Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a brid egg Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, brid Egg, Frida Egg, bride Egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the hump course.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name
Speaker 2: is Garrett Morrison, and today we have our final installment
Speaker 2: of our Bandon Deep Dive series. We're focusing on Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 2: This is a long awaited last piece of this series,
Speaker 2: but of course I'm here with Andy Johnson to discuss
Speaker 2: Bandon Dunes. How you doing, Andy, I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: I'm you know. I'm excited that this series is going
Speaker 1: to be done. I will have to find a hope
Speaker 1: for it on the website where it's easily accessible. But
Speaker 1: if you haven't, if you scroll through the back catalog,
Speaker 1: we've broken down every other eighteen hole golf course at
Speaker 1: Bandon and it is wonderful to get to the final
Speaker 1: of our installments. The first golf course at Bandon. Bandon
Speaker 1: Dune's the namesake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've gone in reverse chronological order, so we started
Speaker 2: with Sheep Ranch and now we've arrived at Bandon dune'es
Speaker 2: the og course at the resort. It opened in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. It was designed by David McLay Kidd and
Speaker 2: it met with immediate acclaim. It still is the most
Speaker 2: popular course at the resort. Right.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. I was recently playing with somebody who
Speaker 1: brought up Bandon Dunes. They're like, you know, band It's
Speaker 1: just my favorite course there. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, and he went on
Speaker 1: and he goes, you know, I'll never forget in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine driving up you know that he was in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, driving up to Bandon and playing that course
Speaker 1: for the first time, and it was truly, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was. He talked about how he played the
Speaker 1: Reese Jones course that Sandy whatever is down the road.
Speaker 2: There's a yeah, there's a rest Jones course in Florence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you talked about how they played Florence Golf
Speaker 1: Links first and he was like, what is this And
Speaker 1: then they went to Bandon Dunes and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is truly spectacular golf on like,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way It brought a different type
Speaker 1: of golf to the American scene, and obviously that's been
Speaker 1: well documented, but this was a really a culture changing
Speaker 1: golf course for America.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's it's incredibly important. Now we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about that, but we're also going to talk about the
Speaker 2: architecture of Bandon Dunes in a way that people might
Speaker 2: not be used to. I think that people might not
Speaker 2: get completely what they expect from this podcast. We are
Speaker 2: going to be critical of this course in a way
Speaker 2: that maybe not many people have been so far. You
Speaker 2: know that there's there's criticism of anything out there, you
Speaker 2: can find it anywhere, but generally the reviews of Bandon
Speaker 2: Dunes are pretty glowing, and I think we might have
Speaker 2: some more negative things to say than most people would.
Speaker 2: But before we get into that, I want to just
Speaker 2: make clear the level of course we're talking about here
Speaker 2: and the level of course that exists at the Bandon
Speaker 2: Dunes Resort in general. Bandon Dunes. This course is spectacular, yes,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure it was absolutely stunning in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine and it's still remarkable today. And so I want
Speaker 2: to kind of set a baseline here. We're talking about
Speaker 2: a truly remarkable golf course.
Speaker 1: I agree. You know, when you're talking about the greatest
Speaker 1: public golf courses in America, you know, it's definitely on
Speaker 1: the list of greatest public golf courses in America. You know,
Speaker 1: where I would put it is far far lower than
Speaker 1: a lot of other people would When you get past
Speaker 1: just like it's golf on the ocean and start to
Speaker 1: look at some of the maybe some of the flaws,
Speaker 1: I think it kind of knocks it down some pegs,
Speaker 1: and especially when you compare it to the other golf
Speaker 1: courses of the resort. And I think it's important to note, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a very inexperienced architect going to
Speaker 1: build a golf course, and it was, as you've illuminated
Speaker 1: a few times, that this was a transition period. And
Speaker 1: what Banded Dunes to me is is it's kind of
Speaker 1: stuck between two eras. And I don't want to feel
Speaker 1: like I'm bashing it, but it is somewhat of a
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties golf course on the coast of Oregon. It
Speaker 1: is not a fully minimalist experience that you would see
Speaker 1: at the other courses where the features of the golf
Speaker 1: course really blend in with the nature around it. It
Speaker 1: is a really stark contrast when you look at pictures
Speaker 1: of Abandoned Dune's next to Pacific Dunes. In that corner
Speaker 1: where the eleventh hole Pacific Dunes is and the sixth
Speaker 1: hole Abandoned Dunes is. You see the man made artificiality
Speaker 1: of Bandon dunees really pop when you see those that
Speaker 1: golf course right next to it, and I think, like,
Speaker 1: this is beyond just the man made features. I think
Speaker 1: design wise it is a significant downgrade from the other
Speaker 1: golf courses at the resort.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So first I think we should set the scene
Speaker 2: for how this course was designed, who was designed by,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't just David McLay Kidd being the sole
Speaker 2: voice in the room here. This was Mike Kaiser's project
Speaker 2: and Jimmy Kidd and Jimmy Kid. Jimmy Kidd, David Kidd's father,
Speaker 2: who was the director of agronomy at Glenn Eagles in Scotland,
Speaker 2: was especially in the early stages of this project. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of voices in the room. Building this
Speaker 2: course was a massive risk. A lot of people were
Speaker 2: saying that Mike Kaiser should not do this, that This
Speaker 2: was a bad idea. Nobody had really done anything like
Speaker 2: it before. There had been sand Hills, but that's a
Speaker 2: private club, and so there was some safety in that.
Speaker 2: You knew that people were going to be paying a
Speaker 2: lot to be part of the club, and so you
Speaker 2: didn't need a lot of business to go there. You
Speaker 2: don't need people playing sand Hills dawn to dusk every day.
Speaker 2: Mike Kaiser needed people to show up to Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 2: This was a huge risk because it's so remote.
Speaker 1: And the idea of resorts were being close to metropolitan
Speaker 1: areas at the time. You know, like if you think
Speaker 1: about resorts in the van, like Barton Springs or Barton
Speaker 1: Creek in Austin would be a great example. Like it's
Speaker 1: just outside Austin. That's like somewhat of a contemporary of
Speaker 1: this resort. You know. The ideology was to build the
Speaker 1: resources where people could easily get to them. In the
Speaker 1: case of Banded Dunes, this is more of a truly
Speaker 1: a field of dreams mentality that is now like almost
Speaker 1: is the norm. What Mike Kaiser did was he went
Speaker 1: and found a great piece of land and built a
Speaker 1: golf course on it. That's now the riding mentality of
Speaker 1: golf courses. It almost the first question when a new
Speaker 1: course is being built is is it on sand? You know?
Speaker 1: And this is what Mike Kaiser really popularized, and obviously
Speaker 1: sand Hills was at the origin of this.
Speaker 2: I can't emphasize this enough. In the late nineties, nobody
Speaker 2: knew whether this would work, and so I think on
Speaker 2: this project, on this build, Mike Kaiser had to do
Speaker 2: a number of things to make it as safe as possible. Now,
Speaker 2: hiring David Kidd might not have been the safest move,
Speaker 2: you know, wasn't the safest thing that he possibly could
Speaker 2: have done. The safest thing that he possibly could have
Speaker 2: done would have been a higher.
Speaker 1: J Nicholas or Tom Fazio or Pete die I'm so.
