Jaeger Kovich and Clyde Johnson - The Eclectic 18 of the UK

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is powered by td Ameritrade. Every stroke counts on the scorecard and every penny counts in the market. That's why td Ameritrade is committed to straightforward pricing with no surprises, so you're free to swing with confidence. Visit tdomritrade dot com slash Fried Egg member SIPC. In today's episode, I welcome on Jaeger Kovich and Clyde Johnson. Yaeger and Clyde are two of the industry's most promising architects. Each has worked for some of the best architects including Tom Doak and Gil Hans, as well as completing some solo work of their own. They are two of the most well traveled people in golf. They've played everywhere. Along with their travels for golf architecture, they hit up famous courses as well as the hidden gems. These guys get around and they're responsible for our new series on the website, The Eclectic eighteen of the United Kingdom. So in this podcast, we talk about each of their travels as well as the process that they went through to put together the eighty best holes in the UK. SO go into kind of what the whole series about and uh, why they did it. So we recorded this podcast the week of the Open Championship and uh we're now on hole three. So check out the series on the Frida egg dot com and be sure to follow Clyde and Jaeger on Instagram.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:01:34
Speaker 3: And when I find my.

00:01:35
Speaker 1: Ball in a frid Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Yeah, what's your guys favorite fruit? Yah?

00:02:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gotta be the banana, right yeah?

00:02:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah you could, yeah, you could guess, mind about even thinking about it.

00:02:31
Speaker 3: It's actually it's actually.

00:02:32
Speaker 2: The only fruit I eat the strawberry ice cream or the strawberry milkshakes.

00:02:36
Speaker 3: That united in st Andrews that.

00:02:41
Speaker 1: The only fruit you eat is banana.

00:02:44
Speaker 3: Oh, strawberry and a milkshake.

00:02:48
Speaker 1: What what what do you? You don't need any other fruit you've never had, like mango or blueberry.

00:02:55
Speaker 3: No, I'm a row carrot man to.

00:02:56
Speaker 1: Be honest, Oh, carrot us have good eyes.

00:03:03
Speaker 4: I I have memories of Kauai trying to peel carrots with just like blunt butter knives on the kitchen table over there at Dismal River. Like the first couple of weeks. Oh man, he was making a mess with the carrots and rice crispies breaking every morning. It was unbelievable.

00:03:26
Speaker 3: I don't kiel the carrots anymore.

00:03:30
Speaker 4: What.

00:03:31
Speaker 1: There are a lot of guys that worked on that Dismal project.

00:03:36
Speaker 4: There are a ton Man absolutely, uh got Zach Fardy who's still working with Corn Crenshaw, Blake Conant who's uh still doing a lot of work with Tom and uh helped so with Kai and h Schneider a lot and eckin Road. Who else? Brad Jeff Yeah, Ryan John's played a part in uh ballet, right yeah, big pop. Yeah.

00:04:15
Speaker 1: So lots of guys. What's it like working with a lot of young guys at the same time, Like you guys were all interns at that point, right.

00:04:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely there were is like you know, basically ten college kids with a rake and of shovel and if you were really lucky, it was like a turn on the sand pro or you know, early morning on the schneider might give you a couple hours on the dozer to go do some gruntwork or something like that. But mostly it was like a rake and of shovel and Brian was there kind of running the show. H Jonathan Reester was shaping most of the bunkers. At least the year we were there, they did I guess like a good handful of greens the previous year with an even smaller crew. I don't know it was.

00:05:07
Speaker 3: It was just just.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: A good way to learn if you can, if you learn how to run a rake, if you can learn how to run a shill, you can learn how to.

00:05:16
Speaker 3: Run an excavator.

00:05:17
Speaker 2: Just time watching Bryan Schnyder and do you have as when they were there was pretty invaluable.

00:05:25
Speaker 4: Yeah. It was probably pretty cool and helpful too that there was like nothing else to do there, right, I mean you're trapped in Mowing, Nebraska, like you know, a thirty minute well a thirty minute ride to Mow in Nebraska town of four hundred and ninety one people. Uh so it's like, you know, just NonStop like golf s Banter. Really, if you were you were like interested in it. I mean you could be up at six am talking about you know, little details out there on site or you know, wherever our next go. Of course we wanted to see was. I mean, we were counting our doak points in the middle of the lunch room too one day, Clyde Sack and I, I mean it's we'd be going going til like dark every night and wake up and do it again. There was there was there was nothing else to do. It was.

00:06:20
Speaker 3: Coming from the UK.

00:06:21
Speaker 2: I mean, I never imagined that I'd never go and play sand Hills or prairie Junes.

00:06:27
Speaker 3: And we were sort of in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nowhere, I.

00:06:30
Speaker 2: Was pretty handy for seeing some pretty cool and important pieces of golf cross architecture.

00:06:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like I mean even so it was not just like the middle of nowhere, but that was like the most minimalist golf project that like has almost ever been done, right. I mean, there were like twelve greens that were like tracked in, like killed, cleaned up all this sort of tough grass, kind of tracked it in sand prode it off well brinded and you know, called it good. Within Like there was like very very little to do in terms of that. So it was really like a you know, just total crash course and what minimalism could be. I mean, pretty awfully inspiring.

00:07:12
Speaker 2: I'd say, yeah, learning, learning what to touch and what not to touch was pretty good, pretty good early lessons.

00:07:20
Speaker 1: Right, How how much would you compare like that American lynks Land and in Nebraska and touched on prairie dunes and Kansas to uh to the UK.

