Speaker 1: One of the biggest problems facing the golf course industry
Speaker 1: today is the rising cost of construction, the cost of
Speaker 1: building new courses, and the cost of renovating existing ones.
Speaker 1: Especially since twenty twenty, these expenses have gone way up
Speaker 1: and have ultimately been passed on to the golfer, most
Speaker 1: obviously in the form of higher green fees, but also
Speaker 1: more subtly in the way that the industry as a
Speaker 1: whole has moved toward the high end, toward pricey resorts
Speaker 1: and exclusive clubs. So I thought it was time to
Speaker 1: talk about the economics of golf course construction, about what
Speaker 1: it takes to build a golf course affordably in a
Speaker 1: time where everything seems to be unaffordable. My guest is
Speaker 1: Bruce Hepner, a long time golf architect who has recently
Speaker 1: taken on some surprisingly low cost projects and who have
Speaker 1: some fascinating thoughts about where golf architecture as a whole
Speaker 1: is headed. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf.
Speaker 1: What do the different components of a golf course construction
Speaker 1: project cost, or really what should they cost? I get
Speaker 1: asked versions of this question all the time, and honestly
Speaker 1: there's no good answer because every project is different, but
Speaker 1: we can definitely talk about the general economics of golf
Speaker 1: course construction, and a little later we'll discuss three excellent
Speaker 1: modern golf courses that were built on low budgets and
Speaker 1: are still affordable to play. Now, this might seem like
Speaker 1: a funny topic to take on right after the Masters,
Speaker 1: given that most people would not associate Augusta National with
Speaker 1: economical golf course construction or maintenance. But actually Augusta National
Speaker 1: did begin its life life as an experiment in what
Speaker 1: its co designer Alistair McKenzie called the economy of golf
Speaker 1: course construction. Famously, the course originally had just twenty two bunkers,
Speaker 1: and it also had very simple agronomy, just one cut
Speaker 1: for the fairways and one cut for the greens. For
Speaker 1: most of his career, McKenzie was obsessed with this idea
Speaker 1: of economy and construction because for him, saving money in
Speaker 1: building courses was not just a nice benefit for his clients.
Speaker 1: He thought that it actually produced better golf courses. So
Speaker 1: let's start with a few things that mackenzie repeatedly emphasized
Speaker 1: in talking about this subject. One he was insistent on
Speaker 1: the importance of hiring a capable golf architect. Now, in
Speaker 1: one sense this was self serving, but in another completely indisputable. Sperienced,
Speaker 1: qualified architect can definitely help you avoid costly mistakes in
Speaker 1: the future. Two Mackenzie was an avid proponent of saving
Speaker 1: money by working with the natural landscape instead of against it,
Speaker 1: choosing sites that were already well adapted to golf, and
Speaker 1: routing the course so that you didn't need a lot
Speaker 1: of large scale earth moving to create the holes. Three
Speaker 1: he advocated for minimizing bunkers and other artificial hazards. I
Speaker 1: will say he did not always practice this, but he
Speaker 1: did at Augusta National, so at least there's that. Four
Speaker 1: Mackenzie was all about using modern labor saving technology. If
Speaker 1: there was something a machine could do just as well
Speaker 1: as manual labor, he wasn't a romantic about it. He
Speaker 1: was fine with mechanizing certain tasks. Lastly, Mackenzie spoke a
Speaker 1: lot about achieving what he called finality in golf course construction,
Speaker 1: in other words, designing and building the course well enough
Speaker 1: so that it wouldn't have to be changed in the future.
Speaker 1: And this is where Mackenzie makes it clear that economy
Speaker 1: in construction is not just about saving money during the
Speaker 1: building process itself. It's about heading off future expenses, and
Speaker 1: this might sometimes involve spending a little more right now
Speaker 1: in order to avoid spending a lot down the line.
Speaker 1: So it's a balance. There are things that you need
Speaker 1: to invest in like a good architect, and there are
Speaker 1: things that you don't need to overspend on. So one
Speaker 1: of the major tasks for a course developer or a
Speaker 1: green committee is to distinguish the smart investments from the
Speaker 1: unnecessary ones, the needs versus the bells and whistles. All right,
Speaker 1: let's bring this to the present day and about the
Speaker 1: economics of modern golf course construction. Now we're setting aside
Speaker 1: for the moment, pre construction costs, which would include purchasing
Speaker 1: the land and getting planning and permitting taken care of,
Speaker 1: clearly a major expense, but not what our focus is today.
Speaker 1: What are the biggest line items in a golf course
Speaker 1: construction budget. I have to start with irrigation. You would
Speaker 1: be shocked at how expensive it is to install a
Speaker 1: modern top of the line irrigation system. That alone typically
Speaker 1: accounts for somewhere in the range of a quarter to
Speaker 1: a third of an entire construction budget, so irrigation that
Speaker 1: is the albatross of any golf course project. Another huge
Speaker 1: expense is large scale earth moving and site preparation. Basically,
Speaker 1: this is about adapting a site to golf, making sure
Speaker 1: it's walkable, graspable, that it drains. So obviously, this cost
Speaker 1: is lower for properties that are already well suited to
Speaker 1: the game, and that's why this is a very dynamic category.
Speaker 1: It's often the reason that a project costs either way
Speaker 1: more or way less than you would anticipate. A few
Speaker 1: other notable expenses would be bunkers, especially when you factor
Speaker 1: in ongoing maintenance. If you decide to put in USGA
Speaker 1: spec or subair under your green, that can get pricey.
Speaker 1: Cart paths sometimes cost millions of dollars by themselves. And finally,
Speaker 1: kind of interacting with all of the above, you have labor,
Speaker 1: who's on site and what are they doing? Now. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can see at this point how golf course
Speaker 1: construction budgets can spiral out of control. There's just so
Speaker 1: much that needs to get done, So how do you
Speaker 1: cut through the noise and identify the needs versus the
Speaker 1: bell and whistles. Let's talk about three modern US golf
Speaker 1: courses that I think did exactly that. These courses were
Speaker 1: built very affordably and can still be played for reasonable rates. First,
Speaker 1: Wildhorse Golf Club in Nebraska, wonderful golf course built by
Speaker 1: Dave Axland and Dan Procter in nineteen ninety nine. The
Speaker 1: total cost of establishing the club was somewhere around one
Speaker 1: point three million, and the construction of the course itself
Speaker 1: came in under a million. The single biggest line item
Speaker 1: in the budget was the irrigation system. You won't find
Speaker 1: that surprising. I've heard that it costs somewhere in the
Speaker 1: range of six hundred thousand dollars by itself, so that's
Speaker 1: where they made their huge investment. But aside from that,
Speaker 1: the course was built for just a few hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, it is the best non resort
Speaker 1: public course in the United States. Next up, Rustic Canyon
Speaker 1: Golf Course, designed by Gilhan's Jim Wagner and Jeff Shackelford.
Speaker 1: This is one of the best golf courses you can
Speaker 1: play in Southern California, public or private, and the cost
Speaker 1: of constructing the course itself was three million. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. About four hundred thousand of that went
Speaker 1: to the cart paths, which the developer wanted but the
Speaker 1: architects were a bit chagrined about. But in all other
Speaker 1: areas the design team used a very light touch. They
Speaker 1: ended up moving only about seventeen thousand cubic yards of dirt.
Speaker 1: And just to put that in perspective, when Mike Strantz
Speaker 1: built Tobacco Road Golf Club in North Carolina in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, he moved around five hundred thousand cubic yards.
Speaker 1: So you know, you can see how the earth moving
Speaker 1: and site preparation part of the budget can be really
Speaker 1: low or really high depending on the quality of the
Speaker 1: land and the intent of the architect. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in the full story behind Rustic Camion, Jeff Shackelford
Speaker 1: goes into great detail about it in his book Grounds
Speaker 1: for Golf. Grounds for Golf has been out of print
Speaker 1: for a while and a little bit hard to get,
Speaker 1: but it's being republished on June fifteenth this year, so
Speaker 1: make sure to check that out. Okay, last project I
Speaker 1: want to talk about is Diamond Springs Golf Course in Hamilton, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Diamond Springs was designed by Chris Schumacher and Mike Devrees
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, and they were really innovative
Speaker 1: in the way they set this course up for low
Speaker 1: cost maintenance in the future. Diamond Springs has old fashioned
Speaker 1: single row irrigation in the fairways, so the sprinkler heads
Speaker 1: just go right down the center of the whole corridors,
Speaker 1: and like the original Augusta National, there are two heights
Speaker 1: of cut fairway and green. Both of these factors allow
Speaker 1: for simple, efficient, affordable maintenance, and it's a terrific golf
Speaker 1: course that anyone can play for sixty dollars at most.
Speaker 1: So three projects, Wildhorse, Rustic Canyon, and Diamond Springs, what
Speaker 1: do they all have in common? One they started with
Speaker 1: properties that were already well suited to golf. All three
Speaker 1: had sandy soils and good natural undulation. The Wildhorse property
Speaker 1: was basically perfect. Rustic Canyon was a little more complicated
Speaker 1: because it was environmentally sensitive, but a great site for golf,
Speaker 1: so good land in all three cases. The second thing
Speaker 1: these projects have in common is that they were directed
Speaker 1: by excellent golf architects who had plenty of experience but
Speaker 1: were still on their way up so they were not
Speaker 1: expensive to hire. Three. Those architects were devoted to minimalism
Speaker 1: and the design build method. They wanted to work with
Speaker 1: the natural landscape, they wanted to minimize artificial hazards, and
Speaker 1: when they did move dirt, they wanted to do it themselves.
Speaker 2: Four.
Speaker 1: In each of the projects, there was what I would
Speaker 1: describe as a remarkable lack of ego in what they
Speaker 1: were setting out to accomplish. They weren't going for the photogenic,
Speaker 1: all green, everywhere turf presentation. They weren't trying to build
Speaker 1: a top one hundred golf course, though in the case
Speaker 1: of Wildhorse, I would argue that they got there anyway,
Speaker 1: but that was not the intent. They were just trying
Speaker 1: to build good golf at a reasonable price, and that
Speaker 1: attitude is unfortunately pretty rare in today's golf course industry.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that all three courses I just talked
Speaker 1: about opened between nineteen ninety nine in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Those kinds of projects, new build projects built affordably are
Speaker 1: just not happening very often right now. One big reason
Speaker 1: for that is that the cost of everything has gone
Speaker 1: way up. But I do believe there has also been
Speaker 1: a shift in philosophy. I think we've become much more
Speaker 1: interested in trying to match the splendor of Alistair Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: courses and less interested in following his advice on economy
Speaker 1: and construction, and that I think is a problem for
Speaker 1: the future of the game. Now, to talk about that
Speaker 1: issue a little more in depth, I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: on the golf architect Bruce Hepner. Bruce got his start
Speaker 1: in the industry working for ron Force and Tom Doak.
