Speaker 1: How do you design a golf course that can host
Speaker 1: major tournaments but still be enjoyable for the average golfer.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about today with Mike Cocking. Mike
Speaker 1: is an Australian golf architect and a partner with the
Speaker 1: firm OCM alongside Jeff Ogilvie and Ashley Mead. Recently, OCM
Speaker 1: completed a redesign of Medina Country Club Course three. This
Speaker 1: course is scheduled to host the twenty twenty six President's Cup.
Speaker 1: So in order to understand how golf architects can balance
Speaker 1: elite tournament golf with everyday amateur play, Mike and I
Speaker 1: will dig into how he thought through this project at Medina,
Speaker 1: how he created holes that will test the abilities of
Speaker 1: the world's best players without making regular members miserable.
Speaker 2: It's not easy.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf. So, Mike,
Speaker 1: you were a high level amateur player initially before you
Speaker 1: were an architect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you think about golf architecture differently when you were
Speaker 1: focused on playing than you do now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, yeah. I think.
Speaker 3: When I was really young and playing competitively, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure I really understood why I liked particular holes. I
Speaker 3: knew there were certain courses I really liked, certain holes
Speaker 3: I really liked, but I hadn't really joined the dots,
Speaker 3: you know, And it probably wasn't until a friend gave
Speaker 3: me The Anatomy of a Golf Course, Tom's book, and
Speaker 3: I had the Confidential Guide, and that was a big
Speaker 3: learning curve for me. And then I was playing competitively
Speaker 3: and traveling a lot overseas playing competitively. Just as I
Speaker 3: started to get good, I was on different teams and things,
Speaker 3: you know. So I went to the UK and it
Speaker 3: was pre internet, so I would reference the Confidential Guide
Speaker 3: and see, you know, were playing at Hoylake or something.
Speaker 3: I'd look through and there'd be three or four courses
Speaker 3: in the area that Tom had raided very well, and
Speaker 3: he'd sort of pointed out things to look at, and
Speaker 3: so I'd ride away to them, and then when I
Speaker 3: was there for the tournament, I'd go and either play
Speaker 3: or just walk those courses. So that for me was
Speaker 3: a that was a big learning curve. And then when
Speaker 3: I came back home as well, I would start looking
Speaker 3: a bit more critically at the courses.
Speaker 1: You said you liked, certain courses, but you didn't know why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: were they the same courses that you like? Now? Was
Speaker 1: there just?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'm motivated. I think visuals play a
Speaker 3: big part for me. So, you know, I always loved
Speaker 3: Royal Melbourne, and I think it was the scale of it,
Speaker 3: and you know, the style of the bunkering and just
Speaker 3: the general esthetic of the golf course. But then there
Speaker 3: were holes there that you know, you had to make interesting.
Speaker 3: They were interesting decisions, you know, whether to take on
Speaker 3: a bunker or play away from the bunker, and I had,
Speaker 3: you know, you kind of figure out that no, if
Speaker 3: I play away from the bunker, that shot into the
Speaker 3: greensby harder or you know, it's a bit longer, or
Speaker 3: it's a shittier angle or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think generally speaking, probably when I was really young,
Speaker 3: it was sort of at the tail end of that
Speaker 3: era of where hard was sort of seen as being better.
Speaker 3: You know, there was that era of you know where
Speaker 3: people saw places like firestone and stuff and thought that
Speaker 3: was the you know, so that probably changed for me.
Speaker 3: You know, as I've got older, I think I typically
Speaker 3: like courses that are more fun and wider and more
Speaker 3: interesting rather than necessarily challenging me.
Speaker 1: Did you believe harder was better for a while? Is
Speaker 1: that something that you absorbed from people who are around you,
Speaker 1: and you know it took seriously.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily. I mean, there was a certain you know,
Speaker 3: there was a certain sense of pride if you went
Speaker 3: and played a hard course, you know, and you played
Speaker 3: well where you hit some good shots. But no, I
Speaker 3: don't think so, you know, I think you, as good players,
Speaker 3: you do often fall into the trap of thinking, of
Speaker 3: course that you played well on is good. You know,
Speaker 3: that's pretty common. You have a good score there, and
Speaker 3: therefore it's.
Speaker 1: Always hard to separate that out, even people who supposedly
Speaker 1: know a lot about architecture.
Speaker 2: I absolutely study it. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It's trying to separate out that good feeling about playing well.
Speaker 3: Which is why I mean, to be honest, when I
Speaker 3: go and see golf course, I actually prefer not.
Speaker 2: To play it.
Speaker 3: I prefer to walk it, because you do get a
Speaker 3: bit too focused on or you look at the course
Speaker 3: through the lens of how you've played it that day,
Speaker 3: but also where your ball is on the fairway. You know,
Speaker 3: if you miss the fairway to the right, you don't
Speaker 3: know all the cool stuff you didn't see all the
Speaker 3: cool stuff that was happening down the left of the hole, right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, these days, in a perfect world, I'd go
Speaker 3: and walk a golf course in the morning and maybe
Speaker 3: play it in the afternoon. But you invariably don't have
Speaker 3: the luxury of that much time.
Speaker 1: I do that when I can, you know, but it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it makes for a long day if you see. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, if that's the one course you're seeing,
Speaker 1: then maybe maybe you can do that. So when you
Speaker 1: were focused on playing, were there particular types of courses
Speaker 1: that you found particularly challenging? What for you made made
Speaker 1: a difficult golf course when when you were playing.
Speaker 3: The first time I went to the States and played,
Speaker 3: I actually really struggled with the rough.
Speaker 2: Around the greens, to be honest.
