Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried egg.
Speaker 2: Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday, fridag Egg, fridagg
Speaker 2: bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of
Speaker 2: the hump.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Golf Podcast.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I'm joined by
Speaker 1: a friend of the program, a former big part of
Speaker 1: the program, former co host of this podcast, Garrett Morrison.
Speaker 2: Hello, Garrett, Hello, how's it going Andy.
Speaker 1: It's going great. It's going great. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: golf arct texture today. Always exciting, always fun to open
Speaker 1: up the mail bag and and kick around some big
Speaker 1: topics in golf. So we each picked four questions to
Speaker 1: bat around, so we should have a a pretty full
Speaker 1: I feel like we always have, like a big aspiration.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get through a lot. I figured if we
Speaker 1: just picked four each that it would probably fill up,
Speaker 1: fill up the pod.
Speaker 2: Aim small, miss small exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And before we get to the mail bag pod big
Speaker 1: big news in the Friday Pro Shop, it's black Friday
Speaker 1: It's that time of the year. It's time to save,
Speaker 1: it's time to shop. That's the way this works, you know,
Speaker 1: load up on your holiday gear. The Friday pro Shop
Speaker 1: has a Black Friday Sale. The code is b F Sale,
Speaker 1: which gets you twenty percent off everything. As as a reminder,
Speaker 1: Friday Golf Club members, you guys get a little bit
Speaker 1: more so if you use your normal code. It's very
Speaker 1: secretive for those that aren't members, but you know, if
Speaker 1: you use your normal fried Egg member code, you get
Speaker 1: twenty five percent off this week. The only things that
Speaker 1: aren't included in the sale at Proshop dot thefridagg dot
Speaker 1: com are our book, our new coffee table book that
Speaker 1: is going to ship pretty soon, and golf bags. So
Speaker 1: those are the only two things that are excluded. Do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite pick, Garrett from the pro Shop.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many, and plus I might
Speaker 2: not be totally up to date on what we actually
Speaker 2: have in the Pro Shop in all honesty, because it
Speaker 2: changes pretty quickly. Items sell out pretty quickly, and we
Speaker 2: have a great crew led by Meg Atkins and Abby
Speaker 2: Libenthal that keep things really fresh in there. But I
Speaker 2: recently in a newsletter recommend getting a humble koozie. A
Speaker 2: not interested in fighting kuzzi, which I think could be
Speaker 2: very useful for some people because if you're using a kuzi,
Speaker 2: you're probably drinking a beer. And if you're drinking a beer,
Speaker 2: you might be in an environment where people might want
Speaker 2: to fight, you know, because they're getting a little lubricated,
Speaker 2: and you're just telling people with this kouzzy. I'm not
Speaker 2: interested in participating in that, and I think it could
Speaker 2: could help people evade certain situations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could save you, could really get you out
Speaker 1: of a jam. I like that. I got a couple
Speaker 1: of recks. I love the bet dratty they got that.
Speaker 1: We got a bunch of andy hoodies check that out,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other dratty stuff. But then I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of this Friday Golf American needle hat.
Speaker 1: It's just got Friday Golf in block text on it.
Speaker 1: I'm just a big fan of it. So that that's
Speaker 1: my wreck, and really earnest reck. It's not on sale,
Speaker 1: you can't save money. I think the book's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: I'd recommend the book. Check out the book. Garrett put
Speaker 1: a lot of time and energy into that book and
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. I think it's gonna be a beautiful
Speaker 1: book to have and to read through. The pictures are
Speaker 1: are spectacular, the writing's great, and I think it I
Speaker 1: think it looks really good. So I would I would
Speaker 1: recommend the book.
Speaker 2: The book's so cool. I mean, yeah, I was. I
Speaker 2: was charged with editing a lot of the words that
Speaker 2: are in the book. But the design of it is
Speaker 2: so cool. And the photography that we have in there,
Speaker 2: mostly taken by Andy obviously you Andy, Cameron Hurdis and
Speaker 2: Matt Ruschius, is beautiful and I think the way it's
Speaker 2: displayed in the book is going to be really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you do you have any photos that's snuck in?
Speaker 2: I think I must have. You know, I photographed like
Speaker 2: like Victoria Golf Club in Australia is in there, and
Speaker 2: I was the one who photographed that one, and so people,
Speaker 2: well people might be people might notice a decline in
Speaker 2: the quality. I would assume, like it's definitely not my specialty,
Speaker 2: but you know, pretty much everything looks good in golden
Speaker 2: hour light. So as long as you get good light
Speaker 2: that that sort of compensates for a lot of sins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so check all that out. Pro shop dot Thefrida
Speaker 1: egg dot Com. It's BF Friday, and while we're at it,
Speaker 1: I know it's not summer anymore. But Maui Nui, our
Speaker 1: friends at Maui Nui have an always summer sausage and
Speaker 1: it's the cleanest, most nutrient dense lunch meat on the planet.
Speaker 1: And it's crafted from one wild harvested access deer from
Speaker 1: Maui uh seasoned with Hawaiian red sea salt and pink peppercorn.
Speaker 1: So this tastes great, it fuels performance, does good for
Speaker 1: the planet. And listen, it's not you know, it's not
Speaker 1: always summer, but you can always eat summer sausage. It's
Speaker 1: not a deli beat. It's a completely new way to
Speaker 1: have a sandwich. I had one of these recently. It
Speaker 1: was delicious. I recommend it honestly, like I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was I was getting into, and it was
Speaker 1: a delightful sandwich beat, a lot healthier than your typical
Speaker 1: sandwich meats, you know those those deli meats, and like
Speaker 1: high in protein and it's super clean nutrition, unlike your
Speaker 1: typical deli beat. So if you're interested in in uh,
Speaker 1: Mali Nui's always summer sausage. You can go to Maui
Speaker 1: Nui Venison. That's m a u I n Ui Venison
Speaker 1: v E n I s O n dot com slash egg.
Speaker 1: And when you're asked about how you heard about Maui Nui,
Speaker 1: make sure to mention this podcast because it helps support
Speaker 1: the show. So go get your always summer sausage even
Speaker 1: though it's the winner. I'll revolutionize your lunchtime sandwiches at
Speaker 1: Maui Nui Venison dot com slash egg. All right, big
Speaker 1: thanks to Maui Nui for the support this year. Garrett.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the golf architecture discussion. Since you're the
Speaker 1: guest here, let's give you the first question. I get
Speaker 1: my influencer, Mike.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Okay, where do I start? Well, there
Speaker 2: were a lot of great questions. We each chose four,
Speaker 2: so we chose a total of eight, and so there
Speaker 2: are many we're not going to get to, but that
Speaker 2: always happens anyway, so we just did it by design
Speaker 2: this time. The first one I'd like to talk about
Speaker 2: is from Brian Decker on Frida Egg Golf Club. So
Speaker 2: we put out a call for questions within our new
Speaker 2: community forum and Frida Egg Golf Club, which has been
Speaker 2: a lot of fun so far. Whatever you may think
Speaker 2: of message boards on the internet, this one one is
Speaker 2: is I feel like so far it's one of the
Speaker 2: good ones. But in any case, Brian asks on FUGC,
Speaker 2: the privately owned ultra premium national membership club model seems
Speaker 2: to be the most common source of quality architecture over
Speaker 2: the past few years, beyond the obvious examples like the park.
Speaker 2: What are some other forms of developer slash ownership models
Speaker 2: that you've seen that have produced good golf and might
Speaker 2: be scalable elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's been a lot of diversity in
Speaker 1: the in the type of types of models. I think
Speaker 1: one that jumps to mind is the public private partnership
Speaker 1: for for public golf.
Speaker 2: This is the.
