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Speaker 2: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a frid Egg,
Speaker 2: Friday Egg, the Dread and Friday.
Speaker 1: Fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off
Speaker 1: of the hump. Welcome back to another edition of the
Speaker 1: Frida Egg Podcast. I am excited for this episode. Spend
Speaker 1: a few years in the making, COVID kind of put
Speaker 1: a pause. I wanted to get down to Arizona to
Speaker 1: see uh David Kahn and Tim Jackson's work at Scottsdale
Speaker 1: National before I had him on.
Speaker 2: They are young. I guess young.
Speaker 1: Young is a relative word in the architecture community.
Speaker 2: I said this to a friend.
Speaker 1: They're like, I didn't know any any golf architect was
Speaker 1: young relatively speaking.
Speaker 2: They're young. They worked for Tom Fazio.
Speaker 1: They are evolved off of that tree, and they are
Speaker 1: building some really thought provoking stuff. Scottsdale National was really
Speaker 1: a cool course to see. Unbelievable the earthwork that they
Speaker 1: did to build that golf course and how real it looks.
Speaker 2: So I was quite excited.
Speaker 1: We went down and spent a day with Tim and
Speaker 1: David and talked a lot, and they've got some different
Speaker 1: opinions than many that come on this podcast, So it
Speaker 1: was it was fun to get a little bit different
Speaker 1: perspective on golf course architecture, and certainly a duo that
Speaker 1: I would be looking out for and excited about their
Speaker 1: future work as they get more and more jobs in
Speaker 1: the coming years. So without further ado, here is David
Speaker 1: Kahn and Tim Jackson.
Speaker 2: How would you guys describe your design style?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I haven't either. How would we describe a
Speaker 3: design style? I'll say this we we we I think
Speaker 3: our design style hopefully is we don't want to necessarily
Speaker 3: repeat what we've done in the past. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of golf course designers. You could
Speaker 3: you know, you could be air mailed into the middle
Speaker 3: of a golf course do a three sixty. You know
Speaker 3: who designed the golf course, just based upon the style,
Speaker 3: the features, the look. You know, when you're on a
Speaker 3: Pete Die golf course. There's a lot of great peed
Speaker 3: Die golf courses. You know you're on a peed Die
Speaker 3: golf course, right when you're on a you know, a
Speaker 3: Nicolas course. A lot of times you know you're on
Speaker 3: a Nicholas course or you know, a Palmer course or
Speaker 3: things of that nature. We we don't necessarily like to
Speaker 3: you know, we try to do different things quite honestly.
Speaker 3: You know, we want each project to be unique, not
Speaker 3: be a replication of what's been done in the past. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily designed style,
Speaker 3: but that's a thought that we have quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, not only is it important for the client
Speaker 4: to give them something different to help their product and
Speaker 4: business differentiate from competitors, but as a designer selfishly, it's
Speaker 4: more fun to explore new ideas. So, you know, I
Speaker 4: think we we have overarching philosophies that apply to every project,
Speaker 4: but the physical manifestation of those philosophies, we hope, are
Speaker 4: you know, varied to the point where it doesn't seem
Speaker 4: like we're just copy and pasting.
Speaker 2: Would you guys think.
Speaker 1: It's fair to say that you'd fall into the maximalism camp.
Speaker 3: What is the maximalism can?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of architects today identify themselves as minimalists,
Speaker 1: like where they want to move as a little dirt
Speaker 1: as possible and kind of let.
Speaker 4: The lay of the land be the I don't I
Speaker 4: don't know how the world out there defines maximalism, but
Speaker 4: I will say that we try very very hard to
Speaker 4: maximize the potential of the design in every project. So
Speaker 4: if that's the definition of it, then I'd say, without
Speaker 4: a doubt, where maximalism maximalists, that does not mean we
Speaker 4: look to move the most amount of dirt in every project.
Speaker 4: But if that's what's required to maximize the potential, then absolutely,
Speaker 4: we're not scared to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think that, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: very honest. There's not a lot of designers out there
Speaker 3: that can successfully take on a project where, in order
Speaker 3: to maximize the golf potential, say you need to move
Speaker 3: four or five million cubic yards of material and then
Speaker 3: create great golf by doing that, right, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of designers that can take a great piece of ground
Speaker 3: and design a great golf course. You know. I think
Speaker 3: once you know that you can take a piece of
Speaker 3: property that may be featureless, that may not have the
Speaker 3: greatest elements, the greatest starting elements, and create great golf,
Speaker 3: it gets pretty easy after that, quite honestly.
Speaker 1: So you think, you know, I think like conventional thought
Speaker 1: recently is like you need a great site to build
Speaker 1: great golf.
Speaker 2: Can you build great golf anywhere?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean they're different, they're different, you know, kind of
Speaker 4: vibes and results at the end of the day. But
Speaker 4: I think that if the desire is there from the
Speaker 4: client and if the funding is there, depending on what
Speaker 4: you're starting with at a certain point there is money
Speaker 4: that is required to build these things, then I don't
Speaker 4: think there are any excuses for not being able to
Speaker 4: create something spectacular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the.
Speaker 3: You always want to spend the client's money as efficiently
Speaker 3: and as responsibly as possible, right, but you also want
Speaker 3: to make sure that you achieve the client's goals. And
Speaker 3: you know, again there's a starting point and there's a
Speaker 3: desired end result. And if you have the experience to
Speaker 3: understand and know what it's going to take to get
Speaker 3: from point A to point B, and the client's willing
Speaker 3: to support that, there's no reason to hold back from that.
Speaker 3: In our opinion, you know, we we've not necessarily been
Speaker 3: blessed with the opportunity to work on a lot of
Speaker 3: amazing in sites natural sites for golf. In our careers.
Speaker 3: We've had to work on a number of projects, both
Speaker 3: when we were with Tom and as Jackson Cohn that
Speaker 3: required a lot of heavy moving, have a lot of
Speaker 3: heavy lifting to create the golf, essentially create the environment
Speaker 3: and kind of put the golf in it. I guess,
Speaker 3: you know, for for lack of a better term, and
Speaker 3: we feel that we've been you know, relatively successful with that.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, when you say Tom is Tom.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, So you know, in terms like
Speaker 1: I think like what are the misconceptions about moving dirt
Speaker 1: to create something? What?
Speaker 2: What do you guys think.
Speaker 1: Some in meeting with clients or you know what, or
Speaker 1: just general conversation.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think that I think that when
Speaker 3: you look about how golf is written about, and you
Speaker 3: look about at the golf writers that are kind of
Speaker 3: active today in golf, they have collectively a very narrow
Speaker 3: bandwidth on how they feel golf should be created, right,
Speaker 3: And I think that a lot of people read that
Speaker 3: and a lot of people feel that that's the way
Speaker 3: that golf should because they say that's the way the
Speaker 3: golf should be right. You know, the end result is
Speaker 3: really what matters. And I'll be honest, you know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of guys that we've encountered in our career,
Speaker 3: critics who are just aboring at the thought that we
Speaker 3: would take a piece of ground and move the amount
Speaker 3: of dirt that we do, and we could take them
Speaker 3: out there and they could never tell what was a
Speaker 3: cut or what was a fill. The whole key is
Speaker 3: you have to do it on a scale that you
Speaker 3: create believability in the end result, right, you know, I
Speaker 3: think that you know, we've been fortunate we were taught
Speaker 3: how to do that. You know, it's not something that
Speaker 3: I think that you you know, just instinctively know how
Speaker 3: to do. But again, you know, we had a lot
Speaker 3: of pieces of ground in our career that the expectations
Speaker 3: were very high as far as what the end result
Speaker 3: for golf was going to be, and the starting point
Speaker 3: was not that great.
Speaker 1: I think that's something, you know, having senior guys work
Speaker 1: at Scottsdale National the other course, like something that you know,
Speaker 1: when you think manufactured golf, you kind of like my
Speaker 1: mind goes to containment mounds and you get those like
Speaker 1: eight to ten foot containment mounds down the right or
Speaker 1: the left side, and you know, little mound here, something
Speaker 1: that kind of like what amaze me what you just
Speaker 1: said is making it look real and the scale of it.
Speaker 1: You know, can you talk about that, like what what
Speaker 1: have you guys learned to make stuff look real that
Speaker 1: is very manufactured you know in essence like it's completely created,
Speaker 1: but it looks like it's been there for a long time.
Speaker 4: So you know, in order to trick the human mind,
Speaker 4: it has to be built at a scale large enough
Speaker 4: where you can't immediately or ever perceive you know that
Speaker 4: dirt was actually moved at that immense scale. And what
Speaker 4: I mean by that is, you know, like to your point,
Speaker 4: the old kind of nineteen eighties shaping where it's just
Speaker 4: mounds left right of the golf hole. There you can
Speaker 4: clearly see the man made very rhythmic, very engineered slope.
