Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of the latest episode of
Speaker 1: The Yoke with Doak. Longtime associate Don Placik joins Tom
Speaker 1: to discuss routing. As a reminder, be sure to check
Speaker 1: out Tom's Confidential Guys to Golf Courses. These are the
Speaker 1: best books if you enjoy reading about golf courses. You
Speaker 1: can find them on Renaissancegolf dot com and they make
Speaker 1: for great gifts. And now part two of our discussion
Speaker 1: on routing. Tom Dolk is back and as usual, he's
Speaker 1: not holding back.
Speaker 2: But don't toss the yolk and.
Speaker 1: The famously candid Oak doesn't pull any punches.
Speaker 2: How do I make natural looking? Contour? Hire the biggest
Speaker 2: pool in the village and told them to make it
Speaker 2: flat first?
Speaker 1: Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated over the years. I imagine
Speaker 1: maintenance is another thing that goes into it a little bit,
Speaker 1: in the sense of if the greens are close by,
Speaker 1: it's it's less gas, easier, faster to maintain, easier to
Speaker 1: mow greens, or you know, does it Does that play
Speaker 1: a role in routing at all?
Speaker 2: A little Maybe not as much as you're thinking there,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean, you know, for maintenance, the old
Speaker 2: style courses were you know, you've got a bunch of
Speaker 2: parallel holes and you can mow green you don't necessarily
Speaker 2: mow all the greens in order because it's because it's
Speaker 2: it's much faster to hop from this green across the
Speaker 2: next tee to the green that's coming back the other
Speaker 2: way two holes later, and you just there's a you know,
Speaker 2: you can get around much quicker. Whereas you know the
Speaker 2: modern courses that are all stretched out and every hole
Speaker 2: is a beautiful view. You pretty much have to maintain
Speaker 2: the golf course in the order that you play it,
Speaker 2: and so the mainest guys are going all the way
Speaker 2: around the golf course every day to get it done.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about mackenzie and how he'd have like
Speaker 1: five greens all within like sure if he drew a
Speaker 1: four hundred yard circle there be.
Speaker 2: I was just I was just at the Valley Club
Speaker 2: the other day. You know, they had a flood event
Speaker 2: there a month ago, and they were trying to put
Speaker 2: the pieces back together. That five feet of mud come
Speaker 2: across one of the greens. But that course, there's a
Speaker 2: couple of little hills that he just maxed out as
Speaker 2: many holes as you could possibly get around him. So
Speaker 2: there's this one hill in the middle of the property
Speaker 2: that the third green sits right into the foot of it.
Speaker 2: The fourth t is elevated playing off it, fifth hole
Speaker 2: plays past it, seventh hole comes back to the foot
Speaker 2: of it, The eighth tea is on it, the tenth
Speaker 2: green comes up to the foot of it, and the
Speaker 2: eleventh t is on it. So three of the four
Speaker 2: part threes the tee is on that hill.
Speaker 1: So it brings back. So this is something I went
Speaker 1: on a Northern California golf trip recently and you know,
Speaker 1: played a ton of Mackenzie and the thing the layering.
Speaker 1: How much does that come into mind? Like we're using
Speaker 1: bunkers on other holes to make it look like it's
Speaker 1: on it on the specific hole and visually deceiving, do
Speaker 1: you guys? I mean, how does that?
Speaker 2: How do you Usually? Usually that comes in once once
Speaker 2: the routing is in place, you're not thinking about that
Speaker 2: level of detail. You might you might notice if you've
Speaker 2: done it enough times that oh yes, but but you're
Speaker 2: not really I'm not trying for that at the routing level.
Speaker 2: It's going to come up, you know. Once I've got
Speaker 2: a routing, it's like, oh, you know, all I have
Speaker 2: to do is move the tea over a little bit,
Speaker 2: and then I'm looking at the other hole out there,
Speaker 2: and I can do some visual things because of that,
Speaker 2: or or you know what doesn't show up on a
Speaker 2: topo map. Two things that don't show up on a
Speaker 2: topo map, or trees and views. Sometimes you can tell
Speaker 2: what the view is going to be the general of you,
Speaker 2: like at Sabanic, you know where the bay is and
Speaker 2: you're going to be looking at water. You don't know
Speaker 2: that there's some particular house or feature across the bay
Speaker 2: that might draw your eye, but you know, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: looking toward the water here. Uh. You know, you don't
Speaker 2: know where where the really big beautiful oak is until
Speaker 2: you get out there and start figuring out how to
Speaker 2: clear it. And then maybe you know once you walk
Speaker 2: it in the woods. A couple of times you'll say, okay,
Speaker 2: this tree, I'm playing for this tree. But still when
Speaker 2: you are, you know, usually when you're building the course,
Speaker 2: you'll find that I want to move the tee to
Speaker 2: the left some or to the right some so that
Speaker 2: I'm looking right at this thing instead of it's just
Speaker 2: kind of off to the left there somewhere.
Speaker 1: So now that we I just talked about Mackenzie, we
Speaker 1: had some questions. We had a couple of them actually
Speaker 1: about Golden Age architects. Which Golden Age architects stands out
Speaker 1: as the most adept at routing courses? And that's from Pete.
Speaker 2: Oh Mm, I don't think. I can't. I can't evaluate
Speaker 2: them all on an equal basis. I mean, I'm much
Speaker 2: I've worked much more on some of their work than others.
Speaker 2: You know, I think Mackenzie was the best that I know,
Speaker 2: or at He's the one I stole the most from
Speaker 2: as far as you know, little sequences of holes that
Speaker 2: get you back to the same place, like I was
Speaker 2: describing at the Valley Club, or like you see a
Speaker 2: roll Melbourne or Cyprus point. Most of his courses, you know,
Speaker 2: he would take a few features and say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get as many holes working off that as I can.
Speaker 2: You know, I haven't. I haven't spent as much time
Speaker 2: on Tilling Hass courses or Perry Maxwell courses to rule
Speaker 2: them out as being great at this too. But I've
Speaker 2: seen a ton of Donald Ross courses. If you just
Speaker 2: had one hundred and fifty acre rectangle. Donald Ross was
Speaker 2: as good as amba ever lived at that because he
Speaker 2: you know, because he came up with one hundred different
Speaker 2: versions of it somewhere in America in that in that
Speaker 2: time period. You know, he he was very good at
Speaker 2: You know, when you get a rectangular piece of property
Speaker 2: and you're trying to fit holes in, it's very easy
Speaker 2: to fall into just playing parallel with the property lines.
Speaker 2: You know, like in the Midwest, nearly everything, nearly every
Speaker 2: piece of land you get is is like rectangles or
Speaker 2: you know, the land was all sectioned off in like
Speaker 2: forty acre sections originally, so you'll either get a square
Speaker 2: or a rectangle of forty acre blocks. And interestingly, a
Speaker 2: forty acre block is a quarter mile four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty yards from one end to the other, so it
Speaker 2: fits pretty well at the dimensions of golf. You know,
Speaker 2: if you played down to the end of the rectangle
Speaker 2: and across the back, that would be a four hundred
Speaker 2: yard hole. You have to you know, you need a
Speaker 2: little room behind the green. So you see you see
Speaker 2: people playing around the edges of the property a lot,
Speaker 2: and once you play along this property line and that
Speaker 2: property line, and you've got limited space in between, you know,
Speaker 2: the holes just get parallel really fast. Ross was great
Speaker 2: at not doing that, either putting the clubhouse in the
Speaker 2: corner where everything had to fan out, but just just
Speaker 2: getting something in there that was on a diagonal and
Speaker 2: then figuring out a way to get that back to
Speaker 2: square at the corner, or better still, not getting the
Speaker 2: square at the corner because a lot of the things,
Speaker 2: a lot of the things we wind up dealing with
Speaker 2: on older courses is they've got boundary issues because they
Speaker 2: had a hole playing right along the property line. And
Speaker 2: you know McKenzie more Town one of his early courses
Speaker 2: in England. When he built it, there was a golf
Speaker 2: course on either side of it, and so he played
Speaker 2: holes right along the right along the boundary fence, you
Speaker 2: know where if you drove closer to the boundary fence
Speaker 2: you got a better angle to the green and if
Speaker 2: you drove away from it, it was a tougher shot. So
Speaker 2: eventually those two other golf courses next to him, the
Speaker 2: clubs moved further out of town and now there's housing
Speaker 2: developments on both sides. So now that hole where you
Speaker 2: want to drive right next to the fence, you can't
Speaker 2: do that. You know that homeowner is making them move
Speaker 2: the hole in. You know, they needed to get a
Speaker 2: little more land at the end of the golf course
Speaker 2: to fix it, because they couldn't they they couldn't pack
Speaker 2: as many holes across the middle of the site as
Speaker 2: Mackenzie did. So Ross was a genius at that. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's other architects that were too, but I know
Speaker 2: that's a hard thing to do, and he seemed like
Speaker 2: he did it really well. I think.
