Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over
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Speaker 1: twenty five percent off on bdradty dot com. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is a new one of the Yoke with Doak. So
Speaker 1: this is part of the Batchelor recordings that I did
Speaker 1: in January with Tom where we were just recorded for
Speaker 1: copious amount of hours. This episode we hit a lot
Speaker 1: of listener questions, so we hit on topics such as
Speaker 1: the links land and you know one of the some
Speaker 1: of the downsides to building on links Land, Mike Strand
Speaker 1: who he would like to listen to from from the
Speaker 1: past on a podcast and much more so, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's Tom Doak.
Speaker 2: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my ball in a bright egg
Speaker 3: Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, fridagg.
Speaker 2: Bright egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 4: Course from a dusty gray.
Speaker 1: You only hear people wowed linx land, But what are
Speaker 1: the main details and obstacles faced while constructing links land
Speaker 1: courses as opposed to inland courses.
Speaker 3: If any one of the things is unreal lynx luan ground.
Speaker 3: The soil is really fragile, like there's there's only a
Speaker 3: little bit of you know, it's sandy all the way down,
Speaker 3: but that little bit at the top is has got
Speaker 3: more nutrients in it, and you really really don't want
Speaker 3: to disturb that unless you have to. And it's really
Speaker 3: hard because it's such a thin layer. It's really hard
Speaker 3: to peel it off and save it and put it
Speaker 3: back on. You know, a lot of golf courses an
Speaker 3: inland ground, you'll strip six inches or a foot of
Speaker 3: topsaw off and reconjure everything, and then you've got a
Speaker 3: huge pile of topsaw to put back down. But on
Speaker 3: a links course, it's a really fine layer and you
Speaker 3: can destroy it pretty easily, and you don't want to.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's you know. I remember seeing Kingsbarns under
Speaker 3: construction of Walter Woods, who was the greenkeeper at Saint
Speaker 3: Andrew's when I lived there, was a consultant to Kingsbarns,
Speaker 3: and that was his main thing was you know, that
Speaker 3: was that little bit of topsaw was like gold to
Speaker 3: him and it had to be preserved at all costs
Speaker 3: and it had to go back down over everything when
Speaker 3: it was done or wasn't going to play like a
Speaker 3: links course.
Speaker 4: I imagine.
Speaker 1: The other thing is the wind probably blows. It's probably
Speaker 1: is it harder to get stuff to sit just the way.
Speaker 4: You want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in general it can be. That can be pretty
Speaker 3: fine material too. It was the same in Australia when
Speaker 3: we were building St Andrew's Beach. I mean, the the
Speaker 3: great layer of soil at the top was really fine
Speaker 3: and really dark compared to it. You know, it was sand,
Speaker 3: but it was a very dark brown sand. So yeah,
Speaker 3: if you put it in a pile over to the
Speaker 3: side for very long, it just half of it blows away.
Speaker 1: Here's a question from waiting on willow Old Tom Morris
Speaker 1: met Donald Ross, who met Pete Die met Tom Doak?
Speaker 1: Who did Tom Doak meet? That will be an innovative
Speaker 1: force of their generation.
Speaker 3: Wow, we skipped over a few people in there, so
Speaker 3: I'm only.
Speaker 4: He was limited to a certain amount of characters.
Speaker 3: I'm only two people removed from old Tom Morris according
Speaker 3: to that equation. That's cool, hmm. You know, I mean
Speaker 3: I've had a ton of talented people work for me,
Speaker 3: and you know, some of them have made names for
Speaker 3: themselves already, Gil Hands and Mike DeVries. But you know
Speaker 3: that questions more like generation skipping. Those those people are
Speaker 3: forty years apart, and you know that's you know, it's
Speaker 3: hard for Gil or Mike or those guys to do
Speaker 3: something really different than what I'm doing because this style
Speaker 3: is so in vogue right now that everybody talks about
Speaker 3: it kind of the same way. And if you're really
Speaker 3: trying to think about, well, who's going to change things,
Speaker 3: it's impossible to predict. I mean, who knows who's going
Speaker 3: to be the guy who or girl who sticks their
Speaker 3: neck out and really does something different that leads everybody
Speaker 3: else to go in a different direction. You know, I
Speaker 3: hope it's one of the people that I've that I've
Speaker 3: spent some time with and helped train. You know that
Speaker 3: that's I tried to tell them all exactly what Pete
Speaker 3: Dye told me, which is essentially, don't copy what I'm doing,
Speaker 3: find your own thing. You know. And when I worked
Speaker 3: for Pete, the one thing that we never talked a
Speaker 3: lot about at all was style. And you know, he
Speaker 3: didn't try to teach me his style of doing things.
Speaker 3: He taught me his method of doing things and being
Speaker 3: out there in construction and you know, really working at it.
Speaker 3: But what the golf course was going to look like,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say it didn't matter, but you know,
Speaker 3: that was kind of up to him. And you know,
Speaker 3: he left that impression on me that if I ever
Speaker 3: got in position to do that, it should be up
Speaker 3: to me, and I should try to do something different.
