Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast
Speaker 1: and the Yoke with Doak. Today's episode is brought to
Speaker 1: you by our friends over at B Dratty Golf. Season
Speaker 1: is in full swing and we have our pro shop
Speaker 1: all stocked up with some great B Dratty gear, including
Speaker 1: a few different polos featuring their soft Peruvian cotton and
Speaker 1: their Russ krew neck. The russkrew neck is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite items. I know it's summer, it's summer, I
Speaker 1: know that, and this is a sweatshirt, but I've got
Speaker 1: a cold basement. I still wear my Russ crew necks
Speaker 1: all around the house. I'm a huge fan of the
Speaker 1: Russ crew neck. It's probably my favorite piece that be
Speaker 1: Dratty makes. They were in such high demand we did it.
Speaker 1: We placed an order about a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: and they were in such high demand last year during
Speaker 1: the winter and fall seasons, we couldn't get our hands
Speaker 1: on a reorder for the pro shop. So get these
Speaker 1: while you still can, and also from now till the
Speaker 1: end of the weekend May fourteenth, all of our polos
Speaker 1: on our pro shop are twenty percent off, so go
Speaker 1: check them out at www. Dot thefridagg dot com and
Speaker 1: if you want a polo that doesn't have our logo,
Speaker 1: go to b Dradty dot com. This edition of The
Speaker 1: Yoke with Doc is the last episode from our massive
Speaker 1: recording that we did in late January. Obviously, quite a
Speaker 1: bit has happened in the world since then, it seems
Speaker 1: like a very very long time ago. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we talk mostly about Tom's very unique new project in
Speaker 1: the Napa Valley area. And Tom has also has some
Speaker 1: big news and something well. I'm sure we'll talk and
Speaker 1: dive into more in the coming months. But he's got
Speaker 1: a new book coming out which is available for pre
Speaker 1: order now. It's called Getting to Eighteen. It's coming out
Speaker 1: in a few weeks. He dives into the routing process
Speaker 1: at all of his early designs in this book. I
Speaker 1: got a chance to read a few of the chapters
Speaker 1: a while back, the first couple chapters when he started
Speaker 1: working on this book, and it was riveting. I hadn't
Speaker 1: played two of the three courses that I read the
Speaker 1: chapters on, and I found myself actually more compelled with
Speaker 1: the courses I hadn't played yet. So if you're an
Speaker 1: architecture fan and you like books. I would definitely recommend
Speaker 1: getting to eighteen. And you can order that book on
Speaker 1: his website, Renaissance Golf dot com. It's available for pre order.
Speaker 1: I know he only is publishing a certain quantity, So
Speaker 1: if you want to get this book, you should get
Speaker 1: it now. And now, without further ado, here is Tom
Speaker 1: Douk I miss.
Speaker 2: A green for example, I'm already upset when I find
Speaker 2: my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a fried egg Frida egg, the dreaded fri bride egg, Lie,
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: How'd you come up with the Doak scale?
Speaker 2: Really, it was just, you know, the idea for the
Speaker 2: Confidential Guide originally was just that I'm writing reviews of
Speaker 2: golf courses. And we talked a little last night. I
Speaker 2: mean one of my inspirations. I'm a big baseball fan,
Speaker 2: and a book.
Speaker 3: That I had read.
Speaker 2: A couple of years before that that I that I
Speaker 2: really loved was a book by Bill James, the baseball
Speaker 2: stats nerd who you know eventually got in the baseball
Speaker 2: business and was advisor to teams for years, and he
Speaker 2: wrote something in the eighties when he was just you know,
Speaker 2: nobody knew who the hell he was, and he lived
Speaker 2: in Kansas by himself. But he was really analyzing baseball
Speaker 2: in his spare time, and he wrote something called the
Speaker 2: Baseball Abstract, which was a lot of the same topics
Speaker 2: that he would cover for teams now and all the
Speaker 2: essays he does about you know, just bunting, help you know,
Speaker 2: how important are take how important is being able to
Speaker 2: take a walk versus swinging at every pitch? But he
Speaker 2: also his Baseball Abstract, the funniest part of it by far,
Speaker 2: he would rate every player in the major leagues, or
Speaker 2: every starting player in the major leagues, by position, so
Speaker 2: center fielders, here's the best one, number one, all the
Speaker 2: way down to number twenty four. But he would also
Speaker 2: write like a paragraph or two about those players, and
Speaker 2: his little reviews of the players were just funny as hell.