Speaker 1: Because you just weren't used to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You grew up here short grass around the greens for
Speaker 1: the most part. Yeah, and it's different.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And my short game was probably one of the strengths
Speaker 3: of my game. It was a good part of but
Speaker 3: very good chipping, bunkers, pitching, and I didn't hit a
Speaker 3: lot of greens in regulation. That was probably I wasn't
Speaker 3: that consistent you know, so here or in the UK,
Speaker 3: if I missed a green, I would back myself to
Speaker 3: get up down. And when I went to the States,
Speaker 3: I found you know, I'd hit ten or twelve greens
Speaker 3: in regulation, but the six or eight I missed, I
Speaker 3: just didn't. I couldn't hit that shot. I couldn't master
Speaker 3: that chart. I still, to be honest, I still struggle
Speaker 3: a little bit with it. But Jeff's kind of shown
Speaker 3: me a couple of things I've whizzed him about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just not a shot that comes naturally to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're design partner. Jeff Ogilvie often says that short
Speaker 1: grass tends to bother most other players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess.
Speaker 1: That equation has flipped depending on what your initial experience is.
Speaker 1: Most players will grow up, you know, especially in the States,
Speaker 1: will grow up playing with rough around the greens, and
Speaker 1: so for them, short grass around the greens can be
Speaker 1: a kind of kryptonate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look for most people, and certainly it's an
Speaker 3: argument that we make a lot of the courses we
Speaker 3: work out, particularly in America, that we would much prefer
Speaker 3: to see short grass. It's a bit more it's a
Speaker 3: more interesting you know, way to treat the area around
Speaker 3: the green on options, and it can be a lot
Speaker 3: tricky if for bit applies too. The irony is that
Speaker 3: for me, it's probably the opposite, the opposite.
Speaker 1: So really what you're doing is you're going around and
Speaker 1: building courses make it easy for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's talk a little bit about the the
Speaker 1: media Course three renovation. Yeah, you know, we we that
Speaker 1: our theme today is you know, how to make courses
Speaker 1: more challenging or more interesting for elite players and maybe
Speaker 1: doing that at the same time that you make them
Speaker 1: more fun for amateurs. A lot of people are interested
Speaker 1: in this question of how that's accomplished. It's a big,
Speaker 1: big issue for golf architects right now, especially since at
Speaker 1: the top level of the game, the way the game
Speaker 1: is played is changing so much and it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to adjust to that. It's hard for architects to find
Speaker 1: new ways to challenge players who are constantly breaking through
Speaker 1: the defenses of of various classic courses. So your firm
Speaker 1: OCM recently completed a redesign of Course three at Medina
Speaker 1: Country Club in Chicago. For people who don't know, this
Speaker 1: is a course that has been highly ranked, has hosted
Speaker 1: a number of majors, will host the twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: twenty six Cup. And so how did this job come about?
Speaker 2: It's a funny story.
Speaker 3: We were well, I was it Shady Oaks in Fort Worth,
Speaker 3: which was sort of the first course.
Speaker 2: We did in America.
Speaker 3: That was our kind of big break, I would say,
Speaker 3: And I still remember we were I was on the
Speaker 3: eighteenth green, it was the last green we would have finish,
Speaker 3: and an email popped up on my phone from the
Speaker 3: course superintendent at Madonna then with Steve Cook and asking
Speaker 3: if we'd be interested in being shortlisted for this Madonna project,
Speaker 3: which was.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, it's like it's going to say that seriously.
Speaker 3: And not two days later, I've got an other email
Speaker 3: from the Australian government saying if you don't come home now,
Speaker 3: you may never come home. Because this was when this
Speaker 3: was when COVID. Yes, this is late, this is better
Speaker 3: re enter the country. Yeah, this is this is March
Speaker 3: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Okay, wow.
Speaker 3: So and I think the first whispers of COVID that
Speaker 3: I that we heard was I think I want to
Speaker 3: say about December twenty nineteen was when there was sort
Speaker 3: of a few reports, and I was still going back
Speaker 3: and forth each month to America. So it went from
Speaker 3: sort of elation thinking, wow, we'll just you know, I
Speaker 3: think I spoke to Ashley and Jeff and said, well,
Speaker 3: I was just trying to arrange, well, let's go up
Speaker 3: to Chicago and we'll spend a few days there. And
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, it was, you know, the
Speaker 3: chances it was getting this job of just diminished. So
Speaker 3: the club, they were very good, they were very patient.
Speaker 3: I went home, but we continued to converse and we
Speaker 3: ended up pitching for the job from Melbourne. We hadn't
Speaker 3: seen the course. Jeff had seen the course. Jeff had
Speaker 3: played there in the two thousand and six PGA, which
Speaker 3: Tiger won. Yes, but his memory of the course was
Speaker 3: not that clear. I mean it was he played with
Speaker 3: Tiger and Phil and so there were millions of people,
Speaker 3: and so you know, you don't get it necessarily a
Speaker 3: great appreciation of every hole. You're just looking at the
Speaker 3: twenty two yard wide fairways that you're on.
Speaker 1: He played with Tiger and fell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first two days and he played well, I want.
Speaker 1: To say it was that was around the time when
Speaker 1: he was really yeah. Yeah, he hadn't great forum.
Speaker 2: Well, he'd won the.
Speaker 3: US Open that year, he was probably top I think
Speaker 3: he got to four in the world, it was probably
Speaker 3: around that time, so he was playing really well. Yes,
Speaker 3: So we pitched on it. That were very fortunate. A
Speaker 3: good friend of ours was living in Chicago and was
Speaker 3: able to take some drone footage of the course, and
Speaker 3: I remember being on the phone with him saying, well,
Speaker 3: could you maybe take some photos from this position right
Speaker 3: at the first green, or can.
Speaker 2: You go over here? Can you go over there?