Speaker 4: Clearly man touched that. And that doesn't en and up
Speaker 4: itself make it bad, but it's it's just striking to
Speaker 4: the eye. It's like, well, that's somebody built that. And
Speaker 4: and in our minds, and we learned a lot, you know,
Speaker 4: working with Tom and senior designers there. When you move dirt,
Speaker 4: when you have to move dirt, when you need to
Speaker 4: move dirt, move it at a scale large enough. And
Speaker 4: and what I mean by that is, don't just necessarily
Speaker 4: do it within one golf hole, have that cut, have
Speaker 4: that fill, you know, transition from one to another to
Speaker 4: a third, maybe a fourth golf hole. And when it's
Speaker 4: done at that large of a scale, it looks like
Speaker 4: a very natural landform. Obviously the shape and esthetic and
Speaker 4: you know the contouring of that movement has to be
Speaker 4: done in a very organic and natural way and not
Speaker 4: very rhythmic, like I said, not engineered. Constant planes, constant
Speaker 4: slopes are immediately scream you know, engineered. And like I said,
Speaker 4: I love Pete die work, and he did a lot
Speaker 4: of that angular, very sharp contouring, and it's it's awesome,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just not the style. I guess to
Speaker 4: go back to your first question of you know, what
Speaker 4: appeals to our eye, and that's something we did on
Speaker 4: the other course of Gustil National is really really large cuts,
Speaker 4: really really large fills, not not vertically but also horizontally.
Speaker 3: Well, I think too. I guess the most extinct way
Speaker 3: of saying is that you have to manufacture in a
Speaker 3: way that looks as natural as possible when it's all
Speaker 3: said and done right, and and a lot of that
Speaker 3: is how it's put back together. So you know, there's
Speaker 3: always the base movement that you're creating, the cuts, the fills,
Speaker 3: the elevations. But then what do you do with those
Speaker 3: those cuts and those fills and elevations when it's all
Speaker 3: said and done. What's the vegetation that goes back in?
Speaker 3: You know, what's the you know, the the rock worker
Speaker 3: and in the you know, in the essence Discustile National.
Speaker 3: You know, we had to blast the lake into the
Speaker 3: irrigation lake, you know, into the ground with I think
Speaker 3: was a sixty foot cut to the bottom of irrigation lake
Speaker 3: hit bedrock at eighteen inches eighteen inches right, So that
Speaker 3: was you know, fifty eight and a half feet of
Speaker 3: rock that needed to be excavated out of there. That
Speaker 3: rock was repurposed around the golf course and placed in
Speaker 3: a way that it actually added it and enhanced and
Speaker 3: made the environment look more natural than if we didn't
Speaker 3: have that. I mean, there's so many areas of Scotstill
Speaker 3: National that are so heavily manufactured and nobody knows they feel.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the bessest compliments I think we
Speaker 3: had from Rand Morris set is everyone's going to think,
Speaker 3: you guys had this amazing site for golf because the
Speaker 3: end result looks so real and it looks so nice,
Speaker 3: and it is real. I mean, it is real.
Speaker 4: It's just you know, you know, the interesting thing about
Speaker 4: all of rock out there was in our initial budget
Speaker 4: we had we were bringing in rock from offsite because
Speaker 4: we always wanted that look to kind of match the
Speaker 4: natural surroundings. We had no idea that we were sitting
Speaker 4: on solid bedrock. And so when we started making the
Speaker 4: cut for the lake and we found that mother earth
Speaker 4: right underneath there, eighteen inches down, and immediately we're like, well, stop,
Speaker 4: stop ordering the truckloads of rock to come in, and
Speaker 4: we have it all right here. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: we utilize that kind of happy accident and repurposed that
Speaker 4: all over the property to uh to kind of eminitize
Speaker 4: the landscape and you know, make it a believable landscape.
Speaker 4: And on the landscape architect pinnacle design that was involved
Speaker 4: in that project was equally as important to making that
Speaker 4: scene in that environment believable because we could have built
Speaker 4: all the cool landforms in the world. But if you
Speaker 4: top that, like Tim said, with the with the wrong
Speaker 4: vegetation or just kind of poor planting or really manufacture
Speaker 4: kind of we call it the bad hair transplant equally
Speaker 4: spacing equally sized plants, then it just it ruins the
Speaker 4: whole effort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, golf architecture likes to be considered an art, but
Speaker 1: what you just hit on is an interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: divergence from so many other forms. Like if you're a painter,
Speaker 1: you just you sit in your house and paint stuff
Speaker 1: and then people buy it and then maybe you start
Speaker 1: to do some custom commissions, right, like really successful painters
Speaker 1: though just paint stuff. But golf like you're you're always
Speaker 1: tied to what an owner, a developer, a client, a
Speaker 1: committee wants. So in a way, your your art form
Speaker 1: is somewhat constrained.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, you try to choose the projects I think
Speaker 3: where it's least constrained, hopefully, but there's considerations, there's always
Speaker 3: compromising considerations along the way. Right. You can't design in
Speaker 3: a bubble, you can't design in a vacuum. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's you know, we understand that many of the clubs
Speaker 3: that we work with now you know, existing clubs, you
Speaker 3: know there's members that are very passionate about their golf courses, right,
Speaker 3: and you have to, you know, you have to be
Speaker 3: able to take what they feel they want their golf
Speaker 3: course to be and you know, show them what you
Speaker 3: think the potential could be and then you try to
Speaker 3: bridge that gap a lot of times because there's a
Speaker 3: pretty big disconnected times as far as what that might
Speaker 3: be with kind of maximalism.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, in creating these environments. You know, maintenance,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think a lot of people assume
Speaker 1: if you move a lot of dirt then you're going
Speaker 1: to have a higher maintenance budget. Is that true?
Speaker 4: No, not at all. No, you may have a slightly
Speaker 4: higher construction cost maybe. I mean in the big scheme
Speaker 4: of things, when you're building a golf course, moving dirt
Speaker 4: is not a big line item blasting, you know, dealing
Speaker 4: with rock absolutely is, But just moving the dirt is
Speaker 4: not is not that expensive. It's again, it's what you
Speaker 4: put on top of it. How many square feet, how
Speaker 4: many acres of turf do you how many square feet
Speaker 4: acres of bunkers, how many square feed acres of greens?
Speaker 4: That's what matters is It doesn't matter if you found
Speaker 4: that site as is and you grasped it, and may
Speaker 4: you know that maintenance is pretty much the exact same
Speaker 4: as opposed to if you manufactured it. If you have
Speaker 4: the same amount of square footage of golf at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, it doesn't matter how you got there.
Speaker 4: The maintenance, the maintenance starts at that point forward. So
Speaker 4: it's it's it's independent. Yeah, it's part of the earthwork.
Speaker 3: A lot of it goes into how well golf course
Speaker 3: is constructed as far as what the maintenance requirements are.
Speaker 3: The follow right, and I'm going to give you a
Speaker 3: prime example between maximalism and minimalism with that. Okay, So
Speaker 3: you know, again, one of the things that we learned
Speaker 3: from Tom Fazio is that the infrastructure that you put
Speaker 3: in the ground supports which you do on top of that,
Speaker 3: and if you don't get the foundation right, you're going
Speaker 3: to have issues after the fact, right, So you know,
Speaker 3: we know, we feel like we know what it takes
Speaker 3: from an irrigation standpoint, from a drainage standpoint, the things
Speaker 3: that the members never see to be able to have
Speaker 3: a successful project. And we work with the golf course superintendents.
Speaker 3: My degree is in agronomy, it's not in landscape architecture, right,
Speaker 3: so I'm a turf fed So I'd love talking with
Speaker 3: those guys. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it affects
Speaker 3: what we do from a design standpoint. Sometimes we have
Speaker 3: a lot of conversations about maintenance and what that, what
Speaker 3: that means, but we always try to give them what
Speaker 3: they need to be successful to support the design. So
Speaker 3: there's a very well known architect who did a project
Speaker 3: out west and he wanted irrigation spacing in a desert environment,
Speaker 3: high desert environment that was going to create dry areas
Speaker 3: and wet areas because he didn't want everything perfectly green, right,
Speaker 3: minimalist designer, minimalist design I don't want perfect irrigation spacing
Speaker 3: because I want this browned out looking areas.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: No understanding of what that was going to do to
Speaker 3: the golf course superintendent when the members came to him
Speaker 3: and said, why does the golf course look this way? Right,
Speaker 3: the minimalist architect dictated the irrigation design in a way
Speaker 3: that was going to create so much more maintenance for
Speaker 3: the golf course superintendent because his guys were going to
Speaker 3: be out there on hoses, hand watering areas. Because the
Speaker 3: members would never have accepted that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We recognize the fact that we want to support the
Speaker 3: golf course superintendents of what they need to achieve the expectations.
Speaker 3: It's not always about us at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: We want to give them what they need. But there's
Speaker 3: a minimalist designer was his thought, and he was going
Speaker 3: to create far, far more maintenance for the superintendent. Was
Speaker 3: all said and done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, in to kind of oversimplify, you can
Speaker 4: put more money into the construction to then reduce maintenance
Speaker 4: needs moving forward. So you know, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 4: not the minimalism. It's absolutely maximalism. But you know that
Speaker 4: can be in any aspect of life, not just golf.
Speaker 4: You know, you can put it into your house, more sustainability.
Speaker 4: You can put solar on your roof. Well, that costs
Speaker 4: a lot, but look now you have no power bill
Speaker 4: moving forward.
Speaker 2: So there are.
Speaker 4: Ways you know, with the construction of the golf course
Speaker 4: with better irrigation system, you know, better spacing, better head control,
Speaker 4: all that stuff that costs an arm and a leg
Speaker 4: to put in upfront, but you know that that pays
Speaker 4: dividends in the long run.
Speaker 1: Well, I always, like everybody always like, oh good architecture
Speaker 1: costs more money, but like when you look at it
Speaker 1: from the design standpoint and building, it's something that's gonn't
Speaker 1: really sound.
