Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: at www dot bdradty dot com. All right, today's episode
Speaker 1: is with legendary golf course designer Bill Korer. So Bill
Speaker 1: and I talked in Scottsdale. We talked about a number
Speaker 1: of topics, including his work at the Sheep Ranch, a
Speaker 1: little bit about Pete Die and much more so. Without
Speaker 1: further ado, here is Bill cor I miss the green.
Speaker 3: For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball
Speaker 3: in the bunker.
Speaker 2: I'm really upset and when I find my.
Speaker 4: Ball in a brid egg, Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg,
Speaker 4: fridagridagg bride egg.
Speaker 5: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 1: So if you, if you, uh, if you could go
Speaker 1: and say, like a race time, there's this movie yesterday,
Speaker 1: the Beatles movie.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, so like how they forget about the Beatles, right,
Speaker 1: and then society just like nobody has any clue.
Speaker 2: And we're talking golf here.
Speaker 1: If you could, if society could wake up one day
Speaker 1: and have no clue this existed, one of these things?
Speaker 1: Would it be the rangefinder, like the yardage gun, the
Speaker 1: the big headed drivers, or the lobledge? Which one would
Speaker 1: you get rid of?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: Gee, I thought you were going to ask something about
Speaker 6: golf course.
Speaker 5: Which one of those three?
Speaker 2: And this is from a design pre well, I.
Speaker 5: Think the rangefinder.
Speaker 6: I think I would probably eliminate that because at least
Speaker 6: I am now. I am now such a dinosaur and
Speaker 6: old enough that I remember easily before rangefinders, and I
Speaker 6: thought it was a fascinating part of golf, trying to
Speaker 6: make distance judgments by sight and often by feel. And yes,
Speaker 6: I actually remember when we played golf even without yardage books.
Speaker 6: I guess, you know, Dean Beaman I think was the
Speaker 6: first or one of no built. You know, Phil Rogers
Speaker 6: I think was the first professional who did the yardage books,
Speaker 6: and Jack Nicholas got that from him, and I think
Speaker 6: maybe Dean Beaman was doing it at the same time,
Speaker 6: Nicholas of course being the one who's the most well
Speaker 6: known for doing it when they made their own yardage books.
Speaker 6: But I even remember prior to that it was judging
Speaker 6: distances was really an integral part of golf.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then also the deception of bunkers and stuff that
Speaker 1: it has been lost a little bit, where you can
Speaker 1: just shoot the top edge of a bunker.
Speaker 5: Well without question.
Speaker 6: I mean Ben and I and the guys that we
Speaker 6: work with, and lots of other folks who are in
Speaker 6: this profession too, still are very enamored of the bunkers
Speaker 6: that are set short of the green surfaces but appear
Speaker 6: to be right at the green surfaces. Generally, if you
Speaker 6: can get the top line of a bunker, even if
Speaker 6: it's thirty forty yards short of the green, if you
Speaker 6: can get the top line of the bunker to match
Speaker 6: the same visual line of sight into the front edge
Speaker 6: of the green, that bunker will appear to be right
Speaker 6: at the front of the green. And as you say,
Speaker 6: in days gone by, when you use visual judgment, that
Speaker 6: foreshortened everything. It made the green look closer than it
Speaker 6: really was because you didn't see that ground that was
Speaker 6: between the bunker and the putting surface, and your mind
Speaker 6: would automatically tell you it's not you know, it's one
Speaker 6: hundred and seventy five yards. It might look like it's
Speaker 6: a one hundred and fifty, one hundred and forty five
Speaker 6: something like that. So even if you knew the ground
Speaker 6: was there, your mind was telling you something different. Now today,
Speaker 6: with the accuracy and the detail of the yardage finders,
Speaker 6: the rain finders, I think we can all overcome what
Speaker 6: our what our site impressions are just because we know
Speaker 6: the mathematics behind the numbers and Okay, it may look
Speaker 6: like one fifty, but I know it's one seventy five.
Speaker 1: So with that is using the horizon lines to match
Speaker 1: for that deception. In terms of deception, how are there
Speaker 1: other ways that you can deceive players with visual tricks,
Speaker 1: whether it be with features or different You know, do
Speaker 1: you have different tricks where you can maybe appear make
Speaker 1: bunkers appear to look further away or closer than they are.
Speaker 6: Well they obviously scale is one of them. Anything that's
Speaker 6: the bigger it is, the closer it's going to look
Speaker 6: to you. But angles, you can use angles that that
Speaker 6: seem to set ups certain ways you want to play. Uh,
Speaker 6: we're we're still pretty much fond of the types that
Speaker 6: help you.
Speaker 5: In other words, if if if.
Speaker 6: The ideal shot going into the green is right to left,
Speaker 6: if you can set the bunkering in such a way
Speaker 6: that it visually that it seems appealing to play or
Speaker 6: right to left shot, that's that's a that's a type
Speaker 6: of bunkering I guess you might say is positive and
Speaker 6: is is reinforcing. Now you can do it the other
Speaker 6: way and set up bunkering with angles that make it
Speaker 6: appear you want to hit a shot a certain way
Speaker 6: when in fact you want to hit the exact opposite
Speaker 6: shape of shot.
Speaker 1: That's uh, I think, yeah, deception is interesting. And then
Speaker 1: you know, with with those visual those angles, it's oh,
Speaker 1: this shot calls for right to left, like you can
Speaker 1: just see it in there with those the way, it's
Speaker 1: a good point about those. So what you got to
Speaker 1: lot of new projects? What have you been working on
Speaker 1: since since we last talked.
Speaker 5: Well, it's been a long time, Andy, since we talked.
Speaker 5: I gush.
Speaker 6: I think last time we talked it was at San Valley.
Speaker 2: So it was colder.
Speaker 5: Oh. I was so grateful to you that day.
Speaker 6: I was freezing out there, absolutely freezing, and when you
Speaker 6: offered the chance to come inside and sit and talk
Speaker 6: to you, I remember you said something like, well, Bill,
Speaker 6: it won't take very much of your time.
Speaker 5: And I've made some response. I recall like, Andy.
Speaker 6: I'll stand here as long as you want, as long
Speaker 6: as we stay in this warm room, and somebody will
Speaker 6: bring me some hot chocolate.
Speaker 5: So we sat there quite a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I've gotten a lot better at producing audio,
Speaker 1: so that's good for the listeners.
Speaker 2: So I guess your big.
Speaker 1: Big opening this year is a sheep ranch, and I
Speaker 1: guess to kick things off the you know what everybody's
Speaker 1: going to be talking about is the decision not to
Speaker 1: have the traditional sand bunkers, so she branch abandoned dunes.
Speaker 2: What went into that decision.
Speaker 6: When win Primarily as you would walk on the site
Speaker 6: and it it like the Old McDonald's site at Bandon
Speaker 6: Or very likely the most exposed to the wind and
Speaker 6: sheep Branch, possibly even more so than Old McDonald's. So
Speaker 6: as we would walk the site and study it, thinking
Speaker 6: about routing of holes and how golf could be played
Speaker 6: out there and the emphstis being on played, not just photographed,
Speaker 6: we just realized that wind was going to be such
Speaker 6: a factor that we thought, well, okay, bunkers would be
Speaker 6: extraordinarily beautiful. They could be off the chart spectactuor branch.
Speaker 6: But it's not a sandy site. Andy, it's you know,
Speaker 6: it doesn't have dunes like some of the other courses Abandon.
