A Preview of LACC North (ft. Gil Hanse and Geoff Shackelford)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a.

00:00:06
Speaker 3: Bride egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. And Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking all about the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club, which is, of course the venue of the upcoming US Open. Here to discuss this incredible George Thomas design with me is Andy Johnson. Andy, how's going.

00:00:51
Speaker 2: It's going great, Garrett, I am. I'm really excited. This is probably this major championship has been circled on my calendar for a couple of years now. I think just the greater golf world, there's more anticipation, intrigue and for this golf course, this venue LACC than any in recent memory. I go back and I try and think about which one has had this much excitement, and I think it's really because of the scarcity of it. We haven't ever seen LACC in a major championship, in any tournament outside of really the Walker Cup. So this is just a golf course that not a lot of people have seen. That's one of the best golf courses in the world, and that is it's really exciting. I can't wait for the week there.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: It's pretty rare that you get a major championship venue that hasn't been used for a major championship before. That is also like a classic golf course, because usually when you get a new course in a RODA, it's like in Aaron Hills or something like that. You know, a Freshers golf course, a Chambers Baby, and both of those courses I like a great deal, especially Chambers Bay. But what's Quail. Yeah, that's maybe the best example of like not super exciting. Now La North is an American Classic. I mean, this is one of the great golf courses and so to get to see it in a major championship for the first time is really wonderful. So I'm very excited about it as well. Now, a couple of extenuating circumstances for this recording. Andy's got his Alliantie on the TV behind him in the NC double A, so he might be a little distracted. I've got a leaf blower going on outside my hand, I've got a leaf blower going on outside, and so so we're going to try our best to power through this. But I think the subject of La North is going to keep us very engaged in this conversation.

00:02:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, a ligne eye on and a battle and a neck injury. So no, I'm really fighting through some stuff.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: You've got a neck injury like I've had for the past year and a half.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: Hopefully, hopefully it does linger much longer. It was. It was a debilitating weekend.

00:03:03
Speaker 1: I was.

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Speaker 2: I spent a large portion of the weekend just on my back.

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Speaker 1: Did you just sleep on it wrong?

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I stretched at my desk and next thing I knew, I was on the ground.

00:03:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to middle age. I've had the same problem, so I can relate. But yeah, main thing is you've got to not play golf for a little bit. So that's that's the hard part, all right. So a couple of things before we really get started with this episode. First of all, our video on Los Angeles Country Club North Course is coming out today May thirty first, so make sure to check that out on YouTube. We're going to have a premiere at I believe is it going to.

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Speaker 2: Be It's it's eighth thirty Eastern Eastern. You can come in, there's a chat. It's fun if you want to join the premiere. If not, it'll be up there on YouTube and easy to find that way. It features Gil Hanson and Jeff Shackelford and a lot of historical photos. It is a cop I think it covers just about every hole at the on the golf course, while also you know, having some history and different twists, and you know, your voice is in it three voices, so.

00:04:19
Speaker 1: My voice is briefly in it at the beginning to set them up.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's our best one that we've ever done, and really excited for everybody to see it.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: I feel really good about it. We had great interviews with Jeff Shackelford and Gil Hants, and we're gonna play bits of that tape that we didn't use for the video in this episode. But those were just really informative, wonderful interviews with people who were involved in the restoration of that golf course, so obviously they have very close knowledge of what really happened there, so it's not just us.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 1: Another video that we have coming out soon is a video on George Thomas's life and work, and that's going to be premiering on the week of the US Open. So this video is going to tell the story of George Thomas's life as well as his triumvirate of great La Country Club courses, which are bel Air, Riviera and La North, so three extremely great courses that he did in tandem with his associate Billy Bell. So that's going to be the subject of that video. Anything we want to tell people about that.

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Speaker 2: One super excited. I can't wait to see what you and Cameron put together. There. Obviously a titan of golf architecture in the Golden Age. You know, three of his courses really remain intact. They are three terrific golf courses, all of which will host big tournaments this year, obviously the Genesis at Riviera, the US Open at LACC, and then in August bell Air is hosting the Women's Aam, so that'll be a really fun tournament to watch. Also, one other video we have, CLUBDFE we have we started doing this for Okill. I'm doing a one feature I love on every hole I guess not love one feature one feature to notice, Yeah, to notice on every hole at LACC. I've almost finished up the script for that. So that is a CLUBTFE video. If you haven't signed up for CLUBDFE, you can do so at membership dot thefridagg dot com and we do a monthly member video that will be this month's member video.

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Speaker 1: There is that the right ur l membership dot the Frida egg dot com. I think so it's usually been the fridagg dot com slash membership. I think that's what it is, Okay, just making sure I believed you. I was like, oh no, the urol has changed and I've been giving people the wrong one.

00:06:48
Speaker 2: I get it confused with proshop dot Friday dot com.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so the Frida egg dot com slash membership is where you find out about CLUBTFE, so make sure to check that out, all right, So moving on to some more from Jeff Shackelford and Gil Hants. First you'll hear from Jeff and then you'll hear from Gil Hants. So some interesting stuff here that we really aren't using for the video. There might be a sentence or two of overlap here and there, but this is just kind of outtakes tape that we thought was really interesting and we thought we would share with you right now, so real quick, something that you should know before you hear Jeff's audio is that the North Course at LACC was built in a number of different phases. One of those early phases was Herbert Fowler's design. George Thomas, who was a new member at LA Country Club, actually supervised that design along with a couple of other people. And then several years later, nineteen twenty seven nineteen twenty eight, George Thomas and his associate Billy Bell overhauled the North Course, redesigned many aspects of it, and they did that work while members were still playing the course. So that's just a little bit of background information that I think you need to know in order to really understand what Jeff is saying here. All right, let's go to it very general question. But you know, when you look at Thomas's body of work, and especially this triumvirate of.

00:08:26
Speaker 5: LA Area country gloves, where does La North stand out among those as a unique course or a unique part of George Thomas's resume.