Speaker 1: He worked on some incredible dok projects, including bally Neil
Speaker 1: and Cape Kidnappers, and he also developed a specialty in gradual,
Speaker 1: sensitive restorations of classic courses like Essex County Club and
Speaker 1: Cape Arundle. Recently, Bruce has done a lot of work
Speaker 1: on public courses. He's helping to revitalize several municipal facilities
Speaker 1: in Nashville, Tennessee, and he also carried out a major
Speaker 1: renovation of Miami Lakes Golf Club in Florida last year.
Speaker 1: He has a bunch of interesting things to say about
Speaker 1: economy and construction and what he sees as the excesses
Speaker 1: of modern golf architecture. So let's go to my conversation
Speaker 1: with Bruce Hepner. So, Bruce, you told me when we
Speaker 1: chatted a couple of days ago that you have been
Speaker 1: playing a little bit more golf lately. How's that going?
Speaker 2: The scores aren't going down, but I'm kind of taking
Speaker 2: a year or so off. I don't have any projects
Speaker 2: till fall at twenty seven. So I told my wife,
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, I play that crap forever. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I want to kind of dedicate this year to playing
Speaker 2: golf and taking Lasson's, hitting balls indoors every day. And
Speaker 2: just got back from Florida. Played two weeks of golf
Speaker 2: down there. So it's just just fun to get out
Speaker 2: and play, see new golf courses. I've seen a lot
Speaker 2: of the new ones being built in Florida, but also
Speaker 2: playing and reintroducing myself to my golf clubs.
Speaker 1: What did you see down there?
Speaker 2: Saw may Aka mm hmm, the Big danea fry striker striker,
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, just insane, just the biggest thing. I've
Speaker 2: just gonna push Shadow Creek, the shade.
Speaker 1: They moved a lot of a lot of dirt out there.
Speaker 2: As elevation changed. Danis. I think they remember say they
Speaker 2: dug one hundred and thirty acre leg fifty feet deep
Speaker 2: and ran out of dirt, so they had to build
Speaker 2: more lakes. It's it's amazing to create that kind of
Speaker 2: a landscape out of your brain. Is somebody's brain is
Speaker 2: just beyond my scope of what I've ever done. I
Speaker 2: saw David's new course, David Kid's new course at streams On,
Speaker 2: which is super cool. And then I went up to
Speaker 2: Aiken and saw Brian and Blake's new the Gilroy had
Speaker 2: under construction. That's gonna be really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the second eighteen whole course at Old Barnwell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Then New Holland. I walked the routing at New
Speaker 2: Holland which Brian's doing ray across the street from the
Speaker 2: tree Farm. Also an Ache and that's gonna be something
Speaker 2: really cool. Wow, the rut it's just laying there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's some good stuff being built out there.
Speaker 1: So, Bruce, the main topic I wanted to tackle with
Speaker 1: you today is what Alisair McKenzie called economy in golf
Speaker 1: course construction, which is to say, building golf courses as
Speaker 1: efficiently and affordably as possible without sacrificing quality. And this
Speaker 1: is as big of an issue as it ever has been,
Speaker 1: because everything about golf course construction has started to take
Speaker 1: longer and cost more in the past few years. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you yourself have taken on a number of projects whereas
Speaker 1: I understand it, economy has been a priority. First of all,
Speaker 1: a series of renovations for the municipal Golf cyte them
Speaker 1: in Nashville, Tennessee, and then just last year a big
Speaker 1: overhaul of a public golf facility called Miami Lakes Golf
Speaker 1: Club in Florida. Was there something that that caused you
Speaker 1: to take on these kinds of projects at this point
Speaker 1: in your career or was it just sort of happenstance
Speaker 1: that they came along at this time?
Speaker 2: It was a perfect timing for me. You know, I've built,
Speaker 2: you know, courses all over the world, but you know,
Speaker 2: you're working for Tom. We were still budget conscious. You know,
Speaker 2: he came from Pete and Pete. Pete was budget conscious,
Speaker 2: so you know, we built Pacific Dudes and bally Neil
Speaker 2: for a fraction of what renovations costs nowadays, So that
Speaker 2: just carried over. You know, I grew up playing about
Speaker 2: public golf courses, Caddie. You know, I wasn't a country
Speaker 2: club kids, so, you know, and specifically Nashville it hit
Speaker 2: the tone because there was just no there's no new
Speaker 2: seats at the table, there's no new golf courses being built.
Speaker 2: There's one, but it's super private, and the only place
Speaker 2: people could play were public golf courses and they've kind
Speaker 2: of gone in disrepair, just like any city. You know,
Speaker 2: I grew up in Detroit, played Rackham. That's where I
Speaker 2: grew up playing. And you know, any city metropolitan system
Speaker 2: is usually that's the lowest priority right now. You know,
Speaker 2: with the economy of it's gone, not a lot of
Speaker 2: money is being sunk. And in some of these are
Speaker 2: really good gems. You know, Rackham was a great ross
Speaker 2: golf course. Yeah, so every every metropolitan area has these
Speaker 2: and they're just going in disrepair, and you know, people
Speaker 2: are playing the heck out of them, but there's just
Speaker 2: not much money supporting him. So you know, that's what
Speaker 2: got me interested. It's untapped, you know that, And that's
Speaker 2: where golf starts. That's where most of us learn how
Speaker 2: to play. Majority of golfers play public golf courses. They
Speaker 2: don't carry handicap even they just play golf. They gone
Speaker 2: and play golf, drink beer and have fun. So it's
Speaker 2: it's kind of been pushed to the wayside, and and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm pretty comfortable. Yeah, I could retire right now,
Speaker 2: I say, my money, but this is kind of fun.
Speaker 2: It's the way I can give back to the game
Speaker 2: in my little way is to is promote this first
Speaker 2: tea programs, Kaddy. You know Evan scholarship programs. You know,
Speaker 2: common Ground is great. They have that kind of pre
Speaker 2: Evan scholarship program out there. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: little hubs that are starting this. You know John's, you know,
Speaker 2: the Ashworths, the Goat Hill. You know. San Antonio has
Speaker 2: an insanely good public golf system where the money stays
Speaker 2: in the golf. They probably are the leaders in the country.
Speaker 2: A guy named Jim Rochik is heading that up and
Speaker 2: we're going to use him as a consultant in Nashville
Speaker 2: how to figure out how to do this without spending
Speaker 2: a lot of money, but keeping the money in the golf.
Speaker 1: Donalds fort Worth does a really good job too. It
Speaker 1: seems like there are a few Texas megalopolis that are
Speaker 1: that are kind of getting some of this right. At
Speaker 1: the moment, and actually you know, a memorial park in
Speaker 1: Houston as well as for example, you know, hopefully an
Speaker 1: indicator of where things are going there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these projects kind of require something different from an architect,
Speaker 1: which is what I'm interested in speaking with you about.
Speaker 1: And maybe as an example, we can dig into your
Speaker 1: work at Miami Lakes specifically. Now, this is not a
Speaker 1: municipal golf course. It is a privately owned public golf
Speaker 1: course that has traditionally been affordable, especially for people in
Speaker 1: the immediate area. And so you know, it's a kind
Speaker 1: of project that we don't see a lot of these days.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, the kind of mid range daily
Speaker 1: fee course has sort of gone away in favor of
Speaker 1: a lot more action at the high end for both
Speaker 1: private clubs and public resorts. So Miami Lakes, just for context,
Speaker 1: is a public course in Florida. It's about fifteen miles
Speaker 1: north of Miami. And I've heard that the way you
Speaker 1: became involved in this project has something to do with
Speaker 1: the last time you and I talked on a podcast.
Speaker 1: Actually it was a couple of years ago when I
Speaker 1: brought you on to talk about Nashville, your work in Nashville,
Speaker 1: among other things. So what is that story? How did
Speaker 1: you become involved?
Speaker 2: I get an email, blind email from Danny Martinez's part
Speaker 2: of the grand family that basically they don't own Miami Lakes,
Speaker 2: but they founded it. The grandfather founded that. You know,
Speaker 2: the community. It's a beautiful community, and they had a
Speaker 2: golf course. And he heard the podcast you and I
Speaker 2: talking about public Golf, so he blindly emailed me with
Speaker 2: a pretty good letter that was quite compelling. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll give him a call, because I get
Speaker 2: emails like this three four times a week. I go,
Speaker 2: I'll call him and chat them up and see if
Speaker 2: I got him in the right direction. And three hours later,
Speaker 2: he's telling me everything. You know. I was waiting for
Speaker 2: him to tell me something so I could hang up,
Speaker 2: and he kept telling me all the right things. You know,
Speaker 2: public golf, the first tea program, his grandfather. You know,
Speaker 2: he grew up playing there. It's a part of the community,
Speaker 2: kids played for free. You know. He was clicking all
Speaker 2: the boxes. I'm like, oh, okay, I'll come down. I
Speaker 2: was going to come down and play golf a timcqwan
Speaker 2: and Jacksonville anyway, So I'm like, I'll just drive down
Speaker 2: to the rest of the way, spend a day with you,
Speaker 2: check your golf course out, and met the grand family.
Speaker 2: They're beautiful people, just humble and just everything clicked and
Speaker 2: I walked the golf course. The routing was pretty good.
Speaker 2: The back nine was just inundated, flooded. They didn't even
Speaker 2: have irrigation on a couple holes just because the water
Speaker 2: table was two inches blowing to the surface. So I
Speaker 2: kind of I'm like, you know, I think I could.
Speaker 2: I think I could fix this. Let me think about
Speaker 2: it and let me build the team. So I called
Speaker 2: him Mecure Golf out of Jacksonville, which I've worked over
Speaker 2: a lot. Talk to them. They kind of fell in
Speaker 2: love with the project. We were able to pick the
Speaker 2: right irrigation designer, and I said, well, if I build
Speaker 2: the right team, he let us do what we're good at.
