Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 3: Ball in a brid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday,
Speaker 3: Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg.
Speaker 4: Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off.
Speaker 1: Of the humped.
Speaker 4: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name
Speaker 4: is Garrett Morrison. I'm here today with Andy Johnson. Andy,
Speaker 4: how has your day been so far?
Speaker 2: It's been delightful. Excited to talk with you about Southern Hills.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're diving into Southern Hills Country Club today, host
Speaker 4: of the twenty twenty two PGA Championship. It is three
Speaker 4: weeks until the PGA Championship, so we are officially ahead
Speaker 4: of schedule.
Speaker 1: Here, Yeah, way ahead.
Speaker 2: But it's good to get this out, give people some
Speaker 2: time to digest and and get ready for the PGA.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a it's it's gonna be a really
Speaker 2: cool event and a really cool course and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, if the conditions play right this this could
Speaker 2: end up being the start of the show.
Speaker 1: I think, a start of the year.
Speaker 2: You know, whether or not the weather works it's a
Speaker 2: it's a really noteworthy course to look at. But if
Speaker 2: the weather works out and uh it's firm, this this
Speaker 2: place could be really really fun to uh to watch
Speaker 2: tournament golf at.
Speaker 4: This is May in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I'm not exactly
Speaker 4: sure what to expect.
Speaker 2: That's that's the thing about May and Tulsa is that
Speaker 2: it's the weather. It's pretty temperamental and unpredictable. I think
Speaker 2: we see it every year. You know, Dallas isn't close,
Speaker 2: but it's not that far away, and we see it
Speaker 2: every year with a with the tour in May in Dallas.
Speaker 2: Is you know that the weather could be really great
Speaker 2: and it could be like a rocket ship out there,
Speaker 2: firm and fast, or it could be really rainy and
Speaker 2: you could get severe storms. But you know, if it's
Speaker 2: the firm and nice weather, that's the thing. And either way,
Speaker 2: the architecture is really good here and it's going to
Speaker 2: be fun to watch regardless of whether it's softer firm.
Speaker 4: It'll be fun to look at no matter what. And
Speaker 4: I think that people who remember Southern Hills from the
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven PGA Championship and from the two
Speaker 4: thousand and one US Open are going to be surprised
Speaker 4: at how different this course looks now, and so we'll
Speaker 4: get into all that stuff in this podcast. We've got
Speaker 4: a clip from an interview with Gil Hants. We did
Speaker 4: a big interview with Gil Hans, about an hour and
Speaker 4: a half and we devoted around fifteen to twenty minutes
Speaker 4: of that interview to Southern Hills and we'll play that
Speaker 4: portion of that interview in this episode. But first we're
Speaker 4: just going to kind of generally introduce the course. So
Speaker 4: it was designed by Perry Maxwell. It opened in nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty six. It was renovated opened doctor style by Robert
Speaker 4: Trent Jones in nineteen fifty eight. Since then, it has
Speaker 4: hosted three US Opens and four PGA Championships. This will
Speaker 4: be its fifth PGA championship this year, and over the
Speaker 4: past twenty years it has undergone various renovations and restorations. First,
Speaker 4: Keith Foster did some work between the two thousand and
Speaker 4: one US Open in the two thousand and seven PGA,
Speaker 4: and what he did was really significant. You know, there
Speaker 4: was quite a bit of tree removal, there was some
Speaker 4: widening of fairways, there was some restoration of short grass,
Speaker 4: and so that was important stuff and we shouldn't forget that.
Speaker 4: But I think most significant was what happened in the
Speaker 4: past few years at that course when Gil Hans and
Speaker 4: his team did what Hans calls a historical renovations. So
Speaker 4: he did bunker work, greenwork, tree removal, but at the
Speaker 4: same time he made some updates, some changes in order
Speaker 4: to prepare the course for this for a major championship.
Speaker 4: It wasn't known when he did this work that it
Speaker 4: would get the PGA Championship because, of course, Southern Hills
Speaker 4: was a kind of last minute sub when Trump Bedminster
Speaker 4: was no longer a place that the PGA of America
Speaker 4: wanted to go. So Southern Hills has subbed in, and
Speaker 4: it should be it should be ready for prime time. So,
Speaker 4: just as a general appetizer before we get to the
Speaker 4: Gill tape here, why do you think people should be
Speaker 4: excited for Southern Hills as a PGA Championship venue? What's
Speaker 4: special about this course?
Speaker 2: So when you cover the professional game and the modern game,
Speaker 2: really you start to realize what are the courses that
Speaker 2: stand out that really test players and are really fun
Speaker 2: to watch. And obviously you know at the top of
Speaker 2: the is Augusta National. And what are the ingredients that
Speaker 2: go into Augusta National that make it so compelling to watch?
Speaker 2: Obviously everybody's so familiar with the golf course. But you've
Speaker 2: got topography, severe topography that creates a lot of uneven
Speaker 2: lies and fairways. You've got immense short grass at Augusta National,
Speaker 2: You've got undulating greens, small targets. And now if you
Speaker 2: if you think about Augusta, another really really fun major
Speaker 2: course to watch is Shinnacock.
Speaker 1: And what's Shinnakok have.
Speaker 2: It's got short grass, it's got it's got terrain that
Speaker 2: creates uneven lies and uphill and dramatic uphill and downhill shots.
Speaker 2: It's got small, undulating greens and difficult targets to hit,
Speaker 2: especially from uneven lies that are you're when you're hitting
Speaker 2: uphill or downhill from them. And and Shinnacock is always firm.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that it has that has really vexed players.
Speaker 2: One other thing that neither of those courses that has that,
Speaker 2: but we see on the PGA tour regularly that really
Speaker 2: Flummox's players is Bermuda Rough and uh Southern Hills has
Speaker 2: Bermuda Rough and it it. You know, the thing about
Speaker 2: bermuda rough is it doesn't need to be your eight
Speaker 2: inch bent or rye or bent grass rough to be
Speaker 2: really tough. Short bermuda rof is extraordinarily unpredictable and it has, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the ability you.
Speaker 2: It really plays mind games with players because it's hard
Speaker 2: to figure out what the lie is gonna do. And
Speaker 2: when you when you add that into Southern Hills, which
Speaker 2: has all the other aforementioned ingredients that we love. It's
Speaker 2: got topography, it's got movement. You know, it's not Augustin
Speaker 2: National It's it doesn't have that much, but it has
Speaker 2: a lot of topography. You know, nobody really has august
Speaker 2: Nationals topography. It's got small targets. It's got these greens.
Speaker 2: They're surrounded with short grass and they're undulating in pockets
Speaker 2: and they create those micro targets. Everybody likes to talk
Speaker 2: about how Augusta is this second shot course, it's because
Speaker 2: the greens have these small little pockets that you want
Speaker 2: to get to, and if you get there, you have
Speaker 2: really makeable putts. And that's the same thing you're going
Speaker 2: to see at Southern Hills from undulating lies. But then
Speaker 2: you also throw in that Bermuda rough and we're gonna
Speaker 2: see great recovery shots from the Bermuda rough. That's the
Speaker 2: thing that's great about it is it allows you to recover,
Speaker 2: but it also can make you look like an idiot
Speaker 2: because you can catch a flyer when you don't expect
Speaker 2: a flyer, and you might end up twenty yards over
Speaker 2: the ball. Might you might expect a ball to jump
Speaker 2: and it might come out dead and you end up
Speaker 2: fifteen yards short and you're running trundling down one of
Speaker 2: those great false fronts at Southern Hills.
Speaker 1: So I think.