Speaker 6: It's basically a red shot clay type on cliffs and
Speaker 6: spectacular landforms and setting for golf, but not a sandy site.
Speaker 6: And if we put if we created artificial formal type bunkers,
Speaker 6: we just felt like the maintenance of those was gonna
Speaker 6: be a nightmare with the wind constantly whipping the sand out,
Speaker 6: trying to water the bunkers to keep the sand in.
Speaker 6: And the more we thought about this and we thought,
Speaker 6: you know, Ben and I talked some but we've remembered
Speaker 6: an old photograph that was in Robert Hunter's book The Lynx,
Speaker 6: and it was an old black and white photograph and
Speaker 6: it had a caption underneath something to the effect of,
Speaker 6: one day there'll be a site with undulations good enough
Speaker 6: that bunkers will be unnecessary. And we just thought about,
Speaker 6: if we're ever going to do a golf course with
Speaker 6: no formal sand bunkers, maybe this is the place. The
Speaker 6: contours are good enough at the Sheep Ranch, the natural ones,
Speaker 6: the ones that had been manipulated through the years with
Speaker 6: you know, by by equipment and men. But you put
Speaker 6: all those contours together, they were so good for golf
Speaker 6: and they're just their basic presentation. We thought, this is
Speaker 6: probably the site that we will just allow the contours
Speaker 6: that exist and the ones that we will create to
Speaker 6: determine the golf without any formal bunkers.
Speaker 1: So great contours, and then you also get that that
Speaker 1: wind that you're round about, which you know that added
Speaker 1: external factor that you probably are going to challenge players
Speaker 1: enough with those two, right.
Speaker 6: I think so Andy. I think we just felt like
Speaker 6: the wind in the and the fantastic contours would take
Speaker 6: care of all the interests for golf and and any
Speaker 6: you know, type of defenses. The course needed, because those
Speaker 6: those would be there through the contring on the ground
Speaker 6: and through the wind. Now that doesn't mean people say, oh,
Speaker 6: you're not you have no bunkers at all, Andy, There's
Speaker 6: some we create, some scolloped out areas and some hollows
Speaker 6: and things, and that probably will appear to be a
Speaker 6: bunkers that had been abandoned, you know, for twenty or
Speaker 6: thirty or forty or fifty years, just because of the
Speaker 6: their shapes and landforms and the fact that they collect balls.
Speaker 6: But quite frankly, we decided where we will we will
Speaker 6: do these, and we will make them.
Speaker 3: More like just wispy fescue type areas, abandoned bunker type
Speaker 3: things with some scrapes of sand in them, but just
Speaker 3: would not be any formal bunkers.
Speaker 1: How do you think those areas will play differently for
Speaker 1: players than a traditional bunker.
Speaker 6: Well, I think for the you know, for the average
Speaker 6: to hire handicap or they're certainly going to be easier
Speaker 6: because you.
Speaker 5: Know, we all know how those of us are.
Speaker 6: Our handicaps are up there, so to speak, more often
Speaker 6: not struggling bunkers, and particularly in bunkers that are severely
Speaker 6: impacted by wind as well. And I think in this case,
Speaker 6: people will you know, they'll see their ball lying there,
Speaker 6: maybe in the taller, wispy fescue, but generally that abandon
Speaker 6: that's very thin. So I think they're just going to
Speaker 6: feel more comfortable. There's my ball, I can hit it.
Speaker 6: I'm going to go I've got a chance at this.
Speaker 6: And yet perhaps for the very best players that play,
Speaker 6: they're going to find them. So since some of these
Speaker 6: scolloped that areas or what might have been old bunkers
Speaker 6: from at least from a perception standpoint, but they might
Speaker 6: prefer to actually be in sand where they could play
Speaker 6: their type of sand shot and spin the ball enough
Speaker 6: to get close to the hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the really best players, sand is a very
Speaker 1: predictable place to be.
Speaker 6: It's interesting, Andy, I remember I learned something so interesting.
Speaker 6: We were working at Chennecak Hills in Mike Davis and
Speaker 6: you know, the executive director of the USGA, and I
Speaker 6: remember we were out there walking and we were talking
Speaker 6: about potential situations where a hole, say it like number
Speaker 6: fifteen or even number thirteen, could be set up in
Speaker 6: such a way that the players could drive. The players
Speaker 6: in the US Open could drive the ball to the
Speaker 6: green under certain circumstances. And I remember thinking, like the
Speaker 6: fifteenth hold, just surrounded by bunkers, and I remember talking
Speaker 6: to Mike.
Speaker 5: Mike, why would anybody ever try to do this? You know,
Speaker 5: to do this?
Speaker 6: They almost cannot get a ball on this green, you know,
Speaker 6: from the tee, because it's surrounded by bunkers. And I
Speaker 6: remember Mike Stentners and Bill probably what they would like
Speaker 6: more than anything is to be in one of these
Speaker 6: bunkers right here, to have a perfect lie in the bunker.
Speaker 6: For these players of that skill level, it's such a
Speaker 6: predictable shot that they would much rather be there than
Speaker 6: offen the rough someplace, or perhaps even in the fairway
Speaker 6: with a more with an awkward angle or lie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's because that sand, if you hit
Speaker 1: it a little fat, it runs a little bit more.
Speaker 1: If you hit a little thin, it grabs a little
Speaker 1: bit more.
Speaker 5: And and there's.
Speaker 1: Just such a you know, for that high level player.
Speaker 1: You look at some of the percentages these guys get
Speaker 1: up and down from the sand over the course of
Speaker 1: the season, and you're like, they get up and down
Speaker 1: that often. It's really unbelievable.
Speaker 5: It is. It's amazing.
Speaker 6: And the consistency now for the tournament courses, the consistency
Speaker 6: of the bunkers and the conditioning of the bunkers.
Speaker 5: Is so.
Speaker 6: Perfect, and it's so again consistent that the players are,
Speaker 6: you know, it's it's certainly the bunkers are not the
Speaker 6: hazards they were when when being introduced into golf all
Speaker 6: those years ago.
Speaker 1: So with with the routing there at the Sheep Ranch,
Speaker 1: it's a smaller site, I believe, right, you know, it
Speaker 1: is eight bridge. You had to be very clever and
Speaker 1: like what you said, you know, taking advantage for the golf.
Speaker 1: How did you guys kind of come up with that?
Speaker 1: And did you find it more difficult with there being
Speaker 1: golf holes out there already?
Speaker 2: Did you have to almost unsee golf.
Speaker 5: Holes without question? Andy?
Speaker 6: I mean because Tom Doak and Jim or being a
Speaker 6: had had built greens out there. There were a very
Speaker 6: few I guess you would say tea placements, but they
Speaker 6: had built let's see, I think it was thirteen I
Speaker 6: believe greens out there that they could be played from
Speaker 6: different angles and sort of the cross country type golf
Speaker 6: that Sheep Ranch had been through its existence. And I
Speaker 6: just remember the first times going out there when there
Speaker 6: were still flagsticks in those greens and looking at it,
Speaker 6: and it's hard not to be your eye to be
Speaker 6: drawn to those. And it actually became a lot easier
Speaker 6: when we just ask them to take the flag sticks
Speaker 6: out and you'd walk out because you know, the greens.