00:07:33
Speaker 2: The scales the scales way bigger I think compared to compared to most causes. You maybe get a touch touching the bigger stuff on the west coast of Scotland to a lesser extent than definitely on the West coast of Ireland.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: But you know the dunes tend to be sharper uh in the style and you know the Gulfs you know.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: Is often tackles it straight on, whereas you know those those projects seem to have a little bit more sophistication to them.

00:08:03
Speaker 4: In snakes.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, makes in Australia worse.

00:08:13
Speaker 1: So you guys have both spent a ton of time in the UK. Clyde you're you're from there and then uh yeager, I know you you spent a lot of your life over there. Tell us a little bit about you know, Clyde growing up there and going other places, and then Jaeger growing up in America and going there, and how your you know, your golf perception changed.

00:08:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess, I guess my interest in golf came.

00:08:43
Speaker 3: I had an old brewer I was as my.

00:08:46
Speaker 2: Sister liked that. I was either adopted or an accident. So my older brew was eleven years older than me. So I got into golf, playing pitch and pert we're on holiday. I was probably about three. He lived fourteen and sort of group on the edge of the Lake district in the Northway of England, and we had a small house but it came a little half acre acre field which we had five sheep to mow it.

00:09:09
Speaker 3: And we.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: Just just used to start by hitting golf balls in that, mowing out over petrol sylind the moor and sticking bad mucnes in with flags. And then by time by the time I got older, about ten or eleven, you know, that's when we really started. I was lucky being the being the being umeless one. It's not by the time I was eleven or so, it was only me going on holiday with my parents. So a lot of our holidays were we always holiday to the UK, Scotland, England and you know, to the coast, and most of my holidays were based around seeing golf courses eighteen thirty six holes a day at that post. At that point, my dad would come and pull my trolley for me and then would just have to find something to do all day and get up for dinner pretty much. So that was that was my introduction to golf in the UK.

00:10:05
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I guess for me, I mean, I grew up in New York City. I wasn't a member anywhere. I learned how to hit balls by taking a shuttle bus over to the Randall's Island driving Range and you know, dragging my dad's old cubs over there, and you know that was sort of, you know, how I first learned how to swing. And you know, growing up in New York City, you kind of always had to travel somewhere to find a golf course, you always, you know, I just had to start, you know, driving somewhere and there's a bunch of different public options and somehow I just started weighing, you know what, I like, you know, golf course wise, how far we had to go price things like that. I just sort of started analyzing I think, golf courses like that, and you know, it was, I guess my first real trip to the UK. It was actually the day after I graduated college. I guess one of my best sort of family friends, as a sort of graduation present, offered to fly me over to the to the UK and we played the Old course the next day. That was like, that was the coolest thing ever. Actually we only got a couple of rounds in in St Andrews. We did the old you know, sort of the Crash Course, the dun Hills stuff. So Carnelist, the King's Barnes actually had to run home for a postponed jury duty I couldn't get out of again. But so that was sort of like my first taste and then aways you know, winked golf and golf in the UK. And then really when I started working for Tom, I guess that was like twenty twelve, I sort of recommitted myself to seeing just lots and lots and lots of golf courses. Uh, just working for him, you really understand how important it is to travel and see different things and not just the courses that you know, might be in the open rota, but you know, the kind of quirky stuff, the stuff that's in land that's you know built. Even some of the modern courses over there I think are kind of interesting in their own way versus the like, you know, ancient stuff. There's there's so much in sort of every different corner of the UK, and so I kind of kept going back and forth, you know, probably at least once for almost like four years in a row, I think it was. It's probably been six or seven total trips to the UK for me now, of like various lengths. But I always kind of find, you know, sometimes I want to go back and see something that I'd seen when I was much younger now that I have maybe a different perspective, sometimes it's I want to go study more of like a you know, I saw one off course by a particular architect, you know, so like J. F Abercrombie. You know, I just had a total crush on the Addington the first time I saw that. So then the next time I went back, I tried to go, you know, at least pick another one of his courses off maybe that was in the area. So there's like sort of lots of different things that and different reasons that you get I keep getting pulled back. There's I mean, there's still so many different corners I need to get to. I don't know.

00:13:30
Speaker 1: And Clyde, you've been about every corner.

00:13:34
Speaker 3: Huh, yeah, I'm in pretty faultuate.

00:13:47
Speaker 2: Guess I guess it showed you how into it I was, depending on your opinions, I think I was. I think I was eight years old when I picked up my first golf magazine and it was the ninety nights Golf World UK magazine, top one hundred in Great Britain and Ireland.

00:14:03
Speaker 3: And I think I've made it for ninety seven of those.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: And then the point now, I just enjoy really seeing under the radar, really really really under the radar courses.

00:14:13
Speaker 3: Went to the Island I owner last summer, which was really cool.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: That was a pound to play, you pay you you buy your scorecard from the post office or won the hotels. And there's literally just sheep moaning, sheep moan, but it's perus, pure, pure the links experiences you never find.

00:14:31
Speaker 4: Uh, there are there many links courses left that you haven't seen. At this point, it seems like it can't be many.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: A few, don't.

00:14:41
Speaker 2: Don't tell Tom, I've never been to Uh, I've never been specific dunes or any of the ones in America, but I've seen most that are worth most that.

00:14:49
Speaker 3: Are working in the UK, probably about two hundred so of them.

00:14:53
Speaker 2: So you know, there's there's always there's only always one whole or one feature. You know, it's worth it's worth seeing or swing to swing to learn from.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting to me is, uh, Jaeger, you've touched on this growing up, golfing in New York is and you know, I lived in Chicago the city for like ten years. Is like a seven hour excursion to golf for a city dweller isn't a big deal. And in the UK a seven hour excursion you can go almost like anywhere on the mainland.

00:15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've probably even pasted about fifty two hundred really good golf classes, even ones that people haven't heard.