00:08:39
Speaker 6: Well, La North so different in that it is probably the most severe property in spots compared to others, you know, as severe as bell areas. The holes in the in the bases of the canyons are actually pretty gentle, simple walks, and the north had to traverse some amazing ground, and some of that was not doable when Herbert Fowler routed it. But again the earth moving equipment came along that they were able to move some holes and soften some elements of the land, or in the case of the Eleventh Hall, completely build that green, which I still don't know how he imagined putting a green there, but he did, and Bell found a way to get all.

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Speaker 4: The dirt there to do it.

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Speaker 6: So there were parts to this that were difficult because they had to play over the severe land, and then there were parts that were difficult because he was working.

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Speaker 4: With existing holes.

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Speaker 6: And then you're dealing with existing golfers and club members that know things a certain way, and you're doing this while they're still playing. You know that you can see in the aerials that the construction going on and there are people out playing golf. And I know that sounds like a small thing, but it's not easy. I mean, you just know there were people going what they doing here? Why are you doing that? Missus Johnson wants to know when George is going to finish the project when she sees him up at the clubhouse. All those elements blow my mind that he then was able to create I think when you compare to the other courses, and obviously you know, I have a bias with our restoration, but I think it's his greatest work and he felt he said it was probably his greatest or would be. But we do know he loved bel Air and what he did there. How did you become involved in the restoration, Well, it started with the club. You know, we go through droughts here and the club had decided to try to take turf out of play and they did that by just not mowing areas anymore. Well, those areas became weeds and bermuda grass and lost balls, and so they decided at some point that it was time to consultant architect again. And the general manager at the time, Kirk Reese, had me over one day and I met with a committee to discuss what was going on in golf at the time. You know, this was we're talking two thousand and six, So the restoration movement is you know, really starting.

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Speaker 4: To move now.

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Speaker 6: You know there were some setbacks, you know, Riviera's greens and going bad and people blaming that and that is an excuse not to restore. Of course, of course they have nothing to do with each other. That's just an agronomic situation and soughting greens. So there had been hiccups, but more and more people were starting to want a restoration and value having certain architects, and so I was able to convey that to them, and I think they already knew that's where it was going, but I think when you hear it from others, and I was able to, I think speak for George Thomas as best as one can without him being there, that they really had something special, not only if you just kind of if you view this as an old painting and get the dust off and see the painting, but then you know they had other things that if you put it in the right lighting, in the right setting, it really pops. And I don't think those elements they fully understood. So I explained that, and when it came time to seek architects, I had worked with Gil on Ruster Canyon, so we were kind of an obvious team and we were able to convince them to let us do a master plan and it went from there, but there were hiccups along the way. There were things that were rejected, and when the markets collapsed in two thousand and eight, we were kind of had a setback, and so we still went ahead though and did the fairway bunkers. And when they saw the methodology and the rationale, which was to create a look like you see in the old photos, but an evolved look one that the fits. Of course that was eighty years plus, they started to realize, I think that we were on the right track, and so a lot of things were revisited and so back, you know, to the view of Ben Crenshaw, the most important thing in golf architecture is time. We had time on our side in ways that we didn't even really appreciate at the time because we were frustrated. We wanted to do the whole thing all at once, and it was a no.

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Speaker 4: Brainer to us.

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Speaker 6: But when you're dealing with a large membership and big changes, it's hard to convince people of that. But when they see things happen it did, you know, to their credit allow us to go back and discuss putting back the second and eighth holes. The way they were for George Thomas, and ultimately we got everything, you know, really what we that we wanted in terms of reflecting his his and Billy Bell's work.

00:14:03
Speaker 1: All right, So that was Jeff Shackelford. And before we get into our gill Hands tape, let's talk about our sponsor for this episode, Club Champion. Club Champion helps golfers of any skill level play better golf through custom fitted and custom built equipment. Their master fitters provide an in depth, data driven, tour level fitting process using industry leading technology like track Man and sam put Lab. They have access to fifty thousand hit able head and shaft combos as well as sixty plus brands, and they build to the tightest tolerances in the industry. Club Champions fittings produce real results for every level of player, including an average of twenty two yard increases off the tee and an average of ten yard improvements in dispersion. Now, Andy, you recently had a Club Champion fitting yourself at Long Last. We've been teasing this for what feels like years at this point. How did your fitting go? Can you tell me, like one thing about your fitting that you thought was cool?

00:14:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not a tinkerer. I the reason it took me so long. I put clubs in my bag and I don't switch. I just I upset with them. One thing I found actually fascinating. We'll have an inscrib story more in depth on the fitting. But one thing I found fascinating was the putting fitting. Uh, the putter fitting. I I can't believe how much a shaft makes a difference in a putter. It was wild. Some of these new shit. Honestly, they like propel the ball. I can't believe how hot some putters get because of the shaft. But anyways, I you know, I use like a I use one of our event putters and I have but this new putter that I got with the shaft and everything like in fit like he just changed like the loft of my putter. And you know, it wasn't anything mechanical like he's just like if you have a little bit different neck like hozzle like alignment the way it is yours is too I think mine was too long. It just like it caused some aiming problems and the loft and all of a sudden it's like every put dead online. Yeah, like it was fascinating. I really enjoyed the putter fitting. We'll see how it goes when I bring it out to the course whenever I get over this neck injury.

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Speaker 1: The loft of a putter is extremely influential on what happens during a putt. That's something that I learned during my fitting, and finding out what your proper loft is is really useful because everybody kind of delivers the putter differently, but that is something that makes such a huge difference in the type of role that you put on the ball, in your ability to like get the ball rolling quickly. So I agree with that. So for Frida Egg listeners, this is the deal that Club Champion is offering right now. You can use code fried Egg to get fifty percent off the cost of your Club Champion fitting with the purchase of a club. That's code fried Egg all one word, all right, Back to Gil Hants, maybe you could just define a Thomas and Bell bunker, like what that is and then tell us a little bit about how you build one or we build one.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the bunkers here are definitely going to be the most visually significant characteristic of the golf course. And I know that you know, working with Jeff Shackelford and Jim and I we talked a lot about what makes a Thomas and Bell bunker, and Jeff had all these different I mean, Jeff's importance in this cannot be underestimated because anytime we needed information or sort of documentation, he had it right.

