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.
Speaker 2: In a brid egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Friday Frida Egg, fridagg bride egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Andy Johnson, and I am excited
Speaker 1: for the second part of our latest talk with Tom Doak.
Speaker 1: So this will be another episode in the Yoke with
Speaker 1: Doak series. Uh, this one is really heavy on listener
Speaker 1: Q and A. So we took a bunch of questions
Speaker 1: in Club TFE and fired through them. So Tom Big
Speaker 1: thanks to Tom for chatting with us here at high point.
Speaker 1: This is the second part of our conversation. It was
Speaker 1: a day later and for him to make a little
Speaker 1: bit time for this episode. Let's take a quick second
Speaker 1: to talk about the USGA. This week, we can't get
Speaker 1: enough of watching the one hundred and twenty fourth US
Speaker 1: Amateur and it's a good reminder of the USGA's impact
Speaker 1: on golf extends far beyond just the US Open. Every year,
Speaker 1: the organization supports fifteen championships, providing a stage for thousands
Speaker 1: of golfers to compete at the highest level. But it's
Speaker 1: not just competitive golfers that benefit. The USGA supports programs
Speaker 1: and initiatives that affect every aspect of the game, including
Speaker 1: junior golf, environmental sustainability, and preserving the history of the game.
Speaker 1: When you become a USGA member, you play an important
Speaker 1: role in supporting the game that you love. You also
Speaker 1: receive great benefits like the US Open or the US
Speaker 1: Women's Open, members hat, a personalized member bag tag, a
Speaker 1: subscription to the USGA's Golf Journal, and much more. Give
Speaker 1: back to golf and get back great benefits by visiting
Speaker 1: USGA dot org slash Frida Egg and becoming a USGA
Speaker 1: member today. That's USGA dot org slash Frida Egg. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the yoke with dope. All right, let's
Speaker 1: start this, uh listener, Q and A. Here this is
Speaker 1: from William J. What GCA book do you find yourself
Speaker 1: returning to again and again over your career?
Speaker 2: Oh heck, you know, honestly, I don't that much. But
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I used to joke with people
Speaker 2: that I had the world Alice of golf, like memorized
Speaker 2: by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, and that
Speaker 2: was almost literally true. I mean, you know, if I
Speaker 2: go back and look at the books now, probably the
Speaker 2: one I look at the most is mcken's his book
Speaker 2: and and what I'm you know, but I remember a
Speaker 2: passage and I'm trying to find it, and it's not
Speaker 2: very well organized, and sometimes I have a lot it
Speaker 2: takes me a long time to find the little snippet
Speaker 2: that I'm actually looking for. But so that was his
Speaker 2: original golf architecture book. But The Spirit of Saint Andrews,
Speaker 2: the later book, has the entire text of the original
Speaker 2: book in it. It was basically just written in the
Speaker 2: note in the margins of the original book. So so
Speaker 2: that's probably the one I look at the most. I
Speaker 2: do like to go back and read Simpson's book every
Speaker 2: once in a while. Partly the diagrams are cool. Partly,
Speaker 2: you know, he's probably the father of minimalism.
Speaker 3: If anybody was. But he was such a good writer.
Speaker 2: It's just there's there's some things in there that are
Speaker 2: just funny, and then there are some things that are
Speaker 2: just very simple. But he's like you know, he basically
Speaker 2: tells you you're an idiot if you are doing it differently.
Speaker 1: I played my first Simpson golf course a couple months ago.
Speaker 1: I played Baltray, County low yep. I was so good.
Speaker 1: I love that golf course. I feel like nobody talks
Speaker 1: about it, talks about that course enough in terms of
Speaker 1: Irish golf.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's you know, it's not. I mean, the
Speaker 2: Irish courses are. It's such tough competition. Those those top
Speaker 2: five golf courses are all so dramatic and so much
Speaker 2: movement that Baltray that's pretty flat can't compete with that.
Speaker 2: If it was in Scotland, people would be.
Speaker 3: Like, Wow, that's a really good golf course.
Speaker 1: We're at high Point. Here's a question about high points,
Speaker 1: So this is this is a good one just because
Speaker 1: we're here and you just you're fresh off playing eighteen
Speaker 1: holes of the preview play and it's from Andrew c
Speaker 1: Are you building the new holes at high Point as
Speaker 1: if you were late twenties Tom or rather with your
Speaker 1: current style and principles at the forefront. Is this complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that you or restoring your own holes
Speaker 1: and building new holes at the same time, I.
Speaker 2: Might lose my place in a multi part question, so
Speaker 2: you may have to remind me about this later on.
Speaker 2: I thought about that some. You know, it helped that
Speaker 2: the routing for the nine new holes that haven't opened
Speaker 2: yet was a routing I did for a third nine
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty eight, so that was the old time
Speaker 2: doing that routing. And when when we started talking about
Speaker 2: doing this, and we weren't going to tear up the
Speaker 2: hops farm, so we were going to have to go
Speaker 2: over there for the rest of the golf course, you know,
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, maybe that routing wasn't that great, and
Speaker 2: I'll try to do another version of it. And I
Speaker 2: tried a couple different things, but I didn't like them
Speaker 2: as much, and I said, Okay, I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: the routing that I did when I was young, and
Speaker 2: that'll kind of keep me on the right track, you
Speaker 2: know that. Really the one thing, the only thing that's
Speaker 2: different is I've got a lot more talent. It helped
Speaker 2: to help me build it this time than I had
Speaker 2: the last time. I say it a lot, I really
Speaker 2: mean it. My ideas are not that much different than
Speaker 2: they were when I was twenty five thirty years old.
