Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a fried egg, Frida egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg Egg, fridagg bride egg, Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to run off of the hump. All right, welcome back
Speaker 2: to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's guest
Speaker 2: is a fresh edition. He's a regular guest, a fresh
Speaker 2: edition of The Yolk with Doak, So Tom Doak joins.
Speaker 2: It's the first episode of The Yoke with Doak in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. We talk, Uh, this is a really
Speaker 2: fun episode. We talk about projects that Tom wants to do,
Speaker 2: new ideas that he hasn't done yet that he'd like
Speaker 2: to build, and uh, some really cool ideas in here.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spoil it, but I had my
Speaker 2: mind racing. And yeah, we'll have another episode of this
Speaker 2: later in the month, maybe in February or later in January,
Speaker 2: another episode of The Yoke with Doke. But thank you
Speaker 2: guys for listening. And here is Tom Doak. Well, do
Speaker 2: you have any New Year's resolutions? It is the New year.
Speaker 2: This is just a layup question for US podcast hosts
Speaker 2: to ask guests right off the vat Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's just an extension of my resolution for
Speaker 1: a last year, which was to spend more time focusing
Speaker 1: on the parts of my job that I like the
Speaker 1: best and that I do really well, and then to
Speaker 1: try to delegate the rest of it.
Speaker 2: What is that? What is the parts of your job
Speaker 2: that you like the I think everybody looks at a
Speaker 2: golf course architect and think what's there to not like
Speaker 2: about that job? But what do you like the best
Speaker 2: about being a golf architect?
Speaker 1: Number One? The puzzle of doing a routing. When I
Speaker 1: get a new map, it's just like you could just
Speaker 1: lock me in a room by myself for a couple
Speaker 1: of days after I get a new map. If it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start looking at how, you know, where
Speaker 1: do I see a piece there? Where do I see
Speaker 1: a golf hole? And how is that going to fit
Speaker 1: with the next one? And I was doing that for
Speaker 1: this project in South Carolina yesterday and it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just that's the most fun thing to me. And
Speaker 1: then you know, the other part of it is just
Speaker 1: being out there in the dirt and working with the
Speaker 1: guys to get things built, because that's a whole that's
Speaker 1: a different creative process, and it's more collaborative and it's
Speaker 1: more you know, in the first part, you might see
Speaker 1: some you might see this whole reminds you of something else,
Speaker 1: and that's why you're attracted to it. But when you
Speaker 1: get out there in the dirt, you tend not to
Speaker 1: think about that anymore and you're just trying to work
Speaker 1: with what you've got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Once you get into the dirt,
Speaker 2: you see what's out there, and then it just becomes
Speaker 2: about what's out there and making it work.
Speaker 1: You know. Now, I'm not trying to make it exactly
Speaker 1: like the radan. I'm just taking this verse, this piece
Speaker 1: of land right here, and making it into taking a
Speaker 1: work for golf.
Speaker 2: Hearing you talk, it's a lot like my professional New
Speaker 2: Year's resolutions, which are to do more creative work and
Speaker 2: less of the business work that you know sometimes box
Speaker 2: me down, you know, doing more of this, doing more
Speaker 2: like going to see places and filming stuff. And it's
Speaker 2: funny because like I think golf architects have you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're a small business and you have to do
Speaker 2: a lot of different things, and I imagine some of
Speaker 2: the proposals, the business stuff of the job can kind
Speaker 2: of take away from the creative.
Speaker 1: Definitely. I mean, you know, most you know, most of
Speaker 1: these kids writing me letters wanting to work for me.
Speaker 1: Imagine that we sit around the office all day dreaming,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about golf holes, and you really don't
Speaker 1: you hardly ever do that. Yeah, a lot of it,
Speaker 1: you know. And you know, I mean I just said
Speaker 1: my New Year's resolution, and yet I have no employees
Speaker 1: to delegate anything else too, So so I have to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to handle all the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: for all the stuff that I do. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've just cut out, you know, I've pretty much cut
Speaker 1: out consulting. And cutting out consulting also cuts out like
Speaker 1: a ton of politics and a ton of proposals and
Speaker 1: reports and back and forth emails and you know, holding
Speaker 1: people's hands. You know, my new clients don't require that
Speaker 1: of me nearly as much. You know, they just you know,
Speaker 1: they want they want to. I'm working with their consult
Speaker 1: I'm working with their consultants to try to figure out
Speaker 1: the the you know, red lines on the map and
Speaker 1: what I can't do, and then you know, we get
Speaker 1: a plan together and then we get out in the
Speaker 1: dirt and we just go at it. But there's not
Speaker 1: you know, I communicate with clients on site. It's not
Speaker 1: like the consulting world where you just you know.
Speaker 2: Well, there's constantly new people involved with it because there's
Speaker 2: a new green chair, new person on the board, and
Speaker 2: you're kind of probably going over the same things that
Speaker 2: you've talked about for the last ten years and in
Speaker 2: a way and you know, five.
Speaker 1: Years for a couple of my consulting clients. Man, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's been crazy. So yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I lost patience with that a long time ago because
Speaker 1: it's just I'm telling a different person the exact same
Speaker 1: thing I said fifteen years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and you don't get a new map to
Speaker 2: mess around with, which goes back to your year's resolution.
Speaker 2: There's never, rarely, almost never a new map when it
Speaker 2: comes to consulting.
Speaker 1: No, And it's you know, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the at the end of the day, consulting is not
Speaker 1: really a creative thing if you're doing restoration stuff like
Speaker 1: I do. You know, if you're like taking a golf
Speaker 1: course it's not so good and trying to change it
Speaker 1: around and make it good. That might be creative.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna do some some guided questions, but also
Speaker 2: a lot of listener questions. And I thought this was
Speaker 2: a great question to kick off from from the New
Speaker 2: Year's resolution. And we already heard the second half of it.
Speaker 2: But Doug Greenberg asked, what else do you want to
Speaker 2: still want to accomplish? And what do you get still
Speaker 2: get excited about at this point in your career. So
Speaker 2: we already got the excited thing, So what else do
Speaker 2: you want to accomplish in your career?
Speaker 1: You know, a few years ago, I kind of you know, well,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, I used to like think that older
Speaker 1: architects were just you know, or other architects in general
Speaker 1: were just too pessimistic about what kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the US to say what you can't know,
Speaker 1: there's no good land left anymore. You know, I heard
Speaker 1: that a lot twenty five years ago. Nobody says that
Speaker 1: to me anymore.
Speaker 2: It seems like Google Earth like completely changed the search
Speaker 2: for land because everybody is coming up with spectacular sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, and you know, you know, a handful of
Speaker 1: developers just willing to build stuff in spectacular places, even
Speaker 1: if it was way off the beaten track. Changed, you know,
Speaker 1: the success of those places changed a lot of things
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. But you know, but you know,
Speaker 1: so I've I've worked on ten or twelve or fifteen
Speaker 1: great great pieces of land that I never thought, you
Speaker 1: know that everybody said, oh, those don't exist anymore. But
Speaker 1: you know, I did start thinking a few years ago, Guy,
Speaker 1: can these keep coming up? I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: odds that you know, I keep getting more of these
Speaker 1: and more of these. It doesn't seem like that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like I should count on that, and so
Speaker 1: and and you know, and there weren't many new projects
Speaker 1: being built in general. You know, I think I counted
Speaker 1: last year. I've only built eight new courses in the
Speaker 1: last twelve years. And I'm a hot architect, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's how little new stuff has been being built. But
Speaker 1: you know, partly from sitting around in the pandemic for
Speaker 1: two years, and you know, I've kind of got some
Speaker 1: energy back. You know, It's like, you know, nothing could
Speaker 1: make you more restless than that. So so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm getting all these calls about new things
Speaker 1: and they sound pretty good, especially after being on the
Speaker 1: sidelines for a while, and it's like, yeah, let's go
Speaker 1: do this. So, you know, I didn't intend to build
Speaker 1: two or three or four new courses a year ago.
