Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 3: Ball in a bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg,
Speaker 3: Frida egg, Frida egg, egg, Frida egg, bride.
Speaker 1: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 3: Hum all right, Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 3: My name is Garrett Morrison. I'm here with Andy Johnson.
Speaker 3: How are you, Andy, I'm doing wonderful. Yeah, yeah, in
Speaker 3: spite of the snowstorms.
Speaker 2: Snow and and uh, you know, lack of childcare. There's
Speaker 2: two things that the modern u modern parent has to
Speaker 2: deal with it this time of the year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, especially recently. All right, So why don't we
Speaker 3: get right into it so you can get back to that.
Speaker 3: We're talking today about Perry Maxwell, the golf course architect
Speaker 3: who worked mostly in I don't know, would you call
Speaker 3: it the Midwest, would you call it the South? I'm
Speaker 3: not really sure what to call it.
Speaker 4: I think it's the Great Plains, right gat yeh.
Speaker 2: Texas is its own place, so you know, we we
Speaker 2: can just refer to it as Texas, right they don't
Speaker 2: you know when you think about it, they aren't the Southeast,
Speaker 2: they aren't the South, they aren't the Southwest.
Speaker 4: They're just Texas. They aren't the Great Plains.
Speaker 3: Texans will love to hear that too, because that that's
Speaker 3: I think that's the belief in Texas as well.
Speaker 4: I'm playing. I'm playing to the audience here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go, Texans. All right. So Perry Maxwell,
Speaker 3: of course, is the is the architect behind Southern Hills,
Speaker 3: Prairie Dunes, Old Town Club, great architect. We've talked about
Speaker 3: him before on the podcast, but today's episode goes a
Speaker 3: little deeper into it. We talked to Chris Klauser, who's
Speaker 3: a historian who has done a lot of work on
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell, including a book called The Midwest Associate. And
Speaker 3: then we also talked to Colton Craig, who's an architect
Speaker 3: based in Oklahoma who has studied Perry Maxwell a great
Speaker 3: deal as well. But first we wanted to mention that
Speaker 3: we have a new event opening for registration. This is
Speaker 3: going to be the Banker at Dornick Hills and it
Speaker 3: opens for registration at noon Eastern time on Monday, February seventh.
Speaker 3: One thing that we should note is that our events
Speaker 3: page has been relocated to Golf Genius. This is going
Speaker 3: to make a lot of things a lot easier and smoother.
Speaker 3: But in order to find this page, you can just
Speaker 3: go to the Friday dot com and find on the
Speaker 3: top banner the word events, and if you click on that,
Speaker 3: you'll be taken right to our Golf Genius page. On mobile,
Speaker 3: if you're on a cell phone, you can find it
Speaker 3: by going to browse time topics on the Friday dot Com,
Speaker 3: then events and all events, and it will take you
Speaker 3: to the same place. And then we'll also put direct
Speaker 3: links in the fridaygg newsletter on Friday February fourth and
Speaker 3: Monday February seventh, So we're just making sure to get
Speaker 3: people there in the first place. Just note everybody that
Speaker 3: there's a new registration process, there's a new home for
Speaker 3: this stuff. Once you're in the new events home, you'll
Speaker 3: be able to see all of the information about the
Speaker 3: Banker and about our other events when we post them.
Speaker 3: A registration button will appear when registration opens. And one
Speaker 3: important note is that during registration, participants are required to
Speaker 3: provide their full name, email information, billing information, shirt size,
Speaker 3: gin number or handicap index, and so just make sure
Speaker 3: that you have all of that.
Speaker 2: Information important if you don't have a handicap index, if
Speaker 2: you're part of the resistance of handicap system.
Speaker 3: And you're included in this, in this community of very
Speaker 3: brave people.
Speaker 4: I just haven't gotten around to signing up for one.
Speaker 3: Nobody can handicap dox you.
Speaker 2: The only well the only way reason and I would
Speaker 2: have it is I needed it for tournaments, you know, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: but uh, listen, you don't need a handicapp dos me.
Speaker 4: You just doxed me.
Speaker 2: The uh but anyways, just put your estimate in there
Speaker 2: and we'll we'll crutch it down and listen, don't be
Speaker 2: a sandbagger. Well, well will boot you out if you
Speaker 2: if you shoot way under your your alleged index and
Speaker 2: you don't include your.
Speaker 3: Index, everlasting shame is not worth it. Uh, just ask
Speaker 3: about what happened at our soul Park event last year.
Speaker 2: And is this a handicapped podcast and not a prayer
Speaker 2: Perry Maxwell podcast.
Speaker 3: We have we've we've done. I mean, people who really
Speaker 3: want the Perry Maxwell podcast. I'm going to put a
Speaker 3: little time stamp in the show notes so that you
Speaker 3: can just skip ahead to it.
Speaker 2: But Dornic Hills is important because it's Perry Maxwell's home course,
Speaker 2: is first design, that's the banker. It's an ourd More, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: It's an hour and a half from Dallas Airport. I
Speaker 2: flew down to Dallas, like you can fly down and
Speaker 2: be up there in a jiffy. It's also an hour
Speaker 2: and a half from Oklahoma City. If you can get
Speaker 2: directed at Oklahoma City. I hear that's a really easy
Speaker 2: airport and drive to navigate. And you know, we will
Speaker 2: have golf available on Sunday as well as Tuesday also,
Speaker 2: so you could make a couple day trip of it.
Speaker 4: On top of the thirty six holes you get with
Speaker 4: the event.
Speaker 3: This should be a really cool, unique event at an
Speaker 3: incredible golf course. Now, yes, so Dornic Hills is Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell's first golf course. He built it on his property.
Speaker 3: We're going to go into greater depth about Dornic Hills
Speaker 3: later in this podcast with Chris Klauser. But one thing
Speaker 3: that people should know is that it has been freshly restored.
Speaker 3: So Tom Doak's team at Renaissance Golf Design was in
Speaker 3: there over the past year year and a half restoring
Speaker 3: the Perry Maxwell design there and basically this event offers
Speaker 3: a first look at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the club's doing their opening day, opening, Grand Open,
Speaker 2: reopening ceremonies the weekend before, so it is it's going
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 4: It's wonderful.
Speaker 2: I went down in December and saw it and it's
Speaker 2: a really cool property. It's got some really neat golf holes,
Speaker 2: some great greens. But you know, the cliff hole the sixteenth,
Speaker 2: the par five is one of the most jaw dropping
Speaker 2: holes that I've ever seen in my life. So that
Speaker 2: is a that is a neat hole. It's a neat
Speaker 2: golf course and should be a great event.
