Speaker 1: The original Augusta National. The Augusta National that Alistair McKenzie
Speaker 1: and Bobby Jones built in nineteen thirty two was, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, one of the strangest and most interesting courses
Speaker 1: ever designed. So let's talk all about it. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and this is designing golf, all right. Today's big question,
Speaker 1: what's with all the template holes at Augusta National. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if this is common knowledge, but a lot
Speaker 1: of holes at Augusta were based in part on some
Speaker 1: of the most famous holes in golf. And we know
Speaker 1: this because Alistair McKenzie wrote about it in an article
Speaker 1: called Plans for the Ideal Golf Course published in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two. He described all eighteen holes at Augusta, and
Speaker 1: many of them, it turns out, were inspired by some
Speaker 1: of his and his co designer Bobby Jones's favorite holes,
Speaker 1: including several holes from the old course at Saint Andrew's,
Speaker 1: which both he and Jones revered. In fact, their intention
Speaker 1: at Augusta was to create a kind of inland American
Speaker 1: version of the old course. Now a lot of these
Speaker 1: influences are still detectable at Augusta, but it does take
Speaker 1: a bit of effort because the course has changed a
Speaker 1: great deal over time. The original iteration of the course
Speaker 1: was much wider and less tried. It had only twenty
Speaker 1: two bunkers, many of which were very large and intricate.
Speaker 1: The greens had these chaotic shapes with strange little tongues
Speaker 1: kind of jutting out in different directions. There was more
Speaker 1: artificial mounding throughout the course. The seventh, tenth, and sixteenth
Speaker 1: greens were completely different, located completely differently, and the sixteenth
Speaker 1: hole in particular was just a different hole altogether. And
Speaker 1: overall the course was just more rugged in appearance and
Speaker 1: eccentric in its design ethos. Which is not to say
Speaker 1: that Augusta National was better originally than it is now.
Speaker 1: It was just different and probably more in tune with
Speaker 1: the principles that Alistair Mackenzie outlined in that nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two article that I mentioned. So to understand the original
Speaker 1: architecture at Augusta National, I think you have to know
Speaker 1: a little about those so called template holes, and to
Speaker 1: help with that, I'm going to bring on Josh Pettitt.
Speaker 1: Josh is a golf architect, but more important for our purposes,
Speaker 1: the founder of the Alistair Mackenzie Institute. And the first
Speaker 1: thing Josh told me about the template hole issue is
Speaker 1: that mackenzie and Jones really weren't trying to do template
Speaker 1: holes in the way that we normally think of them.
Speaker 2: They both revered the old Course as the paramount example
Speaker 2: of the greatest golf course, and they were trying to
Speaker 2: take inspiration from many of these holes. They specifically were
Speaker 2: not trying to copy them. And McKenzie goes out of
Speaker 2: his way to write about that a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: some people were sort of claiming they were building a
Speaker 2: golf course that was just a copy, you know, a
Speaker 2: bunch of holes that were copies of great holes, and
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't like that characterization. So, you know,
Speaker 2: it's important to understand that he was really trying to
Speaker 2: take the ideas, the concepts, the strategic concepts of those
Speaker 2: holes and then apply them on a different landscape and
Speaker 2: create like a new version of them, so much so
Speaker 2: that he hoped, you know, he thought when they were done,
Speaker 2: they'd done such a great job that that collection of
Speaker 2: holes would then go on to inspire future architects to
Speaker 2: do a similar kind of process.
Speaker 1: So the first of these kind of remixed templates that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about is the fourth hole.
Speaker 3: The fourth hole that that part three.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a mid length Part three, and
Speaker 2: it's modeled after the eleventh at St. Andrews, the Eden
Speaker 2: and I think many in that era would consider the.
Speaker 3: Eden is the greatest short hole in the world.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you know that that green, it's it's flanked
Speaker 2: by those two bunkers in the front, you know, similar
Speaker 2: to the eleventh at Shane Andrews that has you know,
Speaker 2: the hill bunker on the left and the strath on
Speaker 2: the right, and you know, you just don't want to
Speaker 2: miss long. If you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss short
Speaker 2: in the middle sort of in that bowl there.
Speaker 4: But you do not want to go long.
Speaker 1: If you go long on the fourth hole, you might
Speaker 1: not be able to stop your chip or putt before
Speaker 1: it runs off the front of the green. And that
Speaker 1: is definitely a feature of the Eden hole at St. Andrews.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a strategic game of distance control. You
Speaker 1: have these threatening bunkers toward the front of the green,
Speaker 1: but if you're too scared of them and you go long,
Speaker 1: you'll find yourself in an even worse position. Obviously, one
Speaker 1: thing that the fourth hole at Augusta National doesn't have
Speaker 1: is the eden estuary framing the green. There was a
Speaker 1: road pretty close behind the fourth Green, originally Berkman's Road,
Speaker 1: but it was rerouted when the club lengthened the par
Speaker 1: for fifth hole in the late twenty tens. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of the fifth hole, it was actually inspired by an
Speaker 1: even more famous hole at St. Andrews, the Road Hole.
Speaker 2: So going back to this idea that they were trying
Speaker 2: to not copy these holes, one of the reasons why sites,
Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of a fool's errand to try
Speaker 2: to copy these holes, is because the visuals, the surrounding
Speaker 2: landscape is going to be completely different. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: the example of St. Andrews, you have the eaton estuary,
Speaker 2: but I guess Nationally you don't. So that's why you
Speaker 2: don't want to like directly copy these holes verbatim. But
Speaker 2: in the case of the fifth hole, the road hole,
Speaker 2: it's again it's just taking the strategy and then in
Speaker 2: this case it's mirroring, it's sort of reversing it off
Speaker 2: the tee. So you know, the road hole you play
Speaker 2: out to the left and the dog leagus to the right,
Speaker 2: and you're trying to carry over the old course hotel
Speaker 2: as close as you can to set up your angle
Speaker 2: of approaching the green.
Speaker 3: The fifth that Augusta is the exact opposite.
Speaker 2: It's a slight dog leg left, it's not as severe,
Speaker 2: and the corner of the dog leg is made up
Speaker 2: by what was just one big bunker. Now there's two
Speaker 2: bunkers there and you know, some trees and so in
Speaker 2: that case you want to play to the right to
Speaker 2: carry that as much as you can to then open
Speaker 2: up your approach into the green there.
Speaker 1: Now the green itself there's no road bunker. Are there
Speaker 1: any similarities between the fifth green at Augusta National and
Speaker 1: the and the road green?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think at first site, at first glance,
Speaker 2: you would say not really.
Speaker 3: But it is kind of on a plateau. That's sort
Speaker 3: of what he says.
Speaker 2: It's sort of, you know, sort of raises up to
Speaker 2: the sort of plateau green similar to that green, but
Speaker 2: the green itself is very very different green, yet it
Speaker 2: doesn't have the road hole bunker there. So this is
Speaker 2: I think another another example of where he was just
Speaker 2: trying to take some of these ideas and apply them
Speaker 2: onto a very different landscape, and then the result would
Speaker 2: be like a very new end product that was like
Speaker 2: not you know, you would see some resemblance, but also
Speaker 2: had a lot of unique characteristic extended of itself. So
Speaker 2: he was trying to take certain ideas and not copying everything.
Speaker 2: So sometimes it was more like the t shot. Other
Speaker 2: times it was more the way the green played, but
Speaker 2: he wasn't trying to copy the whole from tea to
Speaker 2: green and replicate that in any way.
Speaker 1: Finally, to round out this kind of three hole stretch
Speaker 1: of very well known templates or semi templates, the par
Speaker 1: three sixth hole at Augusta National was, according to Mackenzie,
Speaker 1: inspired by the Redan at North Barrackle Club in Scotland.
Speaker 2: The green is set up in a way where it
Speaker 2: allows you to feed a ball from the front right
Speaker 2: of the green to the back left of the green
Speaker 2: if there's a pin there, because there's a bunker in
Speaker 2: the front left that's sort of guarding that. So there's
Speaker 2: this kind of massive mounds sort of a buried elephant
Speaker 2: sort of in the back right of the green, and
Speaker 2: that mound if you kind of hit right into it
Speaker 2: with your you know, probably like a mid iron in
Speaker 2: those days, maybe a long iron for some people, and
Speaker 2: you know, the ground was firm. It was sort of
Speaker 2: feed the ball back left to a pin right there,
Speaker 2: and that in a way, you know, that functions similarly
Speaker 2: to how the Redan functions. He does say he kind
Speaker 2: of like brags a little bit, and he says like,
Speaker 2: they didn't necessarily build a better version of the Red Dan,
Speaker 2: but they built a more beautiful, more attractive version just
Speaker 2: because of the surroundings and the visuals and the esthetic
Speaker 2: of the bunker.
Speaker 3: And he really liked visually the way that hole looked.