Speaker 1: Going forward, I was going to start slowing down, and
Speaker 1: instead the opportunities are speeding up, which was completely kind
Speaker 1: of unexpected for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it seems like the last time we talked
Speaker 2: you you mentioned right at the top that you know,
Speaker 2: you this is about as busy as you've ever seen it,
Speaker 2: you know, since the economic collapse in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: So you know, with that, I mean, what are you
Speaker 2: kind of looking to do? I think something from from
Speaker 2: my standpoint that I really admire about your career when
Speaker 2: you look at the different projects is how different everything
Speaker 2: is and there are different concepts and you like to
Speaker 2: you know, it's not hey, we're just gonna build this
Speaker 2: this golf course and we've we did this before and
Speaker 2: it worked really well, so let's keep doing that. It's hey,
Speaker 2: we have new concepts, the reversible course, the idea with
Speaker 2: Sedge Valley, which is back on at at at Sand Valley,
Speaker 2: where you're doing a par sixty eight. A lot of
Speaker 2: different types of golf courses. Do you have different concepts
Speaker 2: that you really want to try and build, you know,
Speaker 2: in the next you know, twenty years, I do.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, part of what you were talking
Speaker 1: about I just kind of stumbled into, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm interested by different things. So when somebody throws out
Speaker 1: an idea about you know, just I mean as simple
Speaker 1: as different as like, Okay, let's you know, let's build
Speaker 1: a forty dollars golf course in Colorado. Yeah, we haven't
Speaker 1: done something like that. That'll be fun. Or you know,
Speaker 1: let's take a course, Let's take a muni in Houston
Speaker 1: and turn it into a PGA tour site. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's like, never done that before. That'd be cool, even
Speaker 1: though they're not spectacular pieces of land. And yes, I
Speaker 1: have a few concepts that, you know, like the reversible course.
Speaker 1: I've sort of been sitting on them for a few years.
Speaker 1: I've thought about these things a lot, but you know,
Speaker 1: just haven't had the right client to go this is
Speaker 1: the place for that. And you know, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to just put the idea out there and watch go
Speaker 1: Hants or somebody else build it instead of me. But
Speaker 1: at this point in my career, it's like, well I
Speaker 1: might as well put the concept out there. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get to do it. If I don't get
Speaker 1: to do it, maybe somebody else will do it. But
Speaker 1: at least somebody will do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is that,
Speaker 2: you know, in putting the idea out there, bye, you know,
Speaker 2: it might land somewhere with somebody that has the means
Speaker 2: to be able to do that idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is some of them
Speaker 1: are you know, the more conceptual something is generally the
Speaker 1: plane or the piece of ground you want for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you've got a site that
Speaker 1: has beautiful specimen trees and really good topography or a
Speaker 1: coastline or a bunch of views, you've got it designed
Speaker 1: to that you can't you know, you shouldn't be thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a reversible golf course or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, that just doesn't make sense the same way.
Speaker 2: So, like an example of that would be your new
Speaker 2: project at trt ti uh terry Edes Public Resort, where
Speaker 2: you've got you know, some ocean front holes and then
Speaker 2: you go up into dramatic pines, sand pines right right right.
Speaker 1: Although you know, one of the concepts I've had floating
Speaker 1: around for years, and I've talked a little about it
Speaker 1: with Rick Kane is, you know, depite despite everybody loving
Speaker 1: Pine Valley, nobody really has ever has tried to replicate
Speaker 1: Pine Valley. That Pine by the Pine Baran's course at
Speaker 1: World is probably the closest thing to it. But even
Speaker 1: that is like, you know, it's Pine Valley light. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not really hard off the fairways, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: so the strategic things don't matter as much because you've
Speaker 1: got plenty room to avoid the trouble on a lot
Speaker 1: of the holes. And you know, there's no reason you
Speaker 1: can't build an I mean, Pine Valley's a great piece
Speaker 1: of land, but there's no reason you can't build something
Speaker 1: like Pine Valley if you had a good piece of
Speaker 1: land to do it on it. And you know, the
Speaker 1: reason it doesn't happen is because most developers are afraid
Speaker 1: to write off a certain percentage of golfers. Is just
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to get around this, So we
Speaker 1: can't do that. But Rick, especially at this point in
Speaker 1: his life, is like you know, just out there on
Speaker 1: the edge wanting to do something great. So we've talked
Speaker 1: about those inland holes. That inland terrain kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of Pine Valley. It's got the scale of undulation,
Speaker 1: it's all sandy. You know, it's pretty dramatic. And you know,
Speaker 1: the only way that that course is going to compete
Speaker 1: with Bill COR's fifteen holes along the water is if
Speaker 1: when we go inland, we go all out and it's
Speaker 1: really dramatic. I've you know, I've got to sit down
Speaker 1: with Rick and say are you are you really ready
Speaker 1: for us to do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the things I think with with
Speaker 2: golf architecture, especially public and resort golf, is one of
Speaker 2: the reactions over the last twenty years, and I think
Speaker 2: you were a big part of this, is is with
Speaker 2: and playability. You know, has the pendulum gone too far
Speaker 2: one way with every everything being super wide and they're
Speaker 2: not being a lot of penalty off the tea which
Speaker 2: a Pine Valley like golf course would invoke.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that pendulum went way too far. And
Speaker 1: you know Pine Valley is wide too, I mean Pine Valley.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just saying like there is potential for
Speaker 2: some sort of trouble off the tea.
Speaker 1: True, yes, there is. Yes, nobody's gotten through more than
Speaker 1: about four hold Pine Valley before recognizing there is potential
Speaker 1: for trouble there. But yeah, but you know, yeah, pine
Speaker 1: Valley is sixty yards wide. It's not.
Speaker 2: If you were going to do you know, so with
Speaker 2: this modern representation, you know, how is modern Pine Valley
Speaker 2: different from you know, original Pine Valley? Is there anything
Speaker 2: that would be different with with today's game from from
Speaker 2: the original.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I like about that concept is, you know, Pine Valley
Speaker 1: has changed in the last ten or twelve years. They've
Speaker 1: lengthened it substantially. You know, before that it was a
Speaker 1: sixty seven hundred yard part seventy golf course and tour
Speaker 1: protypes didn't hit driver there a lot. You know, they
Speaker 1: were hitting three woods and one irons to the fairways
Speaker 1: on a lot of the holes, and they were okay
Speaker 1: with that, and it worked fine for it, and it
Speaker 1: worked well for you know, five to ten handicappers who
Speaker 1: are the members. So so I think I'd want that
Speaker 1: version of Pine Valley and not the you know, when
Speaker 1: you stretch it out to max length, so that the
Speaker 1: best players in the world can hit driver all the time.