Speaker 2: You know, well it could be, you know, sometimes they
Speaker 2: were dead serious and like this is why I don't
Speaker 2: like this guy so much. And sometimes it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody knows he's a great player, so let me write
Speaker 2: something different about him that nobody would know. There's no
Speaker 2: point in saying that Ricky Henderson's a great player, or
Speaker 2: Pete Rose was still a great player back then, or whoever.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He could write that. He could write something funny or
Speaker 2: critical or negative about Ricky Henderson, but he also had
Speaker 2: him rated as the number one left fielder, and that
Speaker 2: compensated for whatever he wanted to write about. So when
Speaker 2: I was writing my reviews of golf courses, I wanted
Speaker 2: something so I could say, you know, instead of telling
Speaker 2: you that I think Pebble.
Speaker 3: Beach is a really, really good golf course and.
Speaker 2: That the sixth hole through the tenth hole are is
Speaker 2: the best stretch of golf holes anywhere in America. You know,
Speaker 2: everybody knows that, there was no point me write and
Speaker 2: about that. So I wanted to write about the holes
Speaker 2: that I didn't like, but I wanted something in there
Speaker 2: to say, Okay, these are the holes I don't like,
Speaker 2: but I'm not saying it's not.
Speaker 3: A really good course.
Speaker 2: So I could write my semi negative review of Pebble
Speaker 2: Beach and give it a nine on the dok scale
Speaker 2: and everybody would go, oh, okay, you know, he doesn't
Speaker 2: think it's one of the ten best courses in the world,
Speaker 2: but he still really thinks it's good. He's just saying,
Speaker 2: this is why it's not one of the ten best
Speaker 2: courses in the world.
Speaker 1: And also like on the flip side, give a course
Speaker 1: that gets everything out of itself praise, but also reference
Speaker 1: like this isn't Pebble Beach.
Speaker 2: Still, yes, absolutely, yeah, I really had fun here and
Speaker 2: there was this one cool hole. But it's only a
Speaker 2: four or five. Let's not get carried away. And you know,
Speaker 2: as my current wife says, it's not it would have
Speaker 2: been a great book without the numbers, because people focus
Speaker 2: so much on.
Speaker 3: The numbers instead of the reviews.
Speaker 1: But but people would say you hate Pebble Beach without
Speaker 1: the number.
Speaker 2: They still say I hate Pebble Beach because it's not
Speaker 2: a ten. It's you know, it's just it's crazy. How
Speaker 2: if I didn't give a golf course an eight or
Speaker 2: a nine or a ten.
Speaker 3: Everybody thinks I hate it.
Speaker 2: And you know, I I enjoy playing a lot of
Speaker 2: courses there are a five on the dok scale or
Speaker 2: even below sometimes.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm just.
Speaker 2: You know, the number says Okay, just because I like
Speaker 2: this doesn't mean you should fly to halfway across the
Speaker 2: country to get there tomorrow. You know, it's fun when
Speaker 2: you're there, you know, take it on those terms.
Speaker 1: That's why I think is the best part is it
Speaker 1: gives context to it, because like there could be a
Speaker 1: really great golf course, but it's not.
Speaker 2: You know, it puts it into.
Speaker 1: Context of like this is a great golf course, but
Speaker 1: like it's not get on a plane to go see
Speaker 1: it's if you're in the area. That's the thing I
Speaker 1: find the most interesting. I'm curious, what what's the best
Speaker 1: What's the course that you've seen make the biggest jump
Speaker 1: in your eyes from like a project they did, like
Speaker 1: where it's gone from say a five. What's the biggest
Speaker 1: jump in in the number that you've seen happen from work?
Speaker 2: Uh, I don't know, because usually you know, I would
Speaker 2: I would tend to rate the golf course higher if
Speaker 2: I thought that I would rate it fairly high originally.
Speaker 2: If I thought that it was a good golf course
Speaker 2: and they just kind of messed up some things, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't you know, I'd still give it a pretty good
Speaker 2: score instead of instead of knocking the grade way down
Speaker 2: because it was a mess right now, because you know,
Speaker 2: I assume that sooner or later some of that stuff
Speaker 2: would get fixed. So so the ones that I've changed
Speaker 2: my mind on and rate it much higher, it hasn't
Speaker 2: been so much because somebody restored him and did a
Speaker 2: great job. I'd already given them some points for that.
Speaker 2: It's more like, you know, I just when I saw
Speaker 2: this golf course, especially the courses that I saw in
Speaker 2: the UK thirty five years ago, when I was on
Speaker 2: that trip, It's like, Okay, I've I just spent a
Speaker 2: month in Saint Andrew's, I'd just been a week at
Speaker 2: Royal Dornick, and now I'm here and this is a four.
Speaker 3: Of five compared to them.
Speaker 2: And then I go back years later and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is like a six or a seven compared to
Speaker 2: everything else in the world. It's just when I saw
Speaker 2: this in nineteen eighty three, I had just spent a
Speaker 2: week at all the nines and tens, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was just hard to rate them that highly and
Speaker 2: compare with those golf courses.
