Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is with Jeff Shackleford. So we are continuing
Speaker 1: our series on golf course architects after many people stated
Speaker 1: that they loved the podcast with Wayne Morrison recently on
Speaker 1: William Flynn, so we figured who better to talk about
Speaker 1: George Thomas than Jeff Shackleford. Jeff has written the club
Speaker 1: History for Riviera as well as The Captain, a profile
Speaker 1: book on George Thomas, the man himself, the man, the architecture,
Speaker 1: his courses. Obviously. Another thing on George Thomas you can
Speaker 1: look into is his book Golf Architecture in America, which
Speaker 1: a reprint is available on Amazon for fourteen bucks. So
Speaker 1: if you want to dive into George Thomas more, that's available.
Speaker 1: But this is a riveting chat with Jeff Shackleford, obviously
Speaker 1: the owner of Jeff Shackleford dot com. He also has
Speaker 1: a substack newsletter called The Quadrilateral that is fifty bucks
Speaker 1: a year that I subscribe to. I really enjoy it,
Speaker 1: recommend that and without further ado, here is Jeff Shackelford.
Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker.
Speaker 2: I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, fridagg Brian egg Lie, I'm about ready to
Speaker 2: run off of the course.
Speaker 1: Jeff, you are the foremost living George Thomas expert. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, You've written an entire novel, The Captain. I'm
Speaker 1: George Tom I'd love to hear how you first got
Speaker 1: interested in George Thomas.
Speaker 2: Well, I was very lucky Andy that my dad joined
Speaker 2: Riviera when I was sixteen years old and kind of
Speaker 2: an aspiring player at the time. And he also had
Speaker 2: a copy of Golf Architecture in America, And so the
Speaker 2: combination of kind of getting to look at it. And
Speaker 2: that was when, by the way, when when copies of
Speaker 2: the book were a big deal and very scarce. Now
Speaker 2: there's reprints and it's easier to get your hands on.
Speaker 2: But and it's such an incredible book. So it was
Speaker 2: it was as somebody who had kind of doodled golf
Speaker 2: holes and and had a young mind, and in that book,
Speaker 2: more than any of the great books, has just got
Speaker 2: so much in it visually, and so many little tantalizing
Speaker 2: things once you start playing some of his courses, like well, wait,
Speaker 2: what was this? What on earth is that photo of
Speaker 2: where's that course now? And so I was kind of
Speaker 2: in that mindset as a teenager. And then again when
Speaker 2: I was sixteen, he joined Riviera, and so then I
Speaker 2: got to play Riviera and that was a crazy time there.
Speaker 2: It was a very busy place, so it was a
Speaker 2: miracle to get out before three o'clock. It was like
Speaker 2: a muni. But I grew to love the course, even
Speaker 2: in it's sort of not well aged state. And then
Speaker 2: as I played in college and got more into architecture,
Speaker 2: and they had the Greens project there in ninety three
Speaker 2: and ninety four, and I got to know Ben Crenshaw
Speaker 2: and Dave Excellent and Dan Procter were doing a lot
Speaker 2: of the shaping on site. And one thing led to another,
Speaker 2: and I just started looking for old photos. Went to
Speaker 2: the just kind of as my game was starting to stink.
Speaker 2: I had a bad risk, I hit too many balls,
Speaker 2: never took enough days off, and I started hunting for
Speaker 2: photos because they started this project and there were a
Speaker 2: lot of questions we had. There were things that Ben
Speaker 2: new and figured out, and then I went found photos
Speaker 2: and really just got more and more into that, and
Speaker 2: that's what kind of led to me pitching a book
Speaker 2: to the ownership after college on the history Riviera. And
Speaker 2: then I followed that up pretty quickly at age twenty
Speaker 2: four with a self published book, The Captain, and it
Speaker 2: was printed quite stunningly by a member just did a
Speaker 2: beautiful job, and it was bound and a nice way.
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of all that. The writing makes me
Speaker 2: cringe a little bit, but I'm very proud of the
Speaker 2: book still. And I used to be able to draw too.
Speaker 2: I was kind of excited when I could. My hand
Speaker 2: was steady or something. But it was just labor of
Speaker 2: love kind of thing. And and uh, there were just
Speaker 2: so many questions to try to answer about the man,
Speaker 2: not only his golf architecture, but his his unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Life with the with Riviera. You joined your sixty, you'd
Speaker 1: played golf before, obviously you were you know, you played
Speaker 1: college golf, so you at this point you're a you know,
Speaker 1: aspiring golfer. As you said, Yeah, what did you notice
Speaker 1: that was different about Riviera than the other courses that
Speaker 1: you had grown up playing?
Speaker 2: Oh, well, it's just the scale of it. Was so grand.
Speaker 2: And and again even with more trees than and different
Speaker 2: things that that were clearly kind of not quite right.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were really a lot of trees. Eucalyptus
Speaker 2: were really dense, not trimmed. I mean it was it
Speaker 2: was a there were a lot of tight drives in
Speaker 2: but uh, the bunkers of course, even sort of in
Speaker 2: that state, were beautiful. And you know, the the ultimate
Speaker 2: thing about Riviera that got me was it's just it
Speaker 2: was just so much fun to play every day. You
Speaker 2: never got tired of it. No hole ever got boring,
Speaker 2: even the holes that look you know, if you looked
Speaker 2: at them on Google Earth today or or then, which
Speaker 2: it didn't exist, but if you looked at them from
Speaker 2: afar as, some holes didn't look that captivating. Other holes
Speaker 2: obviously did, like sixteen and the part threes, all of
Speaker 2: them really and and there just so were so many
Speaker 2: subtleties and different elements, even with cocuya, which also messes
Speaker 2: up a lot of the great components of that design,
Speaker 2: the approaches in particular that are just beautifully done. And
Speaker 2: so it was just that kind of that that interest
Speaker 2: in playing it every day, you just never get tired
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to. I didn't This is jumping way ahead.
Speaker 2: Rat hole, We're going to go down.
Speaker 1: But why is it cocuya? Does it need to be cocula?
Speaker 1: Could it be grassed differently? Yeah, to get those approaches back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To answer the last question first, yes, I do
Speaker 2: think it's kind of sad that, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people have thrown that idea out before, of why
Speaker 2: can't you have bermuda collars and approaches, kind of like
Speaker 2: Tory Pines did that when when Reese Jones redid it,
Speaker 2: one of the things they did was kept the kakua.
Speaker 1: How rustic is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's bent, and uh, we'd want to have
Speaker 2: a little more of the bent in the fairways. And
Speaker 2: originally it was rye fairways. Then the the bent approaches
Speaker 2: and by the way, the bent approaches are unbelievably healthy
Speaker 2: on the native soil, whereas the California greens are. They're fine,
Speaker 2: but they're not as healthy. It tells you a little
Speaker 2: bit about you know, when you have good native soil,
Speaker 2: you should use it. And Rustic had it on all
Speaker 2: but one green site, so but Riviera it would be
Speaker 2: really nice to have that. And I know the USGA
Speaker 2: threw it out when Tim Morgan was there, and some
Speaker 2: other people have pitched that idea, and it just never
Speaker 2: happened because in the summertime it's just a It really
Speaker 2: kills the the the allure of having hard, firm, hard greens,
Speaker 2: because if you landed three feet short of some of
Speaker 2: those greens or three yards short again in the summer,
Speaker 2: it just stops. Now they've done a lot since to
Speaker 2: get the kukua a little tighter, and they use primo
Speaker 2: and it's still though, is not you don't run the
Speaker 2: ball up, but in the winter time you can at
Speaker 2: least see balls and that a running ball will move,
Speaker 2: and that's that's nice because there's just some of the
Speaker 2: most beautiful approaches. The other thing that kind of got
Speaker 2: screwed with over time is every green has like a
Speaker 2: little raw style ridge in front, and that that wasn't Thomas.
Speaker 2: Thomas had very clean approach. He and Bell built their
Speaker 2: approaches right into the green. But years of top dressing
Speaker 2: built these little rims or or up slopes or false
Speaker 2: fronts or whatever you want column and they're awful because
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember as a kid when you know
Speaker 2: you're hitting a forewood into some of these holes that
Speaker 2: are really long, like eighteen, You hit the most beautiful
Speaker 2: shot and it just hits that little upslope. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: would come back at you and you're like, oh God,
Speaker 2: that was such a good shot and a stupid coculea
Speaker 2: ruins it. So coculea was brought there for one of
Speaker 2: two reasons. Don't really know which one is. After all
Speaker 2: these years, I still don't know the actual reason, but
Speaker 2: either one of them works either. For the polo fields
Speaker 2: that were next door to the first fairway, is one
Speaker 2: version that it was a grass sought to be tougher
Speaker 2: to handle the polo. I think that's a less likely reason.
Speaker 2: The more likely is that after the big flood that
Speaker 2: went through the course in thirty eight, Willie Hunter the
Speaker 2: pro was kind of charged with trying to reinforce the
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth holes and prevent them from from washing
Speaker 2: out and having more damage. They were damaged in that
Speaker 2: flo and they use kukuya to stabilize the banks and
Speaker 2: be a tougher grass, And I think that's the more
Speaker 2: likely story. And then it's spread through the course and
Speaker 2: spread through all of West la. If you ever round here,
Speaker 2: you can look at a parking sign and the grass
Speaker 2: actually grows up through the railing and comes out the top.
Speaker 2: So it's it's just a noxious, brutal weed. And I
Speaker 2: don't think there's any way you could get it off
Speaker 2: the property now, I mean it would take I mean
Speaker 2: it's so that the root structure is incredible. It just
Speaker 2: keeps coming back. But I do think you could, and
Speaker 2: it makes a great fairway grass. And they've learned to
Speaker 2: manage it, by the way. You know, when I was
Speaker 2: younger and playing there, they'd scalped and it was so puffy.
Speaker 2: I mean, you would be exhausted after eighteen holes, just
Speaker 2: because like walking on a sponge. Now it's it's managed better.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't lick your ball or anything out there. Just
Speaker 2: premo is probably not a great thing to ingest. But
Speaker 2: I would say that that ultimately, if you could get
Speaker 2: the approaches regrasped, smooth out that transition to the front
Speaker 2: of the green, and it would be it would just
Speaker 2: make the course so much better, and it would allow
Speaker 2: you to really have those greens nice and firm and
Speaker 2: still let somebody land a ball short for those front pins.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about George Thomas. He said,
Speaker 1: what an amazing person in life he led. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about George Thomas. You know, his upbringing
Speaker 1: and then his eventual move out to California.