Speaker 1: A it loses the intimacy, you know, the green to
Speaker 1: tea walks get all messed up. B you know, you
Speaker 1: just you start thinking about the scale for those guys,
Speaker 1: and it kind of blows the scale for everybody else,
Speaker 1: especially if you've got some carries involved, you know, because
Speaker 1: what's a what's a totally irrelevant carry to a tour
Speaker 1: pro is, you know, is a really hard shot for
Speaker 1: the average guy. I've got a good story about that.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, the the Renaissance Club for the
Speaker 1: Scottish Open is has signed up Pidrig Harrington to consult
Speaker 1: a little bit on the golf course. So I spent
Speaker 1: I spent a little time with him last summer and
Speaker 1: you know, talking through the holes and it was great
Speaker 1: to talk to him, super nice guy. But you know,
Speaker 1: we got to talking about the seventeenth hole there, which
Speaker 1: is a fairly long part three. It's like a one
Speaker 1: ninety two hundred yard hole, and there's a bunker short
Speaker 1: left of the green deep bunker, but it kind of
Speaker 1: sits down so you don't see it very well, and
Speaker 1: he didn't remember it was there, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: a nasty bunker, and I was kind of shocked that
Speaker 1: he didn't remember it was there. And then after talking
Speaker 1: about it for a minute, he was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they put the pin pretty deep in the green there
Speaker 1: because it runs away from the bunker a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to fly at eight yards over the bunker,
Speaker 1: and if I'm trying to carry the bunker by eight yards,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to ever hit it in the bunker,
Speaker 1: you know. So he's talking about like one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety yard carry with a five iron or six iron
Speaker 1: or whatever he's hitting, but he is never going to
Speaker 1: miss eight yards short.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's what's rendered that water short
Speaker 2: of green so irrelevant almost right. It's like you know
Speaker 2: where it's just the greatest extrapolator of skill is I
Speaker 2: don't know if that word is correct there, but it's
Speaker 2: the It just pushes a skill gap in a far direction.
Speaker 2: I think one of the interesting things about you know,
Speaker 2: I find myself in a lot of modern courses just
Speaker 2: hitting driver everywhere, like you alluded to, And I think
Speaker 2: one of the things that happens when you don't hit
Speaker 2: driver everywhere is golf courses play significantly longer than their yardage,
Speaker 2: where a sixty seven hundred yard course can play like
Speaker 2: a seven thousand yard course. The other thing it does
Speaker 2: is it kind of tests good players restraint because you know,
Speaker 2: they want to hit driver. People want to hit driver,
Speaker 2: They want to push it as close as they can get.
Speaker 2: And sometimes what you can do is you can kind
Speaker 2: of egg people into doing something they don't necessarily they
Speaker 2: shouldn't necessarily do percentage wise, because they're being asked to
Speaker 2: lay back a little bit more than they would like to, right.
Speaker 1: And there's a flip side of that too. I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll get themselves in trouble being impatient and going
Speaker 1: for it. But other times they'll lay back and hit
Speaker 1: a foe iron and then hit a bad four iron
Speaker 1: and you know, make the whole pretty hard for themselves.
Speaker 1: And then they're really frustrated because they think I actually
Speaker 1: hit driver. But you're right. I mean, Crystal Downs is
Speaker 1: a great extent. You know, it's only sixty five hundred yards,
Speaker 1: but those four short part fours, you know, until recently,
Speaker 1: nobody ever hit driver on them. You're always hitting the
Speaker 1: you know, maybe four wood, maybe three iron or four iron,
Speaker 1: so you know, so you had longer shots into the greens.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a push it.
Speaker 2: You know, crystal downs is a great topic because you
Speaker 2: know a player of that is now on the PGA Tour,
Speaker 2: Nick Hardy, just set the course record a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago out there. I'd read sure if I ever
Speaker 2: talked about this on the pod. But Nick and I
Speaker 2: have known each other for a number of years, and
Speaker 2: he's we've always talked about crystal downs and how hard
Speaker 2: it is given the short nature of it, and he's
Speaker 2: he's told me so many times he's just so frustrated
Speaker 2: by the place because he feels like he should shoot
Speaker 2: these low numbers, but he always gets him He gets
Speaker 2: himself in positions where he's got these side hill lies
Speaker 2: with like fifty yard wedge shots, and he's just like,
Speaker 2: these are shots I don't hit. And I realize, like,
Speaker 2: you know, it just requires so much patience out there.
Speaker 2: And you know, he he sent me a back like
Speaker 2: I finally slayed the beast when he set the course record.
Speaker 2: And this is a course that a PGA Tour player
Speaker 2: had played hundreds of times before he finally got there,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think he did it like two
Speaker 2: years ago when he was on the corn Ferry tour.
Speaker 2: So that's a perfect example. I always walk away from
Speaker 2: there is God that course is so fricking hard, and
Speaker 2: it's just it doesn't appear to be hard.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, I don't know what you're looking at
Speaker 1: besides the scorecard. If you don't think it appears to be.
Speaker 2: Hard, well you feel like you should be able to
Speaker 2: bully it. But what happens when you try and bully
Speaker 2: it is it It punches you right back in the face.
Speaker 1: That's true of a lot of McKenzie's courses. It's the
Speaker 1: same for Posita Tiampo, It's kind of the same for
Speaker 1: a Cyprus Points. It's the same for that little Cavendish
Speaker 1: thing that's like fifty nine hundred yards. It's still like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of places where
Speaker 1: you can make a big number just by making one mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a course that I've looked at a million times,
Speaker 2: like just photos I scour because that's one of the
Speaker 2: places I bost want to see when I go over
Speaker 2: to the UK this year. It's finally going to happen
Speaker 2: this year. But you know, the uh, one of the
Speaker 2: things that I've heard you talk a lot about before
Speaker 2: on this pod, is the idea of designing a course
Speaker 2: for the women's game. I assume that's probably still in
Speaker 2: your you know, desires of new concepts.
Speaker 1: Very much so. And it's a hard one to do
Speaker 1: because it's it's politically incorrect to talk that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean even my you know, I've said
Speaker 1: to Angela Moser, I've said to my wife, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to build a course that's it's more geared
Speaker 1: toward women golfers. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, don't
Speaker 1: say it that way. And I'm like, why not, you know,
Speaker 1: And what I'm talking about is nearly all women golfers.
Speaker 1: You know, well, the average women golfer doesn't doesn't have
Speaker 1: a very high swing speed, doesn't hit it too far,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them could hit it through a
Speaker 1: doorway from a hundred or one hundred and forty or
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty yards away. They're just they're so
Speaker 1: straight because partly because they don't they're not overswinging, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to overpower it so they could drive it one
Speaker 1: seventy instead of one to fifty. But they just they
Speaker 1: have way more control. And you know, and that scales
Speaker 1: up to the women pros too. I mean, some of
Speaker 1: them hit it really far now, but they still hit
Speaker 1: it really straight compared to the guys in the bit
Speaker 1: of spectating that I see. You do not see them
Speaker 1: hitting a foul ball eighty yards right hardly? Ever. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean you said it before that. You know. I
Speaker 1: was kind of taught as a young golfer and architect.