Speaker 1: Answer where you know a a private group ideally that
Speaker 1: has the you know, aligned intentions with a with a
Speaker 1: municipality or a county. You know one the would jump
Speaker 1: to mind as Rustic Canyon. This is an example of this,
Speaker 1: and don't you know, I don't know the exact intricacies
Speaker 1: of it, but it's a lease and you know, one
Speaker 1: of the big parts of the lease is a is
Speaker 1: keeping the golf affordable. And what you get there is
Speaker 1: you get a ownership group of the lease that is
Speaker 1: aligned and you know, maybe it's not an ownership group,
Speaker 1: it's a leaseee that's aligned with the municipality or county
Speaker 1: where it is, Hey, we want to provide an asset
Speaker 1: for the community, and we're going to give you the
Speaker 1: key here is that give them a long lease that's
Speaker 1: very manageable. A lot of times you see these and
Speaker 1: it's a dollar, you know, a year, you know, some structure,
Speaker 1: different ways there could be profit sharing, but anyways, it
Speaker 1: sets up a situation because the problem with so many
Speaker 1: of these you know, municipalities or public golf courses when
Speaker 1: they go to a you know, a lease model is
Speaker 1: if you give somebody a five year lease, there's no
Speaker 1: time to put capital improvements, significant capital improvements in place
Speaker 1: and recoup the money. You need to have a long
Speaker 1: term lease. And this is where fifty seventy one hundred
Speaker 1: years is really beneficial because then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: if you want to do a major project, let's just say,
Speaker 1: you need to do the irrigation it is it is
Speaker 1: worn out, and you also want to you know, redo
Speaker 1: the bunkers, and some greens and make some big changes
Speaker 1: with the golf course. Okay, if I put eight to
Speaker 1: ten million dollars into the golf course, I now have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to recapture that that revenue over ten fifteen years.
Speaker 1: What the issue is when these at leases are short
Speaker 1: is you have no incentive to do that because you're
Speaker 1: just going to lose money and the person leasing the
Speaker 1: property could change who they listen to, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think that's that's probably the model that's worked the best.
Speaker 1: I think there's room for other models, we just haven't
Speaker 1: really seen it yet. I think the model I'm kind
Speaker 1: of most interested in is the idea of extremely low
Speaker 1: amenity golf.
Speaker 2: That's new. Yeah, mom and pop golf. I'd love to
Speaker 2: see how mom and pop golf might work in the
Speaker 2: current environment. Mike Young at the Fields outside of Atlanta
Speaker 2: is a big advocate of people trying this. It's not
Speaker 2: a big profit business, but you can make a profit
Speaker 2: if you save costs and if you operate at a
Speaker 2: very you know, efficient according to a very efficient philosophy,
Speaker 2: and you might be presenting course conditions that aren't luxurious,
Speaker 2: but they're serving a certain segment of the market. You're
Speaker 2: providing affordable golf for people, and you're not relying on
Speaker 2: the backing of a municipality to do it. So I
Speaker 2: would like to see more people try mom and pop
Speaker 2: golf because there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: who love golf who really would like to own a
Speaker 2: golf course and run a golf course, but are scared
Speaker 2: to do it because you know, they think that they
Speaker 2: might lose all their money, and that's a legitimate worry.
Speaker 2: But you just have to be smart and efficient, and
Speaker 2: I think you can do it. There have been, there
Speaker 2: are a number of examples out there of people who
Speaker 2: are doing it, and you know, they're relatively rare, and
Speaker 2: not all of them are the greatest courses in the world.
Speaker 2: But I wish people weren't as scared as they seem
Speaker 2: to be to pursue this.
Speaker 1: Well. I think some of it is such a follow
Speaker 1: the leader type situation, and I think, like I think
Speaker 1: also where people get wrapped up is they feel like
Speaker 1: if they own a golf course, they have to have
Speaker 1: the most luxurious, most talked about golf course, and often
Speaker 1: what gets propped up in golf is exclusivity, opulence and
Speaker 1: over the top features not necessarily even the golf course.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the golf course features. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the comfort stations, the clubhouses, the amenities, and sometimes
Speaker 1: what gets lost. Is one of the things I talked
Speaker 1: about this with KVV a little bit, is there's a
Speaker 1: startling lack of development across the different markets in golf.
Speaker 1: All the development right now is at the high end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious to see if people could make different
Speaker 1: models work. And I understand the construction industry and materials
Speaker 1: industry has made some of that difficult.
Speaker 2: There's also a startling lack of development in high population places,
Speaker 2: but and that's another issue having to do with land
Speaker 2: costs and a number of understandable factors. So a couple
Speaker 2: of thoughts on models. Quick thoughts. One, you mentioned the
Speaker 2: lease agreements that many municipalities have for their golf courses.
Speaker 2: Those are pretty common. But the lease ees that I'm
Speaker 2: most interested in, or that I tend to be the
Speaker 2: most interested in, are not the big companies that do
Speaker 2: that have a lot of these management contracts. There are
Speaker 2: efficiencies within those companies, and some of thempanies are better
Speaker 2: than others, but that's kind of the usual thing. Is
Speaker 2: that a municipality is going to give the lease to
Speaker 2: a company that has a lot of other accounts and
Speaker 2: a track record, and that can work out fine, just
Speaker 2: depending on the specific people who are there. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: not so great. Sometimes there's not a lot of heart
Speaker 2: and soul put into those projects. But I tend to
Speaker 2: like the leases that are taken by individuals or very
Speaker 2: small businesses that want to make something of their golf
Speaker 2: courses invest in their golf courses. Those ones can have
Speaker 2: really really good results. Public private partnership you mentioned this,
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different versions of this. There
Speaker 2: are groups in cities like Nashville that are fundraising and
Speaker 2: pulling off pretty ambitious renovation projects at municipal courses because
Speaker 2: they've gathered together a bunch of golf enthusiasts who have
Speaker 2: some money and they've decided to support their municipal courses.
Speaker 2: And that is definitely something that we saw at the
Speaker 2: park and something that we're occasionally seeing popping up in
Speaker 2: various cities across the country, but I wish it were
Speaker 2: a little more common. And then the final one I
Speaker 2: want to mention is the possibility of a community oriented,
Speaker 2: very low cost private club I wish there were more
Speaker 2: of those. I think those are that's a feasible model,
Speaker 2: probably not as hard to work out as the mom
Speaker 2: and pop course. But if we had a greater supply
Speaker 2: of affordable private clubs, a lot of the pressures on
Speaker 2: public golf and a lot of the movement toward really
Speaker 2: high end private golf wouldn't be as worrisome.
Speaker 1: I think you hit the nail on the head a
Speaker 1: little bit with that one. One of the reasons we
Speaker 1: don't have that as much anymore is that the demand
Speaker 1: for private golf is so high in metropolitan areas that
Speaker 1: what were the affordable options have gotten more expensive since COVID.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody's everybody has really high initiation fees right now.
Speaker 1: A fascinating study would be, it would require somebody with
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of intel in relationships in
Speaker 1: a city, would be to compare the costs of membership
Speaker 1: between dues and initiation of clubs in a major city
Speaker 1: like New York or Chicago or LA. If you could
Speaker 1: get a full list of a good list of clubs,
Speaker 1: compare pre COVID post code and what they are, I
Speaker 1: think it would be shocking how how much the price
Speaker 1: has gone up for clubs that are that used to
Speaker 1: be considered very affordable. Yeah, and it's really just a
Speaker 1: demand thing, I.
Speaker 2: Mean huge in the twenty twenties. This has been a
Speaker 2: recent change.
Speaker 1: This is just economics at work. Yeah, it's not anybody's fault.
Speaker 1: And what they've done is they've improved their club with
Speaker 1: the Capitol and they're more amenities than ever. But I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that's happened in golf is
Speaker 1: it's really I wrote about a course that I was
Speaker 1: a member of in I was probably a member from
Speaker 1: I don't know twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, probably twenty seventeen Calumet Country Club, which closed
Speaker 1: this this past week. And you know, there's I found
Speaker 1: out after I wrote the piece that there was a
Speaker 1: lot there's a lot more going on potentially with it.
Speaker 1: You know that maybe a story to come. But but
Speaker 1: one of the things I think about is I was
Speaker 1: in my late twenties and a great woman, Lorraine Skodro,
Speaker 1: who runs tournaments for the CDGA, the Chicago District Golf Association,
Speaker 1: that I played in a lot of those. She runs
Speaker 1: ran ternaments for him. And she said, Andy, you know,
Speaker 1: you're costing your money. You live in the city, You're
Speaker 1: costing yourself money every year that you don't join Caliumet.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what do you mean. She's like,
Speaker 1: you play all this golf, Like why wouldn't you join there?