Speaker 2: Glad that he didn't do that, because the course would
Speaker 2: have turned out really different. It wouldn't have been as natural.
Speaker 2: The good characteristics of Bandon Dunes that exist now might
Speaker 2: not have been there because it would have been enormously
Speaker 2: more conventional if one of those designers had gotten a
Speaker 2: hold of this piece of property, I think, and so
Speaker 2: I'm glad that he took a risk on David Kidd.
Speaker 2: But in a way hiring David Kidd was less risky
Speaker 2: than hiring Tom Doak would have been, and for this reason,
Speaker 2: Mike Kaiser knew that Kidd at this time was a
Speaker 2: young you know, he was in his late twenties when
Speaker 2: he was hired, and he was in his early thirties
Speaker 2: when they were building this course. He was young and inexperienced,
Speaker 2: and Mike Kaiser figured that he could influence him, that
Speaker 2: he would have a lot of control over the design
Speaker 2: process in a way that he wouldn't if he had
Speaker 2: brought in Tom Doak to do the project. So hiring
Speaker 2: David Kid, yes, he was interested in the fact that
Speaker 2: David is Scottish. He was interested in bringing a new
Speaker 2: designer and making a splash with a kind of unknown architect.
Speaker 2: But he also believed that he could influence the design
Speaker 2: process a bit more if he had a less experienced
Speaker 2: architect on the scene. And indeed what happened was that
Speaker 2: Kaiser was very involved in the design process, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's remained involved in the design processes of the other courses,
Speaker 2: just not quite as much as he was for this
Speaker 2: first one. And Mike Kaiser also brought in a variety
Speaker 2: of people that he knew well and trusted at the time,
Speaker 2: including the general contractor for this project, Serviscape, which was
Speaker 2: run by a man named Peter Sinott. Peter Sinnott, I'm
Speaker 2: not exactly sure how to pronounce his name, but Serviscape
Speaker 2: is a well established contractor in the golf business. This
Speaker 2: wasn't a kind of David Kids situation where there was
Speaker 2: as an unknown contractor coming in. No, this was a
Speaker 2: company that had done a bunch of golf course projects.
Speaker 2: Kaiser also brought in his friends from the golf industry
Speaker 2: and outside the golf industry to advise on the project,
Speaker 2: and a lot of aspects of the course were sort
Speaker 2: of designed by committee. Now is this a David Kid course. Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think ultimately he did design this course, but there
Speaker 2: were a lot of voices involved in the project, and
Speaker 2: often what those voices were doing were pushing for more
Speaker 2: conventional elements to be introduced to the golf course. And
Speaker 2: I think that that in part explains why we get
Speaker 2: the course we get where there are some elements of
Speaker 2: what came next in golf architecture. There's natural landscapes, the dunes.
Speaker 2: A lot of the dunes were left alone. There's some
Speaker 2: bunkers in the middle of fairways. There's some natural undulations
Speaker 2: in the middle of a lot of the fairway. The
Speaker 2: greens are big, and a lot of them are wild.
Speaker 2: A lot of this stuff would become more popular later
Speaker 2: on and was kind of boundary pushing at the time.
Speaker 2: But then you also have some parts of bandon dunes
Speaker 2: that would have been more recognizable to somebody who had
Speaker 2: been to a lot of golf resorts in the nineties.
Speaker 2: You had some artificial mounding around greens, and on the
Speaker 2: sides of certain fairways, you have returning nines. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't have a lot of the quirk and strangeness
Speaker 2: that characterizes courses like Pacific Dunes and bandoned trails. That's
Speaker 2: just not there. And I think that a lot of
Speaker 2: that is because Mike Kaiser designed this kind of team
Speaker 2: that was pushing for the course to be popular.
Speaker 1: And I think, obviously if you look back on it, it
Speaker 1: was successful. What they did was uberly successful. This is
Speaker 1: one of the most successful golf courses and golf really
Speaker 1: when you think about it, because it led to more
Speaker 1: golf courses being built there and the greatest golf resort
Speaker 1: in America. This was the start of it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that you can nitpick and
Speaker 1: critique about Banded Dunes, and I have my opinion and
Speaker 1: other people have their opinions, and it doesn't make one
Speaker 1: person right or wrong. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: in terms of a golf course development project, this was
Speaker 1: a grand slam project. Now did it yield a great
Speaker 1: golf course, a truly iconic golf course? I would say no.
Speaker 1: You know, I think in terms of you know, some
Speaker 1: of the stuff is kind of dumbed down there, and
Speaker 1: some of this stuff is is it's a huge letdown
Speaker 1: in comparison to a lot of the other experiences that
Speaker 1: you have out at Bandoned Dunes in my opinion. Now,
Speaker 1: everybody has their opinion, as I've said, and they are
Speaker 1: going to feel there are certain ways about the golf course.
Speaker 1: But to me, this is the golf course I would skip.
Speaker 1: If I was resented with three days there and I
Speaker 1: couldn't play all the golf courses, this is the one
Speaker 1: that I would skip. This is the one that I
Speaker 1: don't really feel a need to play again. Of all
Speaker 1: of them, I would spend my time playing other places.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you dive into why. I think
Speaker 1: that it's got the least complexity in its design, it's
Speaker 1: also got the most flaws, and I think there are
Speaker 1: things that it does very well. It has some standout
Speaker 1: holes that I would put near the top of the
Speaker 1: whole greatest holes at Bandon Dunes. I think the fifth
Speaker 1: is a great example of one of the best holes
Speaker 1: at Bandon Dunes. The seventeenth to me, sticks out as
Speaker 1: one of the best holes at Bandon Dunes. Those are
Speaker 1: two of the best part fours at Bandon Dunes, and
Speaker 1: that is a tough list to be on. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, there are some huge letdowns there. I
Speaker 1: think the start of Banded Dunes is by far the
Speaker 1: weakest start. You know, the first hole is kind of
Speaker 1: a nothing burger. The second hole is not really anything
Speaker 1: that is exciting, and it plays up away, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of one of the big things that you know,
Speaker 1: people have heard me talk about these before, but you're
Speaker 1: sitting on sand and there are just catch basins everywhere
Speaker 1: where your ball ends up in. You know, the last
Speaker 1: time I was there, the first two holes, I was
Speaker 1: in catch basins and it's just like, this isn't an
Speaker 1: abandoned Dune's experience when you play the other four courses
Speaker 1: that you preponderance of these. The third hole is fine,
Speaker 1: it's a fine hole, but by the time you get
Speaker 1: to four, you've played three of the most average holes
Speaker 1: at the resort. That is unlike any other start out there.
Speaker 1: In the first three holes, all of those golf courses
Speaker 1: make a huge impression on you. The fourth hole, I'm
Speaker 1: not a fan of. People say it's one of the
Speaker 1: greatest part four us in the world. I think it's
Speaker 1: super awkward off the tee. The containment mounting out down
Speaker 1: the left side that's artificially built is really you know,
Speaker 1: when you compare it to the dunes the natural dunes
Speaker 1: to the right just looks very, very fake. And I
Speaker 1: think it's just a It's a really boring t shot
Speaker 1: in a way, because you know, you just lay back.
Speaker 1: You could push driver, but there's not really a place
Speaker 1: to hit it.
