WEBVTT - Yolk with Doak 9: Routing - Part 2 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.760 Welcome back to part two of the latest episode of 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:06.920 The Yoke with Doak. Longtime associate Don Placik joins Tom 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:10.200 to discuss routing. As a reminder, be sure to check 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:13.840 out Tom's Confidential Guys to Golf Courses. These are the 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.400 best books if you enjoy reading about golf courses. You 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:21.120 can find them on Renaissancegolf dot com and they make 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.200 for great gifts. And now part two of our discussion 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:35.880 on routing. Tom Dolk is back and as usual, he's 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:36.880 not holding back. 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.160 But don't toss the yolk and. 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:44.839 The famously candid Oak doesn't pull any punches. 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:50.040 How do I make natural looking? Contour? Hire the biggest 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:51.600 pool in the village and told them to make it 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:53.200 flat first? 0:00:53.240 --> 0:01:07.360 Overrated, underrated, rough, terribly overrated over the years. I imagine 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.759 maintenance is another thing that goes into it a little bit, 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:13.679 in the sense of if the greens are close by, 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:18.120 it's it's less gas, easier, faster to maintain, easier to 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.480 mow greens, or you know, does it Does that play 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:22.800 a role in routing at all? 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.800 A little Maybe not as much as you're thinking there, 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:33.640 but yeah, I mean, you know, for maintenance, the old 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.680 style courses were you know, you've got a bunch of 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.560 parallel holes and you can mow green you don't necessarily 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.720 mow all the greens in order because it's because it's 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.280 it's much faster to hop from this green across the 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:49.320 next tee to the green that's coming back the other 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.040 way two holes later, and you just there's a you know, 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.200 you can get around much quicker. Whereas you know the 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.000 modern courses that are all stretched out and every hole 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:02.240 is a beautiful view. You pretty much have to maintain 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:04.920 the golf course in the order that you play it, 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.480 and so the mainest guys are going all the way 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.760 around the golf course every day to get it done. 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.160 I was thinking about mackenzie and how he'd have like 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.520 five greens all within like sure if he drew a 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.000 four hundred yard circle there be. 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:20.480 I was just I was just at the Valley Club 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.320 the other day. You know, they had a flood event 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.400 there a month ago, and they were trying to put 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.960 the pieces back together. That five feet of mud come 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:33.520 across one of the greens. But that course, there's a 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.240 couple of little hills that he just maxed out as 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:39.440 many holes as you could possibly get around him. So 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.239 there's this one hill in the middle of the property 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.480 that the third green sits right into the foot of it. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.519 The fourth t is elevated playing off it, fifth hole 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.120 plays past it, seventh hole comes back to the foot 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:53.840 of it, The eighth tea is on it, the tenth 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:55.400 green comes up to the foot of it, and the 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.720 eleventh t is on it. So three of the four 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.480 part threes the tee is on that hill. 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.880 So it brings back. So this is something I went 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:10.600 on a Northern California golf trip recently and you know, 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.960 played a ton of Mackenzie and the thing the layering. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:19.360 How much does that come into mind? Like we're using 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.239 bunkers on other holes to make it look like it's 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.200 on it on the specific hole and visually deceiving, do 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:27.160 you guys? I mean, how does that? 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.240 How do you Usually? Usually that comes in once once 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.200 the routing is in place, you're not thinking about that 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.640 level of detail. You might you might notice if you've 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.200 done it enough times that oh yes, but but you're 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:43.760 not really I'm not trying for that at the routing level. 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:45.880 It's going to come up, you know. Once I've got 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:47.720 a routing, it's like, oh, you know, all I have 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.280 to do is move the tea over a little bit, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.280 and then I'm looking at the other hole out there, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.680 and I can do some visual things because of that, 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.160 or or you know what doesn't show up on a 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.440 topo map. Two things that don't show up on a 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:08.360 topo map, or trees and views. Sometimes you can tell 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.080 what the view is going to be the general of you, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.000 like at Sabanic, you know where the bay is and 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.000 you're going to be looking at water. You don't know 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.240 that there's some particular house or feature across the bay 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:23.960 that might draw your eye, but you know, oh, I'm 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:27.320 looking toward the water here. Uh. You know, you don't 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.599 know where where the really big beautiful oak is until 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:33.479 you get out there and start figuring out how to 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.880 clear it. And then maybe you know once you walk 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:37.760 it in the woods. A couple of times you'll say, okay, 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.279 this tree, I'm playing for this tree. But still when 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.120 you are, you know, usually when you're building the course, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.640 you'll find that I want to move the tee to 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.440 the left some or to the right some so that 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:53.560 I'm looking right at this thing instead of it's just 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:55.320 kind of off to the left there somewhere. 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.919 So now that we I just talked about Mackenzie, we 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.080 had some questions. We had a couple of them actually 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:12.080 about Golden Age architects. Which Golden Age architects stands out 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.719 as the most adept at routing courses? And that's from Pete. 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:23.120 Oh Mm, I don't think. I can't. I can't evaluate 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.279 them all on an equal basis. I mean, I'm much 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.240 I've worked much more on some of their work than others. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.200 You know, I think Mackenzie was the best that I know, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.400 or at He's the one I stole the most from 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:43.040 as far as you know, little sequences of holes that 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.120 get you back to the same place, like I was 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.360 describing at the Valley Club, or like you see a 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:52.080 roll Melbourne or Cyprus point. Most of his courses, you know, 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:54.880 he would take a few features and say, Okay, I'm 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.480 gonna get as many holes working off that as I can. 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:07.920 You know, I haven't. I haven't spent as much time 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:14.200 on Tilling Hass courses or Perry Maxwell courses to rule 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.360 them out as being great at this too. But I've 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.279 seen a ton of Donald Ross courses. If you just 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:26.080 had one hundred and fifty acre rectangle. Donald Ross was 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.040 as good as amba ever lived at that because he 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:31.160 you know, because he came up with one hundred different 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:35.400 versions of it somewhere in America in that in that 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:39.960 time period. You know, he he was very good at 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.400 You know, when you get a rectangular piece of property 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:47.360 and you're trying to fit holes in, it's very easy 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:52.279 to fall into just playing parallel with the property lines. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.320 You know, like in the Midwest, nearly everything, nearly every 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:01.560 piece of land you get is is like rectangles or 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:04.120 you know, the land was all sectioned off in like 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.080 forty acre sections originally, so you'll either get a square 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:12.480 or a rectangle of forty acre blocks. And interestingly, a 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.320 forty acre block is a quarter mile four hundred and 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.800 forty yards from one end to the other, so it 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.040 fits pretty well at the dimensions of golf. You know, 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.040 if you played down to the end of the rectangle 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:25.520 and across the back, that would be a four hundred 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.440 yard hole. You have to you know, you need a 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:32.080 little room behind the green. So you see you see 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.200 people playing around the edges of the property a lot, 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:36.400 and once you play along this property line and that 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.560 property line, and you've got limited space in between, you know, 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:43.280 the holes just get parallel really fast. Ross was great 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.440 at not doing that, either putting the clubhouse in the 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.240 corner where everything had to fan out, but just just 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.160 getting something in there that was on a diagonal and 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.960 then figuring out a way to get that back to 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.400 square at the corner, or better still, not getting the 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.680 square at the corner because a lot of the things, 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:05.720 a lot of the things we wind up dealing with 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.200 on older courses is they've got boundary issues because they 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:12.360 had a hole playing right along the property line. And 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:17.760 you know McKenzie more Town one of his early courses 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:22.160 in England. When he built it, there was a golf 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:27.520 course on either side of it, and so he played 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.880 holes right along the right along the boundary fence, you 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.120 know where if you drove closer to the boundary fence 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:34.679 you got a better angle to the green and if 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.960 you drove away from it, it was a tougher shot. So 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.440 eventually those two other golf courses next to him, the 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.000 clubs moved further out of town and now there's housing 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.400 developments on both sides. So now that hole where you 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:48.680 want to drive right next to the fence, you can't 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.680 do that. You know that homeowner is making them move 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.719 the hole in. You know, they needed to get a 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:57.559 little more land at the end of the golf course 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.920 to fix it, because they couldn't they they couldn't pack 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.160 as many holes across the middle of the site as 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:10.640 Mackenzie did. So Ross was a genius at that. I'm 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.480 sure there's other architects that were too, but I know 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:16.800 that's a hard thing to do, and he seemed like 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:18.880 he did it really well. I think. 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.760 Thinking a little bit about that too, it's interesting that 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.480 at the time those Golden Age courses were being built, 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.320 they were designed and built by the guys they were 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:35.520 drawing their inspiration from, not from the US, because it 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.160 hadn't evolved yet, it didn't exist. So they brought those 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.440 ideas over and they were allowed to incorporate those ideas 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.360 because they were the expert on the task at the time. 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:50.040 But over time, as we do in the United States, 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:55.320 we've americanized everything, and to a degree, americanized architecture, and 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.480 we've come up with these industry standards on length and 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.440 balance and all of those kinds of things, and the 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:07.120 modern architects have taken those and tried to imprint them 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:11.000 on whatever property they have and let which is almost 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:16.200 a complete departure of letting the property dictate what things 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:19.160 ought to be. And and you know, when you can 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:25.440 move things around and cut and fill and strip and 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:30.679 regrass and reveg and change everything that you you know 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.080 that would normally drive a design, you can just wipe 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.920 it out and recreate it and move everything around. The 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.480 idea that you're an architect seems to have demonstrated at 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:44.800 some point that if you're not doing some or a 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.320 lot of that, you're not really an architect. You must 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.600 not be that good at what you do. And to 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.520 watch that evolution go from one end of the spectrum 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.760 all the way to the other is pretty fascinating. And 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:00.000 I think that's just what we do in the United States. 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.280 We've sort of that was the American way to sort 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.720 of do that, and I think it's exciting to see 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:09.320 that now that we've been there a while, there is 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:14.520 a new focus on going back to how it started, thankfully, 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.280 and as a result, things are probably going to be 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.280 a little bit better by default. Obviously the more we 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:26.280 pay attention to that way. But you know, and it's 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:31.199 it's you know, having clients that will allow you to 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.760 to do those things. And that's that's that's as much 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.400 good fortune as being talented at what you do is 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:39.640 having a client that really allows you to let you 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:41.600 max out your talents. 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.560 Right, And you know, eighty percent of what you're saying 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.200 goes back to what is the primary purpose of this 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.640 golf course? And you know, unfortunately, at least half the 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:54.920 golf courses built in America in the last fifty years 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.120 were built the primary purpose was housing development. It wasn't 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:02.560 golf at all. And the architects, who you know, we 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:04.600 don't get those kind of jobs. We never have. When 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.920 I started out, my name wasn't worth anything to, you know, 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.600 to a housing developer. So I you know, I started 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:17.200 with daily fee golf courses and then resorts, but you know, 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.840 I still didn't get my name up there as being 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:26.200 a big enough name architect to be attractive to a 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.839 housing developer until just when that market crashed. We were 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.120 signed up to do two or three of them in 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.160 two thousand and eight and they all went away. But 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:41.280 you know, when you know, when Jack Nicholas or Greg 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.040 Norman stands up at the opening would stand up at 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.560 the opening day of a of a housing development, golf 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.720 course and say, you know what a great client. He 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.640 let me route the golf course first anywhere I wanted 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.040 to go, and then they designed the housing around it. 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.520 Now it does not it can't happen in that way, 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.480 you know, you because you can't build a hole that 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:09.320 ends two hundred and fifty feet from the property line 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.600 over there and leave the developer not enough room to 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.240 do anything with that, you know, not enough room for 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.920 a house and a road and another house. You know, 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.319 then it's just wasted space to them. So it can't 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:24.800 work like that. At a minimum, you're going back and 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.320 forth with a land planner doing the development kind of, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.560 you know, wrestling with him over what. You know, I 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:33.000 want to put the hole there. I know you can't. 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:34.560 You got to move it over here so I have 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.160 some space there. And sometimes you're you know, the same 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:41.720 feature that you want to include in a golf hole, 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:44.840 that's a great place to put a house or the 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:49.280 clubhouse or the hotel. So you're you're constantly in a 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:51.720 tug of war over who gets to use this feature, 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:56.720 the housing development or the golf. So now if the 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.400 golf is not really important to the client, like YaST 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.760 equally important to the development. The golf course architect's gonna 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.760 lose those arguments every time, and the odds that you're 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:09.760 going to build a really good golf course go way 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.280 way down because you're not routing. You're not getting to 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:14.400 do the routing anymore. 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:20.520 So off of that, we have a just a seemingly 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:26.480 limitless supply of golf courses that you just described. If 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.640 somebody was going to renovate those instead of you know, 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:33.840 a lot of them should probably close. But say somebody 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.280 was going to renovate one, like, how would you attack 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:40.520 something like that? Would you you know where you're kind 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:41.640 of very constricted. 