Speaker 3: So we got some very good drone footage, some good
Speaker 3: ground shots, We had some really good historical records. We
Speaker 3: had enough to put a pitch together and say, well,
Speaker 3: if we were to win the job, this is the
Speaker 3: sort of things that we'd be thinking of. These are
Speaker 3: the sorts of courses we like. We had a zoom
Speaker 3: call and then in the end it worked out that
Speaker 3: Shady Oaks was just about to open, and so we
Speaker 3: arranged for We couldn't get there, but we arranged for
Speaker 3: the Madina Green's Committee to go down to Shady Oaks
Speaker 3: and there they at least got to walk speak to
Speaker 3: a client and got to see a course. That we're
Speaker 3: designed and understand what we like and what we don't like,
Speaker 3: and they saw some things there that they really really liked,
Speaker 3: so we won that job. We ended up doing a
Speaker 3: lot of the conceptual work actually still here because we
Speaker 3: still couldn't travel, couldn't get over there. And then in
Speaker 3: sort of June or July twenty one, I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: Ashley and I went over to the States for about
Speaker 3: eight weeks and that history has shown that was such
Speaker 3: a critical visit for us. We had to get government permission.
Speaker 3: It was weird, like, you know that we're in full
Speaker 3: lockdown here and a day after we landed, we're at
Speaker 3: Wrigley Field with forty five thousand people with no masks Australia.
Speaker 3: It was like, what the hell is going on to America?
Speaker 3: But it was a really it was an important visit.
Speaker 3: I think if we hadn't have gone, I'm sure you know,
Speaker 3: the club would have had to look elsewhere. You know,
Speaker 3: you can't design it from here, so we had to
Speaker 3: get there. But we also looked at a site down
Speaker 3: in Georgia which ended up being the Full Line, which
Speaker 3: is another which is our first new project in America.
Speaker 3: So that that visit was literally that was the starting
Speaker 3: point for us of working in America. So it was very,
Speaker 3: very very important.
Speaker 1: From the club's perspective, what was the at us for
Speaker 1: bringing you in changing direction.
Speaker 3: Look, they even if they didn't want to redesign the
Speaker 3: golf course, they had to spend a lot of money
Speaker 3: upgrading it. So it didn't have a drainage system on
Speaker 3: course three, which is pretty amazing. So of course in
Speaker 3: Chicago especially, Yeah, so of course one and two did.
Speaker 3: And a big part of the upgrade of both of
Speaker 3: those courses was getting like a macro drainage plan in there.
Speaker 3: The irrigation system was old. Things like card paths were all,
Speaker 3: you know, in need of upgrade. The greens were really struggled.
Speaker 3: They'd struggled with turf there for a long time. I
Speaker 3: remember Steve Cook pointing out that that year that Halo
Speaker 3: win won, they were spray painting. They were painting fairways
Speaker 3: and painting the edges of the fairways, so they said
Speaker 3: they looked green. They struggled with turf, so there were
Speaker 3: too many trees, greens were too small. I struggled with
Speaker 3: sort of access and egress, and so they needed There
Speaker 3: was a certain number of things they needed to do,
Speaker 3: so I guess their point was, well, if we're going
Speaker 3: to spend all of this money on upgrading the infrastructure,
Speaker 3: why wouldn't we look at a redesign. Because from the
Speaker 3: average members had seen the course, it was very highly ranked,
Speaker 3: but that had kind of dwindled, and then I think,
Speaker 3: to be honest, there are a number of people there
Speaker 3: that recognized that it was a brilliant club, a wonderful club,
Speaker 3: but looking critically at course three, they really felt that
Speaker 3: it could be much better than it was.
Speaker 1: Was part of the brief to make it more challenging
Speaker 1: for pros. The backdrop of this being yeah, yeah, justin
Speaker 1: Thomas going out there and lighting the coruscan fire at
Speaker 1: a PGA Tour event in what twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: sometime around there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. I think it was the BMW.
Speaker 3: And interestingly, if he's since come back and played Madonna
Speaker 3: with a friend, didn't shoot sixty one again, It's interesting
Speaker 3: he said, because he was I've sort of heard this
Speaker 3: story secondhand, but he was playing terribly that week and
Speaker 3: he was saying that, you know, I spoke to my
Speaker 3: dad the night before he had that round and he
Speaker 3: said I really wasn't playing well, and he said, and
Speaker 3: if you look at that round, he said, like he
Speaker 3: hold a weg shot, he hold everything. He looked at
Speaker 3: like it was a you know, he said, I'm so
Speaker 3: sick of people blaming me for redoing the golf course.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're not.
Speaker 1: But yeah, exactly, it's like or is it credit?
Speaker 3: So it was just one of those rounds that you know,
Speaker 3: it could have been anywhere. He literally hold everything. So yeah,
Speaker 3: look it was I mean, I think they are very proud.
Speaker 3: They're very proud of their tournament history. So they were
Speaker 3: conscious of that. They didn't want it to be torn up,
Speaker 3: you know, in the future. But so there was sort
Speaker 3: of there are a number of different goals.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There were those that looked at the architecture, there were
Speaker 3: those that looked at tournament history, and there were those
Speaker 3: that looked at the you know, the turf quality and
Speaker 3: infrastructure and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So there are a number of things that you did
Speaker 1: to chorus three. We can't really go through all of
Speaker 1: them because it really is quite the reimagining of the
Speaker 1: golf course. But just to give people an idea, what
Speaker 1: was the character of the chorus before you started working
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 3: So I think one of the you know, it was
Speaker 3: it's three hundred and fifty acres, very big property. There
Speaker 3: were twenty four acres of fairway. Yeah, not much, not much.
Speaker 3: It was incredibly difficult for the average golfer. Fairways were narrow.
Speaker 3: It was a classic sort of order I would as
Speaker 3: a Melbournian. It was what I would regard as a
Speaker 3: classic parkland American style golf course. You know, they were lucky.
Speaker 3: They had beautiful trees, amazing oak trees. There's a handful
Speaker 3: of trees on that course from the sixteen fifties, which
Speaker 3: is very cool.
Speaker 2: Beautiful old oaks.