Speaker 2: If the weather permits it to be firm, this whole
Speaker 2: recipe could make it really one of the most fun
Speaker 2: championship courses we've seen in a long time because of
Speaker 2: everything that Gil and Jim Wagner have brought out in
Speaker 2: this restoration, which is, you know, getting the fairways out
Speaker 2: to where they're thirty five forty yards wide, getting the
Speaker 2: trees back and unpeeling some more of the great creeks
Speaker 2: that run through the golf course, and then the short
Speaker 2: grass around the greens that is going to lead to
Speaker 2: balls repelling away and running away. And you know, anybody
Speaker 2: that watched that US Open at Shinnacok. You remember just
Speaker 2: the fear that it put into players right off the bat,
Speaker 2: where they knew if they missed the first green or
Speaker 2: the tenth green, the first green long or the tenth
Speaker 2: green short, that that ball was going to run away
Speaker 2: into very undesirable. All of a sudden, it just messes
Speaker 2: with targets. It makes it a little bit more difficult
Speaker 2: to really get into those small pockets. It's because you
Speaker 2: have fear about where that ball is going to go
Speaker 2: if you miss just a little bit of ways, as
Speaker 2: opposed to long grass around the greens that's velcrow. You know,
Speaker 2: the idea of that ball getting away, you know, missing
Speaker 2: a shot by two yards and not staying two yards
Speaker 2: off the green it could run twenty yards away is
Speaker 2: a real big deterrent in these guys. So I think
Speaker 2: if it's firm and that really presents that situation, that's
Speaker 2: where this could be the tournament of the year and
Speaker 2: the golf course of the year.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about it.
Speaker 2: It's up against the old course and you know it
Speaker 2: was a great Masters and you know this country club, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the country Club Brookline is going to be really visually stunning.
Speaker 1: This can be this can be the tournament of the year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's a big statement, but I think
Speaker 4: it's true. I think it'll certainly be the most surprising
Speaker 4: course of the year for people. And you know, just
Speaker 4: one thing to add to what you're saying about how
Speaker 4: there's going to be a real emphasis on getting to
Speaker 4: the right section of the green and if you're in
Speaker 4: one of these weird lies in the rough or an
Speaker 4: uneven lie in the fair way, things could go sideways
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. One factor that's really going to enhance that
Speaker 4: is the fact that Gil Hans and Jim Wagner leveled
Speaker 4: off the edges of the greens which had built up
Speaker 4: over time they had, you know, as as greens often do.
Speaker 4: We talked about this in the Pasa Tiempo podcast recently,
Speaker 4: where just through sand splash and through top dressing, the
Speaker 4: edges of greens tend to rise up, tend to bulge up,
Speaker 4: and it creates this kind of bowl like effect where
Speaker 4: balls will kind of collect to the middle, they won't
Speaker 4: run off the edges as much. Well, in their historical renovation,
Speaker 4: Hans and Wagner leveled those edges off, and so now
Speaker 4: what you have at Southern Hills are a lot of
Speaker 4: crowned greens of the type that people associate with Pinehurst
Speaker 4: number two now, and that's just going to kind of
Speaker 4: exacerbate the effect of misses. You know, balls are really
Speaker 4: going to shoot off greens to far away places if
Speaker 4: players miss on their approaches. So I think a couple
Speaker 4: of things that are going to be really emphasized in
Speaker 4: this PGA Championship are approach play, you know, from variable lies,
Speaker 4: players who can really hit golf shots and not just
Speaker 4: hit driving range shots, and then players who can recover,
Speaker 4: who can lag put really well, and who can hit
Speaker 4: great chip shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it will mirror Masters.
Speaker 2: Is kind of what we look at with Masters, and
Speaker 2: it's not as wide as Augusta, so you know, it
Speaker 2: might you might need to be a little bit more
Speaker 2: accurate driver of the golf ball. But when you talk
Speaker 2: about the number one player in the world, Scottie Scheffler,
Speaker 2: and what the skills we saw on display at Augusta
Speaker 2: and why he you know, and he's on the record
Speaker 2: saying Southern Hills is his favorite golf course anywhere. There's
Speaker 2: a reason, and it is because it places a big
Speaker 2: emphasis on approach play.
Speaker 1: You have to drive the.
Speaker 2: Ball reasonably well, but then you're going to miss some
Speaker 2: greens and you're going to get into some precarious places
Speaker 2: because of the nature of the golf course. And then
Speaker 2: it becomes you know at Southern Hills with the short
Speaker 2: grass expansion. You know what I love about it is
Speaker 2: you're hitting shots and Mike Clayton, I think has used
Speaker 2: this expression and where I picked it up. You're hitting
Speaker 2: extraordinarily difficult shots from perfect lives. And what it does
Speaker 2: is it opens up what we're going to get to
Speaker 2: see is what's in everybody's back. We're going to see
Speaker 2: a wide range of shots. We're a array of shots.
Speaker 2: We're going to see those types of shots, like the
Speaker 2: most thrilling shot we saw at the last Masters, which
Speaker 2: was Scottie Scheffler's bump and run up a significant hill
Speaker 2: where he chose to just line it into that slope
Speaker 2: and bump it up when he had a hole. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he had a bunch of different shots he makes it,
Speaker 2: but he hit a real daring and different shot than
Speaker 2: we typically see week in week out on tour, which
Speaker 2: is generally auto lob wedge, opened the face and hit
Speaker 2: something high and lofted, which was immediately after him what
Speaker 2: cam Smith did, which was a safer shot.
Speaker 1: In that situation.
Speaker 2: So what is going to do is it really in
Speaker 2: across the golf course with what you said with the
Speaker 2: uneven lines, this is not driving range golf. It's going
Speaker 2: to be about who's got the most shots, especially if
Speaker 2: it's firm. You know, if it's soft, it's going to
Speaker 2: mute some of that, but if it's firm, it's really
Speaker 2: going to be about golf shots.
Speaker 4: All right, let's go to the gil Hans tape and
Speaker 4: he's gonna mention some of the things that we talked
Speaker 4: about here, but really what we focused on was some
Speaker 4: some things that he brought out in the work that
Speaker 4: he did at the course over the past few years.
Speaker 4: And then we're going to go through a kind of
Speaker 4: tour of a lot of the back nine and Gill's
Speaker 4: going to give his thoughts on the course. So let's
Speaker 4: go to that tape and we'll come back in on
Speaker 4: the other side.
Speaker 2: So Southern Hills, Uh, it's gonna make its return to
Speaker 2: Majrix Golf this year. You completed a restoration I don't
Speaker 2: really know what to call restorations, and renovations exactly.
Speaker 5: We've got a new term. What is it.
Speaker 3: We call it historic renovations.
Speaker 2: Historic renovation.
Speaker 3: I love that that gets you. It covers all the bases.
Speaker 3: It's basically if if the impetus for changes. And we
Speaker 3: started talking about that after we moved the Sahara on
Speaker 3: the seventeenth hole at Baltus Roll on the lower course,
Speaker 3: which we didn't restore it because we didn't put it
Speaker 3: back where it was. We moved it down range, but
Speaker 3: we did it in a historic fashion.
Speaker 4: Has it been excited that restovation is just too stupid?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Absolutely, I hate that work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes friends whenever I see and sympathetic renovation,
Speaker 4: Sympathetic restoration or sympathet renovation has been around for a while.
Speaker 5: Sympathy.
Speaker 3: I think Brian Silva coined the sympathetic restoration turn back
Speaker 3: in the late eighties early nineties. I guess the first
Speaker 3: time I've heard that, that's when you guys are still
Speaker 3: in middle school.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was just getting born and Cameron was in Yeah,
Speaker 3: he wasn't even around. Historic renovation is kind of what
Speaker 3: we're and I think that's probably applicable for southern hills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about southern hills makes it such a stern
Speaker 2: test of a golfer's ability.
Speaker 3: I think ultimately it's going to come down to the greens.
Speaker 3: I mean those small targets, and in the restoration of
Speaker 3: the green complexes that Jim and I did there, it
Speaker 3: was definitely we found there was a lot of build
Speaker 3: up on the edges. So the old bunkers had, you know,
Speaker 3: the sand build up had occurred, and then through construction
Speaker 3: methodologies they had converted them to USGA greens a while ago.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of sort of.
