Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to welcome on Curtis James. Curtis is the
Speaker 1: head superintendent at the Old Elm Club in Chicago, one
Speaker 1: of the premier golf courses in the country and the
Speaker 1: Chicago area definitely one of the least known great courses
Speaker 1: in this country. It's a Harry Colt Donald Ross design
Speaker 1: and Curtis has been an influential force in the Chicago
Speaker 1: superintendent industry. He is credited by his peers largely for
Speaker 1: kind of changing the tides of how courses are maintained
Speaker 1: in the area. So he's done a great job at
Speaker 1: Old Elm kind of changing the culture and the conditioning
Speaker 1: of the club and making it one of the premier
Speaker 1: courses in the country. So, without further ado, here is
Speaker 1: Curtis James.
Speaker 2: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 1: Ball in a bright egg Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 1: Frida Egg Egg.
Speaker 2: Brid Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.
Speaker 1: Brian Moore was on this pod and uh, he told
Speaker 1: me he told us like the pet peeve. His pet
Speaker 1: peeve was people that dropped the flag, you know, from
Speaker 1: like they don't place it down. He's like, you could,
Speaker 1: you could just place it down. You know. We spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time. And it's funny because, like I had,
Speaker 1: like probably a dozen or two dozen people tell me
Speaker 1: that they listen to that, and they've like it's completely
Speaker 1: changed the way they put the flag down.
Speaker 3: Oh I see yeah, yeah on the greens, yeah, taking
Speaker 3: the flag out. Yeah, and the people just you know
Speaker 3: what my pet peeve is people that pull the ball
Speaker 3: out with their putter or their wedge out of the cup.
Speaker 3: Drives me crazy. I'm like, what are you doing? They
Speaker 3: just mangle the cup, but they'll pick it out with
Speaker 3: their putter, or they'll pick it out with a wedge
Speaker 3: if they chipped it close, or you know, it's I
Speaker 3: just think, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: It's funny because golfers complain about the cup so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they don't even know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're like, it's crowned. You know, that's why I didn't
Speaker 1: go in. This guy cut the cup wrong.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: But then they're so quick to wedge or putter remove it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then they don't fix their ball marks either.
Speaker 3: You got that.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the end of the putter device?
Speaker 3: Oh, you got to be one hundred to be able
Speaker 3: to have that. You got to hit the century mark.
Speaker 3: If you got the little suction cup on the end
Speaker 3: of the putter, it's got to be you gotta be
Speaker 3: ninety plus.
Speaker 1: It's better than the all it's better.
Speaker 3: It's better than sticking the end of the putter itself
Speaker 3: and chopping up the cup that's apparently crown because he
Speaker 3: missed his putt. You know, it's my fault. It's always
Speaker 3: our fault.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 3: I don't ever understand. You have golf professionals. They never
Speaker 3: blame the golf professional for shooting a hundred. It's always
Speaker 3: the superintendent's fault. But the golf pro give the guy
Speaker 3: less than ten times, he won't get any better. So
Speaker 3: how could it possibly be the superintendent's fault. I don't
Speaker 3: ever get it. I'm like, go into golf shop and
Speaker 3: try to get your game better, learn some new shots.
Speaker 1: It's uh, they got golfers. Golfers always have to blame somebody,
Speaker 1: So it's the hardest thing in the world. Is playing
Speaker 1: the finger at yourself. So how'd you get into turf?
Speaker 1: When did you know that you wanted to have, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of work at a golf course.
Speaker 3: I grew up in a very small town of three
Speaker 3: thousand people in central Ohio, but we had two public
Speaker 3: golf courses, believe it or not, and I decided to
Speaker 3: between eighth grade and ninth grade join the high school
Speaker 3: golf team. And part of the deal was you to
Speaker 3: practice golf at one of the courses is you had
Speaker 3: to work twenty or forty hours for the guy that
Speaker 3: owned a golf course. So I started doing that and
Speaker 3: the owner needed some extra help, so he kept me
Speaker 3: on for the summer as a job. I think it
Speaker 3: was three dollars an hour. But you got all the
Speaker 3: golf you wanted to play in carts and hot dogs,
Speaker 3: pepsi that you could have in the shop there.
Speaker 1: It's a smart business. And then we.
Speaker 3: Wait nightwater like everybody's always said, oh have you ever nightwatered?
Speaker 3: And you go out and put the quick couplers in
Speaker 3: and running on the fairways and you'd be up all night.
Speaker 3: And then you go cut greens in the morning with
Speaker 3: a triplex and cupcutter and national to tease and that's
Speaker 3: how I got started and just really enjoyed being outside
Speaker 3: more than anything and thought that was the way all
Speaker 3: golf course jobs were. It was the best job I
Speaker 3: ever had. Little did I know that would be my
Speaker 3: funnest job, and then it all go downhill after that
Speaker 3: you had to get serious and really work.
Speaker 1: So I think back to cadding. I like a lot
Speaker 1: of times, I'm always like, God, I wish I could
Speaker 1: just go back to when I just caddied. You know,
Speaker 1: you wake up, I know responsibility.
Speaker 3: I tell people that story and I'm like, that was
Speaker 3: the best job I ever had. Was between fourteen and
Speaker 3: eighteen years old working at Wyandot Golf Course and Center,
Speaker 3: go Ohio night water and then we would work from
Speaker 3: like six thirty in the morning till twelve thirty, and
Speaker 3: then we'd play in all the pot games because there
Speaker 3: was a lot of golf. It was a popular golf course,
Speaker 3: and I just thought that was the greatest thing since
Speaker 3: slice spread. And little did I you know, at the time,
Speaker 3: I thought, oh man, I could do this the rest
Speaker 3: of my life, just work at work at wyan Dot.
Speaker 3: But then I went to school and moved around quite
Speaker 3: a bit and learned that the Wyandot days were over
Speaker 3: and if you wanted to, you know, do well or
Speaker 3: make any money at the business, you had to you
Speaker 3: had to get kind of serious and took a lot
Speaker 3: of the fun.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I never played golf after that. Really, those were the
Speaker 3: last days of my golf for the most part, you know,
Speaker 3: because just never had time play golf once you got
Speaker 3: started doing all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: So you go to school, and then where'd you get
Speaker 1: kind of your start in the golf industry from, you know,
Speaker 1: a turf side.
Speaker 3: Post graduation, I was going to school at the two
Speaker 3: year program ati a high state and I started an
Speaker 3: internship at Chagrin Valley Country Club in Cleveland. And Joe
Speaker 3: Volk at the time, who was a longtime superintendent there,
Speaker 3: just retired a couple of years ago. He kind of
Speaker 3: took me under his wing, and I did my internship
Speaker 3: and he liked my work ethic and invited me back
Speaker 3: to being an assistant. So, you know, I graduated school
Speaker 3: and I had an assistant's job, and I liked living
Speaker 3: in Cleveland, so I went back and I worked there
Speaker 3: for three or four years, and we never had an employees,
Speaker 3: so you really, you know, you worked all the time,
Speaker 3: and you learned how to work. And it was a nice,
Speaker 3: you know, middle of the road country club, and he
Speaker 3: taught you how to stretch a dollar. You know, we
Speaker 3: never had you know, it wasn't a big budget club,
Speaker 3: but we did a lot ourselves, and you know, he
Speaker 3: really taught me how to work. And then then I
Speaker 3: ended up moving out of there to bell Air and
Speaker 3: working for Brian Sullivan, and I really, you know, we
Speaker 3: did a lot of construction. That's when I really started
Speaker 3: getting going in my career. Was that was the game changer,
Speaker 3: moving out to California and working for him.
Speaker 1: I imagine working at a club with a lower budget.
Speaker 1: When you move up into like a into a bell
Speaker 1: Air where the budget's so much bigger, it's like a shock.
Speaker 1: But also that upbringing of a small budget has to
Speaker 1: help so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, that was some of the
Speaker 3: greatest things I had, was, you know, being at a
Speaker 3: public course. I did a growing in high school at
Speaker 3: Beaver Creek. It was a city course. I worked at
Speaker 3: another little mom and pops kind of little country club
Speaker 3: in Gehanna one season there in high school, and and
Speaker 3: they you know, we had a budget. It was a
Speaker 3: private club, but we had a budget of three hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. So you know, you spray hawk the greens
Speaker 3: by yourself. You know, you drove the tractor and you
Speaker 3: you were your own hose guy, and you just learned
Speaker 3: how to make it work on nothing. And then when
Speaker 3: you get to a club that has the resources, you
Speaker 3: understand how important it is, even though you have the money,
Speaker 3: is to still spend it wisely and still stretch it
Speaker 3: to get twice as much done, even at a big club.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's not like you got a free
Speaker 3: pass here and we're going to give you all this money.
Speaker 3: You know, hire it out right. We still would do
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff ourselves. Even at bel Air
Speaker 3: we were we would strip and prep and lay all
Speaker 3: the fairways ourself. You know, we never contracted anything out,
Speaker 3: but we had the money to do it. But we
Speaker 3: just think all superintendents feel a responsibility to try to
Speaker 3: you know, be you know, pretend it's their own money
Speaker 3: and be a good steward of the club's money and
Speaker 3: try to stretch as I think that's just you know,
Speaker 3: we're dirt farmers and that's ingrained in US. You know,
Speaker 3: is doesn't matter if you have three hundred thousand or
Speaker 3: three million. You're going to spend that money the same
Speaker 3: and get as much as you possibly can out of it. Now,
Speaker 3: it's it's nice, don't get me wrong. It's nice to
Speaker 3: have those extra funds in case you make mistakes and everything.
Speaker 3: When you're at those smaller ones, you really can't afford
Speaker 3: to make any of those kind of mistakes, can't afford
Speaker 3: to go out and spray and then it rains an
Speaker 3: hour later. You know, you have that happen to you
Speaker 3: when you're at a big club and how we got
Speaker 3: to get to spray out and then it rains or
Speaker 3: like I just wasted you know, five grand, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't bother you near as much as when you're at
Speaker 3: those kind of smaller clubs. But I think, all in all,
Speaker 3: no matter where you're at, you're going to take that
Speaker 3: money and try to get as much out of it
Speaker 3: as you can, even though you might have a surplus
Speaker 3: of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So at bell Air you were doing a lot of
Speaker 1: construction and just knowing you from getting to know you here,
Speaker 1: I can tell that working and doing projects on a
Speaker 1: golf course is a passion of yours, Like the thing
Speaker 1: you love most is that where you kind of developed
Speaker 1: that passion and love for the construction and the project
Speaker 1: work at a golf course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was young there. I mean I
Speaker 3: think I was twenty two years old, and Brian Sullivan
Speaker 3: did a great job of just opening your eyes and
Speaker 3: taking the blinders off and letting you see the big picture.