Speaker 2: The execution is a lot better, and I have a
Speaker 2: lot more talented people helping. I have Brian Slonik to
Speaker 2: build bunkers here the first time. I had never even
Speaker 2: tried to build a bunker that had sand going up
Speaker 2: the face, So we tried a bunch of different things
Speaker 2: in it. The original golf course, it was kind of
Speaker 2: cool because it was eclectic and different, but the bunkers
Speaker 2: weren't really sophisticated. They weren't really good. They're better now.
Speaker 1: That's good. So in a recent Golf Club Atlas post,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Pacific Dunes was a response to Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 1: What specifically were you responding to on Bandon and how
Speaker 1: did this play out in the design of Pacific Dunes,
Speaker 1: And that's from jaredam So.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just thought at the beginning, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't want the two golf courses to be the same.
Speaker 2: Let's just see how many ways we can make it
Speaker 2: different and still be good. And the first and the
Speaker 2: first two most obvious ones were they've made banded dudes
Speaker 2: like seventy two hundred yards from the back teeth, and
Speaker 2: I was like, it's a really windy place. I don't
Speaker 2: think it needs to be that long. And the routings
Speaker 2: that I was doing were coming up kind of short,
Speaker 2: sixty six sixty seven hundred yards, and I just said
Speaker 2: to Mike, look, you don't need you know, nobody really
Speaker 2: wants to play seventy two hundred yards in the wind.
Speaker 2: And on top of that, you've already got a golf
Speaker 2: course that is that. I don't think we need to
Speaker 2: do that again. You know, unless you're gonna have the
Speaker 2: US Open here, there's absolutely no reason. Even if you
Speaker 2: have the US Amateur, you're gonna play it on banded dunes,
Speaker 2: which they wound up doing. You don't need that twice.
Speaker 2: This is a resort course. It's for people like you
Speaker 2: and me.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: Not the easiest sell because you had Mike Davis whispering
Speaker 2: in his other ear at the same time, but I
Speaker 2: really stuck to that, and I was like, if you
Speaker 2: find out in fifteen years you need back, tease, I'll
Speaker 2: come back. But I really don't think you need them.
Speaker 2: And the perspective has changed so much. When when that
Speaker 2: golf course opened, people speculated about whether it was too easy,
Speaker 2: and now they all think it's the hardest golf course
Speaker 2: at the resort. It's funny how times change and how
Speaker 2: people's perception changes on what heart is really about. So
Speaker 2: on top of that, the other thing, you know, Mike
Speaker 2: David wanted to build real sod wall pot bunkers and
Speaker 2: Mike Kaiser would not let him, so he did, but
Speaker 2: he did small bunkers with half steep faces.
Speaker 1: And those have changed completely. I saw some old photos abandoned.
Speaker 1: I was shocked at how different the bunkers.
Speaker 2: Are, and I haven't I have not been out on
Speaker 2: Banded Dunes in probably fifteen years. I've only played Pacific
Speaker 2: a couple of times in the last ten years, so
Speaker 2: I don't even know exactly what they look like now.
Speaker 2: But the original bunkers were kind of like Ballybunion. Ballybunion
Speaker 2: doesn't have many bunkers. They're small. We're kind of like
Speaker 2: being inside a little cone. It's not easy to get out,
Speaker 2: but it's not you know, they're not really severe. Mike
Speaker 2: just was abbed adamant that people hated leaving it in
Speaker 2: a bunker, and he didn't want guests to have that experience,
Speaker 2: so he wanted it where you could get out anyway
Speaker 2: instead of hitting the sidewall. You know, Pacific Dunes had
Speaker 2: some land that had just natural blowouts.
Speaker 3: In the dunes, like the eighteenth hole. There were just big.
Speaker 2: Sand craters and several places around the golf course. So
Speaker 2: when we started building it, we actually, when we started
Speaker 2: building the golf course, Mike wasn't sure he wanted to
Speaker 2: go ahead with all eighteen holes. We talked about building
Speaker 2: four or five holes as like a test case and
Speaker 2: building bunkers like that to see how they would hold up.
Speaker 2: And then the first three holes we built were ten, eleven,
Speaker 2: and five, the three part threes that are right together there.
Speaker 2: We had those done in like two weeks, and Mike
Speaker 2: was like, how many more holes could you build? And
Speaker 2: the superintendent at the time, Troy Russell, said, we could
Speaker 2: tap into the irrigation from Bandon Dunes and like grow
Speaker 2: in like probably eight or nine holes while we're building
Speaker 2: the irrigation pond for this, and we were just off
Speaker 2: and running. But I got it. I digressed a little bit,
Speaker 2: you know. The bunker style. We tried to make as
Speaker 2: different as possible, these blowout bunkers, hoping that they would
Speaker 2: hold up in the wind that was out there. We
Speaker 2: even like put irrigation heads just to water the sand
Speaker 2: in the bunker to try to keep it straight. It's
Speaker 2: still a big problem. The biggest maintenance item there is
Speaker 2: at Bandon next at Pacific, next to Mo in the
Speaker 2: golf course, he is putting sand back in the bunkers.