Speaker 1: All the good players told me, don't take driver out
Speaker 1: of my hands, you know, just you know, it may
Speaker 1: not be the right club to hit, but don't like
Speaker 1: narrow it down to nothing or put a cad you know,
Speaker 1: make me lay up because a belt of rough goes
Speaker 1: across or anything. Just let me hit driver however far
Speaker 1: I can. So we've all been taught to do that.
Speaker 1: And you know what we've been doing is just pandering
Speaker 1: to guys who hit it long and wrong. You know,
Speaker 1: we've we've we've come to think, well, we have to
Speaker 1: give them all that. You know, they're gonna swing at
Speaker 1: it really hard, so we have to give them all
Speaker 1: this room. And it's like, why do not make it
Speaker 1: hard for him to do that? You know, why not
Speaker 1: make it so hard for them that they have to
Speaker 1: think about gearing down. The hard part is to you know,
Speaker 1: now you're talking about areas that are not the fairway,
Speaker 1: that are kind of out of play, you know, out
Speaker 1: of play. You know, how are you going to set
Speaker 1: them up and maintain them? So you don't want to
Speaker 1: be there, but you can still find the ball. But
Speaker 1: if you could do that, women golfers would be fine
Speaker 1: with twenty and thirty yard wide targets. You'd water a
Speaker 1: lot less, you know, environment, there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: it would be better. There's one old golf course is
Speaker 1: Stanley Thompson Course in Toronto. The Ladies Golf Club of
Speaker 1: Toronto used to, i think still only ladies can be members.
Speaker 1: Men can play the golf course as a guest, but
Speaker 1: it's a lady membership. So Thompson really designed it for women.
Speaker 1: And so that meant there's dog leg holes that dog
Speaker 1: leg at two hundred yards off the team, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, and now you know on this course
Speaker 1: there's a lot of so you look at that the
Speaker 1: first time as a man and you're like, god, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna have to hit five iron off
Speaker 1: the tee all day or whatever to to keep it
Speaker 1: in play. But you know, if you take away some
Speaker 1: of the trees, now you're saying, okay, you know you're
Speaker 1: not going for the normal fairway. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: be carrying things. You're going to have to be carrying
Speaker 1: hazards to that other part of the fairway if you
Speaker 1: want to hit drive. You know, that's more challenging than
Speaker 1: just sixty yards of fairway going straight down. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, I had Christine to Kim on the podcast
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, who plays on the LPGA tour,
Speaker 2: and she talked and she's, you know, she's into golf
Speaker 2: architecture and traveling and seeing courses, and she talked about
Speaker 2: how you know, when you've got a you know, sixty
Speaker 2: yard wide fairway with a center line bunker, you know
Speaker 2: she's going to pick a side and it's going to
Speaker 2: be very easy for her to thread the needle of
Speaker 2: that side, you know, and she like laughs about how
Speaker 2: wide it is. And in a way I've always wondered about, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the way the USGA sometimes sets up for
Speaker 2: men's us opens is like those like where Wingfoot we
Speaker 2: saw a couple of years ago with twenty five yard
Speaker 2: wide fairways twenty two yard wide fairways. That's a better
Speaker 2: test of the women's game than the men's game because
Speaker 2: of just the you know, a woman who's driving it
Speaker 2: really well could conceivably hit eighty percent of those fairways.
Speaker 2: A man that's driving a well, like they're gonna have
Speaker 2: a great driving day and they're gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I hit sixty percent of the fairways. And it all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, like, you know, if somebody's driving the
Speaker 2: ball well, you want them to be able to hit fairways.
Speaker 2: So for a women's you know tournament, you know, narrow
Speaker 2: fairways and rough isn't necessarily the worst thing, right.
Speaker 1: No, And you know, all the feedback that I've gotten
Speaker 1: from the players for the Houston Open is all around
Speaker 1: and yeah, it actually matters if we hit in the
Speaker 1: fairway here because you know, the rough is not super deep,
Speaker 1: but you can't spin the ball out of the rough.
Speaker 1: And then at the at the green end, if if
Speaker 1: you can't spin the ball, that the ball tends to
Speaker 1: go off the side of the green and down into
Speaker 1: trouble on one side or the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a It's one of the things
Speaker 2: I've seen like, you know, there's been commentary about you know,
Speaker 2: potentially like women. You know, I know Brandal Chamblie has
Speaker 2: been talking about how he wants to build TPC sawgrass
Speaker 2: for women in Mexico, and then there's been commentary Beth
Speaker 2: and nichols Is, you know, she writes for Golf Week
Speaker 2: covers the women game. She's talked about how women's golf
Speaker 2: needs to be kind of pushed more where it's shorter
Speaker 2: courses and they should be hitting more wedges and scoring
Speaker 2: should be more similar to the men's game. It seems
Speaker 2: like this would push it the other the opposite way
Speaker 2: of that and more towards you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: really test their skills.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, they're I mean, there's a dichotomy there,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that the women players all agree
Speaker 1: on what the best way to do it is because
Speaker 1: because you know, they've just announced all these new US
Speaker 1: Women's Open sites, they're going to some of the courses
Speaker 1: that the men have historically played, and they're all excited
Speaker 1: about that. You know, they're really excited about it from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of, you know, we want to show what
Speaker 1: we can do on the best courses. And I remember
Speaker 1: you know, years ago the first time they played the
Speaker 1: Women's Open at Oakmont, you know, Patty she and Beth
Speaker 1: Daniel and those players, they all love that challenge of
Speaker 1: going there and seeing what they could do on the
Speaker 1: golf course, you know, not with it. You know, they
Speaker 1: didn't play it all the way back where the men did,
Speaker 1: but they you know, they played it where the members
Speaker 1: do basically, and it was still a real challenge for them.
Speaker 1: But but you know, they felt like that was a
Speaker 1: great you know, a great challenge. So I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't think very many of them agree with the
Speaker 1: idea that it should be like the PGA Tour week
Speaker 1: to week where we want to shoot thirty under par.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I think. Like one
Speaker 2: of the things that, you know, I got a text
Speaker 2: from somebody, you know, Michael Wolfe, big book collector, historian.
Speaker 2: He messaged me after that announcement. He said, how many
Speaker 2: courses are out there today are more interesting to watch
Speaker 2: the men than women play, you know, at professional level?
Speaker 2: And in the list was really short. And I think
Speaker 2: it's because like the way these courses were originally designed
Speaker 2: the game that it's much more close to the women's
Speaker 2: professional game. Now there are women that are out there
Speaker 2: hitting at three hundred yards, but there aren't. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not a prerequisite to being playing out there, which
Speaker 2: you know, I think that mirrors what it was like
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty five, where you read about Jones hitting
Speaker 2: drives occasionally three hundred yards, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's right. And you know, I mean
Speaker 1: when I talked to when I spent time with Harrington
Speaker 1: this summer, he said, you know, I asked him if
Speaker 1: he if he had changed how he attacks golf holes,
Speaker 1: you know, as a result of all the you know,
Speaker 1: new books and stuff about strategy, and he said, yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely he does. And you know, he kind of he
Speaker 1: kind of felt stupid about playing more conservatively years ago.