Speaker 2: Well, he made his living the old fashioned way. He
Speaker 2: was the executor of the family estate. But you know,
Speaker 2: the beautiful thing about George Thomas is that, you know,
Speaker 2: he only lived fifty nine years. And yeah, he was
Speaker 2: born into money and never really had to work. But
Speaker 2: boy did he do a lot in his fifty nine years.
Speaker 2: From serving our country and uh to experimenting with roses
Speaker 2: was one of his obsessions. Golf architecture, we know, flyfish, shoating, yachting.
Speaker 2: He had a nice yacht. Dogs. He was into tobri
Speaker 2: I have a trophy up here somewhere in my collection
Speaker 2: that his grandson gave me. Uh uh, English shutters I
Speaker 2: believe were his his dog of choice that he showed. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he was out in the ring,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't. I don't actually know that part.
Speaker 2: But he had a he had an interest in dogs,
Speaker 2: he got. He just was a busy guy. He really
Speaker 2: did a lot, and.
Speaker 1: He wrote a lot too.
Speaker 2: He did. He wrote two books on Roses one on
Speaker 2: fly fishing and of course golf architecture in America, and
Speaker 2: multiple articles for various publications, and very inter goal in
Speaker 2: you know, the creation of Pine Valley. A founding member,
Speaker 2: a friend of Dry George Crump was out there quite
Speaker 2: a bit. You know. One of my real regrets is
Speaker 2: there was a little blurb and I cannot find it.
Speaker 2: When I went back to the USGA after I had
Speaker 2: done the Captain and went through the library, I found
Speaker 2: some things that answered some questions that I could not
Speaker 2: answer in the book. And one of those though, was
Speaker 2: a blurb that I I know, I'm not hallucinating, but
Speaker 2: it made clear that he was coming back to help
Speaker 2: William Flynn with the alternate green on number nine, and
Speaker 2: just drives me nuts that I don't don't have that
Speaker 2: little blurb that he made the trip back. So he
Speaker 2: was very devoted to that place, and he mentioned George
Speaker 2: Crump and his his book and obviously tilling Hast and Ross.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of experience. The one question I've
Speaker 2: never been able to answer is during and I speculated
Speaker 2: on in the book is when he was in World
Speaker 2: War One. He must have there must have been a
Speaker 2: way he saw the great links because he refers to
Speaker 2: some of them, and he clearly was inspired by elements
Speaker 2: of golf there, but he never really wrote anything about
Speaker 2: any trips, in particular the way Tilling has did about
Speaker 2: going to visit Tom Morris and took photos of him
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. And so I don't think he
Speaker 2: got all this through a w. Tilly ass. I think
Speaker 2: he had to have gotten some of it through experience.
Speaker 1: So he was really if you look at the golden
Speaker 1: age of American golf was you had kind of McDonald
Speaker 1: leads Fowler, and then you had also Ross doing early
Speaker 1: work in the nineteen tents. Obviously he had his work
Speaker 1: at Marion, So he was more if you would, you'd
Speaker 1: kind of classify him as almost like the second generation
Speaker 1: of the first generation of American golf architect in a
Speaker 1: way where he had the benefit of having people that
Speaker 1: somewhat mentored him.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, and he made that very clear in his
Speaker 2: own writings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and who were those people, well.
Speaker 2: He Tilling, Hast and Ross he singled out as having
Speaker 2: been huge parts of his life. Crump, Hugh Wilson, the
Speaker 2: whole Philadelphia gang there were really vital to his education.
Speaker 2: And then he attempted and built the golf course on
Speaker 2: the family estate at White Marsh, which still exists today.
Speaker 2: So it was a combination of all those people. I'm
Speaker 2: sure William Flynn was another person that was vital to
Speaker 2: his education at the time.
Speaker 1: With Pine Valley that was you know of course that
Speaker 1: you know, there are shades of all different types of
Speaker 1: all different architects in there. You know, obviously like health
Speaker 1: half acre is a tilling half feature or believed to
Speaker 1: be what what would you say are the things that
Speaker 1: that screamed George Thomas at Pine Valley other than the
Speaker 1: ninth graden You know.
Speaker 2: I never really thought of it that way. I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't say there's anything that I would I would
Speaker 2: attribute to him. It's just hard to tell, you know,
Speaker 2: when you have you look at Pine Valley and you
Speaker 2: look at Colt drawings, and you you know, some things
Speaker 2: are maybe attributed to Crump that that weren't his. It's
Speaker 2: it's just it's hard to say. For me, honestly, I
Speaker 2: would I would certainly look at the twelfth hole is
Speaker 2: the one hole that I've always wondered how much that
Speaker 2: influenced Thomas or how much Thomas influenced that because it
Speaker 2: has some shades of the tenth or Riviera, sort of
Speaker 2: sort of almost playing away and taking the longer path,
Speaker 2: uh for the approach shot into the better angle into
Speaker 2: the green, which is is a I think the most
Speaker 2: fascinating thing he did with with the tenth of Riviera,
Speaker 2: and with that more people don't like to try and do,
Speaker 2: which is which is create a hole where there's obviously
Speaker 2: the instinct to take the short route, but if you
Speaker 2: actually take the longer path, which is so against anybody's
Speaker 2: instinct as a golfer, uh, but you get this better angle.
Speaker 2: We tried to do it on the on the twelfth
Speaker 2: at rust A Canyon and just just a total ripoff
Speaker 2: of that concept from from Thomas and and a little
Speaker 2: bit of Pine Valley. Although I don't I don't really
Speaker 2: know if it works on twelve at Pine Valley because
Speaker 2: I've I've hit it over to the right. I don't.
Speaker 2: I it's I haven't seen it since Fazzio uh took
Speaker 2: a dump on it. But I can't imagine it's looking
Speaker 2: too great these days from every what everybody says. But uh,
Speaker 2: but I love that concept that because it just it's
Speaker 2: just not what anybody, especially now with carry distances, anybody
Speaker 2: wants to do you It's like, why would I make
Speaker 2: the hole longer to get a better angle? And it
Speaker 2: just it's something that especially good players just just loath doing,
Speaker 2: even when they've seen it play out in a way
Speaker 2: that you know that, yeah, if you take if you're
Speaker 2: gonna play the whole ten times and you're gonna you're
Speaker 2: gonna your average score is going to be better, and
Speaker 2: you're gonna take out double bogie and you're gonna take
Speaker 2: out and maybe you're gonna make a few, you know,
Speaker 2: fewer birdies or no eagle. But over the over the
Speaker 2: long haul, playing safe, playing the longer way in uh,
Speaker 2: is the better way to do it. It's just still
Speaker 2: fascinating that that if the hole is done right, when
Speaker 2: when the golfer just just resists that and uh, that
Speaker 2: that that he got from probably from Pine Valley and
Speaker 2: tried to carry Riviera is to me really really need
Speaker 2: and something not enough. The architects explore with especially with
Speaker 2: short part fours.
Speaker 1: Well the idea too. You know, it's an architecture that
Speaker 1: reveals your reveals itself after multiple plays, that counterintuitive nature
Speaker 1: of it. The first time you play it, everybody's going
Speaker 1: to hit it up that can hit it is going
Speaker 1: to hit it up into the spot that the architect
Speaker 1: wants you to really hit it and realize this is
Speaker 1: the best spot to be. And it could take a
Speaker 1: long time to figure out, Wait, I should play way left.
Speaker 1: And obviously the strategy for tour professionals that Riviera has
Speaker 1: changed drastically because of the immense carry distance. And I
Speaker 1: just want to clarify that before any any of our
Speaker 1: friends come at us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's very recent, by the way too. I mean,
Speaker 2: and that's why I've always I wish the whole would
Speaker 2: be lengthened fifteen twenty yards, so I just.
Speaker 1: They could put it back on the on the roof
Speaker 1: of the clubhouse.
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't go quite that far. I just go
Speaker 2: there's a nice little pocket on the other side of
Speaker 2: the Gargantua.
Speaker 1: County up there too.
Speaker 2: They well they might well know. I wouldn't be surprised. Uh,
Speaker 2: they have cheat off. The club used to have a
Speaker 2: green Monster tournament and they did create a tea up
Speaker 2: on the on the deck of the clubhouse. They actually
Speaker 2: built a platform and and and put a mat down.
Speaker 2: It was pretty wild, and uh, I'm not sure liability wise,
Speaker 2: is the smartest thing to do, but it was. It
Speaker 2: was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So he's he's in Philly, he's he builds Marion, which
Speaker 1: was up in Massachusetts. He then goes to World War One,
Speaker 1: and then as I understand it correctly, he builds White
Speaker 1: Marsh Valley after that, right, I.
Speaker 2: Don't remember the exact year, but because that's correct, and
Speaker 2: then also Spring Lake in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: M and then what prompts him to move to California.
Speaker 2: Well, according to him, I mean, he was pretty bang up.
Speaker 2: He crashed three times, he was lucky to survive.
Speaker 1: He was a pilot, right, Yeah, he was a.
Speaker 2: Pilot, crashed three crashes, he did, and uh, there's there's
Speaker 2: that that he he was his famous quote as he
Speaker 2: was damn lucky to survive as more of a miracle
Speaker 2: of something like that to Zane Gray, the famous author
Speaker 2: who was his buddy out at the out of Catalina
Speaker 2: flight of deep sea fishing, and uh, he was clearly
Speaker 2: never quite the same from that. He had health problems
Speaker 2: and he died at fifty nine. And there were a
Speaker 2: lot of references to various times even when he was
Speaker 2: out here. You know, he never got to Stamford, which
Speaker 2: he did with Billy Bell and and because of his health,
Speaker 2: and and he never really quite got the south course
Speaker 2: at La Country Club going because of his health. And
Speaker 2: he did plans which are all gone, of course we
Speaker 2: never saw. I never know. They're in the dump somewhere.
Speaker 2: But he wanted to move west in search of better
Speaker 2: rose growing conditions and probably just better weather to kind
Speaker 2: of enjoy. And he was banged up, but the roses
Speaker 2: were the primary reason, according to him and all sources
Speaker 2: that he came here in search of better conditions for
Speaker 2: hybridizing roses, which was a huge passion of his.
Speaker 1: So it would you say he was a avid rose gardener,
Speaker 1: I feel like that might be under selling it. He
Speaker 1: was one of the best rose gardeners in the entire world. Correct.