Speaker 3: You know that I drew most of that just from
Speaker 3: the conversation we had about Harbortown, you know, because we
Speaker 3: were working a long cove and Harbortown's like five miles
Speaker 3: down the road, and one morning I got him talking
Speaker 3: about that, and he said, you know, up to Harbortown,
Speaker 3: he still really admired Robert Trent Jones's work. But when
Speaker 3: he was working on Harbortown, he was living by Palmetto Dunes,
Speaker 3: and he drove past the Jones course at Palmetto Dunes
Speaker 3: like every day to go to work, and he kept
Speaker 3: looking at that golf course over there, and he finally
Speaker 3: said to himself, not very long into the thing, I
Speaker 3: got to do something different than that. We can't just
Speaker 3: keep doing that. And so he tried to do something
Speaker 3: as different as possible from what mister Jones was doing,
Speaker 3: and that was harbortown tight small, really small greens, you know,
Speaker 3: really abrupt features, but not necessarily a ton of them.
Speaker 3: And I just took that as don't do the same
Speaker 3: thing I'm doing. So somebody's going to do that sooner
Speaker 3: or later and change the world again. And I, you know,
Speaker 3: I have a few ideas who it might be. But
Speaker 3: you know, I got a letter from a young guy
Speaker 3: in Canada last week wanting an intern job, and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, he just sounds like a really intelligent kid,
Speaker 3: and he's you know, he's talking about data driven stuff
Speaker 3: and how you know how to apply that to golf
Speaker 3: course architecture. And I I would say, I'm a skeptic
Speaker 3: about that right now, but you know, that might be
Speaker 3: where this thing goes in twenty years. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Almost like everybody nudges and what if you're you know,
Speaker 1: there's like a big nudge or a big push into one
Speaker 1: direction right, and then it's like a steady nudge until
Speaker 1: there's the next big push. Really, it's kind of the
Speaker 1: way I think about it's in a way, it's a
Speaker 1: lot like if you look at a different industry, how
Speaker 1: they advance, there's you know, gradual and then somebody makes
Speaker 1: a drastic change and.
Speaker 3: Everybody sure it's you know, it's it's not quite the
Speaker 3: fashion business. But you know, once his style is kind
Speaker 3: of in vogue, it tends to stay there for a while,
Speaker 3: and other people kind of don't push too far outside
Speaker 3: that for fear they won't get any work at all
Speaker 3: until you know, people have kind of gotten tired of it,
Speaker 3: and then it's time for somebody to come along and
Speaker 3: do something that's way different, you know. You know, I
Speaker 3: see a couple of things now that are kind of
Speaker 3: way different, you know, just like just like back fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago, Jim Ming's stuff was way different, and Mike
Speaker 3: Strands's stuff was way different, you know, and there's there's
Speaker 3: some stuff going on like that now, but whether whether
Speaker 3: it's the right time for it, you know, it's really
Speaker 3: hard for that to work when the business is so small,
Speaker 3: because you know, most architects are just trying to find
Speaker 3: one job for next year, and they don't want to
Speaker 3: take the risk of doing something radical and having people
Speaker 3: not like it, because then then they got nothing next year.
Speaker 3: You have to be willing to take chances if you're
Speaker 3: going to do something like that.
Speaker 1: You brought up Mike Strants and something I've thought a
Speaker 1: lot about. You know, you guys were peers, but with
Speaker 1: drastically different styles. Yes, And I'm curious where with him
Speaker 1: passing away young, do you think architecture would be different
Speaker 1: today he had he not because he was kind of
Speaker 1: almost like a counter.
Speaker 3: That's true, and you know, in a way, I don't
Speaker 3: think philosophically our work was that much different. I mean,
Speaker 3: artistically it was very different, and he was he was
Speaker 3: more interested in creating something that looked wild than with
Speaker 3: you know, keeping it closer to what the land was.
Speaker 3: But but then again, some of the pieces of ground
Speaker 3: he had were pretty wild to start with, so that worked.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think for sure, if if he'd
Speaker 3: kept working, you know, he would have had a lot
Speaker 3: more influence on what other people were doing. But by
Speaker 3: the same token, you was kind of a unique talent.
Speaker 3: I mean, he really was an artist, and there aren't
Speaker 3: that many real artists in our business to try to
Speaker 3: take that direction and do it themselves. And he you know,
Speaker 3: he had a really small crew of guys that worked
Speaker 3: with him on all those projects, and since he passed away,
Speaker 3: they haven't really picked it up and run with it
Speaker 3: at all, too bad.
Speaker 1: Something I always kind of think about because it was
Speaker 1: it was almost like he was the evolution from from
Speaker 1: the Fasio school, but that evolution kind of halted and.
Speaker 4: Now, like you said, nobody picked it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is from chill Gannon. Are there any
Speaker 1: average courses that could be great with a green renovation.
Speaker 3: It's a hard question because you know, great is like
Speaker 3: a pretty vague term. Now, I don't know whether that
Speaker 3: means sixth the Doakes Gale or an eight. You know,
Speaker 3: taking a course that's a four or five and renovating
Speaker 3: the greens and turning it into an eight is pretty unlikely.