Speaker 3: Shelf kind of building along the edge of them, and
Speaker 3: so we pulled all that back away and based on
Speaker 3: all the old photographs that we had seen, and so
Speaker 3: I think now you have to be incredibly respectful of
Speaker 3: the edges of the greens because balls are just going
Speaker 3: to run away, and the short of the restoration of
Speaker 3: the short grass around there. So I think it's ultimately
Speaker 3: going to come down to the greens, and hopefully the
Speaker 3: weather cooperates and we get them pretty firm, because then
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be a true test of
Speaker 3: really ball striking ability because the targets are tiny to
Speaker 3: access or get close to a whole locations.
Speaker 4: So you know Robert Trent Jones's idea of a championship test,
Speaker 4: and Robert tren Jones, of course famously renovated the course
Speaker 4: in the fifties to prepare it for a US Open.
Speaker 4: His idea of a championship test was, you know, long holes,
Speaker 4: heavily guarded landing zones for the drive and the approach,
Speaker 4: and there was a demand for an aerial attack and
Speaker 4: that's sort of what Southern Hills became broadly. How do
Speaker 4: you think think the test is different now, Is that
Speaker 4: it's more at the greens or how would you characterize
Speaker 4: the difference between the RTJ test and the test that
Speaker 4: exists there and will greet players at the PGA Championship.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that Jim and I have worked
Speaker 3: really hard at is just trusting the original architects. You know,
Speaker 3: It's not like there was a period in time and
Speaker 3: Robert tren Jones was a practitioner of that where they
Speaker 3: felt like they needed to make changes to the originally
Speaker 3: designed to toughen it for But we believe that, yeah,
Speaker 3: we need appropriately to have length on the tees and
Speaker 3: the bunkers if they can be put in position to
Speaker 3: challenge those guys will do it, but from the standpoint
Speaker 3: of just trust that Maxwell got it right there or
Speaker 3: the tilling has got it right, and just go with
Speaker 3: what they're original. So when you're talking about originally, you're
Speaker 3: talking about similar playing corridors, removing trees, expanding fairways, allowing
Speaker 3: the slope and the contour of the ground to actually
Speaker 3: feedballs in different areas, and have to be more thoughtful
Speaker 3: about placement. Even though the fairways are wider, they may
Speaker 3: not effectively be wider because where we've expanded may have
Speaker 3: gone into areas that really slope off and will feed
Speaker 3: balls to the rough. I think a re emphasis on
Speaker 3: the little creeks that run through Southern Hills has been
Speaker 3: an important part of the restoration that we did there.
Speaker 3: I think from that standpoint, you're going to see, especially
Speaker 3: on the holes like ten creeks are going to come
Speaker 3: much more in Play eighteen with the fairway being restored
Speaker 3: to come back down the creek going all the way
Speaker 3: across the fairway as it originally did. So I think
Speaker 3: opening and restoring a lot of those features will provide
Speaker 3: a more interesting test off of the tea.
Speaker 5: And I think.
Speaker 3: I mean members always inappropriately, so I mean, they're proud
Speaker 3: of their golf course and they get worried about the score, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that one of the things that Jim
Speaker 3: and I have come to understand more is just its
Speaker 3: ultimately comes down to that week. You know, it's not
Speaker 3: an indictment of the architecture of the golf course. If
Speaker 3: the guys shoot ten, twelve, fourteen under. If it's soft,
Speaker 3: you know, everybody talks, well, if it's soft, it's going
Speaker 3: to play longer, longer. It doesn't matter for those guys,
Speaker 3: it really doesn't. And so I think it ultimately comes
Speaker 3: down to firmness and having the golf course allowed to
Speaker 3: maximize all those features that Maxwell would have put into it,
Speaker 3: or the tilling hats would have put into a baltis Rol, etcetera,
Speaker 3: and just allowing those things to play again the way
Speaker 3: they had intended to. But if it rains all week,
Speaker 3: then we know that's out the window. And it's, not,
Speaker 3: as I said, an indictment on the golf course or anything.
Speaker 3: It's just happens to be. That's the way it is.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't think the general public, or even people who
Speaker 3: think about architecture though that much think about the realities
Speaker 3: of that it boils down to those four days, right,
Speaker 3: and or boils down to the three days before the tournament,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's why you're
Speaker 3: starting to see an investment in a lot of the
Speaker 3: infrastructure that these clubs are putting in. Is what can
Speaker 3: they do to try to help control or at least
Speaker 3: have a more predictable come if they get bad weather conditions?
Speaker 3: You know, what can they do to get the golf
Speaker 3: course back quicker? And I think that that's something that
Speaker 3: the governing bodies really like the potential for that to happen.
Speaker 3: You know, everybody goes into a championship week with a mindset.
Speaker 3: Carrie hag goes in with the mindset. John Bodenhammer goes
Speaker 3: in with the mindset, and then you know, it's the
Speaker 3: old Mike Tyson, right. Everybody's got a plan until they
Speaker 3: get punched in the face and you just have to
Speaker 3: react to what you've got there. And if this infrastructural
Speaker 3: up if the infrastructural upgrades allow you to get closer
Speaker 3: to what you want as you go into the week,
Speaker 3: then I think that's what they're what they're seeking.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I went away off on a tangent.
Speaker 2: As you guys expanded fairways, remove trees. What were the
Speaker 2: things that you kind of uncovered that even surprised you
Speaker 2: about Southern health.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that about Southern Hills that I
Speaker 3: had no idea right the first time I went. Or
Speaker 3: It's one of those courses that you look at on
Speaker 3: you know, we all we all geek out when we
Speaker 3: look on Google Earth and we go, Okay, lots of trees,
Speaker 3: green grass, white bunkers.
Speaker 5: You know, doesn't look that great from the air.
Speaker 3: I never understood the topography, and I think that the
Speaker 3: scale of the site. I think Maxwell did an amazing
Speaker 3: job with the routing there. I think it's probably about
Speaker 3: as good as you could do on that piece of ground.
Speaker 3: Just the variety that he had, how everything flows through it,
Speaker 3: you know, starting and stopping up on the hill. It
Speaker 3: really I think he maximized the potential of the site.
Speaker 3: And by restoring the scale of the fairways and opening
Speaker 3: back the vistas and allowing the scale of the topography
Speaker 3: to shine, I think that's really what we uncovered. It
Speaker 3: was a much better piece of ground than I ever
Speaker 3: originally thought.
Speaker 4: What are a couple of holes that you think embody
Speaker 4: what Southern Hills offers.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, you're probably going to look
Speaker 3: at whole like eighteen is. You know, it's a tough test.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a killer finish, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: I think when you're talking about major championships, do you
Speaker 3: want you know that hole you're it's not the It's
Speaker 3: not like eighteen in Saint Andrew's where you're trying to
Speaker 3: make birdie or eagle. It's like you're holding on for
Speaker 3: dear life there and if you've got a one shot lead,
Speaker 3: there's nothing guaranteed on that. So I think the difficulty
Speaker 3: of that test probably resonates more through through the property.
Speaker 3: But the hole that I'm always intrigued by its ten.
Speaker 3: I think ten is just going to be such a
Speaker 3: cool hole to watch. That's probably where I would camp
Speaker 3: out and watch. It's just you know, obviously a short
Speaker 3: part four. What do they do off the tee? Do
Speaker 3: they try and push it down to get the better
Speaker 3: angle in which is way down to the left because
Speaker 3: of the slope of the green. You know, if they
Speaker 3: put any spin on a shot into it, and they're
Speaker 3: going to be hitting short irons into it. If they
Speaker 3: pull the string on it, it could potentially come off
Speaker 3: that left side and go, you know, they could be
Speaker 3: thirty feet below the green looking back up at.
Speaker 5: That sort of recovery.
Speaker 3: So I think it's going to require, you know, thoughtful
Speaker 3: approach off of the tee and then a thoughtful shot
Speaker 3: into the green, and then the green itself is pretty
Speaker 3: it is pretty severe. I think it embodies all of
Speaker 3: the more thoughtful challenges that I think exist on a
Speaker 3: lot of shots around southern hills. But I think probably
Speaker 3: the hole that stick in most people's minds.
Speaker 5: Is eighteen with the you know you talked about.