Speaker 4: It's construction. Construction costs.
Speaker 1: It actually saves you a lot of money in the
Speaker 1: long run because if if it if it cuts your
Speaker 1: maintenance bill by one hundred thousand dollars for thirty years,
Speaker 1: So you're you're probably high fiving, you know about hey
Speaker 1: we save some money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I mean yeah, So it's you know, for
Speaker 3: us again, it's it's it's it's not Maximuslimbers. It's getting
Speaker 3: it right, you know, quite honestly. And you know, again,
Speaker 3: you know, hopefully working with clients, have the resources to
Speaker 3: be able to build something correctly.
Speaker 4: And getting it right for that client, and you know,
Speaker 4: good or bad it that's that's what we do. We
Speaker 4: work for a client. We're not We're not an artist
Speaker 4: just going in our basement and drawing on a canvas
Speaker 4: and saying I like it. It's that would be great,
Speaker 4: But we don't have that much money to just go
Speaker 4: and you know, buy hundreds of acres of land and
Speaker 4: just kind of fiddle around. So we are, at the
Speaker 4: end of the day working for somebody that has to
Speaker 4: meet some degree of a bottom line, and it's our
Speaker 4: responsibility and task to be able to maximize those opportunities
Speaker 4: with staying within that constraint in those realities.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, I think i'd love to hear
Speaker 1: who This is a question I love to ask architects,
Speaker 1: and I've been particularly interested with your guys's answer. Who's
Speaker 1: on your Mount Rushmore of golf architecture. So you get
Speaker 1: four spots, right, I want to hear who you guys
Speaker 1: is Mount Rushmore of golf architects.
Speaker 4: For me, Mike Strants would have the biggest head chiseled
Speaker 4: in the mountain. I'll have to think about it. I
Speaker 4: would put Pete Die up there as well. I tend
Speaker 4: to gravitate to the guys that break the mold and
Speaker 4: are risk takers, and probably half the population dislikes them
Speaker 4: and the other half of them. So I kind of
Speaker 4: like those polarizing figures, you know, the safe designers that
Speaker 4: go down the middle of the road and have a long,
Speaker 4: successful career. I just I don't you know, to me,
Speaker 4: they don't move the needle enough to kind of admire
Speaker 4: their talent and their courage.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, designs should be slightly provocative.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's my opinion that the best designs
Speaker 4: out there are some of the most controversial as well.
Speaker 4: I mean honestly, because again, if it's plain Jane, it
Speaker 4: may be good maybe you know, good aconomic conditions, It
Speaker 4: may be a cool environment, but if it's not really
Speaker 4: pushing buttons and making you think and question and stopping
Speaker 4: in your tracks, and it's just they think it's missing
Speaker 4: the mark. You know, strategies, getting getting the math of
Speaker 4: golf is very black and white to us. It's very straightforward.
Speaker 4: Once we know those numbers are correct, and we know
Speaker 4: a hazard wants to go here, and it wants to
Speaker 4: be about yay, big, yay, long, yey wide. You know,
Speaker 4: once you have that, that's where the fun begins. It's
Speaker 4: not like, hey, just go put a circle bunker there
Speaker 4: and call it a day. It's like, no, okay, we've
Speaker 4: positioned it correctly, so it's going to play.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Now, let's build the art. What are people going to
Speaker 4: look at and get excited about because you know, Tim
Speaker 4: has this kind of saying a lot. I'm surprised he
Speaker 4: hasn't said it. Yeah, and I'll probably butcher it. But
Speaker 4: you know, we stand on a golf tee or you know,
Speaker 4: a golf hole. The majority of golfers cannot even understand strategy.
Speaker 4: They don't it doesn't register, and then the few that
Speaker 4: actually do understand it, a very small percentage of them
Speaker 4: can even execute. So now you're looking at let's just
Speaker 4: call it, ninety five percent of golfers in the world
Speaker 4: are literally just there enjoying the scene and trying to
Speaker 4: hit a golf ball that they can find the next shot. So,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't put all effort into the beauty.
Speaker 4: We put equal effort into getting the math right, getting
Speaker 4: the strategy, the options right, and then really focusing on
Speaker 4: the art because that's what people engage with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to get back to the Mount Rushmore thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not letting you off the hook that easy, but
Speaker 1: it's something you talked about that I want to touch
Speaker 1: on while we're here. You talked about having to push
Speaker 1: the bounties, having to build provocative stuff. What's an example
Speaker 1: of something that you built that was particularly provocative.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that you know, for us, probably the
Speaker 3: prime example is the you know, the bad little Ninus
Speaker 3: Constan National. You know, the concept behind it, you know, initially,
Speaker 3: you know, for mister Parsons was to create, you know,
Speaker 3: essentially a course that could be set up is the
Speaker 3: hardest part three course in the world, which doesn't sound
Speaker 3: like a lot of fun right in and of itself,
Speaker 3: but when you're out there and it's set up on
Speaker 3: Fridays on challenge days and you see members and their
Speaker 3: guests having just the most amazing time, you know, watching
Speaker 3: a guy you know hit it to you know, fifteen
Speaker 3: feet and walk off a green with a twelve. You know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound fun, but it is, It really is
Speaker 3: because of the challenge. It's there. The hardest part for us,
Speaker 3: and Dave talks about the math of golf course architecture
Speaker 3: golf course design was finding the margin between almost impossible
Speaker 3: and impossible on the on the bad Little nine, because
Speaker 3: impossible is not fun, but almost impossible is fun in
Speaker 3: that particular environment. Right, So, and you know, and we
Speaker 3: took a lot of heat for this when we when
Speaker 3: we talked about this from certain components of the Minimalist
Speaker 3: architecture group. You know, we have a young man that
Speaker 3: works for us, and he had a video game that
Speaker 3: he could build basically golf in and so he built
Speaker 3: the Bad Little Nine in this golf game and just
Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds of thousands of shots were hit to
Speaker 3: try to find those margins between impossible and almost impossible.
Speaker 3: Now it's a you know, it's not the classic way
Speaker 3: of designing golf. It's using you know, new technologies and tools,
Speaker 3: but it worked. It worked in the end results you know,
Speaker 3: kind of kind of showed that.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's actually a you know, a way
Speaker 1: forward sometimes for designer is using these video games.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's effective?
Speaker 1: Like means for if you're you know, building a course,
Speaker 1: like trying doing that and trying it out before you
Speaker 1: put it into the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is, and it is for two reasons. One
Speaker 4: and probably the most important, is to be able to
Speaker 4: communicate to an owner or a client or a group
Speaker 4: of owners what.
Speaker 1: The vision is.
Speaker 4: It's it's you could say a thousand words to an
Speaker 4: owner explaining your vision and they it's not going to register.
Speaker 4: But if you show them a picture, if you show
Speaker 4: them a video of show them a three D space,
Speaker 4: they're gonna they're gonna get it. So it's very valuable
Speaker 4: from that respect. But the other one is if you
Speaker 4: truly are trying to create something different that there are
Speaker 4: no case studies for you can't go step on properties
Speaker 4: and analyze the contouring and the spaces to then all right,
Speaker 4: we're gonna you know, glean some information here and then
Speaker 4: go apply it in a new way. When you're when
Speaker 4: you're searching for that needle in the haystack of something different,
Speaker 4: experimenting and exploring that in a in a in a
Speaker 4: virtual space. It's pretty much the only way you can
Speaker 4: do it. And and thankfully we live in a in
Speaker 4: a time where the physics of a video game are
Speaker 4: real and so you know, it wasn't just guessing that
Speaker 4: slopes needed to be certain certain severities and and spaces
Speaker 4: need to be a certain size to be able to
Speaker 4: make those shots work. It was it was proving it
Speaker 4: out for us. And then we took that new math
Speaker 4: and we're able to bring that in the dirt and
Speaker 4: make it come real.
Speaker 3: And it still just a foundation though too. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, you whether it's in a video game, whether
Speaker 3: it's a plan on a desk, you need to do
Speaker 3: it in the dirt, and you need to do it
Speaker 3: in the field. But you have to have a starting point, right,
Speaker 3: And for many architects the starting point is the you know,
Speaker 3: the plan that they draw all the grading plan that's
Speaker 3: on a piece of paper. You give it to the
Speaker 3: contractor they got out there and they stake it out
Speaker 3: and they start doing cut some fils or whatever it
Speaker 3: may be. This was just different. Our starting point was
Speaker 3: was this video game, and we still made adjustments, we
Speaker 3: still modified it in the dirt. We still spend a
Speaker 3: ton of time out there making sure that it looked
Speaker 3: the way we wanted to look and have played the
Speaker 3: way that we wanted it to play. But it was
Speaker 3: just a different way of going about it. But we
Speaker 3: didn't again, we didn't. We wanted to make sure we
Speaker 3: got it right. You know, when we told Bob about
Speaker 3: the concept, you know, we kind of pitched it to him. Bob,
Speaker 3: you know it's it's gonna be so tough if a member,
Speaker 3: you know, shoots power or better, you know, they're gonna
Speaker 3: get free dues for a year. He's like a little
Speaker 3: little much on that one, guys, right, So you know
Speaker 3: it's a thousand dollars on Friday, and he looked at
Speaker 3: his boys. I don't want to write a lot of
Speaker 3: thousand dollars checks, right.
Speaker 2: But you still have to.