00:15:32
Speaker 3: Off there pretty good.

00:15:33
Speaker 4: Uh, they're they're right. Their perspective on distance is so warped, especially when they come to this country. Why we'd be sitting in the middle of nowhere Nebraska and God'd be like, oh, look, that one's just like you know it's just right there to Prairie Dunes, or you know is right up there Sutton Bay, or you know, like do do you not understand how how far that is on the like one inches, like seven hours worth of driving. It's it's wild. So but I mean the guy we're talking to has no that he doesn't care he's going to wake up at three in the morning and drive seven hours to see you know, you just got to pack them allway, and you just got to be willing to do like thirty six fifty four a day. Make it worth it. See something cool on the way, you know, just like drive straight to the hits. You gotta see, like there's always probably something funky like on the way back if you're if you're willing to go for it. I guess like.

00:16:31
Speaker 2: The worst, the worst one I've ever done was when I was I was on helping out with tar in New Zealand and McK henderson, the Australian guy who's also on the me and him, well, his wife was back in Melbourne. So days offwards go and see the country golf cost of New Zealand, and one weekend we drove nine hours to go and see the nine holes cost That was probably a dope too.

00:17:02
Speaker 4: I mean no, but I mean you never We would have never seen dan Brog if we didn't go all the way to Firethorn. Yeah, yeah, I made both. How could you not? You know, I'll talk talk about that at least a couple of times a year.

00:17:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:17:18
Speaker 2: One the coolest greens and been well cool and not the right word but wacky the.

00:17:24
Speaker 4: Sand green in the middle of the green sidewall.

00:17:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. The second tol I think.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I uh I always had Prairie Dunes. A couple of weeks ago and uh Garrett Morrison and I stopped in to see uh Faldo's course right next to Prairie Dunes, and we drove in. I mean, you could see these beautiful dunes. It was like, oh, this thing could be amazing. We turned in saw like four containment mounding moundings that were identical size behind a green, and then the next hole we saw had a man made lake. And then we drove in there was no cars in the parking lot, and then turned around or drove out.

00:18:06
Speaker 4: Shouldn't have gone in. Man, it looks real good, like from like what you can make out from the road. It looks awesome, so great entrance that's on you, that's on you. It was like a wonder.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like the best entrance too. It's like got this like great like kind of gravel road and you're you're driving between dunes with this vegetation. But that's I think that's the joy though of it. Sometimes there's nothing no better feeling I feel like than when you when you roll up and you find a course that very few and nobody knows about, and it just blows like your expectations are just succeeded.

00:18:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, you gotta you gotta find out for yourself sometimes, you know, everybody's different, everybody's got different tastes. You just gotta go out there and keep seeing different things, and you know, find what you like, find what works for you. It's probably going to change as you see more, learn more, get older. I don't know, all sorts of different, but like that's the cool thing. It's like just going to just discover something, right, I don't know.

00:19:14
Speaker 2: One of my favorite elements of seeing new golf cosses is almost the adventure of getting to the places. You know, look, I look at the places I've been to that I probably never would have ever gone to in my life otherwise, you know, I mean cool, it is pretty cool landscape experiences from just seeing one picture of a golf cost. You know, it might be one good hole lerin eighteen, but it looks like it can be really cool for a topo or Google Earth or just you know, just one lousy website picture and that's.

00:19:42
Speaker 4: Probably And it's always different too, is to like what brings you there, because like you know, sometimes of you know, read everything I could possibly read on that golf course or that architecture, like a whole bunch of the different holes that are on And sometimes it's like you see one pick sure, sometimes it's just a name on the list as you were going down and seeing something, or you just drove past it. Half the time in the UK, it seems like, I mean, there's there's all different different things. It's always a bit of a you know, sometimes even is more of a surprise. Sometimes if it's like man, you only know you're gonna get one chance, you know, maybe it's worth doing a bit of a bit more research on the way in. And then it's different. You know, if you if you walk versus play and you're gonna have a different experience. You're gonna see a lot of different things. You might learn a lot more walking or versus playing. Kind of ideally you kind of do the walk and then play if you have enough time, if you really really really want to learn about it. Yeah, I don't know. There's it's always different, right, that's there. They're all different, especially especially when you're in the UK as well.

00:20:52
Speaker 2: You go to the area golf costs and the chances are it's gonna be pretty interesting because they never really destID any of the cool features that were part of the landscaping.

00:21:02
Speaker 3: You know, the town's are alreadyretty well established at.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: That point, so the landscape or the you know, the sites that were left for golf might not have been ideal, especially in land, and you know, they're often quite funky.

00:21:13
Speaker 3: There's some funky feature or too you know, makes it worth well and worst comes to the worst.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: You probably only paid twenty thirty forty quid at the average club golf course and you know it's not you're not too bad two and a half three hours, three and a half hours later.

00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, less time and less money is an appealing thing about UK golf, you know.

00:21:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that comes from less expectations too.

00:21:35
Speaker 2: You know, as long as the greens are playing pretty well, you know people are going to complain about the fairways being slightly scriffield teas not being completely flat.

00:21:45
Speaker 1: So so we we just kicked it off on the website. You guys, This series the Eclectic eighteen of the UK so pretty neat. It's it's a hole by hole and the rules of it are you can only pick one a course once, so you can only pick one hole of a course once and it goes in the order. So if it's the second hole at a golf course, it has to be the second hole in this routing of yours. Talk to us a little bit about kind of your process and the rules that you set for yourself for this Eclectic eighteen.