Speaker 3: So, you know, it's more about, you.
Speaker 2: Know, the dark scales not infallible. You know, when when
Speaker 2: I have to fix something, it's more that I just
Speaker 2: did a bad job rate in the golf course the
Speaker 2: first time, you know, it's like if it poured rain
Speaker 2: and you could barely you know, look forward and see
Speaker 2: the golf hole. It's hard to rate the golf course
Speaker 2: really highly no matter what. And you know, there's a
Speaker 2: few that that's the only time I saw them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I tried. You know.
Speaker 2: The one thing I'll say in my defense of that
Speaker 2: is I would at least try to write about that
Speaker 2: in the book, you know, if if I didn't like it,
Speaker 2: and it was partly because it was just a shitty
Speaker 2: day to play golf, that's probably in my review of
Speaker 2: the golf course that like, you know, maybe this would
Speaker 2: be better if you could see.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's with anything like the you could have
Speaker 1: happened with a restaurant.
Speaker 2: You know, absolutely even the best restaurants in the world
Speaker 2: occasionally don't hit the mark.
Speaker 1: Or if you've had like a shitty day going into it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you just aren't in the you just have had it.
Speaker 1: It's a that's a that's the thing with like your
Speaker 1: your experience and perception of things are so much a
Speaker 1: part of everything else that happens.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: A lot of golfers there their review of something is
Speaker 2: entirely based on how well they played entirely. Anybody that
Speaker 2: has a whole rank exit and that's.
Speaker 3: That's not that is not me at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, I could play bad and still think it's
Speaker 2: a great golf course, and I can play good and
Speaker 2: still think it's a crappy golf course. In fact, if
Speaker 2: I play really good, you start I start to question
Speaker 2: if this could be really a really good course.
Speaker 1: But I've noticed sometimes when I play my worst rounds,
Speaker 1: I have the most appreciation because I'm all over the place.
Speaker 2: Sure, you can you actually see how the architecture works
Speaker 2: when you're out of position. If you just if you
Speaker 2: you were standing in the middle of every fairway two
Speaker 2: ninety off the tea looking at the green, Golf's pretty
Speaker 2: dull a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and you're not anywhere, but it's it's I've had
Speaker 1: an experience recently where I the first time I played it,
Speaker 1: I played it just like one of my best rounds ever,
Speaker 1: and it was just And then the next time I
Speaker 1: was in a really bad place and I was all over.
Speaker 3: But then all of a sudden it.
Speaker 1: Became way more fun because I was you know, I
Speaker 1: saw the way all these different the green contours work
Speaker 1: in a different way, you know, so that it's I
Speaker 1: totally agree with that, and I.
Speaker 2: Do when we're building courses. You know, well we actually start.
Speaker 2: When you're building a course, usually you put a steak,
Speaker 2: a big a steak with like a ten foot piece
Speaker 2: of pipe attached to it at the tee and the
Speaker 2: landing area for the drive and then at the green.
Speaker 2: And you know, early on you tempted to like stand
Speaker 2: at the post in the landing area and look at
Speaker 2: the green from there and think that's the approach shot
Speaker 2: that people are going to have. But you know, if
Speaker 2: you're not a really good player, you're not going to
Speaker 2: be right at that stake. You could be forty fifty
Speaker 2: yards behind it, thirty yards offline to either side whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, because you're not Jack Nicholas and you don't
Speaker 2: hit it right to the steak all the time. And
Speaker 2: that's actually you know, so I've stopped first, I stopped
Speaker 2: standing at the stake. I would go look twenty from
Speaker 2: twenty yards to the right and twenty yards to the left.
Speaker 2: One course, I told Eric Iverson when he was first
Speaker 2: starting working for me, just try to make the green
Speaker 2: look really different from if you're standing right of the steak,
Speaker 2: or stand in left of the steak. If you make
Speaker 2: it feel different, that'll be an interesting golf hall, no
Speaker 2: matter what you build for the green. But you know
Speaker 2: I would start after a while, I started thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: you remember where the steak was when you're playing the
Speaker 2: golf course, and you just start laughing to yourself, like,
Speaker 2: nobody's near the steak.
Speaker 3: Here. We are, four of us, we've just hit our.
Speaker 2: Drives, nobody's anywhere close to that steak was. So eventually
Speaker 2: I just said, let's throw that sucker out of here
Speaker 2: and not pay any attention to it at all, and
Speaker 2: just build hazards that look interesting and not worry about
Speaker 2: whether they're too sixty from the tee or two eighty
Speaker 2: from the tea.
Speaker 3: You know, and not.
Speaker 2: You know, hopefully we don't repeat ourselves, but you know,
Speaker 2: I think my golf course has got to be more
Speaker 2: interesting when I did that, when it's not all based
Speaker 2: on how far is a good drive?
