Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Friday Podcast. I am excited for
Speaker 1: today's podcast with Joe Bousch and Mike Serba. Think you
Speaker 1: guys are going to really enjoy it. We discuss these
Speaker 1: two guys that are just regular Joe's restoration efforts at
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Municipal Course Cobbs Creek. They set out eleven plus
Speaker 1: years ago to restore Philadelphia this course to its original glory,
Speaker 1: which was considered one of the best municipal courses in
Speaker 1: the country at this point. Now they're finalizing.
Speaker 2: A long term land lease with the city which would
Speaker 2: be up to seventy years, and they would have the
Speaker 2: intention to have a restoration led by Gil Hans. So
Speaker 2: this is really an exciting project and just a great
Speaker 2: project for the public golfer and golf in general, and
Speaker 2: could be an awesome template for other communities to follow.
Speaker 2: A couple of quick housekeeping things. Brendan Pora and I
Speaker 2: who's a regular on this podcast, start a new podcast
Speaker 2: called The Shotgun Start. This podcast will be a much quicker,
Speaker 2: shorter format podcast and it will be on a regular
Speaker 2: schedule of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. This podcast
Speaker 2: will be geared towards more quick updates and commentary on
Speaker 2: the latest happenings in golf. There will be short interviews.
Speaker 2: Just last Friday, we had Gil Hands on the podcast
Speaker 2: for about twelve minutes to talk about around them ink
Speaker 2: and a couple other things, you know, golf course architecture, base,
Speaker 2: as well as giving an update on the tournament. So
Speaker 2: it's definitely worth giving it a try, give it a listen,
Speaker 2: and subscribe on iTunes. It's called The Shotgun Start and
Speaker 2: it's up on every other podcast platform.
Speaker 3: That I know of.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: As a note, I got a lot of people asking, well,
Speaker 2: does this mean the Friday podcast is gone? Nothing will
Speaker 2: change with this podcast. We will continue to do dive
Speaker 2: interviews and discussions on all sorts of different golf topics. So,
Speaker 2: without further ado, here is Joe Bousch and Mike Serba
Speaker 2: talking about their restoration efforts at Cobbs Creek.
Speaker 5: Enjoy the Frida egg requires a different technique. What you
Speaker 5: need to do is actually square the face, so they'll
Speaker 5: dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball
Speaker 5: right out onto the green.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Playing out of a buried lion of
Speaker 2: bunker is completely different than playing out of a nice
Speaker 2: clean lion of Greenside Bunker. You need to be aggressive
Speaker 2: on any show, whether it's sitting cleanly or its Friday Egg.
Speaker 3: Well, we've all faced it, the dreaded Frida egg. It's
Speaker 3: not to be feared though. It's actually a pretty easy
Speaker 3: shot to hit.
Speaker 1: Joe and Mike, welcome on, Thanks Andy, good to be
Speaker 1: here and having us.
Speaker 2: So, Mike, I think jumping off. I think the place
Speaker 2: we should start is kind of the history of Cobbs
Speaker 2: Creek and it's significance in Philadelphia golf. So how did
Speaker 2: Cobbs Creek get started?
Speaker 3: Sure, so, for about ten years, the Golf Association of
Speaker 3: Philadelphia had been trying to work with the City of
Speaker 3: Philadelphia to allocate somewhere in the public park system for
Speaker 3: a public golf course. And it was well behind other
Speaker 3: cities like New York and Chicago in terms of adapting
Speaker 3: to a public golf course for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 3: And eventually the city acquired land in the northwest corner
Speaker 3: of the city that became the Cops Creek Park, and
Speaker 3: I guess the Golf Association of Philadelphia folks found an
Speaker 3: opportunity seeing the property and there was actually a scouting
Speaker 3: group of Golf Association of Philadelphia folks who included Hugh
Speaker 3: Wilson of Maryon Fame, and they identified this property as
Speaker 3: something that they thought would be, in their words, ideal
Speaker 3: for a golf course. That was about nineteen thirteen. It
Speaker 3: took another three years or two years actually of wrangling
Speaker 3: to get the city to agree to utilize this property.
Speaker 3: So Robert Leslie, who was the president of the Golf
Speaker 3: Association of Philadelphia at the time, appointed a committee of
Speaker 3: a number of luminaries from the Philadelphia area. That included
Speaker 3: Hugh Wilson, that included George Crump of Pine Valley, that
Speaker 3: included ab Smith, who was at that time a two
Speaker 3: time Philadelphia Amateur champion, and two others. These were all
Speaker 3: men who had experience in designing and construction and maintenance
Speaker 3: of golf courses at their own clubs. They set to
Speaker 3: work in early nineteen fifteen, had multiple layouts. They were
Speaker 3: confined with the fact that the city Philadelphia would not
Speaker 3: let them remove any trees, so they had to route
Speaker 3: the golf course in an exceptionally creative way to derive what,
Speaker 3: at the time it was opened in nineteen sixteen was
Speaker 3: generally accepted as probably the best public golf course in
Speaker 3: the country. That was evidenced as well very quickly by
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty eight when the US PUBLNX tournament was held here.
Speaker 3: Cops Creek was an exceptionally difficult golf course from the start.
Speaker 3: It was built by the same men who designed Marion
Speaker 3: East and Pine Valley, and they built it with the
Speaker 3: idea that Philadelphia was really getting their butts kicked in
Speaker 3: inner city championships both at Chicago and Boston and New York.
Speaker 2: There was that Leslie Cup which was named after mister
Speaker 2: Leslie that was involved in what was it? It was
Speaker 2: Boston versus New York versus Philadelphia, and that was with
Speaker 2: Tilling played in it and not Flynn, but Hugh Wilson
Speaker 2: played in it.
Speaker 3: That's correct, right, And so the general idea in Philadelphia
Speaker 3: spurred by men like Killing Hast writing about it and others.
Speaker 3: It was one of the major reasons Philadelphia did not
Speaker 3: compete well is they had no great golf course to
Speaker 3: develop great players. So the idea became when they built
Speaker 3: Cops Creek to build an exceptionally challenging golf course, and
Speaker 3: because of the natural advantages of the property itself, that
Speaker 3: was really not a very difficult thing to do. It's
Speaker 3: this place.
Speaker 2: Having we just walked it and walked around the original routing,
Speaker 2: it really embodied. It has a lot of the characteristics
Speaker 2: of the great Philadelphia country clubs. This you know, rolling
Speaker 2: dramatic brawnie topography and some natural creeks and natural land
Speaker 2: movement that's used so well, and it's it's something that
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of public and municipal golf across
Speaker 2: the country, there aren't many places that have a great
Speaker 2: piece of property like this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's so well utilized. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that is nice to know, given the original intent
Speaker 3: of the founders, is that it really did develop champions
Speaker 3: here over time. So in an Italian immigrant by the
Speaker 3: name of Joe Coble, this is the true Rocky story,
Speaker 3: only it happened in golf. He came and took a
Speaker 3: job down by the sixty ninth Street station adjacent here
Speaker 3: in a restaurant and would work all night long so
Speaker 3: that he could come here first thing in the morning
Speaker 3: and practice. Cobol developed over time to become the US
Speaker 3: Publics champion in nineteen twenty four and then become a
Speaker 3: professional and won the Philadelphia the Philadelphia PGA basically a
Speaker 3: couple of years later. Also, one of the things that's
Speaker 3: very noteworthy about the golf course is, unlike most cities
Speaker 3: in the country, Cub's Creek was inclusive from the very
Speaker 3: beginning for all races, all genders, and that led to
Speaker 3: the development of people like Charlie Sifford, who, when he
Speaker 3: came here in the nineteen forties to live with his
Speaker 3: uncle from North Carolina, was just shocked to find whites
Speaker 3: and blacks playing together out here. So he naturally gravitated
Speaker 3: here and really learned the game here in his own words,
Speaker 3: and eventually became the Charlie Sifford, you know, we all
Speaker 3: know who went on to be a successful tour player.
