Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor. Today,
Speaker 1: I am excited to release today's episode of the Superintendent series.
Speaker 1: Today we have Roger Noll on the podcast. Roger is
Speaker 1: a legend in Saint Louis. He is a retired golf
Speaker 1: course superintendent. He now does golf architecture work in the area,
Speaker 1: but he has worked at about twenty Saint Louis area
Speaker 1: clubs in total, worked about five of them as a superintendent,
Speaker 1: and then he has been a consulting architect at a bunch.
Speaker 1: As well as being a superintendent. He is a great
Speaker 1: player in his own right. He won the Superintendent championship
Speaker 1: a few times. You know, a few other times he
Speaker 1: he had chances to win, but he chose to do
Speaker 1: other things. It's a great story. Roger's got tons of
Speaker 1: tons of information, wealth of information, knowledge on many subjects
Speaker 1: in golf, and all around great guy. Here is our
Speaker 1: episode with Roger Noll. I miss the green, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker,
Speaker 1: I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 1: A brid egg Friday egg the dread and Frida egg
Speaker 1: Frida egg Frida egggg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about
Speaker 1: ready to run off of the hup here you've been.
Speaker 1: I started that when I was at one of my
Speaker 1: wife's family's weddings and I asked everybody all night long
Speaker 1: what your favorite fruit was. People got so into it,
Speaker 1: you know, people were you know, everybody's got an opinion
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Why is peach the best?
Speaker 2: Ah? I don't know. It's sweet, juicy, it's hard to peel.
Speaker 2: That's the only downside.
Speaker 1: You peel the peach. You don't just eat the bus.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not a fuzzy eater. So I peeled the
Speaker 2: peach and it's awesome on ice cream.
Speaker 1: It's good about ice cream, vanilla ice cream, all ice
Speaker 1: cream peach. That's Uh. How do you get started here?
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I've obviously known you now for a while. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I'm at the g I S Show and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this wall of all the all the champions
Speaker 1: of the Superintendent Golf Tournament, and I just see Roger
Speaker 1: and Noll, Roger and Roger and Noll, Roger and all.
Speaker 1: You say you only wanted three times. I saw your
Speaker 1: name up there at least six.
Speaker 2: Not really, but I did win three.
Speaker 1: They might be they might be giving you more titles
Speaker 1: than you think you want.
Speaker 2: I'll take them, you know. So win's a win, right.
Speaker 1: How did you start playing golf?
Speaker 2: I started back? Well, my big brother played, I haven't.
Speaker 2: I had an older brother that was a good player,
Speaker 2: good junior player, and you know, you always want to
Speaker 2: do what your older brother does. We were a big
Speaker 2: sports family. My dad was a football coach and my
Speaker 2: brother went on to be actually an Iowa Hall of
Speaker 2: Fame football coach. And so I think it was twelve
Speaker 2: years old, just finished Little league baseball and I wasn't
Speaker 2: sure what I was going to do for the summer,
Speaker 2: and my dad said, you can either play golf or
Speaker 2: go to the next league in baseball. And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to play golf this summer. And that's what
Speaker 2: I ended up doing. A little nine hole course in
Speaker 2: Iowa and Lamars, Iowa, a WPA course that they built
Speaker 2: back then. Cool little nine and folks would just drop
Speaker 2: me off there in the morning and picked me up
Speaker 2: late at night. I'd help around the pro shop or
Speaker 2: I used to change cups once in a while, stuff
Speaker 2: like that, shag balls for the basketball coach who was
Speaker 2: the pro would give lessons, and that was it. Just
Speaker 2: kept playing golf.
Speaker 1: Golf course still around.
Speaker 2: It is. Actually two years ago. I went back from
Speaker 2: my brother's funeral and went up with my nephew, Mike Nall,
Speaker 2: who's also a superintendent at Norwoodale's Country Club here in
Speaker 2: Saint Louis. We drove up. I hadn't been back, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, for years and years, and it's still there.
Speaker 2: But they built another eighteen I couldn't tell you what year,
Speaker 2: but they kept the old nine and it still looked
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 1: Is the old Knight is a good nine?
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It was. Really it was a fun nine.
Speaker 2: The first three holes. The first hole is a short
Speaker 2: part four that when you got older you could drive.
Speaker 2: You could drive the green. Second hole was the bottom
Speaker 2: of kind of a triangle, a part three, and then
Speaker 2: the third hole would come back to the clubhouse pretty
Speaker 2: good slight dog leg left part four. And when we
Speaker 2: were kids, there would always be an argument on the
Speaker 2: third green. The guys that played good wanted to keep going.
Speaker 2: The guys that had a bad start, they want to
Speaker 2: all go start over, you know, so you could fight
Speaker 2: over what you were going to do.
Speaker 1: It's a perfect way to settle a match that was
Speaker 1: tied too. You play the three holes absolutely like a
Speaker 1: little late night loop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: So then, so you played, you played football, You got
Speaker 1: a football scholarship right.
Speaker 2: When after my sophomore year, my dad was out of
Speaker 2: the coaching business and bought a feed store in early Iowa,
Speaker 2: which was just a very small town about seventy miles
Speaker 2: east of Lamars and Sioux City. My graduate a R.
Speaker 2: L E. Y.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I've seen the sign.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My graduating class was twenty four boys and four girls.
Speaker 2: But we had a hell of a football team.
Speaker 1: Slim peckens, you know, on the dating scene.
Speaker 2: We were undefeated, number one in our division in the state.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I got a football scholarship at a small
Speaker 2: school back at Lamars where I played played a year
Speaker 2: and a half I got there was about four of us.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a strict church school, a religious school. Uh,
Speaker 2: and the athletic director and coach caught us drinking beer
Speaker 2: the night before a game. So I lost my scholarship
Speaker 2: for that year, and so didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So I quit at the end of the semester. And
Speaker 2: the summer before i'd been working at Sioux City Country Club.
Speaker 2: I don't know who did it, but it's an old,
Speaker 2: old golf course, and so I went back there and
Speaker 2: worked and didn't really know what I was going to do.
Speaker 2: And the superintendent said, you ought to go to Iowa
Speaker 2: State and get into turf. And I was kind of
Speaker 2: what they calls turf. I really didn't know, but I
Speaker 2: took a chance, and that's how it all got started. Really.
Speaker 2: So wait, year was that, Well, let's see, I graduated
Speaker 2: from high school sixty two, sixty four, yeah, been sixty four, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I went there for three years, kind of ran
Speaker 2: out of money, needed a job. My advisor. I'd had
Speaker 2: all my turf, my soil classes, agonomic classes and horticulture,
Speaker 2: all this stuff just had, you know, some other junk
Speaker 2: I had to take. So my advisor got me an
Speaker 2: assistant job at the Rocket kind of an arsenal golf
Speaker 2: club in sixty seven, and halfway through the year, the
Speaker 2: older superintendent's wife passed away and he really didn't want
Speaker 2: to keep doing it, so they gave me the job
Speaker 2: as superintendent or back then it was greenskeeper. We weren't
Speaker 2: superintendents in those days.
Speaker 1: When did that change?
Speaker 2: Oh man, good question. Sixty seven, Probably not too long after,
Speaker 2: probably around the seventy be my guess. That's a good question.
Speaker 2: Though I can't remember. All I remember is I can't
Speaker 2: figure out why because and I don't know why we're
Speaker 2: superintendents or director of agronomy or whatever. We're just caretakers
Speaker 2: of the of the golf course. You know.
Speaker 1: It's so you're like twenty three and you got your
Speaker 1: running a golf course.
Speaker 2: Yep. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
Speaker 1: Anything. You look back on now, and I think, OK,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of things, anything
Speaker 1: just egregious or is there anything also on the flip
Speaker 1: side that you did really well that you don't have
Speaker 1: no clue why you did that?