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.440 Well, it depends how they're done. I mean, first of all, 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:49.920 not that many of them are going to close, because 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:51.960 the people that own the real estate around them have 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.720 a vested interest in them not closing. And unfortunately, even 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.880 if they go through bankruptcy and the value goes to zero, 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.080 then then it's worth it to somebody to buy them 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:03.720 for you know, if you could buy the golf course 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.640 for a dollar because nobody really wants to run it, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:08.600 then you could probably make a go of it. The 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:10.920 guy that you know, the people that invested ten million 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:15.960 dollars building it, no, they're out of luck. But you know, 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:20.640 so it depends on a development course, like how much 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.600 you know, how small did they divide up the parcels. 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:28.080 If you've just got a bunch of single golf holes 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:32.240 with houses on both sides, you have no flexibility with 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.000 the routing at all, or almost none. Maybe you could 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:38.160 make what's a par four and a par three into 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.320 a par three and a par four. That probably doesn't 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:46.400 make any difference in overall because they you know, if 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:50.480 if the whole development was laid out like that, then 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:54.120 those green sites weren't located on a natural piece of 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.800 ground anyway. You know, they graded the lot to either side, 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.280 so you can't if even if it was now natural, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.520 it would be hard to tell that it was. So 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:07.120 now it's just a shaping exercise. You know, what can 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.440 we do to make this cooler? Can we make the 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.920 bunkers prettier? You know, if the quarters are pretty narrow, 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.720 if they only let you, you know, nobody wants to 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.000 say what the standard is for how how wide a 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.920 golf hole has to be between houses on both sides. 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.640 If I said it in this podcast, somebody would sue 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:34.280 me in ten years because because Riley and use that 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:36.920 dimension and a golf course that he built, and not 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:38.920 only would they sue him, they'd sue me because I 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:45.160 told him. So, you know, nobody says, but obviously, you know, 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.000 developers are interested in making that as narrow as it 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.360 can be so they can sell more homes. And once 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:53.880 you do that, you can't even build a hole where 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:55.920 you want to hit it right or left. You know, 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:58.400 that's all predicated on hitting it down the middle of 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.120 the quarter, and you know you need one hundred and 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:03.560 fifty feet or whatever to the right of it to 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.120 be safe, So you can't if you design a hole 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:08.640 where you want to hit it down the right side 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:10.439 or the left side, then you're playing too close to 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.000 the houses on one side and you can't go there. 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:17.360 So it's really hard with that setup to design anything 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.120 that's really interesting. If it's more than that, if you've 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.120 got at least two holes in the middle between the houses, 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.200 then you've got a chance. If it's more than that, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.600 where it's kind of a more or less a core 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.240 golf course with housing around the outside and maybe it 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.520 sticks in somewhere, then you've got some options and maybe 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:38.960 you can really do something. But there's a ton of 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.119 golf courses that are one hole wide with houses on 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:46.080 both sides, and I can't imagine that. I would, you know, 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.360 we get calls all the time. Do you want to 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.840 redesign this if that's the land plan? I don't. I 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.840 don't think there's anything much I can do with that. 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.840 You can make it prettier, you could make the greens 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:01.720 more interesting, you know. To me, that's not enough. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.200 I was just thinking about one that I grew up by, 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:09.200 and like every single hole is siloed by itself, and 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.000 like there's really nothing you can do. There's decent width 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.440 between them, but you can't really do that much. There's 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.880 not enough with the to get two holes on it. 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:22.560 I think the hardest part of it is really when 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.879 you destroy the frame on both sides. 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:25.400 YEA. 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:27.919 You know, there's no natural land to the right or 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.639 the left that it ties into anything, you know, it 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.880 just gets divorced from being a natural landscape at all. 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.000 If you've got two holes wide, then then maybe there's 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.200 natural land in between and trees and some things that 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:43.280 looks like you know, and then you just try to 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.000 focus inward on that as much as you can. 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.840 I feel like it naturally evolves if it's that into 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.000 a tunnel because the houses need to have the water 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:56.600 run off onto the golf course. 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:56.920 Yeah. 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.080 Yeah, so you you got like a essentially playing through 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:04.959 like a half pipe on every single hole. Right, So, 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:13.919 which from Brett, a former intern, which routing that you 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:18.119 have done is your favorite? Which was the most puzzling 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.880 and the most rewarding? So three part pot a three 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:26.919 part question, and we'll have we'll have Don uh answer 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.400 the first and then Tom you answer the last two. 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.520 Okay, which which which a part of the question. 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.440 Is Don, Don's got favorite? And then you've got puzzling 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:36.160 and rewarding. 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:44.440 Wow, that's a great question. Favorite. We'll have to think 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:46.879 about that for a little bit. If you've got answers 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:49.200 to the next two, I'd be happy to let you start. 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:59.879 Tom, all right, well, the most puzzling. There's two that 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.760 I would put in. The most puzzling rock Creek. We 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.520 started with an eighty thousand acre ranch. The first two 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.439 times I was there, I never even got to the 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:11.200 part of the ground where the golf course is. Now, 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.000 you know, it's like, Holy hell, this is so much ground. 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:16.920 How do I even how do I look at this? 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:20.159 I should probably start with a helicopter or something. But 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:23.960 you know, so there were a lot of iterations of that, 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.199 and the first couple were just okay, which part of 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:31.240 all this land are we going to? And then some 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.639 back and forth with a client as well. You know. Ironically, 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:37.560 one of the things that made that one hard the 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.600 valley where the last three holes are. It's just beautiful 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:45.400 for golf. I mean, you're playing down this narrow little 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:49.720 valley and the creek runs right down it, and there's 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:52.680 at the bottom end of it there are these two 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.879 big rock pinnacles, and the valley gets really narrow, like 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.840 you can't really just the creek goes through pass where 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:02.760 the seventeenth greenis. You couldn't really put a more golf 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.600 holes down that way. It got too narrow to do anything. 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:11.520 So it's a beautiful little secluded spot. But at the 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.640 bottom end below there there's a big power line going 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:19.880 across the valley and you can see it. And when 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.399 I first saw it, I was like, damn, that's a 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.639 beautiful spot. But if I had eighty thousand acres to 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:29.640 work with and I put these last couple of holes 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.280 right where you're looking at the power lines, everybody's gonna 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.080 go why did you have to do that? You know, 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:35.679 he had all this ground where you didn't have to 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.880 look at the power lines. Why would you look at them? 