Speaker 1: So Augusta National originally had these re interpreted versions of
Speaker 1: the Eden, the Road and the Radan four, five, and six,
Speaker 1: but the references to old links courses at Augusta just
Speaker 1: kept going from there. The original seventh hole had a
Speaker 1: swale in front of its green that was inspired by
Speaker 1: the Valley of sin On the eighteenth hole at Saint Andrew's,
Speaker 1: and then the eighth green with those big mounds surrounding
Speaker 1: it was influenced by the punch Bowl seventeenth Green. Mierfield,
Speaker 1: I won't go through every illusion that Augusta National makes
Speaker 1: to other courses, but suffice it to say that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them, and if you're interested, I'd
Speaker 1: recommend reading Mackenzie's article Plans for the Ideal Golf Course.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting and informative, and you can find a
Speaker 1: great reprinting of it on Josh's website, which is alistairmackenzie
Speaker 1: dot org. But before we wrap up, there is a
Speaker 1: broader question for me here about Alistair McKenzie and what
Speaker 1: he was up to when he was helping Bobby Jones
Speaker 1: design Augusta National in the early thirties. Why do you
Speaker 1: think he was interested in incorporating influences in this way
Speaker 1: at this point in his architectural career.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of reasons. I think.
Speaker 2: First of all, it was so much to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that he was starting to get sites that
Speaker 2: weren't very good sites. Now, not to say that the
Speaker 2: site of Augusta wasn't a good site, but it was
Speaker 2: a severe site to build on.
Speaker 3: It wasn't links Land, let's say.
Speaker 2: And coming out of his time in South America, where
Speaker 2: he spent a good amount of time in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: in Argentina and in Uruguay, a lot of those courses
Speaker 2: that he designed, some of which didn't get built.
Speaker 3: He was using this idea of all these templates.
Speaker 2: He was referencing these all basically his favorite holes, his
Speaker 2: inspiration because he was working on sites where he had
Speaker 2: in some cases zero features to work with and.
Speaker 3: He would have to manufacture everything from nothing.
Speaker 2: And then when he got to Augusta, he had been toiling,
Speaker 2: you know, he'd been toying with those ideas for a
Speaker 2: couple of years. And then he and Bobby Jones, because
Speaker 2: of their shared reverence of the old course that was
Speaker 2: essentially what they were trying to create. They were trying
Speaker 2: to create what they called the world's ideal inland course.
Speaker 2: They were trying to create like an inland version of
Speaker 2: Saint Andrews.
Speaker 3: And so I think that gave.
Speaker 2: Him a creative license to pull from, you know, to
Speaker 2: use those holes as inspiration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting evolution for him because Mackenzie
Speaker 1: had spent so much of his career to that point
Speaker 1: theorizing camouflage, theorizing ways to make courses look as though
Speaker 1: they had not been constructed, that they had just been
Speaker 1: sitting there all along, and not only theorizing that, but
Speaker 1: practicing it and coming up with techniques to execute courses
Speaker 1: that looked completely natural, and Cypress Point might be the
Speaker 1: height of that. For him, that might be the best
Speaker 1: that he had ever done in that regard. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like after Cypress Point, or maybe after Pasa Tiempo
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, he started thinking, Okay, well, what else.
Speaker 2: Is there as a great artist, which I think he was,
Speaker 2: and he considered himself that he had that mentality of,
Speaker 2: you know, like Bob Dylan would say, a great artist
Speaker 2: has to be careful never to arrive.
Speaker 3: They're always in a constant state of evolving.
Speaker 1: And that gets to the heart of why I admire
Speaker 1: Alistair Mackenzie's career so much. To the very end, he
Speaker 1: was pushing and experimenting and trying to find new ways forward. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he died in January nineteen thirty four, just a couple
Speaker 1: of months before the first Augusta National Invitation tournament later
Speaker 1: renamed the Masters, And I've always wondered what he would
Speaker 1: have done next, because for him, Augusta National was the
Speaker 1: beginning of something. It was the beginning of a new
Speaker 1: design approach. And part of why I'd like looking back
Speaker 1: at that first iteration of the golf course is that
Speaker 1: it offers a glimpse of how creative and idiosyncratic Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties designs might have been if he had
Speaker 1: gotten to build them now. Fortunately, we do have plenty
Speaker 1: of historical information about the original Augusta National, so today's
Speaker 1: golf architects can continue to learn from that version of
Speaker 1: the course and maybe build some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: Mackenzie didn't get to. One current architect who has been
Speaker 1: inspired by the early Augusta is Brian Schneider. Brian is
Speaker 1: a longtime Tom dok associate and the co designer of
Speaker 1: the Great Old Barnwell in South Carolina. Brian has a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting projects coming up, including a solo design
Speaker 1: at the Michael Kaiser Resort Old Shores in the Florida Panhandle,
Speaker 1: and this new course, according to Kaiser himself, is going
Speaker 1: to draw some inspiration from the Augusta National of the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. So who better to elaborate on this topic
Speaker 1: than Brian Schneider. But real quick before we jump to him.
Speaker 1: The Friday Golf Pro Shop is ready for major season. Specifically,
Speaker 1: our Mackenzie Bunker illustration drawn by our own Cameron Hurtis,
Speaker 1: is back, and you'll find it on b drafty favorites
Speaker 1: like the Andy Hoodie and the Dewey Pocket T shirts,
Speaker 1: as well as on various headcovers, hats, and much more. Plus,
Speaker 1: Cameron has a new T shirt that shows this Mackenzie
Speaker 1: Bunker illustration in a new light, so make sure to
Speaker 1: check that out. You can see all of this at
Speaker 1: pro shop dotthfrid Egg dot com. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to Brian Schneider. All right, Brian Schneider, welcome back to
Speaker 1: the pod. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 4: My pleasure, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So I want to start with what I think is
Speaker 1: a really interesting part of your backstory, which is that
Speaker 1: you worked maintenance at a bunch of great golf courses,
Speaker 1: including Augusta National, earlier in your career. So could you
Speaker 1: give me the background for that, Like what made you
Speaker 1: decide to do that?
Speaker 5: You know, it was relatively late in college for me.
Speaker 5: I graduated in nineteen ninety seven from the University of Wisconsin,
Speaker 5: and for most of my time in college I had
Speaker 5: ideas about going to medical school and you know, kind
Speaker 5: of getting into sports medicine or something along those lines.
Speaker 5: And it was relatively late in my college career that
Speaker 5: I decided to switch gears and get into golf some way.
Speaker 5: I had an inkling that architecture interested me a bit,
Speaker 5: but I wasn't entirely aware that architecture was really a
Speaker 5: thing that you could do for a living.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I was aware of certain architects at the time, and
Speaker 5: Pete Die had recently designed the original version of Black
Speaker 5: Wolf Run in Wisconsin, which made a big splash, so
Speaker 5: his was a name I was aware of, and I
Speaker 5: traveled around a little bit, but you know, you know,
Speaker 5: the entirety of the golf i'd played to that point
Speaker 5: in my life was in the state of Wisconsin and
Speaker 5: not too far away from where I lived, so I
Speaker 5: hadn't been exposed.
Speaker 4: To a lot of architecture.
Speaker 5: But when I decided that maybe doing something in golf
Speaker 5: sounded cool, Black Wolf Runt.
Speaker 4: Was the first place I reached out to.
Speaker 5: I'd played the golf course once or twice and thought
Speaker 5: it was really cool and thought it'd be a neat
Speaker 5: place to work. So I just sent a letter hate
Speaker 5: Black Wolf Run, I'm looking for a job.
Speaker 4: Can you hire me to do anything?
Speaker 5: And I don't know if they sent it around to
Speaker 5: various department heads. But the person I heard back from
Speaker 5: was a fellow named Steve Kurda, who was the superintendent
Speaker 5: of the river course in nineteen ninety seven, and he
Speaker 5: basically said, you know, that was spring of ninety seven.
Speaker 5: You know, he said, y as we're opening up, we'll
Speaker 5: certainly need some labor through the summer. If you want
Speaker 5: to come over, we've got an intern house I could
Speaker 5: put you in. So I started working there before I
Speaker 5: finished school. I graduated in May or early June or
Speaker 5: whatever it was, and I had been an athlete. I
Speaker 5: was a wrestler in college and had always anticipated graduating
Speaker 5: in four years. I broke my ankle my third year
Speaker 5: in school, red shirted, which attacked another year of eligibility
Speaker 5: on to the end of college. So I stuck around
Speaker 5: for another year, and in order to remain eligible, I
Speaker 5: kind of had to preserve a class that I needed
Speaker 5: to complete to graduate, and for me, that was I
Speaker 5: think Biology on one.
Speaker 4: So I was a.