Speaker 3: Thinking a little bit about that too, it's interesting that
Speaker 3: at the time those Golden Age courses were being built,
Speaker 3: they were designed and built by the guys they were
Speaker 3: drawing their inspiration from, not from the US, because it
Speaker 3: hadn't evolved yet, it didn't exist. So they brought those
Speaker 3: ideas over and they were allowed to incorporate those ideas
Speaker 3: because they were the expert on the task at the time.
Speaker 3: But over time, as we do in the United States,
Speaker 3: we've americanized everything, and to a degree, americanized architecture, and
Speaker 3: we've come up with these industry standards on length and
Speaker 3: balance and all of those kinds of things, and the
Speaker 3: modern architects have taken those and tried to imprint them
Speaker 3: on whatever property they have and let which is almost
Speaker 3: a complete departure of letting the property dictate what things
Speaker 3: ought to be. And and you know, when you can
Speaker 3: move things around and cut and fill and strip and
Speaker 3: regrass and reveg and change everything that you you know
Speaker 3: that would normally drive a design, you can just wipe
Speaker 3: it out and recreate it and move everything around. The
Speaker 3: idea that you're an architect seems to have demonstrated at
Speaker 3: some point that if you're not doing some or a
Speaker 3: lot of that, you're not really an architect. You must
Speaker 3: not be that good at what you do. And to
Speaker 3: watch that evolution go from one end of the spectrum
Speaker 3: all the way to the other is pretty fascinating. And
Speaker 3: I think that's just what we do in the United States.
Speaker 3: We've sort of that was the American way to sort
Speaker 3: of do that, and I think it's exciting to see
Speaker 3: that now that we've been there a while, there is
Speaker 3: a new focus on going back to how it started, thankfully,
Speaker 3: and as a result, things are probably going to be
Speaker 3: a little bit better by default. Obviously the more we
Speaker 3: pay attention to that way. But you know, and it's
Speaker 3: it's you know, having clients that will allow you to
Speaker 3: to do those things. And that's that's that's as much
Speaker 3: good fortune as being talented at what you do is
Speaker 3: having a client that really allows you to let you
Speaker 3: max out your talents.
Speaker 2: Right, And you know, eighty percent of what you're saying
Speaker 2: goes back to what is the primary purpose of this
Speaker 2: golf course? And you know, unfortunately, at least half the
Speaker 2: golf courses built in America in the last fifty years
Speaker 2: were built the primary purpose was housing development. It wasn't
Speaker 2: golf at all. And the architects, who you know, we
Speaker 2: don't get those kind of jobs. We never have. When
Speaker 2: I started out, my name wasn't worth anything to, you know,
Speaker 2: to a housing developer. So I you know, I started
Speaker 2: with daily fee golf courses and then resorts, but you know,
Speaker 2: I still didn't get my name up there as being
Speaker 2: a big enough name architect to be attractive to a
Speaker 2: housing developer until just when that market crashed. We were
Speaker 2: signed up to do two or three of them in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight and they all went away. But
Speaker 2: you know, when you know, when Jack Nicholas or Greg
Speaker 2: Norman stands up at the opening would stand up at
Speaker 2: the opening day of a of a housing development, golf
Speaker 2: course and say, you know what a great client. He
Speaker 2: let me route the golf course first anywhere I wanted
Speaker 2: to go, and then they designed the housing around it.
Speaker 2: Now it does not it can't happen in that way,
Speaker 2: you know, you because you can't build a hole that
Speaker 2: ends two hundred and fifty feet from the property line
Speaker 2: over there and leave the developer not enough room to
Speaker 2: do anything with that, you know, not enough room for
Speaker 2: a house and a road and another house. You know,
Speaker 2: then it's just wasted space to them. So it can't
Speaker 2: work like that. At a minimum, you're going back and
Speaker 2: forth with a land planner doing the development kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, wrestling with him over what. You know, I
Speaker 2: want to put the hole there. I know you can't.
Speaker 2: You got to move it over here so I have
Speaker 2: some space there. And sometimes you're you know, the same
Speaker 2: feature that you want to include in a golf hole,
Speaker 2: that's a great place to put a house or the
Speaker 2: clubhouse or the hotel. So you're you're constantly in a
Speaker 2: tug of war over who gets to use this feature,
Speaker 2: the housing development or the golf. So now if the
Speaker 2: golf is not really important to the client, like YaST
Speaker 2: equally important to the development. The golf course architect's gonna
Speaker 2: lose those arguments every time, and the odds that you're
Speaker 2: going to build a really good golf course go way
Speaker 2: way down because you're not routing. You're not getting to
Speaker 2: do the routing anymore.
Speaker 1: So off of that, we have a just a seemingly
Speaker 1: limitless supply of golf courses that you just described. If
Speaker 1: somebody was going to renovate those instead of you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them should probably close. But say somebody
Speaker 1: was going to renovate one, like, how would you attack
Speaker 1: something like that? Would you you know where you're kind
Speaker 1: of very constricted.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends how they're done. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 2: not that many of them are going to close, because
Speaker 2: the people that own the real estate around them have
Speaker 2: a vested interest in them not closing. And unfortunately, even
Speaker 2: if they go through bankruptcy and the value goes to zero,
Speaker 2: then then it's worth it to somebody to buy them
Speaker 2: for you know, if you could buy the golf course
Speaker 2: for a dollar because nobody really wants to run it,
Speaker 2: then you could probably make a go of it. The
Speaker 2: guy that you know, the people that invested ten million
Speaker 2: dollars building it, no, they're out of luck. But you know,
Speaker 2: so it depends on a development course, like how much
Speaker 2: you know, how small did they divide up the parcels.
Speaker 2: If you've just got a bunch of single golf holes
Speaker 2: with houses on both sides, you have no flexibility with
Speaker 2: the routing at all, or almost none. Maybe you could
Speaker 2: make what's a par four and a par three into
Speaker 2: a par three and a par four. That probably doesn't
Speaker 2: make any difference in overall because they you know, if
Speaker 2: if the whole development was laid out like that, then
Speaker 2: those green sites weren't located on a natural piece of
Speaker 2: ground anyway. You know, they graded the lot to either side,
Speaker 2: so you can't if even if it was now natural,
Speaker 2: it would be hard to tell that it was. So
Speaker 2: now it's just a shaping exercise. You know, what can
Speaker 2: we do to make this cooler? Can we make the
Speaker 2: bunkers prettier? You know, if the quarters are pretty narrow,
Speaker 2: if they only let you, you know, nobody wants to
Speaker 2: say what the standard is for how how wide a
Speaker 2: golf hole has to be between houses on both sides.
Speaker 2: If I said it in this podcast, somebody would sue
Speaker 2: me in ten years because because Riley and use that
Speaker 2: dimension and a golf course that he built, and not
Speaker 2: only would they sue him, they'd sue me because I
Speaker 2: told him. So, you know, nobody says, but obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: developers are interested in making that as narrow as it
Speaker 2: can be so they can sell more homes. And once
Speaker 2: you do that, you can't even build a hole where
Speaker 2: you want to hit it right or left. You know,
Speaker 2: that's all predicated on hitting it down the middle of
Speaker 2: the quarter, and you know you need one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty feet or whatever to the right of it to
Speaker 2: be safe, So you can't if you design a hole
Speaker 2: where you want to hit it down the right side
Speaker 2: or the left side, then you're playing too close to
Speaker 2: the houses on one side and you can't go there.