Speaker 3: YEP, special place. So the Banker at Dornick Hills. The
Speaker 3: rest of this podcast isn't all about Dornick Hills. It
Speaker 3: is really about Perry Maxwell, about his life and about
Speaker 3: his courses. So I hope you enjoy it. So, Chris Klauser,
Speaker 3: you wrote the book The Midwest Associate. You are I
Speaker 3: think there's very little argument the foremost Perry Maxwell expert
Speaker 3: in the world. So I wonder how you got interested
Speaker 3: in Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 5: So I got interested with Perry Maxwell when I started
Speaker 5: researching just the history of a golf course. I was
Speaker 5: going to go see and found out that he was
Speaker 5: the architect I was going to go up and see
Speaker 5: Crystal Downs, so I was just curious and I found out, Oh,
Speaker 5: it's Alister Mackenzie and Perry Maxwell. Okay, well I've heard
Speaker 5: that name because i'd heard it associated with southern hills
Speaker 5: and prairie dunes. And thought, well, let me see what
Speaker 5: else he's done, and started researching him a little bit,
Speaker 5: and then got in touch with his family, his daughter
Speaker 5: and his granddaughter specifically, and after talking with them, I
Speaker 5: don't know a Saturday afterdo for two or three hours,
Speaker 5: they sent me a box full of all sorts of stuff, paraphernalia,
Speaker 5: newspaper clippings, his family history type stuff, things from press, Maxwell,
Speaker 5: Perry Son, just a lot of stuff that I was
Speaker 5: started going through. I thought, okay, maybe I can, maybe
Speaker 5: I can do a magazine article about this guy. I
Speaker 5: didn't do a lot of writing back then, but a
Speaker 5: little and started started thinking about, okay, magazine article. And
Speaker 5: then the more and more I researched, more and more
Speaker 5: I found, the more and more I wrote, and I
Speaker 5: was turned into a book project.
Speaker 3: So it just kind of captured you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, his story specifically I mean, after researching it
Speaker 5: a little bit, I was like, well, nobody knows anything
Speaker 5: about this guy really from a from an architectural standpoint,
Speaker 5: because the people I talked to they were either convinced
Speaker 5: that he only did like a handful of course, or
Speaker 5: he was really just Mackenzie's associate and didn't really do
Speaker 5: anything on his own, or just so I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: well that's definitely a story I could tell.
Speaker 3: Well, why don't we talk a little bit about Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell's early years? Where did he come from in the world.
Speaker 6: So he was.
Speaker 5: Born in Princeton, Kentucky, grew up there. After he graduated
Speaker 5: from high school, he started trying to find some other
Speaker 5: place to go because he suffered from consumption or tuberculosis
Speaker 5: or whatever you want to call it. So he started
Speaker 5: looking for places to go. He attended some college in Kentucky,
Speaker 5: some in Florida, and kind of was an itinerant for
Speaker 5: a few years. And then he found a place in Oklahoma, Ardmore.
Speaker 5: Basically settled in Ardmore with his new wife there and
Speaker 5: they bought this massive piece of property. It was an
Speaker 5: old poor farm just on the north edge of Ardmore,
Speaker 5: which is where Dorna kills sits today and he became
Speaker 5: kind of a He was really involved with the community
Speaker 5: in Ardmore. He became a cashier at a bank and
Speaker 5: went through the whole corporate ladder essentially at this bank,
Speaker 5: and became a vice president. He was massively involved with
Speaker 5: like the church. He was in several community organizations. He
Speaker 5: basically did almost everything except it. Become mayor in Ardmore
Speaker 5: at some point. So and then his wife passed away
Speaker 5: and he decided, Okay, I need to do something else
Speaker 5: because he had just retired from the banking industry and
Speaker 5: he needed something to generate revenue. And this was pre depression.
Speaker 5: So based on a recommendation his wife actually in Maine
Speaker 5: to him at one point, was to go into golf
Speaker 5: and try to become a golf course architect. Up to then,
Speaker 5: he had been from an athletic standpoint. He was actually
Speaker 5: a tennis champion in the state of Oklahoma, won several awards,
Speaker 5: was actually ahead of the state Tennis association at one point.
Speaker 5: So his body started to show wear and tear from that,
Speaker 5: and he got older essentially, and all those things that
Speaker 5: come along with old age and middle age took their tolls.
Speaker 5: So he jumped into a new profession after he retired
Speaker 5: and started doing a golf course design and started studying
Speaker 5: people like Charles Blair MacDonald and Donald Ross and going
Speaker 5: around the country and then decided, Okay, I'm gonna build
Speaker 5: a golf course on my own property.
Speaker 3: And that turned out to be Dornic Hills. This was
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell's own property at this point. You know, Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell was It sounds like a fairly wealthy man. And
Speaker 3: he came from wealth as well. He grew up in
Speaker 3: a fairly well healed family, is my understanding.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know if you would
Speaker 5: really consider them extremely wealthy. I mean they were, they were,
Speaker 5: They were well off, but obviously going to Ardmore being
Speaker 5: involved with the banking industry and Ardmore during the oil
Speaker 5: boom in the southern Oklahoma and northern Texas area. Uh,
Speaker 5: he received some benefit from that. He inherited from his
Speaker 5: uncle some sizable sums of money, and you yeah, he
Speaker 5: would be pretty wealthy in today's standard, especially in a
Speaker 5: community like Ardmore, which actually Ardmore was a very wealthy community.
Speaker 5: It was at one point in time, in that oil
Speaker 5: rich time frame, they had more millionaires per capita than
Speaker 5: any other city in the country, and they all made
Speaker 5: a lot of money off of railroads and cotton industry
Speaker 5: in that area.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean it was it was way out
Speaker 3: in what would have been at the time the middle
Speaker 3: of nowhere, but it was a financial center of the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere. Yeah. And so in any case, Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell starts building this golf course on his own land
Speaker 3: what would become Dornick Hills. But at first it was
Speaker 3: a very different looking and different sized golf course than
Speaker 3: it is today. Right, So could you tell me a
Speaker 3: little bit about what this course was at first?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So originally he built four holes that were really
Speaker 5: close to where his house was on the property. Basically,
Speaker 5: he could walk at his back door, tee off on
Speaker 5: the first hole, come back up in the second hole,
Speaker 5: go out to the road on the third hole, and
Speaker 5: come back on the fourth and three of those, the
Speaker 5: first three holes are kind of the layout of what's
Speaker 5: there today for holes ten, eleven, twelve, kind of not
Speaker 5: exactly but close enough that you could say those are
Speaker 5: kind of what he was looking at at the time.
Speaker 5: And there's stories of his family. His daughter Dora told
Speaker 5: me stories of the kids going out and actually picking
Speaker 5: up rocks out of the what would have been fairways
Speaker 5: and picking those up and using them to build walls
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. So started out with that four
Speaker 5: whole course. It was really rough, just laid out.
Speaker 7: Over the property.
Speaker 5: And then he expanded that to basically a nine hole design,
Speaker 5: which is what opened in nineteen fourteen as the official
Speaker 5: Dorni Hills Country Club. And then Maxwell decided, Okay, I
Speaker 5: want to expand this even further, so he expanded it
Speaker 5: and took up part of the property that actually went
Speaker 5: out to the dairy farm that they had out there
Speaker 5: and took part of that property as well. And then
Speaker 5: when he expanded to eighteen holes, that's when he actually
Speaker 5: also incorporated grass greens to do the first grass greens
Speaker 5: in the state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: This was a sand green territory at the moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sand and oil green territory.
Speaker 3: Very hard to do proper greens in this climate and
Speaker 3: on those soils.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And that stretch from when he opened the nine hole
Speaker 5: course to when they built eighteen holes, he had gone
Speaker 5: around to a lot of places around southern United States
Speaker 5: trying to research what kind of grass to use because
Speaker 5: he really wanted to have grass greens if he was
Speaker 5: going to have an eighteen hole course, he wanted to
Speaker 5: be a proper course. And so that's when he went
Speaker 5: out to places in North Carolina and Florida and he
Speaker 5: met the likes of Donald Ross at that point in time,
Speaker 5: and then came back and used this bent grass that
Speaker 5: was really popular at that point in time to seed
Speaker 5: and grow on warmer climate courses.
Speaker 3: Now he was also, in addition to doing kind of
Speaker 3: agronomic research, he was also doing some architectural research. He
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier that he was influenced by Charles Blair McDonald.
