Speaker 1: I miss the green.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball
Speaker 2: in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Speaker 3: Ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 3: Frida Egg, Frida Egg.
Speaker 1: Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the
Speaker 1: golf course. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition
Speaker 1: of the Friday Egg Podcast. Today we have as our
Speaker 1: guest Dave Essler. Dave is a golf course architect who's
Speaker 1: designed courses like Black Sheep Mount Prospect Golf Club and
Speaker 1: then done a lot of restorations around the Chicagoland area,
Speaker 1: including work at Ravslow GluN View Club, Chicago Golf Lake,
Speaker 1: Geneva Country Club.
Speaker 3: Dave, welcome on, Thanks for having me. There's breakfast included, right,
Speaker 3: I assume that's part of the deal the Frida eggers at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get a gift card to our future breakfast
Speaker 1: breakfast establishment.
Speaker 3: It's in the works, Grand Slam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Gonna be called the it's gonna be called the Woke
Speaker 1: Yoke to Coffee, shopping and breakfast.
Speaker 3: Plus. Yeah, you guys are ahead of the curve. Wait,
Speaker 3: maybe not ahead of the curve on the punching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I heard it's kind of popular on weekends. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand, so we're uh yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: you got an interesting background. Dave played golf at Ohio State.
Speaker 1: Still a stick. You know, don't let him tell you
Speaker 1: he's not he you know, we found out really quickly
Speaker 1: last Friday, like we played that he's a He's a
Speaker 1: terrific sandbagger. Still still rolls in a lot of verdies.
Speaker 3: Gift.
Speaker 1: So I would love to hear a little bit about,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of how you got into golf from
Speaker 1: the start, and you know, your your journey through golf
Speaker 1: and how you became an architect.
Speaker 3: The I was born a small notch uh the like
Speaker 3: like everybody of my era. And before I grew up catting,
Speaker 3: and uh, my dad was a school teacher and so
Speaker 3: he had summers off and he worked at a golf
Speaker 3: course near home in Wakanda, and my brother and I
Speaker 3: grew up cattying. And you know, I'm glad there are
Speaker 3: still folks who are institutionally and golf professionals who really
Speaker 3: support that way of life introduction to the game, because
Speaker 3: it really is an artery to creating golfers in with
Speaker 3: all of the grow the Game initiatives, which are terrific. Uh,
Speaker 3: there's there's really one proven method of getting people hooked
Speaker 3: on the game and learn all the good things the
Speaker 3: game can imbue in a personality and and revealing all
Speaker 3: the bad things that the game can show off in
Speaker 3: a personality. But the I grew up canning and playing
Speaker 3: on Mondays. We were fortunate enough to get to play
Speaker 3: golf just about everywhere that was good around Chicago on Mondays,
Speaker 3: back in the days when clubs used to be closed
Speaker 3: completely on Mundles.
Speaker 2: What course did you grow up caddying at?
Speaker 3: Built More Country Club? Which was not a great golf
Speaker 3: course by any stretchy, it was close to home, and
Speaker 3: you know, ended up becoming good friends with Jim Michael
Speaker 3: and his family and spent a lot of summers hanging
Speaker 3: out there, and you know, learned all the important lessons
Speaker 3: of golf, how to swear, how to throw clubs hot up,
Speaker 3: you know, flick matches in the Caddyshack, you know, all
Speaker 3: the good lessons that you kind of saw in the
Speaker 3: Caddyshack movie. But we were really fortunately because we would
Speaker 3: go up and play back in you know, nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five to nineteen eighty five, when golf in Chicago had
Speaker 3: actually golf courses in Chicago had a better reputation than
Speaker 3: the reality. I mean, back then, probably the only really
Speaker 3: really good golf courses were Story Acres in the Chicago
Speaker 3: Golf Club, mostly because they hadn't been touched. Most everything
Speaker 3: else at that period in Chicago used to have a
Speaker 3: great reputation, even better than New York, which was I
Speaker 3: don't want to sound like a homer, but the truth is,
Speaker 3: it just wasn't comparable. There was a quantity, but not
Speaker 3: a great quality, and the qualities improved quite a bit
Speaker 3: a lot of the restorations and less so new development.
Speaker 3: But in the last couple of decades there's been a
Speaker 3: lot of really good work on the restoration front. But
Speaker 3: so we played everywhere, and I got to see everything,
Speaker 3: just about everything on Mondays, and then I played a
Speaker 3: little bit and got to play in some really good
Speaker 3: tournaments at some really good golf courses and saw things
Speaker 3: that you know, public kid wouldn't otherwise have a chance
Speaker 3: to be exposed to, on both the architecture and kind
Speaker 3: of the socio economic front.
Speaker 1: M So then you got good at golf, and you
Speaker 1: went to Ohio State.
Speaker 3: I kind of adequate at golf, I was, I was
Speaker 3: not as good as I thought I was, And I
Speaker 3: always I wanted to be an architect for whatever reason.
Speaker 3: Granpa was an engineer, uncle was an architect. Architect, not
Speaker 3: just a guy who waves his arm around, arms around
Speaker 3: like like we do as golf course architects. But so
Speaker 3: there must have been something in the DNA, I guess,
Speaker 3: but I always knew I wanted to be involved in
Speaker 3: golf course architecture, and you know, wrote the fifth grade
Speaker 3: report and a lot of silly stuff and used to
Speaker 3: draw drug alf holds, waiting to get out on Saturday
Speaker 3: mornings as a young looper, and got decent enough to
Speaker 3: have a chance to play at a big ten school.
Speaker 3: When I got there, of course, figured out that there
Speaker 3: was a whole bunch of guys who were really, really good,
Speaker 3: better than I was, and grinding it out and had
Speaker 3: had a decent career, got a you know, respectable education,
Speaker 3: and played for a little while just because I felt
Speaker 3: like I was as to and had a little success.
Speaker 3: But frankly, like most of us, figure out, wow, everybody
Speaker 3: else is really good. I thought I was but yeah,
Speaker 3: that's who are.
Speaker 1: Some of the guys you played with back then that
Speaker 1: you know people would know and like it was there.
Speaker 2: When was your.
Speaker 1: Moment when you really knew, you know, I need to
Speaker 1: get a real job.
Speaker 3: It was My moment was actually earlier than I realized.
Speaker 3: It was probably my first or second. It's probably my
Speaker 3: second year in college, maybe my third year in college.
Speaker 3: We played with guys like Scott for Plank. On our team.
Speaker 3: We had Chris Perry and Clark Burrows. They in one year.
Speaker 3: In the same year they both played in the Masters,
Speaker 3: So a couple of us actually got to play in
Speaker 3: a spring tournament because those guys were busy. And I remember,
Speaker 3: you know, just watching guys hit shots that I just
Speaker 3: wasn't capable of. I spent some time my brother and
Speaker 3: I worked at Kemper Lakes and they used to have now, shoot,
Speaker 3: what was it? The wasn't the World Series ago, but
Speaker 3: there were four guys the major champions, and I caddied
Speaker 3: in the Grand Slam, right, Grand Slam of Golf exactly,
Speaker 3: and I think mc I was involved with it somehow.
Speaker 3: I remember caddying for Norman and we played a lot
Speaker 3: of golf and ran carts. There's a fella named Bob
Speaker 3: Spence who was just gentlemen of the game, played exceptionally well.
Speaker 3: It was a terrific marketer. It was a fantastic teacher,
Speaker 3: you know, cut from the mold, back when the golf
Speaker 3: pro was the guy at a private club, because he
Speaker 3: knew everything, could fixed clubs, could knew all the rules,
Speaker 3: knew a little bit of something about agronomy. And so
Speaker 3: Bob took my brother and I under his winging at
Speaker 3: Kemper Lakes back when it was just nine holes. Anyway,
Speaker 3: fast forward, so watch Greg Norton. We play a lot
Speaker 3: of golf at Temper Lakes, and you figure out where
Speaker 3: you hit the golf ball on certain conditions. And I
Speaker 3: just watched Norman fly at sixty five yards further and
Speaker 3: my Sunday punch, and I thought, yeah, he can do
Speaker 3: stuff that I can't do. And you know, that was
Speaker 3: the beginning of the end of a largely unfruitful playing career.
Speaker 3: But the good thing about those exposures to competition is
Speaker 3: you meet a bunch of guys who are really good guys,
Speaker 3: and you get to see places in at least in
Speaker 3: my industry, you get to see places that you good,
Speaker 3: ugly or you know, just mediocrity. Lessons about golf course,
Speaker 3: about golf courses, what.
Speaker 1: Was your favorite course you got to compete at, like
Speaker 1: from like a from a competitive golf standpoint, I.
Speaker 3: Love playing the old Scarlet for anybody who played in
Speaker 3: the Kepler and it was it was it was home.