Speaker 3: So there's that kind of history here associated with the property.
Speaker 3: The golf course itself hosted three or four what was
Speaker 3: known National Negro opens because there were very limited places
Speaker 3: for them to play, but Cobs Creek was always a
Speaker 3: place for that kind of inclusivity.
Speaker 2: The proximity to the metro area, to the city, and
Speaker 2: it was wildly popular upon opening, correct and I imagine
Speaker 2: it had a profound effect on expanding the game and
Speaker 2: the public game in the city. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: one of the greatest golf cities in the country and
Speaker 2: the world. Did you know, beyond just the inclusivity, how
Speaker 2: popular was it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely what we've both found with this project when we
Speaker 4: go around and we meet particularly older people that are
Speaker 4: members of private clubs here, a number of them that
Speaker 4: have come to us and said, we learned to play
Speaker 4: golf at Cobbs Creek. If we had a dollar for
Speaker 4: everyone that told us that, we'd have a couple thousand
Speaker 4: dollars easily.
Speaker 3: That's great. At its peak, this golf course was hosting
Speaker 3: eighty five thousand people rounds a year. It was similar
Speaker 3: to what you hear the stories of bed Page of
Speaker 3: people parking their cars at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3: People would begin lining up their bags here at three
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning to play on weekends. And just
Speaker 3: the amazing amount of traffic that came through this place
Speaker 3: over the years was pretty astounding as we learned about it.
Speaker 2: So the project, I mean, so the golf course is
Speaker 2: this great golf course, and obviously a lot of golf
Speaker 2: courses had troubles when you know, the Great Depression hit
Speaker 2: and then later the World War two, was a really
Speaker 2: tough time for all types of golf courses.
Speaker 4: The big change here happened, and Mike is I've dug
Speaker 4: up most of these facts. He's better at remembering all
Speaker 4: the details. But the big change happened in the early
Speaker 4: fifties when, and we don't know exactly why this happened,
Speaker 4: but the city of Philadelphia allowed one of these US
Speaker 4: Army anti aircraft bases to move from the Upper Derby
Speaker 4: area and they moved it onto the golf course. And
Speaker 4: by moving that onto the golf course, it changed one
Speaker 4: of the golf holes dramatically, and they basically had to
Speaker 4: reconfigure the golf course as a result, and that changed
Speaker 4: the golf course. It's still a very good golf course
Speaker 4: as it is, but as you've seen by walking it today,
Speaker 4: and we've only the way it used to be, the
Speaker 4: original routing was superior.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It basically the Army ended up taking about fifteen
Speaker 3: percent of the property of the original golf course that
Speaker 3: today and they occupied that land for about six years
Speaker 3: between nineteen fifty three and by nineteen fifty eight had
Speaker 3: moved out. But I think the city by that time
Speaker 3: had other priorities than restoring the original golf course, and
Speaker 3: you know, it was cleverly reconfigured at the time, but
Speaker 3: it was significantly narrowed. So as you saw today, there's
Speaker 3: areas that were a single wide bold fairway that became
Speaker 3: two holes and got the course kind of got squeezed
Speaker 3: in over time, and six of the most dramatic holes
Speaker 3: were negatively affected. And as we started looking at this
Speaker 3: a few years ago, what really, what really triggered some
Speaker 3: of our interests in this was we had always known
Speaker 3: that or heard that Hugh Wilson was involved in the
Speaker 3: design here, and given that his you know, being famous Philadelphians,
Speaker 3: the designer of Marion, and have designed very few golf
Speaker 3: courses in his life, the idea that understanding what the
Speaker 3: original routing may have been was always a curiosity to me.
Speaker 3: So at one point I sent a query to the
Speaker 3: Hagley Museum in Delaware, and they have the Dalln Aerial
Speaker 3: collection of photographs from the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: and I asked that this is back in the fall
Speaker 3: of two thousand and seven, I asked them if they
Speaker 3: had anything on Cobbs Creek, and I didn't get a
Speaker 3: reply for about six weeks and I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe they're busy, or maybe there's another way I should
Speaker 3: maybe go down there. And one day my email pops
Speaker 3: up eight aerial photos from nineteen twenty seven, I think
Speaker 3: to nineteen thirty nine, and what was indicative in those
Speaker 3: photographs was that all of the greens that exist today
Speaker 3: were in existence back then, even in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 3: but it was obvious that the holes were configured differently,
Speaker 3: and today what is a driving range on CityLine Avenue
Speaker 3: looked to be part of the original golf course. So
Speaker 3: at the time I started a thread on golf club
Speaker 3: at lists just saying, hey, I have these photographs and
Speaker 3: this thing looks restorable if anybody ever wanted to do it,
Speaker 3: And we were kind of young and naive about what
Speaker 3: that would require or what that would take, and why
Speaker 3: wouldn't they do it? Because it makes sense it would
Speaker 3: be a better golf course, and a lot of people
Speaker 3: like Joe started jumping in and actually doing the legwork
Speaker 3: and the research associated. So Joe, maybe you want to
Speaker 3: talk about some of what you were able to dig
Speaker 3: up over that time.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it would also be great. You guys
Speaker 2: are just you know two normal guys with regular jobs
Speaker 2: that love golf.
Speaker 4: Right, yes, yeah, it was that fall of two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven on golf Club at Lists. I had joined
Speaker 4: that site maybe a few months prior, and when I
Speaker 4: got onto the site and I said, yoh, I played
Speaker 4: Cops Creek and that's how a bunch of people from
Speaker 4: that I then reach out to me and said we
Speaker 4: love that place. And this led to Mike ordering these
Speaker 4: dollar areials and when he got those and we were
Speaker 4: still wondering how did the course really run well? I
Speaker 4: walked over to our library at Villanova spoke to one
Speaker 4: of the research people and said, helped me out here.
Speaker 4: I want to know when Cops Creak open and where
Speaker 4: can I learn more about it? Were at that time
Speaker 4: this America's Historical's new Papers had come on board, so
Speaker 4: they had select newspapers, particularly the Philadelphia Inquirer all the
Speaker 4: way up to nineteen twenty two that I could search electronically.
Speaker 4: And one night I start searching and there it is
Speaker 4: like nineteen fifteen Philadelphia Enquirer has got a picture showing
Speaker 4: you what the original routing was. And we were able
Speaker 4: to connect the dots and then further research when I
Speaker 4: started doing it and learning who all these important people
Speaker 4: were that made this project happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was. It was really a very neat
Speaker 3: iterative process because we watched this thing unfold in real
Speaker 3: time kind of as the research was done and it
Speaker 3: got posted to goth Clabalis, so one fact and overturning
Speaker 3: one stone, would you know, five other lizards would scurry out.
Speaker 3: That would be other trails to dig up, and you
Speaker 3: know the people involved. So really it was a design
Speaker 3: by committee is what we learned. And the committee was
Speaker 3: just so we kind of lay it out. It was
Speaker 3: Hugh Wilson, It was George Crump at Pine Valley. It
Speaker 3: was Ab Smith, who was a two time Philadelphia amateur champion.
Speaker 3: It was George Clotter, who had done a lot of
Speaker 3: work with Tilling Has to ironom Ink. It was Franklin Mehan,
Speaker 3: whose family really was responsible for the Fairmount Park system
Speaker 3: in the city of Philadelphia and who was an agronomy expert.