Speaker 2: So it's really hard with that setup to design anything
Speaker 2: that's really interesting. If it's more than that, if you've
Speaker 2: got at least two holes in the middle between the houses,
Speaker 2: then you've got a chance. If it's more than that,
Speaker 2: where it's kind of a more or less a core
Speaker 2: golf course with housing around the outside and maybe it
Speaker 2: sticks in somewhere, then you've got some options and maybe
Speaker 2: you can really do something. But there's a ton of
Speaker 2: golf courses that are one hole wide with houses on
Speaker 2: both sides, and I can't imagine that. I would, you know,
Speaker 2: we get calls all the time. Do you want to
Speaker 2: redesign this if that's the land plan? I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's anything much I can do with that.
Speaker 2: You can make it prettier, you could make the greens
Speaker 2: more interesting, you know. To me, that's not enough.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about one that I grew up by,
Speaker 1: and like every single hole is siloed by itself, and
Speaker 1: like there's really nothing you can do. There's decent width
Speaker 1: between them, but you can't really do that much. There's
Speaker 1: not enough with the to get two holes on it.
Speaker 2: I think the hardest part of it is really when
Speaker 2: you destroy the frame on both sides.
Speaker 1: YEA.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no natural land to the right or
Speaker 2: the left that it ties into anything, you know, it
Speaker 2: just gets divorced from being a natural landscape at all.
Speaker 2: If you've got two holes wide, then then maybe there's
Speaker 2: natural land in between and trees and some things that
Speaker 2: looks like you know, and then you just try to
Speaker 2: focus inward on that as much as you can.
Speaker 1: I feel like it naturally evolves if it's that into
Speaker 1: a tunnel because the houses need to have the water
Speaker 1: run off onto the golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you you got like a essentially playing through
Speaker 1: like a half pipe on every single hole. Right, So,
Speaker 1: which from Brett, a former intern, which routing that you
Speaker 1: have done is your favorite? Which was the most puzzling
Speaker 1: and the most rewarding? So three part pot a three
Speaker 1: part question, and we'll have we'll have Don uh answer
Speaker 1: the first and then Tom you answer the last two.
Speaker 2: Okay, which which which a part of the question.
Speaker 1: Is Don, Don's got favorite? And then you've got puzzling
Speaker 1: and rewarding.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a great question. Favorite. We'll have to think
Speaker 3: about that for a little bit. If you've got answers
Speaker 3: to the next two, I'd be happy to let you start.
Speaker 2: Tom, all right, well, the most puzzling. There's two that
Speaker 2: I would put in. The most puzzling rock Creek. We
Speaker 2: started with an eighty thousand acre ranch. The first two
Speaker 2: times I was there, I never even got to the
Speaker 2: part of the ground where the golf course is. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, Holy hell, this is so much ground.
Speaker 2: How do I even how do I look at this?
Speaker 2: I should probably start with a helicopter or something. But
Speaker 2: you know, so there were a lot of iterations of that,
Speaker 2: and the first couple were just okay, which part of
Speaker 2: all this land are we going to? And then some
Speaker 2: back and forth with a client as well. You know. Ironically,
Speaker 2: one of the things that made that one hard the
Speaker 2: valley where the last three holes are. It's just beautiful
Speaker 2: for golf. I mean, you're playing down this narrow little
Speaker 2: valley and the creek runs right down it, and there's
Speaker 2: at the bottom end of it there are these two
Speaker 2: big rock pinnacles, and the valley gets really narrow, like
Speaker 2: you can't really just the creek goes through pass where
Speaker 2: the seventeenth greenis. You couldn't really put a more golf
Speaker 2: holes down that way. It got too narrow to do anything.
Speaker 2: So it's a beautiful little secluded spot. But at the
Speaker 2: bottom end below there there's a big power line going
Speaker 2: across the valley and you can see it. And when
Speaker 2: I first saw it, I was like, damn, that's a
Speaker 2: beautiful spot. But if I had eighty thousand acres to
Speaker 2: work with and I put these last couple of holes
Speaker 2: right where you're looking at the power lines, everybody's gonna
Speaker 2: go why did you have to do that? You know,
Speaker 2: he had all this ground where you didn't have to
Speaker 2: look at the power lines. Why would you look at them?
Speaker 2: So the first couple of versions of the routing that
Speaker 2: I did for the client, we didn't go there. We
Speaker 2: just didn't use that part of the ground. We obviously
Speaker 2: had a lot more ground we could use. And then
Speaker 2: one of Bill's good friends is a guy named Tom
Speaker 2: Devlin who developed Flint Hills National Witch Top very good
Speaker 2: golf and Tom Tom was one of the guys that
Speaker 2: Bill had come and look at my routing, and Tom
Speaker 2: Devilon was like, why don't you go down there? It's
Speaker 2: beautiful for golf holes down there, And I said, well,
Speaker 2: yeah it is, but you're gonna look at the power lines.
Speaker 2: And we got to talking about it, and we finally
Speaker 2: all agreed, yes, those power lines are there. But if
Speaker 2: you're gonna let that distract you from it's a beautiful
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like there, it's not like there's
Speaker 2: a tower right next to the green, they're behind there always.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're gonna let that distract you from
Speaker 2: the fact that these are three great holes in a
Speaker 2: beautiful setting, you're just an asshole. You know, it might
Speaker 2: get you the first time, that might be your overall impression,
Speaker 2: but for the members, the people that live there, that's
Speaker 2: no big deal. It's just there, it's in the background.
Speaker 2: So what it was hard to get over that. But
Speaker 2: they were absolutely right. I mean, that was the best
Speaker 2: place for those It was the best place for the
Speaker 2: golf course to finish, just partly because the you know,
Speaker 2: the the golf course starts from the clubhouse and works
Speaker 2: way up the hill and way down and instead of
Speaker 2: just coming down to the clubhouse and ending, it goes
Speaker 2: past it and it comes back into the mountain view
Speaker 2: at the end. So from that perspective it was really good.
Speaker 2: But you know, letting go of that took a long time.
Speaker 2: And then bally Neil was the other one because you know,
Speaker 2: we found the one, nine, ten and eighteen kind of
Speaker 2: how to get in and out of the clubhouse pretty fast.
Speaker 2: We found a lot of good holes out there, some
Speaker 2: of them kind of a little too far away if
Speaker 2: you had to go out one and get back nine.
Speaker 2: But the really hard part was number. Once you once
Speaker 2: you got to one green, you were way above where
Speaker 2: most of the golf course was, and there was no
Speaker 2: obvious good way down there. You know, every time every
Speaker 2: hole we looked at was like, well, you're just gonna
Speaker 2: hit down, he'll in to the wind where it could
Speaker 2: go anywhere, and then you're going to wind up in
Speaker 2: a place. If it's a longer hold, you're probably gonna
Speaker 2: wind up in a place where you can't see the
Speaker 2: green very well because you're gonna wind up in this bowl,
Speaker 2: and then there's there's no good angle to go from there.
Speaker 2: So I was stumped for a long time. It didn't
Speaker 2: help that, you know, they weren't very well funded. I
Speaker 2: couldn't tell if they were serious or not. So so
Speaker 2: it was like I was only there for a day
Speaker 2: or two at a time, on the way to somewhere else.
Speaker 2: And it didn't spend like four or five days in
Speaker 2: a row to really get it figured out and get
Speaker 2: you just get lost out there. You had a thousand
Speaker 2: acres of dunes to work with, and every time I'd leave,
Speaker 2: I was like, damn it, I just didn't get far
Speaker 2: enough to figure this out. And finally the last time
Speaker 2: was the last time in that process, I said, well,
Speaker 2: what's over the fence? You know, we were looking at
Speaker 2: the second hole and the second green is about one
Speaker 2: hundred yards or one hundred and fifty yards past where
Speaker 2: their property line ended. And the third hole is all
Speaker 2: on property that they didn't own and that I hadn't seen.
Speaker 2: You know, you could see the second green, but you
Speaker 2: couldn't see what was going on over there at number three.
Speaker 2: And you couldn't see once you walked up over that
Speaker 2: hill what the view was off of fourty, And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what's over there, you know, cause it's all just barren dunsland?