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.679 So the first couple of versions of the routing that 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.720 I did for the client, we didn't go there. We 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:47.800 just didn't use that part of the ground. We obviously 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.560 had a lot more ground we could use. And then 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:53.960 one of Bill's good friends is a guy named Tom 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:59.720 Devlin who developed Flint Hills National Witch Top very good 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.600 golf and Tom Tom was one of the guys that 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:06.200 Bill had come and look at my routing, and Tom 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:08.720 Devilon was like, why don't you go down there? It's 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:12.760 beautiful for golf holes down there, And I said, well, 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:15.600 yeah it is, but you're gonna look at the power lines. 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:17.760 And we got to talking about it, and we finally 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:23.360 all agreed, yes, those power lines are there. But if 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:26.000 you're gonna let that distract you from it's a beautiful 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:27.880 you know, it's not like there, it's not like there's 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:31.320 a tower right next to the green, they're behind there always. 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.840 You know, if you're gonna let that distract you from 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:36.520 the fact that these are three great holes in a 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:41.800 beautiful setting, you're just an asshole. You know, it might 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.399 get you the first time, that might be your overall impression, 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.400 but for the members, the people that live there, that's 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.800 no big deal. It's just there, it's in the background. 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:56.000 So what it was hard to get over that. But 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:58.200 they were absolutely right. I mean, that was the best 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.159 place for those It was the best place for the 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.439 golf course to finish, just partly because the you know, 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.120 the the golf course starts from the clubhouse and works 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:08.600 way up the hill and way down and instead of 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:11.040 just coming down to the clubhouse and ending, it goes 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:14.200 past it and it comes back into the mountain view 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:17.320 at the end. So from that perspective it was really good. 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:21.960 But you know, letting go of that took a long time. 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:25.879 And then bally Neil was the other one because you know, 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:29.520 we found the one, nine, ten and eighteen kind of 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:31.720 how to get in and out of the clubhouse pretty fast. 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:35.320 We found a lot of good holes out there, some 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:37.840 of them kind of a little too far away if 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:39.879 you had to go out one and get back nine. 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.680 But the really hard part was number. Once you once 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:48.080 you got to one green, you were way above where 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.320 most of the golf course was, and there was no 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:55.600 obvious good way down there. You know, every time every 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:58.480 hole we looked at was like, well, you're just gonna 0:23:58.560 --> 0:24:01.000 hit down, he'll in to the wind where it could 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:04.280 go anywhere, and then you're going to wind up in 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:06.800 a place. If it's a longer hold, you're probably gonna 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:08.119 wind up in a place where you can't see the 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:10.919 green very well because you're gonna wind up in this bowl, 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:14.119 and then there's there's no good angle to go from there. 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:17.320 So I was stumped for a long time. It didn't 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:21.359 help that, you know, they weren't very well funded. I 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:23.720 couldn't tell if they were serious or not. So so 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:25.679 it was like I was only there for a day 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:28.280 or two at a time, on the way to somewhere else. 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:29.960 And it didn't spend like four or five days in 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:33.280 a row to really get it figured out and get 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:35.159 you just get lost out there. You had a thousand 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:37.920 acres of dunes to work with, and every time I'd leave, 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:39.640 I was like, damn it, I just didn't get far 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:42.640 enough to figure this out. And finally the last time 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:47.440 was the last time in that process, I said, well, 0:24:48.400 --> 0:24:51.280 what's over the fence? You know, we were looking at 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:55.879 the second hole and the second green is about one 0:24:56.000 --> 0:24:58.480 hundred yards or one hundred and fifty yards past where 0:24:58.520 --> 0:25:02.480 their property line ended. And the third hole is all 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:07.360 on property that they didn't own and that I hadn't seen. 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:10.080 You know, you could see the second green, but you 0:25:10.119 --> 0:25:13.560 couldn't see what was going on over there at number three. 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:15.560 And you couldn't see once you walked up over that 0:25:15.680 --> 0:25:20.719 hill what the view was off of fourty, And I said, well, 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:24.880 what's over there, you know, cause it's all just barren dunsland? 0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:28.280 Nobody's really it's ranch land, but nobody's using it for 0:25:28.320 --> 0:25:32.080 anything in particular. They just graze animals. So it's like, 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:34.280 you know, we we went over and as soon as 0:25:34.280 --> 0:25:36.240 we got to where three t was, I was like, 0:25:37.240 --> 0:25:39.760 this is a lot better way down off the hill. 0:25:40.520 --> 0:25:42.639 You know. Can we trade some of this, a little 0:25:42.640 --> 0:25:45.760 of this land for something else down there? You know, 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:48.679 just swap, make an even swap with your your neighbor. 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:51.760 So that's how that worked out. But it took like 0:25:52.320 --> 0:25:54.119 that was after I'd been on the property four or 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:59.240 five times already. And the funny thing is that land 0:25:59.280 --> 0:26:01.720 that we couldn't figure out how to get down from 0:26:01.760 --> 0:26:06.000 behind Number one Green two years ago when they when 0:26:06.040 --> 0:26:08.080 they called me back and said, you know, we'd like 0:26:08.160 --> 0:26:12.560 to consider doing another little facility of some kind. We've 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:14.640 got we've got a little more water than we need 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:17.560 for the golf course. So we got like enough to 0:26:17.720 --> 0:26:22.159 water seven or eight acres more turf. You know, what 0:26:22.240 --> 0:26:24.320 would you do with that? You know, we could build 0:26:24.320 --> 0:26:27.400 a part, we could build a range. Well that's not exciting, 0:26:27.440 --> 0:26:29.720 you know, could we build like a short course or 0:26:29.760 --> 0:26:32.000 a couple a couple extra holes or you know what. 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:35.879 We wound up doing a par three course. You know, 0:26:36.000 --> 0:26:38.119 almost as soon as you said it, I realized that 0:26:38.200 --> 0:26:40.879 the land that was too severe for the for the 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:43.639 second hole that was probably going to be good for 0:26:43.680 --> 0:26:46.000 the par three course. So all that land that we 0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:49.440 dodged around to get the first routing right, we wound 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:52.520 up using for the Mulligan course just last year. 0:26:55.440 --> 0:26:59.360 That's uh man kind of is a smart thing if 0:26:59.359 --> 0:27:03.440 you think about like courses that force eighteen holes onto 0:27:03.600 --> 0:27:07.680 property versus routing the best holes you can and then 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:12.280 using those little plots of land for like practice areas 0:27:12.320 --> 0:27:15.760 and short courses as opposed to putting bad golf holes 0:27:15.760 --> 0:27:18.280 on It would be a smart thing for golf. 0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:22.919 Yeah, I mean, I don't. It's really hard for me 0:27:23.000 --> 0:27:26.160 to visualize that golf will get away from eighteen holes 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:29.480 or nine holes, you know. I mean, I'm a big 0:27:29.560 --> 0:27:32.200 champion of great nine hole golf courses. There aren't many 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:36.720 because everybody thinks, oh, that's not real. But you know, 0:27:36.760 --> 0:27:38.800 when you've got a really great nine hole course, going 0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:41.360 around it twice is a good thing, not a bad thing. 0:27:43.119 --> 0:27:50.639 But but yeah, I mean to have some of the 0:27:50.640 --> 0:27:53.040 best work I've seen in the last five years is 0:27:53.160 --> 0:27:57.000 like working with little pieces of land and coming up 0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:59.600 with some par three holes or a little short course, 0:27:59.720 --> 0:28:03.200 or some alternative version of the main course, or something 0:28:03.240 --> 0:28:06.160 that is really thinking outside of the box. But there's 0:28:06.200 --> 0:28:07.879 a lot of good golf in a small space. 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:14.639 So don do you come up with your favorite routing? 0:28:15.800 --> 0:28:18.399 I did, Anny. I think it was useful to be 0:28:18.440 --> 0:28:21.080 able to think about it a little bit and favorite, 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:23.480 if you stretch that term a little bit. I think 0:28:26.040 --> 0:28:30.000 it's my favorite for different reasons, not just liking the 0:28:30.000 --> 0:28:35.200 holes I found necessarily, but it's more by the fact 0:28:35.240 --> 0:28:38.840 that I was part of the construction process and finding 0:28:38.880 --> 0:28:41.640 the holes that the routing is. The second course at 0:28:42.720 --> 0:28:47.600 Stonewall the North Course affectionately known as the Utter Course 0:28:47.680 --> 0:28:52.239 and all kinds of other names for it. But I 0:28:52.400 --> 0:28:55.240 was involved in trying to figure out where the holes 0:28:55.240 --> 0:28:57.239 were going to go with Tom from the beginning, and 0:28:57.240 --> 0:28:59.800 it's got you know, it's an odd shaped piece of 0:28:59.800 --> 0:29:04.080 g it's got elevation. It has sort of a starting 0:29:04.120 --> 0:29:08.080 and finishing point with the existing barn and sort of 0:29:08.160 --> 0:29:11.120 farmhouse that we lived in during construction that was going 0:29:11.160 --> 0:29:13.880 to become that was going to serve in that capacity. 