00:22:27
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the whole thing sort of came about in sort of a just funny organic way. I guess you would send me a text I think sometime over the winter, like you know what sort of whole deep dive from something in the UK I might be able to do? Right, So I just started looking through some photos on basically every photo I had of every golf course I've ever been to in the UK, and I was like giving my friends of personal tour by by a group text, and uh, one of them had the I had like, man, why don't why don't you just pick like the best you know one, Like, well, what do you mean? It's so turned it into the eclectic, which is, you know, not not something we created, right, you know, the these eclectic routings where it's like, you know, the standard is, you know, the fourth of Woking has to be the fourth that on your course, the eighteenth at Saint Andrews would have to be the eighteenth on your course. And so you know that was pretty much, you know, just the basis of it. And you know we've we've we've seen them in the Confidential Guide. Tom always did one. Uh in the more recent volumes, he's got you know, a consensus one between the four authors, and each one of them did individuals. So kind of as we were talking and I was going through all this stuff, I'm like, man, I don't know if I can do all of this on my own. Plus you know there's only you know, Clyde's the person I really sort of you can't really do it without him. I'm going to be asking him about every one of these anyways, So you know, I figured we had to involve him and then yes. So it's like an absolutely torturous process of trying to come up with these things. I spent like that week after we sort of came up with the idea basically pulling my hair out. I it's it's incredible, you know. I just started writing down the best sort of holes as I kind of went through, and then as I started piecing them together. You know, first I was like, well, maybe I could do the George Thomas thing, right, you know, pick five par threes and then route the par three first, you know. So I tried to do that a couple of times, and within about five holes, I just bailed. I was like this wasn't where and I just kind of went my own direction. You know. Often the holes i'd probably start with through like you know, a weapon at Saint Andrew's awesome one from Brye in uh you know, sometimes even the thirteenth at the Addington There's there's there's tons. But like you know, I was always searching for like the Sucker short. You know, I'm a sucker for like the short part three. So I started looking for things like that, and it just sort of kept evolving. I did like a whole bunch of them over the course of that week, and like, for whatever reason, I just, you know, I think that I would have ended up with lots of short part three short furs like things like that. I kept ended up with like somewhere between like par seventy three and seventy five, with all these like risk reward kind of funky par fives and things like that. But so I just kept driving myself crazy until I was able to finally narrow it down into sort of more of a cohesive, cohesive like golf course that you might actually want to play every day versus getting your head beat in.

00:25:46
Speaker 2: And that's kind of quite weird how you ended up with a past seventy three, because I mean, you think I think of my most of my favorite golf busses in the UK, great, you know, most of them around six thousand ponent guests.

00:25:58
Speaker 4: But well, that was the funny thing is they kept coming in at like sixty three hundred, but somehow they'd be like, you know, over par seventy two. And I guess that I just picked like all the shortest, shortest part fives in the entire country over there. It's like I didn't because they were the only ones that could get to maybe I don't know, like it was just bizarre. So you know, once you kind of got back, yeah, like it's too funny. But you know there are other things like we really wanted to highlight in this in this piece, you know, really take people the places that they wouldn't maybe normally go or have heard of before. It's we're not just going to play the hits either, you know.

00:26:41
Speaker 5: It's there's a lot more more to you know, just the best hole at each and then you know, I think even as you look at like the first hole, right, you know, and the importance in the UK of like how that the town's relationship so like the starting hole and the finishing hole, and you know you've got other things like you know, railroad tracks, you know, all this sort of different uh culture aspect to golf in.

00:27:07
Speaker 4: The United Kingdom that we kind of wanted to somehow intertwine into into this.

00:27:15
Speaker 2: I guess I started off by listing all my favorite holes for what I thought were you know, the truly.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: The truly great golf courses over here.

00:27:26
Speaker 2: So that's the old costs obviously being the best anywhere, and then places like new Field, doll uh Prestwick, North Berwick.

00:27:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's so many of those those courses too where you could use like six or seven holes from at least on a bunch of those like you know, and so you can you could kind of fill in sort of maybe some of the holes that didn't strike you as the strongest. And you know, I mean, how many thirteens did we look at and torture ourselves with like the consensus, it's pretty amazing and just how many you know, of those world class falls seems to you know, stack up at the same number here or there. So you know, it's funny we kind of left out some of the real big ones too, they just didn't end up fitting in the in the end.

00:28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bunch of there's a bunch of cool holes that you know, someone like Sean Abel who's on postings a lot, who would you know, he likes to call them all England candidates are all Scotland candidates that are really cool that most people.

00:28:34
Speaker 3: It would have pretty good merit.

00:28:35
Speaker 2: But you know, the best the best golf classes are the best because you know, they've got the grounds and we probably gave the edge to those that were a little bit more well known than of us in certain cases.

00:28:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was funny too. We we tried one consensus together. We just went one. We alternated one, two, three, four, odds and evens, and it did not work out well either. We scrapped that pretty quickly, it was. It came out with a rather long was it the seventy three again? Quite I think maybe, And just like we sort of like forced, you know, going that way seemed to like, you know, we each just wanted to be like you kind of just wanted to be able to pick the next great chorus versus, you know, tell the story maybe the way we were looking to do it. So what we ended up doing the second time was sort of went with like we alternated again, but you could pick kind of anywhere within the eighteen so we kind of had like a draft, if you will. So, you know, the first hole we ended up picking was I guess it was the thirteenth at North Barrick West to Pit. You know, somehow I won the coin toss for the first hole, and you know, I picked the the hole that at the time was the hole in the whole United whole world that I wanted to see the most. When I finally got to North Berrick, there was that was easily the the one hole anywhere in the world that just drew me to that place more than more than anything in the past. It was you know, at the time, the second on that list would have been the tenth of Riviera. So you know, it's those are those are the kind of things that are worth getting on a plane for, I'd.