Speaker 3: Although you know, one of the great examples from history
Speaker 3: is Woking in England that John Lowe and Tom Simpson,
Speaker 3: who are members, kind of did. They took. They took
Speaker 3: a Tom Dunn Heathland course, which everybody thought was pretty dull,
Speaker 3: and every summer while the members were away up north
Speaker 3: in Scotland or wherever, they would renovate one or two holes.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't exclusively agree's renovation. They also did some
Speaker 3: fairway bunkering connected to it, so that the all the
Speaker 3: wild stuff they were doing on the greens. You know,
Speaker 3: there was strategy to that, and there was a bunker
Speaker 3: back in the fairway that enhanced it. But you know,
Speaker 3: over the course of five or six years, they just
Speaker 3: transformed that golf course from fairly dull into the talk
Speaker 3: of the town in London in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 3: when there was a lot of other cool stuff going on.
Speaker 3: That's the golf course that it inspired Simpson to actually
Speaker 3: become a golf course architect, you know, and it inspired
Speaker 3: Cole and everybody else watching around of wow, you know
Speaker 3: you can if you take risks, you could do some
Speaker 3: pretty wild stuff that's really cool and got a lot
Speaker 3: of other people interested in art what architecture could do.
Speaker 3: So I think there is the potential for that, but
Speaker 3: you know, it helps if you've got the skeleton of
Speaker 3: a good routing in place. You know, if the greens
Speaker 3: are in the wrong place, you're not going to fix
Speaker 3: that just by renovating the greens.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like think about Champion Hill where you've got just
Speaker 1: that tremendous land up here, but you know, the owner
Speaker 1: who built it, he didn't do any shaping around it,
Speaker 1: on and around the greens it's just like a basically
Speaker 1: like almost a homemade golf course. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, that land's so good, it could be pretty
Speaker 1: pretty dark good, and it is pretty good as is like,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the things.
Speaker 4: It's it's thirty bucks like for what it is.
Speaker 3: It's great. And you know the thing about that is
Speaker 3: if it had a great set of greens, it should
Speaker 3: have still cost thirty bucks. You know, I mean building
Speaker 3: a good set of greens, assuming you're building some you know,
Speaker 3: USGA greens or native saw greens or whatever you're building.
Speaker 3: You know, putting better shape in him to start with
Speaker 3: shouldn't really cost anything more. You know, it's just having
Speaker 3: a good shaper and having some imagination about what you're doing.
Speaker 3: But there's not a lot of people that build great greens.
Speaker 3: There never has been.
Speaker 1: That's something that Mike mccarton said once on the podcast
Speaker 1: that stuck with me. He's like, great architecture doesn't cost
Speaker 1: any more than average architecture.
Speaker 3: No, it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: Thinking about this, and you know, you talked about Tom
Speaker 1: Simpson and John Lowe and we've recorded a lot of
Speaker 1: podcasts and I'm curious if there was one historical figure
Speaker 1: It could be an architect, it could be a writer,
Speaker 1: it could be anybody. If you could listen to like
Speaker 1: a podcast from one figure in golf of yesteryear, who
Speaker 1: would it be?
Speaker 3: Oh, Bernard Darwin, no question, both to see if all
Speaker 3: of that beautiful writing just came out of his voice
Speaker 3: straight away, or you know, how hard did he have
Speaker 3: to work to be that good a writer? You know,
Speaker 3: was it just like everything he said was genius or
Speaker 3: do you really have to grind away at it to
Speaker 3: get it to that level. I'd be curious to know.
Speaker 3: But you know, I still think if the way he
Speaker 3: described some of the old golf courses that he saw,
Speaker 3: and think about how much we've lost. You know this
Speaker 3: he just makes the spira of golf back then sound
Speaker 3: way different and and kind of cool. And you know
Speaker 3: he would he would critique golf courses pretty strongly without
Speaker 3: comparing them to Hamburger Helper or some of the things
Speaker 3: that I've done over the years. You know, it's one
Speaker 3: of the one of the descriptions I'm thinking about is Blackheath,
Speaker 3: the old the old course in London that was you know,
Speaker 3: played a lot played across common Land that's now like
Speaker 3: in the city of you know, it's it's down near
Speaker 3: Greenwich actually, but very much. You know, they were playing
Speaker 3: across you'd be hitting across busy public roads now into
Speaker 3: the park kind of. And yet you know that was
Speaker 3: that was the best golf club in London in the
Speaker 3: early days before the Heathlin courses started coming. And it
Speaker 3: was only seven holes, but it was really hard. There
Speaker 3: was like one part three and most of the holes
Speaker 3: were long and longer to the point that you know,
Speaker 3: he described one of them as I wish I had
Speaker 3: the exact quote. I should go grab grab one of
Speaker 3: my bucks and get the exact quote. But it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, he remembered hitting several long shots before getting
Speaker 3: within the range of the green. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: driver three wood, three wood five iron type hole, and
Speaker 3: then the next hole after that was the same, but
Speaker 3: not quite as much. And you think, well, there's nothing
Speaker 3: even close to that now, I mean, nothing like that.
