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Speaker 1: Now back to another edition of The Yoke with Doak.
Speaker 1: This is the second episode chronicling Tom's recent road trip
Speaker 1: across America all over the place. He went basically from
Speaker 1: Michigan due west, so I guess he wasn't up in
Speaker 1: the northeast. But a couple things we talk about. Of note,
Speaker 1: we talk about his new project upcoming at Dornic Hills,
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell's home course, and then as well as the
Speaker 1: news of his potential renovation of Sandpiper, a well known
Speaker 1: seaside public golf course in Santa Barbara. So those are
Speaker 1: two big projects that we talk about, and then we
Speaker 1: go to a slew of listener questions. So this this
Speaker 1: was a really good conversation. We're gonna have more. Tom
Speaker 1: has his audio equipment, we got it working this hour,
Speaker 1: So enjoy this podcast. I hope everybody has a happy holidays,
Speaker 1: and thanks as always for listening in the support. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I missed the green for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a brid Egg
Speaker 2: Friday Egg, the Dread and Frida, egg, Frida, egg, Frida
Speaker 2: egg egg, fridagg bride egg Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the home course.
Speaker 1: We're back, all right. So yeah, obviously huge news is
Speaker 1: uh Dorny Hills Perry Maxwell's home course Ardboor, Oklahoma. You've
Speaker 1: been hired to restore Dori Hills. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about that project.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure it's huge news, but it's fun.
Speaker 1: We're, you know, for a very Maxwell fanatic.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay. So so I keep saying, I keep saying
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sign up any more consulting clients,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm just passing all that on to
Speaker 2: my associates and to all these young guys that have
Speaker 2: worked for us, because you know, they need the work
Speaker 2: and I really don't. And and for the most part,
Speaker 2: I do that when you know, when somebody calls about
Speaker 2: something new, I I just push it off. So I
Speaker 2: had two calls to Spring for new stuff, new consulting
Speaker 2: stuff that I that I couldn't say no to. One
Speaker 2: was Cricket Stick. You know, it's just Pete Dies for
Speaker 2: a real big project. And you know, I spent a
Speaker 2: couple of days with Peter cricket stick over at the
Speaker 2: course of working for him over the years, and they,
Speaker 2: you know, once he had passed, they you know, I
Speaker 2: I knew several members and they reached out, you know,
Speaker 2: they were interviewing architects and would I want to interview
Speaker 2: for it. While you know normally I'm say a no
Speaker 2: to that kind of stuff, it was like, yeah, that
Speaker 2: one's special. I should go talk to them. And you
Speaker 2: know that is like, I'm not sure there's a lot
Speaker 2: to do there. You know, I've sort of given them
Speaker 2: a preliminary report, but I'm not sure. You know, eventually,
Speaker 2: I think they're going to have to rebuild their greens
Speaker 2: because of what's underneath them. But short of that, you know,
Speaker 2: we're not looking to do a lot of work there.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's a special place because it was
Speaker 2: one of mister Dye's first projects and he was so
Speaker 2: personally involved. And the same goes for Dorna Hills. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I had said in an interview somewhere years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd do that for free, help them restore
Speaker 2: the golf course. And you know I said that partly
Speaker 2: because I knew the club didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And you know, I figured that would at least make
Speaker 2: them think about it. And you know, it didn't go
Speaker 2: anywhere for a while. But but this past year they
Speaker 2: were getting ready to they're going to put in a
Speaker 2: new irrigation system, and one of the members said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, we should talk to this guy who said
Speaker 2: he might consider doing other stuff for free. Why don't
Speaker 2: we Why don't we give him a call? So they
Speaker 2: called me the spring and and said said, we, you know,
Speaker 2: we'd like to talk to you about that and the club.
Speaker 2: The club doesn't really have the money to do it,
Speaker 2: but but there might be a couple other ways to
Speaker 2: get some funding for it, So we'd like to at
Speaker 2: least talk to you about how much it would cost,
Speaker 2: and you know what we would have to raise in
Speaker 2: order to do it.
Speaker 1: So it just to be clear, would you say I'd
Speaker 1: do it for free? You know, I think that it's
Speaker 1: like it's still costs a lot of money, but you're
Speaker 1: you're waving your design fee.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm not going to build it for them for free.
Speaker 2: You know that would be very generous and cost me
Speaker 2: half my networth, But you know I did, Yes, I've
Speaker 2: offered to put my own time into it for free
Speaker 2: and and so they you know, so I went there
Speaker 2: in June my first my first trip post COVID. That
Speaker 2: was one of my first stops. Those were actually my
Speaker 2: first two Crooked Stick and then to Dorna Hills. And
Speaker 2: probably some of your listeners know the background, but most don't.
Speaker 2: Dornic Hills isn't just Perry Maxwell's first golf course. He
Speaker 2: and his wife bought that farm to build a golf course,
Speaker 2: you know, before he started thinking he was going to
Speaker 2: be a golf course architect as a career. They he
Speaker 2: just built that for his town that he lived in Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: to have a good golf course, and because his wife
Speaker 2: thought it would help him. You know, he had he
Speaker 2: had respiratory problems. That's one of the reasons they moved
Speaker 2: to Oklahoma, and she thought that golf would be better
Speaker 2: for his health long term than tennis, which he had played.
Speaker 2: And when she, you know, when she recommended that they
Speaker 2: like get involved building a golf course, he handed him
Speaker 2: an article about the National Golf Links of America and
Speaker 2: some some national magazine and you know, so Maxwell went
Speaker 2: and spend time with C. B. McDonald on Long Island
Speaker 2: to like learn about it. You know, he was Maxwell
Speaker 2: came into this as you know, he was the local
Speaker 2: banker in Ardmore, Oklahoma, so you know he wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: he had the kind of background that McDonald would pay
Speaker 2: him some attention. And you know, they spent a little
Speaker 2: time together and in uh Long Island. And then a
Speaker 2: year or two later, Maxwell went overseas at McDonald's suggestion,
Speaker 2: and that's how he met Alistair McKenzie for the first
Speaker 2: time when he was visiting Saint Andrews. McKenzie was there
Speaker 2: working on his map of the old course for the RNA,
Speaker 2: and you know, and then when and then when mackenzie
Speaker 2: came to the States three years after that to head
Speaker 2: to California and meet Robert Hunter, he stopped in Oklahoma
Speaker 2: on the way, and you know, made an agreement with
Speaker 2: Perry Maxwell to be one of his partners in America
Speaker 2: and and you know, consult on a couple of jobs
Speaker 2: that Maxwell already had going. Oklahoma City Country Club was
Speaker 2: one of those. But Dornet Kills pre dates his involvement
Speaker 2: with mackenzie. You know, he the first version of it
Speaker 2: only had four holes, and then he expanded it gradually
Speaker 2: to nine and then to eighteen holes in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties, and you know, it was a very personal
Speaker 2: thing for him and a very complicated piece of ground,
Speaker 2: you know, very interesting piece of ground, not like your
Speaker 2: normal you know, it's got a creek going through it
Speaker 2: that that floods occasionally. It's got a couple of major
Speaker 2: rockout croppings, including a a sharp little cliff that runs
Speaker 2: along the back nine is in play on one of
Speaker 2: the most famous holes, certainly the most famous hole on
Speaker 2: the golf course and one of the one of the
Speaker 2: most unusual holes that I've ever seen, the sixteenth which
Speaker 2: they call the cliff hole. But you know, in the
Speaker 2: in the late nineteen eighties or early nineteen nineties, I
Speaker 2: keep getting the date wrong, but somewhere in there, thirty
Speaker 2: some years ago, the club had fallen on hard times.
Speaker 2: You know, they were having trouble attracting members. They decided
Speaker 2: that one reason for that was people didn't like putting
Speaker 2: off greens, that some of Maxwell's greens were just too severe.
Speaker 2: Sounds like crystal downs, yeah, but crystal downs.