Speaker 2: You could you could hit it over the dog leg
Speaker 2: on the right. Yeah, if the wind is right. I
Speaker 2: think that's the option that's supposed to be available, But
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that there is a huge reward for
Speaker 2: that risk, because that's a really risky play if you
Speaker 2: push it a little right, you're you're in some tall grass,
Speaker 2: and but the fairway is really really wide and generous
Speaker 2: in the place that is safest to play to. So
Speaker 2: I think most people just end up aiming there and
Speaker 2: then taking the approach from there. The approach from there
Speaker 2: isn't anything particularly super difficult unless the wind is like
Speaker 2: directly against you or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so in the first four holes, like I think,
Speaker 1: you get out to the ocean and it's a spectacular view.
Speaker 1: When you turn the corner on the fore, it's a
Speaker 1: great reveal. I'm not debating that.
Speaker 2: And I think I don't think that should be underestimated.
Speaker 2: You know, the impact of that reveal when you turn
Speaker 2: the corner and face the ocean. That's a great moment.
Speaker 2: And I think that that has to be to the
Speaker 2: hole's credit to a degree. But I think that the
Speaker 2: impact of that moment is such that people may not
Speaker 2: pay attention, particularly to the strategy of the whole, which
Speaker 2: I agree with you, I don't think it quite works.
Speaker 1: The next thing that kind of gets at me, and
Speaker 1: we can get to this, is that this is a
Speaker 1: walking only golf course and it is by far the
Speaker 1: worst walk at Banded dunes. It has the least connectivity.
Speaker 1: I think banded Trails is one that has to traverse
Speaker 1: difficult ground. But the walks are very esthetically pleasing and
Speaker 1: interesting in their own way. As we talked about on
Speaker 1: the Banded Trails podcast, these walks are very EVI and
Speaker 1: they're very like clear you're usually working walking down like
Speaker 1: a cart path and like a barren landscape. And I
Speaker 1: think like a perfect example of this is the sixth hole,
Speaker 1: which is probably my least favorite hole on property. It's
Speaker 1: obviously it occupies a absolutely stunning part of the property.
Speaker 1: And this is where as I talked about the the
Speaker 1: differences in construction, mentality and style really are are are
Speaker 1: glaring between Bandoned Dunes and the other the other courses
Speaker 1: and its neighbor Pacific Dunes. This is a This is
Speaker 1: a par three right along the coast. It was late,
Speaker 1: a late add to the routing, and it makes it
Speaker 1: kind of clunky. My complaint with it is like why
Speaker 1: isn't the green just on the ground. Why it's a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful setting and the green's propped up, it's built up,
Speaker 1: and everything runs off on all the sides, when you
Speaker 1: could have just put the green on the ground on
Speaker 1: the cliff, and it would it just been fine. And
Speaker 1: there's there's beautiful landscape and dunes right around it, and
Speaker 1: there's just no reason for it to be propped up.
Speaker 1: And it looks like when you look at it, it
Speaker 1: looks like a pimple on this beautiful landscape. It's this,
Speaker 1: it's the most gorgeous face in the world, and it's
Speaker 1: got this this like ZiT popping out of the land.
Speaker 1: And to me, like, I can't unsee it. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure a lot of people love this
Speaker 1: golf hole. But then to make matters worse, you play
Speaker 1: the hole and you walk one hundred and sixty yards
Speaker 1: back after you play it to the seventh teeth.
Speaker 2: Well, you essentially walk right back to the fifth green. Yes,
Speaker 2: you play it. You play the hole, and then you
Speaker 2: then you walk back over it.
Speaker 1: Now, like to me, if the golf course went five
Speaker 1: and then to seven, one of my favorite holes on
Speaker 1: the course, eight, one of my favorite holes on the course,
Speaker 1: that three hole stretch might be the best three hole
Speaker 1: stretch on the golf course. And instead you have this
Speaker 1: part three that's kind of hemmed in there that adds
Speaker 1: to a clunky walk, right, because then the eighth green
Speaker 1: to the ninth T terrible walk. You know, there's the
Speaker 1: third green to the fourth T is not a great walk.
Speaker 1: Like there are all these bad walks within the first
Speaker 1: nine holes, and you know, I think the ninth hole
Speaker 1: is pretty average. I think ten to eleven are Ten's
Speaker 1: a great hole. Eleven okay, But it goes through this
Speaker 1: stretch of really great holes mixed in with clunkers, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the walks are very poor. So when
Speaker 1: you talk about the whole story of the round and
Speaker 1: the way that the golf course fits together, it's very clunky.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to that five six seven
Speaker 2: sequence that you were talking about. Now. The story behind
Speaker 2: the addition of those holes is that originally the band
Speaker 2: in Dune's property was pretty constricted, and the front nine
Speaker 2: had some issues with parallel fairways like back in fourth routing.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of wedged in there, whereas the
Speaker 2: back nine always kind of worked, you know, and the
Speaker 2: back nine today I think is definitely better. But what
Speaker 2: really happened there is that the additional property that they
Speaker 2: were able to purchase essentially midway through the design process,
Speaker 2: allowed them to add five six and seven. They didn't
Speaker 2: have those holes before, and it allowed them to push
Speaker 2: the fourth green out to the cliffs. So clearly that
Speaker 2: additional property was huge. But where I think the mistake
Speaker 2: happened is that they decided to put that sixth hole in.
Speaker 2: They might have gotten a little bit greedy and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we have this extra bit of coastline. We can put
Speaker 2: a par three there and then we can kind of
Speaker 2: come back inland. Where I think what they probably should
Speaker 2: have done when they got that extra property is, yeah,
Speaker 2: push that fourth green out to the cliffs. Design that
Speaker 2: fifth hole, which, as you say is is a beautiful hole.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the strategy totally works there. This is
Speaker 2: kind of a sidebar. There's not enough room on the
Speaker 2: left in my opinion. There's there's like these center line
Speaker 2: kind of gnarly hazards, and I don't think there's any
Speaker 2: reason to play left there because it's so narrow, and
Speaker 2: that's like the risky option, and I wish there were
Speaker 2: just a little more rooms so that you were more
Speaker 2: tempted to go out there. As it is, I think
Speaker 2: you play right all day. I'm not sure there's any
Speaker 2: reason not to play right there. But that's again just
Speaker 2: a parenthetical. All right, they decided to use that extra
Speaker 2: coastline for six. I think what they should have done
Speaker 2: is just, yeah, have that fifth hole, but then turn
Speaker 2: inland for the seventh hole. Don't get greedy, don't use
Speaker 2: that extra coastline and then have to walk back. We
Speaker 2: don't need that hole because behind seven and eight T,
Speaker 2: behind seven green and eight T. If my recollection is right,
Speaker 2: there's some really cool dunesland.
Speaker 1: Back there, dramatic too big, yeah, huge.
Speaker 2: And there's no golf holes there. I think you probably
Speaker 2: could have put a fantastic par three back there and
Speaker 2: have that sequence be par four, fifth, par four, what
Speaker 2: is now the seventh, but then the sixth, par three,
Speaker 2: seventh back in those dunes, make a wonderful little doneesy
Speaker 2: lynxy par three and then play eight back how you
Speaker 2: have it. Nine has issues as a golf hole, but
Speaker 2: they don't have anything to do with the way the
Speaker 2: land is used. It has more to do with the
Speaker 2: design and the shaping. I think that would have been
Speaker 2: a more effective routing.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Cripple's nine too, is that
Speaker 1: you know it plays back to the most popular area
Speaker 1: of the resort, so you know, there have been things
Speaker 1: that have been added to the ninth hole to corrale balls,
Speaker 1: keep them from rolling into the putty green, rolling into
Speaker 1: the clubhouse. Like all. You know that returning nine. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the only course on property with a returning ninth hole, and.
