Yolk with Doak 30: What’s Happening at the Lido and Dornick Hills

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast and another episode of The Yoke with Doak. I was up at Sand Valley talking with Tom and this episode we'll focus a lot on his project up there, the Lido project.

00:00:17
Speaker 2: It's a private club.

00:00:18
Speaker 1: He'll be open to resort guests in some fashion, but it will be up there. It's a recreation of the Lido course. So we talked about the project as it's mid stage, and I hope you guys enjoy this.

00:00:32
Speaker 2: I miss the green for example.

00:00:34
Speaker 3: I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball.

00:00:38
Speaker 3: In arid Egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Friday Frida Egg Bride.

00:00:43
Speaker 1: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. So we're here, We're at Sand Valley, and uh, where you guys are building Lido? Tell you know you're you're right in the middle of it. How how's this project? You're obviously recreating the Leedo course from you know, New York, one of the great courses the Golden Age that was you know, lost to housing and all sorts of stuff. Long complicated story, but you're you're recreating it and you know, to as much speck as you can. How how has this process differed from you know, building your own new course.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: This is a completely different process than building my own new course, and a lot more technology involved. And you know, it's kind of like it's kind of like restoring an old golf course, except we have to build that. We have to do that from the ground up here, And you know, I think that would have been really hard. I don't think I could have done that, drawn a good map of it to get all the relative elevation, you know, how high was the fourth green and compared to the twelfth green, and compared to the fairway at four and all those things. I don't know that you could. I could have stared at those pictures for months and months and months, and still it would have been too daunting to think, Okay, I can draw a topo map of all that and get all these elevations right. So that's you know, so I never tried to tackle it like that. And then, as we've talked about on your podcast before, I think somebody else did. Peter Florey spent all this time working on a video game version of it. But you know, using every black and white picture that existed and and some light our data from somewhere, and you know, just pulling together all the information that he could to make a computer game model. So when you make it on computer game software, you kind of have you're kind of having to make it in three D so it looks right. But at least the version of the game that the verse the game that he was using. I guess there's one or two kind of computer games where we actually do kind of do you make a three D terrain model of the land that you're going to do and the greens that you're doing, But his wasn't really that way. So he did all this stuff graphically to get it to look right. And then you know, my question was still like, okay, but how are we going to get a map out of that? You know, you've obviously got all this, You've got a ton of detail in there that that that that feature looks twelve feet high instead of nine or fourteen, But how is that data coded into this program? And is there a way to pull that out? And even Peter didn't really know. And then, you know, because because the world is a funny place, you know, while we're sitting there trying to figure out is that even possible. One of the guys who works on the Meat and It's crew here, Brian Zaeger, who works on the Meat and It's crew at Sand Valley, also like creates computer golf games in his spare time. He's been doing it for years, and he's like, he raises his hand and goes, oh, yeah, I could like make a bot that goes in and pulls out a million spot elevations for off the computer model and turns it into a map. And we're all like really, And like a month later, I get a map in the mail of the Lido and you know, it took me about two minutes of looking at it to think that's got to be pretty close, you know. I mean that looks like that looks like what a very dan hole should look like.

00:05:09
Speaker 2: And it's got the.

00:05:10
Speaker 3: Tilt correct, and it's you know, the greens are the right size, and the elevations seem like they make sense, and you know, I was just amazed. But so we've basically used all this technology to get give us that. You know, we didn't really think that was perfect. You know, Peter Flory was the first one to say you know, some of this I've got really good pictures from five different angles, and some of it I've got almost nothing other than one aerial photo that shows that hole from a certain angle. So you know, so he's been really good about telling us. You know, I'm really confident about this the green on this hole. I'm not as confident about the green on this hole. So so anyway, we've used the model to kind of give us a base. You know, instead of starting from flat nothing, we're starting from the model.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: You know, we're using.

00:06:15
Speaker 1: So what's happening. You take the model and then people are building off that model in the ground.

00:06:22
Speaker 3: Yes, we're so, we're taking we're taking all the topo information off the model. We're digging a giant lake where the lagoon was between the fourth and twelfth holes. We're using that dirt to fill the mounds and green sits all up to the right elevation and just just cotton and filling on site. But like two thirds of the film comes from that huge lagoon to get to build everything else, which the original golf course, they dredged the channel and kind of built those forms all the same way when they did it the first time themselves. So we get every you know, so we get you know, we get the first holes that we built were kind of thirteen fourteenth, fifteen sixteen, and we get the you know, and they're because they're close to the lagoon, so it's easy to haul the dirt. You know, you couldn't really finish the twelfth hole along the lagoon until you had all the dirt out. You know, you keep having traffic across that hole until it's all dug out. So you couldn't work on that hole first. You had to leave that for a while. But we built the other holes close to it with the dirt as it came out of the lagoon. And so you get the thirteenth green, which is supposed to be like a Knowll hole, sitting pretty high up.