Speaker 3: My understanding is that Dornic Hills, the way that it
Speaker 3: developed sort of reflected what Perry Maxwell was learning along
Speaker 3: the way. And so could you talk about some of
Speaker 3: the trips that he took, what he saw and then
Speaker 3: how he implemented those ideas on his own land, on
Speaker 3: his own course.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the first thing he did was he went out
Speaker 5: when he decided he was going to do this occupation.
Speaker 6: He decided to go see.
Speaker 5: Charles Blair McDonald because he was influenced by the famous
Speaker 5: Scripters article about National Golf Links and wanted to go
Speaker 5: see the father of American golf course architecture, and so
Speaker 5: he went out met McDonald, studied a little bit with
Speaker 5: him and came back with some mind with the mindset
Speaker 5: of Okay, this is how you build a golf course,
Speaker 5: because that's the on person he talked to. So he
Speaker 5: started laying out these original nine holes at Dornick.
Speaker 6: Hills, and some of them involved some of.
Speaker 5: The template concepts that McDonald used at national golf leagues.
Speaker 5: A little bit of like eleven hole on the tenth,
Speaker 5: the knowle hole concept is like the fourteenth, a little
Speaker 5: bit seventeenth was probably a little bit of something like that.
Speaker 5: So he incorporated some of these concepts in his golf
Speaker 5: course on the original nine holes. And then when he
Speaker 5: went wanted to expand to eighteen, He's like he needed
Speaker 5: to go tour some other stuff, So he started touring
Speaker 5: the south met donald ross and I think maybe not
Speaker 5: so much with Dornick Hills, although I think he can
Speaker 5: see it because I think if you think about the
Speaker 5: property at Dornic Hills, there's probably not a lot of
Speaker 5: different options of how he could have routed the place.
Speaker 5: But he did use like the higher elevations to establish
Speaker 5: and teas goes through play through the valleys down to
Speaker 5: the lower elevations and back up, which is a similar
Speaker 5: concept that what I've seen a lot of ross courses
Speaker 5: that I've I've played.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the high and dry idea, right, the teas
Speaker 3: need to be high, the greens need to be high.
Speaker 3: You can play through the valleys because that's not as
Speaker 3: important to drain those areas. And so that's it's low
Speaker 3: cost basically a low cost way to build and then
Speaker 3: maintain a golf course.
Speaker 5: Right, And that is one of the big things that
Speaker 5: Maxwell is about low cost and building a golf course.
Speaker 6: I mean, he was very.
Speaker 5: Proud of the fact that he could go out and
Speaker 5: build a golf course probably cheap cheaper than anybody else
Speaker 5: that he was competing against. Wayne would go out and
Speaker 5: bid on places if he ever had competition. There were
Speaker 5: a few places like hard Scrabble and uh or not
Speaker 5: Ard Scrabble, Hillcrest and Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He had a little
Speaker 5: bit of competition there and that was how he won
Speaker 5: the bid.
Speaker 6: He was the cheapest, cheapest.
Speaker 5: Bid and up building a really nice golf course. So
Speaker 5: and then after after doing Dorna Kills and getting that
Speaker 5: really going and he did a tour of Scotland in
Speaker 5: England not so much. I think he could visited a
Speaker 5: few places in England, but it was mostly to go
Speaker 5: to Scotland, uh and see Saint Andrew's and and that's
Speaker 5: where he met Mackenzie and then so I think he
Speaker 5: brought him some some concepts from Scotland as well. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think he's got some holes that you would argue
Speaker 5: are very very inspired by the winds of Kansas and
Speaker 5: Oklahoma and trying to incorporate that into his design a
Speaker 5: little bit. Uh, even even the actual layout of the course.
Speaker 5: The original design a place like Vinker Memorial and at
Speaker 5: Iowa State there was a couple of holes that were
Speaker 5: built to mimic the first and eighteenth at Saint Andrew's.
Speaker 5: So so he took those lessons the Double Green at
Speaker 5: Old Town there, so.
Speaker 3: That houses seventeen and eight I believe at all Old
Speaker 3: Town spectacular. Now getting back to Dornic Hills real quick
Speaker 3: quick before we move on. By the time he finished
Speaker 3: that course, what do you think was distinctive about it?
Speaker 3: What were some of the features that would stand out
Speaker 3: to people if they played it and were remembering it. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's something that I saw at Dornic Hills. That's
Speaker 3: pretty unique.
Speaker 6: Well, I think number one.
Speaker 5: Be the cliff hole. The cliff hole the sixteenth of
Speaker 5: part five. It probably was the longest hole in the
Speaker 5: state at the time. And then you have to conquer
Speaker 5: this cliff face that goes forty feet up in the air,
Speaker 5: and if you mean it's it was nothing that was
Speaker 5: seen up until that time, and definitely in Oklahoma and
Speaker 5: in most of that part of the country. I'm sure
Speaker 5: nobody else saw anything like that. Maybe somebody up in
Speaker 5: the northeast where they have a lot more rocky terrain,
Speaker 5: and the grass greens obviously were new.
Speaker 6: They were a big.
Speaker 5: Change in the mindset of how to build a golf
Speaker 5: course in that time frame in Oklahoma, and then the
Speaker 5: course was very difficult. It's funny because Maxwell joked that
Speaker 5: he had the course record for a time being well,
Speaker 5: he was the first guy played at once it opened,
Speaker 5: so I didn't speak to how good of a golfer
Speaker 5: he was. He was a decent golfer, but like Charlie,
Speaker 5: Coe would come down and actually struggle to break par
Speaker 5: at Dornic Hills. And he was a well known amateur
Speaker 5: champion around the country. It would probably stay known as
Speaker 5: the toughest golf course in the state until Maxwell probably
Speaker 5: built Southern Hills, and then that definitely eclipsed it.
Speaker 3: All right, So Perry Maxwell up until I guess when
Speaker 3: you sort of started doing your research, and maybe when
Speaker 3: Old Town was restored. I'm not exactly sure when Perry
Speaker 3: Maxwell's reputation started to ascend again. I mean, Prairie Dunes
Speaker 3: has been well known as a great golf course for
Speaker 3: a while, but it wasn't necessarily considered among the very
Speaker 3: top echelon of American golf courses until maybe the past
Speaker 3: couple of decades. For a long time, people just knew
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell as Alistair McKenzie's Midwest associate. And you mentioned
Speaker 3: that Maxwell encountered mackenzie on one of his tours of Scotland.
Speaker 3: How did that relationship develop from there? How did Maxwell
Speaker 3: ultimately become his associate in that area.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so when they were when he was in Scotland,
Speaker 5: they made the decision to Mackenzie was ready to move
Speaker 5: to America and start working here, and he knew he
Speaker 5: needed at least one person to be a partner when
Speaker 5: he came over here, because he didn't know anything about
Speaker 5: America really other than why he had read Impress clippings
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. So he happened to be introduced
Speaker 5: to this guy from Oklahoma wherever that was for Alistair mackenzie.
Speaker 5: He probably had no clue, but Maxwell had one thing
Speaker 5: that he didn't. He had contacts in contacts with money.
Speaker 5: So McKenzie and him, while he was in Scotland, I think,
Speaker 5: formed this partnership so that when he would come over,
Speaker 5: Maxwell be able to introduce him. So Maxwell had a
Speaker 5: contract in Philadelphia at the Melrose Country Club and immediately
Speaker 5: got McKenzie onto the contract. It was like McKenzie's entry
Speaker 5: into the country. It was celebrated and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: And then they built their partnership and they got several
Speaker 5: courses pretty quickly across the country in Oklahoma City, the
Speaker 5: Nicol Hills Course which is now Oklahoma City Golfing country Club,
Speaker 5: Crystal Downs.