Speaker 3: Of course, it was Robert Hunter routing I'm sorry, and
Speaker 3: Mackenzie routing that Robert Hunter had finished. It has since
Speaker 3: been substantially altered by mister Nicholas, but it was big,
Speaker 3: brewedish and nuanced at the same time. It only really
Speaker 3: had one awkward hole and that was eighteen. That kind
Speaker 3: of still exists. It was a big, hard dog like
Speaker 3: left but for a lot of guys, for your listeners,
Speaker 3: I besting there's quite a few who played there before
Speaker 3: Nicholas modified the golf course or updated at whatever they
Speaker 3: however they packaged it. But it was so good. It
Speaker 3: would test everything he had and I learned a lot
Speaker 3: about course management there. They didn't really put to good use.
Speaker 1: So with that, I'm always you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that always makes me sad is when when you
Speaker 1: lose like truly great golf courses and from everything I've
Speaker 1: heard about the old scarlet, it was one of those,
Speaker 1: and you know, now it's it's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit more contrived. It's got the you know,
Speaker 1: segmented off greens and and and I'm just kind of curious, like,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of like what it lost the
Speaker 1: most of what what kind of was the and what
Speaker 1: was the you know, impetus. Was it just because of
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholas's design career, like, you know, like how did
Speaker 1: this all happen? Why did somebody think it was a
Speaker 1: good idea?
Speaker 3: Well, I honestly don't know the politics behind it, but
Speaker 3: obviously he's a ridiculous force in the game, let alone
Speaker 3: in Columbus, Ohio, So there was an inevitability about mister
Speaker 3: Nicholas and his team being involved. We actually applied, so
Speaker 3: he made as a middle and among I'm sure other
Speaker 3: folks I assume Herding and Fry did as well, and
Speaker 3: a bunch of guys because it was a it was
Speaker 3: a plumb of a job. But he had been foolish
Speaker 3: to think that that he wasn't gonna end up doing
Speaker 3: the job anyway. Honestly, don't know. I assume that the
Speaker 3: response was largely agonomically. The place was never great when
Speaker 3: I was there, and I suspect that contributed as well
Speaker 3: as the ridiculous distances that the golf ball does. You know,
Speaker 3: a really good example of that is a place that
Speaker 3: you and I talked about last week, the place called
Speaker 3: Bellevue Biltmore, which I think is not long for the world.
Speaker 3: It's a real Donald Ross golf course time in clear Water,
Speaker 3: and we were fortunate enough to be involved in the
Speaker 3: restoration and rebuilding of a kind of a design build
Speaker 3: approach a couple of years ago. And it turns out
Speaker 3: that one of the local rich guys is going to
Speaker 3: buy it from the city, which is kind of unfathomable,
Speaker 3: but that the city would sell an open space asset
Speaker 3: like that. But you know, those those make me really
Speaker 3: sad when a really ideal, niche golf course that has
Speaker 3: some history, has some architectural integrity disappears. And you know,
Speaker 3: I suppose part of this progress and we've lost a
Speaker 3: lot of them. But when when you lose them for
Speaker 3: no good reason, it just seems unnecessary. And you know,
Speaker 3: not that I'm the doian of all things style, but
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that what used to be at the
Speaker 3: Scarlet course is probably better than what's there now, and
Speaker 3: what is at BELvue Builtmore today is probably better than
Speaker 3: what we'll be there now. If you happen to be
Speaker 3: a high networks individual, that may be arguable. But for
Speaker 3: the mass market of the as Mike Guyser causes, for
Speaker 3: the retail golfer, it's an unfortunate trend.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've played that Belvie Builtmore course when I
Speaker 1: was in Tampa, had no expectations of it going in
Speaker 1: and I was blown away. It was probably like three
Speaker 1: four years ago for a bachelor party and or not
Speaker 1: bachelor wedding, and you know it has a volcano hoole.
Speaker 2: It's just got some great quirk.
Speaker 1: It's got the it's just got the ross old school
Speaker 1: ross field that you know was you know, the trademark
Speaker 1: playability for everybody, but the nuance and the you know,
Speaker 1: the detail that that and strategy required to score is
Speaker 1: so high.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a It's a terrific golf course that
Speaker 3: serves a fantastically important niche, particularly in Florida where it's
Speaker 3: KRK ball and you know water everywhere that that place
Speaker 3: had very little water in play and easily walkable, very
Speaker 3: accessible and fun. And we we imbued it in the
Speaker 3: last year, I mean was two sofwers ago. Now with
Speaker 3: a good bit more ross and some quirk, like you said,
Speaker 3: added some center fairlyay bunkers and some strategy to the
Speaker 3: second dot on the par fives. But that happens, and
Speaker 3: and the ship is sale. It's just, uh, good news
Speaker 3: is there are so many more golf courses around that
Speaker 3: are being restored to their golden age characteristics. And that's
Speaker 3: the that's the good news. On the upside of us
Speaker 3: of that story, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious that you know, like if say you
Speaker 1: know Scarlet, like say you know, twenty years down the line,
Speaker 1: there becomes a movement to restore.
Speaker 2: It back to.
Speaker 1: What it once was, Like how how far has it
Speaker 1: moved from there? Like if it was on a sliding
Speaker 1: scale of one to ten, you know, one being you
Speaker 1: know as far away as it could possibly be, you know,
Speaker 1: like it would it?
Speaker 2: You know, is it possible to bring it back?
Speaker 3: It is the only hole to my memory that physically
Speaker 3: changed was the force. And I think the green is
Speaker 3: a lot further that Part five, the part five. Part
Speaker 3: five was one of the best part five. Again, you
Speaker 3: got to remember it was ballattas and steel shafts and
Speaker 3: persimmon and take that into consideration. Well it also old
Speaker 3: fourth with new equipment would be you know, there's there's
Speaker 3: lots of guys whould drive wedge into that into that
Speaker 3: old hole with today's equipment.
Speaker 2: So it dug.
Speaker 1: Which isn't uh isn't is it doesn't really fit Jack's eye.
Speaker 1: You know, he's got to have something with with a
Speaker 1: fade approach, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every once in a while you got to go, uh,
Speaker 3: play against type, I guess, but yeah, that was that
Speaker 3: was certainly his m O early on in his career.
Speaker 3: And I I don't know that it still is or
Speaker 3: universe that's a valid argument, uh universally, but yeah, early
Speaker 3: on that was certainly happening. But we I suppose we
Speaker 3: all do that to some to some degree, I find
Speaker 3: myself doing some of the you know, and I make
Speaker 3: a cognizant effort every time I go to a job
Speaker 3: to try to do what's right for the project and
Speaker 3: not what I have done, and that really puts some
Speaker 3: folks at unease. And we had a chance to get
Speaker 3: hired by a nice private club in town I said,
Speaker 3: I really don't know what we're going to do. I
Speaker 3: need some time to think about what you guys are
Speaker 3: in the marketplace and what this golf course should be.
Speaker 3: And you know, I tend to fall back on the
Speaker 3: best architect who may have ever worked on a property.
Speaker 3: For example, when we redid Ravoslolt was an easy one
Speaker 3: when we read it was obviously Donald Ross was in
Speaker 3: and out of there. And when we redid park Ridge
Speaker 3: many years ago, Bill Langford had done some work there
Speaker 3: and so we largely went with that flavor. We just
Speaker 3: redid again. On the design design build side, we redid Riverside.
Speaker 3: We did a bunch of the bunkers at Riverside, and
Speaker 3: it's an easy decision to make. We didn't move any
Speaker 3: golf holes or anything, but of the things we touched,
Speaker 3: we did so in the Bill lank for style, and
Speaker 3: that's an easily defensible I can sleep at night saying,
Speaker 3: you know, this is what we're doing, and this is
Speaker 3: why we're doing it. And I can remember my education
Speaker 3: early on back Columbuses. You better have some really good
Speaker 3: reasons to do what you're doing. I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of guys now who just work to find work.
Speaker 3: There are two or three good restoration folks out there
Speaker 3: who look at the history, and there's guys who get
Speaker 3: really serious about the historical data. That's not me. I
Speaker 3: honestly just don't have time to be that guy. But
Speaker 3: you better well. If you happen to be working on
Speaker 3: a building that that Frank Lloyd Wright worked on or
Speaker 3: Louis Sullivan worked on, you'd be hard pressed to move
Speaker 3: away from that pedigree. And I kind of take the
Speaker 3: same approach, whether it's our early work at Starter Golf
Speaker 3: Club when I was consulting there, you know, the Glen
Speaker 3: View Club, we tried to do a variation on the
Speaker 3: Flint and obviously they changed horses a couple of times now,
Speaker 3: but that's a great old club that has a terrific history,
Speaker 3: and I still have a lot of friends there. But
Speaker 3: we tried to do what we felt was right for them,
Speaker 3: and that's typically what we try to do. You mentioned
Speaker 3: Lake Geneva Country Club. You know, we work there as
Speaker 3: well as Bigfoot down the Lake, you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of miles away, and they could not be more different places.
Speaker 3: They're physically different property with different histories. They both tend
Speaker 3: to be weekend kind of clubs. But to do the
Speaker 3: same thing at both of those properties, like many architects
Speaker 3: would would be doing a complete disservice to them, to
Speaker 3: each one of those guys. And so you can go
Speaker 3: three miles from Lake Jimeiva Country Club to Bigfoot and
Speaker 3: see dramatically different aesthetics and design goals and objectives, which
Speaker 3: would be fun for me. Would I would have to
Speaker 3: do something else if you call me that, we're just
Speaker 3: going to do flashy bunkers or grass based bunkers everywhere.