Speaker 2: You know, the big thing is getting that those edges
Speaker 2: unraised and then also imparting the short grass. What short
Speaker 2: does short grass? You know, as an architect allow you
Speaker 2: a little bit more freedom, knowing, you know, in a
Speaker 2: way to exact a test on really good players because
Speaker 2: of you know, the subliminal idea of the ball rolling
Speaker 2: fifty yards down a hill.
Speaker 3: I think so, I think, yeah, I think it's more
Speaker 3: of a if they I mean, the thing that we
Speaker 3: love about short grass, and I think all of us included,
Speaker 3: is it just it opens up an entire range of possibilities.
Speaker 3: Versus you know, and it could even be in that
Speaker 3: mental shot. Okay, I know that if I miss at
Speaker 3: five feet left of my target, that ball's going thirty
Speaker 3: yards down as opposed to go and rolling off the
Speaker 3: green and hanging up in the rough. And then the
Speaker 3: recovery from the rough is pretty much a predictable shot.
Speaker 3: You know what you're gonna have to hit to chop
Speaker 3: it back out, versus that rolls down that hill or
Speaker 3: it rolls anywhere on any of the greens. And now
Speaker 3: you've got all these different options of how to play it.
Speaker 3: So I think it gets not only in your head
Speaker 3: as for the approach shot, but then the recovery shots
Speaker 3: are so much more interesting. So I think it offers
Speaker 3: a lot more, much more, many more options as it
Speaker 3: relates to how shots can be played. But I think
Speaker 3: you're right in saying, hey, it doesn't just start with
Speaker 3: the recovery shot. It starts with the you know when
Speaker 3: you're looking in on that green.
Speaker 2: And also I think it adds a level of randomness
Speaker 2: and also adds a significant amount of preparation that's needed
Speaker 2: for players like people that understand the golf course and
Speaker 2: where balls are going to go will actually probably have
Speaker 2: a big.
Speaker 3: Advantage, right, Yeah, And how you can how you handle
Speaker 3: those breaks, right, I Mean that's the part of the
Speaker 3: game that's always intriguing to us as architects is it's
Speaker 3: difficult to challenge them on a physical level, But what
Speaker 3: can you do mentally If a guy if a ball
Speaker 3: gets close to an edge and he feels like he's
Speaker 3: hit a good shot and it goes rolls off to
Speaker 3: the side, Now is he hot?
Speaker 5: Is he going to hit a good recovery? Is he
Speaker 5: checked out?
Speaker 3: Those types of things I think are incredibly interesting. You know,
Speaker 3: the thing that makes tour players and the top amateur
Speaker 3: is so good as they work their whole lives to ultimately,
Speaker 3: and I've said this before, you have a predictable outcome,
Speaker 3: right They want.
Speaker 5: To know that.
Speaker 3: Okay, if I swing and I do this over and
Speaker 3: over and over, the outcome is going to be predictable.
Speaker 3: I know, when I need to hit it one seventy one,
Speaker 3: it's this. If I need to hit it one sixty five,
Speaker 3: it's this. The shortcress doesn't give them a predictable outcome, right.
Speaker 3: It frequently you just you're not sure where it's going
Speaker 3: to go. Where is it going to stop and then
Speaker 3: ultimately what am I going to be left with? And
Speaker 3: so that can start to get into players' heads as well,
Speaker 3: which I think really is much more interesting then the
Speaker 3: traditional just okay, chop it out of the.
Speaker 2: Rough, tell us about the holes ten through twelve in
Speaker 2: the land they occupy and how Maxwell used them use it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I mean, it's interesting because obviously they selected
Speaker 3: the clubhouse site to be up on the on the
Speaker 3: hill and then playing off of it. So with the
Speaker 3: returning nines, you're elevated t shot and then down to
Speaker 3: kind of a very very strong cross from right to
Speaker 3: left slope, and then you've got the hill, then the
Speaker 3: valley with the creek running over it, and then back
Speaker 3: up onto the ridge and it's you know, it's a
Speaker 3: bit of a reverse it's not a bit. It is
Speaker 3: a reverse camber hole where everything's kicking you dog leg
Speaker 3: dog legs right, but everything's kicking you left. But the
Speaker 3: flat is down on the left. And then he tilted
Speaker 3: the green so that when you're playing into it from
Speaker 3: the left it's actually much more supportive than coming from
Speaker 3: the right, which is the shorter line to play into
Speaker 3: with everything sort of feeding away from you, and I
Speaker 3: think that there's the potential and I don't know whether
Speaker 3: Carry's going to do this or not, but there's a
Speaker 3: potential to set that up where the guys might try.
Speaker 5: And drive it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can take it over those trees and
Speaker 3: land it up in the approach, which within kick is
Speaker 3: very narrow opening. But for those guys, they probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: mind being in a green side bunker and take their
Speaker 3: chances of getting up and down.
Speaker 5: So I think.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got off the ridge down to the flat,
Speaker 3: back up to the ridge, and then eleven you're teeing
Speaker 3: off on top of the ridge as well, playing down
Speaker 3: to a green that's tucked into the valley which comes
Speaker 3: from off property, beautiful little golf hole. And you know
Speaker 3: the restoration of the creek that runs between eleven and
Speaker 3: green and twelve t was part of the original design
Speaker 3: that had been filled in over time, so I think
Speaker 3: bringing that back in and the way everything kicks and
Speaker 3: feeds off to the left again, it's it's an interesting
Speaker 3: and I just thought about this now. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether it's applicable through the entire course, but you know,
Speaker 3: the ground's going like this and the green slopes go
Speaker 3: like that. They basically feed and tie into the way
Speaker 3: the ground is falling. You know, another decent sized green
Speaker 3: on eleven, but you've got to hit the right half
Speaker 3: of it, you know, not the not the proper meaning right,
Speaker 3: but literally right hand half of it, otherwise everything's going
Speaker 3: to really slide in funnel off, so very exacting target.
Speaker 3: And then twelve, you know, just a beautiful sort of
Speaker 3: big bending hole playing through the valley. So he used
Speaker 3: the ridges play off of down and then here you're
Speaker 3: starting low and you're hitting up onto the side slope
Speaker 3: on twelve, and then it just sweeps and feeds its
Speaker 3: way down and then the green nestled in the valley.
Speaker 3: So it's just they're perfectly three perfectly natural holes that
Speaker 3: play around a valley. And then you know they range
Speaker 3: from high to low and then low to high, and
Speaker 3: they really I think the variety is terrific. That green site.
Speaker 3: I never saw the tree, but apparently there used to
Speaker 3: be a huge tree that overhung it on the right
Speaker 3: hand side, and that really was part of the challenge
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 5: But it died. It was it wasn't taken out.
Speaker 3: By our hand, but it took it's gone so I
Speaker 3: think that would have been that's you hear a lot
Speaker 3: about that tree, and it was an interest saying exercise
Speaker 3: with the fairway bunker instead of you know, moving it
Speaker 3: further down the range around the corner of the dog leg,
Speaker 3: we actually took the bunker in order to make it
Speaker 3: relevant for today and pushed it out, so we extended
Speaker 3: the dog leg further out, so it's a little bit
Speaker 3: sharper dog leg, and we used the bunker to push
Speaker 3: this way as opposed to picking it up and moving
Speaker 3: it there and keeping the dog leg where it was.
Speaker 3: So we've effectively lengthened the hole by making them go
Speaker 3: that way, although I think there's a chance that probably
Speaker 3: can still get over the top of.
Speaker 2: It, take us through the closing stretched Southern hills, and
Speaker 2: the kind of action it might produce at the PGA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the you know, the the underrated green
Speaker 3: on the golf course and nobody really talks about fifteen.
Speaker 3: I mean that green is nightmarish. As far as we
Speaker 3: flatten some areas on the back to try and create
Speaker 3: some more whole locations, because I think for the in
Speaker 3: the past, they pretty much relied on that lower bowl
Speaker 3: front left, so I think that's really where the action
Speaker 3: starts is you know how you handle the fifteenth green
Speaker 3: and ultimately how you're putting on that, and then you
Speaker 3: transition into sixteen, which the members play is a par five,
Speaker 3: but they'll play as a long part four, great topography,
Speaker 3: small green to play into four for a long force.