Speaker 6: University of Michigan.
Speaker 5: These things kind of start steamrolling, and they got a
Speaker 5: lot of courses right away in the under contract. But
Speaker 5: once he got over here, he and Maxwell actually formed
Speaker 5: a really nice friendship. They constantly wrote letters to each other.
Speaker 5: When I was talking with his family, his daughter remembered
Speaker 5: a couple of times when McKenzie actually came to Ardmore
Speaker 5: and actually had dinner with him at the table. And
Speaker 5: they went on tour golf courses around the state of
Speaker 5: Oklahoma with Parry and Press went with them, I think
Speaker 5: from what people have said so. And then mcken's Maxwell
Speaker 5: actually went out to California when McKenzie was working on
Speaker 5: Cypress Point. It's the only time Maxwell ever went to California.
Speaker 5: He went once, went out there to see his friend
Speaker 5: and golf course he was working on out there in Monterrey,
Speaker 5: and and.
Speaker 3: He saw Cypress Point pretty good one to knock off
Speaker 3: when you when you go out to California.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the one thing he wanted to go out
Speaker 5: there and see. And there was some argument that maybe
Speaker 5: he did some work out there with him. I don't know,
Speaker 5: maybe he helped build a bunker or something. But yeah,
Speaker 5: so they were friends, and I think it was out
Speaker 5: of that friendship that he also continued to do the
Speaker 5: work at Ohio State because that was a contract that
Speaker 5: they also took on, and I think he felt a
Speaker 5: sense of obligation to do that work. And then I
Speaker 5: think that friendship and that partnership led to him getting
Speaker 5: on and Augusta eventually just because he was associated with Mackenzie,
Speaker 5: that obviously opened the door for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And for those who don't know, Perry, Maxwell
Speaker 3: did a substantial amount of work at Augusta National in
Speaker 3: the late thirties and early forties about that time frame.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thirty seven, thirty eight and a little bit thirty
Speaker 5: nine I think are the dates the most people agree
Speaker 5: on he did work on. I think most people agree
Speaker 5: he did work on a double digit number of holes.
Speaker 5: I mean it could be argued at where between eleven
Speaker 5: to fourteen holes. Of course, maybe he might have touched
Speaker 5: all of them by just doing some little work here
Speaker 5: and there, but his noticeable work and it's probably eleven
Speaker 5: or twelve of the holes.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So okay, getting back to the partnership with Mackenzie, what
Speaker 3: kind of influence I know it might be hard to
Speaker 3: hell this necessarily, but what kind of influence do you
Speaker 3: think Mackenzie had on Maxwell? What is visible from Mackenzie's
Speaker 3: style that Maxwell started to incorporate.
Speaker 5: So I think the immediate thing is some artistry with
Speaker 5: the bunkering most people think of when they think of
Speaker 5: Maxwell bunkers. They actually think of the wrong thing. They
Speaker 5: think of those big moonscape type things that used to
Speaker 5: be like Southern Hills and other places like that.
Speaker 6: Those weren't even Maxwell bunks.
Speaker 3: Southern Hills had those saucers with the really crisp badges.
Speaker 3: It was sort of augustified a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3: It was like the like the modern Augusta there for
Speaker 3: a while with the bunkers. But that's that's not what
Speaker 3: they were originally, for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of people think of that as a
Speaker 5: Maxwell bunker. That's not His bunkers were a lot more rugged,
Speaker 5: like he just basically took a plow and cut into
Speaker 5: the ground and set up made the bunker that way
Speaker 5: and dug it out, and then he gave it some
Speaker 5: irregular shaping. I think he did give him a little
Speaker 5: bit more of a mindset of gaining away from this
Speaker 5: this template driven style that he had studied under MacDonald
Speaker 5: and trying to just fit to fit the landscape and
Speaker 5: have a little bit more creativity. And how he created
Speaker 5: the golf course. A good example is I think of
Speaker 5: like the seventh hole at Old.
Speaker 3: Town Uphill Part four.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 5: Just don't know that and it goes into the side
Speaker 5: of the hill, so whereas I think Maxwell pre mackenzie
Speaker 5: would try to go directly into the hill and go
Speaker 5: up it. So I think that's when he started using
Speaker 5: those side hill lies a lot more, which is really
Speaker 5: proven at Southern Hills.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and at Old Town the tilts to some
Speaker 3: of those fairways on the edges of the property for sure, you.
Speaker 5: Know, Yeah, I think that that was probably the other
Speaker 5: big thing is how he routed his courses to to
Speaker 5: kind of go alongside the slopes of the terrain as
Speaker 5: opposed to directly into them.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's something that always delights me about
Speaker 3: Perry Maxwell's career and the roster of courses that he
Speaker 3: worked on is that you have everything from Augusta National
Speaker 3: and from clubs like Southern Hills and Old Town to
Speaker 3: just really small, humble, local courses. I'm not sure that
Speaker 3: any architect pastor president has had such a diversity of
Speaker 3: classes of courses that they've worked on. I mean, maybe
Speaker 3: there's a few, But could you talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about the range of projects that Maxwell took on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean he.
Speaker 5: Was he was very prolific in the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 5: thirties in Oklahoma. He would go to little towns like
Speaker 5: pahuscab Ponca City. You could probably get a golf course
Speaker 5: with that starts with every letter of the alphabet. Based
Speaker 5: on the talents he went to in Oklahoma, I mean,
Speaker 5: there's just an amazing number of golf courses and he
Speaker 5: would go out and in a day, we're oute nine
Speaker 5: holes and he would either depending on the availability of
Speaker 5: his crew, he would either have them build the course,
Speaker 5: like after he got the contract or he would hire
Speaker 5: I mean, leave the plans with them and have them
Speaker 5: hire somebody to build it and he would come back
Speaker 5: and consult. Because everything was in driving distance for him.
Speaker 5: So it was like he would take on like one
Speaker 5: or two big projects every year. And I think he
Speaker 5: recognized that these small town clubs don't have to be
Speaker 5: Augusta Nationals. They can just be Okay, I want like
Speaker 5: pretty decent greens, challenging layout. He didn't put a lot
Speaker 5: of bunkers in these places, so it was really simple
Speaker 5: and efficient and people enjoyed the golf and he was
Speaker 5: he was the father of golf in Oklahoma. I mean
Speaker 5: essentially for all intentsive purposes and if they got a
Speaker 5: Periam Maxwell course in Blackwell, Oklahoma. Well, hey, there they
Speaker 5: were on the same field playing field is somebody in
Speaker 5: Oklahoma City or Tulsa it was also playing a Maxwell course.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't like they were The people in the
Speaker 5: small towns felt like they were connected to something that
Speaker 5: was It was pretty.
Speaker 3: Cool right now, just a piece together the timeline here,
Speaker 3: the Mackenzie Maxwell commissions. There were basically five big ones
Speaker 3: you mentioned them earlier. The last one was Ohio State,
Speaker 3: which I believe Maxwell finished after Mackenzie died in nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty four. But a couple of factors got in the
Speaker 3: way of Mackenzie and Maxwell doing more courses. One was
Speaker 3: obviously the depression from nineteen twenty nine forward there just
Speaker 3: weren't as many golf course projects out there. And then
Speaker 3: in addition to that, Mackenzie died in nineteen thirty four
Speaker 3: and no more collaboration at that point, and so Maxwell
Speaker 3: was then onto another phase of his career. But it
Speaker 3: actually turned out to be a kind of high water
Speaker 3: mark for Perry. Maxwell built many of his most famous
Speaker 3: courses in the mid and late nineteen thirties in a
Speaker 3: time when most golf architects were just not working basically
Speaker 3: at all, or desperately trying to find work here and
Speaker 3: there in random places. Maxwell was able to kind of thrive.