Speaker 2: Nobody's really it's ranch land, but nobody's using it for
Speaker 2: anything in particular. They just graze animals. So it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, we we went over and as soon as
Speaker 2: we got to where three t was, I was like,
Speaker 2: this is a lot better way down off the hill.
Speaker 2: You know. Can we trade some of this, a little
Speaker 2: of this land for something else down there? You know,
Speaker 2: just swap, make an even swap with your your neighbor.
Speaker 2: So that's how that worked out. But it took like
Speaker 2: that was after I'd been on the property four or
Speaker 2: five times already. And the funny thing is that land
Speaker 2: that we couldn't figure out how to get down from
Speaker 2: behind Number one Green two years ago when they when
Speaker 2: they called me back and said, you know, we'd like
Speaker 2: to consider doing another little facility of some kind. We've
Speaker 2: got we've got a little more water than we need
Speaker 2: for the golf course. So we got like enough to
Speaker 2: water seven or eight acres more turf. You know, what
Speaker 2: would you do with that? You know, we could build
Speaker 2: a part, we could build a range. Well that's not exciting,
Speaker 2: you know, could we build like a short course or
Speaker 2: a couple a couple extra holes or you know what.
Speaker 2: We wound up doing a par three course. You know,
Speaker 2: almost as soon as you said it, I realized that
Speaker 2: the land that was too severe for the for the
Speaker 2: second hole that was probably going to be good for
Speaker 2: the par three course. So all that land that we
Speaker 2: dodged around to get the first routing right, we wound
Speaker 2: up using for the Mulligan course just last year.
Speaker 1: That's uh man kind of is a smart thing if
Speaker 1: you think about like courses that force eighteen holes onto
Speaker 1: property versus routing the best holes you can and then
Speaker 1: using those little plots of land for like practice areas
Speaker 1: and short courses as opposed to putting bad golf holes
Speaker 1: on It would be a smart thing for golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't. It's really hard for me
Speaker 2: to visualize that golf will get away from eighteen holes
Speaker 2: or nine holes, you know. I mean, I'm a big
Speaker 2: champion of great nine hole golf courses. There aren't many
Speaker 2: because everybody thinks, oh, that's not real. But you know,
Speaker 2: when you've got a really great nine hole course, going
Speaker 2: around it twice is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, I mean to have some of the
Speaker 2: best work I've seen in the last five years is
Speaker 2: like working with little pieces of land and coming up
Speaker 2: with some par three holes or a little short course,
Speaker 2: or some alternative version of the main course, or something
Speaker 2: that is really thinking outside of the box. But there's
Speaker 2: a lot of good golf in a small space.
Speaker 1: So don do you come up with your favorite routing?
Speaker 3: I did, Anny. I think it was useful to be
Speaker 3: able to think about it a little bit and favorite,
Speaker 3: if you stretch that term a little bit. I think
Speaker 3: it's my favorite for different reasons, not just liking the
Speaker 3: holes I found necessarily, but it's more by the fact
Speaker 3: that I was part of the construction process and finding
Speaker 3: the holes that the routing is. The second course at
Speaker 3: Stonewall the North Course affectionately known as the Utter Course
Speaker 3: and all kinds of other names for it. But I
Speaker 3: was involved in trying to figure out where the holes
Speaker 3: were going to go with Tom from the beginning, and
Speaker 3: it's got you know, it's an odd shaped piece of
Speaker 3: g it's got elevation. It has sort of a starting
Speaker 3: and finishing point with the existing barn and sort of
Speaker 3: farmhouse that we lived in during construction that was going
Speaker 3: to become that was going to serve in that capacity.
Speaker 3: So you had a couple of givens in the equation,
Speaker 3: but going around clockwise or counterclockwise, and if you're going
Speaker 3: to going to cross over where, and proximity to roads
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. There was a lot
Speaker 3: to be learned. But when we settled on where the
Speaker 3: holes were going to go, to be privileged to be
Speaker 3: you know, on site and trying to get those ideas
Speaker 3: in the ground from the beginning all the way to
Speaker 3: the end really made it my favorite because some of
Speaker 3: the preconceived notions that I thought I had on what
Speaker 3: was going to be good ended up maybe not what
Speaker 3: I thought at all. And you learn from that, you know,
Speaker 3: you really do start looking off site and past you
Speaker 3: know the church steeple that serves as a backdrop, backdrop
Speaker 3: for the fourth and seventh greens. You know the barn
Speaker 3: at the sixth, All of that kind of stuff. You
Speaker 3: really that resonates it and it stays with you the
Speaker 3: rest of the way. And I just learned so much
Speaker 3: from the learning curve on that project was so sharp
Speaker 3: because it was really the first time that I had
Speaker 3: been in that position. And thank God, Tom surrounded me
Speaker 3: with a lot of talent. You know, Brian Schneider was
Speaker 3: was there right from the get go and brought all
Speaker 3: his shaping and green contour and green experience building experience
Speaker 3: with him, and Ky Goldby was there, and Eric Iverson
Speaker 3: did a stint or a couple of them, and Brian
Speaker 3: Slonik as well, and Kyle Franz, Will Smith, I mean
Speaker 3: the really long list. Toby Cobb and Dan Proctor from
Speaker 3: Bill and Ben's camp were there. So how could I
Speaker 3: go wrong? I mean, I just but I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I didn't know the value of those guys the ideas
Speaker 3: into the ground, but to be able to watch the
Speaker 3: the on paper part of the whole design really get
Speaker 3: realized and all the different decisions that go into the
Speaker 3: final version of whatever it was. We were shucking and
Speaker 3: jiving all over the place trying to get everything just right,
Speaker 3: and we were allowed to do that, which was a
Speaker 3: real privilege.
Speaker 2: But well, there's you know, the interesting part of that.
Speaker 2: And you're right, do you It's at some point it's
Speaker 2: important to have enough experience actually building a golf course
Speaker 2: to understand like the holes that don't quite fit, the
Speaker 2: little transitions that you're trying to make to get you know,
Speaker 2: you've got a bunch of holes. You know, we're good,
Speaker 2: but there's some places where it doesn't fit together really well.
Speaker 2: And it's like, is that fixable in the field? You know?
Speaker 2: And I have certainly seen modern golf courses where somebody
Speaker 2: rout it and just said, oh, they'll fix that in
Speaker 2: the field, and it wasn't fixable. There was no way
Speaker 2: in the world you can move dirt forever and not
Speaker 2: get a good hole there. But the guy arouting it
Speaker 2: didn't understand that because he never spent any time in
Speaker 2: the field. You know. He just figured, well, if they
Speaker 2: throw enough at it, they'll get it, you know. And
Speaker 2: and there's other ones that, Okay, that's bland, But you know,
Speaker 2: I can see how I can see how I'm going
Speaker 2: to make that work. So you have to, you know,
Speaker 2: if the holes don't all fit together perfectly from one
Speaker 2: to eighteen. You also have to understand enough about what
Speaker 2: you're gonna do. You don't have to necessarily have it
Speaker 2: all figured out in the beginning, but you have to
Speaker 2: understand that you're putting yourself in a situation that's not unsolvable,
Speaker 2: and you can easily put yourself in a situation that's
Speaker 2: unsolvable all you really the most unsolvable thing is just
Speaker 2: if you've got a severe side slope with no bottom
Speaker 2: that you can work off of, it's really hard to
Speaker 2: build anything good any longer hole. You can build a
Speaker 2: par three pretty much anywhere, but once you've got to
Speaker 2: have a landing area for a par four and you
Speaker 2: think about where people could drive it, they could drive
Speaker 2: it all over the place on a hole like that,
Speaker 2: it's hard to do enough earthwork to receive all of
Speaker 2: those t shots.
Speaker 3: I think Tom's absolutely spot on there too. I think
Speaker 3: you're as you're looking on a on a blank piece
Speaker 3: of property, finding good short holes, good par threes, or
Speaker 3: that's really easy, and it gets progressively worse from there.
Speaker 3: Finding the really good long holes is actually a lot
Speaker 3: harder because you you just need the space and you
Speaker 3: and so you know what with stonewall going up and
Speaker 3: over the pretty much the kind of ground that Tom
Speaker 3: was just describing and getting a long hole out of
Speaker 3: some of the most difficult part of the property. That's
Speaker 3: the third hole, exactly right, That's exactly right, And that's.