Speaker 3: There was so much more than just cutting grass and
Speaker 3: how to organize trucks, and especially at a place like
Speaker 3: bell Air, it's very difficult with all the neighbors and
Speaker 3: the small roads, and he just really had to be
Speaker 3: on your a game to get things done there. And
Speaker 3: he know, he gave me enough rope to to go
Speaker 3: out and pretty much run the things by yourself. And
Speaker 3: you know, he let you make mistakes, but he was
Speaker 3: he was just really he was the guy that that
Speaker 3: you know, Joe taught me how to work, but Brian
Speaker 3: taught me how to think outside the box. And and
Speaker 3: he's the one that really changed my life. That move
Speaker 3: changed my life, and that's when I decided that was
Speaker 3: really that kind of level of maintaining turf and doring
Speaker 3: projects and everything that was something that I really enjoyed,
Speaker 3: and he let me, you know, to his credit, he
Speaker 3: let he let his assistance do a lot of it.
Speaker 3: And he you know, he watched us, but he lets
Speaker 3: you cut your teeth and make mistakes and and he
Speaker 3: was hard on us, but he was always fair. And
Speaker 3: that was kind of what my you know, all the
Speaker 3: guys I've worked for, you try to take the best
Speaker 3: that you know from each one of them, put together
Speaker 3: in your own recipe. But that always you know, tough
Speaker 3: but fair Mentality's kind of always been pretty good for me.
Speaker 3: And work for me with my guys is you know,
Speaker 3: I'll push them to the limit, but I'll be the
Speaker 3: first one to thank them and say good job, and
Speaker 3: you know, take them to lunch or whatever to you know,
Speaker 3: you know, give them, give them a half day off
Speaker 3: or working hard that week. You know, just yeah, just
Speaker 3: take care of your people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He always he always gave us, you know, working in California,
Speaker 3: work three hundred and sixty five days a year, so
Speaker 3: he'd always give us a day and a half two
Speaker 3: days off every week. Man mandated it. And that's where
Speaker 3: I also started to you know, work for several guys
Speaker 3: where you work, you know, ninety days in a row
Speaker 3: without a day off, and you just you start making mistakes.
Speaker 3: It isn't that you can't do it, but you just
Speaker 3: get tired and you start making mistakes and learning from Brian,
Speaker 3: I always try to get my guys, you know, every
Speaker 3: other weekend off. I got twelve good days of you
Speaker 3: that you're going to work, you know a lot. But
Speaker 3: that break they get and then they come back, they're
Speaker 3: just that much better and then they don't make mistakes.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine managing people as like a big part
Speaker 1: of the superintendent. Like, as you grow and you get
Speaker 1: more responsibility, that's probably one of the toughest things to
Speaker 1: you know, adjust and learn.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, for sure. I mean because you just in
Speaker 3: our profession, there's just such a variety of different types
Speaker 3: of cultures and people that work for you. You know, you
Speaker 3: have you have retired guys, you have Hispanic Dominican, you know, Cubans, whatever,
Speaker 3: you get some of that workforce. You have young kids
Speaker 3: out of high school or you know, college kids, and
Speaker 3: you know, you have you just have a variety of
Speaker 3: people from all different places. So each person is totally
Speaker 3: different and you got to learn them and you know,
Speaker 3: you got to know what they do good, and you
Speaker 3: try to put them together with the right people to
Speaker 3: get the job done. So managing people and motivating them.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not everybody likes to work outside, but
Speaker 3: we're not a you know, a high paying for a
Speaker 3: guy that just goes out and cuts screens. It's it's
Speaker 3: not something you're gonna You're not gonna get wealthy off of.
Speaker 3: So you gotta find ways to keep the guys interested,
Speaker 3: motivated and uh and I think giving them some time
Speaker 3: off and and trying to be a human being to
Speaker 3: them and and managing them as a person instead of
Speaker 3: as a labor is a way that we have been
Speaker 3: able to keep guys coming back year in and year
Speaker 3: out and then try to get these young interns to
Speaker 3: get motivated and move on. And so we've been pretty
Speaker 3: successful with that, you know. Then and but uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean Brian was really the one that got me
Speaker 3: out there, and then I got a chance he let
Speaker 3: me go and do the UH. I was a construction
Speaker 3: superintendent for year out in Palm Desert, Palm Springs, but
Speaker 3: I also came back and built the UH with Peerless Golf,
Speaker 3: built the practice facility at Bel air. That was my
Speaker 3: first big project as a construction superintendent. So you know,
Speaker 3: I got I got the best of both worlds out there,
Speaker 3: the agronomy, doing a doing a big old course like that, restoring,
Speaker 3: and then also taking a hiatus and being a construction
Speaker 3: superintendent and and growing in golf courses from start to
Speaker 3: finish and doing practice facilities and bunker work, and so
Speaker 3: it really rounded out my resume at a young age
Speaker 3: is you know, learned how to grow grass, but also
Speaker 3: learned how to build USGA greens and bunkers and teas
Speaker 3: and and do it the right way too. It was
Speaker 3: lucky to work with some really good shapers and and
Speaker 3: guys that were with landscapes unlimited for a long time
Speaker 3: that just broke off and had a little niche down
Speaker 3: there in Palm Springs. So you know that that rounded
Speaker 3: me out to to kind of have that passion to
Speaker 3: do that stuff. And I just always thought, you know,
Speaker 3: I think my guys they like a change of pace,
Speaker 3: and mow and greens and projects is a way for
Speaker 3: them to you know, you want to keep them motivated.
Speaker 3: It's given them something else to do than mow and
Speaker 3: greens every day.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's like just changing up some mono any change,
Speaker 1: you know exactly, and it's exciting and it's stuff that
Speaker 1: you can see, like as opposed to just cutting grass,
Speaker 1: Like I imagine you cut the grass and you can
Speaker 1: see it's shorter. But seeing the work day and day
Speaker 1: out and feeling the impact of like adding a bunker
Speaker 1: or something like that, there's there's more of a sense
Speaker 1: of accomplishment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a it's a visual gratification. You know,
Speaker 3: it's esthetically pleasing and gratifying when you build a bunker
Speaker 3: or you change a hole or you you know, you
Speaker 3: redo greens or whatever. You can see all that and
Speaker 3: you know, planning shrubs and doing the landscape around the clubhouse.
Speaker 3: These guys like that because they see it, you know that,
Speaker 3: Hey I did that, you know, And and that's cool
Speaker 3: for these guys to feel that because cutting you know,
Speaker 3: you can cut straight lines, but who cares about that? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just want the grass cut. I don't care if
Speaker 3: they cut it in a circle, you know, just get
Speaker 3: it done. And these guys don't. These guys, you know,
Speaker 3: they'll they'll be like, well, I cut the straightest lines,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't do something like redoing twelve green and
Speaker 3: sidding it from your own nursery that you grew the
Speaker 3: whole summer. And you go and you cut the side,
Speaker 3: you haul it over there, you lay it, you level
Speaker 3: it out, you do all that stuff, and then you
Speaker 3: come back in a couple of months you're like, man,
Speaker 3: that green's you know, they that's stuff. My guys take
Speaker 3: a lot of pride and that, and they enjoy doing projects.
Speaker 3: You know, they know they're in for It's hard, it
Speaker 3: takes the hours, but they're always is a change of pace,
Speaker 3: and I think that's part of the way we've been
Speaker 3: able to keep them motivated too, and not you know,
Speaker 3: get that monotony boredom of maintaining grass. It's like verification.
Speaker 3: It's pain in it's pain in the rear, but you
Speaker 3: know what, it's a change. You know, Hey, let's go
Speaker 3: Swiss cheese this place, and Okay, we don't have to
Speaker 3: cut today. You know, It's just it seems to kind
Speaker 3: of work that way.
Speaker 1: So after bell Air, you went to Wingfoot.
Speaker 3: Then after bell Air, I spent a year with Peerless Golf.
Speaker 3: Like I said, we did the range at bell Air
Speaker 3: and then we did Lakita Country Club and some work
Speaker 3: at Traditions and the Reserve and Vintage Club down there
Speaker 3: in Palm Springs. And I love the construction, but I
Speaker 3: hated the traveling all over the place. And Brian actually
Speaker 3: had called me, and you know, Brian had interviewed for Wingfoot,
Speaker 3: and we thought we were going to go to Wingfoot
Speaker 3: and and then mister Latshaw got the Paul got the
Speaker 3: job at Wingfoot and Paul was out at Riviera at
Speaker 3: the time. So Brian and Paul had a you know relationship,
Speaker 3: and he had called Brian and said, you know, I
Speaker 3: need some guys up at Wingfoot. And Brian called me,
Speaker 3: He's like, you gotta yata go work for Paul up
Speaker 3: at Wingfoot. And so I did, you know, I packed
Speaker 3: up and it was closer to home. You know, my
Speaker 3: family's still based in Central Ohio. It's kind of tough
Speaker 3: out to talk about.
Speaker 1: Uh So you go Central Ohio to Los Angeles, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to Springs, yeap, to New.
Speaker 3: York, Maronick to Mamernick, New York, not knowing what the
Speaker 3: hell I'm getting into. So I went and worked, you know,
Speaker 3: and and you know, I had you knew what Paul was.