Speaker 3: What do you think allowed him to be so successful
Speaker 3: during the depression.
Speaker 5: Well, I think one thing is that a lot of
Speaker 5: his clients were in the petroleum industry and it was
Speaker 5: kind of insulated from the whole depression. I mean, everybody
Speaker 5: still needed oil, so the fill whoever else, they were
Speaker 5: still making money hand over fists.
Speaker 3: At the time, Tulsa, Oklahoma still kind of ride and hide.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so they were a little insulated from the whole
Speaker 5: depression ever thing. So so I think that's why he
Speaker 5: got commissions like for Southern Hills. I mean, he knew
Speaker 5: the Phillips family, so they made sure he was the
Speaker 5: guy that did the course.
Speaker 6: So that was some of it.
Speaker 5: The other thing is is, like I said before, he
Speaker 5: was very much budget conscious about building golf courses, and
Speaker 5: I think when he got to the point Host Mackenzie,
Speaker 5: I think that was when he really reached his highest
Speaker 5: points as an architect from a skill knowledge and just
Speaker 5: running running across ideal sites. I mean something like prairie dunes.
Speaker 5: I mean, you couldn't dream of a better place to
Speaker 5: build a golf course. Yeah, it's in Hutchinson, Kansas, and
Speaker 5: the owner was the Carry family, which was rich off
Speaker 5: of salt mine. So I think it was just getting
Speaker 5: the right owners the right sites, being at the peak
Speaker 5: of his power, so to speak. And he got a
Speaker 5: lot of those high profile jobs at that time because
Speaker 5: of that. But he was still very productive with the
Speaker 5: small town projects too, because if people were making money
Speaker 5: in Tulsa, well, they were making money in Muskogee, and
Speaker 5: they were making money in Oak City. So it was
Speaker 5: just there was a lot of places still were kind
Speaker 5: of the periphery of that industry that were still making
Speaker 5: money too.
Speaker 3: So then another big interruption in golf course construction happens
Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties. With World War Two. Things stopped
Speaker 3: for a while, but then after the war, Perry Maxwell
Speaker 3: is still alive at this point and still kicking and
Speaker 3: still taking on projects with his son Press more and
Speaker 3: more involved. And so could you just give me a
Speaker 3: quick thumbnail sketch of the latest part of Perry Maxwell's career.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so after World War Two, his son came back
Speaker 5: from Serbia the war, wanted to be part of the
Speaker 5: family business and they started taking on contracts and they
Speaker 5: started in the local area but kind of ran out
Speaker 5: because of places to go, because the only connections that
Speaker 5: seemed to be wanting to build golf courses right after
Speaker 5: World War Two were actually like military bases. So they
Speaker 5: did a series of those in Oklahoma and Texas and
Speaker 5: some that was through contacts that Press had. Maxwell then
Speaker 5: also started going out through the southeast. He did some renovations,
Speaker 5: like in Florida, and they built a course in Point Clear, Alabama,
Speaker 5: and down by Mobile there was a resort course essentially
Speaker 5: Lakewood Country Club. And then they did build some other
Speaker 5: courses in the Oklahoma area and and Enid they built
Speaker 5: this place called Oakwood Country Club, which was really nice,
Speaker 5: and so they did a few those, and then they
Speaker 5: also went down to the Dallas metro area and did
Speaker 5: some courses down there, and well, it was a place
Speaker 5: called oak Cliff which hosted the Dallas Open for several
Speaker 5: years on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: Now known as the Golf Club of Dallas, right, Yes, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think it's actually owned by a church down there now,
Speaker 5: but it was a really it was at the time.
Speaker 5: It was a really nice golf course. They built another
Speaker 5: place there that they didn't finish before Maxwell passed away.
Speaker 5: That press kind of finished the design the construction of
Speaker 5: at River Hills. It's no longer existing. And they did
Speaker 5: a place in Oklahoma City called Lake Hefner, which is
Speaker 5: a totally different golf course now, So, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: They did a lot of golf courses together, I mean
Speaker 5: probably fifteen to twenty maybe Omaha Country Cloud. They did
Speaker 5: some renovations there, one of the last places he worked.
Speaker 5: So yeah, they were very productive. And then his son
Speaker 5: kind of took that and springboarded into his own career
Speaker 5: which father passed away.
Speaker 3: Right, And what year did Perry Maxwell die?
Speaker 6: Fifty two?
Speaker 3: Fifty two?
Speaker 2: Right, Colton, You're a man that has seen a lot
Speaker 2: of Perry Maxwell courses, have has studied a lot of
Speaker 2: Maxwell's architecture. Why should the general public care about Perry Maxwell?
Speaker 7: If you want to do a Mount Rushmore of Golden
Speaker 7: Age golf architects, if you have to narrow it down before,
Speaker 7: in my opinion, you got to go McDonald for August reasons.
Speaker 7: Rainer's with McDonald, Let's call that Rayner, Banks, McDonald, Tilling
Speaker 7: has Ross and then.
Speaker 8: Mackenzie, Right, and so you have these four Mans, these
Speaker 8: four giants of the game, and then Max Well was
Speaker 8: about fifteen years behind them, So he was an early
Speaker 8: contemporary to the Golden Age.
Speaker 7: And I think he largely is responsible for the transition
Speaker 7: from almost overly manufactured look to almost like flex the
Speaker 7: muscle and brawn of American ingenuity of the Dush Revolution,
Speaker 7: to something that's more subtle and more closer to home
Speaker 7: to the game of golf. And his clients ranged from
Speaker 7: as wealthy as you could imagine to as poor as
Speaker 7: you could imagine. So hit that influence in that style
Speaker 7: and that approach, I think is I think it's an
Speaker 7: important piece of golf's history.
Speaker 4: Tell us about your Maxwell journey.
Speaker 2: You're from Oklahoma, and I believe you embarked on a
Speaker 2: mission to play every pair of Maxwell course or walk.
Speaker 7: Yeah, sometimes the super exclusive place is asking for around
Speaker 7: us inappropriate for someone of my access. But you know,
Speaker 7: I just kind of was looking at it one day
Speaker 7: on Google Earth and I started just signing mapping it out.
Speaker 7: There's half his body of work is here in Oklahoma
Speaker 7: and the other half is just kind of scattered throughout
Speaker 7: the Midwest. And I started trying to schedule, like, how
Speaker 7: could I plan this there, how could I get there?
Speaker 7: And then I started to realizing, like each course is
Speaker 7: like three hour drives away from each other. Like what
Speaker 7: if I just made a giant loop and took two weeks.
Speaker 2: What what were some of the most memorable experiences. You know, walks,
Speaker 2: see you know, see them, play them, whatever, But what
Speaker 2: were some of the most memorable experiences from that from
Speaker 2: that journey.
Speaker 9: You know, this is going to sound so cheesy, but
Speaker 9: it really is just meeting the people going to Arkansas
Speaker 9: Arkansas City Country Club or Arkansas City Country Club and
Speaker 9: the club president's getting off of.