Speaker 3: So you know, there are a lot of great architects
Speaker 3: who I would have loved to meet and pick the
Speaker 3: brains up a little bit. But but to listen to
Speaker 3: them talk, Bernard Darwin had to be uclassed by himself.
Speaker 1: I mean, he could do a couple hours just on
Speaker 1: the Walker Cup that the first Walker Cup they had
Speaker 1: to play in as a sub beat fountains in the
Speaker 1: singles matches.
Speaker 3: And tell us what National and Leedo are really like
Speaker 3: in the early days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had away with words.
Speaker 1: I read an article that he wrote about when they
Speaker 1: outlawed the stymy the first go around. You know, he
Speaker 1: was very upset about removing this you know, skill of
Speaker 1: the game, the way he described it, and it is
Speaker 1: really interesting because then they brought it back and then
Speaker 1: sure enough a couple of years later it was removed.
Speaker 1: But his his case for the stymy was just the
Speaker 1: way he wrote it, the language and the the clarity.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's something about my era, like
Speaker 1: especially with photos the digital where you could put as
Speaker 1: many photos as you want, an article online and video
Speaker 1: you know you can show people, But especially then where
Speaker 1: you only had the words. You to be a great writer,
Speaker 1: you had to really be a great writer.
Speaker 3: Yes, And have you ever tried to play a match
Speaker 3: with Steimy's in play It's unbelievable. I've done it two
Speaker 3: or three times with guys that work for me, just
Speaker 3: to just so they understand it a little bit. But
Speaker 3: but it was it wouldn't come It usually wouldn't come
Speaker 3: into play more than like a couple of times in
Speaker 3: eighteen holes. But when it did, you know, it was
Speaker 3: rarely ever a matter of luck. It was like, you know,
Speaker 3: we're both playing a part four or part five, and
Speaker 3: we've we've kind of hit the same you know, we've
Speaker 3: kind of played it the same way. But but I've
Speaker 3: been just a little sloppier than you have. So I've
Speaker 3: left myself too far from the hole, and then I
Speaker 3: don't hit a good approach pot, and you have the
Speaker 3: chance then not to just you don't have to make
Speaker 3: your putt to beat me. You have to either make
Speaker 3: it or just leave your ball in a place that
Speaker 3: I can't make mine, which you've got a lot more
Speaker 3: chance of doing. And that's my punishment for being sloppy
Speaker 3: on the hole. You know, I can't just make us
Speaker 3: six or eight foot or and save myself from being
Speaker 3: sloppy all the way through. So it was, you know,
Speaker 3: it would anytime a steiny happened, it would almost always
Speaker 3: be to the advantage of the guy who played the
Speaker 3: hole better. Yeah, you know, and you know it just
Speaker 3: if you try to explain it to somebody now it
Speaker 3: just seems like, oh, that's completely unfair. I mean, you
Speaker 3: can't you can't block it. And obviously everybody going to
Speaker 3: stroke play as the main form of golf. It doesn't
Speaker 3: make any sense in stroke play, so you had to
Speaker 3: get you know, once stroke play became more common, it
Speaker 3: was hard to leave it in because people were so
Speaker 3: used to putting everything out and that's the game that
Speaker 3: having this element of match play just didn't make any
Speaker 3: sense to them anymore. But but I think it was clearly.
Speaker 3: It clearly rewarded the better player in match play, and
Speaker 3: that's why all the old guys thought, we don't want.
Speaker 1: To see this go the I think that stymy one
Speaker 1: of the things that it just allowed somebody. It kind
Speaker 1: of captured the essence of golf where it gave somebody
Speaker 1: one last opportunity to make a truly great shot, you know,
Speaker 1: to get a ball to stop right in somebody's line.
Speaker 3: It is not very easy to do, no, it's not.
Speaker 3: That's the other part of it.
Speaker 1: And it gave that last opportunity to hit a true,
Speaker 1: really great shot that could swing the match. That's the
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about that. Darwin in the Walker Cup
Speaker 1: against founds. I mean it was like the most like
Speaker 1: heavily favored match maybe of all time for founds. So
Speaker 1: you know, they really and I remember reading he was
Speaker 1: down three or four through four and the match turned.
Speaker 1: He stymied founds and found Founds lost like four or
Speaker 1: five for the next seven holes, and it totally had
Speaker 1: to be the I think he stymied him on the
Speaker 1: radan and and that swung the match because there's a
Speaker 1: mental aspect of it too.
Speaker 3: Oh definitely, definitely. I mean you just you think you're
Speaker 3: playing better than the guy and you just got screwed there.
Speaker 1: It's uh, stimy's are everybody should go out and play a.
Speaker 4: Match with stymies. That's it's fun.
Speaker 1: So with forward thinking ideas, is there a space to
Speaker 1: combine combine golf and environmentalism?
Speaker 3: There's space to combine golf and environmentalism. Yes, I mean
Speaker 3: there's the Golf Environment Organization based in Scotland in North Barrack.