Speaker 2: It's a tremendous amount of work, but everybody loves them
Speaker 2: and it's not like, you know, the net profit on
Speaker 2: that has been positive. And the other one was kind
Speaker 2: of keeping the greens half small. The greens on Bandon
Speaker 2: Dunes were really big. You know, Mike really, I think
Speaker 2: wanted people to be able to land the ball on
Speaker 2: the green and keep it on the green. And the
Speaker 2: way to do that was build a green forty forty
Speaker 2: five pieces deep. And they got a lot of that
Speaker 2: on that golf course. And I thought, I knew Mike
Speaker 2: wouldn't want me to have a lot of contre in
Speaker 2: the green, So I thought, if I keep the greens
Speaker 2: half small, then I can have contour around the edge.
Speaker 2: And you know, you're putting from off the edge of
Speaker 2: the green a lot anyway. But you know, putting up
Speaker 2: and over a contra on the edge did not bother
Speaker 2: Mike the same way it did if you were putting
Speaker 2: up over a contre inside the green.
Speaker 1: What you you mentioned that the perception of what's hard changed.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody thought it was too might be too easy.
Speaker 1: Now people think it's too hard. What's changed do you
Speaker 1: think in the perception of what's hard?
Speaker 2: Partly people have stopped stopped playing from too far back.
Speaker 2: I mean those seventy two you know, the problem was
Speaker 2: so band in Dunes when it opened had six sets
Speaker 2: of tees. They pretty quickly went to four sets of
Speaker 2: tea markers, and none of them were ever on those
Speaker 2: back teas anymore. So nobody's playing the golf course. It's
Speaker 2: seventy two hundred yards, you know the most if you
Speaker 2: were playing the back team markers, you're probably playing sixty
Speaker 2: eight sixty nine hundred yards. But even that people shy away.
Speaker 2: If there's four sets of teas and not three, people
Speaker 2: shy away from that and they come to the second
Speaker 2: markers and those were more like sixty four hundred yards,
Speaker 2: So you know, people have stopped letting their buddy drag them.
Speaker 2: Too far back is a big difference. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's more fun to play golf when you've got a
Speaker 2: seven iron in your hands instead of a Forewood to
Speaker 2: hit approach shots on par fours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I selfishly would love to see a USM match
Speaker 1: play held at Pacific Dunes. I know they probably won't
Speaker 1: ever do it because they love that finishing scene with
Speaker 1: the lodge and everything behind it. But to me, there's
Speaker 1: so many great match play holes out there in terms
Speaker 1: of like I mean, I would I would love to
Speaker 1: just you know, six, you just go down the list six,
Speaker 1: sixteen with the way these kids hit the ball, like
Speaker 1: sixteen to me would be fascinating to.
Speaker 2: S exactly who. I absolutely believe, I don't care what
Speaker 2: the score is. Pacific Dunes at match play is a
Speaker 2: great golf course for good players. And they did talk
Speaker 2: Michael Kaiser called me two years before the US Amateur.
Speaker 2: They were talking about using a composite course that I
Speaker 2: can't even remember all of it, but I do remember
Speaker 2: like they were going to wind up with the thirteenth
Speaker 2: hole at Pacific Dunes is the eighteenth hole, wow, and
Speaker 2: finish away from the clubhouse to have that background because
Speaker 2: they'd had the Curtis Cup there and all the TV
Speaker 2: guys were like, this is freaking awesome, you know, this
Speaker 2: is so beautiful out here, and it's not even the
Speaker 2: end of the golf course. It barely made TV.
Speaker 1: Well, they had the road that goes right back there
Speaker 1: behind that green, right, so they seriously considered that, and
Speaker 1: I kind of torpedoed it. I was like, that's like saying,
Speaker 1: neither one of the golf courses is good enough to
Speaker 1: host the US Amateur, And they're both good enough to
Speaker 1: host the US Amateur. But I said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, banded Dudes is seventy two hundred yards long,
Speaker 1: that's where you'll host the US Amateur. I don't have
Speaker 1: any problem with that. Yeah, yeah, it'd be cool to
Speaker 1: change it up. Like one of the things about you know,
Speaker 1: the great thing about Bandon is that they like the debate.
Speaker 1: Everybody loves the debate of what's what's your favorite course?
Speaker 1: What would be neat with all the Usam's, all the
Speaker 1: USGA events that they're hosting rotated around, you know, have
Speaker 1: have it at all the courses since that, and they
Speaker 1: kind of do.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's a bit of a negotiation
Speaker 2: with the USGA over which course is best for which event.
Speaker 2: But there they are reasonably open minded and and and
Speaker 2: everybody abandoned is kind of like, well out of the box. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we don't have to do that. We could use old
Speaker 2: McDonald for this for this event instead. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot you can do with set up there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Pacific Dunes is a little short for toure pros.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. I want to be so
Speaker 1: I called the college event there right before COVID hit.
Speaker 1: It was like the last thing I did before COVID
Speaker 1: was I was calling this COVID uh college event and
Speaker 1: it was like all big, big schools from the West coast.