00:17:46
Speaker 4: And so we had the best archivist. But he also was an amazing set of eyes to help us make.

00:17:51
Speaker 3: Sure that he understood Thomas better than anybody, that we were getting things in an authentic fashion. So I think one of the areas where we deviated, if you want, was the bunkering. You know, the bunkering that that Thomas did. Hear was iould say underwhelming, but it wasn't the height, the pinnacle of what Thomas and Bell ultimately achieved in bunkering. And so we took some liberties and said, all right, if we want to do this, well what would we do? You know from an evolution perspective, and you know, there was the hypothetical, okay, well, if Thomas had lived longer, would he have eventually gotten to this point, you know, because he would have figured he would have had carte blanche to do things. Here he started on the south Course then died before he finished, so you know, there was a little bit of that, but we wanted to make sure that because they were so ultimately became so good at Bunker Building, that we didn't want the representation that a lot of people.

00:18:45
Speaker 4: Were going to see to be the sort of water down version of Thomas and Bell.

00:18:51
Speaker 3: So we picked a style that we thought was appropriate to their you know, their desire was to create the illusion of erosion right and naturally coated bank with sand in it, which would be reminiscent of a lot of the brancas that you see around here from that perspective, so it would get back to feeling natural. So then it became, okay, if we're going to do that, how do we do it texturally? Because we've got bermuda grass everywhere else. Bermuda grass does not offer the texture or the look or the feel of erosion. It's very very difficult to get it to create that because when it.

00:19:25
Speaker 4: Grows tall, it just gets puffy.

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Speaker 3: It doesn't really have any characteristic from a texture standpoint, doesn't come to seedhead. So it was okay, how do we figure this out? And so working with originally Bruce Williams.

00:19:40
Speaker 4: At the time.

00:19:41
Speaker 3: We came up with the concept of let's do a fine fescue edge with a tall fescue cat because in this climate the fine fescue wouldn't really work on the banks. It just gets too hot, it would probably melt out. So we came up with the tall fescue. So you've got basically a revetted edge, which the stacking of the side with fine fat, which will get that little bit thinner, wispier look and feel and kind of lay over. And then above it you've got the tall rescue, which is a thicker stalk ear blade which when it goes to seat head will go up. So you've got a really nice contrast texturally to try and create that feeling of erosion and a little bit more natural with grasses that would number one survive and number two you know, provide playability challenges that we're one hundred percent comfortable with. I think if you see anything in the US Open that the players are going to raise their eyebrows about, it will be the bunker the surrounds of the bunkers, And from our perspective, we feel one hundred percent comfortable. I mean, we don't want people losing golf balls on the faces. But and I think that will be managed appropriately. But the membership plays with these bunkers this way, you know, at least three or four times a year when they're allowed to kind.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: Of get to that height.

00:20:52
Speaker 3: We're believers that you know, technically, within the rules of golf, the margins of the hazard or sorry penalty area are technically the sand. But you know a lot of great old bunkering the hazard is actually where the grass is, where the turf is, or you get yourself a bad lie, or you know, the ravetting becomes a big part of it when you're in sod wall bunkers in Scotland. And so I think what we've created here is you're going to basically the players are gonna begging for the ball to get in the sand because the result from these eyebrows and the surrounds of the of the bunkers is going to be a worse outcome than if the ball gets into the sand. And I think from the standpoint of they're so distinctive because of the different turf grasses, but they're also distinctive because of the contrast between the fescues and the bermuda you know, there's just you can't get them to blend, so they appear to our best of our ability, we've tried to get them to merge, but they do definitely feel a little bit like they're islands of turf around the around the bunkers. But it was our best chance that we felt of getting to replicate that feel. And then when we you know, we finished it up. It was an interesting time because there were very few significant golf projects going on. It was basically here in Pinehurst number two. And you know, we're really proud of the response that we got when when this was was unveiled, but it was it wasn't it wasn't like a direct line on any of this. There was a lot of stops and starts and for various reasons. But at the end of the day, whether it was serendipity or divine intervention, I don't know, but it all worked out for the best.

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Speaker 2: That time you had Pinehurst number two, obviously Corn Crunshaw we're doing that project and this one was going on. There are two of the courses most linked to like.

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Speaker 6: The restoration boom, like two of the big show pieces.

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Speaker 3: Can you talk about that influence that you've seen from the work here that's carried on over the past decade. I think that, you know, because of the visibility of what Bill and Ben did at Pinehurst Number two and what we did here at La North, I think, you know, there there was just this I don't want to say a new found appreciation, but I think that there was now more from a gener public standpoint and appreciation for restoration. I think there was a group of architects who are always believed this was the way to go forward, but now because nothing else was getting built and there was nothing else to write about, it was like wow, front and center as it should have been, right because you had two of the most significant golf courses in the country doing this. I think that it has led down a path of you know, trying to create more people having taking advantage of the of this boom and doing you know, really great work, stuff that Andrew Green's doing at different places.

00:23:28
Speaker 4: It you know, without L A. C. C.

00:23:30
Speaker 3: I one hundred percent believe, you know, I'm not sure we get Wingfoot, and I'm not sure that then Wingfoot leads to Marian and that you know, all the things that have happened because of what we did here. I think that really laid the groundwork from our personal perspective, not only you know, industry wide, but our personal perspective to get us introduced and give us the opportunity to work at some of these great clubs that we're working at.

00:23:58
Speaker 4: All.

00:23:59
Speaker 1: Right, So that is Gil Hans and now Andy and I are back to talk more about our own thoughts on the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club. So just to kick things off, Andy with a big question, where does this course rank among all golf courses for you? Let's give people an idea of how good we think this course is.