Speaker 3: It was narrow, it was lush, it was green. It
Speaker 3: was a bit monochromatic, you know, just everything you looked
Speaker 3: at was green. All the green complexes were pretty similar,
Speaker 3: and a lot of a lot of the course features
Speaker 3: that had been built looked very looked quite artificial, I
Speaker 3: would say. So what we did we did a number
Speaker 3: of different things. We certainly increased the amount of short grass.
Speaker 3: Probably there's about fifty five acres now, so more than double.
Speaker 2: There we looked at.
Speaker 3: It was not a restoration, but there were elements of
Speaker 3: the original. Tom bendel Our course that we found interesting.
Speaker 3: Some of the bunkering that he had on the course
Speaker 3: was really interesting. It looked like, you know, tilling Us
Speaker 3: had built it like. So that became the idea of
Speaker 3: the bunkering style. We wanted something much more natural and rugged.
Speaker 3: We wanted to introduce some longer fescue that would brown
Speaker 3: off to provide some textural differences. The big thing though,
Speaker 3: was we re routed the last six holes. That was
Speaker 3: kind of the That was pretty bold, And to be honest,
Speaker 3: I think because we're on the other side of the
Speaker 3: world and we didn't have the emotional ties with that course,
Speaker 3: it was probably easier for us to suggest that change
Speaker 3: than if we were like local to Chicago, you know,
Speaker 3: because we didn't have that you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, the associations with the tournaments and those holes
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's I mean, I wouldn't say it's the
Speaker 1: most beloved American course, but certainly people have an image
Speaker 1: in their minds. Americans have an image of their mind
Speaker 1: in their mind of what those closing holes at Madina
Speaker 1: Course three look like and play like, because there have
Speaker 1: been these memorable shots played there.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so we looked at it more simply and thought, well,
Speaker 3: there's three part threes that all look the same, right.
Speaker 1: They just crossed the lake there. Yep, it looks it
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a river in that portion.
Speaker 2: Of the property. It does its narrow people often.
Speaker 1: Think it's a river, but the par three is used
Speaker 1: to just kind of play from one side to the other.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And two of them, in particularly thirteen and seventeen, were
Speaker 3: even next to each other. They played in the same
Speaker 3: to they looked like the same hole. They didn't have
Speaker 3: a they'd built a short part four at the fifteenth
Speaker 3: that probably hadn't really ticked the box of you know,
Speaker 3: of the great short par fours of the world, and
Speaker 3: it just, you know, I just I think water can
Speaker 3: be a fantastic hazard, but typically it's best when it's
Speaker 3: on a diagonal when you play across, whether it's a
Speaker 3: creek or a river or a lake. You know, when
Speaker 3: you you know things like cape holes, you know, they're
Speaker 3: interesting because everyone has to deal with the hazard. It
Speaker 3: doesn't matter how far you hit it, and you kind
Speaker 3: of have to determine how much of the hazard you
Speaker 3: want to take on. That's you know, it's just a
Speaker 3: very interesting way to set up a hazard, and they
Speaker 3: didn't have that. And the fact that you played directly
Speaker 3: over the water and the greens were detached from the
Speaker 3: water meant that good players never hit it in the water,
Speaker 3: but they were impossible for the average golfer. So I
Speaker 3: guess we looked at the lake and thought, potentially, this
Speaker 3: is an amazing hazard, but it doesn't quite work as
Speaker 3: well as it should. The three part three's were all
Speaker 3: similar and they didn't have a great short path four,
Speaker 3: so that was kind of our starting point.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, this is what you're saying about. Hazard orientation
Speaker 1: is really interesting because the previous course there was very
Speaker 1: linear or perpendicular, and it's in its relationship with that
Speaker 1: big natural hazard. I guess it's.
Speaker 2: Natural, yes, sort of. Yeah, okay, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: Even though it at some point it didn't really.
Speaker 3: Well I think yeah, I think it was a wetland
Speaker 3: and then they did they damn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's ry. It was formalized.
Speaker 3: Kay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these these par threes, just to use them as
Speaker 1: an example, would just play straight across it, whereas what
Speaker 1: what you were looking to do was to shift the
Speaker 1: orientation of the shots so that it would run along
Speaker 1: a diagonal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's try and and and so the we didn't
Speaker 3: think there was that much variety with the path threes
Speaker 3: and with the reroute that the new thirteenth hole plays
Speaker 3: alongside the water, so that gave the club something different
Speaker 3: as well. So it's a it's a short path three,
Speaker 3: which again they didn't really have. So this is a
Speaker 3: hole that I think it's best played at probably about
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty five yards, so kind of shortish
Speaker 3: it uses it's got like an infinity green with and
Speaker 3: you can see the water behind, but then if you
Speaker 3: miss the green to the right, you're in the water.
Speaker 3: So it's whereas they were always playing across the water,
Speaker 3: so we sort of added a different type of hole
Speaker 3: that's usually played into the breeze. So it's kind of
Speaker 3: a fun shot with a nine nine or a wedge.
Speaker 3: And then and then the new seventeenth does play, yeah,
Speaker 3: directly sort of on a diagonal back across the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So getting back to the theme of challenging elite players,
Speaker 1: I guess diagonal hazards are one way that you can
Speaker 1: do that because if it's just a linear hazard, as
Speaker 1: long as you have the carry number, you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and.
Speaker 2: Make that carry.
Speaker 1: If you're a really good player, you're not gonna come
Speaker 1: up short necessarily unless it's a really long carry.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If it's diagonal, then you sort of have to make
Speaker 1: a decision. If you hit it in a little more
Speaker 1: in one direction than the other, then you might be
Speaker 1: in trouble. If you try to buy it off too much,
Speaker 1: you might be in trouble. So that's one way I
Speaker 1: suppose that the new course might be more challenging to
Speaker 1: a top level player.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, good players are very good at hitting to
Speaker 3: a particular distance, so that's right.
Speaker 1: So when they're they're not going to miss that distance
Speaker 1: very often.