Speaker 1: The deal's great. So I went down and I looked
Speaker 1: at it, and at the time, you know, and this
Speaker 1: was probably a harpinger for why they had financial problems
Speaker 1: and that we were in financial crisis. It was one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars a month for me to join.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was, I mean, okay, twenty thirteen, still
Speaker 2: in the blast zone of the Great Recession, and still
Speaker 2: at a low point for golf, right, and so this
Speaker 2: was probably the best time in the past, I don't know,
Speaker 2: one hundred years to try to join a private golf
Speaker 2: club in terms of finances.
Speaker 1: So I and they had a referral program which knocked it.
Speaker 1: I knocked it down. I was paying one hundred bucks
Speaker 1: a month and I had I think one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: food minimum a month. And it was an amazing deal.
Speaker 1: I I was. I played so much golf, I got
Speaker 1: so many of my friends to join, and it was
Speaker 1: a great place. And I don't think like I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's the model. I want to be clear. I
Speaker 1: know that that's not a real model for golf. But
Speaker 1: I think about today, where do you know, you talk
Speaker 1: about what's going on in the world and the way
Speaker 1: the costs have gone up, where does it we've seen
Speaker 1: all this growth, Where does the twenty eight year old
Speaker 1: young professional play golf, who is you know, working their
Speaker 1: ass off to just house themselves at this point if
Speaker 1: they live in a major city.
Speaker 2: Where where does the regular forty year old dad play golf?
Speaker 2: I don't know if there are even those places right now,
Speaker 2: like middle class, middle aged people.
Speaker 1: And it's a great it's a great situation. The game
Speaker 1: has has grown so much in terms of participation, but
Speaker 1: you've done some stuff with it with the NGNGF. It's
Speaker 1: I think we're in such a similar position to the
Speaker 1: nineties when they recommended, was it the nineties they recommended
Speaker 1: a new golf course need to be built every day?
Speaker 2: Was that?
Speaker 1: I know that you have you have this in your
Speaker 1: vault of oh right.
Speaker 2: I bring it up from time to time with my
Speaker 2: friends over there at the ENNGF. I think that they
Speaker 2: learned a lesson from that prediction slash recommendation, and are
Speaker 2: more cautious now in their kind of prognostications about where
Speaker 2: the industry is going.
Speaker 1: But golf has this huge supply issue at every level,
Speaker 1: and there's no I don't foresee any way of fixing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, aside from increasing the supply, which has proven to
Speaker 2: be I guess too expensive. Land costs are the big
Speaker 2: factor there. Yeah. Where I would just like to see
Speaker 2: some work done is on economy of construction and economy
Speaker 2: of maintenance. I'm not sure that really that many people
Speaker 2: are thinking about those things. People just sort of seem
Speaker 2: to accept that right now. Golf courses cost a certain
Speaker 2: amount to build, build, and maintain, but a lot of
Speaker 2: what people think of as needs of construction and maintenance
Speaker 2: are actually once And I would like to see a
Speaker 2: perspective shift among golfers about what constitutes good conditioning. And
Speaker 2: I would like to see a perspective shift among developers
Speaker 2: about how much these projects actually cost, because I don't
Speaker 2: think that they need to cost as much as they do.
Speaker 2: So that's at least one area I'd like us to
Speaker 2: work on. But I recognize it's a tough situation. Nobody
Speaker 2: can afford to build an affordable golf course anymore, and
Speaker 2: it's a real problem. But the current economic conditions that
Speaker 2: we have right now won't last forever. Things will shift
Speaker 2: and the golf industry will shift with it.
Speaker 1: And if the economic conditions shift, it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see if golfs demand issue shifts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's hope that the shift isn't disastrous. But of course,
Speaker 2: the trend in economic shifts over the past number of
Speaker 2: years has been you know, they've been a little more
Speaker 2: severe than you would want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's get to the next question.
Speaker 2: We just finally Yeah, right, we're gonna even fall short.
Speaker 2: We've gotta, we've gotta, we've got to knock these knock
Speaker 2: these out here, all right.
Speaker 1: This is a question about how we rate courses. In
Speaker 1: case anybody doesn't know, we rate courses in Friday Golf Club.
Speaker 1: If you join, you can get access to I think
Speaker 1: we're probably at like one hundred and fifty reviews at
Speaker 1: this point. With ratings. We do a zero, one, two
Speaker 1: three egg system. It's very similar to a Michelin Star system.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw I saw on the app known as
Speaker 2: X recently that this would be a great idea for
Speaker 2: how to rate golf courses and somebody should do it.
Speaker 2: And I think it was our friend and colleague, Brendan
Speaker 2: Porath who put his hand up and said, actually we
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So a question from Mike, I'm I'm is it?
Speaker 2: I'm okay, I apologies.
Speaker 1: I was told by the whole family at an event. Okay.
Speaker 2: I haven't met him in person. He's a he's a
Speaker 2: big contributor to Friday Golf Club and a very it
Speaker 2: seems like a very nice.
Speaker 1: Guy, great player, great player, whole family great players of
Speaker 1: their own right.
Speaker 2: His brother is a coach, right is that his brother
Speaker 2: at the University of Iowa.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, played played on a bunch of developmental tour
Speaker 1: like the Latin America for a while. They all, they
Speaker 1: all can get her around father, father and sons. How
Speaker 1: do you, guys, egg? I guess you know that I
Speaker 1: would say, rate.
Speaker 2: How do you how do you? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Nine versus eighteen? And a follow on question from Ben
Speaker 1: Dennison is how to evaluate nine hole courses that later
Speaker 1: a different architect comes in to make up eighteen holes.
Speaker 1: This is the happen stance place, Yeah, especially on the
Speaker 1: East coast and in the in the Midwest because a
Speaker 1: lot of farm towns have only needed nine holes and
Speaker 1: the reality is they only ever needed nine holes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean any place where golf was developed before
Speaker 2: say the nineteen seventies, even this is a pretty common situation.
Speaker 1: So it's how should we how should we think about
Speaker 1: ranking and evaluating these courses when maybe these courses would
Speaker 1: be better off staying nine holes? And what is your
Speaker 1: favorite nine hole turned eighteen hole later course in the country.
Speaker 2: Okay, so kind of three separate questions there, how.
Speaker 1: Do you let's just start with how do we how
Speaker 1: do we raise nine hole.
Speaker 2: Versus eighteen Yeah, I mean we can I can you know,
Speaker 2: knock out these questions pretty well. It's uh, it is
Speaker 2: a tough issue when you rate a nine hole course
Speaker 2: and you're trying to figure out, Okay, if this is
Speaker 2: America's best nine hole course, does it have to be
Speaker 2: three eggs? And we recently actually asked that question with
Speaker 2: a with a course profile and rating that our colleague
Speaker 2: Matt Rushis did on Culver Academies, the golf course at
Speaker 2: Culver Academies that it's an excellent Langford and Moreau course
Speaker 2: that has been beautifully restored, gradually restored, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: owing in large parts of the efforts of the of
Speaker 2: the superintendent there over Bobby Bobby Bobby Bobby, Bobby Weed
Speaker 2: and recently Brian Schneider has made some suggestions there. So
Speaker 2: credit to credit to everybody involved.
Speaker 1: But Michael is the superintendent who's done an incredible job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the the you know, Matt gave uh Culver
Speaker 2: one of the most aggressive ratings that I think we've
Speaker 2: we've ever given. He gave Culver three eggs, and he
Speaker 2: made an argument as to why it deserved it, and
Speaker 2: I support that argument one hundred percent. I would say
Speaker 2: I try to rate courses according to what they're trying
Speaker 2: to do. If the course is trying to be a
Speaker 2: great nine hole course, then I'll rate it according to
Speaker 2: how well it is a great nine hole course. So yes,
Speaker 2: I absolutely think that nine hole courses can get a
Speaker 2: top rating. I also think that short courses can get
Speaker 2: a top rating. And I actually gave three eggs to
Speaker 2: the short course at sand Valley, the Sandbox, because I
Speaker 2: think that that's the best par three course I've ever played.
Speaker 2: I think it's an incredible work of architecture. The Green
Speaker 2: shaping there is so good it kind of blows my
Speaker 2: mind how good that golf course is. But a lot
Speaker 2: of people would hesitate, I think to give a short
Speaker 2: course a top rating because it doesn't contain par fours
Speaker 2: and par fives, and maybe to a lot of people
Speaker 2: it's not a completely satisfying version of.