Speaker 3: Tilling has kind of spurring this on in the newspaper,
Speaker 3: and then while the course was being built, people like
Speaker 3: George Thomas later wrote that he learned a lot as
Speaker 3: an architect from Hugh Wilson. Watching him build the city
Speaker 3: course at Philadelphia. People like Walter Travis came here because
Speaker 3: they were working with George Crump over at Pine Valley
Speaker 3: and come here and offer suggestions. So it was really
Speaker 3: this melting pot of ideas of all these people we
Speaker 3: now know as kind of giants in the architectural history
Speaker 3: of the game in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the most fascinating things about
Speaker 2: This is something in America that has often complained about
Speaker 2: with you know, the majority of golfers, is how inaccessible
Speaker 2: so much of the great architecture and how hard it
Speaker 2: is to see the great work from a Tilling hast
Speaker 2: of Flynn or a you know Cromp or Hugh Wilson
Speaker 2: or Walter Travis. Most of their great golf courses are
Speaker 2: are exclusive and not available. And here at at Cobbs
Speaker 2: Creek is an example of a golf course where you
Speaker 2: can come see you know, the great architecture of the
Speaker 2: of that time and some of the greatest architecture architects
Speaker 2: I've ever lived.
Speaker 3: Sure, Andy, and you've referred to you know, William Flynn
Speaker 3: later and at the time Flynn was the superintendent at
Speaker 3: Mary And under you know Hugh Wilson is the green
Speaker 3: as the green chairman, and you will Joe's research also
Speaker 3: indicated that, you know, William Flynn is the one who
Speaker 3: built out all the greens here. And you know you
Speaker 3: had noted as we walked the golf course that his
Speaker 3: use of landforms in directing angles and creating interesting predicaments
Speaker 3: is really an evidence out there.
Speaker 2: So you guys have done all this fact finding. You know,
Speaker 2: you're uncovering all this information about the golf course. How
Speaker 2: did the restoration process work with starting to begin a
Speaker 2: conversation with the city, What did you know kind of
Speaker 2: what were the first steps and the different things that
Speaker 2: went into that portion of the project.
Speaker 4: Oh, maybe begin this and then Mike can take it
Speaker 4: from there. Basically not just doing some electronic searches from
Speaker 4: a database, but also at the Villanova Library they showed
Speaker 4: me all these microfilm reels for the Philadelphia Public Ledger,
Speaker 4: which was one of the biggest newspapers in the country,
Speaker 4: and I spent many weekends just going through issue after issue,
Speaker 4: finding anything I could on Cobbs Creek and learning about this.
Speaker 4: This then learn turned to going down to the Free
Speaker 4: Library of Philadelphia and spending many weekends there to where
Speaker 4: I gathered so much data on cobbs and little tentacles
Speaker 4: that came from that sharing these with Mike and others.
Speaker 4: Mike then basically said, we need to put this together
Speaker 4: just in something that's organized and who knows what comes
Speaker 4: of it, and I'll let him go from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So my background is in journalism originally, and so
Speaker 3: I just looked at this, all these stories Joe was uncovering,
Speaker 3: and I thought, this really needs to be put together
Speaker 3: in some kind of narrative form that tells chronologically the history,
Speaker 3: even going back to the late eighteen nineties at the
Speaker 3: first attempts of Golf Association Philadelphia to get the city
Speaker 3: to create or allocate land for a golf course. So
Speaker 3: there was all this The story really told itself through
Speaker 3: this series of articles going from say eighteen nineties to
Speaker 3: the frustration of the early nineteen tens, where people like
Speaker 3: tilling Has would say wrote, you know, let us let
Speaker 3: us be uh, I forget what the exact term was,
Speaker 3: but let us build of course for men of slender purses.
Speaker 3: I think was his analogy, right, so that they can
Speaker 3: be men. Indeed was you know, he was a very
Speaker 3: florid writer and.
Speaker 2: Some great way with words.
Speaker 3: Right, So I thought, if I can just put a
Speaker 3: narrative around all this stuff that Joe has found, and
Speaker 3: we can get this into the hands of some people,
Speaker 3: why wouldn't they do this? Was our somewhat naive thought, right,
Speaker 3: because there's all of this is recoverable and it really
Speaker 3: shouldn't be a lot of money, and what year about
Speaker 3: is this? So when we started putting the book together,
Speaker 3: it was two thousand and seven, and then in two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight. In early two thousand and eight, a
Speaker 3: local sports writer here, Joe Logan, was able to get
Speaker 3: us an audience with the Fairmount Park Commission at the time,
Speaker 3: who was running the golf course, and we went and
Speaker 3: we presented our ideas to them at that time, and
Speaker 3: Joe thought we'd be thrown out of the meeting room
Speaker 3: in about five minutes. And when that didn't happen, it
Speaker 3: led to some encouragement of We were basically told, if
Speaker 3: you guys raised the money to do it, we don't
Speaker 3: really have any specific objections to it at this time. Well,
Speaker 3: that was encouraging, but Joe and I are both public golfers.
Speaker 3: We're both public gofers forever. We both have day jobs.
Speaker 3: This is not what we do, and we don't run
Speaker 3: in the circles of people who have the investment money
Speaker 3: to do that kind of thing. So that's when I
Speaker 3: started putting together this book over that time period, and
Speaker 3: we ended up presenting to the golf course management company
Speaker 3: at that time our idea shortly after that, and we
Speaker 3: also at the time I got I had Jim Wagner
Speaker 3: and Gil Hans both come out here, Jim first, because Jim,
Speaker 3: Jim I've known for a number of years in gill
Speaker 3: as well, and Jim is definitely a guy who will
Speaker 3: tell you if you're full of it, and and I
Speaker 3: had no qualm. I thought, all right, we all think
Speaker 3: we see the value here. Maybe I can have him
Speaker 3: meet us out here and we'll walk around and see
Speaker 3: what he thinks. And you know, Jim was real. He
Speaker 3: was a little hesitant off for an opinion as we're
Speaker 3: going and I'm get a little more nervous, and then
Speaker 3: we start walking up this hill of the original sixth
Speaker 3: hole and he utters kind of the first valuation of
Speaker 3: what he's seeing and he says it's a little like
Speaker 3: eighteen at Riviera. So I'm thinking at that point well,
Speaker 3: maybe you know we're okay.
Speaker 2: In eighteen at Riviera at Riviera designed by George Thomas,
Speaker 2: a guy that was involved with this project, which is fascinating, right.
Speaker 3: So we you know, we continue on through the course
Speaker 3: and later on I said we were walking up the
Speaker 3: original eleventh hole which is today fifteen or the latter
Speaker 3: half of the hole is, and I said, Jim, are
Speaker 3: we are we nuts? And he said, nah, you guys
Speaker 3: aren't nuts. So I thought that was that was as
Speaker 3: good as it was going to get right with Jim.
Speaker 3: And we later brought Gill out here and he Gil
Speaker 3: had done work pro bono. You know, the courses had
Speaker 3: a historic problem with some the Cops Creek running through here.
Speaker 3: It's led to some flooding issues over time, and parts
Speaker 3: of the third and fourth greens had washed away, and
Speaker 3: Gil would come out here on his tractor and just
Speaker 3: rebuild them without just simply for the good of the game.
Speaker 3: So from our perspective, Gil and Jim always had write
Speaker 3: a first refusal on anything that was ever done here.
Speaker 3: We we went to the management company and some of
Speaker 3: the executives of that company and presented this great history
Speaker 3: and did a point slide in the old Cops Creek
Speaker 3: clubhouse that sadly burned down about two winters ago, and
Speaker 3: and we thought, wow, we really nailed it. And we
Speaker 3: got kind of from them like, well, if you want
Speaker 3: to maybe kind of try to build the TPC of
Speaker 3: Cops Creek out here, you know, maybe we'd be interested
Speaker 3: in doing something like that. That's not what our intent was, right, So, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wouldn't be the letters. I would choose poor
Speaker 2: Cops Creak.