Speaker 3: Great place for them. It has been around for about
Speaker 3: ten years now. I kind of volunteered to help them
Speaker 3: a little bit at the beginning, and I still am
Speaker 3: like an informal advisor to them. But they're like the
Speaker 3: only you know, there's there's lots of organizations in golf that,
Speaker 3: you know, preach how they're saving the environment, but most
Speaker 3: of that sounds very self serving to environmentalists and doesn't
Speaker 3: have much credibility. These guys do have credibility in the
Speaker 3: environmental community. And and I said to him right from
Speaker 3: the beginning, you know, the only way you have credibility
Speaker 3: outside of golf is if you're willing to point the
Speaker 3: finger at golf every once in a while and say,
Speaker 3: you know, pointed an example of a golf course that's
Speaker 3: really doing this wrong, instead of you know, just whitewashing
Speaker 3: everything or green washing they call it. Now, where you know,
Speaker 3: you make no matter what, no matter how bad the
Speaker 3: project is, we're going to put a good face on it.
Speaker 3: And they've done that, you know, they've they've given case
Speaker 3: studies of courses that they think really did a good job,
Speaker 3: but they've also picked on someone's that didn't do a
Speaker 3: good job. And they have the RNA's total support and backing.
Speaker 3: And they also got involved in the Ryder Cup a
Speaker 3: few years ago, and they actually did and I won't
Speaker 3: name the golf course, but they actually did pretty much
Speaker 3: rule out one country's bid for the Wrder Cup last
Speaker 3: time because they said they could not supp were at
Speaker 3: the golf course that they were going to go to
Speaker 3: as being environmentally sustainable at all, which was a big
Speaker 3: deal and will make a big impact in the country
Speaker 3: that they picked on. Like, you know, now, that is
Speaker 3: not the model for your future right there, We can't
Speaker 3: support that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it makes it makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense that that would be one of the trends that
Speaker 1: continues to emerge in the future, because obviously it's you know,
Speaker 1: a environmentalism is growing, you know growing, you know, concern
Speaker 1: of more and more people. I studied environmental science in
Speaker 1: college and even from ten years ago till now, it's
Speaker 1: you know, on the forefront of so many people's minds,
Speaker 1: and golf is an open space activity with you know,
Speaker 1: inputs into the turf that aren't environmentally friendly, but also
Speaker 1: provides like an excellent place to have a lot of
Speaker 1: environment environ meline is combined with it.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you know, we actually I think the golf
Speaker 3: community in general has done a pretty good job in
Speaker 3: the last fifteen years of like getting out in front
Speaker 3: of it with more research and and pushing back on
Speaker 3: the you know, you used to go to a permit
Speaker 3: meeting for a golf course twenty years ago and have
Speaker 3: five people in the back stand up and start shouting
Speaker 3: about pesticide use on golf courses, like, we can't have
Speaker 3: any of this in our neighborhood. And I remember Pete
Speaker 3: Ie going to a going to a meeting twenty years
Speaker 3: ago or more than that for Bully Rock in Maryland,
Speaker 3: and you know, same kind of group standing up in
Speaker 3: the back, and you know, Pete Pete looked at them
Speaker 3: and said, you know, a golf course to put out
Speaker 3: any pesticides at all, you know, you have to you
Speaker 3: have to have a superintendent who's licensed and put it out,
Speaker 3: and there's very strict laws on exactly what he can
Speaker 3: put out. Meanwhile, you go in your backyard and use
Speaker 3: five times as much per acre and nobody says boo.
Speaker 3: You know, the golf business has tried to do that responsibly,
Speaker 3: and they've done a better job of showing the rest
Speaker 3: of the world that that's what they do. And so
Speaker 3: there's not that many questions like that anymore. When I
Speaker 3: you know, I don't go to permit meetings often, but
Speaker 3: when I do, that's not the topic. You know, you
Speaker 3: might have topics about specific habitat for insects, birds, whatever,
Speaker 3: but it's less likely to be about pollution and pollution
Speaker 3: coming from golf courses because we really have addressed a
Speaker 3: lot of those things in the last twenty years, Which
Speaker 3: is not to say that there are no golf courses
Speaker 3: that do it wrong. Yeah, there still are, but it's
Speaker 3: pretty hard to get a permit if you want to
Speaker 3: do it wrong.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's there's stuff like the Posita Tiempo is
Speaker 1: a good example with the recycled water they're doing now
Speaker 1: with that treatment plant, where they're essentially taking water that's
Speaker 1: otherwise unusable and making it where they can at least
Speaker 1: irrigate the golf course.
Speaker 3: With it, right, And that was really cool because they
Speaker 3: wound up getting an agreement to take the water from
Speaker 3: the neighboring town. I mean, you know, usually the politics
Speaker 3: of those things are all you know, inside our little borders.
Speaker 3: And you know, they had no source of water from
Speaker 3: Santa Cruz because they're way up the hill from Santa
Speaker 3: Cruz and it made zero sense to pump the water
Speaker 3: all the way up there, so they had no supply,
Speaker 3: and they you know, they basically looked across the highway
Speaker 3: at the at the little community next door that like
Speaker 3: hadn't you know, it was a small place and they
Speaker 3: had no they had no outlet for their treated water.