00:30:26
Speaker 2: Say, But then you know, you know, you pick, you pick North Berwick West, but and then you're giving up the second hole North the great hole, You're giving up the fresh it's a great hole, and you're giving it the sixteenth North Beer. It's got a great green site, and you know it's it was a big balancing act.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: So that's how you guys settle on it as you went one by one.

00:30:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, although there was definitely uh, you know, maybe a little bit of collusion kind of you know, there was it was NFL. It was NFL drafted me to so you know there's always some behind the scenes action going on. Uh, you know, once we kind of started to see how things were going, you know, Clyde's also been to like you know, one hundred, you know, hundreds of more golf courses in the UK that I've been to. So there's there's places where he was going to be able to add something that I couldn't. So you know, maybe we might have made a trade here or there so that I could from from my repertoire and he could add in something a little bit more off the map. You're probably like, you know, I'm sure people are already hammering us for not picking uh Macrehonnish on the first hole, but like I'd never been there and I went with something else on the first hole. But so you know, that's just how it goes.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: What Clyde would your would your pick a bed Macarhonnish, And there.

00:31:47
Speaker 3: Was it wasn't. It wasn't the individual ones that we did.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: Uh But you know there's some you know, some of my Highlke's got a really good, strong strategic long for if that's if that's where you want to go. The first at Royal Aperdeen's is a beautiful one that plays right out towards the off sea.

00:32:05
Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah, I mean people people are always gonna throw out like Berkshire Blue, the long part three. I just I wouldn't want to start that way. That's not my sort of ideal starting hole. I mean to me, like, if you're gonna do an eclectic eighteen, you want you want something that's going to have you like not being able to sleep for like weeks, knowing that your trips come in you you don't you know, you want to be just so pumped as you're pulling into the parking lot. There's gonna be something special that's going to make you like you just gon be dreaming of hitting that first T shot for like hours days, like you know, something that's really worth getting on the plane just just to hit that one shot.

00:32:51
Speaker 1: So tell me then, if you go, tell me about Pressbook's first first hole that makes you feel that way for those that I mean, we just we put the article up about the first this week, and there will be a weekly series going forward. Jaeger are spoiled the thirteenth already, but that's fine. But the first hole of press Wick, you know, like, what makes it a great first hole? What makes you dream about that T shot?

00:33:18
Speaker 4: It's good for it.

00:33:19
Speaker 2: It's the use of it's the use of this, it's the use of the strategic use of the out of bounds.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: I think that really does it for me.

00:33:27
Speaker 1: I mean.

00:33:29
Speaker 3: Especially for the No, there's not many whole you know out of bounds in in the UK still.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: I mean some of them have been, some have been new, and some of the famous ones like the Dowry Hall, Highlake and the Royal Hole there have been have been a little bit to some extent.

00:33:47
Speaker 3: A lot of them survive still.

00:33:49
Speaker 2: It's just it's just a combination of the outbounds wall with the with the june that it's in. It's just natural versus artificial and just making you know, making use of what was there to make a really intriguing golf hole that never gets boring. You know, the closer the closer you play to the to the outbounds, the anger you get in on these days, you're going to hit the train that's coming from Glasgow down towards Are So you start left and you've got horrible.

00:34:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't even you don't even have like the full riot reliability of like the being able to just smash a driver and off you go there. I mean, because you can you can hit it through the fairway if you hit it even an okay drive most of the time, so it's like, you know, kind of one of those holes where there's like so many different strategies that there's like no strategy almost and it's just an absolute free for all. Like you can bump one up there, you can hit a long iron, you can hit like literally anything you want. Off the tee thing is like you can can't miss I mean pretty much. But it's then it's funny because then you have like the forced carry on the next one. So it's like, you know, if you really screw it up, you can really screw it up in a heartbeat, and it just funnels and funnels and funnels. The more the more link you want to hit, the more you want to rely on that big you know, I personally I just like to freaking smash the driver for well, because I know I'm not going to miss a tennis racket. I'm scared to death of like the long iron. But like that's why you feel it in your hands, like standing on the tee, like there's there's no way to sort of replicate that that feeling, you know, and just like pardon.

00:35:33
Speaker 3: The green complex is pretty cute too.

00:35:35
Speaker 2: You know, there's the there's the there's the poplink on the front left. That really squeezes it to make to make your reward for going down the down the railway line really worthwhile. That it just sort of sits in the general.

00:35:47
Speaker 4: You can get like nice nice little chip shots over the bunkers. They're like way back. You know, there's like some carry bunkers in the approach, but they're way back at like I don't know, like forty fifty yards shorts, So you can like chip and bump and run one up there even if you know kind of from wherever, and you know, start to get a little bit of that like taste for that fast and firm stuff kind of right off the bat. So it's it's really got about everything. And just like the historic nature of the place like this, there's no way you can't pull into that parking lot dressed in a coat and tie just knowing you're just going to have one hell of a freaking day. It doesn't matter how many times you've been there or whatever. It's just like it's the first you absolutely must get there, and you know it's open week and that was the first first open right, yeah.

00:36:40
Speaker 2: And the prevailing wind also is blowing from left to right normally to all the outbounds and it's a surprisingly pretty whole as well. I just got the church yard that sits on the hill above the railway line, and there's some beautiful textures with the heather and the merrimentresses on the left.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: It was it was hard to see the texture as the day we play because it was freaking snowing and hailing and raining. That we did get some sun for like two holes.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: It was.

