Yolk with Doak 34: Saudi Golf Issues, Cabot Highlands, and Listener Questions

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. And when I find my ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday Frida fridagg bride Egg Lie.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off with the hump course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast and another edition of the Yoke with Doak. It's been a little while since Tom Doak and I talked on air. We've talked off air, but been a little while since we talked on air. I figured there's a lot of stuff going on in his world and wanted to catch up with that. There was news that broke on Monday more of this week that he would be designing a second course at Castle Stewart, So we talk about that, but we also talk about golf course architecture, golf course development in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has obviously been a huge, huge news story in the world of professional golf. I think people are kind of missing how much they're doing on the golf course development side as well, and he kind of just talks about that a little bit, but without further ado. Here is the latest episode of The Yoke with Doke. Thank you Tom for the time.

00:01:39
Speaker 3: Tom. It's been a while.

00:01:42
Speaker 2: Seems like everybody in golf architecture is very busy, and you're one of those people.

00:01:49
Speaker 1: We are very, very busy. I haven't been this busy, and well I haven't been this busy since two thousand and eight, which is a little concerning on some levels.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: The other thing is all all your all the people that work with you are busy too, so it kind of multiplies the effect.

00:02:07
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, yes, it does. It does make it harder to plan. Like you know, for years, I've always thought, well, if we get really busy, we've got all these people we've trained over the years, they'll they'll be glad to come in and come and help out for a while if it gets crazy. But yeah, now they're all competing with me and committed to their own things. So yeah, we mean, you know, we're back in training mode right now in Wisconsin, really looking for at least a couple of interns that can get proficient on a machine and be able to help because we're going to need to help.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great, all right, So huge news in golf just in general. Is obviously Saudi Arabia's involvement with the Live Golf Tour and their disruption of the PGA Tour. But I think you know, what has gone a bit unnoticed under talked about, is just their interest in golf in general. And I was curious from your side of the golf development side of things, how active is Saudi Arabia have been in attempting to build new courses.

00:03:14
Speaker 1: I guess up until like ten years ago, there were no grass golf courses in Saudi Arabia at all. There are one or two of those, you know, courses with lined out fairways in the desert and sand that they played in oiled sand greens, but you know, it was only a few years ago that they felt built their first grass golf course. And now I'm told that there's you know, they're master planning for thirty two new golf courses around the country, so and there's like three of them that have been built on itay, So you know, thirty new golf courses, and you know, that's that's more than we've built in America in the last five years. So you know, that's something that is just as attractive to some golf course architects as a lot of cash and no cut purses are to some golfers. It's work and it's a lot of money. So there's yes, there's there's a lot. There's a lot of talk in our business about what they're doing and you know, are you interested in working over there or not?

00:04:26
Speaker 2: It seems like what they're trying to do, I you know, I glean that they see a little bit of envy in in their neighbors and in Dubai in particular, how they've become this great golf destination, tourism destination for a lot of Europe in the winter, you know that is that is a popular place to go to play golf.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: And I think that they look at at.

00:04:54
Speaker 2: The world and see, you know, potentially oil dependency going you know, becoming less uh you know.

00:05:01
Speaker 3: Right now but yeah, not right now, but.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: But in the in the near term, and they look at it as uh, you know, not not only a way to rehab their public image with you know, get there's no better way than getting people to go play golf in your country, but also as a potential you know, economic boom in the future. And I think this's like people look at this, this pro golf thing as a you know, one of the as like, oh, they're just trying to buy professional golf, and who knows when they'll get uninterested. But this, you know, building thirty two courses in developments around them is a huge, almost more of an economic undertaking than than the live tour.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, they're spending they're spending a lot of money on this idea. And you know, I mean one of the hardest parts of it is there's so many people spouting off about what other people's motives are, you know, the Saudi's for what they're for what they're doing, and every individual that deals with them, you know, you know, is he doing that for the right reasons or is he a trader or whatever? And you know, talking too much about what other people are doing is not that productive generally, So so I'm not really going there. And I don't like I don't like how some of the players have been vilified and and you know, because you know, the tour talks a lot about you know, the sanctity of no guaranteed money and playing for you know, playing for keeps, but all sports owners talk like that, you know, the NFL doesn't want to give anybody guaranteed contracts either. They just there's a players union and they have to a little bit, you know. And the tour, the tour is never really you know, while that's their attitude towards the players, it's like the tour does not want competition. They don't want another tour competing with them directly. They do not want all their executive salaries threatened by competition. So they're kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you, as a golf architect, you'd love to You'd love to not have to interview against anybody. You'd love to just have the jobs come to you and they talk, you know, what should we do?

00:07:23
Speaker 3: How should we build a golf course?

00:07:24
Speaker 2: Well, you just have to talk to me and uh and I'll drop the plan and here's my fee. And if that was every every time somebody contacted you, your life would be a lot easier, just like like the tour, where you.

00:07:36
Speaker 3: Don't have competition.

00:07:37
Speaker 2: And obviously there's a ton of complexities, there's a lot of aspects of it, but at its core, you know, competition generally is good for every industry.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: Now, you know, I'll say for I mean you know, I am in the fortunate position of having some people call me about work and I don't really have you know, they want me, they don't want the other guys, you know, And I I hate when clients want for architects to submit a proposal and compete for the job. That's you know, that's not good business in our profession because you're asking us to do a lot of You're asking four or five firms to do a lot of work for free, and you know you're going to pick one and the others are going to get stiffed. You know. That's like, you know, all the money is for first place in a pro event. How many guys would be playing under those conditions?

00:08:33
Speaker 3: Not a lot?

00:08:34
Speaker 1: Not a lot.

00:08:35
Speaker 2: What I would say is is interview like just having a conversation with a couple of people.

