Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 2: A bride egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida
Speaker 2: Egg Egg, Frida Egg, bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to run off of the hump.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Friday Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and
Speaker 1: today we're talking about municipal golf with the architect Gil Hants.
Speaker 1: This conversation took place a couple of weeks ago at
Speaker 1: the third annual National Links Trust Symposium on Municipal Golf.
Speaker 1: The NLT Symposium is basically a gathering of people who
Speaker 1: work in and advocate for municipal golf in America, and
Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty three edition, I was very honored
Speaker 1: to serve as the MC and host a couple of
Speaker 1: the conversations on stage. As the closing event of this
Speaker 1: year's symposium, Gil Hans and I got up in front
Speaker 1: of a crowd at the Pearl Street Warehouse in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And we talked about Gill's various municipal golf projects,
Speaker 1: which date back to the building of Rustic Canyon and
Speaker 1: the renovation of Seoul Park, both in California. More recently,
Speaker 1: Gil designed the new park in West Palm Beach and
Speaker 1: he's currently working on projects at Maggie Hathaway in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: Rock Creek Park in d C. And Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, that last one, Cobbs Creek, I mistakenly
Speaker 1: forgot to ask him about. It was a really fun conversation.
Speaker 1: I was a little nervous. I'd never done anything like
Speaker 1: this before, getting up and kind of performing a conversation,
Speaker 1: but Gil is so good in these situations, and we
Speaker 1: just ended up kind of nerding out about golf like
Speaker 1: we usually do, except this time it happened to be
Speaker 1: in front of an audience. So great experience, and I
Speaker 1: really want to thank everyone at the National Links Trust
Speaker 1: for inviting me to be involved. They have a fantastic
Speaker 1: team over there, and I truly think they're going to
Speaker 1: help shape the future of golf in a very positive way.
Speaker 1: So if you ever have a chance to attend the
Speaker 1: NLT Symposium next year or the year after, you should
Speaker 1: absolutely do so. Now, before we get to my interview
Speaker 1: with Gil Hants, I want to say a few words
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Speaker 1: here is me and Gil Hans at the National Links
Speaker 1: Trust Symposium on Municipal Golf. Please welcome to the stage,
Speaker 1: Gil Hans, All right, Gil you ready? Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So the focus of this conversation is municipal golf. So
Speaker 1: I want to take you back a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: This was before the Olympic course. This was before you
Speaker 1: had to tell people not to call you the open doctor,
Speaker 1: which I'm still resisting. You were an up and coming
Speaker 1: golf architect and one of your first handful of new
Speaker 1: build projects was at Rustic Canyon. Now, I think Rustic
Speaker 1: Canyon is one of the best municipal courses in the country.
Speaker 1: So could you tell me a little bit about how
Speaker 1: this project came about, just to get right into it.
Speaker 2: Sure, Thanks everybody for being here tonight. By the way,
Speaker 2: the green room is not green, in case anybody was interested.
Speaker 2: More of a darkish, bluish yeah, kind of, yeah, actually
Speaker 2: it was. It all came from Jeff Shackelford. Jeff his father,
Speaker 2: Lynn had worked for American Golf and then he had
Speaker 2: partnered up with Craig Price on a few projects, and
Speaker 2: so Craig was looking at bidding for Ventura County to
Speaker 2: get to do Rusta Canyon, and so he talked to
Speaker 2: Lynn Shackelford. Jeff then talked to us because I had
Speaker 2: done the sketches for his book Grounds for Golf. So
Speaker 2: Jeff and I had become friends at that point in time.
Speaker 2: And it's really just one introduction after another. And I
Speaker 2: know at the time they had talked to several sort
Speaker 2: of bigger name architects and they said the site was
Speaker 2: too flat. It's too flat for good golf, wasn't interesting.
Speaker 2: We kept hearing this over and over again, and you know,
Speaker 2: the more we walked around out though, the more we
Speaker 2: realized that it was flat if you weren't really looking.
Speaker 2: But it was seriously tilted. I mean from the high
Speaker 2: end to the low end was well over one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty feet, so there was tons of elevation change.
Speaker 2: The little dry wash that ran through the middle presented
Speaker 2: tons of opportunities. Jeff being George Thomas's biographer and intimately
Speaker 2: knowledgeable about Riviera bel Air, not so much lacc at
Speaker 2: that point in time, but he had these concepts of
Speaker 2: let's build these Thomas holes, and we've got the branca
Speaker 2: and the opportunity to do that. And so we were
Speaker 2: eventually selected for the job, and you know, said to it.
Speaker 2: As you said, there was maybe one or two projects
Speaker 2: we were working on at the time, so we spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time on site. It was a dusty,
Speaker 2: dirty site because you know, it doesn't rain in California
Speaker 2: very often, and so it was just but it was
Speaker 2: a fun site. We had the freedom and the opportunity,
Speaker 2: the ability to build golf holes that we thought were
Speaker 2: interesting and special. And I think that was one of
Speaker 2: the best lessons of that project was we've never set
Speaker 2: out to dumb down our golf courses because they're public.
Speaker 2: We've never set out to say, well, it's going to
Speaker 2: be the average golfer, a municipal golfer is going to
Speaker 2: play here, so let's just give them the vanilla version. Thought,
Speaker 2: why should we do that. We should still build the
Speaker 2: golf course to the best of our ability, put the
Speaker 2: most interest we can into it, and really design it
Speaker 2: to the standard, whether it was private or public, try
Speaker 2: and create some things. We worked really hard on width
Speaker 2: out there. We had the opportunity to build wide corridors,
Speaker 2: to create options. You know, with for WID's sake, isn't
Speaker 2: that interesting. But when you have with it and it
Speaker 2: gives you options and gives you better angles and different
Speaker 2: ways to play these golf holes, I think that that
Speaker 2: that's it made a lot of sense. Early on, it
Speaker 2: was probably the biggest site we had gotten our hands on,
Speaker 2: and then it was also, you know, the site of
Speaker 2: our biggest pop culture phenomenon in that those any Entourage
Speaker 2: fans out there, all right, So one of the episodes
Speaker 2: they were talking about going to play golf and they asked,
Speaker 2: Johnny Drama, he said where are you going to play golf?
Speaker 2: And he said Russa Canyon, the best public golf course
Speaker 2: in southern California. So I had that from a ring
Speaker 2: tone for a little while. But no, it was an
Speaker 2: amazing opportunity. You know, Jeff was such a great person
Speaker 2: to partner with on that. Jim and I would be
Speaker 2: stuck into the machinery and work and then people say, well,
Speaker 2: what did Jeff do? And he actually was like a
Speaker 2: hole ahead. He was walking and looking because he didn't
Speaker 2: really want to work on equipment and he didn't want
Speaker 2: to work with a shovel, I mean want to damage
Speaker 2: his hands. But no, he was a hole ahead, looking
Speaker 2: and thinking and brainstorming. So that when Jim and I
Speaker 2: finished a hole, we went over and it was like okay,
Speaker 2: instead of going now what do we do? I was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: what about this? And I think it fueled a ton
Speaker 2: of great ideas and a lot of great energy out
Speaker 2: on the site.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that story about entourage, his rust of
Speaker 1: Canyon really a Johnny Drama kind of course, I wonder, I.
Speaker 2: Think so, I mean, it's one of those places we
Speaker 2: get you know, I run into people here and there, obviously,
Speaker 2: and I get so many comments about Usta Caanyon. Soul
Speaker 2: Park is another one. And then the strangest one of
Speaker 2: all is Swanee, the University of the South. We did
Speaker 2: a little nine hole makeover there, and the people who
Speaker 2: go to that school love that school. They're like so
Speaker 2: attached their school and so proud of it. And I'll
Speaker 2: just run people say you did Swany, didn't you. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was not you know, in the pantheon of courses
Speaker 2: that you mentioned, it doesn't get mentioned very often, but
Speaker 2: you know, Rustic Canyon, Seoul Park, and Swani are ones
Speaker 2: that people come up and say, thanks for doing that.