Speaker 3: Right right. So, so I remember being in the parking
Speaker 3: lot afterward, and Jim Wagner comes up to me and
Speaker 3: I'm very discouraged. I'm thinking that's it, this is dead.
Speaker 3: And he says, basically, screw these guys. He says, you know,
Speaker 3: like find somebody who shares your vision and has money
Speaker 3: and is willing to fund it. Well, little do we
Speaker 3: know at the time there was some under things going
Speaker 3: on where that winner, or maybe it was the next winner.
Speaker 3: But our book got in the hands of the CEO
Speaker 3: of the manage company, and he was a longtime friend
Speaker 3: of a fellow named Chris Lang, who's a longtime great
Speaker 3: amateur player, probably, along with Jay Siegel, the two best
Speaker 3: amateurs to come out of Philadelphia. In the last fifty years,
Speaker 3: he's played in multiple Senior opens, won the Travis Cup.
Speaker 3: And we didn't know Chris, but Chris ran in circles
Speaker 3: that we don't run in, right, So so that was
Speaker 3: a good thing. Well. Anyway, Peter Hill was playing golf
Speaker 3: with with Chris Lang in Florida at a place called
Speaker 3: the Hideout and they had been roommates at Georgetown, and
Speaker 3: Peter Hill mentioned to Chris, hey, if you ever do
Speaker 3: you ever know those guys who were trying to do
Speaker 3: something at Cops Creek and gave Chris a copy of
Speaker 3: our book. We met Chris a couple of weeks later
Speaker 3: in the in the old Clubhouse and Chris said, he said,
Speaker 3: so I got this book and I started reading it
Speaker 3: and I read the whole thing over two nights, and
Speaker 3: I think we got to do this. So he got
Speaker 3: inspired at that time, and you know, we sat down
Speaker 3: and started talking talking about potential funding. This is again
Speaker 3: now nine ten years ago, and so we're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 3: if we get funding, the rest of this should be
Speaker 3: very easy to do. Not so much so, I think
Speaker 3: I think we've had multiple ups and downs through multiple
Speaker 3: administrations in Philadelphia. Even those administrations who were all proponents
Speaker 3: of it. Somehow we never had any ability to grease
Speaker 3: the skids of progress or or know how to operate
Speaker 3: the mechanisms. So even Chris and his and his group,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's it was hard to penetrate
Speaker 3: what the politics are in the city of Philadelphia and
Speaker 3: how to make that happen.
Speaker 2: I imagine with it crossing over. So you know, just
Speaker 2: for a timeline sense, how many years ago was it
Speaker 2: from when you had kind of everything kind of in
Speaker 2: place to.
Speaker 4: Where we are today, eight or nine probably eight or
Speaker 4: nine years.
Speaker 2: Yes, is there any moments that stick out where like
Speaker 2: you were really just gutted at the most gutted or
Speaker 2: was it after that deep at the meeting where they
Speaker 2: suggested maybe if it was the TPC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think I think this has been an
Speaker 3: emotional roller coaster at all kinds of various times. We
Speaker 3: thought at times that wow, if the city doesn't do
Speaker 3: this in conjunction with the twenty thirteen US open at
Speaker 3: Marion and see the value in that convergence of activity,
Speaker 3: then we're probably never going to happen. But at that time,
Speaker 3: I mean the Golf channel Macanela did a feature on
Speaker 3: US during that US open and we thought that could
Speaker 3: spur people will see this and get excited about doing it.
Speaker 3: And then it.
Speaker 4: Just we just found that there is a long process
Speaker 4: that you have to go through to make a change
Speaker 4: like this in the city of Philadelphia, and that's understandable.
Speaker 4: And it took quite a while, and we got more
Speaker 4: people on board and particular one person that has really
Speaker 4: made this happen. And yeah, we we don't we maybe
Speaker 4: you know he's he's sort of staying under the radar
Speaker 4: right now, but we we got a very key person
Speaker 4: in place that had the doggedness, the persistence and the
Speaker 4: knowledge to know how to work the dealings in the
Speaker 4: city of Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's a great news. Was about a month and
Speaker 2: a half ago or two months ago, I'm losing track
Speaker 2: in June June, June, two three months ago. Now time
Speaker 2: is flying. What are the future plans and the kind
Speaker 2: of the timeline around them.
Speaker 3: So so Gill and Jim years ago had had put
Speaker 3: together a master plan pro bono. They also worked with
Speaker 3: a group who does waterway restoration and called Land Studies
Speaker 3: and designing basically a one down to the one foot
Speaker 3: level plan detailed plan of how to converge the creek
Speaker 3: restoration plan with the golf course restoration plan, and again
Speaker 3: have done all of that work pro bono. So that
Speaker 3: was great and we've had that plan in place for
Speaker 3: a number of years. They also looked at the second
Speaker 3: eighteen hole golf course on the property and there's some
Speaker 3: great land forms up on the other end, and Jim
Speaker 3: was I remember, I was so surprised because that golf
Speaker 3: course is not of any great repute, right, And when
Speaker 3: we first took Jim up there, he was just eyes
Speaker 3: wide open and saying, this is amazing out here, and
Speaker 3: he was as excited for that part of the property
Speaker 3: as this. So, but there's also low lying holes on
Speaker 3: that that really are best probably turned back to wetlands.
Speaker 3: And they came up with what was, you know, a
Speaker 3: restoration in the original eighteen hole golf course as well
Speaker 3: as taking that great land and utilizing that in an
Speaker 3: original nine hole design, but then letting some of the
Speaker 3: rest of it go back to nature or or help
Speaker 3: with the water mitigation issues around the property. So that
Speaker 3: plan has been in place and largely unchanged for a while.
Speaker 3: I'm sure as we get into the detailed permitting there.
Speaker 3: You know, there may be some revisions to that, but
Speaker 3: really the next steps now are I think, you know,
Speaker 3: there's the group who are and we're not part of,
Speaker 3: thankfully because we just smuck it up. But there's the
Speaker 3: you know, the group that's negotiating those final details of
Speaker 3: the least with the city that that they're getting the
Speaker 3: finalize and tees done and and then the really the
Speaker 3: permitting process would begin. You know, we would like to
Speaker 3: see this today. I joke with people, have you know,
Speaker 3: just hit my sixtieth birthday that I'm hoping to play
Speaker 3: those original golf holds while I can still hit the
Speaker 3: ball one hundred and fifty yards. But you know, I
Speaker 3: think that I think things are now on the on
Speaker 3: the progress side, right. I think I think this lease
Speaker 3: will get done shortly. I think that the permitting process,
Speaker 3: there's already been a lot of groundwork happening to get
Speaker 3: that completed. You know, I don't know what the construction
Speaker 3: timetable would look like from Gill and Jim's perspective, whether
Speaker 3: they do it in stages, whether they do it all
Speaker 3: at once. Again, that's going to be, you know, their call.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping. I'm hoping to be able to play here
Speaker 3: in I don't know two years, but that's just my
Speaker 3: feel of it. Things play here under the you know,
Speaker 3: revision of the golf course. You have, what's your thought.
Speaker 4: On that, Joe, We've waited eleven years, So if it's
Speaker 4: two three, four years to make this happen and to
Speaker 4: get it done properly, I'm willing to wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah with it. You know, going into this plan, did
Speaker 2: you guys put together you know, financials, you guys formed
Speaker 2: a nonprofit, Friends of cop Crete Cops create. Did you
Speaker 2: go into the financials to really and did you have
Speaker 2: help to figure out how you could make everything work
Speaker 2: after the you know, the money spent, the restorations done,
Speaker 2: you have you know, the fee structure? How did that
Speaker 2: all work?