Speaker 1: In terms of putting off greens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, Maxwell built a lot of
Speaker 2: greens that you could put off of and if prairie
Speaker 2: dunes and crystal downs. That's a no K thing. But
Speaker 2: you know, the members of Dornick Hill said, just you know,
Speaker 2: there weren't too many people around connected with the golf
Speaker 2: course from way back at that point, and you know,
Speaker 2: they had a consultant telling them, you really need to
Speaker 2: rebuild this and make it more fair for people. So
Speaker 2: they went in and changed. You know, they rebuilt all
Speaker 2: the greens nine holes one year and then nine holes
Speaker 2: a few years after, which is really strange because one
Speaker 2: nine doesn't even look like the other in terms of
Speaker 2: the greens construction, and neither of them looked like Perry
Speaker 2: Maxwell's greens at all. And you know, so that's what
Speaker 2: they need to fix. And you know that's that's more
Speaker 2: complicated than redoing a bunch of bunkers. They you know,
Speaker 2: for two reasons. One, you have to close the golf
Speaker 2: course and rebuild the greens, and that costs a chunk
Speaker 2: of money. And two, they didn't really do a good
Speaker 2: job of recording what Maxwell's greens were before they dug
Speaker 2: them up. So you know, we can talk about how
Speaker 2: we want to restore them exactly the way they were,
Speaker 2: but I don't have a map of exactly the way
Speaker 2: they were other than Jeff Brower, who did the work
Speaker 2: on the back Nine as one of his early projects,
Speaker 2: sent me his plans for the golf course in the
Speaker 2: in the the you know, the the base map underneath
Speaker 2: is probably pretty close to the old greens in terms
Speaker 2: of how much fall there was on him. It may
Speaker 2: not be perfectly accurate, but it's the closest thing we've got,
Speaker 2: and it gives us it, you know, at least gives
Speaker 2: us a good idea of you know, the elevation of
Speaker 2: the green and how it tied in with everything around it,
Speaker 2: which would be really hard to do. You know, we've
Speaker 2: got good aerial photos of it, but looking at a
Speaker 2: black and white aerial photo doesn't tell you much about
Speaker 2: the contour of the greens.
Speaker 1: So what do you do when in that situation? What
Speaker 1: is it? Are you looking at it? Unless you find
Speaker 1: something that would tell you more. How do you go
Speaker 1: about you know, restoring a green? Is it looking at
Speaker 1: other Maxwell greens and trying to create a you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that he might have done, right.
Speaker 2: So that's the thing. I mean, I've always struggled with
Speaker 2: these kinds of projects because you know, there's there's tons
Speaker 2: of architects, young architects going around the country saying they're
Speaker 2: Donald Ross expert or a Thomas expert or a Maxwell
Speaker 2: expert or whatever, and that they could just you know,
Speaker 2: they know what that guy did, so they can build
Speaker 2: a set of Maxwell greens from scratch, even though the
Speaker 2: plans are long gone. And I'm just super skeptical of that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, because fifty years from now, some
Speaker 2: guy will say that about my golf courses. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I know how Tom built greens. I could go build
Speaker 2: a set of greens just like he would. And I
Speaker 2: try to do something different from one product to the next.
Speaker 2: And sometimes the idea for the green is Brian Schneider's
Speaker 2: or Eric's or somebody else's, and you know, we do
Speaker 2: everything kind of in the moment, on the inspiration that
Speaker 2: we've got for that particular day. It's not on the planet.
Speaker 2: And I think that a lot of the old time
Speaker 2: architects worked exactly the same way, you know, and they
Speaker 2: you know, they may have been there a lot, or
Speaker 2: they may have relied on other people to build that
Speaker 2: for them. I mean, Mackenzie certainly relied on Perry Maxwell
Speaker 2: to do that for him. At a place like Crystal
Speaker 2: Dad's where Mackenzie was only there three days during construction
Speaker 2: and Maxwell was there for two six month stints. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no question that Maxwell had more to do with
Speaker 2: building those greens than Mackenzie did. But so I don't
Speaker 2: have a plan for Dornic Kills. And you know, if
Speaker 2: the greens were somewhere close to what they were originally,
Speaker 2: I would say they will leave well enough alone. You know,
Speaker 2: since they're totally changed and they don't look like Maxwell's
Speaker 2: at all. I'll use the best information I can find
Speaker 2: and I'll use you know, one of the people that
Speaker 2: donating money to this thing. When Maxwell built all his
Speaker 2: golf courses, he hired his two brothers in law to
Speaker 2: be his construction team. One of them, Dean Woods, was
Speaker 2: an engineer before he got into golf construction. So the
Speaker 2: Woods brothers were the ones who went around and you know,
Speaker 2: they were at Crystal Downs all summer too, and they
Speaker 2: they're the ones who went to Pine Valley and rebuilt
Speaker 2: greens at Pine Valley and Marion in some of these
Speaker 2: other places. And one of the main donors to this
Speaker 2: project is Dean Woods's grandson, you know who grew up
Speaker 2: playing there, remembers the golf course from the fifties and
Speaker 2: sixties before it was changed. Now, anytime we're dealing with
Speaker 2: older guys and their memories, it's a little faulty, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean I've used I've done that on a lot
Speaker 2: of projects, where you'll talk to the old members and
Speaker 2: they'll be telling you dead on what you think one
Speaker 2: of the greens would look like, and then they'll start
Speaker 2: telling you about another hole and I'm sitting there looking
Speaker 2: at a picture of it. It's like, it wasn't that
Speaker 2: way at all. So so you have to take all
Speaker 2: of that with a grain of salt. But in this case,
Speaker 2: that's some of the best information I have to go on.
Speaker 2: And you know, sometimes you jog those guys' memories by
Speaker 2: just asking them questions about how it played, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: where could you not miss the green? You know? At
Speaker 2: raw Melbourne. The old club champion and his story and
Speaker 2: told me on the East course there was a green
Speaker 2: he used to try to make sure to miss it
Speaker 2: over the back instead of in front. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so that part of the green must have must have
Speaker 2: sloped off the back. That's why he was doing that
Speaker 2: even though he couldn't you know, he hadn't ever had
Speaker 2: a transit on the green to measure it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot sense. So so then it
Speaker 1: you know, be working with him and then you know,
Speaker 1: figuring out obviously some of this stuff going on and
Speaker 1: then making it feel like a cohesive set, especially if
Speaker 1: if the back nine, where you have the you know,
Speaker 1: some semblance of plans comes out in a you know,
Speaker 1: certain style right right right.
Speaker 2: And the other thing, you know, you you you probably
Speaker 2: couldn't if we had plans for all the eighteen greens
Speaker 2: the way they were originally, you probably couldn't build them
Speaker 2: all back to exactly like that because people would put
Speaker 2: off them all day again, you know, near as I
Speaker 2: can tell from the plans for the back nine, a
Speaker 2: couple of the greens had like seven feet a fall
Speaker 2: from back to front. Yeah. That the you know, well
Speaker 2: they're built into you know the I mean, it's your
Speaker 2: typical American country club from the setting. The clubhouse sits
Speaker 2: up on a ridge, you know, face in the valley
Speaker 2: where the stream goes through, and then the clip's actually
Speaker 2: on the far side looking back at the golf course,
Speaker 2: so you know you're playing a pretty steeply back up
Speaker 2: hill on both the ninth and eighteenth holes to get
Speaker 2: back to the clubhouse, and he just built greens into
Speaker 2: that steep slope so that you could see the see
Speaker 2: the surface of the green, and I'm sure they were
Speaker 2: like five or six percent.
Speaker 1: Just like so the routing in a way is kind
Speaker 1: of similar to like Southern hills where he's got the
Speaker 1: clubhouse up top and the course plays out and back
Speaker 1: up and out and back up. Let's see. I feel
Speaker 1: like he did that routing style a lot. Obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. You know, I haven't seen like
Speaker 2: nearly every Maxwell course. I've only seen a handful of them.
Speaker 2: And you know, some people would say, were you really
Speaker 2: the best guy to do this? And you know, certainly
Speaker 2: the price is right for them, But you know, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm the best guy. I'm the best guy only in
Speaker 2: the sense that I'm not I'm not trying to make
Speaker 2: my reputation off this, and I'm not you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to go in there and posture and pretend
Speaker 2: to be Maxwell. I'm just gonna try to do the
Speaker 2: best that we possibly can with the best shapers going
Speaker 2: and the experience that we have and some good people advising,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm confident that will work out pretty well.
Speaker 1: How does obviously, like Prairie Dunes is you know, a
Speaker 1: stand based site, but how does it compare in terms
Speaker 1: of properties to the Maxwells that you've seen. You've seen
Speaker 1: Old Town and and Prairie Dune, Southern Hills.