Speaker 2: Well, it turned out that, yeah, one of the roses
Speaker 2: that he created wasn't a very attractive rose, but it
Speaker 2: ended up ended up doctor Hughey, who was sort of
Speaker 2: his mentor. He named it after It's it's like a
Speaker 2: dark red not it's just not a very attractive rose,
Speaker 2: but the rootstock of it kind of the And I
Speaker 2: apologize to any rosaria and listening to this because I
Speaker 2: still don't understand this, but it essentially is the core
Speaker 2: DNA of the plant that was used to as the
Speaker 2: basis for hybridizing a large majority of the roses by
Speaker 2: one of the main makers. And so because it contained
Speaker 2: elements that made the rose, did did different things for
Speaker 2: different roses but made them hardy. So it was kind
Speaker 2: of accidental, but it ended up being one of the
Speaker 2: most important roses ever created. And then yes, he hybridized
Speaker 2: multiple others. In Is he had this incredible estate which
Speaker 2: has now been subdivided. It appears to me I haven't
Speaker 2: been up there, but I did go there one day.
Speaker 2: I just walked into the backyard, which I can't believe
Speaker 2: I did in hindsight, but where you could still see
Speaker 2: the remnants of this which are the photos are in
Speaker 2: the captain of this incredible sort of layered tiered garden
Speaker 2: he had where he did all this. And I have
Speaker 2: some film that the family had that's really cool. It's
Speaker 2: on YouTube somewhere. I've posted it, uh, and it shows
Speaker 2: him walking around the garden, amazing garden and UH, and
Speaker 2: that's where he did all of his experimentation work and
Speaker 2: creation of multiple roses that went to the market. Very
Speaker 2: few are available now, but you can still get people
Speaker 2: to make cuttings and things. LA Country Club just planted
Speaker 2: some what i'd call I guess I'm sure there's a
Speaker 2: rose term, but but children of his roses, you know,
Speaker 2: where somebody created a rose taking Captain Thomas. Well you know,
Speaker 2: well it's not even looks, it's just sometimes some of
Speaker 2: them are you know, they have defects whatever they are.
Speaker 2: Every rose has are not every but most roses have
Speaker 2: now come on. Now, I don't mock.
Speaker 1: To play that. I couldn't. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: You can go there, but uh, you know, like in
Speaker 2: his time he was trying to create a better rose
Speaker 2: and and taking different ones, and now people have taken
Speaker 2: some of his and yeah, one of them is called
Speaker 2: Golden Showers that's created from Captain Thomas, and another one
Speaker 2: that that is still available. I don't think the name
Speaker 2: has aged very well, unfortunately because of some recent events.
Speaker 2: But so there are still some that you that are
Speaker 2: made from his roses. There were a couple of very
Speaker 2: famous roses that are sort of up in the air
Speaker 2: as to whether he was involved in them. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was he had an amazing career on that front,
Speaker 2: and then he when he passed, everything was left to
Speaker 2: the American Rose Society. But there were some some issues
Speaker 2: there and some tension with with I think his wife
Speaker 2: and family, and there were some roses named after women.
Speaker 2: I don't know who they were, and I have a
Speaker 2: feeling the rose Garden was kind of destroyed in a
Speaker 2: in a sort of a sad way. So I've never
Speaker 2: really gotten that full story, but it I never since
Speaker 2: It was a kind of a it was an odd
Speaker 2: ending to his rose career after he passed.
Speaker 1: So he moved to California for roses. He's an accomplished
Speaker 1: player in the Northeast in Philadelphia, He's built some golf courses.
Speaker 1: How does he get into the golf scene in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Joined What was the golf scene like? What was like
Speaker 1: the golf secene like when he got there, Well.
Speaker 2: It was emerging. There were interesting people around, like Norman
Speaker 2: macbeth who did Wiltshire, And there were these characters like
Speaker 2: the founders of La Country Club, Ed Tufts and Joseph
Speaker 2: Sartorre who were trying to grow the game and build
Speaker 2: out and there were different people wanting to create clubs,
Speaker 2: and so it was burgeoning, I guess would be the word.
Speaker 2: And then during the twenties it really took off and
Speaker 2: we had some amazing things created around here, and a
Speaker 2: lot of them obviously left us during the depression years,
Speaker 2: but an incredible number of courses and wild locations, and
Speaker 2: there's photo of all sorts of interesting holes. And so
Speaker 2: when he got here, he joined LA Country Club, and
Speaker 2: being a member of Pine Valley and already kind of
Speaker 2: the the story of Pine Valley being known, he was
Speaker 2: asked to supervise the carrying out of Herbert Fowler's plans
Speaker 2: for renovating the two courses at Los Angeles Country Club.
Speaker 2: And Herbert Fowler wasn't here much, and so he really
Speaker 2: took that job on and oversaw those those courses and
Speaker 2: the creation of them, and they were very much in
Speaker 2: the style of Fallor in terms of the bunkering, a
Speaker 2: little more grass faced, and they were there were there
Speaker 2: were parts that were really fascinating, and there were parts
Speaker 2: that were frankly kind of aggressive in the way that
Speaker 2: because it's a very severe property, and they took on
Speaker 2: some weird parts of the property. So that was his
Speaker 2: that was the beginning of his career here, and then
Speaker 2: in a couple of years later he did the two
Speaker 2: courses at Griffith Park. They ran out of money. He
Speaker 2: funded the creation are the completion of the work, and
Speaker 2: they gave him a pass. There's some great photos of
Speaker 2: the opening day that I that I have photocopies of,
Speaker 2: and I think there's some in the No, I don't
Speaker 2: think those are in the Captain. I think I got
Speaker 2: those after the book was done. I can't even remember
Speaker 2: now anyway, I'm looking here, But big opening day, the
Speaker 2: whole thing. They gave him the essentially the version of
Speaker 2: key to the city. They gave him a golf pass
Speaker 2: for life, which was really cool, and and so that
Speaker 2: was that was sort of the next They were called
Speaker 2: the La Municipal courses. Now it's Griffith Park and the
Speaker 2: Harding and Wilson courses, and so from there and then
Speaker 2: from there it just went were nuts.
Speaker 1: Very little of the Thomases left correct.
Speaker 2: The Wilson routing is quite a bit of his, and
Speaker 2: and a good portion of the Harding is. But yes,
Speaker 2: there was a wash and a freeway installed and and
Speaker 2: so they lost some holes there and then yeah, architecturally,
Speaker 2: the they've screwed with it over the years and added
Speaker 2: water bunkers and done all sorts of weird things, and
Speaker 2: but it, you know, it's the Wilson starts with his
Speaker 2: signature touch of a of a nice par five, gettable
Speaker 2: and then a pretty tough part four. Those two holes
Speaker 2: are beautiful, just a great start, and and then the
Speaker 2: third holes of part three, and then the fourths of
Speaker 2: a short part four that somebody put a pond on
Speaker 2: and I might have taken that out now, but I
Speaker 2: haven't been. I haven't been on that part of the
Speaker 2: course in a while. Last time I was there was
Speaker 2: when the Special Olympics was played and they played the hearting,
Speaker 2: So I didn't get much out on the On the Wilson,
Speaker 2: it's it's hard to look at. I mean when you
Speaker 2: and we have a pretty good aerial too of it,
Speaker 2: and it yeah, but again it was not on the
Speaker 2: level of the work he did with Billy Bell. It
Speaker 2: was good, it was solid, but things got better. A
Speaker 2: few years later.
Speaker 1: He wrote about municipal golf and designing for municipal golf
Speaker 1: correct mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: And it was a big passion of his.
Speaker 1: What was his prebis obviously, that's that's something that Gus
Speaker 1: talked about a lot, is that this is the way
Speaker 1: municipal golf or public golf has to be. We can't
Speaker 1: do this for public golf. What was his stance on
Speaker 1: the difference between designing for public, you know, municipal golf
Speaker 1: versus private golf, do you Yeah.
Speaker 2: He may have overcorrected a little, but he definitely had
Speaker 2: a mindset of of a little more rudimentary and a
Speaker 2: little more playable and not beat people up. And it
Speaker 2: may have been an overreaction to the Pine Valley.
Speaker 1: I saw like seventy five yard wide fairways.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he I mean he always built all of
Speaker 2: his courses were built pretty wide, even though he was
Speaker 2: apparently a very good ball striker horrible putter, But yeah,
Speaker 2: he was into with and he wanted with and he
Speaker 2: wanted people to get around and have fun. And he
Speaker 2: might have taken that a little far. But like I said,
Speaker 2: it may have been overreaction to sort of the Pine
Speaker 2: Valley inspiration in his career and not wanting to and
Speaker 2: having seen that kind of golf and thinking that the
Speaker 2: public golfer needs to have a place where they can
Speaker 2: ease into the game. But you know, in hindsight, he Bill,
Speaker 2: all of this course is pretty tough. When you think
Speaker 2: about what the clubs were at the time, I can't
Speaker 2: I can't fathom. Well, Bobby Jones, frankly, he came right
Speaker 2: out and said it. After he played Riviera, you know
Speaker 2: where do the members play? And there's a great photo
Speaker 2: we found. I was so excited. It was. It's a
Speaker 2: little out of focus, so we ran it real small
Speaker 2: in the Riviera book, but it's Bobby Jones and you
Speaker 2: can tell he's out on the third green. If you
Speaker 2: know Riviera, you kind of can tell by where the
Speaker 2: clubhouse is. His hair is just a mess, and he
Speaker 2: just looks he just looks shot and so and that
Speaker 2: was when he was at it his at his his peak. Really,
Speaker 2: it was when he was here filming the Warner Brothers
Speaker 2: films and he still could play great and he thought
Speaker 2: it was impossible. So he definitely builds his courses pretty tough.
Speaker 2: And when you look at Riviera and you think about
Speaker 2: playing that with Hickory's, wow, it was it was. It
Speaker 2: was a beast.
Speaker 1: Well, so this was before Bell. When did he meet Bell?
Speaker 1: And who was Billy Bell at the time.
Speaker 2: He was a superintendent at the time. I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly how they meant, but he was from Pasadena and
Speaker 2: obviously a very innovative guy with a background and engineering
Speaker 2: and and then got into golf maintenance and created a
Speaker 2: sod cutter and quite a talented, brilliant guy. Really in
Speaker 2: hindsight when you think about what they accomplished, and they
Speaker 2: first worked together on and now I'm forgetting if it
Speaker 2: was Ohio La Cumbre first, but anyway, mid twenties.