Speaker 5: Biochemistry and molecular biology major, and as you know, my
Speaker 5: final semester of school, Biology one to one was the
Speaker 5: class I had to complete. At that point, I was
Speaker 5: pretty comfortable living in Sheboygen most of the time and
Speaker 5: just going back to Madison for exams. So I started
Speaker 5: working there. That was a long story. Started working at
Speaker 5: Blackwolf run as fall was coming along in the end
Speaker 5: of the season was creeping up. I decided that I
Speaker 5: was going to send out resumes to another golf course
Speaker 5: or several other golf coursesn't find somewhere to spend the
Speaker 5: rest of the fall, and thought, well, this is really cool,
Speaker 5: you know, like being on a golf course every day
Speaker 5: is really neat. Well, I worked at Black Wulf from
Speaker 5: the Straights course at Whistling Straits was under construction. I
Speaker 5: got to spend a fair bit of time out there
Speaker 5: seeing that happen, and it was that it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: building golf courses is neat.
Speaker 4: I want to do this.
Speaker 5: By that point, I reached out to a handful of architects.
Speaker 5: I talked to Tom Doak, I talked to Bill Corr.
Speaker 4: I believe.
Speaker 5: I'd met a few other architects that had come through
Speaker 5: Black Wolf while I was there, and for the most part,
Speaker 5: especially Tom and Bill. You know, I asked for advice
Speaker 5: and they they said, A, see as many golf courses
Speaker 5: as you can, and b learn how to run equipment,
Speaker 5: and I wasn't, you know, financially, I wasn't in a
Speaker 5: place where I could just travel around and play golf.
Speaker 5: I never had access to private clubs, so I thought,
Speaker 5: you know, one of the things I learned quickly at
Speaker 5: black Wolf Run was that superintendents are really generous about
Speaker 5: sharing their golf courses with people in that business and
Speaker 5: people have an interest. So through that, I realized, I
Speaker 5: can see golf courses this way. If I work for
Speaker 5: superintendents and work at cool places, that will open some
Speaker 5: doors for me to study other golf courses. So the
Speaker 5: three letters I sent out went to Pine Valley, Crystal Downs,
Speaker 5: and the sand Hills, and the first superintendent to get
Speaker 5: back to me was Corey Crandall at the sand Hills
Speaker 5: and said, you know, we're getting late in the summer.
Speaker 4: We shut down in October.
Speaker 5: If you want to come out for a few months
Speaker 5: and help us get ready for winter, that'd be great.
Speaker 4: We could use the help. So I went on there for.
Speaker 5: Two months until they shut down, and just something clicked
Speaker 5: at that point, like Okay, I'm going to keep doing this.
Speaker 5: And while I was at the sand Hills, I went
Speaker 5: to Prairie Dunes and saw some of the other golf
Speaker 5: courses out that way, which is not easy to do
Speaker 5: from the sand hills. And that was before a lot
Speaker 5: of the golf courses in Nebraska existed that people rave
Speaker 5: about today. But that was my way of seeing a
Speaker 5: lot of golf courses. So from there I went to
Speaker 5: Scottsdale for the winter, and then on to Riviera, where
Speaker 5: I worked for a legendary golf course superintendent named Paul
Speaker 5: Latshaw who had worked at Augusta National, and Oakamont and
Speaker 5: Congressional and a bunch of other places along the way
Speaker 5: and hosted a bunch of US opens and the handful
Speaker 5: of masters. And his son was the superintendent of Marion
Speaker 5: at the time, So one side worked for mister Latchaw Riviera.
Speaker 4: That opened a lot of doors.
Speaker 5: Starting first with his working for his son Paul at Marion,
Speaker 5: and then from Marion I went on to.
Speaker 4: Shinnecock.
Speaker 5: From Shinnacok, I went to Augusta, and I would later
Speaker 5: work at Pine Valley and the Old Course for a bit.
Speaker 5: But the Augusta stint was, you know, obviously unique one.
Speaker 5: They were all great opportunities, but Augusta, obviously it was
Speaker 5: a really exciting. You know, that was the first one
Speaker 5: they actually had me fly down for an interview and
Speaker 5: they kind of pee in a cup and give them
Speaker 5: my criminal history and whatever else. It was an interview
Speaker 5: unlike anything else. You know, just coming down to make
Speaker 5: seven bucks an hour? Do I really have to do?
Speaker 5: I really have to buy a two hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: dollars flight? Yeah, because you know I wasn't you know,
Speaker 5: I think I made a minimum wage or just above
Speaker 5: that for most of that time, and I literally lived
Speaker 5: out of my you know, my meercury cougar for most
Speaker 5: of that time, which was great. I could play a
Speaker 5: bunch of free golf at some really cool place. Doesn't
Speaker 5: get access to study as many golf courses as I
Speaker 5: could see. But my idea was, you know, I'm just
Speaker 5: going to travel around. I'll get a job somewhere for
Speaker 5: three to six months, be able to study that golf
Speaker 5: course and then also see all the golf.
Speaker 4: In the area that I wanted to see.
Speaker 5: And once I felt like I'd covered that all the
Speaker 5: bases locally, I would send out more resumes and bounce
Speaker 5: around and you know, got to walk and study five
Speaker 5: or six or seven hundred golf courses that way, and yeah,
Speaker 5: in addition to work in some really cool places and
Speaker 5: being able to mow grains and rake bunkers that some
Speaker 5: of the best golf courses in the world. There's a
Speaker 5: lot to be learned through that experience about architecture and
Speaker 5: building golf that's both interesting and great and also sustainable.
Speaker 5: Understanding what it takes to maintain a golf course is
Speaker 5: a really important part of understanding what you can build.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I love this story. I knew a little
Speaker 1: bit about it, but I hadn't hadn't got that gotten
Speaker 1: that level of detail from you about it before. And
Speaker 1: I love that because whenever occasionally I get young people
Speaker 1: emailing me and asking me how they can get into
Speaker 1: golf architecture, and the first thing I tell them is
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't be asking me, you know, ask somebody
Speaker 1: like Brian Schneider, like that's it's not really my uh,
Speaker 1: that's not what my career is. But uh. The second
Speaker 1: thing I tell them is that you can go work
Speaker 1: on these maintenance crews, and that is a hell of
Speaker 1: a good way to go see a bunch of great
Speaker 1: golf courses. Because the superintendent community is so generous and
Speaker 1: Also they're looking for labor. I mean, there are these
Speaker 1: are these are jobs that you can go get and
Speaker 1: they're good jobs, and you get to see some amazing
Speaker 1: places and learn a ton not only about maintenance if
Speaker 1: that's what you end up wanting to go into, which
Speaker 1: it might be, but also if you're if you have
Speaker 1: this inkling that you want to pursue architecture, it's a
Speaker 1: great first step to do. So you spend some time
Speaker 1: at Augusta National obviously walking the course. Did you spend
Speaker 1: a fair amount of time like walk mowing the greens
Speaker 1: and just kind of going over the surfaces daily.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was fortunate too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they let Mimo greens there, which is cool, amazing
Speaker 5: fact that's pretty good at it. You know, they're always
Speaker 5: casual kind of tests between the guys in the maintenance
Speaker 5: grew who could mow the straightest lines. There was a
Speaker 5: local guy, Chris Anderson. I don't know what Chris is
Speaker 5: up to these days. I suspect he's not working there anymore,
Speaker 5: but you know, he was kind of the incumbent champ.
Speaker 5: So there was always a competition with Chris Tosy who
Speaker 5: could try and knock him off. But the mowing greens
Speaker 5: at Augusta was in honor and a real treat.
Speaker 1: What did that What did that experience teach you about
Speaker 1: the about the designs of those greens?
Speaker 5: You know that you know, Augusta along with a lot
Speaker 5: of the other places that i'd worked, you know, to
Speaker 5: create something great. You know, there's a certain level of
Speaker 5: severity involved, and that varies. You know, the greens at Shinnakok,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure anyone would describe it severe necessarily, though
Speaker 5: they can be at us open speeds. But the original
Speaker 5: concept of Augusta was just different and based on strategic
Speaker 5: co answert to the golf course that Mackenzie and mister
Speaker 5: Jones to instill there centered around bold green complexes, and
Speaker 5: the boldness of the green complexes enabled them to really
Speaker 5: limit how many hazards they chose to build. I think
Speaker 5: there were twenty two bunkers something like that too, right,
Speaker 5: And you know they didn't need many buckers to make
Speaker 5: the holes interesting because the land itself supplied a lot
Speaker 5: of the interest, and the greens augmented what the topography
Speaker 5: had already supplied. So there were bold, wild greens and
Speaker 5: that was the primary defense of the golf course.
Speaker 1: Is there a feature on one of the greens there
Speaker 1: that you think is underappreciated, something that stuck out to
Speaker 1: you when you were walking over it.
Speaker 5: You know, things have changed so much, but at the
Speaker 5: time the fourteenth and the fifth or two greens that
Speaker 5: really stood out to me as having you know, and
Speaker 5: I hadn't been to St. Andrew's that point, but when
Speaker 5: you study the old course as well, you know there's
Speaker 5: something severe at the front of the green and then
Speaker 5: a relatively either the green either runs away a little
Speaker 5: bit from there or it's very shallow.