Speaker 2: I'm interested and Danny supported us one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: So what were the the most important goals of the
Speaker 1: plan for the renovation that you ended up coming up with.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a lot of engineering. It was dead flat,
Speaker 2: you know, it was typical Florida dead flat. Any dirt
Speaker 2: that they used, they build the greens up twenty feet
Speaker 2: up out of the ground or putting mounds on each
Speaker 2: side of the fairway. There was no contours in the fairway,
Speaker 2: so it was a drainage nightmare. In the back nine
Speaker 2: really had to be lifted three feet out of three
Speaker 2: to four feet out of the ground to keep it
Speaker 2: from flooding. Every rain event, the water would back up
Speaker 2: and wouldn't go into the canal and it would just fled.
Speaker 2: They couldn't play the back nine basically. So a lot
Speaker 2: of it was engineering, but you know, it wasn't going
Speaker 2: to stop me from making something cool at the same time.
Speaker 2: So the basic thought was what I wanted to do
Speaker 2: was build something it looked like it was built in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty, like Flynn or something back in those Florida
Speaker 2: days when Flynn and Langford and those guys were building courses,
Speaker 2: you know, rainer at that time. I wanted to build
Speaker 2: something to look like that, which meant it was wallawall grass. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of I'm kind of over the I call
Speaker 2: it the native oars. Yeah, of course, you see now
Speaker 2: it's get the sandy native stuff. You spend more time
Speaker 2: in there than making the golf course good. So I said,
Speaker 2: we're going to just take that off the board, walda
Speaker 2: wall grass, make it wide. You know. Luckily, your grandfather
Speaker 2: when you routed that golf course gave us a really
Speaker 2: wide corridor, so the house has never come into play.
Speaker 2: There's only houses on a few of the holes, so
Speaker 2: it gave me ample room to play with it and
Speaker 2: minimal number of bunkers, like fifty bunkers. I use them
Speaker 2: judiciously where they really impacted a lot of t shots.
Speaker 2: Just create a lot of contour in the fairways to
Speaker 2: create interesting lies on your you know, on your a
Speaker 2: pro shots, build great greens. And the goal was, you know,
Speaker 2: at one time, back in the sixties, seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: that was the hip place to hang out Miamu Lakes
Speaker 2: golf courses where all the dolphins lived. Shula's Steakhouse was
Speaker 2: his first steakhouses there. He lived on site, so it
Speaker 2: was kind of the happening place for public golf celebrities.
Speaker 2: You know. I brought in Kay Goldby to help me
Speaker 2: build the greens. His dad had played in an event there. Kai,
Speaker 2: I think caddied for him, So one time it was
Speaker 2: the cool place in Miami. So we wanted to create
Speaker 2: that vibe again. It's also the home of the first
Speaker 2: tea program Kids Play for Free. Charlie Duluca runs that project.
Speaker 2: His grandfather started the project on a Saturday morning. They'll
Speaker 2: have one hundred and eighty kids, some of special needs,
Speaker 2: on that first on the putting greens. So we had
Speaker 2: to build a facility for the kids. We also had
Speaker 2: to build a facility to could hold up. We just
Speaker 2: had a college tournament there. You know, it's still almost
Speaker 2: seventy two hundred yards. Had a college tournament there. They
Speaker 2: didn't rip it up. We want to have state amateur, vank,
Speaker 2: state pro events and create that vibe where people hang
Speaker 2: out there again and it's happening, you know. You know
Speaker 2: at any given day, Ray Allen Alonzo morning, Carlos Boozer,
Speaker 2: Tico Torres, I play golf with him. He's a drummer
Speaker 2: from bod Jovi's hanging out there. They're all coming back.
Speaker 1: From the past right there. You know, it's a good guy.
Speaker 2: I just love him. But it's if Marino it's been
Speaker 2: there playing, if the word is out and we have
Speaker 2: an advertising and it's they still have to build the
Speaker 2: clubhouse or building a big apartment, building a big teaching
Speaker 2: facility with a restaurant in it, you know, the whole
Speaker 2: the whole nine yards to service public golfers. You know,
Speaker 2: they're still going to have they got one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty members. It's basically sold out. That just get preferred
Speaker 2: tea times and we'll have a locker room for him
Speaker 2: in the locker room in the new clubhouse. But it's
Speaker 2: it's really turned back to it's the hit place to
Speaker 2: hang out and play golf in you know, South Florida.
Speaker 1: So before giving into the cool design stuff that you
Speaker 1: did with the course, which you outlined a little bit there,
Speaker 1: I'm curious just about the drainage issue, which you've also
Speaker 1: gestured toward. That was a that was like a big,
Speaker 1: big part of this project, right if people can imagine,
Speaker 1: I think it's it was, especially the back nine. It's
Speaker 1: just full of full of lakes and you know, like
Speaker 1: island fairways and just a lot of a lot of water.
Speaker 1: So could you give me just a few specifics on
Speaker 1: how you how you figured out that that drainage issue there,
Speaker 1: because it it it's one of when if I were
Speaker 1: looking at that course myself, you know, I'm not qualified
Speaker 1: golf architect obviously, but if I were looking at the course,
Speaker 1: I would be saying to Danny Martinez, you're the person
Speaker 1: you corresponded most with on this project. I would be
Speaker 1: saying to him, I don't know if you can fix
Speaker 1: this right. You might have to. You might have to
Speaker 1: really do a lot here. So what what was your
Speaker 1: approach to fixing the issue.
Speaker 2: I walked the front nine and there's just a couple
Speaker 2: of lakes. It doesn't really feel like Florida. The front nine,
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, this is really easy. The routy's good.
Speaker 2: And also they turned to the back nine and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, you know, and it was got on. You know,
Speaker 2: it was just terrible lakes, a lot of force carries,
Speaker 2: and I'm I don't like, you know, I remember playing
Speaker 2: golf with Thomas Sunningdale and they have that one little
Speaker 2: pond in London and Tom went over and spit in it.
Speaker 2: He goes, it's the first water feature ever in the
Speaker 2: history of golf other than an ocean.
Speaker 1: This is where it all started. I'm like, that's sixth
Speaker 1: hole to fifth or the sixth hole lap, and.
Speaker 2: That's how I've been. It's like, you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a big force carry over water, so I had to
Speaker 2: fix it, you know, to make the design work and
Speaker 2: make it something I would want to play. I filled
Speaker 2: in a lot of the lakes so it's you know,
Speaker 2: there's only a couple of really true carries over water
Speaker 2: or they're on diagnosed kind of like the eighteenth of
Speaker 2: Sawgrass that the lake would be on the one side
Speaker 2: or the other, but playing a room to void. So
Speaker 2: I had to make sure I could do that first.
Speaker 2: Then we had to figure out where we're going to
Speaker 2: get the dirt. We had a budget of a million
Speaker 2: dollars of sand being brought in. Luckily mccure Golf, Chris
Speaker 2: Moni and Andy the project manager, we figured out how
Speaker 2: to do it by dredging the existing legs. Because the
Speaker 2: existing lakes were only like two and three feet deep.
Speaker 2: They were just held water and that's why the water
Speaker 2: came up. So we spent half of the project just
Speaker 2: over there dredging, making them twenty thirty feet deep and
Speaker 2: taking the dirt up, lifting a fairway, let it dry.
Speaker 2: And luckily it dried pretty good. And you know, we
Speaker 2: we knew there was a there's a water level we
Speaker 2: had to get above, which was the flood stage. So
Speaker 2: we had to get out of that. So most, you know,
Speaker 2: probably five of the fairways we lifted four feet and
Speaker 2: I filled in all that. You know, the four the
Speaker 2: terrible force carry. You know, you'd hit a driver seven
Speaker 2: iron six irony into a green because he had a
Speaker 2: lake in front of you. So I got I you know,
Speaker 2: I just despise us some Uh. For the most part,
Speaker 2: I got rid of any force carry and reconfigured the
Speaker 2: lakes so they'd be attractive and not wasn't a dominant
Speaker 2: like a typical Florida golf course where you have a
Speaker 2: lake on one side, you PLoP the dirt and houses
Speaker 2: on the right or vice versa. So I said, I
Speaker 2: didn't want I wanted to feel like old Florida, not
Speaker 2: a housing development Florida. And that's how we did it.
Speaker 2: We lifted and we we we saved a million dollars
Speaker 2: just by creating our own dirt. And then we had
Speaker 2: to make sure that drain too, So we surface drain.
Speaker 2: Make sure we surf surface drain. And then we put
Speaker 2: a bunch of pipe. If we saw a wet area,
Speaker 2: we pounded a lot of pipe and down swales. I
Speaker 2: was trying to get the water to swales so we
Speaker 2: shaped the fairways just so they could function well drainage wise.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of how we did it, and then
Speaker 2: put a whole new irrigation system and it's working right, It's.
Speaker 1: True, almost like a Pete Dye project. What are you're
Speaker 1: talking about? You know, it's like dredging the lakes and
Speaker 1: flipping it onto the fairways. And I mean it's that.
Speaker 1: You know, other architects have done this as well, but.
Speaker 2: Make Carrick's the best way to do it because they
Speaker 2: do much of the works dives for exactly.
Speaker 1: That that was kind of the connection I was making. Right,
Speaker 1: you're working with mccarec Golf Construction, and yeah, they know
Speaker 1: that they.
Speaker 2: Get figured out and they did. Yeah, it was engineering Marvel.
Speaker 2: That's why I love you using mcures. Chris Money's you know,
Speaker 2: used to work for Bobby Weed and uh, he's an
Speaker 2: architect has road right, but he's kind of a big
Speaker 2: project manager and he's smart as anybody I know in
Speaker 2: the business. And we figured that out and it the
Speaker 2: beauty is it worked, and uh, they don't have to
Speaker 2: even in a big rain, they don't have to close.
Speaker 2: And that that was a big thing for these folks.
Speaker 2: We can't have closure. We got to get people out
Speaker 2: and play. And it's very walkable, but you know it's floor.
Speaker 2: Do people take carts And you know, the hard part
Speaker 2: was maneuvering the cart pass. When I had a lake
Speaker 2: on the left and lake on the right, where do
Speaker 2: I put it so I didn't want to see it
Speaker 2: on my t shot, So that that was a lot
Speaker 2: of work to figure that out. And then just make
Speaker 2: sure the golf works. And you really don't notice the
Speaker 2: lakes that much unless you duck hook one into one,
Speaker 2: but they're not. I make sure the design you didn't
Speaker 2: need the lake to make the golf holes good. That's
Speaker 2: why we concentrate on the greens and make sure they're
Speaker 2: a great set of greens, and they are, They're really good,
Speaker 2: and then you have great golf.