Speaker 3: You know, it's great. It's a lot of fun to
Speaker 3: go through the intellectual exercise and sometimes the golf course
Speaker 3: archaeological discovery of figuring out what a place should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think I've seen, you know, a
Speaker 1: good sampling of your work and all been different.
Speaker 4: You know, you have Ravaslow. I think that the bunkers.
Speaker 1: There, you know, you've got kind of grass faced bunkers
Speaker 1: and they really push up.
Speaker 4: Into the greens. And I mean that that job is
Speaker 4: a really good one.
Speaker 1: I always I always think about the fourth hole there,
Speaker 1: that part three, and it's it's just it's such a
Speaker 1: pain and the ass that hole because of the bunkers.
Speaker 3: It is exactly and that was the one. Uh you're
Speaker 3: probably old enough and and and some of the guys
Speaker 3: listening uh played and you know remember na MAGA back
Speaker 3: when they used to be junior golf and it became
Speaker 3: the i G g A and you know guys who
Speaker 3: played in the Western m Along the way, there's a
Speaker 3: guy named Chuck Eckstein who was w G a cd
Speaker 3: G official and Chuck was an early member and his
Speaker 3: family was there and he goes, this is the one hole,
Speaker 3: David that you know, we know that Donald Ross did
Speaker 3: and if they had no budget. You know, that was
Speaker 3: our first construction job with Didge Golf Construction, which is
Speaker 3: kind of the build portion of Esther Golf Design slash
Speaker 3: Vintage Golf Construction Design build that we do. And I
Speaker 3: get on a machine from time to time and I'm
Speaker 3: not bad, but that was our very first construction job
Speaker 3: and it was so much fun. They had zero dollars,
Speaker 3: but we got an awful lot of really I think
Speaker 3: important work done for not a lot of money. And
Speaker 3: number four was one of those that had to be
Speaker 3: just right. And while you could literally play ping pong
Speaker 3: back and forth with sandshots, if the greens are fast
Speaker 3: or if you're not skilled. That's what that hole was,
Speaker 3: and we just put it back the way it was.
Speaker 3: But that's a Graves was a fascinating If you look
Speaker 3: at the old aerials, there were two hundred plus bunkers
Speaker 3: on that property. Some were massive, some were tiny, and
Speaker 3: while we didn't they didn't have the dollars to put
Speaker 3: back everything, we gave a fair snattering of the variety
Speaker 3: that was out there. There's a there's a good size
Speaker 3: ten thousand square foot bunker with islands on the sixteenth hole,
Speaker 3: which is I don't know if it's a ross green,
Speaker 3: but it sure feels like a ross green. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like hitting it's a you know.
Speaker 2: It's impossible bowl. It's impossible to hit the ball close there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's if you did one of those today,
Speaker 3: you'd kind of et secured. And the concept is great.
Speaker 3: It's just a little bit it's turned up to eleven
Speaker 3: a little too much, but since it's been there for
Speaker 3: sixty five or ninety years, it's accepted and and we
Speaker 3: you know, then we the previous hole. We've we've got
Speaker 3: a little pot bunker with stairs going down into it
Speaker 3: and and everything between some great little chocolate drops around
Speaker 3: the greens just kind of speak to that turn of
Speaker 3: the century character.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of curious, you know, with with all
Speaker 1: your the restoration work you've done. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you say, you know, I'm a I'm a GM or
Speaker 1: i'm a you know, head of a greens committee at
Speaker 1: a you know, old school course, what are kind of
Speaker 1: like the the easiest things you can do to you know,
Speaker 1: get a little bit back out of your course and
Speaker 1: make it significantly better with you know, a tight budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the the couple the low hangings tends to be
Speaker 3: molly patterns, uh. And that can be anything from you know,
Speaker 3: pushing the fairway out in front of an old bunker
Speaker 3: or you don't even sometimes need to restore the sand
Speaker 3: in the bunker because that costs money. And depending on
Speaker 3: where you are within the Chicago district, you may have
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of money, or you may not have
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of money, but you may still have
Speaker 3: a significant, a historically architecturally significant asset. And sometimes just
Speaker 3: simply not touching the ground itself, but pushing the bent
Speaker 3: cress in front of an old feature, whether it's a
Speaker 3: series of chocolate drops or an old bunker gives the
Speaker 3: illusion that that mound cuts into the fairway, even if
Speaker 3: it cuts into the faraway at the God forbid the
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty yards off the tee or know
Speaker 3: at quote unquote the wrong distance. And everybody wants to
Speaker 3: put bunkers out there at to eighty five or nowadays
Speaker 3: it's even three bills. But those features that help frame
Speaker 3: the view, the more you can x scent them. In
Speaker 3: various committees meetings and board meetings, I always kind of
Speaker 3: give the analogy of so many of our golf course
Speaker 3: fairways have become runways because they've become overplanted and undermode.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the effect of the mowing pattern in
Speaker 3: the fairway. But when you have the opportunity up by
Speaker 3: the green to start to mow around the outside of
Speaker 3: the blookers, and we did a lot at Belgium, built
Speaker 3: more and partially because it was easy down there, because
Speaker 3: it was all bermuda. We're up here you have to consider, well,
Speaker 3: if we're going to do that, we have to take
Speaker 3: the bluegrass and changes to band grass typically but not always,
Speaker 3: And you have to be a little more cognizant of
Speaker 3: surface drainage and top dressing and all those things. But
Speaker 3: just shortening the height of cut around the green sixteen
Speaker 3: at raves Low is a good example. You know. You
Speaker 3: mow all the way around that, and it's a little
Speaker 3: bit more equitable and a lot more interesting, whereas if
Speaker 3: you go one hundred yards and you try to mow
Speaker 3: around the fourteenth green at raps Though, it's not quite
Speaker 3: as interesting in terms of equitable, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's just because of the filled platform and the green surrounds.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a it's a fantastic way to go about it,
Speaker 3: and sometimes it's not. Yeah, But regardless, when you do that,
Speaker 3: it's very inexpensive. Having said that, you know, maybe number
Speaker 3: two is tree removal, but that is far away the
Speaker 3: most politically charged potential third rail of golf course modifications.
Speaker 1: And people love their trees, you know they do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, how many times I've heard, well it's
Speaker 3: always been this way? Well no, actually, in nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 3: this photograph right here, it has not always been that way.
Speaker 3: You know, I've got photographs of Oak Park Country Club.
Speaker 3: I know you'll be playing there in the ridds next week,
Speaker 3: is it next week? Yeah? Next week? There's there's the
Speaker 3: old original pre white person settlement oak trees up to
Speaker 3: the east of the clubhouse in the photograph, and there's
Speaker 3: some other things that are out there, but there's not much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have a final story.
Speaker 3: But it's you know, people believe that it's always been
Speaker 3: that way, but it has anyway.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I was at a meeting at where I play golf,
Speaker 1: and I guess apparently our superintendent met one of our
Speaker 1: old superintendents. I forgot what the year span was, but
Speaker 1: the first thing he said to him was I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and he said for what, and he goes, you know,
Speaker 1: I got ordered to plant four thousand silver maple trees
Speaker 1: because we got a great deal on them. So you know,
Speaker 1: you look at our of course, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: you see these old pictures, there's not a tree in sight,
Speaker 1: maybe one or two.
Speaker 2: And now we've got one of the.
Speaker 1: Most heavily treed golf courses in Chicago, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've been sent there banging a we got to cut
Speaker 1: these down, and sure enough, like in the seventies, four
Speaker 1: thousand trees were planted, don't yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and bad trees, I mean oak trees would be
Speaker 3: one thing hickory, you know, yellow wood native plant material
Speaker 3: to Illinois. And I'm not cheer that need for tree planting.
Speaker 3: God knows that. But there are places to plant trees.
Speaker 3: There are, and there are the correct trees to plant.
Speaker 3: We'll all lose and silver maples and Norway maples, the
Speaker 3: casts an incredible nono shade are not the right ones,
Speaker 3: you know, to your point, And it's not the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties. It's not the effect of the all Dutch
Speaker 3: l disease which is now kind of manifested itself in
Speaker 3: the autumn put flash or the ash boar. It's still
Speaker 3: happening today. I just last year one of my clients,
Speaker 3: who has a nurseryman as a member, said, you know,
Speaker 3: this fellow wants to donate thirty five trees to the club.
Speaker 3: We want you to figure out where to put them.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm getting to the point in my
Speaker 3: career where I'm a little bit more blunt. You know,
Speaker 3: you try to politically couch it. And I said, the
Speaker 3: best place to put him is in his nursery. You
Speaker 3: know you don't want them, You want the opposite. You
Speaker 3: are to donate chainsaw and stump grinding time that would
Speaker 3: be a good use of his you know, and trust me,
Speaker 3: I said it more, Yes, delicately, delicately because you have
Speaker 3: to unless you happen to be the benevolent dictator in
Speaker 3: a club. And those places almost do not exist anymore.