Speaker 2: The fourth all at Roll Melbourne. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just blatantly stolen from Mackenzie's thing because I because I'd
Speaker 2: noticed when I was at Ray Melbourne, how you know,
Speaker 2: doing the one thing that we normally don't do is
Speaker 2: go up and over a big hole a big hill,
Speaker 2: you know, made the other holes were perfect playing back
Speaker 2: into the hill.
Speaker 1: And so that's an example of the walk, the tough
Speaker 1: walk up the hill after a t shot that you
Speaker 1: talked about earlier too.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, if you just walked all the way
Speaker 2: to the top of that hill to play the next hole,
Speaker 2: it would be bad. But but on that on that
Speaker 2: part of that property, the top of that hill, it's
Speaker 2: about two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards from
Speaker 2: where the green is. For number four, it's about three
Speaker 2: hundred yards from like any angle that you could go
Speaker 2: around that property. It's kind of in the middle along
Speaker 2: a property line. But you you didn't have any long
Speaker 2: holes in that section that there's four or five holes
Speaker 2: if you played up to that and back off, they
Speaker 2: were all really short holes. So the only way to
Speaker 2: get something of any length was just suck it up
Speaker 2: and go up over it and get one long hole
Speaker 2: and then fit everything else in. You're kind of fit in.
Speaker 2: When we did that, we also managed to get eight
Speaker 2: and seven kind of on the diagonal through the middle
Speaker 2: of the property and get some long holes there.
Speaker 1: That It's another example of kind of uh we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier with like the distinct sections of property where
Speaker 1: you know, one and two are kind of their own
Speaker 1: little area, and then the third t shots its own area.
Speaker 1: But then you get up and it's a vast open space.
Speaker 1: And then you go back after the eighth hole, the
Speaker 1: par five you have the par three and ten and
Speaker 1: eighteen are its own pocket. But then you get across
Speaker 1: the road and this vast open space.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and that's you know, we you know, we've talked away.
Speaker 2: We spend all this time talking about routings and all
Speaker 2: those all those young guys that want to be architects
Speaker 2: are probably really frustrated because we haven't told him anything
Speaker 2: about how to do it. And the first thing that
Speaker 2: you do is you break it. You break it down
Speaker 2: into a few parts, just like you talked about. You
Speaker 2: know that first little bit where one and two and
Speaker 2: three T are, that's a separate section from everything else.
Speaker 2: And you you know, whether you were going to wind
Speaker 2: up at three T or kind of more up the
Speaker 2: hill on number three, you couldn't come You couldn't go
Speaker 2: any farther because property line's there. You couldn't come back
Speaker 2: past the clubhouse with a hole. So that's a little
Speaker 2: section to work out on its own. And then that
Speaker 2: big three through eight that's a section to work out
Speaker 2: on its own, and nine and ten and eighteen that's
Speaker 2: a section to work out on its own. And then
Speaker 2: the other part is too. So you know, almost any
Speaker 2: property is like that, even if you know Stonewall has
Speaker 2: broad crossings and stone walls and things that really break
Speaker 2: it up. The Lost Dudes has an Interstate highway going
Speaker 2: through the middle of it, so obviously there's at least
Speaker 2: two pieces there, but nearly every property breaks up into
Speaker 2: three or four or five or six different parts, And
Speaker 2: the main reason they break up is because you're going
Speaker 2: over a hill and you don't want to play a
Speaker 2: blind hole, so you're going to try to get the
Speaker 2: last hole in one section, like up close to the
Speaker 2: top of the hill, and then the next tee up
Speaker 2: on the top going over into the next section. And
Speaker 2: when you change a routing, you know, when I played
Speaker 2: golf with somebody on of course I built, and they go, oh,
Speaker 2: it's really cool, but I think you should have put
Speaker 2: that green over there. Okay, but then where was it?
Speaker 2: Where was the next tea going? Because that's you never
Speaker 2: change one hole at a time. Yeah, I guess it's possible.
Speaker 2: You know, if the tee is to the right and
Speaker 2: your green site was further right, maybe you could do that.
Speaker 2: But nearly anything you change, you're going to change two
Speaker 2: or three holes to make it work, or you know,
Speaker 2: cutting out a hole saying no, I can't do that,
Speaker 2: or I'm going to combine these two holes into one.
Speaker 2: Now you don't have any teen anymore. You have to
Speaker 2: find someplace else to get that hole back. So it's
Speaker 2: you know, that's the Rubik's cube part. When you do
Speaker 2: one thing, it changes other things, so you always have
Speaker 2: to be conscious of how you're going to come back
Speaker 2: to be in the right number of holes at the end.
Speaker 3: One of the things I really learned Stonewall again is
Speaker 3: the process you talk about compartmentalizing sections of the property.
Speaker 3: If you can get two holes in one particular section
Speaker 3: that you like that are good, that work, that's great.
Speaker 3: But if you can get three in there or four
Speaker 3: that you like that work that function, that just gives
Speaker 3: you way more leeway to wiggle around and get bigger
Speaker 3: and more creative in the other pieces that are left over.
Speaker 3: So each piece that you can really max out gives
Speaker 3: you more freedom in all of the others. And it's
Speaker 3: exactly like Tom says, it's a ripple effect. You're not
Speaker 3: changing one hole or one thing and it stops there.
Speaker 3: Often it resonates into two and three and four and
Speaker 3: five holes, going all over the place, and then getting
Speaker 3: them all to fit together as eighteen.
Speaker 2: No doubt, that's that's the next lesson routing. Once you
Speaker 2: break it down, it's like, how can you get the
Speaker 2: most out of this one? And you know when high
Speaker 2: point the one little piece I wrote on routing and
Speaker 2: the Anatomy of a golf course was about the start
Speaker 2: of the back nine. At high points, there was like
Speaker 2: a forty acre block a land that was in back
Speaker 2: of everything else, and it was by far the prettiest land,
Speaker 2: you know it was. It was covered with ferns and
Speaker 2: these It was very sandy hilly. It was covered with
Speaker 2: ferns and these little tiny pine trees that they planted
Speaker 2: for erosion control. But but when we when we were
Speaker 2: starting the golf course, they were only like hip high
Speaker 2: and you could you could almost rip them out of
Speaker 2: the ground by hand to clear you just we just
Speaker 2: wrapped a chain around them and pull them out with
Speaker 2: a bucket of a tractor basically. And you know, when
Speaker 2: I first looked at that piece of the ground, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, there'd be a cool hole playing diagonally
Speaker 2: across here to this green site right here, and then
Speaker 2: there'd be a cool hole up there coming out. And
Speaker 2: I had like two or three holes in forty acres.
Speaker 2: And it took me maybe a couple of days to
Speaker 2: get to forget about that. It's like, that's the best
Speaker 2: piece of the property. I should get five holes in
Speaker 2: there if I can't, And ultimately that was you know,
Speaker 2: it's like ten eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and part of
Speaker 2: the fifteenth tea coming out of it. We're all in
Speaker 2: that section in your land, and anybody who ever played
Speaker 2: the golf course, that was the best part of the
Speaker 2: golf course and that's why you wanted to go back there.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, once you've got it broken up, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's the best part of this? How do I get
Speaker 2: the most out of that? And that's you know, it's
Speaker 2: not just one hole. It's like the best combination of
Speaker 2: three or four or five holes. But but you know
Speaker 2: that's kind of where a routing starts.
Speaker 1: It's, uh, yeah, you got to maximize rather than having
Speaker 1: one great hole that hogs the best feature is using
Speaker 1: that feature as much as exam so that you get
Speaker 1: the most. It makes a lot of sense. It's so
Speaker 1: don you You bring a lot of these routings and
Speaker 1: ideas to life drawing, and a lot of the world,
Speaker 1: like myself, are absolute awful artists me too. What are
Speaker 1: some just tips for drawing that you have for because
Speaker 1: there I feel like there's more and more armshair, architects,
Speaker 1: guys that like to doodle, you know, routings and sketches.
Speaker 1: What kind of advice do you have.