Speaker 1: I think it's La Cumbre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it probably was. I think that was twenty four
Speaker 2: and then OHI followed that's correct, And yeah, I would
Speaker 2: love to know how they got linked up. But George
Speaker 2: was a busy guy. He had roses, he had his yacht,
Speaker 2: he had to go deep sea fishing, and so bell
Speaker 2: was the perfect person to oversee the construction on a
Speaker 2: daily basis, and that's what he did, and handle the
Speaker 2: engineering of all these very difficult sites they took on.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're not difficult now compared to where people
Speaker 2: build a course, but at the time they were canyons
Speaker 2: and different things. Riviera was awful, soil La was a redo.
Speaker 2: Bell Air was a bunch of canyons and a real
Speaker 2: estate development and La Cumbre was had some spots that
Speaker 2: were really tough, and o Hi's obviously another difficult site.
Speaker 2: So he was the perfect guy and really brought his
Speaker 2: a different level of construction expertise. And then as they
Speaker 2: work together, you see it in the photos each course
Speaker 2: they got more and more aggressive with the bunkering style,
Speaker 2: to the point where by the end at Stanford they
Speaker 2: were just doing some really crazy, wild, cool shapes and
Speaker 2: it's fascinating how you just look at the photos each
Speaker 2: course they just got a little bit more and more aggressive.
Speaker 2: And so they worked together. They were in about a
Speaker 2: seven year eight year span and created some incredible courses.
Speaker 1: With those bunkers. One interesting thing I kind of think
Speaker 1: about a lot is a lot of architects seem to
Speaker 1: get subdued and worn down the more they the work
Speaker 1: they do because of the green's committees or owners working
Speaker 1: on them over time, and they get almost safer and safer,
Speaker 1: whereas their style seemed to get more and more eccentric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't know what in particular inspired them
Speaker 2: to do that, except that they just probably got reactions
Speaker 2: to things and let's take it more, and they just
Speaker 2: became very consumed with the look of erosion and really
Speaker 2: capturing your eye with great bunkering, and thankfully they did
Speaker 2: do that. The only I guess downside was that it appears,
Speaker 2: based on photos during construction of some of them, that
Speaker 2: the process was to sort of seed and grass the
Speaker 2: whole thing or a large portion and then come in
Speaker 2: and handcut some of those shapes out. And they lost
Speaker 2: those shapes fairly fast once somebody, once the depression came
Speaker 2: and it was harder to get the resources to pay
Speaker 2: people to maintain them, or the desire to maintain these
Speaker 2: little frilly edges that somebody probably thought were ridiculous. And
Speaker 2: then obviously as things got better or they got in
Speaker 2: people got it edgers and weed eaters, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of how you have the current look of of the
Speaker 2: their bunkers and a lot of the courses, and why
Speaker 2: we came up with the style we did at LA North,
Speaker 2: which is to to replicate some of those shapes, but
Speaker 2: to make them look old and to build them in
Speaker 2: a way where those shapes were very are hard are
Speaker 2: almost impossible to edge out, but they did. They obviously
Speaker 2: didn't know how that look was going to evolve at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: How would you, I mean, I know it's hard because
Speaker 1: they're there. Would what would be the best way to
Speaker 1: describe a bunker And obviously this is probably a visual
Speaker 1: thing better shown by pictures over than rather audio, but
Speaker 1: would like kind of like an amoeba, or like if
Speaker 1: you if you cracked an egg into a pan and
Speaker 1: there go with the egg, let it go all of
Speaker 1: I know, I knew you were going to get me
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would say, you know, the two the
Speaker 2: things that I mean, Mackenzie supposedly was kind of pointed
Speaker 2: to clouds. If you look at a little floating clouds,
Speaker 2: and I think that's a shape that you if you
Speaker 2: just watched a little floater and you look at the
Speaker 2: shape of them, the bottoms a little cleaner and the
Speaker 2: top has sort of the more rough edged I think
Speaker 2: they were trying to portray erosion. I think that was
Speaker 2: part of it, is to have that look a little
Speaker 2: bit of a more maintained dune look.
Speaker 1: And that was that fit kind of that fit the
Speaker 1: landscape they were working in, correct, like, because you know
Speaker 1: they were working in these places. If you go for
Speaker 1: hikes anywhere around La, you see that type of natural
Speaker 1: erosion look. On edges of you know, land forms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think mackenzie did it in part. If
Speaker 2: you look at the Monterey Cypress, some of the shapes
Speaker 2: of the bunkers and cypress for instance, or Lake Merced
Speaker 2: or cow clubs, some of those, they were kind of
Speaker 2: mimicking those shapes the trees. So yeah, I think they were.
Speaker 2: They were working in these canyon settings and kind of
Speaker 2: saw those little blowouts and different landslide things, and that
Speaker 2: that inspired it. Obviously again the in the uh influence
Speaker 2: of Scotland, and because bunkers back then in Scotland were
Speaker 2: not the bathtub sod wall things that so many courses
Speaker 2: now unfortunately have a reaction to those bunkers evolving in
Speaker 2: ways that people didn't like. But but that certainly was uh,
Speaker 2: because Thomas wrote extensively about naturalness. They all did, you know,
Speaker 2: they were fighting. Uh. Even the Fowler style that he
Speaker 2: was overseeing at LA initially was a more from the
Speaker 2: Penal school of of design, where the bunkers were were
Speaker 2: more in your face and less natural looking. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: were trenches, they were they were not attractive and you know,
Speaker 2: he wrote about it. McKenzie wrote about it. They were
Speaker 2: all clear in a mindset of trying to get people
Speaker 2: back to a very simple, seemingly simple concept, which is
Speaker 2: that if something is natural or seemingly natural, you will
Speaker 2: enjoy taking it on. If it seems artificial, if it
Speaker 2: seems like the hand of man is trying to screw
Speaker 2: with your game and get in the way, it takes
Speaker 2: you out of that sort of quest to take on nature,
Speaker 2: and it's not as satisfying, and you're offended by an
Speaker 2: architect when they are screwing with you that way, and
Speaker 2: that mentality. Max Bear wrote about it, and Thomas and
Speaker 2: Max Bear were friendly as well. That was what Max
Speaker 2: Bear was consumed with and writing articles here at the time,
Speaker 2: so they were all. They were all kind of even
Speaker 2: if they had little disagreements, they were all from that
Speaker 2: same mindset and trying to get golf back to that
Speaker 2: after a period of player architects and people with less
Speaker 2: artistic sensibility feeling like that's that that more in your
Speaker 2: face style of design was proper, and they were saying, no,
Speaker 2: that's not going to age, well, that doesn't have any
Speaker 2: permanence to it, and so we're trying to do it
Speaker 2: this way. And then Thomas and Bell when they got together,
Speaker 2: really took thanks to another level in terms of the
Speaker 2: details of every little feature, feeling as if it were natural,
Speaker 2: when in fact they did some unbelievable stuff that was
Speaker 2: required a lot of work to make it feel like
Speaker 2: it was always there.
Speaker 1: So it is time. In California, he designed roughly about
Speaker 1: about twelve or so courses yep, give take how many
Speaker 1: of them are still mainly intact, Where you could you know,
Speaker 1: responsibly call it a George Thomas design.
Speaker 2: It's really down to the big three in La you know,
Speaker 2: Riviera bell Airne. I can't really say, Look, I mean
Speaker 2: nothing's Lakumber has just been slaughtered. OHI has moments, but
Speaker 2: it's really been butchered in a lot of spots as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's it's really down to the to the
Speaker 2: big ones.
Speaker 1: From from those three courses and obviously one we get
Speaker 1: to watch on TV every single year. One we'll get
Speaker 1: to watch on TV in two years. Uh what what
Speaker 1: would you decipher as his strengths and weaknesses as an architect?
Speaker 2: I I don't really view him as having had any weaknesses.
Speaker 2: I'm biased obviously because I'm I'm his biographer, and.
Speaker 1: Uh I recognize it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh yeah, well, I I really just think when
Speaker 2: he and Bell were at their peak, I just don't
Speaker 2: know if there was anybody a team that was better
Speaker 2: in terms especially when you know what they took and
Speaker 2: what they care created. They weren't given great sites. I
Speaker 2: mean La North for instance, was a redo they I mean,
Speaker 2: there there's an area where you see people out playing
Speaker 2: while they're redoing it. And it's hard to believe when
Speaker 2: you look at La North now that that that that
Speaker 2: was a redesign that was done in a fairly short
Speaker 2: amount of time with people playing and the whole thing
Speaker 2: and and it, and yet it comes together as this
Speaker 2: amazing thing like they built it from scratch and it
Speaker 2: really was.
Speaker 1: What were the big the big changes that they made
Speaker 1: to La North in that redesign? How did it change
Speaker 1: for people that aren't familiar with the you know, either design?
Speaker 1: Really what what were the big themes of the redesign?
Speaker 2: Just replacing some bad holes and turning turning some of
Speaker 2: those into great holes, or just creating new holes like
Speaker 2: the eleventh and the fifteenth, the two back nine par threes,
Speaker 2: which are just two extraordinary holes, and the eleventh you
Speaker 2: just you know, you look at and you think, how
Speaker 2: on earth did they imagine this location for a sort
Speaker 2: of a reverse d Dan Part three with his green site,
Speaker 2: you know, just built up there was They just created
Speaker 2: that whole thing. It wasn't like they carved out a
Speaker 2: little thing allege and put that that hole there. It
Speaker 2: they created that, and obviously he was trying to fix
Speaker 2: something and having to put in pieces. But still in
Speaker 2: the fifteenth does you know for years it used to
Speaker 2: be viewed as an afterthought, like what the hell happened here?
Speaker 2: This little short part three that that does feel like
Speaker 2: it's a little bit forced in in a sense because
Speaker 2: it's short. But now I think not to you know,
Speaker 2: toot our restoration, but it it's now an integral part
Speaker 2: of the back nine. And mostly because the hole was
Speaker 2: fine when he built it. It was great, but it was
Speaker 2: and he may have built a bunker in the middle
Speaker 2: of the green, but it didn't last very long if
Speaker 2: he did. We have one photo where you can kind
Speaker 2: of see it. I interview him, who took me right
Speaker 2: out there, and he is a sharp guy. He recently
Speaker 2: passed away, but he insisted it was there for a
Speaker 2: while and he replaced it with this bump in the green.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the point is he he took, he created
Speaker 2: new holes, he fixed old holes, he eliminated, i think reluctantly,
Speaker 2: the old seventeenth, which we ended up putting back, which
Speaker 2: was not our I mean, it was our suggestion there.