Speaker 4: Once you get up top. So you've got to find in.
Speaker 5: A way to negotiate that steep slope at the front,
Speaker 5: and you don't have a whole lot of room up
Speaker 5: top to fly the ball over that thing and try
Speaker 5: and stop it, especially for the average player, And that
Speaker 5: used to be more true at Augusta. I mean a
Speaker 5: the golf course plays shorter now than it ever has,
Speaker 5: I would say, and just the style of golf in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six versus the style of golf when I
Speaker 5: was there in two thousand and certainly going back to
Speaker 5: the seventies and eighties has changed so dramatically that players
Speaker 5: can now just routinely flight over that contour and stop
Speaker 5: the ball pretty quickly, and negotiating those severe fronting slopes
Speaker 5: is less problematical these days than it used to be,
Speaker 5: but it's still a brilliant feature for ninety nine point
Speaker 5: nine percent of golfers out there, is you know, getting
Speaker 5: a ball somehow on that top shelf and stopping before
Speaker 5: you roll off the back.
Speaker 1: There's almost a genre of Augusta National Green that the
Speaker 1: fifth and the fourteenth embody. I think the first is
Speaker 1: also similar in this regard where you have what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, that false front or some kind of channel
Speaker 1: in front of it, like you find on the sixth
Speaker 1: hole at St. Andrews or obviously the Valley of Sin
Speaker 1: or even the seventeenth the Road Green with that kind
Speaker 1: of swoop up at the beginning, and then in Augusta
Speaker 1: you get this, you know, it levels out into a
Speaker 1: middle section where you find maybe some of the easier pins,
Speaker 1: at least this is the case on the first hole,
Speaker 1: and then you get those back shelves, which can be
Speaker 1: very difficult, or if they have more feeding contours like
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Green, then you can have some funnel pins
Speaker 1: up there. But the fifth, the fourteenth, and the first
Speaker 1: all kind of strike me as sort of similar, like
Speaker 1: where they they're not the same, but they are variations
Speaker 1: on a theme in a way, with that false front
Speaker 1: and the back shelves. Is that something that I mean,
Speaker 1: something that stuck out to me when I saw the
Speaker 1: course for the first time. I wonder if that resonated with.
Speaker 5: You absolutely, and then seeing the old course after that, Yeah, certainly,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden it's you know, the light bulb
Speaker 5: goes off and you understand that that you know, there's
Speaker 5: so many of those brilliant greens on the old course
Speaker 5: where you know, there's just something at the front of
Speaker 5: the green to negotiate and oftentimes tends to favor or
Speaker 5: running shot of some sort that just kind of climbs
Speaker 5: up and then settles on the back side. And once
Speaker 5: you see that over and over it the old course,
Speaker 5: you understand the way that feature was built into those
Speaker 5: remaining greens at Augusta, and the original version of Augusta
Speaker 5: had more of those, you know, the seventh was a
Speaker 5: variation on that theme.
Speaker 4: I think the seventeenth was also along those lines.
Speaker 5: You know, there there were more greens in Augusta that
Speaker 5: asked you to play shouts that way at a time
Speaker 5: in golf history when more golf was played on the
Speaker 5: ground than through the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's you know, this is really the
Speaker 1: what the Bart's template is supposed to be. It's this
Speaker 1: opportunity to run the ball up and over a slope
Speaker 1: and show your precision in that way. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what those old course holes have. And it's what you
Speaker 1: know when people played Augusta National more along the ground.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess that's what those holes had. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a way to bring this back to modern
Speaker 1: golf architecture? Do you have any hope for for that
Speaker 1: type of shot that lands short of a green and
Speaker 1: runs up or through or over whatever some kind of
Speaker 1: interesting slope and gets there, Like, how do you recreate that?
Speaker 4: I wish, you know, I wish.
Speaker 5: I think it's it's a technology issue as much as anything.
Speaker 5: I mean, the fact that people hit the ball further now,
Speaker 5: but it's we're talking high level golf. I mean, the
Speaker 5: average golf still runs a ball around and you know
Speaker 5: that the average player can't just loft the ball way
Speaker 5: up in the air and get to stop after two bounces.
Speaker 5: So a lot of golf is still played that way.
Speaker 5: I wish more was. You know, I love watching the
Speaker 5: old shells wonderful world of golf matches and you see
Speaker 5: some of the best players in the world running for
Speaker 5: woods onto greens. Nobody does that anymore, but that was
Speaker 5: just the way the game is played back then, you
Speaker 5: know it. Yeah, I don't know how to get that back,
Speaker 5: and I wish we could. I mean, wind and firm
Speaker 5: greens are really the two things that force that to work.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're playing into the six at Saint
Speaker 5: Andrews with a pretty severe tail wind and the green
Speaker 5: is firm, you know, even the best players in the
Speaker 5: world might have to think about approaching front hole locations
Speaker 5: a little differently than they might on other days. But
Speaker 5: that's you know, the Open Championship is really the one
Speaker 5: time of year we get to see that, you know,
Speaker 5: the best players forced to play golf in a different
Speaker 5: way on some days the gusts to really they don't
Speaker 5: play those holes the same way anymore, which which is unfortunate.
Speaker 5: I mean it's when I play golf, I'm rarely trying
Speaker 5: to score as well as possible. I just like hitting
Speaker 5: the kind of shots that I think are fun and
Speaker 5: to me, that's running.
Speaker 4: The ball on the ground and.
Speaker 5: Rolling around cool contours and at the front of greens
Speaker 5: or in greens, and Saint Andrews is the sort of
Speaker 5: place that in North Berwick is another one. You know
Speaker 5: a handful of golf courses in the UK that do
Speaker 5: that better than anywhere, and it's just they're a riot
Speaker 5: to play because that's the kind of golf I enjoy.
Speaker 5: I don't know if all golf I don't think all
Speaker 5: golfers enjoy the same things I enjoy, but I do
Speaker 5: think that's a fun style of golf. And if you
Speaker 5: can find ways to force good players to hit shots
Speaker 5: like that, I think there are ways to doers. But
Speaker 5: it certainly involves a little bit of wind in firm greens.
Speaker 1: When you read what Alistair mackenzie wrote about Augusta National
Speaker 1: early in the course's life, when you when you consider
Speaker 1: what Bobby Jones thought about the course, you see how
Speaker 1: much they were devoted to this idea that you're talking
Speaker 1: about running the ball up onto the green. So many
Speaker 1: of the holes were designed for that kind of shot.
Speaker 1: The entire design of the hole kind of revolved around
Speaker 1: this type of approach, and it is just interesting that
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist in the Masters more or less anymore,
Speaker 1: unless unless you get some kind of exceptional set of
Speaker 1: conditions between firmness and wind in a particular april, which
Speaker 1: is kind of rare. But I wonder if you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at augusta nastional, do you think it
Speaker 1: ever really lived up to Mackenzie and Jones's hopes for firmness,
Speaker 1: Because it's kind of an interesting site for you know,
Speaker 1: the old course of the America's right, because it's not
Speaker 1: a link sland site by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: It's basically the opposite of that. Do you think it
Speaker 1: was ever like firm enough? Do you think it ever
Speaker 1: played like Mackenzie and Jones wanted it to play.
Speaker 4: I'd be surprised.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I've got to think plays today it
Speaker 5: has the capacity to play more firm than never has,
Speaker 5: just because there's so much infrastructure underground that enables that.
Speaker 5: But the the soils don't generally lean themselves or lend
Speaker 5: themselves towards fast and firm if the weather isn't cooperating,
Speaker 5: you know, you certainly with Georgia clay, it can get
Speaker 5: baked out in rock hard, so at certain times of
Speaker 5: the year, I suspect that, yeah, that might have been
Speaker 5: a thing there, as you can play in the South
Speaker 5: today and find you know, firm and bouncy bermuda courses
Speaker 5: on southern.
Speaker 4: Clay that can exist.
Speaker 5: But it's entirely depend on the whether if it did
Speaker 5: or not. And I think that, you know, the seventh
Speaker 5: hole at Augusta has changed so much, but the original
Speaker 5: was very much built for a run up shot.
Speaker 4: It was based.
Speaker 5: You know, there was a valley of sin on the
Speaker 5: front left part of the green and a very shallow
Speaker 5: shelf beyond that, and I think as much as any
Speaker 5: of the holes there, it was a relatively short hole
Speaker 5: in design to play for that sort of shot. But
Speaker 5: I think in the early days, I don't know if
Speaker 5: it was Byron Nelson or Sam Stein or someone actually
Speaker 5: drove the green on that hole and what maybe drove
Speaker 5: over the green, but.
Speaker 4: I don't know that never played quite the way they'd hoped.
Speaker 4: But I think.
Speaker 5: Certainly the many written references to the old course and
Speaker 5: and the kind of the ambition for the style of
Speaker 5: the golf course, you know, the old course played into
Speaker 5: that so.