Speaker 3: So so there's two different entities, right. The first entity
Speaker 3: was just our informal group called Friends of Cops Creek,
Speaker 3: and we basically put up a website just to share
Speaker 3: information about the project. Joe. Joe created that website with
Speaker 3: help from Matt Frey and and that that site was
Speaker 3: really just to keep the public informed into and to
Speaker 3: continue to generate interest and potentially you know, financial help
Speaker 3: or any any of those type of things. There's also
Speaker 3: a foundation though that's been put together, uh five oh
Speaker 3: one three or five oh three c whatever the terminology
Speaker 3: is by the lawyers, right and and the lawyers are
Speaker 3: are friends of Chris and the other fellow who we
Speaker 3: mentioned who has a lot of in with the city.
Speaker 3: And you know that was to structure this in a
Speaker 3: way that took you know, Gill and Jim's construction budget,
Speaker 3: figured out what it would take to maintain that imperpetuity.
Speaker 3: And the deal is structured in such a way where
Speaker 3: it was a long term lease, with the idea that
Speaker 3: if we didn't have control of the monies that are
Speaker 3: generated to go back into the golf course, if they
Speaker 3: were just going back to the city to the general fund,
Speaker 3: this would not be a workable situation. So the city
Speaker 3: basically agreed to lease the property to the to the foundation,
Speaker 3: which was created for a dollar with no money coming
Speaker 3: back in. So the city still retains ownership of the
Speaker 3: almost four hundred acres that are out here, with the
Speaker 3: idea that the group is on the hook to put
Speaker 3: in twenty million dollars in capital investments, also on the
Speaker 3: hook for educational opportunities, for golf opportunities, for inner city residents,
Speaker 3: but also the first T programs. There's some discussion in
Speaker 3: the Golf Association Philadelphia move their headquarters here. That could
Speaker 3: create a synergy for other youth programs. We've talked to
Speaker 3: some of the universities, you know, Joe's at Villanova there
Speaker 3: seems to be interested in mentoring programs and other things
Speaker 3: that could be done out of the facility. And so
Speaker 3: I think, I think the opportunities for those kind of things,
Speaker 3: walking trails, greater integration with the community are really would
Speaker 3: benefit the city. And we eventually, after an hour and
Speaker 3: a half grilling in one subcommittee meeting, we eventually convinced
Speaker 3: them of that vision in a way that they saw
Speaker 3: the opportunities for more of a regional revival kind of
Speaker 3: stemming from this in an organic way than any direct
Speaker 3: payback to the city in terms of dollars from the
Speaker 3: golf operation.
Speaker 2: I mean, bringing it back, making it a hub for
Speaker 2: the community, which was it seems like, you know, from
Speaker 2: all the writings of the original intent really for the
Speaker 2: city of Philadelphia, for the residents, and making it just
Speaker 2: a great place to spend time, whether you're playing or not.
Speaker 2: It sounds like right. So in terms of you. You've
Speaker 2: referenced the book a little bit. Is there a way
Speaker 2: that people can get the book? Is it going to
Speaker 2: the website.
Speaker 4: Or the book is available online electronically they can read
Speaker 4: it at Pete Trenham's website. So I think we can
Speaker 4: put a link. So an early version of the Tome
Speaker 4: as we call it, because it's nearly four hundred pages
Speaker 4: now you can read online. But if someone wants a
Speaker 4: more recent version of that, they can go to the
Speaker 4: Friends of Covscreet Golf Course website. Contact me and I
Speaker 4: can make it happen.
Speaker 3: Right, And and you know, my wife is long suffering.
Speaker 3: And when I wrote that book, put that tog over
Speaker 3: the winter, it kept growing. I told Joe he has
Speaker 3: to stop doing researcher. I'm going to need like a
Speaker 3: marital attorney because I have. I had to keep adding
Speaker 3: to it. I think we're in like the twelfth revision now,
Speaker 3: and like I say, up to about four hundred pages
Speaker 3: of it's all great stuff. And you know, when when
Speaker 3: it's uncovered, it's like, oh man, we got to put
Speaker 3: this back in. I need another revision. But we we
Speaker 3: did it. We also created the book without a sale price. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't sell it anyway because all these articles,
Speaker 3: I never sourced them properly from a you know, from
Speaker 3: a uh term, you know, trademark or what the source was,
Speaker 3: because I just put together one of the USGA archive
Speaker 3: is when he was showing the book, said, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this is awesome, but it's like a trademark attorney's nightmare.
Speaker 3: So we never sold We never sold it. We just
Speaker 3: we just get our own copies made out of our
Speaker 3: own pocket and and and give it out.
Speaker 2: So, you know, the struggles of municipal golfer around the country,
Speaker 2: you know, there's struggles, there's success stories. This is a
Speaker 2: success story in the making. And I get a lot
Speaker 2: of emails from people that are asking, you know, and
Speaker 2: laying out situations at their municipal level, their golf course
Speaker 2: that might be closing in terms of you know, guys,
Speaker 2: to guys that have been through, you know, the whole process.
Speaker 2: What would be your advice to somebody that's looking at,
Speaker 2: you know, their municipal or public course and knowing that
Speaker 2: it might be something special from another time or could
Speaker 2: be something more how to go about the process, Where
Speaker 2: to start really and how to get to a stage
Speaker 2: where you're at now.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the history part is important, right, If
Speaker 4: you have to sell this to some people, you need
Speaker 4: to have something good to tell them, and we've had
Speaker 4: that in this project. There's so many good stories associated
Speaker 4: with this, and I think that's important. And I've had
Speaker 4: many people contact me about having similar ideas that they
Speaker 4: have in various cities, and you know, I try to
Speaker 4: tell them, Wow, are you are you ready for a
Speaker 4: long haul?
Speaker 3: Right? I think that's I think that's true, and I
Speaker 3: think there may be some things that are that were
Speaker 3: unique to this facility here in terms of how good
Speaker 3: the golf course was originally and how great the history
Speaker 3: was originally that helped this project along. But what I
Speaker 3: would say on a practical level is the cities aren't
Speaker 3: going to do it because they don't have the money
Speaker 3: and they have bigger priorities. So the only way effectively
Speaker 3: to do this, in my mind, is a model where
Speaker 3: there is an interested group from a public who can
Speaker 3: create a nonprofit who can get funding from you know,
Speaker 3: benefactors and donors who are interested in you know, either
Speaker 3: creating a legacy or preserving the golf course in a
Speaker 3: good way in perpetuity and then working with the city
Speaker 3: in a kind of arrangement that we have where where
Speaker 3: you know there is that it's a public private partnership
Speaker 3: is really what it comes down to. And I think moreover,
Speaker 3: if we talk about the future of golf, you know,
Speaker 3: over the last twenty years, there's been all these great
Speaker 3: resort places built out in the middle of nowhere, kind
Speaker 3: of in private clubs and resorts, right starting with like
Speaker 3: a sand Hills model out in the middle of Nebraska,
Speaker 3: somewhere abandoned dunes up on the coastline of Oregon. That's
Speaker 3: not what's going to save golf in the long term.
Speaker 3: If golf is to thrive, it has to reach where
Speaker 3: the population centers are and where the groups that have
Speaker 3: historically not had access to golf live. Right, I'm talking
Speaker 3: ethnic groups, I'm talking nationalities, I'm talking racial groups and cities.
Speaker 3: So golf needs to exist where the population centers are.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's had that history of the creation
Speaker 3: of municipal golf courses. It's had that history of so
Speaker 3: many of them being created during the Great Depression by
Speaker 3: w p A, labor and civilian conservation core work and
Speaker 3: other things. And those those still by and large exist.