Speaker 1: And that's like the interesting thing you talked about earlier
Speaker 1: with the the kid that was talking about design with
Speaker 1: all analytics is that if it becomes all analytical, what
Speaker 1: happens when the analytics change?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, Jack Nicholas talks about, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the equipment's.
Speaker 3: Changed so much.
Speaker 2: He has to go back and change a lot of
Speaker 2: his golf courses because they were designed around a two
Speaker 2: hundred eighty yard drive, and now they should be designed
Speaker 2: around a three hundred yard driver, a three hundred.
Speaker 3: And ten yard drive. But really.
Speaker 2: He shouldn't have designed them around a two hundred eighty
Speaker 2: yard drive, because that's that's an average.
Speaker 3: That's not everybody.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you put all the fairway bunkers at
Speaker 2: two eighty, there's guys that can fly everyone, they're irrelevant
Speaker 2: completely to them. And there's guys that are short of that,
Speaker 2: and they're irrelevant completely to those guys. And you're just
Speaker 2: pounding the same guy who hits it to seventy five.
Speaker 2: He can never carry the bunker, and you know the
Speaker 2: golf course is a lot harder for him. The hard
Speaker 2: part is, you know, when you're a good, really good
Speaker 2: player and you're designing golf courses, you don't think about
Speaker 2: it in terms of all your peers. You think of
Speaker 2: it in terms of you, and you think I hit it.
Speaker 2: You know, a two hundred and eighty yard drive is
Speaker 2: much better for me than a two hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: yard drive A two hundred and sixt yard drive I missed,
Speaker 2: So I should penalize that and reward a two hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty yard drive. But that doesn't apply to the
Speaker 2: guy plan next to you. You know, for him, those
Speaker 2: numbers might be two forty and two sixty, or they
Speaker 2: might be too eighty and three hundred.
Speaker 1: And isn't that that randomness that you're kind of alluding
Speaker 1: to the with all the golfers and the averages. Isn't
Speaker 1: the randomness what makes the old course so brilliant?
Speaker 3: I certainly think so.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I've been misquoted as saying that,
Speaker 2: you know, we just place bunkers completely at random, which
Speaker 2: is not literally true. I mean, you know, when you've
Speaker 2: laid out the hole, you sort of decided where to
Speaker 2: put the tea and the landing area based on the landform,
Speaker 2: and you know you're looking at potential places to put
Speaker 2: a bunker, so it's not random when you put a
Speaker 2: bunker there. All I've ever said was I'm trying to
Speaker 2: mix it up, and you know, hopefully you can just
Speaker 2: mix it up by putting things where they look good
Speaker 2: and seem to make sense and that's not always the
Speaker 2: same distance, but you're not really paying that close attention.
Speaker 2: You do have to go back, and you know, we
Speaker 2: do go back and check ourselves to make sure that
Speaker 2: we didn't put every fairway bunker at two forty and right.
Speaker 3: You know that would be terrible if.
Speaker 2: You just kept if you just kept hurting the same player.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make sense to me at all.
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that with like playability has
Speaker 1: become such a big talking point. And you know, you
Speaker 1: architecture's got this pendulum. And one of the things if
Speaker 1: you think about playability for the twenty handicap at some
Speaker 1: point that I had a reader one time email me
Speaker 1: and say, you know one thing you're forgetting about is
Speaker 1: that I, as a twenty five handicap. One of the
Speaker 1: things I want to be thrilled. I want hazard to
Speaker 1: my way because if you remove everything for me, then
Speaker 1: you're robbing me the experience of golf.
Speaker 3: Yes, it just becomes boring. You know.
Speaker 2: The idea that you know, it's the nineteen fifties idea.
Speaker 2: Both Trent Jones and Dick Wilson thought the same way.
Speaker 2: The bunkers should be out there where the average guy
Speaker 2: doesn't even get to them, which you know makes the
Speaker 2: game from tee to green pretty boring. For the guy
Speaker 2: that can't quite reach all those hazards. It's just like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to hit it as far as I can,
Speaker 2: but I know I'm not thinking about going left of
Speaker 2: that bunker.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make any difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1: Golf Guide had a question about the Maha project and
Speaker 1: is it similar to any projects you've worked on before.
Speaker 2: Well, this is what I haven't talked about very much
Speaker 2: because it's in northern California, and you know, permits take
Speaker 2: years and years in California, and the clients are especially
Speaker 2: concerned about whether some you know, there's more people potentially
Speaker 2: around to come and pick it and you know, disturb
Speaker 2: a permit meeting and you know, set the project back.