Speaker 1: Was a hot topic hole. Huh.
Speaker 2: And well in Thomas's time. Yeah. So the other thing
Speaker 2: we didn't get into is he he was also very
Speaker 2: involved in course set up and he had a Tom
Speaker 2: Meeks moment in the California State Open they played there.
Speaker 2: I always thought it was the LA Open, but it
Speaker 2: was a State Open. And someday I'll have to just
Speaker 2: do the whole seventeenth, whole story, because there was a
Speaker 2: poem written about the hole by his friend Scott E. Chisholm,
Speaker 2: who documented a lot of the work, and they had
Speaker 2: a sant Ana win and he put the pin down
Speaker 2: in the front, and uh, he was a problem hole
Speaker 2: in tournament conditions before I think, uh, or it was
Speaker 2: was it was. It was definitely iffy to put the
Speaker 2: pin down in front. And of course he wrote multiplely.
Speaker 2: You know, he was very his writing was so succinct.
Speaker 2: He got he just didn't waste time. But yet in
Speaker 2: golf architecture, in America. He kind of waxes on for
Speaker 2: a while, sort of defensively, like McDonald smith was a
Speaker 2: smart guy because he basically like played to make bogey
Speaker 2: as sart of was he his.
Speaker 1: Sharp part three And he's justifying that it was fine
Speaker 1: because one guy.
Speaker 2: The winner, the winner. Yeah, let's be honest, the guy
Speaker 2: who won the tournament. But he uh but he screwed up.
Speaker 2: And uh but the Santa Ana Blue, Now, they didn't
Speaker 2: have the weather forecast that uh we have now. So
Speaker 2: in his defense, you know, he didn't know what the
Speaker 2: wind was going to be like probably and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: he put it down there and nobody they could keep
Speaker 2: it on the green. And and so that hole survived
Speaker 2: for the LA Open in twenties. The first LA Open
Speaker 2: was at La Country Club and they played the Fowler
Speaker 2: Course and the sixteenth hole was was apart four and
Speaker 2: and then part three was the seventeenth and then the
Speaker 2: eighteenth was a blind t shot and he changed all
Speaker 2: of that. But he did take the hole out, but
Speaker 2: it was clear it was it was hard for him
Speaker 2: because it was a neat little hole. It was a
Speaker 2: beloved little hole. Robert Hunter took a little shot at
Speaker 2: it there were obviously people that were detractors at the
Speaker 2: time as well. It was a controversial hole for sure,
Speaker 2: but there were definitely people who absolutely adored it. And
Speaker 2: you see some great scenes in the tournaments out there
Speaker 2: where people are are are was it was a place
Speaker 2: to hang out and watch the golf.
Speaker 1: Clearly, what was something having you know, worked out there
Speaker 1: for so many years and obviously a historic restoration, one
Speaker 1: of the most influential restorations of this era of restoration,
Speaker 1: And what were some things that you picked up on,
Speaker 1: like maybe just more subtle ones that you wouldn't pick
Speaker 1: up on your first time out there, that you just
Speaker 1: really love about La his work at La North.
Speaker 2: Actually the greens, you know, because Thomas didn't build the
Speaker 2: most build the most exciting greens, but the and it
Speaker 2: was believed because he was just not a good putter.
Speaker 2: And he wrote a story an article about wanting to
Speaker 2: make putts a half stroke, which Hogan probably it.
Speaker 1: Was called a vandal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that wasn't it was not. Everybody loved that one,
Speaker 2: but he felt like there was an over emphasis on putting.
Speaker 2: I can't even fathom what he'd think of what the
Speaker 2: game looks like today with the over emphasis on putting,
Speaker 2: you know, watching his greens at Riviera at thirteen and
Speaker 2: guys marking eighteen inches because of poet and you know,
Speaker 2: they're scary little putts in February, and I just think
Speaker 2: he would say, oh, my lord, putting has really become
Speaker 2: ridiculously overvalued. So he made his case, and I admired
Speaker 2: that he made the case. But I think when you
Speaker 2: look at at l A, it's such a the greens
Speaker 2: just are. They're interesting enough and they don't ever detract.
Speaker 2: And then there there's a nice variety of them, and
Speaker 2: they are a couple that are that are more severe,
Speaker 2: and they are a couple that are just beautifully contoured.
Speaker 2: And and I think when you what I what I
Speaker 2: love about his greens is in la in particular, is
Speaker 2: there's usually one or two key features on each green,
Speaker 2: and as a player, you can you can remember those
Speaker 2: and use those to your advantage depending on where the
Speaker 2: whole is obviously, uh to place a shot or to
Speaker 2: know I can't miss it there. And I love that
Speaker 2: in that Not enough people bill greens that way where
Speaker 2: they're they're they're memorable enough. There's just too many greens
Speaker 2: where there's just too many things to try to remember
Speaker 2: and and and they're hard to visualize as you're trying
Speaker 2: to play a shot in so he he really allowed
Speaker 2: you to if you could perform the shot, uh, use
Speaker 2: those features to your advantage. And I just think that's it.
Speaker 2: Certainly wasn't making life easier. It was just making the
Speaker 2: golf better.
Speaker 1: It's something that I've kind of started to really believe in,
Speaker 1: is that confidence as an architect is the ability to
Speaker 1: build a really subtly brilliant green, not the really like
Speaker 1: we everybody always says, oh that the boldness of that green.
Speaker 1: Can you believe?
Speaker 2: How how you know?
Speaker 1: How confident that architect is to build something severe? But
Speaker 1: in reality, I think the opposite is true, where you
Speaker 1: know you could build something very subtle and small and
Speaker 1: that it's going to be just by yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was. He was really good at that,
Speaker 2: and Bell was was great at that. And I think
Speaker 2: a big part of the influence on that as well.
Speaker 2: They love to use little bumps kind of on the
Speaker 2: side of a green and create little little corners and
Speaker 2: tiers and wings, and they knew that was enough to
Speaker 2: just create interest without going nuts with the contours. And
Speaker 2: then the other thing they did with their greens that
Speaker 2: again you swear their courses were just sort of often
Speaker 2: lay of the land, but they really weren't that they
Speaker 2: they but they were an extension of the fairway essentially
Speaker 2: that that they didn't you didn't just have this kind
Speaker 2: of quiet ground and then get up to this green
Speaker 2: that was just going bonkers. And so that again fed
Speaker 2: to their mindset that if it seems natural, people embrace it.
Speaker 2: If it seems man made, they rejected. And and I
Speaker 2: don't like that when you're when you're on pretty quiet
Speaker 2: ground and then you get up there and the greens
Speaker 2: just a roller coaster ride. It It takes you. It,
Speaker 2: it makes you think of the architect and and and
Speaker 2: and can be quite annoying if the green is getting
Speaker 2: in your way of trying to score in a in
Speaker 2: a way that that isn't isn't much. Uh, I don't
Speaker 2: want to say unfair, but isn't fun. So that that,
Speaker 2: you know, that was a big thing at l A
Speaker 2: to me is is is kind of having that that trust.
Speaker 2: Plus it's a it's a site where that you just
Speaker 2: get so few flat stances and so you just don't
Speaker 2: need the green to be doing much because that alone
Speaker 2: throws you off enough that any slight tilt back, front, sideways,
Speaker 2: whatever is accentuated. And uh so that's a beautiful part
Speaker 2: of the design. Uh there for for sure and probably
Speaker 2: doesn't get a lot of attention just because again the uh,
Speaker 2: there's so much more to look at their tee to
Speaker 2: Tita fringe with the.
Speaker 1: Uh with with the other courses bel Air and Riviera,
Speaker 1: how did the sites differ from l A, which you
Speaker 1: just it was a more severe site, big big canyons
Speaker 1: that La is kind of situated. And how were bell
Speaker 1: Air and Riviera different and how did the designs differ there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, bell Air was a real estate development. He
Speaker 2: wanted to He used his plane supposedly to fly over
Speaker 2: the canyons and kind of help mister Bell, Alfonso Bell,
Speaker 2: the developer find the best site. He wanted to be
Speaker 2: on the other side of Sunset. And there are some
Speaker 2: renderings showing not actual architectural rendering, sort of an artist rendering.
Speaker 2: And then now that and then the state wanted that
Speaker 2: for UCLA and it became UCLA. So he had to
Speaker 2: stay on the I guess the north or the east
Speaker 2: side of Sunset, and that forced their hand to really
Speaker 2: keep everything in those canyons and then figure out how
Speaker 2: to go from one canyon to another. So they came
Speaker 2: up with the tunnel system. Really unbelievable what they accomplished.
Speaker 2: But down in the flats of the canyons, I can't
Speaker 2: even fathom what it once was like. It had to
Speaker 2: be incredible to try to well, it had to be
Speaker 2: pretty awful what they destroyed, I'm sure in terms of beauty,
Speaker 2: but it to create corridors for golf. And then bel Air,
Speaker 2: you know, his daughter who I got to speak to.
Speaker 2: She was, you know, obviously conflicted. I think George had
Speaker 2: some affairs or something, and so she had kind of
Speaker 2: a She and her mom had clearly a complicated relationship
Speaker 2: with him because she she ended up being a very
Speaker 2: good golfer and a longtime member of LA and an
Speaker 2: unbelievable woman. Just amazing woman to talk to. And I
Speaker 2: had some really fun phone calls with her at the time,
Speaker 2: just discussing things and trying to get things out of
Speaker 2: her and what she she could never you know, how
Speaker 2: it is, they people don't really know what's of interest
Speaker 2: sometimes when you're trying to find out about an architect,
Speaker 2: and but one of the main things she told me
Speaker 2: was that, and she held this against bel Air by
Speaker 2: the but she he made very clear that was his
Speaker 2: greatest accomplishment to her and his favorite design because it
Speaker 2: was so difficult, and then he built some of his
Speaker 2: most I don't know, flamboyant or bold or nuts kind
Speaker 2: of stuff like the may West hole, and and so
Speaker 2: when they did screw that up, both both she and
Speaker 2: of course Joe Novak, who was a pro at the time,
Speaker 2: kind of a legendary instructor, and he really held it
Speaker 2: against Dick Wilson, and she did too. In fact, she
Speaker 2: told me she stopped going there for team matches and things,
Speaker 2: and so it was interesting. She kind of admitted that
Speaker 2: it took her time in golf to start to realize
Speaker 2: the magnitude of what he did. But she played at
Speaker 2: LA and was a wonderful woman. So bell Air was
Speaker 2: just his most and Billy Bell the combination artist. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, just what they pulled off and in the
Speaker 2: time they did it. And you know, my only question
Speaker 2: on bell Air is is and we don't have that
Speaker 2: that perfect photo right when it opened. There's a few
Speaker 2: photos though that show some better bunkering. But the bunkering there.