Speaker 2: It has returning nine s because again, that's a conventional
Speaker 2: element that they felt they needed to have because they
Speaker 2: were taking enough risks already they couldn't manage that extra
Speaker 2: risk of having a debut flagship course that didn't have
Speaker 2: returning ninees.
Speaker 1: So I think one of the things, though, is like
Speaker 1: one of the things that having the returning nine does
Speaker 1: for the resort is it's uber popular late night nine
Speaker 1: hole play is the front nine at Banded Dunes because
Speaker 1: you're able to play nine holes. You can get in
Speaker 1: at four o'clock or five o'clock check in and go
Speaker 1: play nine holes and everybody feels like you got the
Speaker 1: trip off to start right Like that is one of
Speaker 1: the things that having one course that has returning nine
Speaker 1: does is that's a very very popular late night golf option.
Speaker 2: It serves the resort in a really specific and useful way,
Speaker 2: and so you can't come down too hard on it.
Speaker 2: For that. But you were just saying before there are
Speaker 2: stretches of holes that kind of don't quite work as
Speaker 2: well as other stretches. Did you finish that thought? Do
Speaker 2: you have anything more to say about the back nine now?
Speaker 2: I think the back nine is a lot more consistent
Speaker 2: than the front nine.
Speaker 1: Personally, it is a lot more consistent. I think, like, again,
Speaker 1: there you see some like I'll never forget when I
Speaker 1: saw the thirteenth fairway, I was just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know, like this is this is stunning. You know,
Speaker 1: I think the par three's on the back nine are
Speaker 1: a little bit of a letdown. They're in beautiful places,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they're necessarily great holes. I think
Speaker 1: as that's one of the things that I would you know,
Speaker 1: the par three score is like there are they mostly stunning? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like outside of the second hole, they're all very
Speaker 1: studdying and and aesthetically wonderful locations on the cliffs. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're letdowns in terms of golf holes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the back nine is is much more more coherent, and
Speaker 1: it obviously occupies some of the best land on at
Speaker 1: the resort on those cliffs there. I think to me.
Speaker 1: What's the holes that stand out on the back nine
Speaker 1: are the tenth, the thirteenth, the par five thirteenth because
Speaker 1: of that unbelievable choppy ground in the fairway area. I
Speaker 1: mean that area is just unbelievable to me. The tenth.
Speaker 1: I love the center line mound that obscures you know,
Speaker 1: if you play right or left, you get looks at
Speaker 1: the hole if you play right down the middle. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things. When you play down the
Speaker 1: middle and you're in one of the worst spots, you
Speaker 1: can't see anything into that green. I think that hole
Speaker 1: is I would say in terms of like the least
Speaker 1: talked about really good hole abandoned dunes is the tenth.
Speaker 1: And then I think everybody loves the sixteenth. It was interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan. I haven't played it that much, but
Speaker 1: I talked to a player that played in the USAM
Speaker 1: who knows its architecture, and he says it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere for somebody to hit it, which was an
Speaker 1: interesting critique because when you play down in the down
Speaker 1: wind southern summer wind, you can't hold the green if
Speaker 1: you go for it. And then also the layup area
Speaker 1: is almost impossible to hit as well because the ball
Speaker 1: runs through it. So that was an interesting critique that
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of. We played it in the winner,
Speaker 1: so we played it into the wind. But that was
Speaker 1: an interesting comment that has made me kind of think
Speaker 1: more about the About the sixteenth, his mentality was like,
Speaker 1: if I hit it and I just end up in
Speaker 1: the front bunker, that's the best case scenario.
Speaker 2: But he's not considering hitting a seven iron off the
Speaker 2: tee in other words, because there's plenty of room kind
Speaker 2: of left center on that hole.
Speaker 1: I think he was talking about hanging like maybe more
Speaker 1: of a long iron as the layup and not going
Speaker 1: as severe as hitting a seven iron. So that was
Speaker 1: just his thoughts. So, you know, I take that with
Speaker 1: a great but I think that's one of the most
Speaker 1: visually spectacular golf holes in the world. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think at that point you've got to be ten. Thirteen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: and seventeen are really great golf holes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think fourteen is a terrific short part four
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, with one of the best green sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sitting down in that little pocket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, benches right into that dune really nicely, so natural.
Speaker 2: The shaping is very successful there. The tie ins between
Speaker 2: the artificial and the natural really really work on that whole.
Speaker 2: And if you're laying up, if you're not going for
Speaker 2: the green, you've got kind of an interesting game of
Speaker 2: hopscotch to play where you need to avoid a bunch
Speaker 2: of bunkers that are kind of in the center of
Speaker 2: the fairway. You know, you mentioned a few things there
Speaker 2: that I think were at the time that Bandon Dunes
Speaker 2: made its debut daring, and one of the big ones
Speaker 2: is a fairway like the thirteenth Fairway. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of architects at the time, unfortunately, would have looked
Speaker 2: at that fairway and said, we can't have this be
Speaker 2: this tumbling. We have got to flatten this somehow, And
Speaker 2: a different architect may have come in and graded out
Speaker 2: that beautiful, you know, linksy, undulating fairway, and that would
Speaker 2: have been a real shame. And so one of the
Speaker 2: things that Bandon Dune's the original course does so successfully
Speaker 2: is that it allows certain fairways just to be natural.
Speaker 2: The Seventh Fairway comes to mind, and of course the
Speaker 2: thirteenth Fairway, and so I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: really strong points of the course. It's interesting that the
Speaker 2: par threes, you know, at least architecturally, don't really work
Speaker 2: that well, but twelve is so stunning that again, like four,
Speaker 2: people may not really be paying attention to whether the
Speaker 2: whole works strategically.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it'd be interesting to rank the par threes,
Speaker 1: uh the property and just where where they shake out, right,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think like one of the things
Speaker 1: with sheep Ranch I think my complaint with sheep Ranch
Speaker 1: is is the par threes feel a sameness to them,
Speaker 1: and they share some characteristics of Bandon. They kind of
Speaker 1: feel forced in on the coast, and I think my
Speaker 1: tastes in the retail golfer as the Kaisers like to say,
Speaker 1: are far different. You know, I love a great par
Speaker 1: three on the ocean, but if it's a mediocre hole
Speaker 1: on the ocean, I kind of think to myself, well,
Speaker 1: what if they had done something else here, you know,
Speaker 1: what if they had done something to push something here
Speaker 1: so this wasn't necessarily a par three or you know,
Speaker 1: in the case of sheep Ranch I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of the par threes blend in and they have
Speaker 1: a similar playing characteristic of on the ocean, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or toward the ocean. You're playing at the ocean,
Speaker 2: so that you have the ocean view in the background,
Speaker 2: almost an infinity effect behind the green. The funny thing
Speaker 2: about Bandon Dune's par three's is that I think that
Speaker 2: they're well oriented. They're well positioned where they should, except
Speaker 2: for the sixth hole, which is just kind of this
Speaker 2: extra appendage. But you know, it plays along the coast.