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Speaker 1: dash goolf dot com. Check it out. As you mentioned before,
Speaker 1: this is the course where a lot of beginners play.
Speaker 1: You're also hosting some tournaments, broad range of skill sets
Speaker 1: skill levels coming to this course. So how do you
Speaker 1: how do you think through you know, accommodating those beginning
Speaker 1: players but also offering a challenge for you know, the
Speaker 1: people who can golf their ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mostly, you know, like I said, it was a
Speaker 2: dead flat golf course. We had a length. There was
Speaker 2: plenty of length, and we have a prevailing wind coming
Speaker 2: off the ocean. Eventually it comes from the ocean, so
Speaker 2: you know, longest holes are going into the wind for
Speaker 2: the good players. I didn't have a lot of fairway bunkering,
Speaker 2: but I have a lot of contours out there, ridge
Speaker 2: lines I built. You know, I kind of built a
Speaker 2: landscape and then knowing the golf course would go on it.
Speaker 2: So you know, out there at two eighty to three,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of hanging lies or little rises that
Speaker 2: that might kill a ball. You might have to kick
Speaker 2: it over it. So I could take care of the
Speaker 2: good players with their t shots by letting him hit free.
Speaker 2: But you know they might be have a funky lie.
Speaker 2: But your average player could just bunk the ball along.
Speaker 2: You know, it's wide open. It's it's almost impossible to
Speaker 2: us a golf ball. And then you know it's all
Speaker 2: about the green sites and the approaches and so the
Speaker 2: greens are good. You know, I just can't you know,
Speaker 2: I just came from Blue Mountain that fall, so I
Speaker 2: had a lot of rainer in my brain. So there,
Speaker 2: you know, there's some there's some influences there. But you
Speaker 2: know I brought in Kai for a month and a
Speaker 2: half and you know, I'd rough shape the green. I
Speaker 2: kind of knew what I wanted, a rough shape the
Speaker 2: green ahead of him, and then he got on it
Speaker 2: made it, you know, ten times cooler, and we just
Speaker 2: worked together and you know, open approaches, or we would
Speaker 2: I'd tuck a bunker on the right where he could
Speaker 2: tuck a pin in the open left side would be
Speaker 2: open so people can bunp the route ball around, you know,
Speaker 2: but there was plenty of places where every green was
Speaker 2: I a would say it was accessible playable, but I
Speaker 2: could certainly every green has three or four really tasty
Speaker 2: whole locations that will get the good player. And it's
Speaker 2: holding up really well. You know, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of corn fairy qualifiers that play there, that want to
Speaker 2: practice there. They love the greens, they love you know,
Speaker 2: the challenge of the place. But you know we also
Speaker 2: have you know, beginners, kids, special needs kids, you know,
Speaker 2: five year olds out there playing golf and they can
Speaker 2: have fun too, So it's it can be done. You
Speaker 2: just gotta check your ego a little bit and understand
Speaker 2: what really good golf is. And it's not a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, like Augusta is what twenty some on bunkers.
Speaker 2: It's all about contours. So the greens are good. You know,
Speaker 2: there's some heavy contours in them, but we made sure,
Speaker 2: you know, Tim Sicico is the superintendent. It's doing a
Speaker 2: great job. We intended these things not to be over
Speaker 2: eleven at the most on a championship day and daily
Speaker 2: is ten on the step meter. So we can hold
Speaker 2: these contours. And it's you know, tight grass around everywhere.
Speaker 2: There's tons of fair away. We roll the t you
Speaker 2: know fairway into the next tee. So if you're missing greens,
Speaker 2: which most people are gone, you're chipping or putting or
Speaker 2: something like that, so easy recovery. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Well so, and then what's the approach to bunkering when
Speaker 1: you're trying to build a course with this kind of
Speaker 1: broad appeal. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not gonna like say, I'm not gonnadum
Speaker 2: me down. The bunkering bunker's really cool. It kind of
Speaker 2: looks like Flynn, you know, flare it up. So we
Speaker 2: you know, we use some bunker solutions to keep it in.
Speaker 2: But you know they're they're the bunkers I did build
Speaker 2: are cool. They're in the all that you know, it's
Speaker 2: like the right bunker in the right location. And you
Speaker 2: don't need five of them, you just need one of them.
Speaker 2: Or you know, there's one hole that I have a
Speaker 2: bunch of bunkers. You know, I shot my water in
Speaker 2: a couple holes. There's a couple of holes that don't
Speaker 2: have bunkers at all, but they might be the hardest
Speaker 2: ones because there's some really cool, tasty contours in the
Speaker 2: approach and you know, knowing we're going to hit long.
Speaker 2: You know, like the fourth hole doesn't have a bunker
Speaker 2: on it or green side bunker on it, because I
Speaker 2: know everybody's going to be coming in it with a
Speaker 2: three wood into it. So you know, you got to
Speaker 2: be really accurate. So it's just being judicial. You know.
Speaker 2: The bunkering is still good. It's really attractive. You know
Speaker 2: I didn't. But they're all playable. You know, you can
Speaker 2: get out of them. They're not they're not stupid deep
Speaker 2: because it's Florida, it's not I don't have that much
Speaker 2: elevation change. You know, some of the green side bunkers
Speaker 2: are ape deep something like that, just because of the
Speaker 2: green sites up that high. But they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: all maintainable. We have a crew that comes in twice
Speaker 2: a week, independent contracts that take care of them. These
Speaker 2: guys are pros. They come in edge them, they know
Speaker 2: how to edge them, they know how to mow them,
Speaker 2: and they know how to maintain them. So you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're maintainable, they're sustainable, and they're in great shape,
Speaker 2: and they're all in the right spot, and they're generally
Speaker 2: in the right spot for really good players who want
Speaker 2: to be aggressive.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, yeah, you know, it strikes me. We're on
Speaker 1: the second day of the Masters right now as we're talking.
Speaker 1: This episode's coming out later. The formula is still kind
Speaker 1: of the same, you know, and people always wonder what
Speaker 1: can you do to build a course that can be
Speaker 1: hard for professionals but but also fun for regular players
Speaker 1: to play. Well. The model is kind of right there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: There are probably a few things that you and I
Speaker 1: both would would prefer to be different about Augusta National
Speaker 1: or more similar to the original course of Augusta National,
Speaker 1: but still the the fundamentals are there. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of short grass. It's you know, undulating greens where there
Speaker 1: are some easy pin positions and some really tough pin positions,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's minimal bunkering, but bunkering in the
Speaker 1: right place. It you know, the things don't really change
Speaker 1: that much.
Speaker 2: I guess no, you know, we know, you know they
Speaker 2: have Golf architecture is nothing new. We're just copying the past.
Speaker 2: And but a lot of people aren't there, you know,
Speaker 2: they're copying the wrong things from the past. Or that's
Speaker 2: why those dollars are going up. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: lot of people are folk. You know. I think you
Speaker 2: and I talked about Instagram architecture, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: what it is. You know, all the new courses are
Speaker 2: wow flash. But you know some of those Flora courses,
Speaker 2: the first hurricane is gonna wipe some of that stuff out,
Speaker 2: you know, all the sandy open stuff. You know, I
Speaker 2: know from stream Song. You know, we we you know Bill,
Speaker 2: when they were building them the Red Course and we
Speaker 2: were building the uh you know, Blue course. We understood rain,
Speaker 2: we understood what was going to happen, and we designed that.
Speaker 2: You know, we built of that. So some of these
Speaker 2: new courses going in. You know all about the flash
Speaker 2: and that the beauty of it, but you know, Florida
Speaker 2: is is pretty hostile when it comes to you know,
Speaker 2: keeping it. You know when you're gonna get especially when
Speaker 2: they're talking about you know, last year was a dry,
Speaker 2: dry summer, so they didn't have the hurricane events. But
Speaker 2: Super El Nino or I was talking about Florida might
Speaker 2: get whacked this year bad. And some of these new
Speaker 2: projects that are all open and exposed and tons of sand,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be I'm gonna be intrigued to see what
Speaker 2: happens because you've got to think about that. You know,
Speaker 2: part of you know what we're talking about sustainability, which
Speaker 2: is a big buzzword that a lot of people are using.
Speaker 2: You you gotta you can build the coolest place in
Speaker 2: the world, but you know, if the guys can't maintain it,
Speaker 2: it's unaffordable to maintain. It might not be maintainable because
Speaker 2: Florida grows, you know, all this open sand might fill
Speaker 2: in with vegetation unless you corner the market on round up.
Speaker 2: And these rain events, whether it's a hurricane or just
Speaker 2: a typical five inch rain on a Tuesday afternoon. Sustainability
Speaker 2: is building something that will hold up to that stuff
Speaker 2: and understand that's going to happen. And I don't think
Speaker 2: everybody's I'm interested to watch what happens with some of
Speaker 2: these courses.
Speaker 1: Me too, And we'll get more into that in a second.
Speaker 1: But I want to tie a bow on Miami Lakes.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: The total cost of the work that you did, at
Speaker 1: least based on what I've seen. You can correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, here was around twelve million.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a sense of how how that
Speaker 1: spend was portioned out to different aspects of the project.
Speaker 1: And I asked this because you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are curious, like what do you you know, what
Speaker 1: do different projects cost? And what is the kind of
Speaker 1: the least I could spend to get certain results? And
Speaker 1: so what was that? What was that math at Miami Likes.
Speaker 2: Believe me, that's a lot of money and the family
Speaker 2: knows that, but they're comfortable because they're building apartment buildings
Speaker 2: all the time. But a lot of it was irrigation.
Speaker 2: They needed a brand new irrigation system. So that was
Speaker 2: five million bucks right there, okay, And we had to
Speaker 2: build all the greens we had to lift the golf course.
Speaker 2: Half of the golf course four feet out of the ground. Hell,
Speaker 2: I think Seminol's doing that. It's costing twenty thirty million dollars.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. That was what I was thinking of when
Speaker 1: you're talking about dredging and lifting. It's you know, the
Speaker 1: best course in Florida's doing that right now themselves, so
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: But they're bringing their they're bringing their sand in from
Speaker 2: Orlando or something like that. So that's why it's costs
Speaker 2: a lot. So, you know, we were it's a major renovation.