Speaker 1: And I think the winner was after three days, no win.
Speaker 1: Do you know what the winning score? Hey, have any
Speaker 1: clue what the winning score was? I want to say
Speaker 1: it was like between six to ten under and it
Speaker 1: was it was.
Speaker 2: I think that's I mean, if the wind blows, it's
Speaker 2: a hard golf course, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: how good the players are. They will have to hit
Speaker 2: golf shots.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah, I don't know. I think I always
Speaker 1: have thought of all the courses there, that's the one
Speaker 1: where I have to hit the most high quality golf shots,
Speaker 1: especially like you get on like the eleventh te box
Speaker 1: and it's like you don't get a break till maybe
Speaker 1: the fifteenth t or fourteenth fifteenth t really is like
Speaker 1: when you feel like you can take your foot off
Speaker 1: the gas. All right, on to the next question here,
Speaker 1: all right, I thought this was interesting. Mark d asked
Speaker 1: if Tom could redo one routing he designed, which one
Speaker 1: would it be and why?
Speaker 3: I don't have any answer for that at all. I
Speaker 3: really don't.
Speaker 2: Oh I do, And it's people don't know the golf course,
Speaker 2: so the quail. No, it's Riverfront Virginia. I did this
Speaker 2: course in in Suffolk, Virginia. Like it's my sixth or
Speaker 2: seventh golf course that I did, and it's it's part
Speaker 2: of a housing development. It's a really affordable public golf course.
Speaker 2: You could play it for about thirty bucks. There's still
Speaker 2: maintaining it. There's about three or four holes where the
Speaker 2: houses are way too close, but the rest of it's
Speaker 2: pretty good. You know when we did it, it's it's
Speaker 2: stretched out over. I mean it's a it's a huge development,
Speaker 2: a huge piece of property with with a bunch of
Speaker 2: inlet tidle marshes come in in off the off the
Speaker 2: big river there, and there's some really dramatic holes along
Speaker 2: the edge of the marshes. And the developer was a
Speaker 2: guy that i'd met when when I was in college
Speaker 2: traveling around seeing things, and you know, he was a
Speaker 2: really good golfer. So he let me put a lot
Speaker 2: more holes on the land than a lot of developers
Speaker 2: would have. But the land was kind of three peninsulas,
Speaker 2: and I tried to stretch the course out over all
Speaker 2: three peninsulas, and that meant you wound up with houses
Speaker 2: like right next to some of the holes. You know,
Speaker 2: in hindsight, I wish I just hadn't stretched it out
Speaker 2: so far and kept like nine of the halls where
Speaker 2: it was just a core golf course, and then gone
Speaker 2: out and gone off along the marshes. More so then
Speaker 2: instead of exposing it to the real estate question.
Speaker 1: Because then the houses would have all gone on that peninsula,
Speaker 1: right and they and you wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Have had well, there still would have been some houses
Speaker 2: around the others, but not as much as there is now.
Speaker 1: Interesting. That's that's a good one. That's a really good one.
Speaker 1: It's like because everybody always tried it. It was you know,
Speaker 1: the most dramatic probably property, and you wanted to get there.
Speaker 1: But when you look back on it. It's like that's
Speaker 1: a good an her all right. I think you heard
Speaker 1: probably just the answer that Tom had about the architecture
Speaker 1: book that he keeps coming back to. That's the McKenzie
Speaker 1: Golf Architecture Book. We've got great news for you. Our friend,
Speaker 1: friend of the program. He's been on a couple of times,
Speaker 1: Josh Pettitt. He's the founder of the McKenzie Institute. He
Speaker 1: has been putting together some great books on Alistair McKenzie.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago he produced The McKenzie Reader,
Speaker 1: which was a compilation of a bunch of writing that
Speaker 1: Alison McKenzie had you hadn't seen, you know a lot
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Speaker 1: Super unique book. The you know, most reprints are are
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Speaker 1: don't have like the level of detail that you'd want
Speaker 1: from like kind of a collector book. I sense this
Speaker 1: is a collector's book. He retyped, He basically reset the typeface,
Speaker 1: retyped the entire book. It's on really high quality paper,
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Speaker 1: when you are reading it, you're like, this is a
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Speaker 1: book that Josh is putting together. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: back to Tom. Here's one from Gray. He asked, what
Speaker 1: are the major differences between working with an experienced golf
Speaker 1: developer versus the first time developer.
Speaker 2: I've just gone through this in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: You know, on the one hand that I've been working
Speaker 2: with Michael Kaiser and with Pinehurst and people that have
Speaker 2: been around the golf business their whole lives basically, and
Speaker 2: no concern about budgets at all. They don't even ask
Speaker 2: me any questions at all for two reasons. One they've
Speaker 2: got a pretty good idea, you know, it's going to
Speaker 2: be in this range. And two they know me, and
Speaker 2: it's like he's not going to like go go off
Speaker 2: on a tangent and decide to spend another five million dollars.
Speaker 2: He's not that kind of guy. So we're not worried
Speaker 2: about the budget for the golf course. But then with
Speaker 2: a new with a new client, they worry about it.