Speaker 2: Yes, a few. And you know it's funny that that
Speaker 2: quite a few of his. You know, even the little
Speaker 2: courses of his that I've seen in Oklahoma and Kansas,
Speaker 2: a lot of them are similar. They have a lot
Speaker 2: of them have a creek going through them. And you know,
Speaker 2: anytime you got a creek, you got two, you got
Speaker 2: hills on either side, kind of feeding creek. And you know,
Speaker 2: he started on one side, he used the creek in
Speaker 2: play on as many holes as he could figure out
Speaker 2: how to do it, and then everything else kind of
Speaker 2: bouncing off the hills on either side to get to
Speaker 2: eighteen holes. So, you know, a similar routing process probably.
Speaker 2: You know, Chris Klauser, who wrote the biography of Maxwell,
Speaker 2: tried to identify certain like template kinds of holes that
Speaker 2: he used, and certainly at Dornic Hills because he'd just
Speaker 2: been to the National Golflings of America and spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time with McDonald. There are at least a
Speaker 2: few things that Dorna kills, you could say are kind
Speaker 2: of template holes or at least inspired by something that
Speaker 2: he saw at the National. But there's not like a
Speaker 2: Radan hole and an alpshole, you know, not not the
Speaker 2: templates to that degree, but there's certain pieces that are
Speaker 2: kind of like, yeah, you know, I can see a
Speaker 2: resemblance there.
Speaker 1: And that'll be an exciting project to watch. Micah Pouschelle
Speaker 1: who he's a Santa Barbara resident, so you could guess
Speaker 1: what his his questions about. You know, your your Instagram
Speaker 1: posts about Sandpiper and you know, I know you you
Speaker 1: said to me that there wasn't you know, they were
Speaker 1: just talking. But curious about that that story. If you
Speaker 1: got anything you can share on it.
Speaker 2: So I saw Sandpiper a couple of times, like back
Speaker 2: in the eighties, and and I think I went over
Speaker 2: there once while we were working on the Valley Club.
Speaker 2: But Sandpiper got bought up like twelve or fourteen years
Speaker 2: ago now by Ty Warner, who also owns Montecito Country
Speaker 2: Club and a couple of the the really high end hotel.
Speaker 2: That's a baby guy, Yes he is. Ty Warner made
Speaker 2: you know, that was a private company, so he made
Speaker 2: all the profits from that for himself, which he did
Speaker 2: really well. By now he owns all the luxury properties
Speaker 2: in Santa Barbara as a result.
Speaker 1: Of it was like one of the most expensive places
Speaker 1: by property too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so you know, years ago, I was one
Speaker 2: of many architects that they had come in and like
Speaker 2: spend a couple of days and draw a potential plan
Speaker 2: for redesigning Sandpiper and and it was like one of
Speaker 2: the most frustrating routing exercises I've ever tried to do.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you look at it and there's like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's about the same amount of coastal
Speaker 2: frontage on that course as there is a Pacific Dunes,
Speaker 2: you know, enough for two really long holes along the
Speaker 2: course and a par three and a little more there
Speaker 2: might be a little more coastal frontage. And one place
Speaker 2: it drops right down the beach level on the eleventh
Speaker 2: and that comes right back up on the twelfth, and
Speaker 2: most of it's up on a cliff one hundred feet high,
Speaker 2: just like Pacific Dunes. But the contra up on top
Speaker 2: is entirely different, and you don't, you know, you don't.
Speaker 2: You're not kind of leaning over the edge of the
Speaker 2: cliff looking out all the time. You know, one of
Speaker 2: the holes you're playing along the cliff, but everything tilts
Speaker 2: back inland from the cliff, so you don't really see
Speaker 2: you're not really seeing the ocean at all where you're
Speaker 2: playing the hole. And you know, so for for your
Speaker 2: typical amateur golfer like the guy who wrote you the note,
Speaker 2: or even for an architect, you look at that and
Speaker 2: you think, wow, somebody should have done a lot better
Speaker 2: with that routing. But when you try to, you know,
Speaker 2: just because you think there ought to be a better
Speaker 2: solution doesn't mean you can make that fit on the map.
Speaker 2: And this is one of those ones that I just
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I'm not sure there is a
Speaker 2: much better solution for this. There are two or three
Speaker 2: things out there that they're kind of locked into for
Speaker 2: environmental reasons, Like you know, down by where the eleventh
Speaker 2: green and twelfth t are now, they wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: if if you ask for permits today, they wouldn't be
Speaker 2: allowed to build a green and tea down there, So
Speaker 2: those got to stay the way they are. That pond
Speaker 2: on the eighteenth hall, you know, I'm going to eliminate
Speaker 2: the par three eighteenth hall back to the clubhouse, playing
Speaker 2: over a little man made pond. But the pond has
Speaker 2: to stay because of some endangered frog that might or
Speaker 2: might not live around it. But I think we can
Speaker 2: leave it and just you know, not have it and
Speaker 2: play on the golf course and kind of take it
Speaker 2: out visually when you're looking at the thing, you know
Speaker 2: we can we can reduce the dam that makes it
Speaker 2: look so bad from the clubhouse. And then there's there's
Speaker 2: some holes on the other side, the ones in the
Speaker 2: trees on the front nine that the trees are like
Speaker 2: a monarch butterfly habitat, So they don't want us to
Speaker 2: change very much in there at all. So you know,
Speaker 2: once you're left with three pieces that you have to
Speaker 2: keep that aren't all right together, that really limits how
Speaker 2: many things you can change. And you know, if it's
Speaker 2: you know, if you got to connect back into the
Speaker 2: existing routing here and here and here and here, there's
Speaker 2: only so many things you can do. And you know,
Speaker 2: I put together a plan in like two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine and gave it to him and didn't hear from
Speaker 2: them again from for years, and I just thought, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's happening. That's okay, you know it
Speaker 2: was that was a tough thing to figure out anyway.
Speaker 2: And then maybe four or five years ago they asked
Speaker 2: that they asked us to look at it again for
Speaker 2: a day or two while we were while we were
Speaker 2: working at the Valley Club, but yeah, nothing more from that.
Speaker 2: And then in the spring, I got a message on
Speaker 2: my phone like, hey, you know, we've been looking at
Speaker 2: all these plans and yours is really the most sensible
Speaker 2: in terms of we could We think we could get
Speaker 2: the permits to build this, and you know, it changes
Speaker 2: the golf course, but it still uses all the parts
Speaker 2: we have to use. So we'd like to sign you up.
Speaker 2: And I was like, this this a lost message on
Speaker 2: my phone. When is this from? You know, because the
Speaker 2: guys called me in twenty twenty and I said, can
Speaker 2: you send me the map of the plan that you're
Speaker 2: talking about? And I drew it in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a long time here, so.
Speaker 2: But you know, in April of twenty twenty, I was
Speaker 2: really glad to have somebody call up and want to
Speaker 2: sign me up for a new job. You know that
Speaker 2: the rest of the world had completely shut down, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, can we can
Speaker 2: we do this? So so I made my first visit
Speaker 2: out there this just this last month to kind of
Speaker 2: walk through the routing we'd done, still try to figure
Speaker 2: out if there isn't a better way to do this
Speaker 2: one corner that I've been beating my head against the
Speaker 2: wall for years trying to figure out. But then also
Speaker 2: talk about all the logistics of what's going to have
Speaker 2: to happen. I mean, it'll be at least a couple
Speaker 2: of years of dealing with the California Coastal Commission to
Speaker 2: get permits for whatever we do, and you know, trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what their hot buttons are, and you know,
Speaker 2: so we can work around those and do something sooner
Speaker 2: instead of later.
Speaker 1: How often do you get just calls from things that
Speaker 1: you sent, you know, a decade ago or five years ago.
Speaker 1: Does that happen a lot?
Speaker 2: No? Almost never, you know, occasionally something you know, there
Speaker 2: are certain pieces of land that people have been talking
Speaker 2: about for you. Wouldn't it be great to build a
Speaker 2: golf course there. And you know, well, frankly, I knew
Speaker 2: when I you know, when I when I did getting
Speaker 2: to eighteen, I put those those dead projects in the back,
Speaker 2: and I put a handful of naps in there, and
Speaker 2: I knew i'd get a call of that, at least
Speaker 2: one of them, like, hey, maybe we could do that
Speaker 2: after all. So I've already had like one call out
Speaker 2: one of those, but not the one that I really
Speaker 2: really want to do. You know, you never know, as
Speaker 2: long as there's a piece of ground sitting there and
Speaker 2: an idea, somebody might make it happen someday. And certainly
Speaker 2: some of the projects that I've done are things that
Speaker 2: you know, well, you know Aaron Hills, which is in
Speaker 2: the back of the book too. Obviously they had somebody
Speaker 2: else do the thing after, you know, somebody I knew
Speaker 2: kind of found that ground and thought it would be
Speaker 2: a good place to build a golf course. And you know,
Speaker 2: I had two different clients that were going to pay
Speaker 2: me to build that golf course years before Herdson and
Speaker 2: Fry got their client who actually did it.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, imagined. Your business has a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: people that are thinking about building a course, but then
Speaker 1: never do, or it happens ten years after they first
Speaker 1: think about it, or three owners later, right.