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Speaker 2: It's funny the more times I mean one of the I played this course probably about four years ago, and I walked off it and I was like, God, this is amazing. And just through the US Open being here, going to shoot a couple of times. I've spent a lot of time on this golf course now in the last year, and every time I come away just more impressed. I think, like, that's one of the things that I always think about with golf courses is the ones where the more time you spend on them, the more you love them. This to me is honestly up there with the best courses in the world. I don't think like I always say, like with the with the very the best course of the world is not like what's your favorites, it's what mood am I in? Where you know. I think this is one of the courses where it's a really really challenging golf course. It is hard, you have to play really well the score, but it's still so fun. And I think that's the thing that's so unique about it is that it can be. It shows that you can have playability and challenge, that they the two can exist together. It is not like you feel you know that shots are so tough, but you also feel like they are achievable. You don't feel like anything out here is unachievable. And I think that's the magic of the golf course. It is among the very best. I would put it right up there. Like I always say, what's Everybody always asks me what's your favorite golf course, and I always say, Cypress Point, this is the golf course. Though that is beginning to maybe nudge Cypress Point out, and who knows after spending a week there where it gets spit. I love Lac North is tremendous golf course.

00:26:03
Speaker 1: So in Club TFE, we evaluate golf courses with the criteria of land design and presentation, and I think that going through each of those categories for La North maybe gives an idea of how great this golf course is and why it's so great, because to my mind, like it just knocks it out of the park in all three land design and presentation, it just is among the best of the best in all of those that I've played. So land, the land at LACC is so cool and unique. How would you describe it to people? Where would you start in talking about this property?

00:26:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say it's quintessential southern California. If you've spent any time in the Los Angeles area, you know that the land is dominated by these canyons. Right, It's hard to tell because everything's covered in concrete. This is one of the preserved, really preserved pieces of ground in southern California. And what what it does? You know, it's really a canyon scape, right, So there's a central canyon that has golf holes in it. You're either playing on the ridges outside the canyon into or out of or in the canyon. So really it is a it's a quintessential southern California landscape. And it's a it's a golf along and in a canyon. With that, there's a baranca that is, you know, a fancy word for ditch to dry river there.

00:27:45
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that, continue what you're saying, but.

00:27:48
Speaker 2: It's a dried river gorge and that runs through the canyon. So that's the waterway through the canyon.

00:27:55
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:27:55
Speaker 2: This winter it rained so much that there it was filled with water. It was really cool to see it when I was there in the spring with water in it. I mean, it's a functional thing, but that's going to be a central hazard. And there's just some you know, big slopes, so there's a lot of movement, but nothing too severe, if that makes sense. Where this canyon's probably i'm not sure exactly what it is, probably about forty feet deep, so you can go down. There's that type of elevation, but nothing too abrupt or severe. The abrupt parts you walk up steps like you go from seventeen green out, you go from one green in. But everything else is really the right size for golf. Right. People think dramatic and oftentimes people think like very severe sites will be good sites. You know, you don't want super severe, you want contour that's manageable, and this is really manageable. And the way the fairways drape over it is really and you play over it along it is really unique. So from a from a landscape standpoint, the other thing that's great about it is just how natural it feels and looks.

00:29:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and that's part of its presentation, part of the how they've decided to make this golf course appear, and all the choices they've made around that. But something that I think is so unique about this property is that it is what you're describing, a natural southern California landscape. And my note about Barankas is that I grew up in southern California. I grew up in I don't know if everybody would consider Santa Barbara southern California. It's kind of the central coast, but that's a geography discussion, and I'm sure you have an opinion on it as well. But I grew up in Santa Barbara. We did call these landforms Barancas. It's not just like fancy golf architecture. People who've decided to call these ravines in southern California barankas people call them that my dad called them, that I learned to call them. That it's a particular type of landform. And yes, it's a ravine like any other ravine. But what's unique about them is that they're sometimes they're most often dry, and there's sometimes there's sometimes water, and then they serve they serve a drainage function. And so a baranca is a specific thing in this region, and people actually do use that term in this region. It's not just a golf architecture thing. It's not just a golf telecast thing. And yeah, it's a fun word to say, so at least there's a there's something. It's way more fun than ditch. Yeah, that's that's part of part of the appeal of using the term, for sure. But what I think is really unique about lacc's property is that it has this distinctively southern California landscape and it's contrasted with the views of the urban Los Angeles area. Right, you can see skyscrapers from the course that's your horizon. So you're in this sort of what was previously there before it was urban in Los Angeles. You're in this landscape that has been there, not always because it kind of went away before it was restored, but it looks a lot like what was there before the golf course and before this area was developed. But you're looking out on this modern city scape and I think that that's something that's just really fun about LA And it's kind of hard to describe the feeling that it creates, but there's something about it that I like. So design, what do you think George Thomas did at LA North that was especially remarkable with the architecture itself, With the design itself.

00:31:45
Speaker 2: I think the greens are really neat out there. I mean, the landscapes obviously gorgeous, and the routing uses the land really well, but I love all the little pockets of greens. You know, you see these green I saw, you know, Jeff Shackelford described the third green as a molar, so it's an interesting way to think about it. It really does look like a bowler, yeah, a tooth ye like, you know, you think about those like they have these neat, little like kind of capes that come down, little tiny sections that are gonna be really fun to see when when the USGA tucks some of these pins because it removes some of the bailout issues. I think, like one of the thing or some of the bailout options. One of the things with these pros the way they play is that oftentimes they're aiming ten feet left or fifteen feet left of flags or right of flags. You know, depending on where the trouble is. There are gonna be spots at LA where the bailout is in a bunker because of these like little you know, sections of greens. So then they're gonna have to bail out long And what these greens sit on so much slope. I think that's the thing about them. They have a lot of tilt to them because of just naturally how they sit on the land. The land is severe and you'll have these uphill holes and you'll have that it looks like it's sitting on the ground, but it's deceiving because of how much the land is moving because you're in this canyon right or you know, you're really near the canyon. So you have these greens with these really cool sections and a lot of slope. This is not going to be one of those places where if you're twenty feet right or left, you've got a pretty flat putt you're going to be navigating a couple feet of break in a lot of instances when you bail out pin high to certain areas. So I think what should be really fun is the greens, the unique whole locations that they're going to have in these little corners. But then also the lag putting, which is always an underrated undertop. It's not really a sexy thing you talk about, but you know, one of the greatest skills of some of these of the best players in the world is their lag putting. And what wins a lot of major championships is your ability to leg stop putts dead. And we're going to see a very challenging you know, they aren't Augustin National greens with big severe sections, but more like that gradual tilt and really cool corners. Right, So lag putting is going to be a supreme skill here.