Speaker 3: But it's still happening, and there are still places where
Speaker 3: there are guys who who want to plant a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of trees and lose sight of the fact that
Speaker 3: the trees are there to support the golf. The golf
Speaker 3: is not there to support the trees. And like I said,
Speaker 3: there are there are on most properties. There are plenty
Speaker 3: of places to plant some trees for specific purposes, whether
Speaker 3: it's safety or control the views. But to make the
Speaker 3: golf course harder quote unquote tends to not be one
Speaker 3: of the right ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I have firmly believe it doesn't make the golf course
Speaker 1: harder because it just thins out the grass. It makes
Speaker 1: it harder for the the you know, average player, but
Speaker 1: for the for the better player, it sends out the
Speaker 1: grass and lets you control your shot into the green
Speaker 1: versus you know, the worst thing is thick grass, you
Speaker 1: know for a good player, So you know you've worked
Speaker 1: with it worked across a bunch of different architects here
Speaker 1: in Chicago and you know down in in in Florida.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of I'm curious. You know, who you've kind
Speaker 1: of come to found is like the underappreciated genius of
Speaker 1: the bunch.
Speaker 4: And it could be one.
Speaker 1: It could be you know, a couple just you know,
Speaker 1: one that doesn't come up often that you know, really
Speaker 1: was a guy that got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, the guy who got it and he's
Speaker 3: getting they're getting more at was Bill Lankford lank for tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I'd love to have something more obscure. Herbert Strong did
Speaker 3: a lot of really great work, almost none of which
Speaker 3: is anywhere near us but around these parts. For my money,
Speaker 3: everybody knows Donald Ross now and obviously did a great
Speaker 3: deal of fantastic work. But when we've gone to a
Speaker 3: property where Langford and Moreau have been, it's always a
Speaker 3: surprise how good the work is. And part of it
Speaker 3: I suspect was the influence of Charles Blair McDonald. And
Speaker 3: they're kind of ova of archetype golf holes. You see
Speaker 3: Langford Moreau PLoP goes down from time to time, whether
Speaker 3: it's a ra dan, whether it's an Eden or Sahara,
Speaker 3: probably because Langford played at Yale and was exposed to
Speaker 3: those golf holes. Uh, incredibly dramatic. They they're they're they're bold,
Speaker 3: an amazing set of God, it's an amazing collection of
Speaker 3: golf holds and a collection overall, a place overall. The
Speaker 3: individual holes are little bit the fabulous pearls that combine
Speaker 3: into just an extraordinarily beautiful necklace. And there are a
Speaker 3: lot of places like that, Fisher's Island, you know, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite places to golf from the planet. Same
Speaker 3: kind of thing. Each one of those holes, if they
Speaker 3: existed on their own, would be just a joy to
Speaker 3: play one time. But then when you string eighteen of
Speaker 3: them together, it's it's just a magnificent experience.
Speaker 1: So in terms of just kind of when you're laying
Speaker 1: out of course and you know, we played Black Sheep,
Speaker 1: we played eighteen, and you know, it just kind of
Speaker 1: it flows together and there's you know, there's there's lulls
Speaker 1: and highs. You know, it never felt like we were
Speaker 1: playing thanks, you know, yeah, and it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: you moved a ton of dirt there, Like, how how
Speaker 1: do you go about you know, laying out a golf
Speaker 1: course and and plotting out you know, the green. So
Speaker 1: do you walk the property a ton like? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm always curious as to your philosophy.
Speaker 3: Well, I I haven't had the opportunity to do enough
Speaker 3: of them, obviously. And in the you talk about music
Speaker 3: artists who you know, their first album may be spectacular
Speaker 3: and then oh my gosh, you got to do another one,
Speaker 3: and then you really see what the person's got. We've
Speaker 3: had a little bit of that opportunity, but to but
Speaker 3: Black People is really the first big one. And you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't spit out all of the ideas on that one,
Speaker 3: but on that particular and the thing that I believe
Speaker 3: is between you know, in the world of architectural geekdom
Speaker 3: is often overlooked and misunderstood. Is the external influences, whether
Speaker 3: it's an owner, a couple of owners, the overall business plan,
Speaker 3: the site itself, the regulatory issues. If there's a world
Speaker 3: in which it is extremely difficult to compare apples and apples,
Speaker 3: it's golf and golf course architecture, because no two sites,
Speaker 3: whether it's they're immediately proximate to one another. For example,
Speaker 3: on a sunset Valley and Bobbling they share a common border,
Speaker 3: but they couldn't be different, more different products, different end users,
Speaker 3: different original architects, and so it's very difficult to say, boy,
Speaker 3: this was really successful if that guy's a good architect,
Speaker 3: because you could never replicate the same conditions. Let's say that,
Speaker 3: you know, Tom Doak gets a project and then you
Speaker 3: erase Tom Doak's work, and then Dave Vessler gets a
Speaker 3: project and you compare them side the same project. To
Speaker 3: compare them side by side, it never happens, and so
Speaker 3: the best you can do kind of is look at
Speaker 3: each site in each project and each set of conditions
Speaker 3: and hope that you can get the best out of them.
Speaker 3: Black Sheep was obviously a good, great opportunity for me
Speaker 3: to do some really, really good work, mostly because we
Speaker 3: had a pretty free hand in routing the place and
Speaker 3: sequencing the holes and determining the overall style, which was
Speaker 3: the point of conversation early on. You know, I said, Vince,
Speaker 3: we need to we need to think of this place
Speaker 3: unlike any other place in Chicago at the time, not
Speaker 3: the same converge we had at Glubi Club, which didn't
Speaker 3: obviously end as well for me. But I view that
Speaker 3: particular experience as a badge of honor that I knew
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do, they didn't like it, and
Speaker 3: I feel bad that it didn't live in the world
Speaker 3: in the words of HS Cult. But to circle back
Speaker 3: to Blacksheet, but we were fixed with the clubhouse site,
Speaker 3: so that was a given. In the middle of the site,
Speaker 3: there was a road and utilities were already extended, so
Speaker 3: we weren't going to move anything in terms of infrastructure,
Speaker 3: and so its a matter of starting from the high point,
Speaker 3: which we didn't have the ability to change, nor necessarily
Speaker 3: what I've wanted to change in that particular case, and
Speaker 3: how do we move in and out and around so
Speaker 3: that it's interesting in terms of whole type, whole direction
Speaker 3: because obviously the wind. You know, if it's windy ear,
Speaker 3: if it's a little windy at your house, it's blown
Speaker 3: out there. And so we've got sixty to in some
Speaker 3: cases one hundred yard wide fairways, particularly on holes nineteen
Speaker 3: through twenty seven, where you're really exposed, and you need that.
Speaker 3: With on a day like to that you and I
Speaker 3: are talking, there's probably a two mile an hour wind,
Speaker 3: but out there at maybe five or ten. But when
Speaker 3: it blows thirty and it's firm and fast, the ball
Speaker 3: runs out and you need that room to so that
Speaker 3: you can play golf. So that was an easy decision
Speaker 3: to make. Hand in hand. That came with triple and
Speaker 3: quadruple and sometimes quintuple with irrigation, and then the overall
Speaker 3: aesthetic it was, you know, we need to be thinking
Speaker 3: about prairie dunes. We're not quite sand hills, we don't
Speaker 3: have that magnitude of landscape. But I felt like prairie
Speaker 3: dunes was a pretty good placeholder in terms of early
Speaker 3: on meetings and concept. We need to restore the native landscape.
Speaker 3: You know, when I first walked property, I think I
Speaker 3: told you this around maybe somebody else that week that
Speaker 3: we drove up to the property and I made the
Speaker 3: sick non architect marketing mistake and said, you know, mister Silana,
Speaker 3: you haven't you haven't actually bought this part. You haven't
Speaker 3: closed on this prout yet, have you. Because when you're
Speaker 3: driving up to the site from from outside, it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like much, you know, which is completely the other
Speaker 3: end of the spectrum. I'm sure you've read it fifty
Speaker 3: seven hundred times. Golf digest that the architect proclaimed that
Speaker 3: this was the greatest idea or she had ever seen
Speaker 3: for golf. Yeah, you know, I I just probably have
Speaker 3: an aumental, you know, moment and went, what are you're
Speaker 3: thinking of? This is not the site you want? But
Speaker 3: he had already closed and looked past.
Speaker 2: My Hey, you were being honest. Honestly pays a lot,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: But then when you yeah, occasionally have you when you
Speaker 3: getting married September, I'm just you know, speaking to the
Speaker 3: honesty question. Yeah, I'm just kidding. No, I've been married
Speaker 3: almost thirty years. Anyway, the u so I, you know,
Speaker 3: recovered with Vince and said, you know, you're very for
Speaker 3: what eat on on the property. There's quite a bit
Speaker 3: of physical movement, and it's a pretty good site. It's
Speaker 3: not a great set, but it's a pretty good site.