00:08:39
Speaker 1: Oh that's yes, that's entirely different. But when you know, when it actually comes to like competing for work, it's like it's a lot to ask, and you know, it's sort of it sort of demeans that part of the process. It's like, you know, do one a routing for a project is like the most important part, and you know that's takes a lot of time and know how and then you know, who knows if you even know which is the best one to pick. So so I don't like going there. But you know, as far as working in Saudi Arabia, you know, I've had calls in the last couple of years from Catter, not from Dubai yet, and you know, and in Saudi Arabia, I've heard from different intermediaries two or three times about would I be interested in working over there, And I really haven't even returned the calls because for me, you know, I wouldn't have a problem like designing a golf course for Saudi Arabia, you know the fact that, But you know it's to me, it's not about that. I mean, anywhere that I'm working is someplace that I'm going to be going for two or three years of my life, and and the people that work for me are going to go and live there for a while. So you know, very first consideration is is this a place that I want to go and is this a place that I'm comfortable sending other people to do the work to produce that golf course? And for me, it's not, And I doubt I'll change my mind on that even if they tell me how much money they would pay me, which they never had. You know, I've never negotiated about it. But if there was nowhere, you know, if there was no work anywhere else in the world, it might be different. But you know, because because at the end of the day, we are always making decisions on what are our options Right now? My options include building a ton of golf courses closer to home on good sites that you know are easy projects to say yes to. And it's not easy to talk about going overseason doing something especially we've talked about before, you know, since the COVID thing came up, it's like it's really hard to sign any international contract. It's like, I'm guaranteeing that I'm going to go spend a certain amount of time overseas, But what if I have to quarantine for a week or two every time I go. You know, that's not in here. I don't get paid more for that. That's so how can you you know, how can you do that? You can do it if you're one of those architects who doesn't go very much, but you can't do it if you're if you're trying to operate like we operate.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: That's it.

00:11:26
Speaker 2: That's interesting in a you know, you hear stories of architects getting lost on the way to their opening day on golf courses and for for that type of golf architecture, Oh, Saudi Arabia is great. I draw up a plan, I hire a contractor, and I give them the plan and they build it.

00:11:46
Speaker 3: And I might only have.

00:11:48
Speaker 2: To go there for a weekend. But if you and you have people that you care about that are having to live there, then it changes the whole calculus of the thing. And it is you know, just like you know, if the professional golfers had to travel with their families everywhere, you know, and and the predominant place that that that that the live Golf Tour played was Saudi Arabia, I imagine that would change the calculus of their decisions to go.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: There absolutely, I mean, you know, I mean one of the one of the odd things about this whole situation with the touris is, as far as I know, nobody, you know, no press have seen a contract between any of the players and what they've actually signed up for. You know, like where are the tournaments? How many tournaments are there? You know, what are your obligations because you know, right now they're just trying to get a foothold. So the tournaments are in places that those guys want to be. They're in They're in Europe, they're in America, you know. But but the PGA Tour and the World Tours have always had trau. You know, there's plenty of money in sponsor money in Asia just dying to bring over these great players and they can't get them to gut you know. But if the if the Saudi Tour is gonna make money long term, that's where they're gonna go. That's where the that's where the sponsor money is. That isn't committed to the PGA Tour And does Phil Nicholson want to go play five events in Asia in the fall.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: And this is the thing to be to be I think the crux of this. Everybody's saying that Saudi Arabia's just try to buy golf. They they're acting, as Jay Bodhan said this week, acting irrationally.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: I I part of.

00:13:44
Speaker 1: The people do that, well, lots of people do that.

00:13:49
Speaker 2: Part of the believes that maybe Saudi Arabia and the Public Investment Fund thinks that the PGA tour has undervalued the value of golf as a whole, especially if you connect it back to their golf development that they're planning that they they look at this as you know, and let's just I have no clue on money, but say say they think we spend five billion dollars between golf development and buying this tour and owning professional golf being the dominant golf tour, and we're gonna net out twenty billion from it. Every single uh, you know, smart business person would be like, that's a great deal. And I think that's the thing that that everybody's in. And if the tour like what you just said, where all the money is. If you have players signed to contracts and they have to go play just like F one, I mean that Lewis Hamilton had this beautiful you know, the most famous F one driver, had this beautiful thing about having to race in Saudi Arabia and saying, oh, this is awful what's going on here? But I have to race here. I don't have a choice because he's he's contracted. And it's the same thing with the players. All of a sudden, the makeup of that tour and where they go might change significantly, you know, because all of sudden, China, what you know, China, Oh yeah, we'll spend a ton of money. Japan and Saudi Arabia are very closely linked because of you know, the way they do business together. We'll spend a ton of money to get the players over here. Like all of a sudden, the economics are turned on its head. And it's the same thing with golf courses. They're you know, this is a bigger plan than just professional golf. Is I think the thing that you illuminate, like they're forty thirty to forty courses being built, is a significant investment beyond the professional side of golf.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: It is. And you know, one one little tidbit that nobody's talked about is I don't know for sure, you know, the only ones I know for sure is that Jack Nicholas and Greg Norman are have signed up to do courses in Saudi Arabia. I fairly confident in saying that Greg Norman will get to do more as a result of his partnership with the saudis that Phil Nicholson and Sergio and some of those other guys, they'll have their names on golf courses over there as part of this deal and get paid three or five million dollars or whatever to lend their name. You know, that's just under the radar compared to the big numbers being thrown around for everything else.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: And that's what I had heard originally with Phil Is obviously, you know, he was instrumental, as Alan Shipnuk's you know, kind of excerpts have from his book about Phil Becklelson have brought to light. It was like Phil is putting together this contract with the Saudis, and I have heard, you know, anecdotally that a lot of you know, where Phil was also interested in was the bigger development side of Saudi Arabia, of the golf in Saudi Arabia, and that would be courses, communities, resorts that at all. You know that that is wealth beyond you know, the the aspect of of of just the golf playing professionally. And and he's fifty two or fifty one, so that that changes the calculus. So enough about Saudi Arabia. This is a topic that has been talked about way too much, as we discussed.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: You're very busy, We're very busy.