Speaker 3: You know, he was probably one of the more respected
Speaker 3: guys in the business at the time, well known, and
Speaker 3: I you know, I didn't even see the place. I
Speaker 3: just over the phone kind of told him I'm coming,
Speaker 3: I'll be there, you know, I'll do it. And shit, boy,
Speaker 3: I tell you, not that I don't love the course
Speaker 3: or anything, but it's just a hard area to live
Speaker 3: up there if you don't make any you know, we
Speaker 3: didn't make any money. I mean, we couple of us
Speaker 3: got an old, one hundred year old house the upstairs,
Speaker 3: you know, and split it. And it was expensive. I mean,
Speaker 3: we didn't have any money.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: We we ate hot dogs and drink Budweiser. That was
Speaker 3: our big dinner, you know. I mean we scrounged some
Speaker 3: change left after rent and we worked a hundred hours
Speaker 3: a week there. I mean, it was it was like robots.
Speaker 3: You know. You got up at four and you got
Speaker 3: the spray hawks out and you sprayed all the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was crazy. And there was a union
Speaker 3: crew there, and that was difficult cause you know, there
Speaker 3: was eight or ten of us AI ts and assistants
Speaker 3: and interns that would do all the walking and raking
Speaker 3: of the bunkers while the union crew just set they
Speaker 3: didn't do anything except a writing job. And that's the
Speaker 3: way it was, you know. And we accepted that. And
Speaker 3: you either either bitch about it or you use it
Speaker 3: as motivation. And I took that as say, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to let those guys get me down and try
Speaker 3: to motivate the other guys that were We were all
Speaker 3: in this business to move on, you know. And I
Speaker 3: mean we cut a couple thousand trees down ground, all
Speaker 3: the stumps ourselves. I mean there was a pile of
Speaker 3: mault so high at Wingfoot that it about catch on fire.
Speaker 3: We had to put a sprinkler on it. And you know,
Speaker 3: it was just crazy there. It was the preparation to
Speaker 3: get it ready for the amateur and the open. And
Speaker 3: there was good ten guys that put in a lot
Speaker 3: of time of sweat equity there that you'll never forget,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll never forget that. We called it the foot.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: There was no fun about it, but we're all better
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: You know what. How what years were you there for?
Speaker 3: Just I was just there a year two thousand to
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, and Paul had come to me
Speaker 3: and there was some opportunities in New York there for
Speaker 3: superintendent's jobs. Or he said, you'd go back home to
Speaker 3: Cleveland if you want and work for Matt Shaeffert Country.
Speaker 3: He's looking for a guy. And I had talked to
Speaker 3: Matt along the way, met Matt through a friend of mine,
Speaker 3: and and you know the opportunity to get back to
Speaker 3: Ohio and be close to my family, and that that
Speaker 3: really tripped my trigger. And I was still young at
Speaker 3: the time, you know, I was still only like twenty
Speaker 3: four years old, but I had been to California, New York,
Speaker 3: Palm Springs. He could, you know, pretty good resume, getting started,
Speaker 3: a couple of good clubs.
Speaker 1: Think about the architectural lineage. You had a Thomas, you
Speaker 1: had a tilling Hast and then Country to Flynn.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, se, how did you you know, start to get
Speaker 1: into architecture and start to you know, understand how to
Speaker 1: get you know, maintenance and construction, and but then you
Speaker 1: know the kind of the those are so hingeent on,
Speaker 1: you know, architecture being alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think at my stage at my career back
Speaker 3: then in the late nineties, early two thousands, like I
Speaker 3: look at all these younger guys that are soups now
Speaker 3: there's so much in tune to the architecture then My
Speaker 3: generation was at our you know. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 3: know a lot now about because where I've worked and
Speaker 3: I've engulfed myself into it because it's just something I enjoy.
Speaker 3: But I could you know, like you talk about Brian
Speaker 3: Moore and Brian Palmer, Scott Bordner, all these younger guys
Speaker 3: that are they just that worked at started off at
Speaker 3: great clubs, you know, across across the country. You know,
Speaker 3: Drew Barnett, you know, these guys worked at great clubs
Speaker 3: where they were restoring all these historical architecture and everything back.
Speaker 3: So I think this generation is a lot more in
Speaker 3: tune than what might. You know, we were still kind
Speaker 3: of like maintained the grass. Okay, this is the architect
Speaker 3: You're gonna have Tom Fozzio come in and fix the
Speaker 3: golf course up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and it was much more of like
Speaker 1: a greenness.
Speaker 3: It wasn't It wasn't a golden age of architecture by
Speaker 3: any means. There wasn't the gil Hans, Tom Doaks. They
Speaker 3: were just they were just learning under Pete Dye and
Speaker 3: there wasn't anybody back then that was doing that rugged.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was at Beller, I met Kyle
Speaker 3: Phillips and he was the first one and he was
Speaker 3: doing Kings Barnes and he was the first one that
Speaker 3: I met that really had that kind of rugged, natural mindset.
Speaker 3: The lay of the land put in. Not to say
Speaker 3: that that Tom Fozzio didn't do a great job at
Speaker 3: bell Air at the time, but it was more of
Speaker 3: a more of a green and possibly prettier golf courses
Speaker 3: at the time. So my experience, you know, when I
Speaker 3: went to Wingfoot, I knew Wingfoot was pretty special because
Speaker 3: I had played a lot of golf and it was
Speaker 3: a hard golf course. You know, those greed complexes are diabolical,
Speaker 3: so I but I never got to you know, I
Speaker 3: played twice when I was there in a year because
Speaker 3: we just never had the opportunity. We worked those guys,
Speaker 3: you know those and that that's the guys I'd worked for.
Speaker 3: They never let you hardly play. How Brian liked to
Speaker 3: play and he would encourage you to play, but Paul
Speaker 3: wasn't going to let you play.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And uh so when I went back to Country, you know,
Speaker 3: I think Matt was Matt Schaeffer was one that was okay.
Speaker 3: You know, he was a trailblazer for down and Brown.
Speaker 3: You know, try to push that plant right on the edge,
Speaker 3: and we killed a lot of grass. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna you know, he'll say the same thing. And
Speaker 3: Matt was good because he let you push it and
Speaker 3: you screw up and you have to go fix it.
Speaker 3: You have to go plug some parts of the greens.
Speaker 3: And but man, he just never let your water and
Speaker 3: he had I think he had the grasp on the
Speaker 3: cultural part of it is the way that a hundred
Speaker 3: years ago, the Golden Age architecture of the Flynns and
Speaker 3: and all those guys, the Thomas's and McKenzie and Colt
Speaker 3: whatever you want to say, those guys wanted it hard
Speaker 3: and fast and just play the ground game. Because like
Speaker 3: you said, you had the hickory clubs, you had the
Speaker 3: you know, the balls that didn't go very far, and
Speaker 3: you played the ground game. It's just that much better.
Speaker 3: And that's the way they designed the golf courses.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't fly it to the green and hit it
Speaker 3: as far as you can.
Speaker 1: What's ironic is it's that game is now like the
Speaker 1: Lady and senior player game, whereas the lower trajectory players
Speaker 1: play the game that was like the great Golden Age players.
Speaker 3: Game, absolutely, you know. And so when I went to
Speaker 3: Country and it was a William Flynn and and it
Speaker 3: was good. It was good. It wasn't something that you're
Speaker 3: going to walk and remember every hole, you know. And
Speaker 3: I'm working for Matt for a couple of years there,
Speaker 3: and he came to me and said, you got a
Speaker 3: decision making. You can go to Marion or you can
Speaker 3: stay at Country. And he said, you know, once you
Speaker 3: have the opportunity to go to Marion with me. And
Speaker 3: when he got the Marion job, he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: he knew I was. You know, I was really starting
Speaker 3: to get into the architecture kind of with him because
Speaker 3: just the way he maintained a course, I started understanding
Speaker 3: why the architects did what they did. And it's from
Speaker 3: a cultural program too.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: You could have the greatest Old School goal, of course,
Speaker 3: and if it's wet and soft, it doesn't do it justice.
Speaker 3: So when I got to Mary, and that's when I
Speaker 3: was just like, holy cow, you know. I I walked
Speaker 3: that place the first time and and I was just like, now,
Speaker 3: this is this is architecture, you know, even though Bella.
Speaker 3: And when I went out to bell Air and I
Speaker 3: got it and I did my interview, I was like, well, man,
Speaker 3: I've never seen a place like this. You know, bell
Speaker 3: Air was breathtaking, and uh, you know, it just had
Speaker 3: so much character. I still do this day. Out all
Speaker 3: the places I've worked at, it's it's right up there
Speaker 3: with number one that I worked at, because it just
Speaker 3: had so much uniqueness and character and how he routed
Speaker 3: it through the canyons and it was genius, you know.
Speaker 3: And and that's why, you know, bell Air is really special.
Speaker 3: And when I got to Marion, it was just it's
Speaker 3: just pure golf, you know. Not the member were all
Speaker 3: about the club. You got the wickers got you got
Speaker 3: the you know, the white faces of Marion. You know. Man,
Speaker 3: I got there and we just we kind of did
Speaker 3: all the grass ligns and kind of let the fescue
Speaker 3: and whatever. Kentucky thirty one grow, you know, just had
Speaker 3: the guns rough, you know, and we gave you know,
Speaker 3: just with those grass lignes, we made the golf course
Speaker 3: just a totally different and then we turned the water
Speaker 3: off and it was brown and rolling and fast, and
Speaker 3: then if you really hit a bad shot, you were penalized.
Speaker 1: To me, it seems like, and I don't want this
Speaker 1: to sound like a stereotype, but so many supers get
Speaker 1: hung up like their job is to grow grass and
Speaker 1: because of that, they're very cautious with the grass, with
Speaker 1: the watering and you know, making sure it's lush, rather
Speaker 1: than going the other end of the spectrum and pushing
Speaker 1: it a little to get the plane. Could you know,
Speaker 1: where's the how do you come up with the kind
Speaker 1: of line?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the happy median line. So you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of it has to do with your
Speaker 3: board and your membership. You know, some clubs and boards
Speaker 3: and membership, that's what they want, and as a superintendent
Speaker 3: you kind of got to give them that. But sometimes
Speaker 3: if you break the mold and go into a club
Speaker 3: and say let me let me try this, you know,
Speaker 3: let me let me show you what I can do
Speaker 3: what I think, you know, you're gonna get more role.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have a lot more different shot values by
Speaker 3: just drying up the place. And I'm not saying kill
Speaker 3: the place. You don't have to kill the place. I
Speaker 3: mean there's there's certain times a year where you can
Speaker 3: get away with a lot more than you know, like
Speaker 3: like right now, you know, you get you get in
Speaker 3: the end of August September, you can ride a little
Speaker 3: bit harder, and you know, the nights get cooler and
Speaker 3: you can come you know, you play the weather. You know,
Speaker 3: mother nature has a big part in how your conditioning
Speaker 3: a golf course. And you got micro environments on the
Speaker 3: golf course and all that there. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: fine line that and I think I think guys like
Speaker 3: yourself and people that are into golf that are in
Speaker 3: the supportive movement of restoring the golf in all the
Speaker 3: architects have done a good job of Hey, we're going
Speaker 3: to store these golf courses, but we want your superintendent
Speaker 3: to get on board with us. Is let's get this
Speaker 3: little brown and dirty boys, you know, and let's see
Speaker 3: where we can take this. And it helps the architecture people.