00:37:08
Speaker 4: One of the most ridiculous golfing experiences I've ever had in my wife, with the entire golf course to ourselves, having driven from Saint Andrew's across the country to Prestwick that morning and like two inches of snow, like blank into the whole country. So we get out there and we're like got videos of hitting t shots out there. It's just like white everywhere. It's just absolute nonsense. So on a personal note, it just that's around of golf that I will never forget in my life. So you know, why not.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: That's you know, I think there's no the out of bounds line. The use of the out of bounds line is one of the most brilliant things in golf. It's so simple. But then right off the bat like there's no harder shot to flirt with it out of bounds line than the first one, because like nobody wants to being up again hitting hitting three on the first hall. It's just like an ominous way to start any round.

00:38:08
Speaker 5: Yep.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: So with this week being the Open, I know Clyde, you've been, you've been out to Port Rush. Jaeger hasn't how many holes would you have had marked as considered for the colectic eighteen from Port Rush?

00:38:27
Speaker 2: Uh Clarenty the six six now the we used to be the forty poets now a six stick pole after the recent reconfiguration toast the open. That's a great long power three with death to the right sort of you play up to along the June Ridge. June Ridge. I'm pretty fond of the short the early I mean the fifth hole hard towards the ocean, short to mid power four, uh, the short path free on the mid path right that follows that has got a beautiful green even if the fourth holes are great great hole sort of plays across across the side slope, the wind howling normally off the left towards the bounds on the right, and a cute little green that sits in uh, saddle, pretty bowl type, green.

00:39:23
Speaker 3: Site, so be free foar. I'd be thinking pretty hard about mm hmmm.

00:39:27
Speaker 1: So it with with with port rush, what I guess what kind of unique characteristics does it have compared to the other open road of courses that we we typically see.

00:39:40
Speaker 2: I think the elevation change probably is the is the first thing that comes to mind.

00:39:45
Speaker 3: Uh, it's it's fairly it's fairly rawny in that sense of the word. You know.

00:39:50
Speaker 2: The first hole you play up hill, you sort of tackle on the top five like I said, five turns and dog legs towards the cliffs lose Castle in the background, and then the new holes you drop into the former valley course, which is part five to seventh and the eighth that plays back up along the ridge line. You sort of tack backing in and around from the center of the site, and then you sort of wrap up up and over the top at the fifteenth.

00:40:17
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful path.

00:40:18
Speaker 2: All that climbs and tumbles down over some rumbling terrain and long looks pretty scary, and two hundred yards beyond that you've got the primary dune ridge and the waves that are crashing beyond that, and then after calamity it's a it's up and over that for the pros will be a pretty short part four the seventeenths. That would be interesting to see. I think the Green complexes as well. You know, actually drove pass Port Rush on Monday, but I last played there last year with Brian Schnader, one of Tom's associates, and you know, we were we were pleasantly refreshed and reminded I'd been about ten years since I've been there before and a similar amount of time is not long for him. And you know, just how cool the green complexes. You know, Colt came in and did a redesign there, so most of the greens are his and unlike most of the the links causes me on the rotor, you know, that evolved a lot over time. There's a fairly consistent set of greens there, just really elegant, and there's you know with big bowl drop offs around them. You know, so the you know, if you miss the recovery shot is going to be pretty interesting.

00:41:27
Speaker 3: I think to watch this week.

00:41:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so those those green complexes with the runoffs should be showcase short game a little bit more than we see. Ye're in year out and and a lot of different types of shots, is what you're saying, right, Yeah.

00:41:48
Speaker 2: Probably probably different types of shots, just just a bonus of the you know, the elevation that you've got to overcome if you missed agree at the short part three.

00:41:57
Speaker 3: Third hole is pretty interesting.

00:41:58
Speaker 2: Sort of like on a little note, if you missed that, you're gonna be way below the green six again in them part three.

00:42:05
Speaker 3: Five as well.

00:42:06
Speaker 2: You know, if you missed that on the inside, the ball's gonna tumble maybe ten twelve feet below the green. You know, the greens are pretty receptive and those guys are good and it's you know, it's.

00:42:15
Speaker 3: Sort of been a so so summer in.

00:42:17
Speaker 2: Ireland and anyone who's in Britain and Island in terms of the wather it's been nowhere nearest drives last year, so we relatively receptive. It just depends how to you know, how it's the wind blows as to whether those guys are going to be missing the greens enough to see those recovery shots.

00:42:34
Speaker 4: I think.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: So with the with the colectic eighteen, you obviously you got England, Scotland and Ireland all together. How did it break down in terms of you know which are the three countries got the most golf courses in there, so.

00:42:55
Speaker 2: Elan, England, Scotland, Wales and Milton Island. I'm not sure if we definitely did include we include. I think we did include the whole from from Wales. Uh so it was fairly it was fairly Scotland centric.

00:43:08
Speaker 4: I think I think I haven't really counted before. I'm just trying to.

00:43:15
Speaker 1: I think England might have had the most.

00:43:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't. I think I just counted nine real quick. For there you go one Wales, one Northern Ireland.

00:43:29
Speaker 3: No, I don't think. I don't think we had one from Wales in the end.

00:43:34
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe a honorable mention.

00:43:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, you stole me on the pick.

00:43:38
Speaker 2: I was going to pick the seventh pole up pennard Well, which is a James Braid truly.

00:43:46
Speaker 3: Call it Links in the Sky you play.

00:43:49
Speaker 2: It goes out towards the cliffs of the Cliffs of More the south of Wales. There is a beautiful you know mid power fall, tumbles over, tumbles down pain you know, the estuary in the distance, the castle in the foreground which is next to the castle ruins next to the green site, just really old and rumpling, rufful terrain and then the green. So it's got a high section that rolls down into a roll right beyond it is a few for as far as you can see down Sandy Estuary towards the the English Channel.

00:44:22
Speaker 3: So that was it was a pretty good hole to beat that one up.

00:44:24
Speaker 2: But yeah, you haven't been there, so perhaps that's that's what really I mean.