Speaker 3: No, so when you're playing across a perpendicular hazard, they're
Speaker 3: unlikely to hit it in it. If it's on the diagonal,
Speaker 3: you're testing line and length, so that's right. So they
Speaker 3: do have the ability to misjudge, So that.
Speaker 2: That was one thing we did.
Speaker 3: I mean, we certainly tried to improve the relationship between
Speaker 3: the playing surfaces and the surrounding hazards as well, you know,
Speaker 3: But being the typical Parkland American style course that I mentioned,
Speaker 3: there was probably ten yards of rough between the edge
Speaker 3: of a fairway and a fairway bunker, so that a
Speaker 3: lot of the bunkering was somewhat redundant. You know, it
Speaker 3: was a very poor shot to hit in the sand.
Speaker 3: Usually you were playing from the rough and green side
Speaker 3: bunkers as well. We're a long way off the putting surface.
Speaker 3: So whilst we knew we couldn't take it to the
Speaker 3: extent of say the sand belt, where you have putting
Speaker 3: surface to the edge of a bunker, we knew we
Speaker 3: could get a lot closer. So you'll see with the
Speaker 3: new course the bunkers are really cut up tight to
Speaker 3: the greens. There is more fairway, the fairwyes are wider,
Speaker 3: but there's probably a bit more strategy now in terms
Speaker 3: of being on one side.
Speaker 2: Of the fairway or the other.
Speaker 3: One of the keys, to be honest is firmness. It
Speaker 3: doesn't matter how strategic you make a golf course. You
Speaker 3: can have all the angles and width in the world,
Speaker 3: but if it's soft, those guys are so good that
Speaker 3: they can be out of position even in the rough,
Speaker 3: and they can hit an eight iron onto a green
Speaker 3: and stop it if the greens are soft. So firmness
Speaker 3: is critical, and you know there's a number of greens
Speaker 3: there that we set up to like the first green
Speaker 3: falls away from play, which really encourages short and using
Speaker 3: the ground game a bit more. But the other important
Speaker 3: aspect is all the drainage that's been added in and
Speaker 3: so unless you had a three inch storm the night before,
Speaker 3: being the new superintendent has the ability to really firm
Speaker 3: that place up, and that will be ultimately that will
Speaker 3: be the key and firmness combined with all the short
Speaker 3: grass around the greens, plus the bunker ing, plus the
Speaker 3: you know, the angles, it's a there's no one thing,
Speaker 3: it's those. It's sort of four or five different things
Speaker 3: that I think start to achieve that balance between playability
Speaker 3: for the average golfer but making it interesting and challenging
Speaker 3: for the better player.
Speaker 1: How do you create firmness on a site like Madona's.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not the Australian sand belt, this
Speaker 1: is this is Chicago. I assume it's kind of heavy clay,
Speaker 1: not typically the easiest stuff to drain or to you know,
Speaker 1: it's not not the easiest thing to fight the weather
Speaker 1: in Chicago with your surfaces. So how do you go
Speaker 1: about creating firmness at a course like this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: I mean it is a heavy sight, but it's got
Speaker 3: quite a thick layer of top soil. They sort of
Speaker 3: look at it and you know, it's good black dirt
Speaker 3: will be the comment.
Speaker 1: Not bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's super rocky or anything. No, it's actually
Speaker 3: quite nice tops oil. There was no sort of there
Speaker 3: were no. I mean, we strive very hard to We
Speaker 3: don't particularly like the you know the catch basins close
Speaker 3: to close to play, you know where you've got a
Speaker 3: big drainage pit, because that.
Speaker 1: Would be one way to do it is to build
Speaker 1: these big swales next to the greens, have the greens
Speaker 1: run off into those swals and drain down at the
Speaker 1: center that's right of the catch basin. But that's sort
Speaker 1: of it can start to seem like predictable or kind
Speaker 1: of hacky architecture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's right.
Speaker 3: So if you were only concerned with the turf and
Speaker 3: you didn't care about architecture or aesthetics, if you had
Speaker 3: the series of catch basins all the way down the
Speaker 3: fairway and all the way around the green, with quite
Speaker 3: a lot of pitch into those catch basins, you could
Speaker 3: create fairly dry surfaces because anytime it rained, the rain
Speaker 3: would hit the surface straight off into a catch bit
Speaker 3: and that's gone. You know, whereas architects we're trying to
Speaker 3: do we're trying to minimize the number of catch basins
Speaker 3: and put them in the raft so you can't see
Speaker 3: them and not have the big exaggerated hollows. So you're
Speaker 3: trying to strike a balance between form and function.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: So there are there's a few catch basins in you know,
Speaker 3: in playing surfaces, but they're typically off you know, well
Speaker 3: off greens and things. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: there's also a lot of subsurface strainage around the greens,
Speaker 3: particularly in their approaches to the greens.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have to be clever about how you're
Speaker 1: draining the surfaces. And that's just one way to do it,
Speaker 1: I guess. Another way is just good agronomy. You know,
Speaker 1: you need to try and pay attention to the surfaces
Speaker 1: and really keep them fresh and you know, not let
Speaker 1: them age in certain ways in order to keep them firm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's right.
Speaker 3: There's certain management practices. I mean, you could destroy the
Speaker 3: strategy of a golf course if you're a bit heavy
Speaker 3: handed with the with the hose. So you know, if
Speaker 3: you were to overwater of course, you know, you're going
Speaker 3: to it's going to lead to soft playing services, So
Speaker 3: you know, trying to keep it a little bit lean
Speaker 3: and keep it firm and keep it bouncy is critical
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: So then in all of this firmness and the challenges
Speaker 1: that you're trying to create with that, what role these
Speaker 1: short short grass play with us?