00:07:40
Speaker 2: In the air.

00:07:40
Speaker 3: It's a little bigger green than I thought it would be. You know, if you did just told me to build a Knowle hole, I would have built a smaller green there. But you know, I've got an aerial photo that shows it was a pretty big green and pictures from enough different angles to say, okay, it was that high, so you know, but you know, when we got on top of it to really look at it, It's like certain things, you know, certain things start coming up that you don't think about when you're making a computer game version, like does it drain anywhere? You know, all the tea is. Peter just made all the tea's dead flat because why not. But you know, nearly any golf course you'd ever build the tea will be built at a one percent grade instead, so that it drains off. You know, when it pours rain, it drains off. Now we're in one of the only places I've ever worked we don't really have to worry about that. The sand here is perks so fast and it's so deep. I mean, they literally can't get a puddle to stay at Sand Valley on the other golf courses, so we think we're kind of exempt from that. And I you know, I went to the superintendent as soon as I started thinking about, like, so, do you want us to build the teas flat or do you want us to build it with one percent? Because if it's one percent, I got to go back and edit the computer model for all the tea's Otherwise the machine's just going to keep making the thing flat again. And he's like, no, I think we could have flat teas here, So I'm like, okay, that's one problem solved. But you know, kind of the greens, I mean, I have no idea like on the computer game version, you know how they decide like how much slope makes the green fast, But it seems like in the computer game it must be dialed up to very high speeds because most of the greens are pretty flat by the standards of how they used to build old golf courses, you know, like some of them there was less than one percent slope in you know, parts of the green that were whole locations, and on an older golf course, typically you would you know, all those things would be two percent.

00:09:42
Speaker 1: So it seemed like in you know, is the real small minutia would be the hardest part to go from video game to ender the ground.

00:09:53
Speaker 2: Yes, now it's you know, it's funny.

00:09:55
Speaker 3: There's there's a lot of like little two three foot high man and ridges and ripples and stuff that when you know, when we just had it build out the computer model, it's like, wow, that looks pretty good. I mean, we'd never shape something that intricate, but it does look like a link's fairway would look in the UK. So you know, we don't have to do anything more to that. Really, the only places that were that were editing much are the green surfaces, because some of them are some of them were flatter than I think they probably were, you know. So I go back to Peter and say, well, how sure, how sure are you about that? Or the you know, the fifteenth green. The first time I walked on it, I was like, God, this looks huge.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: Are you sure? This was really this big?

00:10:41
Speaker 3: And you know, and it you know, and also it's it seemed to sit up higher to just my eye of like looking at you know, comared to like a green of Chicago Golf Club. This sat up like two feet higher. And I was like, are you sure it sat up that high? Because you know, they would have been hitting a fairly long shot in there and trying to run it up and it doesn't seem like, you know, it seems like the ramp going up to the green is too steep and you're not going to be able to hit a long shot and bounce it up there. And he was like, no, you know, no, I can't say. I can't say I'm one hundred percent sure of that. And then you know, Brian Zaeger's step step back in and you know, so the technology for this thing is good enough. Now, you know if we I never try to build a golf course to plants, so I never worry about you know, I'm only trying to make the shaping look right. But for this, you know, we can stand there with the with the map and all the GPS data from the model on the iPhone and a blue dot showing you right where you're standing. So you know where's the edge of the greenside bunker, Well, it's two feet over to the right. You know, we can really put it on the ground that precise. But then of course you got to make it work in three you know, you got to that's two D. You got to make it work in three D also. But you know, so we have Brian Zaeger out there flagging all the time, like you know. We after after we got the model roughed in, Brian came back and looked at the fifteenth green and it's like, no, it's really like ten feet too big in the back. I don't know where, you know, I don't know where the model got screwed up. But you know, here's you know, here's the overlay right here, this should be the back edge of the green, right where we're standing, and we still got that much more, you know, and we we had a half built. We already had the irrigation loop in around that green because we're pretty sure it was right. And Brian's like, oh, it's too big. Okay, yank the irrigation loop out of there, chop off ten feet out of the back of the green. We'll do it again. Thankfully, we haven't had too many of those that we just you know, figured out after we spent a lot of time. I'm on it now, it's not quite in the right place, or no, it's a little too big or too small or whatever, you know, and we're trying to you know, we're doing a better job of anticipating that more and triple checking our work as we do it instead of waiting until the end and then finding out we screwed up the size of a green a little bit.