Speaker 6: It wasn't of course, it was highly maintained, so it
Speaker 6: wasn't like the greens just stood out like beacons, you know,
Speaker 6: themselves in the rest of the type of vegetation and
Speaker 6: landforms and colorization of the vegetation. So once the flag
Speaker 6: sticks were going a little easier to start to visualize
Speaker 6: that site as more natural type contours or contours highly
Speaker 6: conducing to golf without being predisposed to think we need
Speaker 6: to play there, we need to play there, or we
Speaker 6: need to play there.
Speaker 1: In terms of the small site, what type of challenges
Speaker 1: did it present? And you know, what were the solutions
Speaker 1: that you guys kind of figured out that you hacked
Speaker 1: around with that you know, maybe some things that you
Speaker 1: struggled through before finding a solution.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the biggest solution was getting eighteen holes
Speaker 6: on it. I mean the biggest challenge not solution, but
Speaker 6: the it that and the fact that Phil Friedman and
Speaker 6: Mike Kincher and the owners of the Sheep Ranch, they
Speaker 6: would very good naturedly, but at the same time and
Speaker 6: you seriously remind us regularly that had some of the
Speaker 6: most spectacular coastline of all the resort at Bandon, and
Speaker 6: how could we use every linear foot of it and
Speaker 6: in some way in the golf and need to say,
Speaker 6: that was a bit of a challenge, but so that
Speaker 6: was that that's where we started. We started saying, Okay, yes,
Speaker 6: it's a small site, how do we best utilize the
Speaker 6: coastline here and with holes that play certainly alongside it.
Speaker 6: But if you did that repetitively, you weren't going to
Speaker 6: get very many holes on the ocean. So we tried
Speaker 6: to come up with a routing that you could literally
Speaker 6: play from promontories over the ocean to fair ways other
Speaker 6: holes more or less alongside the ocean, but then holes
Speaker 6: that went to greens right on the ocean, and then
Speaker 6: the holes that played from tees right on the ocean
Speaker 6: more inland. So trying to utilize it in different in
Speaker 6: different ways and make that certainly the ocean holes the
Speaker 6: foundation of the golf course. But then how do you
Speaker 6: work in from there and fit the puzzle pieces together.
Speaker 6: I think the big there was certainly a lot of
Speaker 6: concern about the fact that the holes, because the size
Speaker 6: of the site, the holes were going to have to
Speaker 6: be in reasonably close proximity to one another. And then
Speaker 6: given the wind the influence that you know, we certainly
Speaker 6: had some concerns about balls that might travel from one
Speaker 6: golf hole to another. And I think and time will
Speaker 6: only tell how well this worked.
Speaker 5: But our solution to that was to.
Speaker 6: Try, in several instances cluster teeing grounds together. For example,
Speaker 6: the second and the eighteenth tees are right together. They
Speaker 6: play at different angles in different directions, but the teeing
Speaker 6: grounds themselves are very close together. That's the case on
Speaker 6: to an eighteen's case on five and fifteen, it's the
Speaker 6: case on eight and ten. By doing that, getting the
Speaker 6: team getting two teen grounds in a small area, and
Speaker 6: then playing at angles that radiated away at different angles
Speaker 6: from those teeen grounds, it enables us to make the
Speaker 6: fairways wider. So like a piece of pie, I guess,
Speaker 6: or a piece of pizza, if you play from the
Speaker 6: tip out to the wide part, you can put two
Speaker 6: tips together and the pizza edge is much wider and
Speaker 6: the pieces of the pizza are much wider when you
Speaker 6: get away from the tip. So that was in essence
Speaker 6: what we did. We clustered some teeing grounds in order
Speaker 6: to make the fairways, the areas where you were going
Speaker 6: to actually be hitting a golf ball and playing golf wider,
Speaker 6: and that gave us, that seemed to give us more
Speaker 6: room to work to get the eighteen hole routing in there.
Speaker 1: You're you're also working on Terry D's second course, which
Speaker 1: is ocean front. When you're when you're working on a
Speaker 1: big body of water and you're routing, oftentimes you see
Speaker 1: with water, the ground a little bit back of the
Speaker 1: water is the best ground for golf because of just
Speaker 1: the way the you know, the ecological the way ground settles,
Speaker 1: you know, where it used to be wider or bigger.
Speaker 1: How big of a challenge is it to not just
Speaker 1: you know, to figure out the best way to use
Speaker 1: the water front, but also you know, have those holes
Speaker 1: inland really you know, I guess more so is it
Speaker 1: frustrating sometimes where you might think like some of the
Speaker 1: best holes are the least talked about because they aren't
Speaker 1: on the ocean.
Speaker 6: Oh, I think so, Andy. I mean, I can tell
Speaker 6: you a prime example of that that we're just now
Speaker 6: beginning to work with is with the Cabot Links folks
Speaker 6: with their new project down in Saint Lucia on the.
Speaker 5: Super spectacular site.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, it mest be the visually spectacular of
Speaker 6: any site we've we've worked with us. It's saying quite
Speaker 6: a lot, actually, and uh, but the holes right on
Speaker 6: the cliffs on the ocean, and we're able to, like
Speaker 6: at the sheep wrench, to work right to the edge.
Speaker 6: So the holes that are right on the edge of
Speaker 6: the ocean at cab at Saint Lucia will be the
Speaker 6: ones that will without question be the most talked about
Speaker 6: because they are so visually stunning and dramatic. But the
Speaker 6: holes that are actually a bit more inland, on some
Speaker 6: on ground that's very very interesting for golf, even though
Speaker 6: it's not on the ocean. I think they're going to
Speaker 6: I think they're going to hold their own in terms
Speaker 6: of golf interest. Dave Axlan, who's worked with us for
Speaker 6: so many years now, so many places, and he and
Speaker 6: I were just there and I remember that after I'd
Speaker 6: walked Dave through the eighteen old routing twice. I remember
Speaker 6: he looked at me there a few days ago, just said, Bill,
Speaker 6: and everybody's going to talk about the ocean holes. But
Speaker 6: he said, I'm not so sure we're the best holes,
Speaker 6: aren't the inland.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's funny I find myself when I think about like
Speaker 1: my most like my favorite golf holes. Like you know,
Speaker 1: obviously ocean holes or if they're on the lake, are stunning,
Speaker 1: but then you think about that contour that comes you know,
Speaker 1: the contour of a hole is in the in the slopes,
Speaker 1: Like the eighth hole at Prairie Dunes is one that
Speaker 1: always just jumps to the top of my mind, and
Speaker 1: it's like, if you put that hole on a course
Speaker 1: with an ocean, nobody would.
Speaker 2: Ever take pictures of that hole.
Speaker 1: And it is one of the most you know, intriguing
Speaker 1: holes in the world in my mind.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I mean Prairie Dunes in and of itself is
Speaker 6: a marvelous example of extraordinary golf that you just expect
Speaker 6: the ocean to be over the next dune and it's
Speaker 6: never quite there. And so if you can build holes,
Speaker 6: it is a challenge. If you have a seaside site
Speaker 6: and it is a challenge to try to build holes
Speaker 6: that either play away from the ocean or that play inland,
Speaker 6: you know, in different directions. But the ones that are
Speaker 6: not looking directly at the sea, it's a challenge to
Speaker 6: make those have enough inherent interest and appeal to golfers
Speaker 6: that they can be memorable as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've got like, as you alluded to with
Speaker 1: you know, Mike Kaiser and Phil Friedman with the you know,
Speaker 1: they want to use that ocean front land if they
Speaker 1: have it, because that's you know, to the you know,
Speaker 1: that's the you know what they know, the retail golfer
Speaker 1: is going to just soak in and everything, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I just could imagine that's that's a tricky thing to
Speaker 1: deal with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, and for good reason. Yeah, I mean they've
Speaker 6: been looking at that land. Phil Friedman, it was his sanctuary.