Speaker 1: If you go out to Sweden's Cove, you should go
Speaker 1: up to Swanee. It's not not much if you go
Speaker 1: that far, you can go a little bit farther. So
Speaker 1: with the rust of Canyon project, we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: this week during this symposium about methods of building and
Speaker 1: what the best practices for that are the theme of
Speaker 1: the symposium was in house and large scale projects, and
Speaker 1: we learned about a number of different approaches to that.
Speaker 1: For the Rustic Canyon project. This was really a design
Speaker 1: build effort, wouldn't you say it was.
Speaker 2: We had a project manager, we had basically hired then
Speaker 2: our own crew in house. I think when we figured
Speaker 2: we tali died it all up. We moved seventeen thousand
Speaker 2: cubic yards of dirt and it was basically with a
Speaker 2: front end loader and a pickup.
Speaker 1: Could you compare that to like give people an idea
Speaker 1: of how little that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's minuscule. It's barely even shaping. You know,
Speaker 2: we just did a golf course in Palm Springs where
Speaker 2: we moved two million cubic yards of dirt, So I
Speaker 2: mean you can in comparison that was the most rustic.
Speaker 2: Canyon was definitely the least. And so it was just, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a small crew. Some of them had golf experience,
Speaker 2: some of them didn't. We had an irrigation contractor. But
Speaker 2: it was sort of every day you show up and
Speaker 2: there were fifteen guys out there, and today you're going
Speaker 2: to drive this piece of equipment. Today you're going to
Speaker 2: do this. And because it was in essence very minimal
Speaker 2: earth moving and the shaping was really all we did it.
Speaker 2: You know, the holes came together pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And part of that minimal approach, and if I can
Speaker 1: use the term minimalism, it seems like it's a little
Speaker 1: bit out of fashion. It was a little bit more
Speaker 1: in fashion and a little more cutting edge feeling when
Speaker 1: you did the Rustic Canyon project. I believe this really
Speaker 1: is a minimalist project. But it was minimalist for a reason, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were a lot of environmental sensitivities around
Speaker 1: this site, and so, you know, can you talk about
Speaker 1: how your approach to your philosophy of architecture fit with
Speaker 1: this kind of project.
Speaker 2: I think early on, having worked for Tom Doak for
Speaker 2: for four years, you know, he was the first architect
Speaker 2: to be associated with minimalism. You know, Bill and Ben,
Speaker 2: we're doing golf courses that were considered minimalist. Tom was
Speaker 2: the one, I think who sort of introduced that into
Speaker 2: the you know, the phraseology of lexic.
Speaker 1: He wrote a minimalist manifesto, it was the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So I think having been exposed to that and having
Speaker 2: had all those conversations with Tom about how you build
Speaker 2: minimalist golf courses, we set out at Rustic Canyon with
Speaker 2: what we thought was a really good piece of ground
Speaker 2: and didn't want to mess with it. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think all architects look at pieces of ground and they
Speaker 2: try to maximize the potential for them. Some architects see
Speaker 2: potential in a two foot contour through the middle of
Speaker 2: a fairway. Some architects don't, they miss that. Some architects
Speaker 2: see the potential in a dry wash. Some architects look
Speaker 2: at that as an environmental nightmare to have to deal with.
Speaker 2: So I think what we looked at is how do
Speaker 2: we maximize all the potential positives in that property before
Speaker 2: we revert to moving dirt. You know, if you can
Speaker 2: maximize all the potential, I think there we were probably
Speaker 2: more patient having Jeff out in front identifying these things. Really,
Speaker 2: I think lent itself to us being more minimalist on
Speaker 2: that site than we might have otherwise been. So I
Speaker 2: think all the stars were aligned. It was a very
Speaker 2: low budget project, so that also helped to keep the
Speaker 2: aspirations of moving a lot of dirt down. So I
Speaker 2: think all of those things coming together on that particular
Speaker 2: site lent themselves to that minimalist build.
Speaker 1: So correct me if I'm wrong, But I think Rustic
Speaker 1: Canyon was your first experience being an architect on a
Speaker 1: municipal project.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, yep.
Speaker 1: And so how was it different working within that system
Speaker 1: as opposed to working with a green committee or with
Speaker 1: a particular client. Did it introduce any more complexities into
Speaker 1: the equation that you then had to negotiate?
Speaker 2: Not really, Because Craig Price was the he had gotten
Speaker 2: the lease from the county. So once we were approved
Speaker 2: and he was approved as the leaseholder, we didn't really
Speaker 2: have to deal with the county very much. And I
Speaker 2: think I don't know how to say this without saying it.
Speaker 2: You know, California is not easy to get stuff done,
Speaker 2: and I think the county, Ventura County, helped us dramatically
Speaker 2: to get things through and to move them through in
Speaker 2: a more timely fashion than would have might have been
Speaker 2: the normal time frame in southern California. So I think
Speaker 2: they were the aided us dramatically in getting it started.
Speaker 2: But once we started, very little input.
Speaker 1: So Rustic Canyon is owned by Ventura County. Another Ventura
Speaker 1: County property is Saul Park, a few years after Rustic Canyon,
Speaker 1: and there is a connection here involving Craig Price, whom
Speaker 1: you mentioned. But a few years after Rustic Canyon, the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do some major work at Seoul Park, another
Speaker 1: municipal facility popped up. So could you take me through
Speaker 1: how you got involved in this project and then what
Speaker 1: the scope of it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was Mother Nature basically brought us to Seoul Park.
Speaker 2: It was I can't remember exactly the years six or
Speaker 2: seven where it was very heavy El Nino winter and
Speaker 2: basically the golf course was just ravaged. I mean there's
Speaker 2: a dry wash that runs through it and it flooded,
Speaker 2: tore all the bridges out that go across it, tore
Speaker 2: a bunch of the greens apart. And at this point
Speaker 2: in time, Craig had taken over the lease, and so
Speaker 2: it became an emergency. Hey, we've got to get this fixed,
Speaker 2: because right now, instead of eighteen holes we have, I
Speaker 2: think there were maybe about eleven that were playable. So
Speaker 2: and again here Ventura County a little bit to the
Speaker 2: rescue and the Army Corps of Engineers, they passed an
Speaker 2: emergency ordinance that allowed for these areas to be reclaimed.
Speaker 2: So we were able to go back into what would
Speaker 2: have been untouchable from a dry wash standpoint and go
Speaker 2: and rebuild these golf holes, put them back together, and
Speaker 2: in the process of doing so, we were asked to
Speaker 2: kind of give our thoughts as to how we can
Speaker 2: improve the design, how can we could make it more playable,
Speaker 2: more interesting. Once again, Jeff was part of our team
Speaker 2: up there, and once again we kind of looked at
Speaker 2: the George Thomas playbook and tried to figure out how
Speaker 2: can we do things along those lines that would maximize
Speaker 2: the potential of Soul Park. Which Soul Park's setting is
Speaker 2: just beautiful. You're tucked right up against the mountains. You've
Speaker 2: got a much broader, wider rank or running through the
Speaker 2: middle of it, as opposed to the one at Rustic Canyon,
Speaker 2: which was a little bit narrower, and so there it
Speaker 2: was an opportunity to play more along flank, along the
Speaker 2: side of it, go across it, but then start to
Speaker 2: introduce more bunkering, new green complexes. So it started off
Speaker 2: as a let's put this place back together, and as
Speaker 2: the momentum built, it became okay, what can we do
Speaker 2: with the next toll? With the next toll? And I
Speaker 2: think Tracy and I that was one of our favorite
Speaker 2: summers living in OHI was nice. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: really it was a special place and we enjoyed the
Speaker 2: time that we got to spend there. And you know
Speaker 2: the evolution of that place now it's no longer in
Speaker 2: Craig price is, he's no longer the lease holder. But
Speaker 2: I think it's one of those things where peep golfers
Speaker 2: will go to discover fun. They'll go to discover a
Speaker 2: good vibe, a good place to hang out. They'll go
Speaker 2: to discover places where other golfers of similar mindset are.