Speaker 3: Well, the advice I think is me be to, now
Speaker 3: that we have more resources to do it, pay attention
Speaker 3: to what the old guys did not. You know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about building golf and realizing actual golfers, but I
Speaker 3: just did the same thing withdrawing too. You know, the
Speaker 3: more plans that you can get your hands on from
Speaker 3: the guys that did it a long time ago, there's
Speaker 3: always something there, whether you know it's as simple or
Speaker 3: as irrelevant as a north arrow. You know, those are
Speaker 3: the kinds of things that kind of catch my eye.
Speaker 3: And how do they depict grassing lines and you know,
Speaker 3: center lines and te's and greens and flags and that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And there's really good stuff out there.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm not quite sure what my style is,
Speaker 3: but it's it's really not uniquely my own. Certainly. It's
Speaker 3: just a you know, a conglomerate of a bunch of
Speaker 3: other things that someone else has already done that I saw,
Speaker 3: and I'm just putting them together, maybe in a slightly
Speaker 3: different way, but I you know, for me personally, I'm
Speaker 3: fascinated by the really old maps all the way down
Speaker 3: to tease greens and bunkers and different fonts, different styles.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's it's like most things. If
Speaker 3: you enjoy it, that's going to drive you to investigate it.
Speaker 3: And if you investigate it, you're going to discover a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. And it's plus, it's just a hell
Speaker 3: of a lot of fun, honestly, And it's interesting too,
Speaker 3: because I think it can be it can be somewhat
Speaker 3: of a distraction in the architectural process because if you
Speaker 3: put that kind of stuff in front of a client
Speaker 3: early on and for whatever reason, they really like it,
Speaker 3: and you know, they're already having trouble picturing in their
Speaker 3: mind's eye what's this going to look like, and they're
Speaker 3: getting ready to write checks, or people are getting ready
Speaker 3: to write checks, and they want to be comfortable that
Speaker 3: what they unknown is going to turn out a certain way.
Speaker 3: So you have to be careful not to put something
Speaker 3: out there in a way that you know you're not
Speaker 3: going to be able to make all the really necessary
Speaker 3: changes that we've been talking about for a while now
Speaker 3: in the field, because that's what really matters, that's what
Speaker 3: really really matters. So you know, there's a level of
Speaker 3: responsibility that you have. I think in sort of projecting
Speaker 3: an idea and it's good to get people excited, but
Speaker 3: it's all I've also learned it's really important to make
Speaker 3: sure they understand, don't love it too much because it
Speaker 3: could change. Yeah, but there needs to be Yeah, there
Speaker 3: really needs to be that disclaimer, and invariably it does.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what makes Tom and you know
Speaker 3: Renaissance somewhat unique is we kind of go in not
Speaker 3: entirely sure, we just are confident that at the end
Speaker 3: it's gonna be good because we're pouring ourselves into it
Speaker 3: and we've had good luck doing it that way. So
Speaker 3: you know, the drawings can be helpful, but you know
Speaker 3: they're they're also uh, they're just a tool. They're just
Speaker 3: they're just a launch pad. They're not the end all
Speaker 3: be all.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times when you see you know,
Speaker 2: somebody's gone to great lengths at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: project to do all these renderings of what's going to
Speaker 2: look like and stuff. A lot of times they're just stealing.
Speaker 2: You know, it's for the third hole at Stonewall. They
Speaker 2: would just put a picture in there of the fourth
Speaker 2: all raw Melbourne it say it's going to be like
Speaker 2: that you know, in China they would actually take a
Speaker 2: picture of raw melvern and maybe flip it over or
Speaker 2: photoshop something out and just use it like that was
Speaker 2: the whole It was already built. You know, there's extreme
Speaker 2: versions of it, but but yeah, I mean it's you know,
Speaker 2: the more you try to do stuff like that at
Speaker 2: the beginning, it's it winds up being really derivative of
Speaker 2: like other things that are already existing. If you're really
Speaker 2: trying to do something original, you're not going to do
Speaker 2: that on paper before you start. You're going to do
Speaker 2: that when you're out there.
Speaker 3: You know how you know That's the fact too, I
Speaker 3: think is you know, with technology that we have now,
Speaker 3: if we go back to the first plan that Tom
Speaker 3: had on a golf course, that was what we thought
Speaker 3: was going to be the routing, and then subsequently, you know,
Speaker 3: the project is done, it's built, and there are irrigation
Speaker 3: gps as builts of exactly where the tea's ended up
Speaker 3: and how the greens are shaped and the what the
Speaker 3: grassing lines look like. It's fascinating to look at what
Speaker 3: we started with and what we actually ended up building,
Speaker 3: and often they don't resemble in a lot of ways
Speaker 3: what we started with and the configuration of grassing lines
Speaker 3: at the end is just it. It looks pretty crazy,
Speaker 3: you know it. It is really a full on evolution,
Speaker 3: and I think part of that is because that's what
Speaker 3: the ground dictated, so we that's what we paid attention to,
Speaker 3: and you can't get that level at the detail at
Speaker 3: the beginning. But we also spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: trying to get grassing lines right when we're shaping things.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just remember from from a high point,
Speaker 2: from one or two other things when I built them,
Speaker 2: that what you built that looks so cool on the
Speaker 2: ground looks very plain on paper. It's like there's you know,
Speaker 2: you get a i mean the the Ahole Crystal Apps,
Speaker 2: one of my favorite golf holes in the world. On paper,
Speaker 2: there's no fairway, bunkers. You know that. It's all about
Speaker 2: the topography and the landing area. And unless you can
Speaker 2: read a topa map really well, you can't tell what
Speaker 2: the hell is going on there. So it just looks
Speaker 2: like any standard Muni hot dog dog leg right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's nothing there in two D on a
Speaker 2: plan view that you go, oh wow, that's a really
Speaker 2: cool because it's all in the third dimensions, and if
Speaker 2: you're trying to make it look cool in the beginning,
Speaker 2: you're going to embellish it and add fairway bunkers and
Speaker 2: do all these things to make it look cool that
Speaker 2: it doesn't need out there on the ground.
Speaker 1: So with with golf courses closing, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: like a perfect example is that Engineers is closing this year,
Speaker 1: I think, but.
Speaker 2: Were actually closing. I mean I know that, I know
Speaker 2: the deal has been done to sell it, but I
Speaker 2: also know that well, if it's like you know, we
Speaker 2: worked on north Shore, which is not far from there,
Speaker 2: and north Shore, if they had sold the club to
Speaker 2: a developer, it would have taken them five years before
Speaker 2: they could build any homes minimums. So the golf course
Speaker 2: was going to last for a while anyway.
Speaker 1: One place where you were a big part of the
Speaker 1: recovery was Ashkronish Up and I was.
Speaker 2: We were a very small part of the recovery there.
Speaker 2: Somebody else, Martin Eber and those guys really recovered the
Speaker 2: golf course. We just tinkered around with it a little
Speaker 2: sense then, and by a little, I mean a little.
Speaker 1: Trevor Dormer wanted to know about how close. Do you
Speaker 1: think today's routing is to the original.
Speaker 2: I have no honest way of judging that. I don't.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't think that. You know, when Martin Ebert
Speaker 2: and Gordon Irvin walked it originally and put the routing together,
Speaker 2: they didn't they had nobody had a map of it
Speaker 2: from before, so they just they just went by their
Speaker 2: eye and supposedly their vision of what they thought old
Speaker 2: Tom Morris would have done by his eye, which you know,
Speaker 2: things are so different today that you know, I would
Speaker 2: say one of the best holes at Askernish is the
Speaker 2: make sure I get the numbers right, pretty sure, it's
Speaker 2: the eighth, the little short part four that you know,
Speaker 2: you play that great seventh hole down into the valley
Speaker 2: and then you walk up out of it and the tea
Speaker 2: is kind of benched into a little dune and the
Speaker 2: eighth hole is going. It's a short part four and
Speaker 2: there's a bunker by the green, and then you're looking
Speaker 2: out over the water and there's another island in the background.