Speaker 6: He was like his and his family's personal sanctuary out
Speaker 6: there to go play golf and then friends go out
Speaker 6: and play you know, the sheep ranch and and so
Speaker 6: he's been so personally connected to that site for nearly
Speaker 6: twenty years. And of course Mike as well too, being
Speaker 6: co ownered with Phil the of the site. So it's
Speaker 6: understandable why they wanted the holes on the ocean. I'm
Speaker 6: reminded of Mike Kaiser when we were about to start
Speaker 6: what became Cabot Cliffs, because I remember Mike asking me
Speaker 6: there before we started, said, Bill, can you lay out
Speaker 6: of course with six par threes? Mike loves par three holes.
Speaker 6: But my first response I remember to Mike was, and
Speaker 6: I suppose you want them all to be facing the
Speaker 6: ocean and it goes.
Speaker 5: Well, of course, and it was.
Speaker 6: It was kind of an inside joe, but yeah, there
Speaker 6: was a degree of seriousness about it. You know that
Speaker 6: he said people never tire of looking at the sea,
Speaker 6: and and that's that's true. So to your point, to
Speaker 6: get them engaged and appreciate holes that don't look right
Speaker 6: at the sea is part of what If you can
Speaker 6: pull that off, then generally speaking, your course, if you're
Speaker 6: on a site by the ocean, your course is gonna
Speaker 6: be pretty dark good.
Speaker 1: I really I wonder what you'd have to do to
Speaker 1: have like the most photographed hole, of of course on
Speaker 1: the ocean, be a hole that isn't on the ocean.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it'd be possible.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know we.
Speaker 6: All I know is that between working at the g branch,
Speaker 6: now just beginning a cab at Saint Lucian on this
Speaker 6: extraordinary spectActor site by the ocean on the cliffs, and
Speaker 6: then about to start down that it's going to be
Speaker 6: called t R. E Lynx down at Tara Edi in
Speaker 6: New Zealand in the dunes next to the ocean. I
Speaker 6: don't know we're going to have We're everybody's going to say, oh,
Speaker 6: you guys, it's unbelievable. How in the world did you
Speaker 6: get those? Some best sites in the world kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: And yes, that's true, But there is that challenge that
Speaker 6: you brought up, how do we how do we make
Speaker 6: the entire golf course measure up? Because the only way
Speaker 6: you're going to have every hole in the ocean is
Speaker 6: you're going to have to helicopter people back. I guess
Speaker 6: after they play, they just play out down the ocean
Speaker 6: for a mile, you know, miles, and then you bring
Speaker 6: them back.
Speaker 5: But you're going to have to have some inland oath.
Speaker 1: So to speaking of that, what's your what's maybe your
Speaker 1: favorite hole that you've built at any course that almost
Speaker 1: nobody or nobody's brought up to you. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: to ask you a question about a certain hole. I'm
Speaker 1: sure people ask you about holes all the time. So
Speaker 1: what's a hole that you love? But nobody's ever talked
Speaker 1: to you really about it?
Speaker 6: See, And I don't know that I've ever given that thought.
Speaker 6: I could probably go course by course and think of,
Speaker 6: you know, a hole or something. I mean I can,
Speaker 6: I can quickly, for example, think of a hole like
Speaker 6: a Cabot Cliffs the thirteenth hole, which plays straight away
Speaker 6: from the ocean and goes because there then a sort
Speaker 6: of a semi punch bowl type green set in behind
Speaker 6: a natural hill. It was there and you never hear
Speaker 6: anything about it. And yet Ben I both love that hole.
Speaker 5: I mean, we just thought it was just the neatest.
Speaker 6: Natural landform to use to play golf. But it comes
Speaker 6: after playing holes in the ocean, and it's and it
Speaker 6: precedes that stretch of holes it finishes on the ocean,
Speaker 6: So it's just kind of lost in the conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Garrett, our managing editor, and I always talk about
Speaker 1: publishing a piece about you know, we want to put
Speaker 1: together what we consider if the least talked about holes
Speaker 1: like that are really brilliant, Like one we always talk
Speaker 1: about seventeen Aposta TFO. People are like, oh, that fact
Speaker 1: nine's so great, except for seventeen.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Well it's like the eighteenth hole Cypress Point. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean that the poor thing just gets.
Speaker 5: Maligned all the time.
Speaker 6: And I guess maybe it was Jimmy DeMeritt who said,
Speaker 6: you know, all those years ago, it's the best seventeen.
Speaker 5: Whole course in the world.
Speaker 6: Well, of course that type of stuff sticks and people
Speaker 6: you just hear people say, oh, it's just not good.
Speaker 5: It's this. It's that.
Speaker 6: I find it to be an incredibly fascinating hole. It's
Speaker 6: set through those magnificent wind swept you know cypress trees
Speaker 6: that Mackenzie and Robert Hunter used, and how they routed
Speaker 6: the fairway through those with in that serpentine fashion to
Speaker 6: take advantage not only the beauty of those trees, but
Speaker 6: the strategic value of them.
Speaker 5: That you got to put it somewhere on that hole.
Speaker 6: You're going to have to play once, if not twice,
Speaker 6: really close to some trees to have any hope of
Speaker 6: being successful.
Speaker 5: And it's you know, but it.
Speaker 6: Plays directly away from the ocean after of course fifteen
Speaker 6: sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: It's also something I took away from it is that
Speaker 1: that hole asks you a distinctly different question than almost
Speaker 1: every other hole out there, where you really have to
Speaker 1: be precise on that t shot and it's the last hole,
Speaker 1: and if you don't hit a really good shot there,
Speaker 1: like you were talking, playing close to the trees and
Speaker 1: hitting at the right yard, hitting it on a line,
Speaker 1: and I remember you talking about this with Trinity Forrest,
Speaker 1: hitting it on a line and the yardage as opposed
Speaker 1: to just a line or a yardage, And that hole
Speaker 1: really requires you to answer those two questions to have
Speaker 1: a good second shot.
Speaker 6: In absolutely, plus the psychological aspect of you just played
Speaker 6: fifteen sixteen seventeen right on the ocean. You're coming off that,
Speaker 6: I guess you would say an emotional high, and then
Speaker 6: you turn. You're going directly inland. You're going through these trees,
Speaker 6: and if you're not careful, the mental side will waiver
Speaker 6: right there. Even if you're so highly skilled, you could
Speaker 6: just say you could play that hole most of the time,
Speaker 6: you know, say successfully. I think there's that mental aspect
Speaker 6: that comes into play as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you also I have when you play somewhere like
Speaker 1: Cyprus Point, you have that sadness that the rounds almost
Speaker 1: so exactly exactly you gotta contend with. So you've brought
Speaker 1: up Ben a couple of times. Obviously your your design partner.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, as you know, everybody that listens to this
Speaker 1: pot for the most part, works with somebody, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times in a business with a business partner.
Speaker 2: How does Ben.
Speaker 1: Look at golf courses differently than you do?
Speaker 5: Andy?