Speaker 3: And I said, you know, we're not going to have
Speaker 3: to spend a lot of money to build this golf course.
Speaker 3: We're going to have to shape the greens, we're going
Speaker 3: to have to drain some areas, build the tey complexes,
Speaker 3: but we're not stripping the top sail from the entire property.
Speaker 3: Just because we can do it doesn't mean we should
Speaker 3: do it. And so with the exception of the bottom
Speaker 3: lands where there's you know, we had to build a lake.
Speaker 3: I tried to get out of play, but we had
Speaker 3: to build an irrigation lake, and it really wasn't anywhere
Speaker 3: to hide it. So and I'd love to be able
Speaker 3: to have been able to hide it by that piece
Speaker 3: of ground, it just wasn't going to happen. And so
Speaker 3: we incorporated it on a couple of holes. The only
Speaker 3: three holes on the property that play in the generally
Speaker 3: the same cardinal direction four, five, and six could not
Speaker 3: be more different in terms of the type of golf
Speaker 3: holes they are, But every other golf hole there changes
Speaker 3: direction with respect to the wind. You know, plays a
Speaker 3: little upfill downhill, and you do those permutations, and yes,
Speaker 3: you do walk to site a lot and that that's
Speaker 3: just part of the process, you know, the corn crunch.
Speaker 3: Our guys are notorious for doing that, and yes, that's
Speaker 3: that's that's the way to learn the site, yeah, and
Speaker 3: and get the best out of it is to spend
Speaker 3: time with the total maps are really a great starting point,
Speaker 3: but they are a starting point and not the whole
Speaker 3: process by any stretch.
Speaker 1: So you know, move into another project which I think,
Speaker 1: sure you know, I've got a lot of readers and
Speaker 1: listeners I know that love template holes and template hole golf.
Speaker 1: You know, you want the Prospect for Mount Prospects, which
Speaker 1: you know, if you were going to describe the the
Speaker 1: plot of land, I think it's it's flat, it's very constricted,
Speaker 1: and you know, it doesn't possess a lot of features
Speaker 1: that that people would be jumping over the moon to
Speaker 1: get to get. But I think you know, in this
Speaker 1: in this instance, you know, you see you saw with
Speaker 1: a lot of rainer courses where you know, he took
Speaker 1: flat pieces of land and made him really good golf
Speaker 1: courses by by doing you know, building spectacular green complexes
Speaker 1: and using these surefire you know, whole templates you know
Speaker 1: to production. So you know, tak us a little bit
Speaker 1: through the thought process and evolution of Mount Prospect.
Speaker 3: Mount Prospect was just a fantastic prop project for me
Speaker 3: to be involved because uh with which to be involved,
Speaker 3: partially because you know, I had tangentially had a real
Speaker 3: connection to the place. Like I said, we played everywhere
Speaker 3: and there were a bunch of guys growing up on Mondays.
Speaker 3: Not that that was a private club, but actually it
Speaker 3: was a private club many many many years ago in
Speaker 3: the twenties, and I had known a lot of guys
Speaker 3: who grew up there and went through the high school,
Speaker 3: and I g g A ranks, and I knew it
Speaker 3: at a place that created golfers, not unlike Village Links.
Speaker 3: You know, David Glott and Gary Pinn's and Doug Pin's,
Speaker 3: and there were a lot of guys who would just
Speaker 3: hang out there and play golf and evolved into competitive golfers.
Speaker 3: And Mount Prospect was also one of those places, and
Speaker 3: so I also knew I felt like Mount Prospect was
Speaker 3: very much a as close to a kind of a
Speaker 3: private club, you know, public setting. It's in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And when I went back, I think for the second
Speaker 3: or third meeting, there were guys walking down the sidewalk
Speaker 3: with their poll carts to go to the golf course.
Speaker 3: And while that's almost a Scottish aesthetic, you know, the
Speaker 3: club in the village that's open to the public. And
Speaker 3: so it was kind of an interesting flavor. And every
Speaker 3: medium to small town should have a Mount Prospect golf course,
Speaker 3: a place to grow golfers and kind of a community
Speaker 3: center away from the community center, and so it was
Speaker 3: really important for me too. They had one of the
Speaker 3: most dangerous driving ranges and under fitted facilities imaginable. They
Speaker 3: had some people get hit and fortunately, you know, no
Speaker 3: legal action, but it was a liability, and so we
Speaker 3: looked at it as how do we figure out there
Speaker 3: are so many high school kids who can learn to
Speaker 3: play golf there and they use it like crazy, and
Speaker 3: they've been very successful. So we wanted to find a
Speaker 3: place where there could be a substantial practice facility. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: after a whole bunch of iterations and permutations of routing
Speaker 3: and working within the floodplaine, and we figured out how
Speaker 3: to build you know, half an acre range to you
Speaker 3: at three hundred yard long range talent. And the thinking was,
Speaker 3: what's the least the audable thing on the property. Typically
Speaker 3: it's the floodplane, and in that case it was the
Speaker 3: horrible ninety degree dog leg right eighteenth hole, and I
Speaker 3: don't know if you remember it, but it was not
Speaker 3: a great hole. And so I thought, well, how can
Speaker 3: we take the liability which is a very awkward finishing
Speaker 3: hole that floods and turn it into houcki We you
Speaker 3: reuse the space, kind of co opt some of the
Speaker 3: maintenance facility space, and so we landed with the driving
Speaker 3: range there, took the old short game area, made a
Speaker 3: brand new hole to the east end, ended up having
Speaker 3: to move a couple of golf holes, so you know,
Speaker 3: I tried not to do that, but we ended up
Speaker 3: with a couple of big holes on the back then,
Speaker 3: because there are a whole bunch of holes in the
Speaker 3: back that were three hundred and sixty yard holes and
Speaker 3: although I have no problem with that, you don't need
Speaker 3: six of them on one nine. Mostly retained the front
Speaker 3: nine routing, but really am very proud to have created
Speaker 3: a terrific practice facility where you know, for the next
Speaker 3: hundred years folks will learn to play golf there. So
Speaker 3: that and we went there, you know, opening day and
Speaker 3: a couple of days after, and there's a million kids
Speaker 3: running around. And as I get older, that's obviously becomes
Speaker 3: of more value. But with respect to the golf course
Speaker 3: and the design decisions that were made, you know, nobody
Speaker 3: asked what we're going to do in terms of style.
Speaker 3: Along the process, they needed to redo the irrigation system,
Speaker 3: They need a lot of drainage work, and so eventually
Speaker 3: collectively they landed on. We need to rebuild the golf
Speaker 3: course and as much as we can add these other assets,
Speaker 3: the access facility, the short game area, assive putting green,
Speaker 3: and a range arranged tea and a short game area
Speaker 3: at the end for the high schoolers. If we can
Speaker 3: get all that stuff too, it's a total slam dunk.
Speaker 3: We were able to do it, but nobody ever really
Speaker 3: asked about the style of the golf course. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, we had done Raveslow and it had become
Speaker 3: open to the public, and so there was some Donald
Speaker 3: Ross golf course that was available in Chicago to the
Speaker 3: public golfer. And you know, I grew up playing golf
Speaker 3: as a public guy, and like I said, looping, and
Speaker 3: I thought, wouldn't it be cool if we had a
Speaker 3: seth Rainer style golf course for the public golfer who
Speaker 3: will never get invited to Chicago Golf Club, will never
Speaker 3: see Shore Acres, would never see Camargo or Blue Mound
Speaker 3: or something like that. I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be a cool and I don't really mean
Speaker 3: to sound pompous, but wouldn't be a cool gift to
Speaker 3: give the public golfer that style of architecture, and so
Speaker 3: we just kind of started down the road quietly. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't until very late in the design process that
Speaker 3: Brett Barcell, who was a director golfer in a very
Speaker 3: sharp fella, looked at me and said, you know, the
Speaker 3: sixteenth toal seems an awful lot like a beer itz.
Speaker 3: I think we're laying it out. It was being staked,
Speaker 3: or maybe it was even shaped at that point, but
Speaker 3: I think it was after construction had started, but I
Speaker 3: could be wrong. And I said, you know, Brett, it
Speaker 3: is and of course, being a modern golf professional, and
Speaker 3: he understood the marketing value of it, that they are
Speaker 3: the guys who have a publicly accessible rainer slash McDonald's
Speaker 3: more rainer obviously, and he said, this is great. So
Speaker 3: this really is a reverse for Dan and this really
Speaker 3: is the road hole? Uh? And I said yep, and yep,
Speaker 3: and this is the Eden and this is a double
Speaker 3: punch bowl and anyway, so it went on and on,
Speaker 3: and there's one variation in there and that you know,
Speaker 3: the astute listeners and architectural geeks will pick, and that's
Speaker 3: the ninth hole, which is more of a tenth of Riviera.
Speaker 3: But at two hundred, and I guess it goes three
Speaker 3: or five from all the way back. There's a lot
Speaker 3: going on in the Green complex, but that's kind of
Speaker 3: the only one that's not a double plateau or kind
Speaker 3: of one of the archetype Ross or later McDonald.