Speaker 2: Correct. And you know that's I mean, the hard thing
Speaker 2: about trying to be a golf course architect, and you know,
Speaker 2: be in a small business golf course architect, is that
Speaker 2: you've got those those delays built into your livelihood. You know,
Speaker 2: you sign up, Okay, I'm going to design this course
Speaker 2: for Aaron Hills, and they'll pay me fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: up front, and then that might be it. I might
Speaker 2: you know, I might go on for two or three
Speaker 2: years thinking that's going to happen, and it never does,
Speaker 2: and I don't get paid anymore, you know. And you're
Speaker 2: lucky now if you can even get the fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars out front out of them up front. You know,
Speaker 2: these days everything's so iffy. Even my best clients don't
Speaker 2: want to pay a deposit. They just want me to
Speaker 2: like take the risk with them until they're ready to
Speaker 2: build something.
Speaker 1: Here's a question from Patty. Can Tom go into sim
Speaker 1: into the similarities and design philosophy between the sixth at
Speaker 1: PGA West Stadium and the sixteenth at Cyper's Point and
Speaker 1: how the surrounding beauty or lack thereof, can affect how
Speaker 1: a hole is judged and remembered.
Speaker 2: Yes I can, because you know, when mister Dye had
Speaker 2: me do the plan for the stadium of course at
Speaker 2: PGA West, he gave me, you know, he sat me
Speaker 2: down for like a day and a half and gave
Speaker 2: me all his boiler plate things that he wanted to
Speaker 2: include in the golf course. You know. One of them
Speaker 2: was to make the four part threes very different length
Speaker 2: and have one of them be really short, which is
Speaker 2: now seventeen. They you know, length in the really short
Speaker 2: one to like one e or something now and have
Speaker 2: and have one of the part threes be really long.
Speaker 2: But he didn't say very much else about that hole
Speaker 2: or what to do with it. And you know when
Speaker 2: I was playing around on paper trying to just draw
Speaker 2: something to have a first plan of the golf course,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought, well, the best part three hole
Speaker 2: that's two thirty is sixteen at Cyprus Point, so I'll
Speaker 2: draw a version of that. So I just drew, like,
Speaker 2: you know, two hundred and thirty yard direct carry over
Speaker 2: the water, or some fairways shortened left that you could
Speaker 2: play to if you didn't want to go for that. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it's in Palm Springs, and you know you're not you know,
Speaker 2: you're not fifty feet above the Pacific Ocean. That takes
Speaker 2: away quite a bit of the drama and all the
Speaker 2: naturalness of it. But you know, in plan it's not
Speaker 2: a way different hahule. And yet because it looks man made,
Speaker 2: people's attitude toward it is a lot different. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't at Cypress Point, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're not strong enough or or confident enough to try
Speaker 2: to hit driver onto the green, you know, you don't
Speaker 2: blame the architect for that. You think, well, shit, you
Speaker 2: put the green on the point there, just like everybody
Speaker 2: would and I can't go for that today. But you don't,
Speaker 2: you know. But at PGA West, you think, why do
Speaker 2: they build a hole that I have to lay up on?
Speaker 2: I don't want to lay up. I want to be
Speaker 2: able to go for the green.
Speaker 1: On the Cypress finalle.
Speaker 2: It probably should. Although I played Cypress Point just like
Speaker 2: two three weeks ago and had a really good caddy,
Speaker 2: a guy who's a great amateur player in Northern California,
Speaker 2: and I was hitting the ball all right. When we
Speaker 2: got to sixteen. He just he just he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't I think you probably couldn't hit past the
Speaker 2: green into those back bunkers with driver. You know, basically
Speaker 2: he was trying me to tell me, you know, without
Speaker 2: it's just like, hit driver. Don't think you're going to
Speaker 2: get forward there. Just hit driver without saying anything negative
Speaker 2: to me at all, you know, it was And I
Speaker 2: hit driver just as good as I could, right in
Speaker 2: the middle of the green and two putted to win
Speaker 2: our match.
Speaker 1: That's the two times I've played there. The first time
Speaker 1: I almost dunked it on the fly, and then and
Speaker 1: I've kind of locked off the greed. I I don't
Speaker 1: know why everybody thinks it's so hard. And then the
Speaker 1: next time I rinsed to in a row. So I
Speaker 1: got the I got the you know, both both sides
Speaker 1: of the coin.
Speaker 2: Well, I was playing with three guys who are all
Speaker 2: better golfers than me, and I was the only one
Speaker 2: to hit the high It's yeah, it's not. It's one
Speaker 2: thing that you know, can you can you reach it? Yes?
Speaker 2: Can you do it when you want to? Not so easy?
Speaker 2: And you know I've been everywhere on that I've played there,
Speaker 2: probably ten or twelve times in my life, including when
Speaker 2: I was fifteen years old. Was the first time, and
Speaker 2: and I could safely say I've been everywhere on that hole.
Speaker 2: I've been in the ocean, right, I've been. You know,
Speaker 2: I've laid up and then shanked it into the water. Right.
Speaker 2: That's why I don't lay up anymore if I can
Speaker 2: help it, because last time I laid up, I shanked
Speaker 2: the second shot into the water. Anyway. You know, one
Speaker 2: of the very first times I played it, when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, I hit it, I pulled it left,
Speaker 2: and I wound up on the beach down there. You know,
Speaker 2: when the tides out, there is a beach over there
Speaker 2: in front of seventeen t and there were, at least
Speaker 2: in the old days, there were steps down to it.
Speaker 2: So I played a shot, you know, I pulled it left,
Speaker 2: and he hit a shot off the beach back up
Speaker 2: on the green and made it four.
Speaker 1: Was there anything that just jogged like what you played
Speaker 1: for this most recent time that you marveled at, or
Speaker 1: something that stood out that hadn't stood out before.
Speaker 2: Not really. I mean I was playing with the green chairman,
Speaker 2: so he you know, he was asking a bunch of
Speaker 2: questions along the way about you know, some of the
Speaker 2: little things tweaks that they've either done or they're thinking
Speaker 2: about doing, just to get my input on them. Which
Speaker 2: for a round of golf at Cypress Play, I'm happy
Speaker 2: to give some free advice. And so I wasn't really
Speaker 2: just like free thinking about it myself. You know. We
Speaker 2: had a you know, I played with Eric two and
Speaker 2: another friend of mine who's a member of San Francisco
Speaker 2: Golf Club. So you know, it was kind of a
Speaker 2: really nice social round of golf, and I wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to analyze the golf course architecture so much. But I
Speaker 2: do you know, I've seen that place for forty five years.