Speaker 4: Much, and in addition to a bunch of other places.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'd written an article a few years ago now,
Speaker 5: I think for the met Golfer about how you know
Speaker 5: Augusta is the most famous Tembla course in the world,
Speaker 5: and you know so many of the holes in Augusta
Speaker 5: were based on famous holes from the UK.
Speaker 4: And many of those from Saint Andrew's.
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Speaker 1: Check it out. Well. So, since the conversation is just
Speaker 1: kind of naturally flowing there anyway, I want to get
Speaker 1: into some of your thoughts about the early Augusta National,
Speaker 1: basically the golf course as it existed in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I thought to have this
Speaker 1: conversation with you, Brian, is that Michael Kaiser recently revealed
Speaker 1: that you'll be designing a course at the Old Shores
Speaker 1: Resort in Florida that might take some inspiration from that
Speaker 1: iteration of Augusta National. It's a very interesting project. We're
Speaker 1: going to give it time to develop here because we
Speaker 1: need to get through the design process before we can
Speaker 1: talk about specifics of it. But just in general, what
Speaker 1: has been your thought process about being inspired by the
Speaker 1: early Augusta National. What do you find most inspiring about
Speaker 1: that early course and why have you wanted to apply
Speaker 1: some of those ideas to your own architecture.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the context around Michael Kaiser and his project in
Speaker 5: Florida is based on conversations we'd had just about how
Speaker 5: fascinating and unique the original version of Augusta National was.
Speaker 5: You know that it was relatively hazard free and you know,
Speaker 5: insanely wide fairways on really hilly ground, relatively few trees
Speaker 5: at the time, and they certainly weren't much of a
Speaker 5: factor on the way the holes were played, and it
Speaker 5: was based again largely on the topography. And you know,
Speaker 5: the way with the entire place essentially mote is fairway,
Speaker 5: The way that balls could get away from the ideal
Speaker 5: position and make shots into those bold and wild greens
Speaker 5: more complicated. Yeah, the coordination of the contouring in and
Speaker 5: around the greens in conjunction with what was happening through
Speaker 5: the fairways made it a really compelling golf course without
Speaker 5: a whole lot of bunkering necessary. And obviously the water
Speaker 5: hazards have been a part of the golf course since
Speaker 5: the beginning, though they've all evolved and changed pretty substantially
Speaker 5: over the years. But I think it's the hilliness of
Speaker 5: the ground and the vast areas of short grass.
Speaker 4: Allowing your ball to roll and roll and roll.
Speaker 5: Out of position in conjunction with boldly contry green complexes
Speaker 5: that made that something really unique and not something you
Speaker 5: see replicated very often these days. I mean, GUS is
Speaker 5: such an influential place, The Masters is such an influential event,
Speaker 5: but the original version of Augusta National really isn't something
Speaker 5: that I don't think people have sought to latch onto
Speaker 5: his inspiration and design golf in that way very often
Speaker 5: these days.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the relatively minimal bunkering is something
Speaker 1: that makes that original course stand out a lot and
Speaker 1: maybe is part of the inspiration that you can take
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I'm not alone in thinking that bunkering is probably overused
Speaker 5: as a hazard, and there are reasons why there are
Speaker 5: probably more bunkers on golf courses today than there were
Speaker 5: twenty years ago. That have nothing to do with how
Speaker 5: goalf holes play. But yeah, I think latching onto using
Speaker 5: bunkers or artificial hazards sparingly is a very interesting one
Speaker 5: and obvious the more interesting the piece of land is
Speaker 5: you're working with, and the freedom through your client to
Speaker 5: build greens with substantial slope or contour allows you to
Speaker 5: minimize how much bunkering you need to add to make
Speaker 5: wholes interesting.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that so many current architects use
Speaker 1: a lot of bunkers. You said earlier that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have much to do with how things play. Does that
Speaker 1: implying that it has more to do with how they look?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yeah, I'm not the first one to say that,
Speaker 5: but yeah, Instagram and drone photography, and there are a
Speaker 5: lot of marketing reasons for things to look cool, and
Speaker 5: bunkers are an easy way to add visual interest.
Speaker 4: But they're also a crutch.
Speaker 5: You know, It's very easy to add more sand here
Speaker 5: and more sand there, But I think that's been pretty overdone,
Speaker 5: and the idea of simplifying things and pairing it back
Speaker 5: is an interesting concept to pursue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why that original version of Augusta National
Speaker 1: might seem so strange or radical now because of that
Speaker 1: that lack of color contrast. You know, we've kind of
Speaker 1: trained our eyes to look for the framing of white
Speaker 1: sand and green grass to help us understand what a
Speaker 1: golf hole looks like or what it's trying to convey,
Speaker 1: and the original Augusta Nashville, by comparison, is is pretty bare.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Another strange thing about it is those green shapes, the
Speaker 1: wild kind of random tongues sticking out between bunkers and
Speaker 1: doing all that sort of stuff. So is that something
Speaker 1: that you can see yourself adapting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an interesting point. It's not just the contouring
Speaker 5: of the greens and the boldness that the shapes were bizarre. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the fourth had that long, skinny tongue that couldn't have
Speaker 5: been more than five or six steps wide, extending between
Speaker 5: the front right bunker and the left bunker, the boomerang
Speaker 5: shape of the original ninth de other were very eclectic
Speaker 5: shapes that featured a lot of little lobes and tongues.
Speaker 5: You know, it's easy to see why things like that
Speaker 5: may not survive, because you know, there's certain they puts
Speaker 5: on those greens where you couldn't get anywhere near the
Speaker 5: golf you know, where the hole was cut in Certa,
Speaker 5: certain situations you've missed in the wrong place, and golfers
Speaker 5: tend to not like that too much, and superintendents don't
Speaker 5: like that if you're pulling a wedge off the green
Speaker 5: instead of trying to hunt around something. But you know,
Speaker 5: one of the funny things about Augusta is that it's
Speaker 5: one of the places. You know, they certainly have more
Speaker 5: bunkers now than they did in nineteen thirty four, but
Speaker 5: the bunkers are not something that people connect with Augusta visually.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not the bunkers that make it pretty.
Speaker 5: In fact, a lot of the bunkers are very plain
Speaker 5: looking and slightly awkward in places. You know, it's the
Speaker 5: rolling contouring and the greens and the surrounds and the
Speaker 5: beautiful flowers and the trees, and you know, there's so
Speaker 5: much else going on about that place that makes it
Speaker 5: beautiful that an abundance of bunkers wouldn't really add to
Speaker 5: that picture. And even though they've added some, the bunkers
Speaker 5: aren't what make that pretty. So I think, you know,
Speaker 5: leaning into that style if you've got a site that
Speaker 5: that has ample natural beauty, because a great example of
Speaker 5: how restraint in building for adding features or particularly bunkers
Speaker 5: isn't necessary. Just you know, it goes back to the
Speaker 5: idea of minimalism. Just let the site be the star
Speaker 5: of the show and try not to do too much
Speaker 5: and get in its way.
Speaker 1: Something else that's really interesting about the nineteen thirties version
Speaker 1: of Augusta National, and that might be a little bit
Speaker 1: foreign to people who are familiar with the course right now,
Speaker 1: is that it had all this interesting mounding. Some of
Speaker 1: this remains, like if you think of the eighth green,
Speaker 1: the mounding around the eighth green is still there. There
Speaker 1: are still some greens like like six and a couple
Speaker 1: of others that have mounding on the exterior of the
Speaker 1: greens that is kind of representative of what the original
Speaker 1: style was. But a lot more holes on the original
Speaker 1: course had kind of this alpinization or not chocolate drops
Speaker 1: that are bigger than that, but mounding that was intended
Speaker 1: to be a meaningful hazard on the course. What do
Speaker 1: you make of that aspect of the initial design at
Speaker 1: Augusta National. Do you find that interesting?
Speaker 5: The eleventh hole is a great example of that. You know,
Speaker 5: there are there, I think two really prominent mounds on
Speaker 5: the front right edge of the green that dictated strategy
Speaker 5: back to the tee. You know, they very much influenced
Speaker 5: where you wanted to leave your t shot depending on
Speaker 5: where the hole was, and they were hazards that you
Speaker 5: had to negotiate if you were out of position, but
Speaker 5: you could also use them to help you steer a
Speaker 5: ball around to those back left pins if you were
Speaker 5: in the right place in the fairway and hit the
Speaker 5: right right type of shot coming.
Speaker 4: Into the green.
Speaker 5: You know, the eleventh was a very complex hole back
Speaker 5: in the day. That's certainly gotten much longer and much
Speaker 5: narrower than it once was, and the options for how
Speaker 5: to play that hole have been limited. But those mounds
Speaker 5: near the green were a really important feature of that
Speaker 5: hole that you know they've been I think they still
Speaker 5: kind of exist, but in a decreased form, and because
Speaker 5: the hole has been narrowed so much, they just don't play.