Speaker 3: You know, it takes members. You have to educate and
Speaker 3: you have to you have to be on the ground
Speaker 3: with them and explaining exactly what you're doing. And once
Speaker 3: you educate them and they start to see the different
Speaker 3: in the playability, more than likely they're going to get
Speaker 3: on board with that, yeah, and they start to get it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what's happened in Chicago, you know.
Speaker 3: I think that there's been a lot of there's a
Speaker 3: lot of good superintendents, and there's a lot of good
Speaker 3: architecture in Chicago. I think these architects have come in
Speaker 3: to try to restore these golf courses back to the
Speaker 3: original designs, but they've also said, hey, let's let's firm
Speaker 3: this place up a little bit. And I think as
Speaker 3: long as the architects and the superintendent are explaining that
Speaker 3: to the boards and being communicative and educational to the membership,
Speaker 3: I think they start to buy in and then they
Speaker 3: start to enjoy it more.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a process. It's got to be
Speaker 3: a process. There's still going to be clubs out there
Speaker 3: that want it, that want it green, and it's not
Speaker 3: necessarily have to be soft. You can keep it green
Speaker 3: and keep it firm, but they just they don't want
Speaker 3: to see any brown whatsoever. And and if that's what
Speaker 3: and you know, in the eighties, eighties and nineties, that's
Speaker 3: what it was, I mean, that was that was what
Speaker 3: it was for the most part, probably ninety percent of
Speaker 3: it was like that. But you had a few guys.
Speaker 3: You had a few guys like Matt and Dick Batter
Speaker 3: and Pat Lucas and you know some guys that were
Speaker 3: you know, the guy at Huntington Valley in Pennsylvania. That
Speaker 3: guy is extreme, you know, he really pushes it. You know,
Speaker 3: I think was it Anderson, Scott Anderson. I can't remember
Speaker 3: his name, but that guy's been outside the box for
Speaker 3: a long time and they love him there for it,
Speaker 3: you know. They he's he's got that membership to buy
Speaker 3: in that we're going to spit on these fairways or
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: So when you came to Chicago, it you know, it
Speaker 1: was a much different culture of conditions. I think in
Speaker 1: speaking to all your peers that most peers, you know,
Speaker 1: consider you as the guy that started the movement towards
Speaker 1: you know, faster less trees. I love. There's a there's
Speaker 1: something on one of my Tom Doak podcasts he talks
Speaker 1: about how in Chicago in the nineties everybody had the
Speaker 1: Medina effect because they squeezed in the necks of greens
Speaker 1: and there'd be rough, you know, for five yards between
Speaker 1: bunkers because that's what Madna did, and everybody did that,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like what you've created is like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what Old Elm does, So this is what
Speaker 1: everybody's doing. Talk about a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what you came into at Old Elm, and
Speaker 1: then how you've been able to change the culture over
Speaker 1: a number of years.
Speaker 3: Well thank you for that. That's pretty nice compliment from
Speaker 3: peers and everything. But uh, when I got to Old Elm,
Speaker 3: I just I knew it could be really good. I
Speaker 3: just didn't know how good until I engulfed myself and
Speaker 3: all the architecture. And I don't even think Old Elm
Speaker 3: knew what was a cult when I got here. You know,
Speaker 3: everybody had said it was a Donald Ross And then
Speaker 3: I just got into the archives and started looking at everything,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, guys, you know, we got one of
Speaker 3: the only two cult courses in the United States. And
Speaker 3: I mean, these were conversations I had with the board
Speaker 3: and I'm like, this is this is something we can
Speaker 3: hang our hat on. This is something that can bring
Speaker 3: Old Elm. Not that we care about ratings or anything
Speaker 3: like that, but it's it's something besides the fact that
Speaker 3: it was an exclusive Men's Club.
Speaker 1: It's like a uniqueness in finding the you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the character and the uniqueness of each course. Because
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of golf courses and architecture is every
Speaker 1: course is so unique from the other one.
Speaker 3: That's right. That's right, and some are better than others.
Speaker 3: But any superintendent that goes to his own place and
Speaker 3: can make that unique or you know, fire that diamond
Speaker 3: in the rough character or feature that's out there. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, you could go to you know, it's like
Speaker 3: going up to Lake Geneva and he has all those
Speaker 3: little hershey drops, and you know, he's got a double
Speaker 3: green and you know, he's just got some quirky cool things.
Speaker 3: And he found him and he and rediscovered him. You know.
Speaker 3: I came to Old Elm and it was it was
Speaker 3: kind of a combination of I need to get rid
Speaker 3: of some trees first of all, just to grow some
Speaker 3: freaking grass, you know. I mean it was like and
Speaker 3: it was like at Windstone. I went to Windstone. It
Speaker 3: was only you know, it's belt in eighty nine or whatever,
Speaker 3: and we're mowing te's with cottonwood roots and the mower
Speaker 3: had shaved them down so much that you could just
Speaker 3: roll mow over the roots, you know. So it started
Speaker 3: at Winstone and went to Winstone and as did a
Speaker 3: thousand trees out of there just to grow grass, you know.
Speaker 3: And so that mindset came over here. And the great
Speaker 3: thing about being at Old Elm is that my GM
Speaker 3: Kevin was one hundred and fifty percent behind me, and
Speaker 3: he was all supportive and really led the way for me.
Speaker 3: You know that we really kind of really do work
Speaker 3: like a golf club should. Here is that Kevin Brett
Speaker 3: and Jason they deal with the members up there. They're
Speaker 3: they're my communication piece. I'm kind of behind the scenes
Speaker 3: doing the dirty work. They're you know, they're supposed to
Speaker 3: be polished, and I'm not always politically correct, so it's
Speaker 3: probably a good thing that they deal with the members
Speaker 3: and I just go and do what they tell me
Speaker 3: to do. But we got on board as a team
Speaker 3: and explained to the board what we wanted to do.
Speaker 3: We brought out the original plan. I think Old Elms
Speaker 3: probably got one of the best archives of original drawings
Speaker 3: and everything, so it actually kind of made it pretty
Speaker 3: simple to say, this is what we're going to do,
Speaker 3: this is what Colt did, We're going to go with
Speaker 3: this because you know, we we think Colt's one of
Speaker 3: the you know, the most prominent golf archt especially overseas,
Speaker 3: he's the man. He's the man overseas.
Speaker 1: That's a funny thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, you might talk about Rayner and mackenzie and
Speaker 3: McDonald here cold is Jesus over there, you know.
Speaker 1: That's the funny thing is like in America he did
Speaker 1: so little work, but if you look abroad, like the
Speaker 1: way he's regarded in Europe and the UK, and then
Speaker 1: you look at some of the clubs and and like
Speaker 1: he got called in to talk to at Pine Valley,
Speaker 1: like to consult the Pine Valley, like you know, the
Speaker 1: greatest architects in American golf working at Pine Valley, and they,
Speaker 1: you know, bring in Colt. You know, he put together
Speaker 1: he made Royal County down what it is like it
Speaker 1: was a mess before he got you know. And and
Speaker 1: just like I think his his his work goes so
Speaker 1: under the radar in America and that people don't understand.
Speaker 3: People just don't know because not very many people have
Speaker 3: gone over and played his courses over there. That was
Speaker 3: a great thing. I was here a year or two
Speaker 3: and uh, Papa Daka set up a trip for us
Speaker 3: to go to Europe, England, and that was that was
Speaker 3: my game changer. That's where I knew what I had
Speaker 3: to do. When I came back. After I went and
Speaker 3: played all you know Sunningdale, Swinley, you know Rye, there
Speaker 3: was just such you know, Royal Saint George, Saint George's Hill.
Speaker 3: I mean I got to play so many awesome golf
Speaker 3: courses there, but it was just so natural and rugged,
Speaker 3: and it was such a you know Colt was There
Speaker 3: wasn't any templates. Yeah, I mean you could. Every course
Speaker 3: looks different. There's very few courses that have the same
Speaker 3: type of hole. I mean he's got you go to
Speaker 3: Rye and in Royal Saint George's it's links, it's pot
Speaker 3: bunkers deep, and then you go to Swinley and it's
Speaker 3: just like torn bunker faces Heather. I mean, he just
Speaker 3: took the natural environment and the plant material and made
Speaker 3: his golf courses. His greens aren't big and bold by
Speaker 3: any means. You know that he doesn't need it. I
Speaker 3: mean they're so I mean I can take you out
Speaker 3: here at Old Elm, the number three and be like
Speaker 3: this could be one of my favorite greens I've ever
Speaker 3: worked on, and you'll be like, you look at the
Speaker 3: tea and you're like, it's not much like Number eleven
Speaker 3: is the sneakiest green in Chicago, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: but it's flat. And that's that's what I think is
Speaker 3: really cool about him. Not that I don't you know,
Speaker 3: go to Chicago Golf and think those are probably some
Speaker 3: of the best green complexes in the world, but they're
Speaker 3: big bold. He was more of kind of a small
Speaker 3: and dainty kind of guy around the greens, but was
Speaker 3: just magical the way he blended him in and he
Speaker 3: wanted it short and tight around the greens. You know,
Speaker 3: up to the greens and you know it going over
Speaker 3: there and coming back it gave and having the original drawings,
Speaker 3: it was a pretty bulletproof plan to go to the
Speaker 3: members and say it was according to the plan, this
Speaker 3: is what we're going to do. They can never come
Speaker 3: back at me with it, like why'd you do that?