Speaker 2: And it was very difficult to deal with because, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd had so many experienced clients the last few years,
Speaker 2: and the price has changed so much. It's like I
Speaker 2: didn't even know what the price of eggs was. So
Speaker 2: Rod Trump here another of my clients. You know, they
Speaker 2: were really concerned about the bottom line number, and I
Speaker 2: gave them a bit too low of an estimate right
Speaker 2: off the bat, because because the you know, the price
Speaker 2: of building a golf course is almost doubled in the
Speaker 2: last five years, just trying to do the same thing,
Speaker 2: not even putting in more bells and whistles.
Speaker 1: That's it's crazy, like irrigation costs everything is, it's mostly irrigation.
Speaker 2: You know, irrigation was almost half the budget of high
Speaker 2: Point the first time around, and it was again this
Speaker 2: time around. But those numbers are like three and a
Speaker 2: half times what it was or four times what it
Speaker 2: was originally. And you know, over thirty five years.
Speaker 1: This is from Matt. I under he's a frequenter of
Speaker 1: this golf course. I understand that Riverdale Dunes was one
Speaker 1: of your first projects that you got to implement your
Speaker 1: own design ideas in the field. What exactly did you
Speaker 1: implement and it might be cool to hear about that
Speaker 1: experience a little bit.
Speaker 2: So you know, when I the first job I worked
Speaker 2: on for the Dies was Long Cove, Club Hill and Head.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was like a junior in college.
Speaker 2: I'd read a lot of books, thought I knew a
Speaker 2: lot about architecture. It only took me maybe two days
Speaker 2: of working on a construction site to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 2: mister Dye does not need any help designing anything. He
Speaker 2: needs help getting this built and like making sure that
Speaker 2: all the little details are right, but like where to
Speaker 2: put stuff or what about putting a back to you
Speaker 2: over there? It's like he's got that. So you know,
Speaker 2: so most of the time I worked for the dice.
Speaker 2: That was really what we did. You know, we didn't
Speaker 2: come up with new design ideas for him to do.
Speaker 2: The most that you could really contribute to the design
Speaker 2: was to take a bunker face or a feature and
Speaker 2: make it look really good and maybe better than he
Speaker 2: was thinking. Then, you know, I wound up in Denver
Speaker 2: working for his son, Perry, and you know, Perry was
Speaker 2: new to design, and he obviously didn't have anywhere near
Speaker 2: as much experience as his dad, and I was the
Speaker 2: only one out there who had really spent time with
Speaker 2: his dad on a couple of construction sites. You know,
Speaker 2: between working at Long Cove and helping do the planning
Speaker 2: for PGA West, I'd gotten to really pick Pete's brain
Speaker 2: a little bit, so you know, Perry really valued me
Speaker 2: from that perspective. And he was doing two golf courses
Speaker 2: at the same time, Riverdale Dunes and a private club
Speaker 2: down near Cherry Hills called Glenmore. And Glenmore was a
Speaker 2: big deal. It was a housing development, there was a
Speaker 2: big budget. Riverdale Dunes was just this public golf course
Speaker 2: for the county up northeast of the city, even further
Speaker 2: northeast than where the airport is, and Perry was just like,
Speaker 2: you know, he's spending all his time on the other
Speaker 2: one and just turning us loose to do whatever up
Speaker 2: the road. So you know, he put me out there,
Speaker 2: and it's like the irrigation guys are starting on the
Speaker 2: first hole. You know, this is it's what we've got
Speaker 2: roughed in is too basic of a golf course. Just
Speaker 2: go to town, jazz it up. You just got to
Speaker 2: stay ahead of the irrigation crew. So the first two
Speaker 2: or three holes I didn't.
Speaker 3: Do very much.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of I'm learning to run a bulldozer,
Speaker 2: and I'm working with one other guy, Jim Orbino, was
Speaker 2: the only one who had any experience at all. He
Speaker 2: had shaped one other golf course before that, so I'm
Speaker 2: telling him what to do. And then at some point
Speaker 2: Jim had to go back to his real job and
Speaker 2: I had to get on the bulldozer and do the
Speaker 2: last few greens. But it started like just just shape
Speaker 2: a green, reshape a green, and make it more interesting.
Speaker 2: And then it was like, okay, well, let's move the
Speaker 2: tea on this hole over to play diagonally over this
Speaker 2: feature instead of just parallel with it. And then it
Speaker 2: went from that to like, I'm moving greens and putting
Speaker 2: a green in the hollow where the bunker was supposed
Speaker 2: to be, and turning the what was supposed to be
Speaker 2: the green into a big mound and showing Jim a
Speaker 2: picture of the dell hole of the hinch and saying
Speaker 2: something like that there. And you know, it's a wildly
Speaker 2: interesting golf course because we were staying ahead of the
Speaker 2: irrigation crew and we could kind of do what we wanted.
Speaker 1: He asked specifically about the fifth and seventh greens. He
Speaker 1: said they really stand out to him, but he's and
Speaker 1: he was curious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so those like I said, you know, I started
Speaker 2: on two, three, four, and and I wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't doing very exaggerated stuff at all. They were
Speaker 2: interesting greens, but they were they were gentle. And the
Speaker 2: fifth green I did a version of it, and Perry
Speaker 2: came out and said, oh, that's boring. Why didn't you
Speaker 2: do something more dramatic. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I'll show you what dramatic is. Been a lot of
Speaker 2: times since I played that golf course, but that's a
Speaker 2: pretty wild green for my standards. And so those number
Speaker 2: seven is like seven is like along the water, and
Speaker 2: then there's like it comes up onto a plateau and
Speaker 2: then there's a back hole location back down behind that
Speaker 2: with the water behind those two greens would be pretty wild.