Speaker 2: I think it's Bara or one of the other islands,
Speaker 2: and that could be exactly the hole that old Tom
Speaker 2: Morris did. I don't know, but to me at just
Speaker 2: the presentation of it was much more modern. Tom Morris
Speaker 2: wasn't interested, or at least I haven't noticed on very
Speaker 2: many of his other courses where he tried to get
Speaker 2: the tea just up in the right spot so you
Speaker 2: could see a certain amount of water and so that
Speaker 2: island would be straight in the background. So they might
Speaker 2: be in the right place. But I suspect that there's
Speaker 2: other things that creep into it they are not even
Speaker 2: conscious of. So once you get into the like especially
Speaker 2: once you get into the far end of the golf
Speaker 2: course from the club ass like eleven, twelve, thirteen, those
Speaker 2: are the holes that I that I don't really know
Speaker 2: if they're in the same places at all or not.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're first when you go from the
Speaker 2: kind of flatter ground to where seven and eight and
Speaker 2: those are those seem pretty obvious, you know. But again,
Speaker 2: the further you get away from something that you know,
Speaker 2: the less likely that they're in exactly the same place.
Speaker 1: A big trend in golf spend abstract routings, like we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about. A little bit car for the
Speaker 1: course has an idea for a twenty four hole course
Speaker 1: with four six hole loose and you could play eighteen holes,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have six holes open for open play
Speaker 1: at all times and you could rotate them around. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on that? He's written a long post
Speaker 1: about it. Also, he's got a website so everybody can
Speaker 1: go read it. I think it called it the clover Course.
Speaker 1: And if what are your thoughts on that, and what
Speaker 1: abstract routing or idea would you want a design that
Speaker 1: you haven't done yet if you want to give it away?
Speaker 2: So his clover course is just a little bit short.
Speaker 2: You remember, he might not be old enough. Donal'll be
Speaker 2: old enough. You remember when they had that Superstars competition
Speaker 2: on TV in the seventies. I took all the athletes
Speaker 2: and have them do like a decathlon type thing where
Speaker 2: they're doing a whole bunch of different sports against each other.
Speaker 2: They held it in a place called Rotunda, Florida, which
Speaker 2: is like over on the west side, you're it's not
Speaker 2: far from Gasparilla. And their idea for the land plan
Speaker 2: for this town was it was a city in the round,
Speaker 2: and everything was going to be in the round. So
Speaker 2: they they put a clubhouse kind of in the middle,
Speaker 2: and they were going to have six golf courses. Eventually
Speaker 2: they only have one. But to start they built like
Speaker 2: every three holes looped back to the clubhouse. So eventually
Speaker 2: they could spoke off and keep going and build a
Speaker 2: bunch more holes. So they do. They every third hole
Speaker 2: comes back to the clubhouse. It's crazy. It's very limiting
Speaker 2: if you think about it, It's like, what can you do.
Speaker 2: It's like a part five and then three and a
Speaker 2: four coming back is it's hard to get away from
Speaker 2: that as programmed as they were. So you know what
Speaker 2: his idea sounds like. You know, I'm not big on
Speaker 2: this twelve hole thing that everybody, you know, people are trying.
Speaker 2: You know, I think of golf in terms of nine
Speaker 2: or eighteen, And I understand Prestrick was twelve holes originally,
Speaker 2: and I would love to play that twelve hole golf course,
Speaker 2: but but I think you're going to have a hard
Speaker 2: time getting away from nine or eighteen. So there are
Speaker 2: all So there's a lot of twenty seven whole golf
Speaker 2: courses in the world based on the exact same theory
Speaker 2: that he's talking about. You know, we could start people
Speaker 2: on three different nines in the morning and then have
Speaker 2: them flip over to a different nine and keep going
Speaker 2: and get more people out there. We can close one
Speaker 2: of the nines and do work on it and still
Speaker 2: have an eighteen hole golf course operationally. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of advantages to doing it that way. The one
Speaker 2: big downside of doing it that way is that if
Speaker 2: you're trying to do something really good and noteworthy, the
Speaker 2: first question from everybody is, well, what's the main course?
Speaker 2: What's the really good one? And then you're stuck. As
Speaker 2: soon as somebody identifies that this is the best way,
Speaker 2: the A and C nines are the best combination, then
Speaker 2: that's all anybody wants to play. The other one's like
Speaker 2: a stepchild. And on the rare occasion that you get
Speaker 2: a course like Ridgewood and New Jersey where there's twenty
Speaker 2: seven holes and they're all good, the people that great
Speaker 2: golf courses still don't know how to compare that to
Speaker 2: eighteen whole golf courses. They're like, well, which one are
Speaker 2: we rating? Do we count the cool short part four
Speaker 2: on the C nine or do we not because it's
Speaker 2: not part of the eighteen whole course. So you know,
Speaker 2: for your average public golf course trying to make money,
Speaker 2: trying to get a lot of people around. You know
Speaker 2: that idea of having more than eighteen holes and being
Speaker 2: able to take a piece out is not a bad
Speaker 2: idea at all. In Australia a lot like every place
Speaker 2: we consult, the first thing they want to do is
Speaker 2: build a par three nineteenth hole so that it's somewhere
Speaker 2: out in the golf course, not right by the clubhouse,
Speaker 2: so that they have an extra hole to play with,
Speaker 2: so they can work on a couple holes without taking
Speaker 2: things out of play, without having to have a temporary
Speaker 2: green and all that. But you know, if you want
Speaker 2: to build a great golf course, it's going to get
Speaker 2: ranked as a great golf course. That's not the way
Speaker 2: you want to go. It's just two against human nature
Speaker 2: and the nature of raiders. They don't like it.
Speaker 1: I'm for a four or five hole course in like
Speaker 1: an urban area, as somebody that lives in the city
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Like the idea of being able to play
Speaker 1: golf in an hour, which is the same time as
Speaker 1: somebody's workout, is like to me, like the thing that's
Speaker 1: like low hanging fruits, like you can go to the gym,
Speaker 1: or you can go play four holes of golf, like
Speaker 1: people will choose four holes or five holes of.
Speaker 2: Golf, right, yeah, if you lift. I mean, the big
Speaker 2: advantage of belonging to a club back in the day,
Speaker 2: you know, if you actually live close to the club
Speaker 2: and you were on the club and you were right
Speaker 2: there is you could just go out and play four
Speaker 2: or five holes in the evening and jump around to
Speaker 2: where there weren't other people in the way, and it'll
Speaker 2: play a few holes.
Speaker 1: So should we wrap this up with some overrated underrated.
Speaker 2: Okay, that means it's time to wrap up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, overrated underrated flat type properties.
Speaker 2: M hm, flat type property.
Speaker 1: Tight like flat and small properties for golf courses.
Speaker 2: Well, they're not overrated because nobody thinks much of them
Speaker 2: to start with, so you almost have to be underrated,
Speaker 2: but you have to be really creative to get much
Speaker 2: out of them.
Speaker 3: Agreed. I think that's right.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: The precedent from my mind for my money is is
Speaker 3: Garden City in New York. You know, there's, first look,
Speaker 3: there's not much there, but there are lots of creative
Speaker 3: things you can do to make it very interesting. But uh,
Speaker 3: you gotta you gotta execute them. So yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: good question.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that you should judge architects based off
Speaker 1: of like what they did with some of their worst
Speaker 1: property versus what they did with some of their best property.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I get that, I get that questions,
Speaker 2: and and you know, there's a lot of people that
Speaker 2: are envious of some of the pieces of property that
Speaker 2: I've got to work on. You know, I'm sure, you know,
Speaker 2: just like I used to think about Alistair Mackenzie. God,
Speaker 2: I wish I could have worked on some of those properties.
Speaker 2: You know, I've gotten to work on some of those properties,
Speaker 2: and and and you know, I mean I think about
Speaker 2: it sometimes. Donald Ross never had a chance to work
Speaker 2: on a piece of landlike kid kidnappers or Pacific dudes
Speaker 2: ever four hundred golf courses, nothing like that. But you know,
Speaker 2: I don't believe that you can judge what an architect
Speaker 2: did with a given piece of ground when you go
Speaker 2: on it and it's done. It's too hard to it's
Speaker 2: too hard to really dig down and try to get
Speaker 2: a sense of what was there to start with. And
Speaker 2: you know, how many other ways could he have done this?