Speaker 1: But then he said, but then he paused for a second,
Speaker 1: and he said, but honestly, you know, the difference now
Speaker 1: is you have to because everybody else is so long.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't, you know, he said, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago when he played, there were maybe only
Speaker 1: twenty guys who were really long, significantly longer that it
Speaker 1: gave them an advantage, and in any given week, half
Speaker 1: of them weren't there. And half of the guys that
Speaker 1: were there, weren't playing that well. So now you're down
Speaker 1: into like two or three guys who are significantly longer
Speaker 1: than you and really playing and you might beat him,
Speaker 1: but you know, now there's sixty guys and you have that,
Speaker 1: you have that again, and you're still like planned for
Speaker 1: fifteenth place. If you're short and you're playing conservatively, you
Speaker 1: just can't afford to do it.
Speaker 2: Hark is such an interesting guy because he's really thinks
Speaker 2: about the game like he's a maniacal tinkerer with his
Speaker 2: golf swing. But he delivered I think probably the quote
Speaker 2: of last year in the lead up of the PGA,
Speaker 2: and I'm curious just what your thoughts are from a
Speaker 2: golf architecture standpoint. He said, you know, experience isn't all
Speaker 2: it's cracked up to be. I'm paraphrasing slightly here because
Speaker 2: I don't have the quote from me. Experience isn't it
Speaker 2: all it's cracked up to be? Uh, the more experiencing
Speaker 2: you gain, the less innocence you have. And I'm curious,
Speaker 2: from a golf architecture standpoint, a really good golf, well
Speaker 2: designed golf course, you almost think about more and more
Speaker 2: you play, right, Yes.
Speaker 1: You know, like I mean, you know, the famous example
Speaker 1: is the Old Course, you know. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's pretty simple and there's a lot of room, and
Speaker 1: if you just stay left most of the time and
Speaker 1: avoid the trouble, you can get around it, okay. But
Speaker 1: but you're always tempted. You always see, you always see.
Speaker 1: But the really cool shot would be to hit it
Speaker 1: close to that bunker and steer it off that mound
Speaker 1: and it would roll right to the hall. So the
Speaker 1: better you are, the more things you see out there
Speaker 1: that will get you in trouble if you try to
Speaker 1: do it and fail instead of just playing it really conservatively.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean part of your the thing
Speaker 1: that your quote reminded me of, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a big Jack Nicholas fan growing up, and
Speaker 1: Nicholas always at the start of a tournament he had
Speaker 1: a number in his head about what it would take
Speaker 1: to win the tournament, and a lot of times he
Speaker 1: lost because somebody else else shot a lot lower than that.
Speaker 1: You know. They they weren't thinking the golf course was
Speaker 1: that hard, and they just attacked it more and they
Speaker 1: played pretty well. And he had played conservatively for the
Speaker 1: first two or three days and he got to where
Speaker 1: he couldn't catch them. You know, he played well enough
Speaker 1: to do what he thought it would take to win,
Speaker 1: and he was just wrong because somebody else thought the
Speaker 1: golf course isn't really that hard. I can attack this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's the true of Edie.
Speaker 2: Eddie Turbine golfer, would would think as a golf architect.
Speaker 2: You know, there's I was thinking the two ways you
Speaker 2: could frame this as a golf architect. Is that true
Speaker 2: what Harrington said about being a player, where you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes experience isn't all it's cracked up to be, and
Speaker 2: you see problems, you know, and you're wary of things,
Speaker 2: and you lose some of the innocence and maybe the
Speaker 2: some naive you know, naivety. I never pronounced that right,
Speaker 2: but you're you're naive nature. You you miss out on
Speaker 2: something really cool because of all your experience. Obviously, experience
Speaker 2: saves you a lot in different situations. But where inexperience
Speaker 2: actually helps with golf design, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That inexperience helps, But inexperience gives you more potential outcomes,
Speaker 1: some really good ones and some really bad ones. So
Speaker 1: when you have more experience, you're eliminating the bad potential
Speaker 1: outcome same way players, do you know, you're just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have tomit. I'm not going to build a hole
Speaker 1: there because that might be too severe, so I better
Speaker 1: not do that. And you know, if you hadn't a
Speaker 1: thought that you might build something that some people think
Speaker 1: it's the greatest hole I've ever seen. Oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: just so wild and crazy and different. And you're more
Speaker 1: likely to build that when you're thirty five years old
Speaker 1: than when you're fifty five years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think that way too, with like a lot of things.
Speaker 2: What do you you know, the older you get, the
Speaker 2: more you have to lose, So you're you're you know,
Speaker 2: you can make bad decisions, but some of those decisions
Speaker 2: that could have that you live at those you know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, And it's funny about that too, because you're known,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody people do act they get more conservative
Speaker 1: as they get older. It's nearly universally true of people.
Speaker 1: And you wonder why. I mean, I'm at the point
Speaker 1: in my career where I got money in the bank,
Speaker 1: and I don't you know, I'm not gonna like never
Speaker 1: get hired again if I build a course and it
Speaker 1: doesn't turn out well, so I can take a chance.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was thirty five now, it'd be
Speaker 1: hard to take a chance because like one wrong move
Speaker 1: and you'll never work again. There's so many other talented people.
Speaker 2: Well, people always ask me about my life, like what
Speaker 2: made me do what I did, which was like leave
Speaker 2: a very good job and start something in a completely
Speaker 2: different field. And I always say, like, I was at
Speaker 2: the very very perfect life situation. I was like twenty eight,
Speaker 2: I was single, I was dating my wife, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't married, and she was like we were just like
Speaker 2: in the right situation to take a risk. And like,
Speaker 2: if it had happened four years later, three years later,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have I wouldn't have taken the risk because
Speaker 2: I would have had too much going on. And it's
Speaker 2: just an it's experience is an interesting, a very fickle
Speaker 2: thing that applies to everybody's lives, you know. And I
Speaker 2: think that Harrington quotes just it It resonated with so
Speaker 2: many people because everybody could listen to that and think,
Speaker 2: h he's kind of right about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean one of the things we do,
Speaker 1: we try to do on all every golf course we build,
Speaker 1: is you know, hire some young kids for the crew.
Speaker 1: You know, have somebody out there who will say the
Speaker 1: crazy thing. So either we can explain to him why no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that'll get you killed, or yeah, why don't you try that?
Speaker 1: And well we'll see if it works.
Speaker 2: Who who's the person that tells? Are you're kind of
Speaker 2: the editor in your role where your associates build or
Speaker 2: shape out stuff? And then are you the line or
Speaker 2: do you have somebody that that cubs in and says
Speaker 2: this has passed the line?
Speaker 1: No, usually it's me, but I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: talk about it more amongst ourselves. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not always me making the call. And I you
Speaker 1: know I told those guys years ago, Look, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to always be the guy who's toning
Speaker 1: you down. You know, it's don't don't always push it
Speaker 1: to the edge. Give give me some places I can
Speaker 1: make it harder instead of easier.
Speaker 2: Do you have any good stories of the edge and
Speaker 2: a discussion with the group that you that jump to mind?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, in getting to eighteen, I talked about
Speaker 1: that that part of three where you're gonna build a
Speaker 1: kid kidnappers. It was just hanging off the side of
Speaker 1: the cliff. I mean, that was That's the only hale
Speaker 1: I've ever considered building. That was a scary hole from
Speaker 1: the prospect of just just standing on it would have
Speaker 1: been scary. And you know, we seriously thought about doing
Speaker 1: that and we're going in you know, we were pretty
Speaker 1: far along in the process of committed to like you know,
Speaker 1: when we decided not to do it. The thirteenth hole
Speaker 1: that we wound up building, we hadn't really even looked
Speaker 1: at what the alternative was to squeeze in another little
Speaker 1: hole in there, so that whole wound up being like it.