00:44:29
Speaker 4: Yet, Yeah, I think we ended up with a pretty pretty good one, you know, pretty well, a good representation I think for our list at seven. I don't know if you want to keep giving them away or what, but you know, we had to always throw in some quirk with you know, back to back part three somewhere or something funky like that.

00:44:49
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, talk about talk about the process of you know, getting to make this imaginary routing like and you know, you've got your kind of gung ho a lot of gung ho rules about architecture or faux rules like you know par seventy two. It's not par seventy two. We got they're all adjusted pars.

00:45:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, we get it. But did you figure out the adjusted part yet for ours?

00:45:10
Speaker 1: No? No, no, I haven't. You know, I'd have to, I'd have to really dive in. But I'm curious about, uh it was there a cadence or a rhythm or you know, something that you guys were striving for in the back of your mind when you were putting this together.

00:45:31
Speaker 4: Well, we definitely definitely wanted to make sure that our R eighteen represented shorter courses in general. I'd say we really didn't want to just emphasize like big brownnie long holes and beat people up at all. You know, it seems like golf in the UK is really more uh you know, some of our favorites are more like Pars sixty eight parts two see nines, like the real, real sort of shorter courses. You know, you're going to see things like Swimly Forest, you know where you're going to see nine hole courses on our list, you're going to see what like, you know, places that they might have six part threes, things like that. So it's not you know, we're really trying to highlight those sorts of things, you know, and get people familiar with those types of courses that you'd see over there, versus uh, sort of your more kind of standardized thing you might golf course you might see in the States, and then it was also like a balancing act between inland courses, wings courses, courses you know more of like the bigger dunes, perhaps more in Scotland, you know, some of the other stuff along the English Channel. You know, you talked a little bit about, you know, the Open this week over in Northern Ireland, and it's like, you know, we were talking earlier about the difference between you know, Ireland and Scotland and you know, the links courses there and how they different, you know, feature wise. You know, it's funny because as we were talking about it before, it's like, you know, I've made probably six trips to the UK in general, and you know, not not one of them actually is yet to be in you know, anywhere in Ireland. You know, it's like, well, there's some golf courses over there that are like super high on my list of places to see in the world, but maybe we wouldn't learn quite as much or be able to take away as much. And you know, there might be one or two, you know, something more worth of interest for our work that you could find find elsewhere, maybe more in the heat lens or somewhere like that.

00:47:43
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, and I tend to be a bit of contrarian as well. So some of the picks, you know, just from a very nature of picking some.

00:47:52
Speaker 3: Usual holes.

00:47:53
Speaker 2: I think that's a little bit of diversity and interest to the maker. Like the kayteen, I'm pretty I won't give it away. I'm pretty sure no one will have guessed where I would have picked for the second hole.

00:48:04
Speaker 4: Uh, definitely not. Yeah, eight You know eighteen was an interesting right right, you know, it's bouncing the town stuff there. You know, it's like I've had a bunch of people try to guess some stuff since the the preamble came out like a week ago, and it's like, I'd say, four out of every five guesses is wrong. You know, we're not where you didn't just go for the chalk hits either, you know. It's I mean, there's there's definitely a few courses personal favorites.

00:48:39
Speaker 2: Picking picking a home from say Andrews is really difficult to make because you know, and I maybe got the best power in the world, definitely got the best part far in the world, and probably the best part five in the world too.

00:48:51
Speaker 3: You know which which ones you go for?

00:48:53
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.

00:48:54
Speaker 4: But is there any architect that's ever played the Old Course more than quiet at this point. Who lives in Saint Andrews and uh, that's his home course, so it's pretty neat to have him try to figure out. You know, I had to leave the Old Course to him. There's no way I was taking that one away from him. I mean it's the best, the best tour guide anyone could have around there too, So that's pretty sweet, as I.

00:49:18
Speaker 1: Was gonna say, Uh, in terms of like what I guess, what course or what hole was the toughest one to leave off this list?

00:49:34
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, probably the road Hole of Me, which is giving it away a little bit what we picked? Has it given away what we picked the seventeen but it's just pretty times it never, you know, I'm not a big fan of how the mowing it currently. The mowing lines have taken away a lot of the strategy from how the hole should be played, but it just, you know, it never, it doesn't get any better playing that second shot into the green or away from the green more often than not if you're trying to protect a scar or you're just play insensibly.

00:50:08
Speaker 4: There there's definitely like three courses on here that people are gonna really wonder how the hell we left them off? But I think the one to me that didn't end up in the consensus was Woking. Actually, that golf course to such an incredible impact on inland golf in the history of like golf architecture, at least in terms of built golf architecture. We might say versus found if you will. It's so it's you know, it's in the honorable mentions. It was on my personal list. I believe that I tortured myself on that one a bunch, but that to me was probably the the one that I might miss the most.

00:50:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we included any reference like we're all county down.

00:51:03
Speaker 4: I know.

00:51:03
Speaker 2: That's that's partly because I hadn't been there about ten years and I got to walk it a couple of weeks ago when the Ladies Anti Championship was on walking around and that's just like, oh, yeah, this is this is really good.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: How did we include anything from there?

00:51:15
Speaker 2: But you know, that's you know, so there's a little bit by how recently we've seen golf costs as well.

00:51:21
Speaker 1: No doubt you can we can always do a revised, yeah, an amendment, you know, or.

00:51:29
Speaker 4: You never get it perfect man. There's no, there's no way. It's absolute torture. Like I went at it for like, you know, I must have done ten of these over the course of like a week, and I'm not doing it again. It's it's not fun.

00:51:45
Speaker 3: You know.