Speaker 3: Why'd you get now? I think every superintent I'll tell
Speaker 3: you that you're going to have tree hugging members that
Speaker 3: I think you're killing their kids when you cut down trees.
Speaker 3: But more unlikely those trees were not there originally, and
Speaker 3: you and I both know that forties, fifties, sixties, seventies
Speaker 3: there was a movement to not see one hole to
Speaker 3: the other and have a tree corridor, probably thanks to USGA.
Speaker 3: Sorry but uh you know the uh it was. And
Speaker 3: but you know what, it's just like everything else, those
Speaker 3: are t you know, Well, that's the thing is that
Speaker 3: it's just like hairbands in the eighties and nineties, you
Speaker 3: know you had hair bands. That was a fad.
Speaker 1: Well J BLOSEI once I was walking around with him
Speaker 1: at a course and he was talking about how you know,
Speaker 1: it coincides with like house architecture. If you go into
Speaker 1: a house that was built in the sixties, all the
Speaker 1: rooms are closed off, but if you go into house now,
Speaker 1: they're like open floor plans flowing into one another. Just
Speaker 1: like a golf course where you know, you're playing a
Speaker 1: tree lined like you're on that hole and you see
Speaker 1: nobody else. That's where you are. But now you you know,
Speaker 1: like the really great restored courses, you get out there
Speaker 1: and you just see everything unfolding. You see, and I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the psychology of the design, is
Speaker 1: like where you're playing one hole and you're looking across
Speaker 1: at what's you know, four holes ahead, you're thinking, you're
Speaker 1: already thinking about, oh man, look at that green, like
Speaker 1: it's going to be that pins tough spot, you know.
Speaker 3: I think it's part of competition too. I think it's good.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a you know, back in the
Speaker 3: day you play golf as competitive, you know, and it
Speaker 3: was good to see guys from hold to hole what
Speaker 3: they were doing and kind of ras them a little bit.
Speaker 3: I think it's great for golf, you know. And I
Speaker 3: mean the perfect example. Probably my favorite golf course, one
Speaker 3: of my top three is Pine Valley, one of the
Speaker 3: probably one of the best golf courses in the world.
Speaker 3: And there wasn't hardly any trees there when it started,
Speaker 3: and now they're going back to taking a lot of those.
Speaker 3: You know, when I played it, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of trees and it was almost hold a hole, you know.
Speaker 3: But it's still unbelievable, don't get me wrong. But now
Speaker 3: to be able to sit up there and see that
Speaker 3: place in the natural landscape, I just it's so simple,
Speaker 3: but it's so right.
Speaker 1: I saw a picture of like that, the par three.
Speaker 1: It's a long par three. I can't remember what hole,
Speaker 1: but you know it's got. It was all tree riddled
Speaker 1: right around it, and it was like you're hitting into
Speaker 1: this this green that looks, you know, pretty inviting because
Speaker 1: of the trees. But then they took all the trees out,
Speaker 1: exposed all the sand around it, and then the tree
Speaker 1: looks the greens look so small. Oh yeah, And it
Speaker 1: makes the shot psychologically so much more difficult, not to
Speaker 1: mention the wind and the airflow, and it had to
Speaker 1: help with the greens condition.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, I think, I think all the tree work
Speaker 3: that I tell guys that, they asked me, well, how'd
Speaker 3: you get started? I said, well, I took the green complexes.
Speaker 3: I said, we've got to get air movement around greens.
Speaker 3: And at the time, we had bent a little bit
Speaker 3: of bent and poet greens and they were fantastic. And
Speaker 3: when we had that winter in twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: a lot of the greens just didn't make it very good.
Speaker 3: And that's when we decided to gas and grass the
Speaker 3: greens here. But I can tell you this, with this
Speaker 3: newer bents, you really need full sun almost all day,
Speaker 3: especially in the morning. And that's where I tell guys
Speaker 3: that come to me and ask me, how do you
Speaker 3: get started? You know, how do I get started with
Speaker 3: the membership? That's just you know, tough and doesn't want
Speaker 3: to hear anything about it. And you can do all
Speaker 3: that arbor calm stuff and was waste thousands of dollars
Speaker 3: on it, or you can just have common sense and
Speaker 3: go out there at nine o'clock and if the shit's
Speaker 3: in the shade, you know, you need to cut down.
Speaker 3: I mean, we have so many oaks.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a joke with our board was, guys,
Speaker 3: if I've got nuts on the greens, you know from
Speaker 3: the acorns, I think the tree is too close, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know what, those guys laugh. But then they
Speaker 3: chewed on that for a while and he's like, man,
Speaker 3: he's right, he goes, we got to go clean those
Speaker 3: nuts off on Saturdays and Sundays in the fall and
Speaker 3: it drives the snuts. Yeah, well yeah, it's because the
Speaker 3: damn trees too damn close to the green guys. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't care if it's one hundred years old and
Speaker 3: it looks great, you gotta cut it down. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was just it so it kind of got comical,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: So it's I think that's a great piece of advice,
Speaker 1: is I think where so many people and I'm like
Speaker 1: guilty of it myself. I remember I was a member
Speaker 1: of a club, and like I started focusing on like
Speaker 1: the trees I knew I hated the most, and they were,
Speaker 1: but they were also the trees that members loved the
Speaker 1: most because there were controversial ones that were like greatly
Speaker 1: impacting the intended strategy the whole, but focusing on the
Speaker 1: functionality and the ones that like are dependent on grass growth.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like it.
Speaker 1: Where you have a functional thing that people can understand,
Speaker 1: like there's no sun, get this tree out so we
Speaker 1: can grow grass and you can have a better putting surface.
Speaker 1: That's that's I feel like that's where so many people
Speaker 1: go wrong. And this Andy, it almost starts more controversy.
Speaker 3: Andy, you can't put on dirt, buddy, you know. And
Speaker 3: I'll go to so many places and they'll have one
Speaker 3: or two grains that they've got the back left or
Speaker 3: you know, it's been in the shade all year. It
Speaker 3: looks like shit. And it's not Superintendent's fault because he's
Speaker 3: been begging to get that tree down. But mister and
Speaker 3: missus havishammer can't cut that down? Oh God, can't cut
Speaker 3: that down? Well, what you want to put on dirt?
Speaker 3: You know it. It's not a bad thing to cut
Speaker 3: a tree down to allow turf to grow. Because guys,
Speaker 3: you know, all superintendents I know are agronomous and their
Speaker 3: job they're paid to give extreme high end quality putting surfaces,
Speaker 3: rough fair ways and anything that minimizes their opportunity to
Speaker 3: succeed to that. You got to get rid of that.
Speaker 3: You got to get rid of the problem. It's a
Speaker 3: very simple, you know, cause and effect. And we had
Speaker 3: a tree left of ten green, left of seven green,
Speaker 3: and they were probably two of the biggest trees on
Speaker 3: the golf course. But even when I had poe growing
Speaker 3: in the shade there, we struggled a little bit with them.
Speaker 3: They just just you know, tree roots in the greens,
Speaker 3: you know. And once I once I got one of
Speaker 3: those down and they saw the difference within a year,
Speaker 3: it was like, Okay, this kid is actually telling us
Speaker 3: what we need to know. Okay, we's got he's got
Speaker 3: street cred. Now we get it.
Speaker 1: So the besides the tree removal, one of the big
Speaker 1: things that you've done here is like, is the short
Speaker 1: grass expansion, the you know, cutting the rough down to
Speaker 1: shorter to get the ball roll. You have a you
Speaker 1: have a much older membership than most most clubs. You know,
Speaker 1: how how have you been able to effectively expand fairways
Speaker 1: without just killing a budget, because that's always the pushback
Speaker 1: that yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: It's we we're lucky, we have enough room. And we've
Speaker 3: had about an acre nursery that we pretty much have,
Speaker 3: you know, taken and flipped once or twice a year
Speaker 3: for the last six years. We took fronts of fairways
Speaker 3: that weren't necessary and flipped and flopped side from here
Speaker 3: to there. You know, our fairways are enormous and they
Speaker 3: were originally so when I got here just scalping a
Speaker 3: lot of them down had bent and pohen the rough
Speaker 3: and scalping them down and verifying and slit seat and
Speaker 3: dragon plug poe plugs and verticutting. And it's been a
Speaker 3: combination of probably four or five things that we've done.
Speaker 3: But my whole goal to the membership was I wanted
Speaker 3: to restore the golf course for golf, for the architectural
Speaker 3: part of it, but I wanted to restore the golf
Speaker 3: course for the members because I I'm trying to lead
Speaker 3: a movement in making golf fun again. I worked at
Speaker 3: so many places where it was our goal just to
Speaker 3: make you shoot a hundred. You know, we wanted to
Speaker 3: make it as hard and tough as we could, you know,
Speaker 3: and working at you know, Wingfoot and Marion, you work
Speaker 3: at us open course, and that's what people expect. You know,
Speaker 3: I get it, But you come to hold down with
Speaker 3: an older membership. Let's face it, we don't have a
Speaker 3: whole lot of We probably got ten single digit handicappers.
Speaker 3: So my goal was to come up with an idea
Speaker 3: that I could still make it a challenge for those
Speaker 3: guys that are good, but also make it more playable
Speaker 3: and enjoyable to the member that was the fifteen to
Speaker 3: twenty handicapper that was older. So by expanding all these fairways,
Speaker 3: lowering the height to cut on the rough, just by
Speaker 3: doing that, I was still that enabled me to keep
Speaker 3: the approaches in green banks really tight and the greens
Speaker 3: firm and fast, and that's what I wanted to keep
Speaker 3: because they were getting to the point where the guys
Speaker 3: are like, oh, we can't chip, can't put blah blah bah.
Speaker 3: So I said, all right, well, I'll I'll cut the
Speaker 3: rough down to a half inch three quarters of an
Speaker 3: inch step cut, and if you miss these enormous fairways,
Speaker 3: you can take out your hybrid. And you know, these
Speaker 3: guys still can play golf, but for them to get
Speaker 3: through three inch rough, they just don't have the strength
Speaker 3: and it's frustrating for him. So my thought was, I
Speaker 3: want to make the funnest golf course in the United States.