00:17:24
Speaker 2: What have you been what's been occupying the most of your time lately.

00:17:29
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, it's it's weird now because like it seems like a lot of my clients are very, very interested in narrative control of what people talk about their projects and exactly what's said in the press, to the point that I'm almost afraid to talk about them now. You know, There's always been that thing like you don't really want to talk about a project. You don't want to talk about a project before you got to sign contract because there's plenty of other architects that would love to swim been in steal that thing from you. You don't really want to talk about a project before you have zoning approval to build it and environmental permits to build it, because you don't want a lot of people showing up with pickup signs. Don't tear up this native ground that we don't know, so you know. So so you know, like a third of my time is spent on projects at that stage of development that I can't really talk about them yet. But you know, all the places that I'm going that it would be cool to take a picture and post it on Instagram, It's like, okay, I'll do that for this one. But I just can't really identify word is exactly. So so I did when you know, I was out in Dune's Land in West Texas a month ago and posted a picture and like everybody's like, where's that? Where's it? You know, you know what one of the one of them? I just posted a I posted a little shot of like a golf hall on a topo map and somebody was like, seventeen hundred feet where is that going to be? Trying to narrow it down, and I was like, wow, that's really enterprising. I hadn't thought about that as a potential as a potential thing, but you know, it's you know, from that standpoint, it's like, you know, it's fun to have people guessing a little bit. But so what can I talk about?

00:19:31
Speaker 3: What about Scotland?

00:19:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, it's just being announced this week. It hasn't been announced as of when we're recording this, but it's being announced this coming week because everybody's focus is on Scotland now that we're going to do a second course at Castle Stewart next door to Gill's Course in Inverness. You know, that's a project that's been bubbling for a long time. Mark Parson, and before he passed away, you know, he'd always play that to be thirty six holes. You know, he just never really wanted to commit to the capital that needed to go into it for not only a second golf course, but but a you know, a hotel there on site. It was a significant chunk of money, and two or three different architects have looked at it over time. You know, if when Mark owned it, like whoever was going to design it was going to be co designing it with Mark. He had a ton of ideas about how it should be and what it should be like. And I know Arnold Palmer's group spent a lot of time with him working on that and everybody's Some people might say, oh, we're stealing the job out from under them, but I think that was all conditioned on Arnold Palmer putting money into the thing to make it happen, which he in the end did not do before he passed away. So you know, so it's been out there for a while. And you know, I've known Ben Cowan doer who who did the Cabot courses in Nova Scotia for a long time. Uh. You know, Ben's good friends with a friend of mine who was involved in Castle Stewart or in Cabot from the beginning. So you know, I've met Ben. I've met Ben long ago, had dinner with him two or three times. He's you know, he's kicking the tires and looking at projects all around the world. And I've he and I have looked at three or four different things over time, and and this one's finally going to happen. You know, it's probably not the only one I'll ever do for him, knocking would, but uh, you know, this one is ready to go. He's he's bought into you know, he's bought out Mark Parsonen's position in Castle Stewart. He still has one or two other partners, but uh, you know, it's it's really Ben coming in and putting the money in for the thing. And uh he he's very excited about working in Scotland. Obviously I've been fortunate enough to work there before, but it's cool for me too to be back there. And then, you know, I just talked a little while ago about it's hard to take international work. You know, it's a little easier in Scotland, but it's also way easier because one of my younger associates. Clyde Johnson is from the UK, so this will be really a home game for him. And you know he's spent the last twelve years or something like that bouncing around for us from Dismal River to Terry Edy to the National and Saint Patrick's, and you know this is his first chance to really run a job and he's you know, he's been he's been way well equipped to do that for a while. Now. You know, he's just got some guys in front of him. But you know this is his chance to do it because it's home for him.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I've a lot of times you've talked about the Renaissance Club and I remember you talking a little bit about how you know one of the one of the tough things about it is it's a private club. Is it really operates a little bit more like an American club in in Scotland. It's it's got to be exciting to get a chance to build a a course that everybody is going to be able to see.

00:23:28
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, because now they don't have to call me to try to get on it. Big difference right there?

00:23:36
Speaker 3: What what type of land? What?

00:23:38
Speaker 2: What give us a little insight into like the plans for for the the second course there and and what you're most uh most excited about.

00:23:48
Speaker 1: Well, it's I mean, honestly, it's pretty early days, you know this. I was over there last fall looking at it and meeting with everybody and and but didn't not for long enough to like come up with our final plan for it, you know, you know there there there was a plan that Mark had and actually had approvals to build, and so the first thing was to go back to the authorities and say, if we want to change this around some can we still do you know, do we have to start over with the planning process or can we you know, can we just amend what we're doing and go forward? And I guess Inverness is really excited for this development to happen, So it sounds like we can just amend the planning prop you know, amend the plan. We have to get a reviewed again, obviously, but it's not like starting over and it'll take five years to get permission, which is important, But I don't have you know, Mark had a very grand plan for what he wanted to do. Now the land is like originally they were going to build a separate clubhouse for it, and we're gonna connect it to their existing clubhouse. So so we're starting off different. Right off the bath, we're gonna go our first and eighteenth alls will kind of be right through the driving range that they have now, and they'll move the driving range to make room for it, so we can get back to the clubhouse. And those holes that have to be kind of you know, it's it's not the widest thing in the world, so that kind of be you know, doesn't have the town next to it, but kind of like one in eighteen at Saint Andrew's where you've got two holes together and a lot of a lot of short grass, and then from there you're you know, you're up on a hill there and then you know, most of the land is down the load of the water out there's a little inlet behind the third green on the existing golf course and there's a bunch of land across the water from that and that's where most of you know, there's like twelve holes over there. So to get there, we've got to go through the driving range, down the hill past the castle. The castle is actually kind of you know, part of the part of the holdings, and it's it's down there. You know, it's down on lower ground where you'd only see it in the background of the fourth hole on the existing course. You know we're going, we're playing right past it and then and then across the little inlet out onto this more open ground.