Speaker 2: Right? No, And I think it was my golf background
Speaker 2: because I was playing until we moved to Early. I
Speaker 2: played high school golf and then Early didn't have any
Speaker 2: But Iowa has a tremendous tournament schedule. On all these
Speaker 2: little nine hole courses you could play. You could play
Speaker 2: one tournament on Saturday and go to another town and
Speaker 2: play another one on Sunday. They'd be nine whole course,
Speaker 2: you'd play twenty seven holes. You'd go around at three
Speaker 2: times and that was the tournament. Then they had, you know,
Speaker 2: their majors, the State Am and the Northwest Am and
Speaker 2: the Lake forget what the name of it, but several
Speaker 2: bigger tournaments that were fifty four holes. And so I
Speaker 2: played a lot of competitive golf, and I think that's
Speaker 2: what held it together in my first few years as
Speaker 2: a greenskeeper, that I knew what it should look like
Speaker 2: and I knew how I wanted it to play, and
Speaker 2: it had to help you with membership too. Absolutely. You know,
Speaker 2: I was single in so you know, after work, I
Speaker 2: would you know, go home, clean up and then come
Speaker 2: back in the evening and play. And I used to
Speaker 2: play in the evening. There was this dentist that used
Speaker 2: to come out in the evening, was a real good player,
Speaker 2: played in a USAM once. His name was doctor Paul Barton,
Speaker 2: and he was close friends with Jack Fleck and actually
Speaker 2: came edi'd for Jack Fleck when he when Fleck beat
Speaker 2: Ben Hogan in the opening Olympic Club unbelievable, pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And he kind of mentored me. He would. I'd go
Speaker 2: over and have dinner with he and his wife every
Speaker 2: now and and you know, he kind of refined my golf.
Speaker 2: You know, I was, you know, growing up in a
Speaker 2: little town and Iowa, you just play. You didn't know
Speaker 2: much about the game, so he taught me quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. I even look now like when I
Speaker 1: see kids playing, how much like little things they just
Speaker 1: don't know about the game of golf. And it's just
Speaker 1: it's crazy how I feel like everybody had, every good
Speaker 1: player has like a player, an older you know, person
Speaker 1: in their life that helped them learn how to play. Golf,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's so many things you just don't learn.
Speaker 2: And the other, you know, that first year, the other
Speaker 2: neat thing that happened when they gave me the job. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I was scared, didn't know what the hell was going on,
Speaker 2: and that I don't know whether it was the first
Speaker 2: day that I was soup or greens keeper head greenskeeper,
Speaker 2: or that week. I know it was the first week
Speaker 2: they had one of their big member guests, and or
Speaker 2: maybe as a member member tournament. I don't really recall.
Speaker 2: But afterwards I happened to be walking through the locker
Speaker 2: room and the first guy ran into it. I still
Speaker 2: remember his name, Whitey Barnard. He was the club champion
Speaker 2: at the time, and he just lit into me, telling
Speaker 2: me that it was the worst golf course he'd ever
Speaker 2: seen it, He's never seen it in worse shape. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wanted to crawl the locker and he went on through,
Speaker 2: and then the next guy came through named Donalndah. He
Speaker 2: was a higher handicap and he went on and on
Speaker 2: how great the golf course was, how perfect, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the hill. So I go down to the pro
Speaker 2: shop and talk to the fro and I'm tell him,
Speaker 2: he says, all that's per simply said White. He just
Speaker 2: shot eighty and Don Loundell just shot his best score
Speaker 2: ever seventy six and beat him out of X amount
Speaker 2: of dollars. And it was a good lesson right there
Speaker 2: that you know, you just put your head down and
Speaker 2: do what you think is right.
Speaker 1: And so what was different about it that that forced
Speaker 1: those reactions were created?
Speaker 2: And do you know, well the one played Club Champions
Speaker 2: shoots eight. He played terrible, so he's pissed off. And
Speaker 2: Don Londell, who was I think like a twelve or fourteen?
Speaker 2: I would guess it was just.
Speaker 1: Anny thing with the golf course. No, just think it's
Speaker 1: just the perception is how they played.
Speaker 2: The perception how they played.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing thing in America. How how golfers so
Speaker 1: much of their golf experience and what they think of
Speaker 1: a golf course or an experience at a golf course
Speaker 1: revolves around how they personally play right.
Speaker 2: And you got to realize that, you know, in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, you know, what was considered good is a
Speaker 2: lot different than the day. I mean, you know, golf
Speaker 2: courses were rougher back then green speeds were slower. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no irrigation in the in the roughs, which you
Speaker 2: know my opinion there shouldn't be anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, talk about talk about all the changes we
Speaker 1: can get, kind of go along the career path more.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious about, you know, what would have been
Speaker 1: the biggest changes that you've seen in the turf over
Speaker 1: over your time in it. Obviously you know technology is
Speaker 1: a big thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean probably five ten years ago, I
Speaker 2: would have said equipment. You know, the tools we have,
Speaker 2: but you know, they kind of the demands they evolved
Speaker 2: the same as the golf course has evolved as far
Speaker 2: as conden conditioning and demands that the public wants, what
Speaker 2: the golfer wants. But I would say the biggest difference
Speaker 2: right now is access to information technology. I mean, these
Speaker 2: guys here in Saint Louis, I don't know how many
Speaker 2: are on their group text, but you know, if they
Speaker 2: if something's going on on the green that they don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean, they'll just text it out everybody in town.
Speaker 2: You know, somebody knows, or going to the GCSA website
Speaker 2: finding answers or just googling answers. I mean it's you know,
Speaker 2: in my day, you'd have to pick up a phone
Speaker 2: and call some superintendent that you know, and he's probably
Speaker 2: not there. Then you might get in your car and
Speaker 2: drive him try to find him. Then he wouldn't know
Speaker 2: what the hell anyway, so then you try.
Speaker 1: To You wouldn't have like a phone to show him
Speaker 1: a picture unless.
Speaker 2: You absolutely But again, turf stress wasn't as bad then either.
Speaker 2: You know. We we make our own problems with the
Speaker 2: stress that we're putting on the turf at the low
Speaker 2: heights of cut, the rolling, the everything we're doing. But
Speaker 2: yet technology has helped and equipment has helped to combat.
Speaker 1: That with the obviously there's never the way golf courses
Speaker 1: are presented have been never been more intricate, and as
Speaker 1: looking at it through the lens of a golfer, do
Speaker 1: you think it's gotten easier? Has it gotten tougher because
Speaker 1: of the agronomics as the game the game?
Speaker 2: Yeah, boy, I don't. I don't see it. I don't
Speaker 2: see it that has changed that much scoring wise, Uh,
Speaker 2: I mean with the equipment today's equipment and the big
Speaker 2: debates and everything. Yeah, it's probably easier for the average
Speaker 2: guy to hit it, but yet conditions weren't as you know,
Speaker 2: maybe as difficult back then. I don't know, Uh, I
Speaker 2: don't know. The game was. The game's just as much
Speaker 2: fun today as it was back then. I can tell
Speaker 2: you that for me.
Speaker 1: For me anyway, yeah, I always wonder. I feel like
Speaker 1: some of the things could make it easier, like fairways,
Speaker 1: running more, but then it could also make it more
Speaker 1: tough because it's tougher to keep the ball in the fairway, right,
Speaker 1: and then the same thing goes for the green where
Speaker 1: you know, they're smoother and faster, but that speed can
Speaker 1: make them a lot more tough, you know, right.
Speaker 2: You know, if you asked me, would I sooner play
Speaker 2: today or back in the sixties. I enjoyed it more
Speaker 2: in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Why is that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It was just you know, maybe I
Speaker 2: was younger and it just was a lot more fun,
Speaker 2: you know, it was more creative. The expectations, I guess,
Speaker 2: maybe more as strong then. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's a So you went to seed the Rapids then
Speaker 1: after Rock Island, after.
Speaker 2: The rock on Arsenal. Yeah, I was at the Arsenal
Speaker 2: from sixty seven to seventy four. And then I went
Speaker 2: to Cedar Rapids Country Club until nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: And at the time, you didn't know that it was,
Speaker 1: you know, this Donald Ross golf course. You weren't into
Speaker 1: architecture of this.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I knew it was a Donald Ross. I
Speaker 2: mean i'd heard that. I really didn't. I hadn't done
Speaker 2: a lot of reading of the history.
Speaker 1: You hadn't traveled a ton either, and I hadn't.
Speaker 2: No, I hadn't. I mean I hadn't been out of
Speaker 2: Iowa that I recall.
Speaker 1: Not even across the Illinois border.
Speaker 2: Well, obviously I was because I was in the Quad Cities.
Speaker 2: Actually I spent too much time across the border, but
Speaker 2: that's all right. But yeah, I didn't. I didn't know
Speaker 2: a lot about it. I knew it was a cool
Speaker 2: golf course. There was a lot of cool things there,
Speaker 2: and it was pretty. Yeah, it was really hadn't changed,
Speaker 2: you know. I'm sure the green size is probably a
Speaker 2: trunk even before I got there, but you know, they
Speaker 2: hadn't done much to it. Now. The bottom holes, the
Speaker 2: lower holes flooded a lot, and while I was there,
Speaker 2: they had an engineering firm come in and put these
Speaker 2: small lakes in that really didn't fit the property very well.