00:13:21
Speaker 1: Do you think with this technology that, like it's a it could be something that you use more and more in the future, for say, even like restorations or you know, rebuilding other there. I don't think any of them, you know, really compare to Lido, but could you potentially rebuild other courses in America that maybe are in other parts of the world.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's both good things and bad things to say about that. So so like for restoration, just like I was saying, we can stand there and look at our blue dot and tell tell that the bunkers should be a little more to the right. You could do that with the nineteen twenty five aerial of any one of these golf courses that you're working on doing a restoration of, and go, this bunker isn't big enough yet. And you know, we've always tried to do that in the field, and you know, but we're staring at an aerial. You know, we're staring at a photo on our phone. We don't have it blown up big enough that we can say, okay, this thing is exactly from right there to right there.

00:14:22
Speaker 2: Now you can do that.

00:14:24
Speaker 3: But the problem, the problem is no architect can draw exactly what they want to build, you know, making a bunch of lines on a piece of paper. It's like you wouldn't ask Michelangelo to do a sculpture by making a map of the sculpture that he was going to do and then having somebody else make the sculpture based on his map. So you know, golf architecture is a three D field. It's like sculpture and trying to reduce it down to two and back to a plan that you know, the plan shows contral but it doesn't show you know it only you know when you're drawing contra lines trying to actually visualize the shape.

00:15:10
Speaker 2: It is really hard.

00:15:11
Speaker 3: Like the one of the first courses I built when I was doing the Legends of Myrtle Beach, Larry Young had had this old shaper guy that built a bunch of golf courses. So you know, I drew a grading plan just like this one for Ledough of basically what I wanted to do, and they started moving dirt around to build it, and you know, and like one of the days I saw the shaper, you know, he had my plan. He had a little like three inch long ruler that he was using on the plan to figure out like how steep was the mound next to the green on the fifteenth hall, like you know, what was the slope going down there? And I was like, shit, I didn't think about that at all when.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: I drew that map.

00:15:58
Speaker 3: You know, he's trying to get it exactly like my little drawing. But I didn't you know, I didn't measure that out for how steep I wanted that to be. I just thought, I need a four foot high mound to the to the right of the green. But did I draw it the right size? And did I draw the contra line based out just right to get the shape I wanted? Now, you know, I was going to figure that out once we once they put the dirt in place. So that's the hard part. It's like, can you can you draw something like that? What you can do and what I think I'm going to do in the future. So so right now to get the base version of the computer model out there on the ground. You know, the three D topo model is in a computer and there's a GPS unit in the bulldozer that will tell that tells the bulldozer where it is on the plan and what the elevation is supposed to be. So like you need to cut another foot here to get it to the plan. So the you know, so, but like I say, we're editing some of the greens because the plan isn't perfect, you know, so the fifteenth green is smaller. But you know, after we get done with shaping things. It's very windy out here some days, and the you know, it's just all rassy and so it blows around a lot.

00:17:16
Speaker 2: You know.

00:17:17
Speaker 3: The construction guys are like, oh, no problem. You know, we can put it back exactly like before. We just run over it again with the GPS dozer and put it all right back. And it's like, yeah, but you're putting back the computer model and we just edited the computter. You know, we just edited all that. So so we we sorted out pretty quickly. And you know, I said to Brian Seger, so once I, once I reshape this green to get what I want, can you just map that out and put that in the bulldozer so it can rebuild that next time in case it gets blown around. And he said, yeah, So you know we've tried that out on the first three or four greens here now and it does. You know, it puts bad. You know, you don't need Brian Schneider to do to do all the inter gets shaping. The second time. The other guy using the GPS dozer can get it really close because he's got all the data points in there.

00:18:07
Speaker 1: I imagine the first time you did it, it was a very very close examination to make sure it was all right.

00:18:14
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, but now that so now we're comfortable with that, and I'm thinking that could be a game changer for me for like this this winter, I'm going to go to New Zealand and work on the new course down the beach from Terry Ed. And you know, every time I go to build corps like quarantine for two weeks, three separate times so far to build his golf course, I'd like to only have to do that once. So I'm thinking I can go in January do my two weeks of quarantine. The golf course is pretty much all cleared of trees already, so that, you know, we could work on any one of the greens right now.

00:18:49
Speaker 1: So you could do the greens first.

00:18:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking I can shape everything I want to shape in like two months and just GPS at all into a perfect map of what I want to build because I built it.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: You know, it's like.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: Doing the sculpture, making the map of the sculpture, and then using the map to make more copies of the sculpture. You know, we can, you know, so I can make one long trip do all the stuff that I want to see and then leave Brian Slanik to put that back together. You know, I mean, the only reason we can't build the whole golf course that fast is because.