Speaker 2: So while they've been in the process of getting permits
Speaker 2: for it, they've wanted to keep it quiet what we're
Speaker 2: working on. But it's a resort project in northern California,
Speaker 2: and it's close to Napa, but it's it's out of
Speaker 2: Napa County because years ago I was involved with the
Speaker 2: project that we were trying to get permits to do
Speaker 2: something in Napa County. You know, in connection with that
Speaker 2: Etna Springs project that we did, we're going to build
Speaker 2: another eighteen whole course, but Napa County made it just
Speaker 2: impossible to get permits. I've never been to public meetings
Speaker 2: like those.
Speaker 1: There's more than four people in the backyard.
Speaker 2: There were a lot They came with their own avy,
Speaker 2: you know, they came with their own little film in
Speaker 2: opposition to the golf course. And that was just the
Speaker 2: start of it. It was a brutal process. So so
Speaker 2: you really can't build a new course in Napa County
Speaker 2: at all. And I don't blame them in a way.
Speaker 2: You know, if Napa County hadn't been so standoffish about
Speaker 2: zoning for years, you couldn't even drive up that road
Speaker 2: in the valley anymore. I mean, there would be so
Speaker 2: much traffic and so much stuff there it would have
Speaker 2: been ruined. So good for them that they protected that.
Speaker 2: But you know, luckily the county that's next to them
Speaker 2: is like, oh no, we're not like that.
Speaker 3: We'd actually like so development here.
Speaker 2: And so my clients have planned a very high end resort.
Speaker 2: You know, they've always built smaller boutique hotels, very small,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know they're they're almost marketed as
Speaker 2: for non golfers because you know, they're romantic places to
Speaker 2: take your wife, and they're very expensive. And the fact
Speaker 2: that they're so small means they don't support a golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hard to operate a golf resort when
Speaker 2: there's only sixteen rooms at your hotel or twenty four rooms.
Speaker 2: You know, even if everybody was playing golf, the course
Speaker 2: wouldn't be doing enough business to make money.
Speaker 3: So that wouldn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: So, you know, the developers right at the start they said,
Speaker 2: I said, well, you know, I know you've never done golf,
Speaker 2: but you don't really hate golf, do you. And they're like, no, no,
Speaker 2: we don't hate golf. It just the scale of it
Speaker 2: never made sense for us. But this, this is a
Speaker 2: this is a huge piece of land. It's twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand acres and it's so they're going to do three
Speaker 2: or four small hotels on their property, a couple miles
Speaker 2: apart from each other, that are way different from one another,
Speaker 2: and but the critical mass of all of those means, okay,
Speaker 2: now it makes sense if they.
Speaker 3: Have golf too.
Speaker 2: So I said to him in the beginning, well, you know,
Speaker 2: what don't you like about what don't you like about golf?
Speaker 2: And the main client said, you know, it's I mean,
Speaker 2: he's always built resorts in beautiful places with a beautiful beach,
Speaker 2: but always small and very focused. And he said, I
Speaker 2: just don't like the big green blob. You know, it
Speaker 2: just seems to dominate. It takes up so much land
Speaker 2: and it dominates the landscape. And you know, I've always
Speaker 2: been about the you know, small intimate thing and the
Speaker 2: perfect view, and that just doesn't seem to.
Speaker 3: To relate to it.
Speaker 2: And I sort of nodded, and I could understand where
Speaker 2: he was coming from on that. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: the golf course takes over.
Speaker 3: The view of the landscape.
Speaker 2: When you look at the landscape, you see a golf
Speaker 2: course now instead of seeing beautiful oak trees and yellow
Speaker 2: grasses and vineyards and whatever else is out there. So
Speaker 2: so that you know, they had all these pretty famous
Speaker 2: architects around that they're you know, each of them is
Speaker 2: going to design a separate little resort. So they're all
Speaker 2: around the table talking about it, and you know they're
Speaker 2: talking about how one of them is probably going to
Speaker 2: be like an equestrian oriented.
Speaker 3: Resort where you can ride horses.
Speaker 2: And they're talking about, well, you know, to ride a
Speaker 2: horse from the one resort over to the other resort
Speaker 2: three miles away and have lunch over there and ride
Speaker 2: back and kind of make a day out of it.
Speaker 2: And I sort of filed that away mentally. And so
Speaker 2: when you know, this is a I mean, this is
Speaker 2: not only a big piece of ground, but it's a
Speaker 2: really rugged piece of ground.
Speaker 3: I mean there's there's.