Speaker 1: Golf shot values?
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, how do you determine how do you talk
Speaker 2: about strategy, strategic design, or shot values or protection of
Speaker 2: par our favorite criterion. I'm just kidding about that obviously,
Speaker 2: how do you rate a short course? And again, my
Speaker 2: philosophy is, and I don't always like stick to this
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, but I think my basic philosophy is
Speaker 2: rate a course according to what it's trying to do,
Speaker 2: and that extends to affordable courses versus high end private courses.
Speaker 2: If the course is trying to be a great forty
Speaker 2: dollars eighteen hole golf course, then I think that you
Speaker 2: have to approach it from a slightly different perspective than
Speaker 2: you would approach a course with a you know that's
Speaker 2: trying to be the world's greatest high end private course.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think I think determining their I identity
Speaker 1: is such an important piece of evaluating a golf course.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be pretentious about evaluating golf
Speaker 1: courses to a certain extent. How I think about my
Speaker 1: what I rate golf courses. A lot of it is
Speaker 1: like do I you know, and I don't want this
Speaker 1: to sound too simplistic. I think about all the you know,
Speaker 1: various things that go into a golf course, like the routing,
Speaker 1: the bunkering, the greens, the turf, the you know, all
Speaker 1: of that. But really when it comes to putting a
Speaker 1: score on paper, I think about how much do I
Speaker 1: think about going back there and dying to go back
Speaker 1: and play it? And you know, for me, courses that
Speaker 1: I just dream about going back and playing. And this
Speaker 1: extends to places like you know, Diamond Springs, which is
Speaker 1: I believe they've they've gone from thirty five to maybe
Speaker 1: like fifty dollars now, but I dream about playing there.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't want to give to too much away,
Speaker 1: but I was going through the event calendar with Will
Speaker 1: we have an event there this year and I said,
Speaker 1: I saw it on the calendar and I said, ooh, Will,
Speaker 1: I think I got to go to that Diamond Springs thing.
Speaker 1: And he goes well, stirring at the US Open, I go,
Speaker 1: I won't be there.
Speaker 2: And you've already been to Michigan a million times, but
Speaker 2: you still want to go to Diamond Springs.
Speaker 1: So for me, now we could get really uh I
Speaker 1: think the right the right word would be pedantic, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: on the different you know aspects that go into it.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, if I'm jumping
Speaker 1: at the opportunity to go play somewhere, to me, that
Speaker 1: that is a core part of it, whether it's nine holes,
Speaker 1: six holes, twelve holes. And I think Culver is a
Speaker 1: great example of that. Anytime I am within you know, really,
Speaker 1: anytime I'm in Chicago and I'm thinking about going to
Speaker 1: play golf, Culver rattles around in my brain and it's
Speaker 1: three hours away. Anytime I'm in Chicago, I'm like, uh,
Speaker 1: I could go to Culver, And to me, if it's
Speaker 1: three hours away and I'm going to just drive down there,
Speaker 1: it's got a very high appeal in the in the rating.
Speaker 1: So for me, holes don't matter whatsoever. Type of golf
Speaker 1: I don't think necessarily matters. On like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to dock a course because it's a short course. On
Speaker 1: the egg scale. I'm going to rate it, you know,
Speaker 1: against other and I think it makes it a little
Speaker 1: bit cleaner when you do it that way, because if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about rating restaurants, you wouldn't be like, well,
Speaker 1: I like Italian food more than more than Ramen. So
Speaker 1: so all the places are tough.
Speaker 2: Sorry Japan, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Like an, I think these different forms of golf, and likewise,
Speaker 1: like what you brought up, you have championship courses like Shinnacock,
Speaker 1: and you have really fun golf courses that are private
Speaker 1: and well maintained, like Cape Arundle and Shinnacock. How do
Speaker 1: you rate those? They are two they have two completely
Speaker 1: different objectives.
Speaker 2: It's apples and oranges. And that's part of why we
Speaker 2: don't really love ranking courses one, two, three, four, five, six, right,
Speaker 2: because that really forces you to say, Okay, you know
Speaker 2: what's better Cape Arundle or Shinnacock, Like, how do I
Speaker 2: come to that decision? Putting courses in buckets allows for
Speaker 2: a little bit more flexibility about how we're assessing courses,
Speaker 2: and we like to change our mode of assessment depending
Speaker 2: on what the course is trying to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen like all these like very intricate scoring systems,
Speaker 1: but you have to rank out of ten a million times.
Speaker 2: No offense to anyone who does this. I know people
Speaker 2: who do this, and it looks like it's just a hobby.
Speaker 2: It's just fun. I could not be less interested in
Speaker 2: doing something like that, Like trying to mathematically work out
Speaker 2: the perfect rating system for a golf course. I just
Speaker 2: don't think. That's just not how I go about assessing
Speaker 2: a golf course.
Speaker 1: I also think like it becomes very formulaic, and there
Speaker 1: are certain things that certain some golf courses have that's
Speaker 1: just this like special sauce to them. A good example
Speaker 1: of a course that I'm particularly enthralled with is Brambles
Speaker 1: in California. It's been a very long growing period, and
Speaker 1: you know, at different points I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: in my head, I don't know if it's ever going
Speaker 1: to get to where what they're telling me it's going
Speaker 1: to get to with the turf and I play. We played.
Speaker 1: We had an event up there a couple weeks ago
Speaker 1: and we played and the turf was just so incredible
Speaker 1: that I am. I'm just enthralled by it. But if
Speaker 1: you looked at it from like a site standpoint and
Speaker 1: a hole by hole. Maybe it doesn't like it's not
Speaker 1: going to just wow people off the page, But for me,
Speaker 1: as they keep getting it more and more dialed in,
Speaker 1: the next thing they have to get it done is
Speaker 1: the native It's just going up and up and up,
Speaker 1: because there's just that it has an intangible quality between
Speaker 1: the place, the turf, the architecture, the setting that all
Speaker 1: melds together that if I grated it out on point
Speaker 1: by point, I would find a lot of distractions. And
Speaker 1: by doing that you get so specific that you almost
Speaker 1: lose the plot. And I think like this might be
Speaker 1: similar and I, I, you know, to if you're evaluating
Speaker 1: a prospect for a for a for the NFL or
Speaker 1: for the you know, NBA, and you get so I
Speaker 1: would think like grading out really in depth is kind
Speaker 1: of kind of similar to being enamored with measurables but
Speaker 1: just ignoring on field production. And for me, how I
Speaker 1: feel about the course and oftentimes one of the best
Speaker 1: things to me is is do I just want to
Speaker 1: just keep going and playing golf? And am I sad
Speaker 1: if I can't just go play more? And that's kind
Speaker 1: of like watching somebody being like, yeah, they're they're just
Speaker 1: great at this. And to me, a great golf course
Speaker 1: is you kind of know and I there are all
Speaker 1: these things that go into it, and you could talk
Speaker 1: in depth about the greens and the variety of the greens,
Speaker 1: the routing, but there is just that intangible nature to
Speaker 1: great golf courses that maybe if you broke it down
Speaker 1: you could nitpick on things, but they just have a
Speaker 1: special sauce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is supposed to be about golf course appreciation,
Speaker 2: and when you get too deep into rating golf courses,
Speaker 2: you might lose sight of the fact that it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be about golf course appreciation. But to get to
Speaker 2: the other aspects of the question here, which we're asked
Speaker 2: by Ben Dennison.