Speaker 2: What we did, and in twelve million is a lot
Speaker 2: more money than I've ever spent anywhere. But it was built,
Speaker 2: you know, I guess we built them all in the
Speaker 2: right spots. A lot of it was raising that dirt,
Speaker 2: you know, lifting that golf course. A lot of it
Speaker 2: was irrigation, a car pass, a million bucks for car pass,
Speaker 2: ball the wall, it's Florida and it's all concrete. That
Speaker 2: included the driving range, included a three hole short game facility,
Speaker 2: a ten thousand square foot putting green, so they got
Speaker 2: a lot, all new tea's. You know, it's basically a
Speaker 2: brand new golf course. You know, it really is. It's
Speaker 2: brand new. You wouldn't recognize it if you played it before,
Speaker 2: So you know, it was hard to it was hard
Speaker 2: to swallow that, but we did as best as we
Speaker 2: could to keep the costs down for the family. You know,
Speaker 2: they were the CEO goos. We're okay with twelve. We
Speaker 2: just wanted to go to fourteen because we know how
Speaker 2: practice go, and we kept it under twelve. You know,
Speaker 2: we gave him a good bargain because we figured out
Speaker 2: how to do it economically and how to do it,
Speaker 2: build it smart golf course that's sustainable, and that also
Speaker 2: includes some of the equipment we had to buy. You know,
Speaker 2: that place was in shambles. He's got a new maintenance facility,
Speaker 2: so a lot went in out of that twelve million,
Speaker 2: you know, and it would surprises me some of these
Speaker 2: you know, typical renovations at these private clubs now at
Speaker 2: twenty million bucks, and how we did twice as much
Speaker 2: work there compared to what they do at some of
Speaker 2: these other places. So you know, that's kind of how
Speaker 2: it goes. Most of my most of my renovations are
Speaker 2: two million or less. Yeah, we had we had to rebuild,
Speaker 2: you know, we had to a lot of was engineering,
Speaker 2: you know, permitting things like that, you know, tree planting.
Speaker 2: We we took a lot of trees off of that property,
Speaker 2: like a lot of trees, and then we had to
Speaker 2: plant a lot back with the city Organs. So that
Speaker 2: costs a lot of money. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: incidentals outside, you know, the golf itself. I probably Irrigation
Speaker 2: probably spent less than four million on the actual golf
Speaker 2: course Tea to green.
Speaker 1: One of the questions I had in mind is what
Speaker 1: would the four million dollar version of this proce have
Speaker 1: looked like? And it sounds like that would have been
Speaker 1: the golf course work, but you wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to do all the kind of infrastructural work that you
Speaker 1: needed to do in order to do the golf course
Speaker 1: work in the first place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and then that's that's why it blewed up.
Speaker 2: But we had to make it work. But we also,
Speaker 2: you know, we built a big giant driving range and
Speaker 2: we got you know, beautiful short game that's like four
Speaker 2: greens over there for the kids to play on. Built
Speaker 2: a huge you know, putting green. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: that went into that. But you know, that's why I
Speaker 2: was pretty proud of that we still kept the actual
Speaker 2: golf component reasonable, right, you know, compared to most other projects.
Speaker 1: Well, every project is different, and when I talk about
Speaker 1: twelve million, I'm not coming from a place of critique.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: I understand what what you did there and what that
Speaker 1: usually costs. And so when we talk about economy of construction,
Speaker 1: a project like this, I think fits that bill. You know,
Speaker 1: to the extent that I know anything about about how
Speaker 1: money was spent on the project or what decision were made,
Speaker 1: which you know, as an outside observer you can never
Speaker 1: really know all the details of that. My impression is
Speaker 1: that that less was spent on this work than is
Speaker 1: usually spent on projects of this type. The numbers I
Speaker 1: usually see for projects of this kind where kind of
Speaker 1: big things need to be done to the corridors, not
Speaker 1: just the greens, where irrigation needs to be replaced, where
Speaker 1: a driving range is being built, where the golf course
Speaker 1: is truly being overhauled. The numbers I'm used to seeing
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenties for those projects. And this is
Speaker 1: the twenty twenties. This is not the twenty tens or before.
Speaker 1: This is these are specific circumstances in the era that
Speaker 1: we're living in, those numbers are usually in the twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty million dollar range. That's what That's what I
Speaker 1: usually see, and so this is lower than that, And
Speaker 1: so it makes me curious, like, what what do you
Speaker 1: think were the main areas where you were able to
Speaker 1: save and practice economy of construction in this project.
Speaker 2: It's not bloating everything, you know, it's not billy bunkers
Speaker 2: every you know, bunkers can cost ridiculous if you put
Speaker 2: too much liners in it, drainage all that. I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just you know, i'd last fall I
Speaker 2: did Westmoreland Country Club in Chicago. It's all of Willie
Speaker 2: Watson Course. It kind of lost its way and had
Speaker 2: a couple of bad projects, so I was fixing it.
Speaker 2: We all new greens, probably one hundred and some odd bunkers,
Speaker 2: all new te's, all new fairways, all new irrigation system
Speaker 2: seven million dollars, and the irrigation was four and a
Speaker 2: half of it. So it's still none of three million
Speaker 2: dollars of golf where they had brand new greens, all
Speaker 2: new bunkers with Billy bunkers in them, all new te'es
Speaker 2: all new fairways and that's what the golf costs. So
Speaker 2: you know, that's all I know how to do. So
Speaker 2: hearing the twenty million dollars, I don't know where that
Speaker 2: money is spent. To be honest with you, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: I don't know where that money goes. I'm glad of
Speaker 2: what you know, but a lot of clubs are doing that.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kicking a lot of clubs of the
Speaker 2: curb because they're like, well, how come you know we
Speaker 2: only spent one point seven million and the other course
Speaker 2: spent twenty What would we do wrong? I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's we're smarter than they are, and that's
Speaker 2: a lot of money in your pocket. But you know,
Speaker 2: I get I get moved on because they're buying the
Speaker 2: grift of this twenty million dollar projects. So I don't
Speaker 2: know where we saved the money compared to those guys,
Speaker 2: because all I know is I hear the big numbers.
Speaker 2: But all I know is, you know, like in the
Speaker 2: Chicago area, there's a couple near Westmoreland that you know
Speaker 2: are going to do a fraction what we do, and
Speaker 2: they're going to spend more than what we did. Moving greens.
Speaker 2: We you know, we didn't move any greens around. We
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it in Miami. I built you know,
Speaker 2: we I kept the existing green pads for the most sake.
Speaker 2: I re routed three holes, but that you know, they
Speaker 2: were twenty feet high, and they gave me their I
Speaker 2: could drop a ten feet and use that dirt and
Speaker 2: put it out in the fairway. So a lot of
Speaker 2: the economy was just shaping. Shaping is pretty cheap, you know,
Speaker 2: pushing that dirt around. We weren't hauling dirt around that much,
Speaker 2: but we were pushing it around. So that's that's how
Speaker 2: you can save a lot of money just by smart shaping. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and good shapers too, you know, ky I was there.
Speaker 2: I was shaping all the bunkers and doing some of
Speaker 2: the fairy work. And mc kerrick's got some really good
Speaker 2: shapers on board that we're working the fairways and the t's,
Speaker 2: so that's a big savings. You know. Tom always said, well,
Speaker 2: making changes in the field while it's being shaped is
Speaker 2: really economical because it's just actually a couple hours. But
Speaker 2: if architect, famous architect comes in, the greens built in
Speaker 2: grass and irrigating goes oh, I actually went at thirty
Speaker 2: feet over there, you're dropping a bottom, you're moving that
Speaker 2: green over. That's how prices get up. And it also
Speaker 2: helps that I'm there every day, you know, that's I'm
Speaker 2: one of the economies of me how I work, which
Speaker 2: I enjoy working, is being there every day, showing up
Speaker 2: at seven with the crew, getting everybody in line, going up,
Speaker 2: building some bunkers or some greens. But it's basically I'm
Speaker 2: making the decision instantly that's approved, so they're not waiting
Speaker 2: for architect B to show up every two weeks either
Speaker 2: compromising it, approve it, or move it. Oh that's not
Speaker 2: what I was thinking. I know what I'm thinking because
Speaker 2: I just built it. So that saves a lot. You'd
Speaker 2: be surprised how much money that saves. Typically ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of a project is saved by me being
Speaker 2: there on site because they don't have the budget waiting
Speaker 2: for Joe Famous to show up and go, you know,
Speaker 2: drop a bomb on something. You just build right. Well,
Speaker 2: there's an economy of that, and that's just built in
Speaker 2: how I work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, things don't have the chance to snowball in a
Speaker 1: direction that you didn't want them to go because you're
Speaker 1: there and you know instantly if it's going in the wrong.
Speaker 2: And I had Kai there and we you know, we
Speaker 2: were We worked from a month and a half straight.
Speaker 2: We had to get these greens done because he had
Speaker 2: to get back to Montana and workous project. Yeah, shut up,
Speaker 2: he shut up January second and hesing a bulldozer for
Speaker 2: thirty five straight days, you know, trying to bang out
Speaker 2: nineteen greens as fast as we could. And I had
Speaker 2: to get ahead of them. I had to get a
Speaker 2: bulldozer ahead of them because I had to set it
Speaker 2: up and knock these greens down and let that, you know,
Speaker 2: let him do his thing. And that saves a lot
Speaker 2: of money, just because we were fast. You know, Andy, Andy,
Speaker 2: their project manager. I love him because he does the
Speaker 2: big dirt projects and he puts the pedal to the metal,
Speaker 2: and I'm the same way. We kept thinking, all right,
Speaker 2: it's Florida. January and February really nice in Florida. But
Speaker 2: april's when the oven starts going on. And we're a
Speaker 2: couple of Northern boys, and we kept going, we're gonna
Speaker 2: get out of here by April. Sometimes because I don't,
Speaker 2: I'll boil. And we did we you know it was
Speaker 2: it's the economy of speed is really good too, and
Speaker 2: that Mkurric had that built in because they could get
Speaker 2: in and out of there also, so there was inherent economies.
Speaker 2: But compared to the twenty million dollars stuff, I don't
Speaker 2: know where they spend their money.
Speaker 1: Yes, with you, it's it's a mystery to me as well.