Speaker 3: How do I do that? And that's why I told Kevin,
Speaker 3: I said, you know, because Kevin's a scratch golfer, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, you're going to make it too easy.
Speaker 3: I said, keV, you don't hardly miss the fairways anyways. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: So if you're in the rough and you get to
Speaker 3: the green, you still got to chip and put on
Speaker 3: these diabolical green complexes. That's where it is. The defense
Speaker 3: of Old Elm is the greens, in the surrounds of
Speaker 3: the greens.
Speaker 1: That's the magic of it.
Speaker 3: That's the magic of Old Elm.
Speaker 1: Is where what with the short ruff and everything, it's
Speaker 1: made it so much more negotiable for the average golfer.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't have anything any impact on the on
Speaker 1: the good player, because where all the challenges is finding
Speaker 1: the right angles to come into these greens that when
Speaker 1: they're going firm and fast, it's it's you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're just terrified hitting wedges.
Speaker 3: Well and andy, that's why taking these you know people
Speaker 3: are like, this kid's nuts. You know, he's got seventy
Speaker 3: five acres of ben and he's taking his fairways out
Speaker 3: to there's you know, I got like twenty acres of
Speaker 3: rough now when I used to have close to fifty sixty.
Speaker 3: And but it's brought all the angles that Colt won.
Speaker 3: And now you understand why Colt did that is because
Speaker 3: you know, if I'm far left on number two now
Speaker 3: where the fairway is, it's I can actually get it
Speaker 3: on the green without it rolling off the back or
Speaker 3: to the left or the right and getting an eight.
Speaker 3: I can you know, I can get a four because
Speaker 3: that's so hard, you know, it's such a hard green
Speaker 3: to hit. But all these angles that are you know,
Speaker 3: the right four. You know, these old guys don't want
Speaker 3: to go up between all those bunkers. They can bail
Speaker 3: out to the right and they've got a great angle
Speaker 3: into three green. So that just kind of happened for me.
Speaker 3: Is like, and I would take keV and the members.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm
Speaker 3: taking this fairway all the way out here like it
Speaker 3: is on the plan. But I go come over here
Speaker 3: and look at this angle. So if you're good enough
Speaker 3: to try to get your ball over on this side
Speaker 3: of the fairway, you're going to get rewarded because you're
Speaker 3: gonna have a way better opportunity, you know, almost double
Speaker 3: the area to land the ball on the green as
Speaker 3: if you played it like every Tom Dick and Harry
Speaker 3: and try to go straight up the gut.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So I think golfers have been it's all been about
Speaker 3: the power game and flying it as far as you can.
Speaker 3: But you know what I love that about Old Elm
Speaker 3: is you get on the tee and you feel like
Speaker 3: you can just hit it where you know you can
Speaker 3: hit it as hard as you can. But that's fun. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: should you take your three wit or hit an iron?
Speaker 3: Should you hit an iron on nine and just skinny
Speaker 3: it up there and not try to go for the green? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's probably the way you want to play it, but
Speaker 3: guys are going to take their driver and if you
Speaker 3: hit the green grate, you're rewarded, but if you miss
Speaker 3: the green, it's tough up there. Yeah, you know, So
Speaker 3: trying to bring all the clubs back in the bag
Speaker 3: to play here, trying and I can tell you this,
Speaker 3: the higher handicappers over the last five year have gone
Speaker 3: down and my better golfers have gone up. And that's
Speaker 3: a combination of doing what we've done, adding some te's
Speaker 3: for seniors, and you know, I've always tried to give
Speaker 3: and take. If I take away something from you, guys,
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to give you some I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to give you a bailout area.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So my mindset's kind of screwed up, probably and crazy,
Speaker 3: but I want to make it as I want people
Speaker 3: to come back here and bring guys back and be like,
Speaker 3: that's the funnest golf I've played in years. That's the
Speaker 3: funnest place I've played in years. And quite honestly, don't
Speaker 3: you want to come out and get a birdie or
Speaker 3: two instead of a bogie and a triple and a quad?
Speaker 1: Well? Who likes that? I think the best part about
Speaker 1: it is for the good players is that you can
Speaker 1: make a ton of birdies, but the double bogie is
Speaker 1: lurking on any shot because of the greens and the surrounds,
Speaker 1: and you give the wrong spot, you're playing ping pong.
Speaker 3: You give them all this area to hit from. You
Speaker 3: can keep your greens and approaches and banks as tight
Speaker 3: and fast as you want. Now that being said, we
Speaker 3: have been, you know, judicious this year of measuring green
Speaker 3: speed and trying to find what everybody likes. And you know,
Speaker 3: we all like to get them super fast, but quite honestly,
Speaker 3: people just can't. It's it's not the putting, it's the chipping.
Speaker 3: It's the chipping. Here they chip a ball in the
Speaker 3: green and just rolls off. And that's that's just cause
Speaker 3: of the firmness and the speed. And it's not fair
Speaker 3: because you hit a good shot, you should keep the
Speaker 3: ball on the green.
Speaker 1: And the green the way the green is exactly the repellers.
Speaker 3: Now and there are army helmets. And if you roll
Speaker 3: off the green, you're not two feet off the green,
Speaker 3: you're twenty thirty feet off the green. So this type
Speaker 3: of golf course, it's a give take. Okay, I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you all the fairways and all the rough
Speaker 3: to hit out of. But I still want a fair, firm,
Speaker 3: fast speed up around my greens and on the greens.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question. Say you're a
Speaker 1: municipal you got two hundred thousand dollars budget, you got
Speaker 1: your your shoe string, you're overgrown, you've got trouble areas.
Speaker 1: How are you starting and what are you doing to
Speaker 1: stretch the budget to get you know, being maintaining somewhere
Speaker 1: like Old Elm for that, for that, that's unrealistic and
Speaker 1: it's got the municipal golfer. You want to get people
Speaker 1: around the golf course, but you want them to have fun.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, where do you start if
Speaker 1: you inherited a situation similar to Old Elm overgrown, you know,
Speaker 1: narrow fairways, small greens, but with a municipal budget.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're at a municipality and you got a
Speaker 3: a two fifty to four hundred thousand dollars budget. So
Speaker 3: there's you. You have to be creative, you know, you
Speaker 3: have to have a superintendent that's willing to get outside
Speaker 3: the box and be creative. You got to determine what
Speaker 3: your grass type is, you know, if you have that budget,
Speaker 3: maybe you have blue grass fairways or blue rye blue
Speaker 3: fescue fairways and you don't have to spray those very much,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And the way you mow it.
Speaker 3: You know, we mow up and down just because it's
Speaker 3: fast and it's quick as far as treework goes. Okay,
Speaker 3: what kind of trees do I have?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of guys out there that
Speaker 3: are looking for good lumber and they'll come in and
Speaker 3: cut trees, or you drop them, they'll pick them up.
Speaker 3: You know, you you use every resource you can. You
Speaker 3: got guys that need wood for firewood. You know, it
Speaker 3: just depends on what area you are. You got to
Speaker 3: explore every option, turn over every stone that you can.
Speaker 3: That all right, I want to get rid of some trees.
Speaker 3: I don't have the budget to do it. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 3: can you burn there? You know? Can you burn? Cause
Speaker 3: you know you can buy a chainsaw and if you
Speaker 3: got to, you know, or you could rent a skid
Speaker 3: steer with forks or grappler or whatever for a certain
Speaker 3: amount of time. You got to be creative and then
Speaker 3: all right, can we You know, we were at country and
Speaker 3: we could burn. We dropped, We dropped fifty willows, those
Speaker 3: black willows in a low area, and we stack those
Speaker 3: things on top of each other. You know, let's just
Speaker 3: say it was one thousand bucks to cut that tree
Speaker 3: and haul it away. We cut them down and burn
Speaker 3: them for whatever it costs the chainsaw oil in the labor.
Speaker 3: You know, So if a fifty thousand dollars job was
Speaker 3: probably a two thousand dollars job that we just did.
Speaker 3: And we took the buffaloes and put the diesel on
Speaker 3: them and burnt the crap out of them. You know,
Speaker 3: you got to look at every option you have. Can
Speaker 3: I burn? Do I have people that are Do I
Speaker 3: have some lumber? Actually, guys will pay you, give you
Speaker 3: money to come in and cut it down and take
Speaker 3: You got black walnut, you got white oak? You know,
Speaker 3: what do you have? Do you have some good maple?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Do you have cherry? Guys will come and get that.
Speaker 3: And okay, if they are not going to pay you,
Speaker 3: or they're not going to do it, if you cut
Speaker 3: it down, make them come and pick it up. You know,
Speaker 3: there's there's where I would start. As far as trees go,
Speaker 3: I would I would try to grow grass at a municipality,
Speaker 3: that's going to give me the best opportunity to give
Speaker 3: good conditions on a shoe string budget. If you have
Speaker 3: bent grass at those places and that's what they like,
Speaker 3: then removing some of those trees, it's just going to
Speaker 3: improve the turf quality. It's going to help with air movement,
Speaker 3: less disease, you know, better roof structure, all that garbage.
Speaker 3: But you know, you got to decide, you know, the
Speaker 3: municipality's got to decide. All right, we got bent grass
Speaker 3: fairways or we got rye bluegrass fairways. You know, you
Speaker 3: spend the money on the greens because that's where it's at. Everybody.
Speaker 3: Nobody's going to talk about fairways or teas. If you've
Speaker 3: got great greens, they're going to think your golf courses fantastic,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And that's where you score.
Speaker 3: So spend the money on the greens. Get the greens
Speaker 3: back out to where they were. Usually those places don't
Speaker 3: have great irrigations, but the municipalities are open, ok with
Speaker 3: capital and infrastructure. Yeah okay, So you know again it's
Speaker 3: an outside the box educational process. Hey, this is this
Speaker 3: is what I can give you, and you know, you
Speaker 3: take a few holes and you show them what you
Speaker 3: can do once. Once you give them caviare they don't
Speaker 3: want to go back to sardines, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: People people like good ship. They don't want to they
Speaker 3: don't want to eat bad ship. You know, do you
Speaker 3: want to eat a flair? You want a McDonald's cheeseburger.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're going to want the steak. You give
Speaker 3: them a steak on two or three holes, guess what
Speaker 3: those other fifteen tastes? Like? Shit, I'm going to go
Speaker 3: back to those three holes. What's it going to take?