Speaker 6: I would say the differences are minor. It's one of
Speaker 6: the reasons I guess we've managed to enjoyed doing this
Speaker 6: for thirty plus years. Our personalities and our philosophies regarding
Speaker 6: golf design are very very similar. Ben, I would say,
Speaker 6: could be even more conservative than I am when it
Speaker 6: comes to, you know, what is considered to be the
Speaker 6: most interesting elements of golf. Ben Ben is a very
Speaker 6: strong believer in detail, in detail on greens, like you
Speaker 6: know we've talked about with Perry Maxwell with the conjuring
Speaker 6: of greens. But I think the thing that I've learned
Speaker 6: so much from Ben through the years, but also the
Speaker 6: watching him focus on so much, is that detail and
Speaker 6: how it influences play, and not just for play for
Speaker 6: those of us who are out there, you know, just
Speaker 6: playing for fun, but how it influences play for the
Speaker 6: very best players in the world.
Speaker 5: He's convinced that, and I am.
Speaker 6: As well, primarily from working with Ben through all these years.
Speaker 6: But it's the small things that can make the biggest
Speaker 6: influence to the most delete players. The the alignment of
Speaker 6: the axis of the green, how a green is his
Speaker 6: positioned to open the entrance into the green into what
Speaker 6: on what angle relative to the slope of the fairway,
Speaker 6: the width of the fairway, and the way the wind blows,
Speaker 6: and those things combined can make all the difference in
Speaker 6: the world. If you if the axis of the green
Speaker 6: is is aligned in such a way that you have
Speaker 6: a distinct advantage being in a certain spot in the
Speaker 6: fairway that aligns beautifully up the axis straight up into
Speaker 6: the entrance of the green, then that begins to dictate
Speaker 6: thoughts of play. I know, if I get to that spot,
Speaker 6: I have the best angle to play here. That's We've
Speaker 6: talked about that countless times, you know, through through the years.
Speaker 6: So I would say it has to do more with
Speaker 6: that and the and the fact that a small counter,
Speaker 6: what's a contra and a green that's that's three inches high,
Speaker 6: or it's the tilt of the green, tilt combined with
Speaker 6: the wind directions. Those are the things that he focuses
Speaker 6: on so much. I remember him years ago talking about
Speaker 6: the little hump, the little mound that's in front of
Speaker 6: the fourth green at the old course at Saint Andrews. Thing,
Speaker 6: just that infuriating little mound that kicks balls all sorts
Speaker 6: of ways. And once you know he was talking about,
Speaker 6: even as one of the most elite players, once you
Speaker 6: knew where the pen was and where that little mound was,
Speaker 6: it just influenced your thought all the way back to
Speaker 6: the tee. You didn't want to if you could help it.
Speaker 6: You didn't want to be in a position where that
Speaker 6: little mound trying to play, especially trying to play a
Speaker 6: shot just at the front of the green where that
Speaker 6: thing could cause something really unpleasant to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the contours in front of greens, and it's just
Speaker 1: especially on shots where you got to land at short
Speaker 1: is just.
Speaker 2: Interesting. One that jumps to mind.
Speaker 1: One of your courses is that fifteenth hole at Sand
Speaker 1: Valley with those two mounds right in front of that green,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the longer par fours out there.
Speaker 1: I want to just put a launcher out there and
Speaker 1: watch shots kick off them all day.
Speaker 6: And that was a natural contour and it really, it
Speaker 6: really was. It was what it was though it wasn't
Speaker 6: two mounds. It was one sort of a hot dog
Speaker 6: or a hot dog bun sort of a ridge that
Speaker 6: went just at a slight angle in just short of
Speaker 6: where the green was. And we kept standing out there
Speaker 6: and looking we could do something here where you just
Speaker 6: carve a little trough right in the middle of the
Speaker 6: hot dog contour to encourage somebody if you can get
Speaker 6: right there, if you can get a ball to come
Speaker 6: on the ground right through the little trough, it's going
Speaker 6: to feed right to that front pen, which is all
Speaker 6: but impossible to get to if you're trying to get
Speaker 6: it there.
Speaker 5: Area. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something that sticks out. Something that sticks out
Speaker 1: to me about that golf course is the green sites
Speaker 1: out there. There are just some magnificent ones set into dunes,
Speaker 1: you know, dramatic greens playing off of due where you're
Speaker 1: playing off of dunes, two greens, and then you know
Speaker 1: the combination of these subtle ones that are just laying
Speaker 1: the ground. Talk a little bit about the natural features
Speaker 1: at Sand Valley that you guys had to work with.
Speaker 1: That was, you know, in terms of, you know, amongst
Speaker 1: your other great sites.
Speaker 6: Well, Andy, I think first of all, the greatest attribute
Speaker 6: to Sand Valley was in its name. Sand is the
Speaker 6: sand sites are therefore drainage and earth moving, and the
Speaker 6: ability to create interesting contours or discover naturally interesting contours
Speaker 6: was the opportunity for that was great there, as it
Speaker 6: is on most sand sites, particularly sand sites had been
Speaker 6: influenced by wind. The interesting thing to me personally there,
Speaker 6: which one of the things that I am very proud
Speaker 6: of about the course we did at Sand Valley was
Speaker 6: the fact it was a tree plantation, as you well know,
Speaker 6: and been you know, planted in pine trees for timber
Speaker 6: pulpwood purposes. And once those trees were cleared, it became
Speaker 6: apparent almost all the contours were valleys or ridges, pretty
Speaker 6: big valleys or pretty big ridges. And I remember early
Speaker 6: on we were trying to lay out the golf course
Speaker 6: and go, how do we do this in such a
Speaker 6: way that these holes don't become so repetitive in their appearance.
Speaker 6: Or the end of way they play. How can we
Speaker 6: find ways to lay the holes on here in such
Speaker 6: a way that the contours will be different from one
Speaker 6: hole to another. You don't just feel like you're playing
Speaker 6: a whole series of holes in the valley, a whole
Speaker 6: series of holes over a ridge to.
Speaker 5: Low or something of that nature.
Speaker 6: And I remember talking to Jim Craig, you know, who
Speaker 6: worked with us so much, and then Dave Accent all
Speaker 6: the other guys that were there early on. Once it
Speaker 6: was cleared and you looked and you go, many, this
Speaker 6: crown just looks the same. How do we come up
Speaker 6: with some concepts and some visual presentations that give each
Speaker 6: whole individual.
Speaker 5: Identity in character.
Speaker 6: So I think that turned out okay, but it was
Speaker 6: a concern.
Speaker 1: I find it to be endlessly compelling. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I love most about it is that
Speaker 1: I've the advantage of the climate there where it's conducive
Speaker 1: to the fascue and the speed at which a play is.
Speaker 1: When you're building, knowing that you're going to have a
Speaker 1: golf course that's going to play very firm and fast,
Speaker 1: do you approach contour a little bit differently than say
Speaker 1: a place you know we're here in the desert, or
Speaker 1: where you're where Bermuda, where you're dealing with the slower grass.
Speaker 6: Oh, no question, Andy, I mean it's if you're well. Certainly,
Speaker 6: if you're by the sea someplace on sand and where
Speaker 6: it's windy, all all things change. I mean you you
Speaker 6: just simply can't go bunker greens for example, for all
Speaker 6: aerial type approach shots, you just can't do it. There
Speaker 6: some days, particularly the days when holds play down a
Speaker 6: strong wind, that that would be.
Speaker 5: Impossible to play.