Speaker 2: Streams running through it, there's a river on one side,
Speaker 2: There's you know, three or four hundred feet of elevation
Speaker 2: change easily. There's mountain views in all directions. It's a
Speaker 2: really dramatic piece of land. Without an ocean, but it's
Speaker 2: a really dramatic piece of land. And you know, it
Speaker 2: would have been hard to just build an eighteen whole
Speaker 2: course in one piece of it that worked really well,
Speaker 2: you know, just you know a bunch of holes out
Speaker 2: and back to the clubhouse like you think of a
Speaker 2: typical country club, because you know, there's big elevation changes
Speaker 2: to deal with, and you know it would have been
Speaker 2: hard walking back and forth. So I started thinking, and
Speaker 2: you know, when they when they started talking about these
Speaker 2: other activities that can connect the resorts together. I said,
Speaker 2: what if I did the golf course like that? You know,
Speaker 2: what if the golf course started up here and finished
Speaker 2: way over there, Because that then it wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: green blob. It'd kind of be a line through the property.
Speaker 1: Almost like a meanders through the property like a trail.
Speaker 2: And and when you're close to it, a lot of
Speaker 2: times you're just looking across one hole. You know, you
Speaker 2: got forty yards of green grass and then a bunch
Speaker 2: of native plants on the other side, and you know,
Speaker 2: you're not looking at the big green blob at all.
Speaker 2: If you're not looking at a bunker or something golf specific,
Speaker 2: you probably wouldn't even know that that was a golf
Speaker 2: course at all. And immediately the client was like, that
Speaker 2: sounds really interesting, And so we now have a golf
Speaker 2: course laid out that the first tee is four hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty feet higher than the eighteenth green and two
Speaker 2: miles away. And it doesn't it's not all just straight
Speaker 2: in the line. It kind of you know, the the
Speaker 2: front nine kind.
Speaker 3: Of from where you start.
Speaker 2: You start up on the on a high hill with
Speaker 2: a gorgeous view, and you play three or four holes
Speaker 2: just staring down into a deep canyon that's a couple
Speaker 2: hundred feet below you, and then you play back. You
Speaker 2: kind of loop back toward the starting point, but not
Speaker 2: all the way to it, and then out through this
Speaker 2: big meadow to a halfway house sitting on a ridge,
Speaker 2: and then from there, from the tenth tee to the
Speaker 2: eleventh green, the course drops like four hundred feet, so
Speaker 2: it drops so fast that we we were like, I
Speaker 2: don't even think we can put a golf cart path
Speaker 2: down this thing. It's so steep. So we're actually gonna
Speaker 2: I have like a funicular to get from the tenth
Speaker 2: tee to the tenth green down the hill and then
Speaker 2: and then the eleventh is still way downhill too, but
Speaker 2: but you've got to there.
Speaker 3: You've got a place to make the car path kind
Speaker 3: of wind around and get down there.
Speaker 2: So it's this huge landscape with a golf course running
Speaker 2: through it, but it, you know, it doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: a golf It doesn't feel like a normal golf course
Speaker 2: really at all.
Speaker 3: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I mean, just those when you stand where the half
Speaker 2: way house is and you look down at where the
Speaker 2: eleventh green and the twelfth hole are going to be
Speaker 2: your like, my god, that's just that's so far down there,
Speaker 2: and it's and it's seems the scale of this place
Speaker 2: is just off the charts.
Speaker 1: And have you ever had a course where, you know,
Speaker 1: more than a couple hundred yards the starting position the
Speaker 1: ending eighteen is first and eighteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done that once or twice before. You know,
Speaker 2: Black Forest and Miss was like that one of my
Speaker 2: early courses, and that was strictly because the client had
Speaker 2: you know, they they had an existing course and a clubhouse,
Speaker 2: and then they didn't own you know, there were a
Speaker 2: bunch of lots that they'd sold and we so we
Speaker 2: couldn't start an end right near the clubhouse, but we
Speaker 2: figured out a way to start fairly close to the clubhouse.
Speaker 2: And then it didn't make sense to go way back
Speaker 2: up the hill from sixteen or seventeen to try to
Speaker 2: finish there. We just finished in the valley and then
Speaker 2: you ride back after you're done. And then Dismal River
Speaker 2: kind of the same thing. You know, their clubhouse was
Speaker 2: already away from the first golf course, and they had
Speaker 2: a bunch of lots planned around where their clubhouse was,
Speaker 2: so there was no and the land was really rugged there,
Speaker 2: so it didn't make sense to try to get our
Speaker 2: course really close. And you know, once you're you know,
Speaker 2: once you're starting a mile away from the clubhouse, it's like,
Speaker 2: does it really matter if we finish where we start?
Speaker 1: Could beating?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I asked the client that point blank, really early in
Speaker 2: the process at Dismal River, and he looked at me
Speaker 2: really funny, like what do you mean? But you know,
Speaker 2: and then I explained it. I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to take a cart from the
Speaker 2: clubhouse all the way out here to start. Is it
Speaker 2: important to finish here so you could take the cart
Speaker 2: all the way back or could we you know, could
Speaker 2: we finish down there by the river instead, because there's
Speaker 2: some there's some land for some beautiful holes down by
Speaker 2: the river. But I don't really want to play the
Speaker 2: two holes straight up the hill it.