Speaker 3: I mean that's just a kind of hold on and
Speaker 3: get through that golf hole. And then seventeen is your
Speaker 3: chance really to as a short part four to decide
Speaker 3: how aggressive do you want to be. And again I'll
Speaker 3: be interested to see how Carrie sets that up, whether
Speaker 3: he gives them the chance to. In the Senior PGA,
Speaker 3: they played it up I think a couple of days,
Speaker 3: maybe even three of the four days. So you've got
Speaker 3: the creeks, run to the creek running down the right
Speaker 3: hand side, and then when you restore to put back
Speaker 3: in the creek that crosses the hole that have been
Speaker 3: filled in.
Speaker 5: So now just lots of different options ways to play it.
Speaker 3: Drive it, hit it up on the shelf on the
Speaker 3: get yourself a level lie on the left hand side,
Speaker 3: or hit it down closer to the creek, and you
Speaker 3: know risk obviously being in the creek, but also having
Speaker 3: a little bit you know, ball below your feet playing
Speaker 3: into there. So I think seventeens are a really good
Speaker 3: sort of option hole for those guys to decide how aggressive.
Speaker 5: They want to be.
Speaker 3: And then eighteen is, you know, that quintessential difficult parkland,
Speaker 3: as Jim Finnigan once described those kinds of holes, the
Speaker 3: quintessential American Championship finishing hole. And I think, again lots
Speaker 3: of options that we've put it back to you there,
Speaker 3: so you know, the guys will really have to probably
Speaker 3: going to have to hit driver to get down close enough,
Speaker 3: and they've got that kicker slope which we restored brought
Speaker 3: the creek back across, so they're.
Speaker 5: Going to have to be thoughtful about the t shot.
Speaker 3: And then you know that hole just doesn't let up,
Speaker 3: you know, long shot into the green, and then the
Speaker 3: green itself is really challenging. So I think you've got
Speaker 3: shortish part four, but really diabolical green on fifteen, long
Speaker 3: par four get through. It's seventeens really where I think
Speaker 3: a lot of the decision making happens, and then eighteen
Speaker 3: you've just really got to play good golf.
Speaker 2: Seventeen's a really interesting hole because the layup options aren't
Speaker 2: that desirable. You look at them and you don't really
Speaker 2: want to hit that an uneven live wedge into tiny
Speaker 2: little target. And the green's super interesting because of the
Speaker 2: dynamics of where the pins are and how that might
Speaker 2: change where you want to be.
Speaker 3: Right, Absolutely, it does. Yeah, the preferred spot, and it's
Speaker 3: not easy to get to. We took a bunch of
Speaker 3: trees down to restore it is that shelf down there
Speaker 3: on the left, but if you go a little too
Speaker 3: far left, you're in the trees. If you're a little strong,
Speaker 3: then that's probably the closest point of the creek that
Speaker 3: crosses the hole. So it's the most desirable, desirable spot
Speaker 3: to get to, but it's hard to get to it
Speaker 3: for sure.
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Speaker 4: all right. So we finished up with Gil there talking
Speaker 4: about the back nine at Southern Hills holds ten through twelve,
Speaker 4: the finishing stretch fifteen through eighteen, and so I thought, Andy,
Speaker 4: maybe we could talk a bit about the nine.
Speaker 2: One thing I think about holistically with the front nine,
Speaker 2: and I think the back nine is pretty neutral, but
Speaker 2: the front nine has quite a few holes where a
Speaker 2: draw is a preferred shot shape. So you think about one, two,
Speaker 2: even three, Then you get to five. The par five
Speaker 2: is a draw is really important there, and the par
Speaker 2: three is six and eight are both draw holes, and
Speaker 2: really you could make a case that that seven is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a draw hole with just the
Speaker 2: way the fairway and the whole hole slopes too.
Speaker 4: To hold it into the slope, you would need a draw.
Speaker 2: So, you know, one of the things that I think about,
Speaker 2: just in general about the Front nine and in the
Speaker 2: golf course in general, is that it may favor a
Speaker 2: draw a little bit. And we see, you know, I
Speaker 2: hate to keep bringing up the Masters, but we see
Speaker 2: how much trouble hitting a draw gives this generation of
Speaker 2: golfers because of a combination of golf swings and how
Speaker 2: golf swings and equipment has been optimized to hit that
Speaker 2: kind of knuckle fade. So I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the things, just as a whole the Front Nine presents
Speaker 2: is that it is a you know, I think this
Speaker 2: is on the margins, but winning a major championship is
Speaker 2: about playing well on the margins and getting the most
Speaker 2: out of little things. But I think being able to
Speaker 2: hit a right to left shot is a big advantage here,
Speaker 2: and I think that with the Front nine in general
Speaker 2: as a whole, is just something that you want to
Speaker 2: have in your arsenal out here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's another way that Southern Hills is working
Speaker 4: against the driving range of mentality. Right. Gil talked about
Speaker 4: this when we were discussing short grass. He says, you know,
Speaker 4: these guys work their whole lives to hit a certain
Speaker 4: kind of shot a certain way, and they're really good
Speaker 4: at it. And what short grass does is it introduces
Speaker 4: an element of unpredictability that nobody can out for in
Speaker 4: any track man range session. And I think that also
Speaker 4: hitting a draw is kind of in that category, because
Speaker 4: what a lot of the top players are trained to
Speaker 4: do now is just hit this knuckle fade. That is
Speaker 4: the most controllable way to leverage modern equipment to hit
Speaker 4: a long drive. So when you come to a course
Speaker 4: where a draw is kind of preferred, all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: the players who can really play golf, who aren't just
Speaker 4: range rats, all of a sudden, those players are going
Speaker 4: to rise to the top a bit more.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: I guess that's sort of the general theme at Southern
Speaker 4: Hills is that this is a golfer's golf course. This
Speaker 4: is not a course where you can just bash away
Speaker 4: using the modern driving range methods. You have to hit
Speaker 4: a variety of shots, you have to have a deep.
Speaker 2: Bag, and the other thing, obviously, with the front nine,
Speaker 2: we talked with Gil at length about the back nine,
Speaker 2: and there's I think that's going to get a lot
Speaker 2: of the attention. But I think some thing that sticks
Speaker 2: with me is that we played Southern Hills with three
Speaker 2: four years ago.
Speaker 4: Now it was in it was in twenty nineteen, like
Speaker 4: late summer twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, something a while back and something
Speaker 2: that sticks. I remember every single shot on the front
Speaker 2: nine as well. I remember every hole vividly, and we
Speaker 2: spent a day out there, a full day, actually a
Speaker 2: day and a half. But you know, for something somewhere
Speaker 2: to stick with you that long, is it shows that
Speaker 2: there's a lot of great holes on that front nine
Speaker 2: and in the back night it's going to get a
Speaker 2: lot of run.
Speaker 1: But the front nine is very worth a study.
Speaker 2: Obviously, you've done something on the first hole that's a
Speaker 2: great start to the round and just such a dramatic
Speaker 2: entrance into the arena.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I did a video on the first hole that
Speaker 4: was basically about how the first hole establishes the themes
Speaker 4: for the entire course. You know, you basically tee off
Speaker 4: from this hill bill that the clubhouse sits on, and
Speaker 4: this hill is really important at Southern Hills. A lot
Speaker 4: of holes play into it and off of it. Perry
Speaker 4: Maxwell really made the most of this hill. So the
Speaker 4: first hole teas off from that hill in the shadow
Speaker 4: of the clubhouse. It's one of those really intimidating, you know,
Speaker 4: first tee shots where the tea is really close to
Speaker 4: the clubhouse and you play out into the center of
Speaker 4: the course. It's a long par four that bends to
Speaker 4: the left, and the green sits on another of the
Speaker 4: main features of the Southern Hills property, which is this
Speaker 4: gully that sometimes has water in it and sometimes doesn't,
Speaker 4: and a bunch of greens sit along the edges of
Speaker 4: this gully so that they're a little bit pushed up
Speaker 4: and water kind of can drain off of them into
Speaker 4: this water course. And so you get the first that
Speaker 4: you get the main two landforms both in this first hole,
Speaker 4: and then you know, you're just kind of going through
Speaker 4: the center of the course and you can see out
Speaker 4: to the edges of the property because of the tree
Speaker 4: removal that has been done, and so you get a
Speaker 4: preview of the entire rest of the course. So just
Speaker 4: from an emotional standpoint, from you know, an artistic standpoint,
Speaker 4: the first hole is really great because it establishes what
Speaker 4: this course is about. And then beyond that, it's just
Speaker 4: a really strong hole that uses the land in a
Speaker 4: very clever way. You know, the fairway tilts from right
Speaker 4: to left, and the green also tilts the same way.