Speaker 2: No other par three at and In Dunes plays right
Speaker 2: along the coast, so at least that oh abandoned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the Corse band In Dunes, that's going to
Speaker 2: always be confusing, but yeah, it plays right along the coast,
Speaker 2: whereas the others kind of play toward the coast or
Speaker 2: you know, two is inland. So there's some variety to them,
Speaker 2: but just the execution of the design isn't all the
Speaker 2: way there with them. Fifteen I'm not sure what to
Speaker 2: make of because that hole has been changed since the
Speaker 2: original course bunker has been taken out. I think there's
Speaker 2: been some reshaping done. I'm just not quite sure at
Speaker 2: this point what they're going for with fifteen. It could
Speaker 2: be kind of this neat par three a longish par
Speaker 2: three where you run the ball up onto the green.
Speaker 2: But that shot isn't super available right now. There's not
Speaker 2: really places to bank it in or to really use
Speaker 2: the ground in a constructive way. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of like rejecting contours, and so the
Speaker 2: motivation is more to get the ball up in the
Speaker 2: air and kind of land it soft. But the uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the great holes at Bandon Dune's are your
Speaker 2: part fours. Yeah, inland par four specifically, for the most.
Speaker 1: Part, I think like I think seven and eight and
Speaker 1: ten and uh and seventeen to me, like I think
Speaker 1: about those holes a lot. I think about the fifth
Speaker 1: hole a lot. I think the way the fifth sits
Speaker 1: in its landscape is what draws me to the fifth
Speaker 1: so much. Is the way it just kind of nestles
Speaker 1: in there. The green sits in that pocket, like I love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just love how that hole, you know, it looks
Speaker 1: aesthetically and just the way it embraces. What I wish
Speaker 1: more of from Bandon Dunes was the way that hole
Speaker 1: embraces its landscape. If it did that more throughout the course,
Speaker 1: I think it would just be so much better, so
Speaker 1: much better of a course. And instead, you know, especially
Speaker 1: with the first four holes there, it really feels forced
Speaker 1: and that, and then you finally get to five and
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, this is a hole that kind of
Speaker 1: sits more into its landscape. Then the same again goes
Speaker 1: back to that theme of one through four of really
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like strong arming golf into this.
Speaker 1: And then six and seven are kind of a contrast
Speaker 1: back and seven and eight. Seven and eight are really
Speaker 1: a contrast back to what you feel with five. So
Speaker 1: like that to me is kind of like the give
Speaker 1: and take in a similar thing happens on the back nine. Right,
Speaker 1: you have ten that feels so natural in such a
Speaker 1: wonderful hole. Thirteen similarly, But then eleven and twelve, like
Speaker 1: eleven to me is kind of a goofy hole, and
Speaker 1: I know it's been changed.
Speaker 2: It's been changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that And I think that's another important point about
Speaker 1: this golf course. It underwent a big renovation, and you
Speaker 1: don't renovate a masterpiece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm not sure that the changes at eleven
Speaker 2: are for the better. I think the initial concept of
Speaker 2: that hole is that you had a bunch of bunkers
Speaker 2: kind of running on a diagonal on the left, and
Speaker 2: the best place to approach the green from was the left,
Speaker 2: and there's quite a bit of room out to the right.
Speaker 2: Now there's also some gorse out to the right, so
Speaker 2: I'm not sure there's you know, it's that safe to
Speaker 2: play out to the right. But they've taken out some
Speaker 2: of those bunkers on the left, which I think makes
Speaker 2: the play up the left a bit less risky, especially
Speaker 2: if you're taking the gorse out of play. So the
Speaker 2: strategy of that hole just isn't quite coming together for me,
Speaker 2: and I would say that I just don't see what
Speaker 2: the advantage is on a lot of holes at Bandon
Speaker 2: Dune's what advantage there is to being near a hazard,
Speaker 2: or what advantage there is to playing close to a
Speaker 2: particular side of the fairway. I think in a lot
Speaker 2: of cases, if you're just somewhere in the fairway, you
Speaker 2: can kind of figure it out from there and there's
Speaker 2: not any particular penalty for playing super safe.
Speaker 1: Would you characterize Bandon as the most fair course at
Speaker 1: the resort.
Speaker 2: It's a terrible question, it is, and it isn't, because
Speaker 2: we have to define fair.
Speaker 1: Like a tour pro would define fair.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that David Kidd was not a member
Speaker 2: of the fair Police when he designed this course. I
Speaker 2: think he pushed back against a lot of the advice
Speaker 2: that he was getting to make the course more fair,
Speaker 2: and to make the course more fair would mean things
Speaker 2: like making that bunker on the twelfth hole the par three,
Speaker 2: that little pop bunker in the green, making that less severe.
Speaker 2: There was somebody who advised him to do that, and
Speaker 2: he pushed back against that and said, hey, a lot
Speaker 2: of links holes have these sort of quote unquote unfair hazards.
Speaker 2: He didn't grade out some of those fairways to make
Speaker 2: them more fair, to give a level lie to the player.
Speaker 2: And so I think in that sense, Bandon Dunes represents
Speaker 2: a lot of the things that people think of as unfair.
Speaker 2: But today, compared to courses like Pacific Dunes and Bandoned Trails,
Speaker 2: you're just going to get into a lot less trouble
Speaker 2: at Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's it's the most kind of what
Speaker 1: you see is what you get at Bandon. I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna get the least amount of kind of what
Speaker 1: people would call bad bounces. With the other courses abandoned holistically,
Speaker 1: I would put them into the stratosphere of like, hey,
Speaker 1: these are the very, very best public golf courses in America.
Speaker 1: Now with Bandon, I would still put it in the
Speaker 1: class of this is one of the best public golf
Speaker 1: courses in America, but it's probably down in bucket three
Speaker 1: of public golf for me personally. And I think what
Speaker 1: propels its high lofty ranking really centers around its history.
Speaker 1: You know, it has a ton of history and being
Speaker 1: the founding course abandoned dunes, and also its name. It's
Speaker 1: the namesake for the most popular resort in America.
Speaker 2: And it pushed golf course development and golf course architecture forward. Yes,
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Speaker 2: off at zero restriction dot com. You know, before we
Speaker 2: wrap up and get really general, I want to talk
Speaker 2: about the shaping a little bit, okay, because I think
Speaker 2: we've referred to it a couple of times, But can
Speaker 2: we get into that a little bit more deeply because
Speaker 2: I think that you.
Speaker 1: Know, it's your podcast, Scarrett, people.
Speaker 2: Don't always know, Yeah, people don't always know what we
Speaker 2: mean when we talk about bad shaping versus good shaping.
Speaker 2: Say you're comparing Bandon Dunes to Pacific Dunes or to
Speaker 2: Bandon Trails in terms of the shaping style, the execution
Speaker 2: of the shaping, why do you think it's less successful
Speaker 2: at Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about shaping. There are all different types
Speaker 1: of shaping. Like I love SETH Raider CB McDonald golf courses.