Speaker 3: What what can we do to help you? And then
Speaker 3: and then then the ball's rolling, The ball's rolling, You're.
Speaker 1: Gonna That's one of my biggest gripes with municipal goth is, like,
Speaker 1: is the fact that so many people think like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the way it is, and this is the
Speaker 1: way it has to be in we're a twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars course, and we're always going to be a twenty
Speaker 1: five dollar course. It's like, you know, if you do
Speaker 1: a little bit of work, you can be a thirty
Speaker 1: five dollars course. And then all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: you just bumped your revenue up and like, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna get people around faster.
Speaker 3: It's all about rounds, you know.
Speaker 1: For balls.
Speaker 3: Well, that's I gotta tell you. My guys hated looking
Speaker 3: for balls. I'm at a private club. My guys they
Speaker 3: got caddies. They hated looking for balls. Speeds up rounds.
Speaker 1: There's nothing worse than looking for golf balls. No, that's
Speaker 1: maybe the worst part of golf.
Speaker 3: It's it's a guys don't they're expensive, guys don't want
Speaker 3: to lose them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's where the short mow grass speeds up, play, speeds
Speaker 3: up rounds. It just makes golf a lot more funner.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're two hundred yards out and you're
Speaker 3: in like step cut, you feel confident that you can
Speaker 3: get that ball to the green. Ye, if you're in
Speaker 3: three inch four inch rough, that shot is impossible. Puckering
Speaker 3: your butt, you know, you're like, I got no you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to try to snug it up there
Speaker 3: the approach because I'm not gonna might get there.
Speaker 1: So you've worked with Drew Rogers and Dave's inking here.
Speaker 1: You know what would have been the things that you
Speaker 1: have really helped with that relationship and made it a success.
Speaker 3: Uh, their their hands on. You know, Drew is as
Speaker 3: good as they come working with soups. You know, he
Speaker 3: he listens to superintendents, and I think Dave's you know,
Speaker 3: his architectural skills and shaping skills are just extraordinary, you know,
Speaker 3: but working with those guys. I've known Drew a long
Speaker 3: time because we did old Stone together and that's where
Speaker 3: I met Drew and he's he's from Ohio and so
Speaker 3: we go way back. But we went out and met
Speaker 3: Dave out at Bandon when he was doing the short
Speaker 3: course out there, and just love the guy and knew
Speaker 3: he'd be a part of the team. And it was
Speaker 3: really a team effort, you know. It was Kevin and
Speaker 3: old Elm getting on board and just kind of letting
Speaker 3: Dave and Drew do their thing. And the luxury they
Speaker 3: had was I had been in construction superintendent, so my
Speaker 3: whole staff was we gave them as many people as
Speaker 3: they wanted when they were here. And I think that's
Speaker 3: why it was so successful is we really didn't hire
Speaker 3: anything out, so we kind of were able to go
Speaker 3: in the field and just do it and then go
Speaker 3: back and look at it and change it. And there
Speaker 3: was never any like drawings or anything written up. We
Speaker 3: just did everything in the field and if we liked it,
Speaker 3: we kept it, and if we didn't, we changed it
Speaker 3: made it better. And that's what's really great about that
Speaker 3: kind of architecture and working with guys like that is
Speaker 3: and being able to do it in the field, you know,
Speaker 3: because we've done all of our stuff here without ever closing.
Speaker 3: So the members have had construction stuff, but we usually
Speaker 3: wait till the end of the year and do it
Speaker 3: in the spring when they're gone. But even doing the greens,
Speaker 3: we had temporary greens and the guys could play the course.
Speaker 3: So all of our work that's been done here, we've
Speaker 3: never closed the course for one day. So we've done
Speaker 3: basically a total restoration of a golf course that's the bolts,
Speaker 3: without closing.
Speaker 1: And how many years has it been, you know.
Speaker 3: I got here in two thousand and nine and that's
Speaker 3: when we started basically the tree work and then got
Speaker 3: a plan together for new irrigation. The irrigation was thirty
Speaker 3: years old and it needed to be done. That was
Speaker 3: the first really wave of getting things done. We did
Speaker 3: the irrigation, that's when we got that was the first
Speaker 3: round of trying to bring the fairways out a little bit,
Speaker 3: like to make the bunkers make sense. You know, at
Speaker 3: that time, I never thought they would go for what
Speaker 3: we have now with the bent everywhere. I just thought,
Speaker 3: oh god, these guys will never I go. One, I
Speaker 3: can't afford to maintain it. Two They're going to think
Speaker 3: I'm crazy. So we did one round and then we
Speaker 3: did the irrigation where the grass lines were, and Drew
Speaker 3: came out and helped us with that. And then you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of years later it was like, guys, the
Speaker 3: bunkers were not good, and I said, we need to
Speaker 3: do the bunkers. But I said, we can't do the bunkers,
Speaker 3: just stripped aside, put drainings, put sand in. We need
Speaker 3: to do what Colt said on the plan, torn bunker faces,
Speaker 3: because that's to me, that's what put Old Elm on
Speaker 3: the map was was, you know, not only taking the
Speaker 3: fairways out, but changing the bunker complex. The aesthetics was huge.
Speaker 1: Having grown up, you know, and played this course when
Speaker 1: I was in high school and and then you know,
Speaker 1: having grown up like in the area, like it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was standing on the first tea this year, and
Speaker 1: I looked out and I felt like I was like
Speaker 1: in England, but like the only thing that reminded me
Speaker 1: that I wasn't was like the same big power lines
Speaker 1: that I've stared at my whole life, Like out in
Speaker 1: the distance. It's like, yeah, if those weren't there, I
Speaker 1: would have felt like I was in a completely different,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the country then.
Speaker 3: US, because England doesn't have electric you know, you got
Speaker 3: that special out, you know. And I'd always say, I'm like, Andy,
Speaker 3: how much money you think we have. I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: get those lines buried anytime soon.
Speaker 4: But you shut down, like shut that down, right, I
Speaker 4: shut that, Yeah, I shut that down right away. But
Speaker 4: and that's you know, our goal too, was to I
Speaker 4: wanted you to feel like it's one hundred years old,
Speaker 4: you know. I wanted the speeds and the conditioning to
Speaker 4: be of the you know, twenty twenty twenty eighteen. But
Speaker 4: I want you to come out the old Elm and
Speaker 4: be like, God, I feel like, you know, the coolest
Speaker 4: thing I've had really a couple of our tough old
Speaker 4: members and we got those old school ball washers and
Speaker 4: they came out and he was like, I haven't seen
Speaker 4: one of these since my dad and I played here
Speaker 4: fifty years ago. I feel like I'm playing with my dad.
Speaker 3: To me, that was one of the coolest compliments I
Speaker 3: ever got, and it was from one of my toughest members,
Speaker 3: Grummy Grum House, and but he was like he you know,
Speaker 3: he's sitting there and wash his boss. He's like, I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm playing with my dad. You know, I
Speaker 3: haven't seen this since I was playing with my dad.
Speaker 3: And that just hit me. And then that was when
Speaker 3: I wanted to get all the little divot buckets back
Speaker 3: and you know, make the flags old, do our own team.
Speaker 3: You know, it's I think Gil said it best, is
Speaker 3: it's about the golfing experience from start to finish. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not just the grass anymore. It's it's all those
Speaker 3: little anywhere where you can pick up a nugget, anywhere
Speaker 3: where you can get something different than everybody else, you know,
Speaker 3: you know you talk about trailblazing. That to me, ourcessories
Speaker 3: is something that a lot of guys have been like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't tell you how many calls I get.
Speaker 3: Where did you get that? How did you do that?
Speaker 3: You know, from a cesory standpoint, But I think it's
Speaker 3: it starts. That's part of the experience. Is like, how
Speaker 3: can you make your golf course totally unique? Talk about
Speaker 3: a municipality. You could. You could make your own wooden
Speaker 3: tee markers and make them special with your logo or something.
Speaker 3: And you can do that cheap and it's different and
Speaker 3: it's unique. It's not just a painted white ball out
Speaker 3: on the tee. Yeah, you can. You can slab some
Speaker 3: of that lumber and make a natural bench. You got
Speaker 3: a municipality for free.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. To market a brand, you need
Speaker 1: to have a brand and an identity, and that's those
Speaker 1: little things help build your identity. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that people talk about. You know, the more
Speaker 1: you can get people talking about what you have anywhere
Speaker 1: on your course or anything about your course is the better.
Speaker 1: It Just like it helps you market.
Speaker 3: Wooden baskets on my driving range. Cool wooden baskets. You
Speaker 3: thought you thought I hung the moon? You know, these
Speaker 3: they were like where'd you get those baskets? But you
Speaker 3: could go to an apple orchard if you're a municipality
Speaker 3: and go get old apple baskets, or you gotta get
Speaker 3: out side the box.
Speaker 1: You could go to like a rummage sale probably and
Speaker 1: got them.
Speaker 3: I just saw online our our trash cans are old
Speaker 3: bourbon barrels. I just saw online where place in Columbus
Speaker 3: was getting away for free. You know, you you just
Speaker 3: gotta you gotta be.
Speaker 1: Creative.
Speaker 3: You gotta be creative, and you gotta be advantageous. You
Speaker 3: gotta you gotta find all those things. There's you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. When I started, wasn't any internet. You know,
Speaker 3: you didn't you couldn't find any of this garbage.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: That's how old I am now, you know, to think
Speaker 3: about that, that's really my generations when the Internet started,
Speaker 3: and it's it's so much easier now because you got
Speaker 3: access to everything. So there's no excuse for not being creative.