00:26:23
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00:28:06
Speaker 3: You're going to be compared against.

00:28:09
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've made the joke before the people. Yeah, it's a tough neighborhood to work in because there's so many great things around you. And of course you know, I've been doing that the last twenty years of my career. I mean, I've worked in the I've worked next door to the National Golfling since Shneakak Hills. I've worked you know, next door to Bandon Dunes when it was brand new and everybody thought it was the greatest thing ever worked in this. You know, in south of Melbourne, Australia, there's a lot of good golf courses around there. You know, We've done a lot of project you know, and the Renaissance Club, between Mirrorfield and North Erica's two of the best golf courses in the world. So yeah, it's hard, and you know, and usually you don't have like, you know, you don't have like a better piece of land than those places, or they'd have built the golf course there first. So so yeah, it's a little hard, But I don't think about it as pressure. I mean I never really you know, when when we're working on a new project, you're just focused on here's the property we got, what's the best thing to do with this. Let's do the best we can on this, and it doesn't matter whether it's something else is next door. But I will say, you know, maybe I haven't been aggressive enough in some of those situations to really just you know, you know, when you start, you know, when I started the Renaissance Club, I'm not the kind of person who's thinking about beaten Mirrorfield. But you know, maybe because of that, it's like oh, I didn't grind on it quite hard enough, and I should have, like, you know, put more focus into it than I did. So so I'm kind of aware of that now and thinking, yeah, you know, we really gotta think hard about what to do here and something to make it special. And you know, I'm glad to have Clyde on board for that because he's he's you know, he's been around link Scoff and his whole life. He's really full of ideas and hopefully he'll have some good ones that make me seem like a genius.

00:30:18
Speaker 2: I mean, I think one thing, you know, the reality is like there's some modern courses that are better than old courses. But if you look at you know, and I'm not a ranking person, you open up the rankings, like you it's like, oh, well this is old. Like that you can't compete against history is one of the things, right, And that's that's like there's nostalgia, there's history, there's there's certain things that that old courses have distinct advantages when when being judged over new courses. But I think one of the things too is that you you know, it's very rare that you go to a new course and say like, oh wow, how how do you get away from building that? Like, but an old course they built something the great speeds have gotten to the point where, like, you know, they change and it's like that really extreme.

00:31:06
Speaker 3: Hole is super super cool, but.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: You couldn't get away with building it today because there would only be three four pin positions.

00:31:14
Speaker 1: Well I mean that, so that ladder thing. You know, you could get away with building those things today. It's just that you have to be willing to put up with the criticism. Yeah, and most people, most architects are not willing to put it, you know, they'd rather play it safe, not you know, they want everybody to like it. And you know, the futures that you're talking about on these famous courses, not everybody likes them. You know, there's there's there's tour pros who think the old course at Saint Andrews is quirky and unfair and over way overrated. They don't say up publicly that much because it's the home of golf, but that's that's what that's how they really feel about the golf holes. And you know they're wrong. To me, they're wrong. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion, but you know I can build features like that if I want to. It's just that I know that, you know, and here again, the Renaissance Club is a little different than Castle Stewart. If I built features like that at the Renaissance Club, I know I've got half the tour half the tourist saying I'm an idiot a Castle Stewart, You're not. Really, that's not the audience. You know. It's for people that want to have fun playing golf, and they might be a little more accepting of those kind of features than somebody who's getting who's living depends on shooting a good score. You know, That's one of the things I learned for Pete did was you know, he heard a lot of criticism for the TPC at Sawgrass and for for crooked stick and for other things. And you know, one of the things that he said, in his very self deprecating way, was if I was playing for a lot of money, I like that.

00:33:00
Speaker 3: Too, exactly right.

00:33:06
Speaker 2: You know that makes sense, Like if something makes it hard for you to do your job, you don't like it, just in general, anything in life, Like you know, when you've got a really tough permitting situation, you don't like it right, what you can't do certain thing. When you can't design a hole the exact way you want to design it, you get frustrated.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: If you if.

00:33:25
Speaker 2: Something prohibits you from playing a hole exactly how you want to, you get frustrated. I think, so this is something I actually we had a question from will Bardwell, and it's about trends that were novel early in your career that have become a little overdone over the past thirty years.

00:33:42
Speaker 3: And I'm I'm curious.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: Something that I think about a little bit is the idea of consequence, a consequence for a poor shot. Have we swung too far on playability where if you build a golf course that's just super friendly everywhere that it's just you can't get in trouble.