00:34:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, these little tongues on the greens are something that you see on a few other courses, but not many, and they are part of what makes LA such a memorable course. And in addition to that, one thing that talking with Jeff clarified for me is that these little sections where you can put pins help with the courses within a course idea that George Thomas had. So the simplest way to explain courses within a course is that essentially, George Thomas imagined that you could use radically different teas and radically different pin positions to create an entirely different course that you could play on the same property basically on the same routing, though the routing would sometimes change as well. And so you know, coming up with very different positions angles, lengths of teeing positions for holes, and then coming up with radically different pins, some you know, on a bigger section of the green or in the middle of the green, and some way out on the edge on these little capes, as you said, that would create basically a different hole that you would have to play in a different way. And so he thought through all of these kind of alternate courses that you could play within La North. And what Jeff clarified for me is that the design of these greens, the way that they kind of meander or you know, sort of blob all over the place like Amiba's, is a function of Thomas's idea that you could play this course in very different ways on different days, and and so you know, That's That's something that that I find really interesting about this course, and that may not really come through in the US Open. They might use some different teas, they'll definitely use different pin positions, but I don't think a championship is the best place to experiment with these very different courses within a course. They're not going to play a par sixty eight on one day.

00:36:37
Speaker 2: You know, they aren't going to Chambers Bay.

00:36:41
Speaker 1: Wait, what are you referring to with Chambers Bay?

00:36:43
Speaker 2: Have they changed the power of eighteen?

00:36:44
Speaker 4: Right?

00:36:45
Speaker 1: Yes, they did change with the power of eighteen, that's true, so maybe they will know they probably.

00:36:50
Speaker 2: Right they are. I mean, I think one of the hard things about championships is, like why sometimes it gets difficult to move teas around a bunch is because of like the infrastructure that you get locked into with grandstands and roping. I mean, to me, moving a rope line is probably pretty easy, but it seems like it's a you know, it has all these other impacts, right.

00:37:12
Speaker 1: One of those things that would stress out us GA employees probably, Yeah, rone.

00:37:17
Speaker 2: Well, you also like if you move the rope line and then people are just trampling over the back t that you want to use two days later. Like, I get how that could be problematic, right, yeah, So anyways, you know there are reasons why they can't, you know, get extremely but that's one of the cool things about this golf course. I think LACC you could set up to play really easy. I think something that is extraordinarily important. I think this is gonna be one of the harder ones to forecast what the winning score is, but I think it's one of these. It could be a moment in championship golf setup where maybe maybe just you know, I I think, like I'm kind of on this team, is like, let's stop determining the worth of a championship course based off of like the score to part. I think that is an important thing to say here. I don't know how the golf course is what the scores are gonna be. If I had to guess on a winning score, it'd be something in the eight to twelve range.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: The Gills winning score.

00:38:19
Speaker 2: I think it's a winning score. Six is at six at the club, is six at uh six Southern Hills. Oh that's true wing Foot and it was six at wingst.

00:38:29
Speaker 1: Okay, so you think this is going to be a slightly lower score to part, which means that it's less of a good course. Obviously.

00:38:34
Speaker 2: I was talking to John Rahm at Riviera and I opined that I thought it might be like eight to twelve, and he looked at me like I was like I was speaking another language other than English.

00:38:45
Speaker 1: Why did he thought it was?

00:38:47
Speaker 2: He thought it was way harder than that.

00:38:49
Speaker 1: It was going to be way harder. Oh, but had he played the course before?

00:38:52
Speaker 2: Has he played pac twelve?

00:38:54
Speaker 1: Oh that's true? Yeah, okay, yeah, because he yeah, he was a he was a Yes, he was a West Western guy in.

00:39:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, he played at Arizona State. So but anyways, he but I think it's going to be eight to twelve. And I think the thing about LACC that's different than a lot of like different than okill. And if you get a going, it allows you to go, which I think you should want in a golf course. If I'm playing, if somebody's playing great, allow them to separate themselves. That's what we want. I think this golf course, because there is space off the tee, is going to allow for low scores. But I think it's also going to expose people that aren't playing great. And I think what it's gonna do is that we're going to see some separation on the leader board from players like and we're going to see a pretty dynamic range of scores. It's not gonna be what we saw at Okill, where like the scoring for the first three days we saw some guys break through sixty six, but it was sixty six to seventy four, yes, like you know.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: Because it was really hard to make double bogies there, and it was also really hard to make.

00:40:03
Speaker 2: Birdies exactly because you couldn't hit enough fairways right to really sustain a scoring run. Here, I think you're gonna see guys go on runs, and what runs do? Runs make great television. That's what everybody loves about Augusta National is the idea of a guy going and making five birdies and six holes and doing heroic stuff. And I think that's the thing that this golf course is going to provide. But in order to do that, in order to go on one of those runs, you have to be magnificent here. And I think that that's the important thing is that there might be low scores. You know, it's this time of year in LA. It's not going to be really breezy it's going to be, you know, pretty predictable. The mornings are going to be calm. You know, there could be some scoring opportunities out there. But you know, the thing about it is you have to play great here, and I think it's going to separate the leaderboard focus more on the quality of the golf shots that are being hit and not on just the score.