Speaker 6: So you have to in situations on sand with fescue
Speaker 6: where the ball roll and depending on the direction of
Speaker 6: the wind, particularly the wind varies, there are days that
Speaker 6: you just have to start to visualize shots that could
Speaker 6: land fifty yards different from what you just played the
Speaker 6: day before on the same hole. And in that regard,
Speaker 6: the conjuring has to allow for that, and if you
Speaker 6: can create or take advantage of existing contours that enable
Speaker 6: people to play those kind of shots. To say, there's
Speaker 6: no way today down when I can hit this ball
Speaker 6: to the green in the area, it won't stop in
Speaker 6: the next county. I've got to land it far short
Speaker 6: of the green and use the ground to access the
Speaker 6: putting surface. Then that's when those contours become so not
Speaker 6: only interesting, but valuable from the sense of how the
Speaker 6: most successfully play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes the contour so much more of a factor.
Speaker 1: It's really an amazing thing. One course you people are
Speaker 1: gonna be very familiar with. They just watched it on television, Kapalua.
Speaker 1: You just uh finished a refinement of the golf course.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, obviously weather did not and
Speaker 1: the newness of turf did not conduce itself well to
Speaker 1: is regaining that speed that had been lost over the
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years that it was you know, in existence,
Speaker 1: and that's a natural thing to have obviously have happened.
Speaker 2: But what what did.
Speaker 1: You kind of think after being out there watching golf
Speaker 1: for a week? Did you learn anything watching the PGA
Speaker 1: Tour players and you know what and how you approach
Speaker 1: that process obviously with the tour in mind.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, we were pleased Andy, Ben and I were
Speaker 6: both there as well as our wives Julie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: We don't go there without without Sue and Julie, that's
Speaker 6: for sure. I remember they had called the true golf
Speaker 6: management people called one enough would go out there this year,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know I didn't I wasn't necessarily expecting that,
Speaker 6: but they won't know if we would do it. And
Speaker 6: my wife Sue said yes, you know it was yes,
Speaker 6: we are going and so, yeah, it's such a wonderful
Speaker 6: place to go. And it certainly has so many special
Speaker 6: memories for Ben and Julie. They were married there, you know,
Speaker 6: years ago, and and so and of course for Ben
Speaker 6: and me to go back, and but we were very pleased.
Speaker 6: You know, we walked the holes, we we we we
Speaker 6: walked and studied all the greens now that they were
Speaker 6: obviously completely grown in and playing under tournament conditions. We
Speaker 6: were very pleased with the refinements we made to the greens.
Speaker 6: Ben Ben numerous times referred to it as calming down
Speaker 6: some of the aspects of the greens, trying to create
Speaker 6: a few more pinnable area is but also reduced some
Speaker 6: of the slope in the greens that today's green speeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask how much have green
Speaker 1: speeds changed from you know, the early nineties when you
Speaker 1: when you guys did that golf course.
Speaker 6: Oh, I actually don't know, because I don't know that
Speaker 6: I don't have any idea of what the green, the
Speaker 6: stemp peper so to speak, you know, readings were then
Speaker 6: it's significant.
Speaker 5: I wish I could answer the question. I don't know.
Speaker 6: They had the greens had gotten to the point they
Speaker 6: had gotten smaller through the years, but they had also
Speaker 6: gotten to the point that the tour was concerned about
Speaker 6: the number of pinnable areas, and the tilts on the
Speaker 6: greens were severe enough that it just felt like you
Speaker 6: couldn't use areas of the greens that you would that
Speaker 6: you would like to or were able to, you know,
Speaker 6: twenty eight, twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because there's this, you know, constant talk
Speaker 1: of especially when you get in tournament golf. More so
Speaker 1: if really any kind of golf, if the fair and unfair,
Speaker 1: and the idea of you go to these classic golf
Speaker 1: courses and what you alluded to it in our first
Speaker 1: podcast of wing foot and how how close to the
Speaker 1: line it is with being it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: brilliant because of how close to the line it is
Speaker 1: and and how difficult it is because that line is
Speaker 1: so razor thin. With with green speeds continuing to increase,
Speaker 1: do you think do you feel like.
Speaker 2: In a sense, we're losing a.
Speaker 1: Little bit of of the magic of green contours.
Speaker 6: Well, if you if you put any value in the
Speaker 6: sense that green should represent natural conditions or or conjuring
Speaker 6: that you find in the in the world on nice sites. Yeah,
Speaker 6: because the green speeds to the point that the green
Speaker 6: speeds dictate the contours instead of so many of these
Speaker 6: courses that we all revere the contours dictated the green speeds,
Speaker 6: we've kind of reversed this. The engine have become the cart,
Speaker 6: and the carts become the engine. So you know those
Speaker 6: courses that you referred to wing Foot or Shunnacaker, all
Speaker 6: these these magnificent mary and these wonderful, wonderful places, they're
Speaker 6: right on the line. I mean they are right on
Speaker 6: the line. They're still artistic. Oakmont maybe the most so
Speaker 6: of all, just an unbelievably artistic putting surfaces. But to
Speaker 6: be able to conduct, you know, championships today with the
Speaker 6: green speeds that are expected, it's it's difficult.
Speaker 1: It's and I think to extent it's cheapening the game
Speaker 1: because when you get them fast with the less slope,
Speaker 1: you're never inside of ten feet, you're never putting a
Speaker 1: putt that you have to play outside the hole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's you know, it's just a different perspective. I
Speaker 5: guess it's.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know, Ben and Ben and our prejudice.
Speaker 6: We still we still like playing golf in in in
Speaker 6: arenas and on surfaces that that you just truly feel
Speaker 6: like could have been natural in the in the gift
Speaker 6: of nature, and not something that's been created due to mathematics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So another
Speaker 1: golf course that the tour visits training for us, and obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, there's news that it was moving, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons that it's moving, not necessarily all
Speaker 1: all because of the golf course, but because of infrastructure
Speaker 1: and many different things, you know, location.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like.
Speaker 1: The players gave it a really gave it a chance
Speaker 1: to embrace it, because I you know, leading up to
Speaker 1: the event, I remember, you know, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of negativity coming from players who hadn't even seen the
Speaker 1: golf course.
Speaker 5: Oh Andy, I think they I think they probably did.
Speaker 6: I think they were. I mean, certainly we heard some
Speaker 6: of those same comments. But you know, really I think
Speaker 6: once they were there and the experiencing the golf course.
Speaker 6: I'm sure the players, we know that some of them
Speaker 6: would not appreciate it. Anything that's different is sometimes not
Speaker 6: easily accepted, and in all forms of life. But we
Speaker 6: knew that there would be, you know, there would be
Speaker 6: some players who would really like it and really appreciate it,
Speaker 6: and there'd be others who who wouldn't. But I don't
Speaker 6: personally think the players were the driving issue there. You know,
Speaker 6: it's interesting you just referred to couple of the Plantation Course.
Speaker 6: Plantation Course was very controversial when it first opened and
Speaker 6: the touring players played there because they had to use
Speaker 6: the ground, they had to use the wind. You didn't
Speaker 6: play point A to point B in the air. You
Speaker 6: could do it on some shots, but there were many
Speaker 6: you couldn't. And it was a different form of golf
Speaker 6: than most of those players were used to experiencing on
Speaker 6: the tour, and so it had its own years of
Speaker 6: people trying to come to grips with it. Do we
Speaker 6: accept this and do we like it?
Speaker 5: Do we not? Now?