0:29:13.960 --> 0:29:15.680 So you had a couple of givens in the equation, 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:19.080 but going around clockwise or counterclockwise, and if you're going 0:29:19.120 --> 0:29:22.480 to going to cross over where, and proximity to roads 0:29:22.480 --> 0:29:24.880 and all that kind of stuff. There was a lot 0:29:24.920 --> 0:29:27.160 to be learned. But when we settled on where the 0:29:27.200 --> 0:29:30.320 holes were going to go, to be privileged to be 0:29:31.000 --> 0:29:34.200 you know, on site and trying to get those ideas 0:29:34.200 --> 0:29:36.200 in the ground from the beginning all the way to 0:29:36.240 --> 0:29:40.040 the end really made it my favorite because some of 0:29:40.080 --> 0:29:43.040 the preconceived notions that I thought I had on what 0:29:43.160 --> 0:29:46.360 was going to be good ended up maybe not what 0:29:46.480 --> 0:29:50.600 I thought at all. And you learn from that, you know, 0:29:50.640 --> 0:29:54.080 you really do start looking off site and past you 0:29:54.120 --> 0:29:57.360 know the church steeple that serves as a backdrop, backdrop 0:29:57.400 --> 0:30:02.160 for the fourth and seventh greens. You know the barn 0:30:02.200 --> 0:30:05.560 at the sixth, All of that kind of stuff. You 0:30:05.680 --> 0:30:10.120 really that resonates it and it stays with you the 0:30:10.200 --> 0:30:13.440 rest of the way. And I just learned so much 0:30:13.520 --> 0:30:16.280 from the learning curve on that project was so sharp 0:30:16.400 --> 0:30:18.400 because it was really the first time that I had 0:30:18.960 --> 0:30:22.520 been in that position. And thank God, Tom surrounded me 0:30:22.640 --> 0:30:26.920 with a lot of talent. You know, Brian Schneider was 0:30:26.920 --> 0:30:29.840 was there right from the get go and brought all 0:30:29.880 --> 0:30:36.080 his shaping and green contour and green experience building experience 0:30:36.400 --> 0:30:39.880 with him, and Ky Goldby was there, and Eric Iverson 0:30:39.960 --> 0:30:42.760 did a stint or a couple of them, and Brian 0:30:42.880 --> 0:30:47.200 Slonik as well, and Kyle Franz, Will Smith, I mean 0:30:47.240 --> 0:30:50.920 the really long list. Toby Cobb and Dan Proctor from 0:30:51.120 --> 0:30:54.440 Bill and Ben's camp were there. So how could I 0:30:54.480 --> 0:30:56.959 go wrong? I mean, I just but I didn't know that. 0:30:57.000 --> 0:31:01.080 I didn't know the value of those guys the ideas 0:31:01.120 --> 0:31:04.959 into the ground, but to be able to watch the 0:31:04.960 --> 0:31:08.960 the on paper part of the whole design really get 0:31:09.000 --> 0:31:13.959 realized and all the different decisions that go into the 0:31:14.040 --> 0:31:17.080 final version of whatever it was. We were shucking and 0:31:17.160 --> 0:31:20.040 jiving all over the place trying to get everything just right, 0:31:20.080 --> 0:31:22.600 and we were allowed to do that, which was a 0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:23.400 real privilege. 0:31:23.440 --> 0:31:26.360 But well, there's you know, the interesting part of that. 0:31:26.880 --> 0:31:31.680 And you're right, do you It's at some point it's 0:31:31.720 --> 0:31:35.160 important to have enough experience actually building a golf course 0:31:35.600 --> 0:31:40.480 to understand like the holes that don't quite fit, the 0:31:40.520 --> 0:31:43.160 little transitions that you're trying to make to get you know, 0:31:43.200 --> 0:31:44.760 you've got a bunch of holes. You know, we're good, 0:31:45.200 --> 0:31:47.720 but there's some places where it doesn't fit together really well. 0:31:48.400 --> 0:31:53.200 And it's like, is that fixable in the field? You know? 0:31:54.560 --> 0:31:59.600 And I have certainly seen modern golf courses where somebody 0:31:59.680 --> 0:32:02.840 rout it and just said, oh, they'll fix that in 0:32:02.840 --> 0:32:06.760 the field, and it wasn't fixable. There was no way 0:32:06.840 --> 0:32:10.200 in the world you can move dirt forever and not 0:32:10.280 --> 0:32:13.360 get a good hole there. But the guy arouting it 0:32:13.440 --> 0:32:16.360 didn't understand that because he never spent any time in 0:32:16.400 --> 0:32:18.920 the field. You know. He just figured, well, if they 0:32:18.960 --> 0:32:22.680 throw enough at it, they'll get it, you know. And 0:32:23.280 --> 0:32:26.160 and there's other ones that, Okay, that's bland, But you know, 0:32:26.400 --> 0:32:28.200 I can see how I can see how I'm going 0:32:28.280 --> 0:32:31.160 to make that work. So you have to, you know, 0:32:33.000 --> 0:32:36.080 if the holes don't all fit together perfectly from one 0:32:36.080 --> 0:32:39.480 to eighteen. You also have to understand enough about what 0:32:39.520 --> 0:32:42.840 you're gonna do. You don't have to necessarily have it 0:32:42.880 --> 0:32:45.320 all figured out in the beginning, but you have to 0:32:45.440 --> 0:32:48.880 understand that you're putting yourself in a situation that's not unsolvable, 0:32:49.720 --> 0:32:52.440 and you can easily put yourself in a situation that's 0:32:52.520 --> 0:32:56.840 unsolvable all you really the most unsolvable thing is just 0:32:56.880 --> 0:33:01.520 if you've got a severe side slope with no bottom 0:33:01.560 --> 0:33:04.680 that you can work off of, it's really hard to 0:33:04.680 --> 0:33:07.400 build anything good any longer hole. You can build a 0:33:07.400 --> 0:33:10.080 par three pretty much anywhere, but once you've got to 0:33:10.280 --> 0:33:12.560 have a landing area for a par four and you 0:33:12.600 --> 0:33:15.520 think about where people could drive it, they could drive 0:33:15.560 --> 0:33:17.760 it all over the place on a hole like that, 0:33:18.520 --> 0:33:21.680 it's hard to do enough earthwork to receive all of 0:33:21.720 --> 0:33:22.560 those t shots. 0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:25.920 I think Tom's absolutely spot on there too. I think 0:33:25.960 --> 0:33:29.880 you're as you're looking on a on a blank piece 0:33:29.880 --> 0:33:33.640 of property, finding good short holes, good par threes, or 0:33:33.920 --> 0:33:37.800 that's really easy, and it gets progressively worse from there. 0:33:37.880 --> 0:33:41.760 Finding the really good long holes is actually a lot 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:45.600 harder because you you just need the space and you 0:33:46.040 --> 0:33:49.400 and so you know what with stonewall going up and 0:33:49.440 --> 0:33:52.080 over the pretty much the kind of ground that Tom 0:33:52.200 --> 0:33:56.040 was just describing and getting a long hole out of 0:33:56.040 --> 0:33:58.840 some of the most difficult part of the property. That's 0:33:59.000 --> 0:34:02.400 the third hole, exactly right, That's exactly right, And that's. 0:34:02.240 --> 0:34:04.760 The fourth all at Roll Melbourne. Yeah, I mean, it's 0:34:04.800 --> 0:34:08.759 just blatantly stolen from Mackenzie's thing because I because I'd 0:34:08.800 --> 0:34:11.680 noticed when I was at Ray Melbourne, how you know, 0:34:12.000 --> 0:34:14.440 doing the one thing that we normally don't do is 0:34:14.520 --> 0:34:17.160 go up and over a big hole a big hill, 0:34:17.880 --> 0:34:20.359 you know, made the other holes were perfect playing back 0:34:20.440 --> 0:34:21.120 into the hill. 0:34:22.080 --> 0:34:26.880 And so that's an example of the walk, the tough 0:34:26.960 --> 0:34:30.440 walk up the hill after a t shot that you 0:34:30.480 --> 0:34:31.520 talked about earlier too. 0:34:31.560 --> 0:34:33.960 Yes, yes, yeah, if you just walked all the way 0:34:33.960 --> 0:34:35.600 to the top of that hill to play the next hole, 0:34:35.680 --> 0:34:38.000 it would be bad. But but on that on that 0:34:38.040 --> 0:34:42.520 part of that property, the top of that hill, it's 0:34:42.560 --> 0:34:47.080 about two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards from 0:34:47.160 --> 0:34:50.560 where the green is. For number four, it's about three 0:34:50.680 --> 0:34:54.399 hundred yards from like any angle that you could go 0:34:54.520 --> 0:34:57.680 around that property. It's kind of in the middle along 0:34:57.680 --> 0:35:02.959 a property line. But you you didn't have any long 0:35:03.080 --> 0:35:06.360 holes in that section that there's four or five holes 0:35:06.920 --> 0:35:11.160 if you played up to that and back off, they 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:13.440 were all really short holes. So the only way to 0:35:13.440 --> 0:35:15.799 get something of any length was just suck it up 0:35:15.840 --> 0:35:18.520 and go up over it and get one long hole 0:35:18.560 --> 0:35:21.880 and then fit everything else in. You're kind of fit in. 0:35:22.640 --> 0:35:24.919 When we did that, we also managed to get eight 0:35:25.000 --> 0:35:27.399 and seven kind of on the diagonal through the middle 0:35:27.440 --> 0:35:30.200 of the property and get some long holes there. 0:35:30.440 --> 0:35:35.279 That It's another example of kind of uh we talked 0:35:35.280 --> 0:35:40.320 about earlier with like the distinct sections of property where 0:35:40.840 --> 0:35:43.280 you know, one and two are kind of their own 0:35:43.560 --> 0:35:46.719 little area, and then the third t shots its own area. 0:35:46.760 --> 0:35:49.440 But then you get up and it's a vast open space. 0:35:49.480 --> 0:35:52.719 And then you go back after the eighth hole, the 0:35:52.760 --> 0:35:55.799 par five you have the par three and ten and 0:35:55.840 --> 0:35:59.400 eighteen are its own pocket. But then you get across 0:35:59.440 --> 0:36:01.640 the road and this vast open space. 0:36:01.640 --> 0:36:04.520 Exactly, and that's you know, we you know, we've talked away. 0:36:04.800 --> 0:36:08.160 We spend all this time talking about routings and all 0:36:08.160 --> 0:36:10.640 those all those young guys that want to be architects 0:36:10.680 --> 0:36:12.600 are probably really frustrated because we haven't told him anything 0:36:12.600 --> 0:36:14.640 about how to do it. And the first thing that 0:36:14.680 --> 0:36:18.200 you do is you break it. You break it down 0:36:18.239 --> 0:36:21.759 into a few parts, just like you talked about. You 0:36:21.760 --> 0:36:24.719 know that first little bit where one and two and 0:36:24.760 --> 0:36:28.560 three T are, that's a separate section from everything else. 0:36:28.800 --> 0:36:31.560 And you you know, whether you were going to wind 0:36:31.640 --> 0:36:33.719 up at three T or kind of more up the 0:36:33.800 --> 0:36:36.759 hill on number three, you couldn't come You couldn't go 0:36:36.800 --> 0:36:39.799 any farther because property line's there. You couldn't come back 0:36:39.960 --> 0:36:42.760 past the clubhouse with a hole. So that's a little 0:36:42.800 --> 0:36:45.520 section to work out on its own. And then that 0:36:46.160 --> 0:36:48.839 big three through eight that's a section to work out 0:36:48.840 --> 0:36:51.799 on its own, and nine and ten and eighteen that's 0:36:51.840 --> 0:36:54.120 a section to work out on its own. And then 0:36:54.160 --> 0:36:57.080 the other part is too. So you know, almost any 0:36:57.120 --> 0:36:59.520 property is like that, even if you know Stonewall has 0:36:59.600 --> 0:37:03.040 broad crossings and stone walls and things that really break 0:37:03.040 --> 0:37:06.279 it up. The Lost Dudes has an Interstate highway going 0:37:06.320 --> 0:37:08.120 through the middle of it, so obviously there's at least 0:37:08.120 --> 0:37:12.040 two pieces there, but nearly every property breaks up into 0:37:12.040 --> 0:37:14.520 three or four or five or six different parts, And 0:37:14.560 --> 0:37:16.439 the main reason they break up is because you're going 0:37:16.480 --> 0:37:18.799 over a hill and you don't want to play a 0:37:18.800 --> 0:37:22.120 blind hole, so you're going to try to get the 0:37:22.200 --> 0:37:25.200 last hole in one section, like up close to the 0:37:25.239 --> 0:37:27.520 top of the hill, and then the next tee up 0:37:27.560 --> 0:37:31.080 on the top going over into the next section. And 0:37:31.120 --> 0:37:34.040 when you change a routing, you know, when I played 0:37:34.000 --> 0:37:36.799 golf with somebody on of course I built, and they go, oh, 0:37:36.800 --> 0:37:38.359 it's really cool, but I think you should have put 0:37:38.360 --> 0:37:42.080 that green over there. Okay, but then where was it? 0:37:42.120 --> 0:37:44.560 Where was the next tea going? Because that's you never 0:37:44.719 --> 0:37:47.600 change one hole at a time. Yeah, I guess it's possible. 0:37:47.600 --> 0:37:49.040 You know, if the tee is to the right and 0:37:49.040 --> 0:37:51.200 your green site was further right, maybe you could do that. 0:37:51.239 --> 0:37:54.200 But nearly anything you change, you're going to change two 0:37:54.280 --> 0:37:58.400 or three holes to make it work, or you know, 0:37:58.920 --> 0:38:01.200 cutting out a hole saying no, I can't do that, 0:38:01.320 --> 0:38:03.480 or I'm going to combine these two holes into one. 0:38:03.719 --> 0:38:06.120 Now you don't have any teen anymore. You have to 0:38:06.120 --> 0:38:09.040 find someplace else to get that hole back. So it's 0:38:09.160 --> 0:38:12.799 you know, that's the Rubik's cube part. When you do 0:38:12.880 --> 0:38:17.719 one thing, it changes other things, so you always have 0:38:17.800 --> 0:38:20.200 to be conscious of how you're going to come back 0:38:20.320 --> 0:38:23.799 to be in the right number of holes at the end. 0:38:24.440 --> 0:38:27.440 One of the things I really learned Stonewall again is 0:38:27.480 --> 0:38:31.280 the process you talk about compartmentalizing sections of the property. 