Speaker 2: You know, their skins games are legendary now where people
Speaker 2: are just showing up and keep driving from all over
Speaker 2: southern California to go and play and participate, and they're
Speaker 2: hanging out after golf. And so it's become one of
Speaker 2: these really kind of sleepy golf courses that now has
Speaker 2: this wonderful undercurrent of serious golfers, serious architecture enthusiasts go
Speaker 2: up there and and you get to play. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, a golf course that has interest and architecture,
Speaker 2: but it's municipal and it's you can play it for
Speaker 2: it's very affordable.
Speaker 1: It's become a hot spot right now. Soul Park is
Speaker 1: the place to go if you're a golf enthusiast living
Speaker 1: anywhere in the vicinity. Basically people drive up from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to play it and to be part of the
Speaker 1: men's club out there and the and the various events
Speaker 1: that they hold, and so it's you know, and for
Speaker 1: the reason that it has really interesting architecture, I think
Speaker 1: that is what's driving it. So that's where soul Park
Speaker 1: has gotten. I think it's worth being frank about what
Speaker 1: happened immediately after your work there. After you and Jim
Speaker 1: made the changes there, there was some pushback from various
Speaker 1: long time constituents in the soul Park community. What was
Speaker 1: your reaction to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, I'd forgotten about that.
Speaker 1: I got to give you a tough.
Speaker 2: One here and there, right, No, I mean it's true.
Speaker 2: I mean you have players, and I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the most difficult things to try to figure out
Speaker 2: how to get right when it comes to municipal golf
Speaker 2: is there are people who are part of the landscape
Speaker 2: who love where they play, and you don't want them
Speaker 2: to feel like they're just pushed aside, you know. And
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, now all the cool kids are
Speaker 2: showing up and the food trucks are showing up and
Speaker 2: the beer as well, and it's just wait a second,
Speaker 2: what about me? I'm now I don't enjoy this place anymore.
Speaker 2: And I think there was honestly a little bit of
Speaker 2: a pushback as it related to center line bunkering. You know,
Speaker 2: what do you mean there's a bunker in the middle
Speaker 2: of a hole? How you know? That's I hit it perfect,
Speaker 2: That's right where I was supposed to go. So I
Speaker 2: think there was and there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: some In some ways it was easy for management to
Speaker 2: cave versus fight for it because they were wanting income,
Speaker 2: and they were wanting the basically all the revenue and
Speaker 2: the people to show up. And if all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you're getting a group of people who are not
Speaker 2: happy about it, you know, they weren't thinking about all
Speaker 2: the people who were happy. So it became a bit
Speaker 2: of a battle, and it really was unfortunate how that
Speaker 2: all shook out. But I think that's ultimately what led
Speaker 2: to the current management group there, and they've embraced it.
Speaker 2: In fact, they've asked us to come back in and
Speaker 2: restore some of the things that were taken out after
Speaker 2: the renovation of the golf course. But it's it really
Speaker 2: is an important part. I think we're going to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about Maggie Hathaway later on in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: but it was something that also happened at Swanya, Like
Speaker 2: you're bringing that up, but you know, when you go
Speaker 2: back someplace, there's a bit of nostalgia that you want
Speaker 2: to have for it, and you want it to be recognizable.
Speaker 2: You want it to be the place that I love
Speaker 2: fell in love with, and when that's changed, people take
Speaker 2: it very different ways. And so I think that's something
Speaker 2: you know, We're going to obviously talk a lot with
Speaker 2: the National Links Trust about how do we retain play,
Speaker 2: how do we keep people there who have supported it
Speaker 2: for a long period of time yet introduce new people
Speaker 2: to it without dispossessing the people who've come to love it.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you do that? Because you are really
Speaker 1: good at this stuff. I know this from talking to
Speaker 1: memberships where you've worked, you can negotiate these situations quite well.
Speaker 1: Is there a similar approach or set of tactics that
Speaker 1: you bring to speaking with conversing with the people who
Speaker 1: play a public golf course where you're going to make
Speaker 1: some big changes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of it is listening early on,
Speaker 2: is listening to the people who are involved in either
Speaker 2: taking over management or who have played there for a
Speaker 2: long period of time and get their sense. You know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about the park, Well, the park was closed,
Speaker 2: so it was kind of hard for you know, there's
Speaker 2: only one way to make it better was to get
Speaker 2: it reopened, no matter what we did to it. And
Speaker 2: I think same thing with Rock Creek. You know, had
Speaker 2: fallen so far downhill that I don't can't imagine. There
Speaker 2: are many people that are, you know, adamantly defending the
Speaker 2: old fifth hole. So ultimately, what it comes down to,
Speaker 2: and this is going to sound fairly simplistic, but it's
Speaker 2: the truth. It's maintenance. If you put a better maintained
Speaker 2: product out there, you're going to win a lot of
Speaker 2: people back, whether they like the design or not. They
Speaker 2: can't argue with the fact that, hey, greens are better
Speaker 2: than they've ever been, the fairways are mode, the bunkers
Speaker 2: are raked. There's all this sort of good things that
Speaker 2: are happening to the golf course, and they can put
Speaker 2: up with a little bit of changes or maybe significant changes,
Speaker 2: as long as actually there's two things, as long as
Speaker 2: the golf course is maintained and as long as you
Speaker 2: don't charge them more money for that. And I'm I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to be funny, it's true. I mean people
Speaker 2: want they don't want to have a public facility that
Speaker 2: they've supported and been involved with for a long time,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, we've tripled the greens fees
Speaker 2: and now they're economically moved on versus just moved on
Speaker 2: because they don't like the product.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, that's a Those are the two big concerns
Speaker 1: right that you hear about from golfers is the conditions
Speaker 1: and the green fee, and both are completely understandable when
Speaker 1: it comes to some of the architectural moves that we
Speaker 1: as architecture nerds love having a wide fairway that you
Speaker 1: put a bunker right in the middle of in order
Speaker 1: to create some interesting possibilities for play and angles and
Speaker 1: some freedom of choice off the tee. When you talk
Speaker 1: about it that way, it sounds great when you're somebody
Speaker 1: who's played a course for years and you hit your
Speaker 1: drive in the middle of the fairway and it ends
Speaker 1: up in a bunker where you have to kind of
Speaker 1: splash out and then keep playing a hole, it might
Speaker 1: hit you a little bit differently. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: after that experience at Seoul Park where some of the
Speaker 1: center line hazards were modified or moved in or made
Speaker 1: more conventional in some ways, what were some of the
Speaker 1: things that you thought about or that you did in
Speaker 1: the future to help people understand what you were doing
Speaker 1: architecturally when it came to things like, you know, wild
Speaker 1: greens or centerline hazards. How do you help people understand
Speaker 1: what you're doing without seeming condescending about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are several ways to communicate. I
Speaker 2: mean with social media now, there's a lot of you
Speaker 2: know forums. You know, we don't necessarily have like forums
Speaker 2: where there are a bunch of people who play the golf
Speaker 2: course and we sit down we talk about what we've done.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the places have asked us to
Speaker 2: narrate hole by whole flyovers or talk about different things
Speaker 2: or different angles or aspects of what we were trying
Speaker 2: to do. The other thing that I've just been thinking
Speaker 2: about as we're sitting here is this is not dissimilar
Speaker 2: from when you restore a private club. Right, You've got
Speaker 2: all these members are used to playing things a certain way,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you put it back to
Speaker 2: what Donald Ross had and Donal Ross had a bunker
Speaker 2: in the middle of the fairway, and they're like, wait,
Speaker 2: I don't like that. So it's not it like crosses
Speaker 2: all the spectrums as far as architecture is concerned. But
Speaker 2: I think it's really more communication through social media, trying
Speaker 2: to just put forward the best possible plan and hopefully
Speaker 2: people will embrace it and understand it.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about some more recent happenings. Your
Speaker 1: most recent completed municipal design is the park in West
Speaker 1: Palm which we heard a little bit about during the
Speaker 1: symposium today. So this was an ambitious project. If you
Speaker 1: compare this to Rustic Canyon or Seoul Park, it exists
Speaker 1: on an entirely different scale. It took a hefty amount
Speaker 1: of capital to carry out, and the transformation obviously is
Speaker 1: pretty stunning. So first of all, what was the funding
Speaker 1: structure behind this project?