Speaker 1: He's a great question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good, really cool question. Yeah, how
Speaker 2: do you evaluate a nine hole course that later became
Speaker 2: eighteen holes? And I will say my belief is that
Speaker 2: I evaluate the course that exists now regardless of what
Speaker 2: its history would be. But I also acknowledge that, yes,
Speaker 2: a course can become word sometimes when it's expanded to
Speaker 2: eighteen holes if those eighteen holes are not as good
Speaker 2: as the original nine, even though all nine of the
Speaker 2: original holes might still be there, still be intact. The
Speaker 2: course as a whole can decline, in my estimation if
Speaker 2: it now consists of eighteen holes, nine of which are
Speaker 2: not nearly as good as the other nine. And this
Speaker 2: is the case that a lot of courses. The one
Speaker 2: that always comes to mind for me is I haven't
Speaker 2: been to, but I've heard a great deal about Thindara
Speaker 2: in New York. I think that's how you pronounce it,
Speaker 2: you know, great original Donald Ross nine hole course along
Speaker 2: with an additional nine that was built in the fifties
Speaker 2: or sixties that just has a completely different architectural philosophy
Speaker 2: behind it on a completely different kind of piece of land,
Speaker 2: and just as the opposite and in many ways and
Speaker 2: is really not very good, has not stood the test
Speaker 2: of time. Well, well, that original nine holes is still
Speaker 2: there and it's terrific and it's a great reason to
Speaker 2: go play the course. But I would probably rate that
Speaker 2: original nine hole course higher than I would ever rate
Speaker 2: the full eighteen because again, you know, I'm rating the
Speaker 2: course that is in the ground. My favorite course that
Speaker 2: has gone through this kind of transformation would maybe be
Speaker 2: an obvious one, and that's Prairie Did's where the original
Speaker 2: nine by Perry Maxwell there is a masterpiece, maybe the
Speaker 2: greatest nine hole course ever built. The additional nine by
Speaker 2: his son, Press Maxwell, built in the nineteen fifties, is
Speaker 2: missing a little something of the magic of those original
Speaker 2: nine holes by Perry Maxwell. But really are pretty good.
Speaker 2: Really really, Press did a In fact, he did a
Speaker 2: great job considering the context in which the time period
Speaker 2: in which he was doing all this, he did a
Speaker 2: great job of matching the new holes to the old holes,
Speaker 2: to the point where you know, ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: percent of people playing the golf course would not be
Speaker 2: able to tell that one portion of this course was
Speaker 2: built twenty or so years after the initial portion of
Speaker 2: the course. And so I think Paridians is an example
Speaker 2: of a course that went through the nine to eighteen
Speaker 2: transition and came out.
Speaker 1: Very nice, definitely the best example. And I sat and listened.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who who wanted to make the
Speaker 1: argument that the Press nine was better than the Perry nine.
Speaker 1: And I sat and listen.
Speaker 2: A lot of people do make that argument. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I don't agree with it, but I get it, okay
Speaker 2: where that comes from.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like insane. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people tell me a lot of insane things. I
Speaker 1: actually might think it's a little insane, but I listened, and.
Speaker 2: I only think it's I only kind of disregard it.
Speaker 2: I don't disregard it. I only disagree with it confidently
Speaker 2: because the I think that original nine is such a
Speaker 2: master work.
Speaker 1: The I think what sucks about this is oftentimes I
Speaker 1: think like less golf is better just in general, the
Speaker 1: less you build, the better the result. Now I get,
Speaker 1: so I get the point of you want more utility
Speaker 1: eighteen holes in the standard, but just in general, I
Speaker 1: think more facilities, specifically public facilities would be better. Office
Speaker 1: nine hole facilities and eighteen whole facilities. And the case
Speaker 1: of this is basically through the Midwest, all these there's
Speaker 1: so many great public golf courses that were built by
Speaker 1: Lafe for Moureau that were turned into eighteen holes that
Speaker 1: the new nine is an utter disaster, in different varying
Speaker 1: levels of disaster, to be clear, but one that jumps
Speaker 1: to mind. There's a there's a plate place in northwest
Speaker 1: Indiana called Legacy Hills that used to be Laport country Club,
Speaker 1: the Front nine, and and it's not in great shape.
Speaker 1: The front nine is pure lang for Moreau. It's it's
Speaker 1: not well taken care of, but it's amazing the landforms everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. The back nine just don't even bother. Just
Speaker 1: pay the ten dollars to play the front nine. I
Speaker 1: think it's fifteen, like don't even go, don't even go
Speaker 1: across the road, park, don't go go Coke. But then
Speaker 1: you have like other ones Marquette, people go to Gray Walls,
Speaker 1: don't skip Marquette, which is the sister course to Gray
Speaker 1: Walls in Marquette, Michigan. Uh, it's leg for Moreau nine.
Speaker 1: And I think it was Uh, I can't remember the guys.
Speaker 1: I think it was David gill Is the is the
Speaker 1: other architect he did He actually did West Bend, another
Speaker 1: length from Morose other nine as well.
Speaker 2: Yes he did. Yeah, he was. He was a specialist, Yes,
Speaker 2: in this very particular art.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then another one. Another example of this is
Speaker 1: Harrison Hills, which had an additional Tim Lyddy design. Tim
Speaker 1: Lady's holes are i would say, on the offensive scale,
Speaker 1: a little bit lower than say Legacy Hills. But he
Speaker 1: you know, he messed around with some of the some
Speaker 1: of the length of Moreau holes, which is a shame
Speaker 1: he tried to match the style it. You know that.
Speaker 1: I think you could go both ways on that one
Speaker 1: as to whether the golf course is better, you know,
Speaker 1: but I think nine hole, as you see with Culver,
Speaker 1: I think Culver is unequivocally the best nine hole golf
Speaker 1: course that I've seen. Now, I haven't seen Whitonsville. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Cameron has seen Whitonsville on our staff, but he hasn't
Speaker 1: seen Culver, so we we can't get the definitive. But
Speaker 1: for me is the unequivocal champ when it comes to
Speaker 1: nine hole courses in America. And Harrison Hill's Marquette in
Speaker 1: West Bend would all be able to challenge if they
Speaker 1: were just nine holes. And you think about it, is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the best nine hole golf course in America is a nice,
Speaker 1: nice ring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're a nine hole course, then go
Speaker 2: after that crown as opposed to wanting to be something else.
Speaker 2: You know, something just occurred to me. I can't believe
Speaker 2: I didn't bring this up initially, but Pacific Grove is
Speaker 2: a great example of a course that evolved in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction where the initial nine holes was fine. But
Speaker 2: kind of hasn't aged well because of tree plantings and
Speaker 2: neighborhoods springing up around it and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But then the second nine in the Dunes, designed by
Speaker 2: Jack Neville in nineteen sixty, is spectacular and has become
Speaker 2: the clearly superior nine and one that people will often
Speaker 2: play by itself and not even go across the road.
Speaker 1: Neville's an interesting character in golf architecture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he just he just lived his life
Speaker 2: in the Monterey area, routed Bubble Beach, and then in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty got hired by the municipality of Pacific Grove
Speaker 2: and did another really good routing he did.
Speaker 1: He built Glenn Eagles too, and around that time he
Speaker 1: worked for the city for a number of years. I
Speaker 1: think what happened was the depression hit and he got
Speaker 1: this city job. He was, I think the superintendent of
Speaker 1: their golf courses, and then after he retired from that,
Speaker 1: he got back into building golf courses. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that that was Tom Shay, the great proprietor of a
Speaker 1: lease holder of Glenn Eagles, told me to that story.
Speaker 2: Well, that would be interesting to know more about My
Speaker 2: impression of Jack Neville until this point was just that
Speaker 2: he was kind of like a gentleman amateur and just
Speaker 2: kind of was in the golf world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I think the story. All right, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Let's talk about our friends over
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Speaker 2: All right, do we want another question, Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2: Question from Randy Sierra from FUGC. He says, there's plenty
Speaker 2: written about naturalism and the blending of manufactured features into
Speaker 2: the natural landscape. What makes visually manufactured architecture great and
Speaker 2: what are some examples? Okay, so he's basically this question
Speaker 2: kind of challenges the common the conventional wisdom that beautiful
Speaker 2: golf features are the ones that are natural or indistinguishable
Speaker 2: from nature. But we all know that that's not the
Speaker 2: end of the discussion, because there are manufactured looking courses
Speaker 2: that we all like. So what is it that makes
Speaker 2: a good manufactured looking course stand out from one that
Speaker 2: from one that is offensive looking.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's a lot of varying degrees of manufactured. I'd
Speaker 1: also I'm mixed up Jack Neville and Jack Fleming. Fleming.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well that makes more sense to me now, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Fleming is the guy. Fleming did some work. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: added the nine to or he added some holes to
Speaker 2: Sharp Park. He did a few other things. He was
Speaker 2: an associate for various architects, and.
Speaker 1: He met Alistair mackenzie at an Irish pub. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's how he got into the architecture world. But I
Speaker 1: just mixed that up. He built Glen Glenn Eagles I
Speaker 1: got from Jackson.
