebrate it. I'd love to
Speaker 2: see more people walking as a result of this. But
Speaker 2: you know, this is this is a massive health crisis
Speaker 2: first and foremost. And I don't know how you compare
Speaker 2: that to a strictly financial crisis like we had in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Strictly is the wrong word.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously any financial crisis has massive associated health
Speaker 2: impacts as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a this is a health a massive
Speaker 1: health crisis that is having massive financial implications.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think that two thousand probably the other way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree with that. So you know, we uh,
Speaker 1: before we get you out of here, it'd be remiss
Speaker 1: to you know, I think we the future, we'd hopefully
Speaker 1: do a Langord Bureau pod with a few junkies, you know,
Speaker 1: But I gotta I gotta ask you, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of from your standpoint, you grew up pretty close
Speaker 1: to Lastonia, and I remember you saying when we were
Speaker 1: on when we recorded Near bel Air that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that was kind of one of your first Aha moments
Speaker 1: in terms of lang for Moreau, you know, what, what
Speaker 1: aspects of their architecture do you admire the most?
Speaker 3: They were nuts, They were crazy. The scale of their features,
Speaker 3: Like if I go to the Sonia now or Culver.
Speaker 2: You know, Harrison Hills, the scale the features those guys
Speaker 2: built with the equipment they had back then, it was insane.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it.
Speaker 2: They moved a lot of material and the boldness of
Speaker 2: the stuff they built it is pretty remarkable. You know,
Speaker 2: Pete Dye would be the one guy who's probably approached
Speaker 2: that level of boldness since. But the depths of the
Speaker 2: bunkers and the size of the bunkers and the movement
Speaker 2: in the greens is just big and wild fun and
Speaker 2: I love, you know, their best courses. Again, going back
Speaker 2: to where we started to have brilliant green complexes.
Speaker 3: You go to a place like.
Speaker 2: Kanka ki Elks, some fantastic greens there, and you know,
Speaker 2: that's what I'd love to see restored.
Speaker 3: You know that.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately Langford's courses have suffered so much neglect over the years,
Speaker 2: and in a lot of cases that's helped preserve them.
Speaker 2: But there there's still kind of a shell of what
Speaker 2: they once were, which makes places like the Sonia all
Speaker 2: the more special that it's presented really really well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's just a kind of a daring and a boldness
Speaker 2: to what they did that it's just it's fun golf,
Speaker 2: you know, it's fun golf.
Speaker 1: A buddy was doubted Harrison Hills the other day. He
Speaker 1: sent me some picture. There's they've done a ton of
Speaker 1: tree removal.
Speaker 3: Oh that's good to hear.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, the was it the fourteenth hole, the
Speaker 1: one that goes down in the bottom before the short
Speaker 1: part four up that had that green that had all
Speaker 1: the trees on it. All the trees are off it nice.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful green.
Speaker 1: Oh my god that if you restored that green, yep,
Speaker 1: that would.
Speaker 3: Be that's a great set of greens. Yeah. I love
Speaker 3: seeing this stuff.
Speaker 2: I wish there was more of it around, you know,
Speaker 2: it's certainly there's none of my part.
Speaker 3: Of the country.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's the thing is spent a I
Speaker 1: love going down to Kankakee or up to Valley. It's
Speaker 1: it's sad where they're at but still it's refreshing that
Speaker 1: you know, so little of it's changed that it could
Speaker 1: you know, when if some if the right thing came up,
Speaker 1: they could be brushed up and every bay'd be like,
Speaker 1: whoa wait, this place was just sitting here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a blessing. They haven't had the money over
Speaker 2: the last hundred years to screw them up. You know,
Speaker 2: I'd much rather have them in this day right now
Speaker 2: than humming along financially with a bunch of extra cash
Speaker 2: in the bank. That that's something got the wrong idea with.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Spring Valley's another one. I tend to forget
Speaker 2: about that place, but it's there's a lot of cool
Speaker 2: stuff there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got that. It's got for being forty five
Speaker 1: minutes from Chicago. It's got topography you see nowhere else
Speaker 1: in Chicago.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's cool. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of good golf there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, hey, I appreciate the time. You're you're a
Speaker 1: new new favorite follow on Twitter. You've you've delve into
Speaker 1: the platform and just become become an all star there.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, but that's what being in
Speaker 2: quarantine does for you. I guess it gives you a
Speaker 2: lot of time to waste your time on Twitter.
Speaker 3: It's fun. There are a lot of people on there
Speaker 3: sharing a lot of really cool so it's it's easy
Speaker 3: to get It's easy to go down a rabbit hole
Speaker 3: on Twitter, certainly.
Speaker 1: So you're Bee Schneider one two six there is it
Speaker 1: the same on Instagram?
Speaker 3: I haven't the slightest idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just look up to Brian Schneider. We'll include
Speaker 1: in the show notes. But I I appreciate the time
Speaker 1: and and uh coming on. It's been long overdue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been Funydie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we'll talk soon. Hopefully. You gotta get out
Speaker 1: to Old Town during this. When you got there, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be driving through there all the time.
Speaker 3: It is a goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I drove past I drove through North Carolina yesterday
Speaker 2: and considered making.
Speaker 3: The detour, but I don't know if this is the time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll get there soon. No, it's it's at the top
Speaker 3: of my list. HM.