Speaker 2: Private donations? I mean, I think this is ultimately and again,
Speaker 2: West Palm Beach is a different universe. It's different. You know,
Speaker 2: the money that was available there is not available everywhere
Speaker 2: around and we understand that. But I think it is
Speaker 2: the perfect public private model that can be successful as
Speaker 2: we move around the country and trying to restore, renovate,
Speaker 2: improve public golf courses. It's basically a model where individuals
Speaker 2: were asked to contribute. There was a vision that was
Speaker 2: put forward. It was centered around the renovation restoration of
Speaker 2: this golf course that was beloved. It was an old
Speaker 2: Dick Wilson golf course that had been modified and had
Speaker 2: fallen out of favor, but it was a willing participant
Speaker 2: in the city of West Palm Beach. The mayor, the
Speaker 2: city council were all one hundred percent behind this. So
Speaker 2: you had the public side pulling hard for this. Then
Speaker 2: you had a group led by seth Wan, Dan Stanton,
Speaker 2: Dirk Ziff, Tommy Frankel working hard to go through the
Speaker 2: community down there and find golf loving people who had
Speaker 2: the wherewithal to contribute to it. And not only did
Speaker 2: they contribute enough to build the golf course, the clubhouse,
Speaker 2: all the teaching facilities, but also to have an endowment
Speaker 2: that would ultimately, you know, fund future maintenance or future
Speaker 2: golf programs. But I think really the most important part
Speaker 2: of it is also the vehicle it provides for the
Speaker 2: path at the park, which I know Dave spoke about today.
Speaker 2: What we've done. Hopefully, we've played our role in creating
Speaker 2: a facility that people are interested in and that want
Speaker 2: to come and play, and that you know, will hold
Speaker 2: golf architecture geeks, but also the sixty dollars around golfers
Speaker 2: from West Palm Beach are going to go out there.
Speaker 2: And one of the crazy things about it is they've
Speaker 2: we fought long and hard. Those of you know me, well, no,
Speaker 2: I'm a huge ab kid for walking golf. You know, obviously,
Speaker 2: if you have a physical ailment you can't walk one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, you should take a cart, But if you're able,
Speaker 2: you should be able to walk. And we got it
Speaker 2: through where there were going to be walking times only
Speaker 2: up until noon and then Caddy required times, and we
Speaker 2: thought for sure that the city of West Palm Beach
Speaker 2: people were not going to do that. They've done it.
Speaker 2: They've booked all those tea times. They love it. So
Speaker 2: it's also been a vehicle to somewhat talk about what
Speaker 2: we think golf should be and how it should be presented,
Speaker 2: and that the game, you know, the walking game golf
Speaker 2: should be played at three miles an hour, not twenty
Speaker 2: and that you know, you see, you talk, you have
Speaker 2: social interaction with everybody else. So I think within the
Speaker 2: golf there are things, some things we've accomplished, but the
Speaker 2: path is ultimately going to be the most successful thing
Speaker 2: that comes out of it. And the opportunity to bring
Speaker 2: children in, to have them be in a safe, nurturing environment,
Speaker 2: to be taken care of after school, to be taught,
Speaker 2: to utilize the game of golf as part of the teaching.
Speaker 2: You know, art classes can center on painting golf holes,
Speaker 2: math classes can talk about math as it relates to golf,
Speaker 2: and then to actually bring them into the game of
Speaker 2: golf and teach them about golf, but teach it in
Speaker 2: a fun and welcoming You know, a lot of us
Speaker 2: know that golf is sometimes not the most welcoming sport,
Speaker 2: and there are barriers to entry, and there are barriers
Speaker 2: to feeling good about going out on a golf course.
Speaker 2: I think this will drop all of those barriers. And
Speaker 2: so I said, while we're proud of our contribution on
Speaker 2: the golf end of things, I think the path is
Speaker 2: going to be ultimately the most significant and important thing
Speaker 2: that comes out of this. So to have the opportunity
Speaker 2: to have an invested public partner, a willing and able
Speaker 2: private piece that puts the money forward and does it
Speaker 2: in a way that's caring, and then to have created
Speaker 2: the educational aspect of it. So it's not only giving
Speaker 2: to the golf community, it's giving to the community at large.
Speaker 2: It checks all of those boxes, and I really feel
Speaker 2: strong it's going to be an incredibly successful model.
Speaker 1: What are the fundamentals from an architecture perspective of making
Speaker 1: a golf course walkable?
Speaker 2: Well close tea and green proximity I think is a
Speaker 2: good start, you know, getting you basically moving off of
Speaker 2: the green right onto the next tee. I think we
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things we all love about
Speaker 2: these great old golf courses and that you know the
Speaker 2: three here embraced that is that golf was originally designed
Speaker 2: to be a compact landscape. Right. You weren't having a
Speaker 2: cross roads or cross through housing developments to get to
Speaker 2: the next golf hole. You were basically moving through a
Speaker 2: landscape in a way that made a lot of sense,
Speaker 2: and that did so in a way that was walkable.
Speaker 2: And so I think green and tea proximity, I think
Speaker 2: monitoring elevation chair. I mean, when you've got a site
Speaker 2: like the park, it's thirty feet of elevation change, it's
Speaker 2: pretty easy to walk. It's not that not that difficult,
Speaker 2: but I think it's managing those opportuity ups and downs.
Speaker 2: But I think it's it's it's understanding just the flow
Speaker 2: of the way the game is played. And then you
Speaker 2: know opportunities like if you've got a big dip that
Speaker 2: you're playing over, provide an opportunity to walk on the
Speaker 2: high side of it. You know, maybe that's not the
Speaker 2: straight line, but at least you can kind of wander
Speaker 2: your way around where you're not having to tackle some
Speaker 2: of the more abrupt topography out there.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important thing for some municipal facilities
Speaker 1: to consider. Obviously, Kurt golf is enormously common in America,
Speaker 1: and that includes municipal golf courses. But I think we
Speaker 1: all know that if a lot of people choose to walk,
Speaker 1: the golf course does reap some benefits.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's good for maintenance, it's obviously good from
Speaker 2: an exercise standpoint. I think, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things that we're also very proud about there in most
Speaker 2: place is the push cart or the pull cart however
Speaker 2: you want to. I mean that has had a stigma
Speaker 2: in American golf for so long. But it's easy. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's the easiest way if you don't want to put it,
Speaker 2: throw it over your back, to go ahead and push
Speaker 2: and walk work around the golf course. And I think
Speaker 2: that seeing American embracing that and saying yeah, go ahead
Speaker 2: and take that, it makes your walk so much easier.