Speaker 2: So it just seems like inevitable I would have come
Speaker 2: up with that routing. You know, I might have moved it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, well, I would have flipped over
Speaker 2: number eleven and number twelve, and it's like you never
Speaker 2: would have found any of the other holes, so so
Speaker 2: cut it out. There was a point at which at
Speaker 2: Crystal Downs the club president at the time was a
Speaker 2: member of Inverness and he was buddies with Arthur Hills,
Speaker 2: who had a locker right there. So Arthur Hills came
Speaker 2: up to Crystal Downs and went around the golf course
Speaker 2: with the club president and Fred Muller, the pro, and
Speaker 2: they were on the front nine, and you know the
Speaker 2: front nine a Crystal Downs pretty wild piece of ground.
Speaker 2: So they they got in that stretch of five and
Speaker 2: then six coming back over the rugged ground and then
Speaker 2: seven and Arthur Hills looked at Fred and said, I
Speaker 2: don't know if I would have come up with this,
Speaker 2: and Fred just laughed like, I don't think you would happen.
Speaker 1: You know, some argue is one of the maybe the
Speaker 1: greatest stretch of golf holes in the world.
Speaker 2: That would have been a really hard routing to come
Speaker 2: up with. You know, when when Mackenzie started with that,
Speaker 2: the road that goes around the edge of it now
Speaker 2: came through some of those holes. It was it went
Speaker 2: across the middle of six and seven fairways. So so
Speaker 2: he's got to be looking across the road at the
Speaker 2: other side trying to figure out how to do it.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, the hole that makes it
Speaker 2: work is number five, the short part four that hits
Speaker 2: over the hill. It's not as like up and over
Speaker 2: like raw Melbourne, but it's it's over and around and I,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that was just necessity is the
Speaker 2: mother of invention. You know, six will be great, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: but I got to get to sixty. Oh, I can
Speaker 2: do it this way. I don't think anybody would have
Speaker 2: come up with that hole just looking at You could
Speaker 2: look at the map all day and not think there's
Speaker 2: a hole right there. You know, that was just like, okay,
Speaker 2: I got some other holes. Now I got to make
Speaker 2: this one work. And arguably that's the most interesting hole
Speaker 2: of all of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard. I don't know if it's an old
Speaker 1: live sale that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell was there, and he was you know, Mackenzie
Speaker 1: had been just grinding over this routing for days and
Speaker 1: he ran out of booze and Maxwell left to go
Speaker 1: get booze, and when he came back, Mackenzie was like.
Speaker 2: I've got it.
Speaker 1: I've got it. And then they counted up the holes
Speaker 1: and there was only seventeen. Is that true?
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's true. And then the ninth
Speaker 2: hole was supposedly an extra hole, and you know it
Speaker 2: was legend of Crystal Downs that that was a true story.
Speaker 2: So so years ago I was I got asked to
Speaker 2: write I actually got asked to write the chapter on
Speaker 2: architecture in the centennial book for the USGA, like the
Speaker 2: first hundred years of golf in America. Very high powered
Speaker 2: writing assignment. They had, like the editor of the New
Speaker 2: Yorker was their editor. So I was a little in
Speaker 2: over my head and and I had that story and
Speaker 2: I wanted to use it, and they're like, can you
Speaker 2: fact check it? I'm like, I don't know if we
Speaker 2: could fact check that. So Perry Maxwell's son was still alive,
Speaker 2: Press Maxwell, so we called him to check on it
Speaker 2: and he's his confirmation was I've heard the same story.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, yes, that's exactly the way it happened. But
Speaker 2: that was good enough the USGA and the editor for
Speaker 2: the New Yorkers, so it's good enough for me.
Speaker 1: That's as funny story, all right. Last overrated underrated dog legs.
Speaker 2: I don't build any dog legs. I'll say this. Dog
Speaker 2: legs with trees overrated. Dog legs without trees underrated. You know,
Speaker 2: if you can build a dog leg that makes somebody
Speaker 2: like bite, you invite somebody to bite off the angle,
Speaker 2: but to hit to a fairway that's angling away from
Speaker 2: them instead of straight on, I think that's a great hole.
Speaker 2: It's hard to do, you know, it's hard to do
Speaker 2: a lot of dog legs on a modern course because
Speaker 2: you're not working around trees. You have to be really
Speaker 2: wary of somebody shortcutting into another hole that it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's shorter, it's a better angle to the green to
Speaker 2: hit it in the next fairway over and go from there.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of that on old courses. Sometimes when
Speaker 2: you're taking down trees on older courses, if you don't
Speaker 2: watch what you're doing, you open up something that nobody
Speaker 2: was thinking about. But if you've got the space, I
Speaker 2: love you know, where the fairway is not straight, where
Speaker 2: the fair you know, I mean, a dog leg is
Speaker 2: just a really really a matter of interpretation. There's always
Speaker 2: a bee line from the tee to the green. It's
Speaker 2: just some holes you can't actually hit it. When you
Speaker 2: hit drive length is you can't find fairways straight on
Speaker 2: that line. Those are cool holes. But a dog leg
Speaker 2: where you know there's trees inside the corner two hundred
Speaker 2: or two hundred and fifty yards off the tee, those
Speaker 2: are really tough because, on top of everything else, the
Speaker 2: more the distance keeps changing that people hit it. It
Speaker 2: doesn't work for everybody very well. It's a terrible hole
Speaker 2: when you hit a decent drive and you're a block
Speaker 2: behind a tree and you can only hit like a
Speaker 2: hundred yard shot get yourself around the corner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's easy to sit here and agree with Tom
Speaker 3: on that. Over under and you know a dog leg
Speaker 3: hole that you're hitting diagonally across you know some really
Speaker 3: cool negative space natural feature that's whether it's the ocean
Speaker 3: or a natural wash or something. You know that that
Speaker 3: works well. But when the hazard is up in the
Speaker 3: air and you can't see where you're going and you
Speaker 3: don't know what happens if you hit through the dog
Speaker 3: leg and all of that, that's where you really get
Speaker 3: in a spot where the hole's not very desirable.
Speaker 2: And if you weigh that.
Speaker 3: Against a perfectly straight hole that is thoughtfully and strategically bunkered.
Speaker 3: I'd rather play the straight hole more often than not
Speaker 3: than you know, that less desirable, less good dog leg
Speaker 3: with something you know in the crux of it that
Speaker 3: just doesn't it's just not interesting. It ends up being
Speaker 3: really one dimensional that way, and the more multi dimensional
Speaker 3: you can be, sometimes straight offers the widest variety of
Speaker 3: routes to the hole, and that's the good stuff.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of my prefer or a
Speaker 2: little of my preference, at least two goes back to
Speaker 2: being a photographer. It's like, I want to see where
Speaker 2: the hole's going, you know, I want to see the
Speaker 2: flag from the tea. If I can see the flag
Speaker 2: from the tee and then see different ways of getting there,
Speaker 2: that's great. But but you know, you watch tour pros,
Speaker 2: you know, beating it over trees, over the corner of
Speaker 2: the dog leg. You know, I'm not good enough to
Speaker 2: do that. But if I was, when I got done,
Speaker 2: i'd still be standing there and the tea going. I
Speaker 2: wonder if that's imply you know, they know, we don't know.
Speaker 2: We can't even tell whether that worked or whether we
Speaker 2: have to hit another tea ball to be safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does make you match up line and distant.
Speaker 1: But with I think as if technology keeps going, it
Speaker 1: makes it harder and harder for it to stay relevant.
Speaker 3: That's true. I think brings up in the other thought
Speaker 3: too that Tom's talking about from a photographer's standpoint, to
Speaker 3: be able to see the hole. I think the whole
Speaker 3: dialogue being more or less today about routing. When you
Speaker 3: can find a really good hole, a long hole on
Speaker 3: the golf course where you can see the flag from
Speaker 3: the tee, he might not necessarily be able to see
Speaker 3: what's going on all the way through between where you are,
Speaker 3: but if you can see the flagstick on a really
Speaker 3: long golf hole, you've got something there. And you know,
Speaker 3: finding that on paper and finding it in the field
Speaker 3: are two different things. But if you can get a
Speaker 3: hole like that in your routing, that's always that's always
Speaker 3: a winner.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: That's it for routing. Don really appreciate the time, Tom also,
Speaker 1: and we will be back in a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: with a podcast about the Loop and Michigan golf.
Speaker 3: Thanks Sandy, you've been listening to the fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 2: We do the digging for you,