Speaker 6: In more recent years, that's you know, it's that seems
Speaker 6: to have all gone away. Everybody's so accepting in the
Speaker 6: Plantation course grass too, yeah, and saw grass too. I
Speaker 6: wish Trendy Force would have been afforded a bit longer
Speaker 6: period of time in which to prove itself because mother
Speaker 6: nature intervened so dramatically so far in the two years
Speaker 6: they played, so wet and rain and horrible weather. And
Speaker 6: of course that's pretty that's not uncommon in Dallas in
Speaker 6: May and then. But it was a tough marriage from
Speaker 6: the beginning. Indy, I mean the tour playing, playing a
Speaker 6: tournament that was used to attracting very large crowds, and
Speaker 6: playing on a landfill that.
Speaker 5: You know, wasn't for obvious reasons.
Speaker 6: The cap could not you know, water was not allowed
Speaker 6: to percolate downward to penetrate the landfills.
Speaker 5: So there were obvious issues that were going to come up.
Speaker 6: If the weather turned bad and there was a lot
Speaker 6: of rain, particularly in the areas where the spectators, not
Speaker 6: so much where the players were, but where the spectators
Speaker 6: would be working, it was going to become soggy and messy.
Speaker 6: And that and the fact that again the landfill dictated
Speaker 6: there can there be no trees.
Speaker 5: You know, it's against the law. I have plant trees
Speaker 5: on a landfill.
Speaker 6: Where the root structure fractures the gap of the landfill,
Speaker 6: so there were no trees. So if it were a bright, sunny,
Speaker 6: hot day in Dallas, which can easily happen, as you know,
Speaker 6: then there would be the issues with well there's no shade.
Speaker 6: So there were a lot of things going on there,
Speaker 6: the accessibility meaning there were always some folks who said,
Speaker 6: well it's on the more disadvantage side of town. You know,
Speaker 6: it's not quite as glamorous an area you know there too,
Speaker 6: So there's just a lot of things went together probably
Speaker 6: to say it was an uphill challenge from the beginning.
Speaker 2: To change gears.
Speaker 1: You know, Pete die passed away last last week, and
Speaker 1: we we talked at length about Pete in the first
Speaker 1: podcast about fifteen minutes or so about how you got,
Speaker 1: how you how you met, and how he got started.
Speaker 1: Because of seeing his course in high Point, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: I was really interested to hear, you know what it
Speaker 1: was like learning that design build methodology from Pete and
Speaker 1: the importance of it from him. Obviously, that is one
Speaker 1: of those lasting legacies that's bringing that style of construction back.
Speaker 1: And you guys, Tom Doak and many other architects have
Speaker 1: have really brought that where that has become a dominant
Speaker 1: style in architecture today.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's I mean, yes, Tom doak a lot of us,
Speaker 6: you know, or or it's our preferred way of going
Speaker 6: back creating a golf course, and that is there's a
Speaker 6: direct link, I would say, through Pete going on back
Speaker 6: much further obviously, but in in Tom's and my case particularly,
Speaker 6: it was that personal, uh experience of seeing it done
Speaker 6: on the ground, that evolutionary process of starting with the
Speaker 6: concept and then refining that concept through the activities and
Speaker 6: the work on the ground through you know, through the
Speaker 6: process of building the course. That it's the it's the way.
Speaker 6: Certainly for me, it's the it's the only way I
Speaker 6: would know how to do it. And it was just
Speaker 6: given my basic I guess nature and inclinations and and
Speaker 6: the fact that it did work. With Pete and Alice
Speaker 6: uh uh, it was a huge influence not only the
Speaker 6: way we work, but my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And obviously a lot of that was you getting to
Speaker 1: do work, you know, and while you were working, you know,
Speaker 1: it was you were given almost a leash to do
Speaker 1: the work. And I imagine that's the case with your associates.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Something I've found interesting having gotten to know some of
Speaker 1: some of your associates, is that is that some of
Speaker 1: your associates come from like a non golf background. What
Speaker 1: what have you guys learned from, you know, having people
Speaker 1: that you know the advantages of having somebody that maybe
Speaker 1: comes from something a background outside of golf that's not
Speaker 1: a huge golf not when they when they start working.
Speaker 6: For you, well, you know, handy, I mean even that
Speaker 6: you could I can personally link that back to Pete.
Speaker 6: I remember him saying. I asked him one time many
Speaker 6: years ago, mister die, why don't you why don't you
Speaker 6: have people, more people that work building your courses that
Speaker 6: are really actively involved in golf. And he was pretty
Speaker 6: definitive about He said, I don't want people to have
Speaker 6: to unlearn things, you know. I want them to think
Speaker 6: the way we're thinking and do the way the concepts
Speaker 6: and things that we're doing. Not come with all these
Speaker 6: preconceived ideas because someone else did them differently. I'd rather
Speaker 6: have somebody's never done it at all and then train
Speaker 6: them from the beginning to work through it. In our case,
Speaker 6: it's more andy. I think you just get a sense
Speaker 6: of almost all these guys have worked at the well,
Speaker 6: quite frankly, at the very bottom of some of our
Speaker 6: golf courses in the beginning, some starting as labors and
Speaker 6: some equipment operators and things, but then watching them work
Speaker 6: through the years and just realizing that these fellows each
Speaker 6: have extraordinarily extraordinary I would say, night and learned talents
Speaker 6: for what they do, particularly the ones you know that
Speaker 6: I think you're referring to most who are creating all
Speaker 6: the landforms, the shapes and the concepts that so characterize
Speaker 6: the courses and give them the identity. And Jeff Bradley,
Speaker 6: you know, the bunker Guru as he's called by or
Speaker 6: is Arnold Palmer, I guess called him the bunker Guru.
Speaker 5: Jeff's a prime example.
Speaker 6: You know, he worked on the maintenance crew at Hot
Speaker 6: Springs Country Club in Arkansas, and he was a laborer
Speaker 6: working on the maintenance crew. And when we did work
Speaker 6: back there in the early nineties, and he ended up
Speaker 6: up being sent over by the Rusty Mercer who's now
Speaker 6: the director of agrotomy at stream Song, but Rusty was
Speaker 6: the superintendent at Hot Sprange Country Caub Jeff worked for him,
Speaker 6: and Rusty sent him out to work with Dave Axlent,
Speaker 6: who's worked with us now for over thirty years, and
Speaker 6: Dave was doing the bunkers at Hot Springs, so Jeff
Speaker 6: just went out to help as a laborer. And I
Speaker 6: remember Dave telling me toward the end of the job.
Speaker 6: He said, Bill, this guy can see it. He's got
Speaker 6: a feel for it. He can He's just got it.
Speaker 6: It's one of those almost indefinable things. Some people can
Speaker 6: see something and you can talk to them about it
Speaker 6: over and over and over, and yet when they attempt
Speaker 6: to do it, it just doesn't quite happen. And that's
Speaker 6: in all walks of life, all professions. Dave was convinced
Speaker 6: to Jeff Bradley. He said, he's for whatever reason, he
Speaker 6: can see and visualize what we're trying to do. He said,
Speaker 6: he's he's got it, and that intangible, and I remember
Speaker 6: distinctly Dave left right toward the end of the job.
Speaker 6: I went back to walk through with Rusty right as
Speaker 6: they grow in was being completed, and I remember looking
Speaker 6: at bunkers on the last couple of holes that were
Speaker 6: grasped and I said something to Rusty Mercer. I said,
Speaker 6: Rusty boy, David a heck of a job. On those bunkers,
Speaker 6: and Rusty looked at me. He said, Bill, Dave didn't
Speaker 6: do those bunkers. I said, he didn't do Who did those?