Speaker 2: We'll lead more people to walking.
Speaker 1: What was the thinking behind the design at the park? Now?
Speaker 1: I haven't been there, I've looked at a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures and to me, it looks like some incredibly bold
Speaker 1: architecture happening out there. No holds barred. This is a
Speaker 1: Gilhan's golf course. So what were some of the discussions
Speaker 1: that you had with your partner, Jim Wagner. What was
Speaker 1: the theory behind the design here?
Speaker 2: I think it was take advantage of some of the
Speaker 2: better topography in South Florida. I mean, the thirty feet
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like much, but in South Florida that's a lot.
Speaker 2: And so we were able to look at those ridges,
Speaker 2: how we could maximize some of those spaces and Dirk Ziff,
Speaker 2: who I mentioned earlier, is he was a design partner
Speaker 2: with us. In fact, he was very very responsible for
Speaker 2: the routing of the golf course, which was also another
Speaker 2: really fun part of it. But I think it gets
Speaker 2: back to that mentality I talked about earlier on that
Speaker 2: we don't want to dumb down golf courses because they're public.
Speaker 2: We want to give people opportunities to work their way
Speaker 2: around it. I still think that golf, the playing of
Speaker 2: the game of golf is I know this was used
Speaker 2: somewhere else, and I don't want to draw attention, but
Speaker 2: it's aspirational. When you play the game, you want to
Speaker 2: get better, you want to have challenges, you want to
Speaker 2: be able to You know, if all it was was
Speaker 2: a straight turf mode from green to tea would be
Speaker 2: bowling right, It wouldn't be interesting. And I think that
Speaker 2: average golfers get as much joy and satisfaction out of
Speaker 2: overcoming obstacles and hazards in a way that gives them
Speaker 2: an opportunity. I think from that aspirational aspect, if you
Speaker 2: are within you're able to understand the limits of your game,
Speaker 2: and we give you avenues to play within those limits,
Speaker 2: then that's great. If you choose to go outside those
Speaker 2: limits or test your limits and push it to a
Speaker 2: place where now you're flirting with bunkers or you're flirting
Speaker 2: with different angles, then that's learning thing about architecture is well,
Speaker 2: I don't want to go over there again, so you
Speaker 2: kind of start the process. I just remember Tom Doak
Speaker 2: talking about the thirteenth hole. Now we're really going to
Speaker 2: get geeky, you know, golf architecture nerds get excited about this,
Speaker 2: the thirteenth hole at North Barrack where there's just that
Speaker 2: one little bunker out there sitting by itself. And he said,
Speaker 2: you know, you get close to it. Now you can
Speaker 2: play your second shot along the wall. And golfers always
Speaker 2: start off going over here, closer, closer, closer. Then they
Speaker 2: get in it, then they go back to over here,
Speaker 2: and then they kind of slowly but surely it's that
Speaker 2: sort of opportunity to learn as you're playing a golf
Speaker 2: course that there's something going on out here, there's something
Speaker 2: to think about. It's not just hit it wherever you want.
Speaker 2: There are things in the way, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think beginning golfers, you know, one of the things we
Speaker 2: talk a lot about is if you get in a
Speaker 2: deep bunker, most golfers will they'll figure it out after
Speaker 2: if they hit take two or three, they'll just pick
Speaker 2: it up and they they'll go ahead and move on.
Speaker 2: But it gives them at least an understanding of what
Speaker 2: that is. If every single bunker was two feet deep
Speaker 2: and they became then there'd be no differentiation and there
Speaker 2: wouldn't be an understanding of Okay, yeah, there are penalties,
Speaker 2: there are different ways to go through this, and with
Speaker 2: putting on some of the greens, I think most golfers
Speaker 2: are comfortable with a putter in their hands, so they
Speaker 2: don't necessarily mind having to play up and over, around
Speaker 2: or through. Some people actually think that's kind of kind
Speaker 2: of fun. But we wouldn't do it just to do it.
Speaker 2: Hopefully it is meaningful. The topographies in relationship with the
Speaker 2: golf hole, it comes before it.
Speaker 1: It seems like what a lot of you A lot
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about here is how to make
Speaker 1: a golf course playable for a broad population of golfers
Speaker 1: but still challenging for excellent golfers, which has been something
Speaker 1: that pretty much every architect in the history of golf
Speaker 1: has claimed to be able to do. This is tough
Speaker 1: for your expert player, but it's still easy enough for
Speaker 1: the hacker that they won't get totally frustrated. But it
Speaker 1: seems like what you're talking about is a little more
Speaker 1: specific here. How do you carry out architecturally a golf
Speaker 1: course that is truly challenging and interesting for a scratch
Speaker 1: player but can be perfectly playable for any level. Is
Speaker 1: it wide fairways? Is it hazards down the you know,
Speaker 1: down a particular line of the whole. What kinds of
Speaker 1: greens are we talking about? How does that play out architecturally?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. I mean, what
Speaker 2: Jim and I talk a lot about is a level
Speaker 2: of precision. Right, The level of precision required to play
Speaker 2: literally just go play golf should be fairly low, should
Speaker 2: be able to hit your ball, find it, hit it again,
Speaker 2: find it, et cetera. And then the level of precision
Speaker 2: required to score, like to play the course well, should
Speaker 2: be high. And we see that every year at Augusta
Speaker 2: National Right, I mean the level of precision required to
Speaker 2: play there, if you can fortunate enough to play there,
Speaker 2: is not that high. I mean the wide fairways, But
Speaker 2: if you want to score, you've got to be on
Speaker 2: the proper side of the fairway, you've got to have
Speaker 2: the proper angle into the green. And then the you know,
Speaker 2: they're tilted and or they're blind shots and you're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out where to hit it. So the level
Speaker 2: precision required to score is high. Then you take that
Speaker 2: to the greens and if you're trying to hit, you know,
Speaker 2: you got hit to the proper quarter of the green
Speaker 2: to score at Augusta National. But you know, if you're
Speaker 2: just playing, you're going to three putt and it's okay.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the things that we
Speaker 2: were very fortunate that, you know, Tiger has been a
Speaker 2: big booster for the park and he was there for
Speaker 2: on opening day and he hit the opening t shot
Speaker 2: and we were chatting beforehand and he said something and
Speaker 2: I'd never heard before, which he said, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a one ball golf course. And I'm thinking, what do
Speaker 2: you mean. He said, yeah, anybody plays here's one ball.
Speaker 2: You're not going to lose a golf ball. You're really
Speaker 2: going to be able to start and finish. And I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 2: most golf courses are one ball course for Tiger, but
Speaker 2: the thought process was, Yeah, actually, that's true. The more
Speaker 2: you went around it, you'd really have to work hard
Speaker 2: to lose the golf ball at the park. And so
Speaker 2: I think that also lends itself to the level of
Speaker 2: playing a golf course and the level of enjoyment. Constantly
Speaker 2: searching and looking for golf balls. You've lost to half
Speaker 2: a dozen golf balls, that's just not fun. Mark parsonon
Speaker 2: who we co designed Castle Stewart with, who was one
Speaker 2: of the smartest guys I've ever been around, and just
Speaker 2: an amazing thoughtful person about golf, talked about and Jim
Speaker 2: and I constantly remember this and we talk about is
Speaker 2: keep the golfer hopeful and engaged. Like if you can
Speaker 2: keep a golfer hopeful that they're thinking, Okay, I can
Speaker 2: actually hit this shot, or there's a place where I
Speaker 2: can go that I know I can hit a shot
Speaker 2: with my next shot, then they're engaged in the match,
Speaker 2: they're engaged in the playing of the golf course. They're engaged.