Speaker 2: I know, it just didn't It just wasn't quite as
Speaker 2: nuts as it was at even at Ohi or La Cumbre,
Speaker 2: where they were a little more interesting with the bunkering.
Speaker 2: And then obviously Riviera in La They and then Stanford
Speaker 2: they went to another another level. So that was that
Speaker 2: was the complication with bel Air, was just pulling that off,
Speaker 2: and they did it spectacularly and also used it's interesting
Speaker 2: there you think about. They were more into the little
Speaker 2: bumps I mentioned by the Greens. They went bigger there.
Speaker 2: They were bigger scale moldings as he called them. And
Speaker 2: then Riviera was just a river bed. It was not
Speaker 2: an attractive site in terms of soil. It would flood.
Speaker 2: There were all these issues. It did have this cool
Speaker 2: feature going through it a lot like what we had
Speaker 2: Rustic Canyon, and we kept more intact I guess to
Speaker 2: Rustic because we had to environmentally with the sort of
Speaker 2: a sage scrub style wash that ended up obviously being
Speaker 2: a little bit of a problem in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: but so crappy.
Speaker 1: So well, that's the wash that runs along. It's not
Speaker 1: the Baranca eleven thirteen, yeah. Eight. For those that have
Speaker 1: you know seated on TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's now a deep, deep ditch baranca
Speaker 2: with a with a concrete Army Corps of Engineers washway
Speaker 2: or channel underneath. It goes all the way down to
Speaker 2: the ocean and at the end of Santa Monica Canyon.
Speaker 2: And that was installed after the flood and was a
Speaker 2: big excuse me. That was installed in the seventies, But
Speaker 2: after the flood, the baranca got a lot deeper. If
Speaker 2: you see the early photos of Riviera was more shallow
Speaker 2: and you could go play a ball more easily out
Speaker 2: of it. So, yeah, the biggest complication there was they
Speaker 2: wanted to build the homes on the side and the
Speaker 2: thirty six holes down at the bottom of the canyon
Speaker 2: and still plenty of movement in the ground and the
Speaker 2: tilt of the canyon, but it was essentially pretty flat.
Speaker 2: And that's their greatest construction accomplishment in terms of subtlety.
Speaker 2: And this is what I really learned from Ben Crenshaw,
Speaker 2: so much that I just didn't understand. And there was
Speaker 2: a great old story by the first club manager, and
Speaker 2: he detailed each of the green sites where they the
Speaker 2: number of feet they brought them up like eighteen number
Speaker 2: one and number four, all these greens where you go
Speaker 2: Holy cow. So that was at this elevation and they
Speaker 2: raised it, but you would never know when you're out there,
Speaker 2: and so that was where they and they really pushed
Speaker 2: sort of the boundaries. They talked about bringing out roadscrapers,
Speaker 2: and they pushed the boundaries of construction and sort of
Speaker 2: elevated the art of construction. And then drainage was Bells
Speaker 2: where he was just truly incredible the way he he
Speaker 2: dealt with that site. And even though yes there were
Speaker 2: floods and and it did damage, but it was a
Speaker 2: historic flood. It damaged many things in southern California, led
Speaker 2: to the La River being it was a big deal.
Speaker 2: It was a bad, bad al Nino, and so even
Speaker 2: no matter what he did, it wouldn't have mattered.
Speaker 1: I think a few years ago you posted a video
Speaker 1: from Riviera, if I remember correctly, on social media showing
Speaker 1: all the way the drainage works out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy, like when there's a huge nutty downpour,
Speaker 2: you suddenly see these little beautiful rivers through the property
Speaker 2: and it all takes it over to the Baranka and
Speaker 2: out to the ocean. And he they just create and
Speaker 2: and then what's great about him, though, is they add
Speaker 2: interest to the golf. They add these little swales and
Speaker 2: things and break up the land and and uh. But
Speaker 2: then but when you get these monster rains that we
Speaker 2: can get by the sea, the coast and an al nino,
Speaker 2: And when I worked on the book, I saw it
Speaker 2: and and out there that was the first time. It's
Speaker 2: just wild because you can stand up on the hill
Speaker 2: and you just see these perfect little little rivers. One
Speaker 2: goes through the range and uh, one, one, two, and ten,
Speaker 2: and there's some so there's an unbelievable one. But there's
Speaker 2: a great feature on the fifth hole. Anybody who's played
Speaker 2: their noses, it's big, funky, weird mound. And uh. After
Speaker 2: one of the really big al ninos, I went out
Speaker 2: there in a cart, stayed on the path and there
Speaker 2: was just this unbelievable amount of water coming out of
Speaker 2: the hillside but kind of bouncing off and around that
Speaker 2: big mound and then kind of snaking down in front
Speaker 2: of the sixth hole to the to the washway and
Speaker 2: out to the ocean. It was just and it was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe they there was maybe some rock underneath there. Who
Speaker 2: knows there was some reason they created it, and then
Speaker 2: it also served this great purpose of drainage, so they
Speaker 2: they were masters. That's sort of that dual purpose thing.
Speaker 2: But you don't really notice unless you are looking really
Speaker 2: really hard for it. And that's what Ben opened my
Speaker 2: eyes to was and he wrote about that in the
Speaker 2: forward of the Riviera book. What a what a master
Speaker 2: work of And maybe he thinks the greatest created golf course.
Speaker 2: I think he say the world anyway, greatest created course
Speaker 2: that that he can And what he meant by that
Speaker 2: is that they kind of took nothing and made it
Speaker 2: something spectacular.
Speaker 1: But it looks completely natural the ground does.
Speaker 2: I mean, now it doesn't because there's just so many. Yeah,
Speaker 2: bunkers are so clean and they've kind of gotten the
Speaker 2: barancas have lost their their shape and their impuct Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there are elements that have. The greens have
Speaker 2: been screwed with in weird ways, so it's lost some
Speaker 2: of that. But yes, if you actually just look at
Speaker 2: the groundwork, Uh, you just can't believe how many elements
Speaker 2: out there were man made.
Speaker 1: We're at this point with restoration where we're getting down.
Speaker 1: Yale is getting restored. Lookout out and it's getting restored
Speaker 1: all day, and I start to think about, you know,
Speaker 1: what are the great durations left, and you know, Riviera
Speaker 1: is one that jumps to mind, but oh yeah, other
Speaker 1: ones include Ohi and which potentially La Cumbra. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much there could be done there, but you
Speaker 1: start to think about it, it's like, well like kind
Speaker 1: of like three of the best restoration candidates that exist
Speaker 1: in golf, in American golf at least are George Thomas courses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean Riviera was called the Pine Valley
Speaker 2: of the West at the time, and you look at
Speaker 2: the photos and you see how dramatic it was, and
Speaker 2: you think, my god, with the right approach and getting
Speaker 2: that back and getting some of the strategy lost back
Speaker 2: and fixing the approaches, I mean, it would be a
Speaker 2: big job, but it should easily be one of the
Speaker 2: top fifteen courses in the world if in that original state.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just not a week hole. There's a
Speaker 2: case that it's the greatest set of part threes. There's
Speaker 2: a case that it's got just just multiple unbelievable part fours.
Speaker 2: But it's in good shape and it's the bunkers are clean,
Speaker 2: and it's fair and people like that, and so it
Speaker 2: does fine, it's it's it's still ranked very well still,
Speaker 2: but as a work of artist, would be the very best,
Speaker 2: it really would. It would be. Yeah, it would be incredible.
Speaker 2: I would throw Pine Valley by the way onto your
Speaker 2: restorational list. I think it's it's been screwed with a
Speaker 2: little ways. Yeah, well we won't go down that at hole. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and obviously.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other podcast. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of the other courses, which one would you most like
Speaker 1: to see returned or would you have most like to
Speaker 1: see in its you know, great state of all the
Speaker 1: other courses.
Speaker 2: Probably, OHI just because it's such a beautiful place and
Speaker 2: and in a difficult site. I mean I saw o Hi.
Speaker 2: You know. They used to play the Champions Senior Tour
Speaker 2: up there, and I was roommates with the Algeiberger's son John,
Speaker 2: and so I would always go up and watch that,
Speaker 2: and my dad I played there even before the Moorish projects,
Speaker 2: So I saw parts of it. But obviously the abandoned
Speaker 2: holes that they tried to bring back weren't weren't in place.
Speaker 2: But it's just such a The back nine is so
Speaker 2: beautiful and there were elements that you could see were
Speaker 2: really great that they've kind of lost, So that that
Speaker 2: would be I mean La Cumbro would be tough because
Speaker 2: there were other changes, but you still have the lake
Speaker 2: holes and you could still capture certain elements for sure.
Speaker 1: Could they get that canyon hole back? Is that even feasible?
Speaker 2: I think so?
Speaker 1: What was it the sixteenth Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so. I don't you know, it's been filled
Speaker 2: in the canyon. I don't know what you would do.
Speaker 2: I think you couldn't quite recapture the depth of the
Speaker 2: old canyon, but you could do something to get that
Speaker 2: look of that green out on that crazy spot. The
Speaker 2: next part three is gone. It's the maintenance buildings on
Speaker 2: that green site. I don't think that that one would
Speaker 2: be easy to get back. That would be that would
Speaker 2: be a big project. But it was.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of money in Santa Barbara, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is, and it was and it was a crazy
Speaker 2: cool little Part three. So he built he built amazing
Speaker 2: Part three's. I think that's another part of his career
Speaker 2: that makes him stand out. I don't know many people
Speaker 2: who built more diverse and memorable and unusual, but but
Speaker 2: great and fun Part threes and than George Thomas. I
Speaker 2: really don't know there's anybody. I mean, I obviously if
Speaker 2: you love your your template, Holes and Rayner McDonald, Rayner
Speaker 2: Rayner built amazing Part threes. But I would also say
Speaker 2: and and and varied and and went off in great
Speaker 2: tangents away from the the template and and not to
Speaker 2: diminish that in any way, because they're amazing, but in
Speaker 2: terms of originality, I just don't think anybody was in
Speaker 2: the league of Thomas and Bell and their their prime
Speaker 2: and they also, you know, these awful sites we're talking
Speaker 2: about did lend themselves to some fantastic Part three though.