Speaker 3: They were just letting it go downhill to the ocean.
Speaker 3: And it's like, hey, could we use some of your water.
Speaker 1: That's that's a very cool and especially given the spot,
Speaker 1: you know, with a with the water restriction to California,
Speaker 1: a perfect example of environmentalism working with golf there. Yes,
Speaker 1: Adam Grove, this is a good question.
Speaker 4: I think that I struggle with this sometimes.
Speaker 1: There are always a lot of discussions about strategy and golf,
Speaker 1: but how does strategy and golf course architecture apply to
Speaker 1: players who have very little control over where their golf
Speaker 1: ball goes off the tee and on their approach shots.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I've heard that critique before that eighty or
Speaker 3: ninety percent of golfers, including me, aren't good enough to
Speaker 3: play the course strategically, and and I don't really, I
Speaker 3: don't think that's true. You know, it may be true
Speaker 3: that I don't hit my drive to the side of
Speaker 3: the fair way that I want to be on as
Speaker 3: consistently as a really good player does or consistently as
Speaker 3: you do. But that doesn't mean that I can't help
Speaker 3: myself as I go around the golf course. I mean
Speaker 3: I play with people all the time that you know.
Speaker 3: Partly it comes from my brief stint as a caddie
Speaker 3: and partly because I know my way around a golf
Speaker 3: course pretty well. But you know, I'll play with people
Speaker 3: a lot and they'll play five shots better than they
Speaker 3: normally do just because I'll tell them a couple of times.
Speaker 3: You know, just just aim right at the green. Make
Speaker 3: sure you make sure you stay right at this flag,
Speaker 3: because there's there's certain holes where that makes a ton
Speaker 3: of difference. And it's not always you know a lot
Speaker 3: of golfers. If you look in a book about strategy
Speaker 3: on golf course architecture, it's all about what he's talking about,
Speaker 3: hitting the t shot to the right side or taking
Speaker 3: on a bunker in order to get a better angle
Speaker 3: to the green. But to me, where it shows up
Speaker 3: much more in the scoring is on the second shot
Speaker 3: and where you miss the green. If you miss it.
Speaker 3: You know, most good golf courses, there's a best place
Speaker 3: around the green to miss, and there's a worst, and
Speaker 3: it's a shot difference every time. You know, if you
Speaker 3: finish below the hall at Augusta and not in a
Speaker 3: water hazard, you've got a birdie pot and you should
Speaker 3: make par. And if you hit it on the high
Speaker 3: side of the green, you're just desperately trying to two
Speaker 3: putt for par. And you know, if you're not a
Speaker 3: tour pro, you're gonna make bogie like nine times out
Speaker 3: of ten. So you know, that's worth like six shots
Speaker 3: around to the average guy if he just figures out
Speaker 3: which side to miss on and play is for there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I grew up catting my whole life, and
Speaker 1: you know, getting people into the right places where they
Speaker 1: where it takes the big number out of play is
Speaker 1: half the battle, you know, it's it and takes the
Speaker 1: real risk, like you know, a shot that they have,
Speaker 1: you know, three times as much opportunity to get up
Speaker 1: and down that The strategy is still like kind of
Speaker 1: the same, right, It's just it's just a different, you know,
Speaker 1: a different How can how can I give myself a
Speaker 1: really good chance of making par if you don't have
Speaker 1: that good of control and if you hit a really
Speaker 1: great one, you got a birdie putt and.
Speaker 3: One of the main things I learned from p Die,
Speaker 3: and then it was really reinforced from the little bit
Speaker 3: of time I spent with Jack Nicholas at Sabonic was
Speaker 3: how conservatively the pros play exactly.
Speaker 4: That's what people don't understand.
Speaker 3: No, people look at the pros and think they can
Speaker 3: just fire at the pins all day and that's and
Speaker 3: that's true, but that's true once they've gotten themselves in
Speaker 3: position and not made a mistake. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: now it's since Mark Brody and some of those other
Speaker 3: guys wrote about it. It's just the ironclad law. You know,
Speaker 3: if there's a hazard with a penalty stroke involved, you're
Speaker 3: aiming thirty five forty yards away from that, no matter what.
Speaker 3: I mean. You know, even if you're at the edge
Speaker 3: of the trees on the other side, even you could
Speaker 3: be aiming to miss the fairway entirely, just to take
Speaker 3: that out of play, because half the time you'll you'll
Speaker 3: wind up missing between where you aimed and the water
Speaker 3: in the fairway. The other half you're playing out of
Speaker 3: the rough and it might be a little harder, but
Speaker 3: you took double out of the hole. And you know
Speaker 3: it used to drive Pete crazy. How conservative the pros were,
Speaker 3: but you know, he knew that he understood it well
Speaker 3: enough that he tried to use it to their disadvantage. Like,
Speaker 3: the more conservatively you play on this t shot, the
Speaker 3: harder this second shot is going to be. So you know,
Speaker 3: if you know, either if the player just has more
Speaker 3: guts that he can keep pulling off the drive closer
Speaker 3: to the water, or if he's that much better of
Speaker 3: a driver of the ball that you know he can
Speaker 3: aim twenty five yards left of the water instead of
Speaker 3: thirty five. Either one of those gives them a big advantage.