Speaker 3: I kind of pride myself on when I go to
Speaker 3: a new city finding the oldest public golf course around
Speaker 3: or Muni Uni around and playing them. And I've played
Speaker 3: some pretty interesting places. But that that is really where
Speaker 3: I think golf needs to regenerate.
Speaker 2: Again, I completely agree, and I think the founding of
Speaker 2: this with it centered around this competitive golf landscape and
Speaker 2: the you know, wanting to create championship golfers. I talk
Speaker 2: about this all the time, is you know, the GAP
Speaker 2: is a is an example of an organization that really
Speaker 2: gets it when they play championships. They play the greatest
Speaker 2: courses in the city and the courses it's in their
Speaker 2: DNA to allow these championships to happen. And for kids,
Speaker 2: it's so important in developing the young golfers. If you
Speaker 2: you know, the great golfers come like, having exposure to
Speaker 2: grit golf is a great is a way for them
Speaker 2: to to get better and improve because it forces them
Speaker 2: to hit shots. You know, you walk around here and
Speaker 2: you see shots that you really know how have to
Speaker 2: know how to play the game well to pull off.
Speaker 2: And it teaches these kids and then when they get
Speaker 2: into their you know, these first USGA championships or whatever
Speaker 2: it may be. They're better prepared for what they might
Speaker 2: see at that next level. And then even just from
Speaker 2: the interest level, how interesting this golf is for a beginner,
Speaker 2: and the different challenges and the heroic things they have
Speaker 2: to come overcome, the decisions of whether to play the
Speaker 2: safe line or take the advantage, and whether they know it,
Speaker 2: you know, or not they consciously that they have to
Speaker 2: make these decisions. It creates better golfers that understand and
Speaker 2: appreciate the game more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would. I would say two things in that regard. First,
Speaker 3: you know, growing up as a lower middle income person myself,
Speaker 3: if I didn't have exposure to reasonable public golf, I
Speaker 3: hesitate to know where my life would have been if
Speaker 3: all the time I spent on golf courses over my
Speaker 3: life was spent in other endeavors, right, I don't think
Speaker 3: it would have been a good outcome. The second thing, though,
Speaker 3: is that I first had the opportunity to play here
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty one. I was living across the street
Speaker 3: with my roommate from college, and I was parking cars
Speaker 3: at the General Wayne Inn as a valet parker, and
Speaker 3: I came out here to play and immediately, even though
Speaker 3: you could tell it had been lost something over the years.
Speaker 3: You could kind of just feel the ghosts out here, right.
Speaker 3: So this place has so much aura in history, and
Speaker 3: I tell people when I come out here for a walk,
Speaker 3: I take twenty years off my life instantly, because I
Speaker 3: never get tired of walking around here and showing people things.
Speaker 3: It's just such an amazing place to know.
Speaker 2: This morning, it's about fifty seven degrees and it was
Speaker 2: a steady to rainfall, and I I didn't feel cold
Speaker 2: at all. I didn't I don't even have pants. The
Speaker 2: weather changed dramatically from the week. But I can testament
Speaker 2: like I've been tired because I've been walking all these
Speaker 2: golf courses and I felt like a kid out there today.
Speaker 2: I was running. I felt like I was running up
Speaker 2: the hills. You guys are both very well documented travelers,
Speaker 2: and you see a lot of golf courses at many
Speaker 2: different levels of conditioning. What if you were going to
Speaker 2: put together five gems, whether they're in Philly or outside
Speaker 2: of Philly, that are available to the public that people
Speaker 2: should go see when they're in a city or in
Speaker 2: the area. You know, what are your kind of five
Speaker 2: hidden gems?
Speaker 4: Each of you, Well, we want to stay sort of
Speaker 4: in the Philadelphia area of public courses.
Speaker 3: What do you want to do? I'm going to go
Speaker 3: further out because I maybe.
Speaker 2: Do three in Philly or two in Philly area outside
Speaker 2: of Cobbs, and then three anywhere.
Speaker 3: Okay. Wow.
Speaker 4: We get asked this a lot, and I usually don't
Speaker 4: answer this because I don't want to offend people by
Speaker 4: what I choose. What do we I would maybe I
Speaker 4: say this to say some people say how did you
Speaker 4: get into golf course architecture? Because I wasn't into it. It
Speaker 4: was in two thousand and seven I went out and
Speaker 4: played in a Scrone, which is about an hour way
Speaker 4: outside of Philly, Gil Hanson's first golf course, I think,
Speaker 4: and it was private and then things went sour and
Speaker 4: it became public and I played in a Scrown and
Speaker 4: that was when I had this aha moment. I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 4: this has some really edgy architecture. So one of my
Speaker 4: two courses in this area of public I would choose
Speaker 4: in a Scrown.
Speaker 3: Sure, and you know, there's some really good public courses,
Speaker 3: but I and some built in more modern times, but
Speaker 3: I'm always liked the traditional stuff, right, So I like Jeffersonville,
Speaker 3: which had a restoration a few years ago. I think
Speaker 3: it's just a great place to play where you know,
Speaker 3: everybody from a you know, little old lady can can
Speaker 3: roll the ball along the holes of old Donald Ross
Speaker 3: Course to to uh, you know, and it can. Yet
Speaker 3: the greens are so uniquely interesting that they can challenge,
Speaker 3: you know, the best players. There's a piece of property
Speaker 3: out in Berks County that you were at. Galen Hall
Speaker 3: is another just just fascinating golf course to play. Berkeley
Speaker 3: maybe doesn't have the the fine finish, but just the
Speaker 3: use of the land out there is terrific.
Speaker 4: Manor out there Andy which you visited, which doesn't really
Speaker 4: reach anybody's radar around here, but it's an old course
Speaker 4: designed by an architect that probably is underappreciated, Alex Finlay,
Speaker 4: and and you saw it. It's it's pretty darn good that.
Speaker 2: That place has stuff that you can't see anywhere else.
Speaker 2: And that's that's what I think is so fascinating about
Speaker 2: these golf courses is in particularly you know, you see
Speaker 2: it a little bit more with the older courses than
Speaker 2: the courses that were built you know during the mass
Speaker 2: production time. These courses like Galen Hall is a perfect example.
Speaker 2: Manor is another example. Like Galen Hall has stuff that
Speaker 2: you can't see anywhere else. Manor has stuff that you
Speaker 2: can't see anywhere else. I mean the start of manner,
Speaker 2: it's gonna uphill par four to like a punch full
Speaker 2: green with this big mountain. You're like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: a pretty cool, but like that's the right way to start,
Speaker 2: you know, Galen Hall's second hole I and cascades down
Speaker 2: this like one hundred foot drop to part five. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just something that would never get.
Speaker 4: Built in plane across a public road, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, both multiple times you play across roads out there.
Speaker 3: It's so even just tying that back to here, right.
Speaker 3: So I think the architects have then had the advantage
Speaker 3: and disadvantage of they didn't have large earth moving equipment,
Speaker 3: so if you were going to do a routing, you
Speaker 3: had to confront what was there. So today's you know,
Speaker 3: as we walked the golf course today, the first you know,
Speaker 3: five holes up along the creek and then we figure out, well,
Speaker 3: we're at the low point of the property. We probably
Speaker 3: need to get up on that hill somewhere. So what
Speaker 3: do they do they built what was the audacious at
Speaker 3: the time sixth hole, which had an eighty foot climb
Speaker 3: from the driving from the tea area up to the fairway,
Speaker 3: and that was the whole that you know. Interestingly, Jim
Speaker 3: Wagner tied back to the eighteenth at Riviera as we
Speaker 3: did the initial walk around here. So those guys weren't
Speaker 3: afraid to be audacious, and they weren't afraid to be bold,
Speaker 3: and they weren't afraid to call on the golfer to
Speaker 3: create to have a difficult shot. Fairness was not in
Speaker 3: their vocabulary right, and when you think back to the
Speaker 3: fact that they were playing golf with hickory shafted clubs
Speaker 3: at that time when this course was built, it's just
Speaker 3: an unimaginable challenge's I.