Speaker 2: I know it pretty well. So a couple you know,
Speaker 2: like a couple of the things I pointed out to
Speaker 2: the green chairman or things that I'd been seeing for
Speaker 2: like twenty years, you know, wondering if they would ever
Speaker 2: do anything about it. But mostly it's cutting down a
Speaker 2: tree or two. That's you know, they're not allowed to
Speaker 2: cut down a modere cypress tree, period, you know, so
Speaker 2: like people that talk about seventeen and eighteen and oh,
Speaker 2: you know, they should cut down those trees and make
Speaker 2: the holes better. It's like those trees aren't coming down
Speaker 2: until they fall dow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, this question I forgot to write down
Speaker 1: his name, Sorry to whoever ask this. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is a hypothetical, and I don't know if you
Speaker 1: would do this, but if you could redo any hole
Speaker 1: at Pacific Dunes, what would it be and why?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't be touching that place with one hundred
Speaker 2: foot bole, you know. Like so, you know, we're coming
Speaker 2: up on twenty years since we built Pacific Dunes, and
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just not the kind of person who
Speaker 2: second guesses the design unless there's something not working. And
Speaker 2: and pleased to say that the only problem Pacific Dunes
Speaker 2: has had in the last twenty years is sand blowing
Speaker 2: out of the bunkers. And in a few places we
Speaker 2: took a big bunker that the sand just ravaged on
Speaker 2: it every bit every year basis and broke it up
Speaker 2: into two or three smaller bunkers to kind of try
Speaker 2: to reduce that problem some. But the golf holes, I
Speaker 2: love the golf holes. You know, there's a there's a
Speaker 2: couple of holes there where I kind of really held
Speaker 2: strong through that process of you know, let's not do
Speaker 2: too much here, and let's not just jazz this hole
Speaker 2: up like everything else. You know, you kind of need
Speaker 2: a break somewhere in there instead of making every hole
Speaker 2: the best hole on the golf course. And I but
Speaker 2: I wouldn't change that. After twenty years, I still think
Speaker 2: that was an important part of the design, even though
Speaker 2: most people don't. You know, when you when when most
Speaker 2: people look at the design, they're just looking at it
Speaker 2: one hole at a time, and they're not thinking about
Speaker 2: the whole thing together so much. You know, I was
Speaker 2: thinking about that a lot while we were building that
Speaker 2: golf course, and I did make some decisions because of
Speaker 2: that that if you're just looking at a particular hole,
Speaker 2: you would suggest, you might suggest something that was more dramatic.
Speaker 2: And I just think, now I didn't you know, that
Speaker 2: wasn't the time to do that.
Speaker 1: That that makes sense. You know a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the course have gotten worse from tinkering too, you.
Speaker 2: Know, absolutely, you know that's the you know, why do
Speaker 2: all this consulting at everybody else's all golf courses is
Speaker 2: because people keep tinkering around and messing up golf courses.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm a big believer that you know,
Speaker 2: get it right the first time and then don't mess
Speaker 2: with it after that, you know, instead of always thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, the Tom Fazio approaches, you could always improve
Speaker 2: something and make it better, And yes you could, but
Speaker 2: you could always you could also always tinker with something
Speaker 2: and make it worse. And that's really easy to do
Speaker 2: on a great golf course.
Speaker 1: All right, this is from our friend Crystal in France.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in finding out what Tom thinks of the
Speaker 1: difference of working with women compared to men's shapers, apart
Speaker 1: from just women's awareness of distance, discrepancies and tease. She
Speaker 1: remembers vividly when Angela Moser worked at their course and
Speaker 1: how precise it dedicated she was on her various tasks.
Speaker 1: She says, she remembers every time she teas off on
Speaker 1: the seventh tee.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an interesting question because Angela would be one
Speaker 2: of the only women shapers that you could name, so
Speaker 2: I've never really thought of of it as being you know,
Speaker 2: all the shapers that I deal with are different people.
Speaker 2: They you know, they have slightly different personalities and they
Speaker 2: come to the game with different backgrounds. You know, some
Speaker 2: of them aren't very good golfers. Some of them are
Speaker 2: really good golfers, So you know, I never You know,
Speaker 2: Angela is different too, but I never really assigned it
Speaker 2: all to her gender. You know, it's just I think
Speaker 2: of her. We all think of her as one of
Speaker 2: the guys. No slight intended, and I think she appreciates that.
Speaker 2: But you know, I mean for Angela, who was a
Speaker 2: good junior player and is a pretty good golfer to
Speaker 2: this day and plays from the men's teas, Or for Crystal,
Speaker 2: who is a great golfer and plays from the men's
Speaker 2: teas all the time, or for Alice Dye, who is
Speaker 2: a great golfer and play from the men's teas most
Speaker 2: of the time, even until let's do is sixty five
Speaker 2: or seventy years old. You know what, they're women, but
Speaker 2: they don't play golf like the average woman at all.
Speaker 2: You know, they may be more tuned into the average
Speaker 2: woman is not like them, and that you have to
Speaker 2: think about how to accommodate them. But when they see
Speaker 2: a golf hall, they the first thing they're visualizing is
Speaker 2: the same shots that I do, because they all hit
Speaker 2: the driver as far as I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does personality. I'm interested with it. You know,
Speaker 1: all your experience with personalities, do you notice things with
Speaker 1: like type A or Type B personalities, like difference in
Speaker 1: how they do the work or how the work comes out,
Speaker 1: or if there's you know more, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: want to get you in trouble with anybody either.
Speaker 2: Well, to me, there's only to me, there's only one
Speaker 2: crucial quality for a shaper, and that's being able to
Speaker 2: accept it when I don't like something. You know, I'll
Speaker 2: let them be creative and try to do their own
Speaker 2: things sometimes, but only if they're willing to accept it.
Speaker 2: If I don't like it, it's gone. And you know
Speaker 2: we don't. We're not going to argue about that. We're
Speaker 2: just going to do something different. I'll tell them why
Speaker 2: I don't like it, But you know that's I mean,
Speaker 2: golf is a business of big egos. Architects have big
Speaker 2: egos too, so I'm not saying it's just a one
Speaker 2: way street. But at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 2: my job to decide what's out there. And if somebody
Speaker 2: builds something that's cool, but I just don't think it
Speaker 2: fits the golf course that we're trying to build. Or
Speaker 2: the or the client, or it doesn't fit into the
Speaker 2: ground that's there. You know, quite often I'll say, now
Speaker 2: we've got to do something different, and sometimes it's only
Speaker 2: a little tweak, and sometimes it's like knock it down
Speaker 2: and start over. But you know, that's the three guys
Speaker 2: that work for me full time. We've been doing that
Speaker 2: for twenty years, so that you know, they they can
Speaker 2: more anticipate something. You know, they're not going to build
Speaker 2: something if they know I'm going to hate it, and
Speaker 2: they've got at least some sense of what that is.
Speaker 2: You know. That doesn't mean they're building the same thing
Speaker 2: all the time, but you know they've they've learned from
Speaker 2: previous conversations, you know, of various things that I don't
Speaker 2: like or that probably we're not going to do, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's easier to have that relationship with them than
Speaker 2: it is with somebody new or somebody who's just who's
Speaker 2: you know, really getting their first chance to shape and
Speaker 2: wants to show you how great they are, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's fine. We like having new people on projects too,
Speaker 2: because they do add new things, but they just have
Speaker 2: to accept it at the end of the day. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm the one who has to be the most happy
Speaker 2: with it. They don't necessarily have to.
Speaker 1: That is that one of the hardest things for young
Speaker 1: you know, whether they're shapers or architects, is is is
Speaker 1: almost the restraint of not having to, you know, everything
Speaker 1: be the coolest, coolest green, you know, like all, you know,
Speaker 1: like taking everything that the you know, Max.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, you know I could. I won't name them,
Speaker 2: but I can think of a couple of jobs that
Speaker 2: we've done that you know, it's eighteen wild greens, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of like there were so many talented people
Speaker 2: on the job that was like, you know, oh, look
Speaker 2: at the cool green he built for number six. I'm
Speaker 2: going to build an even crazier green for number seven.
Speaker 2: And you don't want to do that for eighteen hole.
Speaker 2: You know, on something like the Mulligan course, that worked great.
Speaker 2: You know, I encourage those guys to make it wild
Speaker 2: and do all the things that we couldn't do on
Speaker 2: a normal eighteen whole golf course. But you know, on
Speaker 2: most golf courses you don't want to, you know, turn
Speaker 2: the dial up to eleven. You have to you have
Speaker 2: to understand that it all fits together and how to
Speaker 2: modulate that some and and that's what young people tend
Speaker 2: to lose sight of because they haven't done it much before.
Speaker 2: It's just like you get caught up. And these two
Speaker 2: things happen when you get caught up and excited in
Speaker 2: what you're doing, which is a good thing. But you also,
Speaker 2: you know, a construction project is like six months is
Speaker 2: shaping and if you're if you know, if it's one
Speaker 2: of your first jobs, you're probably out there nearly every
Speaker 2: day and you are not going around to other golf
Speaker 2: courses and reminding yourself that they are not like that,
Speaker 2: that the it's Cyprus Point doesn't have eighteen greens each
Speaker 2: wilder than the last one, and you don't really need
Speaker 2: to do that. And that's what you know, most young
Speaker 2: people just need to be reminded, Hey, you don't need
Speaker 2: to do that. You know, we don't have to go
Speaker 2: that far. That's really cool, but don't make the next
Speaker 2: one even wilder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because sometimes the coolest greens. I find that courses
Speaker 1: are the ones that are really you know, subdued except
Speaker 1: for one little, tiny, small feature, and that that green
Speaker 1: stands out as much as the wild ones because it's different, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, I mean that the Mulligan Course at Balanil
Speaker 2: has like maybe the four or five wildest greens that
Speaker 2: we've ever built, and uh, like one of my favorites
Speaker 2: there is the one out at the far end, the
Speaker 2: third which is absolutely just looks about as flat as
Speaker 2: it could be, just like a little gentle saucer shape,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of mostly tilted away from you too,
Speaker 2: so it's not an easy green to hit and hold.