Speaker 1: Are they natural golf courses? Do they fit into their
Speaker 1: natural environment? No, they're They're artificial and man made. I
Speaker 1: you know that being said, I feel like Bandon attempts
Speaker 1: to be natural to its area, but then when you
Speaker 1: look at it, it looks very artificial. So the way
Speaker 1: that the shaping ties into the surrounding areas. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've learned from being out
Speaker 1: at sites and talking to you know, shapers or architects
Speaker 1: is the idea of con of horizon lines and looking
Speaker 1: at the lines that the horizon makes and how you
Speaker 1: can shape things that fit into those lines right and
Speaker 1: and aren't obtrusive or like you know you talk about McKenzie,
Speaker 1: when you build something, you build it so big that
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel fake. And that's something that Jackson and
Speaker 1: con talked about with it, which I think is one
Speaker 1: of the best LIFs looking manufactured golf courses. Is Scottsdale
Speaker 1: National Building, something so big that you can't possibly believe
Speaker 1: it's fake. What Bandon Dune's is in is that some
Speaker 1: of the constructed areas, in particular, like the third hole
Speaker 1: or the fourth hole, where you have that left side,
Speaker 1: you know that left side, it looks so unnatural because
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like anything around it, right, And you
Speaker 1: had examples right across on the other off the other
Speaker 1: fairway which you could have mimicked. I remember walking down
Speaker 1: that hole with you and we were just looking to
Speaker 1: the right of the hole at this beautiful land and
Speaker 1: there just like at some of the most stunning land
Speaker 1: on the golf course, and then you look to the
Speaker 1: left at this constructed feature and you're like, you know
Speaker 1: what that those don't Those two things aren't the same.
Speaker 1: And when they're trying to pull off this natural look
Speaker 1: it is trying to embrace the environment that is in,
Speaker 1: it just falls short in those aspects in my opinion. Now,
Speaker 1: something that ties in perfect here is drainage. And when
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of man made hollows in the
Speaker 1: ground that are created because you're putting drains in. That
Speaker 1: also makes things look extremely man made.
Speaker 2: To be clear, a course like Pacific Dunes has drains, yes,
Speaker 2: but they're just a little bit harder to identify and
Speaker 2: pick out of the landscape of the golf course because
Speaker 2: they've been really tied in to the natural movement of
Speaker 2: the rest of the property, you know, whereas on a
Speaker 2: lot of holes Abandon Dunes you can see those scooped
Speaker 2: out catch basins, and they did like a decent job
Speaker 2: kind of matching the grades and various things like that,
Speaker 2: but it's just the work isn't quite as advanced as
Speaker 2: it is at the rest of the courses at Bandon Dunes,
Speaker 2: so that when you walk around holes like three, for instance.
Speaker 2: You mentioned three before accidentally, but I think three is
Speaker 2: the perfect example of where the shaping at and in
Speaker 2: Dune's falls short. There are catch basins all over that
Speaker 2: fairway that are really easily identifiable. And then if you
Speaker 2: look up at the green site, they are these kind
Speaker 2: of regular wavy contours around the green that just don't
Speaker 2: fit into anything around them. And once you start seeing that,
Speaker 2: you can really pretty easily pick out what was made
Speaker 2: and what's natural, and that just kind of takes you
Speaker 2: out of the flow of the golf round. It takes
Speaker 2: you out of this experience that you're having a kind
Speaker 2: of old fashioned linksy round.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think like the greatest credit to an
Speaker 1: architect is when you say something like you had to
Speaker 1: have made that feature and they say, no, that was there,
Speaker 1: and you then say something along the lines of God
Speaker 1: that that feature must have been so exciting when you
Speaker 1: saw that and knew you could build something over that,
Speaker 1: and they say, well, we'll we built all that, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing with Bandon is that it
Speaker 1: what was made and what was there are very very evident.
Speaker 1: And I think the catch base and thing, just like
Speaker 1: the way that drains are used other places, is that
Speaker 1: there was small earthwork done to move water to an
Speaker 1: area where your eye wouldn't see the drain or the
Speaker 1: drain wouldn't be in play. At Bandon, the drains are
Speaker 1: directly in your line of play. And it was the
Speaker 1: first we have a water problem here, let's put a
Speaker 1: drain in. Let's not do the subtle earthwork to move
Speaker 1: the move the water out of play and to an
Speaker 1: area where we can hide a drain.
Speaker 2: And it's variable through the course though. That's the thing
Speaker 2: that's that sort of strange, is that some holes I
Speaker 2: think are really beautifully shaped, other holes fall short. And
Speaker 2: I think that that has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: the way the process worked in construction at Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 2: The lead shaper at Bandon Dunes, David Kids lead shape
Speaker 2: was a guy named Jim Haley. Now I don't want
Speaker 2: to disrespect Jim Haley's name. I don't know much about him.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which work exactly he did at Bandon Dune's.
Speaker 2: But Jim Haley's resume, the main feature on it is
Speaker 2: that he spent eleven years as a shaper for Reese Jones.
Speaker 2: He was part of the kind of conventional golf industry
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties. And I think that some
Speaker 2: of these shapes that we're talking about, these artificial contours
Speaker 2: around greens, the way that the catch basins are executed,
Speaker 2: are familiar. If you have been to Reese Jones courses
Speaker 2: from the eighties and nineties, or Pete Die courses from
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties, Jack Nicholas courses from the same period,
Speaker 2: Robert Trent Jones junior courses from the same period. You
Speaker 2: see touches of that at Bandon Dune's and it's a
Speaker 2: little bit out of place now that Corn Crenshaw and
Speaker 2: Tom Doak have built the rest of the courses at
Speaker 2: Bandon and have taken a really different approach to tying
Speaker 2: in their courses to the natural landscape. And just to
Speaker 2: bring this point home, take a look sometime everybody at
Speaker 2: some early pictures of Bandon Dunes before Pacific Dunes was built, preferably,
Speaker 2: but maybe even a little bit after that, just really
Speaker 2: early days at Bandon Dune's. And for pictures like this,
Speaker 2: you can go to golf club atlist dot com and
Speaker 2: look at the kind of courses by country section and
Speaker 2: click on Bandon Dunes. Look at those pictures, Look at
Speaker 2: the bunkers. The bunkers are totally different in style than
Speaker 2: they are now. The original bunkers at Bandon Dunees looked
Speaker 2: very much like Glen Eagles bunkers if you've seen Glen
Speaker 2: Eagles King's Course where David Kid's father was the director
Speaker 2: of agronomy, where David Kidd kind of grew up working
Speaker 2: what he was familiar with. The original band And Dunes
Speaker 2: bunkers look like that, right, they are kind of these
Speaker 2: smallish a lot of them sort of bathtub like. Okay,
Speaker 2: they don't look bad, I don't think. I think the
Speaker 2: other influence on the original bunker style Bandon Dunes was Mierfield.
Speaker 2: But they just look completely different from what's getting built
Speaker 2: at Bandon Dunes now. And they've gone in after these
Speaker 2: other courses were built, and they have renovated those bunkers,
Speaker 2: naturalized them a little bit, tried to bring them more
Speaker 2: in line with what became the style of the resort.
Speaker 2: There was a different idea that went into the original
Speaker 2: band In Dune's course that wouldn't have been as radical
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 1: Do you think the golf course would tie together and
Speaker 1: feel more like its own like if the bunkers still
Speaker 1: were that style, it might, I agree.