Speaker 2: But you know, from what I've seen of the restoration,
Speaker 2: and hopefully I can get up there this year and
Speaker 2: see Tom Feller and see it with my own eyes,
Speaker 2: it really looks like they've done a magnificent job.
Speaker 1: It's a neat pace, it's really neat. And obviously Tom
Speaker 1: was on earlier on this pot. Right, you assured me
Speaker 1: that you were not the one that planted all the trees.
Speaker 2: I did not plant all the trees.
Speaker 1: Did you plant a lot of trees anywhere?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not really? When I I came to Old Warson,
Speaker 2: I planted a feud Old Warson. But they had done
Speaker 2: this huge planning program. In fact, I remember the one.
Speaker 2: He wasn't the Greens chairman, but he had been, and
Speaker 2: he was so proud of all this tree planning that
Speaker 2: he had done. And now hopefully they're taking most of
Speaker 2: them down.
Speaker 1: Talk about just at that time, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of like our listeners, they look at the trees and
Speaker 1: they don't understand how they got there. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, trees were almost a thing of prestige.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, yeah, it was you know, like I say,
Speaker 2: I was at a Donald Roscoff, of course. But when
Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to come to Old Warson, I
Speaker 2: was ecstatic because I was going to go to a
Speaker 2: Robert Trent Jones golf course. So nineteen eighty Robert Trent
Speaker 2: Jones was still known as the man, and fortunately I
Speaker 2: think this is one of his better golf courses. Old
Speaker 2: Warson has really been good to me and is a
Speaker 2: great golf course. But the tree thing, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean they used to have memorial trees and it was
Speaker 2: just the thing to do that. You know, the architects
Speaker 2: took the landscape that didn't have much trees and fit
Speaker 2: their golf course to it. But when they left, I
Speaker 2: don't think there's the knowledge that we have today of
Speaker 2: what they were trying to do and what their vision was.
Speaker 2: And so committees saw I don't know what courses that
Speaker 2: they saw that made them think that they needed to
Speaker 2: tree line all of them. And instead of just doing
Speaker 2: groups here and there that would have been okay. You know,
Speaker 2: most of courses, they would tree line it from Teeta Green,
Speaker 2: which you know ruin a lot of turf.
Speaker 1: A lot of people tie it to Ben Hogan.
Speaker 2: I feel like, boy, that's really hurting me, he's my man.
Speaker 1: Well, they tie it because he hit it so straight.
Speaker 2: They know.
Speaker 1: It's the funny thing with golf. It's always counterintuitive, you know,
Speaker 1: by just making it narrower, and it just played more
Speaker 1: into the best the guy who hit the straightest hands right.
Speaker 2: Right. But if you but if they would look at
Speaker 2: how he took apart Carnoustie when he won there, they
Speaker 2: would think different on how he could use strategy to
Speaker 2: his advantage.
Speaker 1: YEA, yeah, it's uh so, how did you decide, you know,
Speaker 1: you had barely left Iowa, you're going to move to
Speaker 1: Saint Louis. Why why the sudden, you know, getting out
Speaker 1: of Iowa.
Speaker 2: Well, back then, probably the two best golf courses in
Speaker 2: Iowa was Wakanda at in Des Moines, which was a
Speaker 2: Langford Moro golf course, and Cedar Rapids Country Club. So
Speaker 2: I really felt I was still fairly young and still
Speaker 2: felt and I had felt what I'd probably reached the
Speaker 2: pinnacle in Iowa. There was no place for me to move,
Speaker 2: and I was still young enough and restless enough that
Speaker 2: I just that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to
Speaker 2: go on, and I thought, man, I'm going to the
Speaker 2: big City. And when I was in the when I
Speaker 2: was in the Quad Cities, we used to go up
Speaker 2: to a lot of several of the Superintendent's talks and
Speaker 2: conventions or whatever in Chicago. So I used to see
Speaker 2: the really cool Gough courses in Chicago, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to Saint Louis. It's the same thing,
Speaker 2: and man, it's a totally different world down here. Saint
Speaker 2: Louis probably is the hardest place to grow grass in
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about that shock as somebody who didn't. It
Speaker 1: almost sounds like you didn't really know what you were
Speaker 1: getting in there.
Speaker 2: I did not know what I was getting into. The
Speaker 2: day I was going to interview, I got there early
Speaker 2: and I took a drive around the golf course. There's
Speaker 2: a road Trent Drive that goes around the property and
Speaker 2: it goes right by the tenth Green and I'm early
Speaker 2: in the morning and there's nobody playing. So I stopped
Speaker 2: the car and I thought, well, I'll just jump out
Speaker 2: and my soil probe and see what I got here.
Speaker 2: And I stuck the probe in the ground and it
Speaker 2: went in about six to eight inches and hit solid rock,
Speaker 2: hard clay, and I could not get the probe any
Speaker 2: farther down must have been about eight inches because they
Speaker 2: could at least get a cup in the ground. And
Speaker 2: I thought, oh shit, what the hell am I doing?
Speaker 2: But and then that first year eighty was one of
Speaker 2: the really hottest years on history. I think they had
Speaker 2: twenty some days in a row or twenty one out
Speaker 2: of twenty five days over one hundred. I still remember
Speaker 2: going to a fourth of July evening fireworks and I
Speaker 2: couldn't even see because my glasses would keep fogging up.
Speaker 2: There was so much humidity so between you know, everybody
Speaker 2: blames the climate, which with the two rivers the humidity
Speaker 2: gets so strong, but it's the soil also. Between the
Speaker 2: soil and the humidity and heat, it's a tough place
Speaker 2: to grow. But Zoisia has done wonders for the place.
Speaker 2: It was just getting started when I came here in eighty.
Speaker 1: So everybody in the before eighty was using bat, trying
Speaker 1: to grow bat.
Speaker 2: Most of it was bermuda, okay uh, that would just
Speaker 2: and you know, there wasn't very many hybrid bermudas back then.
Speaker 2: The main one was was either common bermuda or you
Speaker 2: three bermuda and you know they would have winter keel
Speaker 2: every year, and before it was worth the darn it
Speaker 2: was August.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wet Bermuda. Wet darm in Bermuda is about the
Speaker 1: least least enjoyable thing to play GoF on and right
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah so uh so, Yeah, everybody was getting into zoide
Speaker 2: conversions and it's it's done a great thing there. We
Speaker 2: still have one, two, three in the in the area,
Speaker 2: we've got four bent grass golf courses, one one daily
Speaker 2: fee on the Illinois side that has a little better soil,
Speaker 2: and three on three country clubs golf clubs on the
Speaker 2: Saint Louis on the Missouri side.
Speaker 1: So you crossed the river, it's just way better soil.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's areas, but where
Speaker 2: this golf course is Gateway National is a lower area.
Speaker 2: And I mean I can't tell you for sure, but
Speaker 2: just from being told that the soils are better, and
Speaker 2: I do know Illinois has better, much better soil.
Speaker 1: How how do you you told me a good story
Speaker 1: earlier today? You should retell about how you got the
Speaker 1: job down at Old Warson.
Speaker 2: Oh at Old Warson. Well, my good friend from the
Speaker 2: Quad Cities, Jack Litvey was superintendent of Crow Valley in
Speaker 2: the Quad Cities, and he had come down to Saint
Speaker 2: Louis and got the job at Saint Louis Country Club.
Speaker 2: So he told me about it. And back then in
Speaker 2: the in the seventies, a Mana always sponsored some of
Speaker 2: the older people will remember this, but a man of
Speaker 2: sponsored all these tour players, and they would wear these
Speaker 2: a man of advisors and caps. And one of the
Speaker 2: and the main spokesperson for him was Bob Golby. And
Speaker 2: a Mana is right, A Mana's factory is right near
Speaker 2: Cedar Rapids, and their CEO, his name slips my mind Uh,
Speaker 2: was a member at Cedar Rapids Country Club and he
Speaker 2: used to bring Bob over and play from time to time.
Speaker 2: I hadn't met him, but anyhow, he was friends with
Speaker 2: somebody that was on the either board or Greens committee
Speaker 2: at Old Warson and my name happened to get thrown
Speaker 2: out there, and he heard, and he told him that
Speaker 2: if you have a chance to get ahold of that guy,
Speaker 2: you ought to. You ought to get him.
Speaker 1: So Bob the master masters champion's uh word to carry
Speaker 1: some weight.
Speaker 2: Huh master's champion word, carry some weight? And his friend.