0:38:32.120 --> 0:38:35.120 If you can get two holes in one particular section 0:38:35.160 --> 0:38:37.560 that you like that are good, that work, that's great. 0:38:37.800 --> 0:38:41.400 But if you can get three in there or four 0:38:42.000 --> 0:38:45.919 that you like that work that function, that just gives 0:38:45.960 --> 0:38:49.960 you way more leeway to wiggle around and get bigger 0:38:49.960 --> 0:38:53.000 and more creative in the other pieces that are left over. 0:38:53.080 --> 0:38:56.720 So each piece that you can really max out gives 0:38:56.760 --> 0:38:59.399 you more freedom in all of the others. And it's 0:38:59.440 --> 0:39:01.839 exactly like Tom says, it's a ripple effect. You're not 0:39:01.960 --> 0:39:05.920 changing one hole or one thing and it stops there. 0:39:05.960 --> 0:39:09.480 Often it resonates into two and three and four and 0:39:09.600 --> 0:39:12.000 five holes, going all over the place, and then getting 0:39:12.040 --> 0:39:14.320 them all to fit together as eighteen. 0:39:14.360 --> 0:39:17.120 No doubt, that's that's the next lesson routing. Once you 0:39:17.160 --> 0:39:19.880 break it down, it's like, how can you get the 0:39:19.880 --> 0:39:22.040 most out of this one? And you know when high 0:39:22.080 --> 0:39:25.320 point the one little piece I wrote on routing and 0:39:25.360 --> 0:39:29.480 the Anatomy of a golf course was about the start 0:39:29.520 --> 0:39:31.080 of the back nine. At high points, there was like 0:39:31.080 --> 0:39:33.800 a forty acre block a land that was in back 0:39:33.880 --> 0:39:37.800 of everything else, and it was by far the prettiest land, 0:39:38.000 --> 0:39:40.520 you know it was. It was covered with ferns and 0:39:40.560 --> 0:39:43.960 these It was very sandy hilly. It was covered with 0:39:44.120 --> 0:39:46.960 ferns and these little tiny pine trees that they planted 0:39:46.960 --> 0:39:50.640 for erosion control. But but when we when we were 0:39:50.680 --> 0:39:52.640 starting the golf course, they were only like hip high 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:55.080 and you could you could almost rip them out of 0:39:55.120 --> 0:39:58.880 the ground by hand to clear you just we just 0:39:58.920 --> 0:40:00.920 wrapped a chain around them and pull them out with 0:40:00.960 --> 0:40:05.919 a bucket of a tractor basically. And you know, when 0:40:05.920 --> 0:40:07.799 I first looked at that piece of the ground, I 0:40:07.880 --> 0:40:10.640 was like, oh, there'd be a cool hole playing diagonally 0:40:10.640 --> 0:40:13.759 across here to this green site right here, and then 0:40:13.760 --> 0:40:16.400 there'd be a cool hole up there coming out. And 0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:19.640 I had like two or three holes in forty acres. 0:40:19.719 --> 0:40:22.719 And it took me maybe a couple of days to 0:40:22.760 --> 0:40:25.719 get to forget about that. It's like, that's the best 0:40:25.719 --> 0:40:28.560 piece of the property. I should get five holes in 0:40:28.600 --> 0:40:31.759 there if I can't, And ultimately that was you know, 0:40:31.840 --> 0:40:38.160 it's like ten eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and part of 0:40:38.239 --> 0:40:40.560 the fifteenth tea coming out of it. We're all in 0:40:40.560 --> 0:40:42.919 that section in your land, and anybody who ever played 0:40:42.960 --> 0:40:44.880 the golf course, that was the best part of the 0:40:44.880 --> 0:40:47.319 golf course and that's why you wanted to go back there. 0:40:48.160 --> 0:40:53.200 So so yeah, once you've got it broken up, it's like, Okay, 0:40:53.280 --> 0:40:55.399 what's the best part of this? How do I get 0:40:55.400 --> 0:40:58.879 the most out of that? And that's you know, it's 0:40:58.920 --> 0:41:02.480 not just one hole. It's like the best combination of 0:41:02.520 --> 0:41:05.560 three or four or five holes. But but you know 0:41:06.320 --> 0:41:08.239 that's kind of where a routing starts. 0:41:09.239 --> 0:41:13.800 It's, uh, yeah, you got to maximize rather than having 0:41:13.920 --> 0:41:17.560 one great hole that hogs the best feature is using 0:41:17.600 --> 0:41:21.799 that feature as much as exam so that you get 0:41:21.840 --> 0:41:24.960 the most. It makes a lot of sense. It's so 0:41:25.800 --> 0:41:28.319 don you You bring a lot of these routings and 0:41:28.480 --> 0:41:31.560 ideas to life drawing, and a lot of the world, 0:41:31.680 --> 0:41:38.719 like myself, are absolute awful artists me too. What are 0:41:38.760 --> 0:41:44.200 some just tips for drawing that you have for because 0:41:44.680 --> 0:41:48.040 there I feel like there's more and more armshair, architects, 0:41:48.239 --> 0:41:52.440 guys that like to doodle, you know, routings and sketches. 0:41:52.480 --> 0:41:54.480 What kind of advice do you have. 0:41:55.400 --> 0:42:01.839 Well, the advice I think is me be to, now 0:42:01.840 --> 0:42:04.680 that we have more resources to do it, pay attention 0:42:04.800 --> 0:42:07.600 to what the old guys did not. You know, we're 0:42:07.640 --> 0:42:11.000 talking about building golf and realizing actual golfers, but I 0:42:11.120 --> 0:42:13.400 just did the same thing withdrawing too. You know, the 0:42:13.480 --> 0:42:17.000 more plans that you can get your hands on from 0:42:17.040 --> 0:42:20.640 the guys that did it a long time ago, there's 0:42:20.719 --> 0:42:25.120 always something there, whether you know it's as simple or 0:42:25.160 --> 0:42:28.600 as irrelevant as a north arrow. You know, those are 0:42:28.640 --> 0:42:30.760 the kinds of things that kind of catch my eye. 0:42:30.880 --> 0:42:34.560 And how do they depict grassing lines and you know, 0:42:34.680 --> 0:42:37.440 center lines and te's and greens and flags and that 0:42:37.520 --> 0:42:40.879 kind of stuff. And there's really good stuff out there. 0:42:40.960 --> 0:42:44.319 And you know, I'm not quite sure what my style is, 0:42:44.360 --> 0:42:48.640 but it's it's really not uniquely my own. Certainly. It's 0:42:48.760 --> 0:42:52.200 just a you know, a conglomerate of a bunch of 0:42:52.200 --> 0:42:55.040 other things that someone else has already done that I saw, 0:42:55.120 --> 0:42:58.520 and I'm just putting them together, maybe in a slightly 0:42:58.920 --> 0:43:02.280 different way, but I you know, for me personally, I'm 0:43:02.360 --> 0:43:07.600 fascinated by the really old maps all the way down 0:43:07.680 --> 0:43:13.359 to tease greens and bunkers and different fonts, different styles. 0:43:14.440 --> 0:43:18.000 You know, I think it's it's like most things. If 0:43:18.040 --> 0:43:21.640 you enjoy it, that's going to drive you to investigate it. 0:43:21.680 --> 0:43:24.440 And if you investigate it, you're going to discover a 0:43:24.440 --> 0:43:27.399 lot of stuff. And it's plus, it's just a hell 0:43:27.400 --> 0:43:32.560 of a lot of fun, honestly, And it's interesting too, 0:43:32.600 --> 0:43:36.040 because I think it can be it can be somewhat 0:43:36.080 --> 0:43:41.400 of a distraction in the architectural process because if you 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:43.840 put that kind of stuff in front of a client 0:43:43.920 --> 0:43:47.600 early on and for whatever reason, they really like it, 0:43:48.200 --> 0:43:51.799 and you know, they're already having trouble picturing in their 0:43:51.840 --> 0:43:54.200 mind's eye what's this going to look like, and they're 0:43:54.200 --> 0:43:56.719 getting ready to write checks, or people are getting ready 0:43:56.760 --> 0:43:59.160 to write checks, and they want to be comfortable that 0:43:59.200 --> 0:44:02.799 what they unknown is going to turn out a certain way. 0:44:03.520 --> 0:44:06.040 So you have to be careful not to put something 0:44:06.080 --> 0:44:09.000 out there in a way that you know you're not 0:44:09.080 --> 0:44:11.920 going to be able to make all the really necessary 0:44:12.040 --> 0:44:15.000 changes that we've been talking about for a while now 0:44:15.320 --> 0:44:18.359 in the field, because that's what really matters, that's what 0:44:18.480 --> 0:44:22.319 really really matters. So you know, there's a level of 0:44:22.400 --> 0:44:27.120 responsibility that you have. I think in sort of projecting 0:44:27.160 --> 0:44:30.360 an idea and it's good to get people excited, but 0:44:30.480 --> 0:44:32.799 it's all I've also learned it's really important to make 0:44:32.800 --> 0:44:36.440 sure they understand, don't love it too much because it 0:44:36.440 --> 0:44:41.960 could change. Yeah, but there needs to be Yeah, there 0:44:42.000 --> 0:44:46.040 really needs to be that disclaimer, and invariably it does. 0:44:46.080 --> 0:44:50.000 And I think that's what makes Tom and you know 0:44:50.760 --> 0:44:56.560 Renaissance somewhat unique is we kind of go in not 0:44:56.920 --> 0:45:00.560 entirely sure, we just are confident that at the end 0:45:00.960 --> 0:45:03.520 it's gonna be good because we're pouring ourselves into it 0:45:03.560 --> 0:45:05.640 and we've had good luck doing it that way. So 0:45:07.080 --> 0:45:11.120 you know, the drawings can be helpful, but you know 0:45:11.160 --> 0:45:14.520 they're they're also uh, they're just a tool. They're just 0:45:14.840 --> 0:45:17.759 they're just a launch pad. They're not the end all 0:45:17.840 --> 0:45:18.239 be all. 0:45:18.520 --> 0:45:22.239 And a lot of times when you see you know, 0:45:22.320 --> 0:45:24.480 somebody's gone to great lengths at the beginning of the 0:45:24.520 --> 0:45:26.840 project to do all these renderings of what's going to 0:45:26.920 --> 0:45:30.320 look like and stuff. A lot of times they're just stealing. 0:45:30.520 --> 0:45:33.719 You know, it's for the third hole at Stonewall. They 0:45:33.760 --> 0:45:35.439 would just put a picture in there of the fourth 0:45:35.520 --> 0:45:37.040 all raw Melbourne it say it's going to be like 0:45:37.080 --> 0:45:40.600 that you know, in China they would actually take a 0:45:40.640 --> 0:45:43.920 picture of raw melvern and maybe flip it over or 0:45:45.000 --> 0:45:48.239 photoshop something out and just use it like that was 0:45:48.280 --> 0:45:52.440 the whole It was already built. You know, there's extreme 0:45:52.560 --> 0:45:56.000 versions of it, but but yeah, I mean it's you know, 0:45:56.040 --> 0:45:57.560 the more you try to do stuff like that at 0:45:57.560 --> 0:46:00.279 the beginning, it's it winds up being really derivative of 0:46:00.680 --> 0:46:04.399 like other things that are already existing. If you're really 0:46:04.400 --> 0:46:07.319 trying to do something original, you're not going to do 0:46:07.360 --> 0:46:09.719 that on paper before you start. You're going to do 0:46:09.800 --> 0:46:11.080 that when you're out there. 0:46:11.360 --> 0:46:13.799 You know how you know That's the fact too, I 0:46:13.840 --> 0:46:18.320 think is you know, with technology that we have now, 0:46:18.760 --> 0:46:21.719 if we go back to the first plan that Tom 0:46:21.840 --> 0:46:25.560 had on a golf course, that was what we thought 0:46:25.640 --> 0:46:29.279 was going to be the routing, and then subsequently, you know, 0:46:29.360 --> 0:46:32.400 the project is done, it's built, and there are irrigation 0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:36.359 gps as builts of exactly where the tea's ended up 0:46:36.440 --> 0:46:39.920 and how the greens are shaped and the what the 0:46:40.000 --> 0:46:43.839 grassing lines look like. It's fascinating to look at what 0:46:43.880 --> 0:46:47.120 we started with and what we actually ended up building, 0:46:47.160 --> 0:46:51.080 and often they don't resemble in a lot of ways 0:46:51.080 --> 0:46:55.360 what we started with and the configuration of grassing lines 0:46:55.400 --> 0:46:59.960 at the end is just it. It looks pretty crazy, 0:47:00.239 --> 0:47:04.000 you know it. It is really a full on evolution, 0:47:04.200 --> 0:47:06.799 and I think part of that is because that's what 0:47:06.880 --> 0:47:09.719 the ground dictated, so we that's what we paid attention to, 0:47:09.840 --> 0:47:11.600 and you can't get that level at the detail at 0:47:11.600 --> 0:47:13.840 the beginning. But we also spend a lot of time 0:47:14.280 --> 0:47:18.360 trying to get grassing lines right when we're shaping things. 0:47:18.640 --> 0:47:21.520 I mean, I just remember from from a high point, 0:47:21.880 --> 0:47:23.960 from one or two other things when I built them, 0:47:23.960 --> 0:47:26.640 that what you built that looks so cool on the 0:47:26.640 --> 0:47:30.920 ground looks very plain on paper. It's like there's you know, 0:47:30.960 --> 0:47:35.200 you get a i mean the the Ahole Crystal Apps, 0:47:35.239 --> 0:47:38.360 one of my favorite golf holes in the world. On paper, 0:47:38.680 --> 0:47:42.439 there's no fairway, bunkers. You know that. It's all about 0:47:42.480 --> 0:47:45.359 the topography and the landing area. And unless you can 0:47:45.400 --> 0:47:47.359 read a topa map really well, you can't tell what 0:47:47.400 --> 0:47:49.880 the hell is going on there. So it just looks 0:47:49.960 --> 0:47:55.040 like any standard Muni hot dog dog leg right. Yeah, 0:47:55.120 --> 0:47:57.759 I mean there's nothing there in two D on a 0:47:57.800 --> 0:48:00.000 plan view that you go, oh wow, that's a really 0:48:00.120 --> 0:48:05.319 cool because it's all in the third dimensions, and if 0:48:05.320 --> 0:48:07.000 you're trying to make it look cool in the beginning, 0:48:07.000 --> 0:48:09.759 you're going to embellish it and add fairway bunkers and 0:48:09.800 --> 0:48:12.080 do all these things to make it look cool that 0:48:12.160 --> 0:48:14.240 it doesn't need out there on the ground. 