Speaker 1: That's great, all right, here's a sedge question. Rich h said,
Speaker 1: do you think other architects should follow the path he
Speaker 1: took with Sedge Valley?
Speaker 3: It's really a.
Speaker 2: Question of whether other clients will let them follow the
Speaker 2: athlete took at such valley. I mean, I think for
Speaker 2: sure there is I think that a sixty two hundred
Speaker 2: yard golf course that's well done and the details are
Speaker 2: well done could be hugely popular. And the need to
Speaker 2: build something longer to say that it's longer has mostly
Speaker 2: gone away. Now people don't think about that the same
Speaker 2: way that they used to. But you know, that's still
Speaker 2: not the conventional wisdom of the golf business, and most
Speaker 2: developers are afraid to let somebody go there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good answer to that question,
Speaker 1: because I think there are a lot of times people
Speaker 1: that want you know, I think like it's so rare
Speaker 1: that architects get to build exactly what they want, right,
Speaker 1: It's so often like you know, there there's parameters around it,
Speaker 1: and there's certain non negotiables, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: think like the other hard thing is like I gave
Speaker 1: you three hundred acres or four hundred acres, and.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if you got, yeah, if you got if
Speaker 2: if they're giving you four hundred acres, they probably don't
Speaker 2: want a sixty two hundred yard golf course. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of a lot of guys on
Speaker 2: the art on the architect's side, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of guys they don't get to know the client well
Speaker 2: enough to see what makes them tick, and they don't try,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't kind of push the envelope to
Speaker 2: try to get them thinking the same way. You know,
Speaker 2: they just lay out the sixty eight hundred yard golf course,
Speaker 2: and once you've done that, you're not backing away from that.
Speaker 3: And building the sixty two hundred yard golf course.
Speaker 2: You know, to if that's what you wanted to do,
Speaker 2: you would have to start slow and not have a
Speaker 2: plan and you know, and work on trying to figure
Speaker 2: out if this is a client that would do something
Speaker 2: like that, and you know, try to talk to him
Speaker 2: about it before you did a routing for it.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like.
Speaker 2: The I mean, the best example I could think of
Speaker 2: in my own career is the loot, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to sell any client on the idea of doing a
Speaker 2: reversible golf course. I figured, you know, I'd wanted to
Speaker 2: do it for twenty years. The only client that I
Speaker 2: ever even broached the idea to was Jerry Rawls, to
Speaker 2: who's the who donated all the money to do the
Speaker 2: golf course at Texas Tech because he was he was
Speaker 2: an engineer. He was like, it was like a Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley guy, and I thought maybe his brain, he'd be
Speaker 2: the kind of guy to go for it. But you know,
Speaker 2: that was a dead, flat piece of ground and we
Speaker 2: had to do a lot of He wanted it to
Speaker 2: be pretty, and it's hard to make it pretty if
Speaker 2: you're worried about making it work in both directions. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like the prettier you make it one direction,
Speaker 2: the un pretty it is in the other direction. So
Speaker 2: so didn't try it again, you know. And when I
Speaker 2: went over Lou Thompson, Lou didn't know much about the
Speaker 2: golf business, and that was an advantage. But when I
Speaker 2: asked him what he wanted, he said, I want something
Speaker 2: that's going to make people stay here and play again
Speaker 2: the next day, because that's why this place loses money.
Speaker 2: Right now, Nobody stays, you know, nobody even has a
Speaker 2: beer before they go to Gaylord. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: and then he said, and I want it to wow people,
Speaker 2: and and I thought it was a general piece of land.
Speaker 2: You know, the land isn't going to wow people. The
Speaker 2: only way, the only way it can wow people is
Speaker 2: if the concept is really different. I'm like, he might
Speaker 2: actually go for this. And you know, I didn't tell
Speaker 2: him right away. I spent like two months trying to
Speaker 2: figure out if I could make it work. And then
Speaker 2: I showed him the one way and he's like, that
Speaker 2: doesn't really wow me. And then I like showed him
Speaker 2: that it all was also playable for backwards and he
Speaker 2: just sat there kind of dumbfouted for about thirty seconds
Speaker 2: and he went, Okay, now I'm wowed. But again, that's
Speaker 2: what you know, if you want to try to get
Speaker 2: the client to do something different, you got to pick
Speaker 2: the right client for the thing that you want to do,
Speaker 2: and you've got to get them invested in that's a
Speaker 2: good idea. And here's why it's a good idea and
Speaker 2: if they just you know, if it's your typical client.
Speaker 2: You know, the unfortunate part of the golf businesses. There
Speaker 2: used to be a lot of golf courses built where
Speaker 2: the client did not care about golf. It was a
Speaker 2: housing deal. That's all the client really cared about. Any
Speaker 2: old golf course was fine. So just build me a
Speaker 2: conventional golf course. Don't push the boundaries, don't spend money,
Speaker 2: don't spend more money trying to make it great.