00:34:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably shouldn't elaborate because any examples I use people are going to get mad. But yeah, you know, in golf course architecture, before say nineteen ninety, the reputation of a course was based on what good players thought about it, whether it was the tour going there or just you know what the what the good local players or low handicapped visitors thought of the golf course. And now it's what raiders think, and raiders aren't all good players, and clients aren't all good players. But you know, now the courses are getting they're getting rated more and more on how they look instead of how they play, and they're getting rated more and more on they are forgiving to my twelve handicapped game instead of the best players in the world, or even the that's or even just you know, low handicapped golfers, and that's you know, maybe that's fine, you know, maybe okay, that's what your audience is for this resort. That's fine if that's what you want to do. But you know, we've redefined what great is into that now, and it doesn't you know, it's like building a hole like the road hole would not fly with a lot of those resorts, you know, those those those clients would worry about, Oh, aren't people going to think that's too difficult? So they back off from doing that kind of stuff. And you know, I'm not I'm still trying to make things that are challenging for good players. You know, to be a great to be a great golf course, you have to maintain interest. And if it doesn't matter where you miss it, you've lost that interest. For for really good players.

00:35:56
Speaker 2: That's I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, you could characterize golf like the consequence is you know, the soul of the game, and you go too far when the consequence is an unavoidable right, when you can't avoid the consequence. But if there's a path to avoiding the consequence, that's what And when that is present on almost every shot, that's the most stimulating.

00:36:23
Speaker 3: It's the stimulating aspect of golf architecture, you know.

00:36:27
Speaker 2: And I think that's the balance, right, And it makes sense that it swings like it's a pendulum, right. I think in the eighties it swung too far one way and maybe an hour at a period where it's swinging too far the other way.

00:36:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that goes to you know, that goes to the width of courses off the tee and you know every asket, width of course, contras around the greens. All of it is kind of the same thing. But you know, the simplest way to say it is, you know, if you've got a green that's just surrounded by death everywhere you miss, it is bad. You know, that's that's silly. You know, that's too hard for people. But if you've got a green where everywhere around it is good, it's the same problem. You know, it's just there's no interest there. The interest is where there's one place you really don't want to be, you know. That's you know, it's like a grayscale. It's like this is black, don't be here, and then it kind of gets darker gray to lighter gray over toward you know, another spot. That's maybe the best place to miss because then you've got some tension. But if the green is surrounded by trouble, if an island tpc at Sagass Green, or if it's got no trouble around it at all, then you know, it just doesn't matter.

00:37:42
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you know, I was at the US to Open last week, and you know, all my colleagues in journal and golf always ask me about the golf course, and I had so many discussions about the short part three at the country club that was added back in, and I was like, yeah, it's great that it's hanted back and there are you know, this is the best hole here, this is the best hole here.

00:38:03
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I don't agree with that.

00:38:06
Speaker 2: I don't agree that that's the best hole because it's very limited and reductive. It's it's you hit it or you don't. And that's the only there's no you know, other facets to the hole. And it's a great it's great to have.

00:38:20
Speaker 3: One of those holes.

00:38:21
Speaker 2: And of course, but some people are it'd be great if there were more than one of them, and it's like no, no, no, this is one is just the right amount, because you know, you think about certain holes, like a short hole is extraordinarily penal, usually by nature, like the famous short holes are the most are the most penal holes in golf. And and that's another interesting aspect about when you think about famous holes in golf, A lot of them are actually the most unfair holes for the for the largest class of people.

00:38:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, so a hole like the one at the country club is like, you know, that could be a great a great hole from a tour pro standard, because the tour pros are thinking about five yard circles on that green and you know, do I just aim at the middle of the green. Well, if I am at the middle of the green, there's that ridge and if I go over it and the pins short of it, that's going to be really bad. So I need to I need to pull that down to the front. But that's still a target zone that they can go after. Yeah. You know, but but from the perspective of most other people, you know that it's not a very big green. It's falling off at the sides. All they can do is aim at the middle of it. You know, that's their circle. And so is that a great hole for them? Now it's like you got to hit it in the middle of your circle or bad things happen. Yeah.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: That I always think about how my mother would play the hole, and I think like that, what like short par threes always kind.

00:39:50
Speaker 3: Of like get me. I'm like, what what what could.

00:39:53
Speaker 2: She possibly do? Unless the tea is like thirty yards away? You know, it's becomes super hard for her.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, do all golf courses have to be built for your mom and my mom? No? But but do you want to start putting more of that into every golf course? No? Bad idea.

00:40:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:40:17
Speaker 2: So another question we had was about your experiences early in your career. This is from Trade from Trade from I obviously an alias here on Twitter, but my first experiences with Doaker are Heathland in Myrtle Beach and Quail Crossing in Indiana two of his earliest courses, and obviously both those courses have evolved. They've been you know, been a long time since you built them, and they've gone through a lot of changes.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: Its been a long time since I've been to either one. Actually, of my existing courses, I think those two and the Raws course are probably the ones that I haven't seen in the longest time. It's been fifteen or twenty years.

00:41:01
Speaker 2: So what are your thoughts looking at those courses compared to how you have grown and developed as an architect, Like, what would you have done different there?

00:41:12
Speaker 3: Now?

00:41:14
Speaker 1: Good question? Uh, Quail Crossing, which last I heard is suffering condition wise.

00:41:21
Speaker 3: I've heard that too.

00:41:23
Speaker 1: Is you know, it's built on clay soil. It was a really difficult site to build stuff on, you know, and we had a really wet bring year when we were building it, so so it was a tough project to get built. You know, it's a it's a really hot, humid place and just a tough place for that. But you know, so because it's clay, didn't do nearly as many bunkers as I would on sandy site because you not only had to dig the bunker. You had to you know, align it and keep keep water from running into the bunkers and contaminating the sand and making it all you know, getting a gamity with clay. And you know, that was expensive and it wasn't really a very big budget project. So we only built like thirty or forty bunkers on it some of it, you know, And and we because of that, we did more with the green contours, you know, similar to what I did at high Point. It's like, think more about the shots around the greens and not so much about bunkers to defend the golf course. So from that standpoint, very much in line with my philosophy, and you know, still the same approach that I would take today if I had another piece of land like that. The legends is different. You know, that was a It was a really flat site. Like everything else in Myrtle Beach, did have the advantage of not having real wetlands in the middle of it that we had to deal with, so we could get it to drain by digging burns in from the edge. And then you know, what do you do with a what do you do from a blank canvas? The client, it was the client's idea to model it after, you know, Lynks courses. Even though it's called the Heathlin Golf Course, it was supposed to be called the lynx Land Golf Course originally, and he didn't like how that sounded when it came out of the mouths of the ladies that were operating the phones, so he changed his mind, and of course that destroyed everybody's idea of like what a heathlind course even means.