Speaker 2: But if their balls in their pocket and they're just
Speaker 2: walking down the fifth hole in a row that they've
Speaker 2: lost a golf ball, they're no longer hopeful and they're
Speaker 2: no longer engaged and you've lost them. So you have
Speaker 2: to create playing grounds that give you the opportunity to
Speaker 2: keep the average golfer hopeful and engaged. And they also
Speaker 2: talked about the third shot for an average golfer, even
Speaker 2: tour players hit fifty sixty percent of greens in regulation.
Speaker 2: You know, what does that third shot look like? How
Speaker 2: is it is the golfer again hopefully and engaged, are
Speaker 2: they despondent, how do they or how are they looking?
Speaker 2: Because they're most likely not going to hit the green
Speaker 2: in two, So what kind of recovery options do you
Speaker 2: give them? And then within those recovery options, if there's creativity,
Speaker 2: if there's different ways to play it again where they're
Speaker 2: hopeful in the outcome and they don't pull it off,
Speaker 2: they're still okay, I messed up, I didn't hit a
Speaker 2: good shot. But if you put a golfer in a
Speaker 2: position where they have no hope of hitting a good shot,
Speaker 2: then it becomes why this architect sucks and this is
Speaker 2: a bad golf hole, And so you want to keep them,
Speaker 2: keep them moving along. And I think that that translates
Speaker 2: not only to public municipal golf, but it also translates
Speaker 2: to private golf.
Speaker 1: Hopeful and engaged, even if it's foolish hope. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: at they're even if they shouldn't be that hopeful, that
Speaker 1: is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's talk about some future projects of
Speaker 1: yours or ongoing developing projects, ones that haven't been finished.
Speaker 1: One is the National Links Trust's first major improvement project,
Speaker 1: which is going to take place at Rock Creek Park
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC. So, first of all, this course has
Speaker 1: an extensive and very interesting history. What is that history
Speaker 1: and how is it going to factor into some of
Speaker 1: your work there?
Speaker 2: Yes, so it's a William Flynn golf course. Originally nine
Speaker 2: holes by Flynn, and then he came back and eded
Speaker 2: eighteen and then it was changed to as a military
Speaker 2: road went through and took some of the golf holes away.
Speaker 2: So it's been modified ever since. It was William Gordon
Speaker 2: who was one of Flynn's associates, so at least they
Speaker 2: kept it a little bit in the family to try
Speaker 2: to try and emulate Flynn's style, and then over a
Speaker 2: period of time, I mean William Flynn. Obviously we live
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, having spent my adult life in Philadelphia, so
Speaker 2: many great Flynn golf courses around there, Huntingdon Valley, Rolling
Speaker 2: Green Philly Country Club, on and on. So when Will
Speaker 2: called us and said, hey, we've actually got a Flynn
Speaker 2: golf course in a public setting, it was like that
Speaker 2: was exciting number one to think, Okay, great, we'd love
Speaker 2: to work on a Flyn golf course. We'd love to
Speaker 2: have the opportunity to do it in a public setting.
Speaker 2: Tell us more. And so we came out I think
Speaker 2: it was three years ago. Four years ago. It was
Speaker 2: before COVID walked the site and thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 2: Worked with Will and Mike mccarton about how you would
Speaker 2: route this, what you would do, what ultimately would yield
Speaker 2: the best result for Rock Creek's golf course, And given
Speaker 2: how far downhill it had gone and some of the
Speaker 2: holes had been abandoned, it became important to understand that
Speaker 2: the best way to utilize Rock Creek to grow the
Speaker 2: game of golf, to make affordable golf accessible, but then
Speaker 2: to also hopefully give the opportunity to create some revenue
Speaker 2: that would allow the these other projects to go forward
Speaker 2: might not be necessarily a pure William Flynn restoration because
Speaker 2: it couldn't happen number one because the holes were gone,
Speaker 2: but what would be the best use for this? And
Speaker 2: so we all worked together and came up with nine holes,
Speaker 2: which aren't exact replicas of Flynn's, but all the green
Speaker 2: sites are Flynn Green sites. Seven of the nine greens
Speaker 2: are Flynn Greens, even though degraded, but to the point
Speaker 2: where we could at least bring them back create a
Speaker 2: nine hole par three course, which I think is an
Speaker 2: amazing amenity for kids. And again that sort of introduction,
Speaker 2: that's one of the things we have at the park.
Speaker 2: And then also Himalaya is putting green and a full
Speaker 2: scale driving range, so you basically one stop shopping. You've
Speaker 2: got opportunity if you're just learning the game, you can
Speaker 2: putt and have fun, you can play on the par three.
Speaker 2: You've got a real driving range where you can come
Speaker 2: and work on your game and learn. And then you
Speaker 2: have a serious golf course of nine holes. And so
Speaker 2: we went out there today and walked around and the
Speaker 2: ground is better than I remembered. I mean, it's hilly,
Speaker 2: it's got kind of that old school. There might be
Speaker 2: some blind shots, They're going to be some fairways where
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to hit your ball to the left
Speaker 2: sides and let it run all the way across to
Speaker 2: the right side to stay in the fairway. But I
Speaker 2: think that character and interest in golf is really part
Speaker 2: of that kind of local knowledge. And I think the
Speaker 2: best golf courses reward thoughtful study, they reward local knowledge.
Speaker 2: They reward multiple plays to say, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 2: play this all I'm going to play it differently next time.
Speaker 2: But you get excited about learning those things versus just
Speaker 2: it's the same thing every time you play it. And
Speaker 2: I think the topography at Rock Creek gives us the
Speaker 2: opportunity to have a golf course is going to play
Speaker 2: in any number of ways, given whether it's wet, whether
Speaker 2: it's firm, whether you know it's spring or summer or fall,
Speaker 2: and so I think that's really exciting. So all those
Speaker 2: things combined, plus you know, the passion we see in
Speaker 2: the in National links, trust and trying to do the
Speaker 2: right thing for the game, made it easy for Jim
Speaker 2: and I to say, yes.
Speaker 1: We've seen a few of this type of project cropping
Speaker 1: up lately, and it's pretty exciting. It's also an interesting
Speaker 1: idea to work out, as I'm sure a golf course
Speaker 1: restoration specialist or just as somebody who really loves the
Speaker 1: history of golf courses and is devoted to trying to
Speaker 1: bring back the great work of the greatest architects. And
Speaker 1: so I'm curious how you figure out a project like
Speaker 1: Rock Creek where it's clear that the best solution for
Speaker 1: the facility is to move away from what the golf
Speaker 1: course was. Well at the same time, respecting what the
Speaker 1: golf course was, how do you think that through.
Speaker 2: If all eighteen holes were still in place and they
Speaker 2: were available, I don't think National Inkstros would have asked
Speaker 2: us to change it anyway. So I but the way
Speaker 2: the golf course has evolved or devolved made it quite
Speaker 2: easy to make that decision. And ultimately I think we're
Speaker 2: going to be able to present nine really good holes
Speaker 2: of William Flynn golf, will be able to educate golfers
Speaker 2: who William Flynn was. They'll obviously be able to see
Speaker 2: his work. And I think that's one of the cooler
Speaker 2: things too, is that back in the day, you had
Speaker 2: the William Flynn's, you had the Donald Rosses, you had
Speaker 2: the best architects of the time doing some of their
Speaker 2: best work on public golf courses. It wasn't always the
Speaker 2: private club. It was basically, hey, this golf course is
Speaker 2: worthy of our effort and our attention, and they gave
Speaker 2: it to it. And I think that's something that really
Speaker 2: drew Gemini to this project as well. To think if
Speaker 2: on certain level, our restoration or renovation of those Flynn
Speaker 2: holes creates a spark or an interest in somebody else's
Speaker 2: to what architecture is or what William Flint who he was,
Speaker 2: or what he meant it, then that's a win. That's
Speaker 2: a great outcome for us. So I think having that
Speaker 2: opportunity and focusing on those nine holes versus worrying about
Speaker 2: the thought that, well, you know, we're not doing a
Speaker 2: true restoration, I think for the benefits that it's going
Speaker 2: to eat that it was an easy decision.