Speaker 2: Jack Fleming didn't have anything to do with Pacific growth,
Speaker 2: but he did have a lot to do with a
Speaker 2: lot of other courses in the area.
Speaker 1: The uh so different scales of of manufactured something that
Speaker 1: I found interesting spending time with h with the architects
Speaker 1: of Tim Jackson and David Cohn who I went to
Speaker 1: Scottsdale National with. That is an extraordinary manufactured golf course.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually probably one of the more underrated
Speaker 1: or under you know, talked about really great uh modern designs,
Speaker 1: and it's I understand why it's because nobody sees it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's did you mention that it's who it's owned by, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bob Parsons. It's a very high cost to get hit.
Speaker 1: I don't think the.
Speaker 2: Guy just in case people in them, you know, But the.
Speaker 1: Guy did a great job letting these guys build it.
Speaker 2: Those guys did an amazing job. It really is Bob did.
Speaker 2: Bob is an awesome owner because you just let those
Speaker 2: guys do their thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean they said they had a big budget,
Speaker 1: and obviously this goes into it. But something they told
Speaker 1: me about manufacturing golf because if you went out there,
Speaker 1: you never believe that it was just all built. But
Speaker 1: it was effectively a plot of land. We have a
Speaker 1: YouTube video all about this if you're more interested in
Speaker 1: looking at this. But it was a plot of land
Speaker 1: that was like flat graded for houses, and they moved
Speaker 1: heaven and high earth to create a really cool place
Speaker 1: to play golf. And I'm I'm not I don't have
Speaker 1: the exact number, but they made roughly a this is
Speaker 1: just rough numbers off of memory, a sixty foot tall,
Speaker 1: six hundred yard mountain. And what I was like that
Speaker 1: that had to be here and They're like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: And I was like what, And they're like, the key
Speaker 1: to manufacturing something is to make it so big that
Speaker 1: you could never believe it's fake.
Speaker 2: And in that kind of a Fasio principle, this is
Speaker 2: what they learned from Fasio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't think Fasio went ever went that big,
Speaker 1: but they.
Speaker 2: Created this maybe a couple of more modern places. But yes,
Speaker 2: you're right, and I don't think he ever did a
Speaker 2: even as far as I've seen, quite as well as
Speaker 2: as Jackson con did it there.
Speaker 1: It's so outlandish that it works that it feels like
Speaker 1: you're playing in a natural setting. So I think that's
Speaker 1: one end of it. But then there's a more natural,
Speaker 1: less earth moving, but creating artificiality. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the greatest golf courses in the world are
Speaker 1: actually very artificial golf courses. Every seth Rayner golf course
Speaker 1: is extremely artificial. It's artfully done, but you know the
Speaker 1: shapes and such are are artificial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there there are. Every golf architect since
Speaker 2: the Golden Age basically has manufactured features. Some put an
Speaker 2: effort into blending those features in and making you think
Speaker 2: that they were there previously. Others don't make as much
Speaker 2: of that effort and are willing to let some of
Speaker 2: their work stand out and show from the natural terrain.
Speaker 2: And I think both methods can yield good results. For me,
Speaker 2: the difference comes with the taste and the skill with
Speaker 2: which manufactured features are generated. And this doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 2: the skill of making them look natural, but just the
Speaker 2: skill of making them look interesting. Right, So, if we're
Speaker 2: talking about overtly manufactured features, features that are not trying
Speaker 2: to fool you into thinking their natural, then I really
Speaker 2: like looking at the work of Walter Travis McDonald and
Speaker 2: Rayner Langford and Moreau Pete die and then from the
Speaker 2: current era, Brian Schneider and Jackson Kahn. I think all
Speaker 2: of those architects do an interesting job of making overtly
Speaker 2: manufactured features that don't feel just lame. And I think
Speaker 2: they do that by introducing some unexpectedness, some surprise into
Speaker 2: the shaping of these features. They are interesting to look
Speaker 2: at in and of themselves because they're not just trying
Speaker 2: to be pretty, they're trying to be interesting. They have
Speaker 2: something about them that is maybe a little weird, maybe
Speaker 2: a little off, maybe even like a little ugly, right,
Speaker 2: They're a combination of ugly and beautiful in an interesting way.
Speaker 2: And so I think that that is what separates those
Speaker 2: architects I mentioned, and what separates their work from from
Speaker 2: the work of like your you know, your your your
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholas's, or your Rye Jones's, or even your Tom Fazio's,
Speaker 2: because I don't think that you know, when Tom Fazio
Speaker 2: is such a skillful architect and his firm does such
Speaker 2: enormously expert work. He is one of the best at
Speaker 2: the industry at tying everything in and making everything feel
Speaker 2: coherent aesthetically. But to me, it looks like Tom Fazio
Speaker 2: is just trying to make everything look pretty and look right,
Speaker 2: and that ends up being a little bit boring after
Speaker 2: a while. That's just just my personal reaction to it.
Speaker 2: So I prefer architects who are a little have have
Speaker 2: something about the the esthetics that is that is just
Speaker 2: slightly off kilter, and and that's to me what makes
Speaker 2: it interesting.
Speaker 1: I think, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 1: It's an irregular irregularity when when something looks like it's
Speaker 1: just copy and pasted over and over again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a this is a Reese Jones problem,
Speaker 2: which is a separate thing, right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, a lot there are a lot of architects
Speaker 1: that yeah, yeah, it's always always easy to swerve into
Speaker 1: that lane.
Speaker 2: But easy target easy.
Speaker 1: It's when you get like the monotonous. It look that's
Speaker 1: very similar one after another. I like, if you're going
Speaker 1: to make stuff, make it all look different, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be a better, better result. I will say
Speaker 1: architecture has gone, like the trends of architecture has gone
Speaker 1: to much more lay of the lay of the land,
Speaker 1: even on more mundane sites. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the monotonous comes from masquerading when you're trying to
Speaker 1: artificially create a site. And what happens in that situation
Speaker 1: is you hire a giant earth moving contractor and that's
Speaker 1: where you get the monotony of the the mounds that
Speaker 1: kind of just you know, flow, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. Well pretty much every modern every golf
Speaker 2: course that's been built right now is being reshaped from
Speaker 2: wall to wall, and some take that opportunity to do
Speaker 2: something interesting and and others don't really know what to
Speaker 2: do with that opportunity, and and so you end up
Speaker 2: with a with a site that everybody can tell is
Speaker 2: not because you can feel that it's not natural, but
Speaker 2: but it's also not doing anything interesting with it, which
Speaker 2: is can be a problem.
Speaker 1: Here's a question for britch Headache.
Speaker 2: I think Rich Henning, Yeah, r Henning Twitter.
Speaker 1: When do you think the first AI golf course gets commissioned?
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy? I mean, do you think it has already been?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it would be fun to talk about what
Speaker 1: I could do and design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm I might be biased on this
Speaker 2: because I really don't like a lot of the AI
Speaker 2: shit that that we're seeing right now. I don't like
Speaker 2: what a lot of AI focused companies are are doing
Speaker 2: with the technology. But what could AI do in design?
Speaker 2: What would I like it to do in design? I
Speaker 2: think coming up with a variety of options for a
Speaker 2: routing on a certain piece of land would be an
Speaker 2: interesting use of an AI system. I would imagine that
Speaker 2: it could give you. It could just like spit out
Speaker 2: according to certain parameters, one hundred different routings of possible
Speaker 2: routings of a golf course that would work, and that
Speaker 2: might generate some creative ideas for the architect. I think
Speaker 2: that AI could be used to look for opportunities for
Speaker 2: efficiency and economy of construction. Those could be great gains
Speaker 2: that you'd find possibly with AI. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder if like a drainage plan or irritation could
Speaker 1: actually be AI.