Speaker 2: Once I got the job that summer, asked if I
Speaker 2: wanted to go over to Saint Clair Country Club where
Speaker 2: Bob was uh plays at to play. And so we
Speaker 2: went over there and I was fortunate enough to uh
Speaker 2: to beat him. And he's never asked me back over there,
Speaker 2: but he's been a good friend. He's uh, he's a
Speaker 2: he's quite a gentleman. He would do he would be
Speaker 2: a great pod for you someday on Friday pod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, and I've been fortunate to know
Speaker 2: his son, Kay Goby, who has most of the listeners
Speaker 2: of this know that because one of the really great
Speaker 2: shapers in the country. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you uh, you worked at Old Worse and and
Speaker 1: then you managed How did you get you know, the
Speaker 1: you did you became a GM, but you also have
Speaker 1: gotten into golf architecture where you've been you've worked that,
Speaker 1: you've been a golf architect on projects. How did you
Speaker 1: kind of build and grow, you know, from superintendent look
Speaker 1: at these other opportunities to say I'm going to get
Speaker 1: out of the you know, superintendent space, but not really
Speaker 1: out of it, You're still adjacent. How did you start
Speaker 1: to have these opportunities come your way.
Speaker 2: Well, well, I was at Old Wars, and I started
Speaker 2: looking at golf courses and going around playing them. And
Speaker 2: some of it was through my amateur golf career, you know.
Speaker 2: I was fortunate playing some U s Ams and some
Speaker 2: State or some mid Ams, and so saw some of
Speaker 2: the really cool golf courses. Took a trip out to
Speaker 2: Long Island and saw Shinnecock the nash No Maidstone left
Speaker 2: a big impression.
Speaker 1: So is that when you kind of had like the
Speaker 1: high moment that some some places were different. Was it
Speaker 1: that trip or was he playing uh in the US
Speaker 1: M or No?
Speaker 2: That was kind of in a huh moment to a degree.
Speaker 2: And I and I read, uh, what was it Golf
Speaker 2: Club Atlas? No, oh, it was an old book.
Speaker 1: Is it the one that witt and one that golf courses?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, no, no, that was No, that's the book before.
Speaker 2: But Jeffrey Cornish. I went to one of his uh
Speaker 2: two day seminars and got to know Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: Real well what were the seminars? He?
Speaker 2: Uh he there was a period of time where he
Speaker 2: was putting on these architecture seminars. He and uh, I
Speaker 2: think Robert Gravesmere was the other one that would do
Speaker 2: it with him, and they were two days.
Speaker 1: I went up to for superintendents or for anybody.
Speaker 2: Anybody, anybody. It was up in the Chicago area. Saint
Speaker 2: Charles up there, is there Sat Charles, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: St Charles Country Clubs there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The seminar was there. That taught me a lot.
Speaker 2: I still have his stuff and obviously read his books.
Speaker 2: And then when I won the first Superintendent's tournament in
Speaker 2: eighty three, Ransom Company from England every two years put
Speaker 2: on a turf symposium, worldwide symposium. He'd bring they'd bring
Speaker 2: people from all the different countries over and the GCSA
Speaker 2: would send over a group of people and they would
Speaker 2: always send the winner of the championship for the last
Speaker 2: two years over. So eighty three was my first trip
Speaker 2: over there and that was really the big ahamoment. And
Speaker 2: since I was going over there, I was going to
Speaker 2: stay for a while. Passed and there was about a
Speaker 2: and they had arranged for after the symposium which was
Speaker 2: down in England, we went up to Saint Andrew's and
Speaker 2: twelve superintendents from America played twelve superintendents from Scotland in
Speaker 2: a Ryder Cup, just a one day singles match and
Speaker 2: we got to play a practice around. Obviously, the day
Speaker 2: before well, there was at Old Warson there happened to
Speaker 2: be this charity event that was going on with a
Speaker 2: bunch of the tour players. And one of the guys
Speaker 2: that would bring the tour players in was a former
Speaker 2: walker cupper from England and I was telling him that
Speaker 2: I was going for the first time and he said, well,
Speaker 2: when you get there Sat Andrews, make sure you go
Speaker 2: to the caddy house and get Tip Anderson as your caddy.
Speaker 2: Do you know who Tip Anderson is? Uh? Tip Anderson
Speaker 2: was Arnold Palmer's caddy and every British Open ever played
Speaker 2: that Arnie ever played in, and there was one that
Speaker 2: he couldn't make it. So he called Tip and it
Speaker 2: was going to be at Saint Andrews. He called Tip
Speaker 2: and said, I've got this good friend that's going to
Speaker 2: be up there to play in the Open and he
Speaker 2: can't play a practice round. He's just flying in and
Speaker 2: his name was Tony Lima, and Tony a Lima wins
Speaker 2: the tournament dedicates at the Tip. So the night we
Speaker 2: drove into Saint Andrews, I just ran to the caddy
Speaker 2: shack and the caddy master. He's like, ah, Tip doesn't
Speaker 2: caddy for just anybody anymore, and so I figured, well,
Speaker 2: I just tot my own bag. So that morning the
Speaker 2: practice round, I'm on the first tee getting ready to go. Oh,
Speaker 2: and this guy walks by and he says, somebody here
Speaker 2: looking for Tip Anderson. I said, that's me. So I
Speaker 2: had two days with Tip Anderson and two nights and
Speaker 2: a lot of beer with Tip and that was cool.
Speaker 1: I bet he has some stories.
Speaker 2: He had some great stories. I wish I could remember
Speaker 2: them all. I wish that would have been the day
Speaker 2: of a iPhone and you could have recorded him. But
Speaker 2: that was cool. And then I drove around, played Nairn.
Speaker 2: A couple went up, I met one of it, got
Speaker 2: to be friends with one of the superintendent's Duncan Gray
Speaker 2: and his wife Greta, and he at the time he
Speaker 2: was superintendent at Prestwick Saint Nichols, and I played Prestwick,
Speaker 2: which you talk about quirky and cool. That's probably the best.
Speaker 2: And then I made some more trips over there, and
Speaker 2: in the meantime he got to be superintendent to look
Speaker 2: hinch in Ireland and when over and stayed in his
Speaker 2: house on lanch for three days and played courses all
Speaker 2: around Ireland. So those things, you know, really stick in
Speaker 2: your mind.
Speaker 1: What was what was your reaction to the way golf
Speaker 1: was presented in the UK?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: From like especially from an agronomic standpoint.
Speaker 2: Well, from an first of all, how it's presented, I'll
Speaker 2: give you that first. Then i'll give you a good
Speaker 2: example of agronomically, how it's presented is really easy. I mean,
Speaker 2: you go over there and their priorities is the game
Speaker 2: is number one, golf course is number two, and the
Speaker 2: golfer's number three. You come to America and it's absolutely flipped.
Speaker 2: You know, the golfers number one priority here, golf courses too,
Speaker 2: in the game's number three. It's black and white. It's
Speaker 2: that simple. And I hope it's still that way over there.
Speaker 2: I haven't been over there for years. But agronomically, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's scruffier, it's rougher, it's play the ball as it lies.
Speaker 2: But the example I will give you is after that, right,
Speaker 2: a cup format at Saint Andrews. We drove to Prestwick
Speaker 2: and I wanted to and I was gonna play Duncan
Speaker 2: with Duncan at his course Pressedwick Saint Nicholas that afternoon,
Speaker 2: and then the next day we were going to play
Speaker 2: Prestwick and Turnbury. So I go over there. You know, Superintendent,
Speaker 2: it's always up early in the morning. So I get
Speaker 2: my coffee and I go over to see Duncan. See
Speaker 2: what he's doing in the morning. We're not going to
Speaker 2: play the afternoon, and its maintenance buildings just as little shit.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how big it is. It
Speaker 2: wasn't very big. And he's just happens to be walking
Speaker 2: out the door with the cup cutter over his shoulder,
Speaker 2: and I said, where are you going? He says, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to cut cups this morning, and I'm looking
Speaker 2: around for the Cushman or the truck sturn. I said, well,
Speaker 2: where's your vehicle and he says, oh, no, we don't.
Speaker 2: We walk. So he walks all eighteen cutting cups. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's changed a lot since that would have
Speaker 2: been what did I say, eighty three? Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: changed a lot since then.
Speaker 1: See, you had this where you started to kind of
Speaker 1: appreciate golf in a different.
Speaker 2: Way, absolutely totally different.
Speaker 1: Way, and how did your how did your day to
Speaker 1: day maintenance? Did it change at all because.