Speaker 3: Would take to get out of there.
Speaker 2: I'd rather just finish there and then you take a
Speaker 2: cart back to where you're going. And he said, no,
Speaker 2: that's fine, let's do that. And you know, you know,
Speaker 2: there's some people that just will not accept this as
Speaker 2: a viable alternative for a golf court. So you know,
Speaker 2: I've had some good friends that you know, you can't
Speaker 2: you know, it's important to finish close to the clubhouse
Speaker 2: and have that intimacy and finishing way down there on
Speaker 2: the river way away just doesn't make any sense. And
Speaker 2: you know, I say, but there's not even there's not
Speaker 2: even a pro shop by the first tea, so why
Speaker 2: would you want to finish back there? So the course,
Speaker 2: the Maha course, will take that to a whole new
Speaker 2: level of stretching the golf course out on a string
Speaker 2: and not really feeling like you're you know, you're just
Speaker 2: moving away from the clubhouse and meandering around, but you
Speaker 2: are doing it in I think the most dramatic landscape
Speaker 2: that I've ever had to build a golf course in.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't there are no holes like that
Speaker 2: eleventh hole because on other golf courses, because on other
Speaker 2: golf courses you'd have to get back up the hill.
Speaker 2: And you know, the only way you build a hole
Speaker 2: like that is if you don't have to go back
Speaker 2: up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like it's like a hike. You know,
Speaker 1: there aren't there aren't many hikes where you get to
Speaker 1: just go and to the end because you always have
Speaker 1: to come back to where you started.
Speaker 2: Right And you know, and I've been describing this in
Speaker 2: terms of golf carts, but part of the idea of
Speaker 2: it is it's walkable because you know, even because you
Speaker 2: don't have to hike all the way back up the hill.
Speaker 2: You know, the greens and teas are all close together,
Speaker 2: and you're.
Speaker 1: Going to like another part of the resort, and you
Speaker 1: can get a shuttle.
Speaker 2: Back exactly You're going to another part of the resort,
Speaker 2: and you know you'll have a beer or you have
Speaker 2: lunch or dinner down there when you're done, and then
Speaker 2: get shuttled back to your hotel.
Speaker 1: It's got to be that's got to be one of
Speaker 1: the most unique routing exercises you've ever got to do,
Speaker 1: because it threw throws one of the rules like out
Speaker 1: of play.
Speaker 3: I love it when I can throw rules out of play.
Speaker 2: And you know, it almost had to be something like
Speaker 2: that because the ground is so rugged. I mean, when
Speaker 2: when you think about that concept on a normal piece
Speaker 2: of land, you know, you would have like a million
Speaker 2: different options on what to do and it would take
Speaker 2: forever to figure out or how am I gonna you
Speaker 2: know I could go anywhere with this routing now, so
Speaker 2: how am I going.
Speaker 3: To decide what's the best solution.
Speaker 2: This land is rugged enough that you know, there's not
Speaker 2: a whole ton of places you could go. It's not like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're not going to go off the off
Speaker 2: the cliff by the second tee down into that valley
Speaker 2: unless we're going an entirely different direction and finishing somewhere
Speaker 2: way away. And then that valley with the stream going
Speaker 2: through it is too narrow for a golf hole.
Speaker 3: So I thought about it, but it just didn't make
Speaker 3: any sense to go.
Speaker 2: Down there, and there were really like you know, if
Speaker 2: you I usually make a lot of the decisions about
Speaker 2: how a routing works on a map and then go
Speaker 2: check it out in the field to see how it works.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you know, when you're out in the field
Speaker 2: you see something.
Speaker 3: You know, wow, there's a huge beautiful oak tree there.
Speaker 2: We should play the play a hole over that way,
Speaker 2: which you wouldn't have seen on the map. So I
Speaker 2: do go back and forth. It isn't all based on
Speaker 2: the map. Bill Correr, when I worked with them at
Speaker 2: stream Song, when we were trying to put the routings together,
Speaker 2: for the two courses. He really does most of it
Speaker 2: in the field.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He starts from one point and he looks at how
Speaker 2: many holes, how many different holes could I play from here?
Speaker 2: I could make a par five go into that hill
Speaker 2: over there, or I could make a par four go
Speaker 2: in along this water, or I could make a par
Speaker 2: three to that little knob, or I could make a
Speaker 2: par three behind me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So he'll have like four or five different places that
Speaker 2: it looks like that's a good hole, and then he'll
Speaker 2: go to every single one of those places and do
Speaker 2: the same thing. So he's got like a million vectors
Speaker 2: of different places that you could connect together, and you know,
Speaker 2: and he's trying to see how do I connect these together.