Speaker 1: And there's going to be a short course element to
Speaker 1: this as well.
Speaker 2: Yep, there is.
Speaker 1: Could you talk a little bit about designing short courses.
Speaker 1: You've done a couple of a few of them, and
Speaker 1: they seem like they're a lot of fun to design.
Speaker 1: Are they as fun to design as it looks like?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: They are.
Speaker 2: I mean it's liberating, right, you're not worried about you know,
Speaker 2: somebody their shot values. You know, somebody going oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know the shot value on that par four was
Speaker 2: really not good because he didn't hit it here, or
Speaker 2: the architect asked me to do this. No, it's just
Speaker 2: put it on a peg and hit it and play.
Speaker 2: And it's so it's predicated on fun and it is
Speaker 2: that innocence and liberation. I think that comes with that.
Speaker 2: It's the opportunity to just focus not only on how
Speaker 2: do we, you know, create the difficult test for the
Speaker 2: best golfers and how do we create an easier test.
Speaker 2: But I think the magic sauce is if you can
Speaker 2: create something that allows the beginner to go out there
Speaker 2: and have a great experience the first time they've put
Speaker 2: a golf club in there, and yet still get a
Speaker 2: scratch golfer and his or her buddies out there going, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: watch this, this is a fun shot and you got
Speaker 2: to hit it just right in order to you know,
Speaker 2: to stick it or to get it to play. That's
Speaker 2: where the magic sauce is, and hopefully that translates. I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the things we did well at
Speaker 2: the Cradle was the opportunity to create something that's across
Speaker 2: the entire spectrum of golf. People are intrigued interested in
Speaker 2: playing that, and I think if we can do the
Speaker 2: same thing out here, that'll be all equally successful.
Speaker 1: Speaking of little courses, there's one in the LA area
Speaker 1: called Maggie Hathaway that you have been brought on to
Speaker 1: do something with. I actually don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: details about this project, and so I'm really curious to
Speaker 1: hear you talk about it. What is the vision for it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Maggie Hathaway was a civil rights activist in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. She was an African American actress in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies and love golf and use golf as
Speaker 2: as a really nice platform to advance her causes. And
Speaker 2: so from that standpoint, the city named this little nine
Speaker 2: hole golf course in south central LA after her. And
Speaker 2: it is a very rudimentary nine hole course. And this
Speaker 2: is the conversation we're having Earlier, where we could have
Speaker 2: gone in and blown it up and started over again,
Speaker 2: but it became apparent to us listening to the people
Speaker 2: in the community who've utilized this and who value it
Speaker 2: and love it, that they didn't want that they wanted
Speaker 2: the routing to be the same. They wanted to step
Speaker 2: on a tee and see the hole the way they've
Speaker 2: seen it. Maybe the green's a little bit bigger because
Speaker 2: it's where the greens are about the size of the stage.
Speaker 2: Maybe the well not. Maybe the maintenance is better, there's
Speaker 2: a little more interest, there's actually grass on the tees.
Speaker 2: But to make this place better, but keep it familiar.
Speaker 2: And so that was really the conversation we had there.
Speaker 2: And so we've got some very i think, some pretty
Speaker 2: good ideas on how we can do that improve the
Speaker 2: overall facility, yet still make it so that that neighborhood
Speaker 2: can still utilize it and cherish it as as a
Speaker 2: vital part of their neighborhood. So the USGA Los Angeles
Speaker 2: Country Club is part of the outreach from the us
Speaker 2: OPEN decided to partner up and they've gotten pretty decent
Speaker 2: response on the funding to do this. We've donated our
Speaker 2: time as we've done it all these projects, and you know,
Speaker 2: Game of golf has been so good to us in
Speaker 2: our family, and so it's nice to be able to
Speaker 2: give back in different ways to do that. And so
Speaker 2: when we were asked to be involved there, we thought, again,
Speaker 2: it's an easy one to put your hand up and say, yes,
Speaker 2: I want to do this.
Speaker 1: When it comes to a project like this where you're
Speaker 1: asked to keep in place a lot of what the
Speaker 1: golf course has been but improve it a little bit.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you look at
Speaker 1: these specific things that can be done on a golf
Speaker 1: course that are maybe low cost or low impact, that
Speaker 1: maintain the character of the course, but improve the quality
Speaker 1: of the golf as much as possible.
Speaker 2: Ground game. I mean, we try to really at the
Speaker 2: ground game into play and give people options and ways
Speaker 2: to bounce balls in. And you know a lot of
Speaker 2: short grass off of the tee, so if you top it,
Speaker 2: your ball's not stuck in the rough. It's kind of
Speaker 2: running and bounding and giving people the opportunity. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to say in every single hump or hollow around
Speaker 2: the green has got to kickballs to the green, but
Speaker 2: that there are some that do that, and if you're
Speaker 2: paying attention, you can hit a ball here and it's
Speaker 2: going to go and feed that way. So in the
Speaker 2: level of precision, if you've hit a scruffy shot, it
Speaker 2: may have something that will help you and bring it
Speaker 2: back into play. But if you're playing and you're a
Speaker 2: good player, and you're just like, hey, this is gonna
Speaker 2: be fun. I'm going to aim at that little knob
Speaker 2: and watch it take a slope and go sideways. Those
Speaker 2: are things that I think really add a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: to the variety of the playability. Is just let people.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure most people in this room leveling
Speaker 2: scalf you know, the best golf is when the ball
Speaker 2: hits the ground. That's when it really starts. It's not
Speaker 2: when the ball's in the air. It's when it hits
Speaker 2: the ground. Give people the opportunities put the ball on
Speaker 2: the ground and let it do something, whether it's good, better,
Speaker 2: and but just there's that opportunity.
Speaker 1: So we've reviewed about twenty years of municipal golf projects here.
Speaker 1: There were a couple in the early and mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: and now you've really started to take on more municipal
Speaker 1: golf projects at this point in your career. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's if there are any reflections that you
Speaker 1: have on how the municipal golf project world has changed
Speaker 1: over the past twenty years, and whether there's anything that
Speaker 1: excites you about what's happening in the space right now.
Speaker 2: I think it's not only in the municipal golf space,
Speaker 2: but it's society. It's it's social media, right, It's the
Speaker 2: opportunity to get you know, hopefully nobody's taping this in here,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden, you know, later an hour
Speaker 2: from now, somebody's like, hey, gil Han's just said this,
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. There it is. And I think
Speaker 2: it's the opportunity to get the message out amongst like
Speaker 2: minded golfers to say, hey, you need to go check
Speaker 2: out soul Park, Hey you need to go check out
Speaker 2: East Potomac. You need to be at these places. Really
Speaker 2: cool stuff is happening, and so I think within the
Speaker 2: golf community there's a much larger knowledge base than there
Speaker 2: would have been when Rusta Canyon was built, and so
Speaker 2: I think from that standpoint, the word gets out. I
Speaker 2: don't know that it's necessarily people care more now. I
Speaker 2: think it's cooler now, you know, it's kind of there's
Speaker 2: a cool buzz and a vibe to this. And I
Speaker 2: think some of the things that you guys are doing,
Speaker 2: some of the stuff that John Ashworth did at Goat Hill,
Speaker 2: stuff that Tom Coin's doing up at Sullivan County. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a buzz about these facilities, and the buzz will
Speaker 2: go away if it's not real or it's not good,
Speaker 2: But the buzz stays at places like that, and I
Speaker 2: think that's a good thing that gets people energized and
Speaker 2: excited and introduced to places where they might have never
Speaker 2: gone before. So I think that just that information that
Speaker 2: technology from a municipal standpoint has been a very valuable tool.