Speaker 2: Of that, uh, you know, not to a great deal,
Speaker 2: because of the demands of American golf. But I always
Speaker 2: and I always kept this in mind, and I always
Speaker 2: told I've got a lot of guys that have come
Speaker 2: up under me that are superintendents now, and I always
Speaker 2: told them the same thing that whenever you have tough questions,
Speaker 2: something you're not sure about, first thing you do is
Speaker 2: ask how it affects the game, you know, and if
Speaker 2: it affects the game in an adverse way, then you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing it now. Obviously, particularly in country clubs
Speaker 2: and single ownership clubs, you know, you've got to answer
Speaker 2: to people and you have to compromise to some but boy,
Speaker 2: if you can keep those compromises as small as possible,
Speaker 2: it makes a hell of a difference, you know. And
Speaker 2: then you ask me how I got into the architecture,
Speaker 2: and well, by then I was, you know, I was
Speaker 2: well into it when I was all were seas. I'd
Speaker 2: bought Alistair McKenzie's book Golf Course Architecture, you know, practically
Speaker 2: memorized it, and Old Warson at that period was not
Speaker 2: in any way wanting to do a lot of projects,
Speaker 2: and I felt like I'd had it in as good
Speaker 2: a condition as it could be at that point. And
Speaker 2: at the time, Norwood Hills had all the good players
Speaker 2: were there, so I knew them all from tournaments, and
Speaker 2: their golf course was really a mess at the time,
Speaker 2: and they had come to me, or a couple of
Speaker 2: them had come to me and asked if I would
Speaker 2: had any interest, and I said, only if I could
Speaker 2: do a total master plan for a not a restoration,
Speaker 2: but a renovation of the golf course. And so I
Speaker 2: put together a master plan for all thirty six holes,
Speaker 2: doing a big time renovation, building some new greens, and
Speaker 2: not ever taking out, not ever having less than thirty
Speaker 2: six holes. And we had a part of the property
Speaker 2: that we were able to build two new holes which
Speaker 2: fit in with the west course very well. And at
Speaker 2: times some of the holes were part threes, but there
Speaker 2: was always thirty six holes.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the way you talk about that, And I
Speaker 1: feel like when I talked to a superintendent about a
Speaker 1: project versus an architect about a project, the architect's always like,
Speaker 1: we got to just shut it down, shut it down,
Speaker 1: do all at once. And then the way, you know,
Speaker 1: the pride in which you just said we had never
Speaker 1: had a hole shut. We always had thirty six holes open.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a complete shift of a mentality coming
Speaker 1: from your slant as a golfer and a superintendent. You
Speaker 1: didn't want to shut down the course, you know, put
Speaker 1: it together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And part of that was that I knew financial
Speaker 2: I wouldn't yeah, I wouldn't never be able to pass
Speaker 2: the master plan if they could shut it down, because
Speaker 2: it's the club wasn't a Belle Reeve or of Saint
Speaker 2: Louis Country Club or an All Wars, And they needed
Speaker 2: the revenue, and they had a lot of outings to
Speaker 2: do the revenue because they had thirty six holes.
Speaker 1: But it was a.
Speaker 2: Challenge and it was really cool put together a really
Speaker 2: neat business plan. Brought in a couple of guys. I mean,
Speaker 2: my Tim Birch was my West Court superintendent. He's now
Speaker 2: superintendent Saint Louis Country Club. Mike Noll, my nephew, was
Speaker 2: my East Court superintendent. He's now overseas all of Norwood.
Speaker 2: The head superintendent my irrigation tech is now superintendent that
Speaker 2: Fox run golf club. So, you know, it was pretty
Speaker 2: neat to see all this. And then then I had
Speaker 2: a young boy that worked for me at all worse
Speaker 2: and just out of high school that really got good
Speaker 2: with equipment, and he's was my project manager during this
Speaker 2: whole period and he still is there doing projects now.
Speaker 2: They just they're going to have a Champions Tour tournament
Speaker 2: this fall and the Tours wanted them to rebuild all
Speaker 2: the bunkers. So he's busy rebuilding all the bunkers on
Speaker 2: the golf course. Now that's that.
Speaker 1: What are they doing to the bunkers to get ready?
Speaker 1: Just giving them all face left?
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. You know, most of them are still
Speaker 2: from when I did him, so obviously that was in
Speaker 2: the mid eight of the late eighties, so some of
Speaker 2: them are some of them are too short. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: they've got to be moved some if they work now,
Speaker 2: Mike has got my nephew has got a great eye.
Speaker 2: Uh so he's not gonna screw him up, but probably
Speaker 2: some of them. Actually, I need to get over there.
Speaker 2: I just talked to him yesterday on the phone and
Speaker 2: they've started, so I want to go over there and
Speaker 2: see how he's doing. But they're still the bunkers that
Speaker 2: I put in, so I'm sure the drainage is not
Speaker 2: good anymore.
Speaker 1: It's you. It seems like project work was where you
Speaker 1: really started as a superintendent. That's where you found the
Speaker 1: thing that you love doing the most.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I mean since then when I went
Speaker 2: to when I finally left Norwood and went out as
Speaker 2: gym for a few years at Boone Valley because they
Speaker 2: were they were a new club. I can sold it
Speaker 2: on the building of the golf course, and then they
Speaker 2: asked me to come in and be GM. It was
Speaker 2: more to get things organized and started. And after oh,
Speaker 2: I can't remember how many years, I asked if I
Speaker 2: could similarly retire because I wanted to do more design work.
Speaker 2: And I've worked on practically every club in town. I've
Speaker 2: worked on at least sixteen seventeen different golf courses. I've
Speaker 2: done three daily fee routings that I've sold to some
Speaker 2: people that have been built. Didn't you know. I was
Speaker 2: still working at the time, so I really didn't oversee
Speaker 2: those closely, But all the other stuff I oversee that
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. I mean, when I start a project,
Speaker 2: if it's of any size, I prettymum much put up
Speaker 2: my clubs, and I'm there from the day they break
Speaker 2: ground until seed goes in the ground.
Speaker 1: With just having to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: rewarding aspect of having guys that work for you, that
Speaker 1: you kind of come up through the industry and then
Speaker 1: go on to have success.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. It keeps I mean, I know I'm getting old,
Speaker 2: but it keeps me young inside, keeps me young mentally.
Speaker 2: And you know, to be honest, I learn as much
Speaker 2: from them as they learn from me, because I don't
Speaker 2: stay up on all the new stuff like you know
Speaker 2: I was when as when I was working, So you know,
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna spray this for
Speaker 2: this and you gotta do it. What the hell are
Speaker 2: you talking about? I've never heard of that, you know.
Speaker 2: So so it's pretty cool. But just seeing them growing mature,
Speaker 2: you know you've met a couple of them today, it's neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is so cool. It's almost like I always
Speaker 1: compare it to like, you know, college basketball coach Kse
Speaker 1: guys like coaching Tree. Yeah, it's like you start to
Speaker 1: see it with Superintendent's where there's these distinct trees where
Speaker 1: you know, one superintendent will have all this, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like a family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and similar to Pete Dye in his Architects tree.
Speaker 2: You know, I can imagine some of the conversations between
Speaker 2: Pete Die and Tom Doak. They had to be classic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's so many of them. What was
Speaker 1: it like working with PB?
Speaker 2: Uh, you didn't work with PB. Pb was his own guy,
Speaker 2: if if, if, if you happen to I just went along.
Speaker 2: You know. My role was more organizing stuff when he
Speaker 2: was finished, But I was I was out there with him.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know he would if you said, you know,
Speaker 2: wouldn't this be cool if you put this bunker over here,
Speaker 2: or the fairway came in from this angle. I'll guarantee
Speaker 2: you it was going to come in from the other
Speaker 2: angle because he wasn't going to do what you were
Speaker 2: going to do. You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but uh, he was a pretty neat guy. Uh,
Speaker 2: he was a guys guy. You know. We would we
Speaker 2: would go to the local tavern, juke pool and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. Good man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he built some wild stuff.
Speaker 2: He's built some wild stuff. He he was.
Speaker 1: Not afraid, he was not bashful when it comes to no.