Speaker 1: But it's good to have the information that you just
Speaker 1: gave because you know, listeners, especially listeners who are maybe
Speaker 1: involved in a golf course project right now, can can
Speaker 1: take that and say, Okay, this is this is kind
Speaker 1: of where these different aspects of a project should sit economically,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then and then you can start
Speaker 1: to ask questions about when when budgets go over that
Speaker 1: and this is I mean, listen, these might sound like
Speaker 1: nosy questions that I'm asking, or like I'm inviting people
Speaker 1: to to ask rude questions, but the fact is that
Speaker 1: all of these decisions end up affecting the amount that
Speaker 1: a player play at pays to play the course. It
Speaker 1: ends up affecting the affordability of the facility. And if
Speaker 1: that's the biggest issue right now that we're facing in
Speaker 1: golf course construction and in golf in general, is the
Speaker 1: affordability component. Then this is where we have to start.
Speaker 1: We have to start by by looking closely at the
Speaker 1: at the budgets that these projects are are taking on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've had like elkrap Is all nine holer,
Speaker 2: buy me up here. It's an old ross course that
Speaker 2: he was never there, gave him the drawings. It's the
Speaker 2: coolest little it's almost like a Scottish community. It's the
Speaker 2: home course. Everybody plays it. We read a bill a
Speaker 2: bunch of t's and all the bunkers for our budget
Speaker 2: was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars including me. And
Speaker 2: it's the coolest place, you know. You know, Percy Warner
Speaker 2: was one point seven included irrigation Shelby in Nashville's two million.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is just fix it what it
Speaker 2: needs to be fixed. Don't don't build this giant memorial
Speaker 2: to you and your fundraisers. It's public golf. They're just
Speaker 2: happy with grass half the time, you know. And if
Speaker 2: there's cool design, that's cool too. But you know, I
Speaker 2: grew up playing public golf course. We're just we're banging
Speaker 2: the ball and we're just happy. To have grass. So
Speaker 2: a lot of these projects get overblown because you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of rich people are the donors, and they're
Speaker 2: you know, they play out of wherever, and they you know,
Speaker 2: it's aren't we great, We're doing this for public golf.
Speaker 2: But then you know, you go in the parking lot
Speaker 2: and there's nothing but Porsches and Mercedes and BMW's because
Speaker 2: they're the ones that can afford to play there, because
Speaker 2: you had to get the price. So you know, sustainable, maintainable,
Speaker 2: accessible golf also has to be cheap, you know, to play.
Speaker 2: And there's some of these projects, you know, either there
Speaker 2: be funded to keep the prices down, but you know,
Speaker 2: some of these thirty million dollars renovations, who are they serving?
Speaker 2: Are they really serving the people that play at And
Speaker 2: that's the thing that I'm concerned about that some of
Speaker 2: these bloated budgets are great now because we do have
Speaker 2: a lot of paper millionaires, you know, since twenty ten
Speaker 2: Spot markets doing that, so there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: new to the game that have flush with cash. There's
Speaker 2: you know out and you too. My son lived in
Speaker 2: Utah for a while and they say, you know, the
Speaker 2: billionaires and moving the millionaires out now to Park City,
Speaker 2: you know, so there's a lot of money out there,
Speaker 2: so they just think it's money's easy to come by.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've been through a few recessions and
Speaker 2: gas lines and stuff like that, and Help two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight basically took a dump on the golf business.
Speaker 2: And so the people coming into power, everything's rosy. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no there's no war going on there. You know,
Speaker 2: gas prices are fine, but there's a reality, you know,
Speaker 2: the public golfers are paying those kind of gas prices,
Speaker 2: So there's there's a reality of it. And I think
Speaker 2: some of these projects are in Lalla Land and will
Speaker 2: happen if we have a you know, economic downturn, which
Speaker 2: historically we were due. What's going to happen to some
Speaker 2: of these giant projects. And you know, there's gonna be
Speaker 2: a lot of places either closing or sold pennies on
Speaker 2: the dollar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of clubs that are
Speaker 1: that have a lot of debt right now. That's that's
Speaker 1: when it becomes unwise to be because you know, there's
Speaker 1: one thing with these destination clubs that are that are
Speaker 1: funded by some billionaire who just wants a cool club
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere, where where he or
Speaker 1: she and his or her buddies might go to play
Speaker 1: golf away from it all. You know, those those aren't
Speaker 1: those A lot of those clubs are not deeply in debt, right,
Speaker 1: those clubs aren't over leveraged. You know, if a recession comes,
Speaker 1: then then those ones aren't going to be the first
Speaker 1: to go. The first to go are the clubs that
Speaker 1: have have taken on a lot of debt in order
Speaker 1: to do these extravagant renovation projects. And those are the ones.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty worried about it. It seems like you are.
Speaker 2: I work on a few of them. Luckily, most of
Speaker 2: my clients. You know. I redid Blue Mount great rainer course.
Speaker 2: We did that two years ago, and we did it
Speaker 2: for less than two million dollars. You know. It's a
Speaker 2: good wise club. They're smart people. It's a rainer course.
Speaker 2: You don't have to drop Obama. You know. We didn't
Speaker 2: have to rebuild the grains. The grass is great. You know.
Speaker 2: We just redid the bunkering and did a bunch of
Speaker 2: teas and some treework. But we kept it tight and
Speaker 2: they're very They're comfortable in their skin and they are
Speaker 2: going to survive. But you know, the neighbored course that's
Speaker 2: trying to keep up with the Jones is too much
Speaker 2: drop thirty million and can't balance their budget, you know,
Speaker 2: but that's what they thought was the right thing to do.
Speaker 2: And I've had a couple of clubs this year but
Speaker 2: really broke, you know, old, old established clubs just broke
Speaker 2: my heart, like, oh, we're going to go in a
Speaker 2: different direction. You know, I've been working there forever, and
Speaker 2: they hired the latest, greatest young architects to give great
Speaker 2: presentations with graphic artists and all that shit, and they're
Speaker 2: going to drop a bomb on it. And that's not
Speaker 2: what the old club was. You know. It's the newer
Speaker 2: money that taking over that think they need to do that.
Speaker 2: You know, the elders, aren't you I've worked at clubs
Speaker 2: for so long. My elders when I was in my
Speaker 2: thirties were in their sixties and now I'm a few older,
Speaker 2: and they're they're dying off or getting out a push
Speaker 2: out of power. So it's the new money kind of
Speaker 2: coming into power, and they just think that's what they
Speaker 2: need to do. And I still have some you know,
Speaker 2: I was at Blue Mountain last week. I have to
Speaker 2: go to Essex County Club and the next month I
Speaker 2: still got pipe and Rock to go to. It's I
Speaker 2: got some great clubs that haven't fallen for the ruse
Speaker 2: of you got to do that. And like you know,
Speaker 2: they are kind of Yankee cheap, which is good. You
Speaker 2: know they've been that way forever.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's Essex for you. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's wonderful. Like it's i mean, the best renovation
Speaker 1: maybe in this era. And and it's taken a long time.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've talked to the superintendent there a lot,
Speaker 1: Eric Diricherson and and and he and you know, part
Speaker 1: of the story is him and his collaboration with you.
Speaker 1: But it's also you know, the way he puts it,
Speaker 1: the club members wouldn't wouldn't want the big project. They
Speaker 1: would they would say, no way, we're paying for that,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to close down our golf course.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good circumstance for that club because they've
Speaker 1: they've gotten the work that they've gotten, uh, in the
Speaker 1: proper way.
Speaker 2: And I'm lucky, you know, my resume is full of
Speaker 2: those kind of clubs, but you know, some are going
Speaker 2: by the wayside, some are falling for it, and it's
Speaker 2: just like just breaks my heart. I'm like, damn, you know,
Speaker 2: if we spent all this time not spending money, Nelson,
Speaker 2: you're going to spend this much money, somebody's gonna make
Speaker 2: all this money. But you know, that's my legacy, and
Speaker 2: that's why I'm pretty proud of the work I've done
Speaker 2: and responsibly doing it because it is it's still just golf.
Speaker 2: It's still just a game. You know, where do we
Speaker 2: keeping up with the Joneses too much? I've said this before.
Speaker 2: I always try to keep the I always create the
Speaker 2: mantra we are the Joneses. You know, people are gonna,
Speaker 2: i know, Westmoreland, they're pretty proud that we only spent
Speaker 2: that much money because the neighborhood clubs are all doing
Speaker 2: the big stuff and they're asking, how did you do that?
Speaker 2: And it's really good, you know, it's really well done.
Speaker 2: It's a cool club and they're proud, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like you guys are the dummies spending twenty million. You know,
Speaker 2: we get to pocket this, you know, we don't have
Speaker 2: to spend this much money.
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: those those that benefit will reveal itself more and more
Speaker 1: over time as well. And that's how people got to
Speaker 1: think about it. It's a long term thing. It's not
Speaker 1: just instant gratification.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm doing Belvedere in twenty seven. We're finally going
Speaker 2: to do the bunches of Belvidere.
Speaker 1: Wonderful course in Michigan that people should should know more.
Speaker 1: Abouts is a club but has long been accessible as
Speaker 1: well to the to the public golfer at an affordable rate.
Speaker 2: Yep. Great other than Crystal Downs, it's a great old
Speaker 2: club up here by far almost equal equal set of
Speaker 2: greens too. And it's always been a summer club. They're
Speaker 2: members of Camargo Bellery you know, all over the place.
Speaker 2: So there's it's a hitting club, but it's always been
Speaker 2: a summer club. And I'm like, there's just simple oval bunkers,
Speaker 2: but the greens in the content, it's Augusta. Basically, the
Speaker 2: greens are insanely cool. The ground contours are great. It's
Speaker 2: just a great study. I've sent so many architectures sort
Speaker 2: of the green sits there. It's just phenomenal. It didn't
Speaker 2: need fancy bunkers. They just had these simple ovals that
Speaker 2: were done and back in the sixties, even though the
Speaker 2: course is built in the twenties. But we do have
Speaker 2: pictures of the old bunkers and it was kind of
Speaker 2: like Billy Bell looking stuff. You know, Watson worked with
Speaker 2: Bell a lot. It almost like Billy Bell built these bunkers,
Speaker 2: so they were really freely la country club looking, but
Speaker 2: they'd rounded off because it's a summer club. They didn't
Speaker 2: want to spend any money. And I was perfectly fine
Speaker 2: with it as long as the routing was good. The
Speaker 2: greens were great, and I got all the mowing right
Speaker 2: place is perfect. Now they're you know, they got so
Speaker 2: much notoriety through you guys and everybody else. It's it's
Speaker 2: one of the hot stops when you come to northern Michigan.