Speaker 1: You know, we only had room to build about one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five yard Part three, which turned out
Speaker 1: to be a cool hole. But but you know, the
Speaker 1: reason it's so short is because we crammed it in
Speaker 1: there at the last minute thinking we were thinking the
Speaker 1: green was off the side of the hill and eighty
Speaker 1: feet further down instead. But you know, part of that
Speaker 1: conversation was was Brian Slanik, who was going to take
Speaker 1: a piece of equipment down there and build it. There
Speaker 1: were the there was there were a couple of mounds
Speaker 1: down and there there was just barely room for a
Speaker 1: green and there were a couple of mounds that we're
Speaker 1: going to have to knock down. And you know, when
Speaker 1: you're working by the coast in Australia, in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: every mound is a potential like bury pit of some
Speaker 1: kind and the lasting in the world that you want
Speaker 1: to actually actually dig into. So you know, that was
Speaker 1: the straw that broke the camel's back. It's like, I
Speaker 1: can't go down there and dig through those mounts. That
Speaker 1: was our warning sign of okay, let's not do this.
Speaker 2: So what are do you have any other uh, you know,
Speaker 2: new concepts that you like to talk about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should. I should have my little list handy
Speaker 1: and I don't you know one of you know, the
Speaker 1: the the par sixty eight shorter golf courses won and
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be doing that of course for women,
Speaker 1: which is kind of related. You know. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not so much about length, it's about accuracy and
Speaker 1: scaling everything down. That's that's a big one. And I'd
Speaker 1: still like to do that some and I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it's like the best place for
Speaker 1: that is a resort with four or five golf courses,
Speaker 1: like you know, like you know, maybe in Bandon they
Speaker 1: don't they don't, they don't talk as much about trying
Speaker 1: to advertise and market to women, but stream Song does.
Speaker 1: Stream Song like every conversation is like, how can we
Speaker 1: get more women to come here? It's like, what if
Speaker 1: you build a golf course it was more geared to women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a question about that, about gearing courses
Speaker 2: to women from Abby Libenthal, and it was, you know,
Speaker 2: I think one thing that every almost every course could
Speaker 2: improve on is tea placement. And she asked what makes
Speaker 2: for a good forward tea placement? And and then she
Speaker 2: goes on to say, I've played so many bad ones
Speaker 2: plopped in the fairway nearly behind a tree, But there
Speaker 2: are playable ones out there too, So like, what's what
Speaker 2: what makes for a good forward tea placement?
Speaker 1: Well, you can't say. I mean, the temptation is to
Speaker 1: say so it plays the same for the ladies that
Speaker 1: it does for the men, But that doesn't really work
Speaker 1: the same way because if you don't get the women
Speaker 1: farther up there, you know, further up in the landing area,
Speaker 1: or to a new landing area where they can hit
Speaker 1: a shorter club into the green. You know there it's
Speaker 1: going to be way harder for them. So you can't
Speaker 1: just set it up with the with the landing area
Speaker 1: for the men in mind. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: easier to talk about what not to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one that I've heard the most complaints from women
Speaker 1: about is, you know, you push the tea. You push
Speaker 1: the tea pretty far up into one side or the
Speaker 1: other so it's not in the way visually from the
Speaker 1: from the men's teas, and then they just don't have
Speaker 1: they don't have a good angle. They hit it far
Speaker 1: down the fairway. It's like they have to aim kind
Speaker 1: of through the middle of the landing area and they're
Speaker 1: going to go out the other side into the rough
Speaker 1: if they hit a halfway long drop, you know, because
Speaker 1: you're setting them up. You know, you've got a straight
Speaker 1: fairway going down in some trees, and then you're making
Speaker 1: them hit diagonally across that space and it just doesn't
Speaker 1: work very well. So you've got to you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to give them, you know, the I mean, the
Speaker 1: fallacy is thinking that all women hit the ball the
Speaker 1: same distance. Oh yeah, I only have to worry about
Speaker 1: them hitting it one hundred and fifty yards from here.
Speaker 1: Now there's women that are going to easily hit it
Speaker 1: two hundred yards from that tee and you've got to
Speaker 1: give them a line to do that.
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, yeah, because if you get it up to
Speaker 2: the if if everybody's taking from one fifty, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's a junior, whether it's a twelve year old
Speaker 2: playing a senior, or a lady like you know, one
Speaker 2: fifty for me is a wedge or a nine iron
Speaker 2: and for them, you know, for my mom, she's hidden
Speaker 2: a wood. Yes, so it can't play that. So you
Speaker 2: need you almost need new landing area. I never thought
Speaker 2: about the landing area conundrum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's you know the hardest part is when
Speaker 1: you're on when you are an undulating land. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to set the landing area kind of
Speaker 1: into a little bit of an upslope where you can
Speaker 1: see it, okay, and now you want the shorter hitters
Speaker 1: to play up and hit it past there and down
Speaker 1: the hill on the other side, which would be okay,
Speaker 1: but they you know, now they're landing area is invisible
Speaker 1: for them the same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the way so many places have it oriented.
Speaker 2: Where I grew up, Caddie, the forward t is six
Speaker 2: thousand yards and it's par seventy seven. It was nuts.
Speaker 2: But like when you think about it, you know, the
Speaker 2: people that play the forward t are gonna be the
Speaker 2: last people to hit and then so often they're the
Speaker 2: first people to hit the next shot. So if you
Speaker 2: have good forward tes, it actually will help your pace
Speaker 2: of play too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean a friend of mine, her mom
Speaker 1: was a really good player in La and they had
Speaker 1: joined a new club out in Seemi Valley and she
Speaker 1: really liked the golf course and you know, and she she,
Speaker 1: you know, she'd played bel Air and Riviera in places
Speaker 1: like that historically. And I was like, what do you
Speaker 1: like about this new course so much? And she said
Speaker 1: it only has four par fives. I was like wow.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, oh, you know, because like
Speaker 1: Riviera and La Country Club had seven or eight par
Speaker 1: fives for women back in the day they had, you
Speaker 1: know that they were just the same as you were
Speaker 1: talking about, no forward tis. You know, the four hundred
Speaker 1: yard olds were parf fis.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The first hole at this place is like four
Speaker 2: fifty par four and it's just got a twenty yard
Speaker 2: box and it's at the very front of this twenty
Speaker 2: yard box. It's just it's just boxers.
Speaker 1: It's uh.
Speaker 2: Every time I go back, I just I'm like, it's
Speaker 2: just you remember it was just a slog and so hard.
Speaker 2: You know, while we're talking about new designs, Will Bardwell
Speaker 2: had a question for you that I thought was I
Speaker 2: hadn't really ever thought about from a design standpoint, and
Speaker 2: I was curious if you had, have you begun factoring
Speaker 2: climate change into your designs, and if so, what does
Speaker 2: that look like? If not?