Speaker 2: Some of the more technical needs of a golf course
Speaker 2: you would imagine could be done by a robot. I mean,
Speaker 2: the funny thing about new AI stuff, especially the chatbots,
Speaker 2: is that they're not very good at practical stuff, but
Speaker 2: but really convincing it creative tasks, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of makes their application to golf architecture a little
Speaker 2: bit difficult to fathom. I do know that AI has
Speaker 2: already been helping architects with renderings, with responding to RFPs,
Speaker 2: with presentations. I think that a responsible use of AI
Speaker 2: to those ends could be good in the golf architecture industry.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you're just using it to do
Speaker 2: your homework, then then that's probably not good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the temptation has to be has to be heavy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see you can see a lot of
Speaker 1: greens committees really going for AI generated uh wispy praise
Speaker 1: of a golf course. Uh. I think this is going
Speaker 1: to happen. It's going to have happen. I know, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to be excited to be here to watch
Speaker 1: the first few. Well, the reality with AI too is
Speaker 1: it gets better and better the more you use it
Speaker 1: and understand how to use it. But the issue is
Speaker 1: there's going to be the first one's probably going to
Speaker 1: be trash, and maybe the second one, may the third one.
Speaker 1: And these things cost so much money that people just
Speaker 1: stop trying to use it if it doesn't, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't deliver really good results. But I do agree that AI,
Speaker 1: it's like anything, can make an architect's job a lot
Speaker 1: easier in some ways.
Speaker 2: I would hope that it could be used to focus
Speaker 2: architects on creative tasks in some way. Yeah, right, if
Speaker 2: we if the great task of the use of AI
Speaker 2: is to figure out what can belong to the AI
Speaker 2: and what has to belong to humans than in golf architecture,
Speaker 2: I would love to see if it's going to be used.
Speaker 2: I would love to see architects figure out, Okay, what
Speaker 2: portion of this job that I have can I clear
Speaker 2: off my plate and give to this engine so that
Speaker 2: I can be more creative, be more innovative in you know,
Speaker 2: the other areas of my discipline. And I think if
Speaker 2: it can do that, then great. But it's really hard
Speaker 2: to figure out exactly where the AI should stop and
Speaker 2: the human should start. Yeah, but that's why we.
Speaker 1: Have to figure out, all right, what's the next?
Speaker 2: Okay, what's next? We have got a good question from
Speaker 2: Grey Carlton, who is a young up and coming shaper.
Speaker 2: He says, lots of new builds on great Land these days.
Speaker 2: What current architects would you choose to build a great
Speaker 2: course on a dead flat site. I think we could
Speaker 2: address thisretty quickly because we kind of have gotten into
Speaker 2: some of related issues with a previous question. But what's
Speaker 2: your what's your first thought there?
Speaker 1: Eddie? Oh? And see this is just I hate this question.
Speaker 1: This is my least favorite type of question.
Speaker 2: Can we speak in generalities?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Can we say that it doesn't have to be a maximalist.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. I think that your favorite course that you
Speaker 1: talk about on every podcast Talking Stick is Bill Koor
Speaker 1: and Prenshaw's.
Speaker 2: It's become I've become too predictable with the talking stick
Speaker 2: talking point.
Speaker 1: That that's a great and that's an example of really
Speaker 1: minimalist architecture on a dead flat property. I think in general,
Speaker 1: you got to have somebody that's really creative, depending up
Speaker 1: where where the site is, depending on the climate. If
Speaker 1: it's dead flat and it's sandy, I'd hire like anybody
Speaker 1: because if it's super sandy, you could move stuff around
Speaker 1: and create really uh interesting contours throughout. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to totally punt here, which is not not
Speaker 1: a great answer.
Speaker 2: I just you know, I want to see Mike DeFreeze
Speaker 2: go to town on a dead flat site.
Speaker 1: All right, there you go. I love I love that
Speaker 1: you gave an answer. I'm punting. I'm being very political,
Speaker 1: which is podcast.
Speaker 2: The industry has gotten to you. Andy, I think I
Speaker 2: think you just understandably resists the idea that you would
Speaker 2: name one person and not name something else. But there
Speaker 2: are many possible candidates who would do an interesting job
Speaker 2: with the dead flat site, and frankly, I think, Okay.
Speaker 2: The reason I took an interest in this question is
Speaker 2: that a lot of the very best architects at this
Speaker 2: point have spent a lot of time working on pretty
Speaker 2: much nothing but really great sites or high potential sites,
Speaker 2: at the very least not dead flat sites, and so
Speaker 2: I think one interesting direction is to, you know, look
Speaker 2: at some of these architects who have been blessed in
Speaker 2: the land that they've gotten and try to see what
Speaker 2: they would do now with a piece of land that
Speaker 2: wasn't his west.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you could go down the list of
Speaker 1: heavy hitter golf architects. I think what you'd like to do,
Speaker 1: what you'd like to have as a fan of architecture
Speaker 1: over the period of time is a wide array of
Speaker 1: varieties and sights. I really like seeing architecture on flat surfaces.
Speaker 1: To me, as a fan of architecture, it's sometimes more
Speaker 1: interesting than just the tremendous sight because the the land
Speaker 1: and does the work. But as somebody going to see stuff,
Speaker 1: I like to see flat golf courses to see the
Speaker 1: clever solutions around what they did. Now. Am I saying
Speaker 1: these are better golf courses than getting the best site
Speaker 1: in the world. No, but it's it's it's fun and
Speaker 1: amusing often to see all of the tricks pulled out.
Speaker 1: That's to me what when you see the great architects
Speaker 1: work on dead flat uh properties, what they're doing is
Speaker 1: they're showing you all all of the things they've been
Speaker 1: thinking about for years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the different Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes if I tried to build eighteen holes
Speaker 1: of dead flat land, I'd run out of ideas, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what Bill Cora was worried about it
Speaker 2: at my favorite course, Talking Stick. And the reason I
Speaker 2: talk about Talking Stick all the time is that, like,
Speaker 2: I'm very interested in the question of how an architect
Speaker 2: can be site specific on a bad site, on a
Speaker 2: supposedly bad site, what can you come up with to
Speaker 2: still be site specific when the site isn't giving you
Speaker 2: that much that would usually be considered good for golf.
Speaker 2: And you know, people right now are very concerned about
Speaker 2: freshness in golf architecture or where it's going next, or
Speaker 2: where new ideas are going to come from. We're maybe
Speaker 2: not going to find new ideas on rolling Duneland right now.
Speaker 2: And naturalist architecture applied to such Douneland. Those are great courses,
Speaker 2: and I'd like to see as many of them built
Speaker 2: as possible, honestly, because why not, Like they're they're all
Speaker 2: it always turns out pretty nice.
Speaker 1: You know, And they're all different because the landscapes and
Speaker 1: they different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every site is specific in its way. But yeah,
Speaker 2: if we're looking for something really different and really fresh,
Speaker 2: I you know, I want to see a smart site
Speaker 2: specific architect try to apply their site specific philosophy to
Speaker 2: you know, a place that you wouldn't expect to yield
Speaker 2: good golf, you know. And that doesn't mean like reconstructing
Speaker 2: the play, like just denying what the what the side is?
Speaker 2: It means looking for, Okay, what's interesting here and how
Speaker 2: can we highlight it? And and to me, that's what
Speaker 2: that's what's so interesting about talking stick is that corn
Speaker 2: Crunch actually did that there? All right, next question?
Speaker 1: All right, this is this is gonna be the last one.
Speaker 1: We are going to get through four each, Yeah, set
Speaker 1: out with our best intentions.
Speaker 2: Apologies to the uh the ones left on the cutting
Speaker 2: room floor. I mean, obviously I'm gonna as I usually do,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get in the community forum and answer
Speaker 2: a bunch of questions that we didn't get to, because
Speaker 2: that's that's fun.
Speaker 1: This is from Bob roll Tella on Twitter. Are there
Speaker 1: any architectural features or approaches that could be considered as
Speaker 1: a means of mitigating technolgical advances apart from sheer length? Surely,
Speaker 1: with all the improved ability that comes along with new tech,
Speaker 1: there might be innovations in golf course architecture to match.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, come on, golf course architects, keep up, keep up.
Speaker 2: This is a pretty it's a good question. This is
Speaker 2: a pretty common complaint made by Ron Witten. I'm seeing
Speaker 2: within this question the seeds of a complaint that Ron
Speaker 2: Witten often made in the pages of Golf Digest, where
Speaker 2: he was the architecture editor, and that is that golf
Speaker 2: architects have failed to innovate along with the biggest change
Speaker 2: in the game of golf, which has been equipment technology
Speaker 2: and distance gains, and that instead of that, according to
Speaker 2: Ron Witten, they have just complained about it and said
Speaker 2: the ball should be rolled back, we should roll back
Speaker 2: the clock. And he believed that this was a backward
Speaker 2: looking stance and not a forward looking stance, and he
Speaker 2: adbhored it. And I get that argument.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The truth is, I'm not sure that there's anything new
Speaker 2: under the sun in golf architecture when it comes to
Speaker 2: combating distance gains. And I could be wrong about this,
Speaker 2: since my job is to kind of react to golf
Speaker 2: architecture as opposed to design new courses. But I think
Speaker 2: that Pete Dye had a lot of good ideas about
Speaker 2: how to mitigate distance gains in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: He was all about selective narrowness fair ways that kind
Speaker 2: of changed in their dimensions as the hole went on.