Speaker 1: That's the one positive of canyons. Canyons, Yeah, severe ground
Speaker 1: is a great place to put apart exactly.
Speaker 2: And they but but as we know, people screw that up,
Speaker 2: and they didn't. They really got the most out of
Speaker 2: those and that's another thing that makes them so so amazing.
Speaker 1: So one last thing I wanted to hit on. This
Speaker 1: has been terrific. Uh he In your book you have
Speaker 1: some excerpts of him talking about raiding golf courses. What
Speaker 1: was his theory around rating a golf course and how
Speaker 1: it should be done?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he called it standard of competitive merits of Courses.
Speaker 2: I just happened to flip open the book to that page.
Speaker 1: I think he would do You think he would appreciate
Speaker 1: the golf ranking system as they stand today.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a great question because it was such
Speaker 2: a it was such an odd thing for him to
Speaker 2: go off in this mindset, and I would love to know.
Speaker 2: It's one of the things you would love to ask him,
Speaker 2: like why was this such a thing for you? But
Speaker 2: in a nutshell, no, I think he'd think the rankings.
Speaker 2: I mean, who would who would look at what not
Speaker 2: not necessarily Golf magazine because they're they're they're they're going
Speaker 2: in a good direction, but like who would look at
Speaker 2: what Golf digest in golf we do now for rankings
Speaker 2: and say, oh, that's that's a great idea. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's superb.
Speaker 1: Anybody a chief revenue officer was I just wanted and correct,
Speaker 1: look correct? How much money they make?
Speaker 2: I know it's up to three hundred a year and
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred as a down payment, and it's probably going
Speaker 2: to be double that in a couple of years. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was interesting that he went down this rat hole
Speaker 2: sort of of trying to do this. I'm guessing that
Speaker 2: you know, so much of this probably was dicked a
Speaker 2: by kind of the climate of the time. When you
Speaker 2: go back to what what he and and Mackenzie and
Speaker 2: we didn't discuss their little spat I would love to
Speaker 2: clarify that if you'd like me too, But go for
Speaker 2: what they were all bitching and not bitching and moaning,
Speaker 2: but they were they were advocating very hard for their philosophy,
Speaker 2: and each of them had little slightly different takes. But
Speaker 2: Mackenzie and Thomas, their work is very similar in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, especially when Thomas joined with Bell in
Speaker 2: terms of the artistry, and Mackenzie obviously had such an
Speaker 2: incredible group of people building his work. And but they
Speaker 2: were all rather they just they just felt the need
Speaker 2: to keep pressing this case for for a certain kind
Speaker 2: of naturalness and permanence to design, having seen in their
Speaker 2: lifetimes the various phases that golf architecture had gone in,
Speaker 2: and they all well, especially Thomas and McKenzie, explicitly wrote
Speaker 2: that they thought they were just at the beginning that
Speaker 2: the next wave of people would take their ideas and
Speaker 2: go to the next level. Obviously, that didn't happen. It
Speaker 2: went the other direction. So I think they almost in
Speaker 2: a way be a little disappointed that there hasn't been
Speaker 2: a more intricately strategic old course style trend of of
Speaker 2: just crazy crazy strategy as part of the theme of architecture.
Speaker 2: But they were really working hard to make their case
Speaker 2: because they believe that's what was the right thing for
Speaker 2: the land, and what was the right thing for the
Speaker 2: golf and the beauty and and and the responsibility of
Speaker 2: plowing this property for golf and leaving it behind for
Speaker 2: peoples to make it natural seemingly natural, and both for.
Speaker 1: Golf to do it. California, you know, like the most
Speaker 1: naturally beautiful place in.
Speaker 2: Americaa well, and they were probably realizing that there was
Speaker 2: a responsibility they were they were taking on, especially Mackenzie's case,
Speaker 2: some amazing sites so so, and that's why it is
Speaker 2: kind of odd that they clearly had attention. And I
Speaker 2: wrote a piece about Mackenzie's time in la which was
Speaker 2: just kind of one cluster after another. He had projects
Speaker 2: fall through, and this and that I wrote this for
Speaker 2: for the upcoming book on Mackenzie that Josh has done.
Speaker 2: And I wrote just a just a look at his
Speaker 2: time in la because I did have a story related
Speaker 2: to that from my research on Thomas. Because one of
Speaker 2: the things that could not figure out when the Spirit
Speaker 2: of Saint Andrews came out in ninety five and when
Speaker 2: I was sort of in the middle of all this,
Speaker 2: was why why did Mackenzie just crap on Thomas? And
Speaker 2: it was obviously Thomas in his part three course at
Speaker 2: Riviera in the to Saint Andrew's and it's he never
Speaker 2: names him, but it's obvious who he's speaking of. And
Speaker 2: Riviera had this par three course where the range is now,
Speaker 2: and it was magnificent. It was very heavily bunkered. It
Speaker 2: was a pitch and putt course and it really the
Speaker 2: ground for it was there until the tour had a
Speaker 2: phase I guess it's now been what twelve or so years,
Speaker 2: maybe even fifteen now, about ten to twelve where for
Speaker 2: some reason every range had to be a grass field
Speaker 2: with little stakes. That's that was the feedback they got
Speaker 2: from players in a survey. So Riviera redoing its range
Speaker 2: to try to get majors, you know, did a nice
Speaker 2: job building a huge, big tea, but they just took
Speaker 2: the landing area of the range and bulldozed it and
Speaker 2: is heartbreaking because all the remnants of the old par
Speaker 2: three course were out there, and I you know, walked
Speaker 2: it a few times when the range was closed the
Speaker 2: lad evening and found some of the old greens and
Speaker 2: one of them was this crazy little clover leaf thing.
Speaker 2: And anyway, so it was a it was a bold
Speaker 2: part three course, let's call it that. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was tough, I'm sure for what those guys at the
Speaker 2: time thought a part three course should do. And anyway,
Speaker 2: I think it was an opening for McKenzie to take
Speaker 2: a shot because the story that was relayed to me
Speaker 2: by Frank Hathaway, who was the grandson of one of
Speaker 2: the founders of Riviera, of Frank Garbett. There were two
Speaker 2: key founders and they were big, big guys in the
Speaker 2: city of la William My Garland who brought the Olympics
Speaker 2: here in Frank Garbett, and they co founded the La
Speaker 2: Athletic Club. And Frank Hathaway was really gracious and spending
Speaker 2: a lot of time with me when I worked on
Speaker 2: the Riviera book, and I mean he should have been
Speaker 2: They got one hundred and eight million dollars for the place,
Speaker 2: so he should have been in a he was living
Speaker 2: in a nice place, but he and he didn't know
Speaker 2: the full story. But I helped him kind of piece
Speaker 2: it together. We kind of pieced it together, talked looking
Speaker 2: it through. But essentially there was a mix up. And
Speaker 2: there's those famous photos that Scott Eachishom took of Mackenzie
Speaker 2: out on the side at Riviera, and they're in and
Speaker 2: they're in my books and all over and they're all
Speaker 2: dressed up and they're looking at sketches and Thomas says
Speaker 2: his little glasses on and they're pointing, you know, and
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And there was a mix up that
Speaker 2: Mackenzie thought he was being brought in to to be
Speaker 2: the architect with with this group, and he was clearly
Speaker 2: rather resentful of that from that day on. I mean,
Speaker 2: he put on a good show. He came out there
Speaker 2: and one of the things he did was he brought
Speaker 2: a box of golf Ark his book Golf Architecture. And
Speaker 2: it's another side story, but I many years later a
Speaker 2: member sold me a copy they had. It's the original
Speaker 2: with the dust jacket on it, and I paid on
Speaker 2: her books for it. Yeah, they're worth like two grand.
Speaker 2: Now there's very rare, and uh, he he brought this
Speaker 2: box of the books and they sat in the club forever.
Speaker 2: And then Ron Rhodes, the great Man, one of the pros,
Speaker 2: put them out for sale. They didn't sell for years.
Speaker 2: They just apparently sat in the shop, you know, just
Speaker 2: out and nobody, nobody wanted a book in the eighties
Speaker 2: or seventies. And Willie Hunter and Mac Hunter the old
Speaker 2: pros before him, and I guess they didn't throw them away,
Speaker 2: which was nice. And so he brought books. He put
Speaker 2: on the full show and he gets there and and uh,
Speaker 2: there was a misunderstanding, so he was kind of bitter
Speaker 2: from that point on. It sounds like, which is too bad,
Speaker 2: because again their styles were were pretty similar. Now and
Speaker 2: then I also might as well take this moment to
Speaker 2: clarify that Mackenzie had nothing to do with any changes
Speaker 2: to the course. There's a kind of a huckster there
Speaker 2: named Mike Yamacky who tried to peddle a story with
Speaker 2: using Ian Scott Taylor and Phil Young's claims of these
Speaker 2: these drawings of Mackenzie and they're they're total fakes.
Speaker 1: They're totally from mackenzie papers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just total, total fraudulent stuff. And the thing that
Speaker 2: they didn't know when they embarked on this canard was
Speaker 2: that after I did the Captain, I found when I
Speaker 2: went back to the USGA and these old Pacific Golf
Speaker 2: and Motor and Country Club magazines an article by Scotty
Speaker 2: Chisholm explaining what George Thomas was going to do to
Speaker 2: the course for the nineteen twenty nine LA Open. So
Speaker 2: I have that article and I obviously shared it with
Speaker 2: the people who needed to see it. And there's even
Speaker 2: a photo of the tenth hole where Billy Bell is supervising.