Speaker 1: Why? Uh, well, I guess the only place I've ever
Speaker 1: really thought about it. We were looking at a project
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean years ago, and supposedly they're still going
Speaker 1: to build this golf course someday. But the original site
Speaker 1: was had, you know, had a lot of coastline, but
Speaker 1: they were only going to, let me use, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of par threes and maybe a short part
Speaker 1: four along the water because they were going to sell
Speaker 1: residential stuff for the rest of it. But you know,
Speaker 1: all of it was like eight feet above sea level,
Speaker 1: and you know, and at some point along the way
Speaker 1: I was like, well, if the seeds keep rising, this
Speaker 1: thing is not very high above sea level, This isn't
Speaker 1: going to work out so good long term. Why don't
Speaker 1: we build it up on the hill instead? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of just two instead of two holes on the
Speaker 1: coast and fifteen holes on really flat, dull ground close,
Speaker 1: you know, two houses removed from the ocean, why not
Speaker 1: just go build a you know, more or less core
Speaker 1: a golf course on higher ground. So that's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Of course, a concept that you've you kind of put
Speaker 2: as one that you were interested in in an email
Speaker 2: to be was one where the golf course is kind
Speaker 2: of the the centerpiece of a new town and it
Speaker 2: being a different type of real estate play and you know,
Speaker 2: your traditional real estate course but more along the lines
Speaker 2: of something you'd see in Scotland like Saint Andrews or
Speaker 2: North Barrack or you know. One course that reminds me
Speaker 2: of this in the US is ach and Golf Club,
Speaker 2: where it's just steps from downtown and part of the
Speaker 2: town effectively.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and you know, you know, before the housing
Speaker 1: crash in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: We were we were starting to do planning on a
Speaker 1: couple three residential courses that never came to pass. But
Speaker 1: I remember talking with all the land plant you know,
Speaker 1: the land planner guys that do the master plans for
Speaker 1: these big communities, were starting to say that that that
Speaker 1: model that they'd used forever of like fairway with houses
Speaker 1: on either side, or even two fairways with houses so
Speaker 1: just one side of them. You know, that just wasn't
Speaker 1: appealing to people anymore, and it wasn't selling like it
Speaker 1: always had. You know that people wanted to live near
Speaker 1: the golf course, but they didn't actually want the mowers
Speaker 1: starting up at six thirty in the morning in their backyard.
Speaker 1: So they were starting to come around to the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, let's just do these over here and there
Speaker 1: will be a few homes along the outside of it,
Speaker 1: like there are on like most of the famous courses
Speaker 1: you could name. But it's not going to be like
Speaker 1: efficiently planned to get two hundred and forty golf frontage
Speaker 1: lots for any team hole golf course. That's a terrible experience,
Speaker 1: you know, when you when you try to build something
Speaker 1: like that, you're basically planning the housing development to be
Speaker 1: as efficient as possible. And you know, so if you're
Speaker 1: if you're six hundred feet from the property line, now
Speaker 1: it's time for a golf hole, no matter what the
Speaker 1: topography is there, you know. And no, you can't move
Speaker 1: that hall over one hundred feet to where the topography
Speaker 1: is interesting, because then we won't have room for the
Speaker 1: road and the lot on either side of the road,
Speaker 1: which is efficient. So you know, I've always stayed away
Speaker 1: from that model. It's like, I don't I don't really
Speaker 1: ever want to build a golf course like that. I've
Speaker 1: only built really one where the where the development really
Speaker 1: pushes into the golf too much. That was Riverfront in Virginia,
Speaker 1: one of my early courses. And you know, I like
Speaker 1: the golf course, it's just the development crowded it a lot.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. Is like with a golf course
Speaker 2: like that, if if money ever gets tight, they might
Speaker 2: try and add a couple lots and encroach and you
Speaker 2: can effectively ruin holes. So what you're saying with this
Speaker 2: type of development, the way I've kind of got an
Speaker 2: envisioned in my head is that kind of the magic
Speaker 2: of these town courses if we want to just use
Speaker 2: them like a that as a as a as a
Speaker 2: topic is like the retail slash congregating area is intertwined
Speaker 2: with the golf course where you know, if you could
Speaker 2: think about like a modern retail area, maybe the golf
Speaker 2: course is at like the end of the block.
Speaker 1: Yes, and and you know, and the you know, just
Speaker 1: like North Berrah or Saint Andrew's, the well Saint Andrews.
Speaker 1: The real estate part only comes down the eighteenth hole basically,
Speaker 1: but North Barrick it goes out to the fifth hole basically,
Speaker 1: and you know, it sort of scales down as it
Speaker 1: gets away from town. You've got bigger things and then
Speaker 1: you know, you've got big buildings in town and hotels,
Speaker 1: and then you've got more apartment building type size and
Speaker 1: then some single family things as you get further out.
Speaker 1: But it's but it's also not surrounding the golf course.
Speaker 1: It's only on the one side, and you're you know,
Speaker 1: the whole golf courses or the whole all of those
Speaker 1: things that are looking across golf holes to the water
Speaker 1: m so you're not you know, you're not looking straight
Speaker 1: across at another building all the time. That's a big
Speaker 1: part of it. But I just you know, just the
Speaker 1: scale of it too, the fact that you can you know,
Speaker 1: in St. Andrews, you just go out your apartment with
Speaker 1: your golf bag over the shoulder and walk down to
Speaker 1: the golf course and that's what you know. There have
Speaker 1: been a lot of new towns designed that way, designed
Speaker 1: around walking. They just don't integrate golf into it at all.
Speaker 1: It's always it's always way over there, and so you
Speaker 1: got to drive to it, and then usually it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's because it's way over there. They put housing all
Speaker 1: around it too. In the more introduced in the more
Speaker 1: modern American model of how.
Speaker 2: To do things well, when you think about like the
Speaker 2: community aspect and everybody, I don't want to use this
Speaker 2: we're going to say about getting people into the gay
Speaker 2: where areca use the term grow the game, But like
Speaker 2: when you think about introducing people to the game of golf,
Speaker 2: like having golf be within sight is going to make
Speaker 2: it so much more likely that somebody's going to decide
Speaker 2: one day that they want to go try it, yes.
Speaker 1: Or having the way to go to the way to
Speaker 1: walk to school or town is footpath that crass crosses
Speaker 1: over the golf course. You'll see that a lot in Scotland.
Speaker 1: You'll see a lot in places like Argentina that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect that to be the case, but you see
Speaker 1: almost everywhere, but in America. Because in America there's some
Speaker 1: lawyer going, oh no, no, no, we can't have somebody walking
Speaker 1: through there. They might get hit and everybody gets sued.
Speaker 2: It could to be a little bit with the founding
Speaker 2: of golf and how it found it, how it was
Speaker 2: started in America is such an exclusionary pursuit in a way,
Speaker 2: because you know, Cevia McDonald wasn't really a man of
Speaker 2: the people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean the closest I've ever got to
Speaker 1: doing something like this when I was when I was
Speaker 1: working on that course in China that we finished and
Speaker 1: never opened. The client was also looking at another site
Speaker 1: on the basically the north tip of Hainan Island to
Speaker 1: do like a real like a town, a full new
Speaker 1: town over time. It was a huge piece of ground
Speaker 1: to develop, and so we talked through a lot of
Speaker 1: these concepts for that place, you know, ten ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and that's that's one of the reasons I've always had
Speaker 1: in the back of my mind, I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to do this somewhere. But he made the interesting point.
Speaker 1: He said to him the difference between the UK and
Speaker 1: America was in America, the edge of the golf course
Speaker 1: is somebody's backyard, and in Scotland it's the street. You know,
Speaker 1: there may be development across the street looking at the
Speaker 1: golf course, but there's no building between the street and
Speaker 1: the golf course.