Speaker 5: They don't affect strategy the way they used to. And
Speaker 5: I think the seventeenth, if our call correctly, the seventeenth
Speaker 5: was originally based on the fourteenth green, the old course
Speaker 5: and had a really prominent mount in the front left
Speaker 5: corner with some pins stuck behind it. That's another one
Speaker 5: where they would have come into play, you know, every day,
Speaker 5: for every day play. The fourteenth featured a moundered a
Speaker 5: big mounded two in the approach on the right. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there were quite a few of those hazards out there that,
Speaker 5: for whatever reason, have been wiped out over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just reshaped or massaged in certain ways that you know,
Speaker 1: have made them less impactful. I guess on the ball,
Speaker 1: the ones on eleven, specifically short right of the green.
Speaker 1: I think the idea initially was that if you got
Speaker 1: to the left side of that fairway, which was used
Speaker 1: to be the outside of the dog lay, because the
Speaker 1: leven was initially a big dog leg to the right,
Speaker 1: if you got to the left side of the fairway,
Speaker 1: then you could kind of hit your ball into those
Speaker 1: mounds and it would start to arc toward the green
Speaker 1: and you could kind of avoid the water hazard on
Speaker 1: the left in that way. But now I think what
Speaker 1: happens is if you play your ball into those it
Speaker 1: filters more straight toward the water, so it doesn't quite
Speaker 1: do what those mounds originally were meant to do. But
Speaker 1: you know, since we so rarely see players feeding it
Speaker 1: into the green in that way, the difference maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: register that much. But you know, you were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about all the interesting stuff that Augusta National has in
Speaker 1: front of its greens. Those mounds used to be certainly
Speaker 1: one of those one of those things that kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, interacted with the ball when it would land
Speaker 1: before the green and start running on.
Speaker 5: And to the rest of my knowledge, they were all
Speaker 5: mode at fairway height. You know, there were things that
Speaker 5: you could depending on where you were, you could use
Speaker 5: them to your advantage and run balls over and off
Speaker 5: of them, But if you're on the wrong spot, you'd
Speaker 5: most likely have to carry them and try and stop
Speaker 5: a ball on the backside, which is a fascinating hazard
Speaker 5: near a green.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something you were saying
Speaker 1: earlier about the combination of Augusta National's with its hilliness
Speaker 1: and the severity of the green complexes. There's something there
Speaker 1: that really kind of supercharges strategy, right, because if your
Speaker 1: ball gets moving on the wrong direction on one of
Speaker 1: those really hilly sections of the property, on one of
Speaker 1: those big slopes, then there's the chance that your angle
Speaker 1: into the green on the next shot could really worsen
Speaker 1: by magnitudes, right, whereas most courses you don't get that
Speaker 1: extreme of a difference between different positions in the fair way.
Speaker 1: So you were starting to discuss that a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I want to I want to hear more about that.
Speaker 1: What are kind of your thoughts about the nature of
Speaker 1: the property paired with the with paired with the green complexes.
Speaker 1: Why is that so important?
Speaker 5: At Augusta there are a number of holes there where
Speaker 5: you know they're built in the side slopes. Obviously, the
Speaker 5: golf courses benched into the side of a big steep hill,
Speaker 5: and quite a few of the holes run across the
Speaker 5: side slopes, and to a lesser extent these days it
Speaker 5: was still to a certain degree the ability to shape
Speaker 5: you're shot off the tee on some of those holes,
Speaker 5: to flay a draw into a ferry that's left right,
Speaker 5: for instance, or a fade into a fairy that slops
Speaker 5: the other way. It can help you keep a ball
Speaker 5: in a certain part of the fairway. And when they
Speaker 5: were very wide, you know that that matter more. Adding
Speaker 5: trees and adding rough has kind of narrowed the fairways
Speaker 5: to the point where the ideal position from which to
Speaker 5: approach the green lives somewhere in that thirty.
Speaker 4: Five yard forty range.
Speaker 5: You know, the width that's provided to you now, Somewhere
Speaker 5: in there generally is the place you want to be
Speaker 5: coming in from. And when the fairways were eighty yards
Speaker 5: wide as opposed to thirty five, allowing a ball to
Speaker 5: roll another thirty yards down the hill to the left,
Speaker 5: meant you were that much further away from the ideal position.
Speaker 5: When you add trees and add rough your ball can
Speaker 5: only roll so far away from the ideal position. And
Speaker 5: I think you know that mister Jones had this most
Speaker 5: brilliant kind of summary of strategic design when you talked
Speaker 5: about the various ways, and it's reasonably the long quote
Speaker 5: which I don't fully remember, but he talked about the
Speaker 5: various ways in which you can penalize misplayed shots.
Speaker 4: You know, one of.
Speaker 5: Which is to immediately put you in a hazard at
Speaker 5: a bunker. You know, the penalties immediate. You know, another
Speaker 5: option is to let you get yourself into the wrong position.
Speaker 5: And it's only until you've gotten to that bad position
Speaker 5: you realize that you've been had and your second shot
Speaker 5: is a lot more difficult.
Speaker 4: You know, the penalty is not immediate.
Speaker 5: It's in making the succession of the following shots more
Speaker 5: difficult than they would have been if you put yourself
Speaker 5: in the right position. And the original version with Gusta
Speaker 5: was that, I mean, he gave you all the room
Speaker 5: in the world to hang yourself and let you know,
Speaker 5: let a tea. You know, left it up to the
Speaker 5: golfer to determine their own preferred path from tee to
Speaker 5: the whole orreas. Now, the golf course, like many American
Speaker 5: championship golf courses, is much more prescriptive. I mean, it
Speaker 5: tells you how the hole should be played. It doesn't
Speaker 5: allow you nearly as much freedom to sort out your
Speaker 5: own roof based on your own game. So it's a
Speaker 5: less complex test now, I would say, certainly for the
Speaker 5: average golfer. You know, the focus the Masters has always
Speaker 5: been an important event in Augusta, but I think it's
Speaker 5: the the vast disparity between the way the average golfer
Speaker 5: plays golf now versus the professional golfer has really forced
Speaker 5: Augusta to take their golf course in a direction that
Speaker 5: challenges the better players. You know, that gap was far
Speaker 5: narrower fifty years ago, seventy years ago. But I think
Speaker 5: in order to challenge the best players in the world,
Speaker 5: maybe the golf course is less compelling, less interesting, less
Speaker 5: you know, provides less freedom than the original version did.
Speaker 1: A great example of what you're talking about is the
Speaker 1: fourteenth hole, yes, which I still love, but the original
Speaker 1: version of that hole was pretty much wide open. You
Speaker 1: could play anywhere within a very wide hole corridor. But
Speaker 1: if you let your ball run down to the right
Speaker 1: it kind of sits on a side slope, then your
Speaker 1: next shot was going to be blind. So if you
Speaker 1: weren't in control of your ball as you played out
Speaker 1: to the right, then then too bad. You couldn't see
Speaker 1: the green on your next shot. But also if you
Speaker 1: avoided the bunker that used to be in front of
Speaker 1: the tee and that took up the right side of
Speaker 1: the fairway, if you played well away from that bunker,
Speaker 1: there was a big mound in front of the green
Speaker 1: that would block your view of it, and so you
Speaker 1: kind of had to thread the needle there. You had
Speaker 1: to hit a particular spot in the fairway, taking on
Speaker 1: the bunker and also controlling your ball so that it
Speaker 1: stayed in a certain place in the fairway in order
Speaker 1: to have that good view of the green, and that
Speaker 1: was how the strategy of the hole worked. Now there
Speaker 1: are trees on either side, you don't have that bunker anymore.
Speaker 1: The hole is bunkerless. But the challenge is threading your
Speaker 1: ball kind of between the trees and holding it up
Speaker 1: against the slope, keeping it from going into either tree line.
Speaker 1: Very challenging shot, and it's a very good test for pros, right,
Speaker 1: it's a great test of a drive for the pros.
Speaker 1: It really shows whether they have control of their ball
Speaker 1: and then playing into the green they also have to
Speaker 1: have similar control off off of a pretty steep lie.
Speaker 1: But I think that's a good example of how things
Speaker 1: have shifted, where whereas before it was the land that
Speaker 1: was the hazard and the topography and the blindness and
Speaker 1: what your ball might do when it hits the ground,
Speaker 1: and now trees have a lot to do with it.
Speaker 5: I guess, right, yeah, And it's even more complex than that.
Speaker 5: I mean, you spelled out the challenges of playing into
Speaker 5: that green from the right, the blindness, and you're playing
Speaker 5: that much further uphill at the same time, and you're
Speaker 5: probably you know, adding a couple of clubs to your
Speaker 5: approach shots. If as opposed, if you were staying up
Speaker 5: the left, you could shorten the hole. But you know
Speaker 5: there's additional complexity and that the green tilted and still
Speaker 5: does pretty.
Speaker 4: Hard from left to right.
Speaker 5: Right with the lot of people you're playing, you know,
Speaker 5: if you're out the right, you're playing into the green
Speaker 5: from an advantageous angle. You're playing more into the slope.