Speaker 4: It moves with the flow of the land, and so
Speaker 4: you really want to be on the left side of
Speaker 4: this fairway. But one of the things that gil Hans's
Speaker 4: team introduced is a couple of bunkers along the left
Speaker 4: side of the fairway, and so the closer that you
Speaker 4: play to those, the better the angle you have into
Speaker 4: this green. The more you stray away from them. And
Speaker 4: I'm sure a lot of players are going to stray
Speaker 4: away from them. The problem is you're going to be
Speaker 4: faced with an uphill lie and a green that kind
Speaker 4: of runs away from you from that angle and is
Speaker 4: very unreceptive to a draw shot shape, which is often
Speaker 4: what's going to be produced off of that lie in
Speaker 4: the fairway. So right away, you know, from a strategic
Speaker 4: perspective you have a lot of what Southern Hills is about,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, you're constantly fighting the land.
Speaker 2: One other thing about it is that it introduces the
Speaker 2: fear of of miss, Like you talked about, if you
Speaker 2: if you miss, if you hit the If you stray
Speaker 2: away from the bunker off the tee, which most players
Speaker 2: are going to do, you know, it just puts It
Speaker 2: delays your penalty, right, it delays you have to confront
Speaker 2: a hazard at some point. And the hazard that you
Speaker 2: have to confront because you stray away is the back
Speaker 2: of the green, because it's a shallow green. To hit
Speaker 2: from the right side of the fairway, it's a lie
Speaker 2: that produces a draw that might have the ball go
Speaker 2: a little bit further than you expect, and then the
Speaker 2: back of the green is shaved off and it will
Speaker 2: tumble tumble down far.
Speaker 1: Into a bad place.
Speaker 2: And that's I think it introduces that approach into the
Speaker 2: green so well. The other neat thing about that first
Speaker 2: green is you talked about it. It gets you right
Speaker 2: to the central part of the property. And from that
Speaker 2: first green, you see the third green is right there,
Speaker 2: the second t is right off it, obviously, but also
Speaker 2: the seventh green, the eighth hole is right there, the
Speaker 2: ninth t, the fourth hole runs parallel to the first hole.
Speaker 4: The seventeenth green isn't far away either exactly.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, the other thing it's going
Speaker 2: to do similarly, you know to some of our great
Speaker 2: major venues. Is this is a concentration of energy right
Speaker 2: off the bat. You're not going to just some corner
Speaker 2: of the property. You know, you're not playing out to tunnel.
Speaker 2: There's going to be just an infectious amount of major energy.
Speaker 2: We see what happens with major championships when we go
Speaker 2: to these not necessarily big cities, but these middle markets.
Speaker 2: This is the biggest of event that Tulsa has this year.
Speaker 2: People are going to be out in droves and it's
Speaker 2: going to put players right into the major cauldron right
Speaker 2: off the bat, more so than the tenth hole. Right
Speaker 2: that first hole, you get right into the energy. And
Speaker 2: it's going to be an under talked about dynamic of
Speaker 2: the start at Southern Hills, especially on the weekend, is
Speaker 2: that when those guys are you know, maybe it's a
Speaker 2: new player that's never really been there on a weekend
Speaker 2: of a major. Is that the first hole at Southern
Speaker 2: Hills throws you right into the thick of that atmosphere
Speaker 2: right off the bat, and I think it keeps that
Speaker 2: momentum going. And you talked a little bit about the waterways,
Speaker 2: but the second hole is in your face. If you
Speaker 2: didn't notice the waterway on the first which you can
Speaker 2: not notice it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a tucked away a little bit.
Speaker 2: The second hole and the third hole bring the creaks,
Speaker 2: and this is a key theme to the golf course.
Speaker 2: Bring the creaks into full realizight, like you know, you
Speaker 2: will not miss the creeks at this point. And the
Speaker 2: second hole is one of the holes that has changed
Speaker 2: the most thanks to tree removal.
Speaker 1: It has now.
Speaker 2: Got a right and left path. The right path is
Speaker 2: going to be the predominant and it's going to be
Speaker 2: this lone tree. And it's a real juxtaposition when you
Speaker 2: look at the old hole in comparison to the new
Speaker 2: hole with what tree removal did. It showcases this beautiful
Speaker 2: creek that runs through and then around the back of
Speaker 2: the hole. And again it's a green that's got that
Speaker 2: short grass around it, and the ball runs all different directions.
Speaker 2: So if you don't hit the fair away, this is
Speaker 2: a great example. If you don't hit the fairway, you
Speaker 2: have to be really careful about your next shot. And
Speaker 2: that's what this golf course becomes. It becomes a game
Speaker 2: of chess. Right if you're in the right position, you
Speaker 2: can play aggressively. You can move aggressively across the chess
Speaker 2: board and not, but if you're out of position, that's
Speaker 2: when you have to get really thoughtful about how am
Speaker 2: I going to get out of this kind of situation
Speaker 2: that I've put myself in.
Speaker 4: I think the second holes is a great before and
Speaker 4: after example. If you look at what that hole became
Speaker 4: by the nineties, by the two thousand and one US Open,
Speaker 4: it had really no distinctive features about it. You look
Speaker 4: at it now and it's very dramatic and very cool.
Speaker 4: All right. So the other hole that I wanted to
Speaker 4: talk about on the front nine is a new hole.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this too.
Speaker 4: Number seven. This hole has had a complicated history. It
Speaker 4: used to be a kind of shortish par four. Perry
Speaker 4: Maxwell designed it as a shortish par four that played
Speaker 4: up to the left. That was a severe dog leg
Speaker 4: to the left with a green right along basically the
Speaker 4: fence line.
Speaker 2: You can still see I think you can still see
Speaker 2: the green on Google Earth like you can see the
Speaker 2: landforms if you look closely, and for anybody that's really
Speaker 2: interesting interested in this, you can you know there's a
Speaker 2: tree clearing on the left side of this hole if
Speaker 2: you find it on Google or Earth, and you can
Speaker 2: see kind of a distinct little landform that probably was
Speaker 2: the green, and it's about seventy yards short and left
Speaker 2: and way left on the fence line, as Garrett talked about,
Speaker 2: if you want to look and get a visual idea
Speaker 2: of where that green is, because the trees are cleared
Speaker 2: in that area because the green was once there.
Speaker 4: And it was moved away from there for I think
Speaker 4: a variety of reasons. I've heard drainage mentioned, but probably
Speaker 4: the main reason is that it was right along the
Speaker 4: property line and a big city grew up around Southern Hills.
Speaker 2: I think there's some championship golf aspect of it too.
Speaker 4: I think that, yeah, the length of it.
Speaker 2: The length, the length, and the idea of it not
Speaker 2: being hard enough was a part of this, because you
Speaker 2: see that type of hole at a lot of other
Speaker 2: Perry Baxwell courses where he has these kind of dog
Speaker 2: legs that in their shortest holes, and and if you've
Speaker 2: been there, there's significant right to left tilt on that hole,
Speaker 2: and the idea is playing up towards the property lined
Speaker 2: a hole, I mean left to right till left to
Speaker 2: right tilt. It's like a reverse camber.