Speaker 3: You still have to have it be you know, the
Speaker 3: goal is you have hope it's achievable, and it is
Speaker 3: and some day someone will do it. Some days no
Speaker 3: one's done it yet when it's been set up the
Speaker 3: way it's supposed to be set up properly. But some
Speaker 3: day someone will do it because the opportunity is there.
Speaker 3: Because we got the math right, just have.
Speaker 1: To be kind of perfect for you throw no hitter
Speaker 1: pretty much.
Speaker 2: He had.
Speaker 4: He had a great phrase to me once. He's like,
Speaker 4: you know, some somebody will do it one time and
Speaker 4: we'll pay up. And if that happens the next time,
Speaker 4: I just I won't cut a hole on the ninth grade.
Speaker 4: No one will do it again.
Speaker 1: We you know, it's obviously the bat will dine. And
Speaker 1: I think like other short courses are in similar veins,
Speaker 1: like you see a lot bigger, more daring design that
Speaker 1: pushes boundaries. What is it about par three courses that
Speaker 1: uh play golfers accept those bound is being pushed that
Speaker 1: they then turn around and reject them on a standard
Speaker 1: golf course.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it is about it, but there's
Speaker 4: a stigma, especially in this country, about eighteen holes, you know,
Speaker 4: par seventy two seventy two hundred yards or I don't
Speaker 4: want to play. It's it's an unfortunate truth all too often,
Speaker 4: and I think I think the exact opposite is viewed
Speaker 4: for par three courses. They almost undervalue them and think
Speaker 4: it's that's not real golf, So they don't really care
Speaker 4: if you're kind of breaking the mold there, and I hope,
Speaker 4: I hope that we're in a transition where that type
Speaker 4: of creativity and different is going to be more accepted
Speaker 4: in let's call it more you know, a big boy golf,
Speaker 4: you know, because at the end of the day, we're
Speaker 4: all I think, we're all playing golf to enjoy it
Speaker 4: and have fun. But there's just something about the golfer
Speaker 4: that just loves loves that misery and so anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 4: I just think it's I think part three courses is
Speaker 4: just not really regarded as real golf courses, so they
Speaker 4: just kind of let its lie, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Know, And I think that it goes back to what
Speaker 3: they've mentioned too. I mean, we're most of the projects
Speaker 3: they work on, we're beholden to a membership, we're beholding
Speaker 3: to an owner and and you know, memberships as a
Speaker 3: whole are pretty risk averse as far as that goes.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure you know you know that and understand
Speaker 3: that and appreciate that, and we certainly do, you know,
Speaker 3: working on a project in Louisiana right now, and it's
Speaker 3: it's just for a couple of brothers, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's gonna end up being probably you don't know, ten
Speaker 3: eleven twelve greens whatever it is, and it's on about
Speaker 3: thirty to thirty five acres of land and all interacted.
Speaker 4: Fairways seventy acres as a fairways.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, but the but the point being is like
Speaker 3: we're having so much fun, so much fun down there
Speaker 3: because like you throw the rules out, you know, and
Speaker 3: they want something that is stunning. They want something that
Speaker 3: they can take their buddies out there and you know,
Speaker 3: and have fun with and and brag about and you
Speaker 3: know to some extent. And but you can you can
Speaker 3: just be so much more creative in that type of environment.
Speaker 3: You can be so much more creative because I think
Speaker 3: the you know, the expectation is a little bit different.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're when you're working on a say
Speaker 3: a top hundred club and you're doing a master plan.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a mold that's kind of expected to
Speaker 3: be fit as far as what you're going to do.
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of clubs that are going to
Speaker 3: kind of hit the reset button and lets you blow
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You may feel, you may know in your heart at
Speaker 3: the end of the day that if you had that opportunity,
Speaker 3: you feel like there be it might be a better
Speaker 3: golf course there, right, but you know, it just comes
Speaker 3: down to whether or not you can ever actually get
Speaker 3: to that point because they are so risk adverse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree, it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting with with clubs and you know, you guys have
Speaker 1: worked with clubs committees, You've worked for single owners like
Speaker 1: Bob Parsons, like I think everybody has seen as commercials
Speaker 1: PHG and obviously a brash guy you worked with these
Speaker 1: you're working with these brothers, you know, I guess you
Speaker 1: know in your experience, is there different setups that work
Speaker 1: better in certain cases? Is there different you know, are
Speaker 1: there personality traits that you notice with you know, owners
Speaker 1: that you know kind of is it hands off better,
Speaker 1: very involved better? Like is there you know situations that
Speaker 1: promote you know, better work.
Speaker 4: I'll answer my opinion without a doubt. A dictator is
Speaker 4: the best, even even a dictator with a bad attitude
Speaker 4: I would take personally over at committee and and and
Speaker 4: if we're being just truly honest, I mean a dictator
Speaker 4: that's hands off, I mean, you know, if if they
Speaker 4: feel they have hired a knowledgeable, talented person or team
Speaker 4: let that talented person or team do their work. And
Speaker 4: you know, I think I think from a creator standpoint,
Speaker 4: the experts in the field, in any field excel when
Speaker 4: left to do their work.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll, you know, we we it's been kind
Speaker 3: of across the board, right in my opinion, NPCC. We
Speaker 3: had a great group of guys that we worked with there,
Speaker 3: that we were fortunate to work with there, that were
Speaker 3: very supportive. You know, what we felt we wanted to
Speaker 3: do from a design standpoint, and what we wanted to
Speaker 3: do from a design standpoint was very different from the
Speaker 3: golf course that they had and the members played, and
Speaker 3: and and so we had a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: we it was it was a it was a good experience.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, they they just wanted the best
Speaker 3: golf that they could have. And we've had other clubs
Speaker 3: that we work with that wring their hands over whether
Speaker 3: that nose in the bunker is going to be two
Speaker 3: feet this way or two feet that way. It's just
Speaker 3: it's not a lot of fun when you're you know,
Speaker 3: when you're kind of going through that process, and and
Speaker 3: so you know, it's it's certainly more the more freedom
Speaker 3: that we have as designers. I think in any not
Speaker 3: just golf course architecture, golf course design, I think any designer,
Speaker 3: the more freedom they have that feel, the better result
Speaker 3: they feel they can produce. Again, if the client wants
Speaker 3: what he feels, they have to offer, right and so
Speaker 3: it's you know it, it's pretty rare though, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean that's the lesser condition when you have those opportunities.
Speaker 3: In this project in Louisiana, for example, is just it's
Speaker 3: you know, right down the right down the hammer. The
Speaker 3: guys are great and they're just like you guys give
Speaker 3: us the most amazing golf that we can possibly have
Speaker 3: on this property, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk you know, with NPCC obviously, anybody
Speaker 1: that you know, Monterey Peninsula Country Club. It's it's right
Speaker 1: next to Cyprus, It's right next to Pebble Beach, so
Speaker 1: you know, you know your neighbors, you know where it is.
Speaker 1: It's right on the right on the Pacific Ocean. You know,
Speaker 1: creating in that environment versus creating say in Scottsdale, like
Speaker 1: where you had a very flat desert site. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of it was graded out for home so
Speaker 1: it was dead flat, you know, to talk about creating
Speaker 1: in environment that's already like very beautiful and aesthetically pleasing,
Speaker 1: versus creating from kind of almost nothing.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I mean, obviously the Monori Peninsula is
Speaker 3: one of the most beautiful places on the face Earth, right,
Speaker 3: So I mean, you know, you're again your starting point
Speaker 3: is relatively strong. You know, NPCC, you know Seth Rainer
Speaker 3: routed it and then you know, really you know, passed
Speaker 3: away before any detail work was from design standpoint, and
Speaker 3: the club doesn't have you know, a tremendous history on
Speaker 3: how they pretty much got from that routing to the
Speaker 3: golf course they played right, and they've they've tried over
Speaker 3: the years to try to you know, kind of figure
Speaker 3: that out to varying degrees of success. But you know,
Speaker 3: we we actually have you know, plans where we were
Speaker 3: rerouting the golf course at NPCC. They have the the
Speaker 3: Point Joe Range and you know, there's five acres of
Speaker 3: land down at the ocean, like you guys have a
Speaker 3: practice facility up here. But we couldn't find better golf
Speaker 3: quite honestly, right, So we we kind of fell back,
Speaker 3: you know, on Rainer's routing, but it was you know,
Speaker 3: it was a complete re detailing of every golful elevations,
Speaker 3: you know, green contours' locations, and really, you know, there
Speaker 3: wasn't any you know, in that instance, any Seth Rayner
Speaker 3: in NPCC other than the routing, right as much as that,
Speaker 3: I guess is a calling card or an identifiable characteristic
Speaker 3: from a design standpoint, and and so you know, for
Speaker 3: us it was it was relatively easy, I think, and
Speaker 3: maybe Dave can you know, maybe he doesn't feel that way,
Speaker 3: but when we like toured the golf course, when we
Speaker 3: were asked to come up and take a look at it,
Speaker 3: it was like we it didn't take us long to figure.
Speaker 4: Out what we thought. It just started appearing in the
Speaker 4: head right away.
Speaker 3: Right, and and you know, and they had, you know,
Speaker 3: again they had they had very identifiable goals. They had
Speaker 3: to reduce the amount of turf grass that they were irrigating.
Speaker 3: There's a finite amount of water on the Moner Ray Pententsul.