Speaker 2: Mean, fairness is one of the worst terms in golf.
Speaker 2: I think it just it's the beauty. Why golf is
Speaker 2: so great is for Tiger Woods as maddeningly as frustrated
Speaker 2: about golf as the person that just learned how to
Speaker 2: play yesterday, Like that is the beauty and the and
Speaker 2: essentially the ethos of golf and what makes everybody come
Speaker 2: back and come back If everything was fair and it
Speaker 2: was easy. Nobody would play the game like the game.
Speaker 2: The mystique of the game is that you always feel
Speaker 2: like you left shots out there or you're thinking about
Speaker 2: that one time, that one shot that you you know,
Speaker 2: if I could just do over this, Like how many
Speaker 2: times if somebody told you, you know, I shot seventy eight,
Speaker 2: but it should have been seventy four, could have easily
Speaker 2: been that, or could have you know, I shot ninety one,
Speaker 2: but it should have been eighty five.
Speaker 3: I even said that about Tiger watching him on television yesterday,
Speaker 3: I said he should have had thirty on that front,
Speaker 3: exactly thirty five.
Speaker 2: That is the beauty of golf. There's micro moments and
Speaker 2: this this place is it's just full of that drama
Speaker 2: and that you know, if you're a first time player
Speaker 2: walking around it. I mean, I was so excited to
Speaker 2: climb the hill and see what was over that hill
Speaker 2: and that you know, the you know, the opposition of
Speaker 2: blind shots. You know, in the modern era of architecture,
Speaker 2: that happened is like you know that that climbing, that
Speaker 2: unknowing of where it is is like one of the
Speaker 2: best feelings in golf.
Speaker 3: Yeah, golf, golf at its best should be about adventure
Speaker 3: and discovery, right, and discovery is is really oh, I
Speaker 3: didn't realize if I hit it over here and maybe
Speaker 3: challenge that even though it's a little more dangerous, then
Speaker 3: my next shot is is so much more. I have
Speaker 3: such a more advantageous angle. But the adventure part of
Speaker 3: it is still you know, this is still a game
Speaker 3: where guys were shepherds taking their you know, going down
Speaker 3: to the water and hitting the rock or whatever they
Speaker 3: hit originally along the way and trying to get it,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to defeat nature in whatever nature was
Speaker 3: that day, right, whether it was wind or rain or
Speaker 3: or whatever. And I think we've I think we've over
Speaker 3: homogenized golf in the effort to create purely sol you know,
Speaker 3: purely beautiful vistas and pure maintenance conditions wherever you blade
Speaker 3: of grass is uniform and even the roughs are uniform.
Speaker 3: I think the unpredictability and venture of golf is what
Speaker 3: is part of the natural, inherent attraction of the game.
Speaker 3: And I think in as golf progresses, I'm sensing a
Speaker 3: trend maybe back toward a more natural way of maintaining
Speaker 3: golf courses. Water restrictions and other things are going to
Speaker 3: force some of those issues over time. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I know Gill and Jim are very cognizant
Speaker 3: of those things. And I think what I'd like to
Speaker 3: see here over time is really gravity golf, you know,
Speaker 3: using all these interesting landforms in a way that the
Speaker 3: ball will roll the balls around for a reason. Right,
Speaker 3: And and so I think there's such opportunity out here.
Speaker 3: I get excited all the time I think about it.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to to let you guys off
Speaker 2: the hook. Alright, we need we need three more, three
Speaker 2: more gems non Philly gems, okay, and public public, Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 3: I'll start Mount Pleasant in Baltimore, Audubon Park in New Orleans.
Speaker 3: Oh good, there's a lot. There's a lot hard. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Those jump out a place called Bonneville in the hills
Speaker 3: foothills outside of Salt Lake City. They're all places that
Speaker 3: I would, you know, walk on and sling a bag
Speaker 3: with my shoulder and want to come off eighteen green.
Speaker 3: Go back to the first TA.
Speaker 4: Tough question. I haven't played as many courses as Mike,
Speaker 4: although I'm getting there. Mike's over eleven hundred now I'm
Speaker 4: probably about eight hundred. I grew up in Indiana and
Speaker 4: didn't get to play this course until about five years ago.
Speaker 4: But Donald Ross Course at French Lick is a resort.
Speaker 4: But the price tag actually isn't all that bad. It's
Speaker 4: probably eighty ninety bucks. It's absolutely outstanding. So if anyone's
Speaker 4: really wanting to see Donald Ross, I think at his best,
Speaker 4: which is taking a small piece of property and making
Speaker 4: it work, it's just excellent. Then maybe go modern and
Speaker 4: give some love to Gil Hans. The Black course at
Speaker 4: Streams Song is very aggressive. It's just hard to explain
Speaker 4: what's going on there. But I have a somewhat unusual
Speaker 4: way of judging golf courses in that I really love
Speaker 4: a golf course when after you hit the ball, it's
Speaker 4: rolling on the ground a long time. And the way
Speaker 4: that course is presented and designed, it really you can
Speaker 4: take advantage of the ground game. That's outstanding. What are
Speaker 4: we going to do here? Oh, my friend Matt Frye
Speaker 4: is sitting by here. Matt, you're gonna go to give
Speaker 4: me a third? What should it be? Let's let Matt
Speaker 4: put one in.
Speaker 6: The third course outside of Philly?
Speaker 2: Can I pick a defunct course? Uh?
Speaker 6: Tall grass out on long Island public golf course by
Speaker 6: Gil Hans was wonderful and I'm still very bummed that
Speaker 6: that place has since been shuttered in the past year
Speaker 6: or so. That's like Joe was saying when we played,
Speaker 6: it was firm and fast and you could let that
Speaker 6: ball run and roll out and uh, it's just a blast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was up in Boston
Speaker 3: this summer. I'm going to give a shout out to
Speaker 3: two places that had just fantastic restorations of two public
Speaker 3: golf courses. Right, So there's George Wright, which is the
Speaker 3: real Brownie Donald Ross golf course, But equally interesting is
Speaker 3: Franklin Park, which is just about six thousand yards maybe
Speaker 3: and just it has some of the neatest, most original
Speaker 3: golf holes you've ever seen. And recent efforts to get
Speaker 3: both of those golf courses back in a very good
Speaker 3: presentations has just made them joyful to play. I joke
Speaker 3: to people and I'm probably the only person in history
Speaker 3: to ever play in Myopia Hunt Club and George Wright
Speaker 3: on the same day. But I also joke to people
Speaker 3: and I said, and I also joke with people and
Speaker 3: I say, I'm probably the only person that ever played
Speaker 3: my Opia Hunt Club while staying at the Super eight
Speaker 3: in Brockton.
Speaker 2: But the I read a really good brag. Cline just
Speaker 2: wrote an article about Franklin Park and George Wright on
Speaker 2: Golf Advisor, and Mark Mundrum did the work there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: heard nothing but really great things about those two places.
Speaker 3: Terrific.
Speaker 2: So I gotta ask us thinking about this is you
Speaker 2: guys go at this for eleven years. You know, you
Speaker 2: get the news that has passed, you finally cleared the hump.
Speaker 2: What did you do to celebrate?
Speaker 4: Oh, we got on the school kill and set in
Speaker 4: traffic for about an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: Strangely enough, I mean did you get in the car
Speaker 2: and like was there just like like you know, like
Speaker 2: is there any kind of celebratory reaction?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, it was probably somewhat reserved because it's just
Speaker 4: been a long process and just getting it through the
Speaker 4: city council. You know, more stuff had to happen. It has.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we've we've celebrated. We hope to have a
Speaker 4: sort of a bigger event here sometimes, so.