00:41:12
Speaker 1: But it's so much easier just to focus on the score. Andy, that's right. You don't actually have to watch the tournament and try to discern whether good golf is being played. Yeah, so I agree with that. You know, it's hard to predict whether there's going to be a spread leaderboard or a bunched leader board. That I've found that really hard to guess in the past, and so we'll see what happens. But I definitely recognize the logic here that somebody could go really low and also somebody could get it going in the wrong direction, get in some of the wrong places around the greens, and things could move sideways pretty quickly. So hopefully we will see dynamic scoring in this championship. Now, one thing that I wanted to just mention as a pet theory, this is just a parenthetical here, but the greens with the little tongues. George Thomas and Billy Bell built these in nineteen twenty seven, basically, or in twenty six twenty seven, somewhere in that range. And these greens I don't think had really been seen before, at least in American golf architecture, greens with this style of shape. But then by nineteen twenty nine we saw Alistair Mackenzie do something fairly similar with his green shapes at Pasatiempo. Now Mackenzie's greens are more contoured internally, but the shapes at Pasatiempo are pretty comparable to the shapes that we see at La North. We see some of those same concepts where you can put these pins on these little peninsulas out on the edges of greens between bunkers. We see that a lot at Pasa Tiempo, and then we saw it again at Augusta National in the early thirties. Obviously a lot of those little sections of the greens don't exist any longer, but they certainly did in nineteen thirty three nineteen thirty four, And so my pet theory and I haven't done historical research here to see if this is feasible or not. But my pet theory is that Alistair Mackenzie went to southern California at some point and took a look.

00:43:16
Speaker 2: He thought he was getting that Riviera.

00:43:18
Speaker 1: He went to Riviera. We know that, Yeah, he and it was sort of funny, like he brought a bunch of his books and he thought he had the job. And then he saw George Thomas and he was like, oh shit, you know what did I do this for? But I don't know if you went and saw what was being built at La North by George Thomas, But I just have noticed that Mackenzie's greens before Pasa Tiempo and before La North were not in this style. Really, if you look at his greens at Meadow Club or even at Cyprus Point, they don't have these kind of weird amoeba like shapes. And so I wonder if there's an influence there. If George Thomas was kind of pushing the envelope in golf architecture in this specific way, Mackenzie picked up on it and started to push that concept even further by, you know, designing these shapes as well as some of the really sharp end and extreme contours that as greens have internally, because that's one thing that George Thomas's greens don't have is those kind of Mackenzie or Maxwell's style internal contours. So anyway, just a nerdy little parenthetical theory there.

00:44:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the comp to to post the tempost greens because of the slope too, Like a lot of po have severe front to back slope. We'll see if they have that same front to back slope when their renovation's done.

00:44:42
Speaker 1: That's another pot. Now to touch quickly on presentation, This is pretty pitch perfect presentation, right, I mean, like the restoration was great. The turf plays firm and fast. There's a variety of hues. It's rough in some places, it's refined in other places, Like this is a really really well presented golf course. There are some USDA mowing lines out there that one might question, but overall, this is like an A to A plus in terms of presentation. Would you agree with that?

00:45:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I will always have qualms with any mowing line that is brought in after a substantial restoration by one of the great architects. I will always push back on that. But of all the things that they've done over the years. This is pretty inoffensive. There's a couple spots where you just maybe wish there wasn't a narrowed fairway. I think from the presentation standpoint, what I would love to hit on a little bit is the baranca. The branca is wonderful, it's beautiful to look at it, and one of the things that I really like about it is the way it's going to play like a hazard. I think that it's it's going to be super fun because when a ball goes in, you're going to have that suspense of where's it going to end up, and it's not going to be a foregone conclusion of hey, it's perfect. Hey, Like these areas are super unpredictable. There's some thick grass, there's some bear spots that will play just like a bunker, there are some bushes. Really anything can happen when the ball goes into the baranka. So I imagine that some of these tour pros are going to be very very wayward of this baranca because of the unpredictability, and they like everything predictable. And when you start to play away from the baranca, that's when you know everything advantages players towards those areas that are you know, playing close to them, that's when it gets It will get more and more interesting when you play away because you're going to have a lot of contour to work against or different carries. And you know, I think it'll be firm because you know, it doesn't rain in June. The question is going to be really is it is it gloomy? Is it is there you know, cloud cover that's going to keep some humidity in the greens.

00:47:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, the baranca is so good. I mean, not only does it look good, not only does it look natural and rugged, but as you said, if your ball goes in there, it could be a lost ball because there are some patches of really thick vegetation that your ball could go into. But you could also have a perfect lie on a hard pan and be able to hit out of the baranca. So we're going to see players playing out of the baranka from weird lies that they don't normally get in fair way or rough and that's something that's going to be really entertaining, really cool to look at. Just like a player standing in a hazard like that and playing the ball out is not something that you get to see very often, and it's something that you get to see at La North in the summer because it's dry in there, and there's all this variety of vegetation and lies that you'll find in there, and so that will definitely be something to look forward to. So another thing to look forward to in your morning routine is AG one by Athletic Greens. Was that a pretty good transition?

00:48:08
Speaker 2: It was a great transition.

00:48:10
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, all right? So I take ag one by Athletic Greens literally every day. I gave AG one a shot because I noticed that my daily habits just weren't the healthiest and I wasn't always getting what I needed nutritionally. So now I take AG one first thing in the morning, right before I take the kids out to the bus stop, and it just gives me an assurance that I've started my day the right way. Plus it gives me a little boost of energy, which is always a good thing. Andy, how's your experience with AG one going?

00:48:38
Speaker 2: It's great. I like the piece and that comes over me knowing that I've taken care of a lot of the nutritional foundations that I need a day on a daily basis. So I like that. The other thing, the underrated thing, about it is like you mix ag one. It's super easy. You drop in the powder, you mix it with water. Not only are you getting the nutrition in you, but you're getting water right away. If you do it first thing in the morning, you're getting eight to twelve ounces of water. So it's super easy. It's a great way to get your day off to a really good start and yourself in a really good habit. So that's what I like about it. I think we have a promo code. One of the things they give you is is a website a URL if you sign up through us, that give you the travel packs, which I find to be super convenient if you're on the road a lot.

00:49:28
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. If a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine, then Athletic Greens is giving you. And this is the special thing that you mentioned that you get if you use our URL, a free one year supply of Vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. So go to Athleticgreens dot com, slash the fried egg. That's the URL. Athleticgreens dot com slash the fried egg. Check it out, all right, So maybe we can get a little bit more specific with a hole or two at La North. What do you think will be some of the holes to watch for if somebody is watching on TV.