Speaker 3: But you know, the players now are also convinced by
Speaker 3: the data that this is the right way to play
Speaker 3: the golf course that very few of them, even on
Speaker 3: their best week, and even when they're here and it's pure,
Speaker 3: they're still aiming at the same spot and it's kind
Speaker 3: of costing them little shaves of a stroke here and
Speaker 3: there throughout. You know, if they were confident enough to
Speaker 3: aim five yards closer to the water than the other
Speaker 3: guy and really know that they're not going to hit
Speaker 3: in the water that week, it'd make a big difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's almost like if they understand when they're having
Speaker 1: their outlier performances. Yeah, and when they're having when they're
Speaker 1: having their outlier performances on the other end.
Speaker 3: Or if they're just better. I mean, you know, Tiger
Speaker 3: Woods clearly was better with his irons for years. And
Speaker 3: that's you know, if you think of how how the
Speaker 3: players plot their second shots on a golf course, a
Speaker 3: severe golf course like Augusta, where it really matters if
Speaker 3: you're above the pin or below, you know, they're kind
Speaker 3: of we'll take an extreme example. You know, say there's
Speaker 3: a haul where you know, if if Tiger and player
Speaker 3: B were both hitting eight iron into a green, Tiger
Speaker 3: at his best was probably hitting that shot within ten
Speaker 3: feet of where he aimed nearly all the time, and
Speaker 3: the other guy maybe fifteen or twenty feet because he's
Speaker 3: just not that good. You know. That means Tiger could
Speaker 3: aim five or ten feet below the holl without ever
Speaker 3: worrying about getting above the hole, and the other guy
Speaker 3: had to aim twenty feet below the hole. And there's
Speaker 3: you know, there's lots of greens in Augusta that there's
Speaker 3: not that much space. You know, you're playing twelve or
Speaker 3: thirteen and the pins toward the front, you can't aim
Speaker 3: twenty feet short of the pin, that's the water. So
Speaker 3: you you know, you pretty much just have to take
Speaker 3: your medicine, aim for the hole, wind up above the
Speaker 3: hole too much of the time, and it costs you
Speaker 3: big time, you know. So you know, having that tighter
Speaker 3: circle to aim with is a huge advantage if you
Speaker 3: understand exactly how big your circle really is, and it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's not just like what the tour average is.
Speaker 3: It's what your average is, and you're better than other
Speaker 3: guys at that. That's the advantage that you should be
Speaker 3: trying to press. And Tiger understood that completely with or
Speaker 3: without any book telling him how to do it. He
Speaker 3: just he just knew what where his advantages were and
Speaker 3: he macs that out in his strategy of playing golf.
Speaker 4: And it also kind of.
Speaker 1: Puts forth the idea of having more contour and greens
Speaker 1: that because that the circles that the great shots get
Speaker 1: more separated from the average ones.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, just the fact, you know, we always talk
Speaker 3: about players aiming at the hole. You know, if you
Speaker 3: let if Tiger is that good to aim, you know,
Speaker 3: if his circle is ten feet around and the green
Speaker 3: is flat and he's just aiming right at the hul
Speaker 3: because it doesn't matter what side he misses on, he's
Speaker 3: going to have a five foot pot a lot of
Speaker 3: the time. If the green has contour and it's significantly
Speaker 3: different to be above the flag than below, then you
Speaker 3: know he's you know, the top end of his circle
Speaker 3: is at the flag, the middle of it's five feet away,
Speaker 3: the bottom of its ten feet away, and now he's
Speaker 3: leaving himself five to ten feet a lot of the time,
Speaker 3: and he's not making nearly as many birdies. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the key to like keeping scoring on the tour
Speaker 3: a little higher is you know, not letting guys aim
Speaker 3: right at the flag. But like we talked about earlier,
Speaker 3: the tour is just the opposite of that. They want
Speaker 3: the pin placements flat and they don't want there to
Speaker 3: be a difference between missing above the hole and below
Speaker 3: the hole. That's what that whole two percent slope rule
Speaker 3: is about.
Speaker 4: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I've thought about this a ton, and you know, you
Speaker 1: see a lot of times when when it's wet, you
Speaker 1: get these really bunched leaderboards and there's seven guys on
Speaker 1: the back, nine within one shot in the lead. And
Speaker 1: in a way, the tour is an entertainment product, and
Speaker 1: that is more entertaining than the runaway winds.
Speaker 4: But the runaway wins are more more.
Speaker 1: They are more representative of great performances and courses that
Speaker 1: have allowed great performances to separate themselves.
Speaker 3: Sure, but you know I mean, and yes, the tour
Speaker 3: does think of itself as an entertainment product. But also
Speaker 3: the sponsors think about they want people to stay tuned
Speaker 3: and watch the commercials, so they don't want it to
Speaker 3: become a runaway win. And they especially don't want it
Speaker 3: to become a runaway win for a player that you've
Speaker 3: never heard of, that you're not going to stick around
Speaker 3: to the end and watch that, you know, they want
Speaker 3: they want multiple guys within still having a shot at it,
Speaker 3: because maybe at least there's one or two guys in
Speaker 3: that pack of guys that you'll want to watch.