Speaker 7: A triplex to come shake your hand. You know, they're
Speaker 7: running eighteen holle golf course like a less than two
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars budget. But I guess, like the best
Speaker 7: memory I guess is Birdie in number two at Prairie Dan's.
Speaker 7: There's a tough pin and I stuck it like with
Speaker 7: him three feet and that's I think one of the
Speaker 7: best par three's probably in the world. That playing Crystal
Speaker 7: Downs with Mike derives was really cool. He's awesome. And yeah,
Speaker 7: probably that Birdie and number two of them playing Crystal
Speaker 7: Downs with Mike.
Speaker 2: He's a good man, were there any courses that you know,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it be say sand Greens or you know,
Speaker 2: just like kind of obscure experiences that you remember most,
Speaker 2: Like I, you know, for example, I think about around
Speaker 2: at north Woods all the time, the Mackenzie and the Redwoods.
Speaker 2: That isn't at all the best Mackenzie. It's hard to
Speaker 2: even call the Mackenzie today, but it's just the setting
Speaker 2: and the place really resonated with me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's a lot of them. Neoshow is a municipal
Speaker 7: now it was a country club. Neosia Country Club is
Speaker 7: one of the more dramatic pieces of topography he ever
Speaker 7: routed on out in Missouri. And then Bristow Country Club
Speaker 7: between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Those are kind of like
Speaker 7: what you would call a hidden gym, honestly, like most
Speaker 7: of his body of work is hidden gyms. And then
Speaker 7: he has like kind of the mid level clubs that
Speaker 7: are really nice too, Like to Peaka Country Club is
Speaker 7: really cool and he built in thirty seven, right after
Speaker 7: he did Southern Hills and Prairie Dunes. You know, that's
Speaker 7: one of those places where you just want to lay
Speaker 7: down a blanket and have a picnic.
Speaker 6: He really did.
Speaker 7: He really did nail the Parkland look, which I think
Speaker 7: is something that's being attacked a little bit. But I
Speaker 7: think it's also important that American golf looks like American golf.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that I find the
Speaker 2: most pleasing about his designs is just how they kind
Speaker 2: of embody where they are. It's not trying to bring
Speaker 2: a different look to an area. It's the design fits
Speaker 2: in with the look of the area. If that makes
Speaker 2: he's not imposing his will.
Speaker 7: Well, he was an economist, right, I mean, he was
Speaker 7: a banker, so he was all about return on investment,
Speaker 7: and so he designed in an economic way that you know,
Speaker 7: he didn't move a whole lot of dirt. He also
Speaker 7: happened to come back to the clubhouse as much as possible,
Speaker 7: which pre bev cart I don't know if that was
Speaker 7: an economic play there to try to get people to
Speaker 7: like come back to the club more, but he did it.
Speaker 7: Like almost every routing comes back to the clubhouse multiple
Speaker 7: multiple times.
Speaker 2: I noticed that, like a lot of his courses kind
Speaker 2: of situate on like a high hill and then he
Speaker 2: plays off the hill and back up to the hill
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 4: Is that something you noticed when you saw all the courses.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's probably not so hills. It works
Speaker 7: because it's such a high hill and the only way
Speaker 7: you can really get off of it is off the
Speaker 7: first tee. But you know, when you got members with egos,
Speaker 7: when they're going to build a clubhouse, they want to
Speaker 7: put it on the high point. That's just what's going
Speaker 7: to happen. So pretty much that's what a lot of
Speaker 7: his courses happ Yeah, isn't a bad thing. It's not
Speaker 7: a bad thing. It does get repetitive, though.
Speaker 4: What were some other common themes that you found with
Speaker 4: is designed, you.
Speaker 7: Know, bunker design wise. Earlier in his career he is
Speaker 7: more of a grass faced guy, and then as he
Speaker 7: kind of got more involved with Mackenzie, he started to
Speaker 7: get a little bit more wild and creative. But then
Speaker 7: kind of post World War Two he'd started to do
Speaker 7: more of just like closer to what you like, just
Speaker 7: the clean oval bunker that you kind of see at
Speaker 7: Augusta National today.
Speaker 2: With Augusta National, he's obviously heavily involved with the work
Speaker 2: that was done after shortly after for it opened, obviously
Speaker 2: like the tenth hole, moving that green up to the ridge,
Speaker 2: from the punch bowl where Mackenzie had it. Next to
Speaker 2: that bunker was a Maxwell change, And you know, I
Speaker 2: think like that that's a that's like a perfect example
Speaker 2: of a of a very Maxwell hole where you tee
Speaker 2: off from a ridge, play down into a valley, and
Speaker 2: play back up to a ridge.
Speaker 7: Exactly. That's a good point.
Speaker 2: With Maxwell in playing all and seeing all these courses
Speaker 2: where there you know, I don't want to use the
Speaker 2: word template hole, because this is in no way the
Speaker 2: way Rainer McDonald used the template holes. But were there
Speaker 2: common hole designs like you see with other architects.
Speaker 7: I think I think you just kind of put the
Speaker 7: mail on the head as far as the fall to
Speaker 7: a climb, which my favorite golfles do that. Anyways, you
Speaker 7: just kind of see it all and it just kind
Speaker 7: of falls, and then you know, and then it kind
Speaker 7: of rises back and you almost you almost end up
Speaker 7: where you started elevation wise. He did that a lot
Speaker 7: and a lot of times. He would bring up bring
Speaker 7: a whole back home early on, like the fourth hole
Speaker 7: or the third hole, for almost like playoff reasons. He
Speaker 7: was heavily influenced by the old course. He was heavily
Speaker 7: influenced by National Golf Links, heavily influenced by McKenzie. But
Speaker 7: it's you know, it's hard to categorize types of holes
Speaker 7: he designed.
Speaker 2: If you were going to put together a list of
Speaker 2: like must see Maxwell courses, what would be on that.
Speaker 7: Well, the obvious ones right, Southern Hills, Prairie Dunes, Old
Speaker 7: Town Club for sure. You know, I'm partial to Peak
Speaker 7: a country club. I think that's a special place. And
Speaker 7: then there's just there's other cool places like McPherson country
Speaker 7: Club just.
Speaker 4: North of Id's really cool spot.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it is, it really is. And you know, oh,
Speaker 7: what's the place out there by Chicago.
Speaker 4: Rochelle Rochelle Fa. Yeah, yeah, exactly, You've been there, right,
Speaker 4: I've been there.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And those greens are original.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seemed like to me that there was like
Speaker 2: three or four that were really stand out greens. The
Speaker 2: part five, the seventh green was really one that I
Speaker 2: kind of stared at for a while.
Speaker 7: Things all jacked up now, but the greens are still there.
Speaker 7: So some of them you're playing from like a different
Speaker 7: angle and it's a different hole, But that's a place
Speaker 7: that I think could be. I don't know, we need
Speaker 7: to get all over that or something.
Speaker 2: I saw that when I was there, I saw that
Speaker 2: they had like a renovation plan hung up, And that may.
Speaker 7: Be the case. We may have been too late to
Speaker 7: the game.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I don't know if they got the funding though,
Speaker 2: you know, I think there was a they were trying
Speaker 2: to get it. So maybe it's I doubt it's too late.
Speaker 2: I'm close enough. I should just drive over there. But
Speaker 2: it's so so that's where you know. And then you
Speaker 2: know from a public standpoint, you know, most of these
Speaker 2: are private clubs. Is there any public Maxwell courses that
Speaker 2: are or even private ones that are easy to see?
Speaker 7: Let me pull up, Let me pull up some let
Speaker 7: me pull up the pull up the spreadsheet. Oh yeah.