Speaker 6: He is Jeff Bradley, the guy that's been working with Dave.
Speaker 6: So that's one example. You could repeat something similar to
Speaker 6: that story for each one of the guys that works
Speaker 6: with us. They've come from different backgrounds. Some people say,
Speaker 6: what an eclectic group. Some people say, what a weird
Speaker 6: group of guys that all come together from such different
Speaker 6: background and still form this this group of super talented
Speaker 6: artistic people.
Speaker 1: It's neat, I mean, and you think about It's I
Speaker 1: think about this all the time. It's like, how many
Speaker 1: people are like world class it's something that they never
Speaker 1: have tried in life, Like you know, how many people
Speaker 1: are like great singers that were always too shy to sing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Oh, it's it's just you know, in all walks
Speaker 6: of life, it's just that.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's it's that.
Speaker 6: Coming together of preparation and opportunity and talent, and you
Speaker 6: can have all the talent in the world, you can
Speaker 6: have all the talent plus preparation in the world. The
Speaker 6: opportunity doesn't come, it doesn't happen, or you can have
Speaker 6: not much talent or not much preparation and you're given
Speaker 6: an opportunity and not much comes of it.
Speaker 1: It's good advice, good life advice. Yeah, so last question.
Speaker 1: You got to get out of here. And we talked
Speaker 1: to Tom Doak at length about the stream Song project
Speaker 1: and one of you know, one of the things he
Speaker 1: said is he if he could have one hole from
Speaker 1: the red course. Obviously, you guys, it was a very
Speaker 1: collaborative process with routing and then you were building the
Speaker 1: golf course at the same time, which is pretty neat.
Speaker 1: If he could have one golf hole from your golf course,
Speaker 1: he would take the seventh, is what he said.
Speaker 2: If you were able to just take.
Speaker 1: And you get nineteen holes instead eighteen, take on one
Speaker 1: hole off the blue course, which one would it be?
Speaker 2: And why?
Speaker 6: Well, interesting enough, when we laid those holes out there,
Speaker 6: holes on our course that Tom visualized and routed on
Speaker 6: the ground, and their holes on his course that I
Speaker 6: actually visualized and route it on the ground. So do
Speaker 6: you want me to pick one of those or just what.
Speaker 2: You don't know? Me has to know. But you got
Speaker 2: to pick your hole.
Speaker 6: Oh, can I have a moment how long can I have.
Speaker 2: To get You got to leave in ten minutes, so
Speaker 2: you got Yeah.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll try not to take that long.
Speaker 6: I try to, you know what, I think I would
Speaker 6: take Tom's third hole.
Speaker 5: And I say that for two reasons.
Speaker 6: One is I I saw that hole on the ground.
Speaker 5: If if if we.
Speaker 6: Had not been collaborating, you know, on the on the
Speaker 6: two routings together. I think if if Ben and I
Speaker 6: had just done eighteen holes on that whole, you know,
Speaker 6: that whole cycle the two courses are, that would have
Speaker 6: been one of the holes. I just found it to
Speaker 6: be an interesting circumstance for golf and with its landforms.
Speaker 6: But having said that, I think they did a better
Speaker 6: job than probably what we would have because the detail
Speaker 6: work the interested, particularly up near the green and the
Speaker 6: t shots fantastic. But the second shot I think is
Speaker 6: really really good. And I used to kid Tom's guys
Speaker 6: because again we were working literally side by side out there.
Speaker 6: So once i'd walk over the hill one of a
Speaker 6: mon ago, you know, guys, I know it's on your course,
Speaker 6: but this is our hole, this is my whole, so
Speaker 6: don't mess this up. So with all that good nature's
Speaker 6: joking and stuff around. When I went back and looked
Speaker 6: at the third hole of it's free damn good.
Speaker 2: That competitive?
Speaker 1: You know, is that unlike any other project that you've
Speaker 1: ever done where you've built at the exact same time
Speaker 1: next to you know, another group of architecture team.
Speaker 6: Yes, we've worked, you know, building a course while they're
Speaker 6: building another course, maybe at the same project or something.
Speaker 6: We just did that. It was Arts National there in Branson, Missouri,
Speaker 6: the Tiger Woods Courses has been going on while we
Speaker 6: were building our course. But to collaborate literally hand in
Speaker 6: hand on the on the site with holes that intermingle, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's the only time we've done it. It would be
Speaker 6: very difficult to do with most, I think people in
Speaker 6: our profession. The fact that we've been on you Tom
Speaker 6: for so long. We knew the guys, his guys, knew
Speaker 6: our guys. We knew this was you know, this was
Speaker 6: gonna be We knew it'd be interesting. Well, we felt
Speaker 6: like it was gonna be fun. It turned out to
Speaker 6: be more fun than we and than we even imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have all these half written articles and right
Speaker 1: after the President's Cup with Royal, Melverne and I started
Speaker 1: the thinking about American venues that should host the writer
Speaker 1: or the President's Cup, and I landed on the one
Speaker 1: that I was most intrigued by was a composite course
Speaker 1: at stream Song, and I have like eight different routings. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was really fun to put together. It was
Speaker 1: really tough because if you went out and I think
Speaker 1: these are the holes that you kind of had to
Speaker 1: create a little but if you go out one through
Speaker 1: five or six, I always ended up having that central
Speaker 1: piece of ground be kind of where all the holes
Speaker 1: were housed on my favorite ones, but somebody else would
Speaker 1: have different fague route.
Speaker 6: Now it is interesting and stream Song it's it's sort
Speaker 6: of like places at Pinehurst that if you're not careful,
Speaker 6: you could start playing on one course and if you
Speaker 6: weren't pretty observant, you'd end up.
Speaker 5: On the other course.
Speaker 6: You know, it could happen abandon even at Tom's course
Speaker 6: and david Kids course there at number eight.
Speaker 5: So uh yeah, well.
Speaker 6: We're about to not do the same thing but at
Speaker 6: Tara where Tom's gonna do the second public access course
Speaker 6: there and they're going to be building at the same
Speaker 6: time we're building ours. So they don't intermingle, but they
Speaker 6: they come so close together you could almost claim they touch.
Speaker 1: That's that's called Tom told me that because he got
Speaker 1: the ocean the first time.
Speaker 2: You got the ocean.
Speaker 5: Oh, Tom, He's unbelievable. I don't know if I should
Speaker 5: say this publicly, but I will. Tom. So I was
Speaker 5: talking to him on.
Speaker 6: The phone and he told me he wanted to go
Speaker 6: first with his course. And I said, why is that time?
Speaker 6: I thought, maybe we do these at the same time.
Speaker 6: He says, Bill, I think we should go first. And
Speaker 6: I said, well why, He said, because you took all
Speaker 6: the best land, he said, so I got more of
Speaker 6: the inland land, you got more of the ocean land.
Speaker 6: He said, our course should open first, so then yours
Speaker 6: can come along.
Speaker 2: After he's working.
Speaker 5: He's working, he's constantly.
Speaker 6: He's never at rest when it comes to analyzing and
Speaker 6: figuring out the best way to do things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thanks so much for your time. You know
Speaker 1: you got to you gotta get out of here. So
Speaker 1: we look forward to our next time. Hopefully it won't
Speaker 1: be you know, two or three years apart.
Speaker 4: Thank Andy, you've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 2: We do the digging for you.