Speaker 3: It's it's you've gotta you gotta dig deep and find
Speaker 3: it yourself to do it. So you you talk about municipalities,
Speaker 3: it's all on the eye of the beholder. It's whoever
Speaker 3: the guy's there. You know, if he's working hard and
Speaker 3: he's getting his guys working harder than they ever did,
Speaker 3: he's doing his job. If he's getting creative and he's
Speaker 3: making shit out of shiola, he's doing his job. He's
Speaker 3: you know, there's no excuse. You know, I've got a
Speaker 3: great budget. You know, it's easy for me to say
Speaker 3: that stuff, but I started with nothing, and that to me,
Speaker 3: that that was a huge part of my career was
Speaker 3: those early years not having anything. Yeah, and you just
Speaker 3: learn to get by with nothing.
Speaker 1: I visited this place in Philly called Jeffersonville Ross. It's
Speaker 1: an old course pus Municipal, and you know, I spent
Speaker 1: the morning with the superintendent walking around in the rain
Speaker 1: and we were just talking and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the nice thing is like we've done things and like
Speaker 1: they've worked out and he's like, now whenever I want
Speaker 1: to do something, they're all for it because like he's
Speaker 1: built up the tr but like they're doing forty thousand
Speaker 1: rounds a year and the course is packed, and you know,
Speaker 1: the changes he's made have worked with you know, he's
Speaker 1: worked with an architect, but you know, the small changes
Speaker 1: they've made it worked, and like they're making money and
Speaker 1: they're getting rounds and the people love it. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's a sense of pride for the for the
Speaker 1: community too well.
Speaker 3: And I you know, I'm at a private facility. But
Speaker 3: that's what I want golf to get back to. I
Speaker 3: want to get back to what I grew up doing
Speaker 3: is eighteen holes in a cart and a six pack
Speaker 3: for thirty bucks and play a good golf course that
Speaker 3: that is stimulating and fun, and the guys go out,
Speaker 3: have a great game, have a beer at the end
Speaker 3: of the round, and they love it, and the leagues
Speaker 3: come back. We've got to grow the game. How are
Speaker 3: we going to grow the game? How are you going
Speaker 3: to grow the game? You got to make it fun again.
Speaker 3: You don't nobody wants to go and get beat up.
Speaker 3: We're not good enough. Even if you're a single digital handicap.
Speaker 3: You don't want to go and who likes that?
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that every day?
Speaker 3: You don't want to do that every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's uh, let's get to overrated, underrated. Wrap
Speaker 1: this up. So you got pick overrated, underrated? Okay, different topics,
Speaker 1: I got you. We'll start with center line bunkers.
Speaker 3: MM underrated, need more of them? I think, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's I think it's a good it's a good
Speaker 3: aiming point, you know, I mean, what about championship golf?
Speaker 3: I think it's overrated. I think it's overrated. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's gotten too goofy. I I think we're doing championship.
Speaker 3: Are you talking US Open? If we're talking US Open,
Speaker 3: I think we've gotten a way consistency. I think day
Speaker 3: to day it's just you're not playing the same You
Speaker 3: need to play the same golf course for four days
Speaker 3: in a row if you want to get a true champion.
Speaker 3: It's it's going you know, get it too fast, then
Speaker 3: we get too slow, and then the wind, whatever kind
Speaker 3: of garbage you want to talk about, set it up
Speaker 3: the same. The wind comes up. That's part of golf.
Speaker 1: It should just be whatever it is.
Speaker 3: It's got to be consistent.
Speaker 1: I think that it's all around. The problem is the scores.
Speaker 1: It's like whatever they shoot, whatever they shoot is whatever
Speaker 1: they shoot.
Speaker 3: That's I gotta tell you. I think people like to
Speaker 3: see them score good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I know some people are like, oh, I don't want
Speaker 3: them to break par. But you'd love to hear the
Speaker 3: roars when he's making a birdie, you know, perfect example,
Speaker 3: Tiger at bell Reeve gets on a roll. Did you hear?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's time, I get it. It's Tiger. But
Speaker 3: any of those guys that are that are pumping in
Speaker 3: Birdie's Kopka and people get going.
Speaker 1: You know, Old ELM's like a perfect example because like
Speaker 1: it's a par seventy three, but it in my mind
Speaker 1: it's like par. This is the problem with pars, Like
Speaker 1: I don't look at it as a par seventy three.
Speaker 1: I look at it as like a par sixty nine.
Speaker 1: And if I play it as a par sixty nine,
Speaker 1: like if I'm thinking about score, that's as hard of
Speaker 1: a golf course to par as there is in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But if you play it as.
Speaker 1: A par seventy three, you're you know, shooting under par
Speaker 1: for a scratch player isn't like that big of an achievement.
Speaker 1: And it's like that. But if you just flip it
Speaker 1: to par sixty nine, all sudden, people would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is the hardest golf course.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, you.
Speaker 1: Know, but it's that's the that's the paradigm of par. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so it's you know, it's like if they just
Speaker 1: made us open courses, like with the reality of the
Speaker 1: game par sixty eight.
Speaker 3: I think they need to make it consistent. I think
Speaker 3: they've gotten away too far. From that from day to day.
Speaker 3: Just keep it consistent. I know the weather changes and everything,
Speaker 3: but you got to keep it consistent. And I think
Speaker 3: people like to see people score. I know there's guys
Speaker 3: that say, oh god, they didn't break part. The crowds
Speaker 3: ain't getting too excited about that. You know, we've got
Speaker 3: to grow the game, make it fun exactly.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So last one template.
Speaker 3: Holes, you just had to go there, didn't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, had to get one that maybe a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think for that architect it works. Okay, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's all that great, to be honest with you,
Speaker 3: the template holes. I think for Rainer it works. But
Speaker 3: I can tell you this. I can go play certain
Speaker 3: architects horses and feel like I played one of their
Speaker 3: other courses and I don't like it. I don't like it,
Speaker 3: you know. But at the time that that was happening,
Speaker 3: I think he was probably outside the box and it
Speaker 3: made sense, you know. And they're very They're very cool,
Speaker 3: don't get me wrong. There's there's nothing like a cool
Speaker 3: punch bowl, radan or burrits. Those are all cool. I
Speaker 3: like them, but I don't know. I don't know moving
Speaker 3: forward now, if template holes would be such a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 3: for him, he was very good at it.
Speaker 1: He also knew nothing about golf exactly.
Speaker 3: It was all engineering. It was engineering. It was an
Speaker 3: engineering I mean that was That's as close as an
Speaker 3: engineer golf course as you can get. Or those template holes.
Speaker 3: It was more about engineering and shapes golden geometrics. Yes,
Speaker 3: geometric shapes and engineering was what he based it. And
Speaker 3: it made some pretty damn spectacular golf courses. Don't get
Speaker 3: me wrong. I mean those golf courses are amazing. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you could get away with that now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think an architect could be strictly templates. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think Rayner was strictly templates because like some
Speaker 1: of his non template holes are like my favorite holes.
Speaker 3: I mean what he did at Short Acres, yea. The
Speaker 3: fact that that just tells you he wasn't a golfer
Speaker 3: because he didn't put anything on the lake, you know,
Speaker 3: and what he did and take took those ravines and
Speaker 3: did that routing. That was amazing to me. You know,
Speaker 3: here you are, got got Lake Michigan. You could put
Speaker 3: some stuff over there. Now I'm going to go it's
Speaker 3: the flattest, deepest land. It's the flattest most undulated golf
Speaker 3: course I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: That routing is epic. How you just one one feature
Speaker 1: over and over and over again in so many different ways,
Speaker 1: right left over off the team, he you know, around
Speaker 1: off the on a on a second shot.
Speaker 3: I mean, I that guy. That was amazing, you know.
Speaker 3: But as you know, in Chicago's got some great template holes.
Speaker 3: I mean it's you know, they've got that real Dan
Speaker 3: is so good there. The greens in general, the greens
Speaker 3: are just diabolical, but they're you know that leads to
Speaker 3: big and bold too, geometric shapes, yeah, engineering purposes, and
Speaker 3: he gets and it worked. It worked really well for him.
Speaker 1: What you touched on with Colet earlier about the subtlety
Speaker 1: of his greens. I think that's what gets lost with
Speaker 1: Rayner is everybody stares at like the big bowld for
Speaker 1: Dan Kicker, but they miss like the little internal spines
Speaker 1: that make those greens just out of this world. And
Speaker 1: that's what here has. Like the subtlety and the small
Speaker 1: interior stuff are so much more impactful than the big
Speaker 1: bold things. But the big bold things capture everybody's eye
Speaker 1: and you know, they.
Speaker 3: Give, they give you well, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I just played Kingsley, and I think you did an
Speaker 3: amazing job there. But I think these this generation of
Speaker 3: architects are doing a really good combination of both. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I really do. I think these guys are inspired by
Speaker 3: the Golden Age, but they're they're taking it to another
Speaker 3: level and they're it's so good how they You know,
Speaker 3: back then you didn't tie anything in because it was
Speaker 3: just built out of the ground, you know, all these
Speaker 3: big bold pads and everything. You just pushed it up
Speaker 3: and let it fall off. That the old steam blade
Speaker 3: or whatever everybody cont you know, kind of you know,
Speaker 3: Kingsley is so good and that if you hit around
Speaker 3: the green, it's going to feed into some of those greens.
Speaker 3: And I think that's great, you know. Yeah, but he's
Speaker 3: got some of those greens. If you barely miss one
Speaker 3: way or the other, you're gone. So yeah, So I
Speaker 3: think this generation architects is really inspired by one hundred
Speaker 3: years ago by all those guys, but are doing a
Speaker 3: great combination of some boldness feature wise, and some of
Speaker 3: them are throwing some of those template holes back in
Speaker 3: there and and maybe just one and it and it works,
Speaker 3: you know, but where it fits, where it fits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's uh yeah, it's it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be interesting to watch the continued progression. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the coolest things about architecture is you just
Speaker 1: watched it progress and you know there's no right or
Speaker 1: wrong answer and no, and there's going to be somebody
Speaker 1: in the next ten to fifteen years that comes along
Speaker 1: and does something completely different than the way everybody's doing
Speaker 1: it now, and that'll you know, there'll be a new
Speaker 1: trend for sure. So but Curtis, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: your time. It's been uh, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: And uh, well thank you.
Speaker 1: You're not a social media guy, so nobody can find
Speaker 1: you that way. No, No, it's uh but uh yeah
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's been fun and uh we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you soon
Speaker 3: Okay, buddy, thank you,