Speaker 1: What which of the templates did you have kind of
Speaker 1: the most fun building?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What you know, if you had to say, or what
Speaker 1: is your favorite one?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: If you if you love them all the same, that's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I love the ninth hole. Partially, we made
Speaker 3: a couple of clay models. I have some pictures, but whatever,
Speaker 3: I don't think they have survived. But I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: we're doing really old school golf course here. So unfortunately
Speaker 3: or fortunately either way, it worked out. We had a
Speaker 3: great contractor in Quadsworth Golf Construction. They did and just
Speaker 3: a spectacular shaper.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, maybe, aside from the fact that
Speaker 3: we had to bid, had to create a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of very detailed bid documents so that it was open
Speaker 3: for public bidding, maybe we should use some old school
Speaker 3: design methods. And so I started sketching a little bit,
Speaker 3: which I, you know, do from time to time. And
Speaker 3: I thought, well, I've seen the plastic sine models that
Speaker 3: some of these guys used to create, and it was
Speaker 3: so much fun. And the one I stuck on was nine,
Speaker 3: and it's not really the the driveable Riviera tenth, but
Speaker 3: it's of that flavor. It's kind of a combination of
Speaker 3: Riviera at ten and a couple other holes. The sixth
Speaker 3: green from Piping Rock, but that's a wonderful hole. I
Speaker 3: love the punch bowl, the completely new a Labith hole
Speaker 3: is the one really big boy hole on the back.
Speaker 3: Nine kind of looks like the Edward Monk screaming face
Speaker 3: as you stand at it from the fairway. And I
Speaker 3: love the double punch bowl on thirteen, which is it's
Speaker 3: not a great punchbowl in the front, but it's not
Speaker 3: a deep one, but you know, you get that flavor.
Speaker 3: Fifteen is fifteen turned out to be a pretty good hole.
Speaker 3: But we're kind of handstrung by the drains considerations and
Speaker 3: some of the permitting issues in Cook County and webs
Speaker 3: anywhere in the metro area. There's a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: water that we have to take down from the west
Speaker 3: of the property, and so we might have liked to
Speaker 3: do a little bit something different in front of the
Speaker 3: green there, but it's a fun little part. Five, sixteen,
Speaker 3: seventeen a fabulous sixteens maybe a little bit too difficult.
Speaker 3: Seventeen maybe a little bit easy, but it's a nice balance.
Speaker 3: And then eighteen is a very very soft Alps hole,
Speaker 3: which not a lot of folks pick up on. We
Speaker 3: hid the front right part of the green with a
Speaker 3: mound right in front of a bunker, which, of course
Speaker 3: is a modern no no to intentionally hide a bunker,
Speaker 3: but you know, that school of architecture is anything but modern.
Speaker 3: And so while I would have loved to do a
Speaker 3: full on Alps with a twelve foot high or fifteen
Speaker 3: foot high mound in front of green, it's public golf
Speaker 3: and you can't. You know, I would have felt really
Speaker 3: scared about intentionally hiding people from view and the dangers
Speaker 3: that come with that. So we did kind of a
Speaker 3: soft three to two kind of Alps team. But I
Speaker 3: don't know what a favorite it is. There's there's some
Speaker 3: really really good ones out here, though, and I'm awful
Speaker 3: proud of that work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's for everybody that's either Chicago based
Speaker 1: or if you're coming to Chicago. I always recommend if
Speaker 1: you're if you're looking for some public places to play.
Speaker 1: You know, two of my favorites are happened to be Ravslow,
Speaker 1: which Dave Redd all the bunkering on. And then Mount
Speaker 1: Prospects like a super cool public course. I think it's
Speaker 1: like thirty I think I paid thirty five bucks to
Speaker 1: play it last fall. I walked it, you know, three
Speaker 1: three and a half hours with and uh, you know
Speaker 1: it's a it's just you know, template golf for the public,
Speaker 1: which is super cool.
Speaker 2: So your your big new project that you're working.
Speaker 1: On is Pacific Gales and uh, it's a coastal. You've
Speaker 1: got Oregon coast and you know, pretty close in proximity
Speaker 1: to Abandon. And I know it's been kind of of
Speaker 1: like a long journey to get to the point now
Speaker 1: where you've got permit, you've got permitting done, and you're
Speaker 1: getting close to breaking breaking ground. So tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about Pacific Gales.
Speaker 3: Pacific Gals is it's been for me, it's probably been
Speaker 3: twenty one or two years now. My partner Jim Haley,
Speaker 3: who physically shaped the first golf course at the Dune's
Speaker 3: and was fortunate enough to work for Charles Schwab and
Speaker 3: George Roberts and the Huntsman family, and he worked for
Speaker 3: Pete Dye for a while. He worked for Rhys Jones
Speaker 3: for a while, but it was fortunate enough to overcome
Speaker 3: that I'm just teasing. He learned a lawful lot there, obviously.
Speaker 3: But Jim and I became partners formally about a decade
Speaker 3: or so ago on Pacific Gales, and it's one of
Speaker 3: those projects where, for example, I was, along with lots
Speaker 3: of other guys, I was interviewed and walked around Bandon
Speaker 3: Dunes before it was Bannon Dune's Mike and I and
Speaker 3: the aforementioned Bob Spence. Bob and I were going to
Speaker 3: be a design team along with I think everybody in
Speaker 3: the business probably was interviewed and walked the property, so
Speaker 3: it's not as if we were special by any stretch.
Speaker 3: But I remember thinking to myself, for I should just
Speaker 3: sleep on Mikes stares in order to be involved in
Speaker 3: this project. But it turns out that that Jim Haley
Speaker 3: hired a fellow named Jeff Knapp, and it turns out
Speaker 3: they became good friends and still are, and we all are,
Speaker 3: and Jeff's family has a couple of ranches on the
Speaker 3: Oregon coast very similar to the property at Bandon Done,
Speaker 3: and after much effort and considerable expenditure, we've gotten to
Speaker 3: the point where we have a of I don't want
Speaker 3: to used too much hyperbole, but its golf course on
Speaker 3: the Pacific coast. When we're done, it's it's very very good,
Speaker 3: and anybody who's seen the pictures looks at it and thinks, wow,
Speaker 3: I want to be part of that, and anybody who's
Speaker 3: on site. We've had a lot of very smart people
Speaker 3: on site, and there have been some really heavy hitters
Speaker 3: who tried to acquire the property along the way. But
Speaker 3: my partner Jim has a great relationship with family and
Speaker 3: that's how that's why we're involved. We've gotten to the
Speaker 3: point where for folks who love golf and understand that
Speaker 3: this may be once in a generation opportunity to be
Speaker 3: involved in golf, that is maybe as good as anything
Speaker 3: on this planet. And I jin's been around the block,
Speaker 3: and I'm not a complete rookie, but it's very very good.
Speaker 3: I've had guys tell me, boy, if I could have
Speaker 3: been involved in Bandon, dudes like I could become a
Speaker 3: founder at Pacific Gales and you think back twenty five
Speaker 3: years ago for folks who might have had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to be involved in Bandon Duds, and obviously nobody was.
Speaker 3: It was Mike, Mike's baby. But we have a founder's
Speaker 3: club at Bandon Dunes that allows folks to you know,
Speaker 3: have one hundred years of free golf for the family
Speaker 3: and the likes, to be part of our development team
Speaker 3: and maybe get to be part of one of the
Speaker 3: best golf courses on the planet. The physical characteristics of
Speaker 3: the site are very similar to the first golf course
Speaker 3: at Bandon Dune's, except we have quite a bit more
Speaker 3: topography and we have a massive dune, not unlike Tom
Speaker 3: Doak's golf course there on the north end. That is
Speaker 3: it makes the place very very special. So we've been
Speaker 3: working at it and spending our own money, kind of
Speaker 3: putting our money where our mouth is for about the
Speaker 3: last seven years, maybe it's six years, gaining permits and
Speaker 3: setting this place up for a build which I think
Speaker 3: will probably start or possibly start Christmas or New Year's
Speaker 3: about And that's just the first golf course. There may
Speaker 3: or may not be a second golf course, but it's
Speaker 3: the opportunity to be involved in something a special. Frankly,
Speaker 3: it doesn't come along that often unless you happen to
Speaker 3: be Bill Core or Ben Crenshaw or Tom Doak or
Speaker 3: maybe Ki Hands. But this may be better than anything
Speaker 3: they've ever had to look at. So Jim and I
Speaker 3: made a determination that we're going to go all in,
Speaker 3: and we are and we're very close to getting in
Speaker 3: to the finish line and are trying to make people
Speaker 3: aware of the opportunity that they have to jump in
Speaker 3: our boat and be part of something that's not only
Speaker 3: really special, but if you've ever been involved in a build,
Speaker 3: and our guys will have full access to the site
Speaker 3: like nobody else will besides the media. It's a lot
Speaker 3: of fun. It's a lot of fun to be on
Speaker 3: the ground when these things are getting created, and they
Speaker 3: just don't come along very often, particularly in this economic environment.