0:48:17.560 --> 0:48:22.600 So with with golf courses closing, and you know, there's 0:48:23.080 --> 0:48:26.600 like a perfect example is that Engineers is closing this year, 0:48:26.640 --> 0:48:27.520 I think, but. 0:48:28.120 --> 0:48:29.920 Were actually closing. I mean I know that, I know 0:48:30.000 --> 0:48:31.960 the deal has been done to sell it, but I 0:48:32.000 --> 0:48:35.000 also know that well, if it's like you know, we 0:48:35.040 --> 0:48:37.120 worked on north Shore, which is not far from there, 0:48:37.360 --> 0:48:41.080 and north Shore, if they had sold the club to 0:48:41.120 --> 0:48:43.560 a developer, it would have taken them five years before 0:48:43.560 --> 0:48:45.959 they could build any homes minimums. So the golf course 0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:47.440 was going to last for a while anyway. 0:48:49.160 --> 0:48:51.799 One place where you were a big part of the 0:48:51.880 --> 0:48:56.120 recovery was Ashkronish Up and I was. 0:48:56.080 --> 0:48:58.200 We were a very small part of the recovery there. 0:48:58.280 --> 0:49:01.960 Somebody else, Martin Eber and those guys really recovered the 0:49:02.000 --> 0:49:05.640 golf course. We just tinkered around with it a little 0:49:05.680 --> 0:49:08.480 sense then, and by a little, I mean a little. 0:49:10.840 --> 0:49:15.120 Trevor Dormer wanted to know about how close. Do you 0:49:15.160 --> 0:49:18.279 think today's routing is to the original. 0:49:20.680 --> 0:49:23.520 I have no honest way of judging that. I don't. 0:49:23.560 --> 0:49:31.600 I honestly don't think that. You know, when Martin Ebert 0:49:31.680 --> 0:49:36.040 and Gordon Irvin walked it originally and put the routing together, 0:49:36.840 --> 0:49:40.040 they didn't they had nobody had a map of it 0:49:40.080 --> 0:49:44.839 from before, so they just they just went by their 0:49:44.840 --> 0:49:51.319 eye and supposedly their vision of what they thought old 0:49:51.360 --> 0:49:55.600 Tom Morris would have done by his eye, which you know, 0:49:56.239 --> 0:49:59.080 things are so different today that you know, I would 0:49:59.160 --> 0:50:03.960 say one of the best holes at Askernish is the 0:50:05.880 --> 0:50:08.600 make sure I get the numbers right, pretty sure, it's 0:50:08.640 --> 0:50:11.120 the eighth, the little short part four that you know, 0:50:11.440 --> 0:50:14.120 you play that great seventh hole down into the valley 0:50:14.520 --> 0:50:16.120 and then you walk up out of it and the tea 0:50:16.200 --> 0:50:19.040 is kind of benched into a little dune and the 0:50:19.120 --> 0:50:21.560 eighth hole is going. It's a short part four and 0:50:21.560 --> 0:50:24.000 there's a bunker by the green, and then you're looking 0:50:24.000 --> 0:50:27.280 out over the water and there's another island in the background. 0:50:27.360 --> 0:50:29.759 I think it's Bara or one of the other islands, 0:50:30.320 --> 0:50:34.319 and that could be exactly the hole that old Tom 0:50:34.360 --> 0:50:38.279 Morris did. I don't know, but to me at just 0:50:38.400 --> 0:50:41.800 the presentation of it was much more modern. Tom Morris 0:50:41.880 --> 0:50:45.799 wasn't interested, or at least I haven't noticed on very 0:50:45.880 --> 0:50:47.799 many of his other courses where he tried to get 0:50:47.800 --> 0:50:52.279 the tea just up in the right spot so you 0:50:52.320 --> 0:50:56.480 could see a certain amount of water and so that 0:50:56.600 --> 0:51:00.680 island would be straight in the background. So they might 0:51:00.760 --> 0:51:03.200 be in the right place. But I suspect that there's 0:51:03.280 --> 0:51:05.960 other things that creep into it they are not even 0:51:06.040 --> 0:51:11.160 conscious of. So once you get into the like especially 0:51:11.160 --> 0:51:14.040 once you get into the far end of the golf 0:51:14.080 --> 0:51:18.640 course from the club ass like eleven, twelve, thirteen, those 0:51:18.640 --> 0:51:22.319 are the holes that I that I don't really know 0:51:22.400 --> 0:51:24.279 if they're in the same places at all or not. 0:51:24.840 --> 0:51:27.080 You know, when you're first when you go from the 0:51:27.560 --> 0:51:30.440 kind of flatter ground to where seven and eight and 0:51:30.480 --> 0:51:34.360 those are those seem pretty obvious, you know. But again, 0:51:34.600 --> 0:51:37.400 the further you get away from something that you know, 0:51:38.239 --> 0:51:40.640 the less likely that they're in exactly the same place. 0:51:44.600 --> 0:51:48.640 A big trend in golf spend abstract routings, like we've 0:51:48.680 --> 0:51:51.279 talked a lot about. A little bit car for the 0:51:51.320 --> 0:51:54.080 course has an idea for a twenty four hole course 0:51:54.160 --> 0:51:58.720 with four six hole loose and you could play eighteen holes, 0:51:58.800 --> 0:52:01.759 and then you'd have six holes open for open play 0:52:01.800 --> 0:52:06.520 at all times and you could rotate them around. What 0:52:07.320 --> 0:52:10.920 are your thoughts on that? He's written a long post 0:52:10.960 --> 0:52:14.040 about it. Also, he's got a website so everybody can 0:52:14.040 --> 0:52:16.360 go read it. I think it called it the clover Course. 0:52:18.239 --> 0:52:21.279 And if what are your thoughts on that, and what 0:52:22.200 --> 0:52:26.920 abstract routing or idea would you want a design that 0:52:26.960 --> 0:52:29.360 you haven't done yet if you want to give it away? 0:52:30.480 --> 0:52:33.040 So his clover course is just a little bit short. 0:52:33.320 --> 0:52:36.360 You remember, he might not be old enough. Donal'll be 0:52:36.400 --> 0:52:39.520 old enough. You remember when they had that Superstars competition 0:52:39.600 --> 0:52:41.920 on TV in the seventies. I took all the athletes 0:52:41.960 --> 0:52:43.960 and have them do like a decathlon type thing where 0:52:43.960 --> 0:52:46.520 they're doing a whole bunch of different sports against each other. 0:52:47.000 --> 0:52:49.719 They held it in a place called Rotunda, Florida, which 0:52:49.760 --> 0:52:52.040 is like over on the west side, you're it's not 0:52:52.080 --> 0:52:57.520 far from Gasparilla. And their idea for the land plan 0:52:57.640 --> 0:52:59.600 for this town was it was a city in the round, 0:52:59.640 --> 0:53:01.799 and everything was going to be in the round. So 0:53:01.840 --> 0:53:04.440 they they put a clubhouse kind of in the middle, 0:53:05.000 --> 0:53:08.200 and they were going to have six golf courses. Eventually 0:53:08.320 --> 0:53:13.239 they only have one. But to start they built like 0:53:13.760 --> 0:53:17.560 every three holes looped back to the clubhouse. So eventually 0:53:17.600 --> 0:53:20.680 they could spoke off and keep going and build a 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:23.879 bunch more holes. So they do. They every third hole 0:53:23.960 --> 0:53:27.120 comes back to the clubhouse. It's crazy. It's very limiting 0:53:27.200 --> 0:53:29.239 if you think about it, It's like, what can you do. 0:53:29.360 --> 0:53:31.440 It's like a part five and then three and a 0:53:31.480 --> 0:53:34.479 four coming back is it's hard to get away from 0:53:34.520 --> 0:53:39.799 that as programmed as they were. So you know what 0:53:39.880 --> 0:53:43.160 his idea sounds like. You know, I'm not big on 0:53:43.160 --> 0:53:45.919 this twelve hole thing that everybody, you know, people are trying. 0:53:46.360 --> 0:53:48.839 You know, I think of golf in terms of nine 0:53:48.920 --> 0:53:51.920 or eighteen, And I understand Prestrick was twelve holes originally, 0:53:52.320 --> 0:53:54.680 and I would love to play that twelve hole golf course, 0:53:54.840 --> 0:53:57.040 but but I think you're going to have a hard 0:53:57.040 --> 0:53:59.759 time getting away from nine or eighteen. So there are 0:53:59.800 --> 0:54:02.120 all So there's a lot of twenty seven whole golf 0:54:02.160 --> 0:54:04.840 courses in the world based on the exact same theory 0:54:04.880 --> 0:54:08.440 that he's talking about. You know, we could start people 0:54:08.560 --> 0:54:11.719 on three different nines in the morning and then have 0:54:11.840 --> 0:54:14.120 them flip over to a different nine and keep going 0:54:14.160 --> 0:54:17.719 and get more people out there. We can close one 0:54:17.719 --> 0:54:19.479 of the nines and do work on it and still 0:54:19.480 --> 0:54:23.400 have an eighteen hole golf course operationally. There are a 0:54:23.400 --> 0:54:27.680 lot of advantages to doing it that way. The one 0:54:27.840 --> 0:54:31.680 big downside of doing it that way is that if 0:54:31.719 --> 0:54:35.279 you're trying to do something really good and noteworthy, the 0:54:35.320 --> 0:54:38.200 first question from everybody is, well, what's the main course? 0:54:38.640 --> 0:54:42.839 What's the really good one? And then you're stuck. As 0:54:42.840 --> 0:54:45.439 soon as somebody identifies that this is the best way, 0:54:46.000 --> 0:54:49.759 the A and C nines are the best combination, then 0:54:49.760 --> 0:54:52.239 that's all anybody wants to play. The other one's like 0:54:52.280 --> 0:54:57.839 a stepchild. And on the rare occasion that you get 0:54:57.880 --> 0:55:00.479 a course like Ridgewood and New Jersey where there's twenty 0:55:00.560 --> 0:55:04.319 seven holes and they're all good, the people that great 0:55:04.360 --> 0:55:07.040 golf courses still don't know how to compare that to 0:55:07.280 --> 0:55:10.000 eighteen whole golf courses. They're like, well, which one are 0:55:10.000 --> 0:55:14.080 we rating? Do we count the cool short part four 0:55:14.120 --> 0:55:16.920 on the C nine or do we not because it's 0:55:16.960 --> 0:55:20.880 not part of the eighteen whole course. So you know, 0:55:21.080 --> 0:55:24.760 for your average public golf course trying to make money, 0:55:24.760 --> 0:55:27.560 trying to get a lot of people around. You know 0:55:27.719 --> 0:55:30.319 that idea of having more than eighteen holes and being 0:55:30.320 --> 0:55:32.919 able to take a piece out is not a bad 0:55:32.960 --> 0:55:36.000 idea at all. In Australia a lot like every place 0:55:36.040 --> 0:55:38.360 we consult, the first thing they want to do is 0:55:38.360 --> 0:55:42.040 build a par three nineteenth hole so that it's somewhere 0:55:42.040 --> 0:55:44.680 out in the golf course, not right by the clubhouse, 0:55:45.080 --> 0:55:46.640 so that they have an extra hole to play with, 0:55:46.719 --> 0:55:49.080 so they can work on a couple holes without taking 0:55:49.120 --> 0:55:51.760 things out of play, without having to have a temporary 0:55:51.800 --> 0:55:56.480 green and all that. But you know, if you want 0:55:56.520 --> 0:55:58.080 to build a great golf course, it's going to get 0:55:58.120 --> 0:56:00.799 ranked as a great golf course. That's not the way 0:56:00.840 --> 0:56:03.720 you want to go. It's just two against human nature 0:56:03.840 --> 0:56:06.399 and the nature of raiders. They don't like it. 0:56:08.000 --> 0:56:10.960 I'm for a four or five hole course in like 0:56:11.000 --> 0:56:13.719 an urban area, as somebody that lives in the city 0:56:13.719 --> 0:56:17.000 of Chicago. Like the idea of being able to play 0:56:17.000 --> 0:56:19.919 golf in an hour, which is the same time as 0:56:19.920 --> 0:56:23.640 somebody's workout, is like to me, like the thing that's 0:56:23.640 --> 0:56:26.200 like low hanging fruits, like you can go to the gym, 0:56:26.360 --> 0:56:29.400 or you can go play four holes of golf, like 0:56:29.600 --> 0:56:32.120 people will choose four holes or five holes of. 0:56:32.040 --> 0:56:35.520 Golf, right, yeah, if you lift. I mean, the big 0:56:35.560 --> 0:56:38.279 advantage of belonging to a club back in the day, 0:56:38.360 --> 0:56:40.680 you know, if you actually live close to the club 0:56:40.680 --> 0:56:42.839 and you were on the club and you were right 0:56:42.880 --> 0:56:44.719 there is you could just go out and play four 0:56:44.800 --> 0:56:46.560 or five holes in the evening and jump around to 0:56:46.600 --> 0:56:49.280 where there weren't other people in the way, and it'll 0:56:49.280 --> 0:56:50.120 play a few holes. 0:56:52.760 --> 0:56:57.920 So should we wrap this up with some overrated underrated. 0:56:58.200 --> 0:56:59.920 Okay, that means it's time to wrap up. 0:57:00.440 --> 0:57:09.520 Yeah, overrated underrated flat type properties. 0:57:12.920 --> 0:57:18.320 M hm, flat type property. 0:57:18.040 --> 0:57:22.560 Tight like flat and small properties for golf courses. 0:57:24.880 --> 0:57:27.680 Well, they're not overrated because nobody thinks much of them 0:57:27.720 --> 0:57:32.200 to start with, so you almost have to be underrated, 0:57:32.200 --> 0:57:34.360 but you have to be really creative to get much 0:57:34.360 --> 0:57:34.880 out of them. 0:57:36.360 --> 0:57:38.200 Agreed. I think that's right. 0:57:38.440 --> 0:57:38.520 You. 0:57:39.920 --> 0:57:42.760 The precedent from my mind for my money is is 0:57:42.800 --> 0:57:46.360 Garden City in New York. You know, there's, first look, 0:57:46.400 --> 0:57:49.200 there's not much there, but there are lots of creative 0:57:49.240 --> 0:57:51.920 things you can do to make it very interesting. But uh, 0:57:53.040 --> 0:57:56.560 you gotta you gotta execute them. So yeah, that's a 0:57:56.600 --> 0:57:57.080 good question. 0:57:58.200 --> 0:58:04.040 Sometimes I think that you should judge architects based off 0:58:04.040 --> 0:58:06.640 of like what they did with some of their worst 0:58:06.640 --> 0:58:09.560 property versus what they did with some of their best property. 