Speaker 2: He was all about tree lines, like lots of trees,
Speaker 2: but paired with interesting angles and diagonals and shot shapes
Speaker 2: and things like that, So trees kind of getting in
Speaker 2: the way of what good players might want to do
Speaker 2: and therefore limiting the amount that they could just wallop
Speaker 2: away at the ball with their preferred shot shape. He
Speaker 2: used water hazards to thwart pure bombing, right, So water
Speaker 2: hazards would sometimes literally kind of cut off the landing zone.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hit it three hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty yards, you're going to be in the middle of
Speaker 2: this pond. Fine, go for it, you know. And he
Speaker 2: used classic strategic angles, but he just used them kind
Speaker 2: of on a smaller and tighter scale.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's TPC Sawgrass, that's Harbor Town. That was PGA West
Speaker 2: in its early iterations. Right, that's what he was doing
Speaker 2: with those courses that he was thinking about distance gains
Speaker 2: and how golf architecture could be used to combat it.
Speaker 2: That's how he did it. The problem with all of
Speaker 2: that is that it made extraordinarily interesting professional courses, but
Speaker 2: a lot of these innovations were not did were not
Speaker 2: good models for other courses that wanted to appeal to
Speaker 2: average golfers. Right, those models were great for t DPC
Speaker 2: Sawgrass and Harbor Town and and PGA West, But once
Speaker 2: you start replicating them, you are going to start getting
Speaker 2: some frustration from average golfers, for whom a lot of
Speaker 2: these factors, like the trees and the narrowness, and the
Speaker 2: and the tight lines and the water hazards. You're going
Speaker 2: to start getting understandable frustration from those golfers about those
Speaker 2: kinds of features because those features tend to punish average
Speaker 2: golfers a lot more than they punish expert golfers. So
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how much there is that golf architecture
Speaker 2: can do to stay ahead of the curve on distance gains.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think there should be a rollback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to point out that the innovations
Speaker 1: are going to hinder playability for all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's right. I think it's almost inevitably you know.
Speaker 1: I think if you wanted to build a golf course
Speaker 1: and you said to a designer, the only people that
Speaker 1: are going to play this golf course are high level players,
Speaker 1: I think it would look a lot different than what
Speaker 1: everybody gets. Is like, I wanted to challenge the best,
Speaker 1: but I want everybody to be able to have a
Speaker 1: good time playing. This is effectively the charge that you
Speaker 1: know most golf courses give. And if you removed everybody's
Speaker 1: playing this, I think the golf you'd see, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of innovation to be done, there'd be a lot
Speaker 1: of crazy thoughts. It would look so much different than
Speaker 1: what we consider great golf. I you know, Zach Blair,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who's I think, got a good
Speaker 1: golf architecture brain. We talked about this and he's like,
Speaker 1: I just put water everywhere.
Speaker 2: Right, because that's the thing that is a strategic hazard
Speaker 2: of meaning for these guys.
Speaker 1: If you think about the way that golfers play in
Speaker 1: the modern era, it's all risk averse strategy. What they're
Speaker 1: doing is they are trying to mitigate all risk. So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to put them in a blender, you
Speaker 1: put risk everywhere, and you put them in situations where
Speaker 1: they can't. They have no choice but to take on risk.
Speaker 1: But that would be miserable, an absolutely miserable experience for
Speaker 1: a fifteen handicap. It's why one of the things I
Speaker 1: think would be interesting with the PGA Tour is if
Speaker 1: they tried to build a modern day, built out championship
Speaker 1: stadium golf course. I think that's an interesting idea for
Speaker 1: them to ponder, and people that go play it just
Speaker 1: understand this is you're going to shoot one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten and you're not going to have a good time,
Speaker 1: and people will line up to play it. But what
Speaker 1: the charge to the architect? What every charge to every architect?
Speaker 1: And this is people get frustrated with the Golden age
Speaker 1: restorations and how they're not holding up to modern technology,
Speaker 1: and let's just use US opens. It's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this club is only hosting a US Open every ten
Speaker 1: to twenty years. And the reason they did the restoration
Speaker 1: was so that it's more enjoyable for their members to
Speaker 1: play every day. If you wanted to make really hard
Speaker 1: golf for pros, you could do that. It's totally feasible
Speaker 1: to do. You just need a bunch of new golf
Speaker 1: courses because I don't think most people want to play
Speaker 1: what would be really challenging and hold up to modern technology.
Speaker 1: I don't think everybody would want to play it all
Speaker 1: the time. And that that's why a rollback makes sense,
Speaker 1: because it would make a lot more more golf courses,
Speaker 1: make a lot more sense for pro golf because a
Speaker 1: great example, Pebble Beach has been just completely passed by
Speaker 1: by technology. And this is what you know. We're gonna
Speaker 1: see EUS open there every five years, and it's just
Speaker 1: like they hit wedges on probably like ten holes, eleven holes.
Speaker 2: Wedge the only defenses you know, the narrow fairway is
Speaker 2: in the rough, which are which are sort of pathetic.
Speaker 1: Think about it. Wedge on one, yeah, depending on when.
Speaker 1: Wedge on three.
Speaker 2: Maybe a wedge on two maybe no, No, not seriously,
Speaker 2: I don't know that long of a hole and you
Speaker 2: can just blast it down it.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I still it's not a wedge.
Speaker 2: It might be like an eight iron, nine iron maybe
Speaker 2: in a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Wedge on four, wedge on uh, you're sick. A wedge
Speaker 1: on seven, not on eight, not on nine, nine on ten.
Speaker 1: Then you got on the back and there's a wedge
Speaker 1: on fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean also, I mean I think pros are
Speaker 2: hitting on wedges on holes that that you'd be stunned
Speaker 2: to see them. I mean, you know this, but that
Speaker 2: we're all stunned to see them hitting wedges on So
Speaker 2: it's not out of the question to me that a
Speaker 2: pro would hit a wedge on nine at Pebble, or
Speaker 2: hit a wedge on ten at Pebble, or hit a
Speaker 2: wedge on thirteen at Pebble like they're they're doing these
Speaker 2: things now.
Speaker 1: But anyway, maybe this is why they should just play
Speaker 1: simulator golf, right.
Speaker 2: This should all be the Sofi Center. Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 2: The great new uh, the great new course of the
Speaker 2: game is the endless courses of so.
Speaker 1: We get new golf falls this year for TGL.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I've I've been hearing some some
Speaker 2: rumblings about the architects responsible, and I'm curious as to
Speaker 2: what's gonna.
Speaker 1: I know, Piece is back, m Well, of course he's back.
Speaker 2: He was the star. He was the only he was
Speaker 2: the only one who understood the assignment the last time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was he was, all right, Garrett, everybody should
Speaker 1: check out your Designing Golf Podcast. Always a pleasure to
Speaker 1: break down these questions. Uh, I'll probably get in the
Speaker 1: forum answer some bat some of these around too. There's
Speaker 1: a forum now, we got a for it, we got
Speaker 1: place of bad stuff around with everybody.
Speaker 2: It's been really fun for me. I've I've written a
Speaker 2: lot in the forum in the past couple of days
Speaker 2: and I'm really enjoying it. It might actually make me
Speaker 2: like writing again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to start to love writing again too.
Speaker 2: I know it can be hard sometimes, yeah, listen, it
Speaker 2: can be hard. But thank you for having me on
Speaker 2: the pod.
Speaker 1: And always great all right, big thanks for p J
Speaker 1: Clark for editing producing this podcast. Go check out the
Speaker 1: pro Shop, Proshop dot the Friday dot com, and and
Speaker 1: check out our Black Friday deals. Big thanks for all
Speaker 1: the support. I hope everybody has a happy and say Thanksgiving.