Speaker 3: The seven courses share essentially a certain allotment, and there's
Speaker 3: some years where hey, if the water runs out, there's
Speaker 3: no more water, right, so every square foot of turf grass,
Speaker 3: you know, was important to them as far as much
Speaker 3: they had out there and how they were going to operate,
Speaker 3: and it's very expensive water Coachella Valley. You know, the
Speaker 3: the aquaford that underlays that is massive, and you know
Speaker 3: the golf courses in the Coachella Valley. Basically for an
Speaker 3: acre foot of water spent about I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: eighty or one hundred dollars. It's a replenishment fee for
Speaker 3: three hundred and twenty five thousand gallons of water. That
Speaker 3: same amount of water on the Minory Peninsula costs over
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars. So you know, it was really critical
Speaker 3: for them that you know, that money was well spent.
Speaker 3: They had a great golf course, but it was going
Speaker 3: to be sustainable for them moving forward. So for us,
Speaker 3: that meant taking the areas that we took turf grass
Speaker 3: away within what we did from a design standpoint and
Speaker 3: making it a positive not a negative. And you know,
Speaker 3: for us it was like, hey, this is the dune's course, right,
Speaker 3: let's let's create more dunes, right, And a lot of
Speaker 3: it's manufactured. It really is. But again, when you go
Speaker 3: out there and you play the golf course, not a
Speaker 3: lot of people would know that if they didn't know
Speaker 3: the story if they weren't told. So it was taking
Speaker 3: a need that the club had, making it an opportunity,
Speaker 3: you know, with all within all the other redtailing that
Speaker 3: we did from a golf design standpoint, but to actually
Speaker 3: enhance that environment and just you know, further separated from
Speaker 3: the shore course that was like a really really strong
Speaker 3: expectation from the club is that the shore course that
Speaker 3: Mike stranded, which is just amazing and just a tremendous
Speaker 3: golf course, and I know Dave's a big fan as well,
Speaker 3: but they wanted something completely different. They wanted two distinctly
Speaker 3: different designs and that was important to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's I vividly remember the first time after touring
Speaker 4: the property, I kind of felt jipped and I turned
Speaker 4: Tim on like the dunes course, like we're the f
Speaker 4: for the dunes. We didn't see any dunes. So that's like,
Speaker 4: you know, so right away it's like we gotta we
Speaker 4: got to create dunes, you know, and and again do
Speaker 4: them at a scale big enough and believable enough. And
Speaker 4: we had great templates, you know, right along that stretch
Speaker 4: of the seventeen mile drive to kind of inspire us
Speaker 4: of how to create them, because they have to fit.
Speaker 4: If you build dunes that look out of place there
Speaker 4: that is a major eye sore. So again the same
Speaker 4: same landscape architect Pinnacle Design helped out kind of vegetating
Speaker 4: on top of the landforms that we created, you know.
Speaker 2: And and it was like back.
Speaker 1: Of nine, that's a created dune, right.
Speaker 4: That one was was there was natural, okay, but what
Speaker 4: we did it was it was severely overgrown. I mean
Speaker 4: we cleaned it out and kind of made it, you
Speaker 4: know a little bit more presentable. The uh, you know
Speaker 4: the one off of the tea on eleven was there
Speaker 4: really twelve and thirteen where where the and and some
Speaker 4: of fifteen around the tees where that's where kind of
Speaker 4: the heavy lifting was done to kind of make more
Speaker 4: more length of dune, more holes that ran through the
Speaker 4: dune environment.
Speaker 1: In that area before was a little bit more subtle
Speaker 1: and kind of wavy, if you would say. And then
Speaker 1: it's creating more of that big dune scape that you
Speaker 1: saw in just little pockets around the court.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there were there were little pockets. And now it
Speaker 4: goes from nine through the teas on seventeen. So I
Speaker 4: mean there's a there's a good chunk of the golf
Speaker 4: course that meanders through this dune environment and onto the
Speaker 4: coast on on the fourteenth hole, and so it was
Speaker 4: it was a really you know, we felt much needed
Speaker 4: detail to kind of you know, make the make the
Speaker 4: course fit its.
Speaker 2: Name with U.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody like me who big admirer of Golden
Speaker 1: Age design, big Seth Rainer fan. You know, I look
Speaker 1: at the dunes course and you know, immediately I would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this should be restored Seth Rainer on
Speaker 1: on the coast. But just you know, this is not
Speaker 1: about that, but more so the question, in your guys' opinion,
Speaker 1: are too many courses restored that should be renovated?
Speaker 4: I you know, the simple answer is probably yes. But
Speaker 4: I mean we don't have enough personal experience to kind
Speaker 4: of know what went into other other projects to really,
Speaker 4: you know, make a valid, truthful comment on that. But
Speaker 4: I think a lot of times clubs. You know, something
Speaker 4: we did at MPCC, we asked him right off the bat,
Speaker 4: do you want this to be a restoration?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Well that came from the club like, no, we want
Speaker 4: the best course possible.
Speaker 1: Exactly like anybody that ever had an issue with it,
Speaker 1: Like the club bade the decision.
Speaker 2: Right, have they hired you guys to renovate?
Speaker 3: Well, here's the key to though, right, I mean in Man,
Speaker 3: so many times like there was no rainhole tale to
Speaker 3: the golf holes as well. Right, he passed, he ro
Speaker 3: out of the golf course and he passed away. Right.
Speaker 3: So anyone that would come in, you know, the architect
Speaker 3: that was there in the nineteen ninety five restoration or project,
Speaker 3: you know, said he was doing a Seth Rayner type
Speaker 3: of golf course, right, and you played that golf course,
Speaker 3: You're like, no, that is his golf course. Because you
Speaker 3: could go see that golf course one hundred other different
Speaker 3: places and they kind of looks the same, right, you know,
Speaker 3: if anyone would ever and this is kind of interesting
Speaker 3: when you're doing it. We've only been asked to do
Speaker 3: one restoration as Jackson cind Design. We restored sunny Lands,
Speaker 3: which was Dick Wilson's project for Walter Annenberg in Rancha Morage, California.
Speaker 3: And it's an amazing property and it has this amazing
Speaker 3: history in the Annenbergs were incredible people and what it's
Speaker 3: transformed into is just this, you know, really really cool.
Speaker 3: The museum museum essentially so they wanted a museum quality restoration, right,
Speaker 3: so at sunny Lands, and you know, Dick Wilson passed
Speaker 3: away in nineteen sixty five. I was born in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy four. Day was born in seventy seventy nine, right,
Speaker 3: So I mean he was long gone before we came
Speaker 3: into this world. And so you always go back, now, Okay,
Speaker 3: you research what can we find, right, aerial photography, old plans, notes,
Speaker 3: green sketches, whatever it may be. And there was really
Speaker 3: a dearth of information on sunny Lands. There wasn't a
Speaker 3: whole lot there. Robert von Hagey had inherited Dick Wilson's
Speaker 3: design firm essentially, and all you know, he had a
Speaker 3: fire in his office in Texas in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 3: and a lot of that history was lost. Right, So
Speaker 3: we found like one plan routing plan number two. We
Speaker 3: found some old aerial photography from you know, Riverside County,
Speaker 3: and we found the old golf course superintendent Tony Kuwahar,
Speaker 3: who was ninety one years old and still thinking care
Speaker 3: of a golf course. And that was all we really
Speaker 3: had to go off of, right to do this museum
Speaker 3: quality restoration. We went and looked at three courses that
Speaker 3: we thought were kind of the most original Dick Wilson
Speaker 3: designs that were still left. But we had to make
Speaker 3: a lot of assumptions, right, We had to design in
Speaker 3: the style of Dick Wilson as opposed to a true restoration.
Speaker 3: So many times when I think golf course designers say
Speaker 3: they're doing a restoration, they don't. They don't really restore
Speaker 3: exactly what was there, nor could they quite honestly, right,
Speaker 3: And if anyone would go back to one of our
Speaker 3: projects and say, hey, we found a Jackson con design
Speaker 3: plan for whatever project it is, and the golf course
Speaker 3: that's there today is not that we wouldn't expect it
Speaker 3: to be, because we make so many changes in the field, right,
Speaker 3: We make so many adjustments, and you have to You can't.
Speaker 3: You can't draw something on paper and have it turn
Speaker 3: out nearly as good as being out there in the
Speaker 3: field with the shapers and making those adjustments. So to me,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, you know, all right, well, if
Speaker 3: they go back to the plans, well, who's to say
Speaker 3: that those architects didn't make those adjustments in the field
Speaker 3: that you know, And if you're going back to a planner.
Speaker 3: You're really to an a restoration. When you're looking at
Speaker 3: an aerial photograph, you're looking at it two dimensionally, right,
Speaker 3: there's no third dimension in that, right, So there's so
Speaker 3: much assumption that goes back into it. To me, we don't,
Speaker 3: you know. And if a client comes to us and says,
Speaker 3: we want you guys to do a restoration, We're like,
Speaker 3: we're not your guys, right, And we try to be
Speaker 3: very honest about that. Now it's sunny Lands. You know,
Speaker 3: we were young designers, we were just starting. It was
Speaker 3: a great opportunity for We had fun doing it, we
Speaker 3: really did, and we did it as faithfully as we could.