Speaker 1: It's kind of one of the brilliant things with a
Speaker 1: gust of the way it finishes when the Nines got
Speaker 1: flipped is that there's all those scoring holes. You know,
Speaker 1: you got thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, You have all these scoring holes.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times the somebody goes through that
Speaker 1: stretch and it looks like they're in a great spot,
Speaker 1: but all the leaders haven't got through it. So it
Speaker 1: makes the tournament feel closer than it actually is.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. When the leaders are bogeying ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 3: at the same time the guys who are two shots
Speaker 3: behind or making birdie and eagle on fifteen and sixteen,
Speaker 3: it looks like, oh my god, the whole leader board
Speaker 3: is going to turn over. But then the leader then
Speaker 3: the guys who are leading get to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 3: and they get those shots back, you know, unless they
Speaker 3: you know, occasionally they do just collapse after, you know,
Speaker 3: they feel like they're choking it away and they see
Speaker 3: how the leader board is changing, and they just think
Speaker 3: they've thrown the tournament away and they're not patient enough
Speaker 3: to go, yeah, I still got birdie holes coming up.
Speaker 1: It's like the complete opposite of what we'll see at Wingfoot,
Speaker 1: where like the last four everybody's just holding on for
Speaker 1: dear life.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like if you post a number, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting you know, and something that you could think about
Speaker 1: when you're laying actually routing a golf course, you know,
Speaker 1: is how that clothes would if it was you know,
Speaker 1: if it promoted something. It's almost like a deception deception
Speaker 1: way you could just sive a player up with a hole.
Speaker 1: You could deceive a tournament with the way the finishes.
Speaker 3: And we that's one of the things Brooks Kepka and
Speaker 3: I talked a lot about for Memorial Park. I mean,
Speaker 3: he was very interested in the idea of having a
Speaker 3: really exciting finish and having you know, not just thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 3: but nearly all the way to the end. The eighteenth
Speaker 3: is a really tough part four, but fourteen's a very
Speaker 3: short par five, and fifteen is a short part three
Speaker 3: that you could make a big number on, but you
Speaker 3: could also make two and sixteen's ap par five that's
Speaker 3: a real gambling hole, and seventeen's is short part four
Speaker 3: that's a real gambling hole, And you could have big
Speaker 3: changes on the leader board really fast, you know, both
Speaker 3: in front of you that you have to react to,
Speaker 3: but also when you get there. You could make up
Speaker 3: a lot of shots near the end. And you know,
Speaker 3: Brooks thought that was important that that most tour courses
Speaker 3: don't really have that. They're just kind of you know,
Speaker 3: every hole is about the same difficulty in relation to
Speaker 3: par so you don't get it's not that exciting to watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Stawgrass would be another example, coming down that stretch.
Speaker 3: I was absolutely focused on that. And you know when
Speaker 3: we were talking about when I was working on the
Speaker 3: plans for the for the stadium course at PGA West,
Speaker 3: you know, Pete was talking about that concept and I
Speaker 3: didn't really understand. I was trying to understand what he meant,
Speaker 3: and I finally said, so, do you mean like a
Speaker 3: hole where you could have a three shot swing on
Speaker 3: a hole where you know, one guy can make birdie,
Speaker 3: but if if the other guy messes up, you can
Speaker 3: make a double. And Pete was like, exactly, He's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it could also be eagle and bogie or
Speaker 3: birdie and double. But if you've got holes where they're
Speaker 3: that much potential for the thing to turn over, that's
Speaker 3: way more exciting and the players are way more nervous
Speaker 3: than if it's just everybody's gonna make either par or
Speaker 3: boge here.
Speaker 1: Is there any kind of core outside of just water
Speaker 1: that you can think of that promotes that feel.
Speaker 3: Where well, when I would get asked to make an
Speaker 3: eclectic of eighteen holes best holes from around the world,
Speaker 3: One of the ones I used to put in a
Speaker 3: lot was the eighteenth that roll Lithum, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's a hole where it's not a really long par four,
Speaker 3: but it's a difficult drive between deadly pot bunkers, and
Speaker 3: if you drive it in the if you drive it
Speaker 3: in one of the pot bunkers, you're going to struggle
Speaker 3: to make par and you can make bogie or double
Speaker 3: pretty easily. And yet if you hit a good drive
Speaker 3: in between all those bunkers, then you're looking at wedge
Speaker 3: to the green and you've got a decent chance of
Speaker 3: making birdie. And that hole has certainly cost several guys
Speaker 3: the Open, most recently Adam Scott. I think driving it
Speaker 3: in one of those bunkers on the eighteenth hall, you know,
Speaker 3: there's not a course in the States that has bunkers
Speaker 3: anywhere near that severe. So you don't you just don't
Speaker 3: see you You only see it on US tournaments when
Speaker 3: there's water in play, and that's why Pete put a
Speaker 3: lot of water in play on some of his golf courses.