00:19:29
Speaker 2: We have to irrigate and finish it.

00:19:30
Speaker 3: And you've only got so many guys, and the irrigation crew only worked so fast. So usually, you know, when we were building Terry Ed, we couldn't get more of than about four holes ahead or all the cool stuff would blow away by the time they got the irrigation to it. In fact, the last green we build it Terry Edy was the thirteenth, a little short part four up in the back, and Brian Schneider and I were shaping the green. Brian Slanik was working on finishing the twelfth and fourteenth holes and getting grass on them, and you know, we finished the thirteenth green, you know, High five headed to the airport to fly back to the States. We're sitting in the Auckland airport that night and flon it causes like I wish I'd had a better look at that green because it's pretty much gone. We had a forty mine hour windstorm right after you left, and you know, no record of it, so he just had to. You know, he kind of remembered what we'd done and he you know, he wing back a version. But it's not exactly the same as what we'd shape that we that we both gave the.

00:20:30
Speaker 2: Thumbs up to. That shouldn't happen anymore.

00:20:34
Speaker 3: We do have the te you know, now, I know how to use the technology to save that. You know, that's what I want. You know, we can put that back.

00:20:43
Speaker 1: It'll make your way more efficient that way, then yeah, I won't have to so you know, so I'm I'm going through the the immigration process right now to get you still have to have a special you know, you have to have a special.

00:20:56
Speaker 3: Visitor visa to go to New Zealand right now. Even if you wanted to do the two week quarantine, your typical tourist can't can't get permission to cout go yet. So you know, I'm so I'm doing this. I've got an immigration lawyer working on getting me the document that I need. They looked up my records for New Zealand immigration and to build two courses and plan my third one and play a little golf on them. A couple of times. I've been to New Zealand thirty times. In the last twenty years, thirty trips, one hundred and sixty two days on the ground in New Zealand.

00:21:30
Speaker 2: I was like, damn, that's a lot.

00:21:33
Speaker 1: A lot of people be pretty envious of getting to spend half a year, not quite a half a year in New Zealand.

00:21:40
Speaker 3: Oh, I'd love to also, But I've been doing it like seven days at a time with a thirty hour flight each way. It kind of adds up, and it takes a toll on your body, you know. And I've already made like five or six trips for this project and we haven't built anything yet.

00:21:57
Speaker 2: You know. That's that's just.

00:21:59
Speaker 3: The planning and how long it takes to get through all the roadblocks to building the golf course now. But you know, but I do think this technology gives you a chance to like be way more efficient when you get to the construction part and make sure you don't have hiccups. Now, the downside of it is it's too easy to copy yourself, and it's too easy to copy something else and just cop flat out copy it down to the last millimeter instead of like you know, I mean every course I've ever built, just like I was talking about in the Pacific Dunes book. You know, this green is inspired by something I've seen somewhere else. Yeah, but I'm not literally take you know, when I when a carbon copy, yeah, when I think you know, the sixteenth all a Pacific Dunes kind of reminded me a little bit of tenant Riviera. But I didn't intend to build exactly the green of TANet Riviera there. I'm just taking that idea and working with the set site that I've got and how wide it is, and making something that plays similar to that that you want to drive left to play into a narrow little target. But unfortunately, with this technology doesn't just take the idea, it gives you the exact three D plagiarism data to do whatever you want. If you have a map of a famous golf course, which the technology is makes it much easier to get that now too, you know it used to be. You know, I do have deep in the stashes of the Office of Renaissance Golf, I have topo maps for Augusta and wing Foot and Oakmont and Oakland Hills that Arn Palmer's company had when they were doing when they were going to they didn't actually build it, but they were going to build Golden Ocala.

00:23:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they got the maps for those courses so.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: They could reproduce those holes for replica courses. Well, yeah, and you know, I mean my fear is that, you know, it's going to take some of the creativity out, that it'll just it's going to be too easy to just build almost an exact replica of whatever you want, so you don't. You're so you're not trying to build a better version anymore. You're just trying to build the same thing over again. And you know, even I mean the story of the Lido, the way we're doing it, you know, it reminds me just a little too much of Hollywood, where you know, I have had the thought a couple of times that if Michael Kaiser had wanted me to do a great course on that site and not a copy of the Lido, it would have been that would have been a harder sell. You know, he says, we're doing the Lido and people are signing up with a fifty thousand dollars check before we've done anything.

00:24:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if it's if.

00:24:59
Speaker 3: I'm in the new course, generally you're gonna want to have an idea of what that's going to be like and I can't really tell you exactly, you know, the creativity hasn't happened yet.

00:25:10
Speaker 1: But so yeah, the lidos like the ultimate romantic romantic story of golf, like where it went away and bringing it back as like the happy ending.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: Right, but in the movie business it would be a sequel. And you know that's that's just come to totally dominate the movie business. Now nobody ever writes any new movies anymore. They just do you know, some number five comic book mark.

00:25:36
Speaker 1: It's super it's super interesting when you think about it because like it's like all the work that goes into creating the new the characters of a of a story, or the like the unique characters of a golf hole. Like i'd say the golf holes or characters are what when Academy awards, you know, and you know for golf courses, that's like the same thing. The great new golf courses are all new individual holes. Like replica courses don't win, you know, or for Best New Course, right or I hope they didn't.

00:26:10
Speaker 3: I don't know if to Now now you know, we're about to find out whether we whether we've broken through that barrier and and it. You know, it pays to just build the replica instead of trying to do the cool new things because from a.

00:26:26
Speaker 1: Standpoint, at least this one doesn't exist. It's gone, you know. And that's but it would you know where where it would be like I feel it would be cheap. Is like if I came to Wisconsin and played Royal Dornic.

00:26:37
Speaker 3: Or you know, and that's you know, the only reason I signed up to do it is because the lido is gone.

00:26:44
Speaker 2: You know, if if if they just said to.

00:26:46
Speaker 3: Me, yeah, we want to build an exact replica of Augusta. You know, never mind, you know all the flak you would get for that, it'd be like, no, I don't want to do that. And I know I don't want to do like the nineteen thirty version of Augusta either. It's like, you know, just go to Augusta if you want that, even though it's pretty hard to get it.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Rep.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: Sodo.

00:27:14
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, the best way to get better at golf, I think, really is to understand how to hit shuts the right yardage.

00:27:22
Speaker 2: You know.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: Distance control is always the thing that stands out to me as the best asset of really great players, whether you're at the club level, you know, the best junior players hit their irons the right distance. So with that in mind, Rep Sodo is our sponsor. They are a portable, affordable digital launch monitor. This thing's great and it fits. It's about the same size as a rangefinder. You can just throw in your bag, have it for range sessions and you can get consistent, immediate feedback that lets you know how far you're hitting the ball. This thing works great. It automatically tracks your stats stores with shot tracer. You know, it's just a great way to get more informed about how far your shots are going. So rap Sodo it's it's a great tool. If you use the promo code Frida Egg, you get a free premium subscription for a year that's one hundred dollars value. It's awesome. You just have to use the promo code Friday Egg and that's rap Sodo r ap s O d O. Thanks to rap Sodo. And now back to the yoke with doak. Has there been anything when it's gotten built into the ground that's like really wowed you like that you didn't expect from looking at I know you look at a map you can usually tell is there anything that stood out from seeing stuff? You know, it's you know, you're about halfway done with the construction aspect of it.

00:28:48
Speaker 3: Well, as I said, you know, as I said before, some of the coolest parts of just the undulations and the fairways look really cool. And and Peter Flora and I talked a lot about that that it was clear from like a plasticcene model that they did for the lido before they built it, that somebody thought a lot about what kinds of cool little wrinkly contours do we want to get in this course? And you know he did. Going back to what we said about Royal Saint George's, you know, McDonald built the full scale of undulations from from you know, two foot up and down in seventeen fairway to a twenty five foot dune covering over the fairway on the left side that's the out the backside of the Alps Hill coming down into that fairway. You know, it's it's a pretty wild range of contour for starting out with a dead flat sight. And other than that, I think, you know, like mister I missed mister Kaiser by a couple of days here this trip he was here last week, and you know, we only have a couple holes like finished and grassed, and the rest of it's just all open sand. Even though the shapes are close when you're when you're looking from far away, you can't you can't really tell what's going on until you're right on the hole. But his impression was the same as most people that have walked out here. Wow, I mean, the scale of it is really much bigger than we thought. And it's just it's just so big and open, and you like see almost all the way across it from one side to the other. Is kind of you know, it's it feels different than the courses.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: Over here, totally very different. And you know, you know, you know, is that a good thing? It's good because it's different.

00:30:33
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, generally, if I'm if if I was building a course from scratch and you said, would you rather have the wide open thing that's all shaped up or trees and shrubs and big hills and stuff, I'd usually rather go for the land that's over here. You know, we know we're doing something. You know, this this is a special case. It's not it's not the kind of golf course I'm going to build a lot more of I'm really in to see what people think of it. But it is, I mean, it's it's not just a knockoff McDonald replica course. There's you know, first of all, there's three or four holes that there is no version of on his other golf courses. And second, you know all the all the planning work that they thought of, you know, building contra into the fairways on this course. You know, Chicago Golf Club doesn't have contur.

00:31:24
Speaker 2: In the fairways like this.

00:31:26
Speaker 3: You know, I was going to even National doesn't really have contur in the fairways like this.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: What of You know, everybody's always going to compare it to other McDonald's courses, Like, how would you compare contrast it with with different of the famous Rayner McDonald's.

00:31:42
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I think the one that it will get compared to the most is Chicago Golf Club because you know, Chicago Golf Club is is a big piece of ground that the total elevation change from bottom to top is probably pretty similar twenty or thirty feet. Everybody described Chicago Golf as and flat. It's not flat, you know, it's gently up and down fifteen twenty feet at a time. But you know, and this is maybe a little flatter than that with but with bigger features in certain places. So the range is similar. You know, you don't quite see all the way across it from one hole, but you certainly see holes halfway across the property as your plan. So both because of proximity and because of the size and lack of trees in the middle of the property, I think that's.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: The one that it will be compared to the most.

00:32:35
Speaker 3: The one thing that I think will make it most different from Sam Valley is, you know, mostly now we try to make the course hard for the good player but easier for the weaker players. The Lido was not that. You know, there's there's a ton of like cross hazards and and there's a lot of fairway bunkers one hundred and eighty yards from the tee and two hundred and twenty yards from the tea. Just all over the golf course there's a lot of bunkers. And so I think for the like higher handicapper, it's going to be very hard because there's a lot of carries and you know, you can you can bounce the ball into the greens on most of the holes, but there's been some big obstacle in the fairway before you get there that that's gonna take a toll on the average guy and on some good players too. I mean there's some there's some really nasty small bunkers and deep bunkers and cross hazards that the that the scratch player is going to have to really think about, can I get past that or not?

00:33:41
Speaker 1: Any holes like in particular that you've seen now into the in the ground where that's pretty cool.

00:33:49
Speaker 3: The fifteenth all, the one that was actually Simpson's entry for the Lido contest. I mean, it's a huge hole. It takes up some of The fifteenth and the fourth holes both take up so much craft. They're like the biggest holes that I've ever built.

00:34:04
Speaker 2: They're just the channel hole, yes, you.

00:34:07
Speaker 3: Know, they're like they're like one hundred and fifty yards wide between between the two alternate fairways, and they you know, they're both pretty long hauls, and it's just boy, it's going to take like two weeks to plant the fairway on that all. By the time we're done. You know, they're at a scale that's kind of bigger than anything, I think than any hole I've ever built that I can think of, so that that stood out right away, but also like you know, like fifteen Fairway has some ridges in it are that divide the fairway into sections, and it's like, you don't see, I would have never thought to build stuff like.

00:34:43
Speaker 2: That into a hole.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's gonna be cool, and you know, I think, you know, it's gonna be fescue fairways. I think it'll be played pretty dry and pretty firm, and the ball is really going to roll out a lot, and you've got a lot of features out there big enough to like steer about, you know, like have all change direction when it's on the ground and steer toward a bunker or steer away into a hollow on the other side, or something more than most courses that I've worked on.

00:35:11
Speaker 1: I mean, as a Midwestern who's you know, grown up playing all around here, whenever I come to Sand Valley, like the first few holes, I'm always jarred by how firm and fast everything plays, Like how especially around the greens, And it's it's got to be something when you're designing, like do you typically tone down stuff when you know it's going to be fescue.

00:35:37
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I've built enough courses that are if ascue that I think it's the other way around. I Mean, I sort of always come into a course with the mindset that that's what it's going.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: To be like.

00:35:47
Speaker 3: And I have to, you know, on the on the rare occasions that we're that we're not building for those conditions, I have to like remind myself, Okay, you know, I need to make this a little harder because it's not going to be a super fast surface and these slopes aren't going to have as much effect as they normally do.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: That makes sense that that'll be cool with the severity. Like just that ball just fly around there, right, It's yeah, that's it's really cool to see it starting to take shape. And then like the stuff, the crazy stuff is like where you see where you haven't gotten to yet, how just like nothing, you know, it's a it's really interesting halfway halfway through kind of. Yeah.

00:36:35
Speaker 3: The last like the the holes that we're building last are the ones that were on the south end of the site, so like seventy nine and eighteen and the eighteenth hall.

00:36:47
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny.

00:36:47
Speaker 3: I mean, most people when they talk about the Lido talk about the eighteenth hole because that was the hole that Mackenzie won a competition to design and it was the super wild hole, and we haven't we haven't got to that one. Yeah, you know, I'm looking at the fourth hole and the fifteenth hall thinking they're they're pretty wild. I've never seen anything like that. We haven't even got to the wildest one yet.

00:37:09
Speaker 1: So what else do you are you working on the summer this fall? You talked about Terry Edy is the not Terry Edy, but the other courses of Terry Edy are coming up. You've got Dorna Hills restoration, right, That's it.

00:37:22
Speaker 3: The other thing that I'm doing this summer is is doing a restoration of Perry Maxwell's first golf course, which he built on his own farm in Ardmore, Oklahoma, Dorna Hills, which years ago, so that that part of Oklahoma is like, you know, the club's kind of you know, it's not a wealthy club. You know, it's an oil and gas part of the country, and the oil and gas business isn't booming. So I was totally you know, years ago i'd said maybe on your podcast maybe in I think it was an interview with Rand Morrissett. Actually like said, you know, if you could restore any course, what would you do. And you know, at some point one of those one of those questions, I said, you know, I'd restore that golf.

00:38:07
Speaker 2: Course for free.

00:38:07
Speaker 3: They really they blew up all the greens forty years ago and really changed it around and took away from it. And you know, it should be in a you know, Maxwell was buried there on it, in a little cemetery overlooking the golf course. It has one of the great golf holes in America on it, and it's like, you know, the.

00:38:29
Speaker 2: Whole golf course should should be that good.

00:38:32
Speaker 3: And it's really not. It hasn't been for years, decades. So I was very surprised last year, kind of right at the start of the pandemic, when nothing was going on, I got a call out of the blue from somebody at Dornet Kills like, were you serious about you know, you would help restore the golf course for free? And it's like, yeah, you know, I mean for sure, I you know, because they need to put in an irrigation system and they were thinking as long as they were doing that, you know, if they were ever going to do anything to restore it now, would be the time, but they didn't really have the money to restore it all. They didn't know how much it would cost to restore it. That's the first question was like how much would it cost? And I said, I don't, you know, I got to come look for a couple of days. I don't know what the scope of work would be, you know, but they were hoping that we could restore it without restoring the greens, and I was like, I mean it doesn't count. You know, a Maxwell course without Maxwell greens is not a restoration, you know. That's the one thing we have to do. Everything else is like, I don't know if we have to go that far, but we have to rebuild the greens. And of course, just like the Leado, you know, they didn't they didn't make really accurate maps of the greens when they blew them up and changed them all thirty years ago.

00:39:48
Speaker 2: So we have to go back.

00:39:50
Speaker 3: And look at all the old black and white pictures we can find, and there's not as many of that. You know, they didn't hold any major championships on it or anything in New York. Yeah, so it's it's much harder to find good pictures and good information.

00:40:05
Speaker 2: Some of the.

00:40:06
Speaker 3: Pictures of it that do exist were out of Perry Maxwell's personal collection of photos that were handed down to his kids and grandkids, and people have made copies of over the years. You know. So when I went to the club the first time, they put me in a car. They put me in the golf cart next to an older member that was driving me around and showing me around, and you know, after we started talking for a couple of holes. His grandfather was Perry Maxwell's brother in law, and Maxwell's two brothers in law were his shapers and.

00:40:42
Speaker 2: Project manager when he got busy and the like.

00:40:46
Speaker 3: When when Maxwell built Crystal Downs for Mackenzie in nineteen twenty nine and thirty, he and his brother in law moved.

00:40:55
Speaker 2: Up there for two summers and did all the work. So this guy, you know, this guy, Buzzy Westheimer, the old member that I met.

00:41:04
Speaker 3: You know, he grew up playing Dornic Hills, and you know, his his parents and grandparents had worked on building the golf course in the first place, and he, you know, he's got a pretty good memory. But you know, even for me remembering Green Conters forty years later and how they were different is a pretty hard thing to do so, so I was like, well, it's great that he knows the golf course. And really so Maxwell's Descendants Foundation are the ones that are putting up most of the money to rebuild the golf course, and they're just thrilled that, you know, we're trying to do it right. But I really felt like I needed like one more guy.

00:41:44
Speaker 2: Who really remembered the golf course.

00:41:46
Speaker 3: Well, you know, they they rounded up all the ex superintendents and guys that used to work on the crew and had them come out with me for a day and that was cool, and you know, I heard some things about how the golf course used to be that I didn't expect, you know, but they don't remember a players so much.

00:42:02
Speaker 2: They remember features and.

00:42:04
Speaker 3: They could tell you like how high that future was or how hard it was to mow and that kind of stuff, but they don't really remember what the green played like, which is really the you know, that's the most important thing we're trying to get back. And so so everybody's combing their brains like who would know. And then Brosie Westtheimer goes, well, you know, Mike Holder right from Oklahoma State, and Brezi's like his parents moved here when he's fifteen. He played high school golf in Ardmore. He played Dorna Hills every day for like three or four years, and then he went off to college and his parents moved away. He hadn't come back much. So so we called him and asked if he would consult on it a little bit for us, and he said absolutely yes. So he's already been down a couple of times and he's going to meet me next week when I'm there to you know, really go over everything he remembers about the golf course and he's got a really good memory.

00:43:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:43:02
Speaker 1: So I think I feel like anywhere you grew up playing golf, if you're if you're a high school high level like a great player, like you're gonna remember like the back of your mind those those childhood rounds playing there.

00:43:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, just like you know, a Royal Melbourne. The guy who's been the most help in restoring some things on the East Course is there's a guy named John Green who wrote has written a book.

00:43:26
Speaker 2: About the golf course now.

00:43:27
Speaker 3: But John was like club champion there thirty years ago. He was not a long hitter, you know, he was like a club champion who had to be like pinpoint accurate and nowhere to miss every green, you know, in order to get up and down. And that's like the most valuable bit of information you could have because that's basically telling you which way the green tilted, where it was where it was really hard to get up and down from, and where it was easy. If you tell me that, you know, even if I don't get the contras exactly right, still plays the way it played. That's the most important thing.

00:44:03
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Like it's about how it plays, not necessarily like when you don't have all the information, you know, worrying about the every little contour is one, but getting how it played right is the right, yes, and then you know because then everything makes sense. Then all the hazards makes sense.

00:44:20
Speaker 3: And then you know you're looking at a black and white photo, but you don't have context there. If you give me the black and white photo that shows me some where some features are, and then you give me the context of yeah, what was really hard is if you got yourself over here, Now I can put two and two together and make the thing fit.

00:44:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then it is something somebody might say, Oh, it's always impossible to read this pot here and it might be oh, it's not consistent with the rest of the green.

00:44:49
Speaker 2: Yep, that's it.

00:44:50
Speaker 1: I'd never thought about it that way.

00:44:54
Speaker 3: But it's very rare that you have guys that remember the golf course that well after it was changed twenty or thirty or forty years ago.

00:45:02
Speaker 2: It's like, there's just not many.

00:45:04
Speaker 3: People like like for interesting, we were working on bel Air. I said to the guy who was like the chairman of the project, you know, there's a there's a few greens out here that really haven't been changed very much, and I got to rebuild it, but I don't want to change it. So there's some subtle stuff I don't want to lose, and I don't know exactly what it is. I was like, which members of bell Air would be the ones that know the greens the best. And he thought about it for about five minutes and he's like, uh, you know the guys the guy the two players that have won the club championship a lot, and we're really good putters, so he figured they knew the greens were best were Jack Wagner, the actor, and Jerry West. So that's through your guys, those are the guys. That's pretty cool the logo. That should be a fun project to watch.

00:46:03
Speaker 2: And it's all happening. It's all happening pretty fast.

00:46:07
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, they got the golf course closed this summer and we're out there just flying away as fast as we can. You know, they're a month into it. I haven't seen it yet, but basically i'm trying to, like, you know, they're going to have most a rough version of most of the greens there for me to look at Saturday when I get there. And I've got about two weeks to try to sign off on all of them and be done.

00:46:31
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's real quick.

00:46:32
Speaker 2: That's real quick.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: But open back up by spring.

00:46:37
Speaker 2: Oh no, this fall.

00:46:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you know you're so you're you're playing bank Grass in well, November, maybe November December.

00:46:46
Speaker 2: They'll be back to playing golf.

00:46:48
Speaker 1: That'll be really cool. All right, Well, we'll catch you sometime soon. Everybody can go buy your book Dope golf dot com The Making of Pacific Dunes, right, that's the title, yep.

00:47:00
Speaker 3: And I'll have to update the website with the new stuff I'm working on because all that stuff is at a date now and it's joy some of it, and some of it's changed completely, Like one or two of the projects that I thought for sure we'd be working on now looks like they may never happen. And then there's a whole raft of new stuff that I can't quite talk about yet.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll catch you soon. You're gonna be in Wisconsin some more, so that's easy for us. Yep, thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. This episode was edited by Meg Atkins. A quick reminder, we've got a jammed event schedule this fall. We just finished up our summer slate. We're kicking back off in September. We've got great events, a great courses. Go check them out at the Fridagg dot com. Go to the pro shop and you can see the events there, or there's a whole events tap, so check them out. We've got a great lineup, really excited, had a great summer of events and looking forward to an awesome fall.

00:48:08
Speaker 2: A couple include Prairie.

00:48:09
Speaker 1: Dunes, Lancaster and boy Berry, Yaco. So go check him out and hopefully we'll see you at an event.