Speaker 3: We had to write one hundred and ten page paper
Speaker 3: on how we were going to restore nine holes of
Speaker 3: golf that were built in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Right. It's yeah, I think like people think because you
Speaker 1: get the plans, that's all we have, the sketches. But
Speaker 1: it's like anything like I can't imagine somebody wrote. You know,
Speaker 1: bands write a song and it's perfect right away, right,
Speaker 1: Like they play the song over and over and over
Speaker 1: again and make little tweaks to, you know, little parts
Speaker 1: of the song lyric here, you know, you know, note here.
Speaker 3: Whatever you would say, right, and I wouldn't say.
Speaker 1: It's like the same thing with the green, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: we like the green here, but it might be you
Speaker 1: know this, this might be a little harsh. Right.
Speaker 4: Even if you stumbled on the most intricate plans, the
Speaker 4: most detailed plans that as built plans, photos, three D models,
Speaker 4: you still have to ask yourself, is that the best
Speaker 4: it can be?
Speaker 1: And I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I know we ask that to ourselves and of our clients,
Speaker 4: but I don't know if other architects asked that to
Speaker 4: their clients. I don't know. So so to answer your
Speaker 4: first question from minutes ago, you know, I don't. My
Speaker 4: hunch is that too many courses are being restored that
Speaker 4: could be better. But I don't know the ins and
Speaker 4: outs of every decision.
Speaker 3: Well, and I do think there are certain golf courses
Speaker 3: that you know, historically for whatever reason, I mean, hey,
Speaker 3: they they probably should be restored, right, you know, the
Speaker 3: question is who's going to do it and how faithful
Speaker 3: are they going to be? You know, there's there's been
Speaker 3: you know, some courses in you know, I live in
Speaker 3: southern California, that have in relatively recent history been quote
Speaker 3: unquote restored. Right, And you go out there and look
Speaker 3: at it, and you look at you know, all the
Speaker 3: information that's available, and you're like, ah, I mean kind
Speaker 3: of right, but not necessarily faithfully right. And it's hard
Speaker 3: right every designer like, we're we're all biased, whether we
Speaker 3: admit it or not. Right, I mean, we see things
Speaker 3: a certain way. You know, even when we restored Honey Lens,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you know it was we were
Speaker 3: doing our best.
Speaker 4: They could have ten different architects with the same information
Speaker 4: restore the same course, and you're going to get ten
Speaker 4: variations of that. And that's not a bad thing. But
Speaker 4: that's the truth because you because we're not.
Speaker 1: Sting a course from nineteen twenty and if we dog
Speaker 1: this is what everybody struggles with, is like, well should
Speaker 1: I keep leave the bunker here? But the intent was
Speaker 1: for that to be off the tee and I could
Speaker 1: move it thirty yards up into this other hill and
Speaker 1: you have it, you.
Speaker 4: Know, And if you could incarnate Dick Wilson and bring
Speaker 4: him back in twenty ten and do that restoration, he
Speaker 4: would have a different iteration of it. I guarantee I
Speaker 4: don't know how it would vary, but it would. It's
Speaker 4: human nature.
Speaker 1: I think this like I think restoration. I think the
Speaker 1: boom of restoration. I don't think there's that many great
Speaker 1: restoration opportunities anymore. I think the big next wave is renovation,
Speaker 1: with a lot of courses coming like that real in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, reimagining these golf courses, reimagining even older courses,
Speaker 1: like some you know, Golden age courses that maybe it
Speaker 1: was Tom Bendolo. No offense, I'm not trying to drive
Speaker 1: by Tom Bendelo, but you know we've got this Tom
Speaker 1: Bendolo course. Like what can we do reimagine this? You know?
Speaker 1: With like the housing golf courses, do you have any
Speaker 1: idea create you know, ideas around like how do you
Speaker 1: make a golf course with houses and water on Hou's
Speaker 1: on one side, water on the other, How do you
Speaker 1: make How would you reimagine those?
Speaker 2: Do you do?
Speaker 1: You have you thought that at all? Is it obviously
Speaker 1: site specific? Site specific, but like just generally well.
Speaker 3: It you know it it is so site specific. I
Speaker 3: mean I'll say this, I mean, you know, we're fortunate
Speaker 3: to be in a position and this is one of
Speaker 3: the things mister Fasio taught us, and this is one
Speaker 3: of the things he told us specifically when we started
Speaker 3: Jackson cond Design was make sure you guys choose your
Speaker 3: clients as much as they choose you, right. And if
Speaker 3: you're able to do that, you know you're able to
Speaker 3: involve yourself in projects that are engaging, to hold your
Speaker 3: interest and that you think you can have a positive
Speaker 3: outcome on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if we would be the
Speaker 3: guys to look at a Tom Benda Loo golf course
Speaker 3: with houses on one side, water or another and come
Speaker 3: up with something that we feel that we would, you know,
Speaker 3: be happy with the end result. Right. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you really think about it, when you really think
Speaker 3: about the true amount of quality, great courses in the
Speaker 3: United States of America versus how much banal architecture is
Speaker 3: out there. Man, there's there's there's not a lot of truly, truly,
Speaker 3: truly great stuff. And I think there's more of it
Speaker 3: now over this last twenty five years, with a lot
Speaker 3: of courses that have been built.
Speaker 2: I'd be remiss.
Speaker 1: You know. I think most people know Bob Parsons. He's
Speaker 1: a brash personality, obviously extraordinarily successful businessman, you know, was
Speaker 1: in the military. Also, you know, he got into golf.
Speaker 1: He loves golf, and he's got a golf equipment company,
Speaker 1: and he decided to you know, build his golf paradise effectively.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I'm really curious how it was
Speaker 1: working with Bob Parsons, just because you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people probably see the commercials think okay,
Speaker 1: but like what was the experience like for you guys
Speaker 1: working with him as a as an owner?
Speaker 4: The wonderful for the most part, for all the part. Actually,
Speaker 4: you know, he was a dream client to be frank,
Speaker 4: you know, never talked about budget once only one of
Speaker 4: the best. Was very interested in our ideas, but very
Speaker 4: quick to say if he wasn't on board with those ideas,
Speaker 4: which completely fair. You know, he's a bit of a
Speaker 4: wild card, so we were always on eggshells at times.
Speaker 4: But you know, there was a mutual trust gained you know,
Speaker 4: over time, and and he allowed us to spread our
Speaker 4: wings and maximize the opportunity for him on that property. So,
Speaker 4: you know, being able to have an unlimited budget is awesome,
Speaker 4: but being able to have unlimited creativity is way better.
Speaker 4: If you have unlimited creativity in a small budget, you
Speaker 4: can still create awesome golf. Obviously, the budget was was
Speaker 4: so big because of the starting point and his expectations.
Speaker 4: I mean they were worlds apart. We started with a
Speaker 4: dirt parking lot with not one piece of vegetation, and
Speaker 4: so you know, his expectation of what was built that
Speaker 4: required a certain amount of capital. So you know, thankfully,
Speaker 4: you know, he never once questioned or whittled down our
Speaker 4: vision to you know, meet some some desired number, and
Speaker 4: he just let us. He let us go and and
Speaker 4: really didn't want to see it until we could surprise
Speaker 4: him at the end.
Speaker 1: What's an example of having unlimited creativity at the golf
Speaker 1: at Scottsdale National that like in for most people obviously
Speaker 1: will never see this golf course, but like if you
Speaker 1: could explain like what you were able to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, because you had this unlimited freedom of creativit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, mean the surface is simply just you know, not micromanaging,
Speaker 4: not saying, you know, you can't put any bunkers at
Speaker 4: two hundred and twenty yards, or I don't want anything
Speaker 4: on the right side of the golf hole, or you know,
Speaker 4: it's just kind of armchair architecting, which which we get
Speaker 4: a lot in most all.
Speaker 3: Of our projects.
Speaker 4: It's it's the nature of the business, especially in the
Speaker 4: renovation world, where there's already you know, a golf course
Speaker 4: and an expectation and you're changing it. Even if you're
Speaker 4: changing it for the better, it's change, right, you know.
Speaker 4: So so not having that that that leash, you know,
Speaker 4: allowed us to explore ideas of how we were going
Speaker 4: to achieve his goals for the project and and do
Speaker 4: some bold and brash things to meet his personality. So
Speaker 4: you know, nine foot false false fronts on the fifth
Speaker 4: Green for example, which is also twenty two thousand square feet,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of sand, a lot of a
Speaker 4: lot of strategic impactful sand, a lot of visual sand.
Speaker 4: You know, just the boldness of of the golf, the
Speaker 4: strength at times of the visuals. You know, the blasting
Speaker 4: that we had to do. We had to do seventy
Speaker 4: five plus dynamite blasts to build that thing. And that
Speaker 4: was never a topic of conversation with him. It's like,
Speaker 4: you got you do it, do what you need to do.
Speaker 4: So you know that that is an incredible opportunity where
Speaker 4: there was really if we felt it was the best idea,
Speaker 4: and we knew how to make it happen. We went
Speaker 4: and made it happen, and versus having to go back
Speaker 4: to a committee and say, hey, we have this thought,
Speaker 4: what do you think of this? And then it's it's
Speaker 4: a pow wow for two weeks and then you know,
Speaker 4: it just gets watered down or or not done at all,
Speaker 4: or or maybe it does happen. But with Bob it
Speaker 4: was it was not the idea.
Speaker 1: Will change, you know, once there's conversation, you know, almost
Speaker 1: like when it's just say hey, we're going to do this,
Speaker 1: where it becomes your vision, and like you know, when
Speaker 1: there's collaboration, collaboration can make things better, absolutely, but it
Speaker 1: also can divert it and send it down some trail
Speaker 1: that it just basically takes an idea and moves in
Speaker 1: a different direction.