00:43:32
Speaker 2: Well, you know, America, you know, there are a lot of courses that call in America called links, courses that operate under false pretenses.

00:43:41
Speaker 1: So yes, there are, and there's a lot of courses that call any kind of long grass heather, you know, and having no idea what heather actually is. So so we didn't help the lexicon of golf at all with that name. But you know, anytime you do a site like that and totally flat, you could do anything you want site, it's hard to judge what you're doing, you know. I described the other project in terms of what I had to work with, and there it's like, well, in theory, you could do anything, you know. So so quite a few of the holes where the idea was based on you know, a famous hole that i'd seen in the UK. I mean, obviously, I you know, I had to lean toward picking holes that were cool, holes that were relatively flat that you know, they so you had a chance to create something similar without moving ten million yards of dirt around. And and then you know, the soil was sandy, but it didn't drain quite as well as a real links does, so it's hard to have as much undulation. And you know, it's hard to shape two hundred you know, shaping one hundred and fifty or two hundred acres is not minimalism. It's a hell of a lot of work. And I didn't have an army of people that helped do that.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: And you hadn't done it a lot, you know, at that point, I hadn't ever.

00:45:00
Speaker 1: Tried to build that kind of contour before. So, you know, I'm proud of the result that it. You know, it's a golf course that plays sixty thousand rounds a year and it gets people around and they have fun and they want to come back. So from that perspective, it's really good. You know, from the perspective of it, does it play like a true Links? You know, they were really never going to spend the money to try to maintain it that way anyway. But you know, ironically, you know, one of these new projects I'm I'm doing planning work for right now is a private club, you know, north of Palm Beach where there's a ton of new golf courses going in. And it's very similar to the Legends. It's it's a flat site, but it's well above water table, so we can like dig down and build bunkers down in the ground and you know, make it feel like the Links golf course. And because there's no vegetation on it, you know, it makes much more sense to go for that look than to try to you know, you'd have to plant five million dollars worth of landscaping to make a dent in what it looks like.

00:46:13
Speaker 2: The other neat thing about that that's a private club, so you got less traffic. And then at that you know, just like South Carolina, but you know, maybe not quite as extreme. But in the in the winter months, that grass down there gets semi dormant and fast, it gets very fast.

00:46:32
Speaker 1: And then the and the other thing that's a huge advantage is you know, clients thinking he's going to close in the summer like Seminole does, and you know a handful of the other clubs down there, and that's when you get if you close in the summer, you can be really really aggressive about taking the thatch out and getting it back to a firm surface because you don't have to worry about the conditions that people are playing. So it's kind of like Augusta. You could just you could do anything in the summer and get it back to good shape again going into the season again the next year. You know, just learning from from Brian Zaeger and from just doing the Lido project, it's like, you know, I can I can create links contours now we can draw them because we can basically sample them from UK courses instead of just you know, thinking about the say the eleventh green at Saint Andrew's in terms of you know, bunker front right deep, bunker along the left side. You know, now I can get the contours on the approach the same. You know, I could make them identical if I wanted to. But you know, but the first part is you know, putting something on the ground instead of having to create it all on the ground, Putting something on the ground that does really feel like links contract because it's actually copied from Links Contra, which is something that nobody's really been able to do until the last few years. So so we how well we go on that, how you know, how close do we build some holes to the original ideas and then how far do we modify them? Those are all going to be tricky questions to answer. You know, I'm not trying to build eighteen replica holes, but if you've seen a lot of golf in the UK, you'll probably recognize where some of these ideas come from, and some of them might be a lot closer to the original than I could ever. Just sit here and draw for.

00:48:32
Speaker 3: You right now, that's it.

00:48:34
Speaker 2: I remember when we talked last year, I feel like you had you you were a bit conflicted about about the lead out, the technology you guys used at the lead out because of the idea of being able to just like create replica courses to the tee and where does this go with golf design? But you know, in a way, I you know what I think about and I think about this in the sense of like pleasiarism and writing right, just like taking a hole and building it identical in a similar climate to me feels a little in a way dirty, but taking a hole and you know a lot of times you play great holes and you think, you know, what would be neat is if this did this, if this was a little different, and if this kind of went this way instead of that way. And now you're able to actually do that if you start from you know, in a way, you're starting from something and then adapting off of it. It's almost like you're, you know, remixing a song.

00:49:38
Speaker 1: Yes, very much. It's like sampling music, yes, and yeah, it's a it's a really slippery slope to be able to do that. It's like, are you know where are you're going to draw the line on what you copy and what you don't because it's it's the because the easiest thing is to just copy it. That's that's the easiest thing to do. You can get the light, our data, and you could plug it into a plan and they can plug it into a bulldozer and they can build that pretty damn close. So is that all you're gonna do? Hopefully now for.

00:50:15
Speaker 2: Some people they will because they're lazy and the easy thing.

00:50:18
Speaker 1: But sure, and I'm sure I'm going to take some flak for maybe doing a little more of that than other people will think I should, you know, but these are the same people that love the Radian hole and phrase the hell out of every Radan hole they've ever seen, and try to make a hole that has nothing to do with the Ridan Oh, that's like a Radian hole. So you know, I take those criticisms with a rain of salt.