00:50:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're going to get a lot of coverage of the six. The eleventh and the fifteenth, those are going to be the most covered holes.

00:50:17
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:50:18
Speaker 2: The six is a short part four that should be really fun to watch if we want to go into detail. I think one of the neat things about it is this a blind short part four, and you know, I think I'm not sure how different players are going to play. I think one thing we didn't hit on is the eyebrows of the bunker and I think that bunkers that's really going to make a big impact on how people play the six. When we played it about a month ago now, the eyebrows, the rough around the bunkers was like insane. It was. It was the worst place you could be.

00:50:59
Speaker 1: You didn't you're until you're right up on top of it.

00:51:02
Speaker 2: I know in talking to John Bodenhammer, they wanted to thin that out a little. I'm guessing they're going to have that thinned out some. It's going to be a little bit more manageable. But if it's a really difficult and undesirable place. We could see a lot of layups on the six as the way. If it's not that way, I think everybody's going to try and dump it into that front bunker m hm and take their chances of getting up and down right.

00:51:32
Speaker 1: And and you've got a little backstop behind the green that has some hazards in it. You don't really want to be there, but players might take their chances with that that you know their ball might stop before getting up into the really nasty stuff mm hm.

00:51:46
Speaker 2: So I think the six is one to watch, and like the the thing to to pay attention to is going to be it's the narrow It's this narrow green that's on a hard angle and I love that's set, Like it's amazing what you can do with just shape and angle of greens and this hole. You know, like if the pin's on the right, if you play way left off the t, you get a really easy wedge right up and you have a lot of green to work with. If the pins on the back left, if you play way right, you can have that same kind of effect where you have all this green to work with. It's a really simple wedshot. So it'll be interesting just to see if guys do that. The eleventh. It's a long part three. It's like a reverse for Dan. If you play it left, you're gonna feed it in. Why this hole is gonna be really on TV A bunches because of the LA skyline behind it.

00:52:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a super cool hole. Beautiful. It's a natural amphitheater type hole. It looks amazing.

00:52:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a great hole. One of the things I love about it is just seeing how built up the back of that green is. Yes, if you it's down in this valley and it's just like built up. So I wonder where they got the fill for that. That's something I wonder about every time I walk down sixteen. I look that way there and then fifteen the short part three, that's going to be catnip the week of the US Open. You know, it's gonna play probably under one hundred yards at least once. And the green shape and contour right in the center of the green is just tremendous. So you know, some really cool little pins on the front right of that green, and just this central bump that's in the green influences every whole location.

00:53:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that those holes are probably going to be, as you say, the easiest for the telecast to latch onto six eleven fifteen. All are going to be catnip in different ways, but fortunately they're all really good golf holes. Part of what I'm hoping for from eleven and that I don't know if we're going to get, is a little bit of runout with the ball player is actually feeding the ball into the green. I suspect that the hole isn't quite long enough for that to happen.

00:54:07
Speaker 2: That we'll see they can play it three hundred yards.

00:54:10
Speaker 1: If they play at three hundred yards, then we'll see some more run out, And that's kind of what I'm hoping for, right, But don't you think in general that the aerial attack there is probably going to be the way that players go.

00:54:21
Speaker 2: Well, the other part about it is you're coming from up high. Yeah, yeah, the land at a more severe angle of descent. Right. I think the you know, in today's modern age, holes with runout where you want the ball on the ground play best when you play uphill because it gets that descent angle down, right, So I do I think there's enough runout though, like you still definitely want to play it left and short left. The thing that's that's fascinating is like that kicker slope doesn't extend all the way. It's easy to miss it long left over the kicker. It's not that that kicker slope in a way doesn't really feed the entire green. It only feeds like half the green. And if you hit it a little long then you end up long left below it, and everything works a way. Not a great spot to be interesting.

00:55:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, another thing about La North versus another George Thomas design that we see on a yearly basis, Riviera, is that La has a different turf type that runs out more, and so Riviera. Part of the problem with like the fourth hole, for instance, there the reason that players don't really feed that ball in that much on that hole is that the cocuya grass is a little bit unpredictable with the bounces. Sometimes it sort of grabs the ball and it pulls it up short of the green. At La, hopefully what we will see is quite a bit more run out on this and correct me if I'm wrong. I'm always a little nervous when it comes to agronomy. It's Bermuda, right, yes, yeah, So this is nice, kind of firm running Bermuda. You know, there's a little bit of grab to it, but that's where we are. We're in southern California. It's definitely more of a kind of ground game turf than Kquia is. And so you know, I'm hoping that we'll see a lot of balls running along the ground out there at LA. Now, one hole that I want to touch on just very quickly that I think is going to be a star in the US Open and that may not get a lot of run in the lead up to the championship is seventeen.

00:56:30
Speaker 2: It's in that closing stretch Sonning.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's so beautiful, right, and then the strategy and the green complex are both really interesting. Basically, if you're left on this hole, you've got a really really shallow target going into this green and some spots around the green that you just don't want to be. If you go right, which is more toward some you know, hazardous area, then the baranca is there, yep, and just some scrub and some wilderness, some trees, some sycamores. Right, if you go right on this hole, then you'll have a much nicer angle up a very narrow green, and so I'm gonna want to see not if players are trying to position themselves in the corridor, because we know that they tend to go at the middle of the fairway, but I'm curious to see what missus left and missus right, you know, players who end up on the right side of the corridor versus the left side of the corridor, how different those shots might be. And we might see that be a factor in the closing moments of the championship, which could be very very interesting. Okay, cool, anything else we want to cover.

00:57:42
Speaker 2: I was curious, do you think that Little seventeen or seventeen will get more coverage?

00:57:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to be a little seventeen. Did you know? You know, did you know that there's a whole other hole in here? I mean, if people haven't heard of Little seventeen, what is Little seventeen?