Speaker 2: I don't think the original bunkers look bad. I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was an overall coherence to what they were doing there,
Speaker 2: even if it's not what I prefer. Those bunkers were
Speaker 2: of a piece with the catch basin shaping that you're
Speaker 2: talking about exactly, with some of the containment mounding that
Speaker 2: was around the fairways. Even if it didn't tie in
Speaker 2: all that well to the natural landscape, it tied into itself.
Speaker 2: Now Bandon Dunes has a little bit of a hodgepodge
Speaker 2: feel where they have naturalized these bunkers a little bit,
Speaker 2: made them a little more dopey or coorry, but they
Speaker 2: haven't been able to change the shaping of the green
Speaker 2: surrounds and the shaping of those some of the mounding
Speaker 2: around the fairways in the same way, because that would
Speaker 2: be a much much bigger project than just kind of
Speaker 2: thrilling up some bunker edges. So I think that's an
Speaker 2: interesting point, you know, like there was an original style
Speaker 2: to Bandon Dunes and they've kind of moved away from
Speaker 2: that because of what the other courses are.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever gone to a Golden Age course
Speaker 1: that's gotten a bunker renovation, like a great example would
Speaker 1: be Belvedere, right, is a phenomenal golf course that everybody
Speaker 1: can play, But the bunkers are of the seventies eighties vein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're scoopy, they look silly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like they're you know, they're they're just like
Speaker 1: You're like, wait, what where are these here? You know,
Speaker 1: what what's going on? And obviously they would love to change.
Speaker 1: It's a high priced ticket that they aren't going to
Speaker 1: change anytime soon. But like here in this vein, what
Speaker 1: what's happened abandon is that the original aesthetic of the
Speaker 1: golf course that tied everything together. One of the big
Speaker 1: things that ties an entire course together is the bunkers,
Speaker 1: and the bunkers related to everything else, and by changing them,
Speaker 1: they have created this mismatch. I think, you know, when
Speaker 1: you look at those old photos, like I think the
Speaker 1: course looks a lot better, Like if you put dope
Speaker 1: core seaside bunkers on a rainer course, they would look
Speaker 1: so goofy and that everything else would look just silly.
Speaker 1: But what works is everything's manufactured and in a way
Speaker 1: like Banded Dunes is probably the most manufactured golf course
Speaker 1: at the resort, and in that vein like it should have.
Speaker 1: That's where the consistent feel lacks, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think what they were going for
Speaker 2: with the original band In Dunes was what they thought
Speaker 2: was a Lynx course, you know, and they were a
Speaker 2: lot more successful in executing a Lynx concept than a
Speaker 2: ton of architects had been before them. I mean, just
Speaker 2: think of your your local link style course that was
Speaker 2: built in Farmland and compared to that Robert Trench Jones.
Speaker 1: The Robert Trench Jones Trail has links courses that are
Speaker 1: just like monstrosities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know in the Portland area we have
Speaker 2: a ton of these. There's the Langdon Farms, there's Heron Lakes.
Speaker 2: You know, people who are from Portland know what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about here. I think most most cities have these
Speaker 2: style of courses that were built on something flat and
Speaker 2: in our kitec came in, well what can we do here,
Speaker 2: Let's build a link style course, let's do some mounding whatever.
Speaker 2: If you look at the original band in Dunes, it
Speaker 2: was so much better than those. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: a giant leap from link style eighties and nineties architecture,
Speaker 2: It truly was. But what they were thinking of, I
Speaker 2: think as a links course was based on what old
Speaker 2: Scottish links courses, but how they look in the modern era.
Speaker 2: So think of Mirfield, think of even the old course
Speaker 2: at Saint Andrew's. I think what David Kidd was imagining
Speaker 2: is that he was building a course like that, whereas
Speaker 2: what Tom Dook and Bill Corr do is they're trying
Speaker 2: to build courses that look like what original links courses
Speaker 2: look like with blowout bunkers and really natural duneescapes. Well,
Speaker 2: by the time those old links courses got to the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, the bunkers had been shored up.
Speaker 1: They'd been making like literally for like to to save maintenance.
Speaker 1: And obviously maintenance practices have gone so far. But like
Speaker 1: a great example, we have an article on the eighteenth
Speaker 1: hole Mierfield that Jaeger Kovich wrote, and there's an old
Speaker 1: picture of the eighteenth hole bunkers from nineteen thirty or
Speaker 1: something like that, and they're much more wild. They resemble
Speaker 1: a Pacific Dunes bunker. They don't resemble what's there now,
Speaker 1: which is a revetted pot bunker that's very easy to
Speaker 1: maintain that you know, essentially is much smaller but occupies
Speaker 1: the same amount of space by swallowing up golf balls.
Speaker 1: And it's a fascinating thing. Like what Bill core and
Speaker 1: Tom did is that they matched their golf courses their
Speaker 1: bunkers to the area, yes, versus putting bunkers in the
Speaker 1: way that bunkers had been built for the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: And Bill Corr and Tom Douk were very influenced by
Speaker 2: Scottish links courses. The same way that David Kid was.
Speaker 2: But Bill Core and Tom Doak were not trying to
Speaker 2: make their courses look like Scottish links courses currently look.
Speaker 2: They're trying to make them look like they caught Scottish
Speaker 2: links courses did way back in the day. I think
Speaker 2: what David Kidd was doing, and that what the whole
Speaker 2: team there was doing. Mike Kaiser as well. They were
Speaker 2: looking at what Scottish links courses look like now or
Speaker 2: what they looked like in the nineties, and they were
Speaker 2: more trying to replicate that, which I think is fine,
Speaker 2: there's no problem with that, but they have kind of
Speaker 2: walked that back a little bit now in trying to
Speaker 2: match Bandon Dune's bunkers with the what Doak and Core
Speaker 2: have done elsewhere at the resort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the golf course band It would
Speaker 1: be better with those original bunkers.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting take. I mean it's yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I agree with you.
Speaker 1: And the thing about it is, like the important point
Speaker 1: to make about Tom and Bill Corr is they wouldn't
Speaker 1: build those bunkers at a site that was like, you know,
Speaker 1: like a perfect example is Tobb's work at common Ground.
Speaker 1: Common Ground does not have bunkers that look like Pacific dudes,
Speaker 1: because that's not what that area is like, you know,
Speaker 1: they match it to the So the bunkers at common
Speaker 1: Ground look a lot more like the original bunkers at
Speaker 1: Banded Dunes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I don't think that the original Bandon
Speaker 2: Dunes necessarily matched its environment that well. There were some
Speaker 2: things that were not successful in the tie ins between
Speaker 2: the dunes land and the shapes of the golf course,
Speaker 2: the artificial shapes of the golf course abandoned dunes, but
Speaker 2: there was at least a coherence to the concept that
Speaker 2: they were executing at the time, and I think that
Speaker 2: having some respect for that would be a good thing.
Speaker 2: But in any case, hey.
Speaker 1: Can we make a real quick, real quick the eighteenth hole?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well why doesn't it use the canyon on the right.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't it do what the seventeenth does?
Speaker 2: So well, I don't know, I have no idea, no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so just to give people a picture.
Speaker 1: It could have the best eighteenth all of all of them.