Speaker 1: Golf construction is really starting to gain some momentum, and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably an understatement, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to your firm's work. You have a lot of projects
Speaker 1: going on. A lot of firms that establish themselves after
Speaker 1: the turn of the century as design build one project
Speaker 1: at a time, kinds of firms are now taking on
Speaker 1: a full plate of projects. And so you know, as
Speaker 1: somebody who is committed to the craftsmanship that goes into
Speaker 1: a golf course, whether it's a municipal course or an
Speaker 1: historic country club, how do you handle this increased workload
Speaker 1: and still maintain the quality that was your reason for
Speaker 1: getting into the business in.
Speaker 2: The first place. It's a tough one. Somebody the other
Speaker 2: days said that I must be cloned there must be
Speaker 2: three of me, And they said, you know, you're always here, there,
Speaker 2: and everywhere. So the only other person that I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's three of is Michael Strahan. And I thought
Speaker 2: that was an interesting take on it.
Speaker 1: So the first time you've been compared to Michael Strahan.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think yeah, I think it is. But it
Speaker 2: it's tough. I mean, it really is the dilemma that
Speaker 2: we face. You know. I know we're busy and we
Speaker 2: jokingly say we say yes to everything, or we're doing
Speaker 2: every golf course in the universe, when the truth is,
Speaker 2: and I'm not trying to boast, I mean, we say
Speaker 2: no to ninety nine percent of the stuff that comes
Speaker 2: our way. But there's enough great stuff out there that
Speaker 2: it's hard to say no to. And you want to
Speaker 2: do these projects. You want to work on the you know,
Speaker 2: the rock creeks, you want to work on the park,
Speaker 2: you want to work on Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia, our hometown,
Speaker 2: which is when we haven't talked about. So you want
Speaker 2: to be able to know it's okay. We want to
Speaker 2: be able to say yes to these things, but we
Speaker 2: still need to be able to work on other projects
Speaker 2: and keep our team going, and I think that was
Speaker 2: one of the I first met Ben Crenshaw in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight and we talked and so, you know, what's
Speaker 2: the hardest thing about becoming a golf course architect and
Speaker 2: he said staying small and I thought, well, that's a
Speaker 2: strange thing to say. And then, you know, as the
Speaker 2: years went on, we would hear more from people saying, well,
Speaker 2: you'll never turn down a fee. You're going to take everything.
Speaker 2: There's no way you can say no to five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand or a million or two million, whatever the fee
Speaker 2: structure is. And we've been successful at that, but it's hard.
Speaker 2: I always thought, no, it's going to be easy. We'll
Speaker 2: be able to just say no. But you look at
Speaker 2: things and then you build a team, you know. And
Speaker 2: obviously Jim Wagner has been by my side for twenty
Speaker 2: seven years now, twenty eight years, which is crazy to think.
Speaker 2: And I've said this now, you know, you still always
Speaker 2: get the question who's the most influential person for you
Speaker 2: design wise? And I say living or dead, and you
Speaker 2: say living, and it was always Bill Core, which is
Speaker 2: the truth. Bill is an amazing friend, but he's the
Speaker 2: most amazing golf Arket. But the person who's had the
Speaker 2: biggest influence on my career and my design beliefs is
Speaker 2: Jim Wagner. Without a doubt, he's been standing right next
Speaker 2: to me for two twenty eight years and it took
Speaker 2: me maybe twenty to figure that out. But which is
Speaker 2: my fault. But so Jim is trusted. So you know,
Speaker 2: people say, how often are you guys together? And so rarely.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's why we've been together for twenty eight years,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'll go into a project and I'll
Speaker 2: be there and then I'll leave and then Jim will
Speaker 2: come in the next day or the next week, because
Speaker 2: there's no you know, occasionally we'll be there together because
Speaker 2: we need to work through some certain things and we'll
Speaker 2: work on routings together. But I think then we've built
Speaker 2: a team of cavemen. And so these guys are all
Speaker 2: incredibly talented, and they've been with us, you know, Neil
Speaker 2: Cameron's been with us for eighteen years. So you start
Speaker 2: to have these guys and you and one of the
Speaker 2: things that Bill and Benn are so good about is
Speaker 2: they take work to keep their guys busy. They want
Speaker 2: to make sure that those guys aren't sitting at home now.
Speaker 2: Obviously they want to make sure they're going to build
Speaker 2: great golf courses. But you start to then, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, build this responsibility of not only am I
Speaker 2: responsible for my professional career, Jim and I are responsible
Speaker 2: for his career and Ben and Kevin, and that we're
Speaker 2: responsible for eight shapers who are out there, And so
Speaker 2: you start to go, how do we keep this thing
Speaker 2: going but not have its spiral out of control that
Speaker 2: you lose your fingerprints. And the other part of it, too,
Speaker 2: is just it It takes a commitment on Gemini's Park
Speaker 2: to travel. I mean we're on the road all the time,
Speaker 2: and thankfully Tracy has decided that this nomadic lifestyle works
Speaker 2: for her as well, and we rent houses and home
Speaker 2: is where it is. And somebody asked me how many
Speaker 2: nights have you slept in your own bed in PA
Speaker 2: this year? And I think it's like twenty one. And
Speaker 2: so it's a commitment to saying, okay, that's important to
Speaker 2: us to make sure that we continue to do these things.
Speaker 2: And there are sacrifices, and don't get me wrong, don't
Speaker 2: play any fiddles or violence for me. I'm incredibly fortunate
Speaker 2: and lucky to get to do what I do at
Speaker 2: the places we get to do it, but you're still committed.
Speaker 2: I had. I won't mention his name, but it was
Speaker 2: one of the most touching things to me. It was
Speaker 2: a figure in golf who a lot of people in
Speaker 2: this room would know. He said, you know, I just
Speaker 2: want to let you know that I have so much
Speaker 2: respect for the fact that you are where you are
Speaker 2: in this profession, but you still do the work, and
Speaker 2: that just that resonated that we're not mailing it in
Speaker 2: am I on site as much as I was a
Speaker 2: rustic canyon know that's one hundred percent the evolution of
Speaker 2: where we've gone. But I still get in a bulldozer
Speaker 2: most days. I still have a shovel and rake in
Speaker 2: my hands on most days, and that's just part of
Speaker 2: what we do it. And so I think that that's
Speaker 2: you just have to have that commitment to what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I just turned sixty this summer. I don't know how
Speaker 2: long my back and my bones are going to take
Speaker 2: care of this, but as long as I can physically
Speaker 2: keep doing it, that's the way we're going to do it.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: That wraps up our evening with Gil Hans. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much to Gil, Thank you, Thanks Garrett, I've got it.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Rusius.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Matt.
Speaker 1: So you may have noticed that this was episode five
Speaker 1: hundred of the Friday Golf Podcast. Now we're not exactly
Speaker 1: sure if it's actually episode five hundred. The very first
Speaker 1: episode of this podcast is sort of lost to history.
Speaker 1: We don't know where it is, and we're not sure
Speaker 1: if we counted correctly on our way to five hundred. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we're not really big into anniversaries here, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was as good an opportunity as any to just
Speaker 1: thank everyone who listens to this podcast for doing that,
Speaker 1: for sticking with us, for having fun with us, for
Speaker 1: you know, developing these inside jokes about golf over the
Speaker 1: course of months and years. Really has been so so fun.
Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you, and we hope you'll be
Speaker 1: back with us for our next episode.