Speaker 5: So you've got that advantage at the expense of probably
Speaker 5: a longer shot into the green and also the blindness
Speaker 5: you mentioned.
Speaker 4: So you've got your choice.
Speaker 5: Are you comfortable with that in exchange for a preferred
Speaker 5: angle into the slope of the green, or do you
Speaker 5: want to cut off some distance and play up the
Speaker 5: left and you might get a better view of the hole,
Speaker 5: But the green tends to slide away from me a
Speaker 5: little bit, and on some days, depending where the pin is,
Speaker 5: you've seen many golfers kind of play a little cut
Speaker 5: into the back of the left corner of the green
Speaker 5: that just takes the two or three tiers and settles
Speaker 5: within three feet of the pin. When it's cut, we
Speaker 5: are on the right, which is one of the most
Speaker 5: fascinating shots to watch on the golf course. So there
Speaker 5: are days, depending on where the pin is cut, where
Speaker 5: you might prefer to be up the left. There are
Speaker 5: other days when you might prefer to be up the right,
Speaker 5: and it offered that additional level of complexity and the
Speaker 5: way the golf, the green itself, the green complex was
Speaker 5: designed that it gave you the freedom to choose how
Speaker 5: you want to play the hole. And of course not
Speaker 5: everyone hits the shot they want to hit, so you
Speaker 5: misplay your t shot and then you're stuck with what.
Speaker 4: You're stuck with.
Speaker 5: But it gave you so much freedom to choose how
Speaker 5: you wanted to play the hole. And narrowing fairways, adding
Speaker 5: rough adding trees limits those options and remove some of
Speaker 5: the complexity.
Speaker 4: But again to your point, still preserves the challenge of.
Speaker 5: The golf course for the best players in the world,
Speaker 5: but it's a more prescriptive, less.
Speaker 4: Complex challenge.
Speaker 1: I would say, so for you, when you're designing a
Speaker 1: course that is primarily going to be four average golfers,
Speaker 1: do you think a lot about the ground in the
Speaker 1: way that we've just been talking about it with the
Speaker 1: fourteenth hole? Is that something that for you is still
Speaker 1: relevant for the average golfer.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and you know, I admittedly I haven't had many
Speaker 5: opportunities does e gulf of my own. You know, so
Speaker 5: much of what I've done over my career has been
Speaker 5: working for Tom and learn so much through him. But
Speaker 5: I'll bring up Old Barn Well because it's one of
Speaker 5: the few opportunities I've had, along with Blake Conan, to
Speaker 5: design something from scratch, you know, one of the things
Speaker 5: so I worked.
Speaker 4: I worked the two.
Speaker 5: Thousand Masters, and it wasn't until two years ago that
Speaker 5: I'd gotten back to Augusta and I was shocked with
Speaker 5: how much the golf course has changed. But one of
Speaker 5: the things that I really loved and watching play, I
Speaker 5: went back last year as well, so I went two
Speaker 5: years in a row. One of the things I loved
Speaker 5: seeing at Augusta, which is something that every great golf
Speaker 5: course in America should take note of. The fairways are
Speaker 5: really steep there, and balls stop in the fairways because
Speaker 5: you know, they're overseed with rye grass.
Speaker 4: Which is a little sticky.
Speaker 5: But they're also not mowing the fairways as tight as
Speaker 5: they can because if they did, all the balls row
Speaker 5: to the flat low sides of the fairway. So the
Speaker 5: balls stay on slopes in the fairways a go to
Speaker 5: national in places, and on side slopes or down slopes
Speaker 5: where balls don't stop on a lot of golf courses
Speaker 5: in America now, our best golf courses are more in
Speaker 5: their fairways, far tighter than they need to be, and
Speaker 5: balls don't stick on side slopes anymore. That's that's a
Speaker 5: really important part of the challenge at Augustin National. And
Speaker 5: they get that, and they could mow the fairways twice
Speaker 5: as short, and they choose not to because they recognize
Speaker 5: the value of having difficult lies in the fairways and
Speaker 5: trying to play a cut into a green when the
Speaker 5: ball's eight inches above your feet is a tough shot.
Speaker 5: And that still remains at Augustin National at an age
Speaker 5: where they could maintain the golf course however they want,
Speaker 5: they choose to leave their fairways a little longer and
Speaker 5: a little stickier than most places do these days because
Speaker 5: they recognize that challenge. So, getting back to my own
Speaker 5: work old Barningwell, there are a number of holes there
Speaker 5: where you know, if you're content to hit a two
Speaker 5: hundred and forty yard te shot, you're in a relatively
Speaker 5: flat spot and you can probably see where you're going
Speaker 5: to go, and holes like the fifth, the eighteenth, the
Speaker 5: twelfth more than any If you want to hit them
Speaker 5: all three hundred yards off the tee, you're going to
Speaker 5: run out of level space and you're probably going to
Speaker 5: slide down a side slope and maybe be blind from there.
Speaker 5: You might have a better angle, but you're not going
Speaker 5: to see where you're going, and you're going to have
Speaker 5: a shorter shot in because you've chosen to hit it
Speaker 5: to a place. You've chosen to take driver to a
Speaker 5: place where it'll shorten your approach shot. But we're not
Speaker 5: going to you a great look at the green. So
Speaker 5: we've designed those holes in a way where you can
Speaker 5: choose your poison, you know, and I think most golf
Speaker 5: instructor's advisor to tell you get just hit driver, hit
Speaker 5: as far as you can, and we understand that most
Speaker 5: people will do that, but we didn't want there to
Speaker 5: be the advantage of length plus another.
Speaker 4: Advantage, you know.
Speaker 5: We want to counteract that a bit with it's going
Speaker 5: to be blind for you, or you might have a
Speaker 5: tougher angle into the green from that spot that the
Speaker 5: land is going to push you into a place where
Speaker 5: your angle is going to be a little tougher. So
Speaker 5: we tried to incorporate that into that idea into a
Speaker 5: number of the holes that Old Barnwell, utilizing the topography
Speaker 5: through the routing and the golf course in a way
Speaker 5: that we could challenge longer hitters will still give in
Speaker 5: the shorter player, the player who chooses to lay up
Speaker 5: other options. And the agronomy played into that too. You know,
Speaker 5: when we were expecting the grasses for the golf course,
Speaker 5: we had the conversation with our superintendents that we let's
Speaker 5: choose a grass that doesn't have to be mown super
Speaker 5: tight where balls will stop on these side slopes. And
Speaker 5: I think for the most part that's worked out really well.
Speaker 5: You know, they maintain the golf the fairways in a
Speaker 5: way where balls will stay on those side slopes, and
Speaker 5: I think that's a really important part of the challenge there.
Speaker 1: It's something that works really well at Old Barnwell because
Speaker 1: partly because the fairways often have these broad slopes, and
Speaker 1: so there is that dimension to the game that you're
Speaker 1: talking about where if you're in a certain position, you
Speaker 1: might be playing off of an uncomfortable lie ball below
Speaker 1: your feet, ball above your feet, et cetera. And then
Speaker 1: you add that to the kind of potential for blindness
Speaker 1: from certain angles and what the ball is doing as
Speaker 1: it enters the green complex and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of complexity at all Barnwell that I think you don't
Speaker 1: see at many other courses.
Speaker 4: For sure, the.
Speaker 5: Great sixth Hold, it's seminal, is one of the best
Speaker 5: examples of that, you know, and it stares you in
Speaker 5: the face. But you know, the fairway starts out relatively level.
Speaker 5: It's a mid length Par four. Green sits up on
Speaker 5: top of the hill, but you know, the closer you
Speaker 5: get to the green, the more the fairway slopes from
Speaker 5: left to right.
Speaker 4: And the green sets up at an angle where you know.
Speaker 5: It kind of runs from seven o'clock to one o'clock
Speaker 5: or eight o'clock to two o'clock, and it's pretty narrow
Speaker 5: right to left. So the further right you go, the
Speaker 5: shell over the green gets. And you know, the further
Speaker 5: you drive your ball, the more the fairway is going
Speaker 5: to shove you to the right and of that tough angle,
Speaker 5: and you're going to be that much further below the green.
Speaker 5: If you're content to lay back a little bit, you
Speaker 5: can find the left side of the fairway, which is,
Speaker 5: you know, significantly higher than the right side and also
Speaker 5: affords you a better angle.
Speaker 4: It's a brilliant example of how.