Speaker 3: I think it's a plays an important role. So a
Speaker 3: good example we would use with the membership there was
Speaker 3: if you've got an elevated green, we'll say, then you've
Speaker 3: got rough up to the edge. Even if the pin's
Speaker 3: tucked in the corner of the green. Good players will
Speaker 3: tend not to think twice about shooting for that flag
Speaker 3: because they know if they miss it, it's just going
Speaker 3: to get caught up in five or six feet either side,
Speaker 3: and it's a relatively simple where Suddenly, if you've got
Speaker 3: short grass cut thirty yards down that bank and the
Speaker 3: conditions are firm, it forces them back in the fairway
Speaker 3: to think more about that shot. It puts a little
Speaker 3: bit of doubt in their mind because they know if
Speaker 3: they miss it, the ball might finish thirty or even
Speaker 3: forty yards off the green. Suddenly it's a really tricky
Speaker 3: up and down. It's tricky pitch, tricky chip shot. And
Speaker 3: the nice thing is for an average golfer, though, if
Speaker 3: they missed that shot, they can just pull out a
Speaker 3: putter and just kind of whack it up onto the green.
Speaker 3: They're not going to make their part, they're going to
Speaker 3: make a bowgire a double. But it's a more enjoyable,
Speaker 3: more satisfying recovery shot for them than just hacking it
Speaker 3: out of three inches of rough. So and we used
Speaker 3: that theory in a lot of places at Madina. Really
Speaker 3: good example is the first where there's a you know,
Speaker 3: thirty or forty yards of short grass over and to
Speaker 3: the right of an elevated green. So suddenly it's a
Speaker 3: difficult shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the one thing that's gonna bother players
Speaker 1: around the green is not necessarily rough unless the players,
Speaker 1: to you, it sounds like it's putting them farther away
Speaker 1: from the hole. If you've met if after a miss
Speaker 1: they're simply farther away, they have a longer shot in
Speaker 1: they're just going to get that up and down less
Speaker 1: and less often the farther away they get.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And then if the conditions are fairly firmin bouncy. It
Speaker 3: just emphasizes that strategy. And then if you sort of
Speaker 3: work backwards onto the tee suddenly, then then it is
Speaker 3: putting more more of an advantage for them being in
Speaker 3: the right position on the faiawaye or the wrong you know,
Speaker 3: panealizing them in the wrong position. So it kind of
Speaker 3: works its way back strategically both in the fairway and
Speaker 3: even back on the tee.
Speaker 1: You brought up position in the fairway. Let the record
Speaker 1: show that you brought it up. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about with yeah. Width of fairways is a controversial topic
Speaker 1: among those who are interested in tournament golf courses.
Speaker 2: YEP.
Speaker 1: There are those who say that if a fairway is wide,
Speaker 1: and the fairways that at Medina are wider now than
Speaker 1: they to be, obviously they're quite a narrow before. There
Speaker 1: are those who say, if a fairway is wide, then
Speaker 1: it really doesn't matter what you do around the green.
Speaker 1: Elite players are just going to blast it up the
Speaker 1: fairway and they'll take whatever angle they get when they
Speaker 1: get there. And so the argument would go, there's not
Speaker 1: much thinking there because they're not thinking about position in
Speaker 1: the fairway. Because they don't have to think about position
Speaker 1: in the fairway. If you give them a certain width
Speaker 1: of corridor, they're just going to pull driver and look
Speaker 1: at their kind of dispersion zone and just find a
Speaker 1: central point in that dispersion zone and go ahead.
Speaker 2: And rip it.
Speaker 1: Not much thought required. Yeah, what would be your response
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 3: Well, that is true if the conditions are soft. If
Speaker 3: the conditions are soft, it is just a free heat.
Speaker 3: But I think there's enough great designs out day that
Speaker 3: there are examples of the counterpoints your argument. Someone like
Speaker 3: Augusta is a perfect example a little pond host. I
Speaker 3: mean the enth at Augusta that fairways seventy or eighty
Speaker 3: yards wide, and there's you know, a three way advantage
Speaker 3: in hitting down next to the water both shorter shot,
Speaker 3: better angle, and flatter eye. And you know every yard
Speaker 3: you play to the rider gets a much more difficult
Speaker 3: shot into that green. So if the architecture isn't there
Speaker 3: and the firmness isn't there, that's right. Players will will
Speaker 3: will eat up a golf course if it's wide. But
Speaker 3: I think if the if the green complex is good
Speaker 3: enough and it's in and it's a fairly firm, fast
Speaker 3: golf course, I think it will challenge and it will
Speaker 3: create much more interest because the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you can't create strategy on narrow fairways. You know, you
Speaker 3: have to give players choices about where they want to
Speaker 3: hit to. Ironically, I quite like the fact that the
Speaker 3: US Open is an arrow golf course because it's just
Speaker 3: a nice point of difference.
Speaker 2: With all the other majors.
Speaker 3: But it's just it gets too much, I think when
Speaker 3: every week in, week out on the tour is an
Speaker 3: arrow golf course.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of the reality is when it
Speaker 1: comes to designing courses for great players right now, is
Speaker 1: that great players think about course management differently, perhaps than
Speaker 1: than they used to, or at least they're they're more
Speaker 1: likely to have a particular method of approaching course management,
Speaker 1: driven by analytics and data collection and the insights that
Speaker 1: that has provided. So I wonder if as an architect,
Speaker 1: you take some of that stuff into account in order
Speaker 1: to counteract or to account for what players are doing
Speaker 1: when they think their way through a golf course, when
Speaker 1: they're choosing targets based on a kind of different set
Speaker 1: of criteria than they used to, does the architect have
Speaker 1: to do something different in order to keep the course
Speaker 1: interesting and challenging for them.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a really good question.
Speaker 3: I mean, we haven't spent a lot of time going
Speaker 3: through you know, shouts to Hull, and we did it
Speaker 3: at Madina. We looked through a lot of the scoring averages.
Speaker 3: That was one thing we did do which was interesting,
Speaker 3: and just the shot dispersion on each hole. But that's
Speaker 3: probably I would say that's the first time we've really
Speaker 3: taken a deep dive into just how players, you know,
Speaker 3: through tournaments had played particular holes in particular shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what'd you do with scoring averages? What was the
Speaker 1: intention of looking at.