Speaker 2: I know. It's well it's an oh my god, like,
Speaker 2: what an incredible natural feature they have. Yeah, like you
Speaker 2: have just played these holes along the cliff side of
Speaker 2: the Pacific Ocean, right, you can't get much more spectacular
Speaker 2: property than sixteen. And then you turn in and play
Speaker 2: seventeen and what do you have? This massive ravine that
Speaker 2: comes in from the ocean. Incredible. I mean, what a
Speaker 2: blessing to have a property like that where when you
Speaker 2: turn away from the ocean you have something that's almost
Speaker 2: as spectacular as the cliff side and maybe even better
Speaker 2: for a golf hole. And seventeen uses it really well.
Speaker 2: Seventeen Green is incredible. That's a great golf hole. It
Speaker 2: gets you excited. And then eighteen just sort of plays
Speaker 2: away from Cut Creek it's called Cut Creek and from
Speaker 2: that ravine, and doesn't you I don't know why I
Speaker 2: haven't looked into this. Were there some environmental regulations that
Speaker 2: applied to the eighteenth hole that didn't apply to the
Speaker 2: seventeenth I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just like the eighteenth hole revives me of
Speaker 1: Tory pipes.
Speaker 2: That's that might be a strategic strategic in the sense
Speaker 2: that it plays away from the Obviously.
Speaker 1: It's like you have this amazing natural feature that you
Speaker 1: don't have to do much of anything to make a
Speaker 1: great golf hole, especially like a par five, like it
Speaker 1: just could be, it could be unbelievable, and and then
Speaker 1: it just like plays away from it and you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: why why do we go this way? So but anyways,
Speaker 1: that yeah, I think the discussion on Bandon is complex because,
Speaker 1: like listen, at the end of the day, the historical
Speaker 1: aspect of Bandon Dunes, it is one of the most
Speaker 1: important golf courses in American public golf history. But it
Speaker 1: can be that, and it can be not one of
Speaker 1: the that greatest, truly greatest public courses.
Speaker 2: That's okay, yeah, And it can be the case that
Speaker 2: David Kidd went on to do better courses in the future.
Speaker 2: Now we could have a similar debate, I think about
Speaker 2: Mammoth Dunes and Gamble Sands. But Bandon Dune's was his
Speaker 2: very first effort. And if Bandon Dunees falls short of
Speaker 2: what Tom Doak and Bill Corr did later at Bandon Dune's,
Speaker 2: that's no insult to David Kidd. He was in the
Speaker 2: toughest position of all of them. Here. He was a
Speaker 2: brand new architect essentially taking on a massive, important commission,
Speaker 2: where all these other voices were in the room. He
Speaker 2: was launching a major new golf resort, and so if
Speaker 2: the course didn't turn out as well as Pacific Dunes
Speaker 2: or Bandon Trails, then that's really no surprise at all
Speaker 2: because Tom Doak and Bill Corr were able to come
Speaker 2: in later and have more freedom in executing their golf courses.
Speaker 2: Think about who built Pacific Dunes. It wasn't Serviscape, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was Renaissance golf design. Jim Orbina was the construction supervisor.
Speaker 2: Brian Slanik. Who else was shaping there? It was Brian Slonik,
Speaker 2: Don Placik, it was Bruce Hepner. It was an absolute
Speaker 2: murderer's row of great golf course builders building Pacific Dunes,
Speaker 2: and the same applies to Bill Kohrer and Ben Crenshaw's courses.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, then, do you think
Speaker 1: that part of that that maybe one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that David Kids getting the next course abandoned is because
Speaker 1: he never really truly got to build his course abandoned.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a great point. It sounds like
Speaker 2: you agree with that point.
Speaker 1: Why would you say that because it.
Speaker 2: Seemed like a rhetorical question, But yeah, no, I totally agree,
Speaker 2: and I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Speaker 2: You know, David Kidd seems to have found his style,
Speaker 2: you know, starting with starting with Gamble Sands and really
Speaker 2: coming to the fore at Mammoth Dunes. David Kidd has
Speaker 2: stayed in his position. This is, yeah, this is. He
Speaker 2: had kind of a middle period there where he was
Speaker 2: doing some doing some weird stuff. But uh, he has
Speaker 2: come into his own as a golf architect. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that that's good or bad. There can be
Speaker 2: a debate about David Kidd's kind of recent style of
Speaker 2: golf courses, but it is his own. This is who
Speaker 2: David Kidd wants to be as a golf course architect.
Speaker 2: So it'll be really interesting to see what he produces
Speaker 2: and how people react to it. I'm glad that there's
Speaker 2: some variety it is. It is sort of interesting to
Speaker 2: reflect that after David Kidd. You know, this might seem obvious,
Speaker 2: but it was. It sort of came as a bit
Speaker 2: of an epiphany to me. Recently, the only architects who
Speaker 2: have worked at Bandon Dunes have been Core and Crenshaw
Speaker 2: and Tom Doak. Yeah, they've dominated that resort since.
Speaker 1: Kid Well dominated Kaiser Resorts, so other voices are are
Speaker 1: going to be a good thing.
Speaker 2: Now. It's hard to equal what the kind of work
Speaker 2: that Corn Crunshaw do and the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: Tom Dope does, But I'd really like to see David Kittry.
Speaker 2: All right, have we said what we need to say?
Speaker 1: I think so. I think that's a good end spot.
Speaker 1: You know, there's more to come. You know, we'll get
Speaker 1: more deep dives. Maybe next time we go we'll do
Speaker 1: a Preserve deep dive. But yeah, this has been fun.
Speaker 1: If you've missed any of the other other conversations, i'd
Speaker 1: recommend going and checking those out. We also have twenty
Speaker 1: minute videos on three of the courses that are kind
Speaker 1: of focused conversations as well as we have a Sheep
Speaker 1: Ranch two part video from right at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. And then I'm sure we'll cut something
Speaker 1: up for on the YouTube page for the Banded Dudes
Speaker 1: conversation we just had, so that'll be something that will
Speaker 1: be coming to the YouTube page. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: put a time frame on it at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we don't do great with promises for time frames,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of bandoned content out there from
Speaker 2: the Frida Egg obviously from other outlets as well. I
Speaker 2: hope that we've provided something that's a little bit fresh
Speaker 2: in this conversation. It's not an uncommon topic, and so
Speaker 2: we tried to give you something a little bit different.
Speaker 2: I hope that we've succeeded in doing that. But you know,
Speaker 2: Banded Dunes, it goes without saying at this point is
Speaker 2: one of the truly great places in the world of golf.
Speaker 2: It was such an honor and a delight to be
Speaker 2: there last November and to get to photograph these courses,
Speaker 2: play these courses, meet the caddies, get to know them.
Speaker 2: It's just an incredible place, and it's been really fun
Speaker 2: talking through both the many great aspects of the resort
Speaker 2: and the few criticisms that can be made. And I'm
Speaker 2: glad that we can kind of speak freely about it,
Speaker 2: that we have this kind of license to discuss the
Speaker 2: resort in the way that we want to. So it's
Speaker 2: been a lot of fun. Thanks a lot, Andy, and
Speaker 2: we'll be back at you soon with some more episodes
Speaker 2: of the Frida Egg podcast. But we are done at
Speaker 2: this point with the Bandon Deep Dive series