Speaker 2: Not Billy Bell's not in the photo, but it says
Speaker 2: that he's out there supervising the changes to the tenth
Speaker 2: and a few other tweaks for the coming nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: nine LA Open. And it shows the installation of new
Speaker 2: bunkers on ten that really made the hole what it
Speaker 2: is around the green and all that. Mackenzie had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with any of that. It was all Thomas
Speaker 2: and Bell and it was all in preparation for the
Speaker 2: twenty nine LA Open. But I didn't have that in
Speaker 2: the Captain found that out about two years after a
Speaker 2: year and a half after but they didn't know that,
Speaker 2: so they tried this, this ridiculous scam to claim that
Speaker 2: McKenzie did all this work there. And unfortunately, the club
Speaker 2: tried to tell everybody and their brother that this was
Speaker 2: the case. I don't know if they wanted to enhance
Speaker 2: the value of the place or whatever. But he never
Speaker 2: set foot out there again after his h as far
Speaker 2: as I know, and as far as the McKenzie folks
Speaker 2: who've documented his travels know. I mean, he might have
Speaker 2: popped out there one day and seen the Part three
Speaker 2: course and that was his excuse to slam it. But anyhow,
Speaker 2: so it's uh that that part of the mackenzie legacy
Speaker 2: at Riviera is just really more about a site visit
Speaker 2: and a misunderstanding. And like I said, all his time
Speaker 2: in La just was sort of it seemed like it
Speaker 2: was jinxed for McKenzie.
Speaker 1: So about the course rating system, back to the so
Speaker 1: what how did he went hole by hole?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And it was there was one point for a feature hole, yeah, correct,
Speaker 1: two point two points for a good hole. So he
Speaker 1: basically graded he graded out every hole from a score
Speaker 1: of I believe one to five and one was like
Speaker 1: a truly great hole, right, And then you know, and
Speaker 1: it's an interesting way. I think about this all the
Speaker 1: time because it's a format that I really like, because
Speaker 1: it's I always ask the question how many bad holes
Speaker 1: can a great course have? Right, and it exposes courses
Speaker 1: with bad holes, and I think it also lends insight
Speaker 1: into how he built his courses because you know so
Speaker 1: often and I think, obviously this is a modern thing,
Speaker 1: but it's it becomes about the picture holes, the spectacular holes, right,
Speaker 1: and it sometimes great holes or are given away in
Speaker 1: order to get to a place where that spectacular picture
Speaker 1: is taken, and the entire golf course as a whole
Speaker 1: loses some of its luster because of that. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at Thomas and the courses
Speaker 1: that I've seen, and I haven't studied nearly as much
Speaker 1: as you, but you whenever you get off and done playing,
Speaker 1: you go, wow, that was that was really spectacular. And
Speaker 1: one of the toughest questions to answer would be what's
Speaker 1: the weakest hole at La North, what's the weakest hole
Speaker 1: at bel Air, what's the weakest hole at at Riviera.
Speaker 1: You you could sit and argue that for hours.
Speaker 2: You could, although I will say the one weakness of
Speaker 2: his of his design work, and I think it was
Speaker 2: more product of the time than than than and the
Speaker 2: equipment than than his ability. Were his par fives. He
Speaker 2: generally didn't really make them very tough at the end
Speaker 2: at the Green, and I think it was because they
Speaker 2: were pretty long and people were I mean, if you
Speaker 2: went through his with his his system, you would probably
Speaker 2: knock his par fives the most. But again I would
Speaker 2: say is because he built Some of them were five
Speaker 2: sixty seventy, which in the day of Hickory's is yeah,
Speaker 2: you're hitting a long club into those. So he tended
Speaker 2: to and we in fact at La on the eighth hole,
Speaker 2: we just flat out said we're going to make this
Speaker 2: more difficult by the green because he didn't make it
Speaker 2: very difficult, and I really but it was not just
Speaker 2: that hole. I mean, he did it at seventeen and
Speaker 2: at Riviera eleven, at Rivie Era, so he that was
Speaker 2: his one week spot where you'd probably knock him down.
Speaker 2: But I do think, I mean, I do think there
Speaker 2: is something to the system. It's a little like the
Speaker 2: match play system of matching courses against each other, because
Speaker 2: even though some people don't like that, you ultimately do
Speaker 2: speak to those holes that are not as spectacular. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really fun to match play Riviera in La North
Speaker 2: and you do kind of or well any combination of
Speaker 2: courses and you do, it does almost highlight more not
Speaker 2: the great holes, but those those moments of where like, well,
Speaker 2: why didn't the architect just do something to get a
Speaker 2: little more life out of this whole, to to make
Speaker 2: it interesting enough? And uh, you know, and that was
Speaker 2: where he and Bell were amazing. They just they're just
Speaker 2: they just didn't do any uh bland holes. They might
Speaker 2: not photograph well like you you know, but there was character,
Speaker 2: there were there were there were subtleties and uh but
Speaker 2: they they most of the time they kind of hit
Speaker 2: you over the head with pretty pretty uh inspiring looking stuff.
Speaker 2: They didn't they didn't like to, but they threw it enough.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've got to have some holes that are
Speaker 2: not You can't have every I think he even was here, mackensey,
Speaker 2: I mean you can't have no actually it was uh
Speaker 2: it was tilling ass. You can't have attacks of hysteria.
Speaker 2: I believe it was a line on it. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't want every hole to be uh just an
Speaker 2: incredible you know why. You know, Pine Valley does that,
Speaker 2: but but how many courses can do that and make
Speaker 2: you want to keep playing the game and not lose
Speaker 2: your mind where it's just relentless. And that was always
Speaker 2: the mentality of Pine Valley and obviously inspired him to
Speaker 2: create those kinds of holes. But you just can't and
Speaker 2: of course people are going to play every day, and
Speaker 2: he thought more in that mindset. He also thought that
Speaker 2: way with routing. As you know, he was into loops
Speaker 2: of holes and he made a big deal about that.
Speaker 2: And I was fortunate to experience that playing Riviera, the
Speaker 2: great little loops of holes. You just go out and
Speaker 2: play three or four holes and you're you're right there.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not stuck out at the far end
Speaker 2: of the property. You're right there. And he took La
Speaker 2: Country Club has great little loops around there, So he
Speaker 2: was he was a little more cognizant of that day
Speaker 2: to day enjoyability of a course while still blending in
Speaker 2: the crazy and the magnificent and all that. And I
Speaker 2: think that's why he's so so incredible as an architect.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's perfect place stand it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a waxing poetic about George Thomas. Hopefully we will see
Speaker 1: more Thomas restorations in the next ten years. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Hopefully one can one can dream. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: were dreaming about Yale for ten Who would have thought years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about our Inverness or Oakland Hills or Congressional
Speaker 2: or I mean, there's quite a f I was just
Speaker 2: pondering that looking at the golf list I wrote about
Speaker 2: in the newsletter that you know, I mean, just amazing
Speaker 2: to think Congressional and Oakland Hills, these old PGA sites
Speaker 2: in southern Hills that had gotten either tired or now
Speaker 2: look where they are. You're like, Wow, if you told
Speaker 2: me that ten years ago, I never would have Those
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been the ones I predicted seeing the light
Speaker 2: and look look where we are now. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Maybe Griffith Park who knows, who knows?
Speaker 2: We need a rich guy, We need a rich guy
Speaker 2: to write a check and uh that that's that would
Speaker 2: be key.
Speaker 1: So people can find you. You got Jeff Shackleford dot com,
Speaker 1: yelf's og blogger. You know you were you were the first.
Speaker 1: We all owe you a debt of grad Thank you, dude.
Speaker 1: I think that's the way and Uh, then you've got
Speaker 1: your You're also on substack. You're very trendy. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got the Quadrilateral. It is a subscription. I subscribe. I
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I read it all the time. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend people subscribe. It's what fifty bucks a year.
Speaker 2: It's like correct.
Speaker 1: A Starbucks trip, one latte a month, and you can
Speaker 1: get Jeff's writing delivered right to your end box. It's delightful.
Speaker 1: I would recommend it. And uh, then you're on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Jeff Shack, so I can find you
Speaker 1: anything else, any parting thoughts on on Thomas. Anything to
Speaker 1: leave people with, you just wish your book probably was cheaper.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it is kind of kind of amazing how
Speaker 2: expensive it is now. I do have a stash that
Speaker 2: I need to get out on the market. Think that's
Speaker 2: going to lower the price much. But it was great.
Speaker 2: It was great fun to self publish that, and I
Speaker 2: got very lucky again with the quality of it. But
Speaker 2: you know, the thought I'd leave you with is, don't
Speaker 2: feel bad. But because he didn't inherent a lot of
Speaker 2: money and had a lot of free time. But when
Speaker 2: you think about what he did in fifty nine years
Speaker 2: it's with health problems in a war in between. It's
Speaker 2: it's inspiring. Again. He had a nice bank roll and
Speaker 2: we would all but still I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: There was no television either, and the tour wasn't occupying
Speaker 1: fifty weeks of our lives.
Speaker 2: That is correct, that is those were all key points.
Speaker 2: But I think it was a diversification of interest, you
Speaker 2: know that he could he could go from the roses
Speaker 2: to the catching these these amazing fish off tuna. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then the Tuna Club and all that and and
Speaker 2: what and you know, which was part of the movie Chinatown.
Speaker 2: The albu Core Club was inspired by that. You know,
Speaker 2: it was an amazing time at Catalina. You know, Bobby
Speaker 2: Jones had a tournament out there and Wrigley and the
Speaker 2: Billy Bell did the course out there. That's that's a mess.
Speaker 2: That would be cool to see restored as well. But yeah,
Speaker 2: just an inspiring life.
Speaker 1: Like there's just a heap of Billy Bell and Thomas
Speaker 1: courses in southern California. Yeah, that are just just getting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a dark time. We had a lot
Speaker 2: of people come through and not not get the uh
Speaker 2: get what those two guys were about. And we're getting there,
Speaker 2: but it's still compared to other parts of the country.
Speaker 2: We're we're not quite there. But the I think, you know,
Speaker 2: with the US open coming and and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: it'll it'll keep we'll keep chipping away.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, thank you and uh we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Andy. I appreciate you giving me the time
Speaker 2: to talk about the Captain.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg Podcast. Today's episode was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you, Meg.
Speaker 1: And just as a quick reminder, we have a terrific
Speaker 1: three day week newsletter. We're talking about newsletters a lot.
Speaker 1: Jeff's is the Quadrilateral. Ours is just the Frida Egg newsletter.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Frida Egg dot com you
Speaker 1: can sign up for it. It comes out every Monday
Speaker 1: Wednesday Friday. Will Knights writes it. It is covering some
Speaker 1: really interesting topics in golf. Obviously a lot of news
Speaker 1: with what's going on with the Saudis and the alternative leagues,
Speaker 1: and then obviously we get into some other fun topics.
Speaker 1: We have a public golf musty that comes out every
Speaker 1: week or so. So check out the newsletter. Sign up
Speaker 1: for it at the Frida egg dot com and we
Speaker 1: will talk to you soon.