Speaker 3: I've been I have a neat picture Joe found, which
Speaker 3: is Hugh Wilson and a few of the other luminaries.
Speaker 3: Ab Smith and looking at properties for the City of
Speaker 3: Philadelphia to fight a golf course, and they're all wearing
Speaker 3: these bowler hats. So my deal is I want to
Speaker 3: got a bowler hat. And at the time the actual
Speaker 3: construction starts, and I watched them start moving bulldozers down
Speaker 3: through where the driving range is. Today, the bowler is
Speaker 3: going on, and I think some champagne will be open
Speaker 3: at that time. Until that moment, I'm still in that
Speaker 3: reserve of pinch me when it happens.
Speaker 2: That's great. So we'll put in the I know there's
Speaker 2: an exhaustive thread on golf club battlests, so and a
Speaker 2: couple probably I'll put those links in there, and then
Speaker 2: you know, you got your website that people can find
Speaker 2: more about. Is there any other resources, anything else that
Speaker 2: you suggest for people that might want to learn more
Speaker 2: about everything that's happened outside of the book.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that's going to get created
Speaker 3: is a is a website particular to the project, and
Speaker 3: it's really going to be driven to people who want
Speaker 3: to help contribute financially and other things, but also being
Speaker 3: the i'll say it more controlled source of information of
Speaker 3: what you know, what the foundation wants to be able
Speaker 3: to share with the public around the around the project,
Speaker 3: but for anything on the history or how we got
Speaker 3: to this point, or the or the golf course itself,
Speaker 3: the architecture. Uh, you know, our friends at Cops Creek
Speaker 3: site still exists and we certainly want to link out
Speaker 3: to that and we enjoy the interchange with folks there too.
Speaker 4: And I would have to give a plug, but there's
Speaker 4: no advertising nothing. But in the process of doing on
Speaker 4: this research on Cobbs Creek, and I started talking to
Speaker 4: various people that I got to know. They started asking
Speaker 4: me about, well, did you find anything, Like I was
Speaker 4: talking to Tom Paul, a legend around this area. Ever
Speaker 4: see anything on you know, golf mills And it's like,
Speaker 4: I think I have. And then so ten years ago,
Speaker 4: basically anything on a Philadelphia golf on microfilm, I would
Speaker 4: scan it. So I have tens and thousands. Now I'm
Speaker 4: beginning to organize that and put it out into what's
Speaker 4: known as the Bouch Archives, which is on the Myphillygolf
Speaker 4: dot com site. And I think that is an exceptional
Speaker 4: site for anyone that wants to learn more about history
Speaker 4: of golf in the city of Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: I will definitely link out to that. Your archives are
Speaker 2: unbelievable and I personally have looked through hundreds of courses
Speaker 2: on his photo arch Joe's got photo archives and tours
Speaker 2: of what's hundreds of archives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what's been great actually is that Joe's research
Speaker 3: around clubs like even the private clubs like Marion and
Speaker 3: Pine Valley have really solidified what the history of those
Speaker 3: clubs actually was from an architectural standpoint and really provided
Speaker 3: the documentation of the real time. Im Tilling has wrote
Speaker 3: this series of articles that Joe found during the construction
Speaker 3: of Pine Valley originally that really just lay out so
Speaker 3: much information that sometimes I think what happened in a
Speaker 3: lot of these clubs is versus information just got lost
Speaker 3: over time or word of mouth kind of legends just
Speaker 3: sprung up that may or may not have been true.
Speaker 3: But to actually read the story in real time, Joe's
Speaker 3: site is invaluable for that type of information.
Speaker 2: That's great. So we got to do overrated under eight
Speaker 2: and then we're out of here, all right, all right,
Speaker 2: Philadelphia Golf, it's gonna be a.
Speaker 4: Layup underrated, underrated.
Speaker 2: Professional golf.
Speaker 3: Like the PGA Tour. It's about where it is. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's underrated or overrated. I think it's necessary
Speaker 3: to generate interest in the game. I don't like where
Speaker 3: some of it has gone in terms of technology and
Speaker 3: other things.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, I will echo those thoughts. I don't
Speaker 4: I'd love professional golf. My wife knows. If I could
Speaker 4: have a cable channel and I really watch as a
Speaker 4: golf channel, that's just about it. I'll watch any event
Speaker 4: on there. So, yeah, there's issues with professional golf. I
Speaker 4: don't know if anyone's gonna finally tackle sort of the
Speaker 4: ball and maybe roll back the ball or have a
Speaker 4: have a professional golf ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, And then I think you could not have to
Speaker 4: worry about maybe modifying some of these grand old courses,
Speaker 4: maybe even one around here that you know, you might
Speaker 4: say has been you know modified to you know, deal
Speaker 4: with professional golf. And I'm not so certain that that
Speaker 4: is the best for members.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one that they're playing this week, is
Speaker 2: you know, was restored four members, you know, and very
Speaker 2: faithful to what originally was there, and and we're seeing
Speaker 2: that it's just you know, it's one of the great
Speaker 2: championship courses of all time. You know, falling by the wayside,
Speaker 2: and it's it's a it's a fascinating topic. And obviously,
Speaker 2: when I think we're all, we're all sitting on one
Speaker 2: side of the fence, very far over here. So it's
Speaker 2: important to note that we're probably about as far on
Speaker 2: one end of the spectrum as we could get. But
Speaker 2: something the final, we're gonna go final, overrated, underrated. I've
Speaker 2: I've I've developed a massive affinity for this design feature.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of my flavor of the month where
Speaker 2: I just get obsessed with something. What do you guys
Speaker 2: think overrated? Underrated? Ditches on a golf course?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: I think ditches underrated? Some don't. Maybe just look think
Speaker 4: the word maybe kind of sounds elementary, but look look
Speaker 4: at look at Oakmont. Look well, Oakmont uses ditches right.
Speaker 3: And and I grew up on a lot of public
Speaker 3: courses where there wasn't a lot of effort meant to
Speaker 3: hide how they got water off of the golf course property.
Speaker 3: So ditches, right, they would be, they would be out
Speaker 3: there in evidence and you'd get the you know, you
Speaker 3: get your local rule and your scorecard that would either
Speaker 3: define them as a hazard or something else. But yeah,
Speaker 3: ditches are are necessary for water and and they're cool
Speaker 3: for a golf course feature properly done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think they got. We gotta change the name,
Speaker 2: come up with a new name that sounds very consequent,
Speaker 2: and yeah, you know, I like the wash idea, but
Speaker 2: we got I'm gonna think I'm going to think about
Speaker 2: a name. We can change the name too, because like, oh,
Speaker 2: come on, less us open they had, but they got
Speaker 2: like five inches of rain and they played the next
Speaker 2: day and I don't I don't remember. I can't remember
Speaker 2: if the ball was played up or down. It might
Speaker 2: have been played up in just the fairway, but I mean,
Speaker 2: five those ditches just went to work when that rain
Speaker 2: came down, right, And it's any place that's got some
Speaker 2: major drainage problems, you got to be looking at ditches
Speaker 2: because they can be really cool too. The strategy that
Speaker 2: got a strategic aspect of it. But guys, I thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing the story,
Speaker 2: but more importantly the eleven years of like blood, sweat
Speaker 2: and tears into hopefully getting the you know, getting one
Speaker 2: of America's greatest public municipal golf courses back to its
Speaker 2: stature as maybe the best in the in the country
Speaker 2: and and one of the best in the world.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It's it's our pleasure and we've
Speaker 3: we've really enjoyed talking with you today.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Andy, you've.
Speaker 2: Been listening to the Fried Egg podcast.
Speaker 3: We do the digging for you.