Speaker 2: And it's just like that's the perfect place for something
Speaker 2: like that, just before you get to all the really
Speaker 2: wild Hey, and.
Speaker 1: We got a question from Patrick Jordan. I remember your
Speaker 1: Instagram post about it is tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about Frederick Peak in Valentine.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so I you know, one of my first
Speaker 2: stops on the road trip was going through Nebraska and
Speaker 2: seeing you know, I'd been to Valentine, Nebraska like twenty
Speaker 2: years ago, eighteen or twenty years ago to interview for
Speaker 2: the job that is ultimately the golf course that Gil
Speaker 2: Hanson has been building out there of the Prairie Club,
Speaker 2: the cap Rock, Yeah, the course next yeah, cap Rock,
Speaker 2: the course next to the Prairie Club, you know, And
Speaker 2: that was before the Prairie Club existed too. And then
Speaker 2: since then, you know, I've been back to sand Hills
Speaker 2: three or four times, and I've been you know, I
Speaker 2: built the course at Dismal River, but between bally Neil
Speaker 2: and sand Hills and Dismal River, I never like had
Speaker 2: time or energy to get in the car and go
Speaker 2: an hour hour and a half further north to see
Speaker 2: what happened with the Prairie Club, which you know, two
Speaker 2: of the guys that used to work with me shape
Speaker 2: the Dune's course at the Prairie Club for Tom Lehman,
Speaker 2: and I'd never so I'd never seen either of those courses,
Speaker 2: and I'd never see and I knew Gil was building
Speaker 2: the course on the land that I'd looked at, so
Speaker 2: I was curious to see that. And then I also
Speaker 2: knew I remember I played golf in the opening for
Speaker 2: Pacific Dunes. I played golf with a young Australian guy
Speaker 2: named Josh Taylor who worked for a Leman for a while.
Speaker 2: He's out of the business now, but I remember that
Speaker 2: Leman's guys when they were working on the Prairie Club
Speaker 2: got excited about doing a course for the town, you know,
Speaker 2: replacing the town uni with a new golf course, and
Speaker 2: they built nine holes of it, or actually ten holes
Speaker 2: of it, and they've got a plan to do the
Speaker 2: others someday, but I don't know when they'll get around
Speaker 2: to it. But so I made a point of stopping
Speaker 2: in and seeing that instead of just calling it a
Speaker 2: day with the Prairie Club. And and what a cool
Speaker 2: little place. You know, it's like a it's like I
Speaker 2: think it was twenty one dollars for nine holes and
Speaker 2: twenty three for eighteen and you want to go back around,
Speaker 2: which I thought was the perfect pricing scheme, and little, tiny,
Speaker 2: modest clubhouse, and the first couple holes are on really
Speaker 2: flat ground, and you know, you might if I'd just
Speaker 2: driven in and not known anything about it, I might
Speaker 2: not have gone out because the first things that you
Speaker 2: could see were not that inspiring, and I had no idea,
Speaker 2: you know, after the I think it's the fourth hole
Speaker 2: that's kind of up with a great view of the valley,
Speaker 2: and then you drop down into the valley for the
Speaker 2: next two or three holes, and it's really up and
Speaker 2: down from there back in, but some really dramatic stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, mixed in with a couple of pretty flat holes.
Speaker 2: So it's on balance, it's not really hard, but there's
Speaker 2: a couple of spectacular that's cool.
Speaker 1: I love just making random pit stops at places you
Speaker 1: think might be cool. I was, I was driving. I
Speaker 1: drove from Prairie Dunes up to wild Horse and there
Speaker 1: was a course. I was on a real tight schedule.
Speaker 1: There's a course I did. I got out and walked
Speaker 1: around it. I got to find out more info about it.
Speaker 1: But it was built in like nineteen twenty four or five,
Speaker 1: and I was driving by it and I just saw
Speaker 1: it out of the you know, while I'm driving by,
Speaker 1: and I was like, WHOA, that looks really good, and
Speaker 1: I but it's as it was a nine whole course.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name. I can't remember. I got
Speaker 1: to find it in the text. I was on the phone.
Speaker 1: I was literally on the phone with somebody and I
Speaker 1: had them looking up information about it. But it's it's.
Speaker 2: You know, that's that's how I That's how I discovered
Speaker 2: my first Langford course, Harrison Hills. Tommy and I were
Speaker 2: driving to Evansville when we were talking about the job
Speaker 2: at Quail Crossing with the client, and for some reason
Speaker 2: we drove through via Purdue and So we drove through Attica, Indiana,
Speaker 2: and we drove you know, the highway goes right past
Speaker 2: a fence that the like the ninth holes on the
Speaker 2: other side of the fence, and you know, we're driving
Speaker 2: by and I looked to the side and I saw
Speaker 2: these mounds and you know where the bunkering with huge mounds,
Speaker 2: and I was like, stop the car, We're going to
Speaker 2: have a walk around that.
Speaker 1: Whatever the hell it is so neat that place is awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of those holes on that course are
Speaker 1: just incredible. The place I just found the text message
Speaker 1: because I sent the guy that was talking to on
Speaker 1: the phone some pictures and it's got the water tower
Speaker 1: in one of the pictures. Ellsworth Ellsworth, Kansas is Ellsworth
Speaker 1: country Club or Ellsworth Golf Club. I was looking at
Speaker 1: it and I thought, you know, given I was, you
Speaker 1: know where I was, it's a good chance it was
Speaker 1: Perry Maxwell. I didn't have enough time to stop and
Speaker 1: play it, but it was really lay of the land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't think that. I don't think that
Speaker 2: is Perry Maxwell. Because I've been reading through I've been
Speaker 2: trying to figure out which of the other little Maxwell
Speaker 2: courses I should go see. So I've been I've been
Speaker 2: kind of skimming Chris Klauser's book, trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what sounds like a a more likely target of something
Speaker 2: to go see. And I don't remember that. I remember
Speaker 2: the name Ellsworth, Kansas. I might have driven by there,
Speaker 2: but I don't. I didn't see the golf course, but
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Somebody listening probably will know who decided it, but it
Speaker 1: was it was a twenties or thirties golf course because
Speaker 1: but yeah, so as on the road, stops are always awesome. So,
Speaker 1: Jeff Mitzek, is there a course whose stature has been
Speaker 1: outrageously helped by its neighbors and of course that has
Speaker 1: unfortunately been overshadowed by its neighbors.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, outrageously helped by its neighbors. I you know, I
Speaker 2: mean the golf season. The golf scene in Pinehurst has
Speaker 2: really been changing a lot in the last few years.
Speaker 2: But before that, I would say that a bunch of
Speaker 2: the golf courses around Pinehurst were overrated on the basis
Speaker 2: of being next to Pinehurst Number two. You know, I
Speaker 2: won't name any names, but you know, just the whole region,
Speaker 2: the idea that all the other golf courses were anywhere
Speaker 2: near as good or like that. You know that you
Speaker 2: were going to go there for five days and play
Speaker 2: five different cool courses. That was not remotely true. It
Speaker 2: might be true now, you know the place, you know,
Speaker 2: mid Pines and Pine Needles in those places have really
Speaker 2: up their game. And Tobacco Road came in, came in
Speaker 2: the mix. And now Pinehurst is like, you know, taking
Speaker 2: the competition seriously and starting working on all their golf
Speaker 2: courses too, so they won't, you know, so they won't
Speaker 2: just be the hotel for people and have them go
Speaker 2: be playing everybody else.