Speaker 2: No. Rick Hanson, who's the superintendent of Boone Valley, was
Speaker 2: Pebe's construction foreman for I don't know how many years,
Speaker 2: but he was. He when he was at Boone, he
Speaker 2: wanted to stay as superintendent and so he did and
Speaker 2: he's still there. But Rick has some pretty good stories
Speaker 2: about OLE PV.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's why I've heard some stories too about PV
Speaker 1: because that might need to be a hold of separate five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1: So you get into the construction aspect of it and
Speaker 1: the golf architecture of the consulting, and in a way
Speaker 1: you kind of took on a more of a design
Speaker 1: build philosophy than you know, the golf courses you worked
Speaker 1: at were mostly a design contractor.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, And yeah it's definitely designed, Bill. But the
Speaker 2: only downside that I have is that I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up on a bulldozer. I wished I had. I mean,
Speaker 2: seeing working with Kai last year and working with the
Speaker 2: shapers that did Bogie Log where we're at right now, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I just I get jealous of their talents,
Speaker 2: but being there and you know, giving them a sketch
Speaker 2: to start and then just let let them go and
Speaker 2: then as Tom Doak calls it, editing as they go
Speaker 2: is a lot of fun.
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Speaker 1: So the Bogie Log Club. This has gotta be the
Speaker 1: most one of the five most unique places in the States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: H So you told me to meet you here, and
Speaker 1: I bolt in and I called you there's one golf
Speaker 1: course and uh and I pull in and I'm like,
Speaker 1: where are you at? And you say, oh, you must
Speaker 1: be at the Log Club. You had come to the
Speaker 1: Bogie Club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's really interesting. It's two nine hole golf
Speaker 2: courses that were built by Robert Follows, I mean James Follows.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Log nine was built in nineteen o nine
Speaker 2: and Bogie was built in nineteen ten. Yeah, put the
Speaker 2: butt up against each other. And Log Club is on
Speaker 2: the west side of the property and Bogie clubs on
Speaker 2: the east side of the property.
Speaker 1: So number one, separate clubhouses, separate.
Speaker 2: Clubhouses, both have about seventy members. Is all seventy seventy
Speaker 2: five members, probably only forty play golf. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know if they have three thousand rounds a year here.
Speaker 2: It's it's really cool. The golf courtse is only it
Speaker 2: doesn't quite reach six thousand yards from the tips. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be seventy six in a few days, and
Speaker 2: I'm probably the average age of the people, the members.
Speaker 2: They might not like me saying that, so hopefully they
Speaker 2: don't listen to your potet.
Speaker 1: They might not know what a podcast is.
Speaker 2: But like number one at Bogie is number four at
Speaker 2: Log or they can just play their own nine you know.
Speaker 1: So I mean there's never enough play that it ever
Speaker 1: gets in trouble.
Speaker 2: No, No, now they do have. I mean the clubs
Speaker 2: are more we're more socially oriented. And that's one reason
Speaker 2: the place really got ran down Rundown excuse me, and
Speaker 2: let go for years and years and years because there
Speaker 2: wasn't much pressure. But finally there got to be a
Speaker 2: little more pressure. And there's a gentleman named rich Nman
Speaker 2: whose spearheaded of wanting to upgrade this place. And he
Speaker 2: came to me. It started in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: was it?
Speaker 1: Do he come to you from Bogie or Locke?
Speaker 2: He's a Bogey member and he had Bogey convinced to
Speaker 2: rebuild the greens, and but Log didn't want to do
Speaker 2: it because each convinced two committees, right, because each club
Speaker 2: has their separate business, but when it comes to the
Speaker 2: grounds its split fifty to fifty, so anything done to
Speaker 2: the grounds has to be approved by both. So Log
Speaker 2: really wasn't ready to commit to that yet. So he
Speaker 2: talked them into building one green, which is the ninth
Speaker 2: green for Bogie. So we built that in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven and Man everybody loved it. New green got
Speaker 2: so much better and smoother, and you know, the other
Speaker 2: greens are trunk and they were old push up greens
Speaker 2: that were soggy and wet, and so they loved it,
Speaker 2: but they still didn't want to put out the money.
Speaker 2: So for a couple of years we did somebody you
Speaker 2: had me meet bout so we did some major drainage
Speaker 2: problems that they had around that they knew they had
Speaker 2: to get done. And in the meantime, you know, they
Speaker 2: had old Bermuda that was always dead and scrappy, and
Speaker 2: so he said, Rich said, well how about if we
Speaker 2: get started on a zoyser program. So we started. I
Speaker 2: told Rich, I said, you're doing a bast awkwards because
Speaker 2: you know, you need to build the greens. And at
Speaker 2: the same body said there's no way we can get
Speaker 2: it done. So that gave me time to do to
Speaker 2: really study the place and do a master plan. And
Speaker 2: I told Rich that, I said, when we start doing
Speaker 2: these fairaways, we're going to redo all the bunkers and stuff.
Speaker 2: And because the type of clubs, nobody was out there's
Speaker 2: watch and see what we did. So I was just
Speaker 2: on my own. I did whatever I wanted to do there,
Speaker 2: so we just did two pharaoahs first and then we
Speaker 2: got escalating the project and anyway finally came to where, wow,
Speaker 2: this is really cool what you're doing. We need to
Speaker 2: do greens now. So there's a corner of the property
Speaker 2: that you can't do the fairways without doing the greens
Speaker 2: or you just tear it up getting back there. So
Speaker 2: they let us do three greens back there. That made
Speaker 2: four that were done, and all the fairways were done
Speaker 2: with zoiage and they're just going nuts now and they said,
Speaker 2: let's do it all. So two thousand, that was twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, we did the other fourteen greens, finished up
Speaker 2: some faaraway areas that we couldn't get to, and some
Speaker 2: I guess a few te's and some greenside bunkers and
Speaker 2: stuff greens for rounds opening fifteen and it's just been
Speaker 2: a smash hit ever since.
Speaker 1: Did was it? Rounds go up after that?
Speaker 2: Rounds did go up. Not just much more guest play,
Speaker 2: you know guys, you know a lot of them were
Speaker 2: probably embarrassed to bring their I mean, all these people
Speaker 2: were members at other clubs and played golf other clubs
Speaker 2: and They probably really were a little bit embarrassed to
Speaker 2: bring people over here because it wasn't much. I mean
Speaker 2: there was trees and honeysuckle. You couldn't see from the
Speaker 2: bogie side. You could not see the log side of
Speaker 2: the golf course.
Speaker 1: May they liked it that way?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't, but they were worried when I started
Speaker 2: clearing all this honeysuckle and clearing all this underbrush. And
Speaker 2: once they saw the vistas that were created, they just
Speaker 2: it really got cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the property is stunning.
Speaker 2: It is I mean Saint Louis. I mean the properties
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis are great. It's just the soils. I mean,
Speaker 2: Saint Louis country Club's got great rolling property. Uh there's
Speaker 2: a club called Westwood Country Club that I was fortunate
Speaker 2: to do, uh rebuild twelve greens over there. Wonderful piece
Speaker 2: of property. Really neat.
Speaker 1: So what has your philosophy on maintenance changed at all
Speaker 1: when since you've been doing these projects? Do you do
Speaker 1: you do you think of of superintendents different like the
Speaker 1: the way super and the superintendent job. I guess per
Speaker 1: se differently.
Speaker 2: Mmmm. You know, I would like to I would like
Speaker 2: to see more native areas but the hard fescues where
Speaker 2: they're still playable, so you get so you can still
Speaker 2: have a groom golf course with natural looking areas where
Speaker 2: I guess the only the only thing that's changed a
Speaker 2: lot is that I would like to see more textures
Speaker 2: on the golf course, uh than just the one dimensional
Speaker 2: greenh So that's something I know. Tim Burch over at
Speaker 2: Saint Louis Country Club is trying to do some hard fescues.
Speaker 2: All the native areas that people do around here, they
Speaker 2: do look cool at certain times when they when their
Speaker 2: colors change and the textures change, but you have to
Speaker 2: make them out of play areas because it just slows
Speaker 2: play down. You can't find your ball, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: not much fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody likes looking for golf ball. No, that's natives
Speaker 1: the hardest. I feel like it's supposed to be low maintenance,
Speaker 1: but so many it's a lot of work.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of work. That's the other thing
Speaker 2: is people say, oh, just grow native area. You know,
Speaker 2: committee will say see it somewhere and it looks cool,
Speaker 2: just you don't realize. I mean, especially in cities where
Speaker 2: you can't burn, you know, now like Moon Valley, they're
Speaker 2: nadise areas. They're out in the country where they can burn,
Speaker 2: and that makes a huge difference, keeps out the you know,
Speaker 2: the stuff that you don't want grown, the sucker trees
Speaker 2: and soccer plants and stuff. So and the other thing
Speaker 2: when you did mention as my philosophy changed short grass, yes,
Speaker 2: because when I grew up in the sixties, seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: you know, it was fairway rough approach, rough, green collar
Speaker 2: then rough. There was there was no short grass. Chipping areas,
Speaker 2: pitching areas, areas that repelled your off ball. My philosophy's
Speaker 2: definitely changed on that, and the work that we've been
Speaker 2: doing over it all worse and over time we're starting
Speaker 2: to integrate that, which was kind of tough for me
Speaker 2: at first because I didn't see that as a Trent
Speaker 2: Jones feature. But if you do it right, it just
Speaker 2: looks like it evolves and really doesn't take away from
Speaker 2: what people perceive as a Trent Jones design feature.