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, and Bob had some overarching goals
Speaker 3: for for the golf it's costal, national, and he expressed
Speaker 3: those to us very clearly as far as what he wanted.
Speaker 3: But then you know, once we had those marching orders,
Speaker 3: i mean, everything after that was really kind of left
Speaker 3: to our devices to achieve that.
Speaker 4: For him, there were very broad strokes and those were
Speaker 4: our that was our bible, and and every decision we
Speaker 4: made needed to kind of fall into one of those buckets.
Speaker 4: But they were very freeing buckets in order we could
Speaker 4: have executed him in a in a myriad of ways.
Speaker 3: And well, and Bob, you know, he does have a
Speaker 3: brash personality, but he's actually one of the most charitable
Speaker 3: people and has a heart of gold and wouldn't want
Speaker 3: anybody know that. But he's actually he's actually a great
Speaker 3: human being. He really is. But we were, you know,
Speaker 3: we were at that stage in our careers. We could
Speaker 3: not have asked for a better owner or a better opportunity,
Speaker 3: quite frankly, and you know, it was, you know, it
Speaker 3: was it was. It was touch and go for a while.
Speaker 3: And Bill Corr, you know, gave us a tremendous you know,
Speaker 3: kind of endorsement to Bob to allow us to have
Speaker 3: that opportunity, which we you know, we had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to thank him, you know, and which was you know
Speaker 3: that he you know, just we were really really blessed,
Speaker 3: really fortunate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, how did that opportunity come about? Like, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things from from Bob's perspective
Speaker 1: is like he did, you know, in a way take
Speaker 1: a little bit of a risk too, which I think,
Speaker 1: you know him as an entrepreneur, someone who bucked the
Speaker 1: trend and did something different probably helped him be more
Speaker 1: comfortable taking that risk.
Speaker 3: Right Well, I'll say this, Yes he did take a risk,
Speaker 3: but Bob also wanted something that no one else had,
Speaker 3: and at that time nobody had a Jackson con you know,
Speaker 3: designed golf course and Scott Hopmin was a huge, huge,
Speaker 3: huge part of the project as well, huge part of
Speaker 3: the project. Scott's extraordinarily talented guy, you know. So you know, yes,
Speaker 3: he took a risk, but yes, there was gain for
Speaker 3: him as well in doing that, you know, to a
Speaker 3: large degree. And you know again you know, right spot,
Speaker 3: right time, you know, kind words and you know this
Speaker 3: one of the things that you know, Dave and I
Speaker 3: talk about a lot is like give us a you know,
Speaker 3: give us a the flags, give us some paint, guns man.
Speaker 3: We're like so comfortable out in the field doing that
Speaker 3: designing and really enjoy that. You know, we're still learning
Speaker 3: the business side of this, to be quite honest, and
Speaker 3: it's it's pretty cutthroat. I mean, it really is. You know,
Speaker 3: when you read things that guys say about you that
Speaker 3: have never visited your project, or never seen you or
Speaker 3: never met you, and are very comfortable saying those things
Speaker 3: about you, man, you realize at this point in time,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's it can be pretty harsh, it
Speaker 3: really can. So it's nice when you have a guy
Speaker 3: like Bill Krr who's kind enough to step in and say, hey,
Speaker 3: the boys are talented, they can do the job.
Speaker 1: Well, guy, get back to the Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2: To light you off the huck.
Speaker 4: I named two of mine, and I would put Bill
Speaker 4: and Ben as a third, mashed their face together. The
Speaker 4: fourth one doesn't come so easy for me. So if
Speaker 4: you have tim yours, you can chime in and I'll
Speaker 4: circle back. Yeah, I think of a fourth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a you know, I'm a I think Mike
Speaker 3: Strantz was an artist who happened to be a golf
Speaker 3: course designer. I'm a big, big fan of of of
Speaker 3: Core Crenshaw as well. You know, I really enjoy a
Speaker 3: lot of their golf courses. I enjoy I think a
Speaker 3: lot of what they do. It's it's it's distinctly different,
Speaker 3: I think from what we do at times. But you know,
Speaker 3: I still have a great appreciation for it and what
Speaker 3: they produce. Ultimately, I have two more. You know, I
Speaker 3: I think I agree with you. I think I think
Speaker 3: Pete die. You know, it's interesting when he did when
Speaker 3: he did the stadium course at PGA West. Tom and
Speaker 3: I had this conversation we were doing a project Madison
Speaker 3: Club in laking To, California, and Tom was like a
Speaker 3: he was very he was very positive about what Pete
Speaker 3: I did at at TPS are at at PGA West
Speaker 3: Stadium course, which actually shocked me because it was like
Speaker 3: so antithical to what Tom Fazio would ever design. But
Speaker 3: he was so like appreciative of of, you know, what
Speaker 3: Pete did, and it kind of put like laking To
Speaker 3: California on the map in a way. And and so
Speaker 3: that kind of really struck me because you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of designers, I think they they only have appreciation
Speaker 3: for what they do or what people do that's similar
Speaker 3: to what they do. Right, And and I'll say this, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, in golf course design today, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of golf that's being produced that looks a
Speaker 3: lot like a lot of the other golf that's being
Speaker 3: produced now. Maybe good, right, But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: similarity in that in those design styles, in in you know,
Speaker 3: the expression of the design. Right, So it will be interesting,
Speaker 3: like where does golf go from here? Because now we've
Speaker 3: had twenty years of the minimalism, We've had twenty years
Speaker 3: of those types of golf courses and that type of design.
Speaker 3: You know what's coming next? You know, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know. So you know, strands Coret Crenshaw and I'll
Speaker 3: throw that. You know, I grew up playing a Bill
Speaker 3: Diddle design, you know, back in the Midwest man. And
Speaker 3: you know for Laport, Indiana, you know, municipal golf course,
Speaker 3: and it was it was you know, that was my
Speaker 3: stopping grounds.
Speaker 2: Right Johnson.
Speaker 3: It's called Beechwood, Yeah, beech Woods the name of the
Speaker 3: golf course. But I thought it was Yeah, But you know,
Speaker 3: Bill Diddle was actually the guy that Pete Allie went
Speaker 3: to when they started in golf course design. You know,
Speaker 3: he is out of Indianapolis and and Alice lived in
Speaker 3: Indianapolis and Pete moved there when they got married, and
Speaker 3: you know, and and you know.
Speaker 1: He says, I think I remember for the buck billed
Speaker 1: that I was like, why the hell, would you want
Speaker 1: to become a golf market.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think pretty much. Yeah, I think that was
Speaker 3: a quote, right, Yeah. And and you know, but there's
Speaker 3: you know, there's there's design characteristics that you know that
Speaker 3: I grew up playing on that golf course that still
Speaker 3: stick with me quite honestly, right. And you know, there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of people out there that like, like,
Speaker 3: who's Bill Diddlell Right, and he was one of the
Speaker 3: you know, founders of the Golf Course Architects Society, you know,
Speaker 3: a pretty influential guy kind of back in the day.
Speaker 3: But he did design, you know, he wasn't like Bendalow
Speaker 3: thirty six stakes in an afternoon, right, And you know,
Speaker 3: whatever happens after that, we'll see. But but you know,
Speaker 3: it's like I said, Dave and I, we're not we're
Speaker 3: not golf course stops. We have an appreciation I think,
Speaker 3: for for what people do and and we know how
Speaker 3: they do it at times, which you know, really I
Speaker 3: think impresses upon us what the end result is and
Speaker 3: how they get there. But but there's also you know,
Speaker 3: there's also a lot of stuff out there. I mean,
Speaker 3: here's the thing, you know, and it kind of goes
Speaker 3: back to you know, I think a lot of the
Speaker 3: golf writers today and how they view golf course architecture
Speaker 3: and what it should be, and how that kind of
Speaker 3: dictates the taste of the people that play golf and
Speaker 3: engage in golf and because they feel, hey, these writers
Speaker 3: are the experts, right. If we all looked at golf
Speaker 3: the same way, if we all design golf the same way,
Speaker 3: golf would be pretty damn boring.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You need to have that big tent, You need to
Speaker 3: have that wide band with you need to have guys
Speaker 3: that are designing different things and doing things in different
Speaker 3: ways so there's different end results, right, And so you know,
Speaker 3: I think that should be celebrated, not frowned upon. You
Speaker 3: know when you again, when you know, projects that we
Speaker 3: work on get critique because well, gosh, they move more
Speaker 3: dirts than they should have.
Speaker 2: Who cares?
Speaker 3: What's the end result?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And is it different? And is it engaging? And is
Speaker 3: it fun?
Speaker 1: Variety is the spice of life. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: It also goes to like.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that you know, I think
Speaker 1: about this all the time with the Golden Age guys,
Speaker 1: is like, you know, you start to look at like
Speaker 1: the sophistication of where it was going. You know, Rayner
Speaker 1: and McDonald like length for Moreau are were I think
Speaker 1: more there's some more sophisticated shaping earth moving with those
Speaker 1: guys than you know, Rainer McDonald had done. They were
Speaker 1: evolving and they were hitting their peak, and then the
Speaker 1: depression hit, you know, and in architecture, you know, you
Speaker 1: had them, and then you had Maxwell who was just
Speaker 1: condemning the steam shovel, you know, and he was you know, minimalist,
Speaker 1: and it's like but then the depression and World War
Speaker 1: two hit and everything halted. But there was like a
Speaker 1: very clear like there was maximalism and minimal like and
Speaker 1: both of them push architecture forward, you know, evolution, more
Speaker 1: new stuff like, and that's where it has to go.