Speaker 4: It's a reverse it was a reverse camber dog.
Speaker 2: Leg, Yeah, up to a raise green. And you see
Speaker 2: that at other Perry Maxwell courses.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the basic idea is if you let
Speaker 4: your ball run down the hill, you just have that
Speaker 4: longer approach.
Speaker 1: And more uphill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and these are not difficulties that really bother the
Speaker 4: modern professional. Now we keep talking about how this course
Speaker 4: plays for the pros, not just because we have the
Speaker 4: PGA Championship coming up, but because Southern Hills was always
Speaker 4: intended to be a championship level course. That's what it
Speaker 4: was designed to be in a way that Prairie Dunes
Speaker 4: was not necessarily in a way that Old Town Club,
Speaker 4: another Perry Maxwell course wasn't necessarily intended to be a
Speaker 4: big championship course, Southern Hills was. And so from that perspective,
Speaker 4: you know the change, you can understand it, even if
Speaker 4: that old hole was probably pretty cool. So you know,
Speaker 4: a few decades ago they move the green down to
Speaker 4: the right so that it basically turned into this straightaway
Speaker 4: par four pretty dull. All right, Gil Hans comes in
Speaker 4: and moves the green farther down range and pushes it
Speaker 4: down to the right against the creek. The green now
Speaker 4: sits flush against that creek. The creek runs along the
Speaker 4: right side of the green, and the green tilts heavily
Speaker 4: toward the creek. And so what you now have is
Speaker 4: a pretty long par four that runs along a left
Speaker 4: to right slope with a left to right sloping green.
Speaker 4: And that's the challenge. Okay, so how do you play
Speaker 4: this hole? I'm going to be interested to see how
Speaker 4: they do play this hole because I don't really know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you could play it up on top of
Speaker 2: the hill and get the flat lie, but you have
Speaker 2: the longer approach.
Speaker 1: You could push it down.
Speaker 4: And it's a worse angle from up there, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, it depends on how far right you get.
Speaker 2: It's all right, And this is what we kind of
Speaker 2: talked about with This is a basic strategy. Right, play
Speaker 2: close to the creek and you get the benefit. The
Speaker 2: slope's gonna help you. The green opens up and is
Speaker 2: much more approachable and along with the slopes. But you know,
Speaker 2: it'd be really easy if you're trying to push it
Speaker 2: over there. To get it over there, And I think
Speaker 2: this is where you know whether obviously, like if it's firm,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be a really hard shot from the left
Speaker 2: side of that fairway into that green because it's narrow,
Speaker 2: everything slopes to the water, and it's just it will
Speaker 2: be a challenging shot, my guess. You know, one of
Speaker 2: the underrated things about the whole is the blindness and
Speaker 2: the uncomfortable t shot. You know, you're hitting up over
Speaker 2: a hill and it's hard to pick your line and
Speaker 2: commit to your line, and obviously things are only blind once.
Speaker 2: But no matter what, it's still in the back of
Speaker 2: these guys' heads. I think we're going to see a
Speaker 2: lot of guys hit driver left and just deal with
Speaker 2: the second shot here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, play away from the hazard. I mean that that
Speaker 4: is kind of the modern way if if you have
Speaker 4: a penalty hazard, you got to get as far away
Speaker 4: from it as possible. But it is going to be
Speaker 4: a tricky approach from up there. No doubt the ball's
Speaker 4: really gonna move on that green. And so you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what kind of irons they are going
Speaker 4: to be playing in. Probably shorter irons that I'm imagining
Speaker 4: right now, but.
Speaker 1: It's always short, so it always a shorter iron than
Speaker 1: you imagine.
Speaker 4: Garrett, it's probably going to be like a sandwich or something.
Speaker 4: But anyway, that's that's too depressing to think about. So well,
Speaker 4: why don't we talk quickly about number five? What do
Speaker 4: you what do you think is cool? I think there
Speaker 4: are some fun angles there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Well, it starts with the t shot. It
Speaker 2: doglegs left and you really in the in the whole
Speaker 2: entire fairway slopes away from you in the in a
Speaker 2: left to right manner, so you really there's bunkers on
Speaker 2: the right side. You got to turn the ball right
Speaker 2: to left with the way these guys hit it, and
Speaker 2: it's a really hard shot to get yourself to do that.
Speaker 2: It's just a you know, it's a hard shot to
Speaker 2: hit with modern equipment. So you know, if you hit
Speaker 2: that draw, you're going to be set up with a
Speaker 2: really good chance at.
Speaker 1: Making a birdie or maybe even an eagle.
Speaker 2: But if you don't, then you know, you have a
Speaker 2: kind of a tricky layup with all the bunkers. There's
Speaker 2: a I don't know exactly how many bunkers, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of bunkers. There's a creek that cuts in on
Speaker 2: the right side and kind of runs along the right side,
Speaker 2: and it's not an easy layup like where you want
Speaker 2: to push your ball up to lay up where these
Speaker 2: guys want to get to, which is in that short
Speaker 2: wedge category. You know, they want to get it inside
Speaker 2: one hundred yards. The statistics prove out that the closer
Speaker 2: you are, especially inside one hundred yards, is where you're
Speaker 2: gaining the most strokes. When you push that up that far,
Speaker 2: there's an immense amount of trouble. So it almost acts
Speaker 2: similarly to fifteen in Augusta is a good example of this.
Speaker 2: The layup is really undesirable, and here it's not as
Speaker 2: it's not as difficult of a web shot.
Speaker 4: The wedge isn't as hard. It's just a tough layup
Speaker 4: to You could get in a lot of trouble on the.
Speaker 2: Layup when you push up, and it's not obvious it's
Speaker 2: not a pond, so we might see guys push up
Speaker 2: more or try to and end up in bad spots.
Speaker 4: Right two bunkers guard the layup zone there, and then
Speaker 4: there's a bunch of bunkers up by the green. There's
Speaker 4: an opening to the green on the left and so
Speaker 4: that's the most comfortable place to hit a webshot from
Speaker 4: from the left, but it is tough to get that
Speaker 4: layup left. There's a bunker over there and you kind
Speaker 4: of have to be in the right position in the
Speaker 4: fair way. It is. Yeah, it is a dicey, uncomfortable
Speaker 4: layup for sure, and a pretty severe green.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it kind of fits a Maxwell theme, which
Speaker 2: is these ridged a ridge holes. So there you're teeing
Speaker 2: off the very edge of the clubhouse ridge and then
Speaker 2: you end up at this kind of high ridge. The
Speaker 2: green sits up and it's kind of above the second green.
Speaker 2: It's on another ridge, And that's just a Maxwell. You know,
Speaker 2: you're gonna hear a lot about Perry Maxwell. Perry Maxwell
Speaker 2: loved ridged ridge holes where you play kind of off
Speaker 2: a ridge down and then back up to a ridge
Speaker 2: and for a par five, it's great because it makes
Speaker 2: that second shot really exacting if you're going for it.
Speaker 4: And he loved those holes, you know, probably for a
Speaker 4: number of reasons, but one big reason was drainage efficiency.
Speaker 4: He was building courses during the Great Depression, building them
Speaker 4: in a cheaper way than they had been built in
Speaker 4: the nineteen twenties, and so he was looking for maximum
Speaker 4: efficiency and cost savings, and one way to do that
Speaker 4: is to build your t's and your greens on ridges. Now,
Speaker 4: the problem with that routing method is that it can
Speaker 4: sometimes result in repetitive courses. But the genius of Perry
Speaker 4: Maxwell is that he was able to find routings that
Speaker 4: played ridge to ridge but never felt repetitive in the
Speaker 4: way that they did that. And I think that's what's
Speaker 4: really special about Southern Hills that's not going to necessarily
Speaker 4: come through on TV. The way the routing uses a
Speaker 4: land in a variety of ways, but puts those teas
Speaker 4: and greens in pretty similar places over and over. You
Speaker 4: just don't feel like that's what's happening.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the key to that is they're playing
Speaker 2: ridge to ridge, but what's happening in between is the
Speaker 2: natural topography and the and the randomness that when you
Speaker 2: don't move dirt to make things flat and different things,
Speaker 2: and you let the topography just be its natural state,
Speaker 2: it's it feels seemingly random because you're never confronting the
Speaker 2: ridges from the same angles or across the same ground.