Speaker 1: In Saint Louis, you've got a wide range of architects
Speaker 1: where you worked here on a course designed in the
Speaker 1: nineteen times by Fullest's, you've got Robert Trent Jones you've
Speaker 1: got Rhys Jones, You've got Keith Foster's stuff. How is
Speaker 1: it you worked at sixteen different clubs around here, working
Speaker 1: on such a wide range of different architectural style and
Speaker 1: trying to make it fit in.
Speaker 2: It's really not that. It's not that tough. You just
Speaker 2: you see what it is, who the architect was, see
Speaker 2: what damage has been done by other architects or other
Speaker 2: greens committees over the years, and then you just use
Speaker 2: your best judgment and try to stay within that style.
Speaker 2: Like Norwood Hills was Wayne Styles golf course, and I
Speaker 2: had Jeffrey Corny Sho come in and validate my master plan,
Speaker 2: and he walked all thirty six with us and talked
Speaker 2: about because Wayne Style did most of his work in
Speaker 2: the East Coast and he knew Wayne's style of bunkers,
Speaker 2: So we stayed with that. Put as far as placement
Speaker 2: and strategy, you know, I used my own judgment. The
Speaker 2: same aim here was a foulss. My bunkers here aren't
Speaker 2: deep bunkers, but they're deeper than what he had them.
Speaker 2: It gives more accent to the green complexes. I only
Speaker 2: had to change one green complex.
Speaker 1: I had a little bit different technology for those bunkers
Speaker 1: now in that right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and and money and you know what they did,
Speaker 2: you know, Old Orson being Robert Trent Jones in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, I did a complete green side bunker renovation.
Speaker 2: And you know I kept that in his more his
Speaker 2: style of architecture that I had seen and saw on
Speaker 2: his conceptual drawings. But I might have moved him in
Speaker 2: tighter than green or when I could, things like that.
Speaker 2: So you know, you just have to be you have
Speaker 2: to use your own judge, but still be somewhat sympathetic
Speaker 2: to their style.
Speaker 1: Talk about dealing with Greens committees as a superintendent or
Speaker 1: committees at a club as a superintendent versus a GM
Speaker 1: versus a architect.
Speaker 2: I mean I've been I've been really fortunate when I
Speaker 2: was at Old Wars and we never had a Greens
Speaker 2: committee meeting. Ever, we never had a Greens committee. And
Speaker 2: one Greens chairman that he would stop down every couple
Speaker 2: of days about two o'clock and see how things go on.
Speaker 2: And I'd say great, and he said, okay, I'm going
Speaker 2: up to the locker room take my shower. And he'd
Speaker 2: go up and have his shower and his glass of
Speaker 2: whiskey and go home, you know. And but that's changed
Speaker 2: over time. Tim that's over there now deals with him.
Speaker 2: And because I've done I've been their consultants for quite
Speaker 2: a few years now, I deal with them. But as
Speaker 2: an architect and being retired and the fortunate reputation that
Speaker 2: I have in Saint Louis, working at all these clubs,
Speaker 2: I can kind of I can kind of block everything
Speaker 2: from the superintendent and that's and a lot of the projects.
Speaker 2: That's part of my job is that I kind of
Speaker 2: I kind of take the blunt of I listen to
Speaker 2: all their comments and let the superintendent be able to
Speaker 2: go do his own work rather than having to go
Speaker 2: to the office and explain everything on emails and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So it helps the superintendent.
Speaker 1: A lot, like emails and communicating with a committee versus
Speaker 1: being out on the gulf of course doing project work,
Speaker 1: doing you know, managing a team. There's two different, completely
Speaker 1: different skill sets, absolutely, and one of them takes completely
Speaker 1: away from the other, right, I mean, that's the thing
Speaker 1: that's one of the tough things with jobs, is when
Speaker 1: you have things that pull against each other, right.
Speaker 2: Right, But committees, you know, committees are the toughest thing
Speaker 2: at clubs. The only place I really had a lot
Speaker 2: of committee interaction with cedar rapids, and that was in fact,
Speaker 2: it was so tough that it was easy because the
Speaker 2: Greens Committee and the Golf Committee were would have joint meetings.
Speaker 2: So now you got whatever it was, twelve from each
Speaker 2: or eight from each, and I mean there's ideas all
Speaker 2: over the place. So basically you walk out of there
Speaker 2: with nothing and you just go do your own things.
Speaker 2: But you know, the one the one pod that you
Speaker 2: did with I think it was the uh, the guy
Speaker 2: from cal club.
Speaker 1: One, Al Jamison.
Speaker 2: That was absolutely that was the best advice I've ever
Speaker 2: heard for any club president or whatever is that if
Speaker 2: the guy's raising his hand wants to be on the committee,
Speaker 2: he's not the one you want, yeah, because he's going
Speaker 2: to come with his own agenda.
Speaker 1: The guy that you don't want to, you don't that
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be on the committee you want on.
Speaker 2: That's the one you want on the committee.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it was pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was an absolutely fabulous pod.
Speaker 1: My a buddies. It was a superintendent said. We were
Speaker 1: walking around of course and got talking to somebody and
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna leave names and locations out of this.
Speaker 1: But this guy was you know, he's really really excited guy.
Speaker 1: He didn't really he knew a lot, but not that much.
Speaker 1: And he as he left, my buddy, he's super intended.
Speaker 1: That's the guy, Yeah go what he goes. That's the
Speaker 1: guy that knows just enough to fuck everything up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, as far as committees and being
Speaker 2: a superintendent, the one thing I always just told myself is,
Speaker 2: you know, you you just got to go do your
Speaker 2: own thing. If they like it, they'll give you a raise.
Speaker 2: If they don't, you probably don't want to be there anyway.
Speaker 1: See that's a good point. And you it seems like
Speaker 1: you were always one step ahead in your career of
Speaker 1: where you You knew you pretty early when you wanted
Speaker 1: to go do something else, because it was it was
Speaker 1: always a new challenge, right, And I think that's where
Speaker 1: people get stuck in. It's like sometimes the best thing
Speaker 1: is Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean when I went from when I went from
Speaker 2: Cedar Rabbits Country Club, told Warson, I took a pay
Speaker 2: cut just and I wasn't getting paid much anyway. I
Speaker 2: would tell you what they paid me. An all worson,
Speaker 2: but the members probably wouldn't appreciate it because things have
Speaker 2: changed so much. That club has changed so much. It's
Speaker 2: a great club, let me tell you. But I took
Speaker 2: a pay cut just because this was the new challenge.
Speaker 2: It was my chance to see how I could do
Speaker 2: against a different group of people than where I was before,
Speaker 2: and it was you know, it's turned out to be
Speaker 2: the best thing I ever did. But you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: you have to be lucky to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it's an intersection of opportunity and hard
Speaker 1: work usually and a little bit of luck. I always
Speaker 1: feel like I think about that stuff a lot. So
Speaker 1: you put you you're a big traveler. You love going
Speaker 1: seeing golf courses, your regular fride egg events. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: you know, I appreciate the the uh you coming out
Speaker 1: to them. But what's on the list for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one?
Speaker 2: Well, I want to get up. I think we talked
Speaker 2: a little bit. I've I've still got some in in
Speaker 2: uh Wisconsin that I want to go see that I missed.
Speaker 2: Uh And as I told you, I'm going to have
Speaker 2: to miss the the Steam Shovel this year, So that
Speaker 2: just means I'm going to have to go back to
Speaker 2: Lasnia maybe this fall or something and see Mike Lions
Speaker 2: up there.
Speaker 1: That's the best time to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, I've never done Michigan. I want to
Speaker 2: do the Mike Devrees. I want to go up to
Speaker 2: the Upper Peninsula, which I've never been in, Marquette Gray Walls.
Speaker 2: And then my favorite person to read and listen to
Speaker 2: is Tom Doak. I love the stuff, I like what
Speaker 2: he says, and I've never played one of his golf courses,
Speaker 2: so I want to see some of his there.