Speaker 2: You play Kingsley High Point, you try to get into
Speaker 2: the downs Forest dunes and you try to get in
Speaker 2: Velvet there because it is the old kind of Scottish model.
Speaker 2: There's it's privately owned, but it's a lot of the
Speaker 2: a lot of money's paid by the outside public and
Speaker 2: allowed to play. But now that they're charging so much
Speaker 2: to the outside play, they said, well maybe we should
Speaker 2: think about finally doing the bunkering. So but you know,
Speaker 2: my budget is less than a million and a half
Speaker 2: to do the bunkering because we're gonna we're gonna get cure.
Speaker 2: It's gonna do it with me and I'm gonna shape it.
Speaker 2: I'm I live right here, so it doesn't that, you know.
Speaker 2: And there it was hard squeezing that kind of money
Speaker 2: out of that old club because it's a summer club.
Speaker 2: But we finally are doing it, and we're doing it responsibly. It's,
Speaker 2: you know, not doing anything more than needs to be
Speaker 2: done to make a good golf. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: the mantra of public golf. Don't don't fix, fix what
Speaker 2: needs to get fixed, and check your ego and try
Speaker 2: not to make a statement. Just make a good golf.
Speaker 1: And that's how this relates to public golf. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, all these clubs doing the big projects
Speaker 1: because they have this new wave of members coming in
Speaker 1: who want to who want to spend that money and
Speaker 1: want to see those results. Okay, that's that's great for
Speaker 1: certain clubs, especially clubs the host championships. You know, there
Speaker 1: are there are a number of championship focused renovations that
Speaker 1: cost a lot of money, where where I kind of
Speaker 1: understand why that's happening, because you're going to get the
Speaker 1: return of that championship, and that's going to come back
Speaker 1: to the club, you know, maybe not financially, but culturally,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the purpose of the club to
Speaker 1: keep up with the Joneses, to use your phrase. But
Speaker 1: when you start to apply that ethic to public courses
Speaker 1: that are meant to be affordable, that's when the problems begin.
Speaker 1: And part of the issue is that some of the
Speaker 1: same people who are funding these extravagant renovations at private
Speaker 1: clubs are also the ones who are backing the overhaul
Speaker 1: of the local public course. And that is great, that
Speaker 1: is very generous of them. What a wonderful thing to do.
Speaker 1: Thank you for giving back to the game. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely do that. But the problems start when
Speaker 1: you when you apply the taste that you've developed from
Speaker 1: your club's extravagant renovation. When you apply that taste and
Speaker 1: that set of expectations to a public course, it doesn't
Speaker 1: translate very well. We have to develop a different kind
Speaker 1: of taste for different courses. Some courses, yeah, go for
Speaker 1: the extravagant bunkering, the the the you know, spectacular if
Speaker 1: a little bit in pre tactical features that that you
Speaker 1: find on some courses. But when you're trying to build
Speaker 1: a course that is, uh, that is going to be
Speaker 1: affordable and sustainable for the long term, then that kind
Speaker 1: of photogenic approach to golf architecture isn't going to work
Speaker 1: as well. We have to develop a different taste for
Speaker 1: understated elegance, right, we have to. We have to bring
Speaker 1: back elegance somehow, and I'm not sure how we do that,
Speaker 1: and I I think we've gone pretty far in the
Speaker 1: other direction. But we have to somehow or another convince
Speaker 1: people to love elegance and simplicity and uh, you know
Speaker 1: minimalism m h as much as they they love the
Speaker 1: flashy stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think it's it's the hard part for me
Speaker 2: is it's usually you know what we're struggling in Nashville
Speaker 2: because Ted Rohads. Ted Roads Golf Course the next one
Speaker 2: we're trying to get to and Jim Nantz is involved.
Speaker 2: We've had the tour represents from the tour, we got
Speaker 2: backing from you and bigger places than the tour in
Speaker 2: this because it's you know, home of Ted Rhads. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's serving the community there in Nashville. But you know,
Speaker 2: we're struggling with the municipalities that you know, they struggle
Speaker 2: bureaucratic red tape and middle management bloat and entitlement, so
Speaker 2: they're hard to do. But you know those are they're
Speaker 2: all easy because we're not. We're not servicing you know,
Speaker 2: Percy Warner. It was mostly Bell Mead and people that
Speaker 2: we're supporting that because they walk the park and and
Speaker 2: they also play it, which is kind of cool Ted Rhodes.
Speaker 2: You know, we're not We're probably gonna have to have
Speaker 2: corporate money to help support that. You know, there's no
Speaker 2: money in the community, so it's you know, you gotta
Speaker 2: you know, to build that, to fix that golf course
Speaker 2: by minimal everybody's gonna love it because it's more playable,
Speaker 2: not because it's high end and this flashy bunkering and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. It's you know, so I think the
Speaker 2: public golf courses in the city courses, you don't have
Speaker 2: to play kates to the the rich donors because they're
Speaker 2: not going to play it anyways. You know, You're just
Speaker 2: you know, I think that's my mantra there is, like, well,
Speaker 2: they're not going to play it, so I'm just going
Speaker 2: to build it for the people that actually play it.
Speaker 2: You know. Thankfully they're supporting us, you know, Percy, I
Speaker 2: had to. We had to make it kind of cool
Speaker 2: because you know, there's a Donald Ross Coast just down
Speaker 2: the road and these people are there. But Shelby was
Speaker 2: the East Nashville. Now there's at least played golf course
Speaker 2: in the rotation. We got two million dollars from the mayor.
Speaker 2: I fixed all the greens and let them play. And
Speaker 2: people love it because there's no fancy people over there
Speaker 2: playing golf off. You know. So it's it can be done,
Speaker 2: and it just depends on the neighborhood. Like all the
Speaker 2: CD of Detroit, Rackham and stuff like that. You know.
Speaker 2: We I worked there for a little bit, but we
Speaker 2: had you know, we had American golfers putting the money
Speaker 2: into it, you know, Kemper or something like that, putting
Speaker 2: money into it where these high profile things. The park
Speaker 2: is a great example, you know, Paul Beach. It is
Speaker 2: done for all the right reasons. Forty to fifty million dollars.
Speaker 2: Dirk Ziff and all those seminal members put all their
Speaker 2: money and they like hanging out down there because it's
Speaker 2: kind of a nightclub at night. Yeah, but you go there,
Speaker 2: you know, and a gilded you know, they brought in
Speaker 2: gill which is going to be a high end product.
Speaker 2: They built something phenomenal. The only issue I have with
Speaker 2: that place is you go to the parking lot. I
Speaker 2: went there to check it out. It was really cool.
Speaker 2: It's really expensive to play on a weekends, three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty bucks for you know, an outsider to play it.
Speaker 2: And all the all the cars in the parking lot
Speaker 2: were German cars unless they were Tessela's and it just
Speaker 2: becomes a bro hangout. And that's kind of what the
Speaker 2: park is turned and it wasn't intended to be that.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of the donors they're giving back
Speaker 2: to the game and the local people play. There's not
Speaker 2: that many local people playing that golf course. When you
Speaker 2: go in the parking lot and you're you know, I
Speaker 2: had my round car stuck out like a sore thumb
Speaker 2: because there's nothing but Porsches and benzes and BMW's sitting there.
Speaker 2: And you go to the first te and it's just
Speaker 2: a bunch of flat bellies with white belts. You know,
Speaker 2: who made their money financial money by noon, the day traders,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of who's hanging out there. And it's
Speaker 2: super cool, but I just don't know if it's serving
Speaker 2: its intent and is it sustainable. It's it's a high
Speaker 2: end gill project. It's really cool. You did a great,
Speaker 2: great job. It's more like a private country club job
Speaker 2: than like you say, a public golf course. It's sustainable.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, and you know maybe that's good for that
Speaker 1: place too, even but is it a model No? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's where we have to do some searching.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, same of you know Mike and Will's project.
Speaker 2: You know, the Americans trust or links trust, they have
Speaker 2: their heart in the right spot. Obviously Trump is crapping
Speaker 2: all over it and muscling them out. But the original
Speaker 2: intent they were going to spend a lot of money
Speaker 2: on each golf courses, Like why don't you just fix it?
Speaker 2: You know, there's just public golfers there. But they get
Speaker 2: you know, they brought all the high end guys and
Speaker 2: they're going to be twenty million dollar projects, and that's
Speaker 2: really hard to raise that kind of money and then
Speaker 2: make it sustainable at the same time. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't know if their model was great. You know, they
Speaker 2: had a lot of famous people throwing money at that,
Speaker 2: and they've done a great job, you know, Mike and Will,
Speaker 2: their hearts are in the right spot. I just I'd
Speaker 2: always like, man, you're just spending too much money. You know,
Speaker 2: you get you actually have to get out there and
Speaker 2: do it. You know, I'm lucky I've been. I have
Speaker 2: four five public projects that work because we didn't spend
Speaker 2: that much money. I mean, like the natural projects, we
Speaker 2: always said we're going to cap it at two million.
Speaker 2: I can fix a golf course what needs to be
Speaker 2: fixed for maybe two million bucks. And and that's why
Speaker 2: I think that's what these projects have to be. They
Speaker 2: have to be less ego, less frill. Who you really
Speaker 2: serving the public golfer they're just fine, just got on
Speaker 2: banging the ball. You know, they want they want to
Speaker 2: put a peg in the ground, there's grass there. They
Speaker 2: want to put on a green that's full of grass,
Speaker 2: not dirt. After that, it's pretty fun. You know. It's
Speaker 2: all good. So I think it's you say it is education,
Speaker 2: but it's also leading by example. And we're quietly in
Speaker 2: Nashville and San Antonio. We're doing it out there. We're
Speaker 2: just not getting a lot of ink about it. You know,
Speaker 2: the big fancy projects are getting all the ink Cops
Speaker 2: Creek and stuff like that. Rightfully, so because we're spending
Speaker 2: a lot of money, the park got a lot of ink.
Speaker 2: But we're quietly doing this one golf course at the time,
Speaker 2: and it's it's very doable around the country. You just
Speaker 2: have to have the right mindset.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to end this on a positive note
Speaker 1: for what people how people might apply some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're talking about here. I know that every
Speaker 1: individual golf course is different, but when you look at
Speaker 1: public golf courses in general, what are like a few
Speaker 1: low cost things that most any course could do to
Speaker 1: get better?