Speaker 2: So so have you guys. We've gotten like a routing
Speaker 2: done and everything for it.
Speaker 3: Earth we do we do and the routing, the routing
Speaker 3: along the ocean and along the north side of the
Speaker 3: property which overlooks the Elk River, which is just incredible
Speaker 3: fly fishing, overlooks the Cape Block of lighthouse and the
Speaker 3: port Orford reef. We've got nine and eighteen which finished
Speaker 3: on the ocean. We've got seventeen and number eight which
Speaker 3: are also sitting on the ocean. We've got six to
Speaker 3: eight holes on the ocean or with immediate views of
Speaker 3: the ocean. It was an awful lot of routing iterations,
Speaker 3: like you said earlier, walking the golf, walking in the property,
Speaker 3: trying to figure out a comfortable walk with or without clubs.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of where we landed at Blacksheet. Is
Speaker 3: a comfortable walk whether you have clubs or don't have clubs.
Speaker 3: And obviously the end purposes is to play golf over
Speaker 3: the ground, but I felt it was really important to
Speaker 3: add a little drama in terms of sequencing of the
Speaker 3: golf holes. You know, as much as ten years ago,
Speaker 3: I think I talked to Brad Klein over a cocktailer too,
Speaker 3: and he had just been to Spyglass and we were
Speaker 3: talking about the gross effect of the routing of Spyglass
Speaker 3: versus the experiential effect. And I mean gross is overall
Speaker 3: that grotesque. The experiential effect of playing a tubble where
Speaker 3: you get to the ocean, you move away from the ocean,
Speaker 3: you get back to the ocean with a peak, you
Speaker 3: move away from the ocean. Then at Pebble you're fortunate
Speaker 3: enough to finish. So what we tried to do and
Speaker 3: I think have done very successfully in the routing is
Speaker 3: give you the big bang and the first t So
Speaker 3: you're standing on top of the dune looking at the ocean,
Speaker 3: over looking at ninth and the eighteenth green. You know,
Speaker 3: we may kind of have that same intimatesical space created.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever played it crowded by
Speaker 3: the clubhouse. I want you crowded by the dune and
Speaker 3: the ocean as much as that's possible, a kind of
Speaker 3: by a negative space that is the ocean. And then
Speaker 3: the first green plays out to a promontory with a skyline,
Speaker 3: you know, infinity green. And then to move away from
Speaker 3: the ocean and get some views of Humbug Mountain and
Speaker 3: the coastal range. And then you come back into some
Speaker 3: quieter away from the ocean space and into some wetland
Speaker 3: areas that are just stunning. And then we line the
Speaker 3: up with the Portford Lighthouse. You get back to the ocean,
Speaker 3: fool around with the dunes, and we're it's a good
Speaker 3: enough site that we're able to finish both nines on
Speaker 3: the ocean play a couple of holes on top of
Speaker 3: sixty sixty five foot high dunes right overlooking the ocean.
Speaker 3: And so I'm not one hundred percent sure that we've
Speaker 3: got that we've squeezed every ounce of joy and drama
Speaker 3: out of the routing, but it's really really good and
Speaker 3: somewhat three theatrical, and people are absolutely just going to
Speaker 3: love the experience. And we were able to put the
Speaker 3: clubhouse on the ocean so you can hang out and
Speaker 3: have a cocktail of your choice, and we felt that
Speaker 3: was really important to differentiate ourselves from Bandon, and obviously
Speaker 3: Abandons the yardstick by which any resort is measured alone
Speaker 3: a resort that's within twenty miles of band in which
Speaker 3: we will be. We're only twenty five minute drive away,
Speaker 3: so there's going to be obvious comparisons, and we know that.
Speaker 3: So we made the determination that we need to be
Speaker 3: a little different than they are. The business plan is
Speaker 3: a little different. We want to be smaller and quieter.
Speaker 3: We won't ever have as much golf as they do,
Speaker 3: but style wise, we need this golf course to be
Speaker 3: a little different and routing. As much as I love
Speaker 3: the decision that Mike May did not put the clubhouse
Speaker 3: on the ocean, we think that's an important part of
Speaker 3: creating our own space and creating our own unique character
Speaker 3: at Pacific Gales.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's cool. I mean it's a tricky.
Speaker 1: It's always a conundrum with you know, the clubhouse. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think as somebody who's an entrepreneur, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that you're creating your own.
Speaker 2: Unique path and and your own unique place.
Speaker 1: That's that's different and meant to compliment Bandon rather than
Speaker 1: you know, being you know, you know the same, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think that's something a lot of people appreciate,
Speaker 1: and clearly you do.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're you're doing the same thing. You're you're
Speaker 3: creating a product content creation that is is unique and
Speaker 3: you know, not beholden to advertisers, and you know, people
Speaker 3: can trust your opinions and facts that you're not shilling
Speaker 3: for anybody else. And uh, yes, as an entrepreneur, and
Speaker 3: we we definitely wanted to be unique to band Who.
Speaker 3: We didn't want to be perceived as the seventh golf
Speaker 3: course over there, as wonderful as that would be we
Speaker 3: need to take a different path to be successful and
Speaker 3: attract people in our own right rather than just relying
Speaker 3: on them spilling over from band And we're very confident
Speaker 3: that people will want to come see us and stay
Speaker 3: with us and then also go see Banded. I know
Speaker 3: that's a that's a pretty bold statement to make, but
Speaker 3: you know the team we've got between Troy Russell, who
Speaker 3: was abandoned for the construction of for the first Boor
Speaker 3: golf courses, Jim obviously was there very early on, and
Speaker 3: like I said, I'm not a total beginner, but those
Speaker 3: guys have an awful lot more experience in that environment
Speaker 3: than I do. But we're just ridiculously thrilled to have
Speaker 3: fought through all of the obstacles that were placed in
Speaker 3: LA and gotten to the point where we're able to
Speaker 3: welcome folks into our founders Club, which is which is
Speaker 3: kind of interesting. You know. Jim and I talked about
Speaker 3: it ten years ago when he was working in London,
Speaker 3: and he said, no, we need to be able to
Speaker 3: do something. He called it the European model, which was
Speaker 3: just kind of a placeholder name, but it got us
Speaker 3: both thinking about, you know, a private club within a
Speaker 3: public operations model, and you know, kind of the UK
Speaker 3: model where there are clubs that you different clubs that
Speaker 3: use the same real estate. And it turns out Mike
Speaker 3: Keiser beat us to the punch. He used the same
Speaker 3: model up and Valley to populate his Founder's Club. And historically,
Speaker 3: you know, I just talked about spy Glass Hill, but
Speaker 3: spy Glass Hill, the great Samuel Morse used kind of
Speaker 3: a founder's club to fund his construction. It worked out
Speaker 3: pretty well for them. They had his two hundred guys
Speaker 3: had I think fifty years of the first five or
Speaker 3: sixty times every day is what they gave away. And
Speaker 3: that round it. And I think or somebody called that
Speaker 3: like the best deal in golf. And while you know,
Speaker 3: our Pacific El's Founder Club, it offers an awful lot
Speaker 3: more value value than they did at as spy Glass Sell.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure we're the best dealing golf, but I'm
Speaker 3: not sure that we're not the best deal in golf.
Speaker 3: It's historically people are going to look back at this
Speaker 3: once the doors are shut and once we've reached our thresholds.
Speaker 3: You know, geez, I can't believe I didn't get involved
Speaker 3: in that. I'm not going to say it's like Apple
Speaker 3: when it was you know, selling at twelve or Microsoft,
Speaker 3: because you know, the profit motive is not there. But
Speaker 3: to be involved in something the special is is rare. Indeed,
Speaker 3: you know once in a generation or two even you know,
Speaker 3: who knows whether we're going to do the last Yell
Speaker 3: on the Pacific Coast for you know, maybe ever the
Speaker 3: it's very very difficult these things permitted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: I think the side of architecture that that often goes
Speaker 1: overlooked as just the whole permitting and just like you
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, of the constraints that that each
Speaker 1: project has, and I know, you know Oregon has become
Speaker 1: very very difficult and protective of their coast, you know,
Speaker 1: in the recent years. So we're gonna we're gonna get
Speaker 1: you out of here with our over under overrated, underrated tradition.
Speaker 1: So we're going to fire a couple overrated, underrated and uh,
Speaker 1: anybody that's interested in Pacific Gales, I'll throw a link
Speaker 1: in the podcast on the page for the website and
Speaker 1: I think all the infos on there.
Speaker 3: I'm ass commerce. Yeah, I'm a seamless commerce of the Friday.
Speaker 3: Having just talked about your uh and editorial integrity. Then
Speaker 3: we then we just throw an egg on your face
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, but no, you's we're in a cool
Speaker 1: golf course project. I'm gonna go out to Portland for
Speaker 1: a bachelor party, and I'm gonna see if I can
Speaker 1: uh sneak down to Abandon for a couple of days
Speaker 1: when I'm out there and also check out, uh the land.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll just be the guy strolling around a
Speaker 1: big plot of land, you know, looking looking out into the.