0:58:10.080 --> 0:58:14.000 Well, you know, I get that, I get that questions, 0:58:14.640 --> 0:58:20.920 and and you know, there's a lot of people that 0:58:21.000 --> 0:58:23.520 are envious of some of the pieces of property that 0:58:23.520 --> 0:58:26.560 I've got to work on. You know, I'm sure, you know, 0:58:27.080 --> 0:58:30.080 just like I used to think about Alistair Mackenzie. God, 0:58:30.120 --> 0:58:32.200 I wish I could have worked on some of those properties. 0:58:32.760 --> 0:58:35.440 You know, I've gotten to work on some of those properties, 0:58:35.440 --> 0:58:38.680 and and and you know, I mean I think about 0:58:38.680 --> 0:58:41.720 it sometimes. Donald Ross never had a chance to work 0:58:41.760 --> 0:58:44.800 on a piece of landlike kid kidnappers or Pacific dudes 0:58:45.000 --> 0:58:54.520 ever four hundred golf courses, nothing like that. But you know, 0:58:55.600 --> 0:58:59.680 I don't believe that you can judge what an architect 0:58:59.720 --> 0:59:02.360 did with a given piece of ground when you go 0:59:02.480 --> 0:59:06.880 on it and it's done. It's too hard to it's 0:59:06.920 --> 0:59:09.080 too hard to really dig down and try to get 0:59:09.080 --> 0:59:11.960 a sense of what was there to start with. And 0:59:12.240 --> 0:59:14.600 you know, how many other ways could he have done this? 0:59:15.440 --> 0:59:17.720 So it just seems like inevitable I would have come 0:59:17.800 --> 0:59:21.440 up with that routing. You know, I might have moved it. 0:59:22.120 --> 0:59:24.160 You know, it's like, well, I would have flipped over 0:59:24.240 --> 0:59:27.360 number eleven and number twelve, and it's like you never 0:59:27.360 --> 0:59:31.840 would have found any of the other holes, so so 0:59:32.040 --> 0:59:37.160 cut it out. There was a point at which at 0:59:37.160 --> 0:59:41.400 Crystal Downs the club president at the time was a 0:59:41.400 --> 0:59:45.080 member of Inverness and he was buddies with Arthur Hills, 0:59:45.520 --> 0:59:47.720 who had a locker right there. So Arthur Hills came 0:59:47.800 --> 0:59:49.760 up to Crystal Downs and went around the golf course 0:59:49.760 --> 0:59:52.720 with the club president and Fred Muller, the pro, and 0:59:52.720 --> 0:59:55.080 they were on the front nine, and you know the 0:59:55.160 --> 0:59:57.320 front nine a Crystal Downs pretty wild piece of ground. 0:59:57.360 --> 1:00:02.480 So they they got in that stretch of five and 1:00:02.520 --> 1:00:05.240 then six coming back over the rugged ground and then 1:00:05.480 --> 1:00:10.520 seven and Arthur Hills looked at Fred and said, I 1:00:10.520 --> 1:00:12.040 don't know if I would have come up with this, 1:00:12.200 --> 1:00:15.480 and Fred just laughed like, I don't think you would happen. 1:00:19.160 --> 1:00:21.480 You know, some argue is one of the maybe the 1:00:21.520 --> 1:00:23.440 greatest stretch of golf holes in the world. 1:00:25.920 --> 1:00:28.240 That would have been a really hard routing to come 1:00:28.320 --> 1:00:32.440 up with. You know, when when Mackenzie started with that, 1:00:33.720 --> 1:00:36.320 the road that goes around the edge of it now 1:00:36.400 --> 1:00:39.560 came through some of those holes. It was it went 1:00:39.600 --> 1:00:42.480 across the middle of six and seven fairways. So so 1:00:42.520 --> 1:00:44.480 he's got to be looking across the road at the 1:00:44.480 --> 1:00:46.280 other side trying to figure out how to do it. 1:00:46.520 --> 1:00:48.640 And I think, you know, the hole that makes it 1:00:48.720 --> 1:00:51.200 work is number five, the short part four that hits 1:00:51.200 --> 1:00:54.520 over the hill. It's not as like up and over 1:00:54.680 --> 1:00:58.880 like raw Melbourne, but it's it's over and around and I, 1:00:59.880 --> 1:01:03.080 you know, I think that was just necessity is the 1:01:03.120 --> 1:01:08.800 mother of invention. You know, six will be great, seven, eight, 1:01:09.240 --> 1:01:12.560 but I got to get to sixty. Oh, I can 1:01:12.600 --> 1:01:15.160 do it this way. I don't think anybody would have 1:01:15.160 --> 1:01:17.320 come up with that hole just looking at You could 1:01:17.320 --> 1:01:19.560 look at the map all day and not think there's 1:01:19.600 --> 1:01:23.240 a hole right there. You know, that was just like, okay, 1:01:23.240 --> 1:01:25.000 I got some other holes. Now I got to make 1:01:25.040 --> 1:01:28.280 this one work. And arguably that's the most interesting hole 1:01:28.320 --> 1:01:28.919 of all of those. 1:01:29.040 --> 1:01:32.360 Yeah, I heard. I don't know if it's an old 1:01:32.400 --> 1:01:33.200 live sale that. 1:01:34.760 --> 1:01:34.960 You know. 1:01:37.080 --> 1:01:41.000 Perry Maxwell was there, and he was you know, Mackenzie 1:01:41.040 --> 1:01:45.480 had been just grinding over this routing for days and 1:01:45.520 --> 1:01:48.160 he ran out of booze and Maxwell left to go 1:01:48.200 --> 1:01:51.880 get booze, and when he came back, Mackenzie was like. 1:01:51.840 --> 1:01:52.720 I've got it. 1:01:52.800 --> 1:01:55.440 I've got it. And then they counted up the holes 1:01:55.440 --> 1:01:58.120 and there was only seventeen. Is that true? 1:01:59.160 --> 1:02:02.840 I don't know if it's true. And then the ninth 1:02:02.880 --> 1:02:05.800 hole was supposedly an extra hole, and you know it 1:02:05.840 --> 1:02:08.920 was legend of Crystal Downs that that was a true story. 1:02:08.960 --> 1:02:11.960 So so years ago I was I got asked to 1:02:12.080 --> 1:02:16.320 write I actually got asked to write the chapter on 1:02:16.600 --> 1:02:20.720 architecture in the centennial book for the USGA, like the 1:02:20.920 --> 1:02:24.440 first hundred years of golf in America. Very high powered 1:02:24.440 --> 1:02:27.240 writing assignment. They had, like the editor of the New 1:02:27.320 --> 1:02:30.400 Yorker was their editor. So I was a little in 1:02:30.520 --> 1:02:34.040 over my head and and I had that story and 1:02:34.080 --> 1:02:37.680 I wanted to use it, and they're like, can you 1:02:37.760 --> 1:02:42.480 fact check it? I'm like, I don't know if we 1:02:42.480 --> 1:02:45.440 could fact check that. So Perry Maxwell's son was still alive, 1:02:45.520 --> 1:02:48.640 Press Maxwell, so we called him to check on it 1:02:49.280 --> 1:02:54.080 and he's his confirmation was I've heard the same story. 1:02:55.280 --> 1:02:59.040 Not necessarily, yes, that's exactly the way it happened. But 1:02:59.120 --> 1:03:01.600 that was good enough the USGA and the editor for 1:03:01.640 --> 1:03:03.360 the New Yorkers, so it's good enough for me. 1:03:05.200 --> 1:03:12.000 That's as funny story, all right. Last overrated underrated dog legs. 1:03:15.000 --> 1:03:22.760 I don't build any dog legs. I'll say this. Dog 1:03:22.840 --> 1:03:28.240 legs with trees overrated. Dog legs without trees underrated. You know, 1:03:28.280 --> 1:03:30.280 if you can build a dog leg that makes somebody 1:03:30.440 --> 1:03:33.680 like bite, you invite somebody to bite off the angle, 1:03:34.200 --> 1:03:36.680 but to hit to a fairway that's angling away from 1:03:36.680 --> 1:03:39.560 them instead of straight on, I think that's a great hole. 1:03:39.920 --> 1:03:42.760 It's hard to do, you know, it's hard to do 1:03:42.840 --> 1:03:45.920 a lot of dog legs on a modern course because 1:03:46.040 --> 1:03:49.000 you're not working around trees. You have to be really 1:03:49.040 --> 1:03:53.280 wary of somebody shortcutting into another hole that it's you know, 1:03:53.480 --> 1:03:56.720 it's shorter, it's a better angle to the green to 1:03:56.840 --> 1:04:00.160 hit it in the next fairway over and go from there. 1:04:00.040 --> 1:04:03.240 There's a lot of that on old courses. Sometimes when 1:04:03.240 --> 1:04:07.280 you're taking down trees on older courses, if you don't 1:04:07.320 --> 1:04:10.040 watch what you're doing, you open up something that nobody 1:04:10.080 --> 1:04:15.320 was thinking about. But if you've got the space, I 1:04:15.400 --> 1:04:18.920 love you know, where the fairway is not straight, where 1:04:18.960 --> 1:04:21.680 the fair you know, I mean, a dog leg is 1:04:21.720 --> 1:04:26.280 just a really really a matter of interpretation. There's always 1:04:26.320 --> 1:04:29.000 a bee line from the tee to the green. It's 1:04:29.040 --> 1:04:31.320 just some holes you can't actually hit it. When you 1:04:31.480 --> 1:04:35.040 hit drive length is you can't find fairways straight on 1:04:35.120 --> 1:04:39.320 that line. Those are cool holes. But a dog leg 1:04:39.360 --> 1:04:42.919 where you know there's trees inside the corner two hundred 1:04:43.000 --> 1:04:44.760 or two hundred and fifty yards off the tee, those 1:04:44.760 --> 1:04:47.120 are really tough because, on top of everything else, the 1:04:47.200 --> 1:04:50.040 more the distance keeps changing that people hit it. It 1:04:50.080 --> 1:04:52.360 doesn't work for everybody very well. It's a terrible hole 1:04:52.360 --> 1:04:56.000 when you hit a decent drive and you're a block 1:04:56.120 --> 1:04:58.560 behind a tree and you can only hit like a 1:04:58.760 --> 1:05:01.360 hundred yard shot get yourself around the corner. 1:05:01.680 --> 1:05:04.600 Yeah, that's easy to sit here and agree with Tom 1:05:04.400 --> 1:05:08.560 on that. Over under and you know a dog leg 1:05:08.600 --> 1:05:12.000 hole that you're hitting diagonally across you know some really 1:05:12.160 --> 1:05:16.880 cool negative space natural feature that's whether it's the ocean 1:05:17.040 --> 1:05:21.160 or a natural wash or something. You know that that 1:05:21.280 --> 1:05:23.680 works well. But when the hazard is up in the 1:05:23.720 --> 1:05:25.800 air and you can't see where you're going and you 1:05:25.840 --> 1:05:27.880 don't know what happens if you hit through the dog 1:05:28.000 --> 1:05:29.840 leg and all of that, that's where you really get 1:05:29.880 --> 1:05:32.680 in a spot where the hole's not very desirable. 1:05:32.720 --> 1:05:33.480 And if you weigh that. 1:05:33.520 --> 1:05:39.840 Against a perfectly straight hole that is thoughtfully and strategically bunkered. 1:05:40.520 --> 1:05:43.920 I'd rather play the straight hole more often than not 1:05:44.080 --> 1:05:48.320 than you know, that less desirable, less good dog leg 1:05:48.440 --> 1:05:52.720 with something you know in the crux of it that 1:05:52.880 --> 1:05:55.919 just doesn't it's just not interesting. It ends up being 1:05:55.920 --> 1:05:59.120 really one dimensional that way, and the more multi dimensional 1:05:59.200 --> 1:06:03.960 you can be, sometimes straight offers the widest variety of 1:06:04.080 --> 1:06:05.960 routes to the hole, and that's the good stuff. 1:06:06.000 --> 1:06:07.920 So I think a lot of my prefer or a 1:06:07.920 --> 1:06:10.200 little of my preference, at least two goes back to 1:06:10.240 --> 1:06:12.480 being a photographer. It's like, I want to see where 1:06:12.520 --> 1:06:14.640 the hole's going, you know, I want to see the 1:06:14.640 --> 1:06:17.880 flag from the tea. If I can see the flag 1:06:17.920 --> 1:06:19.920 from the tee and then see different ways of getting there, 1:06:19.960 --> 1:06:23.640 that's great. But but you know, you watch tour pros, 1:06:24.000 --> 1:06:26.840 you know, beating it over trees, over the corner of 1:06:26.840 --> 1:06:30.160 the dog leg. You know, I'm not good enough to 1:06:30.200 --> 1:06:32.800 do that. But if I was, when I got done, 1:06:32.800 --> 1:06:35.240 i'd still be standing there and the tea going. I 1:06:35.280 --> 1:06:39.640 wonder if that's imply you know, they know, we don't know. 1:06:39.880 --> 1:06:41.920 We can't even tell whether that worked or whether we 1:06:42.000 --> 1:06:45.440 have to hit another tea ball to be safe. 1:06:45.960 --> 1:06:50.640 Yeah, it does make you match up line and distant. 1:06:50.720 --> 1:06:54.640 But with I think as if technology keeps going, it 1:06:54.680 --> 1:06:57.080 makes it harder and harder for it to stay relevant. 1:06:57.640 --> 1:07:00.439 That's true. I think brings up in the other thought 1:07:00.480 --> 1:07:03.400 too that Tom's talking about from a photographer's standpoint, to 1:07:03.400 --> 1:07:06.120 be able to see the hole. I think the whole 1:07:06.160 --> 1:07:09.600 dialogue being more or less today about routing. When you 1:07:09.640 --> 1:07:12.280 can find a really good hole, a long hole on 1:07:12.320 --> 1:07:15.560 the golf course where you can see the flag from 1:07:15.640 --> 1:07:17.919 the tee, he might not necessarily be able to see 1:07:17.960 --> 1:07:20.560 what's going on all the way through between where you are, 1:07:20.600 --> 1:07:23.000 but if you can see the flagstick on a really 1:07:23.080 --> 1:07:28.160 long golf hole, you've got something there. And you know, 1:07:28.480 --> 1:07:30.560 finding that on paper and finding it in the field 1:07:30.600 --> 1:07:32.320 are two different things. But if you can get a 1:07:32.360 --> 1:07:35.600 hole like that in your routing, that's always that's always 1:07:35.600 --> 1:07:36.040 a winner. 1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:38.840 All right. 1:07:38.960 --> 1:07:44.240 That's it for routing. Don really appreciate the time, Tom also, 1:07:44.600 --> 1:07:48.160 and we will be back in a couple of weeks 1:07:48.200 --> 1:07:52.480 with a podcast about the Loop and Michigan golf. 1:07:53.560 --> 1:07:59.680 Thanks Sandy, you've been listening to the fried Egg podcast. 1:08:00.160 --> 1:08:01.680 We do the digging for you,