00:50:46
Speaker 2: Hey, I I played common Ground while it was driving across the country and I really enjoyed it. I'd love to hear a little bit about that project. You know, we taught you know, you get the rep of only working on great, great, great sites, and you know, we just we're gonna this episode is gonna all be about you know. You know, there's some good sites we talked about, but some mediocre sites and and common Ground it would be one I think where it probably fall into the not made the heathland bucket, but a bucket of where you had to do a substantial amount of creating, creating, you know, especially around the greens.

00:51:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, we didn't move a whole lot of dirt at common Ground. We had to move a little just to get the water down to the bottom end because it you know, it comes off the hill and then it's it's all slope into the bottom end where there's a you know, there's there's a huge dam along one side and a basin there which is flood control for the city and which did you know, we looked at that. You know, it's a it's like a thirty foot high berman. You're like, geez, I hope it never rains that much. And then you know, four or five years after the golf course open, it did rain that much, and you know, that basin filled up twenty feet deep and five of the holes were underwater for a significant amount of time and they just could play nine holes while we rebuilt and regrass some of them. So it is, you know, it's got that aspect too. But it was a very open site, you know, and they had planted some trees, but trees that you know, like shade trees don't grow very well in Denver. It's a really you know, it's high desert environment. So they had these little, skinny not trees that weren't doing very well. And the funny thing was, you know, it's a big, open, two hundred acre site, so a few of the holes, you know, a lot of the fairways. It was an Air Force based course. Originally a lot of the fairways were just thirty yards wide, turn right and dog leg thirty yards the whole way, and they planted trees pretty close to those fairways, so the the you know, the trees weren't Thankfully the trees didn't get big and grow in or there'd have been nothing left. But it was still really narrow, and in a couple places, the gap in between the trees on the right side of the one hole and the left side of the next hole was a bigger, wider, better place for a fairway than the little space that they'd planted out that there was a fairway. So you know, we changed the routing around a lot, and we transplanted some of the trees out. You know, we couldn't. I mean, the coolest thing about that project was the mission statement. Colorado Golf Course Association had saved money for years to they inherited the golf course when the Air Force base closed. They got it for nothing and they saved money from handicapped fees and everything else for several years until they have four million dollars to spend on the golf course. And they said we just want it, you know, we just want to take this four million dollars and spend it to make the golf course as much better as we can. But it's a forty dollars golf course now, and we want you know, we still want it to be a forty dollars golf course. We're not trying to compete to be the highest priced, high end public golf course in Denver. That's not our mission, you know. We we want to still promote affordable golf and we're you know, we're and we don't want to compete with all those private places that are competing for dollars. So, you know, probably the purest client I've ever had as far as that went. So that made it really easy to want to get on board, even though we didn't have any grand ideas that you know, we were just trying to make something that was fun to play. And you know, four million dollars doesn't go a long way anymore, especially with you know, a new irrigation system costs almost half of that. So you spend the money on the greens complexes. That's the scale of what you can afford to do. Build interest in green complexes and try to make it. You know, you're going to have a lot of wide open spaces out there to hit in too off the fairways, but try to make it matter which angle the balls coming in from.

00:55:05
Speaker 3: I think it doesn't really well.

00:55:06
Speaker 2: I think one of the neat things about that golf course is you play it and you can see why. You know, it hosts a lot of things, a lot of a lot of tournaments that it was the second sight of the mid Am. Uh there the US Midam out there. But you can see how like you could really ramp that up. And part of what helps it is the climate right where it's very dry and you can get a firm yeah, and it wind and you start to realize like, oh man, like if you're here, you're in a really tough spot. And those greens, the greens are I think. I think the greens are spectacular. They're super creative, and I you know, I felt like I walked around saying, God, what a cool green? This is?

00:55:48
Speaker 3: What?

00:55:49
Speaker 1: Like?

00:55:49
Speaker 2: Over and over again, are there a few greens in particular that you love out there?

00:55:55
Speaker 1: You know? It's interesting because you know, I don't I usually don't take a lot of credit for that job. And we were building a couple other things at the same time. But I had three associates who had real ties to Denver. Eric Iverson and Jim Orbino was still working for me then they both lived in Denver, and Don Plasi had kind of grown up there and was, you know, he was college buddies with Ed Mate, who's the director of the Colorado Golf Association. So so you know, all of them had a very personal interest in it, like I do with high Point, and so I said to him, well, you know, I'm going to give you more freedom on this, so you know, we just kind of, you know, once we had the routing done, I said, you know, each of you picked three holes and you just designed them. I'm not going to really, I'm not going to say anything unless you asked me. And then the other ones I'll work with you on. So so like you know, I don't remember all of them, but like the third hole, the long par five with the kind of punch bully green, that's Don Placings.

00:57:03
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't make me a Chicago Golfs punch bowl.

00:57:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't shape it. I think Brian Schneider did actually, but he's you know, that was Don's idea from the beginning, and you know a couple of there's like a central fairway bunker there too that you've got to think about on the second shot, and the ninth green was a pretty wild you know, low pin in front, goes up high, you know, kind of falls away to a back right pin. That one's erics the whole. And I think Jim was proudest of was the fourteenth, which is a kind of tough part three with a ridge and find green and no no bunkers on that all at all. Really, I was just excited about the idea of building a bunkerless part of three.

00:57:53
Speaker 2: You kind of are like blind and then it falls off on the on the right and left. I remember I thought I had a really good shot, I thought, and then it just I just saw this huge sideway kick and I was like, oh, that doesn't look good.