Speaker 2: You would think that now, given like we're seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of population shifts and new development, that you know,
Speaker 2: maybe this is is quite prescient given the time we're
Speaker 2: talking about this, But this would be the time for
Speaker 2: somebody to try it because we have all we have
Speaker 2: effectively like towns just being in different different areas as
Speaker 2: parts of the country that are really popular places for
Speaker 2: people to move where it would make sense to try.
Speaker 2: This would be a really interesting and differentiated way to
Speaker 2: do residential development in a time where like a lot
Speaker 2: of people kind of do the same playbook.
Speaker 1: Yes, and especially since you know, I think it's still
Speaker 1: true what those landplanners were telling me twelve years ago
Speaker 1: that that old model isn't that appealing to people anymore,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think it's even less appealing now
Speaker 1: because what's happened, you know, those developments that failed, those
Speaker 1: those golf courses right in your backyard that aren't golf
Speaker 1: courses anymore, and nobody maintains every day or a real problem.
Speaker 1: So I don't think people are that anxious to sign
Speaker 1: up for that. I think they want something that's you know,
Speaker 1: the golf course is more part of the town experience.
Speaker 1: Then it's on them as a hone of homeowner to support.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like formulaic. It became formulaic. And that's
Speaker 2: what everybody tries to do in business, is like, we
Speaker 2: can create efficiency when we have a clear formula of
Speaker 2: how we do our business. But what we see with
Speaker 2: like a lot of these new say let's just take
Speaker 2: the Kaisers for example. One of the things that they
Speaker 2: do well is sure they have some formulas, you know,
Speaker 2: but one of the things they do well is creating
Speaker 2: an identity at each of their places. And the identity
Speaker 2: abandon and the identity at Sand Valley are drastically different,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think that's the you know, the
Speaker 2: essence of creating a sense of place is the most
Speaker 2: important part, and that's what you know, doing a golf
Speaker 2: course with with that's not a traditional residential. I just
Speaker 2: I've actually more I think about this idea, the more
Speaker 2: and more captivated I am about it.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully you've got a couple of listeners that are
Speaker 1: in that part of the business who agree.
Speaker 2: So what are your other ideas that you shared with me?
Speaker 2: Was the idea of an old designing course that looks old.
Speaker 2: It looks like a course of like two hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and believe it or not, we got this idea
Speaker 1: in China. We were I looked after after golf development
Speaker 1: China shut down. I had one call from over there
Speaker 1: from there's a there's a golf course in northern like
Speaker 1: northeastern China. It's on the coast called Tiger Beach Golf Links.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's the only guy to try to
Speaker 1: build a links course in China. You know, with fair
Speaker 1: to middling results. It's not bad. It kind of gets
Speaker 1: the spirit of it right. The detailing is not that great.
Speaker 1: But the developer, you know, he spent he'd been to
Speaker 1: Scotland several times and he started going back there on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. He formed some like like inner club
Speaker 1: thing with Carnoustie of all places. But you know, he
Speaker 1: was He was also an art an art collector kind
Speaker 1: of guy, and he loves some of those old pictures
Speaker 1: and paintings of golf in the early days. So he
Speaker 1: wanted to add nine holes to his golf course. And
Speaker 1: he you know, one of the things he mentioned is
Speaker 1: a possibility was, you know, what if we tried to
Speaker 1: do a golf course that looked two hundred years old,
Speaker 1: you know, not one hundred years old like all the
Speaker 1: Golden Age courses, but before that, like those earliest pictures
Speaker 1: you see of golf where the hazards are really kind
Speaker 1: of broken down and kind of just there's a few
Speaker 1: boards hold them up in places, and there's a little
Speaker 1: like footbridge to get across a sandy bunker in one place.
Speaker 1: And then you know, other than that, there's almost no
Speaker 1: definition because back then they weren't really they weren't mowing
Speaker 1: the golf. They didn't have mowers, they had sheet so
Speaker 1: you know, the the edges were not formalized at all.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time, you know. There was
Speaker 1: a quote in Mackenzie's book about how at the great
Speaker 1: schools of golf, and he mentioned Saint Andrew's and Hoylake,
Speaker 1: that there was no defined line between the fairway and
Speaker 1: the rough, and I spent like years trying to think about, like,
Speaker 1: how is that possible? You know, you got to decide
Speaker 1: where you stop, you know, you know, it's not just natural.
Speaker 1: And it took me a long time to think, No,
Speaker 1: that was the sheep were making the call back in the.
Speaker 2: Day, and so thinking about that. One of the way.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons a lot of these, you know,
Speaker 2: the early golf courses in the UK might have worked
Speaker 2: so well was because the holes became defined by where
Speaker 2: animals could walk. You know, people couldn't go over those
Speaker 2: extreme hills because there was no mowers that could go
Speaker 2: over that wanted to go over them. Right, It almost
Speaker 2: kept them the the sheep kept them away from doing
Speaker 2: something dumb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And some of it, you know, I mean you
Speaker 1: tend not to. You know, most links courses they're not
Speaker 1: in the biggest dunes right next to the coast, with
Speaker 1: a handful of exceptions, they're set back a little bit
Speaker 1: where the dunes are older and the soil is a
Speaker 1: little more fertile, so grass grows easily. You know, on
Speaker 1: the big dunes, all you've got is like merrim grass
Speaker 1: kind of holding the sand down, but the sand is
Speaker 1: still actively blown around and those dunes are getting bigger,
Speaker 1: so they you know, they they even if they could
Speaker 1: have grasped up over those things, they're smart enough not
Speaker 1: to do that because it's still like an environment where
Speaker 1: things are moving around. You know, Let's just build the
Speaker 1: golf course over here where it kind of takes care
Speaker 1: of itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think having a course like
Speaker 2: this built in America, possibly, if it could win some awards,
Speaker 2: it would probably would do the country a lot of
Speaker 2: good when it comes to like, you know, what's what's
Speaker 2: considered sought after maintenance practices, because you know, after this
Speaker 2: year with trips in the last few years, you go
Speaker 2: to these some of these clubs in the Northeast and
Speaker 2: you just, I just can't believe the speeds of the greens,
Speaker 2: and they talk about softening great greens rather than like
Speaker 2: the maintenance standards. And I think a lot of it
Speaker 2: has to do with like the tools, the modern tools
Speaker 2: that have become so good and the ability to do it.
Speaker 2: But it seems like it's jumped the shark a little
Speaker 2: bit where we're talking about softening greens as opposed to
Speaker 2: you know, just slowing down the greens.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's always been a problem and it just
Speaker 1: continues to be a problem. Yeah. I mean, I haven't
Speaker 1: been back to some of these places that have done
Speaker 1: the fifteen million dollar renovations in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: But I wonder if part of the reason for all
Speaker 1: all that big, huge thing they're doing is to take
Speaker 1: the focus off the fact that they're also softening the greens.
Speaker 1: If they were only softening the greens, you'd be talking
Speaker 1: about it, But since they just spent fifteen million dollars
Speaker 1: rebuilding the whole golf course, you didn't even notice.
Speaker 2: Today's podcast was edited by the wonderful Megax. Thank you, beg,
Speaker 2: and also a big thanks to Tom for coming on.
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