Speaker 2: I look, you know I could. I always say I
Speaker 2: could go to any muni and you know, check my
Speaker 2: ego at the door and go how do I make
Speaker 2: this better? A lot of it's just mowing. Get the
Speaker 2: mowing lines, get the ferries out white a little bit wider,
Speaker 2: make it more playable, get the greens good. And to
Speaker 2: manage the trees. You know, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 2: them are been mismanageder they never hit architects before. And
Speaker 2: oh we're gonna we're gonna put a new car path
Speaker 2: system and the freaking car paths going down the mellow
Speaker 2: the fairway, you know, get it out of the way.
Speaker 2: Or are they playing a bunch of trees that really
Speaker 2: affected the golf. But that's a lot of low hanging
Speaker 2: fruit trees and mowing is pretty cheap, and that fixes
Speaker 2: most golf courses. You get the trees back out, the
Speaker 2: grass grows better. But it's you know, fix what you
Speaker 2: actually play golf on. Have some good teas that aren't dirt,
Speaker 2: have some grains that aren't dirt, and after that everything's
Speaker 2: gravy basically, and that that doesn't cost a lot of money.
Speaker 2: You can go to any golf course, you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, look at the bunkers. Are they maintained the bunkers, well,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of them, they're they're just not
Speaker 2: even maintaining they're just you know, that's the one thing
Speaker 2: we're having a problem at Miami Lakes. These public golfers
Speaker 2: don't fix ball marks and they don't rake their damn bunkers,
Speaker 2: you know. So we're trying to create this culture raak
Speaker 2: the bunkers please, you know, fix your ball marks. And
Speaker 2: they're getting better at it. But you know, the general
Speaker 2: public isn't not that sophisticated. They're just out and cutoffs
Speaker 2: and a T shirt and a six pack of beer
Speaker 2: and having fun. And that's it's part of the game.
Speaker 2: So don't you don't have to give them the country
Speaker 2: club setting. Just give them something playable. But I think
Speaker 2: you know that those are the things you can do
Speaker 2: really cheap. It doesn't cost a lot of money. It's
Speaker 2: just something, you know, it's just having the brain power
Speaker 2: to do it, having somebody with an eye to look
Speaker 2: at and like, oh, yeah, I could fix this. There's
Speaker 2: some cool there's a cool little nine holer up by
Speaker 2: a Northport Point club, old private club, old Bendolo, and
Speaker 2: I just mowed the heck out of it and it
Speaker 2: is so much fun. You know, there's simple little Bendolo greens.
Speaker 2: But I rebuild all the bunkers. There's a handful of bunkers,
Speaker 2: but most of it was just mowing shore grass everywhere
Speaker 2: and the ball just rolls. It's just basically Scotland, you know.
Speaker 2: There's not that many bunkers over there. It's all mowing
Speaker 2: and contours and that doesn't cost a lot of money
Speaker 2: to fix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you can do a lot, I think, just
Speaker 1: by making a golf course more functional. If if that's
Speaker 1: the focus first, then you earn the trust of the
Speaker 1: golfers because everybody appreciates a functional golf course. Everybody appreciates
Speaker 1: a golf course where the turf is decent throughout and
Speaker 1: and it's pretty simple. But if you start with that,
Speaker 1: then maybe you can start to do some more interesting
Speaker 1: things with the architecture. But you have to lead with
Speaker 1: making the golf course functional, because if you can't do that,
Speaker 1: then again you're not going to earn the trust of
Speaker 1: the golfers.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, I always laugh. I was, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been doing this long enough. I know a bit about agrondo. Mute,
Speaker 2: I said, I see in my lane. My simple agronomy
Speaker 2: is grass good, dirt bad. And I really care what
Speaker 2: kind of grass as long as it's grass. I got
Speaker 2: my ball sitting there. Most people don't know ben grass
Speaker 2: from bermuda, from dry from anything. As long as you
Speaker 2: have grass, get rid of the dirt. You play gronk
Speaker 2: play golf on grass. So focus on that, which is drainage,
Speaker 2: which is simple, just figuring it out. How do you
Speaker 2: how do you get the best terf we can? You know,
Speaker 2: just coverage doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be perfect
Speaker 2: bank grass you go to I just laugh whenever. You know,
Speaker 2: we were building the Renaissance Club over in Scotland on
Speaker 2: Sundays ago to Saint Andrews and Walkett because it was
Speaker 2: it's public golf course. Dogs and I take a ball,
Speaker 2: roll around. You look at the fairways, you look down
Speaker 2: at the fairies. I'm my good god. You know it's
Speaker 2: a root mat. Basically, it's not even turf. It's just
Speaker 2: this perfect surface that's a root mat of all kinds
Speaker 2: of hodgepodgs of grasses. And that's what makes it such
Speaker 2: a great playable surface and maintainable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, survival of the fittest with agronomy there is just
Speaker 1: like whatever.
Speaker 2: They have irrigation only to keep it so the grass
Speaker 2: doesn't dye, not to grow grass. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: we come over here in America and we have to
Speaker 2: have these pure mono stands of grass, and you know,
Speaker 2: darwin logic defeats all that, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: a pure standard grass just doesn't survive over time or
Speaker 2: you have to spend a lot of money to keep
Speaker 2: it pure. And you know, we go overseas and play
Speaker 2: golf and we there's one set of teas and you
Speaker 2: play from a rock as the guy tells you to
Speaker 2: play it, and you're more unhappy and it's six sixty
Speaker 2: one hundred yards. You come back to America, you want
Speaker 2: a perfect live, perfect greens and ten sets of teas.
Speaker 2: So somehow it's you know, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's an economic hiccup that we have that brings us
Speaker 2: back to sustainability of what turf really needs to be
Speaker 2: and what is essential for good golf. I think, like
Speaker 2: you said, it's the train is running away pretty hard
Speaker 2: that this, you know, this perceived thought of what good
Speaker 2: golf is pure stand of grass and perfect bunkers, perf
Speaker 2: fricked everything, and that's just that nature and that's not
Speaker 2: what golf is supposed to be, and.
Speaker 1: It's not always the most functional either. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, I don't know how you how
Speaker 1: you feel about dogs or dog ownership. But the dogs
Speaker 1: that I like the most are are are the mutts.
Speaker 1: You know, the ones that uh, you know, they just
Speaker 1: came out of a cardboard box next to the grocery
Speaker 1: store entrance, and and they've got all sorts of things
Speaker 1: going on, and their their genealogy and and they tend
Speaker 1: to be really sturdy, cool dogs. But when you start
Speaker 1: messing around with the pure breeds.
Speaker 2: How many how many Irish shedters do you see nowadays? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like well fragile seventies.
Speaker 2: They were the most popular that they got inbred so
Speaker 2: much they disappeared. Cocker spaniels. You don't see right, Chester
Speaker 2: was in here with me. He just took off, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I heard them. I'm a big dog guy. I like
Speaker 2: dogs on golf courses. I love going overseas and seeing
Speaker 2: a pile of dogs and front porch with a you know,
Speaker 2: they're an essentral part of the game, and I love
Speaker 2: them when they're Superintendent's have dogs I have on my phone.
Speaker 2: I have a I have at least fifty or sixty
Speaker 2: golf dogs and they're generally mutts. Yeah, that work best
Speaker 2: on golf courses and everybody loves them. And I was
Speaker 2: at Blue Mountain Moose there is great I know all
Speaker 2: the dogs' names, and uh I hang out with them
Speaker 2: and they're a central part of the game. But that's
Speaker 2: the same thing. It's like, too too much purity is
Speaker 2: for the west Manaster show, not for not for a pet.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, How many of those are real pats?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not many, and they're and they're a little that
Speaker 1: can be hard to keep up.
Speaker 2: So I main you know, that's the problem. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's high maintenance. And that's part of the sustainability, the
Speaker 2: we'd sustainability. It's overused. It has to be maintainable at
Speaker 2: a reasonable pace. You know. That's the one thing you
Speaker 2: were talking about. You know, some of these super high
Speaker 2: in private one owner obs. The kids don't have the
Speaker 2: same passion as dad, and so when dad passes away,
Speaker 2: what's going to happen to that really high end one
Speaker 2: hundred million dollar golf course. Kids are going to sell
Speaker 2: it or and move it on. You know, rarely do
Speaker 2: the kids have the same passion as the dad. You know,
Speaker 2: we all have our own passions. But you know, so
Speaker 2: that'll be interesting to happen to those you know, the
Speaker 2: grand there they're recession proof, but they're not inheritance proof
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as soon as as soon as you lose interest,
Speaker 1: then then it goes.
Speaker 2: I got a couple of you know, I got a
Speaker 2: couple of clubs that where are those you know, real
Speaker 2: private one owner and they're really worried about the legacy.
Speaker 2: You know, they're starting to set up endowments because they
Speaker 2: know when when they pass, who's going to take over
Speaker 2: and what are they going to do? What my passion
Speaker 2: was because they obviously live somewhere else. So I have
Speaker 2: a couple of clients that are concerned about that. We've
Speaker 2: had those discussions how do we how do we carry
Speaker 2: this legacy on of these real high end products, and
Speaker 2: it'll be an issue. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thinking that more people in golf
Speaker 1: should engage in because golf courses will outlive us, and
Speaker 1: so we got to think about how we can how
Speaker 1: we can cause them to do that in the best
Speaker 1: way possible. And some of these principles that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the past hour or so Bruce, I think
Speaker 1: uh start to get us toward that. So thank you
Speaker 1: for thank you for coming on the coming on the
Speaker 1: pod again. Always a pleasure to talk to you, and
Speaker 1: good luck with your with your golf game and then
Speaker 1: beyond that the next projects that you've got.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks man, good talking to you.
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
Speaker 1: Thank you Will. If you've been enjoying designing Golf, enjoying
Speaker 1: some of these explorations and certain topics in golf architecture,
Speaker 1: I can just about guarantee that you would love what
Speaker 1: we're doing in Frida Egg Golf Club. Go to the
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Speaker 1: where there's a lot of interesting discussion going on in
Speaker 1: our community of avid golfers. It's a really fun place
Speaker 1: to be, great place to just post random thoughts that
Speaker 1: you have while watching tournaments or playing rounds of golf,
Speaker 1: and there are people there to discuss it with you.
Speaker 1: So again, the fridagg dot com slash membership Frida Egg
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Speaker 2: M