Speaker 3: That one of them was we wanted to see how
Speaker 3: they played those path threes and how they played their
Speaker 3: short puffour so fifteen it was interesting that you know,
Speaker 3: better players typically didn't hit it in the water on
Speaker 3: the path threes. The water didn't really have much of
Speaker 3: a role as a hazard, which is kind of what
Speaker 3: we thought. And you know, for me anyway, that I
Speaker 3: think the great short puffers of the world put lots
Speaker 3: of different clubs in your hand. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of doubt you see that around the sand belt.
Speaker 3: You would have seen it in the last few days
Speaker 3: where there's no single way to play. You know, these holes,
Speaker 3: you could play anything from a five eye to a
Speaker 3: driver off the tee, and none of them are the
Speaker 3: right or wrong. You know, choice just depends on you
Speaker 3: on the day and the wind and the pin and
Speaker 3: how you feeling. Whereas it was clear that that's not
Speaker 3: how they played the fifteenth hole, so I guess it
Speaker 3: probably just confirmed some of our suspicions I guess about
Speaker 3: some of the holes.
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. Tell me
Speaker 1: about your use of out of bounds at Madonna. This
Speaker 1: is something that people are going to be curious about.
Speaker 1: The fence hole. Yeah, in particular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, So that end of the property, which I
Speaker 3: guess is the northwestern end, was a prairie originally, so
Speaker 3: you kind of got these interesting landscapes at Madonna. You've
Speaker 3: got the holes around the lake, which we talked about.
Speaker 3: Then you've got the holes through the middle of the
Speaker 3: property where you've got the beautiful old oaks that kind
Speaker 3: of frame the holes, and then the top end of
Speaker 3: the property there was originally a prairie, so didn't have
Speaker 3: the features of the rest of the golf course. It
Speaker 3: was pretty open and it had a dirt road running around.
Speaker 3: In the thirties, you know, there were no houses. There
Speaker 3: was just a simple dirt track.
Speaker 2: And when we.
Speaker 3: Looked at the old aerials, it appeared as though the
Speaker 3: sixth hole used the boundary as a bit of a
Speaker 3: strategic hazard, you know, because the hole literally played up
Speaker 3: against it. There were no trees, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: that's kind of interesting, interesting feature. I'm not sure you
Speaker 3: could ever put that back because there's now houses and
Speaker 3: roads and cars and things like that. And then we
Speaker 3: found an old photo that showed the sixth green and
Speaker 3: there was quite clearly a fence immediately behind the green.
Speaker 3: I thought that's pretty cool, very interesting, And then we
Speaker 3: were concerned the view on those holes, particularly six and
Speaker 3: the old tenth which is now the seventh, was unattractive
Speaker 3: because you were just staring at the road and cars
Speaker 3: and an ugly fence, and so in order to improve
Speaker 3: the backdrop, we wanted to shift those holes away from
Speaker 3: the outer bound and the club were really lucky they
Speaker 3: had a lot of space, so we moved those holes
Speaker 3: forty yards, which gave us an opportunity to then plant
Speaker 3: out the boundary and to sort of shift your view
Speaker 3: line away from the outer bounds. But then the question was, well,
Speaker 3: what do we what do we do now? And we
Speaker 3: kind of liked the idea of reintroducing some sort of boundary,
Speaker 3: So that's where the idea of and the fact there
Speaker 3: was these old photos and we thought, well we could
Speaker 3: kind of reintroduce an outer bounds, albeit it's a much
Speaker 3: safer proposition now and with a nicely screened fence line.
Speaker 3: So we pitched the idea of a postmail fence and
Speaker 3: it sort of follows all the way down the sixth
Speaker 3: hole and the seventh hole and the end. We actually
Speaker 3: continued on the fifth as well, So you have this
Speaker 3: run of holes five, six, seven where the fence line
Speaker 3: runs hard up against the edge of the fairway. At
Speaker 3: the sixth that runs hard up against the edge of
Speaker 3: the green. But the fairways are wide, you know, they're
Speaker 3: sixty yards wide, sixty five yards wide, so they kind
Speaker 3: of that there's a huge advantage for being close to
Speaker 3: the fence line, but we give that. We give the
Speaker 3: goal for a lot of space to play away from
Speaker 3: the fence, but you kind of at some point on
Speaker 3: those holes you have to deal with the fence line,
Speaker 3: particularly on the sixth because the green's hard up against it.
Speaker 3: So if you choose to play away from the fence
Speaker 3: with your t shot, the second shot now is really
Speaker 3: difficult because you were sort of aiming directly out of bounds. Now,
Speaker 3: we didn't think it was that controversial because we've played
Speaker 3: and seen a lot of courses in the UK and
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of examples.
Speaker 1: Royal Liverpool maybe the most famous example on multiple holes
Speaker 1: that that it's not really a boundary line. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a boundary line, but the burn sort of comes
Speaker 1: into play.
Speaker 3: And you know, I played the British Amateur there. I
Speaker 3: remember that the first hole there, you know, it's a
Speaker 3: ninety degree it's a long part for I remember hitting
Speaker 3: a three im into that.
Speaker 1: Green played as the third hole in the Open.
Speaker 2: That's why I believe.
Speaker 1: But it's really fun as a first hole because it's
Speaker 1: it's such a hard t shot right off the bat.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But then there's lots of other examples, you know,
Speaker 3: truon fourteenth hole at Saint George's, a bunch of holes
Speaker 3: at the old Course first pressed week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a kind of a traditional and for that sake,
Speaker 1: the road hole is a is a version of it.
Speaker 1: And so it's a kind of traditional type of hole
Speaker 1: that the boundary hole on a links course. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: as much as everybody else in the world has tried
Speaker 1: to emulate links courses in building their own work, in
Speaker 1: other places, the boundary hole hasn't been as much imitated
Speaker 1: because people look at it and they say, well, that's unfair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the stroke and distance penalty as a punishment for missing
Speaker 1: the fair way, that's not fair. I don't like that.