Speaker 1: I probably was part of that too, with you know,
Speaker 1: having competition in the Southeast with you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure that, I'm sure that it was. Competition
Speaker 2: does make people take stock of what's going on. And
Speaker 2: you know, if play drops or people are starting to
Speaker 2: complain about other things, yeah, it's they're they're quicker to
Speaker 2: see the change in that. In that case. On the
Speaker 2: other side of the coin, I mean, there's there's still
Speaker 2: a bunch of golf courses in West County, New York,
Speaker 2: and on Long Island and in Philadelphia that people don't
Speaker 2: know about because Marion and you know, Wingfoot take up
Speaker 2: all get all the attention, and that's where they host
Speaker 2: the tournaments. And you know, and you know for years,
Speaker 2: places like Fenway or Rolling Green or those kind of
Speaker 2: places were just ignored. And they were ignored because because
Speaker 2: they were there. You know. You know when when Gil
Speaker 2: Hanson and I were working on Stonewall, the original golf course,
Speaker 2: we used to go, we used to work weekends and
Speaker 2: then like Tuesdays or when I think it was Tuesdays,
Speaker 2: we'd take the afternoon off and go play a different
Speaker 2: course in Philadelphia. And we were you know, we couldn't.
Speaker 2: We didn't run out of good golf courses to go.
Speaker 2: See every time we go, it'd be like manufacturers never
Speaker 2: heard anything about it. Wow, what a great golf course.
Speaker 2: Just you know, we must have done like ten like that.
Speaker 2: And you know, and Gil, you know, most of them
Speaker 2: are Flynn golf courses because he built so many around Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: And Gil at the time he lives in Philly now,
Speaker 2: but he you know, he was living in Colorado back then,
Speaker 2: and he thought Cherry Hills was a great golf course.
Speaker 2: And whatever Flint course we walk off in Philadelphia, I'd
Speaker 2: look at him and go so that's Burton, Cherry Hills
Speaker 2: is and you know, just week after week, which is
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say because we do some consulting at Cherry
Speaker 2: Hills now, But you know, just a ton of golf courses,
Speaker 2: you know. And if you took any one of them
Speaker 2: and helicoptered him to.
Speaker 1: Ch I say this about Chicago all the time, like
Speaker 1: manufacturers would, it would be like one of the five
Speaker 1: best courses in Chicago. And nobody even talks about it
Speaker 1: in Philly.
Speaker 2: Right, because there's a lot of good land in Philadelphia. Know,
Speaker 2: there's not any pieces of the land like that in Chicago.
Speaker 1: No, Well, it's really flat outside of the ravines at Shorikers.
Speaker 1: It's like the flattest land ever except for the reveeds.
Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, there's just a lot, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's why, you know, that's why golf courses tend to
Speaker 2: be built in clusters like that where there's great land. Well,
Speaker 2: why don't we keep building golf courses. Why don't we
Speaker 2: build more courses in the Sandhills. Why don't we build
Speaker 2: more courses in Moderey and so forth and so on?
Speaker 2: And you know it's inevitable that some of those are
Speaker 2: going to get overshadowed by the big by the big
Speaker 2: brother that hosts the tournament.
Speaker 1: It's I feel like some the pendulums turn a little bit.
Speaker 1: People are liking quirk a little bit more. And I think,
Speaker 1: obviously like social media helps some of those courses that
Speaker 1: are overshadowed a bit. Uh Now, Jim huntoon Superintendent, asks
Speaker 1: the question any superintendents that have made an impression on
Speaker 1: him over the years.
Speaker 2: Superintendency made an impression on me, oh Aton, you know,
Speaker 2: the very first superintendent I got to know. Well, I
Speaker 2: didn't like, I didn't work on the maintenance crew of
Speaker 2: the muni that I grew up playing, So I didn't
Speaker 2: really know that much about being a golf course superintendent
Speaker 2: or what it entailed until I started working in the business,
Speaker 2: you know, at Long Cove when when I was working
Speaker 2: on the construction there for mister Dye, Bobby Weed, architect
Speaker 2: now was the superin was the growing superintendent for a
Speaker 2: Long Cove. So I got to know him a little
Speaker 2: bit and see that from his perspective, and you know,
Speaker 2: and listen to mister Dye talk about how important the
Speaker 2: superintendent was to the project and how it drove him crazy.
Speaker 2: That good superintendents didn't want to stay being a superintendent.
Speaker 2: You know, he hoped they'd stay and take care of
Speaker 2: the golf course forever, and they wanted to go to
Speaker 2: another construction site and you know, have all the fun
Speaker 2: of building something from scratch. And then when I went
Speaker 2: overseas the next summer, you know, I had an introduction
Speaker 2: to the greenkeeper for the old course of Saint Andrews,
Speaker 2: Walter Woods, who is like the godfather of golf course
Speaker 2: superintendents in the UK. I mean, just totally respected by
Speaker 2: everyone over there, and of course, you know, knowing him
Speaker 2: fairly well because I got to you know, originally a
Speaker 2: friend of mine had introduced me and we'd agreed that
Speaker 2: I would work on the maintenance crew when I when
Speaker 2: I moved over there for a couple months. And when
Speaker 2: I got there, Walter said, you know, I can't do
Speaker 2: it because we're in a recession, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: a town golf course and if I hire anybody outside
Speaker 2: of town, they'll hang me. So so I've talked to
Speaker 2: the caddy master and you can caddy you know, just
Speaker 2: just let the guys that are going to make a
Speaker 2: living and that need to make a living and have
Speaker 2: two loops a day, get out before you And he said,
Speaker 2: besides that, you're welcome to hang around with me as
Speaker 2: much as you want and ask questions. And that was like,
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been a better summer of doing that.
Speaker 2: And you know, because you know Walter used to do
Speaker 2: he used to do his work in the morning and
Speaker 2: the evening. The old course was so busy then people
Speaker 2: would go out before the first tea time of the
Speaker 2: day and pay when the when the ranger showed up.
Speaker 2: And I mean they were they were playing seventy thousand
Speaker 2: rounds a year on the old course because it was
Speaker 2: only like twenty bucks or twenty five bucks back then.
Speaker 2: And so he was, you know, he didn't have enough
Speaker 2: time to work on it very hard. You know, It's
Speaker 2: like they had to they had to do two shifts.
Speaker 2: They had to kind of do a clean up pass
Speaker 2: behind the last golfers at the end of the day
Speaker 2: so that they could get ahead start on the next morning.
Speaker 2: Otherwise they'd never be able to maintain it. But just
Speaker 2: to see him, you know, he didn't like well, they
Speaker 2: were still on a pretty tight maintenance budget back then,
Speaker 2: but he didn't like buying chemical fertilizers very much at all.
Speaker 2: He would send the crew to gather kelp off the
Speaker 2: rocks and the harbor behind a clubhouse at low tide.
Speaker 2: Bring it, you know, take a wagon and bring it
Speaker 2: back to the main its yard and mix it with sand.
Speaker 2: It's like compost it, and make his own organic fertilizer
Speaker 2: for nothing. You know, I never heard about anybody, you know,
Speaker 2: nobody used the word sustainable to describe any of that.
Speaker 2: But that's what that was, just way before the time.
Speaker 2: It was like practical, this is what we got to
Speaker 2: do to make it work on a budget.
Speaker 1: It's been a good episode for golf. Golf people that
Speaker 1: with the last name Woods between the Darnick Hills.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it is a good name. It's been a
Speaker 2: good name for golf in general.
Speaker 1: The most famous one, all right.
Speaker 2: But you know, in addition to Walter, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: we've worked with some incredible superintendents, but both of the
Speaker 2: clubs we consult at and then you know, people like
Speaker 2: Ken Nice and Bandon and just you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: if I start naming people, I'm gonna run out of time.
Speaker 2: But I've gotten to work with a ton of very
Speaker 2: good golf course superintendents, and in fact, it's a great
Speaker 2: it's a great circle to be in because they recommend
Speaker 2: superintendents for our other golf courses. I mean, so you know, so,
Speaker 2: you know, we we wound up with CJ. Kreuscher to
Speaker 2: help build Terry Edy on ken Nice's recommendation, and then
Speaker 2: when CJ moved to moved over to the construction side
Speaker 2: to go build the two new courses. Uh. Brian Palmer
Speaker 2: from short Acers who had been consulting, consulting with us.
Speaker 2: He had played in the Renaissance Cup at Tarry Edy
Speaker 2: and you know, stayed in touch with CJ and and
Speaker 2: the client behind our not that we didn't know about.
Speaker 2: So when CJ, you know, said he was going to
Speaker 2: give up the job, Brian was standing there first in
Speaker 2: line to move to New Zealand and run the place.