Speaker 4: All Right. So, something I wanted to talk about in general,
Speaker 4: a thing about Southern Hills that his maybe bothered me
Speaker 4: a little bit has to do with the greens. I
Speaker 4: think there are some really cool green designs here, but
Speaker 4: when I compare them to the greens at Old Town
Speaker 4: Club and Prairie Dunes, they just fall short. I think
Speaker 4: you see similar green designs at Southern Hills. You see
Speaker 4: some of those Perry Maxwell rolls, the way he built
Speaker 4: up features in the middle of the green instead of
Speaker 4: just on the edges. So they're recognizably his designs, but
Speaker 4: they're just a lot more subdued. And maybe that's okay
Speaker 4: because the land is pretty dramatic. But you also have
Speaker 4: pretty dramatic land at Old Town Club in Prairie Dunes,
Speaker 4: But the greens there are just a bit more interesting
Speaker 4: to me because they're bolder. And so I wonder what
Speaker 4: you think of the greens at Southern Hills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they don't have those like eye popping
Speaker 2: Maxwell rolls like Prairie Dunes or Old Town Club have,
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, I think Dornic Hills doesn't
Speaker 2: have those either. Another Oklahoma Perry Maxwell course, and that
Speaker 2: was an early that was obviously his first one. You know,
Speaker 2: I think some of this is probably the impact that
Speaker 2: major championship golf has over the years is that you know,
Speaker 2: these have been restored, but what were they restored to?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: What kind of what was done with the slopes?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: And I saw Derek Duncan had an article with Russ
Speaker 2: Myers on Golf Digests where Russ talked about how the
Speaker 2: greens weren't going to be thirteen or fourteen. They're going
Speaker 2: to be eleven or twelve for the PGA, so they
Speaker 2: don't lose a lot of cool pins.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the thing.
Speaker 2: How do you have really slope greens, you know, and
Speaker 2: not run them like an Open championship runs them? You
Speaker 2: think about another course that Maxwell was involved with is
Speaker 2: Crystal Downs with Mackenzie and could you have a major
Speaker 2: championship speed greens at Crystal Downs? No? You know, And
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the things that happens
Speaker 2: when you make when you host major championships, is that
Speaker 2: no matter what, you know, those greens aren't going to
Speaker 2: have the slope that they once had. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: not fully aware of the inner workings, and you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the slopes were originally, but I
Speaker 2: agree with you that they do not feel as daunting
Speaker 2: as a lot of his other work around the area
Speaker 2: and around that time. You know, I think, like I said,
Speaker 2: one thing I learned about Maxwell was that, you know,
Speaker 2: Dean Woods, his construction foreman, was when he started working
Speaker 2: with Perry Maxwell, That's when the greens started to really
Speaker 2: ramp up. And that's why one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: Dorna Kills greens are a little bit more a dude
Speaker 2: than other ones was that Dean Woods wasn't working with
Speaker 2: them then interesting, and I think that's what Blake Conant,
Speaker 2: who obviously was heavily involved with Tom Doaks's restoration of
Speaker 2: Doric Hills, told.
Speaker 4: Me, Yeah, that's very possible because so much of our
Speaker 4: idea of the Maxwell rolls and of Perry Maxwell's approach
Speaker 4: to green design comes from Prairie Dunes, an old town club.
Speaker 1: And those were at the very end of his portfolio, and.
Speaker 4: So those might be the outliers as opposed to the
Speaker 4: representative examples. I don't know, It's just something that I
Speaker 4: thought about as we were playing it. I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm not as tempted to go around these greens and
Speaker 4: just hit putts, you know, like I am at Prairie Dunes.
Speaker 4: Or Old Town Club, where there's just so many fun
Speaker 4: little areas of the green and you just want to
Speaker 4: see how they work. You don't get that same sense
Speaker 4: of play at Southern Hills, and I think that that's
Speaker 4: for me, what makes it fall a little bit short
Speaker 4: of Old Town Club and what makes it fall short
Speaker 4: of Prairie Dunes. I mean, Prairie Dunes obviously has the
Speaker 4: amazing location as well, but that's why on my personal
Speaker 4: list it would be ranked a little bit lower. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, it's going for a different thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have to remember that this is a
Speaker 4: major championship hosting course. That is what it's going for.
Speaker 4: That's part of its purpose. That's not part of the
Speaker 4: purpose of the other Perry Maxwell courses that we've talked about.
Speaker 4: And so this all comes back to that compromise that
Speaker 4: you have to make between classic Golden Age architecture and
Speaker 4: modern major championship preparation. There are other aspects of Southern
Speaker 4: Hills that are also very modernized. The greens have precision
Speaker 4: air systems under them. I mean, that's obviously not a
Speaker 4: Golden Age thing. All the kind of agronomic infrastructure is
Speaker 4: very modern.
Speaker 2: That's something to talk about, like without that, I don't
Speaker 2: know if they could host a major championship in May
Speaker 2: given the weather and have conditions that you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: they got one of the best in the business, Russ
Speaker 2: Myers as they're superintendent there, and I think that you know,
Speaker 2: they get a they Tulsa has one of the widest
Speaker 2: spreads of weather. You know, when you look at how
Speaker 2: cold it can get and how hot it gets in
Speaker 2: the summer. You know, you're talking about, you know, maintaining
Speaker 2: turf in one of the areas of the country that
Speaker 2: deals with the most types of weather. So, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that makes this may date possible.
Speaker 2: And and I think this is another thing about it
Speaker 2: is like we've never seen Tulsa not in like the
Speaker 2: inferno summer months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Tulsa and August is what we've gotten a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, June and June.
Speaker 4: And June for the US Open.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we get it a couple of weeks earlier
Speaker 2: when when it's really you know, it can be a
Speaker 2: really idyllic time to be there. Obviously the fall is
Speaker 2: a great time to be in Tulsa, but unfortunately there's
Speaker 2: no major championship golf.
Speaker 4: Then, I mean, maintaining turf in Tulsa, Oklahoma is a
Speaker 4: big challenge. That's why they have this infrastructure. And as
Speaker 4: you say, Russ Myers doesn't credible job. This is a
Speaker 4: beautifully maintained course, but yeah it does. It does feel
Speaker 4: modern in the in the ways that it's maintained, and
Speaker 4: it's that way because it has it wants to host
Speaker 4: major championships. It can't be like Essex County Club where
Speaker 4: they have a more old fashioned approach to presenting that course.
Speaker 4: It just can't do that because PGA Championships and US
Speaker 4: Opens wouldn't come there if they were doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sad, but you know, PGA tour players expect
Speaker 2: certain things, and uh expect a lot of uniformity and
Speaker 2: course maintenance.
Speaker 4: But they'll also they'll also maybe be bothered a little
Speaker 4: bit by some of the things that happened to them
Speaker 4: at Southern Hills.
Speaker 5: I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially Yeah, if you get wind and firmness out there,
Speaker 2: it could be it could be really really It's I
Speaker 2: think the thing about it, I'm not sure where the
Speaker 2: scores are going to land, and I think that's super
Speaker 2: weather dependent. But I think the one thing it will
Speaker 2: do if it's allowed to with with the with the
Speaker 2: conditions is that it will do a really good job
Speaker 2: of separating great play from average play and average play
Speaker 2: from bad play. And I think we could see a
Speaker 2: really nice, nice tournament where you know, it's very clear
Speaker 2: who the best players in a given week are, which
Speaker 2: sometimes doesn't happen. Sometimes you watched a tournament and you're like,
Speaker 2: I don't know who who really played best. At Augusta
Speaker 2: this year, it was very clear that Scottie Scheffler was
Speaker 2: the best player in the field.
Speaker 4: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by
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Speaker 4: egg dot com. All right, thanks for listening.