Speaker 2: Let's not have that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be some of that reaction to
Speaker 1: the use of the boundary at Medina. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you think about that? How do you think
Speaker 1: about the issue of fairness when it when it comes
Speaker 1: to a hall like this.
Speaker 3: I like it because it puts even more doubt in
Speaker 3: your mind because the penalty is so severe, right, whereas
Speaker 3: if it was water. I think people are going to
Speaker 3: be more inclined to play a little closer to it
Speaker 3: because they know that they can always drop the ball
Speaker 3: up near the fairway, you know. So I think I
Speaker 3: think it's I think it works really well. I mean,
Speaker 3: and interestingly, there was a little bit of concern about
Speaker 3: it early on, but now that all of the you know,
Speaker 3: the long ruffs grown on the other side of the
Speaker 3: fence and the holes have beard it in, the feedback's
Speaker 3: been unbelievable. So both from golf's hierarchy to tour players
Speaker 3: that have come and played it, to the members, I
Speaker 3: think they understand it, and you know, and those fairways
Speaker 3: are really wide, so you you know that it's not
Speaker 3: They've understood that there's a lot of opportunity to play
Speaker 3: away from the fence. You don't have to play next
Speaker 3: to it. But I think they enjoy the challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there a particular hole at the new Madina
Speaker 1: Chorus three that you're specially interested in seeing top level
Speaker 1: players play in high pressure situations? Maybe something that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about yet.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the fence holes, the sixth with
Speaker 3: the fence quite close to the green. I'm really looking
Speaker 3: forward to seeing how they play that.
Speaker 1: You could definitely see a ball just kind of roll
Speaker 1: the out of bounds there. Absolutely, that's a very distinct
Speaker 1: possibility in approaching that green if you're coming in from
Speaker 1: a tough angle and you don't have total control of
Speaker 1: your ball, yep, it's going to go a bee well now.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And there was some people had sort of suggested that
Speaker 3: maybe we should move the fence ten yards further away,
Speaker 3: you know, And but my argument was that it's no
Speaker 3: different to a you know, suddenly that hazard stops being relevant.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's no different to imagine you moved a green side
Speaker 3: bunker ten yards away from the green, well, it stops
Speaker 3: being hazard, you know. So the whole point of it
Speaker 3: is that it's close to the playing surface. If you
Speaker 3: grow five yards of rough or ten yards of rough
Speaker 3: between the hazard and the whether it's the fairway or
Speaker 3: the green, it stops being interesting. So fortunately we rode
Speaker 3: through that, probably the other holes the Kpe hole. So sixteen.
Speaker 3: So sixteen was the old seventeenth, the part three, and
Speaker 3: there was a lot of space to the right of
Speaker 3: the seventeenth, and every time we sort of stood on
Speaker 3: that tea, our eyes would kind of shift right and
Speaker 3: you would see the water on the diagonal to the
Speaker 3: point where we actually you would look across to the
Speaker 3: fourteenth tes, the original fourteenth t's, and it looked like
Speaker 3: a really interesting green and an interesting short part four.
Speaker 3: The ground was quite steep, which we were a little
Speaker 3: bit concerned about, but that whole worked out particularly well,
Speaker 3: and that's a good example of everyone in the field
Speaker 3: there has to deal with the water. You just have
Speaker 3: to choose how much of it you want to take on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's going to be a really fun hole to watch,
Speaker 1: partly because it's set in this kind of amphitheater, this
Speaker 1: natural amphitheater at the center of the property with the
Speaker 1: lake there, and I can just imagine the crowds around
Speaker 1: it and some of the fun tea shots that are
Speaker 1: going to be played there because there are it's one
Speaker 1: of those holes where there's real tension on the tea shot.
Speaker 1: Is this shot going to get where it needs to go?
Speaker 1: There's going to be some doubt with the ball, with
Speaker 1: the ball in the.
Speaker 3: Air, absolutely, and it is. You know, there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of different We built five or six different teas because
Speaker 3: we wanted people to be tempted to try and drive
Speaker 3: the green, So that shot is on for the elite players, absolutely,
Speaker 3: so I think it'll be fun to see that. And
Speaker 3: your point about the Amphitheater is a good one too,
Speaker 3: that there's so much action around the lake now, there's
Speaker 3: so many there's kind of four or five holes that
Speaker 3: are all in and around the water there, and the
Speaker 3: way the sand will kind of carry across the water
Speaker 3: and from one side to the other, I think has
Speaker 3: made for a really interesting, you know, finishing stretch of holes.
Speaker 1: So my final question, Mike, was it really wise for
Speaker 1: a US club to hire an Australian firm to build
Speaker 1: a course that would host an America and President's Cup.
Speaker 1: It feels like this was an opportunity for you to
Speaker 1: tip the scales in favor of the international team.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I just wonder what.
Speaker 3: The thinking was here, hopefully. I mean, ninety eight was
Speaker 3: the only time that the Internationals.
Speaker 2: Have ever won skills.
Speaker 3: Maybe it would be good for the skills, it would
Speaker 3: be nice. Look, it was brave for them to country
Speaker 3: of origin aside, you know, to not just go with
Speaker 3: the usual suspects. I would say so, and they so
Speaker 3: they did make a brave decision there time will tell
Speaker 3: as successful, but no, they're very pleased with the results,
Speaker 3: and you know it's look, it's not that rankings are everything,
Speaker 3: but it's nice that, you know, rankings have come out
Speaker 3: and shown that it's gone up a staggering number of
Speaker 3: spots and all of that. But yeah, it has been
Speaker 3: discussed numerous occasions that you know, if the internationals do
Speaker 3: win this particular President's Cup, what the reaction will be.
Speaker 1: Not going to be able to re enter the country problem?
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for coming on the show man.
Speaker 2: Thanks Ert.
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