Speaker 7: The the Golf Club of Dallas, which used to be
Speaker 7: the Oak Cliff Country Club, is a public course. It
Speaker 7: was Maxwell's very last design. That's really cool in South Dallas.
Speaker 2: What what's cool about it? What's the what's the unique
Speaker 2: stuff about about that course?
Speaker 7: It's it needs some help, it needs some treework, it
Speaker 7: needs some bunker work. It probably needs to renovate their greens.
Speaker 7: But it's one of those places that again it just
Speaker 7: has that parkland look and it used to be where
Speaker 7: the Texas Open was held. So it's like arguably has
Speaker 7: some of the best history of any Maxwell course you
Speaker 7: ever worked on. So that's that's probably where most of
Speaker 7: your listeners can get access to a public Maxwell is
Speaker 7: the golf of a Dallas.
Speaker 4: And then there's Reynolds Park in Winston Salem, which isn't Yeah,
Speaker 4: isn't one Maxwell still, but it's got a lot of
Speaker 4: Maxwell left and you see some of the the real
Speaker 4: like I think the routing genius out there where you
Speaker 4: just go twists and turns on a on a pretty
Speaker 4: severe piece of land.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Renolds Park, I can't believe I've waited until just
Speaker 7: now to bring it up. That place is awfully special.
Speaker 7: Could be one of the best public courses in the country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, without a doubt.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, the thing that's nice there
Speaker 2: is that all they have to do is really look
Speaker 2: down the street at Old Town as to what it
Speaker 2: could be. You know, that's pretty like it's you know,
Speaker 2: some of the holes out at Reynolds Park could be
Speaker 2: more spectacular than some of the best holes at at
Speaker 2: Old Town Club.
Speaker 7: You can make a really strong argument that the that
Speaker 7: the land is better.
Speaker 4: Than old Town and the old Town's got pretty great land.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: It's probably my favorite Maxwell.
Speaker 2: As I think, like in terms of which course is
Speaker 2: most symbolic of Maxwell that I've played, I think that
Speaker 2: Reynolds part are not old Town Club checks the box,
Speaker 2: it's just got it's the most fully realized to me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think it's
Speaker 7: most fully realized is because it's not fully Maxwell either.
Speaker 7: Probably the best golf architect ever in my opinion, Bill
Speaker 7: Krer came in there and added like fourteen more bunkers,
Speaker 7: you know, but it works.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that you'll commonly hear
Speaker 2: about Perry Maxwell and when people discuss Perry Maxwell architecture
Speaker 2: is the idea of the Maxwell role Maxwell rolls in
Speaker 2: greens Can you explain that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've never really fully agreed with that term. Where
Speaker 7: I see where I see the Maxwell roles are in
Speaker 7: a fair ways and as landing zones. He would he
Speaker 7: would put the you know, buried elephants out there, but
Speaker 7: the Maxwell I call the more Maxwell pimples where they're
Speaker 7: like these like just sucked up little you know. He
Speaker 7: didn't do many plateaus. He did mostly the pins were
Speaker 7: in the lows, right, So I guess you could call
Speaker 7: them the rules, but I think they're more like, you know,
Speaker 7: they're more their own. It'sult their own little amp hill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Dunlop White, the uh golf chair at Old Town Club
Speaker 2: call them muffins, which I like the top tops of muffins. Like,
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to describe them. What
Speaker 2: what impact does that have on putting and greens compared
Speaker 2: to tears.
Speaker 7: Well, again, Maxwell being the practical designer, he was a
Speaker 7: lot of the reason why he designed greens like.
Speaker 2: That, so they drained better and what is it because
Speaker 2: the water would kind of divert in a bunch of
Speaker 2: different ways off of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. And the last thing you want on your
Speaker 7: greens whenever it's one hundred degrees out is sitting water
Speaker 7: because that will literally cook the green. So it's important
Speaker 7: that he didn't have any bird baths being created on
Speaker 7: his greens. So that's why they all kind of roll
Speaker 7: off in multiple directions, which I know the punch bowl
Speaker 7: is like super popular now, like Maxwell was like the
Speaker 7: opposite of the punch bowl.
Speaker 2: I mean, he designed in some places that are the
Speaker 2: best for probably punch bowls also with the with the
Speaker 2: soils and everything, like, you know, punch bowls worked really
Speaker 2: well when you're on sand.
Speaker 7: No doubt he didn't get very many sandy sites, although
Speaker 7: he does in East Texas at Mount Pleasant country Club,
Speaker 7: really cool golf course where it's like the prime example
Speaker 7: of nine holes from the Golden Age and nine holes
Speaker 7: from the Middle Age. But it's like white sugar sand
Speaker 7: all around. And that place could be Pinehurst number two
Speaker 7: if they not actually, but they could. They could Pinehurst
Speaker 7: it up and make it really special out there if
Speaker 7: they have the will to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen like old Foe of Texarkana Country Club,
Speaker 2: which is from Moreau out there, and it's got that
Speaker 2: same kind of ascetic right, And that's in East Texas,
Speaker 2: West Arkansas.
Speaker 7: Right right, special part of the country.
Speaker 4: With uh with Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 2: You know, I think obviously this is a big year
Speaker 2: in your book's coming out around the PGA Championship. What
Speaker 2: can you tell us about Southern Hills and the types
Speaker 2: of Maxwell things that we should look that are easily
Speaker 2: identifiable at Southern Hills for people that are gonna be
Speaker 2: watching on TV or going on the ground.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, it's where I grew up working maintenance and
Speaker 7: I caddied out there for a little bit. I actually
Speaker 7: caddied out there for Frank Lackwier and the Senior PGA
Speaker 7: last year or this year.
Speaker 2: No way, that's got to be a story on his
Speaker 2: on his self the blade.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he was awesome. I love I loved it. I
Speaker 7: loved his intensity. But one thing I guess is look
Speaker 7: for a really exciting finish. Seventeen and eighteen are the
Speaker 7: perfect finish par fours back to back. One's a short,
Speaker 7: tricky one, one's along just brute, and I think you're
Speaker 7: going to see some just a really exciting finish. So
Speaker 7: seventeen and eighteen also check out the fairway contours and
Speaker 7: thirteen Fairway. You know, ten is ten is probably my
Speaker 7: favorite hole now out there. So Gil Hands and his
Speaker 7: team did an unbelievable job out there. I'm really proud
Speaker 7: of how it turned out. And some of my friends
Speaker 7: that get to play out there more often than not
Speaker 7: are they're thrilled with the outcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that stretch of ten to eleven, twelve, thirteen is
Speaker 2: a really neat stretch of holes with like a lot
Speaker 2: of variety. Obviously, between the way it kind of shifts along.
Speaker 2: It's playing in this river valley, and twelve twelve as
Speaker 2: a whole that I felt like most embodied like Augustin
Speaker 2: nastional of all the whole.
Speaker 7: You said it already, ten, eleven, twelve thirteen that you know,
Speaker 7: those holes kind of have the similarities to Augusta.
Speaker 4: Huh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, like it's just that it's the dramatics of
Speaker 2: that river valley, you know. I think like it just
Speaker 2: produced such good movement and the way twelve banks, it's
Speaker 2: like a long part four that kind of is like
Speaker 2: it feels like a sister to thirteen in Augusta, no doubt.
Speaker 7: No doubt, And then thirteen feels like the risk reward
Speaker 7: nature of it feels like thirteen in a way.
Speaker 2: So closing thoughts on Maxwell, you've got a book coming out.