Speaker 2: So we worked with a ton of really good guys.
Speaker 2: But you know, special shout out to the guys in Australia.
Speaker 2: I mean literally every superintendent I've work within Australia and
Speaker 2: I've worked with a bunch they are just all right
Speaker 2: at the top of their game, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of it. Some of them were like Bruce Grant, who
Speaker 2: worked with Mike Clayton for years, was an assistant for
Speaker 2: Claude Crockford. That's where it started. You know. Claude Crockford
Speaker 2: ran Roll Melbourne for like forty or fifty years and
Speaker 2: trained up dozens of assistants who are running other golf
Speaker 2: courses and it's just been all passed down from him.
Speaker 2: So like Richard Forsyth who's at Royal Melbourne now, and
Speaker 2: really all the guys who are superintendents around Melbourne all
Speaker 2: a branch off that family tree somewhere or another. And
Speaker 2: you know, they do so much without you know, it's
Speaker 2: a pretty harsh climate. They don't they don't have much
Speaker 2: water to work with. It's a you know, they're they
Speaker 2: should be running all the golf courses in California because
Speaker 2: they deal with all the problems that California has and
Speaker 2: they've got the golf courses perfect all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they if they could transport the Australian golfers
Speaker 1: and their mentality to California would probably help the California
Speaker 1: courses too.
Speaker 2: Probably would you know, you know, it wouldn't it wouldn't
Speaker 2: entirely translate because like you know, of course around La
Speaker 2: spend a lot more every year on every aspect of
Speaker 2: the golf course. Then you know, if I told if
Speaker 2: I told somebody at Royal Melbourne what the dues were
Speaker 2: at bell Air, they would I don't know, their eyes
Speaker 2: would pop out of their head. Probably.
Speaker 1: Hey, h Gordie, iiker, he lives in Austin, Texas, and
Speaker 1: he wants to know why it may be worth the
Speaker 1: long drive to Lubbock to play rals.
Speaker 2: Oh that was a long drive. You know. I'll start
Speaker 2: by saying to Gordy that I have not made the
Speaker 2: long drive to Lubbock in a very long time. You know,
Speaker 2: I was actually gonna go on this last trip. I
Speaker 2: had to go from from Denver to Dornic Hills in Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: and there's two ways to get there, ones kind of
Speaker 2: going through prairie dunes, which I did this summer on
Speaker 2: my way out. But but coming back I was gonna.
Speaker 2: I was actually gonna meet my brother in Lubbock and
Speaker 2: go play the Raws course, which I haven't seen in
Speaker 2: more than ten years, and then drive to Oklahoma from there.
Speaker 2: And then the day I flew back to Denver, there
Speaker 2: were like winter storms in the mountains of New Mexico,
Speaker 2: and my brother couldn't make it, and I wound up
Speaker 2: like delaying and not going that way, which I was
Speaker 2: bummed about. You know, hopefully when we're building Dorna Kills,
Speaker 2: I'll get back and go go see how the raw
Speaker 2: score is holding up. Eric went there, you know, last
Speaker 2: summer on kind of a courtesy consulting visit to just
Speaker 2: check in on it and tell them tell him to
Speaker 2: mow a little more grass and take down the trees
Speaker 2: because we none of us had seen it for ten years.
Speaker 2: And things do grow up and things, you know, mowing
Speaker 2: lines change, and you know, so is the raws Churus
Speaker 2: worth leaving Austin for I don't know. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: for me, it was just a really different project. It's
Speaker 2: a chance to see what I can do with a
Speaker 2: totally barren piece of ground. If that interests you, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, if you I will say, if you
Speaker 2: want to if you want to go play golf in
Speaker 2: the wind, Lubbock is a great destination for that. That's
Speaker 2: one of the ways. You know, we've worked in windy
Speaker 2: places and Lubbock is the windiest of them all. So
Speaker 2: you know, if you if you want to learn how
Speaker 2: to play in the wind and what the wind can
Speaker 2: do to make a golf harder.
Speaker 1: Go there. Yeah, I mean, if if you don't have
Speaker 1: access to private golf in Austin, I'd lived there at
Speaker 1: a time in my life where I didn't have access
Speaker 1: to private golf, it might be worth driving there because
Speaker 1: there's nothing. Really there's not a lot of courses outside
Speaker 1: of a few that are worth seeing that are within
Speaker 1: two hours. It's a long drive, but you know, worst
Speaker 1: ways to spend a weekend.
Speaker 2: The other place I'd still like to stop through and
Speaker 2: see when Dave Exland and Dan Proctor when they you know,
Speaker 2: when they started doing courses on their own, when they
Speaker 2: were still working for Bill Corr. In addition to Wildhorse,
Speaker 2: they build a course called Delaware Springs or maybe that's
Speaker 2: not the name. It's in Delaware Springs, Texas, which is
Speaker 2: an hour or two from Austin, and that's one place
Speaker 2: I've always been curious to see. You know, that will
Speaker 2: be a true minimalist golf course.
Speaker 1: It's a good recommendation right there, even though you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. It's uh, yeah, it's funny what you were
Speaker 1: describing with I was thinking about stopping there because I
Speaker 1: was going here. I was in the same thing. I
Speaker 1: was driving from from Nebraska to Hutchinson, and I was
Speaker 1: going through and I was driving through Lincoln, and I
Speaker 1: had planned to drive back to Chicago from Hutchinson, and
Speaker 1: I was gonna go through Kansas City. I'm driving through
Speaker 1: Lincoln and I'm driving through there, and I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm as close to wild Horse as I
Speaker 1: could get. So, you know, I went down to Hutchinson,
Speaker 1: but then on my way back, I picked up two hours,
Speaker 1: but it was a five hour drive. I was two
Speaker 1: hours close from Chicago. So many people were like, you
Speaker 1: should go. Some people recommended Doric Hills, and I'm like, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not driving five more hours to add five hours
Speaker 1: more to my trip back, you know. But it's so
Speaker 1: funny how you get out on those road trips and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden five hours is like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal, it's five hours whatever.
Speaker 2: No, that's I mean for me, the the you know,
Speaker 2: getting back in the car and doing a lot of
Speaker 2: driving in twenty twenty because of not wanting to get
Speaker 2: on an airplane because of COVID. That's the first time
Speaker 2: I've done that in America. In fifteen or twenty years.
Speaker 2: I used to do it so much. When you know,
Speaker 2: before we got really busy and before I was a
Speaker 2: big name, I used to drive, you know. I used
Speaker 2: to drive back and forth to Philadelphia or New York
Speaker 2: from Michigan, and there was always something new to stop
Speaker 2: and see along the way. And you know, and Bruce
Speaker 2: Heepner and Jim Orbina both saw a ton of golf
Speaker 2: courses for the first time, just riding along with me.
Speaker 2: All let's stop out and look at these holes at Marion.
Speaker 2: You've never been to Marian. Okay, let's go. You know,
Speaker 2: I you know, and I just haven't had much time
Speaker 2: to do that the last fifteen or twenty years. And
Speaker 2: you know, I missed doing that. I'd like to be
Speaker 2: able to make time to do that with interns when
Speaker 2: I had him. Is just like the O'Reilly Johns was
Speaker 2: an intern for me. I had some consulting work on
Speaker 2: the East Coast. They're like Oyster Harbors in Massachusetts. But
Speaker 2: I can't remember what. We were somewhere around New York
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, let's just go do this
Speaker 2: and like go stop in and see a few other
Speaker 2: courses while we're while we're here, and you know, we
Speaker 2: stopped in on two or three of the little ross
Speaker 2: courses in Rhode Island that I hadn't seen before. And
Speaker 2: we stopped by Yale on the way back and just said, yeah,
Speaker 2: we go out and they're like, yeah, go play. So
Speaker 2: that was a great little trip and I, you know,
Speaker 2: I miss having time to do that, but I don't.
Speaker 2: You know, those opportunities are pretty rare now, or at
Speaker 2: least I did. It's hard to make time for them
Speaker 2: when you're working one hundred and fifty days a year
Speaker 2: on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I I drove way more this year
Speaker 1: than I have been and I saw so many more
Speaker 1: and I got to just so many more random spots.
Speaker 1: But that'll do it for this session. I think I
Speaker 1: we got it promote, so there might be more of
Speaker 1: these covered, more frequent who knows. Yeah, good talking to you, Tom.
Speaker 1: Thanks again,