Speaker 5: To use topography to allow the golfer to make the
Speaker 5: choice of which approach shot they prefer and hit their
Speaker 5: t shot accordingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, getting back to the old version of
Speaker 1: Augusta National real quick for a last couple of wrap
Speaker 1: up questions. Here, is there one hole that you wish
Speaker 1: would be restored to its initial version.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I'd go that far, but I
Speaker 5: would love to see the original version of the tenth,
Speaker 5: which was a wildly different hole than the current iteration,
Speaker 5: which I think is a great hole in a very
Speaker 5: challenging hole. But you know, that massive squiggly fairway bunker
Speaker 5: that really doesn't come into play for anyone these days,
Speaker 5: you know, is the kind of one remaining example of
Speaker 5: the original bunkering style out there, and that was a
Speaker 5: green side bunker originally, you know, the green sat the
Speaker 5: original green sat in a hollow to the right of that,
Speaker 5: and it was plagued by maintenance issues and I think
Speaker 5: one of the first masters there were a few inches
Speaker 5: of water in it on one of the days and
Speaker 5: they had to play around a big puddle in the green.
Speaker 5: So it got moved pretty quickly after, I think by
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty seven to thirty eight, and then pushed back
Speaker 5: to where it is today and it's a brilliant green
Speaker 5: by Perry Maxwell. But the original version of that hole
Speaker 5: I think was drivable, or very nearly drivable, and you
Speaker 5: had to keep your ball out to the right and
Speaker 5: if you pulled to the left you were kind of
Speaker 5: blind into that shallow green and over the big sprawling bunker.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't a hard hole, I don't think, but
Speaker 5: it was a pretty unique hole and a fun clever hole.
Speaker 4: And there aren't many.
Speaker 5: Just fun, clever, easy holes in Augusta, Nashville anymore. So
Speaker 5: I don't think it would make for a very compelling
Speaker 5: hole for the pros, but I think it was a
Speaker 5: unique hole and just a fun short part three that
Speaker 5: Mackenzie exceled at.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see somebody try that hole on another course,
Speaker 1: because it is really cool. I mean it just to
Speaker 1: give people an idea of how the strategy changed when
Speaker 1: they move the green. Everybody knows about the speed slot. Now, right,
Speaker 1: you hook your ball around the trees to get to
Speaker 1: that speed slot, that big hollow that's in the left
Speaker 1: half of the fairway, and if you get down into that,
Speaker 1: then that's the best place to be. You get the
Speaker 1: distance advantage, you get an angle advantage going into a
Speaker 1: green that slopes from right to left. That's what you
Speaker 1: want to get to and you have to hit a
Speaker 1: very hard shot to get there. So it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But what people always forget is that on the right
Speaker 1: half of the fairway and the tenth fairway, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of plateau and that's where you used to want
Speaker 1: to be in order to approach the old tenth Green,
Speaker 1: which was tucked, as you said, into that little saddle
Speaker 1: to the right of the big Mackenzie bunker. And so
Speaker 1: the challenge was staying up on the place and not
Speaker 1: letting your ball run down the speed slot, because if
Speaker 1: your ball round down the speed slot, then you have
Speaker 1: this crazy shot over the big bunker to a green
Speaker 1: that you couldn't see from down below. And it's so
Speaker 1: the original hole made total sense as strategically as a
Speaker 1: short part four, and it's such a clever hole. But
Speaker 1: the way they reversed the strategy when they moved the
Speaker 1: green back was also really smart, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: still a pretty good strategic hole, even though they changed
Speaker 1: the part of the fairway that you want to be in.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a fascinating evolution and both very clever to
Speaker 5: your point, in both using the ground contour in ways
Speaker 5: that make the whole really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is there a hole that you think became better
Speaker 1: over time at Augusta National where you look at the
Speaker 1: original and you say, Okay, I can see why they
Speaker 1: did what they did.
Speaker 4: I mentioned it earlier.
Speaker 5: The original fourth Green had that long tongue in the front,
Speaker 5: which seemed like a very odd, odd thing to include.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know when you would ever use it, because
Speaker 1: you can't really use it to run your ball up.
Speaker 1: Nobody's like aiming for that.
Speaker 5: No, I don't know if it's better or worse, but
Speaker 5: you know, it's certainly less original than it used to be,
Speaker 5: but probably more.
Speaker 4: Sensible than it once was.
Speaker 5: A lot of length has been added to the golf course, certainly,
Speaker 5: and nowadays that's necessary. You know, there are a handful
Speaker 5: of holes that still really well reflect the original intent.
Speaker 5: The thirteenth, you know, I hate in general the idea
Speaker 5: of needing to add lengths to golf courses, but it
Speaker 5: does feel like that's getting closer to presenting a really
Speaker 5: scary second shot and a hole that had gotten easy.
Speaker 5: He's not the right word, but players are here hitting
Speaker 5: very short clubs into that hole not too long ago,
Speaker 5: and it's fun to see that second shop. You're really
Speaker 5: scared one again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hole has some tension back, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: if you imagine that, Like the original thirteenth hole is
Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty something arts, which now for the
Speaker 1: Masters field is a short for so what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Got to move?
Speaker 4: The tell sixteenth is one I would like to see.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: The sixteenth is a very compelling hole during the tournament.
Speaker 5: The lower hole locations are really fun to watch, and
Speaker 5: it's it's always amusing when somebody gets stuck up top
Speaker 5: when the pins down below. But it's a really it's
Speaker 5: a fun hole to watch, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 5: one of those holes where you're you're engaged for the
Speaker 5: you're engaged with what the ball is doing for a
Speaker 5: really long time. You know, it takes a while for
Speaker 5: a ball to come to rest on that green, and
Speaker 5: I think that's one of the things that makes golf
Speaker 5: interesting to watch and certainly interesting to play, is you know,
Speaker 5: the amount of time your ball is rolling on the ground,
Speaker 5: and sixteen presents that pretty well. But the original version,
Speaker 5: I think was also so it would have been a
Speaker 5: really fun hole for them to watch. It was a
Speaker 5: wild green to the left side of the creek that's
Speaker 5: now the pond on the left side of the current
Speaker 5: sixteenth green.
Speaker 4: It looked like a pretty neat, shorter.
Speaker 5: Maybe easier hole, but also a very cool green in
Speaker 5: a really neat.
Speaker 1: Setting, very neat idea for a part three again, something
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe maybe somebody should try at another course.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the green kind of almost had a reverse
Speaker 1: radan characteristic to it, I guess where there's a big
Speaker 1: kicker slope on the left where it looked like if
Speaker 1: you're playing the ball along the ground, which you might
Speaker 1: not be because short par three, but if you did,
Speaker 1: then that would kind of funnel your ball over to
Speaker 1: the right side of the green. But yeah, interesting hole.
Speaker 1: Today's current hole. I mean, people don't talk about it enough.
Speaker 1: That is a Robert Trent Jones golf hole. You know,
Speaker 1: entirely pretty much fully Yeah, not pretty much fully fully.
Speaker 5: Yeah, almost changed more than any because it's an entirely
Speaker 5: new hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Well, Brian, it's been very fun talking to
Speaker 1: you about the original Augusta National. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: seeing your your projects coming up in the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. I know you've got a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff on the horizon. What are you working on right now,
Speaker 1: anything you want to let people know about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm very fortunate to have some cool opportunities, and
Speaker 5: the one I'm actively involved in right now is the
Speaker 5: second golf course, So the second big golf course at
Speaker 5: Old Barnwell and Aiken, and a very different piece of land,
Speaker 5: routed very differently than the first one. So trying to
Speaker 5: create something complimentary but also on a really beautiful piece
Speaker 5: of sandy land for a club that's become a really
Speaker 5: lovely place to spend time.
Speaker 4: So we're well into that.
Speaker 5: We've got most of the green shaped at this point,
Speaker 5: there's a little bit of grass going down. I've got
Speaker 5: another project, a strange coincidence. I'm also building another golf
Speaker 5: course in Aiken called New Haven New Holland Golf Club,
Speaker 5: New Holland, New Holland Golf Club for my old friend
Speaker 5: Jeff Warren, which is maybe twenty five minutes from Old Barnwell,
Speaker 5: and that's a place where, you know, all the things
Speaker 5: we've been saying about the restraint involved in kind of
Speaker 5: the simplicity the original golf course at Augusta National. It's
Speaker 5: a beautiful piece of land and that lends itself really
Speaker 5: well to golf, and I think we're taking a very
Speaker 5: restraint approach to how we're gonna build and design it.
Speaker 4: So that's a fun one as.
Speaker 1: Well, very cool looking forward to it. Yeah, the Achin area, obviously,
Speaker 1: as everybody knows, is exploding, and you've been a big
Speaker 1: part of that. So when people go to the Masters
Speaker 1: these days, they have a lot of options in the
Speaker 1: ac and area. Many of these clubs open their doors
Speaker 1: during Master's Week, sometimes even the week before Master's Week,
Speaker 1: and so you know, during during that time in April
Speaker 1: you can go play Old Barnwell, which is one of
Speaker 1: the best modern courses that you can play anywhere. And
Speaker 1: then you know, obviously, Brian, you have a couple of
Speaker 1: projects coming up there that are going to add to
Speaker 1: this scene. So pretty cool place. Thanks for coming on
Speaker 1: the pod. Fun to talk to.
Speaker 4: You appreciate that yet my pleasure.
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Will once again make sure to check out
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