Speaker 2: In the case of Maha, they don't have to connect
Speaker 2: to you know. The only thing that has to connect
Speaker 2: together is one green to the next tea. But I
Speaker 2: don't have to work my way back around to that
Speaker 2: first point.
Speaker 3: It's a very different thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I had a similar after the President's Cup.
Speaker 1: I started thinking about, hey, where can we have the
Speaker 1: Presidence Cup in the United States? That would provide a
Speaker 1: really you know, compelling golf course in the same vein same.
Speaker 3: Time a year.
Speaker 1: And I kept landing and the place I landed on
Speaker 1: was stream Song, but as a composite course. And then
Speaker 1: I put together like I have like twenty different and
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop doing it. One day and I felt
Speaker 1: like I would just I would get here and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, I could go this way or this way,
Speaker 1: and then you's it was really a fun experiment.
Speaker 2: Well, a couple of those exists, not because we were
Speaker 2: trying to plan a tournament, but you know, very early
Speaker 2: in that process, you know, Bill had already started working
Speaker 2: on routings, and at the time the the client wanted
Speaker 2: one of only one of us to build a golf
Speaker 2: course where we did, and the other one of us
Speaker 2: to build another golf course somewhere else on the property,
Speaker 2: you know, possibly where the Black course was, possibly where
Speaker 2: the hotel is, and there was one other site two
Speaker 2: or three miles away from those two. And you know,
Speaker 2: Bill and I both, I mean, the land that we
Speaker 2: ultimately built on was so dramatic, and you know it
Speaker 2: was it was so natural for building a golf course
Speaker 2: in its re configured mind state that we both were
Speaker 2: attracted to that right away. You know, Bill had tried
Speaker 2: to just lay out eighteen holes over it, and you know,
Speaker 2: you were giving up a lot of other good holes.
Speaker 2: You know, there was clearly enough room on it for
Speaker 2: twenty seven really cool holes. We weren't sure that there
Speaker 2: was enough room for thirty six holes, but we sort
Speaker 2: of agreed between ourselves, you know, if we work together,
Speaker 2: we could probably figure out how to make thirty six
Speaker 2: holes here. And the client, rich Mack, was concerned that,
Speaker 2: you know, we would crowd each other too much and
Speaker 2: you know, and spoil it somehow, and we were like,
Speaker 2: don't worry.
Speaker 3: About that, just let us work on it for a while.
Speaker 2: And see if we can put put it together between us.
Speaker 2: So that's how we did it. We you know, we
Speaker 2: tried to fit thirty six holes in. They're the best
Speaker 2: we could without you know, without having to go into
Speaker 2: the tougher land or do things that really required a
Speaker 2: lot of earth moving, and we couldn't quite do it.
Speaker 3: We could only come up.
Speaker 2: With like thirty or thirty two holes that really fit.
Speaker 2: And eventually Bill went and walked where the first six
Speaker 2: holes are on the red course. Part of it hadn't
Speaker 2: been mine. The second and third holes that was just
Speaker 2: a flat boggy stretch that they were gonna mind that
Speaker 2: they've still had a mine, and he just kind of
Speaker 2: sucked it up and said, you know, if we did
Speaker 2: if we did this little this loop of six holes
Speaker 2: out here, then then we can make the rest of
Speaker 2: it work pretty easily. And I said, okay, And and
Speaker 2: we came up with that routing of the red and blue.
Speaker 2: And you know, we came up with the routing of
Speaker 2: the red and blue having not decided which one of
Speaker 2: us would do which course that came at the very end,
Speaker 2: and neither one of us really wanted to be the
Speaker 2: guy who.
Speaker 1: Decided, Yeah, that's that's one of the cool, cool projects
Speaker 1: of the modern era for sure. So we uh, we
Speaker 1: covered a lot. We're we're gonna we're gonna pack this
Speaker 1: up for the day. And thanks again obviously for the time,
Speaker 1: and really excited hopefully the the Maha project permits for
Speaker 1: out because it would be a really neat, neat and
Speaker 1: different golf course than we've seen.
Speaker 3: I think we're gonna get there.
Speaker 2: You know, it's gonna ta It's not an easy site
Speaker 2: to build on either, as you as you probably guess,
Speaker 2: it's rocky, so it's gonna take you know, if we
Speaker 2: get started on it this spring like we want, it's
Speaker 2: still going to take two years to build in, a
Speaker 2: year to grow in. So it's twenty twenty three probably
Speaker 2: before anybody's playing golf there, but hopefully it's worth the way.
Speaker 2: It's a really different thing, and thanks for coming to
Speaker 2: Traverse City. It's nice to do a home game every
Speaker 2: once in a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah,