Yolk with Doak 42: Cabot Highlands, Childress Hall, and Sandglass

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.

00:00:06
Speaker 1: In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday fridagg Bride Egg.

00:00:11
Speaker 3: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am Andy Johnson, your host, and I have another edition of the Yolk with Doak. This is one of my favorite podcast series that we've done. Big thanks to Tom for all the time over the years. Uh this we haven't done one in a while. We've both been really busy and it was great to catch up with Tom and Traverse City for a couple of days. We recorded a couple episodes. This one will obviously is airing now. The next one will be next week. So next Thursday, the second part of our conversation will be up. Just to give you an idea, this episode kind of dives into all of Tom's new projects and the second episode is a listener Q and A. So big thanks to Tom and super exciting to see some of his new projects. I saw High Point last week, saw Sedge last year. I'm gonna see it again this year. Before we get to Tom, let's talk about Golf Forever. They are one of our partners. This is a really great product, and you don't need to necessarily take it from me. My uncle is. He's a very good player, and I've always wondered as he's kind of moved into elder years, not elder, I mean he's still young at heart, but as he's kind of aged, he's he's kept his distance like it's kind of crazy. He's a long hitter, so I always have wondered how he's keeping up. And I saw he sent me a text the other day he said, Hey, I see who had Golf Forever as a sponsor.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: I've been using the.

00:02:21
Speaker 3: Program for a couple of years now. It's really good stuff. The middle back teas workouts are serious. This explains a lot. He's like super flexible, and he's stayed in really good shape, really good golf shape, and that's what's kept his distance and allowed him to like not really slip up over the years in terms of of of of speed and golf game.

00:02:47
Speaker 2: So I would use I would. I've been really a big fan of this. Uh.

00:02:52
Speaker 3: I just started taking on the road with me so I could stay you know, kind of like keep a regiment while I travel. It's been super awesome if you want to get this like kind of like they it's an at home training system. It combines world class coaching and personal follow along video programs, so.

00:03:14
Speaker 2: It's really easy to do.

00:03:16
Speaker 3: It is a great way to stay in golf shape, more flexibility, more speed. It just makes you know, swinging a golf club easier. So if you want to get started, go to golf forever dot com and use the code egg to save an extra fifty dollars on any training system package that's golf forever dot com code egg big.

00:03:38
Speaker 2: Thanks to Golf Forever.

00:03:39
Speaker 3: This has been an awesome addition to my kind of fitness and life strategy, so check it out. Works for my uncle, works for me. Completely different age buckets and really great program.

00:03:55
Speaker 2: Let's get to Tom.

00:03:55
Speaker 3: Dove all right, Tom, we're back another edition of the Yolk with Duk. Has been a little while. I feel like both of us have been on the road a little bit, but it's exciting. It's exciting to do this in person. We haven't done one in person in a while. Where all have you been this year?

00:04:20
Speaker 1: Well, first, I want to mention I'm home for a change. We're actually in my house, which is even rare for me, much less for visitors. Yeah, I've had a busy year since the first of January. I've finished three new golf courses. You know. We had started in South Florida and we had started in Texas before the end of last year, but we built and signed off on all eighteen holes in both of those. I went back over to Scotland just a month ago and finish the last ten holes of Cabot Highlands. And you know, Clyde still has a bunch of work to do to put those all to bed and get them all grass before the end of this year. But my work's pretty much done, you know, other than going over there during growing and figuring out mowing lines and what parts to have open sand and what parts to do more landscaping to and and then I've opened Pineer's number ten open, Sedge Valley. Didn't go to an event for Sedge Valley open. The first nine holes at high Point. The other will open in a month or two. So that's a really productive year.

00:05:40
Speaker 3: Seriously, I guess you know when you're when you're building these courses, when you sign off, when you when you when you're done doing the construction work, is there is it a wave of satisfaction? Do you get sad that it's kind of over?

00:05:55
Speaker 1: Like?

00:05:56
Speaker 3: How does that? How does like kind of just the feeling of a project, like the ebbs and flows of these projects, how do you know do you have a favorite? And you know, is it a sad part when it's over?

00:06:10
Speaker 1: The only time I remember really feeling kind of sad was when we were building Pacific Dunes because it was so exciting to be doing it. And it was like we did take a break there in the summer for a little while because it gets so dry in the summer. You just you know, everything blows away before you can put the irrigation in. But but we you know, we worked from like January to June, and we came back September to November, so we were pretty much working out the whole year with the with the break in the middle, and you know, I mean, obviously it was a special place and a special project and everything been going well, and when we got that last all done, it's like it was kind of a shock that we were done that fast in some ways, and we didn't, you know, I didn't have a bunch of other work lined up next and know what I was going to do. So yeah, that was that was like, oh wow, okay, But usually, you know, I mean, construction is a grind. It takes nine months to build a golf course, sometimes a little less, sometimes more, but that's the average. You know, long days, you're away from home. A lot of a lot of the cool places that we've worked that are really cool places to go hang out. Now we're tiny little towns with not too much choice of other things to do or places to eat. When we were building those places, there's a lot of them that had like two options and they weren't very good. And you know, so you're kind of like a pioneer. And that's what my crew has to go through. You know. For me, I come in for a week at a time, and everybody's energized when I'm there, and we're really being creative and we're going to get four or five holes done. And you know, for me, the travel part is hard, hard, but the actual time I spend on site is really cool. And I'm working with people I love and we're doing creative things. So the whole way through, you're just really energized, and honestly, when you get to the end, now it's a relief because I have you know, I just explained how much work I've been doing. Now, you know, okay, check that one's done. I don't have to worry about that for a while, on to the next one. The really weird part is when you go back for Pineer's number ten for their you know, they didn't do a grand opening the day they the day they started playing. They had me come back for a media day just before the US Open and you know, all the writers there are like, well, how excited are you about this project? And it's like I was excited like a year ago. You know, this has been over for me kind of for a long time now, and I'm working on four other cool things. So that's weird, you know, because because the press attention doesn't line up with my experience of the projects. It lines up with the clients experience of them, but not with what I actually do.

00:09:09
Speaker 3: It seems to me like maybe, and this is me just thinking of of you, is that maybe the most exciting part is when you get the topo map and you start trying, like that very initial wave of trying to figure out what you're going to do.

00:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sometimes, I mean that's that's like I'll you know, there's there's two parts. There's that part and then there's let's go build some greens part, And I love them both. They're very different. Yeah, the the playing around with the topo map is much more personal and usually for walking around on site, I'll probably only have one of my associates with me for that to try to figure out the puzzle. And and that's really cool too. And you know, occasionally you're working on a piece of land that's so good. When you're done with that, you're all almost like listening's almost done. I mean, now we just have to build some greens and what we've done. But you know, but other times there's a lot more work to do than.

00:10:12
Speaker 3: That with so much going on. I mean, you open three courses, you're finishing three courses. I imagine it's put kind of like it's been a unique couple of years of just managing your team and working with your team. And I think one of the things that happens with architects, and I think it's probably a lot of the recent years, you guys have become like you've become golf celebrities, like huge celebrities, and I think that's like the last twenty years, architectures continue to gain popularity, but like the people on your team are so vital to that. And how is the challenge been of managing working with your people, you know, with all the stuff going on?

00:11:00
Speaker 1: Well, I mean to address the one part first. Yeah, I mean I get recognized in airports sometimes now, and it kind of freaks me out because I don't really I don't live for that, you know, I like the work. I don't. I don't like the you know, I don't. I don't you know, I don't handle praise well. So I don't know what to do. And FIVA come up to me and tell me how much they like this place or that place. I've gotten better, but it's still awkward for me sometimes. The managing my team part is interesting because like four years ago, I told him, you know, I'm turning sixty, I'm not going to have a payroll forever. So I'm giving you guys the company and you're kind of independent now and you're going to you know, I'm not doing consulting anymore. You guys decide for yourselves, how much of that you want to do, and you know, and I'm still going to work with you on all my new projects, and I hope you're not too busy to work on them, but I don't, so I don't get to manage them so much. And it's that's been the one part of it that's actually been kind of harder the last two or three years, is just don't always have everybody lined up right when I need them to be there, because they've you know, because they got kids, and they got lives, and they've got another place they got to be that I have nothing to do with now. So it's not always that easy from that perspective. That's you know, I knew that was a trade off I was going to have to make if I did it the way I did it. But they're all thriving too, so I think overall it's been really good. But you know, it's kind of weird to be working with different people sometimes just because just because of the way the schedules are lining up. Like I'm making a trip to Punta bravin a couple of weeks and I just found out, like my grandkids are all going to be here when I was going to be away. So I'm trying to change the date, and that means I'm changing the date for like three other people too, and they've thought they're, oh, I was going to be in Europe that week, and it's like, you know, okay, when can we all be there? You know, let's regroup and figure it out. So that's that's tricky. Fortunately, I don't spend I don't waste a lot of my own time worrying about it. But I'm not like, you know, I'm not quite like if I was Jack Nicholas, I'd be like, I'm gonna be there July twelfth. You all better be there. You know. My life's a little different than that.

00:13:24
Speaker 3: You talked about new people, like working with some new people you guys have you know, I would say, since we started doing the podcast, some new fresh faces, Like is it energizing to get just different perspectives, new ideas?

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Has it? You know?

00:13:40
Speaker 3: I know, like Brian Zaker, Parker Anderson are new people that you've been working a lot with, Like, how has it been working with new associates? I don't know if you call them associates that's the right word.

00:13:53
Speaker 1: I don't know what the right word is. I mean, they're they're they've been lead associate for different jobs, so associate is fine. And I've done it my whole career. I mean, if you know, if you look up my best golf courses, at one point when I had like five courses in the top one hundred, they were like five different lead associates. I don't know what it is. Now a couple of them have more than one. I know that, but but I don't know exactly how it shakes out. But but yeah, I mean, you know, you know, Clyde Johnson and Angela Moser and Blake Knyan have all been working with us for like ten twelve years, and you know they've been ready to do be the lead associate or do something on their own for a while. It's just like if you're doing two courses a year and you got three or four great people ahead of them, you know you're not going to make the junior person the lead associate. You know. That happened quickly for Brian Schneider when he did barm Google because because everybody was at Cape Kidnappers and then the rest of them were all ready to go home and he was he was just newly married. He's like, yeah, I'll go there and run that. And you know, so that was a good, good chance for him, and he just never know when it's gonna come. It took a long time to get around to Okay, Eric and Brian are too already booked up with other things. So Angel is going to be the one to run Pineer's number ten. But you know, and Brian Zaeger was my guy for Sandglass in Florida because it was very complete. You know, we had to change the world there and we had to do it with very meticulous plans, and he was the right guy for that. So yeah, it's interesting. But you know, I like working with a variety of people, even though I think a lot of my best work has the same three or four guys shape in most of the greens. You know, it's it's great to see somebody new get on a bulldozer and build something that makes the cut. And you know, I don't have to bring in Eric to edit the last three greens before we're done.

00:15:57
Speaker 3: So your new project that we've talked about, you've brushed on sand Glass, Childress Hall in Texas, and Cabot Highland in Scotland. What excites you may like one thing that excites you about each of them.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: Sand Glass, We've really kept the wraps on what we were doing the whole time. So I'm really curious to see what people's reaction is to the golf course. You know, the one thing I can promise is is different from what anybody else is trying to do down there. You almost have to suspend disbelief a little bit when you drive through the gate. But I think it's a pretty good golf course and and I'm interested to see what people what people think of it. And you know, there's gonna be some questions about how we did what we did and why we did what we did, which is fine, but I don't really want to give away too much more than that. Honestly. That's that's the way the clients wanted to handle it, and I'm fine with that. You know, let people actually decide for themselves after they see it Chiulder's Hall. I mean, the funny thing is when I when I went down there to look at the piece of lamb the first time, this was like this would have been two and a half years ago now. Brian Zaiger and I flew down the client met US and flew US the rest of the way to a tiny little regional airport that's ten minutes from the site.

00:17:31
Speaker 3: It's in like kind of like the almost the panhandle of Texas.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: That that kind of nor it's just below that north top Hat part of Texas, so like three and a half hour top Hat, three and a half hours west of Dallas, northwest of Dallas, and you know, very much in the middle of nowhere, like sand Hills and Balliono the middle of nowhere, except there's a I mean there is like a a major US highway that's kind of the truck route from Dallas to Denver. So if you drive from Dallas, there's big trucks the whole way. But I didn't, I didn't experience that the first time. We just landed and went out and looked at this site, and it was dunes. It's the same kind of dunes you find in the sand hills, you know, not not you know, they're kind of all along the Red River. So it's not like it's not as huge in expanse as the Nebraska sand Hills by any means. It's only like two or three miles either side of the river maybe, But the first site, the site that we went out to look at, which had which was a property that was for sale. It was cool. It was really good land for golf. It just didn't have a lot of features. That was like, Okay, that piece looks really different, and that's that's the perfect place for a couple. I want to put a couple holes over here. I want to put some holes over on this part of the land that's really different. You know. It was kind of all similar, and we spent most of our day out there. We went and had a late lunch at this place in town, and the conversation was we're going to get back on the plane, and one of the guys had said, well, there's another site we kind of looked at. You know, it's not really for sale, but the guy seemed like he'd talk about it, and everybody was like should we do that? And I would raise my hand like why would we not do that while we're here? And so we drove up there at fifteen minutes out of town to get up there, and from the moment we drove in, I just love the site. I mean, we drove in late in the afternoon when the sun the light was really good and the concours really showed off. But you know, we drove in on contours that reminded me a little of Saint Andrew's Beach. And then when you got up on the dunes, there was a long view to the west and you saw the river coming kind of around the site. It was bigger dunes and it's like, Okay, this place, this place has what the other one did in it has a variety of different settings within eighteen holes.

00:20:14
Speaker 3: The variety of settings, I think like most people, if they just saw dunes sand, it's like, oh, this is perfect for golf, right. What does the variety of settings really lend and allow you to do as an architect?

00:20:28
Speaker 1: I mean you're kind of choreographing the feel of things as you go. The best example is Cyprus Point. You start out play across the road, you're kind of in you know that second holes kind of up on a shelf. Then you get back into the back part of the land with all the trees and stuff. You pop out for eight and nine or their own little world up there with a great view over everything. You go back into the trees, you come out, and then like twelve thirteen is kind of lynxy, is you know, more Lynxy than anything else there. And then you get to the point that's like five different environments in eighteen holes. And I should not compare anything that I'm working on right now to Cyprus plinked, But Childress all has a bunch of different settings. There's canyons, and there's big sand dunes, and there's gentle stuff, and there's little pockets and and you know, sometimes you see them quite a bit of golf at once, and sometimes you're just seeing the hole you're on, and it's it's a neat variety.

00:21:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, variety is wonderful. I found myself I was playing Oakland Hills the other day, and I think, like all the tension is always on those holes right at the start you're in like right at the front of the clubhouse, like eleven and ten and nine and one, and and I found myself like on and there's just these nice, like kind of more gentle ridges, and I was like, you know, it's really nice over here. And everybody nobody ever talks about that, right, But it's just the variety, right, like being feeling like you're in a new space. It's almost you know, like a house, like you don't want every room to feel the same.

00:22:17
Speaker 1: Right, right, And yeah, I mean a great golf course, every hole is different than the next hole. And if if the if the spaces feel different to start, then you're not as worried about making sure that this sole is only four hundred and twenty yards where that other one was four fifty because you just wouldn't even think of comparing the two holes they're so different.

00:22:41
Speaker 3: I've been I've been wondering this, and I was thinking about it while we're at high point yesterday. How did working with Brooks Kopka, now that you're a few years removed, did that have Has that had a lasting impact that Memorial Park project? Just working in the you know, thinking about PGA tour golf and thinking about challenging the best players in the world at like you know you were it was the first time you really built a golf course for that purpose. Has that changed how you approach designs since then? Just in in any way, like is there are there some general themes that from that project that you feel carried through your work.

00:23:27
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, both Memorial Park and the Renaissance Club now have in the Scottish Open on a regular basis. I get a lot of feedback on that too, and I've and I've spent a lot of time talking to Padrake Harrington. They hired him as a consultant, kind of as a go between between all the players and getting their feedback and then filtered through him and kind of what he thinks of their feedback, and he's you know, he's funny and dead honest about it. He's like, well, if you wanted to be a hero to the players, you do this, But I know that's not you want to do well.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: The players would love if everything was just as fair as possible.

00:24:07
Speaker 1: But you know, it's been a learning process because even for the longest time, you know, I was I just spent a day with padrig and the client and a couple of people from the PGA tour and the European Tour the week before the Scottish Open while it was over for Cabot Highlands, And you know, all this time I've been designing things, thinking about trying to do things that are going to affect how they got the decision the guy makes on the tea, Like we added a bunker to the right of the first fair way to try to make guys think, okay, there's not just all the room in the world out here. I've got to flirt with that bunker. I got to lay up from it, or I got to go left of it. And now I'm flirting. Now I'm maybe dealing with rough and there's a pine tree short of the green that might be in the way. And I thought we had that all work well worked out. And we go back this year and Padrick says, well, there's a lot of guys that are really bothered by the fact that right of this bunker on the first hole, there's about twenty yards of pretty gentle rough before you get to gorse bush. And I figured with the gorse bush, you know, nobody's going to play into that space deliberately. And they're not. But they're really bothered if they hit the ball in the fairway bunker and their opponent hits the ball in between the fairway bunker and the gorse bush, they're like, that's not fair. Has nothing to do with how they're trying to play the hole. It's just, you know, for the players, they would rather straight down the b line of how you're supposed to play the hole is a highway, and you know, not necessarily every hole has to be straight, but there should be a highway for them to play to and trouble all trouble if you're off the highway.

00:26:02
Speaker 3: I think generally for tournament players, the ideal thought in their head of how a golf course should interact with them is that if I hit it straight, I'm rewarded, and then every yard off of ideal is met with more penalty. So the idea if I'm fifty yards off or twenty yards off, twenty yards is way better than fifty Like it's like inconceivable. I think this is their issue a lot of times with center line bunkers, like I hit it straight down the middle and I'm in a bunker, but like they like they want to have very black and white I executed the shot and anything that disrupts that. It's but it's fascinating because you play their courses that they play, and inevitably where the fans are is a great place to miss, and that's always way off the fairway.

00:26:54
Speaker 1: No, and they you know, you can't build all golf courses like you just describe, because if every yard off the center line, you're more and more penalized. You know, three quarters of us would just have to give up playing. And the tour players understand that they're not stupid. They play with the people in pro ams. They know how their dad plays, So it's not that they think what you're doing is bad design, but they think it's unfair from that very narrow band that they're in. And that's they think in a very narrow band. It's like, if I carry the ball to eighty five and I successfully get over a bunker at two eighty, that should be that should work out perfectly, but you know they did. But that's how narrow they're thinking is they're not even thinking. They know very well that there's guys that hit it to sixty five that bunker they can't even try to hit it over that bunker, and there's guys they hit it three oh five and that bunker is meaningless to those guys, But they still it's so centered around how far they hit it and if they hit it perfectly, then that should be rewarded.

00:28:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:28:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like, I think there's nothing that frustrates good like tournament players more than when they feel like they've executed a shot and it leads to a bad result, which you know, to a certain extent I think is like the humor of golf design.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: No, but I think it's I think what bothers them more honestly is when somebody when they've executed a good shot and then somebody else gets away with a bad shot. That's that's the part that bothers them. That's that's the thing I was describing about maybe putting another bunker over there to the right on that first hall. It's like, that's just gonna that's just going to punish the members, Yes, but the tour pro will feel better about it if if somebody else hits it in that bunker, they never worry about. I mean, the bunker that we build is really nasty, like if you're in it, you can have trouble going for the green from one hundred and thirty yards. But they're fine with that. It's like they know that bunker is there, and if they mess up and go in it, they are fine with that.

00:29:17
Speaker 3: How can you get the impact of bunkers like the pot bunkers with not building pop bunkers, Like, to me, it seems like the just and maybe it's just the American mentality on bunkers, but to me, it seems like every year when I watch the Open or if I go over there and play there is like I'm terrified of bunkers and it like impacts my strategy the way I play a golf course so much more because of the you know, the impact and like the penalty associated with them. They're actually hazards.

00:29:58
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, brooks Kopko is very clear. The first day I talked to him in Houston, He's like, the only place fairway bunkers matter at all to us is in Scotland because they're penal and if you get in one, you might not be able to hit it on the green. He's like anywhere in the States, if if I hit it in a if a fairway bunker and I've got one hundred and eighty yards left and it's a clean lie, that's really not any different from being in the fairway, and the face is never going to be so high and so close that I got to worry about getting getting out of the bunker with a eight iron or a niner in my hands. So either make them really severe or.

00:30:35
Speaker 3: Why have them at Cabot Are you going to have like a pot bunkers? There?

00:30:41
Speaker 1: Only a few only if you know we didn't. We didn't want to. You know, you have to rebuild those things every like three or four years, so it's it's a pretty expensive, ongoing assignment to do them. And plus you know, we're struggling a little bit at the Renaissance Club. When they rebuild them, all is we're not there, and they kind of go their own direction and that you know, they evolve from year to year, and they're not necessarily evolving for the better all the time. I'm trying to get on top of that now, but but most places they just keep getting rounder and deeper and nastier and higher faces. And it's like, no, that's the word. Let's have more variety than that. But you know, you're not. That's a process. It takes a few days, and the guys who shape the bunkers originally are long gone by the time they're doing that work. So you've really got to have a crew on site that's good at it and keeps getting better at it. You know, Mirfield has that, Saint Andrews has that. Nearly everywhere else they don't have that, And and the bunkers, you know, they're penal, but they're not really good looking at all or interest. They all look the same, so, you know, I've thought a lot about it. We started both at sand Glass and at Childress, all with the idea that we were going to do more of those kind of bunkers. We've done more of that at sand Glass and we have a Childress. We kind of got away from it at Childress a little bit. There's some really penal bunkers there, but they're not there. There's not a bunch of sidewall bunkers. We haven't done the sidewall yet at sand Glass. We're going to see if we can get the effect without actually doing that. You know, there's going to be a very very steep face, but just grass growing on the face, and we'll see how that goes. And we you know, we might decide later on to change that on some of the holes, but you know, we didn't. If you're going to do them there, you're probably going to do the artificial the artificial turf sidewalls, because sidewalls in Florida will burn up right away and client was uncomfortable with those. And and you know, the artificial sidewall bunker, that material is a little hard to work with and if it is going to last for ten or fifteen years, and you've got to get it right the first time. You know, if you spend the money to build it and it doesn't look great, you're kind of stuck with it. So we want, I mean, if we if we ever do go that way in Florida, we want to have the thing exactly the shape we want it, so we can tell the contractor that is the shape and the face is exactly that high before it bevels off and there's turf rolling.

00:33:22
Speaker 3: Into what's your favorite part about working in Scotland. When you get to spend this like three four weeks at a time in Scotland, you're obviously working a ton.

00:33:34
Speaker 1: But yeah, well obviously. I honestly, this last trip is the only time I've really had a chance to do more than like a day of golf on top of my trip, because partly because you know, every time I go over there, the Renaissance Club wants me to talk about what they're going to do to the golf course next year. So it's like two or three days down there. The good news is I get to see North Barrick and or your field a lot while I'm there. But but I've been kind of going to the same places. So this trip was a little different. You know, we had a lot of holes to finish on this trip. The irrigation crew is in behind us, so we had to get I had to get a couple holes finished early and then and then I had some more time before ben Cowan doer was coming in at the back end of my trip, so in the middle I took a few I did go down to Renaissance Club and have a meeting, but I also went out to the west coast and looked at a bunch of different courses, a couple I'd seen years ago and a couple I'd never seen, and just you know, got back into Scottish golfer a little bit, which is great.

00:34:44
Speaker 3: What were the what were the takeaways? What were the highlights? What were what were some of the places that you saw that that you thought differently about.

00:34:52
Speaker 1: I saw the very I saw the the the extreme ends of golf in Scotland. I saw Iona, which is almost a completely natural course which hardly maintained it all by anybody, just grazed animals and just played by the locals. It's really not set up. There's no green fee at all. You can pay a dollar to get a scorecard. But at the post office in town we got to walk out there and there's no signs or directions or anything to just play off. And then Ardfinn at the extreme other end, you know, developed by an Australian billionaire on his estate and originally just for him, but he built a little lodge so that a few people could go play it. I saw him like three days apart, with mcrahanish and the Macari in between, and then we went up to Durnass when we got finished with our work at Castle Stewart, like a day before the client got there. So he drove from Inverness up to Durnass and the way far northwest corner to play the nine holes up there and came right back.

00:36:02
Speaker 3: I find I think, like my answer always, it changes every time I go. But you know from this trip, what would be the one thing you would take back from this trip if you could bring it to America?

00:36:14
Speaker 1: I own it was a great experience. I don't know how. I don't know how you could do anything like that. I was good, honestly.

00:36:23
Speaker 3: I was going to ask if you thought that would be feasible.

00:36:26
Speaker 1: You know, I've actually talked to the client at Childress all about you know, they've talked vaguely about doing a third golf course someday that would be more public access. And they had me look at a site a little away from the other two that's flattering along the river moor. This cow's grazing it. Now it's like, well, that could be like bra or one of those places. Just put the wire fence around the greens and do that. And you know, it's hard, it's hard to explain that to most clients, Like I tried to get Julian Robertson interested in doing that twenty five years ago as a second course for Cape kidnappers, which they're actually talking about now like they might think about doing something like that. So both of but it's such a remove from the super high end luxury thing to graiest fairways and poop all over the fairways that you know, it's it's just a culture shock. And yet at the same time, you know, when Rick Kane, a few years after we built Terry Ed is going on a trip to the UK with with a friend of his and their wives, and he was like, can you like pick out a handful of courses that we could play that I wouldn't have played before. And you know, Rick's one of those guys who's played all the top hundred courses. So I was like, you know, almost anywhere I sent him, I'm like, now he would have played there already. So I finally settled on the southwest of England, Saint Anna doc Uh Suntan and Westward Ho and Westward Hoe is graized and there's poop everywhere.

00:38:07
Speaker 3: I was like, I didn't get roll out on that drive. It landed in the poop and I was like, that's that was the one. I was like, can I send a billionaire guy and his wife there? And what are they going to think about that? The wives loved it.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: They thought they was by far their favorite thing that they did. You know, partly because the golf course isn't isn't super hard, you know, it's it's fairly open because when when a golf course is graized, there's no real fairways. It's just like most of the grass is short because that's the animals are grazing all of it. That's that's edible. There's there's a line in Mackenzie's book about that. He says that the great schools of golf, like Saint Andrews and Hoylake. There's no defined line between the fairways and rough and I read that for years, like how the hell could that be? You know, somebody's moa and where the fairway ends. Now, the early golf courses are a place like Brara, there's not really a fairway. There's not an edge to the fairway. It just kind of bleeds out into the native.

00:39:08
Speaker 3: It's you know, I think the thing that you hit on with with sending them out there was that people crave like unique experiences, and I think this is like one of the things that I that frustrates me is like everybody pushes to be like in the same box, right maintenance.

00:39:30
Speaker 1: You're right, you're defining like what a top hundred golf course is to to you got too many criteria for what it is and you have to throw all these things out. And then you know, the people want what's not in that box. Just they want to see something different than what everybody's trying to build.

00:39:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's funny like the standard like there's like the standards of maintenance that has like that. What it does is it just creates the sameness to everything, right and to circle back to what we were talking about with bunkers earlier. I mean, I remember forty years ago, you know, bunker sand was not the same from one course to in the States to the next. And some of them were like notorious, Like Southern Hills had some kind of river sand of the bunkers that was just you couldn't you couldn't hit a good bunker shot. You know, it's really hard to spin the ball out.

00:40:24
Speaker 1: Of them at all. So the bunkers were penal and you had to stay the hell away from him more than on a typical Parkland course. You know, now everybody's doing a fifteen million dollar redo in truck and sand in from the same quarry in Ohio. All over the country they have perfect sand bunkers that are not penal.

00:40:43
Speaker 3: And then it's the same, it's the same rough. It's like the there's like this this same esthetic that comes from that big renovation. It's like a newness to right and it's it's it's it's a bummer because like part of what makes I think about this one I go to Sand Valley. I like was like I struggled so much out of Sand Valley's bunkers because there's like there's like a heaviness to the sand, there's like a depth in it. And then one one day, I just like I switched to fifty six and the bounce, like the bounce was like working for me versus my lob wedge, which I usually use out of every bunker, and it was like, oh, like I had to like figure out how to hit a bunker shot, right, you.

00:41:30
Speaker 1: Know, we had for Childress all the client and the superintendent were absolutely convinced that they're going to have to bring a bunch of sand in from off site for the bunkers, and we're like, you could play out of exactly what we just dug right there. The sand is good, it's just it's different and I play, I play I don't even carry a sandwich. I play everything with a pitching wedge because I play in different kinds of sand and that you can kind of you can kind of play differently and make it work. But with a sand wed with a lot of bounce on it, sometimes some of the courses I play that wouldn't work very well. Yeah, and so so we finally got you know, we kept trying to get the client to go to Ballet Neal to see what that was like, because it's the same kind of sand and it's the same you know, we didn't bring any sand in there either, and he's just this busy guy and he wasn't getting out there, and it was and then it's winter for most of the time we're building the golf course, so you're not gonna go to Balleil on March to figure it out. So finally we just got him out there one day on the bunker on the seventh hole and it's like, well, yeah, chuck five balls in there and try playing wedges. In the first two or three he's trying to play with the sandwich and he wasn't getting out and I was like, oh, this is this is going to end badly. We're gonna have to spend a bunch of money on bunker sand. And then it's like, try pitching wedge and it's you know, the light went on and he started being able to hit balls out of it and control it a little bit. He's like, yeah, that's fine, that's all we need. I was like, you know, I think we saved him at half a million dollars with that. With that twenty minutes of hitting practice bunker shots, and you know in the end the bunkers are going to be a little harder for it, which is that's the that's the other value to me. If you're in a bunker there, it's not going to be an automatic cup and down for a good player.

00:43:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing you should We shouldn't be rooting for balls to go in bunkers. It's a bad it's a bad sign for the game if you're rooting for balls going hazards. All right, let's take a quick break here to talk about Club TFE. One of the ways that we have kind of been able to grow our team and do more and more content has been Club tf It is our membership program in there. We're producing a couple three really three big pieces of content a week. We have a design notebook which is Garrett, Garrett and Matt and I kind of put it together. For the most part, Cameron's evolved too, mostly Garrett and Matt. It is all about like what's going on in the golf architecture world on a weekly basis. And you know, we have a vibrant comments section. Tom is in there every once in a while commenting on things. But then we do a big course profile every week. This week I am as this morning, I was trying to put the finishing touches on my Oakland Hills South course profile. So we go in depth on a golf course. There's loads of photography. It really gives us a great place to put all the photography we've had and then also write about golf courses. And then finally we do a weekly tour guide. Joseph Mania and Brenda Porth kind of head that up and they write about what's going on on the PGA Tour. So that is Club TFF. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. There's a lot of other benefits including pro shop discounts, early access to our events, member only events, which we are kind of starting to expand, and it's just a it's been really a fun membership and kind of a project for us to continue to expand our golf course and architecture content. So if you want to join, go do the fride egg dot com slash membership and join there. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year and it is a great way to support what we're doing. Let's get back to Tom and the Ookwi dok. You brought up North Bary. I don't think we've ever talked I like thinking, racking my brain. I don't think we've ever really talked much about North Barrack. Obviously, I think it's one of you know, it's become one of the world's most revered and loved courses. You say you visit a lot often when you're visiting the Renaissance Club. What what are the things that you think about the most about North Barrick.

00:46:22
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, I have a long history with that place. You know. That's after I lived in St Andrews for two months, that's the first place I went. I stayed in North Barrick for like a week or two to see all the golf courses around there. But I was staying right in town. And in nineteen eighty two, North Barrik is kind of a rundown town and I wish i'd been a had a little money and like real estate, real estate. Oh god, Yeah, there are several towns in the UK I had made a killing in. But you know, North Barrick was never on anybody's radar as a great golf course. It was too short and too easy and good players didn't respect it that much. It was nowhere in the top hundred list. Nobody even thought about putting it in a top hundred, and every good player that I talked to after that, like when we looked at doing the Renaissance Club the first time in the late nineties. That was when John Ashworth was looking at doing a project there. And John and his buddy had been living over there for a while. They played Gullin and Mirfield and those courses all the time, and they never would go to North Barrick. They thought it was too easy. And I'm like, I mean, yeah, you can shoot a lower score, but there's a bunch of really good golf holes there and that's probably the course that is the single course that its reputation has changed the most over that forty year period. You know, National Golf Links kind of the same thing for the same reasons, but National was at one time considered one of the great courses in America. North Barrick was always considered a great place in the UK. But you know, it doesn't host the Open champion Ship. It's you know, it's short, and it's got some really quirky holes and all those famous holes except for the radan. Nearly all the famous holes are really short par fours that are almost drivable when the wind's blow in a different direction. So you know, I always thought it was a great place, and when I wrote about the Confidential Guide pretty revet reverentially, everybody was like, yeah, I kind of like that place. Why doesn't it get more acclaim? And you know, now I look at it and I think, well, it's got so many it's got so much more water view than any of the Championship Links courses. I mean, you're right, you're playing along the beach the first two or three holes and again at the far end, and you know, that's obviously a big factor in ratings now that it wasn't that It wasn't nearly so much thirty forty years ago. Thirty years ago was about how testing is the of course for scratch players, the Golf Digest system of voting. So North Barrack's reputation has changed entirely, even though that whole time, the pit and the Redan and the sixteenth hole with that crazy green and the second hole playing over the beach have been some of the most famous holes in Scotland, and everybody would have told you, Oh, yeah, there's some great holes there. But by the same token they would have told you, oh, the first hole is just like a six iron off the six iron wedge part four. That's kind of silly. And the funny thing is that's grown into a great hole because now you can actually try to hit a driver on it. You could try to carry where the fairway cuts off and you go up the hill and you could try to fly it up there on the green. You'd be crazy to do.

00:49:44
Speaker 3: It, but especially especially after a few swings in their warm up net. Yeah, couple take a couple of cuts in the warm up net and then try and drive the screen up on right along the beach.

00:49:59
Speaker 2: Is there.

00:50:00
Speaker 1: But I love playing the golf course and it's you know, I've shot even parther not lately, but but I still I play much better there compared to a typical round anywhere else. And when we were building the Renaissance Club, at the start of it, I went to the pro and said, you know, I'm gonna have like four or five people here working on this golf course. It's just going to be dying to play some golf. You know, this place is like one hundred dollars around now is there? You know, can we work out can can we work out some deal where they're like temporary members for the summer, temporary members something. So so they took me in to see the secretary of the club, and you know, and and they all knew that I'd written a lot of nice things about the golf course over the years and it probably helped them out a little bit. And the secretary thought about it for and he said, well, we stop, we stop having tea times at six o'clock. Why don't you know just after six you could just play golf as much as you want. That was seriously, you know, no, you don't have to pay us to be members just after six o'clock. Just go out and play. Nobody's going to stop you. And you know, we would play eighteen whole matches after work from six pm to nine and be finishing and just playing that eighteenth all where you could just see the clock on the clubhouse and kind of aiming toward that you couldn't really see where the ball finished and you'd have to walk up by the green to find it unless you hit a car, you'd hear that. And just you know, that was by by a factor of five the best like residual golf. While we were building a golf course of anything we've ever had. So all of my crew that worked on that thing is just North Barrack's like the most special place in the world to them.

00:51:54
Speaker 3: It's that the closing stretch there. I mean, it's one of the great match like when you talk when you think about just match play culture over there, but like that closing stretch is so fun. If you're not you know, like you think a lot of what we've talked about with it. It's like you've talked about it's like how it wasn't hard enough. But if you're just playing a match, that closing stretches about is exhilarating of a set of shots and situations that you can be put in to try and close someone out. Mm hmm.

00:52:30
Speaker 1: And even that last hole, And I've built a hole very similar to that last hole at sand Glass for the fifteenth hole. The fifteenth hole comes back to the clubhouse a sand Glass and then there's a little three hole loop at the end and I built like a super short driveable part four just like that that everybody's going to look at it like this is like the easiest hole in the world. But you know, hopefully they're not just all card and pencil and you know, playing matches and they'll they'll get that like playing a match. It's like the last time I played a match there, my partner drove the green on the eighteenth hall. Everybody else was a little short. Then he three putted and we didn't win the hole, and I wound up losing the match on the eighteenth hole by just you know, there's real pressure. To make a three from two hundred and eighty five yards is not that easy to do, even if there's absolutely nothing any.

00:53:23
Speaker 3: Way, And with the cars on the right, you get nothing away.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: But out of bounds, and we've got we've got the driveway coming into the club as the out of bounds in the same place. That's fun.

00:53:35
Speaker 3: Well, we're we're going to come back with listener questions in the next episode of this podcast. Tom, thanks for being on and we'll be back in about a week with with listener Q and a here for this podcast.

00:54:01
Speaker 2: All right, big thanks to PJ.

00:54:02
Speaker 3: Clark for editing and producing this podcast, and of course to Tom for joining us.

00:54:09
Speaker 2: We will be back on Tuesday.

00:54:11
Speaker 3: I think the plan is to have a little amateur golf talk and a Women's Olympics talk with Garrett and Joseph. We're gonna be on and then the second edition of the Yolk with Doak will be back on Thursday of next week. Hey, we've got some stuff going on in the pro Shop. We have a sale by two hats get one free. We've got a huge selection of hats in the pro Shop. We also have some new T shirts. We have a Saint Andrew's themed T shirt that's really cool. Cameron Herdis did illustration on the back of it. It's got like part of the routing back there. And then also our Potato Chips Greens T shirt, which I love.

00:54:52
Speaker 2: It's a bag.

00:54:53
Speaker 3: It's like kind of like a bag of potato chips with all these greens that look like potato chips coming out. Really cool sh If you want to check those out, go to proshop dot the Friday dot Com use the promo code hats to get that by two get one free discount. Thanks to Tom, Thanks to you guys for listening, and we'll be back next week with two more episodes of The Friday Golf Podcast.