Speaker 1: Go play the Loop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to play the Loop for sure.
Speaker 1: Key though, you got to spend you got the Loop,
Speaker 1: you gotta spend a couple of days at Okay. I
Speaker 1: think that's the mistake everybody makes, is they play it
Speaker 1: once one way, once the other way and they're out.
Speaker 1: Or they play it once one way. If you play
Speaker 1: the second time, you play it each way, you're you
Speaker 1: just like everything because you're you know when you play
Speaker 1: some golf courses, how you just are sensory overloaded, right,
Speaker 1: and it's everything's like whoa, whoa? And and at that place,
Speaker 1: especially the more time you walk around, the more time
Speaker 1: you really are just like whoa. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I mean it's going the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: But sometime before it's too late for me. I want
Speaker 2: to play bally Neil good Spot. I mean Kai you
Speaker 2: know said it's one of the most fun golf courses
Speaker 2: you'll ever want to play. Yeah, And one of the
Speaker 2: problems I have is, you know, I've been a member
Speaker 2: of Palmetto for a lot of years.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: That's so into my heart that I go down there
Speaker 2: and spend time. And I've got friends down there. Tommy Moore,
Speaker 2: the old pro, it's one of my best friends. And
Speaker 2: I just go around and round and around on that
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 1: That's one that is Uh, if you can go play there,
Speaker 1: there's not very better places than Palmetto.
Speaker 2: You haven't played it, have you?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: I have played it, Okay.
Speaker 1: I played it. Uh. It was funny. It was I
Speaker 1: was coming out of a Chicago winner and I was
Speaker 1: playing with somebody from down there and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: last winter in Chicago. It's just her redness and I
Speaker 1: was refreshed out of winter and it was like fifty
Speaker 1: five and mistic and He's like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: this is pretty awful. I don't want to play, and
Speaker 1: he's like, you want to play in this? I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is nice. That place is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you got to You gotta play it when.
Speaker 1: It's had its best two bouncy.
Speaker 2: Right right before the pulmetto am, which is right in midsummer.
Speaker 2: It varies, but it's around the end of June or
Speaker 2: into July. I mean, it's hot down there, but then
Speaker 2: the humidity isn't terrible there. And let me tell you,
Speaker 2: the ball bounces. The greens are just I mean, that's
Speaker 2: it's just like what you said about the loop. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you start seeing nuances that you didn't
Speaker 2: know was there when it was soft or green. Oh God,
Speaker 2: what if.
Speaker 1: They didn't overseed there and it was I if they
Speaker 1: let that that Bermuda go dormant.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether it would withstand the traffic. And
Speaker 2: one of the things, one of the things that keeps
Speaker 2: them alive and keeps them being a true, true golf
Speaker 2: club and not do these stupid things at other places
Speaker 2: liable to do is Master's Week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They that's really important to them, and they really need
Speaker 2: I mean, they need it to shine, they need it
Speaker 2: to look good. I mean, they need these corporate people
Speaker 2: to come in. They need to see green. They don't
Speaker 2: need to see you know. And if they get a
Speaker 2: bunch of rain and it's dormant, that corporate group might
Speaker 2: not come back the next year.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I went to Pinehurst last year. It was
Speaker 1: around this time and it was still dormant, and god,
Speaker 1: it was so fun to play number two with the
Speaker 1: ball just flying and like, you know, the the thing
Speaker 1: that it brought back was it brought so many more
Speaker 1: shots into play around the green because you didn't get
Speaker 1: the grabby first bounce and it just you know, just
Speaker 1: skidded along. And I mean that was and then it
Speaker 1: just makes me think about because I played Palmetto right
Speaker 1: before that, and it was overseeded, and you played Midpies
Speaker 1: was overseeded. And then you go and you play and
Speaker 1: you read what Ross talked about. Ross loved Pinehurst because
Speaker 1: it was the first place when it went dormant that
Speaker 1: he found that played like Scotland in the States.
Speaker 2: Sure, but the oversea of Palmetto is a perfect example
Speaker 2: of the compromise I talked about. When you ask what's
Speaker 2: best for the game, what's best for the game would
Speaker 2: be not to oversee, but what will due to the
Speaker 2: rest of the year, the rest of the season, the
Speaker 2: club will they you know, will they have to do
Speaker 2: other things to make up that money. So that's a
Speaker 2: compromise that I'm sure it's hard to swallow for some people,
Speaker 2: but maybe that is the best one.
Speaker 1: They tied it back perfectly. You know. Palmetto is like
Speaker 1: the most non American club of any place I've been
Speaker 1: to in America.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I remember reading an old book. I think
Speaker 2: it was by Charles Price. You know how you can
Speaker 2: tell the difference between a country club and a golf club.
Speaker 2: When you walk into a country club, the nice wood
Speaker 2: floors are nice and polished and beautiful. When you walk
Speaker 2: into the golf club there's spike marks all over it.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 1: That place. That is a fun place.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got to get back down.
Speaker 2: There, you know. And talking to Tom dok about Tom
Speaker 2: dolk out. I hope to meet him someday because you know,
Speaker 2: I was over there with Tip Anderson in eighty three
Speaker 2: and in our foursome we played individual matches. I didn't
Speaker 2: play walder Woods, but walder Woods was playing the other
Speaker 2: person in our forsum and I got to know Walder
Speaker 2: pretty well, who was caretaking, and I know Tom got
Speaker 2: to be good friends of Walder and I have a
Speaker 2: hunch Tom was caddying that year that I was there.
Speaker 1: Probably makes sense, yeah, because he he was soccer at
Speaker 1: he was at that first that was the first year
Speaker 1: of the TPC.
Speaker 2: Right eighty three, Well, I couldn't tell you you're better,
Speaker 2: You're better dates?
Speaker 1: I think that. I think that would match up because
Speaker 1: I think eighty three was when he was started to
Speaker 1: work with Die, but he was on he was in
Speaker 1: school still because he was doing the internship and then
Speaker 1: he won the Dream Award. Right the dates, I'll have
Speaker 1: to go back and listen to because he lays out
Speaker 1: that in one of the podcasts.
Speaker 2: I know it, and I don't remember which one.
Speaker 1: It might have been the first one ever could have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a rough audio. Don't go back as those
Speaker 1: are the early audio days for the right Eck.
Speaker 2: I'd love to sit down at a round table with
Speaker 2: a couple of cases of beer with Tom Doak, yourself,
Speaker 2: Michael Clayton, and maybe Derek Duncan to throw in a
Speaker 2: little controversy. That would be a blast.
Speaker 1: Guy set it up on if you gotta get Clay's
Speaker 1: over here.
Speaker 2: He is he he is so much fun to listen
Speaker 2: to Michael Clayton.
Speaker 1: He's brilliant, he is he really is. The best is
Speaker 1: when you meet him, he's the same person that he
Speaker 1: is on like when you hear him.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's what he should be.
Speaker 1: I mean the first time I met him, first time,
Speaker 1: I have never met him, you know, I obviously had
Speaker 1: talked to him and I had known him through the
Speaker 1: internet and had interviewed him on the podcast. First time,
Speaker 1: you know, like the first words out of his mouth, Andy,
Speaker 1: that place is complete shit. I just laughed out. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just like it was like we were just messaging.
Speaker 1: It would have about exactly what he said to me.
Speaker 2: I can believe it too.
Speaker 1: Good guy. So Roger, thanks for the time. We'll have
Speaker 1: to do this again. We'll set up that roundtable.
Speaker 2: Oh god, you know, count me in. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't even have to be part of it. I can
Speaker 2: just sit in the corner and listen.
Speaker 1: We'll just put a microphone right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the table. See what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So thanks, and uh, and people can email you.
Speaker 1: I don't know how else sare you're not social media guy.
Speaker 2: I mean I've got you know, I follow people on Twitter,
Speaker 2: but I don't even know how to use it. I
Speaker 2: just read.
Speaker 1: So what do you know what your Twitter handle is?
Speaker 2: I think just my name.
Speaker 1: I'll find it, I'll tweet it out.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 1: No, you're gonna have followers.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how it works. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know. Anybody wants to email me, they can, all right, Oh,
Speaker 2: I need to give you the email. It's Oh, the
Speaker 2: email is niblic Farm, which niblic is spelled n I
Speaker 2: b l I c k f A r M at
Speaker 2: century tail dot net. Century is ce n t U
Speaker 2: r y t em. Yeah. Feel free. Yeah, I love
Speaker 2: to talk about golf, any kind of golf.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Thanks so much, and uh, we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Under an ability of alder