00:58:00
Speaker 2: The original seventeenth hole before the redesign that there was you know, they played a tournament out there before.

00:58:06
Speaker 1: George Thomas is redesigned. By the way, it was a Fouler hole and it was not used consistently after George Thomas and Billy Bell came in and redesigned the course in nineteen twenty seven.

00:58:17
Speaker 2: There was a famous story about how everybody like four putted and five putted this green in a tournament.

00:58:24
Speaker 1: I think it was that. I think it was the LA Open, wasn't it.

00:58:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be so yeah, and uh that it's still there. It's still sitting there. You're gonna get, you're gonna get, serve plenty of little seventeen content. I don't need to be the person that tells you all about it. One other hole of note that I would just throw in there. I love this hole is the fifth. It's a long, long part. Four. You tee up from down in the canyon, you tee up out, you hit it out of the canyon, and you're gonna have like a mid to long iron in. It's a super severe green. It's got some really cool wings, and I love that the left side really funnels the ball in, so you might see some guys hitting shots that run in there from the left. I think one of the things just in general about this golf course, we're going to see the ball rolling on the ground, which is always just like, that's fun and that's what we love about links golf. We're going to get a little bit of that at LACC. Is the ball on the ground and rolling.

00:59:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not going to be a static golf course at least that's the hope. You know. This is always conditions dependent, but based on our past experiences at this course, the shot doesn't end when it lands, and there's a lot of stuff that happens afterwards, and that is always fun to watch. So let's close out with a couple of gambling podcast type questions here. Which players and styles of play do you think we'll thrive, What are some good course comps, and do you have any kind of pet picks at this moment for who might really do well at LACC.

01:00:00
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a news flash, but the best players in the world are going to play the best.

01:00:04
Speaker 1: It is going to be a decent pick.

01:00:07
Speaker 2: I would I would just say, I think you got to hit the ball well, Like you're gonna be really rewarded for hitting the ball well out here, and I think driving it well is obviously going to be a feat like you're gonna be heavily rewarded if you have a good driving week, You're going to be penalized if you're if you're pretty crooked right off the tee like, but it gives you enough space to achieve a good driving day. So with that in mind, I think the other aspect of this is gonna be short game dependent. There's a lot of short grass. This isn't a place that you can kind of hide with. You know, you're you're just hitting the same shot all the time. There's gonna be lots of different shots called upon around the greens, and and so I I think a good course cop is honest. Augusta Nashvial, I agree.

01:01:02
Speaker 1: I mean the green, the sections of the greens, the contours are not nearly as severe, and so the separation between you know, a really accurate approach and a slightly less accurate approach are not quite as significant, but it's still significant. And so I think that you'll see probably similar dynamics. A player that I kind of had my eye on and who has played sneakily well in the past couple of majors is Patrick Reid, and obviously he is pretty well suited to Augusta National. If he's not driving the ball well, then you know, as he often doesn't drive the ball well, then he might struggle a bit, but he could be a really really good player to keep an eye on going into this championship, and somebody who will sort of keep some of that live rivalry alive. Obviously, you know, Brooks Kopka is in good form and could be a factor as well. But I think Patrick Reid might surprise a few people in this tournament.

01:01:59
Speaker 2: I mean Rom Obviously. I don't think we need to talk about why they fit here. They fit everywhere. I think those guys are gonna gonna play well, and I think Shuffler in particular is one that kind of jumps off the page to me, is a fit. I mean ROM two for that matter. I don't know how you could ever really be down on them on any course. This feels like a Cameron Smith golf course in terms of maybe a player that doesn't fit everywhere, this would be one that I would I think will fit him well. Australians like seem to play well in LA. I don't know if there's any statistical basis behind that, but they just seem to play well in LA. I think it's probably like a similar climate to Australia in a way. Like you know, I don't I think Obviously Kkuya at riv is one factor that is common. But I think there's a lot of space. There's enough space for his driver here, and he's just a magician around the greens. And when it becomes like approach play, having to take on some targets that you most weeks wouldn't have to take on. He is a player that can be aggressive successfully other name, I would like to see him. I think if he plays well this week at Memorial. I think Kyle Morkawa is an interesting player.

01:03:22
Speaker 1: He's been in such a weird phase lately where he just hasn't been that much of a factor. I mean, it was that Colonial last week and he just wasn't anywhere near being a factor.

01:03:35
Speaker 2: I mean he played bad in round one, but then he played well after that. It's a really down year for him. But if you look at his year like, it's not horrendous, right. He finished second, obviously, had the collapse at Tournament champions. Yes, he finished third at Tory, He finished sixth at Riviera. He finished thirteenth in the players, so not terrible. Tenth the Masters. He always plays well at Augusta. From the limited sample size we've seen, I just think he's he's super accurate off the tee, like I would look at this golf course if he's, if he's if he's trending in the right, if he's if he's got good for him, right, this is a golf course he could conceivably hit like every fairway. And then you're talking about Colin Morikawa playing into greens where you know, accuracy is very rewarded, and he's the best iron player in the game right now.

01:04:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, he might be able to be a little bit more aggressive to some of these pins than other guys.

01:04:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I just think and like, you're probably not gonna get tons of win which is one thing I always worry about with more Kawa, and that just like kind of high fade. So I like Morikawa as like if we see something that is promising from him in the next couple of weeks. I like Morikawa as maybe a pick that's not necessarily at the top everybody's list coming in.

01:05:02
Speaker 1: Here, Okay, I like it all right? Thank you, Eddie, Talking again soon. This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One more reminder to check out our premiere of our La North video on YouTube. It's premiering tonight. That's Wednesday night, May thirty first. Is it the thirty first or is it going to be June? There are there there's a thirty first in May, right, yes? Okay, all right, thank god? All right. So if you can be at that premiere that that would be great. We're really excited about the video. Or if you can't be there then just check it out afterwards. So that's going to be eight thirty Eastern time tonight our La North video. We also have a George Thomas video coming up within the next couple of weeks. And of course, if you're interested in Club TF, go to the Friday dot com slash membership and see what we have to offer there. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you again soon