Speaker 1: It has to be new stuff. And I think like
Speaker 1: different styles should be celebrated.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'll say this too. I think you know,
Speaker 3: there I don't know if there's you know, another sport,
Speaker 3: if there's another engagement that everyone always tries to kind
Speaker 3: of identify and in place golf course designs and boxes
Speaker 3: right and in you know, it's such a gosh, man,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it just it's to me, it seems
Speaker 3: like such a fool's Errand you know, at times, you
Speaker 3: know the golf course ranking system, right, Hey, if you
Speaker 3: like a golf course, you know, who cares what is
Speaker 3: ranked or if this one's higher than that or whatever, Right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it really doesn't matter at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, right, I mean, Listen, some clubs get to
Speaker 3: put a plaque on the wall, and you know, they're
Speaker 3: pretty excited about where they are on that list or whatnot.
Speaker 3: And we understand, you know, certain memberships is important. We
Speaker 3: get that, and we understand that. But there's so much
Speaker 3: effort that is put in into identifying ranking golf courses.
Speaker 3: What style is this? What style is that?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Again, ultimately it's the end user experience that matters, right,
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily wasn't maximal, wasn't minimal? Was it this
Speaker 3: or was it that? Did you have a good time
Speaker 3: out there today? Did you have shots that we're engaging?
Speaker 3: Did you have things that really got you excited about
Speaker 3: you were doing? If you did great, the rest of
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go back and play it again? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that to me is always the biggest thing. It's like, God,
Speaker 1: do I like, really, do I want to go back
Speaker 1: and play again, Like I want to hit that shot again?
Speaker 1: Like you know, that's the stuff that matters the most.
Speaker 3: Dave and I say this all the time. If we
Speaker 3: walk off the eighteen green and we want to go
Speaker 3: back to the first tea, we were successful. End of story.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Variety is It's everything, And I think I
Speaker 4: hope we're trending this way, but I think in the past,
Speaker 4: you know, a variety comes on different scales too. Everyone
Speaker 4: seems to focus on the variety within the golf course,
Speaker 4: within those eighteen holes, having a good variety of angles
Speaker 4: and distances and pars and elevations and all that, which
Speaker 4: is great, but you do that fifteen thousand times. Now
Speaker 4: we have no variety from course to course, and I
Speaker 4: think we need to zoom out a level and think
Speaker 4: of the actual golf course and the golf experience as
Speaker 4: having more variety.
Speaker 2: So just a dumb.
Speaker 4: Example, I mean, if there was an eighteen hole part
Speaker 4: five course, I know you're saying it would be fun,
Speaker 4: but just that concept is variety. It may be very
Speaker 4: mundane on paper because it's part five, part five by five,
Speaker 4: but if as executed well, you can have incredible variety
Speaker 4: within those part fives, and then the course as a whole,
Speaker 4: amongst the collection of golf in the country or the
Speaker 4: world has immense variety. And so I hope, I hope
Speaker 4: we can. I hope clients can, you know, get on
Speaker 4: board with it. I hope other designers get on board
Speaker 4: with it, and I feel like they are. It's slowly starting,
Speaker 4: and I hope it's it's momentum is growing and it's
Speaker 4: not just a little blip. But I think golf, you know,
Speaker 4: on a much more macro scale needs more variety.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to some extent, I think there's a de
Speaker 3: traditionalizing that. That's a term of golf in America today, right,
Speaker 3: and the top golf Right, here's a here's a you know,
Speaker 3: here's an entity that's been created that has a quote
Speaker 3: unquote golf experience. It's you know, vastly different, right from
Speaker 3: the traditional golf experience that you have, right, Just as
Speaker 3: an example, you know, there's there's there's going to be
Speaker 3: I think more types of golf experiences, whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: not a traditionally teen golf course, right, because that would
Speaker 3: be you know, something that's been done so many times before.
Speaker 3: But those are going to be created. And I think
Speaker 3: they're going to be created because there's a need for that.
Speaker 3: There's a desire for that. And you know, society is changing,
Speaker 3: right and and so you know, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: the model of the traditional country club. You know what
Speaker 3: that's been for the past one hundred years. It'll be
Speaker 3: interesting to see where that goes moving forward.
Speaker 4: You give me a club and a ball, I don't
Speaker 4: care where I am. I'll make some sort of golf
Speaker 4: fun out of it. Right in this house right here,
Speaker 4: going to a hotel, you're putting four hundred feet down
Speaker 4: the hallway. You just it's a it's fun to hit
Speaker 4: the ball and try to get it close to a target.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking to somebody that logged hours upon
Speaker 1: hours whiffleball golf through my neighbor's front yards. Trees were
Speaker 1: the holes. You know, the street was in the old
Speaker 1: water hazard. And you know, me and my buddy would
Speaker 1: just play up and down the street, hacking divots out
Speaker 1: of our neighbors.
Speaker 4: Yet, if I could wave a wage, if I could
Speaker 4: wave a magic wand over the golfing population, I would
Speaker 4: wish that all of them just become kids. Again, because
Speaker 4: they embrace the spirit of the game and don't have
Speaker 4: that preconceived construct of what golf should or shouldn't be.
Speaker 4: They just are enjoying playing the game, and the game
Speaker 4: is literally just hitting the ball towards the target. That's
Speaker 4: all the game is. There's a lot more flexibility and
Speaker 4: what that can unravel into.
Speaker 1: All right, David, we're letting you off the hook. It's
Speaker 1: you're gonna have three heads on your mount Rushmore. You'll
Speaker 1: be able to leave the fourth blank.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you know, the way I I interpret your question
Speaker 4: is which architects would I want to kind of see
Speaker 4: their resume? That's how I read that question, And and
Speaker 4: Strands and Pete Dye and Core Crenshaw. I would love
Speaker 4: the lifestyle to provide me the opportunity to go play
Speaker 4: all those courses. I can't, but but I really would
Speaker 4: love to. And and so the fourth person, you know,
Speaker 4: is very well known to us and not to everyone else.
Speaker 4: But honestly, I got to put Scott Hoffman in that category.
Speaker 4: He has never gotten the credit he deserves, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, he worked a long time under Tom Fazio.
Speaker 4: That's where Tim and I met him. I have learned
Speaker 4: a tremendous amount from Scotty. We were fortunate enough for
Speaker 4: him to join us. Uh, you know JKD for four
Speaker 4: or five years. He was instrumental in Scottsdale National. I
Speaker 4: think he has hands down the best router of a
Speaker 4: golf course. He is absolutely the best greater of a
Speaker 4: golf course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's doing something in in Nebraska right now that's
Speaker 3: going to be really really cool. And you know, Scott's
Speaker 3: you know, he's he's a pretty modest guy, doesn't seek
Speaker 3: the limelight, doesn't want the limelight, but he is he
Speaker 3: is so so very talented. He's a great friend of
Speaker 3: ours and you know, and we're hopeful that we'll continue
Speaker 3: to collaborate, you know, in the future moving forward on projects.
Speaker 3: And Scott has a very specific narrow bandwidth of the
Speaker 3: type of projects that he wants to collaborate on, which
Speaker 3: is fine by us.
Speaker 4: We don't want to be in that position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but yeah, he is. He is one of
Speaker 3: the most talented people that no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know that you guys. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about variety. I think you got we got
Speaker 1: the first Mount Rushmore without McKenzie on it. So that's exciting.
Speaker 2: There you go, new Mount Rushmore. So thank you guys.
Speaker 1: People can find you you're You're on social media a little.
Speaker 4: Bit, you know, a little bit mostly Instagram. Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: kind of where we contribute the most, but it's not
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call us having a tremendous We're too busy,
Speaker 4: you know, having fun doing work. But every once in
Speaker 4: a while we post some stuff, but we don't have
Speaker 4: a huge following and don't really seek it out. But
Speaker 4: for those that are interested, yeah, at JK D Golf
Speaker 4: Design is where he could find us and look forward
Speaker 4: to seeing more of your works.
Speaker 1: That's you know, I think I'm excited with I know
Speaker 1: you guys have got a bunch of stuff in the
Speaker 1: pipeline and excited for everybody to see more and more
Speaker 1: of your work.
Speaker 4: Man, We're thankful to be alive in the very flourishing
Speaker 4: time of the industry and we'll ride this wave as
Speaker 4: long as it's here. But I appreciate you having us
Speaker 4: on and thank you for coming all the way to
Speaker 4: scott Still to spend the day with us.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg Podcast. Today's episode was edited by the great meg Adkins.
Speaker 2: Thank you Meg.
Speaker 1: And as a reminder, we have a sale in the
Speaker 1: pro Shop for you podcast listeners. If you use the
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Speaker 1: your order. We've got hats, we've got winter hats if
Speaker 1: you're in dealing with winter, and.
Speaker 2: All sorts of stuff including Prince.
Speaker 1: So check it out pro Shop at the Friday dot
Speaker 1: com and thank you for listening to another episode. We
Speaker 1: will be back on Friday this week and we also
Speaker 1: have Bill Corr coming next Tuesday. So we've got we've
Speaker 1: got some good pods on the dock and so talk
Speaker 1: to you soon and thank you for listening.