00:58:05
Speaker 1: That is a severe green and that's not on me. But you know, and you know that that holds the one. I don't think they're mowing it the way Jim was thinking. You know, there's some like long grass over there to the left that I don't think was supposed to be that way originally. But but you know, so so a bunch of different guys. You know, it's kind of a little like Saint Andrews is. It wasn't designed by one guy for for you know, to be more consistent. There's more variety in it because of that. About the only hole that well, the hole that I like best is actually the seventh short part five with yeah, some deep bunkers about forty yards short of the green that you can't go in and then a nasty bunker of the right of the green. Is that's just a really cool green.

00:58:53
Speaker 2: Cars it's got it's got that kind of trough that runs through the that that you created right into the proper that in it. I remember because I got I was either on a downslope or something, and made my second shot really tough in there into that green.

00:59:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. But then the only hole that I really spent a lot of time on was the eighth, the little short part four, which you know, it was just a short part four into a field basically a very wide open space and then you know, a green still on the flat, and you know, we played around with principles, nose bunkers and other things in the fairway, but at the end of the day, we just went back to putting a mound in it. You know, there's bunkers on the right, but then there's a mound in the fairway with some long grass on it that you do not want to tangle with. And then there's a little ridge in front of the green. And that actually is one of the three or four times i've I've tried to build something like the twelfth green at Saint Andrews.

00:59:49
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, courses I was thinking about.

00:59:52
Speaker 2: I was looking at the picture of the yardage book of Saint Andrews, and when you brought that hole up, I just started to think about that.

01:00:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. See it's similar green, not quite as severe as the one at Saint Andrew's, but it's it's a tough little hole. And you know, you know, after everybody thinking it was just going to be a nothing hole, that's fun that it turned out cool. But that's exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's like what it takes to make something really good is sometimes working really hard on the couple of holes that you're not that excited about. And you know, and I go back and look at some of my pass courses and not that I want to go change it around all the time. But you know, I do see some places like maybe I should have worked a little harder on that, or sometimes you know, the hole that you thought from the beginning like it was going to be the best hole on the golf course because it's just such a dramatic natural setting and it's like it's almost there, so why do anything to it? Then you go back and it's like, man, we built five holes better than that at the end of the day. Maybe I should have done a little more here.

01:00:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's I mean us everything though. That's sometimes with writing, like any anything, like any kind of pursuit, like you sometimes stuff that you think is gonna be the the the like real bang, or like the thing that everybody shares about a piece is is actually it's the thing that you you worked forever on and you never really were that happy with and it ends up it turns out better, you know.

01:01:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a good life lesson you know.

01:01:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it does keep you know, stories like that are what keep you more engaged in stuff. It's like and I really had to grind on that, but that's that's the thing everybody likes, so maybe my work is valuable.

01:01:39
Speaker 2: Well, uh, Tom, I we're gonna We're gonna call it here. Common Ground is a place that everybody should go see. Denver's a city that people go to a lot, and it's uh, you know, it's it's gotta it's one of the one of the best. If you combine value and quality of golf course, there are very few uh in the country, uh in the u US that that even come close to matching that place.

01:02:03
Speaker 3: So definitely a.

01:02:05
Speaker 1: Good I got a good story for you to close on. Last time. There was about just just a couple of years ago. You know, I was out of bally Neil during the pandemic and one of the times I just went into Denver for overnight and out the next day. So I drove into Denver and I got to Common Ground about three o'clock in the afternoon. It was a nice day, and I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna go. You know, I'm not telling Abam coming because I you know, if it hadn't been nice, I might not have played at all. It was nice, So it's like I just came out unannounced and waved at the golf pro and said I'm gonna go play. He's like sure. So, you know, I played the first two holes by myself, and then I caught up to another threesome and they're like, oh, do you want to play with us? So so I did, and I you know, I said hello, but I didn't really introduce myself. And you know, we're going down the third fairly and and one of the guys who was like a you know, found out later he's like an eye surgeon who plays out there after grinding on very detailed surgery in the mornings. And we're going down the third fairway and I said, I said, do you play here a lot? And he said no, only once a week. But I'm a big Tom Doak fan. And I just laughed because you know, he didn't know it was me.

01:03:21
Speaker 2: So did you tell him eventually?

01:03:24
Speaker 1: But not right away?

01:03:25
Speaker 3: Yeah you should.

01:03:26
Speaker 1: I thought about saying, oh, today's a lucky day, but you know, I wasn't going to do that either, you know, because I'm much rather hear what somebody really has to think about the golf course instead of just kissing my butt all day about how good it is. So so yeah, if you go see common ground, you can get on anytime in the late afternoon and who knows who you'll bump into.

01:03:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, all right, well that's a that's a neat story to end on. And thank you as always for the time, and we'll talk. You got a ton of travel I've got I've got to go to Scotland. It'll probably be good to talk after I get back.

01:04:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you'll definitely have some ideas after you get back. Take care of me.

01:04:20
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast, and thanks to Tom Doak for his time. We'll be back on Friday actually with a special edition of the.

01:04:31
Speaker 3: Yolk with Doake.

01:04:33
Speaker 2: It's on Saint Andrew's in the Old Course with the Open Championship coming back, so it will be you know, I don't know. I think it's like forty to fifty minutes of Tom talking to Old Course, just to get you all in the mood for the Open Championship, which is a couple of weeks away.

01:04:50
Speaker 3: This episode was edited by Meg Atkins.

01:04:52
Speaker 2: Thank you, Meg, and as a reminder, it is a great time to subscribe to the Frida Egg newsletter. There is tons of stuff happening in the world of golf, and this is the easiest way to stay up to date so you can sound like an expert with your friends when you're out on the golf course this summer. Thank you for listening to Friday Egg and we'll be back on Friday with another edition of the Yolkwood Dug