00:51:45
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe we'll try try one again in the US or something like that at sometime, but like it is brutal. I'm sure we're just go down and flames on the internet for our bad choices.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: But that's all right, that's it's funny. I since we've started this conversation, all my head's been doing has been thinking about like an a classic eighteen of the Midwest. Clyde client's talking about the road hole at St. Andrew's Midwest, and I'm like, you know, the road hole at Short Acres. It's pretty good. You know, that should be the tenth hole. But it's funny. But then I'm like, oh, it could be the leveth there too. It's just like crazy, how how it gets your mind thinking when you do an exercise like this. It's like, yeah, I.

00:52:31
Speaker 4: Mean, I mean you just talked You're talking about like road holes and stuff like that. So that was the thing that crossed my mind A bunch when when I was always doing mind is like you know, holes did not just you know, they had influence not just you know at their golf course or maybe in the country, but like literally around the world. So you know, there's there's been golf architects and people traveling to the UK, you know, forever that come back and you know, Charles Bury McDonald, Tilly has guilt, I mean, Ben Crenshaw, like you name it, right, Everyone's gotten over there and seen stuff and studied stuff and brought something back and you know, sort of some of that that impact had to somehow find its way into our list. I think, you know, at least across my mind as to you know, why I went there. You know what you know what my drive people to go there too, you know, at least from the US, right. You know, client's perspective is different than someone that lives there, and sort of you know, uh was able to see a lot of these places, you know, without having to get on an airplane. But if you're going to make that like leap, you know, sometimes there are things like that that like, you know, part of what inspires you to go somewhere. But yeah, and it's like, well, if you did one in the US. Are you gonna you know, how many of those kind of holes that are sort of replicated or templated off something else that you might put in put in there? The US is so much bigger though, Like there's so many many choices for.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: What it's worth, There's plenty of there's plenty of stuff I've seen in American golf, especially American patland golf, that I love to bring back to the UK one of these days, to an inland site.

00:54:13
Speaker 3: So it works both ways.

00:54:16
Speaker 1: It's uh what uh so you know kind of parting party thoughts. Well, you know, since both of you guys are very very well traveled. Clyde, you know, extremely extraordinarily well traveled in the in the UK and uh even you know Australia and New Zealand and Jaeger extremely well traveled, extremely you know, lots of trips to the UK. If you're if you've never gone, where's the where's the first place you got to go? You know, say you got ten days?

00:54:47
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean I think I think there's more, you know, if you're if you're a big art golf course architecture fan, there's pretty more diversity to be had from a trip to England, especially the southeast of England. Uh, but it'd be hard to you know. I had had the owner of South Cape in in South Korea contact me for some advice very recently. I'd been there with Tom on a trip a couple of years Tom a couple of years ago on a trip and uh, you know, I said to him, the five courses that you might you absolutely must see the Old Course down at u Field and then Preswick North Berwick at the five you absolutely must see. And then you know you'd think about putting places like cruden Bay and Macarhannish in that list, but you know there's quite a lot of traveling to be done there.

00:55:39
Speaker 3: So you know, you're just you're good.

00:55:42
Speaker 2: You're just as good parking in St Andrews for five days, playing the Old Course as much as you can, playing some of the cool little ones around there, like e uh he din St Andrew's got a really cool set of greens or it's nine really set, nine really cool greens, and then spending sometime in the Slovian you know, staying play, playing the ability you can, and then little places like kill Spindy, uh going number three.

00:56:11
Speaker 4: Uh, just playing brick every day, you'll be good. Uh, but is that I think you were? I think you're good? Is that?

00:56:22
Speaker 1: Like? I mean, this is something I think about a lot, Like is it better to see some of these places twice than seeing another place once?

00:56:34
Speaker 4: Sometimes?

00:56:35
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:56:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean you take ten you take ten rounds on the old cast if it was given to you for ten days, that's for sure.

00:56:41
Speaker 4: Yeah. I didn't get I mean I was, I was pretty young, and I guess you would say I wasn't wasn't woke yet, I suppose, Uh, the first time I saw it. The second time certainly made a huge differ rents to me. There there's but like North Barrick, I ended up playing probably three or four days in a row, or at least four days within a week, and just going around there over and over again. Just really planted it at one of my absolutely three favorites in the world. You know, I loved it after one, but there's no way that you're not going to want another taste that the some of those holes the second time, right, I mean, just to go back and just keep banging putts off the wall on the pit or trying to get over it in different ways. You know, there's you're definitely not going to pick the right line on a whole bunch of the holes, and the wind's going to change, and that's you know, half the time you go around, even you know, like St Andrews, you're not going to know where you're going. At least you still won't probably have to or ten plays. But I do think it's if you can. I do think that the ideal way if you really want to study stuff is to walk and then play. But sometimes playing just at least twice, not necessarily twice in the same day, but within a week or so, you see a lot of different things. You'd end up in a lot of different places, you see things from different angles. I think it makes makes a big difference.

00:58:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, so everybody just needs to quit their jobs and go over there and play play for a year, right at least, I wish.

00:58:41
Speaker 4: It's got to find a way to like get your job to take you closer. That's the trick.

00:58:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's it's a it's a you know, it's the best spot in the world, you know, in terms of concentration without a doubt.

00:58:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, it's pretty good.

00:59:03
Speaker 4: It's pretty good.

00:59:05
Speaker 1: So, uh well we'll look for this. It will be up every Tuesday. Eclectic eighteen articles will be a whole ones up, the Preswook write ups up, and uh next week we'll have a whole two which is probably gonna surprise some people, right, I hope. So definitely all right, mabe, we'll do uh do a pod when you get when we get we get done with this and and and uh talk more in depth about some of the decisions.

00:59:36
Speaker 5: Yeah,