Speaker 3: That's not what we need.
Speaker 2: You know, we're in this to sell the houses. Don't
Speaker 2: make it controversial. There's not as many projects like that anymore,
Speaker 2: but there's still a lot of clients that.
Speaker 3: Think that way.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you're if you're an architect and
Speaker 2: you want to do something different, you got to find
Speaker 2: the right clients to let you do that.
Speaker 1: Have you you know, I think like one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting aspects of golf architecture is like you give
Speaker 1: somebody the same piece, Like give ten architects the same
Speaker 1: piece of land, you get ten different.
Speaker 2: Ideas, amazingly different rout yes, yes, amazingly different.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gone to like a meeting about a
Speaker 1: routing with a couple options. Does that ever happen? Or
Speaker 1: you always do? You always get set down, have you do?
Speaker 1: You always drill down to this is what I want
Speaker 1: to do here.
Speaker 2: I always try to drill down to what I want
Speaker 2: to do and get feedback and iterate off what I've done.
Speaker 2: All right, let's work on these three holes over here.
Speaker 2: They're not quite as good. But no, if you you know,
Speaker 2: if you just go in like you're an open book
Speaker 2: and I could do this or I could do that,
Speaker 2: you're letting them make the decisions for you. You would
Speaker 2: want to be very careful about who you're letting make
Speaker 2: those decisions.
Speaker 1: I just would be interested in, like, in the framework
Speaker 1: of this question, right, if somebody gave it, gives you
Speaker 1: four hundred pieces of lamb, build me a golf course, like,
Speaker 1: it's almost hard. I would imagine it's hard to go in, say,
Speaker 1: especially if you're if you're you know, working, you know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get the job. It'd be hard to
Speaker 1: be like, I want to build fifty nine hundred yard
Speaker 1: par sixty seven.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I mean that was It was certainly
Speaker 2: a much easier sell for Sand Valley, which already had
Speaker 2: two or three other golf courses that were big and
Speaker 2: wide and everything else. Then it would be as like
Speaker 2: a standalone eighteen hole private club. Although you know, now
Speaker 2: that I've done it, I've got a potential client in
Speaker 2: Florida that wants me to do kind of the same
Speaker 2: thing down there on a you know, on a different
Speaker 2: piece of land, and that would just be a standalone
Speaker 2: eighteen hole private club.
Speaker 3: He doesn't care how long it is. He just wants
Speaker 3: it to be cool.
Speaker 1: I I don't know if I'm just this way, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that golf should take four hours, like exactly.
Speaker 1: I just the whole idea. I kind of think that
Speaker 1: there should be versions of golf. Recently, I don't like,
Speaker 1: I rarely play golf when I'm home. It's like, because
Speaker 1: I play so much my travel and I've been traveling
Speaker 1: so much. I like him home, I'm home and you're married, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm married and I've got a young kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, the other day I was like, it
Speaker 1: was like just spur of the moment, a buddy of
Speaker 1: mine asked like, Hey, do you want to go play
Speaker 1: nine holes? Or I think he said eleven holes, And
Speaker 1: it was the course is right in town, like very
Speaker 1: close to my house. And I was, like, I said
Speaker 1: to my wife, I'll be back in two hours. And
Speaker 1: like the power of that, like in terms of just
Speaker 1: like the idea of like how much more golf you
Speaker 1: can play when when the commitment is less than let's
Speaker 1: just say five or six hours, when you add up
Speaker 1: time to the course and back.
Speaker 2: Seven or eight for me to go over to Crystal
Speaker 2: Downs and play and and show people around and and
Speaker 2: have a have something to eat and make the drive
Speaker 2: back and here. You know, that's the whole reason I
Speaker 2: wanted to do this so badly is you know, my life,
Speaker 2: my wife likes to have dinner early. I still got
Speaker 2: time to come over here, play nine holes and go back,
Speaker 2: and you know it's not bedtime yet.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 1: See That's why I'm most jealous of. It's like you
Speaker 1: could you could, like I think about it in terms
Speaker 1: of dad hours. You know, I could conceivably do bedtime
Speaker 1: right if I were in your situation. Come off here,
Speaker 1: play nine holes after bedtime.
Speaker 2: I played golf with Jim Nants a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago on the in the UH for the open reopening
Speaker 2: of bell Air, and he was talking about you know,
Speaker 2: he had a small child then, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll like, we'll put the kid down for an app
Speaker 2: and I'll go play six holes and come back and
Speaker 2: you know, in an hour and a half, it's perfect.
Speaker 1: That's that's honestly like the best part about about about this.
Speaker 1: It's like the late night golf you got in northern Michigan.
Speaker 1: All Right, here's a here's just an existential question. Say
Speaker 1: we made you the golfs. Are you are the golfs are? Okay,
Speaker 1: you're in charge of all of golf.
Speaker 3: I'm ready for this.
Speaker 1: You can do anything you want. What are you addressing? First?
Speaker 1: What was the first thing that you're doing?
Speaker 3: Holy cow, what is the first thing?
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like you like this question, So
Speaker 1: there might be we might that might be if there's
Speaker 1: a thank you, I might build off of this after
Speaker 1: episode this first episode of tom Is the Golf Stars
Speaker 1: then introduced.