Speaker 2: What would you say are the most important things that
Speaker 2: somebody should take away from Perry Maxwell's golf architecture.
Speaker 7: Just have fun, meet the members, meet the people who
Speaker 7: play out there all the time, and try to walk
Speaker 7: if you can. It's not the middle of the summer,
Speaker 7: and don't overthink it.
Speaker 3: Well, so why don't we step back here and try
Speaker 3: to take an overall view of Perry Maxwell's design philosophy,
Speaker 3: some takeaways from how he built courses. What would you
Speaker 3: say are the main components of the way he approached design?
Speaker 5: Well, I think that the number one was just his
Speaker 5: idea of economy on the construction, just lower costs trying
Speaker 5: to do He did almost everything through manpower or animal power.
Speaker 5: I don't think he used hardly any powered equipment, which
Speaker 5: was probably normal for the time frame. I mean, and
Speaker 5: maybe up until World War Two that was pretty normal. Anyway,
Speaker 5: I think after World War Two maybe they used a
Speaker 5: little bit.
Speaker 6: More of a bit.
Speaker 5: He had his own construction crew that he used, had
Speaker 5: an in house engineer, his brother in law, a Dean Woods,
Speaker 5: that knew.
Speaker 6: How to do build things.
Speaker 5: So Perry would go out and figure out the easiest
Speaker 5: routing to build, and with his brother in law toon
Speaker 5: and no, I can do that or I can't do that,
Speaker 5: and then then they would build it with their own people.
Speaker 5: And then I think the other thing is just some
Speaker 5: of the practices as far.
Speaker 6: As how he would rally course.
Speaker 5: I mean, like we talked, I mean he would keep
Speaker 5: greens and teas at higher elevations if he could, just
Speaker 5: to help keep them from having water issues and drainage
Speaker 5: concerns and stuff like that. Drainage was a big deal
Speaker 5: for him. I mean, we look at a place like
Speaker 5: Twin Hills. The whole place was routed based on how
Speaker 5: it was going to drain. And I think that's what
Speaker 5: every golf course des iron did back then, right, that
Speaker 5: was the number one problem. How do you drain a place,
Speaker 5: especially in the clay of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Well, if you think about it, golf architects today always say,
Speaker 3: we spent so much more on drainage at this place
Speaker 3: than we did on anything else. And so if you're
Speaker 3: like Perry Maxwell and you're looking for ways to be efficient,
Speaker 3: then of course one of the main concerns in routing
Speaker 3: is going to be how is this place going to drain?
Speaker 3: Because I don't want to spend more on drainage than
Speaker 3: I do on building the golf course.
Speaker 5: Right, And they didn't even have irrigation systems back then
Speaker 5: when you started, So I mean he had to figure
Speaker 5: out a way for the water to get to the
Speaker 5: course and then how it's going to flow through the course.
Speaker 5: So those things. The idea of some timplate driven holes
Speaker 5: that he used throughout his career. Whenever he saw a
Speaker 5: similar situation, he would go back to that mindset of, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: I've seen this landform before, I can use this type
Speaker 5: of hole on it.
Speaker 3: Could you tell me about a couple of those What
Speaker 3: were a couple of Perry Maxwell templates that somebody might
Speaker 3: be able to identify if they're watching the PGA Championship
Speaker 3: or if they go play Old Town or something like that.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, one that I think is almost it's on most
Speaker 5: of the golf courses I've seen for param Maxwell is this.
Speaker 5: It's like a shortish to midlengths par four where you
Speaker 5: drive out to a plateau and it's got this drop
Speaker 5: off and then the greens on the other side of
Speaker 5: this little valley. The fifth at Dorning Hills is a
Speaker 5: great example. There's a I mean, the seventh at Crystal
Speaker 5: Downs is kind of like that too, although the boomerang
Speaker 5: greens is totally a Mackenzie thing. That's not a Maxwell
Speaker 5: green biting means, but that idea of how to attack
Speaker 5: the hole and where you got to drive it. He's
Speaker 5: down a lot of places. Hard Scrabble's got one, Hellcrest
Speaker 5: has one. I mean, there's a lot of places where
Speaker 5: he ran across that type of template and said, Okay,
Speaker 5: I've got this creek bread.
Speaker 6: It's probably a dried creek.
Speaker 5: Bed that's at the bottom of this of this hill,
Speaker 5: and he's got a green sitting on the other side,
Speaker 5: so he's got he's got a template right there.
Speaker 6: I would say in the second half of his career he.
Speaker 5: Was looking for these dog legs that would bend around
Speaker 5: the hillside, like the tenth at Southern Hills is a
Speaker 5: good example that he built a lot of those, I
Speaker 5: think in the second half of his career once he
Speaker 5: started using that concept of how to rout a course
Speaker 5: using the sides of hills and lies and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: So I think those are probably two of the more
Speaker 5: prominent ones. And then he would take ideas like the thirteenth,
Speaker 5: that is the thirteenth No, so twelfth at Southern Hills
Speaker 5: is very much like the thirteenth of Augusta in a
Speaker 5: lot of ways. So I think he was willing to
Speaker 5: take ideas that he saw and incorporate them over his
Speaker 5: career too. I don't think he was stuck on doing
Speaker 5: the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 3: So if a golf architect today is trying to learn
Speaker 3: something from Perry Maxwell to apply to twenty first century
Speaker 3: golf course architecture. What do you think they should focus on.
Speaker 6: I would say focus on his greens.
Speaker 5: They have they're unique. I mean, some people think he
Speaker 5: patterned his greens after Mackenzie. I don't think that's necessarily
Speaker 5: the case. But I think also the other thing is
Speaker 5: is you've got to learn to change over your career.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can't do the same thing over and
Speaker 5: over again. I mean if you look at a Maxwell
Speaker 5: course from the start of his career and look and
Speaker 5: just kind of track through his career, you can see
Speaker 5: the way his designs changed and ideas about how to
Speaker 5: build a golf course and what different things to do
Speaker 5: on a golf course.
Speaker 6: I think you can.
Speaker 5: I think you just got to learn to adapt and
Speaker 5: keep pushing yourself to be different in some way and better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he really did roll with the times. You know,
Speaker 3: if you think about what he lived through and what
Speaker 3: his career went through, he really did find ways to
Speaker 3: build golf courses in kind of three distinct challenging eras
Speaker 3: between the twenties, the thirties, and the post World War
Speaker 3: Two era for a few years at least.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and his work.
Speaker 5: You can you can divide his work into those three
Speaker 5: eras and say, Okay, this is definitely a early Maxwell course,
Speaker 5: this is a mid career course, and this is an
Speaker 5: end of career course. And I think that end of
Speaker 5: the career look was probably a little bit kind of
Speaker 5: a little bit more plain because he didn't have a
Speaker 5: lot of standout designs from that era. But it wasn't
Speaker 5: anything as dramatic as an old town or southern hills
Speaker 5: or Prairie Damns obviously, so it kind of harkened a
Speaker 5: little bit back.
Speaker 6: To what he did in the early part of his career.
Speaker 5: And I think the other thing is he also had
Speaker 5: a different style design depending on the type of course
Speaker 5: he was doing, too. I mean, if he was doing
Speaker 5: a small town course, he had a totally different mindset
Speaker 5: about how he's going to build a small town course
Speaker 5: as opposed to this massive national country club type of course.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Chris, appreciate it. It's fun talking
Speaker 3: to you about Perry Maxwell.
Speaker 6: Yeah, anytime.
Speaker 7: Ext