Speaker 3: Vistas exactly trying to visualize dolf. Uh yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: over and under all.
Speaker 1: Right, so, uh, we're gonna go with this week's uh,
Speaker 1: this week's golf course. You're a Columba, you know. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Columbus. Mirfield Village overrated
Speaker 1: or underrated.
Speaker 3: I gotta see it's overrated. The gotta see it's overrated.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Deck, It's this spectacular place, but it kind
Speaker 3: of helped solidify the trend of more is more, and
Speaker 3: in fact, I'm not sure more is always more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's the the architecture
Speaker 1: crowd generally feels that way. And then you know on
Speaker 1: the flip side than on architecture crowd. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the greatest place in the world. I haven't been both
Speaker 1: kind of is both honestly, Yeah, it's an experience, right
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The first time we played there with the team,
Speaker 3: I was almost afraid to take a tibbot. It was
Speaker 3: so well maintained, so much better maintained than anything I'd
Speaker 3: ever seen, you know, even here at some of the
Speaker 3: very high budget places in Chicago. It was I was,
Speaker 3: I was. I literally had the feeling that I should
Speaker 3: maybe should not take a dibbot. Yeah, it's uh, I
Speaker 3: spelled it around in eighty two.
Speaker 1: That's why I probably would shoot way worse than that.
Speaker 1: What about Jordan Spieth.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, not a lot of guys who've had the
Speaker 3: success a long term. I would not. I would short
Speaker 3: that stock, let's put it that way. I think if
Speaker 3: I was his agent, I would also mike him. I
Speaker 3: don't think he does himself a lot of credit by
Speaker 3: having an open mic near him on the golf course.
Speaker 3: You know, the at and Ts and Toka colas. The
Speaker 3: world don't need to hear him whining. But that's more
Speaker 3: corporate than anything. I just somebody. I said that to somebody,
Speaker 3: and he's clearly an enormous talent. But I unless he's
Speaker 3: putting really, really well, I'm not sure he has the
Speaker 3: horsepower to be that good over the course of a
Speaker 3: couple of decades. But of course, you know, he'll probably
Speaker 3: win fifteen of him and and prove me wrong, and
Speaker 3: I hope he does. It would be fun to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very conflicted. I think I appreciate I just
Speaker 1: like his ability to get the ball in the hole.
Speaker 1: I think that's like an underappreciated aspect of golf.
Speaker 4: Is like the game around the greens.
Speaker 3: But by the way, that's the only thing that matters.
Speaker 3: Last I looked, because nobody gives you a check for hitting
Speaker 3: it pure and not getting it up and down or
Speaker 3: you know, stripe it on the range. My son and
Speaker 3: I were talking about that that's the only skill for
Speaker 3: which they pay you on the PGA tour is well
Speaker 3: shooting left everybody else.
Speaker 1: I think they you get paid you rate it. You're
Speaker 1: you're an underachiever because you'll you'll make a ton of cuts,
Speaker 1: you'll have a lot of high finishes, but you won't
Speaker 1: have a lot of wins. If you can't get the
Speaker 1: ball in the hole, you know, because like there's a
Speaker 1: slew of guys that hit the ball so good and
Speaker 1: you're always like, why don't they win more? Well, it's like,
Speaker 1: well they can't, they can't chip, they can't. But I
Speaker 1: mean they still are really good at it. I mean
Speaker 1: they're there, but they aren't as good is you know,
Speaker 1: the elite. So next one, center line bunkers, like.
Speaker 3: I don't think they've gotten to the point of ubiquity
Speaker 3: and you know, over use. But maybe I haven't been
Speaker 3: getting out as much as I used to. Generally underrated,
Speaker 3: but another couple of years of them, maybe all right,
Speaker 3: let's let's move on. But we've done them where I've
Speaker 3: literally left the bunker in place. We didn't one out
Speaker 3: of sixteenth twelve, for example, at belv Billmore, left a
Speaker 3: bunker in place and added, took out, took out some trees,
Speaker 3: added fairway about twenty five yards of faaraway new fairway
Speaker 3: that didn't exist before. And you were criticized by you know,
Speaker 3: a member or two for placing the bunker in the
Speaker 3: middle of the fairway, when in fact, oh we really
Speaker 3: did was add new fairly opposite and so that's a
Speaker 3: hard that's a hard one for folks to get their
Speaker 3: head around, not unlike mounds within a bunker. Mm hm,
Speaker 3: oh that's unfair. Well, you know, if it's a long
Speaker 3: finger in the bunker, it's perfectly fine to some folks.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I in the right situation you have with
Speaker 3: particularly on a second shot in the par five, which
Speaker 3: I think is probably the most ignored shot in architecture,
Speaker 3: I think they can be used really, really effectively in
Speaker 3: that scenario.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like a big fan of center line bunkers. I
Speaker 1: just think they put people in like a conundrum, and
Speaker 1: anytime you put people in conundrums, it's great.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, Skokie Country Club. I played this place yesterday, and.
Speaker 1: You know, not not on many I don't think it's
Speaker 1: on any top one hundred list. Just curious where where
Speaker 1: you think it falls, whether it's overrated, underrated.
Speaker 3: Probably underrated. I think it might have been on one
Speaker 3: of the Golf Digest lists many years ago, just because
Speaker 3: I was one of those guys many many many years ago.
Speaker 3: But it's Uh, it's a very very strong golf course
Speaker 3: and I like it a lot. Don crossed the superintendent
Speaker 3: there is is just a world class guy and professional
Speaker 3: as well. He's very good at his craft.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I hadn't played in a number of years in it,
Speaker 1: you know, I always said it was in my like
Speaker 1: top five in Chicago, and it reaffirmed itself.
Speaker 4: I think it's so good.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's just such a fun place to play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a lot of variety in the holes,
Speaker 1: and you know, you rarely play the same part twice
Speaker 1: in a row.
Speaker 2: Curious, curious what your.
Speaker 1: Top five in Chicago would be if you had to,
Speaker 1: if you had to make a list, be out here
Speaker 1: on a heater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously it's black sheep. Uh Yeah, Shore Golf Club
Speaker 3: and short Akers are easy ones to include on that list.
Speaker 3: The one that nobody will ever get to see, and
Speaker 3: I'm obviously a homer in this case, is like you
Speaker 3: have a country club, very much a period piece, probably
Speaker 3: more foul less now than when fouls designed it. H
Speaker 3: If you can't get there, and almost nobody can, it's
Speaker 3: definitely worth a couple hours of Google Earth, just kind
Speaker 3: of drooling over some of the little feature that have
Speaker 3: been created in the square corners and the greens and uh, boy,
Speaker 3: what is that five or is that four? That was low?
Speaker 3: Is wonderful, but that's not fair. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I I love, I loved, I loved Glenn Club. That's
Speaker 3: that's a pretty good one too. And like I said,
Speaker 3: it's a that's a great space. I'm sure I'm choking
Speaker 3: my guts out, but I I'm drawing a blank beyond that.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, it's uh, it's there's there's so many
Speaker 1: good courses out here. Yeah, it's and like you said,
Speaker 1: I think outside of you know, once you get short
Speaker 1: akers and Chicago golf, it's almost like all from their
Speaker 1: personal taste.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. The other one I really loved its under
Speaker 3: the category of an incredible walk is Bigfoot. The physical
Speaker 3: prop Yeah, the physical proper there and again we consult there.
Speaker 3: So it's cheating.
Speaker 1: But hey, you're you're a company man, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Respect I am.
Speaker 3: I'm exactly you know, Uh, whether you had golf clubs
Speaker 3: in your hand or whether you were just chasing frogs,
Speaker 3: it is a great place to spend time. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a class one trout streams and springs that bubble
Speaker 3: up by the ground, and it's it's it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of a magical place that just happens to have very
Speaker 3: good golf on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I haven't been out there since I played
Speaker 1: like a US Junior qualifier out there, I mean as
Speaker 1: decades ago. But I something I that's like Geneva is
Speaker 1: a cool place to get to spend some time and being.
Speaker 3: Just not a just not a weekend it down on weekend.
Speaker 1: Being somebody that's spent hours drooling over like Geneva Country
Speaker 1: Club on Google Earth.
Speaker 2: It's definitely something that is worthwhile.
Speaker 1: So and then you'll you'll just you know, spend the
Speaker 1: rest of your life trying to figure out how to.
Speaker 2: Get out there.
Speaker 3: So out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So well, Dave.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on, and we'll do another one of.
Speaker 2: These in the future.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to keep tabs on the Pacific Gales project
Speaker 1: that golf can never have enough you know, really really
Speaker 1: great sights, and everything I've heard from from you and
Speaker 1: also some you know, non biased parties is that it
Speaker 1: is it's got potential to be one of the.
Speaker 3: Great It's really good. And I appreciate you doing the
Speaker 3: company plug there and I appreciate you staying awake for
Speaker 3: what it has been six hours while I'd drone on
Speaker 3: about how wonderful all of my workings, But thanks for
Speaker 3: having me appreciate it for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate your time and we'll talk soon, all.
Speaker 3: Right, look forward to it. Thanks,