Speaker 2: The first thing is everybody play matches. You know, don't
Speaker 2: be a card and pencil person. Just what you're playing
Speaker 2: with your friends. Just play a mat play match play,
Speaker 2: figure out how many strokes you need and just do that.
Speaker 2: You know, the most interesting thing of the most interesting
Speaker 2: conversation I've had This year, we were working on a
Speaker 2: childress hall and the client brought a friend to his
Speaker 2: from Connecticut down for a couple of days and we
Speaker 2: were I sat off late at night having wine with
Speaker 2: the clients and talking about golf, like every night I
Speaker 2: was there that whole project. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And this friend of the clients was like, we were
Speaker 2: talking about green speeds, and he was like, I don't
Speaker 2: even understand why why the green speed is so important
Speaker 2: that it's so fast, because like it's so fast now
Speaker 2: that it's too hard and nobody.
Speaker 1: Actually puts out.
Speaker 2: People don't finish the hole. They don't, they don't. You know,
Speaker 2: your typical round of golf, guys are giving themselves three
Speaker 2: four or five footers. They're not even trying to make
Speaker 2: those because it's so scary. It's like, why did it
Speaker 2: get to that point.
Speaker 1: It's very stressful, Like you think about it, it's like
Speaker 1: when you see your you hit a good putt, you
Speaker 1: feel like, but you're in the wrong spot and it
Speaker 1: just keeps rolling. You're like, God, this is so stressful.
Speaker 2: Oh and then you know, I've got the yips now,
Speaker 2: so I'm terrible on the greens. And I just want
Speaker 2: it to be over. I can chip, but I can't putt.
Speaker 1: But you got to go to the room, Go to
Speaker 1: the broom.
Speaker 3: I just can't do it. Man. That's another thing.
Speaker 1: I would have made it.
Speaker 2: I would have already made it illegal if I was
Speaker 2: the bizarre.
Speaker 3: So I can't go there.
Speaker 2: But you know, to that point about playing matches, if
Speaker 2: you're playing a match, if it's just match play, the
Speaker 2: conditioning of the golf the importance of the conditioning of
Speaker 2: the golf course goes away because it's the same for everybody.
Speaker 1: You don't worry about.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're leaving put short, if the fairways
Speaker 2: are a little rough, doesn't matter. So it's the next guy.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not like, it's not affecting your score
Speaker 2: and your whole day and your impression of yourself. That
Speaker 2: would fix a lot right there.
Speaker 1: All right, this is a good, easy quick one. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: last question here before camera and I have to hop
Speaker 1: on a flight here. If you were setting up the
Speaker 1: lido for the matchplay portion of the mid Am, which
Speaker 1: is next year, it might be trying to just get
Speaker 1: back in shape so I could play in that. What
Speaker 1: would be one teeing location and one pin location that
Speaker 1: would be a must. So it's match play at the lido.
Speaker 1: What's one like combination of tea and hole that is
Speaker 1: a must?
Speaker 2: Well, if I was setting up the Leado, as crazy
Speaker 2: as you'll think this sounds, I would set up one
Speaker 2: day where they were playing from exactly the historic teas
Speaker 2: that they always played from, and like you could do
Speaker 2: it with modern equipment. You're going to hit in entirely
Speaker 2: different places. I think that's just fine because that golf
Speaker 2: course has so much going on and it's so complicated
Speaker 2: that you're going to have to really figure out some
Speaker 2: different things. Whereas if you go back where they're going to,
Speaker 2: you know, we made room for back tease, but if
Speaker 2: you go back there, then then you know more conventionally
Speaker 2: how to play the golf course the way the way
Speaker 2: that most people played it back in the day, and
Speaker 2: playing from sixty four hundred yards it would be different.
Speaker 2: And you really have to think about am I trying
Speaker 2: to get over you know? Am I trying to bomb
Speaker 2: it over everything on six and get to the other
Speaker 2: fair way? What am I trying to do on some of.
Speaker 3: These holes.
Speaker 2: Whole locations? I don't know that. I mean there's a
Speaker 2: tremendous variety of whole locations on some of those greens.
Speaker 3: I don't have a favorite at all.
Speaker 1: All right, Tom, big, thanks for another session of these pods.
Speaker 1: I know that there's been a lot of people clamoring
Speaker 1: for a new batch, so big. Thanks for making some
Speaker 1: time and hopefully we'll be back with more soon. But
Speaker 1: enjoy the rest of your time at home here and
Speaker 1: come up and see me anytime. This is easy. I
Speaker 1: would like to I'm trying to actively spend more time
Speaker 1: up here, so you know, if maybe I'll try and
Speaker 1: get up here again this year. All right, thanks Andy,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to another edition of The Yoke
Speaker 1: with Doak and the Friday podcast. That was fun. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll get another out of these end before the end
Speaker 1: of the year. We're going to try and coordinate a
Speaker 1: time to to record more of these. Big thanks to
Speaker 1: p J. Clark for editing and producing this podcast. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are up on YouTube. I don't know if people
Speaker 1: know that, but you can check out our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: and see these podcasts with Tom. They're they're up there
Speaker 1: and uh and yeah, so big thanks to you guys
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll be back next week with a couple
Speaker 1: new episodes of the podcasts